#79: Avatar and How People Are Really Stupid

Wow. It's been almost four months since I've written anything that I really cared about. I tried to do this Republican blog, as you can probably tell, but I lost interest after about a week.

So. What can I do then?

Let's write about Avatar, since everyone else seems to be doing it.

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Well. It kind of sucked. As everyone else ever has said at least once, the plot was basically a rip-off of all tribal movies. The special effects were fucking awesome, like they were in 2012 and Angels and Demons, and pretty much every blockbuster last year, but it didn't do much for me intellectually, which is something that I'm beginning to care more about now.

I don't want to label it a parable about human greed, or a analogy for the war in Iraq, or America or any overacrhing sort of theme like that. This was James Cameron's life dream and I think he just wanted to do cool stuff with special effects (re: Terminator 2 and Alien [neither of which I have seen]).

But mostly, I just think that it is possible that he just wanted to write a movie, and all of this backlash about how it's racist is us reading into it overmuch. People do have a tendency to overanalyse things (re: Every slightly imperfect relationship you've ever been in) and isn't it possible that that's all we're doing with this?

The answer is yes.

And cue an absolute lack of impact and response.

#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.

Life Happens (With Memoriam to Michael Jackson) [Jesus, this took forever. I think the autopsy results came back already]

So few people realize this small, yet important fact. But this truth is important and must be recognized to achieve happiness. If it is ignored, or denied, bad things will happen. So listen up.

Life happens.

You may make allowances for it, plan around it, or try to account for it, but regardless, it will happen and you cannot stop it.

Many have heard the phrase "shit happens," and in fact, it makes up half of one of the central tenets of my life philosophy, though it takes the slightly more poetic form of "Expect the best, plan for the worst."

"Shit" is only shit if you let it be shit. It's only "shit" if you know that it will happen and yet you go on into life without a contingency plan, assuming that it will go correctly on the first try, you'll get it on the first take and everything will go swimmingly from then on. If you assume that Plan A will work, and you don't make a Plan B, "shit" will happen. If you expect that Plan A may possibly go better than you expected, better than you planned, shit will happen. Yes, this does happen, but only rarely, and it should not be planned on. If you plan like this, with ridiculous, misplaced optimism, your plan will mess up. AND SHIT WILL HAPPEN, and you be left out in the cold. And then you will become jaded and pessimistic, neither of which is a way to live life, despite how many people may be attracted to it. You get out of life what you put into it, and if you put a lot of negative energy into living, you will recieve negativity in return. If you act surly and jaded all of the time, the only people who will be able to stand you are other surly, jaded people. Besides, a failure to plan for failure is a sign of a weaker mind, of a person who leaves all to chance, and is that really who you want to be seen as?

Contrast the above with the person who start off with the assumption that shit happens. They don't expect the best, are caught off balance by a scenario that would be a great situation for anyone else is for them a miserable death march. Andrew Johnson never expected to become president after Lincoln's death, but he did and he hated the job. Things didn't go well for him in the position and he ended up being the first US President to ever be impeached.

Those who know that life happens, those who know that they need to plan for the worst but expect the best (yes, the order can be switched, but just don't mangle it, like plan for the best, expect the best) they are the ones who will succeed like Bismarck, like King Louis XIV, and like Ivan the IV of Russia. They succeeded because they planned for the worst but expected the best. They never displayed their indecision. And they went forth every day, demanding that only the best outcomes from the world and they recieved it.

However, people today refuse to make decisions. They vacillate endlessly between multiple decisions, focusing on the negative outcomes and weighting them heavier than any positive ones, which, more often than not, causes the road with the least good to be taken, only because there is little recoil. Or, on the opposite spectrum, people refuse to plan for the worst, expecting only good can come of their plans, as if they have a sort of Midas touch. They have bought too heavily into what they were told as children: "If you work hard, you can be whatever you want to be!" And so they just skip the planning part, believing that if they work hard, soon someone will notice them, without their having to do any self-promotion or have a backup plan or do anything besides being a workhorse, or a man on a hamster wheel. The hamster runs and runs and runs but doesn't get anywhere, but continues to run until he finally gives up, exhausted.

