Xero's other waste of space

So now that acceptance of gay people is slightly above where it used to be, it seems like bi has become the new straight for a lot of people. Okay, not for everyone. There’s still the people who insist they’re 100% straight no matter what and act like they’re disgusted of any other possibilities, but those select few aside, there’s a lot more acceptance of this.

Okay, here’s a few interesting tidbits. Female bisexuals with boyfriends who think it’s cool, cause you know, their girlfriend can have some hot lesbo action. They act like they’re open to them seeing a girl or something simultaneously – until they realized that they’re more emotionally attached to the girl than himself. They’re only okay with it in the same way they’re okay with watching lesbo porn. Sorry, if you’re bi in a straight relationship, you picked a side, don’t pretend you can pick the other and it’ll still be okay. Maybe some people can pull off such a weird relationship – most will fail dramatically.

Then there’s reports that all the chemicals in our food are turning us into a bunch of mutant freaks – feminine males and masculine females in more abundance. Or maybe it’s just the population increase meaning there’s more people like this. Who knows for sure, all I know is that being bi is fine, being indecisive and fucking with peoples feelings is not.

Plus, I’ve never really met anyone who was bi that hasn’t favored one side or the other. Some people say bi is like a gay person in training and/or someone who hasn’t come out all the way, but I’m not convinced that’s the case at all.

An old friend of mine once told me, to truly enjoy sex then you have to be bisexual. An interesting perspective. They went through their varying phases of sexuality in some unusual extremes so I can’t say it’s a quote that represents everyone. However, what I took from it was that you can’t truly enjoy something unless you’ve tried all your options.

Generally when meeting most people, you don’t assume they’re not straight unless there’s something obvious. I’ve noticed that many people are unsure of my sexuality when I meet them, both men and women. Why? I’m not quite sure. Is it because of my long hair and beard, do they think i’m some kind of 1970s latex gimp man, or maybe my sort of lack of socialness towards people, but I don’t know.

All I do know is that I’m not going to lump myself into the indecisive middle group just cause it’s cool. I’m straight and always was – not that I’m one of the macho men type, and not that I can’t be turned on by the same sex – just that I have always desired relationships with women. That’s not to say men can’t ever turn me on or anything, but it’s just not the same thing and wouldn’t be right to me.

Now, I’m not against people who go the other route. I’m not sure if it’s a genetic thing or not, though I could understand the attraction part. I almost feel like people are hated on for saying being gay is a choice – to bisexuals, isn’t that almost the case? They say you can’t choose who you fall in love with, although I’m not the type of person who believes there’s only “one” person out there. So I don’t buy it, basically.

Thus I start to feel bisexuality is used almost as an excuse. An excuse for infidelity, or otherwise. Ladies, it’s not hot, it’s just part of life. Don’t use it to your advantage just cause guys think it might be at first, it won’t be in the end. Men, well, shit good luck. Pull a Larry Craig and see what happens in your marriage.

And now that I’ve pissed off the gay/lesbian/bi community, I should start picking on minorities.

I was tempted to title this article “online dating sites made me hate bisexuals” but given that this article had other real life influences as well, it wasn’t quite right. Your mileage may vary.

I’m not a big fan of these things as you may be able to tell. Well, piercings aren’t as bad, you can take them out and stuff. Tattoos are a lot harder to remove. That’s the real issue.

People who have them are often overly proud about it. I don’t really care too much either way, but if you have to announce it like it’s a disclaimer then I’m not too impressed. It kind of reminds me of the south park episode where they call all of the bikers fags. That’s sort of how I feel about some of these tattoo people.

Also when it ‘s coming from unmotivated jobless bums, and/or people who think being a tattoo artist is a good career choice. It’s almost like saying you want to do graffiti for a living. Except on someones body with a needle for cash.

Honestly, I don’t care that much either way, but if you really are going to do it then you better not be a fool. Also, tattoos can never really make you “hotter”. Sorry if you’re hot and you have a tattoo it’s kind of like you just put a chip in the vase. That’s all I’m saying.

Sure you can get them removed with expensive laser surgery, but it’s out of many peoples price range and probably doesn’t happen as often as you think. Even so, people who get tattoos like on their neck and face and other highly visible places are just asking for failure in life. Don’t go around advertising your foolishness to me.

I’ve been meaning to write something about this for a while. I hate meetings, and for a few good reasons too.

Generally, most meetings are useless and often have a negative outcome. It’s a way to pretend that you’re discussing something in an open manner, when you’ve really already made up your mind. Fact is, most of the decisions are usually made before the decision to meet was. We’re just here to get your input, and by that, we really mean we’re just telling you how it is and will be and want to weed out those who might give us any trouble.

Sit back and quietly listen to the speech, however misdirected it may be, and don’t dare say a word. This is often how most meetings go. Any real issues will likely be handled privately before and after the meeting, without the input of the whole.

