So meta

Now that the "word"—which is actually just a prefix—"meta" has been assimilated into the present generation's social vernacular, do you think it's possible that they might someday come to understand—perhaps even pursue!—the fundaments of metaphysics... even by accident?

Nah, you're right; before that could happen, the trend would first come full circle and see "meta" assigned an artificial pejorative connotation. By that point, all forms of thought might already be stigmatized as "being, like, way too meta" to be socially acceptable, and we will have collectively returned to our barbaric pre-intellectual roots: happily accepting the fates handed to us by the effigies of ourselves—physical and ideological—that we worship as "gods," and allowing the minutiae of our lives to be arbitrated by a few of the most egocentric and loud among us.

Oh... I see what I did there.

Beep-beep, mmm, beep-beep, yeahNOOOOO!

Did you know that:
... a person is far, far more than the sum of his or her ability to produce consumable products for other people who don't need them? (First, though, one must to realize as much)!

Why the hell would I WANT to pretend there's such a thing as a "dream job?" Stop asking me what my "dream job" is, robots! I realize that most of you have become accustomed to rigid routines of beep-beeping and have even trained yourselves to assign arbitrary values to specific configurations of beeps you encounter along the way - but I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be a human being, and I'd rather not trade more of that away than I have to. I'm certainly not willing to pretend that I fantasize about any particularly-glorified idea of slavery. No human being in its natural environment would either have or need a dream job - or any job at all beyond finding food, evading predators and surviving the elements for that matter. I have all of those things in plenty, so what exactly is there to gain by giving away far more of my time, energy, happiness, personal and objective growth... for different, but no more functional, versions of those same things? — Nothing of importance, at all! 

If it's not intrinsic, it's superfluous - and if it's superfluous, I'd have to think of a damned good reason for wasting a chunk of my life on it. My "dream job," thus, is whichever job has the least impact on my actual *life* - i.e. whichever job is the least "job" and the most "anything else." The colloquial definition of "working" doesn't even satisfy the eligibility requirements for qualification as an allowable ingredient in the fundamental idea of "living." The two are mutually exclusive!

I didn't *pick* what I love to do from a list; I invented it from scratch as I grew. I'm a professional "myself," and you couldn't pay me *any* amount of money to be anything else. Once I've got a roof over my head and food in my belly, there is literally nothing else in the world that is truly worth the cost of even the slightest amount of my humanity.

Having to endure the constant "beep, beep" is compromise enough!

Femenifascism

I have to do a public shout-out to all of the feminists among you; I had an inspiring random encounter today, and I felt the impact of those feminist ideas you're all projecting out into the world. I thought I should tell people, in the hopes of educating well-meaning people who really don't comprehend the effect their behaviors have on other members of their society. Here's what happened:

I was driving home from work on the freeway at 11 PM when I saw a car pulled off to the shoulder ahead of me. Being that there was no traffic to speak of behind me, I slowed down to see what was going on. Once the other vehicle was in range of my headlights I was able to make out a pair of women looking totally confused—and clearly freezing—as they stood behind a car with a very flat tire on the rear driver's side. I looked for signs of a jack, a spare, or a lug wrench, and saw nothing; unless they were either missing one or more of those things or there was something else wrong with the car in addition to the flat tire, there was no good reason they should be just standing around doing nothing but freezing. So, as any sensible person who gave a (small) shit would do, I partially pulled over, rolled down my window, and asked if they needed any tools or help with a spare, or if they needed to use a cell phone to call anyone.

Then, as any 30-something woman—who's learned that women of any age can get away with *absolutely any* behavior toward men, short of killing them before first coming up with at least a poor excuse—would do, one of them shouted, "Fuck off, you fucking perv." Ahh, feminism at its finest. The sight and sound of a woman fully empowered to do absolutely anything the fuck she wants—because she lives in a society where a woman's individual level of sexual and individual power over men FAR exceeds any potential social power imbalance in men's favor—with absolutely not a care in the world about her objective value or qualities as either a human being OR as a member of society, or about her obligations to the standards of behavior agreed upon by her membership in said society, or about her responsibility for the consequences of any of her own utterly whimsical actions...
... that is INSPIRING!

I'm so glad, and so privileged, to get to observe yet another in an endless series of real-life examples of the reverberations of the female-entitlement-activism running rampant through our society. Please, feminists - by all means... continue your noble quest for *overt* total social dominance, even though you've already had covert total social dominance for as long as there have been men and women.

I still don't know why they were standing outside the car when there have been constant 80-90mph gusts of wind as cold as -2 F since... yesterday... but I can only guess that it must be another symptom of their obvious stupidity. Being the models of feminism that they were, it's clearly a deeply-ingrained personality trait which they celebrate at every opportunity.

In short, all of you self-mistitled feminist "activists" hawking compulsory "equality" on your pseudo-philosophical blogging communities and internet social networks, ejaculating fallacious rhetorical bullshit while egomaniacally masturbating your daddy issues and profound lack of both useful historical education and intellectual competence... are actually just *singularly oblivious fucks.* I'm calling you out.

Feminism = willful adversely socio-repercussive egotism.

A friend of mine brought up an important fact that I may take for granted: almost everyone who uses the word "feminism" has NO CLUE what they are actually saying - so I should probably do my due diligence and explain it to them and/or you.

You have to first understand that I'm referring to *actual* feminism when I write about "feminism." I'm aware that it is popularly misused in the form of a misnomer for a significantly-lopsided and naive—but probably originally well meaning—version of "egalitarianism," but that's not the (mis-)definition I'm referring to when I invoke the word... and, honestly, that popular misuse is one of the reasons I feel it's so important to bring it up. I have no argument against egalitarianism or social *equality,* (at least in theory, though that's another matter entirely), and I have no problem with the generally constructive ideas referred to by otherwise well-meaning people when they incorrectly use the word "feminism," as I think many so-called "feminists" probably do. However, the example I described in my original post illustrates one of many inevitable behavioral consequences that follow the inappropriate misappropriation of one word—with its own very specific and strong connotations—for use as a container for quite different ideas - in this case with contradictory connotations. Language does change people's behavior, both as they use it themselves and as they are exposed to it in their environments; I think it's important to scrutinize the net results of language in general, and even more vital to do so when those results are... for lack of a better term, horrific.

