today's rant: online dating honesty, Waffle House

I think it would be interesting if online dating services forced male members to disclose, as part of their public profiles, instances of:

-          Being called to their HR department for complaints made about his comments to/regarding females

-          Any past or present restraining orders or outstanding warrants

-          Current child support payments (required per court order vs. actual provided)

-          Up-to-date STD test results

I’d also want to know the percentage of profiles that would be put on hiatus or deleted if those disclosures were put into place.

Last year, the mobile application for Monster, the job search website, changed its format to a swipe right/left for job postings that their special algorithms think match your background; swipe right to apply, or swipe left to disregard.  Yeah.  Monster is now the Tinder of job searches.

In the fictional universes of comic books, you see a fair amount of characters that are neither aligned with the polar opposites of heroes or villains.  So many characters in the grey area make for more entertainment and drama.  You don’t see a lot of that in Star Wars.  I can only think of one character types that fit that mold:  scoundrels.  In this context, “scoundrels” include characters that are not closely affiliated with the light-side, good-guy characters (Luke, Leia, Rey, etc.) or the dark-side, bad-guy characters (Vader, Jabba, Kylo Ren).  Each of the major trilogies had had clear-cut dueling factions:  Jedi vs. Sith, Republic vs. Confederacy, Rebel Alliance vs. Empire, Resistance vs. First Order.  Scoundrels include bounty hunters (the Fetts), pirates (Han), and, more recently, hackers/slicers (DJ).  They rarely picked sides on a permanent basis.  You really have to dive deep into the Expanded Universe to find other types that fit the gray area between the polar affiliations (non-interfering species like the Chiss, fringe sects of Force-practitioners).  Such a shame that it was declared non-canon.  It is going to take a long time and, if they are making movies for it like “Solo”, a lot of production value to recreate the spectrum of character morality.

I don’t have anything snarky to say about a guy shooting up a Waffle House.  The only thing I objectively have to say about Waffle House is simply personal experience from one that I visited in Montgomery, Alabama.  I don’t like eggs when the whites aren’t fully cooked.  In general, your dining experiences are a crap shoot, depending on the cooks.  I will say that, once again, some sniveling little white dipshit with nothing better to do made a whole lot of trouble for no good reason, although this time, he was enabled by his father.  Gun permit was revoked, then cops told the dad not to give the guns back to him.  He did, and one of them was used.  Live with the shame, pops.  Another option is to kill yourself in front of your son at one of his upcoming court appearances.  That ought to get the message to sink in to him.  Throw yourself from a balcony.  That will work in case there are metal detectors at the courthouse and you can’t bring anything sharp in.