Friday, April 29, 2011

Solemnly Swearing

Why do they still make us swear on the Bible in court? I'm not really sure why that should be in any way binding these days. I realize that this country is still mostly Christian, but a majority isn't everyone, and it doesn't really seem right to exclude such a large percentage of the population from being included in your magical oath ritual. Why would an atheist give a damn about lying under oath if they swore on something they don't believe in? It would mean absolutely nothing to them. I mean, lying under oath is still bad and all,* but it seems like we should be using something that people would actually care about.

And of course there's the whole swperation of church and state thing. We're supposed to be a religously neutral country, right? So why are we using a religous text for our court cases? That seems kind of...completely stupid and ridiculous to me.**

Not that the oath actually means anything anyway. People who are going to lie to save their asses regardless of some stupid oath. That's how justice works.

*You heard it here first.
**This is one of those things that's stupid and annoying, but not important enough to actually be worth campaigning against. It's like that guy who tried to get any mentions of God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Cool idea, but seriously dude, I'm sure you have better things to petition for.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Love You Sometimes

I'm not sure why everyone goes on about "unconditional love". You always here people talking about how they want to have a marriage based on "uncoditional love". And I am here to say that this is a lie and you most certainly do not. Now, I'm not saying that you should have a marriage complete devoid of love. That would be very, very bad. You heard it here first. The problem is that "unconditional" implies that you will love somebody no matter what. And well, that's stupid. What if you find out that they're a Neo-Nazi and wants you to come to their book burning? Under those "conditions", would you still love them?

And I imagine unconditional love is one of the biggest causes of consistent abuse. If you loved someone unconditionally, I guess that means you'd still love them after they savage the hell out of you. How romantic.

And no, these arguments do not apply to God or puppies. And puppies don't love you unconditionally. If you abuse them, they tend to bite. And yeah, let's just not get into God, okay?

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Battery Fanboys

I love it when there are companies competing in industries that nobody actually cares about. For example, Duracell and Energizer* spend ridiculous amounts of money on advertising, mostly involving commercials in which they trash the hell out of each other. And yet, do you really care about which batteries you buy? Do you have some sort of corporate allegiance to either one of them? Do you consider yourself a big fan of Duracell? Of course not, you raving lunatic. You'd get decked repeatedly, ever day for saying something like that.** But corporations apparently think that's how people act.

It's the same thing with the insane amounts of commercials for cleaning products. Doesn't that just annoy the hell out of you? It seems like there are more commercials for spray cleaner and mops*** and whatever the hell else they're coming up with these days. It takes a very special type of insanity to be that obsessive about how you clean your house that you have to compare different brands with statistics and performance reviews.

Other products this applies to:
-Paper towels
-Toilet paper
-Water
-Tooth paste
-Shampoo (only applies to stereotypical men, not stereotypical women)
-Shaving cream
-Razors
-Pretty much any personal hygiene product
-Socks (I swear to God I've seen this)

*Firefox's spell-check recognizes both of these as real words. Either we have officially reached the corporation singularity, or they both have company names that are also words. A quick Google search could easily answer this question, but I feel that basic fact-checking destroys the mystery of life.
**And I mean more than you do already!
***Seriously, those mop commercials are just...ugh. It's a mop. We get it. It cleans floors. Shut up now.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

I'm Pretty Sure This Is Completely Incoherent

Knowing what we know about the FDA,* it sort of makes me wonder if any other government-funded organizations are that corrupt. I mean, if we allow them to pull that sort of crap with our food, which is, you know, kind of important for living and stuff, I don't see why they would exercise any sort of moral practices when dealing with anything else.

Although sometimes it's difficult to tell if the organization is corrupt or just composed of complete morons. For example, the FCC is run by people who are apparently stuck somewhere in 1954, but they don't really seem evil, just ignorant.** And contrary to popular belief, television isn't really as important as food and drugs, so it's probably not something that anyone's going to bother with.***

But not NASA. I trust NASA.