Notwithstanding the vernacular misconception of its meaning, actual feminism is something else entirely different from "egalitarianism" and, in fact, exerts a force in society that is literally opposite to the notions of equality or socio-sexual balance. If the damaging and marginalizing ideas of feminism weren't so easily conveyed along with the affirmative ideas that most people *intend* when they misuse the word "feminism," I wouldn't consider it more worthy of mentioning than any other modern linguistic corruption - but sadly that's not the case. A hundred years from now, if kids started misusing the word "fascism" when they actually mean "patriotism"—an approximately equivalent analogy of "feminism" vs "egalitarianism," and, (to a well-meaning but inadequately-educated person, as are most members of modern society), a likely mistake if some faceless marketing executive decided to re-brand an old idea for a new generation after "fascism" had faded from the social vernacular—the resulting inference of anyone adjacent to such misuse will inevitably contain fundamental aspects of both - and the contradictory nuances of meaning will still be both significant and tangible... despite their invisibility to some or even most of the population.

More than anything else, the point I'm making is that misusing language—even by accident as the result of ignorance—can actually be damaging, with the potential for damage having a positive correlation to the strength of the language misused - and that said damage finds its way into real life interactions between people. Sadly, good intentions are now one of the most dangerous aspirations a human being can possess - unless they are administrated and moderated by an uncommonly critical and altruistic intellect. How many human beings would you describe as being primarily "uncommonly critical and altruistic intellectuals" above anything else? – because those individuals are your only real coefficient of constructive potential by which any social activism can be multiplied to produce a net-positive social effect. The investments of anyone and everyone else will bring about a net deficit in short order. The actual net social effect of feminism is particularly damaging - despite the good intentions of many women (and men) who don't know better. While I recognize those good intentions, in this case I cannot in good conscience *enable* the inevitable damage perpetuated by the—admittedly sincere—ignorance from which such intentions are derived.

Feminism's story isn't especially different than other historical instances of linguistic usurpation, and it could easily be considered a cliche in our current era. Even if I try to ignore the powerful ramifications of the language itself, though, the pragmatic reality stands on its own: very few spiritually-benevolent social movements in the present day are actually moving in a constructive direction, due not only to the behavioral law of numbers but also to the utter dominance of marketing in the public sphere of thought. Generally speaking, any mobilization of individuals that originated beyond the individual level will inevitably result in the corruption of its significance and consequence to and for said individuals. For more on this and other tragic social advocacy fails, see Google.

A single word cannot convey any meaningful philosophy, either. Women who want to focus on the affirmative aspects that have been colloquially/recently injected into the otherwise-contrary ideas of "feminism" should do so - but the first step should be defining those ideas properly. Even if feminism didn't mean what it actually means, using it as it is currently used would still be a problem. Actual feminism is intrinsically insecure, maliciously rhetorical, fundamentally political, and reflects an utterly demeaning and marginalizing concept of men; it is egocentric rather than altruistic, proudly hypocritical rather than reservedly intelligent, and radically fundamentalist in ways that, truthfully, are rarely seen even in the worst extremes of *male* ideology more recently than the past few hundred years. Even being the cynic that I am, I'm reasonably confident none of that reflects what otherwise reasonable people—who erroneously refer to themselves as "feminists"—actually consciously believe in.

As for me, I'm a proud supporter of conscientious, altruistic egalitarians of no political affiliation - and of no particular demographic.

— and note how I'm not calling it "masculinism."

Raising the Social Curtain: Narcissism

As a conscientious sometimes-narcissist, I feel it is my duty to set the rest of society straight on the topic of narcissism.

For those who favor fact over opinion, it might interest you to know that narcissism is a purely social pathology - and absolutely no *causal* factors whatsoever are contributed from either genetics or any other objective characteristic. In fact, narcissistic personalities are inevitable products of badly-constructed and/or -managed societies. Given that human civilization in its present form cares little for exerting meaningful control over any social fundaments, the existence of narcissistic personalities in any society is just as predictable and unavoidable as homosexuality, belief in god or any other fundamentally-irrational yet widely tolerated behavior.

Narcissists derive from a range of particularly environmentally-sensitive psychological sub-type of the "high intelligence" parent archetype from which they also inherit significantly elevated analytical and observational talent and skill levels relative to the median person. It is the extent of this somewhat rare ability to "see through" social machinations juxtaposed with their specific environmental precipitates that allows them to intuitively—and generally unconsciously—reflect the sum total and scope of insecurities projected onto them by other social elements. The logical culmination of these behavioral mathematics are highly versatile control patterns which are typically opaque to the average member of society - i.e. "narcissism."

In a sentence, narcissism is a highly functional externally-focused coping mechanism precipitated by the less successful internally-focused coping mechanism(s) of the average moron. The only *rational* way to "deal with" narcissists is to teach yourself to recognize those failings of your own that attract you to them - because they ARE failings. Your insecurities are the catalyst that narcissistic personalities require for their behavioral chemistry. No person gets disadvantaged by entanglements with a narcissist except as the result of one or more of said person's own unresolved personality flaws. Because the incidence of narcissistic personalities will always correlate directly to the prior incidence of dysfunctional insecurities, the only practical way to "cure" narcissism would be to eliminate society entirely - and that solution would likely be considered too inconvenient by the prevailing social supermajority—average morons—for them to seriously consider implementing it.

As an alternative to either global annihilation or the universal elimination of stupidity and willful ignorance in every imaginable form, you can simply cultivate broader and more useful intelligence; if you do, damaging narcissists will disappear from your life forever - alongside a few of your own horrific personality flaws of equal or greater social significance.

Assimilate to futile resistance

It is the inescapable fate of a society to make of each of its members an actual victim, and to diminish to lesser comportment what should be a life. The inevitable relegation of individual liberty is to the rote circumnavigation of shallow communities that cannot be policed for lasting betterment. Prison of this sort is only survivable through great exertions of profound insanity; it is thus the legacy of any society for its progeny to aspire to eclipse, by greater progressive failure, those same which birthed them.

Unless HELD to egalitarian terms, society is only useful to trivialize the task of basic physical survival. Our society isn't even close to that basic ideal - and, failing that as it does, every instance of individual compromise beyond basic physical survival constitutes a violation of that individual's rights to live freely. This right, I feel I should mention, is not one derivative of society, but is rather an intrinsic right that existed before the very notion of "society" was even a remote possibility. This is essential to keep in mind; if society doesn't improve upon anything we would all already have, then what rational, *actual* benefit does it offer?

People's choices can prevent solutions to the problems they create for other people - and at some point, the *objective* value (within a community) of any person's right to live can be exceeded by that person's objective toll on others of said community. This is the intrinsic truth upon which the concept of "crime" is based, and for which systems of social justice attempt to compensate. Unfortunately, existing laws are so overwhelmingly short-sighted and naive that all crime beneath a certain blatant spectrum is simply ignored; only a small fraction of "crime" is actually pursued as such - primarily in the form of a choice selection of ancient and ridiculous taboos dating back centuries, or else in the form of utterly arbitrary impositions for the sole purpose of generating economic revenue. Members of society are overwhelmingly not held accountable TO society for ALL of their actions and choices - and until that changes, no society can ever succeed in protecting individuals from the damage of other individuals proximal to them. Willful ignorance should be a social crime; lying to the public should be a social crime, etc. Instead, the present guidelines for "crime" include only those behaviors which are harmful only to single individuals or entities - i.e. they ignore the context, which of course is that we don't live as single individuals or entities.

