#83: Planned Move to WordPress

Wow. Go a week without writing and a four post backlog can go away pretty quickly.

Anyway, like you shouldn't know, (because I didn't tell you [by the way, I need to learn how to do punctuation around parens correctly. I always feel like the comma or semicolon is going in the wrong place no matter where I put it. Like some words always feel like they're being spelled wrong {y'know, back when we actually wrote stuff on paper} or how some songs always feel like a note is missing or wrong], even though I was going to yesterday) I was planning to move the blog to Wordpress, based on the advice of a Mr. Greiner, or something, over at The Social Path, but more specifically, this post on how we should stop letting social media stress you out (I've essentially summarized it so you don't have to stop reading. And yes, I know I'm a prick [Who says this? Outside of the UK], but I'm kind of working on it).

Now, Mr. Griner usually does good work, in fact, almost always, so, as usual, the error is mine. I minsinterpreted his statement "So what if you're still using Blogger instead of WordPress?" to mean that I should move immediately to WordPress. So I tried. In fact, this blog now exists up to the last post on WordPress. But I couldn't use it. I found the website sterile and busy at the same time (Like if New York City was an operating room [which would be the fucking best] or if a subway at rush hour was like a clean room). Anyway, the point is, I couldn't find anything I wanted. I appreciated some features, like the built-in hitcounter, which would have rendered my whole hitcounter odyssey on this site completely unnecessary.
Or the Technocrati profile they gave me for free as well, which would have made this adventure completely superfluous. And they also gave me apps. Like a search bar for posts, so readers could look for posts on, say, cavemen or money or things movie villains should never do. (I miss hyperlinking. Can you tell? I did it so much in my HTML days back in 2005 or so. It was my favorite part of coding. But anyway. . .) The point is that . . . damn, I forgot where I was going. So . . . I'm just going to say that although . . . oh right, I remember now. But WordPress also had some bad stuff. Like making it absurdly difficult to look through layouts, even though they had like a thousand or some ridiculous number. Or the large fonts that made me feel blind(er).

But ok. WordPress wasn't for me. You may like it, but I didn't. So I'll stick with Blogger, even though it doesn't do some things, like all that stuff I wrote in the two paragraphs above. It's clear, and easy, and I get it. And I've been with it for more than two years, which is longer than I've known most of my Facebook friends, so I think we'll stay together. And that, I think, is what Mr. Griner's post was all about.

#82: Writing Posts In Advance

So I have discovered that Blogger allows you to schedule posts in advance. So that's what I'm doing. And it makes me happy. Oh so happy. Because now I won't have any excuses (at all, mind you) for not doing one on time (or at least having it look like I didn't do one on time).

In fact, this post was written and ready for publication to the general public on January 29, even though it was published February ??. I find that extremely awesome. And I believe I have that right.

In other news, J.D. Salinger died last Wednesday (it feels so weird to be writing this two days after his death, in the same week). And for those of you who have read some of my previous posts (or the select and special few who will go back and read every single on of my posts after you finish reading this one), the serial that I wrote on Monday, The Man Bartók, is somewhat inspired by J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (of course). So yeah. It's almost kind of personal for me now that he's died. I almost care. Not that I knew the man, or was aware that he was alive until the announcements of his death came out. But now that he's dead, I feel some slight feeling of what might be the beginnings of sadness if made ten times stronger.

I wonder what he's doing. Probably up (or down) there looking down (or up) at us and just laughing (or crying) at us (or for us).

#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.

#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.

#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!)

Thank You, 69.141.124.55

Well, I recieved my hit counter report yesterday and I'd first like to thank the owner of IP address 69.141.124.55 in Montclair, New Jersey. I appreciate your regular visits, and I'd also like to apologize if you don't want me putting your IP address and location up here.; message me and I'll take it down.

So anyway, once more, I'd like to thank you for your visits, which were hopefully inspired by my shameless self-promotion on the various websites that I am a member of (by the way, I now have a Facebook page. Become a fan). Please continue visiting and I'll post again soon.

