Who was that "someone" in the kitchen with Dinah, anyhow?

Decades later, and I'm still left wondering to precisely what lascivious activity the euphemism "strummin' on the ol' ban-jo" most likely corresponds. 

Fee, fie, fiddly aye-ooooooohhhh... oh Dinah, yer a right ol' hoe.

Everyone in The Sims is... a silver-spoon trust fund baby (?)

 

Every time I boot up The Sims, I'm always struck by how ridiculous the premise is. There really should be a "realistic start" game mode.

Instead of beginning the game with a pile of cash and your pick of a few lots/houses, you'd start with:

• $50,000 - $200,000 in debt (depending on how long it took you to realize that "higher education" other than trade school is a literal scam, and depending on whether or not you've ever been to the doctor or dentist as an adult);
  
  
• A shitty ghetto studio/apartment with zero amenities, "managed" by a soulless criminal enterprise—sorry, 'property management company'—that's breaking every single landlord-tenant law in existence (which you can't do anything about because every one of your options for recourse would cost you 3 years of rent just to get started), for all of which you pay 75% - 80% of your monthly income... for at least a few years, until the 20% annual rent increases force you out, at which point you downgrade to an even shittier living situation with even worse value per dollar (but for a slightly less insane number of dollars), and repeat ad infinitum;
  
  
• A shitty job you hate in an industry that the world would unequivocally be better off without, which pays as little as law permits, only gives raises every other year that at best account for 1/4 of yearly local inflation (before accounting for bi-annual gas and utility tax increases), and for which you have absolutely no job security beyond how well you can kiss ass... wherein all of the employees (who actually do any work) are laboring solely to keep the company's executives in the latest model of overpriced blinged-out junk-mobile every year along with new seasonal vacation homes in a different country every-other year;
  
  
• A minimum 20-45 minute drive to work each way that costs you 10-15% of your income even with your 20 year old economical 40-mpg 4-banger (that will absolutely cripple you if you so much as get rear-ended)... and that's just fuel - so not including essential vehicle maintenance, the labor for which you perform yourself in your nonexistent free time because otherwise you'd have no vehicle or job at all;
  
  
• No health or dental insurance (which in America means no health CARE at all, ever), because the only bottom-barrel option your employer "offers" would cost you 60% of your gross income out of pocket annually BEFORE kicking in to even potentially save you up to the next  10% of your income annually (but not applicable to, of course, any expenses you'd incur to diagnose or treat any acute or chronic illness that could possibly have any actual impact on your life in any way)... and because the next-best marketplace option would cost you twice that for half the potential savings;
  
  
• A miles-long list of "minor" health issues you can't and won't ever be able to do anything about, because this is America, idiot, lol, wtf you think we are, some hippie 1st-world developed nation with functional infrastructure or extant social systems and all that other commie crybaby bullshit? Get outa heeeeeere;
  
  
• Grocery prices that are obviously set by more executives in desperate need of more new cars and vacation homes;- Vague memories of imaginary thought-experiments that you think were called "goals" and "dreams;"

... and the objective of the entire game, then? Simply to to avoid becoming homeless for as long as possible - until, if you're very, very lucky, you can someday magically afford to pay a different kind of higher rent for a slightly larger shitty home with the same exact shitty neighbors - but whose screaming kids and bass-only stereos and non-performative rattle can mufflers and drunken football parties will be a massive 6 feet away instead of only 6 centimeters... until not long after, you die and lose everything, leaving absolutely nothing to the children you couldn't afford to have, except for the small mountain of debts that you weren't lucky enough to incidentally escape... which will of course leave them slightly more impoverished than you started out. 

 

Tha's the REAL 'Merican dream ri'there! Mm-MMMM!

Now THAT would be a relatable premise! "Sims," my ass. The only thing being simulated here is the same preposterous fictitious fantasy narrative about an impossible imaginary* life in this country that its own mass media and entertainment are constantly feeding to the entire world - our own selves included. 

 

 

 

*unless you belong to a "special" minority demographic, in which case the proverbial oyster that should be equally shared with the other 80% of hard-working citizens is instead entirely and solely yours for the affirmative-actioning!

