Twit is a new culture.

I've just identified it. I haven't defined it yet, but come on, you can't define a culture, man. Especially if you're not a member. It's not up to me to tell these people how to live their lives.

I have decided to define Ralph Haddad as a member of a culture I will label 'Twit'. It (I don't want to use gender specific pronouns, because I'd hate to try and lock a person into a gender role that they do not wholeheartedly identify with and embrace.) has written an article about Movember.

Movember as microaggression

I had to go look up microaggression on Wikipedia.  It (currently) says, "Microaggression is the idea that specific interactions between those of different races, cultures, or genders can be interpreted as small acts of mostly non-physical aggression; the term was coined by Chester M. Pierce in 1970."

I feel that Ralph's article is a microaggression towards non-twits. 

If you weren't sure about Movember, participants shave at the beginning of November and then grow the wickedest (is that even a word outside of Boston) 'stache they can for the rest of the month. So that when anyone asks them why they're channeling Tom Selleck, they can tell all of the men in hearing range to get their man tackle checked. 

Dude (non-gender specific term, as far as I'm concerned), it's a damn awareness campaign. Just because you can't/won't rock a 'stache, doesn't mean you need to piss on other people's parades. Folks of the trans world have special health concerns already. I think they are already aware of their specific preventative care needs. They pretty much have to be. Transitioning is hard and comes with a lifetime of being very careful with your body. 

On the other hand, Joe Schmoe, who likes football, baseball, beer, and tuning out everything his wife says, probably ignored her when she told him he needs to schedule a physical. Suddenly, he sees all of these athletes with weird facial hair, and decides to make an appointment to have the first non-work-required physical of his adult life (while his wife rolls her eyes so hard that she sprains something).

And don't get me started on the black/white thing. PROSTATE CANCER IS SERIOUS, but highly treatable. It doesn't matter if you're black, white, or purple - early detection will make your cancer easier to treat. Does this dude really and truly think that black men are going to deliberately not check their testicles for lumps because there are a lot of the guys reminding them to check are white? Because that would make them sound like petulant children (kind of like Ralph here), not adults. 

If you really want to complain about race, let's look at some numbers for breast cancer. You'll notice that white women are more likely to have breast cancer than black women, and yet far more black women than white women die of breast cancer. If you really need to start bitching about race, start there.

I've written one too many cover letters that won't be read.

An announcement for a job I probably won't get came up, and I was kind of irritated, so I penned the below. The ogre insisted I share it with the world, so you can blame him.

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to express my interest in coming to work with [company] as a [position]. I am an excellent analytical chemist, but wait, there's more! I belong to the subset of chemists that enjoyed organic chemistry even without specializing in it. Even before I became a chemist, I had excessive experience in excessive documentation - I was a collegiate EMT. That's right, I saved lives. Or I could have, if there were ever any lives in danger. It was mostly endangered livers, what with the college campus and all.

In addition to my outstanding benchtop and instrumental skills (and my towering modesty), I am overly experienced in method development and QA/QC. I may have brought that on myself. I have written, re-written, revised, and made paper airplanes out of SOPs. I've also helped revise an LQAP, and developed control charting to track performance.

I can be annoyingly cheerful for 7 am, especially if I've had coffee, but I get the job done. I prefer to see every task as a challenge and opportunity, and accordingly, I award myself a gold star for each one. I have a lot of gold stars.

According to my checklist, I have every trait requested in the notice for [position], and it would be in the company's best interest to consider me heavily. It would be in your direct interest to interview me, if only because I am very entertaining.

My salary requirements are negotiable, because even though I have 5+ years in the lab, I would rather have a job I enjoy than a Ferrari.

I'd be delighted to hear from you, but I'm sure you'd like to glance over my resume first. (I've attached it.) My telephone number is [number], and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Cordially,
me

National Grid, you asses!

Dear Ms. Ferrante, Mr. Tarr, and the "lucky" staffers who will hopefully have answers for me:

First of all, let me warn you, I am new to Massachusetts - I've lived here for less than a year, and I've only been in Gloucester since September. I did not find anything specific to my question on the internet, no doubt because I don't have a particularly well-formed question. So, I resort to the age-old solution to nearly every problem - write to my legislators!

Last night, I experienced a particularly unpleasant situation. I arrived home from work (in Watertown) just before 7 pm. While on my drive home, I had planned out dinner - a nice little pasta dish with roasted chicken, sauteed tomatoes and asparagus, with a modified alfredo sauce - not that the menu is terribly relevant to the story. By the time I had entered my apartment, changed into comfortable shoes (who am I kidding - I changed into bare feet), and chopped tomatoes into tiny pieces while pretending to listen as my boyfriend rambled on about his coworkers and their antics, it was nearly 7:30. I turned to light the burner on my stove, and to my abject disappointment tinged with horror, it would not light - there was no gas being dispensed. I attempted to light the other burners, but the sinking feeling in my stomach (that I would not be eating my pasta dish that evening) was proven correct - none of the burners had gas, either.

As I had paid my gas bill, and there was no notice of shut-off on the door, I assumed that my stove somehow managed to die a quiet, yet mysterious and extraordinary death. I decided that since dinner was off the table, I would take a nice, hot shower while mentally composing an e-mail to my landlady. I intended to ponder the most tactful way of saying, "FIX IT. FIX IT NOW." My ponderings proved to be unnecessary - the lukewarm water gradually gave way to bone-chillingly cold water, as opposed to my shower's usual scalding offering.