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.

Even Homeless, You Have to Be Connected

In the Wall Street Journal recently there was an article about homeless people who, despite being homeless, manage to still maintain internet access in order to remain a part of online communities. The story is here if you want to read it, but it basically describes, using the homeless as an example, how tied we, as a culture, are to our computers, and the Internet as a whole. I lived without the Internet for a month (April of 2009), and I was nearly driven insane. I couldn't check Facebook to see what my friends, who I don't care enough about to call or text them, were doing, I couldn't blog, I couldn't check my e-mail, and I didn't know what was going on in the world, since I couldn't get to the New York Times website, and I don't trust network television and CNN is just a collossal waste of money (they had f*cking holograms on Election Night! Not even real, Star Wars-esque holograms. It looked like they took a video of will.i.am and cut his image out and pasted it in front of Wolf Blitzer. The thing looked sh*tty as hell. And I bet it cost eighteen f*cking million dollars). They say they're unbiased and all that crap, but they're just burning money.

Anyway, before I get too off-topic, I wanted to mention how, even though someone may homeless, the person can't completely sever their ties with the Internet. According to the article, the privelege of computer use at one shelter became so desired and popular that the shelter was forced to limit it to thirty minute sessions.

Wow. I am speechless. I can't even comment on that. Really, besides searching for a job and keeping in touch with other homeless folks*, why are you using the computer for so long? I mean, what are you doing that would require the shelter where you get your Internet fix to limit session time, because I doubt that the homeless are going to http://www.miniclips.com/ to play games or something. They're probably not playing Runescape, because that's just sad. And I know that they're not popping in World of Warcraft and doing that for half an hour. I mean if you're living on the streets or in a shelter, what business at all do you have going to the shelter and hogging the computer playing online games?

Seriously. I think that no one has their priorities this screwed up. But, on the off chance that any homeless person actually does this, they should go to China. There's no problem with unnecessary Internet use over there.

But honestly, we as a country need to cut down on frivolous Internet usage. I have a presentation due for work tomorrow and I have spent five hours not doing it, instead writing this post, reading the Times and sporadically looking for images that I can use for it. My teammates are going to be so disappointed.

*By the way, according to John Grisham in The Street Lawyer, homeless people know everything that goes on.

Dogs of Wrath, The: Hiatus

For those who missed the Dogs of Wrath last weekend, rest assured, I will not let it go the way of The Sixth Degree. It is finished, and I am trying to be able to sell it.

That sentence made no sense at all.

What I mean is, I want to be able to sell the Dogs of Wrath manuscript as an eBook. I have the PayPal thing set up, but I also want automatic delivery or a download link, or something. That's the part I'm having trouble with. I can't figure out how to have both of them together.

Help would be appreciated.

Oh yeah, and I never did write that follow-up post about the meaning of life or the one about money, did I? Well, that's on my list of things to do (which is, essentially, in no particular order: 'Get girlfriend, get married or become responsible baby-daddy whose baby's mother is irresponsible [just to flip the stereotypes and be a single father], adopt female [preferably Asian] child [haven't worked out how to reconcile those two yet, since I want to have one kid and I also want to be a baby-daddy and adopt a girl], finish writing second book. And the aforementioned 'finish blog post series.'

I think I might have trouble finishing things [Wow, one of my parenthetical musings has never had its own line break before. Can you do that?], or maybe just staying on topic). So I'll get one of those done soon.

A'ight, good night guys. See you tomorrow.

Nuclear Holocaust! Plus, a Technorati Blog Link!

As you may or may not recall, a couple of weeks ago, I posted about how I was trying to register my blog to Technorati on the advice of an article by the New York Times' technology columnist. However, when I tried to register, Technorati refused me, which set me on the path to a completely random, rambling rant about nothing (moreso than my usual posts), but also happened to lead me to a new blog that I am now following.

Anyway, I have just retried registering and it was successful, which is why I am now very honored to be able to post this link to my as of now blank Technorati Profile!

