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This is where Matt vents

I suggest that if you have a problem with some of the things I have written here that you e-mail me about them. I'm always open for some intelligent discourse and conflict of opinion. I just ask that you note my use of the word intelligent before you send anything my way. Either that or just leave and go be offended by yourself because I quite frankly don't like people who whine unintelligently. This is my page. These are my opinions. If you can't laugh at yourself then you need to get a grip.

Rant #1 : The Jesus movie and the Jesusantic...

"Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded." -Feodor Dostoyevsky in Notes from Underground.

Rant #2 : The Dapper Gap Guy

"Beggars . . . should be entirely abolished! Truly, it is annoying to give to them and annoying not to give to them." -Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Rant #3 : Sorority Girls *not for the faint of heart

"There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it." -Mark Twain in Notebook.

Rant #4 : Stupid People

"To accuse another of having weak kidneys, lungs, or heart, is not a crime; on the contrary, saying he has a weak brain is a crime. To be considered stupid and to be told so is more painful than being called gluttonous, mendacious, violent, lascivious, lazy, cowardly: every weakness, every vice, has found its defenders, its rhetoric, its ennoblement and exaltation, but stupidity hasn't." -Primo Levi in Other People's Trades.

"And, re-assembling our afflicted powers, Consult how we may henceforth most offend." -Satan in Paradise Lost by John Milton.

Rant #5 : Televangelists

"You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength." -Charlotte Brontė in Jane Eyre.

Rant #6: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell by Marilyn Manson

"The manner in which Americans 'consume' music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie--it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made." -Frank Zappa in The Real Frank Zappa Book.

"For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions." -Plato in The Republic.

Yet another side note: Okay... I, unfortunately, am one of the stupid people who bought the newest Marilyn Manson cd, Mechanical Animals. I don't think I would be exaggerating if I said that it is the absolute worst piece of garbage I have ever had the misfortune of listening to. The guy makes me want to tear out my ears and mail them to someone. Not that the music itself or the lyrics are that grating, I just feel like a complete and total TOOL for EVER buying into his crap. I mean, the guy is a total phony. I know that there are a lot of people who just don't like him because he's "weird" or "scary" or something, but I don't even think he's that. He's completely fake!! The lyrics on his new album are completely recycled... things like, "god is in your tv" or "I don't like the drugs, but the drugs like me." OH, come ON!!! For an atheist, he sure talks about god a whole lot. His attitude on this album seemed to be... "Okay, I'll get high for about 6 months on various substances and when my bank account is dry, I'll write about 15 songs involving god in televisions, veins, and how messed up I am. Then, I'll use some more drugs and write really unoriginal guitar riffs. I'll have to put the cd out soon becuase I'm almost out of drugs and I have no money, so we'll just nix the post production of the album because I've got a lot of faith in myself as an artist." It's all drugs and the devil for Marilyn Manson and thanks to his shock-rock mentality, America has become desensitized to his crap and the fifteen-minute timer is now ticking as far as I'm concerned.

Rant #7: Billy Gets A Blow Job

More power to him.

Rant #8: Computers and Holy Stuff

Man do I love my computer. It's great. There's really no limit to how much stuff I can do on it. The only problem comes when my limited expertise fails me in some areas. It's weird because after you have a computer for a few months or so, you start to realize that everything you save on it and everything you do to it actually has an effect on it, kind of like when you're 65 and you've been smoking your whole life only to find out it's killing you. I mean Christ, I had so much garbage amassed on my hard disk after a year that I had to clean it up before my computer started to barf. I slowly realized what an ordeal that is. It's like f**king passover or something. Go through and mark all the files you want with this sheep blood and eat nothing but unleavened bread for an entire day. After that time, stroke your computer until it begins to boot and then just nuke everything. Now I know how God felt. I mean, it's not like I've got anything against the files I'm destroying, but my computer wants to make it seem that way. "Are you sure you want to erase this?" "I mean really sure?" "I'm serious now, I may be a great invention, but I can't bring back files from the dead." Jesus! What, am I aborting files or something? Are they carrying on meaningful relationships inside my computer? That's why I start to sympathize with the Old Testament God. He was pretty new at the whole creating life thing I think. He f**ked it up the first time around and panicked, so he just said, "F**k it." and sank it under a sea of water. Noah and all those animals must have been his boot disks. He hadn't quite perfected the programming for us humans yet, so he figured he'd start with a clean slate. Of course, it scares me a bit to compare the computing habits of God with those of myself. I mean, the reason I clean out my hard drive is either because I'm really bored or I've got entirely too much pornography on it for it to run anything at all. Does that scare anyone else? Maybe God's just some pervert and the great Biblical flood we read about was merely a result of his overactive libido. He made all these people who were just getting crazy all the time and he realized that people constantly having sex kind of slow his little world down. I'm not really sure what happened after the flood. He must have discovered DOS or something like that... this is where my theory is a little weak. I'm not sure where Jesus fits in yet either. I think that he must have been analogous to the Commodore or the Amiga. They were short lived and wound up crushed by Microsoft. Hahaha... there' s a funny thought. Bill Gates is Pontius Pilate. Billius Gateus. Now that's a shirt I'd like to see: "Bill Gates Killed Jesus". I'd wear that with pride any day. Of course no one would get it, but then again, that's the story of my life.

