Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

While in the drive-thru of a fast food restaurant last night, I noticed a large Help Wanted sign next to the pick-up window. At the bottom of the sign, in bold letters, was: "Do Not Call Back to Check On The Status Of Your Application".

This made me think of lists of job hunting tips I've read over the years. Every one of these lists has, without exception, strongly advised job seekers to make return calls after applying for jobs. The reasoning for this was to show the employer your sincere interest in the job and as a way to make oneself stand out from the other applicants, which would, presumably, give one a better chance of getting an interview, or getting the job after one had already been interviewed.

This was one tip I'd always felt uncomfortable with, even though I understand the reasoning behind it. I always felt like a pest calling back after I'd applied for a job, feeling as if I was begging for the job. I thought I'd make myself stand out, all right, but as an annoyance, rather than as a go-getter.

And in today's economic climate, I can understand why an employer would ask that people not make such calls. With even the crappiest jobs getting applications in the triple digits, if everyone was making repeated call-backs to check the status of their applications, the business wouldn't get much work other work done. This is especially true for small employers who do not have a separate personnel department.

But it still leaves a question -- how does a person make themself stand out from the 900 other schlubs who have also applied for this McJob if they are barred from further communication with the employer? To me, "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" has always been synonymous with being brushed off, never with being a prelude to being hired.

I was grateful yet again to have a job, though it's nothing special.

Thoughts?

Pretty Girls Are a Dime a Dozen

Unless you're living under a rock, you've heard the story of Susan Boyle, a contestant who recently appeared on Britain's Got Talent.

Because of the 47 year old's unpolished, matronly appearance and manner, people in the audience openly mocked her as she took the stage. Similarly, the judges on stage, which included American Idol's, Simon Cowell, expected little to no musical talent from this contestant.

That all changed once she'd sung a few bars of I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables. Cowell's jaw dropped at Boyle's phenomenal talent and all the pin-headed morons in the audience suddenly shut their traps and later gave Boyle a much-deserved standing ovation.

Good for her. Kudos to her for shutting up Simon Cowell for once in his life and for showing the audience that musical talent -- or talent of any kind -- is not tied to a person's appearance. She has yet again proven the truth of the old saying, "Don't judge a book by cover.".

Putting his money where his mouth is, Simon Cowell is reported to be setting up a contract with Boyle with his SyCo Music company label, a subsidiary of Sony Music.

With a talent like Boyle's, it doesn't (or shouldn't) matter what she looks like. She's the real deal. The entertainment world is chock full of pretty girls with only the barest modicum of singing talent, but a talent like Boyle's is a rarity and should be valued for the treasure it is.

Indeed, the outer packaging is of supreme importance for the dime-a-dozen bimbo singers, precisely because their talent is mediocre at best, and the flashy appearance is to make audiences forget their less than stellar vocal skills.

As far as I'm concerned, the singing world needs more Susan Boyles and fewer Ashlee Simpsons.

Recent Studies Show Circumcision Benefits

In March, the New England Journal of Medicine released the findings of a random clinical trial study show that circumcision not only reduces the incidence of HIV infection in men, but also reduces transmission of herpes simplex virus Type 2 and the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV).

After analyzing the results of the study, done on 3000 Ugandan men, the researchers estimated that circumcised men had a 25 percent reduced risk of HSV-2 infection. For the types of HPV. that cause genital cancer, it was found that the circumcised men had a 35 percent reduced risk of infection. Both studies were controlled for various health and behavioral factors.

The authors of this study suggest the difference might be because of the retraction of an uncircumcised man's foreskin during intercourse exposes the penis to infection, and that the moist area under the foreskin may then provide a protected environment in which the viruses can flourish.

“The findings suggest that there are important lifetime health benefits to the procedure,” Dr Ronald H. Gray, a professor of reproductive epidemiology at Johns Hopkins and the senior author of the study, said. “I think it’s important that pediatricians consider the lifelong benefits that might accrue from circumcision when they are advising parents on whether the procedure should be performed in baby boys.”

In 2007, prompted by the results of other similar studies, a consortium of experts convened by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS (the United Nations' HIV program) announced that circumcision should indeed "be part of a comprehensive HIV prevention package." A package which, of course, includes safer sex practices.