(I had to post the link in order for them to verify that I owned the blog.)

Now that that's out of the way, in my last post, I mentioned the very real possibility of nuclear holocaust. It may be just a coincidence, or some sort of subconcious expression of the effect that watching Nicholas Cage's latest film, "Knowing," (which was a piece of sh*t, by the way) has had on me. Either way, I have been having thoughts and dreams of nuclear holocaust (by the way, in case you couldn't tell, this is a picture depicting about the maximum range that Iran's new nukes could reach), all of which, for some reason, seem to involve me quickly making a post to this blog along the lines of, "The missiles are about to hit the Northeast. They've sounded the alert sirens. I don't know how much more time I have, but rest assured, I will keep you updated and I will fight the cancer, heat, cellular degeneration, radiation poison and disintegration until the bitter end. F*ck the bastards that came and sh*t on the American way of life! Solomon out."

Then, just as the missile is about to hit, I fold up my laptop, stand erect with a steely glint in my eye, and begin to run away from the missile, escaping just in time in one of those action movie explosion escapes (you know what I'm talking about. The hero just barely makes it out from the exploding vehicle, house, secret lab or other threatening structure, and is pushed to the ground by the explosion's shockwave, but gets up with nary a scratch, cut or bruise), then I run somewhere with free, unrestricted internet access and continue blogging until the end of the world. And you know my last word is "This is Solomon. Goodbye," and I click Publish just as the missile hits and I die a martyr for a now extinct civilization.

Yes, I know how implausible that is. Yes, I know the destructive power of nukes. Yes, I would not have time to escape the shockwave, and if I do manage, by a miracle, to evade the epicenter in the fashion that I have described, I would have massive radiation burns and likely be in too much pain to do anything.

But it's a cool scenario, isn't it?

I also know that the likelihood of Iran setting off a nuclear war is extremely low, since the President knows that massive retaliation would be swiftly forthcoming and very possibly fatal for all of Iran. He might even set of a nuclear world war, which no one wants. This is why nuclear weapons are used more a bargaining chips in the international game of diplomacy, along the lines of countries with nukes saying to the nukeless, "Send us money or we bomb you to the Stone Age."

Or something like that.

But even though I am aware of this fact, or have rationalized it through a brief consideration of the problem, the presence of nukes still worries me, especially with the recent apparent glut of news stories about small, US-hostile nations building and launching nuclear weapons tests.

And if I'm the only one, I might as well cede control of this blog to my brother and turn myself into a crazy bin.

Which I won't do, because Mr. Obama apparently shares my views. You all know about how he wants to abolish some nukes (if you were able to find my small, relatively obscure blog, you know about current events), and how no one else thinks it is really feasible or rational (oddly enough, suggesting the disposal of a few slightly volatile substances is not rational) to do so.

I am hardly in a position to suggest a plan to make Mr. Obama's dream a reality, nor do I believe myself capable of fulfilling such a momentous task, but I do think that it is somewhat feasible, and in fact, necessary. I use this analogy: Do you really need 7,600* bullets when you can kill just as effectively with just one or two? The problem worsens when it is revealed the the bullets are highly volatile and need constant care.

Think about it.

*Number of warheads in the US arsenal as of November 2002, according to the website http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab11.asp.

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!

Greed is Good . . . if You Don't Overdo It, and Lust is Just Bad

A'ight (don't you hate it when people spell that word "iight," or "Aite?" It's a f*cking contraction of "all right," so there should be a f*cking apostrophe at f*cking least!), some of you Holmes-y types may have noticed that I have changed my favorite websites. I added Mr. David Griner's The Social Path blog after reading his post The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media, which I found after visiting Delicious' in order to add this blog to their stores so that more people could read it and improve my self-esteem. I decided to visit Delicious for this purpose after reading this article on the New York Times website about how to build traffic to your site, which suggested going to Delcious and other sites and registering my blog there.

