"– 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.

Fact? – Or fact trumped by irrational belief? YOU decide!

Impossible "Biblical fact" of the day:

The real-world city referred to in the Bible as "Jericho" is actually between 11,000 and 15,000 years old (at least)... yet, also according to the Bible, the Earth—actually, the entire universe—itself is less than 7,000 years old.

Could The Holy Spirit of God have missed a typo somewhere in Genesis 5? Seems like an unlikely oversight for an Infallible Supreme Being of the Entire Universe, Past, Present and Future - but, then again, I will admit a sliiiiight bias toward "reality."

— Only *you* are qualified to be the judge of this incontrovertible scientific fact.

Have they isolated the genes for "being an idiot" or "denial" yet?

As a student of science and history, my laugh lines look forward to the inevitable day in the next, oh, 6-7000 years or so, when some poor nincompoop discovers an ancient copy of the great Lovecraftian mythos, takes the time to decipher it, and recognizes a few vague references to events that might actually have occurred in human history - at which point the population of this only-theoretically-theoretical future will commence its worship of the One True God—Cthulu—for several thousand years... until some poor nincompoop discovers an ancient copy of...

War.. FOR peace! C'mon! DUH!

http://q13fox.com/2014/08/07/u-s-begins-humanitarian-airdrops-over-northern-iraq/

Exactly! This guy GETS it: "war FOR peace."

Sometimes you gotta break a few hundred thousand bodies with bullets to make an omelette, right?

And sometimes you just gotta burn a few family trees to the ground to light that propane stove - otherwise, when you bring home those hard-won economic yolks from your righteous foreign ventures, you'll have no way to make said omelette!

Breakfast being the most important meal of the day... I just don't see any way around it; a bunch of Iraqis gotta die.

Hell, if we don't keep bombing the shit out of random countries all over the world, someday we might not have the right to bomb the shit out of random countries all over the world at all.

... And who's gonna make our omelettes then? US!? F--- that! Bombs away! 

Football is gay!

It's hilarious, sometimes, to see something brilliant thrust out into the public... where it goes completely over the heads of almost everybody who experiences it. Case in point:

... everybody realizes that this particular selection of social satire is a double-dicked dildo, so to speak? You weren't distracted by the glitter, right? –sooo, you all caught the "football is gay" metaphor?

This wasn't simply a lesson on moronic hyper-sexuality both in and out of entertainment media; it WAS that, but that's just one slice of the bread. The other slice is FOOTBALL: one of the most epitomical examples of the shameless sensationalization of inane behavior in American entertainment media.

In the middle of this brain-sandwich can be found the meat of the sketch - those ingredients that complement both ideas and make it a meal: football players (and some fans) celebrate their hormono-maniacal masturbation in exactly the same way—psychologically speaking—as flamboyant gays flaunt their mindlessly stereotypical deficit for attention. Both demographics exhibit behaviors so ridiculous that they are ultimately defined most honestly by their pathologically-myopic participation in brainless social ritual than by any small amount of individual identity that might exist in its shadow.

Critical analysis: eat up!
–AND FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING INTELLECT, mind your crumbs!