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School Fundraising–Producing Beggars for at Least 30 Years

Is anyone else really put off when they are attacked by an army of eight year olds in front of the grocery store trying to sell something for their school?  We were just talking about this yesterday after our weekly trip to the store.  Yesterday’s group of kids wasn’t even selling anything, they were just taking donations.

I despise this practice for so many reasons it actually warrants its own post, or several posts.  I have no doubt in my mind that public schools need more money.  After all, what gov’ment run project doesn’t?  How can our schools maintain their mediocre performance without more money?  Financing sports programs alone is insanely expensive, yet essential to providing an average education, right?

It gets better.  Our doorbell rang at 8:00 last night–a little girl selling overpriced stuff I don’t need for her school.  Well, a little of the money was for her school.  The rest was no doubt going to line the pockets of some guys in an MLM program.  Of course the little girl was super motivated by the plastic paddle game, or sticker book, or whatever it was she would get for being the top beggar salesperson in her class.

Or maybe not.  I told her if she wanted to come back the next day and ask the Missus, she may want to buy something.  No dice.  “This has to be turned in tomorrow.”

I at least admire her procrastination.  It reminds me of my elementary school days when I waited until the last minute to sell some insanely expensive junk to people.

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How Sad Is It That This Makes Me Happy?

The KNS reports that Scott Moore would like to repeal the $30 wheel tax in Knox County.

“In times of a slow economy, we ought to be able to help our citizens and put some money back in their pockets,” Moore said this morning as commission’s Intergovernmental and Finance committees began meeting.

It is also wise to put money back in the citizens’ pockets when their county government is a mess and they have little faith in it.

Regardless, I’m can’t help but be happy when our overlords graciously offer to return money to the people who earned it.

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Nashville Increasing Licensing Fees For Strippers

From The Tennessean:

Even though the board has discussed increasing the dancing permit and club licensing fees to $500, it probably won’t be able to charge that much.

Metro attorney Doug Sloan said the board is prohibited from charging more money than it needs to regulate the industry, and the board is waiting for a tally on those actual costs

If they factor in the cost of enforcement of the tax they should be able to justify it. Just like the cross-border cigarette enforcement, Metro Nashville will no doubt have to send revenue officials into strip clubs in all neighboring counties to make sure that the dancers are not actually Davidson county residents.

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Supporting Social Programs Is A Lot Like Driving

I don’t remember where I heard this comment, but the basic idea is that there are two types of drivers:
1) Maniacs–these are people who drive faster than you
2) Idiots–these are people who drive slower than you

What is the ideal speed? Whatever speed you drive.

I think a lot of middle class neo-liberals have the same basic outlook on how social programs should be structured. There should be two types of people in their view.
1) Payers–these are “rich” people (people who make more than them)
2) Recipients–these are “poor” people (people who make less than them)

And what is the ideal wage to neither pay or receive? Whatever they make.

Want to put this to a test? Let the market decide. List every social program on the individual tax returns and allow people to choose how much of their yearly income will be allocated to which program. Allow people to contribute as much or little as they want. Allow them to choose as many or as few programs as they want.

What do you think would be the result?

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Three Things I Haven’t Let Go

When I first got hit with this meme by BillyMac, I thought the topic was “3 Things I Wouldn’t Let Go”. That one would be pretty easy–family, health, and some other random item.

But this is “3 Things You Haven’t Let Go”, which has a much different conotation. Maybe I’m inferring it incorrectly, and it’s vague enough for interpretation, but I take this as “3 Things I Haven’t Let Go (but probably should)”. Believe it or not, this is a part of my character I’ve really worked on over the past few years. I’ve really tried to develop “the ability to let that which does not matter truly go.” Despite my best efforts, I still have plenty options. After all, I am powered by spite.

Spite CanAs I’m trying to narrow it down to the top three, I’m realizing how much I don’t want to admit any of this publicly. It’s not the fear of baring my soul that’s holding me back–it’s the realization of how stupid they all are. All instances of forgiven, but not forgotten. In order of increasing ridiculousness on my part…

Las Vegas August, 2005
I was going out for a weekend with about 15 other guys. Soon after booking my ticket I saw that there were UFC fights that weekend, so I asked some other guys if they wanted to go. I could only buy eight tickets, and as soon as seven other guys said they were in, I bought 8 together. $100 per ticket before all the taxes and charges. Not a problem–these guys are all local and they all have jobs. I’ll get my money back this week, right? Wrong. But that’s not the worst part. Literally thirty minutes before the fights I met up with the final two guys who owed me for their tickets. They walked up with two other guys who I didn’t know, paid me for the tickets, and turned around and sold them for $200 each to the other guys right in front of me! Chuck Liddell is lucky he didn’t have to fight me that night.

Summer 1993
I was living in a dump of a house in Ft. Sanders with two other guys–$300 rent. We split the electric and basic phone service evenly, but if anyone had long distance calls they had to pay it themselves. The month he moved out, one of my roommates had $37 worth of long distance calls to his girlfriend in California. By the time the bill came, he was gone, and the other guy and I had to eat it. Sure, not a lot of money, but at the time it was, and besides it’s the principle. I never got the money back from him, but I did hit him in the back with a folding chair (part of the height of my pro-wrestling obsession) in Long Branch one night when he was playing pool. Surprisingly, it didn’t make me feel any better.