Also, a team of researchers from the CDC, Johns Hopkins, and the Baltimore health department examined the records of more than 1,000 African American males — all heterosexual — who tested positive for HIV at Maryland clinics. Uncircumcised men were 50 percent more likely to be infected.

An editorial published with the first study reported noted that U.S. circumcision rates were declining, and that they were lowest among black and Hispanic patients, groups with disproportionately high rates of HIV., herpes infection and cervical cancer. Sixteen states also have eliminated Medicaid coverage for routine circumcision, which may exacerbate the problem among the poor.

Many American doctors in recent years had no longer been recommending routine infant circumcision, backed by anti-circumcision organizations, who claimed that it was merely a cosmetic procedure that caused unnecessary pain to infant boys, as circumcisions were done without anesthesia. In light of recent findings, however, many of these same doctors are reconsidering their position.

According to Marvin L. Wang, co-director of newborn nurseries at Massachusetts General Hospital,says that since the 1990s, it's become routine in U.S. hospitals to anesthetize babies before the procedure and complications are now rare, about 3 in 1000 and are minor and treatable.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, circumcised boys have a lower risk of urinary-tract infections and penile cancer, and a slightly lower risk of getting sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV. Uncircumcised men are also subject to balanoposthitis (inflammation of the foreskin and glans), phimosis (a foreskin that's too tight to retract over the glans), and paraphimosis (a foreskin stuck in the retracted position).

After reading about all of this, I was glad yet again that I am circumcised and I'm confident I made the right decision for my son. Even if the benefits of circumcision to prevent the problems mentioned above were only minuscule, it would have been worth it in my book

Fat Lip

I’ve read about collagen injections and “lip plumpers”, which are designed to make a woman’s lips bigger. I have to admit I don’t really get the appeal of this; kissing a woman who has done this to herself is kind of a rubbery, blubbery experience.

And when I’m going in for a kiss, I’m not concerned with the appearance of her lips. It’s all about the tongue for me.

This one looks to me like she went a few rounds in the boxing ring.

Self Censoring Readers

Recently, I overheard two women at work talking about the books they'd read. One mentioned to the other about a novel she'd read where the main plot was about one woman's adulterous affair. She asked the other woman if she wanted to borrow the book. The other woman declined, stating she didn't want to read about such things because she thought adultery was immoral.

I rolled my eyes at this, thinking this woman must be very limited if she restricted herself from reading books about topics she didn't agree with, even if it was fiction. What was this woman afraid of, I wondered. Did she think if she read a story about adultery, that she would suddenly want to have an affair?

People read about things all the time that they'd never do in real life. Mysteries and crime novels are quite popular with a lot of people, but it doesn't mean that such people approve of murder or will suddenly go on a killing spree because they like reading a good mystery.

It really boggles my mind at how depressingly narrow-minded so many people can be.

Marriage and Children

Many people who oppose same-sex marriage base their opposition on their belief that the purpose of marriage is to provide a legal structure in which to raise children, preferably of their own biological origin.

But I believe that issues concerning children and those concerning marriage should be viewed as separately for a couple of reasons.

One is the fact that people marry for a wide variety of reasons these days with almost no one marrying for the single purpose of raising children. People most often marry now for love and because they want to share their lives as a legally and socially recognized unit. And though many people would be happy to just live together to achieve those goals, they enter into legal marriage in order to gain the myriad legal benefits that come with making their union official.

Though most people do have children, it’s almost never their sole reason for getting married in the first place. It’s not as if couples who love one another but who don’t want to or can’t have children decide to simply remain friends because of that fact.

People who have no intention of having children, along with infertile people and people past reproductive age get married all the time, and no one is clamoring to remove their legal rights to do so — as long as they are heterosexual, of course.

Secondly, the law no longer distinguishes between children born to married parents and those born to unmarried parents. “Illegitimacy” has not been a legal status for non-marital children since the late 60s. The law now focuses on how children relate to their parents, rather than so much on how their parents relate to each other.

Hence, this makes opposition to same sex marriage for the “marriage is for having children” reason moot and invalid.

Disgusting Internet Ads

What’s up with all the disgusting, puke-inducing internet ads I’m seeing everywhere on the net lately.