But their hard work doesn't excuse them from a central fact of life: Life happens. And it hits them hard. They wake up one day, and the stock market has crashed, their shop has burned down, their computer was erased, and they have nothing to fall back on. Or they come out of grad school, summa cum laude, expecting job opportunities to be laid before them like palms before Christ, and they are supremely disappointed. But then they see their colleagues with jobs lined up and they wonder "how did she get all of those when I got much better grades?" It's because while he was working at the college store and studying during the downtime, she was looking up companies who were hiring and applying for thrity, forty, fifty different jobs.

But the summa cum laude has to ask his classmate how she got those jobs. And the classmate responds, "I lined these up last summer!"

But her response isn't nearly as important as what she doesn't say: "And I didn't expect so many to be left."

Successful people are also a little bit lucky. Think of all of the beautiful people you see every day. How many do you think are models, or actors or actresses? Why didn't your band become famous, but Prince's band did? Why didn't your internet business take off and Google did? Why didn't you become a successful comedian and JERRY did? Hell, he stole some of your jokes!

Yes, Prince had the patronage of Owen Husney. Yes, Google was Google. And Jerry was Jerry. But more importantly, these people planned for the worst and expected the best. They understood that life will happen and that it can deal good cards as well as bad. They knew the odds and they took their own cards. Because they also knew that if you let anyone or anything else pick your cards for you, it can only lead to evil in the long run. YOU must control which hand you're dealt.

So plan for your life. It's not like you can restart if things go badly, so you might as well take control.

Now before I go, I'd like to request a moment of silence for the death of Michael Jackson (over a fucking month ago!). The man was very good at what he did.

However, I'd also like to mention how if anyone of us normal people thought about Michael Jackson on Wednesday, June 24, they would likely remember him as "Wacko Jacko," the accused child molester, alleged vitiligo sufferer, and presumed plastic surgery addict.

It's funny how someone's death can change public opinion of that person. Yesterday (on June 26th!), almost all of my friends who, previously, had almost unilaterally declaimed him as something along the lines of "creepy pervert," were now changing their Facebook statuses to something along the lines of "RIP MJ. You will be missed for your genius," or "RIP MJ, God wanted his angel back." Now I'm not quite up on my theology, but the way I've always heard it is that "creepy pervert" is few steps away from "angel."

But maybe I'm wrong.

Anyway, I meant no disrespect to the man, I just wanted to point this out.

(This has taken way too goddamn long to put up. I started this post way back in mid-June and it's August fucking 5th!)

Just Went To The NY Times Website

Damn. And after the post that was essentially in worship of trains.

Fuck.

Public Transport

I'd like to first renounce certain of my statements in a previous post regarding environmentalism. In the post, Why Going Green is BAD (Yes, You Heard Me, BAD) For the Environment, the title contained a sweeping declaration against all environmentalism, when the article just addressed buying organic food from places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. The title of the post will be changed as soon as this post is completed.

The reason for this decision to change the title is not because someone brought this to my attention (you guys never comment on my posts), but because I am riding on a Bolt Bus to Baltimore and I've realized how much I care for public transport, or, more accurately, shared transport.

I took a train to get to the bus, which is very nicely equipped. It has actual seatbelts (like the ones that go across your chest and are usually found in cars, something that I have never seen on a bus before), electric outlets, and apparently wireless internet. I say apparently because this post was written in a notebook on the way down after I foolishly decided to leave my laptop at home because my bag didn't have enough space and I thought that I wouldn't be able to use it until I got to Baltimore and set up, because the bus shouldn't have Internet, which it did. I only found this out because when I get on the bus, I see all of these people with computers working on them and the woman across from me is checking her Facebook page, so I assume there was wi-fi.

The train was a New York City subway, so I can't really expound on this, since almost everyone has riden on some sort of subway.

By the way, every time I get on any sort of public transport (excluding buses), I always think of one of my favorite games, Locomotion by Chris Sawyer. By the way, I am part of the small cult following that they mention in the article. So, in the game, you are the CEO of a transportation company and you set up a transport network with buses, trucks, ships, trams, planes, trains, and boats. I haven't played it in about two years, so I'm going to look for it on eBay or BitTorrent as soon as I can.