However, after reading The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media, I realized that I was embodying the first, third and sixth sins, (which are Lust, Greed and Envy, respectively) and that commiting these sins was not getting me more readers, richer, or making me the most popular blogger to ever live.

Now, to you my problem and how I realized that I have a problem, I suppose that at this point, I am to figure out how to overcome my problem, or pose some sort of philosophical query to you, which no one will much care about, until my next post in about two or three days, or a month or two. However, I still want to be widely read and recognized, ridiculously rich (who doesn't?), and the most well known purveyor of the written word ever (an honor that probably belongs to either J.K. Rowling or the assortment of people who recorded the events of the Bible).

So then, what have I learned? What is the point of this rambling, rather bland post about nothing? Can it be said that there is even a point, and that the point matters to anyone at all?

I just read that last sentence and it makes no f*cking sense at all.

But anyway, why write this post, since right now, I just seem to be going on and on and on about some random sh*t until I can think of a good way to get Arlen Specter into this post.

Damn. That was cheap. I can't even put him in this post in good faith anymore. Forget I mentioned him.

So now what? I think I'll just end it here, and note that today is coincidentally the 101st anniversary of Mother's Day in the United States.

Happy Mother's Day, everyone.

The Meaning of Life (Part 1)

Stop me if you've heard this before.

I believe that the meaning of life is to make babies.

There is no high, lofty, philosophical, overaching meaning. The only meaning, the only point is to produce more like animals, a task at which humans excel. The object of any species is to produce more members of the species, to pass on your genetic information, and to survive long enough to breed enough offspring to be able to ensure the continuation of your line into future generations.

Everything any organism (including us) does is done either to appear more appealing to members of the opposite sex, or to ensure the survival and increase the reproductive ability of its offspring. Yeah, like that new car? Bet that could help you pick up some young, college students (if you wanted to and weren't married). Taking your kids to Europe? That makes them cultured and cultured people are attractive. Even being disaffected and disillusioned with life is appealing to some people. Homosexuality in men is very appealing to some women (as several men have learned over the years, myself included). Bisexuality is this theory taken to the extreme (Argue with that!). You try to enter a sexual relationship with members of both genders. If that doesn't sound like trying to spread your genes, I don't know what does.

Some people argue that, "Our need to procreate is going to supercede our need to write a concerto, however, once that need to reproduce has been fulfilled, and let's face it, in the West that means two or three kids on average, we do need to self-actualize. I think that the sex is a building block upon which one of the main points to life is built; the need to self-actualize." (Thank you Dar Krum, from the playdiplomacy.com forums) But one could argue, (and I am) that writing the concerto in question is another way to attract a mate, for lack of a better word.

Let me put it another way. Long ago, there was a caveman. He wasn't the alpha-caveman, who got to f*ck all of the new cavewomen that came into the cave, so he was just sitting there. He was extremely bored, so he began to beat on a rock with a stick and made a sound that he liked. He kept on doing it and soon enough, some cavewomen came over to him and they had a massive orgy.

Ok, maybe it didn't happen exactly like that, but the main point is the same. Some guy did something really cool (like music) that made women love him and gave him the ability to disseminate his genes that contained the ability to make music. (Before we go on much further, I'm focusing on the male for two reasons: I'm a guy, and guys will always seek out girls. It doesn't really go the other way. I mean, it can, but not very often, even in this age of liberated feminists. Anyway . . .)

A modern example of this phenomena is the Jonas Brothers band. This group has many, many, many, many, many young teenage fans who would gladly have children with them, if not for the fact that they tend to congregate in numbers that require the Jonas Brothers to have security guards in case the fangirls accidentally harm the brothers, and the brothers' purity rings. This band has created a sound that some find appealing, and they identify this sound with the brothers, instead of recognizing that the sound is created by the band in order to make money, or because they enjoy it, as they claim. The Jonases also emulate homosexual fashion, as evidenced in this photo, and as I mentioned earlier, homosexuality, sincere or feigned, happens to attract members of the opposite sex, whether one intends to or not.

