To Consider: Who in their right mind would ever consider a career in the armed forces these days, what with the possibility of going to the Middle East and ending up hurt, dead, or worse, unless you had some sort of great aspirations of heroism or patriotism?

I have a few friends in the forces at the moment. One is in Iraq right now and regrets getting involved in the Army in the first place because she’s stuck in that hellhole. Another is going over shortly and he’s excited for it simply because of the experience he’ll get in his field, but isn’t very amused at the idea of leaving his family behind.

But the one that really flabbergasts me is a woman I know through my wife who is going into the forces simply because it’s good money. What???!? Are you crazy? Sure, being a mercenary or an assassin is good money, too, but you could end up DEAD, very easily, and what good is the money then?

I simply cannot fathom what goes through these folks’ heads. Do they not read the news? See the pictures of people brought back in boxes? Families torn apart because their father or mother is a corpse thanks to some random bomb or bullet in a foreign land?

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times — “Oh, the recruiter says they won’t send me over.”   Bull.   Shit.   Folks, they’re thinking of reinstating the draft for the love of god, and you think they’re not so short on people that you won’t go over?   Hah, Hah, and Double Hah.   If you trust the word of the military, I have a pretty golden bridge out west that I’d love to sell you.

Don’t get me wrong — I have nothing against the troops and I support their work greatly. Of course, I disagree with what they’re doing in the first place, but my beef is with the administration, not the movers and shakers of it. Never would I want them to think that I didn’t stand behind the fact that they’re throwing themselves on the line regularly for various causes. Much like being a mortician, I’m not sure I could do it, so I’m glad someone can.

My incredulousness is with the fact that people are currently entering the forces willingly for such inconsequential things such as money or education. Surely this isn’t responsible — who says, “Sure, I’ll take a high death rate for myself in exchange for some CASH!”? Yes, the government makes is MIGHTILY appealing — tons of sign-on bonuses, education credits and assistance, etc. But they know that a) nobody wants to do it right now because of the situation and b) there’s a high chance of ending up as a shrapnel pincushion. So they sweeten the deal until dollar signs cloud vision and reason both.

What do you think? Is it still smart to enter the military despite the facts at hand, or are these people just being twits? I have to think the latter, but perhaps my thinking is clouded or skewed.

To Consider: When listening to public radio (specifically, NPR), why is it that you can hear every single little detail of the mouth movements of the reporters, no matter who it is, while on commercial radio, you don’t?

Nowadays I listen to a lot of public radio while driving to and from work, simply because it allows me to get some information into my life about news, culture, and other interesting topics while mostly avoiding the incredibly irritating commercials that plague about 68% of the airtime on commercial radio.   In the mornings, I alternate that with Bob & Tom, depending on my interest level.    That statement alone has caused the death of about 50% of the Twin Cities white collar population from being terminally aghast.

One thing that has really gotten to me of late is how much detail you can hear in your broadcast when listening to the reporters speak.   Now, I’m all for clear radio and wonderful reception, but when I can hear Michele Norris‘ saliva glands squirting, I think we’ve gotten a bit too realistic.  For that matter, I guarantee that unless I was tonsil deep in a passionate kiss with her, I wouldn’t normally hear those sorts of inflections in normal conversation, let alone broadcast at 100,000 watts to the surrounding countryside.

I’m sure NPR, being the quality organization that it is, has dumped excessive amounts of cash on the state-of-the-art microphones and studios to accompany their reporters and compliment their well-suited voices.    But can we back it off a little?    The clarity is wonderful; no matter if I am running the A/C or passing a semi, I never lose the conversation or mis-hear a word.    But do I really need to hear your tastebuds begging for Cheetos?

On this edition of Life’s Best with Nathan, I’m going to rant on about some things that I’m either musing about, pissed about, or generally wanting to talk about. It’s gonna be random, it’s gonna be odd, and it’ll be mostly me, complaining. You cool with that? My blog, my scenery, eh?

Let’s jump on in:

Taking It to the Next Stage — I suddenly had this extreme urging to do some acting again today. I haven’t been on a stage in character since freshman year of college which makes it about 11 years ago, but I still miss the thrill of it all. There’s just no time in my schedule to put in for nightly rehearsals, alas. Gah.

Experts-Exchange Sucks — For those of us in IT, there’s a website called Experts Exchange that allows people to ask technical questions and get responses from supposed “experts” in the field. It used to be open for anyone to read and view, but now they charge you a membership to view the answers to questions and to participate. The problem is that Google is allowed to spider their pages and so when you search on a problem, oftentimes EE is the first few links on the search, but you can’t actually see the answer. Sometimes Google has it in the cache, but not always. So they suck because they waste my time over and over.

Jesus is NOT Your Personal Coach — I’ve had it up to *here* with folks that use Jesus as their personal trainer, coach, or motivator, but only when they’re ahead in the game. Athletes are always responsible for this — “Well, I’d like to thank Jesus for this opportunity to score big for my team” — or call upon Jesus or God to help them win a contest (Big Brother, anyone?) as if God favors the believer. This is a really good reason why most religious whacks are considered to be mental twinkies, folks. If you have nothing else better in your pocket than your religion, you have issues. Quit using it as your personal crutch or fairy godmother. Either that or be sure to blame God when everything goes to hell as well — I mean, c’mon; let’s be fair, hrm?