Anyway, the bus is one of the coolest that I have ever been on. Unfortunately, it is just a bus. If it were a train, with actual cars and all of the amenities that this bus has, I would love it and figure out somewhere that I had to commute so that I could ride it everyday.

Well, maybe that's a little drastic, but I f*cking loved that bus. But in my opinion, no matter how awesome a bus is, it will never be as fast, cool or dependable as a train (excluding Amtrak). I mean, trains pretty much trump every other mode of transport. They are not hindered overmuch by the weather. They don't usually crash. They don't have to deal with much traffic. They don't induce seasickness. They're realatively quiet. They don't produce much pollution. And best of all, they usually stay at ground level.

Unfortunately, trains are not as common as buses, highways, or planes. Planes do have the advantage if large bodies of water need to be crossed, beause they can travel a more direct route than trains. And highways had a lot of potential, but due to poor administration and overpopulation by cars, they became the nightmare that we now know as the American superhighway system (You notice I am only addressing the United States. I don't know enough about, nor do I have the inclination to research other countries' transport modes). However, now others are realizing the potential of trains. In California, there are plans to build a high-speed train down the length of that state.

The bus is stopping. I'll try to muster the resolve to finish this post later, but I highly doubt I will. And for those who care, I'll post the next installment of Dogs of Wrath tomorrow. Just so you know, I didn't figure out how to install the proper code.

The Saturation Point, Part 2

There are six and a half billion humans alive today. At an average weight of 150 pounds, that is a total biomass of 975 billion pounds, or 487.5 million tons of biomass.* This number may not quite match the biomass of several other species, such as ants, or beetles, but it is still an impressive figure.

The thing about ants and beetles though, is that they have a clearly defined place in their habitat’s ecosystem. They leave a minimal impact on their environments, and daily, hundreds of thousands of them give up their lives after a short struggle to provide sustenance for some creature greater than themselves.

However, humans? We do not have a defined place in the ecosystem. We kill and eat almost every single animal on the planet, and are not consumed ourselves except by accident. We have caused untold harm to the Earth, harm that may be irreparable. But the most telling, significant difference between our philosophy of life and that of the creatures that operate solely on instinct is that human beings almost unilaterally refuse to give up living if another alternative can be found and we view those who have differing views as to this fact as in need of therapy and counseling.

And if we are injured and declared to be nearly beyond repair, we will turn all of our willpower, intelligence, and funds to find a way to cure ourselves in order to remain alive, even though we may be in incredible pain (Example: Chemotherapy). And if there is no possible way to be healed, we will freeze ourselves in the hope that one day technology will be developed that will be able to cure our ailment.

But why do we go to these lengths? It seems that after a certain point, we would realize that it would be better, easier and cheaper to give up on life.

But no.

We don’t.

We continue to fight to stay alive and the important bit of this is that with our intelligence and determination, we will probably very soon raise the average lifespan to above ninety. However, humans would likely not stop having unprotected sex, and as a result, the population would increase even faster than it is, since there would be more people alive at any given moment. And as the lifespan continues to increase, as more cures for diseases are found, humans will die less frequently, which will lead to the population density increasing to the point where basic sanitation will become nonexistent and we drown in our own filth, our elderly bodies that have lived longer than humans were meant to live too aged to provide the strength that might once have saved us.

Now let me pause in my predictions of doom and catastrophe to insert some logic into my arguments.

Yes, excess will kill us unless we get our waste under control.

And yes, the population is growing at an absurd rate. As much has been said before. However, the apocalyptic scenario that I painted is probably a bit over the top.

. . .

This is why I never do sequels to posts. The fire, drive and inspiration that consumed me during the writing of the original post is gone, leving me to write a moronic, insipid, unenthusiastic piece of work.

Fuck.

* HamdenRice at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x111533

The Saturation Point

If you guys followed me on Twitter, you would have seen the series of tweets I wrote last night about the world being oversaturated with people. It's not that these people lack talent. Not at all; however, any field that contains even the slightest appeal, writing, for instance, is now overflowing with aspiring authors, journalists, poets, songwriters, etc., which makes it harder for any of these talented people to rise to the top.

