Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Some Random Jewels

  • "The thing is, and I think it is important to hold onto this thought, that humanity is so far away from its ultimate destiny that everything that is happening right now, EVERYTHING, is wholly irrelevant. Think about the trials and tribulations of the early Cro-Magnons and how much of an impact it has on your life. That's how much all the fucked-up shit happening now will matter in the post-human, post-Earth future."

  • "People invent governments for the same reason they invent gods -- because they are too lazy and too chickenshit to take responsibility for their own lives and destinies."

Sunday, March 7, 2010

If I Wasn't So Lazy

People tell me that I'm lazy. I tell them that they're lucky.

If I wasn't so lazy. With this much hatred towards the world, if I ever got off my ass it would be to tear the whole damned thing down. Or die trying. I joke that I am a bomb-throwing anarchist. The reason that it is a joke, and I am not actually out there throwing bombs, is because I am too lazy. It is easier to get high and play video games, to sit in my bathrobe and catch up on 60 years of comics continuity, to invent schemes and scams I will never actually get around to setting in motion.

People are kept in line, kept from actively attempting to overturn the staus quo, by certain socially-implanted barriers. The fear of ostracism. The fear of punishment. The fear of death. These barriers mean nothing to me. I have been ostracized all my life. There's something missing inside and I ultimately don't really care what happens to me. I have already been willing to risk -- at various times -- jobs, relationships, my freedom, my life, all solely in the pursuit of making trivial and petty points. It gives me satisfaction to make a point. It's pretty easy to imagine how over-the-top I would extend that characterization if I had a cause or a belief that I gave a shit about.

If I could actualize my vision, transform my delusions of grandiosity into just plain grandiosity, I could be a great and terrible monster.

If I wasn't so lazy.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Happy No Presidents Day!

Today is No Presidents Day. Today we commemorate the day 161 years ago that there was no President of the United States for one day.

Sunday, March 4th, 1849. That was the day that James Polk's term as President expired, and his successor Zachary Taylor refused to take the oath of office on a Sunday, the Sabbath. And yes, while you and I know that Sunday is the Lord's Day, not the Sabbath, cast your mind back to the simpler times of 1849. A time when an incoming President would be willing to throw the entire country into anarchy for a day just to be freakishly faithful to an already antiquated religion. One day we'll have a President that isn't a Christian and I will declare that a holiday too.

Anyway. March 4th, 1849. Zachary Taylor, afraid to anger the God that would strike him down a year later anyway, refused to take the oath of office. James Polk's term had expired. Millard Fillmore, his vice-president, likewise didn't take office. So who was President? The legend is that David Rice Atchison, President pro tempore of the Senate, was President for that day, since he was next in line at the time. But. His term had also expired, and he also never took any oath. So if he wasn't President, who was? I am going to argue quite simply that no one was.

For one day the country had no leader. And everything was fine. No cities burned down in mass looting and orgies. The trains still ran, or at least they would have if they had trains in 1849. Not switching over to Wikipedia to research that one, enough is enough. The point is, for one day the government had no head.

We remember this until it becomes the every day reality.

Monday, February 15, 2010

We Are No Threat To The Earth

Get over yourselves. We are not harming the Earth one bit. Let me explain. By "the Earth" you can mean a few things. You might be referring to the actual planet Earth, an astronomical body in orbit around a G-type star. Or you might be referring to the biosphere, that envelops the blue planet like a tapestry of green and red. That line came to me as I was drifting to sleep last night. Regardless, we are no threat to either one.

The biosphere thrives on chaos and devastation. Don't be fooled by how pretty it is, study how it actually works. The biosphere has stood up to asteroid impact, terrible ice ages, biological plagues, it has taken them and laughed. AND evolved intelligent beings, some of them smug, one of them me typing right now. Yes, it's that kind of piece. The biosphere thrives on chaos and devastation. It's really a kind of awful game, but it was around long before us, and hopefully in time it will escape planetary confinement and spread. Hopefully in time it won't be such an awful game. But until then, we are no threat to it.