The Lastronaut

Some cultures believe that each new life is the universe's way of fulfilling a departed individual's dying wish to ascend to an even better place. The universe, in its straightforward wisdom, can only interpret that literally - and determines that the only better place than any given moment of life itself is an earlier stage of it, wherein the opportunities to discover, learn, and experience its many joys, sorrows and surprises for the first time are even richer and more numerous.

If true, it would mean that the closest thing to "heaven" that any living person can ever truly get is each moment, as it's happening in real time. Maybe our thoughts, and loved ones, and discoveries, and curiosities, and even our senses themselves represent the only chances we'll ever have to build a "better place" for ourselves within the otherwise unlit and infinite existential recesses of our own minds. 

Maybe that potential is the best it ever gets.

 

 

It Ain't Easy Bein' a (Person with an Estrogen-Preferential Medial Preoptic Hypothalamic Standard-Binary Differentiation*), Pilgrim

Okay.

Let's talk about something that almost all men think about, but absolutely no one talks about: having sex with women is WAY too often WAY more frustrating and ungratifying than it's worth. Frankly, a lot of times it's just another thankless chore. It's a shame, though - because it doesn't HAVE to be that way... but these days—and ever-increasingly as society becomes progressively more proudly insane—it just really is. As each more-recent generation somehow predictably becomes more socially and intellectually moronic despite having free, unlimited, virtually instantaneous, increasingly effortless access to the comprehensive sum of human scientific knowledge on a whim, both the concept and the actual act of sex with women is—also predictably—becoming proportionately less interesting, less satisfying, and more stressful for men. Nevermind microplastics and testosterone-antagonistic estrogen precursors from soy being ubiquitous in everything we touch and eat, and nevermind that modern doctors have somehow—(conveniently?)—forgotten that female fertility has always begun to rapidly diminish around age 30 or even before (despite it having been common knowledge for at least the last 12,000+ years); if those aspects of general human stupidity weren't already substantially contributing to the fact that humanity is no longer maintaining globally-sustainable population growth-equilibrium, I guarantee you that in the next couple of decades, the progressively increasing withdrawal of reproductive and general sexual participation by more and more men will become a long-term survival problem for humanity all on its own. Contrary to popular belief among readers of Cosmopolitan magazine, the species would not actually survive if all the women of the world began exclusively reproducing with the same 1 in 4000 men - so it miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight even be in the best interests of women, too, to at least consider considering important issues affecting the other 3999 in 4000 (and/or the other half of the species in general, but I digress). 

This isn't a rant, though. There's a reason this is coming up - double-puntendre intended:

The lowest common denominator of useful public/common knowledge regarding men's sexual-health and -wellness is presently over 200 years behind that of women's... and if you're a woman, you should know that this fact sometimes makes having sex with you a super fucking drag - and at least a little bit of that impact is probably your fault (or at least your prerogative to ignore to the tangible detriment of the men in your life).

A more than sufficient body of data pertaining to male sexual wellness exists - but the seed of social emphasis needed to eventually cultivate a common vernacular of functional and utilitarian wisdom from such data is so far from even being initially planted that it may as well not exist at all. Most modern women's (and doctors') perception of and personal comportment regarding male sexuality is not even quite as sophisticated or dialed-in as the absurd once-practices of arbitrarily lobotomizing psychiatric patients, or of prescribing hysterectomies to remove "corrupted wombs" as a cure for "foul feminine moods and ailments," or of measuring a woman's weight against that of a duck to test if she's a witch (gotta keep it light, right). Now, if you happen to be female and angry at the world for the hypothetical sociopolitical injustices "waged" against your distant ancestors by the distant ancestors of your male peers'—almost certainly destitute and powerless—great-great-great-great grandfolks, that of course entitles you to arbitrarily rationalize that fact away however you want and/or to cancel anyone who dares suggest you instead think rationally about it - but the non-fallacious and less melodrama-worthy reality, ignored or otherwise, is that a social-equity pendulum swing that massive is bad for EVERYONE.

