"The most highly developed branches of the human family have in common one peculiar characteristic. They tend to produce- sporadically it is true, and often in the teeth of adverse external circumstances- a curious and definite type of personality; a type which refuses to be satisfied with that which other men call experience, and is inclined, in the words of its enemies, to deny the world in order that it may find reality." -Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism
Also check out my old Global Warming website, because you're worth it.
Hi! I'm a critic. Unlike most critics however, I criticize everything. I'm a critic of the human condition, and a critic of every day life. I believe in building a better world. I believe it is the duty of every man, woman and child to seek the universal truth and question information presented to them, and dissent when they disagree with that information. I also believe it is the duty of every person to take the law into their own hands when the justice system fails to do an adequate job. This page is one of many steps I am taking to cathartically expunge the ignorance that is consuming civilization.
Stay on my good side and I'm the best friend you'll ever have. Get on my bad side and I'll sign you up for a ton of e-mail porn and send your I.P. to my hacker friends. Game set and match.
Lots of people like to pretend that they know me, while the truth is, I often have them believing exactly what I want. I'm good at manipulating people and creating false impressions, because I can usually pin a personality after one sentence. It’s funny how much you can learn about the world from just paying attention. I love to people watch. I love to spy. I love to listen. I love to gather the details.
This page is a constant work in progress. It has been a lot of useless things in the past but now it is just a place where I can vent my rage and express my judgement towards various things in the world around me. You will note however that there are many topics that ruffle my feathers that I have not yet had the opportunity to write about here, so sit tight or eat a burger. It is good to have this on the internet so people who read it can know that there is someone in the world who thinks these things. I mean, you have to have an opinion sometimes, right? They need to be shared, sometimes argued with, I guess. Sometimes it is a diary, sometimes not, sometimes something inspiring and enlightening or generally happy and sometimes you may care to fire a weapon at your computer screen or not care at all. But whatever, hell, you're here now, read, rejoice. Because if you aren't having fun, you're just a place where cells divide.
11/5/2008:
2/14/2008: I hate musicals. And yet, as a struggling part-time actor I continually find myself funneled into talentless ensembles with a resigned sigh and a shrug, only to be shoveled to the back of the stage with the ones who can't sing or dance. Case in point: Jesus Christ Superstar. It seems these days they'll make a show about any obscure little thing. The show is a rock-opera, a modernistic interpretation of the final days of Jesus Christ. It's directed and choreographed by Tami Gray, who is kind of famous around here. Fortunately, she's a bit of a fundie, so the show is infused with a layer of unintentional comedy that didn't exist in the original production, such as Jesus having nipple piercings and resurrecting a dead guy. (Basically she missed the part where the Bible is a metaphor, not a historical document.) It's about a cult leader who invaded Jerusalem a couple thousand years ago, and the stoic local religious leaders who stood their ground and, through strength and ingenuity, managed to expell the violent heathen.
You don't want to miss a single second.
Also, I are writing a book. It's a bunch of short stories revolving around a single theme, similar in vein to Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, only 10 times worse. The working title is "Swimming Lessons" and it'll be done whenever I get around to finishing it.
Movie reviews are going to become an obligatory part of my updates from now on, because there's oh so much to talk about! Today I'll be reviewing Live Free or Die Hard and The Kingdom.
The title Live Free or Die Hard is confusing to me because nothing that happens in the film can necessarily be considered a threat to freedom. The bad guys aren't terrorists, their hackers, the least scary bad guy there is. Like all the other films it's about thieves, only this time they are trying to steal all the money in America, or something. If they succeeded, technically we'd be more liberated than before. The fact that the film takes place in DC (and then New York, after a 45 minute car trip), the symbolic epicenter of American democracy, is more or less a fluke; as a hacker, one could jack in anywhere in the world with a phone line to complete the task. So in other words, the title is simply pandering to post-9/11, jump-at-shadows simpletons. They should have called it "9/11 terrorism America STRONG God Bless United Orange Alert" or something.
Bruce Willis returns as his usual bad-assed self, bald I had a bald time suspending my disbaldness with such an old protagonist balding the bald out of guys clearly much balder and nimble than himself. Also, Timothy Olyphant isn't much of a convincing terrorist. Anyone named after an animal from The Lord of the Rings and therefore hated by their parents is about as intimidating as a cupcake. Speaking of LOTR, Kevin Smith has a cameo that is distracting at best. He didn’t need to be in this at all, and as a matter of fact he doesn’t need to be in anything at all. If the world didn’t have his dumbass movies where his friends just argue about Star Wars it would probably be a better place to live in.
As for The Kingdom, I'm not even going to try my hand at humor. I love Michael Mann flicks, so I'm both a little disappointed and a little relieved he only had a producer's hand at this clunker. I thought this movie was a huge disappointment.
Though it is filled with its share of impressive action sequences, which are the film's best selling points, the movie nevertheless reveals itself to be increasingly, disappointingly manipulative and obvious. It's purely opportunistic, trading off our war in the Middle East and the fears surrounding it while offering audiences a pro and con look at the Arab community that grates with its black-and-white simplicity.
There is no shading here, no gray tones, just a movie designed by those and for those who get their information from headlines and soundbites, nothing more substantial. If this film underscores anything, it's just how deeply we still misunderstand the Middle East and how our culture-- in this case, pop culture-- completely misses complexities it can't even begin to understand.
And why not The Golden Compass? All I'll say is that the controversy surrounding this film is, as usual, hilarious. Bible-Thumpers are great for merchandising. They never seem to learn that boycotting something only spurs people's interest in it more than if they had kept their mouthes shut. It's the usual "poor-us we're only 70% of the population and insecure with our hypocritical beliefs" sob-story, I've never read the books myself and never could (they were all the rage in grade school, which immediately plops them into the 'don't waste your time' category) but go figure, the film is a complete failure. What's wrong, Hollywood? Out of ideas? Surely the answer is: More Fantasy Flicks! Throw together another baker's dozen, sprinkle in a few overrated stars, water it down for American children to iron out any possibility of it being watchable and vuala! You've got a recipe for another writers strike!
Across the country there's been a plague of police brutality lately, often in the form of taserings. Now I know we live on a dying planet full of sick, violent people who hate each other enough to not care about their own lives... but even tasers are outlawed across most of Europe because they are viewed as inhumane torture devices. Fortunately, America and it's colonies (Iraq, Cuba, Phillipines) don't torture, but implement "alternative interogation techniques" to spread the word of Freedom (see: gang-banging the Constitution for oil-soaked baby-Jesus). These "techniques" include Water-Boarding, followed by a healthy dose of Power-Drill to the Shoulder and Allah's favorite closer, Gaping Gunshot Wound to the Head. That leaves all the real torture-tools in the hands of local law-enforcement. There are two main reasons you see this here but no where else in the world:
-Tasers are outlawed across most of Europe as tools of torture and inhumane
-America is gradually being conditioned into a police state
Every time a donut-muncher electrocutes someone, it is a test to see how the public will react to having their rights infringed upon. This is why police are only trained to hurt, but not to counsel folks who might just need someone to talk to. "Asking a question? Sorry sir, that's an arrestable offense in these parts." It's sickening, but you know, I'm really okay with the whole situation. That's because every time I hear about some man or woman being hospitalized (or even dying) from having 50,000 volts sent through their hearts, I hold my breath, count to 10, exhale, and relax, content that so many scumbags were crushed and/or burned to death on 9/11. That's correct: Every time a cop breaks the law, that's one less Port Authority and/or Police Officer who died in the Twin Towers that I have to feel sorry for. What we really need is more terrorist attacks to thin these fuckers out. Hey, don't call me a scoundrel: taser-hungry policeniks are the ones shitting on the memory of the folks who died that day, not me. I hope they're happy. :S
"Hey Damon, another student was tasered for exercising free-speech."
"That's okay. Just a few less blue-and-whites killed on 9/11 that I have to give a shit about."
The ironic thing about war is, the more of our tax dollars they throw at it, the more our standards of living will drop, and the more the cost of higher education will increase. As textbook prices rise, less men and women will be able to afford a college education, and the less likely someone is to major in Political Sciences and become a figure who fixes American foreign policy so that we stop pissing off the rest of the world. And by extension reduce our dependency on non-renewable resources, reverse Global Warming and start, you know, actually fixing things. Of course, any person who still believes that modern wars are waged to improve a country's way of life or rid of the world of tyranny is not a person I could be concerned with. I mean, hello! Silly fascists. :p
My Tech Theater professor actually proposed an option box on tax forms that signifies "I do not support the Iraq war and thus request none of my income be deducted to support it." It'll never happen, of course; you've got jokers like the guy in my class who responded "Yeah, but that's sort of a slippery-slope. If you do that then soon you'll get people requesting their taxes not go towards repairing roads and highways and stuff." Because, you know, pot-holes are a more pressing issue than a foreign action that has cost the lives of over a million civilians.
Did I mention I hate medical science? Did I mention that Americans are full of pharmaceutical drugs, horomones, and carcinogens? Did I mention that we are being poisoned with every breath we take, that toxins are in the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe? Did I mention that doctors are trained to write you throw-away prescriptions instead of helping you fix the source of your bodily and mental ailments? Did I mention that absolutely no medical "professionals" aside from Chiropractic can claim to do something to your body that is genuinely beneficial and garners-- gasp-- NO side-effects? If you disagree with this assessment, then you are already too far gone and also not worth my concern. Silly pilly-poppers. Too doped up to realize they aren't themselves any more. :p
Idiots who inject themselves and their children with harmful vaccines completely ignorant of their cancer-causing side-effects deserve to have their children get cancer. These are the same type of people who think the world is flat and absolutely refuse to believe in life on other planets or UFOs in our skies or spiritual energy or auras or conspiracies and believe that life is all wrapped up in a neat little package and there is absolutely no mystery in the Universe. A concept they couldn't even begin to understand because their tiny arrogant minds are incapable of comprehending how large the Universe is. These short-sited people are the reason we aren't making any real progress as a species, why "faith-based initiates" exist and genuine scientific studies lack proper funding... and even non-scientific philosophical studies that don't involve religion but could help us further understand our demon-haunted world go ignored and neglected. Now I know why aliens would never land here. There would be panic, and the world would change over night. It would be terrifying, our hubris shattered, forced to look up instead of down for the first time since Socrates. It would be just the vital change this world needs.
Fuck Shircuit Shitty. Fuck every electronics chain that ever decided to post snoopy motherfuckers at the door to greet you. Why can't you just admit you're checking for shoplifters? You know, because heaven forbid your already wealthy managers lose a piece of merchandise here and there and are unable to line their pockets for that second hot-tub! I can't walk into this place without getting eye-fucked by three people, all of them usually dudes. What the hell. It's like renting a car; I'm not automatically going to crash your precious lemon because I'm under 25. I've always avoided Circuit City on purpose because when we were 11 my friend and I were kicked out of one for burning a music CD. On one of their computers. With file-burning software. Using music we already owned. This was way before the whole "ZOMG music industry losing teh moneyz!!1" anti-Napster hype, and since then I've stuck to Best Buy or Borders for my media. It's just ironic, as because of that incident I have since downloaded thousands of songs through questionable sources, just to spite Circuit City (and plus I like free stuff). Any way, I was in the area looking for a copy of Crysis a few weeks ago and decided enough time had passed to put away my prejudices. Upon entering I was immediately accosted by the eyes of a douchebag from halfway across the store, who telepathically signaled to his fat douchebag co-worker, who attempted to intercept me as I entered deeper into the top-secret facility. Unexpectedly, I made a right turn and completely fucked up his agenda. I heard him mutter "Can I help you find anything?" and I assume he heard me mutter "Nothing you've got" as I disappeared into the consumer mist.
Less than a week later, an armed individual entered the store just before closing, kidnapped an employee, duct-taped and raped her. This is known as kharma. Wherever I go, kharma inevitable follows.
Speaking of consentual rape, I am endlessly amused by news coverage of the Larry Craig "debacle". Man, the Republican party is so ironically, hypocritically fucked. I actually feel sorry for the guy; he cracks a sex joke to a cop and gets arrested. Because homosexuality is illegal now, or something. Unless you're a cop, in which case it's okay to stake out an airplane restrooms for fags. I never understood the logic behind selective-enforcement stake-outs. It's like putting an IBM in the middle of the street with a sign reading "12-year-old girl" and arresting anyone who slows down. That's why I can never tell if cops are joking or being serious any more, that's how delightfully ridiculous our times are.
Another obvious indicator? Charities. These are becoming ridiculous to the point of being offensive. I am taken aback by the length to which people will demean themselves to raise a few thousand go-nowhere bucks. Case in the point: The Desert Bus Charity. It's hosted by those morons over at Penny Arcade, a cartoony gaming website where an overweight bald guy and his nerdly assistant pretend to be young handsome married bucks with a gaming addiction supported by a mysterious unlimited cash flow. These guys are contenders for the biggest blowhards on the internet; just read any of their updates and prepare some baby-wipes as they like to masturbate English 101 alliteration all over the screen.
Desert Bus is a video game that consists of driving a bus from Las Vegas to Touson... and back... drumroll... in real time. Anyone who knows basic geography knows that this entails an endless, uninspired desert. Anyone who knows entertainment knows that this is a terrible idea for a game. The road is perfectly straight, but the steering leans a little to the right, requiring the player's constant attention lest they leave the game running and drive off the road. It's a well known masochistic joke by the designers, Penn and Teller, created as a gag to fool stupid people. Case in point.
Momentarily amusing, considered as nothing more than another unheard-of title in a long valiant line of terrible video games (for the Sega CD system no less) that are deservedly doomed to become the butt of various jokes in the vein of Daikatana or Duke Nukem Forever... never actually played for more than a few minutes as a party gag or something lest your brain melts. So of course, anonymous benefactors (see: Special-Interest Douchebags) paid lesser Douchebags money to play the lackluster videogame for weeks on end, dishing out checks to various child-friendly charities for each successful lap.
Where any respectable human being would just give money to the fucking charity rather than demand someone jump through hoops and humiliate themselves, Penny Arcade is paying people to endure carpel-tunnel, obesity, and possible nerve damage for their personal amusement, and slapping a "charity" logo on the whole debacle to keep from getting arrested. This makes any "contributions" accumulated for the charity, in essense, dirty money, which should be returned to the players and spenders and put towards psychological counseling instead. Then maybe- maybe- they could grow up to be useful members of the species who actually do something to end world hunger and disease in the first place. It's called attacking the root of the problem, Dornbecker-- try it!
And finally, fuck Net Zero. Their whole appeal used to be free internet, but thanks to greed and inflation, it's a minimum of $9.95 for basic dial-up. So technically, shouldn't they change their name to Net 9.95?
Today's Badass of the Moment award goes to the Inside The Web message boards.
For those who don't know, or don't remember, these were pretty much the first forums in existence back in "the day" (see: early-to-mid 90's) and as such were prone to major security faults and perhaps the worst online community in the short, sordid history of the internets.
So you've got these boards with varying layouts and color-schemes ranging from McDonalds to Shit-Brown Ebony Ecstasy, populated by dozens of attention-hungry children who just want to have a good time. Naturally sooner or later some outsiders are going to come along, with their little cliques and name-calling and homosexual internet-lingo small-penised too-cool-for-school shit-wipe attitudes and generally ruin it for everyone else. This was the case with InsideTheWeb, and eventually this rash of subversive abuse resulted in action by myself and others to bring about the website's closure.
But before that happened, man oh man did I have a good time. InsideTheWeb is pretty much the soul foundation for my excelled education in English. I was writing so often, consistently "upgrading" my technique to appear more articulate and professional that I quickly became a fine-tuned wordsmith. This process did not let up for a good five years.
But the best part was being a puppet-master. InsideTheWeb had no limit on how many accounts one could activate, so I was at least half of the users on each board I frequented. I administrated the "Luigi in Super Mario 64" message board for at least two years as three different people (to give the illusion of a functional democratic voting system, similar to America today). The trolling and flaming got so bad that I created a "garbage" board, "Ground Zero", where members from other boards could come and rant and rave about what or who they hated on InsideTheWeb without fear of sudden banishment. I monitored that one too, under the guise of a shady blowhard named "Anonymous". See kids, the key was inventing multiple personalities for each of my accounts. When someone attempted to berate me, I'd invent a persona to back myself up... but if praise became too common, I created a troll to shoot me down and essentially serve as a verbal scratching post to earn the respect of others when I inevitably turned him into a martyr.
My closest buddy, a whiz-kid masquerading under the avater "Cybertron" joined the party. Imagine that guy you always looked up to because his family was rich and he had twice the education you had at half your age and you've got my sidekick. We basically had the whole community by the balls.
This delicate dance of the douchebags culminated in an "epic" battle of wits (I quoted epic because nothing on the internet is epic and often immediately turns to shit.) Some of the more popular trolls that frequented our network got ballsy and challenged us to a 10-question "quiz" to be manufactured by a third party; whomever scored best after a day's time limit... won. And was smarter, or a more evolved human being, or something. I'm not quite sure what the point was. (Keep in mind pretty much all of us were jr high pre-pubes.)
I faced off against some guy named Surplus Wattage or Frequently Dipped or EndoQuad or something (all the same person), and lost because he was in cahoots with the judge. The validity of my answers was never really resolved, though, so I ordered a redo. (The vote was conveniently backed by 12 other people.) I had my friend Cybertron create the quiz questions this time, so that I could be sure the game was legit.
I'm not sure why, but likely in a thrall of desperation my opponent decided to cheat by copying my answers right after I posted them. He clumsily rewrote them to appear his own... and still failed miserably, gaining a 1 out of 10 against my 9 out of 10 total.
Did you read that clearly? He copied all of my answers, including the one wrong answer, and still bombed. That's called being too creative for your own good, folks. The irony here is that the question we missed was a trick question Cyb intentionally inserted into the quiz for the express purpose of weeding out a cheater. I passed. My opponent did not. The poseur soon disappeared from Inside The Web, probably in a fit of frustration and anxiety.
I gradually became King of the Internet.
After a few more years of uncontested reigning, I got tired of abusive admins rewriting my posts (this was long before boards showed how many times a message had been edited and by whom), and even going so far as posting under my name (even though the IP address was almost always different, much to their humiliation.) Yet nothing was being done so I sent some e-mails of complaint-- complete with detailed evidence-- to InsideTheWeb management. I had my alter-egos send a couple more, just to be on the safe side. InsideTheWeb had been falling apart for quite some time, and everyone knew it. Once it had overstayed it's welcome in Cyberspace, I simply helped it out the door. Soon after, InsideTheWeb closed its shades forever.
For posterity's sake, here is the list of message boards (and entire web-sites) that have been shut down or gone dead through my subtle intervention:
InsideTheWeb
The Data Backroad (a community for Vancouver locals)
Pointless Waste of Time (as the name implies)
Ruthless Reviews (far from ruthless)
Black Forces (a mod for Half-Life)
Dark Planet (believed Reptoids were stealing all the gold in Iraq)
That's just off the top of my head. What can I say? World Wide Web, I smirk at you and your "communities".
9/11/07: Long has the public been deprived on an honest, critical, and thorough review of the popular entertainment of the last few years, and what better day to remedy that than the anniversary of one of the largest scripted tragedies in world history?
w@velength's Entertainment Guide 2007*added game and book reviews
Music
Sound Garden
I liked them better when they were called Sound Guardian. Anyone know why they changed?
Guided by Voices
Again, they were 10x cooler when they were Guarded by Voices.
Master of Puppets
Whenever I see some poseur wearing this tag in multiplayer games, I immediately change my callsign to Pastor of Muppets.
Beck
Playing all your instruments at once does not constitute talent. Playing with puppets makes you gay.
Franz Ferdinand
Naming your group after an assassinated Austrian Archduke does not constitute talent. Neither does making all your songs sound the same.
Cake
Naming your group after a pastry does not cover up the fact that all your songs sound like monotone speeches.
Taylor Hicks
He won American Idol and all he got was a stupid Toyota commercial.
Jack Johnson and John Maher
These two men are testaments to the overcoming will of the mentally damaged to make it in the music business. ::tear::
Television
24
The Republican party has always been geared toward the wealthy. This program, which is written under the watchful influence of several White House hacks, features the melodramatic exploits of racist super-agent Jack Bauer, who fights to protect the assets of the 1% of the population that owns 90% of the world's income. Since the show plays out in real-time (and is thus tediously boring), the editors make frequent use of split and quad-screens, which aren't cool. They're just distracting. Bauer works for a make-believe secret-police service called the CIC (the same one Jason Bourne tears apart in The Bourne Ultimatum), though nobody really knows what CIC stands for. They use their cells too much, so all the terrorists would have to do to strike a devastating blow is shut down their phone service. You know these guys are terrorists because they are brown or have accents. All of the action in the show can be distilled into three "distinct" categories: Bombs, Hostage Situations, or Hostage Situations involving Bomb-Sniffing Dogs. And I never get tired of hearing the old gem, "The United States does not negotiate with terrorists." I'm not sure why they are so adamant about this, considering they consistently co-op with FEMA and the CIA.
For a few weeks last spring, Fox aired a superior show entitled "Drive" starring Nathon Fillion that, according to Fox Census analysts, did so poorly in the ratings as a lead-in to 24 that it actually dragged 24's rating down. This is incorrect. A more reliable opinion would be that 24 simply sucked-ass this season. I caught an episode the other night, in which CIC agents discover a mole within the organization. The suspects were:
*A woman of middle-eastern heritage
*A middle-aged jive-talkin' white guy
Guess who they decided to torture first?
The whole concept behind 24 reminds me of a Persian girl I knew in my Creative Non-Fiction class. She was studying to be a lawyer, and wrote a paper on her run-in with some trigger-happy police last quarter. One late friday evening, after refusing to serve as the getaway-driver to her drunken-brawler friends, she was cornered by an angry mob on the street. With little time to devise an escape plan, she aimed for the tallest guy in the group and slugged him. Later, sitting in the back of a police car in hand-cuffs, an "officer" took her statement and asked for her ethnicity.
"You Mexican?"
"No, I'm Persian. But since there isn't a square for that, just put Black."
The Sopranos
I love the way people freak out over series finales. Like movies and games, they never live up the hype because people can't seem to figure out that nothing is ever as good as you picture it in your mind. Your egotistical, self-centered, endlessly unsatisfied consumerist mind. Series writers identify this, and plan accordingly in order to screw over the viewing public as much as possible for their own amusement.
I am reminded of the Seinfeld finale, which I never actually watched because I was disgusted by all the hype. There is nothing funnier than people who watch a few episodes of a program and then assert themselves experts on the entire series. The episode begins with the main characters making fun of a fat guy, which is appropriate (it's in the vein of the series.) Then they have to go to court and face all the people they have ever wronged, which is also appropriate (Seinfeld is a comedy, and the justice-system is a joke in itself.) The series ends with the characters in jail. Again, appropriate (they are reprehensible characters.) Que a media storm of discontent, cornerstoned by a fatass suing the creators because he didn't like the depiction of the fatass in the last episode. I was so lauded by this that I had to doublecheck to see what was going on elsewhere in the world that day... such bollocks passing as "news" could only serve useful as a distraction from a CIA takeover of a third world country.
As for The Sopranos, this program went the opposite way and ended on a subtle, open note; no explosive finale, no definite conclusion, a "make your own ending" as the head writer put it (my favorite cop-out in the book). I could care less; I've only seen one episode of the show, and it was fucking ridiculous. A bunch of mental deficient fat guys wandering around complaining about Dis and Dat. The Mob in general are fucking ridiculous, if Hollywood has taught me anything. But the uproar to this finale was hilarious; "What happened?" a woman on the news wept, as though she had just backed over her newborn child with her stationwagon. "I felt like I had wasted several years of my life!"
No shit? Well, dear, I have the perfect remedy for that. I will lay out the steps nice and clear for you, chronologically, labelled numerically with sub-steps marked alphabetically for clarity and convenience:
A: Turn off the television
B: Get a fucking life
The Loop
This brilliant comedy, long since cancelled by Fox after a three week run (something Fox is renowned for, can I get an amen) is about a newboot executive at a major Airline company. As he learns more and more about the airport business, hilarious antics ensue. This show should be mandatory viewing for anyone who works at an airport, because airports are fucking ridiculous. Did you know they banned water on Airplanes? H20. Scout's Honor. Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the Universe, composing three quarters of the Earth's surface and three quarters of your surface, 100% essential to survival, ain't goin' on duh big magic metal birdy 'cause it's in a container.
Apparently terrorists are hiding in inanimate objects now.
Naturally they lifted the ban about a month later, I guess because they finished testing people to see how flexible they were to the concept of martial law. Pretty tame test if you ask me. A bunch of armed men and women threatening to kill you if you don't surrender a bottle of water; pretty tough decision. They must be aiming low to get that 100% assured power-trip, like when the US started attacking random island countries after Vietnam. They know that Joe and Jane Citizen will always be in control, will always make their own choices and decide the fate of the country, and it drives them mad with fear. Why does any authority figure act rashly? That is why you keep seeing people arrested for throwing cheeto bags or jumping in mud puddles, but a plane full of angry passengers? Good luck. It's easy to bully around individual "perps", but the mob is a powerful, irresistable force.
There is a reason books like 1984 haven't come true and the Cuban Missle Crisis didn't end in disaster; no, not the flavor-of-the-month photoshoot elect, but the efforts of regular people.
While the security representative in question was confiscating your precious water, they missed an opportunity to fondle a pregnant woman's breasts for explosives, taser actor Naveen Andrews into a coma, and put a Koran into a toilet. Hurry, Airport Security, before you stop being useful! Now, the typical mislead response I get to this view is:
"But they are doing it to protect your freedoms, Damon. If they weren't doing it, you'd complain they weren't doing enough."
This response oozes with irony. That they intend none of it, speaks volumes.
The View
They got rid of Rosie because she was too outspoken about 9/11. Luckily for Rosie, nobody cares about The View or anybody who watches it.
Lost
LOST is a great sci-fi-fantasy show marred by obsessive fan-boy-ism and a functionally retarded fan-base. Avoid the following this show has-- in other words, stay off the internets-- and you will enjoy the program immensely. On the other hand, if you haven't been watching it from the very beginning-- indeed, if you have missed even one episode-- don't bother. You might just become one of those annoying people who complains that "it's too confusing, there are too many questions, it doesn't make any sense." Wrong. The show makes perfect sense. And if you'd spend more than 30 seconds thinking about it, it would make sense to you, too. On the other hand, maybe it wouldn't.
Heroes, Daybreak, The 4400, The Nine
All terrible LOST rip-offs. Avoid.
Gray's Anatomy
A soap-opera about a bunch of pre-med imbeciles stumbling around complaining about how they don't like the way their partner eats pees. Grow up.
Scrubs
See above.
CSI
When I was doing Children's Theater we were scheduled for a show at an elementary school in Seaside. As we were walking through the main office with all our gear, Alex, the group idiot, said our getup reminded him of the crew from CSI. "Nonsense," said the director. "Seriously," Alex continued, "You could be Grissam, and she--" pointing at out of the female coworkers-- "could be the girl who used to be a hooker." He said the last part a little too loudly. Our director smacked him across the back of the head and one of the staff told him to keep that shit under wraps. Just to be sure, a debriefed several bystander children on what a Prostitute was, but they didn't seem to be interested so I had to go into extra special detail.
For some reason this show is all the shit with college students, I guess because they wanna be professional crime-solvers like McGruff the Crime Dog. Somebody should tell them that CSI isn't real life. Investigators, criminologists and forensic technicians often perform their duries in different offices all over the country and never even meet the people they work with. There are no ex-hookers or wise-cracking chinamen. And real criminal investigations aren't "to be continued" or wrapped up in 45 minutes.
Dr. Phil
Regular people with over-sensationalized issues are screened onto a "talk" show where a doctor who isn't really a doctor talks down to them and cracks unfunny sarcastic jokes at the patient's expense while staring condescendingly into the camera, then proceeds to use reverse-psychology (see: placebo psychology) to make small talk and never really solve their problem, while the 100% female audience looks on and roars. To keep mouth-breathing viewers from thinking too hard, there's a commercial break every two minutes.
Judge Judy
See above.
Larry The Cable Guy
You're not "white collar" and you've probably never been to a Nascar race in your life. You are white trash. Your humor is juvenile and so rank I can smell it through the television screen. Even my room-mate thinks you're retarded, and he listens to punk. "You ever farted so hard you cracked your back?" No, you ever been slapped in the face with a penis and it left a mushroom mark?
Family Guy
Schizophrenic crap cartoon show about a fat guy who gets naked every other episode. If you think talking-babies and rape jokes are funny, you might like this show. But I might not like you. The plots are rehashed from old Simpsons episodes, and... I can't even go on, this show gives me such a headache. Did I mention the dog talks too? Okay, I suppose it's occasionally funny... if you like references to obscure actors and movies that only the show's writers still think about. And why oh why is there a talking baby. Why does it have a vaudeville accent. If someone can please explain "teh funnay" to me, I'm all ears.
South Park
South Park instantly loses points with me because of the ridiculous fan-base, which consists primarily of teenaged boys who probably don't even get the sophistacted social and political references on this show. "OMG Cartman's fat, LoL." I got so sick of hearing about South Park in high-school, listening to future frat-boys stumbling around going "TIMMAY" like it's the funniest shit in the world, but it's not, it's a fucking cartoon and cartoons are incapable of being transcendant no matter how hard they try. Like Family Guy, the show is occasionally brilliant, although in the last few seasons it has divebombed into 100% sheer Shock-Value. Also, that horrible spineless excuse for a puppet-show Team America showed us Trey and Parker's true colors, which has no doubt contributed to South Park's staggering drop in the ratings the last few seasons.
And I feel this deserves a special paragraph so fuckheads can take note. You know who you are:
The "What Did We Learn Today?" morality lessons at the end of each episode are satirical. They are not meant to be taken seriously. South Park is as much a satire of itself as it is for current events. I am consistently amused by people who laugh at the "jokes" without realizing that the joke is on them. Themes that South Park appears to mock on the surface, it actually supports. By making fun of them, it is making fun of the people who make fun of them. The show is in fact very liberal; that the typical viewer (and often the writers themselves) miss this facet tells me that they are in essence mocking themselves. If you can't grasp this, there might be hope for you. If you've been watching South Park from the beginning and haven't grasped this, then I don't want you anywhere near me, breathing my precious oxygen.
Drawn Together
This is the funniest show on television, end of discussion.
Movies
John Q (2002)
Probably the worst movie ever made, considering the atrociously misdirected subject matter and star power. Denzel Washington pulls a SWAT guy out of a vent and beats him half to death, pulling each ham-fisted punch with wide, swooping arcs. That's what I wanted to do to everyone involved with this movie. It even ends with a court-room scene, and we all know that court-room scenes are the final condemnation possible for a movie. The only thing that could have improved this wreck was if a SWAT guy fell through the ceiling during the court-room scene and Denzel shrugged and beat the crap out of him with wide, swooping arcs.
Hotel Rwanda (2005)
What the hell is The Lady's Man doing starring in dramas? He should stick to his strong suit: helping SNL continue being unfunny. And what kind of codephrase is "Cut The Tall Trees" as the signal to start the genocide? Could they be less subtle?
Rebel Leader: "All cockroaches should be calm and rest assured, we are NOT coming to kill you all. Oh and by the way, 'cut the tall trees.'" Cockroach 1: "Holy shit, we have to get out of here!" Cockroach 2: "Nah nah it's okay mon, he's just doing some last minute landscaping"
Crash (2006)
A bunch of contrived plot devices culminating in a music montage better suited to an after-school t.v. movie. I dozed off and thought I was watching Cold Case. For a movie that is so adamantly anti-racist it manages to be both boring AND disgustingly hypocritical. The sassy black chick, the white trash gunsmith, the uppity persian guy, the passive-aggressive hispanic... am I missing the moral here? These aren't stereotypes, this is the way people are.
Transformers (2007)
Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer direct action movies like they were pornos. This is crass, militaristic crap made to sell war and toys to kids, like pretty much every Bay/Bruckheimer compilation. This travesty of your favorite childhood distraction stars manufactured teen star Shia LeBeouf (pronounced Sheeya La-Bee-Off, obviously a fake name because he's not black) as a mentally challenged child who discovers mentally challenged space robots in his back yard. How the hell does a vehicle "transmorph" into a robot three-times the mass of the original vehicle? Who knows? Even the toys didn't make sense; my Optimus Prime came with defective rocket-launchers that wouldn't fire, the rockets just sat in the tubes.
Co-starring Ryan Seacrest as some soldier, as if the movie wasn't unbelievable enough.
Spiderman 3 (2007)
Spiderman isn't supposed to be able to shoot web out of his wrists. The web is supposed to come from refillable cartridges that attach to his forearms. Also, Peter Parker isn't supposed to be a plaster-faced emo piece of shit. I'm not even a fan of the Spiderman "mythos" and I know this stuff. Tobey MacGuire can't act. Mary-Jane whines about Parker closing her out when he made it very clear in the first two movies that his way of life is very fucking dangerous. According to these films, Spiderman can only rescue one person per scene, And they have to be dangling from something, otherwise he is powerless. When he swings he fires his web well above the skyline of the buildings around him. And I don't recall Spiderman being able to turn into a bendy cartoon every time he starts leaping off walls and performing stunts. And why is Sam Raimi writing and directing comic book movies, any way? He should stick to making bad horror-comedies starring that idiot from Jack of All Trades.
I'm not going to continue because this movie doesn't even deserve further condemnation.
The Pianist (2004)
The Nazis were assholes, we get it. Move the fuck on. We don't owe you or your country anything, stop asking America for money. All we owe you is for the cost of the eggs we managed to cram up Adrien Brody's nose.
Borat (2007)
People tell me that I have a very dry, very unique sense of humor, and I don't deny this. Often, I learn who my real friends are by judging how well they can take one of my twisted jokes. Then there's Borat, who is the opposite of funny. What humor or originality people gleen from this creepy sweaty racist effigy I will never understand. He walks around and harrasses average people, people minding their own business. I don't care who they are or where they come from or what ideologies they carry, this is the least intelligent form of humor, as well as the easiest to execute. Then he stands there and flashes a thumbs-up and weeves incoherent sentences like some kind of smug genius. But look! He's foreign and has a silly accent! Gracious but this humor is so far over my head!!
"But Damon," you say, "it's supposed to be low-brow. Snobby holier-than-thou humorists can go fuck themselves!" No cause see, it's not funny. It's not even low-brow. It's a washed-up comedian from a washed-up network cashing in on his fifteen minutes of fame.
That his movie got a 95% in the ratings is the biggest case of Emperors New Clothes syndrome I have ever witnessed.
Hot Fuzz (2007)
British "humour" is a conuundrum for me. On the one hand, it's not funny. On the other, are severely underrated movies like Hot Fuzz. "It's too violent," says the Aunt. "Comedies aren't supposed to be violent." Right. So forget the success of Analyze This and Desperado because they happened to show people doing what they do all the time: Dying. And Hot Fuzz is a satire of action films, any way. It's "funny" violence. It's self-aware. It's so... not Epic Movie.
America has a monopoly on classical, historic, genuinely funny comedians and satirists. NBC's version of The Office is far superior to its British source material (despite the best efforts of their hideously cheesy promos). Just another example of America taking something British and fixing it, like the U.S. Constitution or the English language. Airplane! is a great satire of cheesy 70s disaster films, and one of the best satires in general because it understands that humor is about what is going on in the background of a shot, not just the foreground. And yet British "humour" is defended mercilessly (and quite bemusedly) by a bunch of Eurotrash blowhards who still can't let go of the Revolutionary War. So they incite fights on movie message boards and entertainment threads, a biting metaphor for a country composed of hypocrites who place so much importance on tradition that they forget to brush their teeth.
Contrary to the Borat defense, proponents of British "humour" believe that I am too stupid to comprehend the Einstein-ian subtleties and nuances of the depressingly boring limey sitcoms that run on PBS every night after 10.
But I contend that humor shouldn't have to make you think to be entertaining. I watch comedies to laugh, on the spot, not contemplate philosophy or the pros and cons of pre-agrarian capitalism. That's what drama is for. And this is all assuming that British "humour" has any sort of serious depth to begin with... I have yet to be confronted by a nuance or a pun that didn't leave me thinking for several hours with very little payoff.
Comedy is meant to cater to our basic cerebral pleasure-centers. Always has, always will, any way you coat it. Sure, you may choose to flaunt your higher brain functions (all 3%). And I could fart in a can and send it to you. The point is you shouldn't feel bad when you fail to grasp the joke. On the contrary, the writers should feel bad for failing to entertain you.
Dead or Alive (unreleased)
Jenna Jameson is not attractive.
I repeat: Jenna Jameson is not attractive.
Showing your chest-ribs when you flex isn't attractive. Looking like a bag of antlers isn't attractive. Breast implants are not attractive. Being a porn-star is not attractive. A facial profile that looks like a fuckin' bird is not attractive.