At first, one would argue, "Well, hey, doesn't that mean that the absolutely most talented are gonna get famous due to survival of the fittest?"

Oops, no, so sorry, wrong answer. First, let's all reflect on the fact that Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen (a.k.a. Tila Tequila) got a television show. As far as I know, she has no marketable talents, besides being extremely hot (she is) and having over 1 million MySpace friends, neither of which can truly be considered talents. Essentially, she's a whore. Her show just took up time that could have been given to someone who actually had talent.

Now for the second part. If you've read Malcolm Gladwell's newest book Outliers, you will understand how success is influenced not only by the person's talent, but also by many arbitrary factors. He uses the example of birthdays in Canadian hockey influencing success, with those who have earlier birthdays being more likely to become pros in hockey, due to the setup of the Canadian youth hockey league. His proposal is that a player, Ned, born closer to January 1 (which is the cut-off date for the league) will have had more time to grow and mature than a player named Ian, who was born December 31st of the previous year, so their birthdays are only a day apart. Because hockey apparently favors larger players, the January 1 birthday will be seen as more talented and pushed to attend special hockey programs that will result in his becoming genuinely better at hockey than the player born on December 31st who was not drafted into the special hockey programs. Because January 1 is better, he will be sorted into the A-1 league, Canada's top youth hockey league, where he will compete against the best youth hockey players, gaining experience. December 31st probably didn't get into the A-1 league because he wasn't sent to the advance hockey program, a result of him not being seen as talented at hockey.

The end result? Ned eventually becomes a pro hockey player. Ian does not. And this could have been reversed, or happened a totally different way if only one of them had been born a few hours earlier or later.

So if success can be based on something completely arbitrary, like birthdays, how can we say that "survival of the fittest" in relation to humans will let the most talented rise to the top. This is obviously an erroneous viewpoint. Ian could have been more naturally talented than Ned, but because of their birthdays, Ned was put into the advanced leagues, while Ian was not. If success depended completely on talent, Ian would be the pro of the two of them.

But because 6.5 billion people are living on this planet, it can be hard to sort out who of us is the most talented at anything. And talent is not necessarily and indicator of success. Again I offer up the example of Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen. Compare that to one of my friends. She has written several short stories, which I think are rather amazing, and yet, she is not famous.

Perhaps the "whoring" nature of self-publication is onereason why the talented rise to the top. To achieve fame in the way that she did, Tila Tequila was forced to self-publicize relentlessly, whereas my friend sort of expects that somehow, she will become famous.

If this is why the most talented do not recieve notice, doesn't it mean that there is something wrong with the model? I realize that the sheer numbers of people alive today prevent publishers and talent scouts from discovering everyone who is good at something, and that if you want to be famous, you have to put yourself out there, but still, there needs to be a way to certify that those who have true talent are exposed and discovered.

But again, as I mentioned at the beginning, the number of talented people on Earth is astounding, and seems preventative to anyone getting discovered and recognized. There are simply too many people.

Which leads me to the necessity of a mass extinction event. Humans are so intelligent and geographically ubiquitous that the normal controls on population size (i.e. Drought, fire, natural disaster, famine, disease, predators, etc.) simply don't work anymore. At this given moment, I am sure that any number of these events is going on somewhere in the world. And is the human population plummeting? No. Even with these events occuring, the human population continues to increase exponentially.

This makes Agent Smith's revelation from The Matrix ring true: "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure." --The Matrix. (Can't believe I quoted The Matrix, but whatever).

Continued next week.

The "Next Blog" Link

Good day, all. Just wanted to discourse about this thing that's been slightly bothering me. I mean, that's why I started a blog in the first place, isn't it? To express my Flow of Conscious, or was I just experiencing temporary insanity?

Either way, I will communicate my issue. Whether you decide to read it is beside the point, because I can't make you do anything that you don't want to do. Even if I'm right there with a knife to your neck, telling you to read this, it's still your decision . . . but that's another post.

