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Perceived importance of education for black people…*classic post*

I remember when I was much younger and in high school. I didn’t get very good grades when I was there. I also didn’t care if I got bad grades, because I just knew I wasn’t going to college, and had no clue what I was going to do after I graduated. See, the thing is, I didn’t really think I belonged in school. I didn’t think I belonged in college. I thought that kind of thing was for white people.

Why would I think this? It certainly isn’t that logical to me, as I reflect back on those feelings/thoughts. Where could I have gotten that perspective from? Well, I think I got it from my family and my mom and other people in the neighborhood I grew up in. The thing is, when my mom was young, school LITERALLY WAS for white people.

I can imagine it being hard for parents to have gone through that kind of thing to have much faith in the educational system. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons that the black community as a whole puts so little stock in education. How does one usually deal with something that is clearly out of reach for them? Well, they tend to adapt to it, and leave it out of their sights after a while. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that many people I have met, including myself “back in the day” don’t put much stock in education.

I mean, if people thought education was important, they would surely do better. I think this answers the question “why don’t the people that go to these schools care about education?”.

Posted 14 April 2008 † myronman § Classic Myronman ‡ Comments Off °

Two things….*classic post*

I finally realized that it is perfectly acceptable for a person to not like me. Really. I have nothing to do with their decision, and it makes no difference to me. Really. It doesn’t.

I also realized that I feel physically ill when I have to say no to someone asking me for help. Like, I cannot say no, no matter how many things I have to switch around to squeeze time in for someone. I’m taking proactive steps to fix that flaw, but I figured it out today when a boy came up to me and asked me for a donation to help his basketball team. It stands out so clear in my mind because I was in a completely neutral mental state while practicing “passe compose verbs” for French Class. He asked me, and I couldn’t donate anything because I’m saving for a camera. Then it hit me. I couldn’t help him, and I felt bad for not helping him even when it was not feasible for me to do so.

I’d say that today was a pretty good day.

Wouldn’t you?

Posted 14 April 2008 † myronman § Classic Myronman ‡ Comments Off °

Why Bawlas Bawl? *classic post*

I am writing this post as a place holder for a longer article I’ll be writing at some point on myronman.com. The jist of the article will be this: people have needs, and even if they are poor,they still have the same needs.

The way I would like to lay out the piece is in the following sections:

Mazlo’s hierarchy of needs – I have heard of these. I’ll use this as my basis for human beings needing things. It has to do with their drive systems and what they want.

How people that have money fulfill those needs – I’d like to have a section that goes into what people with money do to fulfill theri needs. Like go to clubs, join golf clubs, buy expensive cars, have children who are successful at school and college, etc.

How people that are poor fulfill those needs – This section will talk about bawlas and what they feel they needs. It will hopefully shed some light into how people that are so poor still fork over all kinds of money on bling and other stuff that doesn’t matter. I’ also compare and contrast how much poor people bawl compared to people with money and then…

Conclusion Section – My conclusion if all works out will be that poor people really don’t bawl as much as people in the mainstream do. That they actually bawl much less, and that society focuses on them anyways. I’ll end up asking questions about why we feel these people that are poor shouldn’t be able to bawl a little bit to fulfill their needs.

I also want to put in the story about when a person I knew scolded me for giving a homeless guy money, and saying that “he would spend the money on booze and drugs anyways”, when the only difference between the homeless guy and his sister was that his sister (alcoholic) had money and wasn’t homeless, and that because this guy was homeless he was compelled to judge him was interesting…

Look for this article sometime in the future yallz.

Any thoughts?

Posted 14 April 2008 † myronman § Classic Myronman ‡ Comments Off °

Doctors and their fees…*classic post*

Why is it that doctors and dentists can charge you as if you actually went to the appointment and they had to do work if you don’t cancel with 24 hours notice? I mean, when I go over to my dr.’s empty office and get a voicemail a few days later, I don’t expect a check in the mail for my time. I mean, what the fuck? How do they get to get paid for the time you missed the appointment, and *also* get paid for the make up sessioin?

Posted 14 April 2008 † myronman § Classic Myronman ‡ Comments Off °

On poor children… *classic post*

Well,

For like the third time by three different people over several years I heard someone say something to the effect of “how can these poor children have the newest game systems and stuff when they can’t afford (fill in the blank)? Where are their priorities?”.