A Weekend for US? Surely not. – Sometimes it seems like all of our time is spent trying to please everyone else in life but ourselves, doesn’t it? We were home all weekend this week and it was wonderful; we didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything in particular other than take care of ourselves. I got the hallway painted, lots of dishes done, a bunch of food cooked for the upcoming difficult week, and played with my son a fair whack (got puked on once, just for good measure). It’s not that we don’t like our family and friends, but it’s good to be apart sometimes, too, ya know?

Mitsubishi, Is It Always Cold in Your Offices? — I am really, really unhappy with the automatic climate control system in our 2007 Mitsu Galant Ralliart. It’s intended to keep the temperature at whatever you set it and make it nice and easy to control. If you’re doing air conditioning, it works really, really well, but with heat it’s either 62F or above, and you get no lower choices. Now, I don’t know about you folks, but when I go outside in winter, I am wearing a good insulated leather jacket, gloves, and probably something fairly cozy underneath. I’m naturally warm anyway, so this is a great get-up for me to stay unshivering. In reality, I only need the car to be a mere 50 or maybe 55F to keep me happy, but the lowest is 62, so what the hell? My options are HOT or OFF. I think that’s rather limited, don’t you?

No Heart In It — While talking the other day about the lack of sales of tickets to my barbershop show coming up this weekend, my wife commented, “Nobody’s heart’s in it,” and it made me pause to think — you know, she’s absolutely correct. Have you noticed it lately? The heart has gone out of a lot of people for lots of things — hobbies, work, life in general. Why? Well, there’s a lot of negatives going on right now — the housing market taking a dump, medical expenses rampaging middle America, idiots in the White House, serious fear of a recession, less jobs, less well-paying jobs, higher food and fuel costs, etc. In short, we’ve lost any sort of spark in our step and spring in our eyes for much other than buckling down, working hard, and maintaining the status quo. I have a great fear that if the country slumps into a full-blown recession our hearts will go down the tube right along with it, and I’m not fond of looking forward to that.

Speaking of No Heart — Insurance companies and medical bills are plaguing us once again. Almost weekly I have to deal with one or more things that aren’t getting filed correctly with insurance or yet another bill coming through from something or other with my son’s birth and my wife’s surgery. Collectors are starting to call and we got approved for a repayment plan that is higher than our biggest car payment. Our crappy-ass drug plan goes through Express Scripts which is anything BUT and ends up being almost more hassle than it’s worth. (You know it’s bad when you prefer to pay full price than to file it with insurance.) It should NOT be this hard to get good, consistent coverage for healthcare given what we have to pay to get this. If I was paying this sort of money for a meal at a restaurant and got the service I have so far, I’d storm out and leave my meal behind. While I don’t think universal health care is the answer, I can fully see why people are hopping mad and demanding it — they’re tired of being treated like shit by companies that simply don’t care if you have a hard time of it.

We Are Too Desperate For Entertainment — This I have decided after watching TV shows get harsher and stranger the more they try to milk the ratings and get viewers, and the American public is apparently lapping it up. Reality shows are pushing the boundaries as much as possible, pitting violent extremes of personalities against one another just for the clash of it all. (“Let’s see what happens when we trade spouses between an African-American upper middle class suburban family of five and a white-trash family of skinhead Mississippians.”) Mind you, I wonder about the people volunteering to be on these shows — they’re clearly not right in the head, or money speaks volumes, but wowzers — can you get any lower? And we sit back and watch it all, like a train wreck where it’s so horribly you can’t possibly take your eyes off it.

—–

Never have I looked forward to summer so much as this year, when I can get outside, breathe some freshly mown grass, listen to the birds, feel the warm air on your skin, and watch the sun set. My soul needs it about now. There’s plenty of space on my front step if you care to join me.

About this time every year we Iowans decide that the winter has dragged on long enough and pulled us kicking and screaming through its frosty hallways far too many times to be useful anymore. This usually leads to bitching about the weather at every opportunity until our repertoire resembles that of an accomplished debate team minus the hot blond that will argue your ass to the ground and then strip for your amusement. Gone is the gossip about who is living with whom or what mind-numbingly stupid thing the city is doing with our tax money this year and in its place is a healthy dose of bellyaching with the occasional old-timer rant about how today’s youth has it so easy thrown in for spiciness and flavor.

I like to think that I’m rather accepting of the area of the country in which I live and its weather eccentricities, but on the whole I, too, find myself participating in these scathing attacks against Old Man Winter. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the winter — I do. I simply disagree with its tactics and efforts to make even the most simplest of operations outside a complete nightmare to navigate. One doth not understand the agony of winter until you have attempted to safely transport a 3-month-old in a blizzard.