Whenever I click the "Next Blog" link at the top of the page, it always, invariably takes me to some foreign language blog. Often it's Spanish or Portuguese, but Monday, I believe (I'm not too certain of dates around midnight), I was directed to a Russian woman's blog (which I'm sure I would have found delightful, if I had been able to read Russian!).

Before you get on me for being all f*cking anti-immigrant, pro-America (not that being pro-American is a bad thing), "Burn everyone who doesn't speak American with an American accent," please, understand. I appreciate the fact that we live in a global society, melting pot, yada, yada, yada . . . BUT I would appreciate it if I could once get as my "Next Blog" a blog that was in English. I know that non-English speakers exist, and I applaud their accomplishments, yes, but I want something that I can support and follow and add to my list of "Blogs I'm Following," without having to learn a new language.

Also, I suppose that it bothers me that I always get a different blog every time that I click that link. I'm probably going to sound out of touch (BTW, I have Linux! My comp now has 2 OS[s? i?]), but I thought that if something was next, it was supposed to always be next, kind of like two is always after one (as long as you count [forwards] in whole numbers and not with fractions or decimals or some crap), B after A, etc. I'm slightly disoriented by the changing "Next Blog" (slightly; I figured out how to get Linux, [which I have to stop bragging about], didn't I?), which irritates me.

But whatever.

Also, before I collapse from exhaustion or lose what little lucidity I have ever possesed (ooh, flying monkeys! Hi Dorothy! Flibberty-gibbet![Is that how it's spelled?]), I'd like to congratulate the nation of Iran for successfully conducting the solid fuel missile launch that "landed exactly on target," according to President Ahmadinejad (I always thought that his name had a C in it somewhere . . .). I am not exactly sure what a 1,200 mile range will allow them to target, but as long as they don't begin a nuclear war, I am fine (I wonder if the Obama administration is as uptight as Bush's was about not spouting the party line, RE: Kid Gets Arrested For This. If I said that supporting Iran during Bush years, my blog would be shut down and you'd never hear from me again directly, since I'd be in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib [whatever happened to that anyway? No one mentions it anymore]. Maybe Obama is just more covert about it, since he essentially controls the media, and everyone loves him, including me. I'm just cynical).

Next Time: The World Is Dumbing Down! Prepare for Nuclear Holocaust!

Explorer Scouts Train to Fight Terrorism

I read this article on the New York Times website about how Explorer Scouts are being taught how to fight terrorism and crime. According to the Times, "one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters." However, teaching 14 to 18 year old kids to handle guns and rifles? Training them to be able to respond to border violence, terrorism and bus hijackings? Really. I mean, I understand if you want to teach thesekids how to resuscitate drowning victims, or treat burns, or deal with excessive blood loss, or whatever else is needed to help a person recover from an injury.

I may have been wrong, but my understanding of the Scouts program was that of teaching kids to "Be Prepared" for any eventuality, especially those that involve victims who need medical attention.Wasn't that the reason that Scouts were given all of that emergency medical training. However, it seems that in this post-9/11 world, the Scout's of "Be Prepared" was really "Be Prepared to Respond To Any Crisis By Knowing How To Maneuver As A Trained Strike Force."

I must have missed the fine print.

But I am beginning to digress. A Scout was supposed to be a sort of EMT, as I stated above. If they wanted to learn how to take down "disgruntled Iraq war vetran[s]", or deal with an "obstreperous lookout" on a marijuana field raid, they were to join the police force when they came of age. It's just too early. What happened to the concept of "childhood innocence?" Or did that die with the advent of the ninetys and nearly ubiquitous internet (not that either of these is to blame; I'm just saying that this era seems to mark the vanishing of true childhood, which may or may not be the subject of another post) to be replaced by omnipresent sarcasm, cynicism and a desire to find things out by oneself, immediately?

However, I again digress. The Scouts were, to me, a manifestation of the decline of innocence. Children were supposed to not be prepared. They were to learn this during their teenage years, sometime before adulthood. And now, with the Explorer Scout program teaching the scouts about "facing down terrorists and taking out 'active shooters,' (those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses)," one begins to worry about whether the notion of childhood can continue to survive, or if it will be snuffed out by these programs that force kids to live in the adult world before they are ready for it.