Perhaps the most absolutely bonkers example of this is the fact that the combination of pandemic apathy and willful ignorance (predominantly among females) surrounding male sexual health and wellness is so severe and pervasive that there is presently an entire industry of for-profit pseudomedicine successfully profiteering from it - and doing so solely from the widespread conflation of an extremely rare (effectively exclusively geriatric) medical condition affecting less than 1 in 800 men over the age of 65 or 1 in 2,000,000 men under that age with what is, in actuality, instead simply men's completely-normal & -healthy arbitrary lack of sexual arousal due to any one of dozens of commonplace if not daily interfering circumstances, including but not limited to lack of attraction, lack of trust, disinterest, boredom, distraction, preoccupation, frustration, discomfort, pain, depression, anxiety, fear, anger, sexual trauma, general relationship trauma, ongoing emotional abuse, etc. In science terms, they just call that "male sexual response dynamics." It ain't rocket science. For those women of the world who still struggle even with not-rocket-science, though, I'm going to share what should be a really boring, really obvious common-sense fact that is somehow instead an ultra-mysterious super-secret in this modern age of bass-ackwards-counterintellectualism (which has probably convinced you that your vagina is more important to humanity than intellect): if your non-geriatric, non-morbidly-obese guy can't get it up for you, there is a 99.99999% likelihood that it has nothing whatsoever to do with his dick, and there is also about a 70% likelihood that it has at least something to do with you and/or your lack of chemistry. Even if it's not to do with you directly, gaslighting him and yourself into believing that there isn't a rational—and probably obvious—permanently-fixable acute contextual cause (other than a vogue pseudo-medical diagnosis that only exists to make money for the ultra-rich descendants of the handful of assholes who *actually* oppressed the distant ancestors of everyday women AND men alike)... well, that level of unabashed self-celebrating stupidity isn't gonna do either of you any favors in the short term, the long term, or the gestational term. Frankly, any sane & self-respecting guy's dick would shrivel up at merely the thought of him being abused like that... and yet, that's almost every guy's every-day status quo when it comes to dealing and/or having sex with women - or if not their own experience, then that of most of the guys they know. Just as frankly, especially given how powerful our brains have become it's a bonafide miracle that most guys can get it up at all for most women, most of the time, all things considered - and that's even when those women aren't being proudly and loudly fucking toxic to, around and/or about them. Now that right there's a true testament to the tenacity of the human biological imperative.

Here's a nugget of functional factual wisdom that should have been taught to you in high school sex-ed (which in turn should have been two orders of magnitude more comprehensive and should have started as a core annual class every year beginning by age 10, but I digress... again): male and female arousal dynamics aren't even CLOSE to symmetrical with each other. The male equivalent of a woman's failure to orgasm during sex is not that he fails to orgasm himself - it's actually that he just doesn't get an erection at all, or doesn't get a full one, or doesn't keep it for long. Just think about how common it is for a woman not to get her rocks off during sex - and not only in the first few years of trying with other humans, or in cases of masturbation prohibition/shaming or other sexual repression at home, and/or with otherwise inexperienced/casual/self-absorbed lovers. I hate to break it to ya, but as a woman, if you want to reliably have mutually-satisfying sex with halfway-decent men, you may eventually have to stoop to thinking of your male partner as another human being just like you, subject to all the same contexts and then some.

I swear, sometimes it almost seems like there's always a double standard about everything sex-related that's ever existed, or something. Gee, just think - if that were true, figuring out which side of it you're currently on just might not be the dumbest thing you've ever done. (And I know that, depending on who you are, that might mean you're disinclined to do it as a rule - but even if you're one of "them," at least consider considering it. Maybe it'll become a habit someday).

- now, ladies, try putting ALL THAT in your catty group chat and gossiping about it. It just might do something other than nothing and/or yet more harm to the poor men in your orbit - and maybe that trend toward positive change could become a habit someday, too.


(*For all you sad sack non-sciency types, that's human physiology speak for "male.")