Rant #9: Undies

How many of you guys out there actually wear whitey tighties? Actually how many guys just wear white underwear? See, my white underwear phase went away as soon as I got to college. I know every guy out there can relate. And I don't even have to say why. I mean, let's just face it: skid marks do not a popular man make. The last thing I want to have pop up in the laundry room in front of a bunch of women is nasty undies. So, I discovered flannel boxers. They're dark and stuff like most boxers, so you can pretty much do about anything in them and not worry about what they'll look like afterwards. See, you ask a guy why he's got on boxers and most will say something like, "Well they give my boys room to breathe" or something like that. That's all bull though. What they really mean is, "Well because this way if I decide not to wipe my butt or I eat too much spicy stuff, I don't have to worry about skidmarks." Boxers are basically a tampon for guys. It's just less embarassing to buy them I suppose.

Rant #10: The Origins of Christianity

You know, I have a theory about religion. Christianity in particular. It was started and based on guys exactly like myself. Not that I'm like Jesus or anything.. well maybe I am. See, guys like me never got laid as teenagers, so we were always sort of jaded by it. That's how the Christian religion all began. A bunch of guys who couldn't get laid started it. They were pissed off at the people who were getting it regularly and decided to spoil their fun. Besides, since they weren't getting it, they had to think up a valid reason why. If they became priests, then they could just tell everyone that they were "not giving into temptations of the flesh". Bullsh*t. Have you seen these fu**ing priests? They're like all under 5' 4" and they're totally bald. RIGHT... women everywhere are trying to get them to give into "temptations of the flesh". What they really mean is that they chose a profession that made them feel better about their lack of sexual appeal. The guys who wrote the Bible were all people who couldn't get laid, so they formed this little club with about 12 guys and the leader of the club was this guy named Jesus who was really horny. I mean, this guy was so horny that he could move things and heal people with as a result of his pent up sexual energy. Plus his mom was a virgin. How much less sex could you have in a club? So, here's these 12 dorks with a sh*tload of sexual energy traveling all over Israel trying to see how many other people were like them. Then the people who were getting laid, mainly Pontious Pilate who got laid more than Wilt Chamberlain, became a little wary when they saw how many of these guys there were, so they killed Jesus. But instead of killing the idea of the virgin society, Jesus became this huge martyr and hence what we have today. The Christians today never cease to amaze me. I mean, if there's a book or a movie with the word WOOD in it, who's going to point it out like it's a sexual innuendo? The Christians!! They're always looking for sex in things so that they can point it out and be better Christians. What they're actually doing is trying to rid their world of things which remind them of how impossible it is for them to get some. Just a little theory... direct the flaming e-mail towards my mailbox.

Rant #11: Crisis in Yugoslavia

Well, as of yesterday (March 25), NATO started bombing Yugoslavia. First off, I don't claim to know everything about events unfolding over there. In fact, I know very little, but I am going to share some of the things I've found out about the small nation of Kosovo.

From what I understand the Yugoslavian president, Slobodan Milosevic, has started attacking the Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and in the interests of keeping things "humanitarian", NATO started bombing to stop him. After reading a bit of the history behind all this, I found several things. The Albanians in Kosovo started rallying for independence in 1968 and have been fighting with the Serbs ever since.

What I object to is the media coverage of this whole thing. Last night on television, The President as well as the news anchors and all the people they interviewed painted a picture of these helpless Albanians being killed, nay massacred. What I found upon further inspection on the internet is that the Albanians have a long history of terrorism in Yugoslavia. They moved in there from surrounding territories and have been seeking independence in order to create an ethnically cleansed Greater Albania. This information also came to me from a media source equally as suspicious as our own, the "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Official Web Site" in the section about Albanian terrorism. They back up their stories with grim photos of executed Serbs and crematoriums created by the Albanians in order to get the Serbs to leave the country they wish to claim as their own. The address is http://www.gov.yu/terrorism/index.html if you would like to take a look for yourself.

Now I'm at a loss for what exactly to think about all of this. Certainly the fact that the page on terrorism was made by Yugoslavians makes it a bit suspect, but it's hard to disregard all those grim photos. And certainly our own media here in America is suspect just because they have tainted so many things. But what I do know is that these are two different stories about the same place, making one of them or perhaps both, a lie. I can't see the logic behind our country getting into a war when the lines are this grey. It appears that a considerable amount of violence has taken place on the parts of both parties, so why are we in the middle of it?

Today, I logged onto ICQ and the first message I got was from someone not on my contact list (if you don't know what ICQ is then, tough... I'm not explaining it). It said something along the lines of "Stop bombing! Viva Yugoslavia!" and it was from a 20 year old kid in Belgrade. Not 10 minutes passed before I got another message from someone else that was more graphic and angry. I'm tired of feeling ashamed of what my country is doing. First our President runs his name along with the American judicial system through the mud with his lies, then he bombs Iraq in an attempt to ricochet the media spotlight elsewhere and now we're bombing Yugoslavia. Great, now I have to apologize for being an American to everyone? No, thanks but I don't want to do that.

This is actually a pretty weak rant, I just wanted to make the point that I don't think we have any place over in Yugoslavia at all. Yeah, there is violent stuff going on, but it is being perpetrated by people on both sides. It is futile for us to pick sides and start bombing. I would think we would have learned our lesson about trying to quell a civil war after Vietnam, but apparently not. I'd like to get some feedback on this if I can... I'm not the most well informed on the subject and perhaps I have made some broad generalizations that are ignorant... I don't know. Responses are welcome.

More rants to come... unless someone puts a hit on me for something I've already written...

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times... these rants you are reading here have all been written by me... Matt Hill. They are my property and I'd appreciate it if you decide to use them in any way shape or form that 1.) you tell me and 2.) you give credit where credit is due. Because otherwise I'll be forced to take all this stuff off here and I'm sure all 2 of you that read this page would be utterly mortified were that to happen... so please, be kind.

"If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research." -Wilson Mizner in The Legendary Mizners

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Email: hill_m@denison.edu