With Apologies To Mathematicians

I think it's important that we have a clear distinction between people who are intelligent, and people who are good with numbers. Now, I'm not saying that someone who's good at math can't also be intelligent. In fact, most of them are. However, there is a difference between someone who does well academically and someone who's actually intelligent. In fact, this doesn't have to only apply to math. I know people who get straight As and take fifty APs every year, but once you actually talk to them, they're dumb as bricks. Conversely, I know people who are rock-stupid as far as school goes, but are among the smartest people I know.

See, but I don't think that the difference between the terms "book smart" and "street smart" is really enough. We have people who you wouldn't really call "street smart" either. These are the guys who are into philosphy and psychology and all that sort of higher thinking.* That shows intelligence to me.

Maybe my definition is crap, I'm not really sure. If it is, we need better words.

*Most scientific fields are sort of a
gray area here, because a lot of them require both math skills and intelligence. For less in depth fields, such as geology, it's mostly being "smart", not intelligent. But when you start working in things such as quantum mechanics, it's a bit different. Once you get to a certain point in math and science, intelligence becomes
more important.

Turns Out We're ALL Sociopaths

I wonder how many terrorists* these days genuinely believe what they say, are just in it for political or monetary reasons, or are completely insane. Because it seems to me like most of them are probably just completely out of their minds, and just doing what the voices in their heads tell them to. See, because we spend a lot of time talking about how terrorists are "crazy", but we don't ever really think about what that means. I mean, these people clearly have mental illnesses. Lots of people have mental illnesses, and there's just happens to be the type that tells them to blow other people up. How do we deal with that, really?

This kind of applies to serial killers too. Most, if not all mass murderers are either schizophrenic, extreme sociopaths, or both. And yet there doesn't seem to be much of a distinction between the people we put in jail and the people we put in mental hospitals. I mean sure, it's not like it's going to make that much of a difference, but the fact that we have mental hospitals, but we only really seem to use them for the non-violent crazy people seems like sort of an issue to me. If it wouldn't sound incredibly stupid, I'd say it's almost like we're being prejudiced against murderers. But I'm not going to say that.

And how many people are there that are running around with mental disorders, but it doesn't affect their ability to pretend that they DON'T have some kind of condition. I've heard sociopaths are very good at lying like that. There's some good paranoia for ya. ANYONE could be a serial killer! Even YOU!

*I've been writing about terrorism a lot lately. Clearly this means I am slowly turning into a terrorist.

You Can Be Anything Within Reason

So they always say how anyone can be president some day, right? But it doesn't really work that way, does it? Sure, it's theoretically true, because anybody can RUN for president. But getting nominated? That's a bit tougher. See, to actually be a legitimate candidate, you need money. If you can't afford to advertise and drum up publicity, no one's even going to know that you're running.* But hey, you can start small, like trying to be a mayor or something, then work your way up, right? Well yeah, if you have a background at a law school or something like that. So what if you just can't afford college? Then no presidency for you.

Not that it's REALLY a bad thing. Yes, it does suck that not everyone has an equal, legitimate chance, but on the other hand, can you imagine what it would be like if ANYONE could have a real shot at the presidency? Watching the news would just be insane. Because they'd just have to cover as many people as they possibly could. Actually, it'd be kind of cool if the elections were more like a tournament, and we got to slowly weed out the riff-raff. Of course, it would take a long-ass time, but everything would be way more awesome.

And then we'd get to see the REAL crazy people! You think Palin's wacky? We'd be getting rednecks and animal rights activists and all the people from the crazy end of the spectrum.

I changed my mind, this would be a great idea.

*Although, I bet the media would totally eat up a story about a guy running a campaign out of his garage or something. That also has potential to be the feel-good movie of the year.

Very Weird Genie

If you were offered the choice between having the knowledge of everything in the universe, or remaining blissfully ignorant, what would you pick? On the one hand, if you turned down that kind of opportunity, you would probably wake up every morning and kick yourself for not taking the chance. On the other hand, that amount of knowledge, and knowing not only the good but also the horrors of the entire universe, would probably drive you completely insane in a matter of minutes. Would you be able to handle that amount of responsibility? I don't think anyone could.

And would taking that kind of risk be worth the amount of things you could do to benefit society? You could predict the future! You could prevent disease! You'd pretty much be set for life, because you would know everything. But would that be worth your sanity? I guess that really depends on how selfish you are. If you really wanted to help the rest of your species, you'd probably take the knowledge. Unless, of course, it drove you mad the instant it was given to you, like that universe-viewing machine from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Actually, I suppose that's exactly what I'm describing. Could you handle that? Probably not.