Jabroni and Their Asinine Rhetoricolor Dreamboat

When they cry

"Straight,"
"Racist,"
"Privilege,"

 "Cis,"
 "Patriarch,"
 "Pessimist,"

  "-phobic,"
  "-phile,"
  "Conservative,"

   "Matters,"
   "-rights,"
   "Prejudice,"

A security blanket's all that is:
Insulating a narcissist,
Proxying self-ignorance,

 Delusions of dogmatic grandeur notwithstanding
 Your fine-tuned rhetorical bandstanding
 For the stage show status quo's demanding more
 Fallacious anti-intellectual grandstanding
 And cancellation of yet more upstanding;

Shuffling right to far-left right now in lock-armed copedance,
Along with the audience rapt with hot-eyed confuseberance,

Oblivious to the fulminant shlurps of shticking feet
 atop the feculent ocean of festering spat-up
  washed-out savory fucking drivelgum
   hardening palpably to the beat beneath
    all the world's floccillating idiot-elite's
     aplombly-attention-deficit non-ideas -

- draped warmly across their lapdog laps,
 - positively septic with self-affirmed applause...

    Always and only ever stumbling 'cross invisible roots
     of their so-called "noble causes."

This Dark Age of Gaming/Intellect/Civilization, pt. 831-C

PICTURE IT NOW:

A striking red-haired female Nordic warrior, short and skinny, stood next to a massive weapon twice her height & half her weight and adorned in half again as much weight in makeup alone, dressed in a massive suit of full battle armor except for—duh—a completely bare midriff and an extremely revealing non-armored cleavage line. (Never fear, would-be nay-sayers; everyone knows that melee combatants NEVER target unarmored/exposed areas of an opponent's body. It is known. And what do you mean, "She's got no helmet?" Don't be, like, such a misogynist! Women-warriors don't need helmets; helmets are just a patriarchal contrivance that exist only to subjugate the female body's flowing locks, in order to make men feel less intimidated by the comparatively overwhelming perfection of female sexuality amid the throes of battle!)

This paragon of utterly-realistic and wholesome feminine badassery belongs to and represents a now tragically-wartorn matriarchal society that was once an ancient utopia, noble and great and perfect in every possible way until—naturally—a man—ughk!—had the audacity to speak out of turn - at which point, obviously, the entire civilization fell apart overnight, as we all know utopian matriarchal civilizations are so famously wont to do. (But, mind you, it was abso-certain-tively NOT because of a foundation that was inherently impossibly fragile, egregiously precarious and/or absurdly lopsided, nor because it did or could possibly have had even the slightest of innate flaws in its concept or execution whatsoever! Obbbbbbbbbbviously). 

And hey - listen, it only looks like it would be 40 degrees below freezing because of that massive arctic glacier in the background of their open-framed boat, and because of the icebergs they're sailing past at a rapid clip. Her hot-blooded ferocity and purity of mind and/or Jon Snow's thing he does with his tongue will keep her warm and safe! "Frostbite" is just a myth—and a shitty game engine—anyway.

Every time I see another game developer/publisher go down this road, by golly gosh, I just want to send them a strongly-worded thank-you letter to reiterate to them just how important—no, essential—their contributions to society and the industry TRULY are.

It would probably go something like this:


Dear Crate Entertainment, Activision, Ubisoft, Epic Games, or whomever else it may concern,

Thank you so, SO much!

What we desperately need in gaming today—or any other established industry whose entire existence is predicated solely upon the participation and goodwill of a core majority demographic of longstanding enthusiasts—is MORE phoned-in woke DEI/SJW low effort trope-pandering in order to best engage the attention-deficit casual hipster minority demographic whose hobbies and intellect are derived entirely from the latest trends - and, along with that, yet MORE dilution, regression and corruption of the fundamental experience/enjoyability/relatability for the remaining 96% of the playerbase supermajority whose money is actually funding it all.

I have the utmost respect for creative professionals who don't allow themselves to be weighed down by traditional and/or rational standards of merit, excellence, or—especially—creativity itself.

What you do represents a god-tier brand of bonafide innovation that's TRULY fit for this modern era in which we are all seemingly doomed to remain fucking trapped just so tremendously fortunate to find ourselves. 

Very, very few others can do what you do. It really takes a special sort.

Don't.
Ever.
Stop.

Vive le moutons-mouvement! Ba-a-a--a-aa-a-a!

Is it really too much to ask...

