We should all be bald vegans…

Alright I’m going to give this another try, and by try I mean do it half-assed maybe two or three times before petering out into nothingness, since that’s what happened last semester.  But to a new decade here goes another doomed attempt to rise out of mediocrity into a cycle of an actual life.  I hate when people who write blogs start off with self-deprecation, it actually comes off as sort of pretentious, but it’s so hard not to.

Anyways, today I want to write about two laws that I don’t think should exist, sort of.

So about a year ago I was getting a haircut at a barbershop that I’ve been going to since junior year in high school.  Mid-cut this heavyset Caucasian woman walks through the door and asks to see a license; apparently she’s a government official and was checking to see if the barbers were licensed to cut hair.  Now the owner of the shop had a license, he has it framed next to his mirror, but I could tell from the start that the one cutting my hair, let’s call him Jack, didn’t have one from the way that he looked at the owner.  So while the store-owner was distracting the government official with a stream of broken English, Jack was slowly inching his way to the door mumbling something about having to go to his car.  Throughout all of this I’m sitting in a chair with half my hair cut, and I have to admit I cared more about what was going to happen to my head than Mr. Jack.  Long story short Jack did not have a license, and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t here legally, but the white lady let him finish cutting my hair before taking him away.  Honestly, I’m sure he wasn’t really punished since he was back a few months later, but that’s not the point of my story.

The point of my story is that you need a license to cut hair.

Now I’m pretty sure there are thousands of reasons for why this is necessary, but it still boggles my mind that you are required to obtain a license and that there is an agency actively enforcing that you do.  He’s cutting hair, the most damage he could inflict upon a client would be ruining his week.  Even if he went AWOL I doubt he could have seriously injured me, especially since now a days most salons and barbershops don’t use actual razors.

The reason I get so riled up about this is that every time I’m in that same barbershop I watch some Korean channel on the TV.  It seems that 95% of all Korean commercials have to do with some supplement or pill that claims to cure any ailment.  It also seems that 100% of Korean commercials feature non FDA approved products.  So with some simple math that I am totally making up there is a stream of substances that are not government regulated available for purchase, and it’s not just Koreans since there are thousands of weight-loss drugs that are not FDA approved either.  So while barbers need a license to prove their abilities at wielding an electric razor, there is a multi-billion dollar industry based upon false promises and placebos.

Conclusion: whenever I see a product that is not FDA approved I assume it does nothing, but then again I don’t know anything about the FDA either.  Also, before buying anything look it up online, just type in “acai berry scam,” and you’ll see what I mean.

Second thing I want to talk about is Michael Vick, which gives you a good measure of how much I procrastinate.  All in all I think it was wrong for him to be sent to jail, I don’t think he should’ve even been punished or suspended for that matter.  I love dogs and I think animal cruelty is a horrible thing, but can I honestly say that I’m innocent of the same crimes as Vick?  Now I haven’t gone Peter Wiggin on any squirrels but I did pay for someone else to bludgeon a cow over the head with a sledgehammer.  It seems ludicrous for a country to publicly ridicule a man for dog fighting while eating more meat per capita than any other, not really sure if that’s true but I would be surprised if we weren’t.  Now for all you vegetarians out there don’t get all uppity either.  Anyone who owns a house or a car has displaced thousands of animals and permanently altered the ecosystem.  In essence our very existence is a symbol of animal cruelty, because although we may be animals too I’m pretty sure we’d fall into the parasite category (Agent Smith).  I don’t know if it was PETA or some other organization that had that campaign saying “animals are people too,” but that was the biggest load of crap I ever heard.  If you really wanted the government to consider the rights of animals equally with those of humans we’d all be screwed.  Environmentalism and animal advocacy are two different things.

Conclusion: I love meat, and I can’t see myself abstaining from it, even for pseudo-moral reasons, and I hate vegetarians who look down their noses at those who don’t follow their insane way of life while ignoring how they have benefitted from the exploitation of animals.  I see it as justified if Michael Vick be punished only if the rest of the nation was punished as well, and since I doubt I could last long in prison, definitely the big fish, I’d rather go with no punishment at all (Heywood).

Next time: Pandas