St. Patrick’s Day Rugby Tournament, Savannah Georgia, 2000
We had a pretty solid team, and were scheduled for a Sunday morning match. Of course we’d all gone out on and had fun on Saturday night. At game time on Sunday, we only had 12 guys there. We started the match shorthanded, and when the other guys finally rolled up, I was infuriated. I didn’t even want them to come into the game–my preference was to take an ass kicking and let them sit and watch it. After the match (we lost) I refused to shake their hands. I love all of those guys, but I haven’t let the fact that they didn’t show up for us that morning go. I could have stayed in Knoxville if all I wanted to do was drink beer and not play rugby. Under certain conditions and in the presence of certain people, this one still sends me into a mild rage.

See the common thread here? All cases of being let down by friends. So I guess that is my biggest pet peeve? Possibly.

Up next are:
SVD
Ivy
Taylor–fingers crossed she’ll relate this to public education

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Tonight We Have a Fine ’07 Sprite

Soda WineI saw this on the soda dispenser at a BK yesterday and absolutely had to take a photo of it. Is this for real? This is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen. They are actually offering suggestions on which soda you should drink with which meal! I’d love to meet the person who actually uses this as a reference when choosing a drink.

Note to BK–you’ve already sold the drink. It doesn’t matter which one they choose. You aren’t going to make any extra money, and your suggestions aren’t going to add any enjoyment to anyone’s meal.

I love it when people do idiotic stuff like this.

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Some Shameless Pimping For WidgetBucks


Earn $$ with WidgetBucks!
I try to keep advertising to a minimum here for loyal readers by doing a few things. First of all, no ads in my RSS feed for subscribers, although there will be one at the end of this one as an example. Secondly, I only put adsense in the middle of older posts after they are archived and not very likely to be read by loyal readers. Thirdly, I try to keep ads unobtrusive (in the sidebar, end of posts) for my regular readers. Lastly, I try to keep them limited only to things I think my readers may actually be interested in.

So, mainly, I’m advertising to other bloggers. Because no one seemed interested (and it was pretty ugly), I’ve replaced the web hosting ad that was in the margin with a link to WidgetBucks (net gain of 0 ads). WidgetBucks is pay per click advertising that works pretty much like Adsense. Contextual ads show up on your site based on what you write, and you are paid for each click you receive. Just another ad network? Not really. They give you $25 just for signing up as a publisher! Also, you can get paid through PayPal, which is nice.

Honestly, ads don’t do very well on this site, but that’s okay. I have more fun with this site than any of my others that actually generate (very little) revenue. So the WidgetBucks link is not one of their ads, just an affiliate link to their site. That’s right–there’s something in it for me if you choose to go there and get $25 from them.

I’ve posted an actual WidgetBucks ad at the end of this post so you can see how it looks. I’ve been running them for a few days on a couple of my other sites, and they’ve done reasonably well, outperforming Adsense in some cases.

Oh, by the way, I’ve also added my latest del.icio.us bookmarks in the margin, if you are interested in what I’m reading outside of here.

Anyway, the ad is below (please don’t click it unless you are actually interested in what is shown). Of course, you can choose different colors, sizes, and styles.

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Google Buys Jaiku

…and inches a little further towards critical mass. This is definitely going to change things–what will all you Twitter-ites do?

Google has bought Finnish start-up Jaiku, which offers a mobile phone application that locates users and allows them to post short messages to a social network.

The news comes as rumours reach fever pitch that Google could launch a mobile phone, or mobile phone operating system as early as February 2008.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the absolute death of Twitter. There are instances where Google’s product is being outdone–Picasa/Flickr, Blogger/Wordpress. But in general they are heavy hitter in any market they enter. I think the mobile phone arena could actually use a good Googling.

As for me, I have to draw the line at text messaging and Twitter. Those are two things that seem absolutely pointless to me.

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Please Fix Boxing!!!

I don’t mean that kind of “fix”. I mean “fix” as in “repair”.

I don’t watch boxing nearly as much as I used to. At one time I would have considered myself a fan. For the last seven years or so I’ve sort of ditched boxing for the UFC. The fights are more active and the outcomes less predictable. Boxing is losing lots of fans to MMA fighting.

Just in case, I TiVo’d Saturday’s Jermain Taylor / Kelly Pavlik fight and watched it tonight. Wow. The other fight HBO showed was between Andre Berto and David Estrada. I won’t give away the results to either, but if you can catch the replay they are both great, entertaining fights. It reminded me how great boxing can be.

Anyway, I think I know how to fix boxing. Some promoter besides Don King should offer former UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell a few million dollars to fight a big name boxer. He’ll take it, partly because he lost his last two fights and partly because the UFC doesn’t pay anywhere near that kind of money.

How does it benefit boxing? He’ll lose. Badly

Liddell is considered one of the UFC’s hardest punchers, but watch the two fights I’m talking about here if you really want to see some guys hit hard. Throw in the fact that his pure boxing skills are nowhere near those top notch professional boxers, and it hardly seems fair.

Boxing will gain a lot of credibility with younger fans, and the buy rate for the pay per view would be tremendous. I’d buy it.

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Moment of Clarity for Striking Workers?

Via WBIR:

Both striking and non-striking workers will vote whether to oust the union. Striking workers have been off the job and on picket lines for seven months.

Hopefully enough of them have woken up and realized who is actually oppressing them. Hint: it is usually the person who is taking money from your paycheck, not the person who is signing it.