That is all.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2003 - 2006)
The first one is amazing, because I had never seen anything like it before. Having not bothered with the overrated books as a child I didn't know what to expect. The opening scene of the movie is on par with the opening scene from The Mummy in which villains on horseback charge a fort while firing automatic rifles. Here, a giant demon hacks away entire rows of dudes with a swing of his gauntlet. There, a guy named Viggo sets a bunch of grim-reapers on fire by throwing a torch in their hooded faces. Something called an "Elf" shoots "Orcs" in the face using "Arrows" with pinpoint accuracy, and an old gay man fights the boss from Diablo. Shit blows up medieval style. Cate Blanchett struts around looking hot as usual. The exclamation point is a great open ending that had the theater howling with anger and I alone cheering uproarously.
Then, they decided to make two sequels.
Golem is the cinematic equivalent of auditory rape. He's not cool, his schizophrenia is gay, he's a cartoon, he bounces around the screen, he's annoying. I could always tell he was computer-generated. A sickly-skinny pale actor such as would have sufficed perfectly well, but no, Peter Jackson had to go and jerk off George Lucas Episode One all over the film. They literally skinned the damn thing in as a last second decision during the final two months of production; Serkis, the voice-actor for Gollum, said the end result looked like a combination of his grandfather and his newborn son. I say it looks like a combination of Silly Putty and Shit. There's talking trees and Karl Urban and arrrrg I wanted to claw my eyes out. I hope you like inappropriate close-up shots of disgusting monsters, because Jackson certainly has a fetish for them.
The only good part of the second movie was when someone started a petition to get the name changed, post-9/11. You know, because if we cleanse all references to the Twin Towers it will never have happened! This cheered me up so much I went jogging.
The third is even worse because it drags on... and on... and on... and looks like a video game. The viewer is subjected to an army of fucking ghosts at one point. I thought I was watching The Haunted Mansion and kept expecting Eddie Murphy to show up. The worst part was when a cell-phone went off in the front row and the guy's friend grabbed it and threw it at the wall. The best part was when the projector broke down with Frodo and Sam sitting on the rock surrounded by lava (where the movie should have ended any way.) Not a happy crowd.
Exhibit C: There are no blacks in these movies, except as villains.
The Matrix Trilogy (1998 - 2003)
What happens when you let fat porn director twins make a movie based off their infatuations with comic books? You get Swordfish. But first, you get The Matrix. Technically speaking the second two movies can't possibly exist because Smith died at the end of the first one, but nobody except me seems to care about that. This minor foible asside, all three films are crap. Okay, so you live inside a computer because machines have taken over and are harvesting our bio-electric energy (which I can totally accept as an act of pity on the part of the machines), and the only way to free humanity is to dress up like one of the Columbine heroes and cut down regular cops and blow up office buildings for no reason.
The second film has a rastafarian ghost-fight, enough said.
Then, when the machines are closing in, the only way to stop them is with World War II weapons rather than something useful like remote EMPs, which is what you should have invested all your resources in, Zion. "THERE'S THE MATRIX, SHOOT IT!!1" Meanwhile, the last surviving humans (who are apparently all black) have a dance-orgy in a cave at the heart of a gay underground city that isn't futuristic at all or anywhere near as cool as it should have been. Luckily, Jesus with Sunglasses shows up and saves the day... sort of. The world was destroyed hundreds of years ago... What were we fighting for again?
Star Wars Episode I (1999)
I knew this was going to suck months before it came out because the trailer sucked. A cloud of thick mist, que the Star Wars mystery theme, then dozens of ugly cartoon monster come marching toward the camera. CGI actors does not a movie make. And why couldn't Anakin and Amidala be the same age? Because Lucas is a pedophile, that's why.
The Departed (2007)
A Scorcese movie about crime? What a stretch! Too bad it's boring and predictable... I wanted to throw something at the screen when, instead of finding a creative way to end the film, all the main characters get killed off. What's the point of watching a film if everyone dies at the end? Is it some sort of massive sociology experiment to test the tolerance threshhold of the viewer? And thel ast man standing is pussy Mark Wahlberg, no less. Also, casting nothing but A-list actors in your film makes it impossible for the audience to suspend their disbelief. The same reason Outbreak sucked, that being I knew Dustin Hoffman and Renee Russo weren't going to die because they're Dustin Hoffman and Renee Russo. That The Departed pulls the contrary isn't creativity, it's lack of imagination. What a waste of two hours. Even the editing was laughably bad. Avoid.
The Gaurdian (2007)
I wish Kevin Costner was my dad. He's awesome. Ashton Kutcher on the other hand, isn't. He's a bad actor, and worse, he's a murderer. What, you didn't hear about that? A few years ago he was sent to pick up his female co-star for an awards show. Apparently when he arrived she neglected to answer the door and there was "a red stain on the carpet, I assumed it was wine and left." Nope, turns out it was blood and she was brutally stabbed to death. And you, Mr. Kutcher, were very uncooperative with the police.
The Sixth Sense (2000)
Shayamalanahan's second best movie (his first being the glorious Unbreakable) and another great movie ruined for me by hype and fanboys. So it turns out he's actually dead. Wow, great, now what were your thoughts on the rest of the fucking movie? The best part, for me, was when some dumbshit fat woman waddled into the theater because she just had to have some popcorn, right at the scene where Osment looks into the homemade tent. When the puking girl suddenly appeared and the score hit, the woman screamed and fell over the railing separating the handicapped section. She just dropped out of site. Nobody moved, or made to help her. They just laughed their asses off. I have no patience for people who leave in the middle of the movie. Learn to hold it.
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo CARES? I refuse to read the book, I refuse to see the movie (though I hear from objective viewers that it is far superior.) The controversy over The Da Vinci Code is sickening, and a testament to the hypocritical, fascist and alarmist nature of religion in the United States. And the movie doesn't even take place in the United Fucking States. Look people, I'm going to lay it out for you nice and clear and I'd be flattered if you would so much as try and contemplate assimilating it into your thick skulls: Jesus Christ was a traveling fucking magician who impressed his disciples with parlor tricks and sleight of hand. Then he fucked a whore and died, and they called the movie Donnie Darko. Sit down.
World Trade Center (2006)
I think I know why the terrorists hate us... and it's Nicholas Cage with a hitler mustache. This movie qualifies Oliver Stone for revocation of his Director's License, and lowers his status from Talented Subversive Filmmaker to Tragic Curiosity. When his name pops up in my daily doings, the title "JFK" drifts through my mind with admiration, followed closely by the image of Nicholas Cage with a hitler mustache. The next word to appear is often "cop-out". Some say Stone should "revert" back to his glory days of conspiratorial paranoia... I say Hollywood would be as confused as Muhammed Ali on a merry-go-round.
V For Vendetta! (2006)
R For Retarded! By which I mean the controversy, not the movie itself, which was pretty damn good. But I'm not too worried because the critics of this movie don't appear to have much of an argument: "It claims to be so subversive yet is ultimately spineless because it takes place in Britain and not the 'States." This is a fruitless complaint, because-- surprise surprise-- the fucking comic book takes place in Britain. Also, if you'd bothered to pay attention during the movie you'd have noticed that America crumbled to dust many years previous due to biological black-ops on the part of British MI5.
Complaining that "the movie glorifies terrorism" also doesn't fly because all the "terrorists" do in this movie is walk toward a military barricade, nothing more. When the army guys stand down, the legion of Guy Fawkes simple continue on past them. If you failed to notice the subtle-- but hugely profound-- statement in this scene, then you fail at watching movies. There are rights we all have that transcend any written laws or constitutions, and those are our Human Rights. Remember? That shit we used to exercise before you abused your right to vote by "electing" the wrong guy?
+10 points for Natalie Portman and her little-miss-bundle-of-sex routine.
It's A Wonderful Life (1946)
It's A Horrible Movie
A lot of people recommend this movie specifically to me for some strange reason. As though I hadn't had it shoved down my throat every Christmas as a child. I do a really good Jimmy Stewart impression, but that doesn't make this shit film endearing. The theme is a concept that so many find romantic but which I find horrifying and tragic: A man is about to kill himself, something he is completely entitled to do. He didn't ask to exist, and he decides to take control of his existence from the fickle forces of causility by offing himself. Then some fucking angel comes and takes it upon itself to show him what the world would be like if he had never existed or something, as though that argument would ever work. Nevermind that this act completely subverts the laws of nature. (City of Angels is a far better execution of this concept.) Stewart learns the "beauty" of consolidating his freedom by taking on a wife and kids and being shackled down by family life. I guess so the angel can take his soul or something (Stewart certainly doesn't need it any more.)
Amelie (2001)
Another one people keep recommending to me. It's about a creepy pale-faced French chick who learns to stop being shy. Girls love this swill because they think it identifies with their reserved, fragile nature. It doesn't. The sad truth is that most women aren't very interesting to begin with and we'd be better off if they kept their mouthes shut except as receptacles for semen.
Zodiac (2007)
I had no idea the Zodiac killer was such a klutz until I saw this film. The cops knew who he was and foiled two thirds of his poorly-executed schemes. His infamous "riddles" were the shit children fill out on the backs of animal-cracker boxes, and authorities were too busy solving real crimes to bother with them. He preyed on his victims using-- get this-- prank calls. The only reason he was never caught, apparently, is because competitive bureaucratic bullshit between the Feds and local police slowed down the investigation. Or maybe it's because Jake Gyllenthall is almost as bad an actor as Tobey Maguire. "I wish I could quite you" is one of the funniest lines in movie history. Bang doo bang!!
300 (2007)
Another piece of Hollywood shit, another hypocritical fanbase. Complain that the movie isn't historically accurate, that's because it's based on a comic book... but complain that it's not over-the-top enough, that's because it's based on historical truth. The result is a schizophrenic cartoon about fighting for your right to own slaves and kill babies. But it's okay because it's for FREEDOM!! And apparently the Greeks were macho under-dressed weight-lifters with perfect hair and hygiene 2,000 years before barbers and dentists. Which is like, a direct and blatant contradiction of the truth. The Spartans held out as long as they did because of their heavy armor and the fact that the inexperienced Persian army's wardrobe was almost 100% cloth. Also, there were no giants or monsters or oracles and shit. And what's the point of this movie, any way? Aren't their enough movies about guys killing each other and finding unique ways to kill each other where the scenery wasn't made in KidPix 9.0?
A Thin Red Line (1998)
A lot of people complain that this movie is "too much philsophizing and not enough combat." I'm here to tell you the ugly truth: War is too much philosophizing and not enough combat.
Munich (2006)
Do we really need another heavy-handed propaganda film to remind us that we all bleed red? Spielberg seems to think so. Here he tries in vain to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a fair and balanced manner. He has the power and the resources. Unfortunately, he forgot to take into account that he is a Jew and therefore any attempt he makes at balanced commentary will come up short and be tampered by the fact that he is incurably biased. He can't help it, power corrupts absolutely. But I don't like it when well-known and respected people try to pull fast-ones on me. Did anyone really think that the guy who did Schindler's List could make a sensitive film about the eternal enemies of the Jews? The film even opens with an Arab extremist group perpetrating a horrific act of violence. This sequence is interspersed throughout the movie at various key moments, as though the filmmakers were worried about the viewers growing too much sympathy. The running theme here is supposed to be "violence begets more violence", though the film fails to prove this. Pathetic, considering anyone who watches the news on a daily basis could make this conclusion, yet a film that claims to deeply analyze the roots of said violence for the first time in history completely fails as nothing more than a guilty pleasure for Zionist alarmists. After the opening, which gives viewers an accurate idea of how predictable it will be, Munich tries to appear sophisticated by having the leaders of Israel meet in the shadows and discuss the "difficult" decision of waging a counter-attack, firm in the knowledge that such an action will only bring more violence down upon Israel. Well, if we've learned anything in 40 years, it's that political leaders, tucked away in their bunkers and armored cars, don't care what happens to their people. So they send out one of the most unconvincing mob-squads in movie history to take revenge. Now the movie turns into Oceans 11 but with wacky killer Jewy McBagelbergs. They do their job with little remorse. Any doubt about their orders is quickly smothered by a wise-cracking commando-character (played by Daniel Craig) who at one point spits out "Don't fuck with the Jews." Credibility gone, this pretty much sums up the entire theme of the film right there. Then you've got the bizarre finale, in which Eric Bana's sensitive main character fucks his wife while fantasizing about the 1972 Olympics terrorist attack. This is the most telling image in the film, because it shows his characters to be a hypocrite, and reveals the films true colors as a brainless action film. You can't make a convincing case against terrorism by showing one graphic scene after another of cold-blooded murder.
Apocalypto (2007)
A lot of people complain that the second half of this movie is better than the first half. Oh really, fascist? That's like volunteering to have your testicles removed because you're a knuckle-dragging warmonger piece of shit. So you like violence, huh? Then please, do us all a favor: enroll.
Video and Computer Games
Halo 2
The story's cool but it ends too abruptly. Which is a slap in the face because the first is one of my all time favorite games. I used to get into this debate endlessly with this guy Mattcraze, who claimed "it was always meant to be a trilogy." So? When I exchange money for service or merchandise, I expect to get my money's worth. Let me spell it out for you: The - Game - Is - Incomplete. I fork over $50, I expect $50 of game. Also, I expect a worthy single-player experience. Who gives a fuck about multiplayer? Apparently Bungie has forgotten what made their original titles so replayable. (Besides the fact that they were broken and many of the switches unuseable if you were out of certain types of ammo, BOOYAH.) The multiplayer scene, much like all console FPS multiplayer scenes, is full of whiney unskilled bitches. Take me on with a mouse and keyboard, I'll show you what real gaming is.
But I can't, because Microsoft decided to make the PC version exclusive to Vista, as though it will make anyone want to buy their shitty OS. Considering Halo was originally designed as a PC title-- then dumbed down for thumb-stick aiming because Microsoft needed a launch title-- XBOX can go fuck itself.
Gears of War
I've never played this game, but it's a popular FPS and the commercial featured the Tears for Fears cover "Mad World". Therefore I'm never going to touch it for fear of the minute possibility that gayness is transferable by touch.
Guitar Hero 2
Doom
The funny thing about this "classic" is that pretty much every game ever made using the Doom engine is superior (See: Strife). Yet a cult of frothing fanboys still cling to Doom as though it popped their cherries or something. Then they put up a front when Id Software revealed that the monsters in Doom 3 would not be exact replicas of the originals. Newsflash: It's Id's game, they can do whatever the fuck they want with it.
Doom 3
I put off buying this game forever because everyone complained about the flashlight-weapon setup. "The game is too dark!" they said. Turns out, they were all wrong, and the game kicks ass the way it is. That being another Id Software tech-demo piece of shit.
Half-Life 2
The sequel to one of the best shooters ever. It's interesting, but the original is still better. The sad case with Half-Life 2 is that an attention-seeking whore of a hacker leaked much of the pre-production content to the internet, thereby forcing Valve to delay the thing for a year while they cut out much of what would have made this game awesome. Then, they offered the hacker a job at the company as a reward for being able to crack their database. The FBI was waiting for him when he got off the plane. Dumbass.
Pro: Barney is back.
Con: Alyx is back, too. She's supposed to be a sexy, wise-cracking gunhand love-interest, but you'll be too distracted trying to figure out what fucking ethnicity she's supposed to be to notice how well she can aim. Her existence in the game is completely useless, and she talks too much, a point sadly emphasized by the fact that Gordon doesn't talk at all. An idiot from Brooklyn once tried to sell the plot of this game to me, as follows: "Don't you get it? You're a weapon being sold to the highest-bidder!!" And? I paid $50 for a deus-ex machina because the developers couldn't think up a proper ending?
Unreal Tournament
Some gamers talk about this bargain-bin bankshot like it was the second-coming of multiplayer games. It wasn't. It's a bad Team Fortress spinoff that gave birth to the abomination of multiplayer-only games, flamboyantly dressed space marines with giant shoulder pads, and team-killing. Pass.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Far too frustrating for all but the most devoted gaming masochists. Fulfill your fantasies of running red lights (after all you've got SHIT to do) only to be T-boned at 80 mph by a pickup-truck conveniently placed by the computer to spoil your fun. Yes, the game is rigged to foil the player as much as possible, throwing insurmountable odds in your path often during vital high-speed car chases or timed missions. In other words, the computer cheats. Once I was running from the cops and spun out because the CPU placed a bunch of civies in my path and I did a continuous donut for 30 seconds nailing a constant stream of cars coming from intersecting lanes on the rebound. For some reason, the designers decided to have the game freeze or crash every 45 minutes, often when trying to save your progress. The camera controls are too wonky: try getting out of a car and running in a particular direction without falling out of your chair. Something tells me realism wasn't at the top of the game designer's list. Someone should make a mod that creates an invisible forcefield ten feet in front of the player's car that sweeps up every obstacle in your path, then record it and post the video on YouTube so everyone can see how cheap Rockstar Games is.
Once you get past the steep learning curve, the game has some redeeming value. Assassinate hordes of fat trash-talkin' gangbangers using a silenced-pistol (only to have them immediately switch off the moment you leave their turf.) Get a boner from beating to death parades of teenaged girls on rollerblades while people just stand around and watch. Equip your pimp-mobile with hydraulics and custom hub caps and wonder where your life went wrong. The greatest gameplay achievement of this game over previous titles is the ability to drive half an hour to get anywhere and jump into the water without immediately drowning.
Counter-Strike
Ah, Counter-Strike. I could write an entire update about the pathetic downfall of this game. It all started when they began charging for it, for some reason. Next thing you know, you're running around generic levels using make-believe weapons (what the fuck is a CV-47? The AK was named after the man who created it, Kalashnikov, you can't just change the letters) to fight aimbotting, wallhacking, bunnyhopping faggots. Oh, the hackers! They cheat so profoundly, and I still kick their asses. Counter-Strike is the biggest of the E-Penis fights out there, and I've gleaned endless amusement from listening to these jokers brag about their "skills", as though it takes any kind of skill to move a mouse and click a button. These guys can't even grasp basic spelling (they incorrectly abbreviate the Arctic-Warfare Magnum as the "AWP".)
Also, the game is rigged to benefit people with faster connections. They experience virtually no recoil, while anyone with a ping higher than 100 can only take about one shot before losing accuracy completely. And why the fuck do you run faster with the knife equipped? Your other weapons are still on your back, aren't they? Counter-Strike is uber-retro, but not by choice.
Natural Selection
This is a fascinating free real-time strategy FPS which pits heavily-armed Marines against quickly-evolving Aliens in vast complex interconnecting corridors. Great weapons, great upgrades, great fun. So what's the problem? You guessed it! As usual, the players ruin everything. One person is the Commander, and he usually sucks. And even if he doesn't, people only follow orders if they want to. Also, the gameplay is slanted towards the Alien team. Marines pretty much never win. The good news is, the game's weakness is also it's strongest proponent. It is hilariously easy to sabotage your aggressors if you are determined enough. For instance I usually play as a Marine by default (the Aliens look like dogs and rhinos and are gay as hell) but if the Aliens are stacking the teams and winning a few too many rounds in too cheap a manner, I simply switch over to their side. Then I start throwing away resources on do-nothing structures, blocking spawn-points, and generally acting like a complete asshole. Tards who were so vocally adamant previously about flaunting their victories suddenly exit the game with nary a peep. Freedom is beautiful.
Now that admins have begun banning all of the more experienced players, gameplay has become as fair and balanced as possible. This is definitely a gem to keep an eye on.
Battlegrounds 2
The one and only Revolutionary War FPS, I love it. Guns that are inaccurate as fuck and take 10 seconds to reload. Sword fights. Cannons. Tree forts. And one of the worst online communities in history. I'm all for leniency with historical accuracy, but I don't quite recall reading about the Red Coats using aimbots and speed-hacks to win battles, or Minute Men so full of themselves they refuse to shut the fuck up, nobody wants to hear about your fucking clan.
Perfect Dark
The shortest game ever made, comprising only one level. You land on a rooftop, work your way through the building killing some dudes, then come to an abrupt dead end when you step into a basement elevator and are told "Mission Objectives Incomplete." Then you turn the game off, because there is nowhere else to go. Congratulations, you won.
I've rented this game once every four years in the vain hope that my age and wisdom would reveal something I'd missed the first time through. I've been bitterly disappointed every time; running about the same monotone hallways and rooms over and over, I once found a hidden bank of computers that apparently required "EMP mines" to hack, but since there is nothing similar to an "EMP mine" strewn about the game's single level, I could only conclude that this was a bug overlooked during playtesting. The popularity of this game continues to astound me, considering how short and incomplete it is. Also, the graphics cause eye cancer.
Call of Duty 1 & 2
These are the best WWII games ever made-- which is quite a feat considering about 30 or 40 come out every month. Intense, absorbing, action-movie-esque thrill rides. Keep in mind I'm talking about the single-player components; the multiplayer is laggy beyond all comprehension, hitting a moving target is nigh on impossible, and the weapons aren't hit-scan (bullets are delayed). Naturally, the online community is ridiculous as well.
Books
Harry Potter series
Why does everyone rag on Potter fans? They're not a loud, eccentric crowd. They don't hold obnoxious public rallies or argue heatedly with non-fans or each other (unless rudely provoked). Once more, they are obsessing over reading, ALOT (have you seen the page-counts for the last three books?) Books are something more people could stand to invest in. Standing in line for days does not make someone ridiculous. Haven't you ever been excited about something you liked? A movie, a CD? So why all the harsh words? I have yet to hear an acceptable response to this. "It's a Fantasy book for Kids" doesn't count, it isn't even accurate. The books themselves are complicated an intriguing, full of complex characters and situations, like any other good book. If you think magic spells and wizards are gay, you should probably take a few Literary History classes and get caught up with reality.
Driver's Ed
This book single-handedly ruined any positive prospects I might have had for high-school. Incoming Freshmen were required to read this for some study-group book-club session that would take place on the first day. I crammed down 50 pages a night to finish it in time. Funny thing is, I loved it. It was tragic, emotional, intense, and the ending still haunts me today. For the uninitiated, it's about two love-struck teenagers who go joyriding and cut down some stop-signs as a prank. The next day a mother crashes, both she and her child are killed. It's all over the news and headlines. The teenagers are struck by guilt and shame and gradually their lives start to unravel. Any way, I show up at the classroom designated by the notice that came with the book, find it locked and empty. Confused and concerned, I report to the main office and ask for clarification... they sit me in a chair in the back for 45 minutes while they slowly try to figure out where I'm supposed to be. Finally I'm told that the meeting is actually another classroom on the other side of the school. No explanation, no apology. I show up to find the meeting five minutes from ajourning, all the popcorn and cookies eaten, and 30 people looking at me like I'm a moron. Story of my life, I'm the only one who didn't get the memo. Boom, I hated the school, and I hadn't even started my first class. To this day I hold that there was a conspiracy at Mtn. View to make my life a living hell.
Nephilim
Semi-retarded pseudo-religious bullshit masquerading as a complex science-fiction novel. Apparently aliens are fallen angels trying to get back at god for shunning them. The bad guy is named Roswell ::slaps forehead:: and he dies when a "good" angel comes out of a black hole and stikes him down with a sword of flame. A waste of 200 pages, I only read it because of the Nephilim mythos-- but the book only pays lip-service.
Anything by Chuck Palanuieake
This guy writes every teenage-through-college girl's masturbatory fantasies, which makes me concerned about the future of literature. I left Clark College simply because I got tired of people recommending his shit to me. He's original, I'll give him that, but I could be original too if I snorted as much coke. Also I firmly believe that sexuality should be kept completely out of books, not because I'm conservative but because so many authors (including Palalanuekela) are horrible at writing anything related genitalia. Oh Chuck, you're so edgy and cool!
This update's Badass of the Moment Award goes to the producers of the most-watched (free) documentary of all time, Korey Rowe and Dylan Avery.
...And whoever that other guy is. Loose Change has taken a lot of flak from the mislead subservient sheep for its investigative, scathing (and ultimately objective) approach to the events surrounding the September 11th, 2001 tragedy, a day that most Americans it seems would rather forget. Rather than settling for the narrow-minded, closed-book conclusion of the 9/11 Commission Report, Loose Change asks obvious questions such as: Why no Pentagon footage? How does a fire take down two entire skyscrapers (for the first time in history), when double the amount of explosives failed in 1991? How were the black-boxes completely destroyed (again for the first time in history)? For answers, they ask the experts.
Media outlets cursed with heavy conservative sway, such as Popular Mechanics and Talk Radio, have attempted to discredit Loose Change using doublespeak and the opinions of their own so-called (see: paid-off) "experts" with mixed results. Rather than caving, however, Rowe and Avery returned to the drawing board and reassed their information to be released in several updated editions to the Loose Change documentary. Not surprisingly, people still weren't satisfied, but judging by its popularity, the most vocal opponents are often the most few. Truth is an uphill battle, as the history has shown the brightest minds consistently oppressed by the fearers of change. Authorities have even gone as far as to attempt and discredit Rowe and Avery, as though defaming the messengers will somehow alter the bottom line. Rowe, an ex-marine with tours of Iraq and Afghanistan under his belt, has been detained for skipping duty (and quickly released), and both have had to endure constant harrassment and defamation of character by spooks and trolls. Worst of all, they and the rest of us have had to endure countless websites attempting to debug Loose Change but inevitably doing more whining than explaining and falling back on the old gem, "unpatriotism" when coming up against the most difficult questions.
Ha ha, you army boys must feel really squeemish, knowing one from your own ranks (with probably more experience than yourself) is leading the 9/11 Truth parade. I was walking back from class one day and this kid sitting on a wall called to me, asked me if I was interested in a free informational video about the government's involvement in 9/11. When I paused and approached him he curled up a bit as though I meant to hit him or something, rather we engaged in a conversation about our mutual distrust of the mainstream media and their failure to provide an adequette independent investigation. A moment of silence for those Americans we've lost, and further resolve that our cause is in their names. Pity for the mislead souls who look the other way. I left with extra copies of the Loose Change DVD to distribute to my friends and family.
12/5/2006: This is a very unique edition of Wavelength's Page of Rage. It's an experiment actually, a new format that, depending upon the feedback I receive, I may rely on more heavily in the future. I've underlined feedback because I don't really want feedback, I just wrote that to give you, the reader, the warm impression that I give half a shit. I don't. Now, instead of my usual broad assortment of jests, I'm going to focus on a single individual. There, that's the big surprise. You can stop clapping.
For some reason I could never really get this brief but frenzied exchange with the one who was known as Hyena out of my mind. I'm a forgiving person, but somehow I just couldn't let it go. Never in my somewhat limited history of the Internet have I met someone quite like Hyena. (Or Hy3n@, or however he's spelling it these days.) Finally I decided that maybe something good will come of this whole encounter if I put it up here, and hopefully people can just look at it and laugh (I sure didn't.) This is mostly just cathartic for me, but I hope someone out there enjoys it.
(I just hope Hyena himself does not find this page, as he would likely launch into a tirade of garbage that would be very irritating.)
Hyena entered the Doomworld forums one fateful day and began an epic journey of the most retarded arguments ever to be seen on any forum, anywhere.
Being the sort of way-too-analytical person that I am, I've always tried to work out in my mind how his works, and I still can't. My best theory has been that he was simply being a "troller", purposely playing dumb to get people all riled up. If such is the case, I can't imagine why he would spend so much time paying for and updating a website that nobody else will read (and that has, ironically, disappeared as of recently.) Second-best theory: Hyena may be a somewhat intelligent person, maybe slightly above average. He believes himself to be super-intelligent, but maybe deep down he's not so sure. That's why he's very insecure about what he thinks to be a vastly superior intellect. If anyone ever disagrees with him, it's a sleight to his enormous brain and he feels compelled to insult and do anything he can to silence them. It doesn't matter how sound anyone's argument is, he will treat it as a clearly inferior remark that does not even need to be considered, before dismissing it as total and utter garbage, sprinkling his reposte with as much insulting and profanity as possible. I'm convinced he doesn't even read the posts of people who would dare argue with him, merely skimming through so he thinks he gets the general gist.
Here's where it started: Doomworld, the news site for all things related to the game Doom, was posting information about a new project called Freedoom. The idea behind Freedoom is that people could contribute to a project that would replace all of Doom's graphics, sounds, and other resources so they would have a perfectly legal freeware version of Doom that could be distributed on the Internet (and hence people could play Doom online with each other without buying the game. Pretty neat, huh?) Id Software, being the modest giant that it is, will probably shut the whole thing down at the last moment due to artistic-license infringement, but for the time being it is keeping the small community alive and busy. That's right: There are people that still play Doom. Sad, huh?
Hyena posts the following message on the forum regarding the update:
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I'll let you draw your own conclusions, but this is nothing compared to what comes next.
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Okay, because of something he did wrong, "we're not supposed to send submissions anymore". The next time Freedoom is mentioned, he posts this:
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If he had bothered to look on the website, there's a very easy-to-find comprehensive guide to uploading your work via an FTP link. Hyena instead expects the Freedoom moderators to get the sprites from him, when, I might add, there is already a reasonable chaingun replacement. Regardless, I step in and play nice.
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The next time Freedoom updates, he's at it again.
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By this point I'm completely frustrated. He's obviously not listening to the help I'm offering him. I decide out of curiousity to look at the graphics on his site. It's a machine gun drawn in MS Paint with one solid grey colour, with one-tone hands holding it. It looks extremely square. The animation has a bullet casing that flies out the side, something that would look cool if it wasn't just a yellow rectangle hovering in the air for one frame.
I figured that he probably skimmed over my post suggesting how to upload, and decided to lay it out nice and simple for him.
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I want you to notice I said that the existing one was better. I didn't say his work sucks, which I could have. I only said that there was already a chaingun and it was perfectly good.
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Don't you just love this guy?
Incidentally, just to help you to see what sort of person this guy is, here are some things he posted on his website:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------What's retarded is people going off at me for getting drunk before I post. You can't say you weren't talking to me. You can't tell me to mind my own business. If I can see you writing, it IS my business. If I don't agree with something you say, I am PART of the conversation. If you don't like it, you can leave the boards-- or better yet, FLAME me-- and reep the consequences.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Now this is just obnoxiousness. I wonder if he thinks he's hardcore for getting drunk and-- get this-- posting on a message board. Actually, I'm pretty sure he does. I wonder if he also stands in the back at protest rallies and throws snowballs at police-cars from the bushes. This guy is hard core. Not only is he a known troll on ALL of the boards he frequents, but he's so cool that he can drink and post. A man's man, in other words. And I can literally see the conversation he's referring to. A couple of people on a message board are talking about something their friend did that they didn't approve of. Mr. Hyena here happens to be in the room at four in the morning on a weekend and starts ranting about how they're idiots and how their friend can do whatever he wants. And he expects them to leave the room if they don't like his "opinion".
Eventually, Hyena did get banned from Doomworld. (Several times, in fact, and he kept coming back and being the same moron. I'll get to that in a moment.) Here he sums up his experience:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Doomworld banned me cuase someone had the balls to compliment my profile picture and criticize theirs. Although I must admit, it is an admirable way to go out. Cause now whenever someone asks me why I was banned, I reply: "Because I'm cuter then they are, and they know it." The funniest exchange I've had with someone on the forums was a short conversation between myself and the founder/head asshole of Doomworld, "Linguicia"(misspelling of Linguini or something). So I gave him a link to an article with evidence that playing too many computer and video games resulted in brain-rot, and his reply was simply: "No they don't, I'm majoring in Astrophysics." Now I didn't say that HIS brain was rotting, but it's interesting that he did!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here are the highlights of that little rant:
1. He was banned because he was cuter than everyone else, and they know it. (Are you busting a gut yet?)
2. Linguica (The guy who ran doomworld for the longest time) is named after a sausage. It's not a misspelling of Linguini. And the ironic thing is, Hyena misspelled Linguica when he wrote that.
3. If that's the funniest exchange he's ever had, this person has led a sad existence. Now, I know that the average member of Doomworld is pretty dumb-- this is the only intelligent conversation I've ever been witness to, as the rest of them are whatever topic some 12-year-old thought would be cool to share with his school-mates. Topics that 9/10 fizzle into random flamewars and e-penis fights before the second page. The only half-way readable part of the forum is "Post Hell", the place "Where Bad Posts Go To Die" apparently (it should be "Where Bad Posts Go WHEN They Die", but whatever,) because listening to nerds and half-literates argue with each other and stir up shit with the moderators is truly one of the best reasons the Internet was created.
But Hyena is the only one of these school-shooters and college-dropouts who repeatedly evaded bans just to post his mind-numbingly retarded exposition. I've even borrowed some of his material as satire for my page way back in the day, because it was that side-splittingly brilliant.
Another thing that he says which infuriates me a little bit has to do with a sort of philosophy that he and the people of Doomworld share. He thinks that you shouldn't try to "please everyone" with your work, but simply make something that you enjoy working on and if people like it, great. Do you get that? Basically he's saying that constructive criticism is obsolete and there is never room for improvement.
Reality: If people are taking the time to wait for, support, contribute to and download your project, you OWE them something that they will enjoy. Regardless of whether or not it is "free".
When someone gives a second thought to and invests time in your project, they are immediately granted the right to expect something good, if not a masterpiece. Why else would you be making something to release for public consumption? If you work on a Doom level for a month, you owe it to everyone to make it something they will like. If they don't, it means you suck. It means you need to get "critiqued" by folks like me. But in Hyena's world, there is no room for criticism or improvement. Instead, we are all expected to waste our time with the half-done palp we're subjected to, then keep our mouthes shut. British Diplomacy 101.
Even worse, two-thirds of the "long-awaited" projects released on Doomworld are either never released or buggy to the point of being completely unplayable from the get-go. Almost as though nobody playtested them. Almost like they knew it was going to suck but released it any way because they had inflated everyone's expectations to an impossible level and had to give them something.
Tsk, tsk.Honestly, some day I am going to make a review-page dedicated to nothing but Doom levels, and all I will do in the reviews is point out the obvious problems that everyone else is too afraid or too much of an ass-kisser to mention. You know, like I do on this page, but for games instead of everything else.
Lastly, Doomworld has a problem with Origininality. Everyone is always pirating each other's resources and ideas for their next WAD (a WAD is a special file type used to make levels for Doom) and more recently, they have begun steal from other games. Special features such as particle effects, rooms-over-rooms and reloadable weaponry are completely new to Doom... why they don't simply graduate to a modern game that has those features standard (like Doom 3, maybe?) I guess some people just can't get past the 90s. How do they justify artistic plagiarism? This is how Hyena justifies it:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Well, when you think about it, it's kind of hard to be truly original any more. Everything is a copy or variation of something else. In fact, every story ever written and every image ever created was borrowed or inspired by another, pevious piece, all the way back to the Greeks and the birth of image and storytelling.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------A lie hidden behind a shroud of eloquence. The irony is that the statement itself is plagiarized. It's perhaps the most overused excuse on Doomworld for terrible work, and Hyena even copied those exact words from a character named "UAC PR Dept", who probably stole it from another turd, etc. It's a cop-out, essentially; there are plenty of fresh ideas out there, waiting to be thought up, and naysayers of creativity will always complain, for lack of imagination, that there are not.
Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 were released around the same time. It is generally agreed that Half-Life 2 is a far superior game, the same way it is generally agreed that Doom 3 is just another id Software tech-demo with gameplay thrown in as an afterthought. Half-Life 2 contained a "revolutionary" new game element called the Zero-Point Energy Manipulator, or "Gravity-Gun", a tool that can attract nearly any object from far away, pick it up, and release it. It can also be used as a weapon for moving or throwing large objects into enemies. While I think it is completely over-rated and over-used in the game, I do admit it adds a whole new dimension to gameplay, and paves the way for some very interesting puzzles and frantic combat. Everyone seems to love it, and indeed it's grown on me as well. Playing HL2 as much as I do in my spare time, I really can't imagine the game without the God-like Gravity Gun.
So naturally, id Software went and copied it. With their official expansion to Doom 3, Resurrection of Evil, comes a less-functional duplicate of the Gravity Gun called the Gripper or Grappler or something. It handles like an obese cat. The only edge it has over the HL2 Gravity Gun is that it can catch and throw fireballs, but really, who the fuck casts fireballs in the 23rd century? Also, it's implentation into the game is clumsily explained by the story element that your character is a Combat Engineer. What use an Engineer would have for such a device is beyond me, unless Engineers in the 23rd century routinely handle flaming skulls or catch fireballs or work as construction workers in their spare time or something and need to carry an item at a distance from their self. I'm going to have to call bullshit on that. Because we all know that the only reason it's there is to capitalize on the HL2 Gravity Gun's popularity.
So of course the denizens of Doomworld write it off as either a) coincidence, b) id Software somehow thought of it first but gosh darn forgot to put it into Doom 3, or my favorite cop-out c) there is no such thing as originality. See how easy it is to steal stuff, kids? This kind of bullshit would get you fragged in the English Department. Huh. No such thing as originality. So I guess that means the ancient Greeks had Gravity Guns, huh? For handling nuclear waste and fighting off Special Forces I bet?
I'm digressing. Truly the most exasperating experience I had with Hyena was the following debate.
Doomworld had posted an image from a game show in Germany where someone was wearing a Doom T-Shirt. (Now, this is long before the trainwreck known as Doom 3 came out. These days, seeing Doom shirts is not rare at all, but at the time it was a sight to see.) Here's the image.