At this point, I became less concerned with tact.

While I believe in many strange and improbable things, like democracy and the Great Pumpkin, I am simply incapable of of believing that the only two gas-fed appliances in my apartment could experience unremarked demises within hours of each other.

I called National Grid, my gas supplier. My first call, to their customer service line (at 7:38 pm, by my call log) picked up to a recording that announced they were closed, and disconnected me. As I have said, I was no longer concerned with tact. I called the emergency line (at 7:42 pm, again, according to my log).

After a few minutes of listening to menus, I was transferred to a human being, I told her I was calling to report a service outage. I gave her (with some difficulty) my address. She informed me that my service had been cut off, due to non-payment. I gave here the date and amount of my last payment, and she suddenly decided that my service had not been terminated due to nonpayment, and that she would have a technician out to re-connect my gas that evening. We gave up and ordered take-out from Ocean Garden.

Shortly after 9pm, a tired-looking technician arrived and announced that he needed access to the basement (it is through our apartment) to re-connect our gas. We then learned that gas service to all three units in our building had been disconnect. He managed (with some difficulty that I did not quite comprehend) to turn our gas back on. He then ascended to our apartment to relight our pilot lights. After an extended discussion with the thermocouple on the water heater, he announced that we were all set. This was at 9:30 pm.

My question is, are utility companies here allowed to arbitrarily disconnect their victims, I mean, customers, like that? I can understand the usual outages, but disconnecting an entire building because one unit didn't pay their bill (and not telling us) seems somewhat mafia-esque to me. I realize that taking a glacier-fresh shower and having to pay for dinner instead fixing it myself is hardly a tragedy, but given the economic climate, I prefer to save money where I can. (The shower didn't affect my pocketbook, it just put me in a bad mood.)

Does Massachusetts have any laws in place to protect residents, as we are more or less at the mercy of the utility company?

Thank you for you time,
Aynsley

A Modest Plan to Reduce Gun-Facilitated Violence

Dear New York,

I'm writing to tell you that you suck.

As it turns out, I can come up with a better plan to curb gun-facilitated violence in five minutes of glibness than you can in a month of hand-wringing.

This is based on the fact that making something illegal in the US counts for shit when it comes to discouraging criminal use - we have between 7 and 20 million illegal aliens in the USA. I would try and find statistics about illegal drug use, but frankly, I don't want to get depressed. It's only Wednesday. Suffice it to say, unless you're Amish or otherwise completely cut off from society, I would bet my next paycheck that you know someone who regularly uses marijuana.

Note that I would like to distinguish between use and criminal use. Killing another human being with no provocation is criminal use of a weapon. Although some of my vegan friends may disagree, hunting with a weapon is simply use. Taking a Lortab because you just had oral surgery - use. Taking a handful of Lortabs every day because you're a satirist and your fans are dumb enough to think you're serious (and that you have good ideas) - criminal use, although I think I can empathize.

Anyway, I digress in my logical exercise. Onto the plan.

Gun registration is a completely flawed system. I propose to scrap it entirely. After all, sure, we register cars, but hey, we register drivers, first! Why don't we just register gun owners?

Here is my proposed ownership licensure process:

Step 1) You must complete a regulated firearms safety course. Whether it's hunter safety, CCW, etc doesn't really matter. Legislators will decide what's important for the area. I say area, because I truly believe that gun ownership licenses should be state - not federally - regulated. Let's face it, typical gun use in Vermont is worlds away from typical gun use in Atlanta.

Note: Due to the massive clusterfuck that implementation of any system causes, current gun owners don't actually have to take a class, as long as they can pass the test. Trying to tell someone who has been shooting his or her own dinner for 30 years how to place a trigger lock just leads down a road I'm not willing to traverse.

Step 2) You have to visit a head-shrinker. A psychologist must complete an evaluation and agree that you are firing on all four cylinders. If you and the psychologist don't get along, you can go see another, but if you get negative evaluations from three different therapists, you have to complete a course of treatment before you can re-apply.

Some people might not think this is fair, that it's ramming mental health care down the throats of people who don't want it. I think mental health is overlooked far too much in this day and age, except for when a scapegoat is needed. This is critical. Guns don't kill people, any more than cars driven by drunk drivers kill people. You know what kills people? Poor and impaired decision making. If you are mentally ill, your ability to make decisions is compromised and you should not be in a situation where your decision may cause harm to another human.

Step 3) Background check. You know, the one you're supposed to have done every time you buy a gun? The current NICS system isn't always instant. Things fall through the cracks. Let's have one extensive background check for licensure, and then you're set to go buy your arsenal.

Step 4) Gun ownership license. You get a shiny new piece of license, that you can stick behind (or in front of) your driver's license, and voila! Going to a gun show and see something you just have to have? Show the vendor your license and s/he knows that you're allowed to buy it. It could be that easy.

Step 5) Renewal. You're going to have to go for a check-up every renewal period, be it every year or four. When you submit for your renewal, the clerk will also make sure that you're still allowed to have a license.

Irresponsible use. In the same way the reckless and drunken drivers have their license revoked and vehicles impounded, licenses for gun ownership will be revoked as needed. Committing a felony, domestic violence, irresponsible use and any action that would will all lose you your license, in addition to your other penalties. Depending on the locality, your firearms will be confiscated, and you may or may not be able to get the auction price of them back.

So, New York? Isn't fun how once you make something illegal, the only way for folks to get it is to go through illegal sources, which have no regulatory measures whatsoever? Isn't that awesome?