Basically, for society to be worth the price we pay for it, every single member must be both accountable to and equivalently subject to the social rights AND responsibilities of every other member. That's the "fix" to the problem of all crime. Presently, it's impossible - so talking about fixing things, while commendable ideologically, has the net actual social value of naivete. At a certain level of cognitive duress, *anything* is better than accepting the role of a victim. It's not difficult to extrapolate the inevitable behavioral results from there; it's a cycle, and one of the inevitable logical remainders of this equation is violence.

Punch-card brainwave

The real problem with fear isn't that people succumb to it - it's that people lack the intellectual conviction to let it drive them to its ROOT so they can yank it out.

Put that in your happy-ignorance receptacle and collate it, ya backwards fucking nincompoops. 

The folly of feminism

When was "appreciation and cultivation of intellect" usurped by "celebration and masturbation of idiocy?" Knowing the answer to that question is an essential prerequisite for understanding the complete context that cultivates profoundly erroneous social commentary like "feminism," and which—worse—allows it to pass itself off as anything other than the pseudo intellectual effigy to uncomfortable truth that it actually is. Part of the problem is a stark lack of factual education and critical reasoning ability, but other major players in this crime include "I don't give a shit" disorder and the ubiquitous "I believe that my perceptions determine reality" syndrome.

The collective behaviors of individuals create "society" - not the other way around. A major shortcoming of feminism—or any other deliberate perceptive bias falsely marketed as egalitarianism—is that it completely undermines any potential for possible social benefit by failing to observe the simplest, easiest, and most fundamental tenet of human intellect: open accountability of self. One and only one person is ultimately completely and utterly responsible for every single thought, action, and inaction to which you give birth: YOU.

Even the best-intentioned generalization of "men" or "women" in "society" can only ever amount to a certain sort of naive ignorance at its very best. Every individual man creates his own life from the moment he decides to do so, or else never does at all - just as every single woman creates her own life from the moment she decides to do so, or else never does at all. Simply demanding to be given what you want amounts to merely more trivial noise resonating uselessly throughout a spectrum of human cacophony already brimming with egotism and self-ignorance. Any person—man, women, or anywhere in between—who ever finds cause to feel that they have not lived the life they deserve... are probably right to feel so.

–and the sole fault lies with their own failure to create such a life - not with the failure of any other human being to donate it.

As I've said before, "privilege" is a moot non-point; it's a hipster whiner's trophy. Only profoundly ignorant sheeple can become upset about who is or is not awarded or allowed access to the "best" slops in their current pasture of life. Intelligent human beings, on the other hand, simply move to a better pasture - or, when the best option is not good enough, create a new one that only they control. They continue to do so until the result is exactly what they want.

Feminism is moot. Social activism is moot. All of their incarnations are simply one more form of willful self-enslavement in an endless sea of similar terrible options - all just as inane, dehumanizing, and intellectually paralyzing as the rest.

The entire notion of society is in fact irrelevant where the rights and life of an individual are concerned. A person either chooses to be subject to the laws, whims and injustices of society or else s/he lives as a free person. You can't have both - so make your choice—feel free to change it at any time—and in the mean time, take a modicum of responsibility for every single aspect of your own life and shut the fuck up about it. Don't complain that you sometimes feel like the slave you chose to be, and that you continue to choose to be every time you wake up in the morning and choose not to live better.

The best things in life have always been available in limitless quantity for the most reasonable price possible: your will to have them. They always will be. No human factor can ever change this truth.

In the mean time, women *should* be free to keep chasing that D, or else the arbitrary economic status they desire from a man, or any combination of the two in any configuration. Of course, they *should* also be aware that those are simply different sides of the same meaningless coin; neither choice is either good or constructive, and both ensure that what could otherwise be "women" remain mere slaves - to themselves. If they continue to allow those options and others like them to define the boundaries of their lives, then I expect their self-enslavement will continue for quite some time - aided in no small way by the "feminism" encouraging it.

Baa-a-a-a raa-a-am puu-u-u-u-bes

http://racked.com/archives/2014/12/15/brazilian-bikini-wax-pubic-hair-style.php

No doubt at the behest of their silent shepherds in Marketing, sheeple nevertheless appear to now be questioning the *sense* of fully shearing their nether-wool. It's a Christmas miracle!

Thank our precious American baby boy Jesus that we have so few concerns or obligations of importance that we can afford to not just think about but to also write (at length), comment, vote, and have intense feelings of any kind... about pubic hair.

THAT'S freedom, folks. Freedom! It's also "insanity"... but, aw hell, either way it's the greenest pasture a flock like this can ever hope for. This just makes me so god-damned excited and proud to be a part of the best god-damned human civilization that's ever declared itself a god-damned human civilization, ever.

Baa-a-a-a  raa-a-am  puu-u-u-u-bes!

Equality of hypocrisy

Because all women DESERVE the right to behave just as stupidly as some men. I will champion your noble cause, fem-idiots!

"– and don't worry about the vase."

Mountains are the islands of the near future.

I don't know why everybody worries so much about the weather. Hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis... bah. Winds are just the tides of the gas-ocean we live in. We should enjoy it while there's still breathable air. Unless we succeed with the urgent terraforming attempts that we haven't even started planning yet, it won't be long before all humans have to live either underwater or in the clouds. And, hey - the oceans only rose about 3mm globally this year, which is still only just over twice as fast as it's risen over the past few thousand years. 

That's not bad by apocalyptic standards. 

If the human population stays where it is now, we have at LEAST a hundred years left before most of our continents become ocean floors. That's longer than you or I are going to live, probably, so that should be good enough for me and you.

I don't know why ya'll be trippin' about losing electricity, homes, or all of your personal property and livelihoods - when the next few generations may very well have to breathe artificial atmosphere and eat solyent green from vacuum bags just to survive.

As if that's not bright enough for you, think about it this way: if you're alive now, there's a chance you might get to live like an astronaut—at dinner time—someday soon!

DOIN' IT RIGHT.

Quote—terrorism—unquote

It is the position of the United States government that all revolutionaries whose interests are not aligned with its political—economic, i.e. capitalist—agenda are "terrorists." 

I find this fascinating.

 

Not coincidentally, the United States government has its own revolutionary quality: it is the most successful, subversive and violent global terrorist organization in the history of the human race - even by its own official standards.

It's a shame that our government hasn't choked to death on its own hypocrisy by now. If it had, perhaps the rest of the world would have a better option than to simply kill all Americans - i.e. those people who continue to allow their politicians to freely rape the rest of the world in their names, and who not only deny their responsibility for any of it but openly pretend that it isn't even happening.