Linguica added the comment: "I have no idea what sort of game show this is, but I hope the guy won! Thanks quake.de. Remember, send in those Doom pics!"
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I should think the intense moronity in this post would cause physical pain to many of you that read it, in which case I apologize for subjecting you to it. I still feel I should mention a couple of things. First, I learned about World War I in grade 10 honors history class. I guess he didn't. Not only that, but I found out that my history teacher, while compelling, got a few minor facts wrong, as teachers often do. So I did a little private research. (He said that Gavrilo Princip was just some guy who wanted to kill the Archduke and so he took his pistol and went over and shot him. I noticed later it was said that Princip threw a bomb, and that he was part of a terrorist group known as the Black Hand.) The point is, I know what I'm talking about.
Hyena was wrong, plain and simple. The "following orders my ass" remark really pissed me off because he clearly didn't know I was talking about the people living in Germany, not the soldiers. I still to this day regret that I forgot to mention that my freaking great-Aunt Barbel came from Germany and her family fled during the second world war. I suppose this makes her a dirty Jew-killer who doesn't deserve to be upset at nazi-killing video games? (Cough cough, wolfenstein 3d, cough cough. Oh sorry, you know, Winter.) Also notice how he has removed his signature at this point because of the sheer amount of flak he received over it's absurdity.
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I should note that he made the yeast infection joke before to someone else. Oops, should have kept your head down!
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You believe this? He actually got someone else to take his side! Although, in retrospect, it was probably just Hyena under another name. That's exactly the kind of thing-- the only thing-- he could ever do to create the illusion support; feign someone only half as stupid.
Just remember that it is Doomworld, where garnering votes is like luring a colony of clueless ants with a lollipop, then burning them one by one with a magnifying glass while their buddies bumble around in confusion. But arguing with someone like Hyena is taxing on your sanity.
It wasn't long before an administrator deleted his account. There were so many things I had left to yell at him but in hindsight he wouldn't have gotten the point anyway.
I'm still trying to figure out exactly what his reasoning was for thinking Germany started World war I. If he thinks that professors are purposely telling me incorrect information, and that Austria-Hungary didn't actually start the war (it's a mind-controlling scheme to take over the world? I am no stranger to such ideas) then exactly how does he know that Germany did it? My best guess is he doesn't trust "history" because he thinks if few people are still around to tell the story then we can't really get an accurate depiction of what happened. If such is the case he doesn't seem to understand how history works. Eye witnesses see things, they describe them. They get written down. Newspapers existed in 1910, and the assassination of the Archduke happened in front of many many people. When you look at different sources for the same story, you'll see what they have in common and what they don't, and you're able to deduce for yourself what you think the real story is. Every time someone writes an article or a report, they include a bibliography so you can see for yourself where things came from. I checked many different online encyclopedias and they all said that World War I began with the assassination of the Archduke, and the subsequent invasion of Serbia. Now, I also know that Germany did indeed prolong the war as much as possible, to the point of depleting all available resources, despite strenuous peace negotiations by the allied forces. So if you consider the nature of war from that perspective, technically the Germans are responsible World War I. I mean, some guy can throw a bomb. People do it all the time. And some Prime Ministers can make a declaration of war, as seems to be the trend nowadays. But it was Germany's decision to commit to it. Matter of fact, the German war machine was at the heart of both World Wars, and the world would probably be a safer place if the German people were quietly swept under the rug.
But Hyena basically just "decided" that Germany started World War I, and I'm supposed to treat that as more true than historical records? Good job, Hyena. I salute you, you racist ignoramus.
As a side note, I would like to say that I later did some research and found out that Hyena put his zip code in his ICQ profile, so it only took a quick search on internet white-pages to find out what his address and phone number are. (Don't e-mail me asking for them because now that I've stated that I have them on my website, any legal action would be headed my way even if I didn't post them.)
I waited for him to say one more stupid thing so I'd have an excuse to do something with that information, but as it happened, he never did attack me again after that. I even invited him into a chat room where he actually came off as somewhat civil (I was pretty shocked) and after that I felt no need to do anything gruesome. Oh well. Let it be known that I am not hate-filled. Only rage-filled.
Well, probably from the moment I started thinking for myself and realized that faith in anything is dangerous and stupid. Especially faith in politicians and elected figures, or those who decide, based on their personal biases or the biases of their party, how people should live their lives, blatantly ignoring scientific facts and disregarding the legacy of our founding fathers in the process. Reproduction. Marriage. Privacy. And all sectors of Law Enforcement, like good little errand-boys, enforce the new status-quo unquestioningly. Their apathy is disturbing and they wonder why regular hard-working citizens like myself turn around and spit in their faces. Some people may take kindly to having their trust betrayed; I do not. Their foreign policy is even more despicable, concerned only with domestic interests no matter the long-term cost or deterioration of American reputations abroad, and the whole thing is wrapped in a tidy bow to sell it to a docile, sheeplike public. And all sectors of the Armed Forces, like good little christian soldiers, enforce the new status-quo unquestioningly. Then when things inevitably become complicated, they are the first to point fingers and complain. We needed more troops. We were lied to. We weren't trained for peacekeeping operations. We want teh war to be less hard. We want occupying other countries to be easy.
Indeed, they were lied to. We all were lied to.
How could I possibly have faith in a system that allows these kinds of people to weasel their way to the top? And Capitalism is a mixed blessing, at best; don't get me wrong, I love the free-market, but don't think I don't notice that man still exploits man in ever increasingly conniving and intricate ways-- anyone who believes America still follows the grassroots definition of democracy, or believes that the open-ended nature ofCapitalism hasn't been exploited in the worst ways, obviously hasn't read the newspaper lately. As for government, one could argue that it is inherent in human nature to follow any sort of leader who knows how to articulate and give the people what they think they want and need-- that being safety and sustinence. Worse, people seem easily swayed into following obsessive ideals, and that leads to Nationalism, another reason I have lost faith in America. Over time, folks have been conditioned it seems to follow unquestioningly the decisions of their leaders, not only because of a common interest but because they believe they have no choice, due to the implied existence of a majority. I say "implied" because as technology has progressed, the illusion of majority has been more easily blanketed upon the masses, i.e. television and the news media, which are essentially the mouth-pieces of special interest groups, corporations and thus the ruling party. Another example, however subtle, is the way Ann Coulter's books keep getting published. If every station, every outlet is telling you than such-and-such is the popular ideal and accepted as the norm, then what chance do you have to make a difference? Probably a lot better than you realize, but don't expect any help from your neighbors. Chances are they watch the same propaganda you do; major media outlets, the muscle from with information and popular-culture are flexed, have like money and power been consolidated over time by the self-proclaimed ruling Elite; the extent to which is inconceivable to the casual observer. Now, with unmarked planes dropping poisons on our heads and chemicals in the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe-- sadly the side-effects of living in a post-industrial civilization-- with people hesitantly accepting greater and greater sacrifices of liberty such as wire-tapping, military tribunals and domestic spying in the name of an illegal war, and Dora the Explorer teaching your children the language of violence and cheap labor, it's becoming harder and harder to pin-point what conditioning is coming from where, and the effects are so gradual and the sources so well hidden I'm not even surprised people don't notice.
This is apparent throughout the history of this country. The nature of Democracy, Nationalism and Capitalism allow people to become self- serving, docile, outspoken pricks, abusing their freedom of speech and voting priviledges to put the wrong people in power and blindly, loyally push whatever party line is being tossed around this month. They try to force it on their fellow man, then turn around and force it on the rest of the world. "Why can't you be more 'Western'? Our system works!" This creates friction. Which consolidates power. We are easier to control and manipulate when we are split up into several polarized groups. Meanwhile the rich sit at the top of the ladder and laugh, sip their Chardonnay, then go make another campaign contribution to whatever asshole is running parallel to their ideologies this month. And by ideologies I mean whatever suites their lavish, ostentacious lifestyles. This is a cycle that will continue so long as the average Joe American Voter remains at odds with Jane American Voter over how the government should waste our tax dollars on whatever domestic indulgences are popular this month. An endless and utterly useless struggle.
And this is assuming their vote even makes a difference any more; who could ever forget the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004? When Bush scraped by a win based on technicalities and foul-play. The first time I thought it wasn't as bad, because I had yet had to endure four years of plummeting approval ratings (42% last I checked), terrible supreme court nominations, the disastrous mishandling of Katrina, failed social- security reform, a bogus "war on terror", fictitious Iraq intelligence and resulting conflict, abysmal GOP prospects, soaring gas prices, mishandling of domestic issues, unpopularity abroad, accusations of cronyism, increasing mideast violence, deteriorating relations with China, prisoner abuse charges, avian flu, a republican congressional takeover, oil dependence, disregard for Kyoto treaty, Delay's and Libby's indictment, near economic collapse, and whatever the hell happened to Bin Laden? Did I get everything? So it should have been enough of a warning when the Supreme Court appointed a president, because the poll results were "too close". Tii close my ass. Somebody fucked up. And Florida took the blame. Probably on purpose, considering Jeb is the governor. I know because nothing like that has ever happened before in history. And suddenly heavily influential Neo-Conservatives are coming out of the woodwork to the aid of their master, right on cue. 'Man didn't even with the Popular vote. "But Damon," I hear you saying, "He won the Electoral vote!" So? Which is worth jack shit? If my friend and I were in my house picking players for a game of Hoops, should my friend get the special priviledge of picking two people at a time... because he's standing in the kitchen? Doesn't make any sense, does it? That's how the Electoral College basically works. The truth is, Gore had the better vote but Bush had the better shot because a minority of shady folks wanted him in a powerful place to create the Orwellian quagmire that has engulfed the United States and furtherment of the decaying foreign interests you see around you today. And people still doubt the existence of a satanic cult bent on plunging the world into chaos and anarchy. How could you let this happen, America? I've done my part and my hands are clean, but that whole debacle was when I really started losing faith in America, and started realizing that things really were as bad off as I had predicted.
Then, 2004. I didn't care who won because they were both candidates were part of that Skull and Bones cult at Yale and that's all I needed to know. I'd stopped caring about partisan politics in general because it's all just a show put on to sell to the American people the idea that the system hasn't been compromised by fascistic goons and war mongerers. Ironically, the same thing that happened during the 2000 election happened once again; same president, same circumstances, as though no one would notice the coincidence. Only this time, Ohio was the racist fallguy and electronic-voting booths were the assassin. Same as before, Bush "won" the vote but focusing on unrelated and inappropriate topics that appealed to the bigotted sector of his voting majority: gay-haters, bible-thumpers, science-fearers, truthophobes. And what the hell was all that shit about Vietnam? "My opponent didn't support the Vietnam war!" Yeah, so? Is that some roundabout way of saying he doesn't support the current one?
With all this crap going on at home, I haven't the patience or the energy to care specifically about the various peoples of the world. All I have time to care about is general moral principles. It is not good to do certain things, and it is good to do other things. As far as I am concerned the only morally relevent discussion Americans can have is about things which Americans can effectively have an impact on. Everything else dissolves into scholastic discussions. This is why American criticism of American policy is more relevent than American criticism of another countries' polices. Not to say that we shouldn't have that, but I can't really influence the internal politics of Iran in the same way that I can influence American politics. And now even THAT certainty is beginning to falter. I found out that for a time the Republics planned to divide Washington into two states because they're disgruntled over political sway held by liberal paradise King County. And you thought that the conservatives could sink no lower after that whole Spongebob thing... Which reminds me, when did they take Ernie off Sesame Street? How is it possible that so many people can be so homophobic and hold so much power? Oh, right. As if that wasn't bad enough, I went to vote for the next round of Washington District Court Judges and Library expansion/renovation the other day and almost flunked because of how heavily misleading the ballot was. There are several paragraphs of confusing instructions, the first of which commands in large letters: Step One: Vote for your Partisan Pick! implying that you are required to specify a party when you vote.
Of course, you are not.
I know this as fact, but what about all the folks who don't? Does the Elections Commission know this? What about the folks with poor reading comprehension? There are more than ever now, what with the Education system having been refined to serve the military meat-grinder. What does all this tell me? It tells me that there is a guy sitting in an office somewhere counting ballots and casually throwing away the ones marked "democrat". Just like in the 2000 election, only on a more focused scale. It gets worse. Under each party pick was a list of candidates, democrat or republican. The republicans were all familiar names. The democrats however, sans Cantwell, I had never heard of. Have you?
What the Fuck? I wasn't aware people were allowed to run for State Supreme Court under their AIM monikers. My favorite one is Mohammed because it is such an obvious ploy to tap into America's subconcious fear of anyone with a vagualy middle-eastern sounding name. Naturally I was convinced I was the victim of some tasteless joke so I tossed the ballot and got another one, only to discover that the Washington Elections Commission had indeed gone crazy. And now I'm hearing that 10% of the ballots submitted so far have been tossed because people didn't designate a party. Fucking shenanigans. I spent an hour sitting on my bed cradling my sweaty head in my hands, woefully contemplating the quantum nature of reality. Particles interacting with other particles at distant points in space, for no visible reason. It was the only way I could account or conceive of such reckless and random behavior in the world around me.
To make myself feel better, I went outside and jotted down the plate numbers of some of my neighbor's cars that were parked in the street, and anonymously reported them as abandoned. As I sat by the window watching two of the three vehicles being towed away, I reminisced on the sorry state of things. Felt the positive demeanor drain out of me to be replaced by melancholy disdain. I wasn't even safe in my own state any more. Not that I am in any physical danger-- when you live life on the edge, break out of the mold, stir shit up on a daily basis like I do, you get used to being bounced around-- but my sanity is another issue. I've learned to tune out all the SUVs and poorly-conceived bumper stickers and mouth-breathers stumbling around, the relics of a dying ideological movement slowly but surely losing it's grip on the American mindset. I find myself with less to write about, as this shit simply writes itself. All I can do to speed the process and preserve my emotional health is live by my own rules, as I have been doing. Or should I say, the grassroots rules laid down by the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who would surely suffer sudden cardiac arrest if they travelled here today in Ben Franklin's slave-powered time machine.
You ask me why I hate America, but I ask you, why do you hate the World? As Harriet Beecher Stowe said, it's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong... something the best people have always done.
Another botched terrorist attack right in time for the 9/11 anniversary, so Bush has something to plug during his next world-domination jerk-off speech. I'd cite it as proof that America is "more secure", but the supposed terrorists were en route from the UK so it doesn't count. Also, by my last check none of the accused have been convicted of anything. Even a former British Ambassador labels the thwarted attack a Propaganda Stunt. Conveniently, the dudes were using liquid explosives, which means you now have to dump 75% of your luggage before you even enter the airport or else you're a terrorist, too. I always knew airport security were a bunch of incompetant morons but now they're just pulling at straws. And by now you've realized how it all works; War on Terror creates more terrorists, furthers the need for a War on Terror. So you can expect an "attack" every few years at least, be it by an actual agressor or more likely a CIA black-ops group set to maintain the status quo. And each spin of the wheel brings us one step closer to martial law.
Why does anybody fucking care about the 9/11 attacks anymore? Jesus fucking Christ, right now the American economy is teetering like Bush Jr. during his early days of drinking and fucking dogs, the Middle East is alight with another round of stupid religious violence, oil-per-barrel is skyrocketing and thousands of dollars (and lives) are being blown to hell in some godawful country that had nothing to do with our problems. And I'm supposed to fucking care about one day that's honored by people who probably don't even give a shit about New York, much less the 'atheist and un-Amurrican North?'
Fuck the World Trade Center. Fuck the whole fucking day. How about we stop jizzing over the goddamn thing like it's the day we got our cherry popped by some drunken relative, and take another fucking look at our lives as they stand now? Why don't we just kick down the asshole relatives who can't decide how we're going to weep forever at some gaudy monument? I'm sick and fucking tired of being told to mourn forever because our government fucked up royally. Anybody who mourns the World Trade Center-- besides the people who were there or knew someone who was there-- or even mutters 'nine-eleven' should be kicked in the fucking teeth and set on fire. Enough of this shit. Enough of these saccharine bullshit movies. Fucking move on! I'm surprised World Trade Center did as well as it did, considering it has three of the most poisonous elements in cinema history: Nicholas Cage, Firefighers, and WTC. Snore. What makes it insulting is that it's a Stone film about a controversial event, so one is right to expect layer upon shocking layer of intelligent exposition and inquiry, or at least entertain us with the notion of such things (or both, as in JFK). But you will find no such delicious conspiracy-theorizing here. In the words of Steve McQueen in The Sand Pebbles, "What the hell happened?!" All the trailer shows me, is that someone got to him, and he was forced to cop-out and sell-out. What a disgrace. I'll probably remove his other films from my library now, just to spite him. Then I'm going to go watch The Sand Pebbles.
I was planning a special update all about this particular topic but why make the effort when another site has already done all the research? By now you've probably heard of Loose Change, a documentary by Louder Than Words llc, covering pretty much every suspicious element leading up to and surrounding the 9/11 massacre, with some sarcastic wit thrown in to boot. In this modern world of coverups and covert operations, the path to truth is an uphill battle, especially when one has the balls to challenge the "official" story. And Loose Change does so-- much of the time simply by pointing out obvious lies and glaring fallacies in the 9/11 Commission Report. The most common attack on Loose Change is that it's sources are unreliable-- in this case, the Free Press-- but that's just a knee-jerk reaction, paranoia and skepticism. Facts are facts, no matter who you get them from. My roommate, who inspired me to write this section for instance, isn't a "qualified expert" with a "degree", but he sat down and read the most cited books on the topics of explosives and structural engineering, so technically he knows what he's talking about. Same goes for the boys behind Loose Change.
The documentary might be a tad too honest for some people to stomach, and that's alright. If it makes you uncomfortable, you're welcome to go fiddle with your PS2 or see what's on HBO tonight while the big boys watch the documentary for you. All in all it's bloody brilliant, and like all historical documents it is a work in progress and continues to gain credence by the masses as the Bush crime syndicate crumbles. Maddox even gave it a negative tribute on his page (though I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic and actually liked it). Any film that cites basic laws of physics-- such as the fact that never before or since has a skyscraper collapses from fire or impact damage-- can expect to be railroaded by a forum full of naysaying hypocrites. I've been around and gradually realized that the only reason the majority of critics don't like Loose Change is because they got their feelings hurt on 9/11/2001, turning them all into a raving crowd of bandwagon patriots and overriding any sort of rationality they could ever hope to muster.
"Mom? This is Mark Bingham. I just want to tell you that I love you. I’m on a flight from Newark to San Francisco and there are three guys on board and they have taken over the plane and they say they have a bomb. I’m calling you from the Airfone. You believe me, don’t you, Mom? I’m calling you with an Airfone! You believe me, don’t you, Mom?!"
And the thing that bothers me most, is that people who have the "audacity" to question the official story-- the true patriots, according to Walt Whitman himself-- are constantly labelled as tin-foil-hat wearing conspiracy theorists, which most of them, upon even the lightest scrutiny, are not. They are simply asking questions that the government has yet to answer, thereby digging it's own grave. It's sort of hard to be a conspiracy "theorist" when there is nothing theoretical about your position; the facts speak for themselves. I'm sure critics will come up with some magical reason that the entire Air Gaurd was recalled on 9/11. Nevermind the thermite residue found on WTF support pillars. Forget that Larry Silverstein said to "pull" WTC 7 right before it collapsed in a demolition-like fashion. It really isn't relevant that the Bush Administration allowed now public inquiry into the 9/11 Commission report. Let's just forget that the last 100 years ever happened and assume that our elected officials never lie to us. In fact, let's just ignore any evidence that might upset our perfect little world-views. Every day is a new game of Fantasy Land!
Man, if you keep believing that you have to look to your government for constant sustenance, you'll never be truely free or independent.
I like how I am accused of being "insensitive" and even "monstrous" when I confront families and individuals who lost folks on 9/11 with these troubling facts. As though I have a choice. You think I chose for reality to be so harsh? I have to live with the implications just as they do. And how exactly do any of these "conspiracy theories" denigrate the people who lost their lives in 9/11? Does it denigrate those in power in the U.S.? Yes. Does it venerate terrorists and murderers? Absolutely not. It is not anti-American to be skeptical of a government's actions, especially not when that government has erred tragically on numerous occasions. How exactly does one's search for the truth behind 9/11 equate to a lack of sympathy for families of the victims? Under that rationale, it would seem that murders should no longer be investigated because it is unsympathetic to the victim's families. Maybe we should no longer do cancer research, or AIDS research, because it is too painful for so many people to be reminded of their loss. :[
You know who else has the stones to spit in the face of falsehood? Me. War has always been fought over cash. A bit of a stretch in terms of the two World Wars but whenever I research into it I discover that one side always comes to the rescue because they are either morally or financially bankrupt. Can you believe that people still believe the Civil War was fought over slavery? That was maybe 10% of it. The truth is the war broke out because the South had an extensive short-term economic advantage. We don't see it now because we know that the South had zero industrial infrastructure-- slavery is as far from industrialism as you can get-- and was in fact fucking doomed. But at the time, the Confederate States of America were in a position to be the world's largest and most economically efficient agricultural exporter. With the money Europe would have forked over for the CSA's goods, huge armies could have been equipped to walk over the Union. And with a white rich elite to serve as officers and poor white proletariates for cannon fodder, the CSA could have been an enormous problem for the North. Hell, they already were when they were dead broke and outnumbered. If the CSA had been fed enough money, equipped with modern European weaponry and armor, the North would have been fucked. The best outcome would have been stalemate, which is pretty much what happened any way if you consider the actions of democratic Southern representatives (such as Andrew Jackson) following the end of the conflict.
The Civil War was about money. Just like most all other wars in history have been. The rights of slaves were simply a motivating factor for the masses. You can't honestly think that the Union went to war over the slaves...? I mean, rich white people have always hated blacks. It's the way of things. They certainly didn't care about blacks after the war, seeing as how the North didn't raise a finger to help black civil rights for another hundred years, not to mention allowing passage of illegal laws such as the "grandfather" clause, fixed citizenship tests, and sharecropping, which was basically legalized indentured servitude. The Union did not care about black Americans before or for nearly a century after the Civil War.
Nowadays the playing field is Iraq, the collective battleground for every Warlord in the region trying to make a name for himself and ensure that Iraq never returns to the powerful state it once was. Robert Fisk has been going on about this for months now, and has done some excellent reporting on the topic. He asserts that there are death squads operating in Iraq, intent on sparking civil war. Who's behind them is the question. What it comes down to is foreign powers duking it out in Baghdad, just to ensure Shias don't get control of what could potentially be the most powerful state in the Arab World. They're intent on keeping Iraq in the stone age, never to get back to it's former glory as a major player in the Arab League. They fear a Shia "crescent" in the region, stretching from Iran through Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, all the way to Damascus and Lebanon. So it's a distinct possibility that our leaders are fueling the insurgency from both sides. Regardless, the point is to make a parallel to the South during the early 1800s; a resource-rich state taking a beating from special-interest groups on the pretense of empty ideas such as "liberation" and "counter-terrorism". The guise is a "War on Terror". The prize is Oil. Just ask Donald Rumsfeld, shown here shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in the 70s.
I can't read his lips, but I think he had just sold Saddam some WMDs. Then, he and the CIA continued on to equip and train other middle- eastern resistance groups in order to fight the Soviet war-machine-- with no regard to what these groups would do once they'd accomplished that mission.
How is that war going, any way? New figures from the Iraqi Health Department (information gathered from hospitals, morgues etc.) suggests the death toll since the beginning of the war is 50,000 civilian Iraqis. You can safety triple that amount for a more likely figure. In June 2006 alone, more than 100 Iraqis were killed every day. Also, as I've noted on my Kill-o-Meter at the bottom of this page, the figure for U.S. Armed Forces killed in Iraq has surpassed the death ratio of those killed in the 9/11 attacks. Someone, please, wake me up. No American life is more valuable than another. The attacks were an atrocious disregard for the sactity of human life, yes. Al-qaeda hates humanity and needs to be wiped out. But do you really believe they hate our freedom? Educate yourselves. We are governed by evil-incarnate and it isn't our freedom they hate, it's our perverted foreign policy. Ten times as many people die every day from starvation, lack of clean water, or easily-preventable diseases, all of which could be solved for a fraction of the amount of money we spend on weapons. The only reason people attach so much emotional importance to 9/11 is because: how dare they attack Americans! That's all it is: Excessive Nationalism. And now we've killed tens, if not hundreds of thousands of innocent people in two countries to satiate our flawed jingoism. Flag-waving and irrational "Remember the Alamo" thinking has made us all murderers. Congratulations, America!
The really frustrating thing is that the people who endorsed this won't learn any lessons, and when something similiar comes up in 15-20 years time, they'll be all for invading whichever poor fuckers America thinks was looking at them funny. Leaving now is out of the question; they can't just let the country slide into anarchy, after all those pipelines and refineries need guarding. And what exactly was their reasoning for occupying in the first place? (I've noticed they don't even pretend to call it liberation any more.) They changed the story multiple times and then Wolfowitz basically announced that WMD's was the most acceptable reason to present to the voters. Does anyone know how the search for WMD is going? They've been in Iraq a few years now, so they should have ruled out most of the possible hiding places.
Saddam's links to Al-qaeda? Nope. Strike three. But why listen to the evidence when you have righteous indignation to fall back on? My favorite counter-argument is: "Iraq demonstrates, if nothing else, America has finally grown a pair." I love this logic, as if the world is a prison yard and you need to shank someone to prove to all the other countries that you are not a bitch. All Iraq demonstrates is that as long as you aren't foolish enough to engage the U.S. conventionally, you can always destroy them with guerilla warfare.
This is just another case of the US military making themselves look like a bunch of sadistic marauding fuckpumps. Somebody needs to govern these fuckers because they certainly can't govern themselves. But it won't happen, because the word from the top is that the Accords are fair game to break and the life of a Muslim is worth less than nothing. They even compare it to "quail-hunting" (which is actually kind of funny). When your own Commander In Chief says torture and blowing shit to hell is all fine and dandy, when there is no end in site and no clear objective, is it any wonder the troops are acting like a bunch of tooled-up baboons? I see people puffing out their chest patriotically and proclaiming: "If you don't support the war, at least support the troops." Support support support. I am all out of support, assuming I had any to begin with. Consider it my personal sacrifice. Why would I support the people who are willingly fighting and dying for a cause I never believed in? This is not like the Vietnam draft; all of these men are volunteers, and you can rule out college money or "seeing the world" or whatever as an incentive because they could have gone Coast Guard, Navy, or Air Force. Instead, they eagerly pursued the opportunity to be babykillers.
I honestly don't think there is anything we can do to stop the violence at this point. We took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan-- which is becoming a problem again. Iraq was never secure to begin with. The country was engulfed in a civil war long before some General came on television and made it "official". We can put more troops on the ground but what kind of success have we ever had with trying to keep neighbors from killing each other? The debate over withdrawal makes the assumption that the Americans actually can stabilize Iraq. I never fucking cared to being with.
And why should you care? You have more important things to concern yourself with, like whatever white chick was raped and murdered this month and turned into a pop-culture icon so local news has something to rant about while they avoid more serious topics. Props to the CIA for brainwashing John Mark Karr into confessing to the murder of Jon Bennet (for no apparent reason other than he is a little creepy) just in time to distract us all from the President's latest fuck up. I'm glad there was such a backlash to his 9/11 "tribute" speech. First he asked for all Americans to "come together" (unless you're gay, democrat or live in a blue-state) and proceeded to cite the national tragedy as the subject for a political tirade, ridiculously bunching Al-Qaeda, Saddam, and Liberals into the same category, and canonizing the police and firefighters as heroes who died for a higher cause. Bullshit. They were doing their job, nothing more. And that should be enough. To make them into martyrs is disgusting and offensive and a tarnish on their names. Maybe he was too busy "vacationing" to notice that nobody has his back any more.
But enough politics. I want to talk about a more important issue: the fact that NASA and JPL have been purposefully covering up evidence of ancient ruins on the Moon and Mars since the mid 1970s. This includes the existence of giant spires, domes, and extensive complexes several miles high, all of seemingly ancient origin and in a heavily decayed state. Lunar Anomalies did a good job of keeping up until, as typically happens, it's contributors got bored and stopped updating. (Not surprising, considering the slow nature of space exploration, and the perpetrator's ever-improving techniques at misdirection and image-altercation.) I've always found this About.com article to be pretty thorough, even though it's About.com and they think they know everything. Enterprise Mission, while having one of the gayest layouts I've ever seen, has some of the better scans of Martian anomalies such as the D&M Pyramid, City, Tholus, and, of course, the Face.
Your first objection would be that if any of this stuff actually existed, they would have told us about it by now. I disagree. There is a good reason why a government such as ours would not allow such evidence to be disseminated to the public. At least, not purposefully. This country was (supposedly) founded on the precepts of Christianity by the Puritans. Most of the people in our government today are Christians. And the Christian Right ultra-conservatives obviously want to make everyone God-fearing Christians, even if it kills them. Now imagine this government finding undeniable evidence of intelligent life on another planet in our solar system-- say, the remnants of an advanced civilization: in essence, a true extraterrestrial contact. If the public ever found out for sure that the Earth was not alone, the government would lose a tremendous amount of power over us. What other reason would NASA have to tamper and screen pictures? National security? Think about it. The very existence of a race not of this Earth completely and totally destroys all credibility of the Catholic Church, which makes no room whatsoever in its Catechism for extraterrestrial races. This dawned on me for the first time when I was watching the film Contact, and contemplated that had it been modeled after real life, the movie would have stopped the moment the government received the alien transmission. The republican party is especially guilty of this heinous suppression of science. The White House actually has a "Situational Science Advisor", a hack by the name of Nathan Null, who is responsible for spinning the illusion that there are two sides to every scientific report-- even if only one of those sides is supported by facts. Basically, his job is to create controversy where there is no controversy. That is why Global Warming is still disputed. It doesn't fly with the party line, so they created a category out of thin-air to dispute it.
Take this original picture of the Face on Mars, captured by Mars Global Surveyor in 1998.
Yet this is what NASA first released publically, before admitting that it had been tampered with.
My opinion is that they did it to make the structure appear more "flat".
Your second objection would be that it is too far-fetched; that the more you have to assume, the less likely the theory is. The problem is compounded when there is no good reason for the assumption. Unless you have a compelling reason to think that a pile of rock is the remains of an ancient civilization, it's better to assume that it's just a pile of rock. And you'd have a good point. But that doesn't rule out that this apparent pile of dirt might be the remnants of a monument, buried under dirt and eroded beyond recognition after millions of years. Why the hell not? Is it really so far-fetched? What would New York City look like after a million years? It certainly wouldn't look like what we call a "city" nowadays.
I'm not assuming anything. I'm just clarifying that I don't think we have it all figured out, and photos such as these stand out like sore thumbs. I DO know that 1) there is a screening process at NASA for all pictures taken and 2) there HAS been image tampering. Speculate all you want, but those actions speak louder than words. Louder than Occam's Razor. And while I'm at it, fuck Occam's Razor. "The simplest explanation is always the most likely" may work in the animal kingdom, but human beings are intricate creatures who have a nasty habit of complicating matters. So there. I don't think extraterrestrial civilizations are beyond logic or rational thought. Any person worth their weight in brain-cells can rightly assume, with the millions of galaxies, tens of billions of stars and hundreds of billions of planets, that there is someone else out there. The real problem comes down to the issue of transportation; even if we weren't alone, how might we ever know for sure? How would we ever meet another being if the distances between stars is uncomprehendably huge? And what's to say they haven't found us already? Science has already proven the existence of wormholes, distant points in the gulf of space connected by a funnel-like structure in spacetime. Or maybe these beings are a lot closer than we think. The existence of dimensions parallel to our own is also a very likely possibility.
Your third objection: You are afraid. Afraid because this forces you to examine your place in the greater scheme of things, to look closer, in which case you realize that you have no place, and you are just making the best of a brief visit.
Today's Badass of the Moment is ex-Marine and NFL Jockey Patrick Tillman.
NFL Quarterback Pat Tillman answered the call of patriotism after 9/11 and backed out of a lucrative football contract to join the United States Marines and take the fight to Afghanistan, where he fought and died heroically, as was reported by the military and major news networks for a week straight. Landing with the first wave, he rappeled out of an Apache gunship and immediately began firing from the rooftops. Jumping from building to building, weilding an M16 in each hand and grinding a cigar between his teeth, he single-handedly mowed down endless hordes of brown towel-headed evil-doers as they fled in fear. Switching to a bow-and-arrow and brandishing a nifty red headband, he proceeded to explode the enemy mud-huts one after the other, shrapnel and debris flying every which way. Then the bullet of a cowardly sniper pierced his overlarge American heart. Gasping on the ground, Tillman pulled a football from beneath his kevlar vest and muttered "Go long, Osama..." and as a dying gesture, he launched the ball several hundred yards, where it exploded in a devastating firey display, killing the Al-Qaeda leader and several biochemical weapons factories in the process.
::touches earpiece::
Oh, actually it turns out he was mowed down by his own guys because it was dark out. Nevermind.
Reminds me: Word up to all the veterans-of-popular-wars out there. I say veterans because on principle I don't support anyone in active-duty right now. (Why would I support soldiers fighting a battle I don't agree with?) Don't worry PFC Johnny, I'm sure somebody out there will put a ribbon on their bumper for you. I'm going to specify further and say only veterans who fought before 1945. And in WWI only foreign troops because the sinking of the Lusitania was probably justified. And in WWII, only the soldiers who believed they were fighting to end fascism. Not the ones who believed they were fighting for God or America (let's start thinking outside the box, what do you say gentlemen?) Ultimately, that's still at least a hundred people I'm commemorating, right?
I showed my support by flashing a thumbs-up to this old drunken soldier in the window of one of the bars we passed on the way to see The Proposition.
Seriously; fucking veterans, always on the make. Why can't they get it through their thick skulls that when they can't fight anymore they're just a burden on the rest of us? It's amazing they go on about how much they want to serve the country, but the second they come back they just can't get enough of whining, sniping people from the trunks of cars and suing right-thinking two-armed folks. This is one of the most appealing things about the Japanese Kamikaze pilots; You don't have to put up with the fuckers after the war.
If I see one more Popular Science article about "TEH FUTRE OF MODERN WARFAIR!!!!!1" I'm going to puke. I remember one about the "future soldier", which was some guy in black kevlar with an OICW rifle and the nametag "Patterson". If I recall, he had a wrist-mounted rocket launcher and motorcyle-helmet configuration to complete this ridiculous gay-ninja ensemble. All that flash and money, when the simple reality is if you shoot someone, they die.
One of the reader responses to this article was something like "I keep seeing all these articles about the future of warfare... How about future PEACE?" which is great, but they actually let Patterson himself respond. I don't remember what he said about the matter the same way I don't remember what a child with a toy gun says about pre-agrarian capitalism; he obviously wouldn't have had anything compelling or believable to say on the matter because it was simply above his ability to comprehend, so I stopped reading.
The idea of a grunt giving his opinion on How The World Works makes my stomach turn. I got into a "debate" with some air-force pilot while playing Battlegrounds 2. He was playing as a Yankee (what a surprise) and he said something retarded like "See, guys like me are out fighting so guys like you can go to college and not have to worry about China invading the 'States!" Please. Leave the world politics to think-tanks and diplomats, soldier. There may have been a time when you were worth something, but now you're just a tool of corporate greed. "Guys like me" are going to school so that guys like you can stop carpet-bombing civilians and land that little toy plane of yours and come home and get a real job.
Think PEACE. This new "cloaking" stuff is neat, and I support the idea of using partial-invisibility to study wildlife rather than killing brown-people. If that's not "cool enough" for everyone, well, I forgive you and would be happy to let you work for me when you drop out of whatever it is you are doing.
Today's Badass of the Moment Award goes to comedian Stephen Colbert (host of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central) for his royal thrashing of the Bush Regime on national television at the White House Correspondents Dinner on April 29th.
It's common knowledge that public events featuring Bush are painstakingly screened to weed out anyone not vehemently aligned with the ruling party, so as not to make the man uncomfortable and to make it easier for national media outlets to spin Bush as having any remaining support. Clearly, someone dropped the ball this time; one will be forgiven for expecting the Secret Service to rush onstage and tackle Stephen in our First-Amendment starved nation. His speech is a masterpiece of scathing political commentary and educated sarcasm, and like all good comedy it overcomes the climate of fear in our country and has the balls to say what everyone worth their merit is thinking but afraid to say. The whole thing can be found here. A commemorative site can also be found here. Also keep an eye out for the audition video with a camera trained on Bush for the entire duration so you can see his pained facial expressions.
I'd like to give some special recognition to my grandfather, who died a year ago around this time, about week after his 91st birthday. Okay, I don't remember the exact date, but I remember it was a Saturday because I was still up at 3 AM playing Chronicles of Riddick when we got the call. That was a good game.