*And if you don't know, it goes a little something like this. The FDA has many, many board members who were previous CEOs of major food corporations, and almost all of them hold stock in the company. So naturally, they're much more ready to protect the corporations (and therefore make more money) than the consumers. Because money is all that matters and health is for pussies.
**Hmmm...a discussion of whether the FCC itself is made up of morons, or if it's the product of bad parents who bitch and moan because they don't want the television they use as a babysitter to say bad words. That would make for an interesting article...
***And anyone who isn't an actual artist (i.e: executives) in the entertainment industry is pretty much corrupt by principle, so it's a moot point.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Stop Helping People

I really think the US just needs to stop trying to help other countries. It very, very rarely goes well for us. Obviously, the example everyone always gives is Vietnam, but that's not even the worst of it. See, in Vietnam, we were sticking our faces into a conflict that we didn't have any business with and didn't entirely understand in the first place. And we got our self-righteous asses kicked to the curb, as we rightfully deserved to. So we booked out of there and just pretended that it never happened.

But there's so many more wonderful examples of this. The bay of pigs readily springs to mind, when we tried to arm a small Cuban rebellion and they all got ruthlessly slaughtered in less than a day. Not only did we end up totally screwing up a bunch of people by making them suicidally overconfident, we also made our already disastrous relationship with Cuba even worse. Can we just keep our hands to ourselves for a bit?

And hey, what about Saddam Hussein?We friggin' ARMED that guy. It was almost like a movie. We helped to foster and nurture him, and then we turned on each other. The mentor battling the pupil.* Of course, being the US, we beat the everloving crap out of him and had him executed. And many, many, many, many people got shot in the face. America needs to go back to preschool an learn how to keep its hands to itself.

*In this context, "mentor" means "crazy uncle who sells the kids firecrackers" and "pupil" means "mentally disturbed child".

Friday, April 22, 2011

Taking Me Seriously Part 5

So I've been hearing some talk lately about how we might some day be able to have a cure for autism, and honestly, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that. I mean, autistic people are not exactly easy to deal with, but they're also some of the most influential people in our entire society. There have been many, many great scientists and mathematicians who have been autistic, and I don't really think you can argue that these people would have been as brilliant or successful if they HADN'T. Do we really want to get rid of that altogether? I'm not really sure if that's okay.

Furthermore, I don't think it's fair to suppress someone's intellect and ways of thinking just because their actions and thought processes don't align with what we consider to be "normal". Sure, autistic people think differently than we do, but can we really call it wrong or bad? Something that needs to be eradicated? I know plenty of high-functioning autistic people who lead relatively normal lives, and come off as regular people with some odd personality quirks. Oh, and they're also ASTONISHINGLY smart. Even those who are not particularly good with social interaction are often still incredibly brilliant.

Let me put it this way. There is an autistic kid that's been in the news a lot lately who is apparently attempting to rewrite quantum physics. Do we really want to lose that?

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Lazy Utopia

I think we need to all just collectively agree to just start doing things later. Wouldn't that be great? There's no real reason to get started on crap at 6 AM, right? I'm willing to stay later into the day if you let me sleep late, honestly. And there's been, what, about fifty billion studies proving that teenagers and people in general tend to learn and work better if you do it later in the day?So why the hell not? You guys know that there's no obligation from some sort of god telling us that we have to do things at specific hours, right?*

Take a look at Mexico. THAT is a group of people that's got it figured out.** They noticed everyone seems to get really tired in the afternoon, so what did they do? They just made it naptime! Dude, that's frikkin' brilliant! We need to get in on that! I think it would solve a lot of our problems. We need the sleep.

Basically what I'm saying is that we, as a civilization, take ourselves way too goddamn seriously. We're not really all that important guys. Have some fun for awhile, you're only around for like 80 years. Astronomically, that's nothing. Now chill.

