Aberrant Lucidity

Message from both Obama & Trump administration's DoE. Sub-prime loans.  Let me tell you about sub-prime loans… I got one.  I got 8 actually because I went to that worthless piece of garbage for-profit not-center-of-higher-education, ITT Tech.  To hell with ITT Tech.  I went there because I squandered my opportunity at a real college and couldn't get tuition assistance.  ITT Tech got me a student loan at 22% interest.  That’s right.  A student loan at 22% interest.  And because they have quarters instead of semesters, I got that 4 times a year.  After the first quarter of straight A-s for this 2.86 high school GPA student, I was rewarded with federal financial aid as well.  I never saw a penny of it because ITT, Corinthian, AIA and others make sure those payments go straight to the bursar and into their fat bank accounts. From J.K. Cody, a former financial aid officer at ITT Tech: “Another interesting fact about ITT...

Why is the stock market allowed?  Seriously; why do we allow so-called  “investors” manipulate everything about our economy?  On the one hand it's international legalized gambling that not only affects the livelihoods of the investors, but potentially hundreds of millions if not billions of people in the world and on the other hand it's used for currency manipulation and strong-arming new entries to the market into complying with the established market (or preventing entry altogether).  I wouldn't call that a free market so much as a market controlled tightly by the very people who the regulations are supposed to protect everyone else from.   Do you realize that “speculators” can lie, cheat and manipulate the perception of the value of existing and future goods?  Some ultra-wealthy guys in New York can basically decide what percentage of Americans can afford to drive to work and buy bacon each month.  The immediate repercussions of decisions made ...

My ex-girlfriend could be very… expressive when she was upset.  She also  didn't   get things the way other people would. I told her we were breaking up, I  couldn't  see her anymore and she needed to get her things and leave.  She was upset, naturally.  She said, “I  can't  believe  you're  breaking up with me over this puddle on the kitchen floor.” I shook my head and said, “You can’t?  Really?  First of all, dear, even though I had much more important issues to attend to you refused to clean it up.  Second, it was a lot of blood. Third, you fucking stabbed me over using the last of the ranch dressing!"

As a futurist there are a couple of things I  can't  wait for. One of them is already here.  You know what  I'm  talking about?  Google glass; now hear me out!  I know some of the early adopters have been, well, kind of dickish about their toys.  I think  I've  heard the term ‘glassholes’ thrown about.  I think it’s a great technology.  It kind of looks stupid as hell, but at the same time it’s not far off from what people several decades back thought the future would look like.  I’m going to be a little judgmental about this whole thing though.  If you don’t think that this technology is inevitable… take a moment here and try to remember how you gained knowledge prior to the early 90s.  When a piece of trivia came up and an argument ensued, how did you settle the argument?  It’s kind of hard to remember now, isn’t it, folks?  Did you carry around your parents cell phone with its own car...

I'm going to go ahead and get a little political here.  It's been known to happen from time to time.  I ended up writing this in response to a query from a commenter on this story  about the anti-woman anti-abortion law in North Carolina being struck down.  I was addressing commenter Nefertittles, who I subsequently decided was not as crazy at her initial comment led me (and many others) to believe. So basically we ("we" being anyone who is pro-choice) are expected to oppose a law that has doctors providing  more  information? How fucked up is that? We're against knowledge now? This one is making me uncomfortable. So, as I later learned, Nefertittles just wasn't aware of what was already required in the process of obtaining an abortion.  That's okay.  It's an opportunity to teach, and I like to use humor to do that. So You've Decided to Get an Abortion! You made this decision with or without the knowledge or permission of the pers...

Sometime's it's easy to find inspiration. Some people's ideas just blow your mind... for awhile. Once the excitement, the "I can do this!" wears off though, it can be tough to become re-inspired by the same person. I find it especially difficult to become re-inspired by people who motivate for a living, with the purpose of making you better... for a price. The best, most inspiring person I can think of though, is Henry Rollins. He doesn't fill a hotel hall with people who pay exorbitant amounts of money to sit through a lecture that teaches you to be a better person, only to be disappointed when the lecture itself fails to bring about the change they were looking for in their lives. He tells a story about himself. Whether it's all the hell he went through as the young punk lead singer of Black Flag, having bodily fluids thrown at him, having gear stolen by the same bar owners that paid the band to play, having to eat canned dog food because anothe...