Fred was very old, but still quite sharp for his age. A brilliant engineer, he patented many inventions in his day, including a device to maximize the efficieny of thermocouples (which he constructed in his basement to survive the Depression.) When he wasn't creating fascinating devices out of wood in his workshop, he was teaching me to use a computer, letting me drive him around the golf-course (despite my age), and taking me to see some gay new Disney movie that I knew he secretly abhored but put on a show any way to please me. Man was a straight, soft-spoken pacifist and he LOVED M.A.S.H. And he actually understood the show, unlike actual Korean War vets who are offended because "the Korean War wasn't funny" despite the program's obvious underlying anti-war message. And he loved James Garner.
We'd spend the summers swimming in the crystal waters of the Fairway Village members-pool, driving down to the Gorge to watch the trains go by, or watch movies on the VCR-- those classic movies from the days when movies were GOOD-- Father Goose, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, To Catch a Thief, The Navigator, The Gods Must Be Crazy... Long walks in the cemetary, secret clubs, Goosebumps, Sim City 2000, beginner electronics kits, marble roller-coasters, rubber-band guns... Hell, he even fixed my Super-Soaker when it got clogged with dirt. We did everything together; one will be forgiven for suggesting he was a "father" to me, when my actual father was off in another state being a drunk workaholic. This is incorrect; he was always a Grandfather to me, nothing more nothing less, and fulfilled that duty admirably. But he was not a replacement for a father-figure. 80-year-old men, despite their wisdom, are incapable of such deeds. And this is where the plaster begins to crack; around the time he turned 80, something changed in his head and he turned into an asshole for pretty much the remainder of his life. This and the fact that I was getting older too tore us farther and farther apart, so that I visited him less and less and to the point that the enthusiasm I displayed in his presence became an bad act to keep the old man happy, and content that he was useful. There is nothing I despise more than men with unwanted advice and undue criticism; my life seems plagued by them. If I see one more Nascar-loving, Hummer-driving asshole "teaching" his kid to "be a man" and generally commit what amounts to legalized child-abuse, I'm going to detonate a dirty-bomb in downtown Vancouver and impose mass-sterility.
Still, the fondest memories of my childhood stem from this man, and despite my two-sided love, I owe him much. Much more that I could ever express in a few paragraphs. I have two regrets: one, that I never stood up to him. Second, that I didn't get more play out of him before he went. Documented more of his tales. He has his companies and his inventions to maintain his name, and left more than a small mark on our family, to give him that much. Also, I shouldn't neglect to mention that I am currently living 95% off of the savings he put in place for my education, a freedom afforded to him by the half of this country that believes in complete financial liberty. Without that, to make ends meet I'd probably have to enlist in the Army (right), or worse, become a full-time Cook. So above all else I owe him for that.
I threw this together in a few minutes (as should be painfully obvious), wiped my page and threw the image up there in place of everything else. Then I posted the following bulletin on Myspace:
the Department of Homeland Security shut down my web-page!!
I woke up this morning to find this where my page used to be.
I knew they'd been watching me for some time and were waiting for an excuse to shut me down. I find it humorous that the government feels threatened by the voice of one college student on the internet. Guess that shows just how desperate the Neo-cons are becoming as the House of Bush crumbles?
You can bet that this isn't over and I will be putting up quite a fight.
I immediately received several stunned messages from friends, expressing their disbelief and outrage. I won't quote them here for the sake of their dignity but suffice it to say, out of five or six people only one of them figured it out, and only after sitting on it for a day or two.
I'm a little shocked that I got away with this considering the shoddiness of the joke (I have no idea what section V article XXVI of the Patriot Act is, assuming there even is one-- I haven't examined the Act for several months) but under the circumstances I will reiterate that NO, the Department of Homeland Security did not in fact "quarantine" my page, and I highly doubt that it's on their "to-do" list (though if it was, I would find it humorous and even flattering.)
To the people who wrote in ready to take up arms: Thanks for making my joke a success! I'm sorry if you feel I've insulted your intelligence or offended you in some way. But, man, you've got to admit that it was pretty funny!!
As usual, it got me thinking about religion. As I've probably mentioned before, I know a lot of uber-religious folks who are really great people, composed of strong moral fiber and magnetic personalities due to their soft-spoken extroversion. This likeability is probably due to the fact that they have shaped themselves to match their interpretations of the message of the Bible and the message of their mythical figure Jesus. In doing so, they become better people; kind, intelligent people, understanding that the world is a diverse place and that it is their place in it to be tolerant and acceptant of other people's beliefs. The kind of people you want to be your friends. Unfortunately, my observations have revealed to me that these types of religious folk are few, and often difficult to discern from another type of devout follower, one that behaves the same way but only as a ploy, an act to buy time as they search for an opportunity to "convert" you to their way of thinking. (They do this because they are insecure about their beliefs, and are actually closet-athiests.) These folk often give themselves away quickly enough, because if they aren't knocking on your door with pamphlets, they are vainly engaging in redundant creationism/evolution debates under the false assumption that there is any debate to be had; evolutionary scientists have time and time again obliterated every single argument ever put forth by creationists. That's why you don't see creationist "science" in scientific journals; there is no science to it. "Intelligent-Design" is just a term used by creationists to sound smart and give the impression that their foundationless claims are science; they are not science. They should not be taught in classrooms, sans perhaps a Mythology class. Religious study groups, and the evolution/creationism "middlemen" who teach them exist only to appease loud-mouthed right-wing pundits. Science creates conclusions based on repeated experimentation and observed evidence; a theory isn't "just a theory"; it is the product of strenuous, repeated testing and the conglomeration of facts, hypotheses and other theories. There is no higher teir for truth in science than a Theory.
Creationism, the belief held by pretty much anyone who takes the Bible (and particularly Genesis) literally, starts at a preconceived notion and "creates" observations and assumptions about the known Universe to support the claim. This type of behavior is inherently flawed and by extension, useless, making any argument put forth by Creationists, in the past, present, or any time in the future, irrelevant and unworthy of any close scrutiny. Finally, the last thread bible-thumpers always cling to when cornered is "science can't prove that god doesn't exist." True. Because science doesn't need to. Since Creationists are the ones making the outrageous claim, they are the ones who must come through with the evidence; scientists need not attempt to disprove something that cannot be proven in the first place. This is called the Burden of Proof. Creationists-- Garden Variety or Young-Earth Variety-- expect everyone to abide by their fantastical beliefs without any proof (faith/pseudoscience), challenging naysayers to prove them wrong. But it is their responsibility to back up their absurd claims, not ours. Since they can't, they have no ground to stand upon.
The kooks who are looking to convert you are the ones you need to watch out for. Even if you explain to them the flawed logic of even their most core values before getting to their main "argument", they will just change their tactics and proceed to yell a little louder. Don't expect to hear "My God, you're right! What was I thinking? I've been going about life all wrong! I don't need a false deity to guide me, or it's church to control me! There is plenty of moral righteousness inherent in the world around me to get by! I've been wasting my time, and yours! I'm a hypocrite!!" And even if you manage to ditch them, the bigger ones are still out there, hiding behind their Terry Schiavos and September 11's and War on Terror. There is always someone behind the curtain, manipulating current events for the sake of personal gain. In the case of the backlash to the Denmark Cartoons, it's obvious to me that under normal-- or perhaps less flagrant-- conditions, the cartoons would have gone completely unnoticed and uncared for by all, including angry, militant Islam. Satirical cartoons are posted in papers all the time-- that is the point of political cartoons, to poke ridicule and provide honest, unbiased criticism of something, simply by showing something as it is, with a little humor thrown in so it can be considered a cartoon. So why, all of a sudden, is Political Islam in a swirling rage over some cartoons posted in an obscure newspaper in Denmark. Methinks it is either a) a subtle attempt by the white house to garner support for the failing "War on Terror" by stirring up a muslim hornet's nest and rile forth the "brown-people" racism inherent in American and European Culture, or b) a subtle attempt by fanatical Political Islam holy leaders to garner support for their failing flawed and broadly oppressive religous crusade by stirring up a muslim hornet's nest and rile forth the "white-infidel" racism inherent in Islamic Culture. Someone is pulling strings, playing both sides, and I will have no part in it.
Everyone is supposed to be so understanding and tolerant of Islam, but the moment an actual free society exercises its right to free-speech, and does something Islam doesn't like, they are allowed to behave like vicious animals? They did more to hurt themselves than the cartoonists by lashing out in such a predictable fashion-- this is exactly the kind of behavior the world has come to expect from them, and which the cartoonists aimed to satire. With each subsequent flag-burning and suicide-bombing, they gleefully shoulder the stereotype of jealous desperation and ill regard for human life, giving their already dying religion even more of a bad hype. (Maybe they're just being really ironic?)
To further expand on these issues from the perspective of a native European, I'm going to open the floor to a guest-writer, my school-mate and very good personal friend, Jessina.
Danish Cartoons and the Evolution/Creationism Debate
by Magica_de_Spell
Lately, I've been thinking about religion a lot. For years, I've been trying to figure out where I stand when it comes to religion. Usually I come to the conclusion that life is much simpler when I don't even try to think about religion. However, it seems that I regularly decide to give God another chance, last time having been last fall here in Ellensburg, when I kept going to the GCU (Generation Church University) services for about a month or so. What a surprise that I did not find God, and little by little I started feeling like they were just another bunch of closed-minded Christians even though I had at first felt they were pretty relaxed and different. In some ways they were more open-minded, I give them credit for that, and I liked their band.
During the past month I've been thinking about religion for two reasons; first, the Muslims went crazy over the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed, and second, I realized what a big issue the Evolution-Creationism debate is in the States. In my opinion, neither of the issues should be an issue at all, and both of them have reached such huge dimensions that I am having a hard time understanding how ignorant and brain-washed some people are.
The issue about Danish cartoons immediately reminded me of an article I was required to read for one of my classes last fall. The article was called "The Clash of Civilizations" and was written by Samuel P. Huntington. Here's an excerpt of the summary I wrote about the article:
"In his article 'The Clash of Civilizations', Samuel P. Huntington talks about the changing nature of conflicts in the world. During the past few centuries, the conflicts mainly took place between nation states in the Western world. Changes began to take place after World War I and by the time of the beginning of the Cold War conflicts had become ideological in nature. However, Huntington believes that in the future conflicts will primarily be neither ideological nor economic. Instead, cultural conflicts between the Western and non-Western world and between different civilizations in the non-Western world will occur. A major change in the shift from ideological to cultural conflicts is that an individual can always jump from one side to the other in ideological disagreements, but when the conflict is between different civilizations, an individual is confined to belong to the civilization he was born and raised in. With the decreasing importance of economic and social development in determining boundaries between civilizations, religion has again become an important dividing factor between the civilizations. As Huntington points out, a person can be a citizen of more than one country, but belonging to more than one religious sect is not usually possible."
The rage over the cartoons has led to riots and the burning of Danish flags and embassies in Middle Eastern countries. Dozens of people have died in various demonstrations, and the artists receive daily death-threats. An 8-year-old boy has been shot to death. I want to ask the Muslims involved in these violent demonstrations: is this all really worth dying for? Sadly, I know what kind of an answer I would get. These people don't appreciate life, and are more than willing to die for their beliefs. But how can they justify the death of a child?
Here are links to a couple of articles on the BBC News website. The articles discuss the background and causes for the whole issue:
Cartoon row highlights deep divisions: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4678220.stm
Divisions and inconsistencies: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4708216.stm
The first article lists three reasons for why this whole issue got blown out of proportion, and these reasons are the rise of political Islam, America's war on terror and modern transnational media. All of those are valid reasons, but we have to remember that the cartoons were published in late September last year and the issue didn't get blown out of proportion until in late January. The second article goes deeper and examines how the information about the cartoons reached the Muslims and why they angered them so much. It wasn't just the cartoons, there was more to it: additional cartoons that never got published in the newspapers.
I have always taken the freedom of speech for granted. Now that I've spent some time in the United States, I've noticed that despite how much they talk about the freedom of speech, they still have a lot more limitations to what they can say or show on television than what I have been used to in Finland. When it comes to the cartoons, I am disappointed in both the United States and Finland. While both countries have condemned the violence and destruction caused by the demonstrators in the Middle East, they also have expressed their sympathies to the Muslim community, and the cartoons have not been printed in any major publications. At the same time, both countries also have defended the freedom of speech while saying that religious beliefs have to be respected and that offensive material should not be published. Is there a contradiction in what the leaders of these countries are saying? YES. I am extremely disappointed in my country for not standing up for the freedom of speech the only right way: by encouraging the major newspapers to publish the cartoons. The Ayn Rand Institute website has a good article concerning this and can be found here: http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=11837&news_iv_ctrl=1021
How about the Evolution-Creationism debate, then? Last week CWU had a "Darwin week", which consisted of a series of lectures and discussions. I never realized this issue is so huge in America, and it made me wonder why this is not an issue at all in Finland. Last week I attended every lecture and discussion I could, hoping to find out the answer and hoping to understand a little bit more about the whole issue in general. In some ways I am even more confused now, but the good thing is that I redefined my own religious beliefs (or lack of them) again. All along, I have been avoiding labels, but I suppose I would have categorized myself as an Atheist, but now I would rather call myself an Agnostic. And why is that? Well, I believe in science. As for now, science hasn't proved the existence of a god, but it hasn't proved that there is no god, either. But since there is no scientific method to test for thesupernatural, the existence of a god simply cannot be proved or disproved by science. Therefore, I have changed my mind slightly and admit that there may be a god, even though personally I tend to believe such a possibility is unlikely.
As for why this issue is huge in the States but not in Finland, I am still confused. Of course, in Finland there is no separation of church and state (about 85% of the population of Finland belongs to the Lutheran church), and religion is taught in school starting in the first grade. Teaching evolution in schools has never been an issue. Not to my knowledge, anyway. Now I can't help but think maybe I just haven't noticed. I'm sure we do have some fundamentalist creationists in Finland as well. What is really interesting here is that to me it seems that even though in the States church and state are separate, I get the feeling religion plays a far bigger role in the politics than it does in Finland.
I am pretty confused about fundamentalist creationists too. I can't believe how they can believe what they talk about. There were a couple of old guys that attended the Darwin week lectures and discussions, and both came across as typical religious idiots to me; they babbled on and on but never answered the questions they had been asked. After seeing how my Geology professor handled these old guys and other ignorant people, I have so much more respect for him. I could never have been as patient as he was with them, but at the same time he also explained to them why their science is bad. I don't think the old guys got it though. In class, though, he admitted the old guys took the conversation somewhere where he didn't really want it to go, but added that it was nice to have them there so that everyone could see that those guys really existed and that we weren't spending all that time talking about phantoms. At the end of his last lecture on Friday he also said something that really made me think. He said that he tells people that if they can't both keep their faith and accept evolution, then he suggests they keep their faith, because evolution isn't going to change their life. At first, I thought that was weird coming from someone who claims to be an agnostic, but now I feel like he does have a point. Somehow I've let my annoyance against religion grow so big that I've thought that since they are promoting their views pretty aggressively, I can do the same. Now I realize that certainly isn't the way to do it.
Being understanding and compromising is more likely to make people listen. And after all, there doesn't have to be a controversy between what the Bible says and evolution. This site provides the evidence for the Bible not mentioning that the Earth couldn't be 4.55 billion years old: http://www.answersincreation.org/question.htm. Another site, holding the opposite views, can be found here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4005.asp. The latter site just cracks me up. I wonder if they even realize how bad statements like this sound: "Much more young-world evidence exists, but I have chosen these items for brevity and simplicity." I strongly encourage you to check out the evidence they offer, it will make you laugh. What really is funny about that sentence, though, is that an article about the flaws of radiometric dating on the same site explains every piece of "evidence" they got without worrying about the length and simplicity of the article that in fact keeps repeating the same things over and over again. So much for brevity and simplicity.
What it seems to me is that they just don't want their young Earth evidence article sounding as ridiculous as their radiometric dating article sounds, but even with the brief and simple explanations the article could not avoid sounding ridiculous. The article about radiometric dating can be found here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v24/i4/radiometric.asp. Here's an example: "The only foolproof method for determining the age of something is based on eyewitness reports and a written record. We have both in the Bible. And that is why creationists use the historical evidence in the Bible to constrain their interpretations of the geological evidence." So, if I record things that never happened and are untrue as "facts", will they be considered a valid source for scientific research in the future, on the basis that a written record is considered a foolproof method? How can we be sure the "foolproof written record" found in the Bible wasn't just some guy fucking around and making up stories? Another question I would like to ask these people is that how come they spend so much time trying to come up with evidence for why scientific theories are wrong, instead of trying to come up with better rational explanations? Wait, I forgot, these people aren't rational, and since all their explanations must be supported by the Bible, of course such explanations can't exist.
The radiometric dating article is funny in that it blames the scientists of the exact thing that the creationists are doing; accepting only the results that fit their expectations. The writer fails to recognize that the only way to reconstruct the history of the Earth is by incorporating multiple sources of data and trying to make sense of the big picture. This is why the results given by radiometric dating are compared with those from other sources. At the end of the radiometric dating article the writer lists a number of instances where the ages of the rocks had been concluded to be uncertain. This brings up another point that the creationists just got so wrong; the scientists do not claim to know everything! Of course, this can be a hard concept for a creationist to comprehend, since their method is to come up with a theory first and the evidence afterwards. Seriously, why am I even wasting my time in explaining why that crappy piece of writing does not contain reliable information?
If anyone actually read through this, I'd like to hear your comments. If I said things you disagree with, I'd especially like to hear what you have to say. I'm still in the process of figuring out about this stuff and would much like to try to understand people who have different views. I realize Page of Rage isn't necessarily the right place to post something like this, but what the hell, I didn't stay up the whole night to write this and keep it just to myself. Also, this is my way of trying to get used to having people read my texts. It has always been horrifying for me to think that my professors read my papers, and whatever I write on message boards or anywhere can be read by a lot of people. So, I decided I have to start posting my rants here instead of my LiveJournal that I keep private. I will stop feeling embarrassed eventually, right?
I almost forgot. One more site, The Truth for Youth: http://www.thetruthforyouth.com/standard/main.htm. This site is just so entertaining. It's sad it's not a joke. Check out the evolution comic. All that false information... oh my... This is the kind of crap I don't want my kids (if I ever decide to have any) to be exposed to.
Now for some nostalgia.
First, there was the Luigi in Super Mario 64 Message Board. At least a decade ago, a giant community of devoted (and mostly pre-teen) video-game enthusiasts searched for the plumber's brother in the polygonal halls of what is arguably the best video-game ever made. Besides a few leads and curious discoveries, they came up empty handed. But I think they call knew, deep down, that Luigi wasn't hidden anywhere in the game; that was just a ruse to hang out on a cool board with cool people that they could connect with. An excuse to have a place to go and be a part of. But the search held them all together. Unfortunately, the creator and leader of the search, Jason, disappeared, and the search itself began to die soon after. The board became increasingly populated by unsavory characters who proceeded to undermine the conversation and usurp the management. The board fell into chaos. A hacker, who claimed he was working under the approval of the long-missing Jason, converted the Luigi Board into a moderated discussion forum in which each post and subsequent reply required strict moderator approval. This was an irresponsible and half-assed attempt by the invasive newcomers to stem the turmoil that they themselves had created when they joined the community. Now, this was back in the early 90s.
Back when movies sucked so everyone just quoted the trailers and pretended they had seen the film. "The dishes are done, man!" "Look! It's the leaning tower of CHEEZA!" Back when good alternative rock was just finding it's footing and heavy metal was starting to blow. And nowadays, even those bands are starting to turn... well, gay. Yes, I have a special knack for identifying which bands are gay, based on listening to their music. Thankfully, the 90s brought with it the realization that most male vocal artists suck and most female vocal artists sound like they're being raped, so that a pleasant equilibrium formed somewhere in the middle. In fact, some tracks didn't even start sounding good until they were re-recorded by female vocalists. (Just listen to The Smith's drunken-sounding version of "How Soon Is Now?" and "It's My Life" and then treat yourself to the superior No Doubt and Sonic Jihad versions.)
Any way, this was back before worms or banner ads or internet security, before the internet turned to shit. Back when it was much smaller than it is now. The Luigi board was hosted by InsideTheWeb, the primary message board service at the time. This was both a pro and a con; while it hosted some of the best boards, it inevitably became infested by some of the worst types of people who had gathered enough brain-cells to log onto cyberspace. Imagine that the internet is the Universe, and Earth was InsideTheWeb. Only, instead of a planet, Earth is a giant Toilet. Now imagine a bunch of turds floating around in that toilet, and you've got InsideTheWeb. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this analogy; since we've established the negative side, imagine the positive side is, oh I don't know, the relief you get from a bowel-movement. Alright just forget the analogy. I was one of the longest-running and most respected members of the Luigi board. When I was not immediately elected and given full moderator priviledges when the board fell under martial law, it became immediately apparent to me that the care and preservation of the Luigi Board was not in the best interest of the usurpers.
Any true, loyal member would have put me in the position immediately, knowing I had a talent and reputation for managing such things. So I worked a little "behind-the-scenes" magic; my friend and I ran some searches and send out a mass-mail to nearly all the most trusted Luigi Board members, explaining to those who were not already enlightened about the direness of the situation and rallying them to our cause. Apart from about a dozen or so newcomers, all of the best (and oldest) members boycotted the board and disappeared, leaving the Luigi in Super Mario 64 Message Board a deserted cess-pool ruled by a widely-despised tyrant hacker. However, the issue of the corrupt newcomers still had to be dealt with. It was well known that they cared nothing about the Luigi search and were merely there to cash in on the 'buzz, act tough, and generally cause trouble. Even though the most loyal of us had more-or-less grown out of and moved on from the game, it was the principal that we had to enforce; these savages didn't care about video-games, much less Super Mario 64, and they certainly paid no respect to the long-forgotten Luigi search that only a few innocent, uninformed souls still pursued. The message board fell into disarray. A civil-war broke out.
A sister-board was created to manage the arguments that had recently errupted on the Luigi board. Ground Zero became the main battle-field for a bunch of e-penis fights between bickering children that had no interest at all in the original purpose of the Luigi board; nothing was really getting accomplished. Even worse, Ground Zero was moderated by a soft-spoken but no less sleazy character who went by the monicker "The Editor". He constantly, and annoyingly, inserted his unwanted opinion into most posts, claiming to be a "neutral" benefactor, while clearly housing an unfair prejudice toward those of us trying to maintain the old ways. The joke was on us: Ground Zero turned out to be just another dirty playground run by another hooligan looking to get attention by sticking his fingers in other people's business. Several other sister boards were created by Luigi board loyalists, private havens for those of us who still wished to have formal, open conversation while maintaining the ruse of an interest in the search for Luigi in SM64. All of these boards either died off due to lack of interest, or were found out by the usurpers of previous boards, hacked, and subsequently placed under strict, corrupt, biased, moderated watch. It had been a long, fun run but the whole place eventually fell to ruins.
Thankfully, InsideTheWeb took notice and decided to shut the whole operation down. InsideTheWeb died, all of the message boards disappeared, and everyone went their separate way. Forgive me for romanticizing the whole era, but I owe those old InsideTheWeb boards so, so much. I posted vigorously, often several times a day, for at least two years straight, often among other posters several years older than myself and also much more articulate. I was forced to struggle constantly to increase the quality and depth of my writing and grammar so that I would be taken seriously and so that I would make a name for myself. I'm trying to say that it is InsideTheWeb that helped me become such a good speller and articulate writer. Without all of those message boards and all those nasty flame wars, I would never have passionately written so much as I have now, and never have ended up pursuing English as a possible major. My writing skills have helped me in so many other tasks that I often lose track of where I'd be without the internet and it's constant plethora of retards for me to not only stomp on, but maybe teach me a few more tricks in the process.
There was a time long ago when I couldn't log onto AIM for 10 seconds without being accosted by some religious fanatic or military ideologue who didn't like the ring of my user profile. This has helped my argumentation skills quite a bit if nothing else. (People who believe fervently in stuff are so cute!) Which is fun for a while, until it gets predictable. So I had to move on to bigger and better things to, you know, help myself grow. Those were the good ol' days. Imagine, now you have to go out of your war to find a good liberal, free-thinking message board that isn't full of obnoxious teenaged feminists or narrow-minded power-hungry gen-Xs. Take PWOT for example; while it first it appears to be an original and inspired humor site, upon closer inspection one finds that all of the jokes and articles have an arrogant, often right-wing racist slant. If one is to dive into the site's forums, this becomes abundantly clear: Nearly two thirds of the members have the same avatar, that of a dense-looking black man, staring dumbly off into space, perhaps wondering where his next welfare check is coming from and if he'll be able to buy any more twinkies. The remaining thirds are your typical, depraved Zionist Jews, the kind that want to control your media and grub all of your money but don't want to work for it, and play the Holocaust card every time someone calls bullshit on them.
As for Hispanics, interestingly I've never met one online, probably because they are all busy running drugs across the border and doing yard-work. Seriously though, I'm just kidding. Good luck to all those armed Militia down there, patrolling the borders and attempting to keep the country from turning into a giant Mulato that performs cheap labor. I find it sadly ironical that George W calls these people "dangerous renegades", when during his State of the Union he madea scene of reminding each and every American that it was their responsibility as much as his to keep the country safe from foreign threats; this is exactly what they are doing. I also find it sadly ironical that my brother-in-law busts drug runners on a daily basis, while my sister enjoys Mexican food every chance she gets. Of course, they're not all bad. It's only a few million ruining it for the rest of us. They should dig a giant canal that stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, fill it with gasoline and light a match.
This would not only keep the threat at bay, but provide new, exciting jobs to jumpstart our economy; someone has to keep that fire burning. Medical aid and ration kits would be airlifted over the flames to ease the angry Mexicans into the revolutionary new idea of taking care of themselves for a change. Sure enough, a few heroes will try to cross the river of fire on hang-gliders built of clay and sheet-metal. If they managed to make it over without melting, they'd be greeted by three layers of barbed-wire fence with dual-bore m60 machine-gun posts every 100 feet. We could maybe build a few Wal-Marts at intervals along the perimeter to funnel the gliders into pre-determined choke-points. Inevitably someone is going to get through, slippery goofs that they are. This is fine as the whole point of the exercise was to thin out our southern newcomers so that the minority was entering the country at the same ate as other minorities, so that people would stop picking on them and complaining that they are "taking over the country". This isn't a "security fence" in the fashion of the one Israel built to "protect" it's people from the blood-thirsty Islamo-Facist intifada.
But enough Spike Leeism.
Since I left for Ellensburg I've gotten in trouble with the law several times. Actually, for the first time in my life, but about once every month since I arrived... on one occassion for actions committed while I was home for winter break.
I saw one of those huge electronic signs set up at the off-ramp for Vancouver and it said something on it like "FIREWORKS BANNED NEW YEARS EVE" and something inside of me just snapped. The police, the city council, the road service, I really don't give a shit what fucked-up authority tyrant put it there -- You just don't ban fireworks on New Years Eve.
Land of the Free.
I decided something had to be done. I would be the voice of the people. In preparation for New Years, I went out of my way to distract and confuse local law enforcement. A few days before zero hour I drove around and put up signs displaying "FIREWORKS AHEAD" in areas where there were certainly no fireworks that I knew of. Then, on New Years, not only did I set off an ass-load of fireworks, but I verbally-abused a cop who came 'round looking for trouble. He made the mistake of shining one of those god-awful spotlights in my eyes, as though I were some kind of Deer and would freeze instantly and stare dumbly. Instead, I took off around to the other side of his squad car, where his spotlight couldn't reach. When he asked me where I was going, I told him "out of the way of your fucking deathray." Then, like a good predictable cop, he started up with the reverse-psychology crap. "Did you know that fireworks are illegal?" I shrugged. "Did you know that it's New Years Eve?" He then revealed to me the source of the electronic billboard on the off-ramp, which further fueled my fury. "There's a biiig sign on the Route 14 off-ramp."
"I don't drive. Bad for the environment."
"I'm going to give you a fine, and then I'm going to take the rest of your fireworks."
I told him where he could stick his fine.
He gave me a $350 ticket.
I refused to pay it.
That's how I got called into the station, and that's how they learned about the fake signs that had ended up wasting half of the Department's time. Vancouver has a very incompetant police force. Which is good for me.
I planted these in mile-wide arcs that would cause anyone following them to end up driving in circles. (According to a Sergeant I was later interogated by, it worked for about two hours, but didn't cause as much paperwork as I would have liked.)
It's sort of like smoking marijuana; the majority of people believe it should be legalized, the most vehement and vociferous spokespeople obviously smoke the stuff in private. Emphasis on: in private. Because that's what you do when you don't agree with a law; you fight it, and in the mean time you break the law in secret. But it's not like that with fireworks; the whole point of it is to make it a public display. (Of course, one might argue that a true activist would openly and proudly smoke marijuana in public to express their firm belief in its acceptability.)
They say the best defense is a good offense. This has nothing to do with fireworks, but I did it any way because it's funny. And because I'm a fucking genius.
During the 2003 Portland Protests, we knew what we had to do. It was us or them. It was our chance to wreak havoc and then disappear into the crowd without getting arrested. Unfortunately, my friend and I only managed to get shot in the shoulder and crotch with beanbag guns and (maybe)smash an officer's faceplate with a chunk of cement before fleeing in terror from the dreaded teargas canisters. (One canister can easily be chucked back at a line of officers, but two or three? Forget about it.) Still, we proved to them that, no, we won't be routed, with your security cameras, we don't need no stinkin' permit to protest, we won't go quitely. Activism isn't a constitutional right; it's a fucking human right. However, the country went to war any way-- or, at least, the poor young men went to war while the rich men stayed home and enjoyed their bribes. The cancer of nationalism, racism and greed won the day, but we were forced into the shadows. Seattle was another story, however; easily one of the most liberal cities in the world, in Seattle police are outnumbered 100 to 1 and the people remind them of this fact every time a cop tries to pull some shit-stupid oppressive stunt. During the WTO riots, both the police and civilians were completely out of control. And that is when you know something is wrong; when the men sent in to keep the peace are the ones further instigating the riots. Wait, that's not completely fair-- The WTO instigated the riots. But, rather than fight on the side of the everyman, rather than help create positive change, our lovely boys in blue decided to put down Free Speech, forcefully. It cost us. But it cost them, too. And now, even the WTO has suffered terrible blows overseas, especially in third-world countries where they made the mistake of turning the fight against poverty and starvation into a business venture, resulting in crushing embarrassment as the very people they are claiming to help end up rejecting the WTO's programs. Which just goes to show you.
Any way, we lost contact with each other, content to wage our own little wars wherever we could. And that is what I am doing. Activism is an art. The whole point of protesting is that it shouldn't be practiced in ways that authority is comfortable with.
What else?
Right, during a heated argument I threatened to kill my ex-girlfriend. Well, not really; women just have a funny way of twisting words. Any way, she freaked out and called the police. She didn't press charges, either because she is a coward or because she realized that she was being ridiculous and wasn't going to have her ex kicked out of school because she's a little hysterical. However, since I had broken a vague domestic abuse law I was forced to spend some time in a police station talking to a sergeant and signing a statement saying that, no, I did not intend to kill her. (In actuality I had been contemplating the action at the time, but of course you can never let that on.)
Later, I was called to a special meeting with the university vice president and head of student affairs to discuss the incident in question, as well as the three or four derogatory and harassing emails I sent to her afterward, of which they somehow had transcripts of and read back to me aloud, while I leaned back disinterestedly and smirked at my clever play on words and disgusting, demeaning insults. These acts, along with the note and various trickets I left on her doorstep the same day (I was returning her stuff as separated couples often do) had apparently given her the impression that I was out to knife her, and sent her sobbing and shaking to the police. (::groan::)
I told them the truth: I didn't deny the things I had said and done, nor did I regret them, and if given the chance to go back and rethink my actions, I would have behaved the exact same way, because I say what's on my mind and stand by it, and I believed firmly in what I had done and that I had not broken the law or at least any law worth obeying. (Seriously, I am fed up with the police playing the "law" card whenever you attempt to explain social logic to them.)
I also told them the transcripts of our conversations were none of their business, and that PEOPLE TALK LIKE THIS ON THE INTERNET ALL THE TIME. It's a fact of life. If you aren't mature enough to handle it, you shouldn't be surfing the net. Period. I went one step further, and told them that I was completely convinced that she was full of shit regarding this whole "threat" business. Honestly. The reality of it is-- and I know because I've seen it a dozen times before-- she is simply blowing my statements out of proportion to get back at me because, like a typical repressed female, she didn't like what I had to say, and had no other way of striking back. Quite the little actress, manipulating the police into taking pity on her, just like she was manipulating the school staff, the same way she manipulates the men she dates and screws and cheats on, the same way she manipulated me, because that's what useless whore spiderwomen like her do.
I neglected to mention that I had left a note on her doorstep that included, among other things, the line: "I never want to see you again." Not typically something a homicidal stalker would write. I'll bet she conveniently left the note out of her police report, too, because it would have immediately discounted everything else she said.
I knew that anything I said really wouldn't make a difference, so I had fun with it. I told them I believed Jodie was the real threat, and should be kicked out of school for being-- quoting one of my emails-- a "stupid gimp slut". (She's a paraplegic.)
Lastly, I told them I was amused at how she is permitted to get drunk, sleep with her ex (David) thereby cheating on her fiance, yet I am the one who gets in trouble for putting her in her place for being a twat. Kind of absurd. Now, I was terrified at that point because I believed there was no way I could have admitted all of this to these men and gotten off. However, they seemed detached and uninsterested the entire time, as though they weren't even listening.
Like they get this all the time.
I was put on a Disciplinary Probation sanction, which means basically nothing. It's one step below being kicked out of school. I am allowed no further contact with her, I am not allowed to enter the court she lives in, and I was recommended for anger-management counseling and "mental evaluation", whatever that means. None of this is out of my way.
So nothing really changed for me and I got away with near-murder. All she managed to do was waste about an hour of my time, most of which I spent fulfilling my boyhood dream of telling-off mislead authority figures. Also, and this is my favorite part, I won a bet I've had going with my mom now for about 10 years. "Damon," she'd say, "You have an anger problem. And you always say what's on your mind. One day it's going to get you in irredeemable trouble, and I won't be around to bail you out." Like my ex, Mom was just mad at what I had to say and couldn't think of a better way to get back at me than threatening me with authoritative intervention. Well, she was right, I got in trouble. But not irredeemable trouble. I got myself in and I got myself out. I spoke my mind and even if nobody gave a shit, I got away with it. That's two bitches with one stone.
And my ex? No regrets. One of the worst people I have ever met, one of the worst relationships I have ever experienced. I tried, oh how I tried to be her friend for so long after the split. But when I heard about her latest cheating escapades with her new boyfriend, I snapped, exploded, no doubt catching her off gaurd, and perhaps even terrifying her like she claimed. (Which is just as awesome.) She's crafty, certainly no "deaf-mute girl"; you can't think of this girl in the stereotypical sense of a handicapped person. She has learned to hide her disability very well, to the point that it's almost impossible to notice her limp, much less her prosthetics. And rather than remaining depressed and downtrodden, she clawed her way out of the dark and into the realm of social prowess, job security, and academic superiority.
For these reasons, I respected her for quite some time, and fell into her trap. But the more I got to know her, the less impressed I was, and while I won't go into more detail let's just say that she is in actuality one of the creepiest, screwed up fucks I have ever met; she just hides it pretty well. A social weasel, a player, a poseur, someone who uses sex as a manipulative tool, and carries her friends around like a bandolier, each of them merely another tick mark to make her feel more attractive, to maintain her image-- people either too dumb to realize it or just as crooked as her. In other words, when it comes to friends, she cares more about quantity, not quality. On the inside, beneath the makeup and Meningitis scars, she is nothing more than a giant Fuck- hungry Horn-dog, looking for her next fix. When such human cancer walks freely in the light of day, unimpeded, I am given more reason to fear for the human race.
And she's terrible in bed. There, I said it. I have no inhibitions about mentioning our private life. Basically there was foreplay and kissing. Lots of kissing. Neither activities I particularly enjoyed. So I just laid there and let her do things to me that generally made me feel more awkward than turned on, as I stared at the ceiling and wondered when she would finish up so I could finally go home and look at porn. I returned the favor as best I could but I could tell that half the time she was just faking it like I was. That's the kind of person she is. And that's the kind of relationship you have to endure with Jodie. And with each visit I could see her frustration growing as she tried new things, desperate to somehow get me off, and failing. "How can this be, for I have studied human sexuality and am the master of seducing!!" We even tied each other up once because I'm into that kinky bondage stuff. But once and only once did she succeed, because it was morning and because I really concentrated. Meanwhile she tells me she doesn't think I'm ready for full-blown sex. Whoa! Hold up! That isn't the most see-through excuse in the world. Right up there with "I can't talk to you because my computer is broken. Every other week." Tens of thousands of years of evolutionary instinct, and I'm not ready to stick my penis in a vagina because I'm 19? Yeah, real sound logic there. And welcome to the 21st century, and a mysterious land called Birth-Control. Any way, I told her that I didn't think she was ready either, but that it hadn't stopped her from getting knocked up by her ex. Hoowah. Something about being told I'm "not ready" by someone who has proven themself, time and again, quite the bonafide whore.