*This is actually more having to do with the fact that the world in general just needs to take a massive chill pill and just take it slow for awhile. We need a collective break.
**Besides all the drug cartels and the murders and the political instability and the kidnapping. Not cool guys.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Absorbitantly Cheezmazing

I like when advertisers use words to describe food that no normal person would ever actually use in a conversation. If somebody asked you how the chocolate was, and you told them that it was "decadent", I'm pretty sure that would be grounds for getting your teeth punched in. Actually, calling it that sort of ties in with the theme that chocolate manufacturers have been pushing in their ads lately, where they try to convince us that THEIR chocolate is super fancy and forbidden. And, surprise surprise, it all tastes the same. But anyway...

There is, of course, also the cereal commercial route, where you get to just make up words and nobody seems to care that much. What exactly does "crunchtastic" mean guys? Is it the same thing as "crunchy"? Because if it is, you could have just said that. We would've gotten what you meant. Because crunchtastic isn't a real word. Did you know that? Perhaps you were confused. It's okay guys, I make words up all the time, but somehow I don't think this one is going to catch on.

Or, you could just start taking regular words and misspelling them. Tell me boys, how does "creme" differ from "cream"? Is it perhaps that "creme" isn't actually real dairy? And what of "cheez"? I don't think you're spelling that word correctly. And I'm reasonably certain that it's not going to sell more disgusting cracker dip. Pretty sure it just sounds like a disease.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

I Am Insane Just Like Them

I'm surprised we don't get more homeless people deliberately committing felonies in the hopes of getting a life sentence in prison. Because when you think about it, all homeless people really want to do is survive. If they didn't they'd just start killing themselves.* Sure, some of them try to get off the streets, but I'm pretty sure a large majority are not that goal-oriented. And to a homeless guy, prison would probably sound pretty sweet. You get fed regularly, (crappy food, but you still get fed), you get shelter (again, crappy shelter, but it's better than sleeping under a bridge), and you get to not get beat up by other homeless people if you're lucky enough to get into solitary confinement.**

It's not like you have to kill anybody or anything,*** just try to rob a store. Several times. And I mean like a store-store, not a mini-mart. Like, go in and try to steal fifteen purses from Macy's. And get caught. On purpose. I don't know, just do something to get yourself landed in the big house. If homeless people went forward with a plan like this, we'd have a worldwide hobo-crime epidemic AND a major increase in prison population, so we could completely screw EVERYONE over. See? This sounds like a GREAT idea.

*This is a pretty damn morbid observation, but I dare you to tell me it isn't true.
**I'm not sure if you get solitary confinement just for being crazy, or if you can also get it for doing something evil enough. Granted, you'd have to be pretty damn crazy to cut up like fifteen people and drink their blood, but hey, that's some dedication right there.
***You know, if you're one of those PUSSY homeless people

Monday, April 18, 2011

ScumBuckets

Right, so I know this is something that pretty much everyone in the universe complains about these days, but it's been bugging the crap out of me lately, and I'm going to write about what I damn well want to write about.

Guys, I'm just going to be straightforward with this. The Starbucks thing is getting out of hand, okay? Look, you guys are great. You have very good, confusingly-named drinks,* and if Fast Food Nation is to be believed, your corporate policies are not nearly as terrifying as McDonald's. But seriously, there are way too goddamn many of your stores. I have seen places where there are two Starbucks at the same intersection. I have taken walks down to the store and passed at least three of them within a three mile radius. This needs to stop. I know you can't just start demolishing the ones you have, but for the love of God, stop building more of the bastards. It's like a plague. A delicious, delicious plague.

How much more money can this possibly be making you? I'm pretty sure people are willing to cross the street to get there, it's not like the damn things are trash cans, and there needs to be one on every corner so that you can always conveniently reach one. And isn't it sort of bad business to have your stores competing with each other for survival? You're creating several different rivalries with yourself. But hey, I don't run a multi-million dollar corporation, so maybe this is a perfectly good plan, logically. Doesn't stop it from being incredibly stupid in practice.

*I'd rip on the whole "tall, grande, venti" thing, but I'm sure everyone else is already well-versed in the absurdities of it.