— Keep on voting, America.

What's in a name? – bullshit, now'days.

Parents, stop fucking up your kids' names. This is not a difficult concept to understand - but most grown-ass adults seem to have difficulty understanding easy concepts for some reason, so I'm going to explain it any way.

There are only two ways to go about naming your child: either the name is one of the nearly infinite preexisting options spanning every single possible idea known to humankind but that somebody, somewhere, might have heard before - in which case, your run-of-the-mill, not-actually-a-special-snowflake might someday realize that s/he isn't actually a special snowflake (gasp!); or else it's an arbitrarily contrived non-word with literally no etymological meaning at all - in which case you're a complete idiot, because your child's name now means "nothing." In the latter case, you might as well just name your child "Myparentsrstoopid," because at least that's an idea horse that (probably) hasn't been beaten to death in the English language... yet.

Soo... stop creating nonsense names for children. It's horrifying, and almost certainly will be psychologically damaging to them at several points in life. If you ever start to think you're smart enough to come up with a name that means something no other name has ever meant - you're not, and it doesn't. Modern contexts are not so significantly different than ancient ones that they justify renaming an idea; that's just your vanity - and it's pathological.

On the foibles of folk who argue ignorantly about human sexuality. (Did you know there are no remaining unknowns about which to argue?)

The irony of alleging a false failure of intellect—in the form of an actual failure of intelligence—is not at all lost on me. In keeping with that, I am hereby calling out any and everyone who insists on continuing to misuse sexuality's non sequitur posterchildren: "homophobe," "homophobic," and "homophobia." I assert that human civilization has advanced to the point at which a modicum of utterly basic psychology, biology, and sociology is not only well within the grasp of the most common fool - but is in fact so readily available that it can only be common knowledge, and that ignorance of these basic facts of our existence can only be achieved WILLFULLY in the present age of information. If anyone actually cared at all about these issues beyond the effect they have on one's own ego and concept of self, such people would educate themselves to the point where they can explain why they are factually correct as well as intelligently—or at the very least, factually—refute allegations of their own profound error - even where human sexuality is concerned, and especially when upset.

There will a come a time, probably long after I am dead, when the otherwise-idiots of the present day will be forced to accept the then-common scientific fact that ALL human behavior—including and especially sexuality—is subject to simple, knowable, easily understandable laws based on TWO factors, in the following order of precedence: environment, and then biology. Any person capable of reading and using a dictionary can learn that *biological* sexual *preference* in particular is determined in the first few years of life - and, most importantly, that every single nonessential human biological function not only *can be* reprogrammed by our environment, but in fact IS. Accordingly, humans learn their actual sexual *behaviors* strictly from emulating and interpreting their *environments* - and they never stop learning. I honestly cannot comprehend what utter vacuum of mental discipline must exist for so many people to avoid simply fucking GOOGLING IT—all of it, everything!—after their first exposure to any given idea.

Mulder may have said it loudest on the admittedly "out-there" X-files, but like it or not, even that fictional character was aware of reality's not-at-all-breaking news: THE TRUTH *IS* OUT THERE. ALL of it. If YOU don't know it, your only valid excuse is that you don't live in a country where you have internet access or libraries of any kind. (And, notably, in such countries you are unlikely to stumble across anyone engaged in a vigorous argument about human sexual foibles). Failing that, you're just fucking lazy.

—And if you're able to read this post online... well.

Until that future utopian fiction of global intellectual accountability is achieved, though, I will continue to be simultaneously entertained and incensed by the efforts of the vernacular ignorant to convince themselves and everyone else that any facts which prove contrary to their *beliefs* must constitute some form of phobia, cruelty, or other fundamental human failing (and are, of course, thus invalid).

So, to everyone it may concern: Ha, ha! Thank you for the laughs - but also, fuck you for not caring that you're all ignorant and for setting back the intellectual progress of the human race nearly every time you open your mouth. Mostly the latter.

On linguistic accountability and the follies of perceptive-egotism

I agree that people tend to perceive things differently - which is why comprehensive critical analysis of all perceptive factors should be an essential prerequisite to every statement of importance that any person makes to another. Failing that, error is guaranteed; such errors of comprehension in interpersonal interactions inevitably marginalize someone or something of contextual or other factual importance, and an ideologically-destructive chain reaction is thus started. At that point, severe conflict is already underway - but urgent confrontation of that reality can potentially allow for the development of a solution prior to the inevitable—and rapidly ballooning—social cataclysm that would otherwise follow.

The notion that a non-confrontational solution is possible is unfortunately incorrect. If people either had or were generally capable of creating sufficient incentives to self-moderate in time to avoid making the worst logical mistakes, these mistakes would not permeate our entire civilization as they have historically done and continue to do. I recently re-read The Giver for the umpteenth time, (after being disappointed by the movie), and the phrase "precision of language" motivated me to momentarily focus my reflections on my near-constant frustration with what I like to call "conversation FAILS" - those instances in which a person simply cannot comprehend a precise idea due to a fundamental flaw in his or her language repertoire. Precision of language is, indeed, important. While an actively-remedial solution to the problem of unrealized and/or ignored perceptive bias is not readily available, (and may not even be feasible in modern society), a shift of focus away from ourselves and toward our mechanisms of expression IS both possible and easy to achieve - and may help make up the difference.

The purpose of language is to understand each other and our environments - and through doing so, to understand and exert control over our places and our futures within those environments. Language is the most useful and powerful tool ever developed by human beings - bar none. The ability to understand each other is vitally important especially within—and amongst—human societies as large as ours have become, and can be a source of great introspective wisdom even outside that context. However, understanding of this sort can only actually be achieved if language is consistently employed in its most useful capacity, and neither needlessly beyond it nor futilely short of it. It is best used to establish objective criteria with which the infinite personal contexts of our lives can be reduced to universal terms - from which wisdom, in turn, can be extracted. 

While it is possible to communicate any given idea and any given context for such ideas, the *value* of this potential is completely negated if the idea's context does not extend beyond the person expressing it - i.e. if language's transformative power—created for reduction and simplification—is abused for the purpose of self-expansion and needless complication. This is unfortunately the case whenever language is used to simply express oneself without a meaningful context - such as when a person simply states their perceptions without having filtered them through deliberate criteria with the intention of accessing—or providing access to—a more fundamental truth derivative of said perception. Language does not function meaningfully or usefully unless it is used either to teach, or to learn, or ideally to do both at once. In fact, it is this very concept from which the term "conversation" is descended.