When I tried to sleep she'd just lie there and stare at me like I was some sort of monster for ignoring her. Fuck woman, I've had a long day and I'm tired. I know I only see you once every two weeks but so what if I'm not getting any? The world doesn't revolve around you and I can't drop everything and put my life on hold because Inspector Gadget is in town. I couldn't even have a conversation with her; she doesn't seemed interested in talking passionately about anything. All of exchanges consisted of cutesy noises, pet-names, and cheesy, cliched one-liners about our undying love for each other (which of course were so obviously fake and untrue that I had to hold my breath when I said them to keep myself from cringing or bursting out laughing.) The variation between the two of us on this aspect is that I actually meant some of the stuff I said, and wasn't just playing a part in a play. Believe it or not, I used to be authentically poetic and romantic, I really did. Then, go figure, a woman came along and sucked all the poetry out of me. Pun intended.
An example of her clumsy and neglectful attitude towards our relationship is the way she constantly berated me for being even a few minutes late to our little "meetings", regardless of the unavoidable factors of life. One time, after I had just survived the opening week of Hair, I slept late and missed our date because I had been out all night driving home three of my co-stars who were too inebriated to drive themselves after a much-deserved cast party, each of them to opposite points on the map. Out of the goodness of my heart. I was exhausted and suffering from a cold, and had abstained from the illegal substances myself.
Rather than showing understanding, accepting my apology and taking the time to forgive me because of my gracious and compassionate nature, she threatened to leave me. A fact I found ironic because, as far as I was concerned, we shouldn't have been together in the first place. Not under our circumstances. And even though I apologized over and over and explained to her the reason for my absence, she proceeded to barrage me with deep, penetrating questions about our relationship, as though we were a married 40-year-old couple going through a mid-life crisis with decades of commitment and devotion under out belt. Please, Jodie. Grow up. Anyone who takes this shit so seriously is going to have a heart-attack by age 30, before they even have a chance for a successful marriage. Spur-of-the-moment, long-distance relationships are statistically prone to disaster. We're young and trying to sort our lives out, pay our bills, pass our classes, find our niche, and she wants Damon to wear a leash and drink out of a bowl? For as long as we both shall live?
Sorry. My life's already taken. By me.
Her shallow behavior and poor decision making in deciding to pursue such a relationship was beyond me. I came very close to pulling the first punch and walking out on her that night. I should have; would have saved a lot of trouble. But she switched tactics at the last second and pulled me into the bedroom, desperate for a second chance. Like a good little slut.
And whenever we actually managed to get truly intimate, she'd slip up and accidentally call me by her ex's name. For real. I just laughed and waved it off but seriously, seriously, don't you have to be really stupid to make a slip like that? I thought that shit only happened in the movies. Then again, dating Jodie is about as exciting as dating a bad hollywood popcorn flick. After the feature, your hands are greasy and you just wasted two hours and $20 of your life you can never get back.
And people let her get away with it because a) she is vaguely attractive, b) she is moderately intelligent, and c) she is a gimp.
I, however, always saw right through her bullshit. I only told her I loved her because I thought it's what she wanted to hear, and she did the same in return. I only kept the act up because she let me feel her boobs. Shallow perhaps, but, well... When In Rome.
Now, she's just kind of fat and smells funny. I will continue to learn and grow and develop as a human being, while someone like her, well, no matter how far she gets, no matter if she believes she's found the perfect man or the perfect relationship or the perfect lifestyle, she will always fuck it up eventually. She is her own worst enemy, and she really can't help it; her wooden legs are a metaphor of the robotic cycle she employs to capture her next meal, that being men who will inevitably smarten up and leave her in the dust. I mean, how can she sleep around and expect them not to?
When I first met her new boyfriend I feared I had been outdone. But afterwards I realized how rude and arrogant both of them had behaved the entire time I was present. Seriously, he's a real piece of crap. That's not to say they are perfect for each other; on the contrary, a relationship between two people of such slim fiber can only end in disaster, unless both choose to accept the lie. Either way, she is screwed. I pity her.
Jodie hates being referred to as "handicapped", yet always parks in the same damn handicapped spot at the front of the parking lot. That's not convenience, that's selfishness and hypocrisy. At this point she's basically in it for the parking. When people ask her about it, she lies and says she just had "wrist surgery". She's been having wrist surgery off and on for about a decade.
To top it off, she's one of those self-described new-aged empowerment Feminists.
In reality she's just a new-aged Sperm-Dumpster.
I put the Disciplinary Probation Sanction letter the school sent me up on my wall as a sort of trophie. When the other guys ask about it, I take the opportunity to gather them around the campfire and tell them a horrifying bedtime story about a rabid monster, once a female human but now horribly mutated and grotesque, that they should avoid at all costs so as not to fall into the same trap I did.
Now, don't get the wrong impression of me here; I respect women, I don't go around abusing them, hell I even find some of them worthy enough to date me, but if I am crossed the wrong way, by male or female, I don't hold back, I don't make distinctions. Women, I don't care if you are handicapped or what; if your idea of a fun evening with the Mister is Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, The Vagina Monologues, followed by a dessert of giggling at Gay Porn, you are a ditz and don't deserve to be happy.
And speaking of feminists.
Don't see The Vagina Monologues. It is a useless, immature exercise in outdated feminism, relying on shock value to garner ticket sales and demand attention in a society where women already have the same rights as men and are given ample opportunity to reach their full potential.
Directors and Producers who fund this show are doing more harm than good. They are often uppity, fat, depressed women with terrible social skills who choose to blame society rather than themselves for their hopeless situations. (I'm a Theater Arts major; I see it all the time.) They believe that by ranting (inappropriately, I might add) on about their genitals is somehow creating "awareness" and informing people about "the beauty of the vulva". Perhaps these people lack proper educations in biology, or else they would know that female genitalia ARE NOT in fact brand new to the 21st century, but are in fact part of the female reproductive system that has been a part of females for millions of years, the same way the penis and scrotum are to men. There is nothing new or exciting one can say about them that we don't already know. They're not breaking now ground nor are they spuring misogynists to hop up and give them any leniency.
Feminists will of course purposefully misconstrue their objective in presenting The Vagina Monologues, which I am sure what the intention of the original writers. If they are trying to make people comfortable with the female reproductive organs, they are going about it all wrong because the only people who are going to come to the show are people old enough to know about those things any way. It will provide them with a humorous topic of conversation for about four minutes afterward. Nothing more.
Parents, school and society generally keep this explicit content hidden from children until they are of a suitable age to learn about the reproductive process, and make relatively responsible choices. I'm not a big fan of the conformist nature of America that came to full bloom midway through the century, but this is the nature of the world we live in. And up until the time that a person is deemed ready, (by their parents appropriately,) and every second afterwards, they learn through nature and nurture what is acceptable and become more comfortable with themselves and achieve a level of confidence, concerning both their bodily image and how they use their bodily image to interact with in the social world.
Women can be just as liberal as men, but the Vagina Monologues asks them to be too liberal; if we allow sexuality to become a platform for casual jargon and everyday conversation, how long before other negative attributes of society become common-place? Drug use? Alcoholism? War in the streets? Teen pregnancy and underage sex is already rampant in our schools; people are becoming TOO comfortable with themselves. I'm all for people becoming comfortable with every aspect of the male and female body as a matter of science and knowledge, but calling The Vagina Monologues "theater" is a slippery-slope, and there is nothing scientific, or theatrical, about a group of girls standing on a stage making terrible metaphors, reading horrible poetry and contemplating comparisons between their private parts and completely unrelated objects. Or spouting degrading female slang as though men are so awful for creating such words; just as many women use such slang on a daily basis. Removing curse words for our lexicon isn't equality; it's oppression of our Freedom of Speech. If we let people outlaw words because they make us uncomfortable, how long before someone with real power starts striking "unsatisfactory" words from the English dictionary, and our children never learn what they mean, that they even exist? Words such as Revolution? Dissent? Protest? Freedom? If this is the objective subtext of The Vagina Monologues, the show should be blacklisted outright as a matter of public safety.
I don't know any women who continue to feel oppressed or treated unfairly these days to the point that they are unable to function in the world; while I'm sure they have to deal with discrimination at the hands of some sadly misinformed and below-intelligence people, the majority of human beings in the United States support equal women's rights. Rights which they have had for many decades; The Vagina Monologues may have served some counter-culture free-speech purpose in the 60s, but it is no longer useful. It is part of a feminist agenda to "feminize" men and "empower" women, but in a skewed, unclear way that serves to confuse people so that the viewer doesn't understand the real message they are being hit with. By creating what amounts to badly written, uninspired sexism women are singling themselves out and alienating themselves from the rest of society as being "special", and achieving exactly the opposite of their goal. Rather than serving as a template for thought and contemplation, they are serving as a laughing-stock. In attempting to create awareness of sexism, they are instigating sexism.
Now, if this were a presentation about the unfair waging of women in the workplace, I would understand and support that. I too would be pissed if I did a job twice as fast and better but earned a few dollars less per hour than the neanderthal next to me. (Wait, that happens to me all the time. Where's my play?) As it stands now, the show is nothing but a temporary distraction for feminists, perverts, and men attempting to appear "sensitive" to their girlfriends so they can get them in the sack. I'd like to see a brave crew put on The Vagina Monologues in any other part of the world, particularly an area where women have been subjugated for thousands of years and remain so today. To do so would be a true, honorable, useful, ballsy, and ultimately catastrophic display of activism. But then again, I never counted Feminists as having much in the way of balls. (See? Guys have deragatory slang for their reproductive organs, too.)
Feminism in general is funny shit; like Creationists, half the time they can't even get along with each other on how to best make fools of themselves while the rest of us try to go about our business. I am reminded of the 60s dispute between several members of the National Organization for Women (NOW) concerning the creation of a constitutional amendment to afford women equal treatment in the workplace. While at first glance it appears to be a positive step, the amendment would in fact undermine the strength of women, implying that equality could not be achieved by their own hand and willpower but instead required governmental interference. Oops! Also, NOW has a long history of prejudice towards lesbians and the documented secession of members who disagree with the NOW status-quo. So it's alright to empower women, but only some women? Is that it? I see.
Ladies, you can be almost anything you want to be nowadays. I say "almost" because men are naturally stronger than women and are therefore more suited to certain occupations, and hence chosen more frequently over women. That's not discrimination, it's nature. Okay, so you have to work a little harder to get where you want to go; big fucking deal. As I said before, all you've really got to complain about is the fact that women's wages are unjust. Again, why not make a play about that? Or discrimination in the workplace generally? Hmmm, perhaps I'll make it the topic of my first script. Oh, wait, nevermind; the concept has already been done to death and still nobody gives a shit.
Women have to deal with a menstruation cycle (that's the female body's bloody preparation for pregnancy, if I'm not being gratuitous enough for you) and give birth once, maybe twice tops, throughout your entire lives. Men have to deal with shit all the fucking time. Just as much bullying, harrassment and unfair treatment as any woman. And up until recently, except for a few notable exceptions, men have fought all of our wars, created all known cures for diseases, won all major awards and saved countless lives, all in percentages much higher than women; These are all acts that can be attributed to nature, not a flawed, unequal society. What have you done that men haven't? Saved a few slaves during the civil -war? Identified a few unknown genotypes? Nursed a few wounded soldiers? Glued a few beams together in a factory somewhere? Written a few dusty, outdated books on government and military socialism? Performed some Suffrage? Grow up. Put down the Ayn Rand, grab a copy of The Left Hand of Darkness, and go curl up in your man's arms. And if you don't have a man, go chill out with your seven cats.
Rosie, it's time to find a new reason to slack off and complain. History is full of both male AND female tyrants. Chinese Empress CiXi ruled in the 1860s with an iron fist, ruthlessly oppressing her people, murdering thousands, waging anti -semitic genocide against foreigners, and even assassinating her own son when he grew too old to control. Hmmm! True, female extremists are few and far between, but that's only because women don't have balls. They are NOT some golden race, they are not special or deserving of special priviledges. Society is just biased in their favor because it holds Motherhood in such high regard. Which is funny because the whole "child-rearing" thing doesn't really work without the male. Sure, this world does have it's share of dead-beat, no-show dads-- hell, I don't even remember what my father looks like-- but I am proof enough that a single mother can suitably raise an affluent child (with only mild compulsive narcisism and borderline schizophrenia), so the "men are lazy" excuse sort of flies out the window. Sorry we couldn't be there to raise your child; we were too busy earning a living and putting food on the table because you already ate away most of our manhood when we married you and work is all we have left. So raise your spoiled brats and make some more little soldiers to go off to occupy some foreign land and make the rich a little richer. Republican Bitch.
Men need women, and women need men. Or, more realistically, women just need men. In one of those "Poor Us" studies for which the Emotional Female Void is notorious, it was pointed out that after a divorce, the average male standard of living rises. While the average female standard of living drops. No surprise coming from a gender which has no ethics, no scruples, no sense of right and wrong.
And while I'm on a roll-- Feminists are to New Boots what Mormons are to Giant Trampolines: what the hell is it with uppity girls and showing off their new shoes? Man, they LOVES their new shoes! That no doubt cost the lives of several leopards.
Everyone bleeds from time to time, but not everyone goes and makes a play about it.
It's female empowerment month at CWU. I use "month" cautiously because it's been going on for far longer than a month. Central Washington University will
soon be hosting two showings of The
Vagina Monologues. I am boycotting this production the same way I boycotted the Clark College Student Stage Ensemble, and I urge anyone with
half an ounce of sense to do the same. I have
already torn down several
advertisement posters across most of north campus convinced everyone I know not to attend the show, and I'll leave the rest of the campaign
up to my readers.
If ticket sales do poorly-- and I expect that they will-- I will give you all a special treat.
9/6/05: This will probably be my last update for a while, because I am transfering to a new school and hence moving somewhere far far away come Fall. I'm not yet certain of what my personal computer situation will be when I arrive, although there are sure to be plenty of stations provided by the university. However, school libraries aren't my concept of the ideal creative writing environment, and I'll probably be too bogged down with my heavy course-load to write much any way.
In the mean-time I'm going to be very busy wrapping up current engagements and tying up loose ends around Vancouver so that I can leave this place with a clear conscience. I could probably come back any time I want to, but I don't plan on it. Besides some pleasant memories and a few friends and family, there is nothing left for me here.
I'll take this opportunity to plug the show I am currently in, Getting Over It, a festival of three one-act plays put on by the Magenta Theater company. It's a pretty shoddy organization and I only have a few small parts in each play (due to my fashionably late auditioning), but it's well worth admission if you're in the Vancouver area.
Today's Badass of the Moment award goes to television journalist Bill Moyers for his epic speech given to the National Conference for Media Reform, as an official response to accusations by Kenneth Tomlinson that Moyers's PBS television program NOW is guilty of presenting "biased information".
The manuscript is a masterpiece and one of the most beautiful, articulate-- and rage-filled-- works of non-fiction I have ever read. Here is the transcript in its entirety. If you can't find the time to read the entire thing then I strongly suggest watching the video or listening to the audio recording, also available at the previous URL, to get the full feel for the way he turns the accusations around, throws them in everyone's faces, then proceeds to tear open the stitches of corruption and dishonesty inherent in the media, partisan politics, right-wingers, the republican party, and particularly the white house, and exposes their messed-up, self-absorbed, exploitative concepts of patriotism and press freedom. And that's just in the first paragraph. His words outline and speak against the way the news media is bullied by the state and government into selling their warped orthodoxic complacencies to the public. (Did we learn nothing from McCarthy and Edward R. Murrow?) It is so inspired-- and inspiring-- that, as often happens when an English major such as myself hears something so perfect and pure it borders on rapture, I actually got a boner.
The gall-- and sheer retardation-- of the people I meet on the internet never ceases to amaze me. I've been getting more and more complaints about my site, the majority of which consist of "Dude, such-and-such song wasn't written by so-and-so!" The first couple times, I didn't know what these people were talking about. Then, one day, when I was updating the U.S. kill -count at the bottom of the page, I noticed some of the first updates I had ever written. In them, I expressed my rage toward and made fun of a couple of terrible songs that had been following me around for a while. All in the space of a few sentences. I realized that these are what I had been getting flamed about-- and I realized immediately on top of that: Some forms of stupidity should be considered terrorism. Let me get this straight. You come to my site, skip the 30+ pages of sociological, political and paranormal insight, scroll right to the bottom, and then lament me about something I wrote over two years ago? The mental power required for such a feat is staggering-- and I thank you! Your awe-inspiring, nobel-prize winning discoveries are sure to alter the course of human evolution. I shall now proceed to write all your names down in the big golden book of Get a Fucking Life. No, a girlfriend doesn't count, because she's probably clinically retarded like you. I mean, some readers-- and I use the term "people" loosely-- might actually bother to read the contents of my page; peruse, jump around, skip a few articles, then write me to discuss something that isn't completely below me... Agrarian Precapitalism, The relationship between traffic pollution and Bronchial Hyperresponsiveness in Dutch school children, or, my favorite, the prevalence of the Phlogiston theory despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. But not: you come along, read a few lines, become confused and angry at the use of big words and ideas, then skip to the bottom of my page and quote some obscure statement to make it appear to me that you are so amazingly adept that you read through my entire page in the space of 10 minutes? "Damon, Damon, you may think that a vast, dark conspiracy is systematically consuming the human race, but, but, get this, the dude who sang that one song WASN'T a token dee-voiced black guy!" Yes, yes it was. Although I'll forgive you because you're so stupid; back when it was being written and recorded, the group was going through renovation and financial stress and lead singers were in and out almost twice a week, so that a black man ended up doing the vocals "You and me baby we ain't nothin' but mammals" while a white guy ended up appearing on the album cover. Regardless, you want me to tear down my entire page because of a single sentence I wrote down two years ago. Yeah, fantastic logic there, bub. Why, by that spacious reasoning, I should go ahead and walk off a cliff because I lost a dollar last month. And you should kill yourself because you're an idiot.
Further, I understand how this may be confusing for you, constant reader and hate-mailer, but try to get it through your thick neanderthal skull: "La Bamba" is not a good song. I don't care if it was written by someone who was 17 years old, and I'm definitely not surprised that he died before the age of 20; with lyrics so gratingly ridiculous and annoying as his, it's no wonder his whole family wasn't lynched. This isn't a matter opinion. I remember when I was forced to sing that rubbish in 6th grade music class. I almost started crying because I couldn't distinguish one line from the next; all the lyrics are practically the same, and the chorus doesn't help one bit. Idiots think that if they sing it really fast they will look cool! And they will... to other idiots. Which is probably why I only see it being performed by homeless Hispanics in the shadier districts of San Diego. I actually turned my back on a good friend-- swear on my fucking grave-- because, among other things, it was one of her favorite songs. I almost felt kind of bad about it, because her grandma had just died and she was emotionally unstable already. Almost. I'm not going to go into other complaints I've gotten regarding said entry, because it is simply below me. I've set my goals a little higher than "Dude, that was Nine-Inch-Nails, not One-Inch-Punch!" because I don't plan to end my life by slitting my wrists, overdosing on downers or getting murder-suicided by my girlfriend Courtney Love. Although, please people, continue sending me e-mails such as "American Beauty is completely bad-ass!" without giving any explanation why. I'm always looking for good material to make me laugh and kick my feet up and down in the air while I eat my cashews.
Oh, and this is a "page" not a "site". There is a difference.
"Your web-site is racist and you are a white radical!" is another common one I get. These are sent by people who clearly missed the point. Of my articles, of my page, of reality. Yeah, I'm such a "white radical" that today, I got up, took the garbage out, kissed my wife on the forehead, went to work, complimented my co-worker's new tie, drove home, used the turn signal, paid my electricity bills, looked over my tax-returns, then updated my page. Did I miss something here? Oh, and I raked the lawn for leaves. I guess, by your logic, there is a hidden stockpile of weapons under my yard? Grow the fuck up. The only "radical" here is you-- radically conformist. Just because you don't have the balls to speak your mind and cut against the grain doesn't mean you have to e-mail me about it. If anything, I'm not radical enough-- I need to get out there and kill some riot cops with a sniper rifle or something before this country turns into a fucking police state. Hmmm, that's not such a bad idea. Thanks for the inspiration! Dumbass.
Did you know: It is men like me that have, throughout history, been the harbingers of change and justice.
One of my favorite hate-mail experiences ever involved a guy named Matt from New York who, like so many others before him, instant messenged me in an attempt to make friends with me and get a piece of my world. When he couldn't figure me out, he became angry and picked a fight with me. I blocked him. He noticed that my last name is on my Global Warming site, spent five dollars to access my contact information, and called me up. He had apparently meant to give me a scare, but chickened out and merely attempted to engage is casual conversation. He failed. The phone call he got was from my brother-in-law: an FBI Special Agent. Needless to say, I accepted Matt's apology, but he doesn't come around here much any more.
Did I mentioned that, as of this moment, I am the cause of the demise of three internet forums? No? Well, listen closely because these events are testaments to my badassness. The first forum was for a site called Black Forces, a modification for the game Half-Life. Everyone on the forum was lazy, immature, and foreign-- as in, spoke English as a second language-- and you don't know Hell until try to have a conversation with a Ukranian who uses l33tspeak. Throw in the usual assortment of over-used emoticons :] for people who are too dense to express their feelings in plain writing and an Admin' who models himself after an obscure, homosexual GI Joe character named Cobra, and you have a recipe for disaster when I walk into the saloon. Needless to say, we didn't get along-- at all. I was banned several times, often without provocation other than a disagreement on who's country was better, and no less than a week later, the entire site went down. The modification was never finished, despite my contributions and ideas. Instead, the development team began work on a terrible project involving cell-shaded british soldiers on a space station. It died in about a month, along with the entire domain. Flash forward a few months. A web-site called Dark Planet, devoted to UFOs, aliens, conspiracy theories, metaphysics, computer engineering, the works. Great community, with the exception of one of the moderators, some Scottish prick who took it upon himself to openly be a dickhead and unabashedly rude to everyone else, if for no other reason than he was a self-proclaimed "freelance subversive" with an addiction to alcohol and masturbation. Naturally, we started to disagree on some key issues, and by disagree I mean I wouldn't let him walk all over me like he did everyone else, but the Administrator kept me around because he liked me and recognized that I was a long-time member. The Scotsman threatened to delete my posts and ban me, but his power was too limited for him to make good on his threats. I finally got myself kicked when I stood up during a conversation about how Chem-Trails are manufactured by the government to spread toxins for the purpose of mind control, and pointed out that everyone in the thread was full of shit: based on testable facts and observations, they probably manufacture Chem-Trails to terraform the planet and oppress thoughts of dissent. I was banned, and within a few weeks, activity on the board dropped off to practically nothing. The web-site still exists, but its updates consist only of links to interesting articles and lacks anything resembling originality. As I recall, I challenged the Scot to a battle of wits in an earlier update, but he never took the challenge. Flash forward another few months to the Data Back Road, a nifty little web-site run by a couple of girls from Washington and populated mostly by teenagers from the local Vancouver area. I made a lot of friends and had some of the most interesting and inspiring conversations. Then one day I posted my article about how the military is a training ground for psychopaths (and how it stems from a mass mental illness inherent in American machismo culture). Unfortunately, I neglected to notice that two of the forum regulars were in the military. We got into quite a tiff, and because they weren't very bright, the conversation when no where, fast. This was about the point that, as usual, I began to be victimized because of my views. I kept a low profile for a while, feelings among the other board members were mended, and things had settled down enough that I could continue posting. Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Semper Fi were too juvenile to let it go, made some underhanded comments about me, and I kindly asked them to grow up. One of them posted that stupid picture of the soldier holding the mug and saying "How about a nice warm cup of Shut the Fuck Up?" to which I responded, in reference to the ongoing Abu Ghraib scandal: "Or what? You'll strip me naked, force me into demeaning poses, and be retarded enough to take my picture? I wouldn't put it past your kind." Banned. Not long after, the forum collapsed and the web-site that hosted it was condensed into a single page that contained nothing but fluff about the activities and interests of the two webmasters-- a "blog", basically-- because apparently they thought the forum was diverting attention from themselves, and they demand to be the center of attention. Now, even that page is gone. A true testament to their egocentrism is the fact that THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO SIGNIFY THEY EVER EXISTED. Bet you didn't see that one coming, mouth-breathers. I sure did. It wasn't a total loss, however; I met Caitlin, the best thing to ever happen to me, but after the biggest fluke of a relationship ever conceived she went and broke my heart into a thousand pieces, so I can't really consider her a positive contribution.
There have been a few other instances of confrontation with forum operators that usually resulted in the community being split apart. Here is a great article on the art of wreaking havoc in forums that fail to meet your needs. It's called "Raging", ironically enough. I've used it as a template many times and it always works because people never seem to catch on. (Immaturity often corresponds with a lack of intelligence, it seems.)
The moral of these stories is, if you decide to be a corrupt asshole and ban the coolest people on your forum just because you don't agree with them (and don't like their web-page, which is none of your business any way), you're probably not far off from complete destruction. And if you're not, then it's probably because you've surrounded yourself with mental deficients such as yourself. (Like Hangar16 or PWOT.)
I was watching Bush drivel on about the usual crap of "higher callings" and "patriotic honor", and reflected that there are more pressing problems here at home that this "Iraq conflict" is being used to distract from. They know that they can never completely secure the country, that was a given from the beginning; it's about making money and monopolizing the world's power and religion into the hands of an elite few. That damn "War" gets $7.2 million a day. That's what the EPA gets once a year. This tiny budget forces them to sell out and alter their data to fit the convenient specifications of the current administration, but at least they are trying to do some good-- instead of instigating more violence, hate, poverty, death, and terrorism. National Security, my ass. If you believe for one second that security is what this is all for, you need to put your paranoia back in your pants, turn the fucking XBox off, and go back to grade school, you couch-patriot. America has always had skewed interpretations of "national security".
"Sir, they're killing millions of Jews in Europe!"
"Not a threat to National Security."
Sir, waves of UFOs have been spotted all over the globe! This could be the biggest discovery in the history of mankind!"
"Not a threat to National Security."
"Sir, Saddam Hussein tried to assassinate your dad!"
"So? What can I do about that?"
"Well, we could get our Saudi friends to nail the Pentagon or something, then blame it on Iraq. Of course, we'd have to work our way up first. Say, Afghanistan."
"Yeah! And the more people we kill, the more of those blue-state bastards will jump on the patriotism-bandwagon!"
"True. But... We'd have to destroy the White House to achieve the full affect."
"Awwww... My Playhouse!"
"Alright, alright... We'll have that plane go down a couple hundred miles short of D.C... We could make it look like the passengers rose up and fought back control of the plane, or something. We could make it sound like there was some American Hero among them who riled everyone up to fight, and then sap it off as a metaphor for the country going to war."
"Like Die Hard!"
"I was thinking more along the lines of Jessica Lynch, but you're catching on, sir."
"He'll need a catch-phrase, though. Every Hero has a catch phrase."
"How about... 'Let's Roll'?"
"Fantastic. They'll let us do whatever the fuck we want to their freedoms after that."
"And the beauty is, they'll think we're doing it for their freedom."
"On to other matters. Our top military officials want to make money endorsing bigger and better fighter planes, but we don't need bigger and better fighter planes because our current A-10s can do the work of any other plane and often much better. They're big, heavily armored, and loaded with ordinance. Which sucks for the defense contractors we're affiliated with, because it erases the logic behind building the latest super-fast jet to compensate for our small penises. Not to mention the fact that we can't even fight the types of enemies we're engaging with jet-planes any more. This is a battle of fear and guerilla tactics, not superpowers. For even using our armor, we are in essence cowards."
"Ugh, please don't get me involved with that right now. I might have to take a nap or go on another vacation. Talk about Iraq?"
"I hear they've got oil, too. Establish an American democracy there, I bet they'll sell it to us for a really cheap price."
"Well why didn't you say so?! SEND IN THE MARINES!!"
"Yes, sir."
"Wow. Manufacturing this shit is getting easier and easier every year. Didn't we learn our lesson after Watergate?"
"No, we just learned not to get caught."
"Nucular."
"It's Nuclear, sir."
"Internets."
"Please, just listen to your ear-piece, sir."
Besides, most of the military's new hardware just sits in a giant parking lot rusting over. It's completely unuseable unless we find ourselves battling the endless legions of hell or something. And while the Navy's aircraft carriers have survived, their battleships are pretty much useless now; all they ever really accomplished was getting themselves sunk, any way. And with the money it takes to build one Abrahms tank, you could purchase 100 interpreters so that interrogators in military prisons knew what the hell their prisoners were saying, and wouldn't feel obligated to beat and torture them more than they already do. Not the way to win a war, folks.
And if you think that there isn't growing dissent and lessening moral among troops overseas, think again: just because you can't read about it in your newspapers, definitely doesn't mean it isn't going on. Just ask these guys.
The tendency of politicians to wear colored ties corresponding to their partisan leaning (blue for republicans, red for democrats) is so juvenile it's pathetic. But then, the Bush Administration has always excelled in the "art" of lies, manipulation, disinformation, and distraction. You've got Karl Rove basically committing treason by revealing the names of a key CIA operative and his wife, and similarly discrediting anyone who disagrees with his underhanded agenda by telling blatant lies about them. Even when the accusations are proven false, the damage is already done because the person has been viewed by the whipping-boy media in a negative light for an extended period of time. During the congressional hearings to decide a basis for an attack on Iraq (which were really just a show for the public to give the impression that the president's men still play by the rules) the obvious fact that there were absolutely NO solid reasons for committing the WORST military and strategic operation since Vietnam (and the most pointless and inneffectual operation since the radar blip that was Grenada) and even evidence that conclusively and undeniably CONTRADICTED the evidence presented by Powell and his chronies-- weapons inspector results, secret memos, expert testimonies, pretty much everything Richard Clark said-- was conveniently pushed back to the fourth or fifth page of all the major newspapers. Instead, we got to learn about the pressing issue of how Japan disposes of its garbage. All while tens of thousands of civilians are murdered, written off as "collateral damage", for the sake of some vague concept of national security. The figures for which Rumsfeld doesn't even bother to look at". Thanks, you nazi pussbags. Thanks for destroying the soul of America, not to mention its hard-earned credibility with your "shock and awe" and "operation iraqi freedom" Orwellian doublespeak bullshit. Nobody buys it except the minority you surround yourself with, and you are hated by the rest of the world. First it was a "liberation", and you stoutly denied the term "occupation". Now you use the word with the casual finesse of the stock-broker joking with his friends about nuclear war over a modest lunch. What will you call it next? A "clensing"?
Reporter: "You've created a huge mess with no end in sight, and that's just the way you like it. Why haven't you resigned?"
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "I assure you that I have sent my letter of resignation to the president time and time gain and time and time again it has been rejected."
Sure.
I just noticed that yesterday was the 60th "anniversary" of the dropping of the twin atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I suppose that in the long run it was necessary-- or, at least that's what we're told. I like how the pilot of the Enola Gay firmly believes that he did the right thing. I'm not really surprised that he'd think so, seeing as it's pretty much gauranteed that he's a complete pyschopath, what with him signing up for a job where he knew he'd be dropping bombs on lots of innocent people. Strategic and political bullshit asside, who else but a closet nuttcase could do that? The same with the 13-or-so men who built the damn thing, Robert Oppenheimer at the top of the list. "Your biggest problem may be after the bomb has left your aircraft," he told Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay. "The shock waves from the detonation could crush your plane. I am afraid that I can give you no guarantee that you will survive." I often wonder if he followed this statement with: "It sure sucks that I created a device that is going to forever change the world in a negative way and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, if not the entire human race... but MAN do I really want to see that thing go off! It'll be crazy awesome!!" I'll give Philip Morrison some credit for becoming a prominent arms-race critic; it was the least he could do to hang on to his humanity. General Dwight Eisenhower, at the time commander of the Allied forces, was strongly opposed to dropping the bomb, and said so to Truman. "I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'." But by then it had already been long decided that the bombs would be dropped. Truman: "Screw dropping the bombs on actual military targets such as Japanese-occupied islands with minimal loss to civilian casualties, let's hit them on their home turf! Give the soldiers some genuine 'nuclear families' to come back to! Huck huck!" If you ask me, the site of that mushroom cloud over two previously occupied islands would have sent a pretty firm message, and the bombing of the mainland probably wouldn't have been necessary; but we'll never know for sure. I just find it depressingly ironic that nuclear devices were researched and produced in response to the knowledge that Germany was working on a similar device-- but by the time we used them, Germany had surrendered. Japan, as far as I know, wasn't a nuclear threat.
What was the figure? Something like 200,000 civilian lives lost, and thousands more effected in the decades following? In Vietnam there was Agent Orange to permanently fuck up the ecosystem and pollute the local gene-pool. Now, I think we're going to average just about the same amount of "collateral damage" in Iraq with the use of weapons-grade depleted uraniam and the resulting prolonged toxicity that will poison their land for several generations to come. I guess we didn't want the USA to be the only country with irradiated livestock, birth defects and hideous genetic mutations caused by a chemical existense / dependency.
On a clear summer day in Vancouver, Washington, one can often behold the beautiful visage of a pair of F-15 Tomcats performing maneuvers in the endless blue sky. I am not sure what the point of these maneuvers are, and apparently neither can most of the community, because they are aggressively pushing for legislation to have the local airbase completely removed from the area. All they are doing is wasting thousands of dollars in fuel to perform barrel roles and loop-de-loops. I guess that is supposed to make us feel more secure or something. From what exactly, I'm not sure. With all the money we've put into airport security, it can't possibly be from suicidal jumbo-jets. Are clouds suddenly waging a Jihad and I wasn't informed about it? Or are the pilots just playing a friendly game of sky-tag? The answers to these questions is no. These aerial maneuvers are a tactic to instill fear. "Look at us in our obnoxiously loud jets, flying side by side as our on -board computers do all the complicated work! Don't question your government or else!" Find a new plan, fuck-heads. It's bad enough when UFOs and alien-spacecraft do it, and most people lost interest in those a long time ago. Seemingly because a bunch of spooks get together and decided they would descredit authentic sightings by creating a bunch of fake reports to keep people nice and confused about what is really going on. For instance, I *hate* how the general concensus is that all crop- circles are rubbish because a couple of assholes tied a rope to a board and made some infantile patterns in the wheat. Before they became the "big thing" among drunken fraternities and Scots, crop-circles were a rare, fascinating and downright supernatural phenomenon. Some bizarre and grand message was being conveyed-- I mean, let's be honest with ourselves, most of these are simply too complex to have been manufactured by human hands, and the designs often contained formulas only found in theoretical physics and -- which naturally meant that a coverup was in order.
Any way, People are finally standing up and telling the weekend-warriors to get the hell out of our town because all they are doing is scaring off business. Whoa, you can buzz the tower with your useless plane! Good for you, dropout!! I was jogging down by the barracks with two other people a few weeks ago and some soldiers actually came out on a balcony and started laughing at us for no apparent reason. My friend yelled "Incoming Beer! Defend the kitchen at all costs!"
They stopped laughing.
Speaking of security: With all the money being spent on protecting the Olympic Games... why not just cancel them? As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing wrong with "giving in to the terrorists" if nobody gets hurt. Or are your stupid gymnastics events so important to you? More money down the drain on entertainment. Apple is the expert on throwing money away. Have you seen their computer games selection? The time and cost required to port a game to a secondary platform-- the huge majority being from PC to Mac-- results in even the oldest games selling for around $70-$80, minimum. What a bargain! Get the latest releases, like Warcraft III, Jedi Knight, and the original Quake!! I could count Unreal Tournament 200_, but I won't because I don't consider boring derivative EA-type shit worth my time. I also don't consider the Ipod worth my time. The Nomad has twice the internal memory, for the exact same price.
And there you stand, stuck with your stupid little over-hyped Apple product, jamming along, just too cool to for this planet! Someone should shoot you so you can leave.
Lastly, I'd like to coin a new section called Badass of the Moment. This is a commemoration of remarkable citizens who have risen to the occasion in the face of injustice and made a public display of what this page stands for.
This moment's badass is actress Jane Fonda.
During Vietnam, she enraged thousands of pro-war advocates by interviewing American POWs as a media stunt, and having herself filmed while laughing and joking with Viet-Cong guerillas behind enemy lines. 30 years and a severely crippled movie career later, she publicly apologized several times for her actions, then proceeded to give all her antagonists the finger in a recent television interview. "There is a statute of limitations on guilt," she said. "It's time to move on. The government was lying, men were dying, I was doing my part to stop the war, which had been going on for eight years. People had been telling Nixon to stop, and students had been shot at Kent State. If we had learned the lessons we were taught, the pain wouldn't still be there." Her rebellious "get over it" attitude and her undeniable middle-aged beauty earns her a permanent position on the Badass of the Moment wall of fame... even if it can't earn her a new film career. We salute you, Jane!
However, I should mention that I consider my page, and myself, above such things as the Constitution and vague, misunderstood and ultimately meaningless concepts such as freedom and patriotism. I don't need a piece of cloth from 1776 to remind me what I can and can't do, I don't need some cop to read me my rights or some aimless, ridiculous anarchist to tell me that I can do and say whatever the hell I want because I have human rights-- rights gauranteed to me by my existense, regardless of my gender, my nationality, my age, my blood. I hold these truths to be self-evident, and not just on our contintent.