These days, now that 97% of the world's females are exclusively screwing only 0.02% of the world's males—(well, and sometimes their husbands and boyfriends, I suppose)—thanks to the ubiquity of hookup apps, it's getting harder and harder to get any negative attention at all from grocery store prissy girls! Now, don't get me wrong; I completely understand! Hey, look, if I belonged to the sex for which absolutely no requisite standard of social behavior exists whatsoever, it'd probably be hard for you to get MY attention while I'm busy worrying that, in these yoga pants, the outline of my clitoris might not be entirely visible from across the store to some people with poor vision - and that I should thus probably go home and change into something with much thinner material that fits me even worse (and with an even more contrasting color) before I go stand around in the gymn for an hour to pick out tonight's double-digit-IQ anthropomorphic dildo.

I just don't want to be completely ignored solely because I'm entirely irrelevant to the modern woman's highly specific and equally egregious sexual whims and/or to her statistically-impossible marketing-conditioned physical ideals, you know?

It's nice when you can still get that fleeting look of, "Oh, wow, that weird moving inverted-shadow is actually alive and might be politely acknowledging my existence - EWW!" That's all I want, ladies! I just ask that you deign to enter reality, even if only to narcissistically recognize and express your passive-aggressive irrational disgust whenever a human male you don't actively want to fuck right that moment happens to exist in the same vicinity as you at the same time.

But perhaps that's too much to ask?

Has it ever occurred to you...

 ... that social media has become, in essence, an entirely new form of subliminal pornography?

— and that, having become such, it might now very well be social media's defining characteristic?

Lolwut? Yeah, me neither. Thinking is tedious, and I can't be bothered to stop scrolling TikTok! 

Some Women: "Why do most guys not talk or make any noise during sex? It's annoying/it pisses me off."

Well, women of the internet - I'm glad you asked. It's really not that complex: it's a YOU-problem, not a them-problem.

It really boils down to a matter of one particular notion that many of the female persuasion seemingly believe shouldn't ever matter in any sexual context: guys who genuinely don't enjoy performing a given arbitrary act for its own sake miiiiiight prefer not to, ever.

... almost like there's a double standard, or something. Huh. Imagine that! On the internet, too, of all places... and regarding sexuality, of all things!

LISTEN UP:

Expression of physical (or any) experience in any socially-compatible medium—e.g. spoken words, noises, language in general—is NOT a fundamental human drive or characteristic, and it is in fact much more common and natural for humans NOT to perform ANY social or otherwise expressive behavior in any given scenario.

For many people, sex that includes ANY expectation/need for them to perform arbitrary socially-adaptive behaviors of any kind is—justifiably—uncomfortable. Due to the way modern social structures and processes have been inversely-molded by the inherently-disparate fundamental sexual dynamics between males and females in nature, that discomfort tends to be more pronounced in men than women - but it's more common than not for everyone. 

 

... do YOU enjoy being uncomfortable when you have sex? Huh. Imagine that!

Accordingly, an intuitive and/or comfortable capacity for verbal articulation/expression during sexual activity is uncommon enough in men that its absence should be an expectation to any reasonable person, not a surprise - and certainly doesn't constitute justifiable cause for criticism or disappointment, any more so than it you'd consider it justifiable for any man to expect any woman to be inherently thrilled to deepthroat, or to receive anal, or to do both in reverse order.

— "BUT WHY," you whine ask?

Because "expression" is a strictly environmentally-acquired, adaptive social behavior (and concept) - and all adaptive behaviors cause physiological stress. This happens to be the underlying psychological mechanism responsible for allowing kinkplay—a deliberate reversal of adaptive roles and/or the consensual discarding/adoption of specific performance expectations which are contrary to them—to be enjoyable under the appropriate circumstances, btw. (And in stark contrast, when you weaponize this concept in an attempt to manipulate any person into serving your own desires for only your benefit, it tends not to be received very well... nor should it be).

Think about ALL of the individual behaviors any person exhibits in the course of a day, including private ones and those they aren't even conscious of doing, and then consider how many of those correspond to a discrete simultaneous example of self-expression: virtually none!

Sex is no exception; some people have ACQUIRED expressive sexual habits, while many (if not most) have not.