But regardless of whether the Jonas brothers know of the power that their style and music has to attract women, (probably not, but I bet that their stylist does) it doess exist. Those with a talent, or something that makes them stand out from the crowd are, and will always be, attractive. If you are able to do something, act different, (in a positive way, not oddly) or just look different, then people will gravitate towards you, and you will be able to select a mate from this cult of personality that you have inadvertantly created. You may fool yourself into thinking that you are only doing this because you enjoy it, but your brain chemistry is forcing you to do this so that you may reproduce your genes, and propagate.

So continue to do your thing, whether it be sing, play an instrument, write, make others laugh, be a pleasant, uplifitng person to be around, flirt, or all of the above (and if so, you will be/are very successful in life), because by doing this or these, you will fulfill the meaning of life.

Think about it.

Bathroom Strutters

You ever been walking down a hallway and seen a guy strutting for no apparent reason? 10 to 1 that he just came out of the bathroom.

That's one of the weirdest things that I've ever seen: guys strutting their way out of the restroom. They're walking like they just bedded a supermodel or something. And you have to wonder why they do it. I mean, I don't do it. When I walk out of the bathroom and someone sees me, I always think the person who sees me is thinking, I know what you did in there! Hahaha! I mean, I'm just trying to get back to wherever I left to use the bathroom and this person is just STARING at me. Literally, I look over my shoulder and they have that wide eyed look of shock, like I just killed someone in front of them.

I just went to the bathroom, stop looking at me!

It's creepy as hell. But anyway, the guys who strut, I always try and guess what they're thinking. And it always ends up being something like this:

Ooh yeah, best bathroom trip ever! Hit the toilet! Yeah, fifth time this week! At this rate, I might get in the Guinness Book! At the very least, I deserve a medal! Ooh yeah! Then I washed my hands, yeah! Then I dried those suckers and opened the door! Not many people can do tha- hey, what are you showing off for? Grr.

Yeah. I know it's ridiculous, but you just came out of the bathroom. You're supposed to do one of two things in there. It's not an miracle, you didn't just slay some f*cking dragon, millions of people do it every second. What are you so damn proud about?

Idiot.

Verification Denied

So, on Sunday, I talked about how I was trying to get Google to verify my page.

They didn't.

(Soft sobbing).

Ok, but I can deal with that. I don't need Google to have me verify my blog.It's seachable. You look up flow of conscious and you'll find it. Eventually.

Off that.

In the pros columnn, Google Adsense has verified my blog. And, my hitcounter is up and running. And I am reading Catch-22, the most unsensical piece of literature I have ever read, with the possible exception of Slaughterhouse Five.

So, that's it. Nothing really happened. Not too emotional about anything, just sort of ambivalent about everything.

Damn, I'm bored.

The Trouble with Boys

The title of this post also happens to be the title of a very good book by journalist Peg Tyre. To save all of you busy people out there the trouble of reading this book, I will write a comparatively short synopsis.

Essentially, the book describes how the women's rights movement has made it so that schools teach girl friendly curriculum. Before I go any further, let me just say that I have no problem with women's rights activists. Being a minority myself, I understand their struggle to get fair and equal education in school for their daughters.

Now that I'm through with that little sidebar, I will continue. I'm sure that all of my readers have seen the graphs detailing how girls are enrolling more in college than boys. If not, here is a graph detailing this trend.

Please, feminists, hold up your attacks for a minute. Some of you out there must have sons in school and this must worry you at least a little bit. If it doesn't, then you're horrible f*cking parents and don't deserve to have little boys under your command. For those of you who are worried, you are worried with good cause, and you're not the only ones. Ms. Tyre is worried with you.

The main question of the book is, "How can we fix this problem without upsetting all of the feminists who worked so hard to get our dauthers equality in schools, who worked so hard to make sure that more than 50% of girls enrolled in college?"

The answer is not so simple. The book first of all points out that boys and girls learn differently. OK, we can live with that. Boys are usually more active and enjoy and get more out of hands-on learning. Girls, however, learn more with book-learning, and are less active. The book says that even if girls are bored with a particular lesson, they are more likely than a boy to just sit there and force themselves to absorb it. This is true.