Then again, maybe you'd end up like Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen,* and you wouldn't be able to actually do anything about it, because you would be interfering with events that, to you, are entirely pre-determined. Of course, if you know the future, and it's guaranteed to be accurate, you could basically do nothing, because you know the outcome will be the same. But what if KNOWING that is what caused you to do nothing? That's a paradox, isn't it? That would probably drive you mad. And then I'm pretty sure you have to go to Mars and create life or something.

*Besides being blue, naked, and kind of a prick.

Most People Are Just Pretty Okay

I've always found the question, "Is man inherently good or inherently evil?" to be fundamentally flawed. First of all, good and evil are incredibly banal, black and white terms with no real application to real-world morality.* More importantly, there's no real answer to the question. Humankind is neither, because there is no law** that you can apply to the entire population. I can see someone arguing that INDIVIDUALS can have inherent predispositions towards good or evil, but society? No, that can't be done.

In a sense, what I'm saying is that there is no such thing as "human nature". Everyone has there own nature, and none of them are the same. Now if the question is more of a GENERAL thing, i.e: "Do the majority of humans tend to be good or evil?", then it just becomes a really stupid question. And once again, you run into the fact that "good and evil" isn't an applicable concept.

And now I should probably end this before it becomes an argument over DnD alignments. For the record, I'm Chaotic Neutral.

*Even if it is almost certainly true, it still feels odd to call the Nazis "evil". That's just such a gross oversimplification.
**Yes yes, besides things like gravity. You know what I mean.

To Atlantis!

I wonder if it would be possible for a civilization to develop underwater. I'm not talking about like if we went out right now and tried to colonize the ocean, I'm talking about intelligent life evolving in an underwater enviroment. Is it always necessary for increasingly intelligent species to move towards, or could they continue to evolve in the ocean? The question is if it's a possibilty, and our planet is such that our species just didn't evolve that way, or if it actually just isn't possible. I suppose it's sort of presumptuous to assume that anything is impossible, the universe being infinitely large and all that.

So let's say it COULD happen. Now I'm left to wonder how exactly it would work. I'm assuming they wouldn't need to invent any sort of architecture, since you don't really NEED shelter underwater. Would they have a language? Dolphins seem to be able to communicate verbally underwater, so I suppose that there could somehow be a full, underwater language, although I imagine it would be pretty difficult to understand. Maybe they'd develop some kind of sign language, like those deaf kids that made up their own non-verbal language.*

Actually, considering how many aquatic species we have yet to discover, it'd be pretty trippy if we found out that something like this already exists. And again, I'm left to wonder how we'd handle that. Would they have civil rights? We need to plan for this stuff dammit!

*I don't have a source for this, but I remember reading about it somewhere or something.

And it Did Not

Surprise, surprise, no rapture on Saturday. I gotta say, I was slightly disappointed. I didn't really care how exactly it happened, I just thought it would be interesting if something came along that actually shook things up a bit. That'd at least have been interesting, if nothing else. Well, for whatever reason, it didn't happen. Maybe God was busy or something. Or maybe there is no such thing as the rapture. As always, I don't really care. I am sort of interested in the people who predicted though.

In fact, I can't wait until they finally convince that guy to take an interview. I bet he was PISSED when it didn't happen. Wasted a whole lot of money on this didn't he? I mean, it's hard to imagine what that would be like. To be so sure that something was going to happen, and believe it with every fiber of your being, and then have those beliefs crushed right in front of their eyes. Fortunately for him, denial probably kicked in before he even had a chance to be let down. Yes, there just HAS to be a logical explanation. Fundies know not of Occam's Razor.

That's also why if there is ever any absolutely undeniable, conclusive proof of the non-existance of God, it won't matter, because the really hardcore Christians have never even heard of logic. It's like trying to convince somebody who's got their head stuck in a bucket that the bucket isn't doing them any good.

In Case the Rapture Happens

So, big day tomorrow, huh? Some guy decided that tomorrow was going to be the rapture, and I guess everyone just decided to run with it. Now, I'm not saying that some random moron actually predicted the future, but in the infinitely small chance that tomorrow, all of the Christians will be leaving, I have a few things to say.

First of all, the Democrats are going to pretty much take over America. Christians make up like, what, 90% of the Republican base? And you know, I'm perfectly fine with that. We could probably get gay marriage legalized in no time at all. Not to mention abortions, healthcare, etc. Of course first we'll have to figure out how to deal with replacing everyone's jobs. That'll take awhile, but I think we'll be able to figure it out.

Actually, I don't think we have any sort of plans for over half the country dissapearing. We should probably get that worked out, just in case. Maybe we should be prepared for like, whole bunch of major industries suddenly being absurdly understaffed.