Somewhat of a digression here perhaps, but it's also critically important to differentiate between the vastly-disparate concepts of (social) PERFORMANCE vs bonafide EXPRESSION; the latter can potentially be a reasonable expectation of a committed partner under clear, specific, predetermined circumstances - while any expectation of the former can only be reasonable when it is strictly elective behavior, period. In (healthy) kinkplay, for example, what might otherwise be considered a "performance" is usually or mostly fully-derived from expressive drives that have been qualified by an explicit comprehension of both the presence and clear definitions of mutual safety and consent... but that is a (rare) exception providing for an overlap between those two otherwise-contradictory behaviors - not a rule conflating them as being inherently similar or commonplace under normal circumstances. Outside the structure and context of a clear, mutually- AND EQUALLY-beneficial social contract containing an explicit performance-component, "performance" and "expression" normally have little or nothing to do with each other in actual, real, healthy life - and are much more often found to be in opposition not just to each other but also to the practice of productive interpersonal interactivity between individuals in general.

tl;dr:

Whether you're just another passive-aggressive misandrist bandwagoner on reddit or merely another normal, imperfect human being with occasionally-imperfect ego-control, it's never appropriate to expect a sexual partner—yes, ladies, even if that partner is a guy!—to merely PERFORM any arbitrary behavior during sex; the words for that specific behavioral modality are either ACTING or SLAVERY, and both involve an exchange of legal tender for a very good reason.

Non-consensual PvP in Gaming: a Sure Path to Long-Term Underperformance

Most people frame their analysis of PvP vs PvE in games based on a common major error in reasoning: that any particular example of a "risk vs. reward" scenario is either uniquely or particularly special, meaningful, or even unusual. In fact, in all cases... it is none of those things, ever.

Gaming (or any form of entertainment), on its own, is ALWAYS an inherent risk vs. reward interaction at all times; you are always wagering your TIME against the possibility that you can find a justifiably-valuable degree of enjoyment in doing so; if you do not enjoy that investment, you outright lose it then and there - and if you continue to invest at that point, well... you know how sunk-cost fallacies work, right? Simply changing this dynamic's degree or appearance or venue does not—and cannot—significantly influence the already-fundamentally-binary reality of its possible outcomes, i.e. "it's either enough fun, or it's not."

THAT right there is the meat and potatoes of reasoned argument against—in general, regardless of source or bias—any form of PvP that is not explicitly opt-in at all times. Accordingly, the only correct way to quantify that sort of interaction in an entertainment context would be to refer to it as one with an "arbitrarily-inflated risk requirement, regardless of outcome."

Please, consider, the following:

A) most enjoyment from any form of entertainment, including gaming, effectively boils down to its various constituent analogs to otherwise real-life psychological processes;
B) in real life, while consent is OFTEN missing from many interpersonal interactions, in such cases it is (almost universally) not only missing but in fact ACTIVELY MISSED - with the realization of that absence being a potential—and likely—source of almost every possible negative and/or harmful human emotion/experience imagineable.

The human brain's reactions to this mechanic over time are, in fact, at the root of the origins of most if not all environmentally-precipitated antisocial behavior, i.e. "crime."

In short, people overwhelmingly dislike being taken unfair advantage of by other people, regardless of format or context - and no matter how effectively such proceedings might be obscured behind the fourth-wall.

Just as there exists a relatively small—but widely impactful—demographic of devoted criminals in real life who will reliably target the most-vulnerable members of society within whatever environment is most advantageous for such a pursuit, there are a roughly-equivalent proportion of individuals who will actively seek to exercise that same pathological aspect of their psychology in any (interactive) fantasy environment that can offer a greater inherent advantage to them; non-consensual pvp is then one of the most obvious choices of outlet for these individuals in a gaming context, specifically.

Not surprisingly, MOST people with an active desire to partake in such antisocial behavior are exactly the sort that are also the MOST harmful to any gaming community over time, and—biscuits to baskets, at the end of the day—the amount of enjoyment inherent in participation within a game's community is what ultimately makes or breaks its long-term prospects.

