Mi Casa Su Causality
Selected pairing for this post: Enjoy!
http://explosm.net/comics/3355/
Hey, thanks for having me over. I hope you don’t mind, but you did say, “Make yourself at home.”
So I:
- Performed maximum quaffage on every partial bottle of whiskey.
- Deleted all West Wing from your DVR and recorded a full season of Honey Boo Boo.
- Adjusted the hot water heater to maximum.
- Rubbed every towel on my butt rather than use toilet paper.
- Let your cat outside.
- Used your wi-fi to download the entire Metallica library with BitTorrents.
- Dug your coffee can of cash out of the backyard.
- Unlocked the windows and the side door on the garage.
- Licked your ketchup bottle clean.
- Went “two turntables and a microphone” on your collection of LPs.
- Pushed over your hoarding piles in the garage and took a nap.
- Spent your remaining iTunes balance on Demi Lovato.
- Cleaned my genitals with your toothbrush.
- Used your mom’s ashes to refill the litter box.
Don’t be angry. All of these are considered normal back home.
What Does The Rich Say?
Get wealthy enough and you start believing your own hype and thinking shit like this is a good idea.
Earlier I espoused my pet theory (my precious!) that the odds of being an asshole increase exponentially with the acquisition of wealth. For example, if someone is in the top one percent there’s an asshole threshold (AT) of 99 percent. For the top .01 percent that grows to 99.99 percent.
I said at the time I said that I thought extreme wealth was a function of “lie, cheat and steal (LCS).”
Is it a chicken and egg kind of thing? Are people in the top .01 percent because they were born with LCS? Or was LCS something they had to learn to get there? Chicken and egg.
Thinking about this, I thought to myself, “If only there was some way to know.”
Then I realized that an existing data study might be useful. But what existing data is available? How about words taken right out of their own mouths? Perhaps that might provide some insight into their character and world view.
Case Study – Ray Kroc
Ray Kroc was a “restauranteur” and founder of McDonalds Corporation and included in Time: The 100 Most Important People of the Century. Perhaps not in the .01 percent Kroc was still considerably wealthy, worth about $500 million when he died in 1984. The Kroc family now has an estimated worth of $1.7 billion.
Suffice it say he’s sold a few “hamburgers” and made a few bucks. Let’s see what he has to say.
If any of my competitors were drowning, I’d stick a hose in their mouth and turn on the water. It is ridiculous to call this an industry. This is not. This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I’ll kill ’em, and I’m going to kill ’em before they kill me. You’re talking about the American way – of survival of fittest.
–Ray Kroc
Source: Bloomsbury Business Library – Business Thinkers & Management Giants (2007)
Wow. He truly sounds like a great guy. I think we’re ready for the peer review process to begin.
I’m updating my hypothesis. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that wealthy people say all sorts of the darnedest things. Like upside-down Weebles, they have an overly-inflated sense of self and think they can’t fall down. That’s when they’re at their quotable best. (See: Sterling, Donald.) It’s almost like they get off on exposing themselves. As if to say, “See what I can do? I don’t just have all the money. I can also do this. What are you going to do about it? Ha ha ha.”
Can you find other compelling examples of what the rich say?
They Talk Among Us
I thought maybe I had shared this story before but the search function says otherwise. So here goes.
There I was, a young pre-guru lad, still in my sensitive formative years, sitting on grandma’s porch out on the Taker homestead. Aw, shucks, I may even have been chewing on some amber stalks of grain.
The neighbor came over and started talking to my grandma. I was just a youngin’ so I didn’t pay no mind to their adult conversation.
Until… suddenly, the neighbor just dropped the N-word!
I sucked in my breath. Holy shit, I thought, someone is in for it now. I got the hell out of Dodge to make way for the can of whoop ass I knew my grandma was about to open.
Except… that didn’t happened. Grandma didn’t use the word herself, but she as hell didn’t kick that fucker in the nards, either. In fact, she acted like nothing happened at all.
Although I was young, I’ve never forgotten that moment. It is still vivid in my mind. I learned an important lesson that day. I guess it’s hard to forget certain moments frozen in time like when you got your heart broke. It was all part of my Intro 101 to this planet, I guess.
Fast-forward to present day where I’m, obviously, a seasoned traveler and enlightened guru in this game called life. Shit like that no longer surprises me.
What the fuck? Cliven Bundy just said what? Double dribble? Come again? The owner of an NBA basketball team just said what?
I guess I’m not as enlightened as I thought. I still can be surprised.
And, like always, this got me to thinking…
Continue reading →
Our new People Being People segment
More stuff ripped from the headlines. I’m only too happy to pass it along. -Ed.
Beer Pardons
This story has me “hopping” mad. Get it?
For at least the last five years, beer sold at CenturyLink Arena in Boise, Idaho, came in two sizes: A short, wide cup called “small” and a tall narrow cup called “large.” This year a small cup of beer cost $4 and a large was $7.
Sounds reasonable. What could possibly be the problem? It turns out that both cups contained the exact same amount of liquid. Say it isn’t so!
The responsible party, Block 22 LLC, feigned ignorance. Of course. A company spokesperson claimed that 16-ounce and 20-ounce cups had been ordered and that they never meant to mislead customers.
Question: Over the course of five-years why did no one at the company ever notice that profits on beer were approx. 50 percent higher than expected? Maybe they were siphoning that extra beer and drinking it at work?
Editorial: I’m calling on everyone to boycott CenturyLink in every possible way. After all, it’s their name on the stadium. That makes them the bad guy. They’re in bed on this one. I’ll lead the way by extending indefinitely my personal boycott against these kegger bootleggers.
Source: Washington Post – Fans sue Boise arena because “large” beer is same size as “regular” (video)
Addendum: “CenturyLink Arena has responded with an official press release, they have acknowledged the problem and have increased the large cup to 24oz at the same price for the rest of the season.”
What’s Worse Than An Asshole? A Hypocrite Asshole
You may have heard about the case of the grumpy old man at the movie theater who shot a guy because he was texting? Yes, in the Great State of Florida. The victim, a 43-year-old man, was reportedly texting his daughter’s babysitter during the movie previews when the 71-one-year old grumpy old man (and former cop) fatally shot him a single time in the chest.
It is now being reported that moments before the incident, the alleged shooter (and non-alleged asshole) did a bit of texting himself. According to a statement from the shooter’s own son, a text was sent by the shooter confirming that he and his wife had already arrived in their seats for a screening of the movie Lone Survivor. The shooter’s son texted he was running late, received the text from his dad, then walked into the theater just as the shooting took place.
Source: Los Angeles Times – Reports: Florida movie theater shooter also sent text message
Biebalypse
And now our continuing coverage of The Biebalypse…
Audacity of Gumption
I believe that people have the right and freedom to believe what they want. I believe that’s a basic human right.
When I meet someone, who knows what they might believe? In all likelihood they believe in God. (In this country I’d say about a 70 to 80 percent chance.) There’s at least a fifty fifty shot their political party affiliation is different than my own. There’s a high probability they believe in at least one idea that I’d consider wonky. (Bigfoot? Probed by aliens? Michele Bachmann is human? Sarah Palin is a decent hunter because she uses a helicopter?) If you think of the political spectrum as a grid, the odds drop even lower, perhaps 1/16th, that we are in the same general neighborhood.
I don’t worry about any of that stuff. I base my opinion of a person on things like how they act, what they say, if there are nice, sound pleasant and reasonable, rub me the right way, etc.
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Shouts from the Abyss 
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