Friday, April 15, 2011

And They're So Damn Loud

I find it fascinating that printers seem to be the only electronic that we're willing to take crap from. Have you noticed how printers have a startling tendency towards spectacular failure? Seriously, there is very rarely a time where I need to get some stupid, single piece of paper printed and it gets pulled off without a hitch. Some of my personal favorites:
-Telling me that I'm out of ink when I very clearly am not, because you're printing error messages.
-Telling me that the papers are done printing when the printer hasn't even moved yet.
-Telling me that I'm out of ink when I just put in a new cartridge.
-Printing out random gibberish.
-Printing the same thing over and over and over again, wasting stupid amounts of paper.
-Suddenly deciding to start printing as slow as possible, despite the fact that it's a goddamn laser printer, and I've seen it print pages in less than five seconds.
-Breaking, no warranty.
-New one breaks too. Three days.

And we totally let them do that, don't we? Can you imagine if somebody produced a desktop that was this poorly-made? Well, they do, and people sue their asses. And yet printer companies get to do it. Why? What makes them so freaking special? And all of them do that. Even the insanely expensive ones. They crash and burn, all the time.

I'd go ahead and argue that it's because they're made to suck so that you have to buy more,* and they make more money that way, but I'm sure you've already figured it out.

*Also known as the "lightbulb" method. Seriously, I hate you so much.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

I Always Just Picked the Ones About Video Games

So yeah, magazine drives.

This is one of those things that was moderately annoying when I was a kid, but got pretty damn disturbing in retrospect. See, there's just something fundamentally wrong with forcing kids to sell crap so that YOU can get more money, and basically making them feel like complete crap if they don't do it. I'm not saying that fundraising for schools is inherently wrong,* it's just that turning kids into tiny little entrepeneurs is just kind of sick. They have plenty of good years before some of them turn into monoplizing business dickheads, just let them have it. It's not like the kids have any idea why they're actually selling the stuff anyway. Turns out they don't know what "economic downturn" is.**

The Girl Scouts disturb me for similar reasons. Blah blah blah, yes, the cookies are delicious, let's move on. It's mostly for the fact that the Girl Scouts don't really DO anything anymore, and I'm not entirely sure if they ever did. And nobody I know has ever actually completed the whole course. Everyone stops when they're like ten, so they don't even get the "impresses colleges" bonus. So basically they take girls, make ridiculous amounts of money off of them and then never see them again. The Girl Scouts are a sinister bunch.

At least the Boy Scouts teach you how to, I dunno, tie rope and hate liberals and crap. Plus, that good old-fashioned American homophobia. God bless America, right?***

*Because seriously, where are you going to get education funding these days.
**Except for that one really smug, smart kid that got the piss kicked out of him for being such a smarmy prick.
***Christ, I went on a tangent there. So yeah, magazine drive can go die.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Oh Gee Thanks

I like when they give kids ribbons for winning stupid crap.* It's a great way to teach them about the harshness of life. "You know what Timmy? Sometimes, you work really hard at something, try to be the very best, and all you get is a stupid piece of cloth with your name on it. Oh yeah, and the stupid kids who didn't work hard at all get them too. And the only difference is yours has a lower number on it, and might be blue if you're lucky. Welcome to reality."

I mean damn, at least you can prop up a trophy on your shelf, or beat someone to death with it, or something. What the hell can you do with a ribbon? I mean, you could pin it to your shirt or something, but they don't even make them like that anymore, as far as I know. And besides, can you imagine what a smug little bastard your kid is going to look wearing that ribbon around? "Oh really? You won the spelling bee? How nice for you. Tell me Timmy, can you spell 'fist'?" And then your kid gets beat up. That is what will happen. Every time. There will never be any other scenario.

Let's just start giving kids crap that they actualy WANT for prizes. You know, RC helicopters and pizza and stuff. Of course, these prizes are usually only given out for stupid things, like those God-awful magazine drives.** If you actually do something of value, or at least of perceived value (i.e: sports), you get a ribbon. Hooray for you.

