Legalize and Sterilize

When you make something illegal, you make it where people do it in secret because they don't want to get caught. I believe, oddly enough, that to handle a substance or item you believe should be illegal, you must legalize it.

Once it's legal, it can be controlled. A person addicted to meth is much more likely to buy from a local drug store where their product is guaranteed, than to get their addictions calmed by someone who overcharges, is shady, dangerous and can likely barely speak English.

It all started with the Tennessee mom for being the first charged with prenatal drug use.

I abhor parents who don't take care of themselves and therefore don't take care of their kids. But, there are a slew of things I don't like about this law.

Any law that is harder on one sex than the other is wrong in my book. I suppose they could have written it without mentioning gender, but we all know men can't get pregnant. It still takes two to tango. They should at least punish the sperm donor who managed to impregnate the addict.

Then I thought about abortion. Abortion has been debated for decades and we will never agree on it. It would be nice if everyone just agreed that we will never agree on it, but it'll never happen.

So you take a meth addict. She gets pregnant. She can't afford an abortion because it's so expensive and "frowned upon". She is addicted to meth. She didn't mean to get pregnant. She spends the next nine months waiting to give birth so she can be convicted.

You could argue more in favor of convicting the mom if you say she wanted to have the kid and did meth anyway. Kind of makes you nauseous, but there you go. I've certainly seen worse people in the world.

Anyway, in my keep it simple, political view of the world, I came up with an exciting new law. The Legalize and Sterilize law.

We legalize drugs, but regulate them with side effects. Drugs like meth will be available for purchase at your local drug store, but they have the side effect of sterilization. Problem solved. No more meth babies because we legalized and sterilized.


_______________________________________________
I used to blog regularly. Most of my writings are not entertaining to anyone but myself, but I look at it as practice. Unfortunately, after a few years of blogging I quickly ran out of quirky ideas to write about. Now, I'm out of practice because I blog irregularly. I wrote this one just because I thought the "Legalize and Sterilize" was a wonderful campaign slogan!

Top 5 Things I've Learned in the Last Three Months

In no particular order.

Pins are Cheaper Than Pens

Unless you are a bank giving out credit cards in America.

I travel to Europe quite often. When I'm there, they have the same "automatic" amenities as we do here in the states except I can't use them because they require a credit card with a pin.

We live in a modern world with old technology credit cards. At least in the good old capitalistic land of the free.

In Europe their credit cards have a chip on them. This chip contains all your pertinent information. Your account balance, your name, what you look like, the birthday of your firstborn child and your pin (I may have made some of that up). This is because, in some countries, the Internet/communications system isn't as vast as in the USA so when they can't validate the sale via the Internet they can just read the information off of the chip. But, the chip can't be accessed without the appropriate PIN (personal identification number).

When you go get gas at a 24/7 pay at the pump station in Europe, they don't ask for your zip code when you slide your card (in fact a lot of them don't have a magnetic strip reader). They ask for your PIN. In Europe there are a large majority of gas station attendants who don't speak English. So when I'm out of gas in Italy, I have to park my car, go into the station, find an attendant who can speak a bit of English, try to explain to them that I don't have a chip on my card and that I'll be requiring a pen because I have no pin.

When you go to a restaurant in Germany, they bring a little chip reading device to your table. You put your card in and then guess what? It asks for a PIN. This comes as some embarrassment to we technologically advanced Americans. You have to ask them pathetically if they have the dumb down credit card machines. Then, if they do and are able to run your card, they ask for your PIN. Then, we pathetic Americans have to ask for a PEN.

That's not entirely true, their credit card machine almost always have a magnetic strip reader, but they don't carry pens with them. And I can't write anyway.

Texting and Driving is Not Just Dangerous

It's also annoying as hell. I am starting to enjoy the people who say, "I only text when I'm at a stop light."

They are the ones who make me miss the green light because they are too busy playing with their phones to notice that the light changed.

Then there are the ones who "can safely text and drive". They are the ones you come up on driving 15 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour zone so that they can safely weave between the white lines without crossing them.

I saw a guy the other day texting at a four way stop -- because it wasn't his turn. Of course, when it was his turn, he had no clue. People get stupid at four way stop signs anyway. Texting at a four way stop is like stirring up the kettle of stupidity.

I've Only Got Two
I feel kind of guilty for leading you on.

You Can Plant Plants 
It's a good thing you don't pee peas. That would hurt!

Obamacare is Not That Bad
But only if you are intelligent. I wish Obama would have done away with health insurance all together. Sick people are not happy and we all should have a right to the pursuit of happiness. 

However, all the horror stories you've been hearing are just not true. If you have a  brain, read this.  You have a couple of more days to sign up. If I had had access to Obamacare when I graduated college, life would have been much different for me.

Target's Botched Breach Apology

I shop at Target. Not because I'm a diehard Target fan, but because it is the most convenient store to go to on my way home from work.

Therefore, when Target's servers were hacked into near the end of 2013, I was one of the ones notified. Luckily, I was using my wife's credit card. Yay me!

They hacked like 40 million accounts or something of that nature, so I figure I have a better chance of winning the lottery than someone actually stealing my identity, but better safe than sorry and all of that kind of thing.

Anyway, they sent me an email today telling me I can get free ID Protection from Experian. In this "unsolicited" email sent to an address that is no longer used, they provided a link to get started...

I don't know if you can understand the subtlety of this, but let me see if I can come up with an analogy. It would be like Kellog's sending out samples of their peanut butter crackers after doing the salmonella recall because of possible peanut contamination.

Anyway, I looked at the link and it looked valid so I opened up a browser and typed in the link by hand. It was creditmonitoring.target.com for those of you following along. Being that it ended in target.com, I probably could have just clicked on the link.

The funny thing about this website (you can go there if you want) is on the right side it warns us to "be wary of calls or email scams that may appear to offer protection..."

Kind of like saying, "you're here so we know you didn't follow rule number one, but we'll point it out just in case". But, alas, being the adventurous soul that I am, I went ahead with the registration process which involves entering your name and email address to get instructions from Target (within 72 hours). It is super fast technology after all. It may take 72 hours for their super computers to look you up in their system and send you an email. Maybe they should have let their hackers take care of it?

I got the email within 30 minutes with further instructions. These instructions take you to an Experian page where you enter more personal information. After diligently entering all the information, Experian presents me with this:

Basically telling me I've wasted my time. It all seemed legit though. There was no bad grammar or English subtitles. I'd like to thank Target for trying and I am hoping they and their apparent Experian partners didn't join on the Obama bashing bandwagon about the Healthcare Website.