Wherein, I completely remove any chances of ever becoming President

You ever notice how when a politician is running for office or trying to push a major piece of legislation, any and all of their past statements are brought back up, no matter how recent or long ago they were, and used against them? Okay, it doesn't happen often enough, in some cases, but it happens.

Well, I'm here today, to remove any chance of me ever holding any sort of office that I would have to be elected to. (This does not, however, remove the possibility of me being a dictator. Dictators are notorious for not being elected.)

How will I do this? Simple.

Here are my views on human sexuality.

I don't care if someone is gay or straight. I don't. Okay, yes, it does weird me out a little when a few of the gay customers I deal with tell me I have nice hands, but that's not the point I'm here to make today. I don't care who you are having sex with. I really only have three rules when it comes to sex, in fact.

Rule 1) Don't tell me about it. This is not some prudish dislike of hearing about your intimate sex acts. It's more along the lines of, well... okay, would you go up to a starving man and tell them about the wonderful multi-course dinner you just ate? Most of you would say no. And why would you say no? Because it's an assholeish thing to do. You just don't go up to people who are starving and wave food in their face, or brag about that huge steak you just couldn't finish.

So don't talk to me about how often you're getting laid.

Rule 2) If it's with a consenting adult, I don't care. You could be sleeping with people of the same sex, the opposite sex, four people at a time. Doesn't bother me. If they (and you) are consenting adults, then I have no problems with it. Likewise, I have no problems with the idea of gay people getting married. Why should heterosexual couples be the only ones to suffer? (That's a joke.) And think about it, there's lots of problems that hetero couples have that gay couples probably wouldn't have. How often are you going to hear a gay guy complain that his partner left the toilet seat up?

Rule 3) If you're having sex with children, you had better hope God finds you before I do.

So, that's pretty much it. I don't believe in the "sanctity" of marriage. I mean, I believe that people who love each other can and maybe even should get married, but I don't believe that there's anything special about marriage that inherently restricts it to only being between a man and a woman. Two women want to get married? Fine. Two men? Fine. Four guys and two women want to all be married in a Heinlein-esque (Moon is a Harsh Mistress or Friday) type of marriage? Okay by me.

And, in the event that I ever do run for political office, I want one of you fuckers to bring this back up to the media's attention. If nothing else, it would make for a good show.

It's a shame

That the best part of X-Men 2 takes place in the first 5 minutes of the movie.

Mo' money

So, I found out how much my raise at work is going to be. It's not as high as my pipe dreams hoped it would be, but it is still substantial.

It got me thinking though. This is the first truly substantial raise I've gotten while at this job, and while some of the raises (or lack thereof) were my fault (poor performance or poor attitude), I have to wonder... what would it be like if I was, say, in Congress?

Every year, Congress has to vote against automatically increasing their own pay, and if they don't vote it down, they get a pay raise. Every year. Well, hold on, many people get a pay raise every year. Maybe it's not a lot, but it's there, right? Well, yes. But those people don't get to decide whether they get their own raise, do they? And those raises certainly aren't guarenteed.

But Congress does. Every year, they have to specifically vote against giving themselves more money. Now, go out and find 20 people who work for a living. Doesn't really matter what they do. Fry cook, businessman, newspaper reporter, whatever. Ask them if they could, every year, decide for themselves to give themselves more money (whether an increase in an hourly pay or an increase in salary), regardless of their actual performance, would they do it?

Now, most people aren't dopes. And most people do have that tiny bit of greed, or that nugget of belief that they aren't being paid enough. So, I'm willing to bet that if you did ask those 20 people if they would give themselves a better income every year, they would say "Hell, yes, where do I sign?" But people making minimum wage have to hope that Congress gets off their collective fundaments and votes for an increase in minium wage.

I mean, it's not like we're ever going to hear about Congress cutting "employees" are we? "Due to the nature of the current economy, each state will be going down to one Senator and we're also looking at significant layoffs in the House of Representatives. We hope that these layoffs will result in a leaner, more responsive Congress, able to meet the demands of a modern government."

Psssh... yeah, that'll happen.