*Stupid crap here meaning "pretty much any competition they're forcing kids to do these days".
**Actually, these piss me off enough to be worth an entire post. Stay tuned.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

They Got Too Many Legs

I don't entirely understand arachnaphobes.* Not the fact that they're afraid of spiders though. That makes perfect sense to me. Seriously, have you seen a frickin' spider lately? Those things are pretty damned scary. Especially the giant ones. And the poisonous ones. And the ones that eat birds. And the giant, poisonous ones that eat birds. Pretty terrifying. No, what I don't understand how spiders can absolutely petrify you, but you have no problem with any other kind of bug.** Naturally, this doesn't apply to all arachnophobes, but I have met some like that, and it confuses the hell out of me. The difference is, what, two legs? Some of them are just as scary-looking, if not more, and just as dangerous.***

I'm sure it's some sort of weird psychological thing. Now, I firmly believe that a human being's personality and fears are a product of their upbringing, rather than pre-programmed at birth, with the notable exception of mental disorders. So this sort of changes depending on whether or not you believe that phobias are ingrained due to minimal birth defects or can only grow through traumatic experiences. I'm thinking it might be both, but I'm not good enough at this sort of thing to really call anything for certain.****

I do enjoy trying to get people to explain why they're terrified of spiders though. They can never really give a solid answer besides "they're creepy-looking", which is fine I guess, but so are a lot of other things. It gets to be a bit worrying at times.

*Firefox's spell-check claims that this is not a real word, but it didn't have any alternate suggestions. I'm forced to either assume that Firefox is stupid or that it isn't actually a word. Yet.
**Yes, I realize that spiders aren't actually bugs. Turns out I don't care. I know, shocking.
***You know what's frickin' scary? BEES. Seriously, BEES.
****Science and agnosticism, coming together in perfect harmony once again.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Love Ain't All You Need

Can we please, for the love of all that is holy, stop making romantic comedies? They are no longer original. It is virtually impossible to make a romantic comedy and have it not be utterly boring and predictable. Even the parodies are tired and cliche, which is a pretty much a sign that things are not going very well. And the fact that people keep trying to play the genre completely straight is pretty damn embarrassing. Honestly, I don't even find the "good" ones entertaining, mostly because I have never been able to stomach a single romance in pretty much any movie,* except for a very small list, so an entire movie about nothing BUT romance makes me want to slice my arm off with a table saw, and I'm not even entirely sure what a table saw is.

Here is a run-down of every romantic comedy ever made:
-One of the leads will be awkward and "quirky", yet somehow still charming. If male, he will somehow go against all standards of attractiveness, but still never be actually ugly. If female, she will be "ugly", here meaning "wears glasses and perhaps a sweater".
-The other lead will be rich, popular, "sexy", or some combination of the three. They will have some sort of obligation from their parents to get married before they get "old", here meaning "over thirty".
-They meet each other in some sort of awkward fashion, like perhaps bumping into one another at a book store or some other geeky affair, unless it takes place in a high school, in which case it will happen in a lunch room.
-The rich/successful lead will slowly but surely fall for the geeky/quirky lead's awkward "charm".
-They begin to date. Montages involving beaches, bicycles, and ice cream ensue, as well as wacky hijinks. There will probably be some sort of running gag involving a bizarre animal with an inappropriate name.
-Some sort of fight occurs. A problem comes up in the relationship somehow.
-The audience doesn't care because we know they will get together anyway because we aren't retarded.
-They do.
-Kissing and sex.
-Roll credits with obnoxious pop song.
-I demand my money back, because apparently I'm bad at pattern recognition and didn't see this coming.

No, having Adam Sandler in it will not make it any better. That usually makes it worse.

*And they seem to cram the damn things into fricking EVERYTHING. Can't we just have a nice, well-written story without a shoehorned romantic sub-plot?