The actual planet itself is a big rock. It doesn't even know we're here. One day the Sun will have heated up to the point where all the liquid on the planet boils off and whatever life is still here will die badly. And then some time after that the Earth's orbit will decay and it will collapse into the red, giant sun. That's the only threat to the Earth. And maybe an impact with a body large enough to crack it in two. When the Earth dies it will die without having had any clue it had intelligent life on it at one point. We are no threat to it.

We will live and die on the Earth, or we will leave the Earth and live forever. Given enough time, we could conceivably develop to the point where our technology has hit the Clarke's Law threshold and we can harness unfathomable power and move planets around at whim. By this point we would definitely be a threat to the Earth, since it would finally be within our power to destroy it. But why would we? That's dumb.

I've slipped around a lot from the rant I heard in my head as I was drifting to sleep. It was in my voice and I'm pretty sure it was me, but I kept trying to sleep and not listen to it, and it kept shouting "Two spheres! There are two spheres!" So this is only the ghost of a rant, and I guess what I am trying to say is this: Screw you, hippies. The Earth is doing fine.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

The Life Cycle Of The God-Mind (Made Simple)

The mind of the universe, and how it is experienced, can be broken down as such:

1. The Void
In the beginning there was nothing. A period of darkness and sleep. On a universal scale, this refers to the time before the universe had manifested, or at least before it had manifested consciousness. On a personal scale this refers to the time before you were born, or more accurately, the time before "I" was born.

2. Yin & Yang
The current phase, a period of alternating sleep and wake. Universally this can be interpreted as the imperfect and incomplete manifestation of conscious will over the blind and impersonal forces of random chance. Personally this can be read quite literally: your entire life is periods alternating wake and sleep.

3. The Eye
The Omega Point. The period of pure and total consciousness, the entire universe awake and aware as a single all powerful entity. Waking into this from your life is probably analogous to waking from a dream. For all intents and purposes, this is God. The personal and universal scales are the same.

Except breaking it down into a three-step process implies the existence of time. Problem is, time doesn't really exist, at least not the way we understand it. This leads to the tricky and ineffable part -- somehow step three IS step one, or leads to it, or causes it. Better prophets than I will hopefully explain further.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

a quick argument against intelligent design

Let's talk for a minute about the maxillary sinuses. Like the rest of the paranasal sinuses, they are hollow areas in the bones of your face. The maxillary in particular are these arrow-head looking hollows behind your cheeks on each side of the nose. These sinuses are lined with mucosa that produce mucus for whatever reason which I am too lazy to look up. The sinuses drain this mucus out of these small passages in the bone called ostia. If for some reason these ostia become inflamed, proper drainage can become blocked and the buildup leads to sinus headaches. Now the maxillary sinuses in particular don't drain right under the best of circumstances, since they only have a single ostium for each, called the "maxillary hiatus," and they are located near the top of the sinuses, as opposed to the bottom where any competent engineer would tell you is the best place to put the drainage pipe. You know, because of gravity. And so forth. So under the best of circumstances they don't drain right, under bad circumstances they don't drain at all. These holes in the cheekbones collect with mucus which in turn collects bacteria or viruses, better known as an infection, which finally leads to a really bad sinus headache. Sort of like the electric agony of a toothache mixed with getting kicked in the balls, except if your balls were behind your nose.

Intelligent design my ass. If sinuses are intelligent design, I'm Leonardo da Vinci.

post-addendum footnote disclaimer: Yes, true believers, I already understand that my scope and vision is too limited to truly understand how the crap design of the maxillary sinuses is completely crucial and consistent with blah blah blah blah blah. You don't need to tell me.

post-post-blah-blah-blah: Also I already know there are plenty of things that post-technological humans can do to alleviate this crap design, from decongestants to irrigation of the nasal canal with that weird teapot looking thing to balloon sinuplasty, and seriously look this last one up if you haven't heard of it. That's not the point.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Thoughts On Christmas (And The Holiday Season In General)

