Pull Your Pants Up

Another jurisdiction is playing with fire by banning low slung pants that expose underwear or private parts. This ordinance actually has a hammer: up to $500 in fines and six months in jail. Hooooweeee! Go on with your common sense self, Delcambre, LA! This is old news now, having passed last month, but I hadn't heard about it. Yesterday it was a call-in topic on a hip hop radio station I flipped across.

Boy were those callers mad! "Freedom of expression!", "Illegal!", they cried. And inevitably, "Discrimination!" Let's unclutter the issue. Underwear, if anyone is uncertain about its intended use, gives us a great clue in its name: Underwear. It's to be worn under our clothes. I don't want to see anyone's boxers, briefs, whale tails or coin slots when I'm walking down the street, thanks. What yahoo got everyone thinking these sights were sexy, cool or worse yet, no big deal? Man up, society! Let's not be afraid to say, 'that's disgusting and stupid', when something's disgusting and stupid.

There were almost 100 comments posted to the Washington Post article I linked to. Most were outraged at the government telling us what we can wear or astonished at the steep penalties. Well, when parents or we ourselves can't recognize inappropriate public apparel, maybe we need a little help. As for the fines, yes, they're stiff alright. A juvenile can steal about 10 cars before they see any formal probation or camp time in my jurisdiction in California. So someone going to jail for flashing their butt is great cause for celebration to me.

Somewhere along the line, we've forgotten the difference between sensuality and sexuality. Being sensual is far more enticing than raw sexuality to me. By the way they're dressing, many young people must think the more skin shown the better, the sexier. Sensuality is the great intoxicator, though. It gives us hints to what may lay beneath. We don't see the blasted boxers or thong hanging out, but we imagine what it might be like under there after someone's sensuality blips on our radar.

So please, America, pull up your pants. No matter what you see on MTV or what your friends say, you look ridiculous.

Dry Sausages

Occasionally, after an especially draining or tedious day at the office, I reminisce about my waitressing job of high school and college. Those days under the tray were exciting, indeed. I never knew what characters would sit at my tables and the money wasn't bad, either. I regularly pulled $300 in tips a night on the weekends at an Italian fine dining house with very over-priced wines. In fact, it was a much fairer compensation system than my current civil service pay structure. Your tips directly reflect your customers' satisfaction and motivate you to provide your very best service. In civil service, everybody gets the same salary and automatic (albeit tiny) pay increases once a year whether you're a hard charger or a slug. Unless you have designs on management positions, which are almost always inside jobs, there's really no monetary incentive to do your best. Thus all those civil service worker jokes..."how many civil servants does it take to...". Naturally, there are always exceptions. I count myself among those. There are employees who have a strong work ethic among the sloths. It's just a broken system, all the same.

Of course, waitressing has its pitfalls. Strange birds who might crack off a dollar on a $100 tab, or those curious people who must round the charge total to an even amount, even if it short-changes the waitress. Grrrr. Waitressing is hard work, folks. My restaurant was a former house, with the kitchen upstairs. The owner was a bit Cruella DeVille-esque (crazy white hair, loooong red nails, black and white outfits) and insisted us girls wear those black parade shoes with 2 inch heels with our Italian maiden dress uniforms. Every one of us took a tumble down the stairs and if you'd been holding food or dishes, she'd take the cost of what you dropped out of your check! Beyotch, eh? No matter, the tips were so good we came out ahead anyway.

I had my little share of regulars and one guy, in particular, was beyond odd. But I was always happy to see him. He dined alone and was crabby. No small talk whatsoever. Always insisted on the same table and ordered the same thing: spaghetti with Italian sausage and peppers, with a twist: the sausages MUST be dry. We marinated our sausages in sauce all day. Mr. Dry, however, wanted no sauce anywhere near his plate. So I obliged, washing off the two sausages, drying them and placing them in their naked glory on the plain white noodles. He was happy at last! He left me a $50 tip that first night and every night there after until I left the job four years later. See? He appreciated my service! And that just made me want to dry those sausages extra nicely time after time.

So I propose all civil servants complete one year of waiter/waitressing prior to permanent appointment. It will be readily apparent who wants to work and who's there for the free ride about five tables into the first night. And remember, support your food servers. Please tip accordingly!

Blogholes

There are blogholes out there. I've discovered many blog directories with fun features and virtual friends to exchange tips with. But there, in between meaningful messages on the forums, lurks the bloghole.

They lay in wait on every directory I've visited, barking stuff at novices and vets alike. The blogholes call people names for asking questions, belittle honest suggestions, blast out arrogant comments and pollute the blogosphere with useless flaps from angry little fingers on keyboards. Tap, tap, tap!

But hark, there's always a voice of reason that exposes the bloghole for all the world to see with one rational reply. I love it! I've seen threads going nuclear until the bloghole gets shut down and blurp, they slink for a bit and then post a good thread for forgiveness, only to amp back up to their undeniable blogholeness a few replies later.

WTF blogholes? Stand down. There's enough page ranks to go around. Enough badges and votes and trackbacks and...wait a minute...a bloghole remedy! Please, some spectacular smart geek (and I do love geeks) out there write some code to slap a bloghole badge on someone's avatar that just cannot be removed. Blogholes, watch your backs. The code is coming...

The Scarlet Letter Remixed

The crooks are on to something with this one. It seems four criminals branded "SNITCH" on a woman's face during a surprise attack after luring her into an apartment. They allegedly did this in retaliation for her reporting two of them to Arizona's Department of Child Protective Services for endangerment involving drug abuse. The couple's kid(s) were taken away as a result. Awww.

Let's turn the tables and brand the criminals instead of the victims. Wouldn't you like to know if your new babysitter had a drinking problem? I bet a big "DUI" across her forehead would be helpful. Or the teacher of your son's first grade class sporting a "pedophile" in small block letters from one cheek to the other via the bridge of the nose. This is fun! One more..."fraudster" branded into your financial advisor's palm.

Relax, ACLU. Of course this could never happen. People deserve a second chance. Just not a ninth or tenth one. Sizzzzle....