Friday, April 8, 2011

Buy More Crap

I occasionally catch myself realizing over and over again just how disturbing the concept of advertising is. Do you ever contemplate that for awhile? It can get pretty vomit-inducing if you think about it too much. Billboards are the ones that get to me the most. You literally cannot escape advertising in this country unless you become a hermit in the MidWest and never leave your house. See, advertising on TV, while monumentally annoying and disgusting, is still at least justifiable, because otherwise the shows you're watching couldn't stay on-air. They need the money. But when you're just walking around, trying to enjoy you're day, getting constantly bombarded by advertising is pretty damn disturbing. I'm pretty sure you don't have to pay to use the sidewalk, although I'm sure they're looking into it.

And of course, the more you read about all the insane amounts of psychological profiling that goes into this crap nowadays, the more you want to start shoving sharp objects into advertisers. Since at this point, people basically completely ignore most commercials and advertising in general,* so they have to become even more disgusting, mongering swine to squeeze more money out of you. And on the internet, where it's sort of hard to legislate things, there's just straight-up lying and scamming, which is just wonderful.

Except movie trailers. Those are okay. You know, because they put actual effort into them that ISN'T based entirely on scamming people.

*Unless it's the Super Bowl, which as I have previously stated, I care about so little that's it's not even measurable by any form of anything ever. Seriously, they could replace every single football game on TV with two straight hours of people falling down stairs and I probably wouldn't even notice until my dad started complaining about it.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Leave Them Kids Alone

It absolutely fascinates me that elementary schools and the like are so big on encouraging children to "be themselves". Not that this is bad advice, because trying to be someone ELSE always inevitably leads to being a complete twat, but because it's so much of a contradiction to everything else they try to pound into you during the primary years of education. Everyone has to do well in every single subject, or else they'll get held back* and have to do all that crap all over again,

See, there's no specialization in elementary school,** or even high school (in America at least). Every kid has to learn the same stuff, and are not allowed to choose the things THEY want to learn. Now obviously, there's some base knowledge that everyone needs, like basic math and reading, but there's a point where you should start focusing on the things that are important to you. Why force a kid who has absolutely no math skills to take a higher math course? He's not getting enough out of it to be worth the stress. Same thing with forcing someone who loves math and science to analyze the symbolism in a book. It isn't worth their time.

Forcing elemtary school kids to wear uniforms makes me vomit too. What does this accomplish? It doesn't benefit the kids, it mostly just makes them miserable. Yeah, let's stifle any individuality they might have had. They don't need to have identities, they're just kids! Yeah, turns out that kids aren't as rock-stupid as most adults think they are. They're ignorant at times, but they aren't stupid. Most of them anyway. And they really, really hate that you think they are.

*Which is just an incredibly good way to completely embarass and emasculate a kid.
**Unless you go to one of those hippie schools where all they do is talk about feelings all day. This would be fine if the real world were anything like that.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

A Short One Because Shut Up

The human body is an incredible bit of engineering. Whether you think it was created through billions of years of advantageos genetic mutations or through the infinite power of Christ, we can all agree that it's a pretty damn impressive piece of work...for the most. There are some...let's say, flaws with it. Now, let's be slightly mature for a bit and not discuss unintentional erections. No, what I want to talk about is nerves.

No, not the nervous system, although that's got its fair share of annoyances.* I'm talking about just being nervous. When your body hears from your brain that you're afraid of doing something, it immediately starts to suck more. Your hands no longer work properly, you can't speak, and some people start vomiting, which is just fantastic. And it's not like you're conciously deciding to turn into a complete wreck. So apparently your brain just hates you or something.

This totally doesn't have anything to do with any experience I had today and I am totally not abusing this space to bitch about my own life. That is not what is going on here. Nope.

*Yes, I realize pain is a necessary evil, but AAAAAHHHH!!!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

When The End Times Come

 So I've recently discovered that one of the most entertaining experiences ever is baiting the 2012 conspirators. I'm not talking about the people who just talk about the world ending that year in jest, or as a very small, but maybe kinda sorta plausible possibility. I'm talking about the full-blown, 100%, holding signs in the street nut-jobs that are THOROUGHLY convinced that the end is nigh, and they know the EXACT day. Of course, this is if you can stop them from peeing on your shoes and asking you for change for five seconds to actually talk to them.* Then the real fun gets started.

