Baseball Cap Stickers

/rant

I don’t want to sound racist, and I guess its more of a style choice over a race thing, but every black guy I see with a baseball cap tends to leave all of the stickers on it.  Personally, I wouldn’t buy a hat with stickers on it unless it was like a NCAA or league branding sticker.  But even if I did, I’d take the stickers off.

Today I saw three guys, all sitting with their flat-brimmed baseball caps, all with the holographic branding sticker on the brim.  I’d seen this before and always wondered, “What’s so cool about keeping the stickers on the hats?”

One thing that blew me away even more way that all the stickers UNDER the brim were still there too.  The bar code, the consumer warning, the washing instructions and whatnot.  Are they leaving them on there so that they can return them when they run out of money or need some extra cash?

I really don’t want to come across as racist, and I am certainly not prejudiced, but I do notice when people feed into stereotypes.  Not to get off subject too much, but when I was working at Martins Food Store last year, every black family or person that came through the line either had a watermelon or a box of fried chicken.  I’m sure if there were more African American families that shopped at the store I wouldn’t be able to say that, but it came to fruition every time someone came through.

So, my question to you.  Why do people like to leave the sticker on the cap?  Who started that?  Why do people still do it?  Was it a rapper that made it cool?  Let me know in the comments.

/endrant

Turn Signals Are Only Useful When Used Correctly

/rant

Okay.  Something that I have been noticing a hell of a lot more lately is the blatant lack of turn signal etiquette on the roads near me recently.  I mean how easy must a concept be for everyone to understand before everyone does it.  I’ve just been finding that a ton of people either:

a. Don’t turn on their turn signal to turn on a street when there is clearly someone behind them (namely me)

b. Don’t signal to make a lane change when there is clearly someone in the lane they are changing into (namely mine)

c. Turn on the wrong turn signal to accomplish the tasks in a or b

d. Forget to turn off their turn signals after changing lanes or taking a sweeping turn

e. Drive for MILES without noticing d

I have experienced all of these in the course of maybe the last four days.

I understand that things may be distracting in your life.  These are also things you should avoid while driving:

a. Being blind

b. Texting

c. Constantly looking in your backseat

d. Talking on the phone while driving on busy highways or backroads

e. Otherwise not paying attention to the action at hand (driving)

On occasion I make a slip in judgement as well, but if I happen to be noticing everyone’s slips in judgement, I am either one of the luckiest or unluckiest people on the planet.

/end rant

Reach

Okay, so I got Halo: Reach. I know, some people will call me a bandwagon jumper, but I was a fan of Halo, Halo 2, and Halo 3, and owned them all at one point or another, so that accusation would be quite false.

Anyways, as most people know, these titles are rated M for mature. This means that noone under 17 should be allowed to purchase this title without a parents discretion. Okay.

You’d think this would deter a large number of young kids from playing. Wrong again.

In my course of playing in matchmaking, the majority of people playing with a mic have been under 14.

What’s worse is that they are snotty brats with little manners and no common sense.

So if you’re gonna play an M rated game online and you’re under 17, at least hit puberty before you pick up your mic.

/end rant

World of Warcraft

This is the first of many posts you will see from me concerning World of Warcraft.

I play this game on a very regular basis.  I consider myself a nerd as do many other people.  However, I am not a geek, or a fag, or a dork because I play WoW.  It’s a video game I enjoy very much.  Just because it is a fantasy roleplaying game, it comes with the stigma attached that just because I play the game a lot, I am a super-obsessed ultra-nerd.  There are people that act out their characters roles in real life.  These people are mentally ill and should be treated as such.  I am not one of them and never will be.  I have played Dungeons and Dragons.  This does not make me a weirdo either.  There are plenty of normal human beings that enjoy creating an alternate persona to act out in a gaming setting.  You do not need to dislike your current life to enjoy living out an alternate reality (The Sims, anyone?)

If you have never tried WoW, I encourage you to give it a shot.  Get past the stigma (over 12 million other people have, after all) and play for at least 2 hours.  If you do not enjoy yourself, you can then have a leg to stand on in an argument, but I have found it very rare that a person does not find it in some way enjoyable.

The stigma is slowly lifting, but in order for it to lift entirely, there needs to be a wider acceptance of these types of games by more than just 12 year olds, old guys reliving the good old Dungeons and Dragons days, and potheads.  If more average Joes played, it would become much more commonplace and less looked down on.

/end rant

/afterthought

By the way, my character’s name in World of Warcraft is Gratheron, and he is on the realm Korialstrasz, Alliance.  Look him up.