WE NEED A HOLIDAY FROM THE HOLIDAY
There's a reason basically every culture and civilization put a big holiday right around the winter solstice. It's because that time of year sucks ass. It is really cold, and it gets dark so soon, and outside everything is death and bone-chilling despair. That's why suicides historically skyrocket this same time of year, because it's an awful, awful time. So they created the Holiday. Call it Christmas, Yule, Hanukah, Kwaanza, Saturnalia, or any of the other names it has gone by in different cultures, the Holiday itself is pretty standard. Today, what was intended to be a joyful celebration to help make bearable the depressing winter has been transformed, become a monster that makes this awful and hateful time of year even worse. It is not only a major Consumer Stress Event, but it also leads to Unavoidable Social Obligations. Everyone is so stressed out about having a good time during this "most wonderful time of the year" that they neglect to have the good time. We need a holiday from the holiday.

CHRISTMAS IS A HOLIDAY FOR WOMEN AND SMALL CHILDREN
Actually, come to think of it, ALL holidays are holidays for women and small children...

CHRISTMAS IS A MODERN AMERICAN POTLATCH

Stop me if you've heard this one. The people are under intense social pressure to BUY, to purchase gifts for one another. Then the holiday comes, and when it passes they all rush back to the stores to return the gifts they just received. What is this immense waste of time and retail man-hours but an ineffective version of potlatch, conspicuous consumption on the tribal scale?

"THE ONE DAY A YEAR I'M SUPPOSED TO NOT BE A DOUCHE"
In older, more religious societies, the paradigm was six days with the Devil and one with God. In other words, for six days you would be concerned with this world and tarnish your soul to grasp onto it, but come Sunday you would be back in the house of the Lord. In modern secular America it is 364 days with the Devil, one with Santa Claus. Christmas is the time when you're not supposed to be a douche, but people spend most of the month or so leading up to it being selfish and lunatic douchebags. Defeats the purpose? Not for me to say.

LYING TO YOUR KIDS ABOUT SANTA CLAUS IS STILL LYING TO YOUR KIDS.
Just a thought.

RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER WAS AN UNCLE TOM
What's the meaning of this story? Kid born with freakish ability. Ostracized for it. Oh, wait, his freakish ability saved the day! THEN how the reindeer loved him... If I was Rudolph, I would have told the reindeer to fuck off. I'm the same reindeer you made fun of yesterday, I want nothing to do with any of you assholes.

WE NEED SOME NEW CHRISTMAS SONGS
Did you ever notice that Christmas songs describe the Christmas experience of the 1940s or the Christmas experience of the 1800s? When was the last time you ate chestnuts roasting on an open fire or rode in a one-horse open sleigh? Christmas songs are totally irrelevant to the modern Christmas experience. They should do a song called "I'm Waiting On Line For Christmas" or "A Prescription For Yuletide Cheer."

SANTA HATS AREN'T FESTIVE
They just make you look like a fucking idiot. Consider this a public service announcement.

THEY SHOULD SELL EGG NOG YEAR ROUND
I mean, they don't just sell turkey around Thanksgiving, or liquor around St. Patrick's Day. Why do they only sell egg nog around the Holiday? It's really delicious!

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS ARE TACKY
To be fair, I guess in the right hands they could be a tasteful, even aesthetically interesting medium. Just not the way you're doing them. Especially you lames with the flashing lights. This has been another public service announcement.

PEOPLE WHO SAY KEEP CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS ARE DUMB

First off, Jesus wasn't even born in December. He was probably born in March. The reason the festival of the dying-and-returned god was placed in December had a lot more to do with the pre-existing holidays already set for December. Saturnalia ran from the 17th to the 23rd. The Germanic pagan winter festival Yule took place on December 25th. There was the Holiday long before there was Christmas. Christmas itself wasn't celebrated as such until centuries after the death of Christ, when it finally supplanted the pre-existing holidays and assimilated them into itself. (Listen to Christmas carols talk about "yule-logs" and "yule-tide" and see what I mean.) In fairness, I do admit that if you take Christ out of Christmas it's just "mas." That sounds retarded. Maybe we should keep Christ in Christmas after all.

