April 08, 2008

Humanity Scale

I keep my own scale of the humanity in my mind where I catalogue the ills of society. It changes based on who currently annoys the most. But generally the same set of items sit near the bottom as Most Offensive To All That Is Decent And Right.

Scents: somewhere in the middle of the negative arm of the scale, placed there due to the overly accessible, vast quantities that exist, are scented products. It is true that I do not want to smell you; I do not want to smell hairspray; I do not want to smell deodorant, fabric softener; I don't annoy the wafting bouquet of glade plug-ins, and I do not want to smell cologne from 10 feet away. But more than this, the chemical irritants in perfumed products are... chemical irritants; pollution that causes wheezing, runny noses, migraines, bleeding eyes, melting skin, exploding brains.

Rewarding irresponsibility: below scents, but above the lowest and meanest of ills sits the bailout of the irresponsible while the responsible sit by like polite fools. For example, a lot of people purchased homes they did not have the income to afford, with ARMs that they knew would reset to a rate they could not sustain. I don't mean those duped into it, but people who jumped in with a 0% down payment hoping to refinance in 2 years, thinking that the market could only ever go up. This in itself doesn't piss me off. It's a gamble that a lot of people took, and a lot of people lost. It happens. It sucks, but when it comes down to it, it was a bad investment. People make bad investments all the time. What pisses me off is this: aide plans where the lender would cut the principal of a troubled mortgage to 85% of a home's current, diminished market value, The FHA would take 5% of the new, lower amount as a fee, and homeowners would get the remaining 10% as equity to give them a stake in paying off the renegotiated mortgage.

You'd get 10% equity as a reward for making bad choices! What!? Awesome. Meanwhile, for those who decided against buying because it just didn’t seem like a sound idea, unspent savings now languish at wussily low interest rates, IRAs steadily decline, and food costs rise... ultimately penalized for not making irresponsible investments.

Deaf ignorance: that Celtic Woman/Thunder should be so low on a scale of societal ills should need no explanation. Do you think they sound pretty? I think their very existence is outrageously offensive. That so many people have so little understanding of the fundamentals of music that this crap satisfies musical appetites is astounding and horrifying. If you don't find yourself gesticulating wildly and spitting with anger upon hearing them, you need to take some music classes.

Willful stupidity: The lowest point on today's version of this index is the teaching of Creationism/Intelligent Design in public schools. Nothing pisses me off more.

Posted by allison at April 8, 2008 02:06 PM