Happy New Year.  I am buying a motorcycle.  It is a cruiser styled bike, but not a Harley.  Harleys are OK, but I usually dislike the riders.  Kind of like SUVs.

I like SUVs but their drivers are assholes.  Usually they are nice people on an individual basis, but if they get in a vehicle taller than themselves they become assholes.  Sometimes it is a purposeful attitude change, sometimes it is subconcious, usually it is plain ignorance of their surroundings.  Guess what?  I drive a ten year old Saturn.  If you want to get in an accident, I will survive well enough, but you will have at least three times the monetary damage I will, and I am not afraid of you hitting me.  I am not looking for an accident, and usually yield to anyone who is in the right, or polite.  But if you are in the wrong, and you are an asshole, I will keep going and let you hit me.

Back to Motorcycles.  Why do Harley drivers think loud is cool?  My pipes are damn near silent, and I imagine it helps me hear other traffic, etc, so that I am safer.  The thought that loud pipes save lives is silly.  First, the bulk of the noise is behind the bike, so it only saves you from being rear ended, which is uncommon anyway.  Second, it lowers your own situational awareness!  Third, it pisses off all the people with road rage making them want to cut you off, etc, and actually increases your chance of an accident!  Dumb-asses.

Loud pipes are for idiots.  I do not want to listen to you no matter what you are doing.  I do not want to hear your voice, your vehicle, your screaming kids that you refuse to discipline, or any other toys you have.

Speaking of kids, they were OK back in the old days.  In fact, they were an economic necessity.  You needed them to work and take care of you as you aged.  They were a source of income, and free labor around the house.

Now?  They are a luxury item in our society.  You can earn enough to retire on your own, and in fact if you save the money from not having children you will retire pretty fat!  That way that chunk of $ is yours for sure.  If you 'invest' in a child they can stuff you in a nursing home and never see you.  Then you wasted all that money rearing them when you could have had a 401K!

Children used to do chores, SERIOUS chores.  Wake early, milk cows, clean stuff, start a  job or apprenticeship before they were in double digits.  Now kids are a toy for the parents to play with until they are 12 and bitch about until they are 18.  Some are their for a 'legacy' or some other insecure purpose, but that is just a luxury canned as posterity.

I am not having children.  I would prefer instead to save up for a country house to retire in.  If I get too sick, then I am going to a home either way, that is my risk.  Since children in this country seem to not take good care of their elders, I would end up in a home either way, I may as well enjoy my money more in the mean time!

Some what related, our country has grown accustomed to stuffing parents in nursing homes.  BAD JU-JU!  Yes, there are cases when it is not only acceptable, but there are not other alternatives.  When a parent or any other patient becomes too sick to be safe without round the clock care, or advanced care beyond normal training, then it is time.  This in no way allows for the abandonment to a warehouse of old people!

I know several families that have gone down several paths, some good, some bad.  Some have built additions with minor medical facilities in the house and gotten part time care nurses.  Some have been forced to the nursing home but were taken care of DAILY by relatives.  Some have been put in the facility and forgotten, while their home was sold and their possessions distributed.  For the love of all that you hold sacred, if you have parents take care of them!

If you have kids, raise them right.  Take care of your own parents so they get the right training!  Ughh.  There is no solution here.  Perhaps I will get killed on my motorcycle before I have to worry about getting senile!

I cannot believe there exists a rule requiring NFL owners to interview minorities before hiring a head coach.  There are 32 head coaching jobs in the NFL.  There are 32 owners.  Chances are the owner knows who he wants before he even interviews.  The Lions owner was fined even though he contacted five minority candidates from different teams.  The five all refused the interviews!

Good GOD!  Bill Belichick is arguable the best head coach ever in the NFL.  If for some bizarre reason the Patriots fired him and I had the opportunity to sign him it would take one phone call.  "Bill?  Yeah, it's Gill.  How much do you want?  I'll double it."  I would then be fined because some assistant coach on another team was not interviewed.  Can I find a guy working in the community and interview him as a token gesture?  What about the blimp pilot (if he is a minority)?  Probably very well educated and watches a lot of games.  Would that be more or less insulting than interviewing a real coach who has NO chance.  The five coaches who turned down interviews in 2003 should be fined for not trying to promote equality in the league.  They had a chance to dazzle the owner and become a head coach.  They didn't even try.  They should each bear $40,000 of the fine, to make up for the $200,000 that the owner must pay.