This is compounded by the fact that this year I must make a 42 minute drive to work each way, either by tracing a county blacktop as it winds through the farmland wilderness or via a roundabout way on state highway and Interstate, the latter of which takes me nearly an hour but is by far the preferable in the case of crappy roads. This happens far, far more often than need be, as my more scenic and shorter route takes me through three counties, none of which have mastered the art of running a snowplow. Considering the simplicity of the machine, akin to a snow shovel welded to the bumper of a Jetta, you would really assume that they could make a significant dent in the crystallized water population. This is not the case, however; folks, your tax dollars at work.

So the other day, after Iowa had been calmly slammed to the mat by Mother Nature with near on a foot of white fluffy headache, I trekked northeasterly along the highways to my workplace. After making it to the Interstate and shooting along for some time, I entered a whiteout doing about 45mph or so. When I emerged, the scene before me would have sent sane men scampering for the treetops — three semi trucks side-by-side in front of me, blocking both lanes. Apparently one was already mostly on the side of the highway, another had been passing him, and yet another was trying to speed past on the left.

This was not good.

Imagine the further dropping of my heart as I looked into my rearview mirror and saw two more semis barreling down behind me in both lanes. Suddenly, sitting there in my little econobox, I felt cold, tiny, and very alone.

The thoughts that ravaged (quickly) through my head were storms of expletives, silent urgings to light fires underneath the asses of my angels, and wondering if my underwear would pass my mother’s emergency preparatory test. I started the oh-so-important self-debate of whether I should head for the ditch and turn my car into a four-wheeled flying sleigh from hell or allow the airbags to deploy turning me into a very safe, very snug, and very tenderized chunk of sirloin.

Fortunately for me, the semis sorted themselves out somehow without leaving pieces strewn across the highway and I was able to avoid becoming axle fodder for that day. My morning this enbrightened, I continued onwards to work where I found great solitude in not being behind a wheel for many hours.

Many people have said that if you don’t like the weather here in Iowa, just stick around for the next 5 minutes, but I’d like to cordially add that if you’re not into intramural dodgeball involving vehicular transport, you might consider staying tucked into your beach blanket and reading Cosmo. It is by far the less stressful of the two.

I had a friend when I was growing up that constantly got help from others to make it through the trials of life. No matter what the situation, he could find a way to get someone else — family, friends — to do the ‘dirty’ part of it, the hard part, the unpleasant part. In short, he ended up avoiding nearly all major responsibilities and consequences, or at least he had help in them and so he didn’t hit the ground nearly as hard when he fell.

No doubt a lot of you have heard about President Bush’s latest dubious action, which was to strike a deal with the mortgage market and attempt to freeze some interest rates from climbing so people didn’t have to foreclose and lose their houses. The essential idea behind it is this — during the housing bubble of the past few years, a lot of people either bought their first house or upgraded. Because interest rates were so low and lenders were giving out mortgages left and right for great terms, a lot of people bought a bigger place than they could really afford. They could do that because lenders gave out a lot of ARMs — Adjustable Rate Mortgages. It essentially means that for the few few years, your payments are low and your interest rate is, too. After that, however, the interest rate readjusts, usually higher, and your payments go up steeply.

Well, three or four years later, here we are, and a lot of homeowners are finding themselves in dire straits. Their ARMs have readjusted and, because interest rates went up, so did their payments — significantly. Suddenly that $350,000 house in Orlando is sucking up all of their income and they’re eating ramen to make it. If borrowers can’t make the payments, the lenders foreclose on the property and take it back and they lose their house as well as getting a black mark on their credit history.

So, the government is stepping up and saying, “Hey — a lot of foreclosures are bad for people and bad for the economy, so we’ll help you folks out and here’s some programs to assist you through this tough time.”

Excuse me? Since when was this a good idea?

Frankly, I’m miffed. By doing this, the government is basically condoning the actions of stupid people. Just like investing in Internet startups in the late 90s, everyone got too excited and did dumb things that they’re now regretting. Feeling a bit bad about buying a house that cost you $600/month for the first few years and now costs you double that? Want me to call the waaambulance?

As I heard one financial analyst say on the BBC, people are financially motivated in two ways — the pursuit of gaining wealth and the fear of bankruptcy. Both features exist in capitalism to balance the system out and make it dangerous to be reckless with your money. Sometimes that risk pays out — and sometimes you hit snake eyes.

I feel bad for anyone who had the wool pulled over their eyes about a bad mortgage, but only a little bit. Buying a house is not a trivial matter — you’re are making a huge purchase that will extend over years of repayment and financial situations — it behooves you to know exactly how your loan will behave at any point and what your risks are. Assuming everything will be fine because the banker says so is stupid. Failing to understand the risks you are taking is also stupid.

Call me cold-hearted, but I think this sets a bad precedent. Just like my childhood friend, this basically says that being idiotic with your money will result in the government stepping in to make sure you don’t suffer from it. If they do that now for mortgages, do we get a slippery slope to other risks in life? Oh, you made a bad choice by jumping off a roof — let us help you pay for that. You bought a huge-ass SUV and can’t afford the gas now to drive to work? Let us help you subsidize that. A bad hand at poker? You didn’t mean it, did you — here’s a Benjamin to keep going.

A bankruptcy would suck — but life isn’t all tea and sandwiches, either. Sometimes the only way people learn is by making mistakes, but apparently letting people make them isn’t ok anymore?