This line of thinking is interesting to me becuase I felt the same way for a long time. Now, I think I’ve realized that this line of thinking is a little flawed because it assumes that the children are somehow not children because they are poor and do not want/deserve to play. That somehow poor children are more responsible for their plight than more affluent children.

What do you think?

Posted 14 April 2008 † myronman § Classic Myronman ‡ Comments Off °

Why? *classic post*

Does the act of being poor evoke suspicion?

Posted 14 April 2008 † myronman § Classic Myronman ‡ Comments Off °

no, no – let me talk! I don’t want a free credit report! Do you understand me?!

You know what, I consider myself a pretty patient guy. Having phone support/customer support in my background allows me to visualize the actual person’s plight that is being forced to call me during dinner time for a few dollars an hour.

Fuck them.

Tonight I get a call from Discover again asking me about signing up for some bullshit protection plan that I won’t ever use, will never help me out if I can’t pay my fucking Discover card debt and will never, EVER prevent my privacy from being either breached or pwn3d. That’s bad enough, but to sweeten the deal, they try to offer me a free credit report from all three bureaus.

Bear with me here.

I’m all for getting some shit for free, but there are a few things that makes this kind of cock-sucker-ous offer shameful:

  1. I guarantee you, if I accepted the credit reports, that would have been the equivalent of me “signing up” for their trial. A trial for which I would have a fucking hell of a time canceling  before they started charging my credit card.
  2. Since it would be a credit report that I didn’t initiate, my fucking credit information would eventually show up at my house for the whole world to possible take from my cheap ass mailbox, at a time I have no control over – not cool.
  3. I also guarantee that the credit reports I receive would be some proprietary, half-assed, *free* version that would be useless anyway.

So the lady that calls is like “Hello I’m calling from Discover and we need you to blah blah (purposefully omits name, badge number, or any indicative information that I can use to prove we had this conversation, call to her supervisor/the police about her saying or doing shit that’s generally cock-sucker-ous or make fun of her by name on my blog) join credit protection blah blah. Pay us. Blah blah. Bullshit.

A sidebar: You know how you hear all of these stories about identity theft because a person took a laptop out of the building and sold it on ebay or something equally ridiculous? Well. They lost your information the first, second, and third time FOR FREE. HOW IN THE FUCK ARE YOU GONNA PAY FOR THEM TO LOSE YOUR DATA NEXT TIME!!?

You see, I used to work for a major credit company and on Monday we did things normal. Tuesday comes along, and we are doing things the same exact way, only this time, people are paying us for extra *security*. No eye scanners. No encryption on my hard drives. I still even had *the bunny stickers* on my god-damned laptop. My guess is that the credit companies and banks are just using that money as reserves for lawsuits because they LOST SOMEONE’S FUCKING DATA. *AHEM*

…The conversion continues:

me: No.

her: Excuse me sir? *silence* *continues sales pitch* (after all, if you just keep talking, people will just allow you to sign them up)

me: NO.

her: Sir if we just sign youupthere’snoriskandyougeta30dayoffer

me: let me talk…

her: blah blah blah…

me: LET ME TALK!

her: Yes sir?

me: I don’t want to be a member of your service. No privacy guard for me. I also do not want a credit report from you all because I don’t trust what you guys do to/with the information before the report gets to me (remember, I used to work for a credit company).

me: Don’t call me again either.

me: Do you understand me?

her: *silence*

me: DO YOU UNDERSTNAD ME?

her: Yes sir (notice that it’s not a question this time and she’s realizing that she had better go now before this turns into some kind of lawsuit).

her: blah blah blah have a nice night (please let me go peacefully) Sorry but it will take 6-8 weeks for them to remove your name from the list and you – unfortunately – may receive another call in that time (by the way, if I do get another call from “800-service” I’m going to answer the phone, and then say “blow me” when the talker gets a breather. I won’t hang up either. That’s not my style. I will say “blow me” and ask “any questions?”)

me: Good. Good-bye.

I don’t like customer service/phone support people.

Posted 14 April 2008 † myronman § Gripes ‡ Comments (1) °

Hello cab driver. who the fuck are you talking to?

You know what, I have no clue why people talk on the phone while they are driving, but cab drivers are the worst.

I consider myself a pretty good/safe driver because people often wind up falling-asleep-without-a-care-in-the-world when they ride with me on long trips. I wasn’t always the kind of driver that made people trust me. I used to be the "my wife is about to vomit from car sickness" , or the "90 dollar moving violation" kind of driver.

