#77: Thoughtful Thursdays

There has been a rumor in recent years that on Halloween, large gangs, such as the Crips and the Bloods decide to hold initiations. Allegedly, the goal is to cut the throats of 31 women or something, or shoot and kill some people. I don't really know. But I checked it out on Snopes.com and apparently it is just a rumor. Completely false, they say.

But this evening, as I sat down at my computer, I heard several very distinct gunshots and then the sound of a car speeding away. I have heard what I thought were gunshots before, but I was not completely sure. But these ones tonight sounded authentic. If it had been just one isolated incident, I would have dismissed it as my mind playing tricks on me before Halloween. But then earlier, I heard some possible gunshots further away. I hope that they weren't shots, or that someone was just showing off for their friends, or that if a person was shooting at someone else, that their shot went harmlessly wild, but I don't know. I just hope that it wasn't what I thought it was.

So a while after the shot, I started thinking (because I do far too much of that and I can't seem to stop). How can a person take another one's life? I've thought about doing it, seriously, several times (not because I have issues, but just as a mental exercise. A twisted, violent one, but just in theory) and I don't think I could. The biggest living thing that I've ever killed is a mouse and that shook me a bit. What I do know is that if I were to kill someone, I would get a massive thrill. But if the thrill would cancel out the MASSIVE F*CKING GUILT is what I'm not sure about.

This post was so morbid. Should have ended it two paragraphs ago.

#76: (Formerly)Turbulent Thursdays. Now Adjective Beginning With "T" Thursdays: Transitive

As you can tell, not all of the posts have the same tags, which means that I did not complete my mission. What did you expect? Probably as much (It was 75 posts! I did at least a third. And then stopped for a rest). But I will continue.

Meanwhile, like I said before, I'm trying to be a bit more regular with posting on this thing, so I've begun Turbulent Thursdays. I will post anything that I feel is indicative of the fact that we live in a moving world (I don't know, I couldn't think of any other adjectives. Maybe it will just be "Adjective Beginning With 'T' Thursdays." That works. I could replace the whole adjcetive beginning with T thing with an appropriate adjective.), or just anything interesting.

Actually, you know, the parenthetical insert is right. I will do the ABWT thing (I like acronyms. Can you tell?). Anyway, I will post every Thursday. I promise. Unless I say why not beforehand. Okay?

Good. See you next Thursday.

#75: As You May Have Noticed

So, after finishing my last post, I decided, along with ceasing to self-reference, possibly reposting articles from Cracked.com, and some other third thing that I forget because I was distracted, that I was going to go back and do specific labels for all of the posts. All seventy-four of them. I hope that this probably unnecessary procedure will be done by Monday, but I will make no promises.

Also, I have uploaded another game that has been described, variously, as "awesome", "very goog(sic) game", "cool game !!", "lolol", and "It made me laugh." Play the game of the decade, Avoider With A Smile, available exclusively at the link provided. Go ahead and experience the "goog"!

#74: Marines: Assault on Terror?!

So, how y'all doing? It's been, what, two, three weeks? Yeah, something like that. Anyway, I have been twittering, or whatever the hell it's called (I'm sorry, but it seems to change every f*cking week. I can't keep track. And I hate this. I feel like those old geezers on CNN who decided a long time ago, "You know what? I can't even begin to understand how this stuff works, or what it's called, so I'm just going to treat it as magic. I don't give a sh*t about how old and out-of-touch I seem." And that's not cool. Anyway...).

I'm sorry about that. It's just that with Twitter, you can't really do long parenthetical breakaways, and I've missed those. It's one of the many reasons that I have to continue writing this thing. If you followed my Twitter account, you would know some of the others. But the main one is thatI don't feel whole unless I'm writing. And neither texting nor coding count as writing, as much as I may enjoy both activities.

So I intended to come back to this eventually, but the impetus for this specific post is a game. A video game. It's called, as you may have guessed, Marines: Assault on Terror. Now, don'tget me wrong; I have nothing against the Marines, but this is taking too far. If you want to indoctrinate the population, please, do it in a subtle way.

As far as I could gather from my five second glance at the tacit summary on Amazon, you go through the streets of Beirut, looking for terrorists to shoot down and stuff. Now that I look at it, I remember that it was featured in some newspaper where the developers were trying to pay homage to the troops, while producing the most kickass war simulator on the market. Which means that they are trying to paint this war as kickass by association.

But the reason that I'm doing this post is that it just doesn't seem right to commercialize war. Yes, the revenue doesn't hurt, but when war is commercialized, a real, active war is commercialized, it lowers the level of horror that is so much a part of war, and such a large part of the reason that many people abhor it, and most countries resort to it as a last resort. This just seems wrong on some basic level, that I can't properly articulate. But it's wrong. I know it's wrong. There are still people out there, in Afghanistan and Iraq who are fighting something and losing their lives, and to trivialize that conflict, where people are still dying, on both sides, just to make some money just strikes me as not quite f*cking kosher.

I guess I got my point across as well as I'm going to be able to right now. Comment if you think that you understand, or if you want to disagree or agree, or whatever.