@Randem

“Every time we make a purchase that doesn’t have real meaning for us, we’ve added another bar to our prison cell.” — Trent Hamm

Yesterday, someone tried to get under my skin by throwing in my face that facts that I don’t own a car, that I don’t own my own home, and that I live in a bad neighborhood in a spare room with family. This person thought that would really hurt my feelings, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. If you think that bothers me, you don’t know me at all.

Fitting, then, that after this happened, I went home and opened Google Reader to find the latest post from Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar, talking about what it all means:

That luxury car and that sweet house in the suburbs are balms. They’re like putting calamine lotion on a very bad case of the chicken pox - you might lessen the itch, but the itch is still there and it will keep coming back no matter how much lotion you put on it.

What is the itch? That itch is your dreams, what your soul tells you that you should be doing with your time. That itch is the dream that you’re not chasing so you can drive that Lexus on your dreaded morning commute. That itch is the time you spend at meetings when you’d rather be your son’s Little League coach. That itch is the realization that you’ve just sold your dreams for a house full of consumer goods that are gathering dust while you sit in a hotel room watching sports on basic cable after a business meeting wondering what has happened to your life.

Exactamundo. Money comes and money goes, but time is in limited supply — once it’s gone you can’t get it back. I’m chasing my dreams, and they’re bigger than some mortgage or car payment. To quote Trent one more time, every time we make a purchase that doesn’t have real meaning for us, we’ve added another bar to our prison cell.

You’re riding down in the elevator, and you reach the lobby. The doors open, and before you get a chance to move, there are a dozen people already pushing into the elevator before it’s even empty. It happens every day.

The crowd in the lobby doesn’t even wait to see if there are actually people on the elevator… they just see the doors open and start climbing in… only acknowledging your presence if they happen to bump into you on their self-concerned journey to the upper floors.

It’s rude. And I don’t stand for it. When I’m riding in an elevator, I stand directly in front of the door once I get near my destination floor. When the doors open I stand firm, blocking entrance for anyone who doesn’t give me space to exit.

We’ve all been that hurried passenger, anxious to get into the elevator. But why do some people eventually slow down and look while others never learn?

How might the various schools of thought answer this question? Let’s see…

Social determinism
The passengers who wait calmly must come from better homes and have higher education, whereas those who push their way into the elevator without concern for people trying to exit must come from broken homes with divorced parents, and have attended bad schools.

Environmental determinism
The patient people who wait for the elevator to empty must come from warmer climates, which formed lazy, relaxed attitudes, while the impatient people are from colder climates and have a more driven work ethic.

Evolutionary psychology
There were no elevators in the Savannah, so our minds are not evolved to deal with the conditions of vertical transportation.

Chaos theory
A pigeon flapping its wings in the promenade outside caused a chain reaction of events eventually leading to the urgency, or lack thereof, of passengers to enter the elevator car.

Freudian psychology
The lobby is a cold, scary place, and passengers long to enter the warm, womb-like safety of the elevator… no doubt due to some repressed sexual desire for their parents. The patient ones are simply repressing their oedipal sexual urges to penetrate the elevator.

Jungian psychology
Those who push their way into the elevator without empathy for the passengers trying to exit have very repressed shadow selves due to failure to admit their own failures, shortcomings, and weaknesses.

Pavlovian psychology
After being hit by the closing doors, or being left behind for not boarding the elevator fast enough, people eventually learn to enter the elevator as forcefully as necessary in order to get aboard and avoid negative stimuli.

Then there’s Randem Psychology. My theory is simple: those who push their way into the elevator, ignoring the passengers who try to exit, are inconsiderate, self-absorbed, rude. They’re assholes, and they need to be knocked down a peg. And that’s why I block the door and prevent their entry until they make room for the current passengers to exit.

Michael Vick received a 23-month prison sentence today for his part in the dogfighting conspiracy. He will also get 3 years of probation upon his release, scheduled for October 2009.

Who knows… he’s still young enough to come back from this sentence and possibly play again in the NFL. Other pro football players have served sentences and returned to the starting lineup.