You know the ones: magnified, close-up pictures of yellow teeth, toe fungus, severe acne, distorted photoshopped photos of belly fat, animated asses that swell and reduce over and over, and the like.

Such ads are always placed front and center, where you can’t avoid them by averting your eyes. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have a magnified picture of toe rot staring me in the face when I’m trying to read a website.

Most of these ads have the clickable words “learn more” below the nasty image being foisted upon us. Learn more? I’m already nauseated having seen the first picture. Do these idiots think I’m going to click to go se more pictures, so I can make sure to lose my lunch?

I understand that those selling products to cure these various problems have a right to advertise. But do they have to show us graphic, billboard-size images of the “before” pictures? People who have these problems and who could benefit from the products know what it looks like and don’t need to see it plastered all over the internet any more than the rest of us do.

Pardon me while I go blow some chunks.

Three Stooges Movie

As a kid in the sixties and seventies, I grew up watching The Three Stooges on TV every afternoon after school. I must have seen every episode dozens of times. Even now, I could accurately reproduce the opening music for each episode, as the tune is burned into my brain.

My friends and I would imitate Moe and Curly, with one doing the eye jabs, and the other putting up a hand between our eyes to block it. We'd do some of the other gestures, such as Moe slowly raising his hand in front of Curly, whose eyes would follow it up, and who would then be surprised brought it down suddenly to slap him on the face.

We'd do Curly's "woob, woob, woob, woob, woob, woob,", "nyuk, nyuk, nyuk", "wiseguy, eh ?", and his high pitched hum: "la da DEEEEEEE, la, la, la, la, deee". And naturally we'd try his breakdance-like thing of lying on the floor and spinning ourselves around in circles.

I've missed watching the Stooges, as I've never gotten around to buying their DVDs.

I heard the other day that a Three Stooges movie, which will be a modern version of the 1930s and 40s episodes, will be released in 2010. Jim Carrey will play Curly, with Sean Penn as Larry, and Benecio Del Toro as Moe. I think Carrey will be great as Curly, though he'll have to gain quite a bit of weight or put on a fat suit to pull it off. The other two I'm not so sure of, but perhaps Carrey can carry the entire movie if the other two prove to be miscast.

The movie will be released some time in 2010.

Health Care: A Right or a Privilege?

While listening to Neil Boortz the other day, he stated quite categorically that "Health care isn't a right, it's a privilege".

I don't know about you, but I was brought up to believe that an essential tenet of morality is that anyone who is sick or injured deserves medical treatment, no matter who they are and regardless of their ability to pay.

Indeed, when I worked in law enforcement it was considered cruel and unusual punishment to deny sick or injured arrestees and jail inmates medical care. Access to medical care most certainly is a right in this instance.

Providing health care to anyone who needs it is part of living in a civilized, humane society. It's not just for those who can afford comprehensive health care, Nor should it be limited to those whom the powers-that-be in this country consider as "worthy"; no one should have their character judged prior to being deemed eligible to see a doctor.

To deny someone health care because they are poor or, as Boortz would have it, lazy and don't want to work, is nothing less than repugnant in my book.. No one should have to work hard to earn the right to see a doctor when sick or injured.

Driving a car is a privilege. Getting medical assistance to maintain health and to live life free of pain and debility is not. It's a basic human right.

Airplane Bird Strike Solution

Bird strikes on airplanes, like the one that downed the US Airways jet on January 15th into the Hudson River, are an increasingly common problem for pilots.

Fortunately, a simple and effective solution has been proposed that causes the birds no harm:

An Observation

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Martin Luther King

"Normal" people don't change the world. People who are normal are complacent; they are unmotivated to devise new ways of doing things or finding new things to do.

"That's the way we've always done it" is their mantra, with includes the implication, "That's the way we should always do it".

Rather, it's the malcontents: the complainers, the lazy, the oddballs, and the misfits of the world who get progress up on its feet and moving forward. They are motivated precisely because they don't fit in and cannot afford to be complacent.

"There has to be a better/faster/easier way of doing it" is a classic malcontent sentiment. The malcontent's answer to "That's the way we've always done it," is "Why?". But they are also the ones who say, "Why not?" when coming up with alternatives to doing things as they've "always been done."

Thoughts?