Well, you might be saying, this isn’t a democracy, and truthfully it isn’t, but let’s not pretend like it’s all good while we proceed to waste your time with pre-packaged bad news. And maybe the news isn’t really that bad, it’s just different…changes. Well, change isn’t always bad, but any change, even the most minuscule can have a fairly large effect on the morale of the whole. Maybe to the CEO, your vacation time is no big deal, since he’s always off on “business trips” and no where to be found, or maybe that old-timer who’s always calling out with no repercussions. What I’m really saying is that exceptions are always made, but it’s far too easy to make decisions that effect other people in unknown ways when you’re the exception.

And thus meetings. Fact is, most people will live strolling along through the stream of crap since they have nothing better to do, they need money, job provides, bullshit in between, nothing they can do, deal with it.

Me, I manage to put up with it somehow, I speak out in dissent to those I trust, wishing I had the leverage to actually make a difference, but really being out of place in either case. Fact is, here I am writing about it, because some day, I will do it better. I have a job now, but I am young and fairly opportunistic towards running my own endeavors, and when that time eventually comes I will know what to avoid.

Some people have had it easy – what does it matter to them. Well, it won’t win you any fans, and maybe you’re rich as fuck, so who cares, but I will see through your bullshit. I don’t care about social expectations. I am not a “team player”. All that really means to me is someone who mindlessly follows order, like a big pile of group think. I want people to think for themselves and not be intimidated by the decisions being made, rather being part of them.

How is this possible? Well first of all, you can talk to people. Not just your upper management in your private quarters, but the average people in their working environments. What do they care about. Also, different departments might have different needs. Blindly applying the needs of one department to the rest might mean you greatly disappoint a large amount of people while satisfying the needs of one group.

Then there’s just the meetings which are mostly a pure waste of time. These are generally the optional meetings touted as informational and might even have a time limit. Fact is, people don’t need informational meetings, if they need to know something to do their job better, they will ask those around them and/or find the right place to go. If people were really that unmotivated that they need to constantly be brought up to date, something just seems wrong. These meetings often have people dozing off and/or resting their heads on their hands while they stare aimlessly at a power point presentation which is almost identical to the one from two weeks ago.

Meetings aren’t necessary when people are enjoying their job and actually doing what they should. People will naturally convene and discuss things of importance to the task at hand, without the necessity of predefined dates/times, meeting rooms, and other such non-sense.

Things tend to stagnate when people don’t like what they are doing, or when they are doing it purely for the money. Mediocrity is made this way. People will do the bare minimums to get by and try to basically stay towards the middle of the pack – be average.

Trying to make people do more than average means keeping them happy – unfortunately what employees usually enjoy at a company tends to be the very freedoms which get stripped away as a company grows.

It’s like a government in a way, the government starts out with some initial laws, like the constitution and the bill of rights. Skip forward a few hundred years and you’ll have to be read hundreds of thousands of pages worth of law books to fully grasp the laws of a country.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve gotten an e-mail from an employer which was clearly only sent because someone, somewhere, did something stupid and now it’s time to announce whatever it was to the whole company to make sure this doesn’t ever happpen again, by anyone, when it was only one person who had done it.

Even though it’s not usually something I had done, it still angers me. It angers me because I just see one more freedom stripped off the list. Fast-forward a few years in a growing company and those e-mails start adding up. The companies rules to live by and/or employee manuals are updated. Maybe someone was caught doing something naughty on a lunch break, now lunch breaks have to be within the contained area, or at a specific time, or within a specific amount time, however unreasonable it may be. This is just an example.

Such decisions, made in private, applied to the whole, lower morale. I don’t care how minuscule you think the change is, or even if what you’re taking away is so obscure that there’s no way anyone should care, it doesn’t matter. The fact that people see you depriving them of it is enough to do it.

Also, some people are intimidated by power. When an employer asks you what they could to do make things better, most employees are very hesitant to answer honestly, usually giving a round-about answer which misleads the person asking.

Example: “Tuition reimbursement.” Do people working full time jobs really want you to help them pay for more school? Maybe somtimes, but no, they just want you to pay off their pre-existing college loans, which is probably not going to happen in most companies. Also, such a program has no benefit to someone who did not go to school but does their job just as well as the person who did.

Employers/employees, don’t fall into this trap of confusion. You won’t get honest answers talking to employees this way, and unless you really involve these people in your decision making process and earn their trust for real, and not purely by their paycheck, you are unlikely to find out the truth anyway.

Also, never, ever, treat your employees like they owe you for giving them their job. They might be thankful for their jobs, but regardless, you owe them for their work, never the other way around. Don’t act like you’re doing everyone a big favor just because times are bad, you will just be silently resented.