See, the idea that an ancient civilization that was wiped out hundreds of years ago somehow managed to predict the future is absurd enough, but that's really just the beginning. First of all, if the Mayans were so damned clairvoyant, how come they didn't know that that was not, in fact, one of their gods coming to stop by for a chat, but Hernan Cortes, who only wanted to chat if you by "chat" you mean "viciously slaughter". Wonder why their calendar didn't tell them that. Why are we just assuming that they were right about ANYTHING? If they were, Quetzacotl probably already would have shown up by now to murder us. It's no more provable than any other religion, and probably less so.

Furthermore, I've been hearing lately from various sources that the Mayan calendar ending wasn't even SUPPOSED to signal the end of the world. It was basically just like the New Year for them. I'm not ENTIRELY sure if this is true, but you know what? It's more likely than anything the nut-jobs are saying, so I really don't have much of a problem with saying it. You have to fight on their ridiculous level, after all.

*Get it? Because they're crazy homeless people! Hahaha, mocking the horrifically disadvantaged and brain-damaged is fun.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Respect Their Beliefs

So, we're supposed to all respect each other's religious beliefs, right? Sure, tolerance is great, no one's going to argue that it isn't.* Even if you don't agree with someone's ideas, you shouldn't insult them, right? Well, I've been having a bit of a problem with that. I mean, where exactly does it end? For example, the Mormons** call themselves Christians, but they also believe that Jesus lived in America, which, quite frankly, doesn't really make any sense. Am I wrong to say that? Is it disrespectful? I'm not sure.

And there's so many ways you can take advantage of this concept. What if I say that I believe in a deity that absolutely REQUIRES that I run sprinting through the streets naked every Sunday, or I'll burn for all eternity. You know what they'd do? They'd put me in an asylum. But what if I took them to court and calmly presented my reasoning? The reasoning might be stupid, BUT IT'S MY RELIGION. So they have to respect it, right? Probably not.

And then we sort of hit the one, enormous snag. If I have to respect EVERYONE'S religion, do I have to respect people who believe in racism in homophobia? You know what? Hell no. Anyone who says that the gays are going to hell is wrong. THEY'RE going to hell.

*Well actually, this isn't true at all. There are people who will argue against it, but these sorts of people are also completely devoid of any humanity or sense, so sometimes it's better to just pretend that these dickheads don't exist.
**Really, their first mistake was calling their order something that sounds so much like "moron".

Friday, April 1, 2011

Nothing You Do Is Clever

I debated with myself for awhile whether or not I should do some sort of April Fool's joke on here. You know, like saying that this is now a site for my poetry about my own personal struggles and hardships, or that I'm just going to post nothing but pictures of kittens from now on. Then I decided that there was a pretty good reason why I shouldn't, and it's because it's just too damn obvious. At this point, pretty much every website on the entire friggin' internet does some sort of joke article on April Fool's, and by now, nobody really falls for them any more. We get a laugh out of it, but we don't ever actually believe them, so there really isn't much of a point. Sure, the stupid people fall for it, but I just pretend stupid people don't exist sometimes, and those are good times.

I think if you're going to make a joke like that, you should go all the way with it. Stick with it for a couple of days. Change the whole color scheme of your site to pink and start writing flowery love poems. The amount of complaints would make it totally worth it. Of course, if you end up getting way more readers that way, then you probably made a misstep somewhere with your life. Also, you'd probably grow to hate yourself, like that guy from the Sex Pistols.

Or, alternatively, say something plausible, but untrue. Talk about some minor, unimportant change in the site that most people probably won't care about. And then just don't do it. I guarantee that'll bug people. If you get asked about it, just insist that you never said that.

Oh hey, by the way, I'm changing the tag line at the top of the page tomorrow.