By the way, before the Scouts program sues me for defamation, I have emailed them, requesting an interview with a representative, so this may well become a miniseries of articles (assuming they respond to me, with my body of work totaling only forty-seven posts over a period of almost twenty months).

Letter to the Presidential Candidates

Candidates;

First of all, congratulations to both of you for getting this far. I applaud your audacity and perseverance.

Now, you both market yourselves as agents of change, and yet, I have noticed a lot of old politic, such as fingerpointing and saying, "I will do such-and-such. Look at his record. He did this bad thing and earmarked and voted to raise taxes."

Look, you guys are saying pretty much the same thing. And I'm looking at your websites right now and they look almost exactly alike, although Barack's looks cooler with the lighter shade of blue. But that's not the point I wanted to make.

Your jobs are to help the American people, to represent their views and wants and needs. I watched the debate last night and you two talking about your policies. (by the way you should both apologize to Tom Brokaw. The poor man was just trying to do his job and you talked over him and ignored his cues to stop, just so you could press your own agendas, which I'll get back to. You spent at least five minutes on questions ANY OTHER HUMAN BEING ON THE PLANET could have answered in one.) Your views were so similar, just blame the other guy. Barack even took up John's free tax credit spiel. This campaign is no longer about the issues, it's about personality. Who is more likable, more cool, more electable.

I mean, yes, personality plays a part, as does reputation, but no one should want to have a reputation as the guy who slings mud until there is no more mud to sling, at which point, he slings rocks and trash. If someone tells the press that you have cheated on your wife, take a lesson from Grover Cleveland and David Paterson: Tell the truth. Mark Twain said it best:
"If you tell the truth, then you don't have to remember anything." Lies will catch up with you. They will trip you up and make you stumble and have you falling and getting your stories mixed up. Tell the truth about your records. If you voted a certain way, say, "Yes, I did vote for that bill," instead of lying or ignoring the question. The voters will respect you more in the long run.

Candidates, what I am saying here is common sense. It's not that hard to understand or comprehend. Try to take my advice. It will be better for the country, and for your reputations if you do.

-Solomon

Concerning my Repeated Absences as well as the Candidacy of Barack Obama

Once again, I must apologize for my absence. I have been very busy this past month, what with moving, my family reunion and my job starting again. However, I know I've said it before but this time I will really try to blog regularly.

Now, I have been thinking about what I should blog about, and since I have already criticized the Bible for being out of touch and contradictory, I should write about the 2008 Presidential election.

Hmmm...

The Bible and John McCain have a lot in common. Is that by design or accident?

Anyway, John McCain is running against Barack Obama, as you should know unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past 19 months, and Barack's amazing lead, where everybody in America seemed to be for him has whittled down to him being a few points ahead by most estimates. However, the Democrats think that they can beat McCain by 50 or so electoral points. It's so nice that they can remain upbeat, despite their having lost the majority of the last few elections. However, this view of things fails to take into account 1 thing.

Most Americans have neighbors who would not vote for Barack Obama. "Yes, of course, we're progressive, we'll vote for him, we want to see an end to Republicans in the White House. It's just that, well, Mr. and Mrs. Jones over there, they might not want to. Why? Well, it's because, (and mind you, I'm only voicing their opinion, I'm 120% for him, raised funds and everything) it's because, well, I guess it might POSSIBLY have something to do with the fact that he's . . . black." This is of course followed by a nod, a wink and then both people chuckle at racist old Mr. and Mrs. Jones. How could they be racist? This is the 21st century, for heaven's sake!

But this isn't just one isolated incident. This kind of thing is happening everywhere. And guess what happens when everyone's neighbors go off and vote for the white guy? The black guy loses.

But don't think that I'm not for Barack Obama because I don't expect him to win. I'll vote for him, my whole family will! It's just that, well, my neighbors . . .

Badadadadah, I'm playin' it!

OK, I was surfing the internet one day and on a whim, I typed in "mcdonalds game." I clicked on this link and found this game. In it you play some sort of McDonald's demigod (Alert: If you see the words "game" and "god" in the same sentence, it does not mean that you will be able to throw random people around and end their lives). So I began to play it and it is really freaking HARD! I have not lasted 10 years on it yet. And I am now hopelessly addicted to it. Play at your own risk.