The truth is that language has become over-used, and in doing so has lost some of its *real* usefulness. A specialized tool can no longer fulfill its function if it is homogenized and inflated to the point of dullness or superfluity. If you try to combine a hammer with a screwdriver, for instance, someone will eventually decide to use the hammer to remove a screw, or the driver to pry up a nail - imperfect compromises in lieu of perfectible solutions. They may "work," but they create an unnecessary effort overhead; they corrupt the ideas of the individual solutions each tool represents. Over time, people devise additional half-measured "solutions" to the new problems that inevitably follow the original compromise, and so on, and so on. The *purpose* of language is specifically to address the ideological version of this problem. 

When people use language to communicate ambiguous ideas or—worse—when people fail to realize that their communicated ideas are fallacious or useless or both, the fundamental objective of language is defeated in such interactions. All it would take to save language is for everyone to pause, imperceptibly, for just a fraction of a second before every sentence, and ask: "What purpose do I intend for these words, and how can I arrange them such that my purpose is self-evident to my listener?" It is not possible to perfectly adhere to "conversational law" without fail - but everyone must at least maintain a conscious awareness that such an idea exists, that it is useful, and that it is necessary if we are to maintain useful and productive interpersonal relationships. Of course, a person must first be taught to think proactively in this way, and therein lies the real rub of modern first-world "education."

Comprehensive language education within any human civilization is just as if not more fundamental and important as are food and shelter.

She's got a ticket to ride... but I really, really don't care - and for the love of intellect, everybody else please stop whining about it!

I'm really sick of pseudo-intellectuals whining about privilege. It's the next hipster non-issue fad. Sure, it's a component of modern life, though the point there is... utterly missed. It's true that achieving society's current arbitrary idea of economic success is fundamentally difficult and requires a large investment - and it's true that the further you are from the goal when you start, the harder it is to get there (and that's "privilege"). Likewise, it's true that if you are born into a position in which your predecessors/parents have invested FOR you, you are pretty much already there and can simply reap the perceived rewards for "free" (and that's "unfair"). What's ignored, however, is the fact that the modern social notion of "success" is idiotic at best and constitutes nothing more than a meaningless content gate to *actual* living - and that's unacceptable.

I have an analogy that—unlike the "privilege" protesters of the present day—also considers an essential context of reality: It's harder to drive off a cliff in style if your rich parents don't buy you a BMW for your 16th birthday. Rather than complain about not being born into a leather pre-warmed seat, an intelligent person would stop and think, "Gee, maybe it doesn't make sense to be competing with everybody else to see who can drive off a cliff the quickest(*) and in the most luxurious fashion?" 

Arbitrary standards are arbitrary! Profound, I know.

Privilege is a moot point; it's a whiner's trophy, and nothing else. Only profoundly ignorant sheeple can be upset about who gets the "best" slops in a faux-life. The best things in life have historically always been free, and the only way that'll ever change is if people overwhelmingly start to truly believe that they should have to pay for their intrinsic rights - at which point somebody smarter will happily start selling said rights for juuuust more than the median populace can afford. There's already enough of that going on in most current world governments. Encouraging this privilege nonsense is another step in the direction of willful self-enslavement. 

Don't be an idiot. Ah, hell... that's probably too much to ask. How about, instead, don't be that much of an idiot? That seems more reasonable... relative to the current state of human civilization, at least.

(* Clarification in the name of technical accuracy obsessiveness on my part: "quickest" was not a reference to the BMW component of the analogy - because modern BMWs are inferior racing machines).

The Lie of "Education" and The Truth About College

Welcome, graduates. You have fulfilled the arbitrary and irrelevant pseudo-academic requirements of your respective collegiate employment lanes, and have demonstrated mastery of the 10 minutes of Google-fu necessary to begin a career as a low, mid, or high level corporate servant of any kind. It is time to swear you in to our honored tradition. Please turn to chapter 1, page 1 of your government-accredited university documentation, and repeat after me the following lie:

"Money is not my religion. I am free to pursue my physical life on my own deliberate terms and at my own discretion, and I am free to define my metaphorical life and create my own personal justifications and goals for and in that life. I am not nor will I ever be beholden to any external entity or force beyond that of my own will and of mother nature. My open denial of any and all unwilling obligation to any person, idea or entity will never cause me to suffer a reduction of my quality of life within my society. No other human beings shall ever be permitted to interfere with these intrinsic rights under any circumstances, nor I with theirs, under penalty of complete forfeiture of all rights to live until such interference immediately and permanently ceases."

Now, in order to satisfy the requirements of the institutions to which you are henceforth indebted and to whose continued persistence you are solely devoted, you must repeat this lie to yourself every day of your life. You will refute any and all challenge as to the efficacy or present state of the ideas contained within this lie, and when challengers arise which cannot be refuted you must then eliminate them using any means necessary. You will never prioritize the pursuits of reason, truth, philosophy, objectivity, or broader perspectives - but you may indulge in them as diversionary entertainments and/or as props by which to facilitate the association of legitimacy with the lie. You will follow these rules until, at some point, you wake up in the morning and believe the lie. On that day, your obligation will be fulfilled.

Congratulations on your achievement! The billing process officially commences with your receipt of your first paycheck.

Focus Reticulates Momentum

– boots on the ground.

Ouyay: Minutiae?

The brightest minds are always left holding the psychological bill while the rest of the species dashes from one insanity to another - and no person is possessed of any limitless resource.

Any idiot can see that human society will eventually collapse under the weight of its inflated self unless *severe* changes occur, and soon.

A ponderous person might wonder

to what height humans would muster

if ever utter standards were uttered.

On the failure of the American electoral system - and its entire electorate

I've said many times and in many different ways, and in many different forums, that the electoral process in America does not serve the good of the people - that, even if you assume—errantly—that its premise is ever rational and that a useful result is ever possible, the behavioral science mathematics of those very same results PROVE that the results are *actually* meaningless - LITERALLY. This is not speculation. This is not conjecture, nor opinion. This is not just "evidence;" there is PROOF derived from decades of evidence in support of the conclusion, with absolutely not a single shred of evidence—or even reasonable theory—to the contrary.

Here are the details, in case you give a shit and want to know what the fuck is actually going on in your country, and/or why.

These are the following three conditions upon which the conclusion is based:
1) [Logical Fact:] in any election, there is one candidate who would perform his or her duty to the American public better—whether absolutely or relatively is irrelevant—than other candidates in the race;
2) [Biological Precedent/Fact:] a statistically significant supermajority of living humans will always *attempt* to act in their best interests to the best of their knowledge;
3) [Behavioral Fact:] In any environmentally-controlled human population (a society), intellectual deviation from the median is an empirically recognizable phenomenon.

Follow these with a single statistical fact to establish the necessary context: after factoring in intellectual margins of error, almost every single election in this country actually results in statistical *insignificance.* THIS is the proof. Voters are voting in such a fashion as to render their results statistically equivalent to RANDOMNESS!

