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10 Things Most Americans Don't Know About America

From Postmasculine:

Imagine you have a brother and he’s an alcoholic. He has his moments, but you keep your distance from him. You don’t mind him for the occasional family gathering or holiday. You still love him. But you don’t want to be around him.

This is how I lovingly describe my current relationship with the United States. The United States is my alcoholic brother. And although I will always love him, I don’t want to be near him at the moment.

I know that’s harsh, but I really feel my home country is not in a good place these days. That’s not a socio-economic statement (although that’s on the decline as well), but rather a cultural one.

I realize it’s going to be impossible to write sentences like the ones above without coming across as a raging prick, so let me try to soften the blow to my American readers with an analogy:

You know when you move out of your parents’ house and live on your own, how you start hanging out with your friends’ families and you realize that actually, your family was a little screwed up? Stuff you always assumed was normal your entire childhood, it turns out was pretty weird and may have actually fucked you up a little bit. You know, dad thinking it was funny to wear a Santa Claus hat in his underwear every Christmas or the fact that you and your sister slept in the same bed until you were 22, or that your mother routinely cried over a bottle of wine while listening to Elton John.

The point is we don’t really get perspective on what’s close to us until we spend time away from it. Just like you didn’t realize the weird quirks and nuances of your family until you left and spent time with others, the same is true for country and culture. You often don’t see what’s messed up about your country and culture until you step outside of it.

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Anticlimactic

I haz.

To be honest, I was a little worried about upgrading after the fiasco I went through last summer when I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion, but the word that best describes today’s experience is anticlimactic.

This morning I fired up the App Store, paid my $19.99 and the download started. It took about 30 minutes, and after making a backup copy of the installer and closing everything I had open, I started the install and left to attend to a user who had to have nearly 3 GB worth of archived mail always available on her laptop (don’t ask). By the time I got back, my Mac was waiting at the login screen.

Everything works. This was one of the most painless OS updates I’ve ever gone through.

Microsoft who?

Good job, Apple.  Bravo!

 

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Commandment Number Nine

Apparently Chick-Fil-A needs a refresher course:

“There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.” ~ Proverbs 6:16–19

How very Christian of them.

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Beautiful

This is what I envision of when I think “21st Century Desert House,” and it really makes me regret having left the architectural field fifteen years ago. From the firm ibarra rosano design architects of Tucson. We’d move back to AZ in a heartbeat if this were waiting for us. Absolutely stunning. (Click on any of the images to embiggen.)

Be sure and check out all their other work!

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Perkins: Google Trying to "Destroy" Values with Gay Rights Initiative, Should Expect "Blow Back"

Ugh. Will it never stop?

So… the usual suspects are at it again, threatening a boycott of a gay-friendly company. I mean seriously…how do these people look themselves in the mirror each morning with so much hate festering in their shriveled little hearts?  And um…how exactly does a boycott of Google (a free service) work? Are they going to refuse to look stuff up on the Internet? Are they going to delete their free GMail accounts?

Not that the Bible-humping…er…thumping crowd was ever terribly bright to begin with, but seriously, they’re going to boycott an Internet search engine?  What’s next, a boycott of gifs? jpegs?

I’m actually kind of surprised Miss Perkins even knows the definition of blow back; at least not in any usage other than, “If I blow you, will you blow back?”

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Some Thoughts About Boycotts

While I support them, I’m not sure that the threat of boycotts—whether they come from the left or the right—are really all that effective in changing the hearts and minds of whatever company is being targeted. I’m not sure that when I and a hundred of my closest friends say we’re not going to patronize Company X, it really makes any difference to the individuals running those companies—no matter how fervently we believe in the cause.

On the other hand, when millions of people join forces to boycott a company and said company sees its bottom line being affected over the course of one or two quarters, then it might examine how it’s doing business. But except in a few select instances, that rarely happens. (Someone please fact check that for me.)

That’s why I laugh when I hear organizations like OMM (One Misguided Mom), NOM (National Organization of Morons) or the AFA (American Family of Assholes) loudly proclaiming they’re going to boycott Starbucks, or General Mills, or whoever. They simply don’t have the numbers to affect corporate policy—especially when that company’s policy is inclusion, rather than exclusion.

If their members want to stop drinking Starbucks, fine. If they feel better about not eating Oreos, more power to them. From what I’ve seen of their membership they could stand to lose a few pounds anyway. (Not that I have room to talk.) But are they going to force their medieval views of what is right and wrong onto a company by those actions? Hardly.

(By the way, OMM, NOM, AFA and the rest of the alphabet soup of hate groups: good luck ripping Tickle-Me-Elmo out of your toddlers’ hands now that Jim Henson’s company has publicly come out in favor of equality. Your children will remember it forever and a part of them is going to hate you for the rest of their lives. But hey, you’re saving their immortal souls, so what difference does that  make, right?)

The same goes for the left and the call to boycott Chick-Fil-A.

I boycott Chick-Fil-A (and Walmart) because I personally feel better about myself for not continuing to enable the funding of bad corporate policies. Do I have any real expectation that this will affect how they do business? Hardly.

By all means boycott if you want. But do it because it makes you feel better as an individual, not because you think it’s going to change policy overnight. That being said, if enough people simply do what is right, it will eventually affect a company’s cash flow and the company will be forced to look at how they do business.