Money

Everyone goes nuts if you drop a buck on the floor. If someone
saw this -> pile of money on the floor, he/she would probably start foaming at the mouth and fling herself on top of it, like that lottery commercial where the money falls from the sky and everyone rushes for it. I mean, yeah, it pays the bills, but still, there's no need to start acting like you're a penniless orphan who's never seen a dollar bill before. I think that's part of the reason that reality shows are so popular, because you get to see the extent people are willing to go to for money, even though you'd do the same thing.


But why? Why are we so obsessed with little green pieces of paper, or rather, really f*cking thin cloth? Why do we risk bodily harm for the aforementioned little pieces of paper? Because, since birth, we have been brainwashed with the idea that those little green pieces of cloth are the most important things in the world, and they are, because everyone believes they are. And when every single person in the world believes something, then that thing becomes a fact and try as one might, one cannot change it.

But is this the best way? Couldn't life operate on bartering for services, "I pull your tooth, you fix my roof?" No, we couldn't. Services have different values and unless one has tried his or her hand at both services involved, one usually thinks that his or her trade is the more difficult and thus worth more. So the bartering could extend until the need has passed or become so severe that it has exceeded the capabilities of the original parties and requires specialists.

Money is quite an integral part of our society and will be for the forseeable future, although why it must be so all-consuming is beyond me. So then, a return to the classic sign-off, and a suggestion: Think about it.

Guess What?

OK, so I took this piece of sh*t quiz called "Are you stupid?" and I guess I got my answer right there, because I'm wondering whether I'm f*cking stupid in the first place. So here is a
Question: Who wonders if they are stupid?
Answer: Myself, mentally challenged and the village idiot (George W. Bush)

I have just been notified by the CIA, FBI, and the NSA that GWB is not an idiot. I apologize Mr. Bush, but I will not remove the reference because of the 1st Amendement. (3 Words of Advice: Learn Your Rights. If you ever go to jail or somewhere equally unpleasant but fully law abiding [unlike Guantanamo Bay & Abu Ghraib], you need to know them) Sh*t, I feel like a textual copy of Stephen Colbert, without snarky writers (I have all the snark!). BTW . . . sh*t again, I forgot what I was going to write and both my Backspace and Delete keys are broken right now.

Anyway, away from the World's Longest Digression, which would not be out of place at the 1904 World's Fair (why is "World" capitalized there anyway?), I got a badge for completing the quiz, which is here by the way, if anyone out there wants to take it and HTML works here, but I lost the badge and don't care much about it.

Luckily for all of you out there who wonder about my intellectual capabilities, you Platos of the world, (not capped!) I took an I.Q. test and here is the badge for that! 144! Take that! I am smarter than our current president! (Whose I.Q. is 120-something, if anyone wants to know) And I have a tendency to boast! (Insert Nelson-esque "ha-ha" here) I also am addicted to random tidbits of info I'll never need to know and I ramble! I'm trying to stop myself, but I can't! Must hit 'Publish' button!

Tears of Gaia

How do you feel about the Earth? Have you never really thought about it? Do you think that this global warming stuff is a load of bullsh*t? Do you think that people should stop using plastic bags and cars and oil and fossil fuels and if you don't plant at least one tree, you're a total a**hole, not worthy to be a part of Mother Earth? Well, I've watched Al Gore's An Inconvinient Truth. I believe that global warming is real. And I think that we, as the supposedly most advanced species on the planet, we need to do more for this planet, because it's our f*cking home, and even if we were going to leave it tomorrow, we should still clean it up and leave it better thane we left it. Our species has overpopulated this rock, dumped our sh*t into the lakes, rivers and oceans, taken its resources and f*cked up the air we breathe. We, homo sapiens have effectively signed our own death warrant, as well as the death warrant of every other creature on this planet. But we aren't dead yet. We can change our ways, get off the path we're headed down, and fix our mistakes. But we have to do it soon, before all the sh*t we've done turns our path into a one-way street, with no exits. So, un-f*ck this planet, before our bastard child of the apocalypse is born. Think about it.