Explanation:

As a sample of random events within a finite range of possibility increases in frequency, the samples inevitably approach a balanced distribution; only truly random behavior OR logically insignificant samples can ever produce a statistically insignificant sample after tens of millions of iterations in any circumstance where human intellect is concerned.

Even if you were to ignore that fact and take the cynical position and argue that a majority of human beings are preternaturally stupid, and if you were to lay out two choices between which it is POSSIBLE to discern a "better" choice, a SUPERMAJORITY of even those *stupid* people will always manage to select the better choice! Failing that, almost all of them will still try, and nearly all of those people will try in the same way - meaning that MOST PEOPLE—period!—WILL ALWAYS CHOOSE THE *SAME* WAY ON ANY REASONABLY-TRANSPARENT MATTER OF PERCEIVED IMPORTANCE. Not 53% compared to 47%; not 61% to 39%; we're talking upwards of 80% significance in ANY human society. Have you EVER seen a result like that in any election? If you've lived long enough to have seen one or two, have you seen it often enough to reasonably contend that it could possibly be anything other than anomalous to the obvious trend?

The results are clear: even though they are—generally—doing their actual best, there is no POSSIBLE way for the median human mind to conclude with any degree of confidence that any one candidate is ACTUALLY "better" for its interests. If it were possible, a supermajority of humans would choose the better option *almost* always. Why? Two possibilities, both of which are true simultaneously:

A) Some voters are being SUCCESSFULLY manipulated by the political system into making lose-lose decisions without realizing it;
B) Other voters recognize that none of their options represent their best interests, and their brains, as human brains always do, seek to satisfy this impossible biological directive by doing *anything perceived to be different* because the present circumstances are clearly already unfavorable.

The result in both cases is the formation of irrational patterns of behavior - turning what people believe to be "decisions" into arbitrary choices that are actually no more useful than random guesses. If you vote, then you fit into one of those two categories above.

People want to choose what's best for them, but they can't - because choosing from an uncontrollable pool of options can't ever be best, better, or even just *good* for anything or anyone (except, rarely, by complete accident courtesy of the law of averages). We ALL know this. Even the stupid people among us know this intuitively by proximity to those of median and higher intelligence.

VOTING DOESN'T WORK FOR US. It works against us. In theory, a democracy of carefully controlled size could work. In reality, an ideal democracy is impossible with a human population even as "small" as NYC - much less a country, a continent, or the world. All of that is moot, though, because we don't HAVE a democracy in America! We have a government owned by corporations, media owned by the same corporations that own the government, with ALL electoral information about the government distributed solely by the media, wherein the only entity capable of enforcing corporate accountability to the electorate is... wait for it... the government that those same corporations own and fully control. A trained dog could effectively use that self-sustaining cycle of horrors to control a population of people. With humans in charge, the engine can be made to not only run itself but to gain momentum while doing so - and it's running, and it's gaining, and it's been doing both for decades while we've sat in our booths and voted. MEANINGLESSLY. USELESSLY. STUPIDLY!

The sooner everyone accepts what we already know to be true, the sooner we can collectively stop pretending that the tripe currently sustaining us... DOESN'T - and then come up with a better idea than democracy. Democracy was a great idea thousands of years ago, when it fit the world in which it was conceived. Our world needs a solution that FITS IT.

At the very least, STOP VOTING. The system depends on the illusion of control remaining in the hands of voters, who in turn can overwhelmingly be deceived into believing that they are actually in control of something important. If we stop voting, that illusion cannot self-perpetuate any longer. ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR AWARENESS OF THE PROBLEM BY *NOT* CONTINUING TO BE A PART OF IT.

In short... quit being a bunch of fucking pussies. "American" is supposed to mean something else entirely.

Just Another Road to Hell

An ability to abstractly interact with one's thought-space is essential to living consciously. Most people never bother to develop the talent. It should be a requisite for living beyond a certain age in the present era. Those who cannot fully comprehend reality are most likely to damage its inhabitants - and, presently, they are free to do so with impunity. Even the very best intentions of profoundly ignorant people can only amount to chaotic change.

Tell me why this is acceptable to YOU.

Explain to me, if you don't mind, why you seem content to simply accept the pollution generated by willful ignorance. It spills into every aspect of your life, my life, your children's lives, your children's children's lives, growing exponentially every day and with every additional participant - yet you still inhale deeply, and claim the air tastes as fresh as ever.

Enlighten me as to how, in your mind, this is not an utterly insane way to live.

Pseudo-intellectuals love to say "live in the present" or "live for today" etc., meaning that one shouldn't fixate on circumstances or ideas beyond one's own scope of influence - with the goal being to minimize the psychological dissonance inherent in living within a flawed and largely unimprovable physical and social environment. Such weekend wisdom warriors fail to take this notion to its conclusion: to "live in the present," you must admit what "today" actually IS - in its entirety.

The fact of the matter is that living is *not* simply what you believe it to be; instead, it is only ever exactly what it *actually,* literally, is. If you pretend that life is great when life is, factually, quite bad... guess what? Life is still bad! You just can't be bothered to acknowledge it, or concern yourself with difficult—but possible—solutions – and that makes YOU part of the problem.

The activities and behaviors you pursue and exhibit in your waking hours may be objectively sensible, productive, rational; objectively fruitless, ignorant, irrational; or, more commonly, objectively somewhere between the two extremes. In all cases, your opinions/beliefs about the quality or value of your life are only useful if they coincide with reality. You ARE a measurable entity; while you are alive, you are either good or bad for humankind. You ARE accountable to other humans; while you are alive, you either harm or support every current and future person. You can not and do not control whether you are ultimately a "good" person simply by wishfully thinking that you are.

You can only control your worth as a human being by making deliberate actions to make yourself worth the energy and space you consume.

You cannot change this truth by turning your focus inward to arbitrarily narrow your perspective.

All belief is a delusion, all delusion has the potential to be damaging, and all those who embrace delusion will always be the last to see its *actual* effect on everyone else.

I'm going to share with you the one and only meaning of human life: DELIBERATE, INFORMED, PRODUCTIVE CHOICE. It's the only skill we have that's not either universal or common to every other organism on this planet. Without it, we might as well be insects.

Put the "un" in "FUN" — for the good of humanity.

One of my favorite things to do in life is to encourage people to question the nature and origin of their idea of "fun."

"Fun," as you hopefully know, is a completely hollow colloquialism. I believe meaningless words like that are functionally little more than barriers to comprehension (both of the self and of others). They serve as convenient and seemingly-innocuous containers for hidden meaning, and few bother finding out what that meaning is. 