I do not believe in using force to spread this message, and those who claim to do so are lying to themselves and to others. As I've stated before, the multi-billion dollar disaster in Iraq will end with the U.S. getting booted out of the country onto its pepper and bullet spraying, torturing mass murdering unarmored mega-trillion dollar indebted ass. But let me go one step further. Only bloodthristy, completely adrift yokels sign up for the army, and the chicks are wannabe men or so inept that even minimum wage jobs seem like a pipe dream. The army is for sad sacks, losers, saps, and those who want to kill, but seek a socially approved outlet for doing so. There, I said it.
Now for something completely different. I originially wrote this article for my page as a rage-filled memorial to the Kent State Massacre, and then turned it into a speech for one of my college courses. However, it was rejected because it was overlong and "too opinionated" for an informative speech. The version I ended up giving in class was cut in half and heavily watered down and still clocked in at 12:03 (twice the time limit), probably because of the use of my visual aid. I left the "opinionated slant" in because I decided it was less a "slant" and more a history lesson about the corruption, conspiracy, and hate-mongering mentality that dominated the Nixon-era, that the educated-class rose against.
I gave the speech on May 6th, and meant to post the complete, uncut edition on my page the same day as a commemoration, but amid the shuffle of trimming it for school use, I completely forgot. So here is the full version, posted on July 4th, 35 years ago... and two months... to the day of the Kent State Massacre. If you are one of those warm people that doesn't see the big deal in shooting college students for exercising their human rights, then consider this a tribute to our boys in green and yellow fatigues that are helping to make our country safe from a fanatical, stone-throwing, barbaric, car-bombing, women-enslaving, 14th-century form of Theocratic Islamic savagery. And doing a terrible job at it.
Imagine you and your friends are marching around campus protesting the war in Iraq. Suddenly, shots ring out and you realize in terror that the riot-guards are spraying you with bullets, not pepper spray. BANG! Susie’s head explodes. BANG! Ralph takes one in the gut. He’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. A terrifying prospect, isn’t it? American soldiers shooting American citizens. But on May 4th, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, this prospect became a horrifying reality when four students were shot and killed by National Guard troops.
Learning the events that led up to the Kent State massacre is important to understanding why this terrible tragedy occurred. Kent State could have been our school. The students and National Guardsmen involved could be you, or someone you know. The city of Kent, Ohio could be Vancouver, Washington. That is why you need to know what happened, to prevent it from happening again. As a college student and believer in civil disobedience, I feel obligated to study the events that transpired, thoroughly and in detail.
Flash back to the 60s and early 70s, when America was split over the military quagmire in Southeast Asia; the Vietnam War. Protests by college students were common all over the nation. Research into the tragic shootings at the typical Midwestern University of Kent State has led me to conclude that the causes of the massacre are best categorized by looking at the days leading up to May 4th, 1970.
First, I’ll talk about April 30th. Second, I’ll talk about May 1st, and so on until the infamous events of May 4th.
According to the March 7th, 2005 edition of Upfront magazine, on Thursday, April 30th 1970, President Richard M. Nixon televised his decision for the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. Up to this point, Nixon had pledged to gradually decrease involvement in Vietnam. However, he wanted to invade Cambodia to take out the communist sanctuaries and aggressors there. College students across the country were outraged. In their eyes, Nixon had broken his promise to gradually wind down the war and in turn stop throwing young lives away into the Vietnam meat grinder.
Transition: Because of this betrayal, a new set of protests and demonstrations erupted at Kent State. According to William Gordon in his book The Fourth of May, written in 1990, the first few days of May leading up to the massacre unfolded in the fashion that follows.
May 1st was a day of both calm, legal demonstration and reckless behavior. About 500 students of Kent State University, located in Kent, Ohio, met at the school’s Commons to peacefully protest the war. They buried a copy of the U.S. Constitution to express their disgust at Nixon for invading Cambodia without the blessing of Congress. That evening, downtown Kent suffered several blocks of broken windows, bonfires, and two stores were looted. Official inquiry to find reasoning behind the actions and place responsibility was indeterminate. However, the presence of a traveling motorcycle gang may have contributed to the damage that evening.
Transition: These illegal activities put the subject of civil unrest firmly at the front of the minds of local law enforcement officials, who wanted to find a way to blame the university activists for the damage. They turned up the heat.
On Saturday, May 2nd, tensions increased drastically. According to the previously mentioned book by William Gordon, Police department and FBI officials continued to investigate unfounded rumors of organized, growing dissidence at the hands of, as the Kent Chief of Police theorized, “dedicated subversives, outside aggressors, and outright revolutionaries.” One such revolutionary group, the “Weathermen”, entered the vicinity by airplane at some time on May 2nd. The Students for a Democratic Society, a local college group, was also questioned. However, there was no proof for either of the group’s involvement or coordination of the rioting. Adding gasoline to the fire, multiple store owners received telephone threats, ordering them to place anti-war slogans in their windows or face having their establishments razed. An anti-war rally was staged on the Kent State campus Commons at 7:30 p.m., which marched around the school and gathered up between 500 – 1000 students to a major demonstration by 8 p.m. Mayor LeRoy, after a day of meetings with various officials, got in touch with the governor and had the National Guard sent in. Around 8:05, protestors came before the campus ROTC building and managed to set it on fire. The Fire Dept. moved in but was harassed and sabotaged by the protestors, who cut their hoses and threw stones. The Firemen were forced to retreat. Five minutes after the Firemen retreated, the protestors were chased off by a few deputies from the Portage Country Sheriff Department, armed with tear-gas. The crowd headed into downtown Kent and reached the main intersection at 9:30, where they encountered the newly arrived National Guardsmen. They worked the crowd back to the college, where the ROTC building was burning furiously. By midnight, all of the rally students were back in their dorms and apartments. The National Guard proceeded to take up position throughout the campus and city, asserting their control.
Sunday, May 3rd was a day of further protests and instigations by both sides.
According to records in James Michener’s book Kent State; what happened and why, written in 1971, as a publicity stunt for the upcoming election, Governor of Ohio James A Rhodes met with General Sylvester Del Corso, the highest ranked Guardsman in the state, and other high level officials to discuss how the demonstrations would be handled. He had his picture taken in front of the burnt out ROTC building, while he and members of the police force proceeded to make inflammatory comments about the protestors, comparing them to communists, revolutionaries and war criminals. On multiple occasions they openly considered firing at protestors if need be. During the evening, another peaceful protest was staged, which was broken up by tear gas when the students refused to disperse. The congregation migrated to the home of the University president, Robert White. Later on, a student used a police bullhorn to voice “demands” to the National Guard troops and whoever would listen. At 11 p.m., the troops suddenly changed the curfew from 1 a.m. to that very moment. Students felt they were being picked on and became hostile, throwing stones. The Guardsmen retaliated by dispersing the crowd with teargas and mopping up stragglers by chasing them around with bayonets.
Monday, May 4th, 1970. Tension between the students and the troops has dangerously and inappropriately elevated, with no proper intervention by law enforcement or school officials.
Troops learned of the imminent gathering of about two thousand students and bystanders during the noontime at the Commons. Soldiers from multiple divisions were intermingled and marched upon the campus. Mostly frustrated and exhausted, they confronted the protestors and proceeded to chase them around the campus in an increasingly edgy game of tag, while other units took up positions around the open areas of the campus. The back and forth goads included rock throwing and the lobbing of teargas, though most of it wafted away in the 14 mph wind or was thrown back by brave students. At one point, the Guards cornered a group of protestors and then were surrounded themselves, at which point they ran out of teargas. They fixed bayonets to clear a path, regrouped, and headed up a grassy knoll toward the Japanese Pagoda and toward the corner of Prentice Hall, apparently on an exit vector. Many of them took kneeling and firing positions, pointing their rifles menacingly at the protestors as they retreated. One apparently even fired into the air. At one point, it appeared the troops were on an exit vector, and most of the Kent State students began milling around and heading back to class. Then, unexpectedly and without appparent provocation, the soldiers wheeled and fired downhill at the group of students. According to statistics in James Michener’s book about Kent State, 28 of the 100 Guardsmen in the unit fired 61-67 shots in the space of 20 seconds; 13 students 20-250 yards away were hit. Four of them, two young men and two young women, were killed, while others were permanently disfigured or paralyzed. That afternoon, the University was closed.
Investigations following the massacre did more to obfuscate the truth than to come to a resolution that explained why four students had to die on May 4th, 1970.
A commission appointed by President Nixon concluded that the actions of both sides—those of the students and the National Guard troops—were irresponsible, dangerous, and reckless, and specifically blames the Ohio National Guard’s policy of issuing loaded weapons to troops called to monitor civil order, and scolds University administrators for taking such a lax approach towards civil disobedience. According to the March 7th issue of Upfront published this year, a state jury charged 25 of the protestors with rioting and related offenses, but only two were convicted. The National Guards were deemed to have been acting in self defense, and a federal grand jury indicted eight of the guardsmen only to have the charges dismissed as a judge concluded that the guardsmen “had not intentionally deprived the students of their rights.” In 1979, the Governor of Ohio and 27 of the guardsmen formally expressed regret and $515,000 was paid to the nine injured students, with $15,000 going to the parents of each of the dead students. On May 4th, 1990, the university dedicated a permanent memorial in their honor.
In a way, the showdown at Kent State was the culmination of the conflicting attitudes in America during the Vietnam War era; those for the war and those against—the hawks and the doves. Like many of the tragedies during a time when the country was practically split down the middle, it is plagued by controversy, peculiarity, and lies. It is widely believed—by many such as myself—that what happened at Kent State was part of a conspiracy to reduce anti-war action across the country by making an example of the college students. On May 3rd, both Kent State campus security and Kent State police were curiously absent from the scene until after the Fire Fighters retreated and the ROTC was engulfed, when four or five deputies from a local department arrived and easily dispersed the group with tear-gas. Only then did campus security emerge from their vantage points and surround their establishment. According to the March issue of Upfront magazine this year, sniper fire was suspected to have sparked the soldiers into firing their weapons, although a commission investigating the incident found no proof. However, Terry Norman, an FBI Agent who had been covering the unfolding events, is still suspect for perhaps instigating the massacre by “accidentally” firing his weapon during the demonstrations. The mentality of law enforcement and governing officials in Ohio towards anti-war rallies was clearly that of apathy during the time of the Kent State Massacre. In the days just prior to the shooting, several questionable comments were made by the Chief of Police, the Governor of Ohio, and the National Guard General that heavily implied foreknowledge and purposeful instigation of the shooting spree.
I am a college a student and it’s quite likely that most of you are, as well. I reiterate that just as similar college students exercised their right to dissent and free speech during the Vietnam War era, so it is our duty to cry foul and make our voices heard lest we forget the faces of those like us who died that day on the Commons of Kent State University almost 35 years ago to the day.
Sources:
Canfora, Alan. Alan Canfora -- May 4, 1970. 23 Sept. 1997. 3 May 2005 http://alancanfora.com.
Federal Bureau of Investigation: Freedom of Information Act. 21 May 1970. FBI. 25 Apr. 2005 http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/kentstat.htm.
Gordon, William A. The Fourth of May. Buffalo, York City: Prometheus Books, 1990. 1-36.
Michener, James A. Kent State; what happened and why. New York: Random House, 1971.
Roberts, Sam. "1970: Tragedy at Kent State." Upfront 7 Mar. 2005: 20-22.
I'll admit that it's not that great; sometimes it fumbles over itself and the ending seems a bit rushed, but boy you should have seen me up there. I was something else. Afterward, when I turned in my work and sat down, everyone around me immediately scooted closer and began asking questions, seeking apeasement for their curiosity regarding topics I had only hinted at while in the spotlight. I was more than happy to answer! All the new friends I made that day completely made up for the C- I received for the speech. (And I proceeded on to pass the class with a solid B.)
Now, I've always been a very visual person. Therefore, I decided that a simple digital readout wouldn't be enough. I once had a science teacher in high-school who put a poster on the wall next to the entrance to his classroom that I always found compelling. It was a chart showing how many nuclear weapons existed in the world and how many it would take to end all life on Earth. Instead of a simple number, the amount of nukes was represented by several hundred tiny marks in the shape of a missile, lined up in rows. I can't speak for everyone, but this form of depiction really drove the point home for me, much more so than a simple digit would have. I thought, "How about a poster with several million marks to represent the chaotic, barbaric slaughters of Rwanda or Nanking or the Holocaust? Or the victims of disease or the dropping of the atom bombs in the Pacific? Or the martyrs of the Vietnam War?" The marks on such posters would have to either be very, very tiny, or the posters themselves extremely large. Cumbersomely large. But that would be the point, wouldn't it?
Remembering how well the afformentioned form of representation had worked on me, I decided to use a similar format for my web-page "kill-o-meter". So, from this moment forward, an image displaying the number of U.S. casualties in Iraq will appear at the bottom of Wavelength's Page of Rage, and will be updated weekly. Scroll down to see it! I'm not going to make a chart of civilian casualties or non-american coalition deaths (20,000 and beyond), because not only would it take far too long and the chart be far, far too large, but because I know that you people really only give a shit about the U.S. troops.
As an added bonus, I've decided to include a photo of those flag-draped coffins you have heard so much about but are not allowed to see:
"Why were Bush, Powell and Rumsfeld so upset about the flag-drapped coffins of dead U.S. personel being shown on national television?" Asked my professor. "Because they're ashamed of all the people they're killing?" Answered the girl who sits behind me.
While I'm on the subject of great minds thinking alike, I should note that as of this moment president George W. Bush has an approval rating of 47%, the worst rating for a president since World War II. That is only two points higher than the 45% average that all presidents are pretty much obligated to receive for being re-elected. Why do I mention this? Because it means that I, and people like me, are no longer the minority. Eat it, bitches.
And lastly, going slightly off subject to rub salt in the wound, add insult to injury, here's a little motivational poster I threw together in five minutes:
Happy Memorial Day!
I’m sure the four or five of you who yearly check my site are ecstatic. Okay, It's probably more than that, but Angelfire is annoyingly cryptic at times and decided to transfer Page of Rage to the advanced editor-- which doesn't include a hit counter-- a few years ago without my consent. I could put a third-party counter in but technically the reading would be incorrect because it would only show the number of hits taken since I put it in, and then what would the point be? I don't need one, any way.
Capitalism emphasizes personal gain over ethics. Greed at the expense of the soul and profit over legality, so that the hard work of the “everyman” and the value of the individual is gradually weakened as power is consolidated to the upper class from the lower classes; those who own the means of production and those w ho produce. Soon, there will be no middle. But what are we going to do about it: drop everything and embrace Communism? Not any time soon. So we have to make the best of an inevitably downward spiral.
When I heard that people were selling spoons and medallions and other junk made from melted down unlucky-skyscraper metal after September 11th, 2001, I groaned. My American Literature teacher brought this up and forced the class to debate about it, but I segregated myself from the conversation because I of course already knew what was going on. These people were trying to make a buck; there was nothing patriotic about it. Any pride and dignity our crippled economic system has is surrendered the moment people are allowed to profit off of such a tragedy. A tragedy built on the lies and betrayals of our own government!
But to say that there is no discernment between our elected leaders and those simply with great wealth and great influence, that there is not nor was there ever a true “for the people / by the people”, but rather only a corrupt slight-of -hand bureaucratic system, would be redundant. Rather, I’ll point out that we the people have let it get this bad. Yeah. Me, you, and your boyfriend over there. Though, I won’t deny the wiliness of our shadow government: look who they’ve managed to sneak into the light of day! A president and first family with strong ties to Bin Laden and the Third Reich. Oil barons, of course. Stooges who care nothing about the value of human life; absolutely. A anti-education (and anti-educated) president that supports the teaching of factless creationism in schools and the enslavement of women’s bodies.
Regardless, the power will always be in the hands of the people. The power of stupidity, at least. Evangelical / Fanatical Christianity, Greed, Hate—these things are taking over and creating a cancer that will soon spread out and completely destroy the civilized world… and let the uncivilized world burn to death on its own.
You know what else is stupid, self-destructive and hypocritical? Skepticism. Yeah, you heard me. There was this horrendously awful special on ABC about UFOs that was aired with the soul purpose of attempting to discredit and discount the idea of “mysterious happenings” in our skies and anyone who tries to study the phenomenon. This was accomplished by conveniently avoiding awkward things called Facts. How in the world a veteran newsman like Jennings allowed the sloppy storytelling, unbalanced review and erratic focus is beyond me. Oh, right: he’s been faking it for decades because any real journalist in his sane mind would have known he was being fed BS. I say real journalist, as in, not taking bribes from the same hand that conveniently silences NASA whenever they take an off-world picture of something no one is supposed to see, and then sends a probe to cobalt-bomb the fuck out of it. Golly, don’t even get me started on corporate media control and how it’s all programmed to benefit and fit the narrow-minded worldview of the current administration. Hot damn but how I am starting to loathe television… That cursed talking box, practically thrust into the hands of the public almost immediately after it’s invention, a mainstream populace eager to be entertained and conditioned, without any research into it’s long-term effects or possible abuses. It may sound outlandish, but I assure you, it’s been going on longer than you know.
And that ABC Special? Just the statistics would have told the whole story. Then, they could have gone in for the kill by inquiring that the authorities and researchers, both pro and con, back up their claims and explain the gross errors in their judgment and findings. That is how you are supposed to do the news. I've said it before UFO researchers, witnesses, abductees, etc…you don't need the mainstream press to legitimize you. If you're true to yourself and the people it will be the mainstream that will need you in the long run. And don’t pay any attention to the self-proclaimed scientist “skeptics” who will tell you that “an eyewitness account isn’t scientific evidence because human beings are flawed”; anyone who says something like that obviously has a low view of human beings and should themselves be ignored like the fascists that they are.
Don’t even get me started on the Roswell “coverage”. Still clinging to the weather-balloon-soviet-nuclear-detection theory… What the hell? Even the Navy admitted it was rubbish, replacing that convenient lie with a worse one in 1997. Apparently they were dropping test-dummies from planes… in the middle of a storm.
And alien abductions? Sorry, but “sleep-paralysis” doesn’t cut it, and most mainstream scientists and researchers scoff at any sort of connection. For the uninitiated, when you go to sleep your brain releases a chemical into your body to subdue it so that it can initiate REM sleep without having to worry about you flailing about and trying to act out your dreams and hurting yourself. (For some reason this chemical likes to gather around sexual organs which is why, if you’re like me, you often wake up really horny and with an erection the size of the empire state building.) Sometimes, for reasons that aren’t entirely known, a person will “wake-up” paralyzed but completely aware of what is going on around them. This most commonly happens when falling asleep at night or waking up in the morning and can be very terrifying because the bouts of paralysis are often accompanied by dreamlike hallucinations, strange sounds and flashes of light, a suffocating “weight” on the chest and abdomen, and the awareness of a “presence” in the room. It has happened throughout the centuries as a documented occurrence, and I’ve experienced it once or twice myself, to be sure. But I don’t know where or how anyone logically tied Sleep-Paralysis into the alien abduction phenomenon. To do so is to blatantly ignore all the physical, hypnotic and eyewitness evidence that has been assiduously gathered over the last 50 years. The implants—many of them completely inoperable—removed from patients are often composed of bizarre circuitry and elements either rare to this world or unidentifiable altogether. Then you have Hypnosis, an experimental procedure, but nowhere near as fallible as skeptics would have you believe, especially when in the hands of a trained professional like Budd Hopkins. And quite frankly, the last time I checked, 30% of alien abductions take place away from home, and while doing thinks such as driving or hiking. Just another bit of empirical evidence ABC News decided to sweep under the rug because it didn’t fit its agenda of misinformation.
I mean, if you’re out to do some good and want to expose a giant fallacy, why not do a report on religiosity?
Have you been watching all of this crap about the Michael Jackson trial, Terri Schiavo, Capital Punishment, Church vs. State and Family vs. Government? And so on. There is almost too much bullshit to wade through. Distractions. All distractions perpetrated by the Bush Administration, media corporations and special-interest groups who share a common interest with them. “Hey, maybe if people are immersed in local Hollywood scandal crap, they won’t have to think about that nasty little war that we are making money off of!” It makes me so sick.
Michael Jackson: I had nothing against this guy until he started lying about his blatant pedophilia and the fact that he is a lunatic.
Terri Schiavo: Glassy-eyes, no cognitive ability, persistent vegetative state. The unwitting personification of the Christian right… except she’s not a disgusting hypocrite. She’s a computer without a motherboard. A cooling fan is constantly spinning and power cables are sucking up energy but nobody’s home. Most of her brain has atrophied and filled with spinal fluid, she can’t comprehend pain, or much of anything at all; she is a shell. And there she sits, with a feeding tube nourishing a hunk of meat that died six years ago. A feeding tube paid for by thousands of dollars in medical bills that could have fed a village in Rwanda for a month and at least the kids there would have been able to appreciate it. Not to mention the thousands of other patients on feeding tubes who desperately need medical coverage and deserve it because their conditions aren't the result of self-destructive behavior (Bulimia). Her parents are nut-jobs and upset over the fact that her husband didn’t split the settlement money with them. Her husband is trying to respect her wishes to be euthanized should she ever fall into such a depressing, helpless state—a humane wish and a right that every human is born with. The right to die. The politicians who are trying to keep her alive are only interested in political gain and all the president cares about is securing votes, as usual. He only pretends to be religious: trust me, if someone like him actually abided by the contradictory schooling of the Bible, at this point he would rot in hell for all eternity. Terry Schiavo is not “defenseless”—to use such inflammatory language is to suggest that she is being “attacked”—bullshit. Ignore these videos of Terry “laughing” with her father and following a balloon with her eyes. What they don’t show you is the other 19 times Terry didn’t laugh and didn’t follow the balloon.
Speaking of reality television, did I mention that I hate it? I was vaguely watching Wife-Swap the other night (because it comes on after Lost, one of the few shows I can still stand to watch) and for some reason that melodramatic, ever-present music began to bother me more than usual. That stupid, grating soundtrack that they add to every single scene and every single facial expression to create tension in an instance where otherwise people would be bored because they didn’t have the musician present to orchestrate their feelings and tell them how they are supposed to feel. Every reality television show does this, and if you are looking to find the key to reality- television’s success, the show’s score is its diseased heart.
Last, I just have to mention this little gem that I originally heard on Howard Stern while driving to class a few days into Bush’s second inaugural ceremony. Oh Fox News, will you ever learn?
Word up, Candy! Michael Powell here. How are you doing? Great, I'm sure, because you're Secretary of State now! Don't worry, I'm not bitter about you dethroning my dad; I understand how Bush wants someone who will do whatever he says, like a good little second-wife. His mind is set, after all. He's not taking orders from anyone "of this world", remember? He's sick, to be sure, and merely exploits the beliefs of others to sway the degenerate masses into following along with the crazy, useless shit he comes up with. Religion is another form of fear, right? Sad, indeed. The way he and his enemies project the shadows of their egos on each other, when the real enemies are themselves. But I won't get all psychological on you, I'll leave the Bush-Bashing to the experts. It's just a shame we've got an illiterate, self destructive Chimp playing Mickey Mouse to a bunch of power hungry elitists. Any way, I only got appointed head of the FCC because my dad was Colin Powell, but now that he is out, they have no use for me. After all, my only real accomplishments were squandering millions of dollars of tax -payer money aimed at improving education in poor schools, and covering my ass by going on a 1st Amendment witch-hunt and censoring the fuck out of radio stations nationwide. Oh, and like you my little Condi, I always contradicted myself and went against my own standards. You know, so I wouldn't lose my job. Too bad that didn't pan out. Thank the good dude for Affirmative Action.
Hi, I'm a New York City traffic cop. Screw going after the real terrorists-- war-profiteering mega-corporations, filtered media and religious zealots using their sway to put fairy tales in school-- I'm after some hard core freaks: Bicyclists. You and your clean-air-technology promo-riders are going to get busted for disturbing the flow of vehicles, even though the road-blocks and barricades me and my buddies deploy to contain you hold up traffic for hours. But what did you expect? They cut our pay to fund some racist war in another country, so there are fewer cops and more dangerous criminals wandering the streets. We're incompetent as fuck any way: someone breaking into your apartment to rape you? We'll be there in 15 to 30 minutes, depending on your accent.
Hi, My name's Matthew Haze!! Don't try to be my friend, I'd prefer to mope and cry and cross my arms and hope to die. I don't want to talk about politics, under any circumstances, but whenever people try to talk to me about anything else, I usually ignore them and give uninspired, throwaway single-word replies. So they are forced to bring up politics, really. But whatever, I'd prefer to lecture you on the philosophy and importance of "choice" while simultaneously living in my parent's basement, unemployed and out of school. But it's my choice; there is no such thing as Genetics, everything is decided by God. Alcoholism, sexual dysfunction and retardation are all completely the result of that person's choice, not nature or the environment they grew up in. I hate "Liberal Washington" and free speech makes me want to puke. Other things that I hate:
See: Facts.
I'll start from the ground up, here; the prejudice built into the system, the fly already in the ointment, so to speak. My Sociology teacher, like many college professors these days, encourages an "open forum" style of teaching, where everyone is encouraged to speak up, ask questions and make comments, whenever they feel like it. It's not a big deal to me, because I never have any questions or comments I feel worthy of putting forth-- the teachers know what they are doing, if something is bothering me I figure I must not have been paying attention and can either look over my notes once more or check it out in the text book later on. But it's a good system regardless, I understand that. You know, in case I do have a question or comment to make. It's all good... except for the people who abuse the system. And HOO-BOY do people like to take advantage of my teachers.
So, my professors will smile and believe they are doing a good job and that they have a good class because students are always piping up with arguments, questions and concerns. However, what irks me is that all my teachers fail to realize that, as is usually the case, it's always the same three or four students speaking up. There are always a couple pricks who love the sound of their own voices and, call it a really good hunch, make problems not because they are concerned, but because they like making trouble and have been doing it their entire lives. There is no place for bullies, clowns, "cool" people, or other such statuses, however intelligent they are, in college. But the types of people prone to ruthless attention-seeking will always look to the "open-mic" style of classroom government as a way to satisfy their obnoxious demeanor.
I feel like I am over-complicating this issue. There isn't anything really special about it so much as how simply annoying it is! There are these guys-- they are almost always male, go figure-- who always ask
a) extremely stupid questions even when the teacher is very clear on the point, or
b) questions that at first seem like the result of strains of original and intelligent thought, but upon closer inspection are merely the result of a dehydrated mind clawing desperately at the chance to look halfway smart. After all, dad is out drinking with the other sex-deprived hispanics and mom is a stay-at-home house-wife who vacuums all day and eats taco-chips in front of Oprah. It's time to pull that beaner down over your eyes and impress the rest of the class with your token moments of cliche wisdom. Forget that remaining silent can be just as honorable an act. who cares if the teacher refuted your comment three seconds later without a second thought and you will be forgotten by the other phony simpletons once they step out of the classroom? You got that well-needed attention! Take THAT racial-strife! Not going to accept the hand society has dealt to you!
...Not to pick specifically on the minorities, though. I wouldn't want to look like a racist ignoramus, after all; it's just the first thing that popped into my head when I looked at one of these guys and the opporunity presented itself. Most of these kids are stupid whites, any how. But it doesn't matter what they look like. It's the way the same three or four guys keep asking stupid questions and arguing points that have no ground and that they clearly do not understand. It doesn't matter what they think they know; in-depth studies, the definitions of sociologists and the views of society-- for better or worse-- say otherwise. That's what Sociology is all about. Shut your mouth and stop making a scene just to get the other retards will laugh with you. The few decent people in my corner of the room paid for a class and would like to learn something.
My "favorite" side-quirks of these dolts is when they turn touchy subjects into tasteless jokes. For instance, the way rapes recorded on the annual FBI crime report can logically be doubled because it's estimated that only half of rapes are actually reported. One way this statistic is acquired is through anonymous surveys, with questions such as were you raped in the last few months. This one joker who sits conveniently in the middle of the classroom spouts "Well, what if I read that and thought it was funny because I'm a guy and checked 'yes'?" with a huge grin on his face. When most of the class had finished rolling with laughter over the hilarious concept of a guy getting raped, this glorious young woman in front of me looked over and asked "You would do something like that?" Exactly what I was thinking. "Well, I mean," the clown continued, "Some funny guy." "What exactly is a 'Funny Guy'?" The girl replied, completely serious and clearly annoyed. At which point the teacher forced the exchange to a close so he could continue his lecture.
Then these jerks get to the point where they aren't even taking the time to formulate the question, think it over, before they open their mouthes. It's painfully obvious they don't even care about what they are talking about, either. It means nothing to them. They just want to talk talk talk talk. "Break the ice", so to speak, on a serious topic that should remain serious. And they continue to force the teacher to repeat himself. They are either too stubborn and arrogant to accept the facts presented to them (like people critical of my web page), don't understand the concepts, or are simply bored and don't understand that it is a federal offense to interfere with the education of other students. (Luckily for them, the voting majority doesn't take learning that seriously...)
"Well, dude, uh, like... What if... What if... How can that be? Whites aren't... naturally (inherently) superior to blacks!"
"The sociological definition of race states that--"
"But just because a person has a certain skin color..."
"Despite your preconceived notions, despite your idea of common sense, again, the sociological definition of race says that--"
"--But, like, um... RAPE IS FUNNY!"
Honestly, dude. Give it a rest. You're in a room for 50 minutes a day, just like thousands upon millions of students before you. Do you really think you're going to break any new ground?I just have to mention this asshole Ex-Soldier in that same Sociology class. He also sits in the middle of the room, has a thick Kentucky accent, a deep, booming voice that cannot be ignored, calls everyone "soldier", answers any foible with "god bless you", blurts out random text-book glossary references like "Don't ask, don't tell!" and "Stratification!" to sound intelligent, and sporadically interupts class while beginning every sentence with "I was in the military, so I think I know a thing or two about...", one of my major "pet-peeves". At the same time, he openly denounces military and economic foreign policy and our current administration, because everyone else does and he isn't capable of original thought, he just steers clear of anything that might stir controversy. Fascinating behavior for such an outspoken person. Deep down, he probably knows that he has to be careful because no matter how "chosen" he is to draw attention to himself, he is still some 40-year-old guy in a class full of 20-year-olds, who thoughtlessly threw most of his life away in America's infamous standbye career, the Army. I grit my teeth whenever he speaks and squirm at the idea that he is breathing my oxygen. I have exercised inhuman patience thus far in not freaking out and telling off he and his cohorts and perhaps beating one of them into the cement (or as I'm sure he calls it, "see-ment".) Sorry dude, the south called. They want their human garbage back. Fucking nationalists.
It's not so bad in my math class. Pro: The one "loud dude" in the class sits next to me and is very friendly and never shuts up about stuff that makes me laugh. Con: The one "loud dude" in the class sits next to me and is very friendly and never shuts up about stuff that makes me laugh. He's tall, handsome, and doesn't "get" the math. He asks the most questions, especially when he walks in late half of the time and clearly missed something, forcing everyone else to get a repeat viewing of everything they just learned, seeing as they bothered to show up on time because they weren't out getting high all night. Apparently he goes to all the help sessions. Honestly, I can't blame him. The teacher is a nazi when it comes to "side conversation". In other words, no one is allowed to talk-- even if they are whispering and helping the person next to them understand the mathematical concept that was just flown through (which happens quite a bit.) I finally gave up trying to explain things to the afformentioned "peer" because the teacher has supernatural hearing. (He probably heard my little quip about his wife-- Eep!) But this guy always seems to have something to say to me, and he makes me laugh, and I have a certain level of admiration and respect toward anyone who can make me laugh-- even if I am laughing at them-- because I have a bizarre, often sick sense of humor. (diarrhea water- balloons, anyone?) Oh well, the quarter's almost over.
Astronomy is definitely medium-level annoying because it's always the same three motherfucking poindexters shooting their mouthes off. Yes, they are three of the ugliest people I have ever seen. Yes, their insights are often intelligent and thought provoking. But the fact remains that they are the same three motherfucking poindexters shooting their mouthes off every time.
Not to be a homophobe, but I am reminded of the words of a young man I sat next to in my creative writing class in high school. We both watched as a tall, unnattractive and clearly overweight bespectacled geeknerd entered the classroom carrying some popcorn chicken. We both knew this guy liked to speak up and make unclever, unwitty observations. The young man sitting next to me turned and said, casually:
"Some people are just big vats of Gay. Sometimes the Gay keeps building up until it is at unsafely Gay levels, at which point you have to release the Gay valve and let some of the Gay out."
Hmmm. It really makes you think.
That's all I have to say on the matter. You already know how I feel.
I'm also fed up with people who compare the lack of plausibility in Creationism with the lack of plausibility in the Big Bang theory. This is bullshit. The Big Bang theory and evolution are supported by huge bodies of objective evidence connected by rational logic. The existence (and, to be fair, the definite non-existence), of a God or Gods is not. And these old and absurd arguments about the "beauty" of the universe and how lovely and compact it is, (implying that it must have been designed) have been explained away for years. Theoretically (and I use the term loosely so the stupids out there won't think there is any possible way to back it up), such a thing is indeed possible within the laws of physics; but in the absence of any evidence and given the outlandishness of such a theory, I find that I am entitled to disbelieve in God by default without having to prove that it doesn't exist... whereas the Theist who proclaims that their God or Gods DO exist does have something to prove. Guess I was just born at the right time.
Further more, I am sick of the mentality of "you have to be religious to harbor good morals." Wow, what a fantastic grave of Bullshit someone has uncovered! NEWSFLASH: I am not religious and I consider myself a good person with good morals. One can teach good morals secularly; they are independent of religion. Think about it for a moment. Why do most religions and many Atheists agree on common themes like "do not steal", "do not rape", and "do not murder"? These are things that any rational being could figure out for themselves; if you do something to somebody who doesn't deserve it, then you are being illogical-- in other words, unfair. Therefore by logic we conclude that we must not steal or rape or murder. The magical human touch call Emotion should properly serve as an inspiration and guidepost to and check-and-balance on logic (but not replace it entirely).
Cutting right to the bone here: Being a believer in any faith-based idea that flies in the face of common sense is a bad thing. Since it makes you act irrationally, you end up adversely affecting other people around you who might not believe the same thing; in extreme cases, cases that are nonetheless common throughout history, you might end up "infecting" people with whichever religion is in question, and in turn cause them to harm unbelievers who depend on rational thought.
I am no more worried about a terrorist attack than I was before September 11th. I am more worried about the constitution, the bill of rights, and the loss of power at the hands of the people-- and the power all the wrong people have. I am more worried about the flow and mediums of information, what is in my water supply, what is in the air I breathe, and who is killing-- suiciding-- key figures in the scientific community researching environmentally-friendly power sources. I'm worried about people hiding under my car, in the daylight, and this girl I never know what to say around or do with. Curse this mortal coil and the reality it is trapped within.
You know what else? I think people who argue about their religion being the "real" religion are in fact reflecting the idea that deep down they're scared, scared that they might not have bet on the right religion. That's why showboat religious people claim they can't pray in school-- that's simply a lie. That's why showboat religious people demand to be seen praying, so others can watch in awe. That's why showboat religious people demand that a shiny golden calf be displayed at the County Courthouse, and why showboat religious people make a ruckous over the the deletion of "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.
I've had a while to gather up some more petty little shit that bothers me. The big stuff is still there-- but I've already written about that so even though it still eats away at me, I really can't go on about it, can I? That would be redundant and I would be ripping off all, let's see, zero of my readers.
Why do people still ski? Well, no, that's a dumb question. Why do people do anything? What I meant to say was, skiing looks so stupid and even if you consider yourself good at it, it's an unnecessarily risky sport because snow- boarding is ten times cooler and safer. I just can't see any good reasons to keep skiing when a snowboard will get you there faster and in style. Disregard the claims that "snowboarding is extremely dangerous." That's only if you're an idiot who isn't cut out for it (slow reaction time, unathletic). You're surfing down a (hopefully) dormant volcano at unmentionable speeds at high altitudes at a consistent downward angle with trees and rocks here and there, of course it's dangerous; I'm just saying, skiing is even more dangerous, and more awkward as well. A piece on each foot to watch out for? No thank you. I want to spend more time worrying about only speed, balance and direction rather than gymnastics, spraining my ankle, breaking my leg, losing my ski, multiplied by two. Oh yeah, and you have to carry poles too, right? No thank you!
Yeah that was bad, I admit. I think the numbers are on my side for that last one so I don't have much controversy to worry about; skiiers know they do what they do out of family routine and custom, it's probably nothing to do with fun and passion. To each his own, I suppose; I just don't see any logical reason for wanting to ski when the snowboard, a far more efficient and friendly tool for personal pleasure, exists. Wow, that last sentence didn't sound right.