I got to this point by realizing the kinds of things you should not do while you drive. That’s all fine and good for me, but I’m barely on the roads, so I’m not the person we need to be concerned about in the first place. We have to be concerned about the assholes that are going to fucking kill us all, worst of all those fucking cab drivers.

I call these guys assholes because they are breaking rules in an asshole-ish way. Here’s some ways you can tell they are being assholes when they drive.

They are:

  1. talking on phone for the entire ride.
  2. talking on phone when there’s a sign POSTED BY THE CITY that you should not talk on your phone for the entire ride.
  3. talking on phone for the entire ride to the degree that the customer/rider has to give blow-by-blow instructions on where to go and how to get there.
  4. talking on phone while honking at trucks that are trying to LEGALLY TURN.
  5. talking on phone while honking at trucks that are trying to LEGALLY TURN while ILLEGALLY TURNING in front of them and to the right (in Chicago, it’s illegal to make a right turn IN FRONT of a large commercial vehicle/truck/bus/etc.).
  6. talking on phone while telling customers how much the trip was.
  7. talking on phone while giving customers change for their trip.
  8. talking on phone while driving off from customer before they are fully out of the vehicle.

For these assholes I have only one question: Who the FUCK are you talking to?

Posted 01 April 2008 † myronman § Gripes ‡ Comments (1) °

Don’t be an asshole on the bus

Okay people, this is the coveted back of the bus:

bus

Here are the rules:

businstructions

  1. You sit in the green seats, you are an okay person.
  2. You sit in the red seats, you are an asshole.
  3. You sit in a red seat, and give the okay person an attitude when they ask to sit on either side of you, you need a kick in the ass.

Asshole.

Posted 19 March 2008 † myronman § Gripes ‡ Comments (6) °

“Cancel the appointment, I’m canceling the appointment because you guys SUCK ASS! *CLICK*”

This is what it came to when I tried to go to see an ear nose and throat doctor from a referral within the Rush University Medical Center hospital. You see, I had actually scheduled my first appointment with them last Friday, but when I got there, I realized that I had forgotten that I needed to bring a referral form completely. So, I go up to the desk:

Bitch:”Hello, may I help you?”

Me:”Yeah, I’m here for a 12:45pm appointment.”

Bitch:”I need your drivers license, insurance card, and the referral form.”

Me:”Oh crap! I forgot my referral form.”

Bitch:”Then you can’t see the doctor. Insurance will kick that claim right back. Maybe I can give you our fax number and they can fax the referral to us. We’ll need that before the doctor sees you. *picks up phone and starts talking with friends*”

Me:”*picks up cell phone. NO BARS*” *steps up to window and begins to be ignored while the bitch is on the phone with her friend*”

Bitch:”*gets tired of ignoring me*” “May I help you?”

Me:”Yeah, I uh…can’t get any bars in here, can I use one of those phones back there to call my primary doctor?”

Bitch:”Oh no…., you gonna have to go outside.”

Me:”*walks out completely dazed by the content, as well as the body language of her communication to me*”

Me:”*calls the other office, gets them to say they will be faxing it over**Proceeds to wait an additional 30 minutes in the office and then cancels the visit cause I waited there for over an hour**realizes that I was refused treatment because my documentation did not check out*”

I wound up rescheduling that visit for tomorrow afternoon and today I got a voice message that said something to the effect that they wanted me to call to confirm the appointment or it would be canceled. I got confused at that message because since the lady has bad grammar she phrased it in a way that made me think that the doctor was going to change my appointment time again (he did that on Friday).

So, I called up the bitch, and she starts giving me attitude because she didn’t understand what I was asking. She then proceeded to put me on hold for no other reason than to fuck with me for like 10 minutes. She then gets back on the phone and begins talking over me and explaining (as if I was an idiot) what the phone call and subsequent message were about. When she finished, I told her:

“cancel the appointment, I’m canceling the appointment because you guys SUCK ASS! *CLICK*”

You see, in the grand scheme of things, she did prevent me from getting health care that I need. I will have to wait around three weeks to get the proper appointments, referrals, sand script and smoke signals in line for a visit with a new doctor, in a new medical group. Which sucks, but she’s going to have to deal with being told that she sucks ass. That’s gonna fuck with her for much longer!

*evil grin*

Posted 18 March 2008 † myronman § Gripes ‡ Comments (3) °