Shrewd, forward-thinking developers know all of these things, and THAT fact—that wisdom-driven desire to safeguard the possibility of a long-lasting healthy community by cultivating the lowest-possible concentration of pathologically-antisocial and/or otherwise toxic individuals within it—is the ACTUAL reason that open/free/unrestricted/non-consensual (inflated risk) PVP is as rare as it is in (successful) games...

... and it's the reason it should absolutely always stay that way in any game that hopes to be successful in the long term.

Just chewin' the Americud

As proud capitalists, we must never neglect to totally-non-ironically pay homage to the three worst and most popular on-the-dl scams (in no particular order) in modern human civilization, without which our glorious way of life would simply not exist:

• Insurance.
• Credit (not just consumer credit but also stocks and loans of state, etc).
• Democracy.

In combination, the insurance and credit industries are almost solely responsible for inflating the cost of (everything) so absurdly high that both are now required to be able to "afford" anything. Each of them is a giant economic ouroboros constantly swallowing up people's livelihoods, shitting out the impoverished husks, and then feeding on those perpetual-debt-turds in turn - and growing larger and hungrier with every single bite. Mmmmmmmm. Freedom!

As far as democracy goes, there are only two kinds of people in the world: those folks who are intelligent enough to have studied a modicum of history and who have thus learned better... and those who fail to see that they're the reason it can never succeed.

Darmok and Jalad at the Merriam-Webster Annual

Tamarian-isms. STAT!

We desperately need Tamarian-isms in the English language. Better yet, we need CELEBRITY Tamarian-isms! Just THINK of the potential to obtain otherwise unimaginable densities of nuance via references to the impossibly-obtuse lives of celebrity icons.

Here are just a few suggestions off the top of my head (yw M&W, ya old coots!):


"Will Smith, his fist open" = A person so incapable of taking a joke that they have unwittingly made themselves into an even funnier joke.


"Miley Cyrus, her smile spread wide as her legs" = Any grossly-superficial but seemingly-harmless je ne sais quoi from which incalculable human suffering will nevertheless inevitably be derived.


"Kanye, his mouth moving" = Egregious narcissism, vanity or self-aggrandizement; less commonly, any person who gives their child a name that warrants court-mandated therapy for all involved.


"Beyoncé, her fans ravenous" = Anyone sycophantically-lauded for their vague, nonspecific advancements of and/or contributions to society that have never actually occurred.


"Morgan Freeman, his chords resonant" = Any sound that is at once universally and simultaneously soothing and arousing; the antonym of 'misophonia.'

Who is Ron Swanson, Ye Ask?

Ron Swanson, the silver duke of saxophony & hand of The Tammy: first of his name, slaughterer of snowflakes, breaker of hipsters, builder of pyramids, master of chairs & high lord of lumber - long may he reign.

The Anti-Vax Bandwagon is STILL Going!?

 "Harvard Immunologist to Legislators: Unvaccinated Children Pose ZERO Risk to Anyone"

Errm, no. Yiiiikes.

That article is swimming in fallacies of rhetoric and context. There's a huge difference between longstanding herd-safety vaccinations and those specific edge-case vaccines which are (or were) on the forefront of vaccine research (i.e. very much works in progress) - yet this article only discusses the latter despite making sweeping assertions about the former.

I've read a lot of Obukhanych's research, and—her more infamous public appearances notwithstanding—the actual science underlying most of her "outreach" amounts to a couple of distinct points which are almost universally, if not always deliberately, misinterpreted and/or misrepresented. Most notably, none of them actually support or otherwise provide evidence for the anti-vax rhetoric stirred up by/in the (often for-profit) media in which she is often cited. Those points being:

— First, synthetic vaccination, in general, is an imperfect substitute for naturally-acquired immunity. This is factual common knowledge and generally uncontested in medical science.

— Second, because any given infectious disease evolves parallel to its hosts' immunity over time (but almost always evolves more efficiently than its hosts'), iterative, short-term vaccination is likely to lead to more severe long-term problems as disease evolution steadily outpaces the cutting edge of human disease science. This is also factual common knowledge.