Friday, November 6, 2009

A Passage I Just Wrote For Something That I Deleted

...his attendance was like a game of Battleship, sometimes a straight run here or there but mostly scattershot and random.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Render Unto Caesar

So I got forwarded this chain email, by a close family relative who really should know better, and while I usually delete these unread I clicked this one out of curiosity and was rewarded with a genuine head-scratcher, the body of which I have duplicated below (minus most of the poor formatting but with all the poor grammar kept verbatim):


Fw: Re: Fwd: It has begun...Refuse new coins

REFUSE NEW COINS

This simple action will make a strong statement.

Please help do this.. Refuse to accept these when they are handed to you.

I received one from the Post Office as change and I asked for a dollar bill instead..

The lady just smiled and said 'way to go' , so she had read this e -mail.

Please help out...our world is in enough trouble without this too!!!!!

U.S.Government to Release New Dollar Coins


You guessed it
'IN GOD WE TRUST' IS GONE!!!
If ever there was a reason to boycott something, THIS IS IT!!!!

DO NOT ACCEPT THE NEW DOLLAR COINS AS CHANGE

Together we can force them out of circulation..

Please send to all on your mailing list!!!


Okay... so. Wait, I'm still laughing about how ridiculous this is. Hang on.

(nervous, incredulous laughter)

Okay, I think I'm -- wait, be right back.

(more laughter, cough cough cough hack spit, deep breath)

Okay, I'm ready to continue. But where to begin? By picking apart the patently preposterous propositions? Like "our world is in enough trouble without this too!!!!"? As if WORDS ON A COIN really matter EVEN AT ALL in a real world sense. Or the part where "The lady just smiled and said 'way to go' , so she had read this e -mail." But, how could she have already read this email when the incident involving her was just mentioned in it? Time travel? Precognition? Or maybe the person that wrote this email is lying scum. Take your pick, back to the subject at hand.

Now, maybe you really think God should be on our coins, the way it's been since the beginning of... well, since 1864, when Salmon P. Chase (yes, his real name) got the ball rolling on stamping In God We Trust on coins. Maybe you're really religious, and you just forgot the part where Jesus said "You cannot serve both God and money." It's Matthew 6:24 if you need to look it up. Or, maybe you're real patriotic, and you just forgot the part where it is unconstitutional for the federal government to acknowledge or endorse any deity, deities, or religious figures. (Except Elvis, naturally.)

Look. It's almost 2010. There's still slavery going on, did you know that? In the time I wrote this sentence a couple hundred people just had their lives taken by violence in various parts of the world. A bunch of people just starved to death somewhere. We live in a world where 99% of the resources are owned by 1% of the people, and "if ever there was a reason to boycott something," this is it? Seriously? I've said it before and I'll say it again, please someone build a spaceship so I can get in it and leave this madhouse and all you fools behind. Please.

But wait, here's another relevant Jesus quote: "Render unto Caesar's what is Caesar's; and render unto God what is God's." (Matt. 22:21)

The real question is, why does In God We Trust belong on our money in the first place? Jesus didn't approve of mixing God and Money. The Founding Fathers didn't approve of mixing Church and State. So clearly only someone who hates both Jesus AND the principles of this great nation would want to demonstrate their contempt by cynically putting In God We Trust on money.

It's like this, folks. Over here is religion, and whatever God or Gods you worship. Spritual. Transcendent. And over HERE is government, and money. Secular. Material. If you were to draw a Venn diagram of it, it would look like TWO COMPLETELY UNCONNECTED CIRCLES because that's what the spiritual world and the material world are. Unconnected. Unless you buy into Eastern philosophy or quantum physics and believe that everything is connected to everything else, in which case you probably aren't too concerned with WORDS ON A FUCKING COIN.

And last, since the money isn't actually backed by anything but our own belief that it's worth something, wouldn't it be more proper for the coins to say IN OURSELVES WE TRUST?

Wednesday, October 28, 2009