And Ms. Tyre believes that schools send a negative message to boys about reading. "Boys predominantly choose books that are funny and vulgar. They think The Adventures of Captain Underpants is the funniest thing on earth. They don't want to read Little House on the Prairie! But if they bring Captain Underpants or Captain Marvel to school, many teachers will tell them those aren't classroom books. So they learn that what they like to read isn't acceptable at school. That's a negative message that sets a lot of boys back.The same goes for writing. Boys tend to write for other boys—things that are dark, funny, and gory—whereas girls tend to write for the teacher. Boys don't want to write personal narratives; they want to write about Star Wars, and teachers might not approve of that, so we're creating nonreaders and nonwriters."

About early education she says, "Over the last 10 years, parents have bought into this idea that children are receptive to academic learning at a very young age. But there's good research that says that's really bad for a lot of boys, who aren't developmentally ready yet—their fine motor skills and vocabulary develop later than girls', and they have a harder time sitting still. We think if we give them French and violin lessons early, we can plant the seeds of genius. But it doesn't work that way."

Now, can we change this uneven academic playing field, which, for the first time in hundreds of years, is slanted in the favor of girls? To quote Barack Obama, "Yes we can."

But how should we approach this problem without disenfranchising the millions of girls who have had their mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, cousins and sometimes male relatives, work so hard to get them to this spot? First of all, the book says that we can instill a love of learning in boys just by hiring male teachers, or having male role models come into school and show the boys the value of education. This doesn't hurt girls, and it will get boys to see education as a valuable tool to become a police officer or a fire fighter or whatever.

If this should fail, then Ms. Tyre also advocates single sex schools. She tells the story of an all boys school in New York, which, among other problems, had a crew of feminists attacking it for being sexually discriminatory. The school was assaulted with discrimination lawsuits and shut down within five years.

She then tells the story of an all-girls school where the principal, an ardent feminist, sued the City of New York and got a verdict that allowed the school to remain open as long as the facilities remained equal. This prompted a New York branch of the 100 Black Men organization to open an all boys school of their own. The boys at this school are well dressed, well spoken and getting a college preparatory education. However, these boys have problems that carry over from their elementary and middle schools. Many of them are averse to learning, believing that being educated is a sign of weakness. Due to this belief, many of them are below grade level in reading, but the organization will not give up on this school.

So, what shall we do, then? What is the proper course of action to make sure that our sons can go to college so that they will have a fighting chance in the corporate world? What steps can we take to ensure that our daughters do not fall behind in this mad rush to narrow the gender gap?

Because the last thing we need is to hinder the progress of our daughters to bring it to an equal level with our sons and call it "success."

Congratuations, Barack Obama

First things first.
Well, Barack, here is your belated congratuations from myself. I know that this race was hard for you and I am very glad that you've won. But now, everything will get harder. You are the President Elect of the United States of America, (as if you didn't know that already) and come January 20, the real work begins.

You are taking control of a country that has lost a lot. It has lost much of the respect of many other countries. It has lost many young lives in a pointless and seemingly endless war, and it has lost many jobs due to outsourcing by companies that only care about the bottom line. This country, while it still may be the "greatest country in the world," is for the first time in fifty years facing competion for that highly coveted position.

You ran on a platform of change, Change We Can Believe In, was your slogan. We have no doubt that you will change things. But is it drastic change or subtle change? Is it change for the better or change for the worse? We will soon find out.

You have won the highest office in the land, Mr. Obama. You are, as they say, the leader of the free world. So what how will you use your power? Will you be a great and memorable President, like FDR or Lincoln? Will you be a forgetable President, like Buchanon, or Taylor? Will you be a scapegoat President, like Hoover, or a truly horrible President, like Johnson. It's all up to you. You have a great legacy to live up to and very big shoes to fill. Let's hope you're up to the challenge.

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