The vernacular use of "fun" is that of an effort-justification wildcard - effectively, "I don't know why I like it, and I don't want you to ask because I also don't want to think about it." To intellectuals, this is important to point out; functionally, the word "fun" almost always carries with it an unacknowledged rational pejorative (or several). Allowing it to be used in such a manner also allows the underlying irrational thought processes to continue unchallenged. This is ultimately harmful to the human bottom line, and diminishes us all.

On the not-so-subtleties of human sexual conquest

No matter how you dress it up, *any* interactions based on attraction are only significantly differentiable when relative subtlety or bluntness is considered - and neither one of those concepts is any more objectively sincere—or less coercive—than the other. The only other significant variables beyond that are each party's comprehension—or not—of their own susceptibility to one approach or the other (and, of course, what each party either chooses to do or not do to moderate the inherent cognitive dissonance of such a situation).

Cat calls, small talk, indirect and direct flattery both sincere and dishonest, body language, arbitrary social rituals... all are explicit and conscious manipulations, all are objectification, and the success of any of them relies on both parties' pre-acceptance of a universal social contract stipulating that *some* measure of these behavioral compromises are acceptable. Only intellectual standards are absolute; anything less fundamental is always going to be either subjective or arbitrary or both.

Condemning one extreme of an inherently exploitative behavioral range is both moot and hypocritical - considering every one of us subscribes to one part or another of that same range, (or else only has sexual encounters of a purely derivative and incidental nature... very, very rare). In fact, an adverse reaction to an extreme behavior in this context simply reflects one's own attitude toward attraction and sexual rituals. A primary reason some—not many, but some—women react negatively to overly-overt displays of attraction from men is because it crushes their socially-inherited fantasies of control; when a woman accustomed to the prevailing social rituals of our era—in which men first present themselves as objects to women, to either be engaged or dismissed according to the females' own subjective preferences—can no longer completely and arbitrarily control the terms and circumstances of the interaction, the ego-satisfaction element of the interaction is removed - and with it the main incentive for which most people, (male or female), pursue trivial relationships: ego affirmation. Likewise, the tendency for males to over-display for females is a socially-precipitated reaction to males'—most often justified—preconceptions of being sexually trivialized in this manner before the encounter even occurs. If the female responds positively, the initial trivialization—the female of the male—is reversed, and the ego responds approvingly.

Simply put, some women derive more ego satisfaction from knowing that they can consciously manipulate the terms of a potential sexual encounter on their own, than other women derive from seeing a man theatrically display his sexual attraction to them. Intellectually speaking, the difference is trivial - but behaviorally, it means the former group of women find brash sexual assertiveness in men offensive, while the latter require it, and most women fall somewhere in between the two extremes... and so on and so on.

It doesn't really matter which is the chicken or the egg, when each guarantees that the other will almost always fail to live up to more conscientious standards of behavior. ("Even the most careful analysis of the shadows on the wall...")

Mmm, this has a hearty, musty, woody taste of denial - with some subtle aromas of cake detectable in the nose

Ray Rice BS

   Literal fucking craziness.

I can't help but point out the extreme irony and hypocrisy inherent in our society collectively not only allowing, but in fact *celebrating* the deliberate brainless violence of football—and practically worshiping the players as heroes—while simultaneously condemning their ... um, deliberate brainless violence. There's a reason that not everybody can be a professional football player - and it has almost nothing at all to do with athleticism. So, let me get this straight: players should only be allowed to behave bass-ackward-contrary to social "norms" when they're being PAID to do it - so millions of viewers can experience their own violent fantasies vicariously through them; but when they break through (society's) delusive fourth wall, and we suddenly realize they're actual human beings, actually doing real things—like they always have been—suddenly it's a crime instead of a celebrated national pastime? In what totally-impossible fictional reality is that a recipe for a) any kind of expectation of rational or consistent conduct in general, or especially b) a non-violent society? The entire causal chain is contaminated by stupidity and denial at every single point beyond its origin. I can't imagine any other *possible* outcome for a scenario like this one; our social environment practically guarantees it.


Hypocrisy just pisses me off. There's no justification for becoming incensed when inevitable problems secondary to other—deliberate—behavioral choices suddenly come to light. These conditions don't just exist by default; they require explicit maintenance to persist. If people are really so upset—for the right reasons—then they should do something about the actual problem - not just bitch uselessly about one of its insignificant poster-children. In a couple of months, all of this cathartic self-righteous fire will have successfully burned away its effigy (Ray Price) like it always does, and then—just like they always do—everybody will go back to pretending that this was just an isolated incident, and that only the symbol itself was responsible for the idea that created it, and that whatever arbitrary punishment was meted out was either just or effective.

MMM, that's an impossible amount of cake, right there - but shhhh... don't think! –just eat it!

America: the best country in the world?

Our country is the best country in the world.
Our government is the best government in the world.
— at falling over, and at taking over - respectively.

Since Lincoln, and likely even before, our masters knew that you just can't enslave a population by force; once people realize their freedom is being subverted, they will always fight back - and once they've started fighting, they'll fight to the death.

It's human nature.

Instead, our government has become the most skilled in the world at using that nature against us. Government, my hat is off to you! Here's how you've done it:

First, occupy and distract the populace with trivial tasks that provide our necessities for basic physical survival - but only if we spend nearly every waking hour performing these tasks. Next, ensure there are not enough hours in a day for parents to sufficiently educate their children - and create "educational institutions" to occupy said children with lessons about the merits of obedience, compliance, and adherence to the status quo, all while stripping the curriculum of anything that might encourage intelligent creativity or individuality. Then, deny us access to the tools we need to physically protect ourselves - because at that point, none among us possess enough energy to either notice or care. Finally, quietly manipulate our nearby environments in increments small enough to avoid undue attention, but significant enough to ensure we can't ignore them. Piece by piece, build these deliberate events into an ironclad web of imaginary fear - laced with just enough real danger to preempt any would-be probing questions about the authenticity of these "dire threats to our lives."

As the ripples slowly but surely spread across the world, the populace will become afraid. If you ensure that we see at least a few of those fears take tangible form, we'll become even more afraid - and, as our instincts for survival kick in, we will ask ourselves, "What is the best way to defeat these threats? How can we most efficiently apply our—now VERY limited—energy toward protecting ourselves?" Then, lacking the intelligence and pliable skills necessary to invent an ideal solution for these problems you've created for us, and without the tools to defend ourselves against a threat we believe to be growing closer every day... we will happily trade our freedoms for your protection. All of them - every last one. We won't think for a moment to question our actions OR your intentions - because you've guaranteed we know very little of either ourselves or the real world beyond your veil of propaganda. Our children follow in our footsteps, believing more and more with every successive generation that the "solution" we've chosen is the best one - based on what you teach them "on our behalf."