Dissecting 10 Stupid Reasons Against Gay Marriage

I got this one in an email

1. Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.
2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.
7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.
9. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
10. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

Negative Attitudes Toward Food and Sex Come From the Same Source

Yet again, Alternet has giving me blogging fodder. In the article in questions, Which Is Worse These Days: Being Called Fat or Whore by Charlotte Hilton Andersen, the author explores the idea:

In an interesting switch, food and sex have completely reversed their roles in society. And all within only a matter of two generations.

My response to the article follows below:

Negative Attitudes Toward Food and Sex Come From the Same Source

We must remember that our country's culture has a strong Calvinist streak running through it, starting with the Puritans.

Calvinism values ascetic self-denial and is suspicious of anything that even suggests excess, which would include food and sex. It takes a negative view of human nature, with its doctrine of "total depravity", which takes the view every person born into the world is enslaved to the service of sin. Thus, all the basic drives that go along with being human, which would include the drive to eat and to mate, believing that such things, while necessary for the survival of the species, must be tightly controlled.

In both the instances cited in this article, food and sex, what is being resisted is hedonism, which is a worldview which values pleasure for its own sake. Eating and having sex, are both naturally pleasurable activities. A sex hedonist is a libertine, while a food hedonist is a gourmand.

Naturally, both forms of hedonism offend the Calvinist mentality, as Calvinism is suspicious of anything that indicates that people are having too much of a good time, as such pursuits take away from focusing on God.

Though most people today who take a negative attitude against those who enjoy sex and/or food "too much" in their opinion, are generally not consciously aware of the Calvinist roots of their beliefs, such roots are so deeply embedded in our culture as to be sacred cows.

Thus, many of those who rail against "whores" and fat people get emotional about it and take on a moralistic tone and cast sex and food hedonists as bad people deserving of public scorn.

And this is precisely what makes such attitudes so hard to root out; they are so deeping woven into our cultural fabric that most people are unaware of the religious roots of it all.

It would be better if people realized that everyone in this life has their own burdens to bear and that no one is perfect or in a position to act as moral judges to others. Pleasure for its own sake isn't bad, but self-righteously meddling into the private lives of others is.

The guiding rule should be, "If it doesn't infringe on your right to do differently, then it's none of your business." Simple enough, I'd think.

The True Irish Test

Your result for The Ultimate TRUE IRISH Test...

A Brave Fenian

You scored 95 Common Sense, 69 Irish Facts, and 74 Irish Soul!

You know your stuff. You are Irish in your heart. You probably talk like an Irish person after a few pints. You sing the rebel songs. You drink, and probably bleed Guinness. You may have even been interned in British Prisons. If you are a female, I am in love. If you are a male, we are brothers. We should have a pint. Please don't forget to rate my test...

Take The Ultimate TRUE IRISH Test at HelloQuizzy

--

In reality, I am one quarter Irish

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Pardon my lack of entries, but things have been a little hectic around here. I'm kind of distracted, so this will be an equally distracted entry of the odds and ends variety as I've not had much sleep in the last two days and I'm not up to concentrating very much tonight.

So, on to the disjointed snippets of thought in my mind
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Inane expression of the day

"Pop", used to mean "stand out". As in, "That purple scarf really makes her outfit pop". What? Is she made of popcorn and the scarf is a microwave oven?? This inane jargon-y buzzword needs to finish its 15 minutes, fast
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I noticed that a bird chirping in my yard today made the sound: "Wurty, wurty, wurty". Does anyone have any idea what kind of bird would make this sound?

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Stupid commercial of the day

Chick-Fil-A has an extremely lame radio commercial. One hears a "Clickety, clickety, clickety" sound interspersed with an occaisonal "ding!" sound. The clickety sound is the sound of a 70s era phone being repeatedly jostled by someone who isn't able to pick up the ear/mouthpiece part, but keeps bumping it. Then there's a voiceover telling us that cows are trying to call somewhere to tell people to eat more chicken. This is followed by mooing and more jostling.

It makes me wonder if the latest ad agency trend is to ttry to sound as moronic as possible, as it would seem so if the current crops of fast food ads are any indication.

Well, that's about it for tonight. I have a longer entry in mind, but I won't write it until I'm rested enough to concentrate properly on it.