My New Favorite Quote

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." --Robert E. Howard

WTF??

In my inbox tonight:

Dear blog author:
We recently came across your site, soulrants.blogspot.com, while searching for fellow christian bloggers.
A small group of us have started a new site called Christian Bloggers. Our prayer and intent is to bring Christians closer together, and make a positive contribution to the Internet community. While many of us have different "theologies", we all share one true saviour.
Would you be interested in joining Christian Bloggers? Please take a few minutes to have a look at what we are trying to do, and if you are interested, there is a sign up page to get the ball rolling. We would greatly appreciate your support in this endeavour.

May God Bless you and your blogging efforts.

We look forward to hearing from you.
Craig Cantin
Christian Bloggers
info@christian-bloggers.com


Innocent children dying by the score (http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=children+killed&btnG=Search+News) , yet God is going to consider me and "my blogging efforts" important enough to "bless"?

Self Discipline Pt. 2

Here's another one that always gets a rise out of people, since 99% of the U.S. population seems to use them: snooze buttons on alarm clocks. I simply cannot understand their purpose. If a person has to get to work by 7 a.m., and it takes them half and hour to get ready plus an additional 15 minutes of commute time, why in the hell would they not just set their clock for 6:15 and then get up when the damn thing goes off?

My wife drives me nuts with this. "Riiiiing". Hit snooze."Riiiiing". Hit snooze."Riiiiing". Hit snooze. If you have that much extra time, why not just set your clock for later? I once roomed with a dude that had no less than three different alarm clocks all set to different wake times, plus he'd wear out the snooze buttons on all three of them each morning. I wanted to goddamn strangle him. If you have that hard of a time getting up your ass needs to get to bed earlier.

It's just another total lack of self-discipline. It's real easy: You set the clock for whatever time you actually need to get up, then when it goes off you get up you lazy bastard.

Self Discipline Pt. 1

So I'm sitting in the sauna listening to a conversation between this younger guy and his girlfriend. The gist is here, edited for brevity.

G: So while I'm overseas you're saying I should have the $300 electronically deposited into my account each month?

G/F: Yeah, just start an allotment.

G: I'm not sure if I want it put into my Charles Schwab account.

G/F: How come?

G: Well then I can get to it. They let you draw three checks a month. I mean, I'm not going to be doing much. I might go out drinking with the guys once in a while, but it's not like that's going to be a regular thing.

(a whole bunch of other babble about how he can't access his account over the internet for some reason and how when he calls them he doesn't know what they're talking about and suggests they talk to his 'financial advisor', who apparently handles everything)

G/F: How about putting it into a CD?

G: Well then I can't touch it in case of emergency.


I swear, it's crap like this that makes me want to scream. Either you want to be able to get to your money, or you don't, dolt. It's called self-discipline. A very simple concept:

A. I want to save my money.
B. So I'm not going to withdraw any.

Instead of being somewhat ashamed that he has the willpower of a 3 year old, there he is carrying on this in-depth discussion trying to find some artificial banking construct that will say "no, you can't have it....well...unless you really, really need it!" Here's a young guy who probably makes half what I do pontificating on various interest rates and investment schemes (I left that part out) as if he's Donald Trump, yet doesn't have the self-discipline of a squirrel trying to store up acorns for the winter.

If you suck that bad just have the loot sent to your mom to hold or something. Or give it to me.