Oh, if only we could have gotten similar swift justice for Barry Bonds. Had justice been served promptly in his case, he’d have never gotten his name tied to a record he didn’t deserve.

If Barry Bonds served time — even only a year — he’d come out 40 pounds lighter due to the inability to find quality steroids and HGH in prison, and even if he returned to baseball (what is he now, 50 years old?) he’d never be able to crush a ball into the river.

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.“ -Thomas Jefferson

I have discovered a little-known secret that has allowed me to raise my credit score significantly. Using this revolutionary financial secret, I raised my credit score by more than 80 points in only a few months.

Sure, there are lots of gimmicks and programs available online that promise to help you magically raise your credit score, but they all require you to do debt consolidation, or apply for hardship billing status, or even to file bankruptcy. Some of them try to convince you to write fictitious letters claiming that your bad credit marks aren’t really yours.

All these gimmicks and programs are encouraging people to be dishonest and to try to cheat the system. But most people just aren’t that dishonest. Most of us don’t want to spend our lives looking over our shoulders and trying to keep our lies straight. Am I right?

My radical new program offers an honest solution. If you follow my simple advice, you will see your credit score increase rapidly, and your debt will decrease. And since there are no gimmicks and no tricks, you can feel good about yourself and have the confidence of knowing you won’t have to answer for it later.

This is truly groundbreaking advice. It’s so obvious that most people don’t even realize that it’s an option. But it is, and it works. It worked for me, and it can work for you, too.

It’s not difficult, and doesn’t require a great deal of time. You don’t have to spend hours on the phone with creditors, or writing letters to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Most of the work can be done in just a few minutes each month, right from your computer.

Are you ready for this groundbreaking advice? It’s simple: pay your bills. Yep, that’s really it. Just pay your freakin’ bills! If you pay the money you owe, your score will go up, and your debt will go down. It’s really that simple!

I won’t even charge for this advice. I’m giving it to you, my readers, free of charge. So go and try it. See that it actually works! Just pay the money you owe, and watch how much your financial situation improves!

Last night I had another one of those typical disagreements about my workout routine. Then today, Mehdi on StrongLifts.com writes about exactly that:

Can’t You Exercise Tomorrow? Bad. You break the exercise habit & accustom people to skip workouts for reason X. Do it once, and you’ll get plenty of more reasons to skip workouts in the future, “but you did it last time!”

Solution: men need time for their women, friends, and themselves. If you’re not “allowed” to spend 1h30/week doing StrongLifts 5×5, find somebody else. Nothing is worse than having no freedom to do what you need to be happy.

Bingo. Too true.

Mehdi writes about women sabotaging your workout routine — and gives some good explanations for why they do it — but in my experience, it’s not limited to just working out. They’ll try to change your diet, your social habits, your dreams, your goals… anything they can. You can’t let it happen.

Women don’t think like men. When you allow it once, they don’t remember that and considerately make a point of not doing it next time. No, if you do it once, they’ll establish that as a precedent for doing it again and again.

If you care about someone and choose to spend your life with them, then it’s good to change your dreams and goals and friends to include your partner. But there are some things a man needs for himself. That’s sacred ground. Don’t give in — even if it’s just a workout — or else you’ll find yourself six months later wondering why you ever quit going to the gym.

This trifecta of interesting stories really has me wondering, what goes on in the mind of religious people?

Mark Frauenfelder points out some interesting statistics regarding their online reading habits:

Wikipedia is “The Free Encyclopedia.” What’s on the mind of Wikipedia its readers? Here are the top ten most viewed pages on Wikipedia:

1. Main Page [30,090,900]
2. Wiki [904,800]
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [413,400]
4. Naruto [401,400]
5. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock [396,000]
6. United States [330,000]
7. Wikipedia [329,400]
8. Deaths in 2007 [321,300]
9. Heroes (TV series) [307,500]
10. Transformers (film) [303,600]

Conservapedia is “The Trustworthy Encyclopedia.” What’s on the mind of its readers? Here are the top ten most viewed pages on Conservapedia:

1. Main Page‎ [1,906,729]
2. Homosexuality‎ [1,572,713]
3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [517,086]
4. Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [420,687]
5. Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [389,052]
6. Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [388,123]
7. Homosexuality and Domestic Violence‎ [365,888]
8. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [331,553]
9. Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [291,179]
10. Homosexuality and Syphilis‎ [265,322]

That’s interesting. Certainly explains a lot.