The Pledge of Allegiance should not contain the words "Under God", end of discussion. I'm not a huge fan of the Pledge itself but I'll give it the benefit of a doubt; I specifically do not see any reason for "Under God" to exist other than to instill an atmosphere of fear and obedience in our already sheepish young culture. The Pledge already performs this function to an extent, but I'll admit it also serves to remind us of something we need to know about why we are allowed to follow the types of lifestyles and existences we choose-- but "Under God" pushes the boundaries and cuts up the separation of church and school-- not to mention church and state. And that doesn't sound like a noble reason to me. The phrase wasn't even in there originally; it was added in 1954 during the Cold War as a pot shot at Communism, which was commonly considered "godless". (Which was a great excuse to implement a new way of brainwashing youngsters, but they don't teach you that in the history books.) The Cold War is over. Is Communism still a threat? I can think of far worse threats, right here in our own country. So why do we keep this phrase? Well, bottom line, "Under God" sways the way of religion, and lots and lots of people are religious, and we know how religious people are. There was an uproar when this very issue was going through the Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (if you're out of the loop, that's sort of the final tier of the Supreme Court for our side of the country). But I don't need to go into that; if you are up on the news you should already know about the logical Michael Newdow and his quest. My point is, if they are so secure in their numbers, if their way of thinking isn't as endangered as I like to think, why do religious people care if "Under God" is in the Pledge of Allegiance? Must they have their way of thinking forced upon the confused, impressionable schoolchildren of this country? My friends are probably tired of hearing this, but I hold society in contempt for creating an atmosphere where people are made to feel ashamed and become alienated by not just their peers but by their elders for refusing to believe in a higher power, having their own beliefs, or in my case, believing in nothing. That's right, nothing. I should be able to believe in nothing and not feel outlawed. Well, I more or less feel fine, but that is after going through trial after trial and putting up with a lot of shit, before I learned to read between the lines and think for myself. And I don't have a problem with people of other beliefs going about their business; it's when they and their beliefs begin to infringe upon my right to my own beliefs and lifestyle, that they cross the line and I start to take offense and get angry. So don't fuck with me on this one. Children, and people of all ages-- shapeless clay in general-- should be given a clean slate when they learn; not be told that "this way is the right way"; they must be given the tools to seek out the path that makes the most sense, and works best for them. That would be great. And sure, lots of people would probably still decide to go with the ways of popular and organized religions and their churches-- I understand that-- but their numbers would probably not be anywhere near as large and intimidating as they are today. Anything can be threatening in large numbers; even dumbness. Back on track now: General Theodore B. Olson (who suddenly has authority on history and politics because he is in the military, go figure) states a common defense for the existence of the phrase, that being "Under God" merely serves to remind us of pretenses that our country was founded on. In other words, "Under God" is a part of our history that we can't deny. Bullshit. If that is so, why wasn't the phrase inserted into the Pledge in the first place? It's nothing but a relic of the Cold War, and a pedestal for fanatical goddies to stand upon while they force their way of thinking down the throats of a new generation. Dumbass. At least it was decreed that children in public schools aren't required to recite the Pledge any more, as they once were. A small victory for not just Athiests, but also children and the parents of children who don't believe in god and don't want their kids going to school every morning and being told that their parents are wrong. For free thinking in general. But a small victory, none-the-less. Court rulings don't mean shit to these people; they are still going to go ahead and give you dirty and condescending looks when you refuse to stand there like a zombie with your hand over your blood-pump and recite empty meaningless tripe. They are still going to instigate crowd-wide prayers before football games and around the flag-pole. They are still going to go ahead and make innocent, intelligent and just plain confused children feel awkward, cold, and outside for not obeying the "norm". I was once one of those kids. Now, I am my own God. I come to my own decisions without consulting some imaginary diety to make myself feel better; I understand that this is a world of coincidence, and if not coincidence, then something that Science can explain. And if there is more, much more out there that is beyond even the realm of science... Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Nobody else knows how it all works, even if they claim to, so we're all in the same boat whether we know it or not. I myself will continue looking for that bridge and the answers on the other side, even if they are beyond my comprehension and drive me insane; I can do nothing else. I'm sure there are powers out there much, much greater than ourselves and greater than we can imagine, just not necessarily in the way people commonly think of them. I just... don't know. I will not buy into and abide by answers that have no backing. I'm keeping an open mind, even if it kills me and leaves me cold and shivering. Although we are not alone in the Universe, we are all, in our own way, alone. I'm going to stop dwelling on this, because I've dwelled on it too many times before; sometimes I think of nothing else. You can tell, no? In conclusion, Pledge bad, Reservism good. False warmth bad, intuitive cold good. Sunrise bad, Sunset good.
I'm sick of Reality Television. I was sick of it after Survivor part one. Like game-shows, reality t.v. is just another cheap cash-in for copycat networks and the media in general, who have lost touch with reality and don't know how to be original.
And fuck comic-book movies, too. Another flavor-of-the-month cash-in by movie studios. Sure, some of these movies are good, but that doesn't matter. It's the principle of the matter-- comic book stories are meant for comic book stories, not the movies. Okay, maybe one a year, but beyond that, all this fakey-action-fantasy-violence garbage needs to go; original, ground-breaking cinema needs to be grown like wildflowers by talented writers, not like the mushrooms Charlie the Independent Film Janitor farms in the studio basement. Movies based off of comic books simply aren't proper cinema. And I'm not saying they aren't proper because they are too edgy, but because they aren't edgy enough.
This is more personal that broad, but I can't get over this moron in my Children's Theater group who didn't like Halo because of the "fixed crosshairs", meaning he didn't like how the crosshairs didn't swell and expand to represent a gradual loss of accuracy when you held down the trigger too long. Look buddy-- and this goes for anyone who complains about this--: if you don't like fixed crosshairs, you shouldn't be playing first-person-shooters. Nearly all FPS' use fixed crosshairs except the ones that had designers who found it absolutely necessary to add a touch of realism but implementing expanding crosshairs. And I have no problem with that; I'm just saying, most FPS', and Halo in particular, don't need them, and if your complaint with Halo is that the crosshairs don't expand, then you are spoiled and need to get a life. I'm not going to get into a debate about balancing realism in FPS' because I'm not your average boring geeknerd and frankly, what it comes down to is, in some games it works and in some games it doesn't. Halo doesn't need expanding crosshairs to be enjoyed. Return to Castle Wolfenstein did. And that's all really a matter of opinion; I myself figured, Halo takes place in the future and there are a thousand ways to argue against there being any expanding bullet spread in that Universe. RTCW takes place in the past and your character isn't a genetically enhanced super-soldier with powered armor like in Halo. Besides, the guns in Halo do have spread, it's just confined to a certain area. What more do you want, asshole? Do the aliens care about spread? No! Shoot the bastards already!! See, this guy's problem, like so many others, is that he plays too much Counter-Strike. CS is, as far as I can tell, the most popular and most played-- but hardly the best-- FPS out there. CS uses expanding crosshairs. So, what, every FPS needs to have expanding crosshairs because CS has them? I'm going to let you in on a little secret: Counter-Strike sucks. I don't even consider it a first-person-shooter because it totally bastardizes and defiles the FPS genre. It's this multiplayer game where you run around the same boring little maps again and again shooting the other team with the same boring little guns again and again. Does it take any skill? Any CS player will immediately answer "yes". But the real answer is, "no". No multiplayer FPS requires any "skill", other than knowing what everything does, and that can't be considered a skill because that's information you can find out at the push of a button. I mean, what kind of "skill" could be required? "I have better aim," you say. Um, I hate to break it to you, but aim doesn't matter in a computer game. Everyone and their mother can place a crosshair over a target and click their left mouse button. So what that comes down to is, who has the better mouse? Having a good mouse isn't a skill. If your mouse suddenly dies on you, or if there is a speck of dirt that inched its way onto your mousepad and caused your hand to jerk, is that a determination of skill? Nope. "I have better hand-eye coordination." That's doesn't matter. I don't think you have to learn how to move your eyes from one part of the screen to the other. It can't be that difficult; it's not even human instinct. Something moves, on that small square in front of you (the computer screen) and your eyes automatically dart to it. Then it's a matter of moving your mouse and in turn moving your crosshair over the target and clicking. Oh, what skill!! Or should I say, Oh, what complete chance! News for you, retard: The game moves the same for everyone. You don't "learn" how to move your mouse hand faster than someone else; it's not an acquired skill. It's just who you are, and what the game allows you to be. If the game is flawed and cannot accomodate your needs, then it is worthless. Even if I see someone on my screen and want to shoot them, that doesn't meant my shitty hardware and shitty internet connection is going to let me. "Leading" targets is out, because all the weapons are hit -scan, and choosing whether to hold your ground or move in is a matter of basic human instinct, as is listening for footsteps. It's just a boring contest where everyone is on equal terms except they have their computer specs do the work for them. So, basically, multiplayer in general is pointless and useless. It proves nothing, except that someone has better hardware and a smoother internet connection. There, I said it. I'm up for a good old fashioned 100-meter dash any day of the week.
Lastly, my dog: would somebody please shut my dog up? It was still bad when he was doped, but ever since we took him off his medication, he barks at EVERYTHING! Someone across street? Oh no! A fly? Better alert the owners to an intruder! Someone pulling into their driveway? Getting their mail? Waltzing around on their own property as though they own it? Unacceptable!! Someone closing a dumpster lid a mile away in the middle of the fucking night? Better let loose with the ear-shattering barkage and play Gaurd-Dog even though I should have noticed by now that nobody every gets up to check it out! And then he comes into the family room and barks there if we don't do anything. No stupid, go back to the window. It was bad there but it's even worse in here. Yeah, there you go you worthless sack of excrement. Don't make me bash your little skull in with this remote.
Yeah, I know... I'm fishing. Sorry for sounding a little ignorant there. I mean, animal instincts are animal instinct, right? But it just get's to me how the people in this place don't do anything about it. They should know by now that he does most of it just to get attention, and then they succumb to his childish, untrained whims and give him what he wants: more food. He just gets encouraged to do it more. Look how fat he is! LOOK!!
I'd like to talk about something else that's been bothering me. This usually only happens online, because everyone is so anonymous there. Although, it might happen when I am in a far-off place, as well. Someone will ask me where I am from, and I'll answer "Washington"... And here is where things go sour... NO MATTER WHAT, the person will always respond with "D.C.?" as in "Washington D.C.?" GAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! ::throws dumbass down the hallways:: NO, BITCH!! IF I WERE FROM WASHINGTON D.C. I WOULD SAY SO! THE STATE! I'M FROM THE THE STATE! WASHINGTON STATE!! It drives me fucking nutts!! And I'm not the only one, oh no, I can assure you that most Washington residents have had to grudgingly deal with this at one point or another, probably more than once. It's fucking stupid. Why would I mean D.C.? Again: if I were from Washington D.C. I would say so. WASHINGTON. THE STATE. YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT BY NOW FROM TALKING TO PEOPLE. You always answer with your state. And if you don't, well, you're supposed to. Most people probably don't have to put up with assholes asking if they are from Washington State or Washington D.C... Seriously! It's even worse when you are one state away, in Oregon perhaps, and people still fuck this up. YES, YOU GOT IT SMART GUY, I AM FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON D.C.!! Dolt. And it's even more trying to guys like me, because when I tell them I am from Vancouver I always get "British Columbia?" in return. ::shudders:: Strength, Damon! Summon your strength!!.
You know what else Washington residents hate? Being called "Washingtonians". What the hell is a "Washingtonian"? It's surely not a real word, and you can sure as hell bet that no one in Washington refers to themself as a "Washingtonian". And if someone in Washington does, they really shouldn't be considered Washington residents, much less human being. You can herd them out into a field and slaughter them wholesale any time you want. In High School, I knew this annoying born-again- christian girl. How annoying was she? Well, first off, she was fat. Secondly, she had this huge birth-mark on her cheek with discusting long brown hair growing out of it. Third, in reference to the nasty things children say, she would always use the expression "Junk goes in, Junk comes out" while making a circular motion with her fingers, over and over again, as if this stupid, un-original, magic expression was the answer to all of the problems in the world. FOURTH, the way she talked. Her tone of voice was always very solemn and depressing. It drove me fucking nutts, particularly when she was asked to read for the class, and she read everything in a sad, abysmal way, that made me want to shoot her and then shoot myself. Ugh! The cream of the crop, and the reason why I mention her, is because of the time she stood up in front of the class and read a little essay about "having to move to Washington". It went something like "But I don't want to leave Texas, mommy. I don't want to be a Washingtonian. That sounds like some kind of cookie." Right, did I mention she has an awful Texan accent? Any way, she read this passage in her usual sad, somber, depressing tone, which was the icing on the cake, firmly entrenching in everyone's mind that, yes, this girl is a pathetic little bitch. I know that all self-help born-again religious pricks are pathetic little bitches, but where the hell does she get off thinking that Texas is better than Washington? Have you seen the crap that comes out of Texas? I know, besides the people? And I wonder if they all refer to us as "Washingtonians". I wouldn't put it past them, simple-minded bastards. I bet they feel pretty bright, taking the name of our state and adding "ian" to the end. How fucking original!!
For instance, here is a brief essay (see: rant) describing why most soldiers, in any army, are in essence Serial Killers.
What's that you say? Oh no!! Gee whiz, it's all fun and candy until someone criticizes the Army! Then, may hell have no fury!! I have reaped the whirl-wind, but... I stand by my statement. The Army DOES train men and women to kill other men, women (and children) in a pre-meditated pattern-- both physically and psychologically. Military Strategists have become artists at devising intricate ways of scaring the shit out of-- and summarilly killing-- any and all types of enemies. And judging from those torture pictures that just came out of Iraq, there is definitely something sexual-- perhaps, homoerotic-- about the act of not only killing your enemy, but terrorizing his family and crushing his spirit. That, and the 'Grunts are just plain fucked-up. Way to go, putting all the sociopaths in charge of Abu Graihb. (For the sake of extracting information and protecting the country, of course!!) Come on-- the Military is all about the cocks. It might not always have been that way, like in the "old days" when our country was founded, for instance. But now it is all about coercion and terror. During the Revolution, we more or less did what we had to do, to earn our freedom. You have to do things like that to break the arm of Tyranny. But after that? Come on. Even the soldiers of the Revolution killed again and again. They killed other soldiers, soldiers like them. Serial Killers, definitely. Justified? Perhaps. But at the core, aren't all actions? For someone to take offense, another must be taking defense. It's not fair to say "they aren't serial killers because the people they are killing have guns and are shooting back." They are defending their way of life. I have it a mother or father would take up arms and fight vehemently to keep intruders from harming the children. The only difference here is that your commanders, whoever you take orders from, tell you that the intrusion, the killing, it's all justified. And you believe them because they use words like "freedom", "destruction", "patriotism", (empty words that really mean nothing except 'hate' and 'nationalism') to stir your impressionable emotions. If your commander told you that the killing of innocent children would secure your freedom, would you do it? It happens more than it doesn't. You just don't hear about it. I have no doubt that it happened back then, too. (The Slave Revolts.)
"Freedom from Tyranny" is no longer the case today. After all, our elected officials are Tyrants. But they are citizen- elected Tyrants, right? Not necessarily, seeing as George Bush failed the electoral voting process (one might even say that the way the court "selected" him to preside was a tyrannical act in and of itself. But that's sort of overlooking the entire conspiracy that got him into office) but even if they were elected properly, the fact that they are Tyrants still stands. King George III had lots of supporters, too. Many of whom were mentally ill and had the reasoning-maturity level of two-year-olds (see: religious fundamentalists). You can lie to yourself and believe that the Army-- any Army-- is about protecting the country. Bullshit. Think about it: So maybe some guys with guns are coming to wipe you out and take your city. But why? What did you do to make them hate you? And vise-versa? Afghanistan and Iraq were no threat to us. That was a lie, a fabrication. America creates it's enemies through ignorance, fear, and force. We train our soldiers to kill, without fear, an enemy that we do not understand, and they do the same to us. In a sense, both sides are innocent, until they rob each other of their innocense by the act of War. And War itself is fought using Strategy, and Strategy is Premeditation. So basically, it's Serial Killers fighting Serial Killers, and they are the ones who make each other so. Hope they wipe each other out completely. Yeah, in my dreams... Now, our Army and it's conglomerates-- the Israelis in particular-- have fear and killing down to a formula. Only, the formula doesn't work. The goal ism apparently, to make "peace", but only more death and hatred is created. You can't fight a primitive, fanatical enemy by building bigger and better weapons. That kind of mentality is left over from the Cold War-- Know what I mean? "Those guys over there are a threat to us, so let's create a giant, undisposable stockpile of hundreds of Nuclear weapons, so that we feel safer." Yeah, good luck with all that. Any way. Children have always died in war, and not necessarily by accident. For the sake of tidiness in an untidy subject, I'll just refer to the "innocent" men, women and children as "civilians". Civilians get wiped out by accident all the time during conflicts. In fact, more civilians have died in recent conflicts than have enemy combatants. But the Army-- both sides-- don't care, and you know why? Because they are trying to destroy not only lives, but the IDEAS those lives follow. They are trying to incite further violence and create anger and fear. What else did they except to accomplish? They didn't really fall for that "dethrone the tyrant" crap, did they? Oh, whoops. Looks like Private Johnny is a misleads stooge. And who cares if the person he just shot is a soldier or a civilian? They both harbor the same ideas ::coughreligioncough:: and are therefore both fair game. It opens up a whole can of worms, sure, but you can shut that shit up with a few bullets, right? Wrong. You just make things worse, and create more fanatical foes. But that's not going to stop our fantastic ARMY! Going after one "bad guy" at a time, yeah that'll work!! Let's make sure to only shoot at the other soldiers because the other soldiers have guns, and so they come first. Civilians, later. And I'll be fair here, in a sense, and say that the majority of civilians are probably killed because of a Soldier's twitch-reflexes. "Is that guy reaching for a gun, or his wallet? Is that kid in the window just watching the action, or is he looking for a chance to fire that RPG? I'd better shoot them both just to be sure, because if I hesitate or make the wrong judgement in a split-second moment, I might get killed." It's sad. Really, it is. And when the situation is so bad that soldiers don't know who is who and kill anything that moves on an instinct of fear, you're not supposed to find a way to calm the soldiers down and boost moral, you're supposed to RE-ASSESS WHY THE FUCK YOU ARE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE AND THEN WAKE UP AND GO HOME!! Moving on. Every position in an Army involves killing people, and/or spreading/oppressing ideas through intimidation... either directly or indirectly. Whether you are the sniper or the spy-plane flyer, bombs WILL blow up school-children, stay bullets WILL kill a pregnant woman. No operation is ever completely clean. But hell, people sign up any way because, sadly, that's where the money is, and not where it should be. Hmmm! The Army-- the Military-- is all about either Serial Killing, or the POTENTIAL for Serial Killing. The Army trains killers, trains killers to kill again and again. Don't give me this "the people they are killing aren't innocent" bullshit. Don't give me this "for the sake of the nation" bullshit. Human life is human life. There is ALWAYS another way. Bringing up the American Revolution was sort of off the subject, but it supports my point in that it shows HOW FAR people will go for an IDEA, and HOW FAR we have fallen from the country that our forefathers envisioned. Yes, rebels died for a cause. But look at us! Was it really worth it? Freedom, Shmeedom. You already HAVE your stupid freedom. A pretty gluttonous freedom, at that. And to support your way of life you will allow your government to strengthen it's empirical grip on the world through political manipulation and REAL terror? We need a smaller Army, and more SMART people to solve these problems with words rather than loaded pistols pointed at the head of a naked POW tied up on the floor, panties over his head, begging for his life and to be returned to his wife and newborn son. Sorry it doesn't fall into the "law- enforcements" tidy little definition of Serial Murder. In essence, what Armies do is much, much worse. Let's take Andy Rooney's advice, and select a board of College Professors to work on world problems. They would present the public with a logical course of action, and whether or not politicians and the current administration chose to go with it, the information would already be out there, and that would create a lot of public pressure. I'm all for trying out new things. And we are long overdue for some reform, even if it is temporary. And I am sick of couch-patriots, sitting comfortably at home and whining about "patriotism" and "freedom". Patriotism is the sanctuary of the scoundrel, damnit. A last resort to actually doing something meaningful and helpful and taking action. Grow a brain, you bastards. On the news, you hear about "Enemy combatants being killed" and sometimes, if the media is feeling a little brave, "American Soldiers killed a lot of Iraqi Fighters today." They fail to mention that people who still ride around on donkies and wear towels around their heads and drink water out of wells, are having the living SHIT blown out of them by Apache Gunships with 20mm Autocannons, Infrared Tracking, and Satellite-Guided Missiles. Bottom line, tell me there isn't something extremely fucked up about that. You know, besides the death. Tell me that isn't a war on ideas, or a holy crusade. Damnit, we aren't even fighting a real army. It's a bunch of slightly-organized yahoos running around with AKs and RPGs, and they are still kicking our asses. And you know why? They know the truth. And they just want it more. Welcome to Vietnam II, boys and girls.
So there you have it. Soldiers are pretty much Serial Killers. Although, it's much worse than Serial Killing in a way, because we condone it. Serial Killers are often mentally disturbed. They kill a few dozen people sometimes, and guess what? People make them that way, regardless of mental-derrangement. Nobody is "born evil". America, and the Army it allows to exist, suffer from a much bigger, collective, mental illness. It's called IGNORANCE.
While you're chewing on that, here's a fantastic article written by an ex-marine that describes the absurdity behind military recruition.
What else? Oh yeah! What's really hilarious is those pro-Bush campaign ads that have been running lately. "We need to make more jobs for hard-working citizens, create better schools for our children, and keep our country safe while fighting terrorism." NO SHIT, SHERLOCK? You mind telling us HOW you plan to do any of that? Judging from your current track record, I don't think you have any idea how.
Of course, that won't stop Mr. Bush. He's quite a busy man, what with all the oil-pumping left to do in national parks, war-mongering left to do in any country with a different point of view, and talking to Jesus in the bathroom while high on crac-cocaine. Don't forget playing golf with skin-cancer-Dad while casually joking about nuclear weapons and what lies to use on television tomorrow to garner more idiots to support him.
Oh, and all the vacationing Bush has planned-- how ever will he find time to be President? Or converse with his award- winning Neo-Conservative "War-Pig" Commission? Sure, Condileeza and Colin are there for him... but isn't it interesting how BOTH of their names begin with C's, BOTH of them are black, and BOTH of them go along with everything that rich texan says? Funny.
He's a very busy man. Bush has already taken the liberty of cutting a ton of "unnecessaries" out of his schedule: press conferences, reading the newspaper, listening to intelligent people (boy does he *hate* intelligent people! Those damn liberal smarty-pants elitest-circle think-tanks! Why would Bush need an intellect when he's got a great friend like Jesus to go along with everything he decides?)
::cough:: Any way... I have lost my train of thought.
Oh yeah, the best part of it all, for me, is the anti-Kerry ads. "Would you vote for a man like Kerry? Kerry wants to stop pre-emptive strikes, pull troops out of Iraq, and cut down on defense spending! Kerry wants to impose a huge gasoline tax that would force Americans to pay 38% more for gas every time they fill up!" GOOD! THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT! I laugh my ass off at these commercials, because everything they "accuse" Kerry of trying to do, is EXACTLY what I want to happen. Listening to that ironic shit makes me feel a lot better.
Mr. Bush is surely taking his policies and decisions right out of "Surviving The Great Depression For Dummies 101." Keep sending those jobs overseas and getting migrant workers from Mexico to fill in everything other position. That'll work! What? It's just making things worse? Darn!
Or hey, start a war! Oh, wait, you already did? And the economy is even worse off? Whoops, guess you and your cabinet should stop being fanatical tyrants. And stop making trouble for our country so your defense-contractor buddies can get rich and try out new toys.
But hey, at least it gave you a chance to test that cool new stealth-tank prototype on some unsuspecting terrorist school -children! Those terrorist "evil-doers" will never bother you again!!
Anywho, getting back on subject: I cannot stand movies that end in trials. You know: in Courtrooms, with a solid verdict deciding the outcome of the major problem in the "film". What an absolute cop-out. I quote the term "film" and use it loosely because, let's be honest: a movie does not deserve to be called a "film" if it simply copies the exact same formula as another movie, but uses different actors and different jokes. And ends with a Courtroom scene.
I can usually tell if a movie is shitty by the commercials, but my educated hunch is never completely confirmed until I have seen the movie and have seen that the last third or quarter of the picture is taken up by some boring Trial sequence that is supposed to suddenly make the throwaway movie seem serious. These movies usually feature crumby actors in crumby situations, cast only to appeal to teens and a generally dumbed-down America; flavors-of-the-month type "films" with tossed- together scripts, fast-food endorsements, crude sexual humor and slap-stick violence... Fluff. Since there is really nothing going for the movie in the first place, the movie needs a reliable, empty, by-the-books Courtroom ending. And what's more solid than the Justice System?
Some examples to come when I'm not so tired... In the meantime, your homework is to brainstorm some movies-- any movies-- that climax in the midst of a Courtroom. Yeah, I know, doesn't it suck for me to have you do some actual thinking, rather than just laying it all out for you myself? Any way, re-assess your opinion of the movies you listed. Because, they're probably bad regardless of what you think.
In other news, I have some new "pet-peeves"(i hate that expression), including: Perfect teeth. Straight is alright, but a mouth full of big, bright white teeth just pisses me off. Especially when those people smile all the time. Having fun there Mrs. Julia Roberts? Enjoying your stupid little BMX bike-ride there Mr. Donkey? Gonna' go hang out at Plaid Pantry with your other poseur friends wearing their Soulfly t-shirts and complaining about bullshit they don't understand? Get out of my town.
I absolutely cannot stand immature adults. Those "grown-ups" who do stupid things to entertain little kids or people younger than they. For instance, when I was around 11 years of age, I wanted to hike the Multnomah Falls trail but my mom wouldn't let me go because I refused to wear this stupid looking poncho, so I left her in the dust and went any way. While I was sitting on a bench near the falls, looking sad, waiting for her to change her mind, some guy walks by with his two kids, and says in a Donald Duck voice something like "What's up, Doc?" I couldn't help but lower my head, close my eyes, and give a silent prayer for his poor kids(this was back when I still believed in God), who proceeded to laugh at their father's delightful joke. Oh, what fun it must be to have father with such magical sense of humor? That must never get old. I wonder how funny he'd be if his house burned down and his family was killed? Dork.
Let's see... the next most prominent memory was from a few weeks ago, actually. I was at a diner in Camas trying to have a conversation with someone and there was this guy in the booth across the aisle from us with his wife and a baby in a high- chair. I don't remember what his wife looked like, and his baby looked like any baby, but the "man" was wearing a white t- shirt and had a slight beard, pretty average looking, but then his baby starts to make wierd noises(like babies often do). The guy tells the baby to stop. Then HE starts doing it. At first he was just tickling it's chin and gently going "Woob woob woob woob woob" in a cute little manner as someone might coddle a puppy. But he keeps doing it and getting louder and louder and more intense in his gesturing. Suddenly his body is flailing and contorting and his head is twisting back and forth as he makes that annoying "AWOOSHYWOOSHYWOOSY!! AWOOSHYWOOSHYWOOSHY!!!" sound non-stop for what seemed like five fucking minutes. Jesus Christ and Hunter, I thought the bastard's head was going to snap off. I had my back to rest of the diner so I couldn't see anyone else's reactions. At first the guy was just annoying but as he kept at it became rather alarming, I started to think he was having a seizure or something. But every once in a while he would stop and take quick glances in my direction, perhaps to see my reaction(staring vigorously at my french fries as my friend hid her face behind an open newspaper and tried to muffle her laughter), and that told me alas, no, he was doing it just to be an obnoxious asshole. I guess he forgot that you don't do shit like that when you are an adult. I seriously considered killing him. No, bear with me here, I really did. I was having a bad day, and I am a pretty angry guy with some overwhelmingly pent-up rage who is known to go to extremes at times, and I figured I might jump on over to his table and slit his throat, in front of everyone. Blood would squirt out of his neck and cover his screaming family, his permanently scarred child. Hell, I might have taken his entire head off; he looked like he didn't have any use for it anymore. I wanted his kid to grow up and ask mommy one day: "Why is daddy dead?" to which mom would reply "Because he acting like a baffoon in a restaurant and pissed off the wrong guy. Don't you ever piss off anybody, sweety. Let your father be an example." If there had been one piece of silverware in the entire damn place, or if I didn't have the strong will-power that I do, I might have carried out my fantasies, and many others.
Less memorable but no less infuriating moments mostly occurred at school in relation to teachers. Asside from these two teachers I had one after the other who did nothing but treat me immaturely, I knew this old bitch that didn't like how one of my math books looked (even though it had been sitting on my counter for two months and nowhere else) so she forced me-- and I do mean forced me, through intimidation-- to sign some paperwork charging my mother the cost of the expensive book. We complained, but of course the bitch was about to retire so no one would lay stuff like that on her... and I'm sure she knew this. Come to think of it, another fat bitch made me and my friend do something similar a while back, but I don't remember what our crime was. Hanging out in the library during lunch when we were supposed to stay on the playground where people could pick on us, or something. Whatever.
There was this other bearded asshole at that same school who grabbed me in the cafeteria one day and shook me and told me something along the lines of: "If you ever look at me like that again, I'm going to take you to my office, and we are going to call and talk to your parents." I was scared out of my mind because this tall figure whom I had never seen before was about to kill me, so I whimpered something like "Okay, sorry" and was left alone. That incident speaks for itself. Years later I found out that the "man" was a teacher there who happened to have a wooden finger, so I guess he was really insecure about random children grazing him with their eyes. Wow. I'd like to find him and cut his other nine fingers off, show him what real pain is. Huh, pain. You know how you try to be nice to everybody under most circumstances, but there are a few of those people you've met in your life whom, if you could go back, you would gladly tear apart? These immature adults are, for me, a few of those people.
My last and latest "pet-peeve" is doors. Always getting in my way, always really big and heavy so I have to push extra hard to open them, always there to make me insecure about whether I should open them for this girl I'm walking with who I may or may not know very well or who I barely know or who I've never met in my life, or whether that would look too bizarre or pretentious. Sure, they keep out the cold, the hot, the killers, the slackers... But seriously, the Earth is really overpopulated right now, and the one thing we might need is more "accidents"... Sure, Black Ops are planting bombs right and left to create fear and panic and blind following of unfit military leaders, but there are only so many skyscrapers you can take down and hotels you can bomb and women and children you can incinerate before people start to catch on that it's all part of a global scheme for world domination; thinning of the masses not for the benefit of society, but for a select minority. Anyone ever heard of Alternative 3? Look it up, folks.
I lost my train of thought. Oh yeah; on a similar note as stupid adults, another thing I absolutely can not stand is advice from strangers. Mostly random people noticing that I'm in a bad mood, and making some wise remark about how "life's too short" or "stop being unhappy" or "if you're angry all the time you'll die of a heart attack at 30" and so on. Who the fuck do they think they are? Leave me alone. "Yeah, you're right, Mister! Who cares if I just backed over my own dog in the drive way; life's too short to be sad in such a happy, happy world as this! Oh, wait-- you're an idiot! Goodbye!"
Increased Alcoholism all across the U.S., particularily in New York, quite possibly related to the events of and surrounding September 11th. I'll tell you why: Stress, sure. But what's the reason for the stress? I'll tell you what. Guilt. Americans know deep down that they are all wrong about everything. That we should not have sent soldiers to Afghanistan or Iraq. That "military might", the "Terror alert" system, "Freedom" Fries, and putting American flags on cars is all garbage, an empty distraction perpetrated by a nation of sheep and egged on by the government who herds them. Americans- All Americans- know that democracy and freedom have gone sour, and we have gone astray. And it doesn't just start with current events. I'm talking about church, cruelty to animals, have to study the life out of every little thing we don't understand. It doesn't stop with Americans, either. Everyone in the world drinks to cover up something; in America, it's another way to keep reality and the awful shameful truth from surfacing. You know what's also "up"? Domestic abuse. More often than not these assholes get drunk and go home and beat their wives and kids because they need an outlet for that guilt, a way to go on denying that they are blind, ignorant fools who simply create other, bigger problems to worry about when a current problem gets beyond them. Blow shit up with no regard for the consequences and then wonder why people are trying to blow you up. Create more terrorists to have an excuse to fight terrorists. Create more distractions. More problems. And it's not just the 'Stupids. Too many intelligent people have gone astray, too.
All my teachers are so obsessed with whether or not we students know how to narrow our search results. They cram tips and procedures down our throats for how to find exactly what you want in a few search hits. Sure, there are little pointers, like adding an extra symbol or keyword, but more often than not, they send you on time-consuming strike missions that involve sifting through hundreds of search pages and pop-up ads, clicking specific links amid hundreds of others, selecting options from drop-down menus, filling in bubbles and checking surveys... all just to find some crappy little medical search engine to look up information on silicon injections. Look, if I want something, I'll type some vague reference to it in Google. Sure, I'll get around 1500 hits, but so what? I can just sift through the first 10 and I'll find it. It will always be somewhere in the first batch. And who knows? While you're looking you might stumble across a totally unrelated site that sparks your interest. Isn't that what life is all about?
I am disgusted by the saying "You don't like it because it's not yours." No, I don't like it because it sucks. The fact that other people fall for it just provokes a headache and makes me ashamed to be a human being. If I liked and wanted something, then I would say so directly. As my mom would say: "I have an extremely low tolerance for crap."
Norton Antivirus. Fuck you Symantec; windows users try to have faith in you, and you have no idea what you're doing. Your program pops up and crashes my games, slows down my computer, and doesn't even delete the viruses when it finds them. That's right: am I the only one on the god damn planet who's noticed that Norton only points out the viruses, but refuses to delete them because they are "at-risk"? What the hell does that mean? I know they are "at-risk"! So find a way to delete them!! It's your job!!!
I can't stand those dorks who chat-spam in Starcraft. I can understand it when it goes on in most regular chatrooms, where there is no point to anything and the mind easily wanders. But when you copy-and-paste GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO thirty times right before a game starts, it's not cute. It only slows down the games and creates lag. Parents, please don't let the pre-pubescents in your household use the internet. And if they are over 18 and still don't know how to behave in all the manners of online gaming, shoot them.
Doomworld. They banned me ever since someone had the nerve to compliment my grammar and criticize theirs. Although I must admit, it is a noble way to go out. Whenever someone asks me why I was banned, I reply: "Because I'm better than they are, and they know it." I think the funniest exchange I've ever had with someone in the Doom community was a short e-mail conversation between myself and the founder and lead dork of Doomworld himself, "Linguicia"(misspelling of Linguini or something). I believe I sent him a link to an article thoroughly proving that playing too many computer and video games resulted in brain-rot. The conversation went something like this:
Wavelength: Here's an article you might find interesting.
***24 hours later***
Linguicia: I question the validity of that man's Phd
Linguicia: And btw, I'm majoring in astrophysics right now so I think I'm doing all right
***24 hours later***
Wavelength: Why yes, I would like fries with that.
Another cutes aspect of the Doom community, and other active gaming communities as well, is the whole "We don't owe you anything" attitude. When someone releases a level and people say it sucks, more often than not the author or authors will respond with something along the lines of: "Well we made this thing with our own time and sweat, free of charge, so we owe nothing to you." Wrong. When you make a level with the purpose of releasing it on the internet, where people will take time out of their lives to download and play it, you owe everyone a GOOD level. And you owe it to yourself, as well. If your level is bad, people will tend to lean toward the idea that you are an idiot. If you make a level and are going to purposefully waste people's time with it, they deserve that level to be worth their time. That's just the way it is. Consider this the next time you open up your editor, thinking that you are about to design the next big thing. Because if I have learned anything from 10 years of playing through overhyped, warmed-over crap, it's that you aren't. Well, maybe morons will like it, in that case you should probably stick to the Doom community, yeah. However, I don't want to discourage people from experimenting and uploading their work; I just don't want editing veterans to let popularity go to their head. I don't want them to lie about how great their creation is.
Pop-up Ads. I've probably already gone over this before, but I'll say it again: They are pointless. They are designed only to piss people off. How does that sell products? I don't understand they plan to get people to buy their stuff by invading their privacy and throwing bad advertising in their faces.
Oh, one more thing about Doom: Why is the Doom guy left handed? What's up with that? Who the hell lets a left-handed goofball join the Marines? And why are his sleeves pulled up if he is in vacuum?
I don't like the Gollum/Smeagal character from The Lord of the Rings films. Good movies... Bad character. I will never, ever connect with something that I know isn't really there, no matter how good the CGI is. All that emotion and depth they tried to portray in Smeagal only made me angier, because I knew it was all fake. This is one of the reasons why I like the first movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, the most. It is simply the strongest of the three movies. Better cinematography, better dialogue, better acting, better timing, better everything. I did like the Extended Edition of The Two Towers, however. I liked it a lot. Sure, it was long as hell, but not once was I bored like I was when watching the Extended Edition of The Fellowship. The extra scenes added just the right amount of atmosphere and characterization to flesh out the movie and make it a classic. As for The Return of the King, which I just saw... Sure, it was okay... But, well... Let's just wait for the Extended Edition, shall we?
