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This is my Blog, on it I simply write stuff that I feel like writing about. You'll find it heavily slanted towards tech, games, entertainment and the like. I write about other stuff too, and somethings I write about things. I also do photography, the link is on your right.

Monday 3 December 2012

Left, Right? Left.


Alan Turing, Pablo Picasso, Fredrich Niezche, Barak Obama, Bill Clinton, Robert NcNamara, Winston Churchill, Bill Gates, Jim Henson, Mark Twain, Nikola Tesla, J Edgar Hoover, Paul McCartney, Buzz Aldrin, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendricks, Albert Einstein, Ludwig Van Beethoven, H.G. Wells, Douglas Adams, and Henry Ford.
Can you wager a guess as to what all these people have in common?  If you said they were all born with 11 toes, your would be dead wrong, also what the hell is wrong with you?  If you said they were all astounding, impactful people, contributing greatly to the world as we know it today, your would be partially right.  No, the tie that binds these people is that they are all left handed.  Now, the reason I point this out is to illustrate that left handed people are not gimped, we are not handicapped in some way, we are not invalids.  We are a rare and beautiful thing, making up less than 10% of the population of the planet.  Now you might think I’m cherry picking all the good left handed people and leaving out all the amazing right handed people to further my own left-handed agenda.  You are correct.  There are both good and bad people who are left or right handed, but that data doesn't skew in my favour to prove my point, so I shall ignore it.
Some time ago I posted a blog entry talking about introverted personalities.  In it I brushed upon the topic of left-handedness, comparing the similar reactions people have to our “condition.”  That reaction is of course, “if I don’t understand it, or can’t identify with it, it must be bad.”
So lefties, much like introverts, get relegated to a second-class citizen.  You would never patronize, or look down upon any one of the people in my aforementioned list.  That somehow changes if you are just a regular lefty, now you are broken in some way, you need special care.
I remember kindergarten, the teacher was trying to teach us all the basics of writing, specifically, how to properly hold a pencil.  We had these special pencils with little triangular rubber grips to help us get a feel for where out fingers should go.  Now, most people take a skill like this for granted, but to this day, I cannot hold a pen or pencil properly.  The teacher couldn’t figure out how to teach me, she couldn’t comprehend how to show me, so she just gave up, told me to figure it out for myself.  It’s bad enough that I have to drag my hand through everything i write, staining the heel of my hand with graphite or ink.  The same scenario happed a bit later when it came to shoe tying lessons.  I would use the opposite hand for the loops and bunny ears and the what have you.  I had to do it myself, nobody could teach me.  To make matters worse, when it came to arts and crafts time, all the left-handed scissors looked markedly different from the other scissors.  It made me stand out, kids would wonder why I needed special scissors, was there something wrong with me?  I took it upon myself to learn how to use the same scissors that all the other kids used.  The problem was, the teacher would see me using them, and take them away, saying I should use the proper scissors, designed specially for my ilk.  Why couldn’t the lefty ones look the same, you would just need to put a little “L” on the handle or something.  So if your think I'm being overly dramatic but using the phrase “second-class citizen” then why was I treated as such?
Here’s where things get really insulting.  I was looking to buy a new mouse. Normally it just use a symmetrical mouse, basic, but functional.  Then I got to thinking, there are all these cool-ass gaming mice out there, with thumb buttons and extra controls all over them.  Maybe I could find something like that, but for a left hand.  So I did some poking around, this is what I got:
31KyuMTs35L._SL500_AA300_         images
What in the hell are these unholy abominations!?  What am I, fucking retarded?  I need some crazy fucked up awkward, backwards ass piece of crap clearly designed by a right handed person who thinks we need some sort of special help.  I have a great idea, how about you take that awesome right handed gaming mouse, and make a mirror image version of it?  I’m perfectly capable of figuring out your “big boy” mice, you condescending prick.
Here’s where things degrade into the comical.  The one gaming advantage of being left handed is the number pad on the keyboard.  I have my mouse on the left, and my right hand on the keypad, it’s a perfect fit.  Right handed people have the use WASD, or turn their keyboard  at a weird angle to use the number pad.  Behold, the left handed keyboard!
102419577-260x260-0-0_Maxi Aids Left Handed Keyboard with PS 2 and USB I   
The one advantage I did have has been striped away.  See, what right handed people don’t understand is this:  Right handed people’s left hand is next to useless to them, they can’t do anything with it.  Left handed peoples right hand is quite capable of many tasks.  For instance, this keyboard assumes that lefties are like righty's, to do data entry effectively on the number pad, you would need your dominate hand.  This is not true, I can do it just fine with my right, I can even use a mouse with relative proficiency, not quite good enough for gaming, but well enough for everyday tasks.  This keyboard is useless!
Finally we come to the absurd:
left-hand-fighter
   I’m speechless.

-jer