I weep for the future

This makes me sad, but there are some points to be made by this sign on a Philadelphia Burger King:

1) This is the type of company you keep when you visit this (or any other) BK Lounge.

2) Although it is spelled "Meat," what you are eating at BK should be classified as something else all together.

3) Be happy with your life, because you could be writing signs for BK when they are out of letus.

On Holding the Elevator...

So every morning I step into an elevator bank for my office building. There are four elevators in that bank, and as people proceed through the security gate, there are two questions that arise:

1) Is it worth it to rush through the security gate, up to the elevator and make eye contact with one of its occupants to have them hold it open?

2) If I'm inside, is it worth it to hold open the door for other people coming towards the elevator?

After some thought, the answer is definitely, "no" and here is why...

In a bank of four elevators, holding the door does several things:

1) Keeps you from your destination by delaying your elevator departure.

2) Makes you wait for another person to get into the elevator.

3) Increases the chances of an additional stop on the elevator.

4) Delays you enough so that you may have to hold it for another person, thus bringing you back to issue 2 & 3.

If you are the person going to the elevator, it still isn't worth it. Just wait for the first one to go, and then get another elevator with less people and less stops!

The argument against this is that it's impolite to close the door, but when you step back and think - it is much more practical to keep the elevators moving and have people get where they are going fast. If you have one elevator in your building though, this may not apply. In that case, I don't have any advice.

So next time you are alone in an office elevator and see someone coming, waiving at you to hold the door, press the close button.

Atheism: Let's Party!

To those that know me, the know that I think religion is not only mostly crap, but a negative force in the world. Recently, some of the Atheist/Agnostic crowd has started to come out of the closet just a tad and I think that is a good thing. The person who is leading the charge is pictured here - Tiffany Patterson, just kidding - it is Richard Dawkins. He's a geneticist and vehement atheist. He and others have pointed out that about 20% of the US country is "non-religious" but we have no representation. That 20% is more than blacks, Jews, Hispanics, farmers, or just about any other special interest group. I don't know for certain if there is or is not a god, but I don't surrender my reason when asking big questions about life either. In turn, the only reasonable conclusion that I can come to, is there probably isn't a god. Furthermore, we shouldn't live our lives afraid of how some mystical man in the sky might judge our deeds.

I dig what Atheism is selling, and how their doing it is pretty funny as well. If you want to see how ridiculous some religions get, check out Religious. Google video has is hosted for free here.

The Terminator

First off, Happy New Year everyone. All right, let's get down to business...

The new phrase is Terminator. A Terminator is a type of person that, when in social settings, constantly terminates conversations. I don't know if they do this deliberately, but my suspicion is it's subconscious and the side-effect of poor social graces. Now, I'm no master of the segue, but I can keep a conversation going and hopefully interesting. A Terminator can really kill a conversation, but usually there is someone to offset their impact on a group conversation. When you are faced with a Terminator alone, you better be John Connor and start running. Here is a classic example

Person A: "I read an article that said if you cook only with foods from the outside areas of a grocery store, you'll eat better."
Terminator: "I don't cook."

Another classic Terminator line is, "That's funny." However, the usage of this is important. If people are laughing when that is said, it is OK and you don't have a terminator on your hands. If they say, "That's funny" and look at you with a listless stare, you have a Terminator in your midst.

There is only one way to deal with Terminators, and that is to pull that microchip out of their head and destroy, oh wait... that is the other Terminator. For this type of Terminator, you'll have two choices:

1) Engage them. This means asking about their job, their family, their outfit, and boring stuff like the weather. It may break them down, or just get you through the conversation.
2) Run. Smile, nod, move on to another individual to whom you'd like to converse with.