Category: Randomosity…

During normal lapses of insanity…


Kiss My Disease

How often do you hear a song that inspires you to overcome your yourself? I think I first checked this song out in like 98 or 99. I didn’t like it much at first because I identified with it a bit too closely and didn’t like it that my own self identity was so easily plugged into a few verses of a song by a band that no one hardly knew existed anyhow. Regardless after a few times I eventually decided I like the song (I was already hooked bad on the band). And felt it was almost an inspiration to listen to before I set out to save the world 😉

Well it’s been a few years, I haven’t quite finished saving the world, but I have a few things to be pretty satisfied about and decided to listen to the song again.

Here are the lyrics, I highly recommend the band as well.

Kiss My Disease
From Virgos Merlot – Signs of a Vacant Soul




Thoughts on minimum wage increases…

minwageI am just thinking aloud here, but my logic is telling me that minimum wage increases shouldn’t and don’t have the effect some people and organizations say will happen.

See…here is what raising minimum wage gets everyone, the middle class pays for it, as the salary changes made to accommodate for manpower will initially result in price hikes, but in efforts to minimize client/customer impact, all middle positions will be the first ones hit as those are the easiest to justify. The $5 extra you might get from a raised minimum wage doesnt magically come out of the decision maker’s profits. It doesn’t work that way. Businesses are there to make money, and the owners of those businesses are rarely there on behalf of all their employees.

More importantly, lets touch on the targeted demographic: minimum wage earners, which is specifically NOT the unemployed demographic, which everyone immediately assumes to be the primary beneficiary. Nope, what we’re talking about are the people that already have jobs, because the businesses will not restructure themselves with a goal of spending more money on labor. they will restructure themselves in a manner that minimizes the impact of increases in cost of labor.

This doesn’t help the poor in the least, it just makes 10% of the country less poor, and 30% of the country more poor as the impact of adjusted salary plans are engaged to accommodate for the hike in minimum wage.

Now, do I have your attention? Good. Here is what I think will make it worse. This disconnect in income differences further segregate wage earners from each other. This meas those that make more are further separated from those making less, initially this is only a change in wardrobe or car model, but over years it quickly develops into a very clear social distinction between groups that average less and/or more annual income. I am saying that it will exacerbate a social division already present. Inflation hits and the cycle repeats itself.

Now, I am not an economist, and this is all pure streaming thought with only cursory research, but seriously, how is raising the minimum wage by itself going to fix the poverty line?

-Tony




I’ve got to sleep sometime…

NOT FUNNY

NOT FUNNY

Must…sleep…

But then I remembered this one time where Rob (Loki) and I were hanging out with Elizabeth and we were so so far from sober, and Rob asked me what is was like to be wise….and I answered that wisdom was for the long-lived, meaning that I wasn’t on the list…and he responded by looking at me, and saying, “Tony, you’re always going to be our ancient Wyrm of wisdom.” The three of us laughed. The moniker caught on a bit.

Elizabeth died two months later…of Leukemia I think, I found a bottle to crawl under for a couple years…

This may be the worst run of insomnia I’ve had in a long time. I am actually getting sleep, but it’s been impossible for me to wind down until the wee hours…and even then i have to write a bit and then read a bit to get my mind wound down.

I suppose that’s a perk then, eh? I get to stretch some literary muscles and speak about random shit to an audience of wonderful nothingness that is the internet.

Today was such a killer awesome day though, I am sure thats why I am still thinking a million miles an hour. Added to plotlines for the book(s)…added two more canvases I’d like to finish before old ages prevents me from getting around to it…added more to-do’s to the video game whiteboard…talked with my mom about all the crap I have to do in order to hire contractors/employees for my upcoming projects (she’s my own personal wyrm of wisdom, to coin Rob’s phrase).

Time to try for a night of sleep…

-T