Then there’s this collaboration by David Wong and Owen Bell to identify the 9 most bad-ass bible verses, such as:

This is a man’s law, right here. When Conan became king at the end of Conan the Destroyer, you can bet he made sure there was a rule just like this his first day in office. “Ladies, we respect your right to resolve disputes in whatever manner you feel necessary for the situation. But, DO NOT GRAB THE JUNK.”

The words in the Bible are actually those of God, speaking to the Hebrews and taking time to add the junk-grab rule into the supplemental commandments that didn’t make it into the original 10. This had to be right after God realized his plan for a male-dominated society had a fatal flaw, which is that the women could prevail in any conflict simply by grabbing the men’s junk.

Now, you nervous, liberal types are complaining that this is barbaric and misogynistic. Perhaps, a little context helps. Just a couple of pages earlier, in Deuteronomy 23:1, we get this:

“Emasculated by crushing?” Gah! Everything in the Bible has to be understood in context of the times these people were living in. And, apparently, these people lived in a time when “crushing” the nuts was so common that the crushed-nuts victims were an entire demographic that had to be accounted for in the law. Call these commandments savage if you want, but if you were God, how many nuts would you have to see “crushed” before you overreacted? We’re thinking the answer is two.

Of course, if you’re not a believer and don’t think this “grab the nuts, lose a hand” commandment is from the almighty at all, then it becomes obvious what happened: The rule was handed down by some angry clergyman within the first minute or so of having his junk crushed. All perspective tends to go out the window at that moment.

That bible certainly seems to be filled to the brim with acts of violence and descriptions of sex, and from time to time you get gems like this, which combine the two. Geesh, and they say Hollywood is bad.

So what would happen if someone was to suggest that perhaps the bible isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? Well, if that someone happened to be Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, perhaps the most influential advance in this century for the theory of evolution, it might lead to the wrath of an entire country:

Richard Dawkins’ best-selling atheist manifesto The God Delusion was at the centre of a growing row over religious tolerance yesterday after the Turkish publishers of his book were threatened with legal action by prosecutors who accuse it of ‘insulting believers’.

Erol Karaaslan, the founder of the small publishing house Kuzey Publications, could face between six months and a year in jail for “inciting hatred and enmity” if Istanbul prosecutors decide to press charges over the book, which has sold 6000 copies in Turkey since it was published this summer.

Doesn’t sound all that bad, compared to what they did in the bible, does it? Well, that depends. Consider what’s happened in past cases:

Mr Karaaslan is by no means the first publisher to face investigation in Turkey, a country that has become notorious over the past two years for a slew of cases based on laws restricting freedom of expression. Nobel prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk and Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink were two of dozens of writers to be charged last year under a controversial law that makes it a crime to “insult Turkishness.” Pamuk was acquitted. Dink – who was murdered this January by a 17-year ultra-nationalist - was convicted.

Holy crap! They murdered a journalist for being insulting? If that happened here, the body count would rival any major land war.

For the Star Wars geek in all of us, stormtrooper ornaments can restore order to your intergalactic Christmas. Also available: Leia, Luke, Amedala, Jabba the Hutt, and more.

No Pastafarian Christmas tree would be complete without the Flying Spaghetti Monster ornament.

Any steampunks hiding among us won’t be able to sleep until they have adorned their tree with a Cthuluclaus ornament.

And for the super-conservative, liberty-hating, support-the-troops crowd, my personal favorite is the unaborted commando fetus ornament. Now you can support the troops from the womb to the war and topple despotic scrooges for the holidays.