At the point in time when a society begins to allow its questions to go unanswered, and the lack of answers to go unchallenged, freedom is truly dead and gone.

Wake up, America - this is the DEFINITION of slavery. You're eating, breathing, drinking, and working toward your own continued enslavement. And now, our government has started to apply the formula that successfully enslaved US... to the rest of the world - while we stand by, shaking in our fucking boots, praising God that we're still alive "despite the innumerable terrors beyond our borders" and somehow believing that we're still living like people.

WAKE UP! We're pathetic, domesticated animals, and this—your life—is a CAGE.

In today's news: Stupid is the new "Black"... LITERALLY!

Truly brilliant! Whenever *I* go out to any of the ubiquitous socially-conventional sex-shopping-malls, (colloquially but inaccurately known as simply "bars" or "clubs" by the less intellectually-burdened among us), and then proceed to pay somebody else for a few tallllll glasses of poison—and sugar!—so I can intentionally incapacitate myself to the point that I can no longer make rational decisions about even the most fundamental concepts such as my physical safety and emotional well-being, (never mind those imagined principles I was preaching about until the first Long Island Iced Tea), I ALWAYS MAKE DAMNED SURE TO BE "SMART" ABOUT IT ALL.


And now, I can be even smarter... about choosing to be an unabashed utter - fucking - idiot in a public place full of people who—like me—are just there for some innocently desperate mutual-insecurity-masturbation and a little bit of utterly selfish opportunistic social engineering - i.e. "getting summ" - oh, but only from the RIIIIIIGHT PEOPLE; it's important to pick the best of the worst-of-the-worthless, you know!

YAYYYY!

It's AMAZING to know that our tax dollars are being spent on funding for educational institutions of such prodigious ambition that they produce students like these. I can't think of anything better to spend the hours, days, months, years, and eventually decades of my life supporting. Can you?

If you answered yes... well, then somebody's just not drinking enough poison, you party pooper, you!

The fact that somebody's actually invented a(nother) product to enable folks to avoid using—just a modicum! A MODICUM!—of common sense is evidence of ideas that are not only not an awful lot of good, but are actually an awful lot of really fucking terrible: DENIAL & APATHY. Not only do people not care in general - which makes them even more stupid than what used to pass for average... but they now no longer care about *being* stupid... AND they're in denial about it being the worst possible behavior a human being can exhibit.

Stupid is the new black - LITERALLY!


... "bbbbbut, Mr. Blase! What about the VICTIMS!? Don't you care about the VICTIMS!?"

— no. There are no such things as victims. Let me ashk yew a question: does rain "deserve" to fall? In reality, the perception of justice, fairness, or any kind of arbitrary equity is a fallacy - a delusion meant to sustain the belief that "anything is possible," which in turn is essential to the way that we humans live in the present age. Cause-and-effect is the only *actual* law of the universe; humans, for all our seeming complexity, are actually very simple machines once you become AWARE of all the moving parts. Even our own self-reprogramming has pre-programmed boundaries... in turn limited by deeper programming, some of which we can never consciously access (without the technology of the near future, at least - but more on that in another post). Part of that programming is opportunistic social engineering, or taking advantage of others for our own benefit. It's an evolutionary instinct that's responsible for our being alive right now - and because there are nearly unlimited opportunities within our environment to apply this instinct to our continued advantage over anyone who doesn't do the same, it'll never change. It can't ever change. All a person can do to prepare is simply be conscious and honest about this - and then simply choose not to deliberately create self-vulnerabilities. 

That's all there is to crime, of any kind: cause-and-effect. 
Cause-and-effect. Cause-and-effect. 
Learn the cycle, avoid being caught in it. Learn the cycle, avoid being caught in it. 
Ignore the cycle, maybe get caught in it. Ignore the cycle, maybe get caught in it. 
Repeat whichever part is applicable to you for every minute of your life, and you have a lot of opportunities to either get taken advantage of, (in any one of MANY ways), OR a lot of opportunities to be left to your own devices. Math is science for a reason. LEARN IT. FOLLOW IT.

... "bbbbut, Mr. Blase! ... Victims?"

No!  The non-sequitur "Being a victim" is a result of a linear process; its twin "being a criminal" is also a result of the same linear process - just earlier in the chain of events. They are both derived from the same precipitating events or circumstances. If you choose only to follow the chain as far as is easy or convenient, that's your stupidity to... well, evidently, to deny outright; unfortunately, language gives you plenty of tools to continue to efficiently evade reality. There are MANY words we employ in our every day lives which serve only to obscure the existence of ideas that we either aren't willing to pursue or aren't capable of understanding. "Victim" is such a designation, given to only one side of a coin that always has two equivalently-weighted sides. Just because it's the side that a majority of people can empathize with doesn't make it any more valid or significant than the other. On the contrary, until the word "criminal" and "victim" are synonymous—i.e. until the intellectual state of society as a collective rises to the point that we can analyze ALL events objectively and draw from them ALL of the lessons conveyed by ALL of the facts—using one or the other as self-contained, separate—and of all things, contradictory!?!?—ideas simply adds either a falsely-pejorative or -complimentary context to a reality which is NEVER either of those things. This actually perpetuates the cycle, continuing to make ALL OF US "VICTIMS" by default.

Somewhere, there's a single point of origin which PRECEDES and completely moots the concepts of both "criminals" and "victims" alike, and it is that distant point of origin which is, in fact, the only important item upon which we must focus. Put another way, you could say that criminals and victims are equally victimized by circumstances which, generally speaking, are FAR  beyond the awareness of average people; even if you were to confine the analysis to the current fallacious binary system of "criminals vs. victims," everybody is actually a victim - and universal constants must be universally reduced out of any equation in order to solve it. Again... MATH = VITAL FO' SURVIVAL.

Calling people victims, or criminals, obfuscates the fact that they are simply two relatively-insignificant results of a much longer chain of increasingly significant events - which we are collectively unwilling to either acknowledge or examine in sufficient detail as to either understand or prevent.

Returning to the simpler original topic of test-strips-turned-nail-polish... the NET EFFECT that these four fucking morons actually achieved is going to be a lot MORE women raped in the future. As with all non-solutions that enable an underlying problem to fly under the radar and endlessly repeat itself and its long chain of symptoms... this one invention will only push the drug industry to be more creative. There is a DEMAND for these drugs, and that demand—another insignificant result of a longer chain of events obfuscated by denial and language—will only continue to increase with time. With it, the suppliers will become increasingly effective at satisfying the demand. In not too long, the pendulum will swing back in the other direction - and, then, the particular kind of stupidity exhibited by women who trust complete strangers in an obviously-unsafe environment will be even more dangerous than it was before now. (I KNOW! That last sentence is fucking ridiculous!)

It's called a "cycle" for a reason.