What is next?  Will the owners need to have metrics to present to the NFL to show why a coach was chosen?  If I were the Lions owner I would go interview a Hawaiian Tropics model and claim that being Hawaiian qualified her as a Native American.  At least I would have something good to look at while I was planning on hiring my buddy.

Perhaps the next step is to pay one of those five derelict assistant coaches $100,000 for an interview.  Therefore it would provide incentive for the deadbeat to show up, and it would still be half what the NFL would have charged!

NFL, you are steering the league in the same direction as affirmative action.  It is bad for society, it will be bad for the NFL.

Just one rant about them.  Although it is only one topic, every time they open their mouths they torque me with stupidity and poorly thought out claims.

Many times this year I have heard wind-bag announcers blabbing about the injustice of 10-6 teams not making the playoffs and how rarely this occurs.  With 10 wins being some sort of magical point that should get a team to the playoffs, I did a little number crunching.  Under four years of the current system, 48 teams have made it to the playoffs, with the following records:

2002-2005 NFL Seasons

A weighted average of these records suggests that the magic number is not 10 wins, but 11 (rounded from 11.063).  Furthermore, of teams with 10 wins 88% made it to the playoffs.  Nine wins gets you in 25% of the time, and eight wins is 20%.  Thus, not only is the average record of a playoff team 11 wins, it is also the only number of wins that has yet to be eliminated.

As far as teams missing the playoffs with a 10-6, who cares?  Two teams did not make it in four years under this system, but six teams with eight or nine wins have gotten in.  Do these wind-bags believe that because ten is the first double digit that it is automatically significant?  Or can they just not count any higher without contacting a polydactyl?

Team wins Eleven,

Guarantees a playoff trip,

Not a playoff win.

For my polydactyl friends (two of them, one corrected, one not), I mean absolutely no harm to you by suggesting to NFL announcers that they contact you.  Nor do I mean any insult by associating you in any way with those potato-heads.

I do not mean any harm or insult to potatoes, either.  In fact, being of Irish ancestry, I rather enjoy them.

Good god.  I like some humor, but I hate ignorance or senseless bigotry.  Some people have it right, and they can still tell a joke.  I have a group of folks that works for me on the ship.  They do a great job and always finish their work early.  While I was ribbing them about being slackers I said that I was going to chain them to the ship to get a full workday out of them.  One black guy said, "Sir, we really don't like to talk about being chained to ships!"

That is funny!  He meant no disrespect, he was simply using his heritage as a basis for humor.  He was not blaming anyone for the past, and was not saying he was oppressed.

There are parts of racial/cultural history that are generally true and not insulting.  Sure you can turn anything into an insult if you want, and some ignorance will always lead to that, but get over it.  People are stupid!  I am of Irish descent.  I like beer and potatoes.  I do not believe this is a coincidence, I believe it is because I was raised by a family that liked a lot of beer and potatoes!

My buddy was black (well, he probably still is), but he hated fried chicken.  Why?  Societal stereotypes drove him crazy?  No.  His whole family ate lots of fried chicken because they were poor and from the south, he used to love it.  It was not a black thing, it was economic followed by a couple generations of tradition.  Why did he grow to hate it?  Well, he worked at a KFC (thinking it was good since he liked the food) and got overwhelmed by the smell of the food everyday.

Sure a lot of black people like fried chicken, a lot of Irish like beer, a lot of Asians like rice.  BIG DEAL!  Now, here is where trouble comes:  All Irishers are drunks.  That is not true.  All (insert group name) are lazy.  Not true.  (XXXX)'s are stupid.  Not true.  Sure there may be a few drunk Irishers, or a few lazy people in any group, but that is where generalization is bad.

There are old truisms (Irish and beer) and there are new ones (New Englanders are more practical than Californians).  These are cultural, yet no one seems to care about the new ones.

Bottom line, if it is an insult, that is bad, regardless of what it is based on.  If it is not true, then you are an idiot.  If you can not tell what is wrong, you are an idiot.  If you assume someone likes beer because they are Irish, fine.  If you assume all Irish people are lazy because you know me and I am lazy, that is wrong.

If you cannot follow the logic here, stop reading and go be a hermit.  Society does not need you.  What society does need in a difference in cultural backgrounds between people.  This is the Great American Melting Pot.  If there were no differences between the ingredients we would be a completely homogeneous mix (like tomato soup).  When we all bring in different qualities we get a great stew or a chunky clam chowda.  Our society will not survive if we demand an increase in diversity and simultaneously refuse to observe the differences.

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