There was about a three-year period a couple years back in which I got really shitty Christmas presents from far-away relatives. See, I'm seen as sort of a "special" person in the family, a "bright-spot". Put frankly, everyone knows I'm pretty intelligent. What they don't seem to understand is that I am not a "nerd". I don't want "factiod calendars" that lend me some interesting little tid-bit about science every morning, I don't want dictionaries, I don't want Brain-Quest games, or for that matter, trivia of any kind. I don't want some cheesy Astronomy set or stargazing equipment, I don't want Telescopes or books about money and mathematics (what were you thinking mom); I can get all of that shit on my own, as usual, under the scrutinous eye of fatass football players. I want toys. Nowadays, clothing and books about art and science are okay because I'm only enough to appreciate it. I've always received all my gifts with good sportsmanship, because I'm a good person and I'm not spoiled, but I won't hesitate to voice my distaste on my web page.
"All Your Base Are Belong To Us." Yes, the Japanese have shitty translators, we get the joke. We got the joke thirty years ago. It's not funny any more. Drop it and get a real life.
Why are we asking others to disarm, but not even considering disarming ourselves? Wouldn't that make us a good role-model, rather than the true terrorists that we are? It's all a big distraction, any way. Nobody cares who disarms as long as someone makes money. You can easily grab a nuke from anywhere these days, as long as you have the dough. Once again: Stop avoiding the real problems. Pissing people off so they don't want to kill you, for one. Yes you, America. And I'm also looking in your direction, United Kingdom and Israel. And Scotland. Mostly Scotland. Come on; everything smells funny there. And Poland is full of racists, too.
Every time George W. Bush uses and pronounces a new, big word correctly (rare occasion) I just want to clap, pat him on the back and say "Good job! Next we are going to learn the definition!" I don't want to jump the "bush-is-dumb" bandwagon, but it's just so true: He puts himself in situations where he is surrounded by other idiots and proclaims totally irrelivant, obvious bullshit, and the viewing audience simply laps it up. And it's really scary, because this guy is sick and dangerous. He has the American people, and himself, believing that he and his administration are lead by an omnipotent being. In the Dark Ages, I believe this being was most commonly known as "God". The whole situation scares the hell out of me. A religious zealot as President of the United States? How the fuck did that happen? Another nail in the coffin of the separation of Church and State, Chaos and Order. I see that old habits die hard. That some ignorance never dies. With this joker in power, and his horde of religious, brainwashed zombies, the death toll can only mount. Why can't we be involved in the things that really matter? Why can't things change? Well, it's a deep, dark conspiracy to create Hell on Earth, for on... but also because here on planet Earth we have a generation that is in majority self-indulgent, uneducated, racist, and cruel. Sure, human beings are flawed, but that is no excuse for this mess, seriously. Screw you for letting it go this far. Point in case: Bush only uses religion as a show, to get people to go along with his agenda. I doubt he would hesitate to have a church full of praying Christians shot up if it would further his career.
The "Terror Alert" system. Another form of distraction. They boost it up to Orange or Red alert just for the hell of it, even though they know nothing can or will happen, and then when nothing does happen, people think it must be because they are doing a good job, that everything is alright, that everyone can go back to sleep. Think I'm full of it? Go on, ask them what their basis is for raising alarm. "Credible Sources Cited." Pffft, sure. If people swallow that, they'll swallow anything. We need to ask more questions. What's happening to enemy POWs? Why are they hooded? That's a form of torture. Well, our military isn't exactly known for following the rules of war. Heck, the pentagon isn't exactly known for doing anything right, but whatever. Why are we suddenly "occupying" Iraq? Wasn't that term frowned upon earlier? Now it's used commonly. Why was that guy arrested for speaking out against America? Why are we sitting around twiddling our thumbs instead of speaking out? Oh right- we're too drunk too care. And all we care about is who will win on American Idol and what time the video store closes. Get off my porch and give me back my country, dick. Stop lying and trying to convince people that your brand of world-cruelty through military strength is the right way to win peace. Stop wasting billions on useless systems that don't protect anyone, seeing as illegal immigrants are free to come and go from Mexico and not only ruin the economy, but take up residence anywhere in the United States.
Although I'm loath to take sides, and although I know things are never as simple as black and white, right and wrong, truth and lie, I think I've found a sure-fire stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Palestinians: A bunch of apes.
Israelis: A bunch of apes in uniform.
I've got another Weapon of Mass Distraction for you: The Hubble Telescope. Astronomers and NASA Scientologists alike are looking into deep, deep space as if it has any pertinence and can answer any real questions about our past, when they SHOULD be scanning the surface of Luna and Mars in search of Alien Artifacts, both old and new. But, as usual, someone doesn't want you to see them.
People sure made a big deal when Brandy Chastain tore off her shirt and ran around in her sports-bra after winning the National Women's Soccer Championship. It spurred some pretty bitter controversy, as if people don't do it all the time all over the place. Sure, she's a role-model (or should I say roll-model, ::snort::), but when you've just won something as big as she and her team had, there is certainly no harm is having a little fun, and everyone should know that. Christ and Hunter, calm the fuck down you Feminazis. It doesn't have any deeper meaning that hasn't been present for thousands of years and isn't going to change anything. Now, Britney Spears-- There's a girl a lot of mothers would shoot if they had the chance.
I haven't seen the Spiderman movie, partly because I'm just late at getting around to things, and partly because it's not accurate to the cartoon and comic books. He isn't supposed to just be able to shoot web out of his ahdn; he's supposed to have special home-made canisters of web-mixture that latch onto his wrists. He presses a pressure-plate in his hand with his two inner fingers to fire off the web. That is how Spiderman is supposed to be, period. And don't tell me web-cartridges aren't a special power; only a young man gifted with the senses of a radioactive spider would know how to make the mixture for the canisters. Oh, and he looks gay, too.
There is nothing more annoying than being interrupted in the middle of a game. You're in the middle of a tense firefight, caught up in the heat of the moment, top score, about to cap some guy in the forehead with a sniper-rifle when BOOM, the game crashes to the desktop to be replaced by an Instant Message window sent by some random person saying "Hi, what's up?" I'll tell you what's up: You crashed my game! I *HATE* when people IM me in the middle of a game!! Now I hear some of you saying "Well you should put on an Away Message." Wrong. YOU shouldn't Instant Message me unless you have something IMPORTANT to say, like "You're dying", or "Here's that cheese calorie graph you wanted, sir". Watch as you are warned and have no way to retaliate.
Jack Black. Dude, you're not funny and you can't act. You play the same damn character in every movie, and that thing you do with your eyes isn't cool, it just makes me want to suckerpunch you. You are a flavor of the month, and a rather undeserving one, at that. It's a sign of how bad things are when Jack Black is hosting Saturday Night Live. Jack, how about hosting Saturday Night Dead?
Global Warming is real, don't listen to politicians and especially not President Bush, they don't know what the hell they are talking about, they just want you to go back to watching Nascar and driving your SUV and having kids and ruining the planet. The Environment is under attack, and I absolutely will not stand for it.
Last and least, American Flag stickers on cars. Don't know what you're doing? You're desecrating the Red White and Blue. It's common knowledge that our flag is to be displayed only on a pole, or folded up and burning in a fire. Of course, you wouldn't want your neighbor to think you're wierd, would you. You just can't make your own decisions without jumping on the band-wagon, can you? Nope, thought not. Ugh, don't get me started. I think I'll just go ahead and put an American Flag sticker on my car... Upside down. Yeah, that's right. What are you going to do?
Recently, my family and a bunch of relatives flew to Kansas for a wedding. My Auntie accidentally left some box-cutters in the luggage that she brought along with her. The scary thing is, they got through undetected, and she wasn't stopped. She didn't even notice she had them until we were all in Kansas. Don't know if that's as scary as it is funny, though. I think she said she brought the box-cutters along with her on the way back as well, in her luggage, and once again they were missed. Bravo, United Airlines! So much for being safe on planes any more.
Off the record:The first time we flew after the media-planned events of September 11th, there was practically no line at the Security Checkpoint, probably because of the season. We just got in and got out. This last time, the line was a LOT longer, and they made us take off our belts and shoes, which really slowed things down. Especially because I was trapped behind a guy who kept doing awful retard impressions and I thought I was going to die. Then this black flight attendant gave me sass on the airplane.
"Young man? What do you want to drink?"
"I'm 18, actually. Coke."
"Diet Pepsi it is."
::presses face against window:: "NOOOOOOOO!"
Wow, where to start. First of all, Telemarketers are annoying, so screw the Constitution. It's most important rules are hardly abided by, any ways. When something like Telemarketing annoys a lot of people, you just need to follow through with their polite demands and throw it out. Charities are Charities, and Telemarketers are Pirates.
My mom made a good point when she said something along the lines of "Isn't it amazing that around 50,000 people practically instantaneously signed up for the No-Call list? Businesses who Telemarket are obviously annoying us, and they know it, yet they continue to invade our privacy, coming into our homes via our private lines and interupting us during our dinners. Isn't that unconstitutional?" Couldn't have said it better myself. America is fed up with Spam.
About the only thing Telemarketing is good for, is providing jobs. But the values and morals behind taking a Telemarketing job are debatable and questionable. Do you like to steal from people? Do you like to invade people's privacy? Do you like people to shoot you down then hang up on you? That telemarketing may be the career for you. Because you get to steal people's time. You get to invade people's homes and attack them when they are eating dinner or trying to sleep or simply wanting to be left alone. You can have guys like me cuss you out then hang up on you, make light of your lack of intelligence, genitals, boyfriend/girlfriend, or play nasty tricks where I lie my ass off and draw out the conversation to make you feel bad, then hang up on you like the whore of corporate consumerism that you are.
On a similar not, the same thing goes for the argument of whether people should be able to look up pornography on school and library computers. The simple answer is no. But people think that since technically you are allowed to look up anything in the name of research, pornography could count as research too. This is bullshit. I mean, come on, it's porno. You simply don't allow it in public places. What if a child saw? What if anyone saw? And who is going to assign you a research paper on porno? Seriously? And even if someone did, you will research for it in your own home or someone else's home, not in a public place. Hell, you don't even need to visit porn sites to research pornography, dork. And please fire the guy who assigns you a report on pornography. What a joke.
The point is, there must be exceptions to rules or else idiots like Anarchists and Rebels would take full advantage of the cracks in the rules of society. When it comes to cases like this, the simple thing to do is: screw the Constitution. People are fed up and annoyed. End of story.
People who use force to convey a their anger and no better than the people who made them angry in the first place. Shame on us. But most of all, shame on the world for forcing us, allowing us, into this position. You know better. Anyone who thinks otherwise is mentally ill and worthy of a gunshot to the temple, by the universal rules of all that is proper.
I like how some the most popular television shows are being sissified to temporarily satisfy minorities. Someone complained that there weren't enough black people on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. So what? That's their fault, not ours. If you're not smart enough or quick enough to get on the show, much less pass the Fastest Finger Question, it's your own problem, not biasedness on the part of the show. I'm sure there are just as many whites, or latinos, or asians, as blacks who don't make the cut. But you know what they did to satiate the hunger of Civil Rights Activists? They got rid of the Fastest Finger Question. What does that say about black people? That they are too stupid to compete with everyone else. Way to set a great example for the rest of the community, guys. If you're too stupid to compete, don't try harder, just accept your failure and simply complain until you get your way. What a country. And the funny thing is, I still don't see any minorities on that show. Probably because they've moved onto:
Friends. This is a decent show that my mom hates, my sister used to watch but grew out of, but that I've always found to be generally well written and funny. All the characters just come off well, and they know how to do jokes. It's nothing to take seriously, and easily forgotten. Especially now that they've added a new black character in the last season of the show. She seems like a nice person, but it doesn't matter, because the whole experience is poisoned by the fact that she's only there because someone complained that she needed to be. I like the original seven friends, and I like them white. If the producers put a black person into the show, it should be a totally random decision and not because they are scared of looking racist. In the meantime, the black woman's character barely has any lines and is used as a feminine object. So I guess the moral is, if you are going to be a sellout, you're going to have to make some sacrifices.
So, all in all, I still like Millionaire, but only because of it's questions; the new woman host who replaced Regis is nice, but she's not Regis. Regis completed that show's charm. And I still like Friends, but only because of the male characters... as odd as that might sound... particularily Chandler("What kind of name is that, any way? It's almost like Chandilier, but not!"). But until most minorites try, and succeed, in gaining leeway in something other than out garbage entertainment industry, they will garner little respect.
I hear some of you saying, "Well Damon, if people don't complain some things just can't get done, because of racism." To that, I reply, "Bullshit." It's exactly petty complaining like that which I mentioned above that lowers people's opinions of minorities. And it's violent crap like riots and marches that gives people the impression that blacks are angry people by nature. I personally have noticed that blacks express themselves through violence whenever they get the upper hand, rather than through political manipulation and public relations as minorities have in the past to successfully implement themselves. Blacks in particular have had the most time to move on, and little by little they are making progress. I'm saying that blaming other people, hip- hop, ebonics, rap, and generally acting like monkey children isn't making it any easier for everyone else to tolerate, much less accept them. Oh, and I just have to mention, Civil Rights Activists are so cute!!
Dr. King must be rolling over in his grave. Why doesn't Condaleeza Rice have anything to say about this? Oh, that's right: She doesn't have any credentials.
Addition: Here and here are some articles describing in further detail what I'm getting at here.
There haven't been any attacks since 9/11, not because leaders are doing a good job securing stuff; if a terrorist group wanted to cause immediate havoc they could just drive into a crowded marketplace and blow themselves up, or mow down a few hundred people with a minigun, in the space of 5 seconds. There haven't been any more attacks because 9/11 was just a poke, a "Ha ha, I got you, Infidel!" not a "JIIIHAAAAD!" They knew there would be no more conveniently open doors after their brilliantly executed attack, and so they planned nothing for afterward. Plus, it's kind of hard to provoke further terror when you've already blown yourself up. But in retrospect, the terrorists of 9/11 couldn't have been more successful in their endeavors. Because of their attack:
Americans are stupider and more dramatic than ever before
The government has more power than the people than ever before
The military is more corrupt and deceitful than ever before
The mass-media is more corrupt and deceitful than ever before
Jews and Muslims are acting more retarded and more corrupt than ever before
We've been dug into a debt bigger than ever before
I'm amused most by the Airports. As if wasting our time checking and double checking people, pulling tax-paying citizens out of line to randomly search, is going to make us safer. Pffft. I don't feel safer. I feel like I'm being exposed to unreasonable searches and seizures, a la Article IV of the U.S. Constitution. But as Jay Leno says, "Well, why not give the Iraqi's our Constitution? We don't seem to be using it any more." Thanks to the Patriot Act and everything spawned from it. There aren't going to be any more terrorist attacks on home soil, no: why would there be? It's just a guise to scare the public into accepting anything that comes out of that idiot President's mouth. That's pretty much all it means to him. I mean, come on, who is going to try and sneak something through with the intent to kill nowadays? Or should I say, how hard could it be to sneak something past those dumb apes nowadays? I wasn't worried about it before 9/11 and I'm not worried about it now. And I wouldn't be even if security wasn't tighter. Because there hasn't been a terrorist attack since then, and there won't be. Why?
Because the Government had a hard enough time covering up their involvement the first time around
Because the terrorists have accomplished their mission, for the time being
Come on Rent-A-Cop, confiscating Pencils and a miniature rifle from a G.I. Joe Action Figure(seriously) ? ::Snort:: Way to go, guys. You aren't doing shit. Nobody would try to smuggle anything on board any way, after 9/11. And even if they did, more power to them, our population is too big, any way. And after you're done locking me in a room for 24 hours naked bathed with searchlights and feeling up my wife's breasts for signs of "explosives", can I perhaps get on the plane and visit my dear old grandma? And can you get a real job that actually accomplishes something rather than, as I said before, bandaging a broken leg?I'm amused to see the television corporations cashing in on people's fears, with shows like "Threat Matrix", "The Agency", "Alias", and now "Enterprise", a half-decent show, is changing it's premise to something like "A bunch of evil aliens killed a few thousand people, so we're taking a special militry squad on board to help us go hunt em' down!" ::slaps forehead:: I can't stand the drama!
We're being bankrupted
People died, mostly innocents(who cares about soldiers, they sign up for that shit)
We're not any safer, if anything we are hated more than ever
Of course the Iraqis don't trust us, we're full of shit and we don't really care whether or not their towns (which we bombed) are fixed, because we just want their oil, any attempt to convince otherwise is a cheap, laughable lie
The terrorists are in your own government
The government has to find another U.S.-funded Hollywood Stooge "Bad-Guy" now that Saddam is living in safe-house in Arkansas with his fellow actors- I mean top Lieutenants
Reality isn't an illusion- just the one the government has you believing.
There was no justifiable reason for this war. Bush isn't evil or anything; I don't necessarily believe in evil. He's just a moron. That's why it doesn't exactly make sense when people compare him to Hitler. I mean, the atrocities are about on par, but intelligence wise, nah. And god damn, he has to get a better speech writer. Like maybe me. Someone who will stop making his speeches bloated and repetative. Listen closely when he talks. He basically says nothing, he breathes hot air, just dodges questions and says the same stupid thing over and over, even when it's completely off the subject. I really won't be satisfied until he's dead.
You people really need to question your values, because I think you value all the wrong things. You value unprovoked/unnecessary slaughter, occupation, imperialism, lies.
I want to talk about the military. How do I put this simply? The military, mainly the Army, is useless. The only reason we have such a large, high-tech military is because we create and cause most of the problems that require military action. Oh, it's so awful, probably more than I can comprehend. The government needs lots of soldiers so it can get away with threatening and influencing people, maintain a stranglehold on the world. That's simple enough. Want me to get more complicated? Okay, so how do they get all the soldiers? Well, perform some quiet manipulation, rig a few polls, hand out a few bribes, pat a few heads, threaten a few men and their families, and have Congress divert funds from Education to Military. So schools start chugging out more and more souless, passionless mental-deficients who have no where else to go, no plausible path in life except the Military. Bush and his team of terrible Politicians wouldn't have it any other way. Don't listen to all this "No Child Left Behind" bullshit; it's just more smoke and mirrors, lies and deception. But any way, that's not enough. They now have recruiters for all sects of the Military staked out in America's High School. I would know; we got used to looking at them behind their booths in their gay uniforms in the Cafeteria at school. I mean, what the hell? As far as I can tell, they weren't there before, in previous years; at least not so many. It's not a sign of improvement, it's a sign that something's wrong. When most of the money goes to the Military, it isn't a sign of improvement, it's a sign that something's wrong. Don't look at the situation as "we have a better military", instead as "why do we need a better military". Have they gotten in over their head so far that they need an inflated image? So any way, these military recruiters would always bug me while I was eating my lunch. They seemed like nice guys, which is why I pitied them; in this day and age, to be a happy Soldier means to be totally blind to the fact that you are a stooge being thrown out like toilet paper and thrown out like Dixie Cups to further the sick agendas of money/power-hungry dictators who hide behind the soiled curtain of "freedom" and "democracy". These recruiters will not shut-up that's what they try to do; however nice they come off as, they just keep bugging you until you sign up. It's like Bullying. It's like when a stranger lures you into his/her car, or someone rapes you and tells you it's your fault. So when I gave this guy the picture that I wasn't really interested, "Because, you know, I plan to have a future despite guys like you", he says "Well it's just an option, I'm not forcing you to do anything." "Oh," I'd continue, "Then you are a gem, because your goons in Congress seemed to do a good job forcing my other half a million peers into your ranks in Vietnam, and your other 10,000 buddies are going strong with my 200,000 peers over in Iraq." God damnit, we need to worry about problems at home; one of the thousands of impediments faced in America every day at least needs to come first. But we seem to be having trouble focusing on that, we're too busy pissing off other countries and creating more terrorists, who in turn will come at us, and give the government more excuses to take away out freedoms. "Double whammy! Two birds with one stone!" I hear Ashcroft yelling. So where was I. Oh yeah; another marketing tactic employed by the military are these stupid gimmicks of "Be All That You Can Be" and "An Army Of One". More like an Army of staggering Thousands, stripped of their identies and trained to shit at the same time every day. To be good-little killing-machines. Trained to kill without thought. Well, I'm sure that sooner or later, the "thought" starts to shine through no matter what, because, like in Vietnam, I know that deep down those soldiers really don't believe what they are fighting for. What rational man could? It's bullshit; it's Hell. In Vietnam, soldiers began disobeying orders and attacking their superior officers. It happens nowadays, too; you just aren't allowed to see it, not just because they don't think you can't handle it, but because they don't want you to see it. They don't want you to know. You have to browse around the Internet and Alternate Media like Rense for that kind of damaging shit. In this country, if you're trying to promote a product, just throw the word "God" into the sentence, and everyone will fall for it. If there was a God (which there isn't), he would shit on all of you for discracing his name so. Maybe that's why he is keeping a low profile. Maybe I am your God. I laughed as I listened to one conversation between an Army/Navy recruiter and two Arab boys at my school. "So what if we are for Saddam, and Tanner, and Budledev? What if we don't want to go over to China? Would you not let us in?" And the recruiter replied "No, we'd just make sure you were firmly on our side before we placed you in a platoon" or something. Real smart tactic, boys. I bet you would, you creature. Why don't you just come out and say "Look, I know you're smart, I know you're hard working, but wouldn't it be easier to be a machine? We are the future, after all." See, young generations aren't as stupid as the others, despite how hard many of them try to get the image across. We figure things out. We see what is happening in the world, and that spreads dissent, no matter what. The truth is out there, and whether or not we can see it, a lot of us know it's there. Some march in protest, others, like me, and those two Arab boys, work hard, maybe go to college, maybe graduate, maybe snag a good career, and maybe try to change our country for the better, reduce the need of a military, force clean-air energy products upon the masses for free, and drag tyrant Politicians out into the street to be shot. In other words, we're Treasonous, or something. That's what they'd call us. Bush starts wars because Defense Contractors want an excuse to build new weaponry, which in turn makes both they and the Bush family money. Among other things, that's *one* the simple reasons for the latest "war". Doesn't weak shit like that make him a Traitor? Apparently not, because everyone's in on it, including the whistle blowers. Any way, I'm losing my train of thought.
I'll end this military rant with a quote from This ruthless New York Times article (which correctly characterizes Bush) that sums up the intelligence of most of the military (and American people) when it comes to war:
"Even the administration's foreign policy reflects its tendency to go for quick gratification without much thought of the gritty long haul. The invasion of Iraq appears to have been planned by people who assumed that after a swift military assault, Saddam Hussein would be gone and Iraq would quickly snap into a prosperous, semidemocratic state that would be a model for the rest of the Middle East."
::snort:: Yeah, that'll happen! One thing the British have learned from experience is that the road to true conquest is long and brittle, and can only be achieved through keeping the population of the said nation by:
Turning tribes on each other
Bleeding the population financially
Housing large percentages of the target population in Concentration Camps
Sounds rough? Sure, but at least they follow through on what they start. Americans just want the easy way out. Bush and his chronies are all bark and no bite. And it's costing us, and future generations, a boggling amount of cash.
Any who, the September 11th reunion approaches. Seeing as Americans thrive on drama, I can't wait to see what bullshit gimmick the media is going to pull out of it's ass this year. Last year it was "Always Remember", or something. Seeing as the media had the brains to bring down the two towers in the first place so as to have something more to report about, I'm sure they'll think of something. Yeap, you heard me: that's how much a human life is worth to these people. That's as close to real evil as you can get.
I tried to sort out our differences via Instant Messages, but you were too much of a coward to have a man-to-man conversation without your ass-kissing chronies to back you up, and turned the other cheek. What does it take to pick a fight with you, the self-acclaimed Subversive Hardass? Once again I challenge you to a private debate- an e-mail debate. Of course, you won't accept, because you aren't that type of person, it isn't your "thing", you're too busy drinking yourself into a stupor and jerking off; formal rituals and duels aren't a Scottish way of thinking, because judging form your history you're more into Cut & Run Conentration Camps. You have the luxury of pretending that you don't visit my site on a daily basis and couldn't therefore have caught my challenge. But I had to ask. You and I both know what's really going on. It's too bad we have a difference in temperaments and details... and intelligence. I'm not afraid of you. In fact, there are chunks of guys like you in my stool every morning, 'Jock.
I'd also like to add that I believe people should stop making fun of the French for standing up for what is right. Those who say that the French "aren't any good at war" are obviously idiots, and avoiding the real problem: that America "isn't any good at world politics". The French Legions maintained control over all of Northern Africa for almost a century, and Napoleon came pretty close to conquering the world. End of discussion.
Update: Here's another home-run.
As for the concept of "freedom fries", it just goes to show how ignorant, inexperiences, immature and closed-minded Americans are. They can't comprehend other countries disagreeing with them, because America knows EVERYTHING, right? What's next, Freedom Horns? Freedom Kisses? Would someone please tell these people that "Freedom" is just an illusion that binds the weak minded? Another word for "nothing left to lose"? "Freedom", like "Patriotism", is just an empty word used to rouse the masses during times of war. You don't know what REAL freedom is because your Secret Government has never let you taste it. But I digress. Just read the article. What's that? You can't imagine having it any better than you have it here? Well, like Orwell says, "That's because you can't comprehend anything bigger".
In other words, the truth is well hidden behind an Administrations alternate agendas and gambling debts. But we smart people have known this for decades. I think I've already been through this before. ::cough::
How retarded can people get?
And now for a list of things that have been really pissing me off lately.
Well, that's all for now. I should also mention now that I hate Fireworks; they double in price every year, and there seem to be more now than ever. And what the hell are they selling these days, any way? The neighbors have been consistenly setting off Bunker Busters over our house for the last 3 days. These obnoxious firecrackers that go on and on and on, and there are these behemoth bombs that explode ::BOOM:: ::BOOM:: ::BOOM:: and make the windows rattle and the ground shake and aside from scaring the living shit out of me, give off enough smoke to suffocate my entire family. It's hot out. You know, that Global Warming thing you and your country creates? We leave the windows open for ventilation. We die from the smoke. Jesus. It sounds like a fucking battle zone out there. Heavy explosions every 5 seconds. My mom goes out and yells at those crazy Russians but they just don't get the message. We don't want that shit detonated over our house. Go back to Siberia.
A sort of disclaimer: People will notice that I have been very viscious, very cruel, very angry in this last article. Well, that's correct. They may strongly disagree with what I say here. I tell them to open their eyes. Wider. I am indeed very distressed. This is what happens when you live in these troubled times and you are cursed with wisdom. I say: wake up, stop taking in all the shit our "leaders" spin out. President Bush is not a great man. He wasn't elected, he was selected. He totally ignores the rules of Separation of Church and State and will therefore simply help to tear the foundation of this country apart. He uses the idea of God as a way to appeal to the masses of religious idiots that are destroying this country. He is a worthless liar. He is the worst president we have ever had. He is a clueless, war-mongering Neo-Hitler. He should have been impeached five times by now. People are simply afraid to stand up to him, and I don't really see why. He hasn't done one good thing since he's been in office. Unless you consider indirectly killing thousands of civilians an accomplishment. He uses words like "evil", which are totally innappropriate. When you divide things into "good" and "evil", you have fallen into the chasm of immaturity. There is no such thing as "good" and "evil", only popular opinion. Things aren't black and white like that, buddy. Except in the minds of the retards that you try and appeal to. If anything is remotely "evil", it's how you, Bush, allowed the slaughter of, what was the last count? 3,124 civilians in Iraq? And that's not counting the countless millions he and past presidents have slaughtered for unjust reasons. Where is the logic in that? Someone please explain it to me. Defense of freedom, my ass. The concept of "defending freedom" is so laughable I'm going to cry. We wouldn't even need to "defend freedom" in the first place if we hadn't gone and wiped out someone else's freedoms in another country in the first place. Yeah, that's right: we started this, remember? Oil? Control? You probably wouldn't know this because you are blissfully ignorant. Pffft, "freedom". You mean those things they are stripping away from us more and more every day in the name of "fighting terror"? In the name of "patriotism"? Ha! They are doing it in the name of Corruption and Control. Like I said before; slap the word "patriotism" on the front and you'd have to have courage NOT to go along with it. Ignorant fools. And a thumbs up to Mr. Bush for turning this into an actual Jihad by using religious double-speak. Redundant religious double-speak, that is. The fool says the same stupid things over and over until I mute him.
I say, bring on another 9/11, this time being a nuke detonated in the center of the Capitol. What better way to start off a much needed population-thinning than by cleaning out the rat-cages? "There is nothing I detest more, than the stench of lies."
In conclusion. Support our troops: Bring them home. PROMOTE PEACE. Yeah, that's right, I said the "P" word. What are you gonna' do? Nothing will be "right" or "safe" until people stop dying. Rather than taking the blame out on people you've never met, save a sniper bullet for the real villians: the ones in the capitol.
For instance, at a certain school assembly, a black student went up to the microphone to talk about race. A collective groan rose from the audience. You know the feeling. "Here we go again..." I for one was tired of the following conversation:
White: "We have a black history month, so where is white history month?" Black: "Every month is white history month!"
That's a bullshit argument, of course, so I went up to the microphone and got it off my chest:
"Listen, every month is human history month, not white or black history month. You are just as much a part of our history as we are of yours. In conclusion, get rid of Black History Month. If you were smart you would know that you shouldn't need one. By asking for one you are insinuating that you are unequal and that racism is still alive and you need a special month out of the year as crutch, just like you need government pay and lower SAT standards. Work out your priorities, get off your ass, take initiative, and shutup. We white students can't get away with that crap."
Bad idea.
The biggest "argument" I face on the subject, is about Neo and Agent Smith. What some people don't seem to understand: at the end of the movie, Neo kills Agent Smith. No, not just kills him so he'll pop up somewhere else, into someone elses body; Neo destroys him so he cannot return. Wipes him out of existence. Impossible, you say? No, it's not- that's the whole point. By that time in the movie, Neo had been shot, killed, then resurrected as a God-like entity with nearly unlimited abilities. The first thing he does to demonstrate his power is annihilating Smith's program from the Matrix. He zipped inside of him, then exloded him from the inside out, and all that is left is Neo standing where Smith was a second ago. See all that green shit flying everywhere? That's his program. That's what I'm talking about. That was the turning point; the remaining Agents just look at each other and take off, because Neo knows how to kill them now, permanentaly, just like he did a second ago with Smith.
Of course, the Wakowski Brothers didn't expect the movie to make so much money so now that they are making a sequel they are forced to change the rules of logic and make it so Smith wasn't killed so that they can have a sequel with Smith again instead of being slightly original and creating a new villian(although I have to admit, Smith is a kick-ass villian. The moment he first spoke in The Matrix, I wanted him dead). I will see these new sequels, and hopefully enjoy them, but deep down, smart folk like myself will know that the story rightfully ended and was resolved at the end of The Matrix part one.
Luckily, I back up that file every time I am done with it, so I had everything back to normal in about 10 minutes. With a site as controversial, ground-breaking and "turned-on" as mine, I have to be paranoid; plus, it's common sense, you know? At least for people like me it is. And there aren't a lot of people like me.
I want to talk about Feminism. Onoka Sorenstan, as I recall, is a professional female golfer who signed up for and played in an all-men's tour. Why? Who knows. If she was trying to make a statement, she did a really poor job of it, because women's golf holes are shorter distances than mens, and when she joined the men's tour she had them lower the distance to the hole when she played. And she still got whooped, too, as I recall. What kind of statement is that? That she's a woman, and she can play men's golf too, even if she still insists on women's standards and still gets beaten? That cheating, and that's weakness.
Of course, shrill feminists all over were immediately in an uproar, deciding to lay the blame on Tiger Woods, saying he has an obligation to stick up for minorities in sports. Bullshit.
Simply put, these women should shut their mouthes. Tiger Woods doesn't have an "obligation" to promote women's rights in Golf just because he is a minority. He doesn't need to be anything he doesn't need to be. He doesn't owe it to anyone, and he makes that very clear. He is smart, smarter than those women, and knows that if you have to make a big deal out of the fact that you are a minority, then you still haven't won. Tiger Woods is simply a golfer. A good golfer. Perhaps the best. He wins a lot of cups. He has a great smile. Oh, and he happens to be black. But who cares? If you make a big deal out of it, if it has to be an issue, than there is no acceptance, only tolerance. Sure, deep down he and everyone else knows that he is black and that is a very important factor in his story; but not necessarily his success. So when feminists come into the picture, yelling "YOU'RE BLACK! THAT'S A MINORITY, LIKE WOMEN IN GOLF!" they are making a problem where there is no problem. Yeah, he's black. So what? Why is that an issue? Have we made no progress in the civil rights movement? The Black Panthers took their sweet time killing Malcolm X because he was trying to separate the white from the black. Tiger is successful. A successful golfer. And, oh, he happens to be black.
Another stupid deal is how feminists have created the image that all women are supposed to go out into the workforce and seize the world. What if women want to stay at home and cook and have babies and be prostitutes? That's their choice, respect it. Don't be a feminist-@-hole and insist that you know what is good and right for your species. Every man, and woman, should be able to freely decide their future without the tampering of people they have never met.
On another note, I want to point out, without naming names, that it is slightly idiotic to accuse a person of not working hard enough to support a friendship, while ignoring them whenever they try to have a conversation with you, and whine about how they did something you didn't like five weeks ago that nobody remembers, probably didn't happen, and is a stupid thing to hang your emotions on.
Let's say, for instance, that I am trying to rekindle a friendship with someone, who arrogantly and unjustly ignores me, and when I ask them why, they have no comment except some lame-ass excuse like "you laughed when I said I might have cancer!" Yeah, sure I did. The guy in question has a friend who has an aunt who has suffered from skin cancer before. So suddenly they decide to use cancer as some sort of baggage against me. Yeah, cheap, I know. Wow, what's with the hostilities? You know you must be an idiot if you don't want to be friends with Damon. I'm tired of bending over backwards to extend friendship toward teens with unpredictable mood changes that "take it all out" on me. I'm also tired of befriending conservative- christian girls who have never seen any good movies. Yeah, I know they are good people; what can I say? I attract good people. But come on. A certain message must be put out to the people: You may not believe it, but I am as good as it's going to get in the long run when it comes to allies, and adapt. Consider yourself lucky.
I'm just going to end the 'friendship' part of this little rant with a quote: "When looking for fault, start with yourself and go no further." It doesn't matter who said it; only blowhards credit quotes(it's not like they are copyrighted or anything). The reason I said it, is, before accusing someone like me of being at fault for a lost friendship, try working on your own damn social skills, rethink your priorities, and then come back to me with your tail between your legs, prick.
Now, cancer. All you young people out there, from 14 to 40: don't whine about cancer. I don't care if you have it or your aunt has it. You just wait until you are 80 years old. By that time, cancer will be a part of your everyday life. You will be having skin leisions removed from your face, nose and ears every other day. You will get used to it. I know about this: I have two 90 year-old grandparents. And they grin and bear it because they are real senior citizens.
And don't give me this "but what if you got cancer?! Huh?!" because I have obviously been thinking about this and I will be able to handle it because I am around good people like my grandparents; not whiners, like you.
In conclusion, the reason American teens are so freaking obese is because they have stopped walking and started driving. And there is immense pressure from society to do so. "Look at me! I am driving a motor vehicle! I am wasting gasoline! I am cause of traffic accidents! Look at at my l33t mobile phone and my inability to think for myself! Oh no! Someone died! Sniff, moment of silence, and I'm off to Abercrombie and Fitch!" Ugh. Thank god for Track and Field. Wait, no. Don't thank god.
So this means that Right and Wrong can change with the ages, or differ between different societies in the same era. But what do all society's views of Right and Wrong have in common? Well, although it is hard for me to admit, every human urge revolves are selfishness. When you come down to it, everyone performs actions for their own benefit, for themselves. And because people don't like the feelings of: hungar, jealousy, sadness, anger, but primarily pain, the rules of Right and Wrong will develope in a way in which hurting people is wrong and doing good things for others is right.
Yes, even though everyone is selfish, people must help others, because if everyone openly jumped on their every urge and craving to satisfy their own comfort, we would have death, war and chaos and the society would be unable to function and would crumble; humans would be reduced to savage cavemen. But as mentally developed humans we can make decisions that involve oppressing our savage beast within, and helping others so that the society can function as a whole; but in the end, everyone is doing it for themselves. Mothers birth, nurture and raise their children to make themselves feel good, to satisfy their urges- but that urge is to help children, to keep the race going, due to thousands of years of learned instincts of helping others, family and society, so that the system will remain intact, the system that lets them be selfish and satisfy themselves, their urges- even if though some of those urges benefit others. See what I am saying? Everything comes down to selfishness, but a degree of selflessness must be achieved to maintain a functioning society where everyone can be selfish at a higher degree. And if we jsut jumped on our urges withour regards to others; chaos, cavemen.
So, Right and Wrong is usually established by the dominant group, to maintain some type of order among the group, so that the personal satisfaction of each individual can be attained(maybe more-so for the benefit of the people in power, even if they are a minority, ala Nazi Germany or America). And what about Wrong? Well, next to directly disobeying the rules of Right, someone can have personal wants and needs that conflict with the functionality of the group and their wants and needs, resulting in uncomfort(pain, hunger, jealousy, sadness and anger because of all three) and dissatisfaction for both parties; the individuals, the minority making that happen would be in the Wrong, according to the current guidelines of Right and Wrong.
So as long as there is a set guideline of Right and Wrong put down