Note, too, that with the exception of the now well-known flaws in the aP vaccine (which, despite that, is still better than nothing), the vaccines cited in this article are conspicuously absent their corresponding real-world data and context, such as: why a vaccine for a disease exists in the first place (referring to once-fatal and relatively commonplace diseases which, thanks to vaccines for them, now are not); why non-mandatory vaccines (particularly for cancer-comorbid viruses) might still be wise in populations demonstrating an above 50% rate of early-life infection; etc. There's a reason that those largely edge-case vaccines in particular are cited here, while the rest are not:

If one takes the aforementioned points completely out of context, it's easy to distort them into alleged or perceived "evidence" against vaccination - but that critical qualification obfuscates the real meat and potatoes of the issue (as is generally the intention). Here's the bulk of the important context, then, that's again-conspicuously absent from media employing that strategy to prop up that sort of rhetoric: when vaccinated individuals are exposed to a dangerous disease, they are demonstrably much, much, MUCH more likely to survive it, much more likely to avoid ever contracting it in the first place, and, if they do, their symptoms are almost always much less compromising to their short- and long-term health. Additionally, if infected, the body is able to fight off the disease much more quickly - which means everyone else in proximity is also much safer as a function of reduced exposure. Of course no solution is 100% consistent - but when the median rate of desirable outcomes within the expected range of possible outcomes is in the very high 90th percentile, that's clearly a success in big-picture terms.

Furthermore, when the alternative to even the most imperfect and inelegant solution is... a very high (or even simply non-negligible) risk of death... one can argue that there's not really much of a choice. Sure, human immunity as a whole might be better served in the long run if we were to simply allow ourselves to become infected with as many full-blown deadly diseases as possible - but in that case, "humanity as a whole" will only include the survivors, and the difference between that result and what we have now is far from negligible. Understandably and, in my opinion, justifiably, giving that up is not a price that most are willing to pay - and that pragmatism is the compromise that is vaccines.

Hopeless Romantic Seeks Filthy Star Trek Playmate

I'm not Borg, but I want to add your biological distinctiveness to my own.


fingerguns
 

Turtles All the Way Down

I'm glad that some of yesterday's authors are still writing with today's youth in mind. Even if his presentation is sometimes a bit cliche, there are always sufficient pangs of reality in John Green's writing to justify the concession to his target audience. I need to complete my collection of his books before I'm too old to read.

"Most adults are just hollowed out. You watch them try to fill themselves up with booze or money or God or fame or whatever they worship, and it all rots them from the inside until nothing is left but the money or the booze or God they thought would save them. Adults think they are wielding power, but really power is wielding them."

Be lazy

Today I learned that

"Some seven-syllable sound"
Works every time

7 hours since "I just need to find a high-quality version of one song," and...

... now I've found this. Not only does it fit right in with classic Ministry, but it might be the most entertaining video on Youtube.

Wordsagne

tarseirdinuddlis

[tahr-seer-din-youd-lihs]

noun

1. the familiar, comfortable, distinctly erotic, vaguely filthy feeling-cum-sensation of a person's warm underwear sliding down their naked legs and coming to rest upon and around the exposed heels and dorsa (topsides) of their feet.
   
   

Origin of tarseirdinuddlis

2018; early Middle Jamesage < English: a loose portmanteau of the words 'weird,' 'nude,' 'pubic,' 'libidinous,' 'tarsus' and 'cuddle.'
 

Related forms

• tar·seir·din·udd·lic,  adjective
• tar·seir·din·udd·li·ty,  noun
• tar·seir·din·udd·lic·al·ly,  adverb

  

The Meaning of My Beard

I often wonder.

At times, my wonder wanders toward the undeniable peculiarity that is my beard. Why do I care about it? I might as easily just cut it off, and for all the social lubrication that doing so would afford me, a clean shave would undoubtedly find me on the "net gain" side of the energy ledger. It's not procrastination, laziness, apathy, or fetish that keeps it firmly attached to my chin and jowl, either; I am possessed of some sort of intuitive understanding that my beard is more than simply a vestigial biological element of my face, and I can't shake it - but I also don't yet understand it. Most paragraphs abutting any arbitrary anecdote of mine are destined to arrive at similar ends on the way to their beginning, I suppose. Why should the truth about my beard be any different?

Perhaps hair is a sentient organism with its own life goals, and I am tenuously attuned to the tune of its gentle Zen.