Of course, this is assuming that only the Christians are leaving. If the Pretty Cool God is in charge, then I'm pretty sure we'll all get to go. I'm psyched for tomorrow, how 'bout you?

Comic Books Are Surprisingly Unrealistic Part 2

When I eventually acquire superpowers,* I don't think I'm going to use them to fight crime. In fact, I always thought it was sort of weird how people in comicbooks in movies always DO choose to either fight crime or take over the world.** I see no reason to do either of those things. Okay, so that's not entirely true. I get why there are some weirdos who would want to fight crime, but I don't get supervillains. Most of them want money and power, right?*** Well my foremost thought whenever the acquirement of superpowers is brought up is "I would totally use that to get rich."

But no, not by stealing money. Can you IMAGINE the kind of money Cirque Du Soleil would pay you? Hell, can you imagine how much you'd make just by charging people to see what you do? Enter the friggin' Olympics! Start a friggin' business! There's so many legal opportunities to make absurd amounts of money! Take advantage of that ya goddamn weirdos.

That isn't to say I wouldn't use my powers to show off or do crazy stuff. I'd just be rich in addition to it.

*I ingest three liters of irradiated sewage every day. It's bound to happen eventually.
**Blah blah blah there wouldn't be a story if they didn't blah blah blah shut up I'm making a point.
***This is obviously disregarding guys like Magneto, who's just kind of a dick for the sake of being a dick.

There Are So Many "Pirate" Jokes I Didn't Make

I like when people try to justify piracy.* I'm not taking a moral high ground about it or anything, because Lord knows I've given into the temptation many times.** But I readily admit that it isn't the right thing to do. I'm not one of those weirdos who thinks it's one of the most horrible things you could ever do, but I'm not going around coming up for reasons for why it was okay for me to pirate. Yeah, it was wrong. Okay, then what?

Now, my personal rules for this is that I don't pirate small-time musicians. I always, if I can, legally purchase music from underground bands that I like, because they need the support. When you're pirating say, the Beatles, you have to ask yourself, "Does Paul McCartney really NEED any more money?" Probably not. Does that make it right? Not really, but I do consider it to be less bad, if that makes any sense.

My favorite stupid argument for piracy is, "Well, I didn't have the money, so they weren't going to get it out of me anyway." Yeah, you can just sort of let that sink in.

Done yet? Great. Now imagine how boned our economy would be if EVERYONE thought like that.

*Digital piracy, obviously, although the alternative would also be pretty fun to watch.
**This sentence sounds incredibly religious.

Write It Down Again, I Forgot

Okay, so this one's really, really specific, and I'm probably not going to get a lot of agreement on this, but it's been bugging the hell out of me lately and I feel like venting about it, so here we go.

I've been noticing recently that apparently, either schools do not keep anything on file, or they're just astonishingly lazy. What's my reasoning for this? The fact that they make us fill out the same damn information at least fifty times a year.

"Oh, you wanna go on a field trip?"
"Well yeah, that's kind of why I'm here, with a permission slip..."
"Better right down your address!"
"Shouldn't you already have my address? I'm pretty sure I couldn't have gotten in here without giving you my address..."
"WRITE DOWN YOUR GODDAMN ADDRESS OR I'M SENDING YOUR ASS HOME."
"Okay, I'll write down my freakin' address."

And this continues on with your phone number, your email, your health insurance...It's not like it's a MASSIVE pain in the ass, but it does make me wonder how we even got into this situation. Are they just trying to make sure that I'm not, I dunno, turning in a permission slip for someone else? Because I can only think of maybe...five situations where that would be advantageous, and only two of them don't involve going to juvie.

Nowadays, I just make crap up when it comes to the "health" part, because nobody ever reads them anyway.

-"Allergies: Bees, amoxicillin, watermelon, corn syrup, latex, plastic, soup, cloth, and the abstract concept of thought."
-"Physician: D. Howser."
-"Health Insurance Company: Geico"

Our Planet is Boring Now

I'm kind of surprised that we haven't started trying to colonize Antarctica yet. I mean, we got some scientists working there, and all that nonsense, but it sucks that no one's ever tried it yet. We have the technology to survive down there at this point, with massive difficulty, and it would be kind of a fun experiment to watch. Just to see if they could start their own country down there. As a challenge of sorts. You have to admit, the thought of living in a completely independent state is pretty tempting. You'd think people would try it more often.

That's one of the things that kinda sucks about the modern world. There's nowhere to go anymore. We've pretty much charted all of the inhabitable land on the planet, and most all of it is owned by SOMEONE. No more going out and colonizing new lands, we already colonized everything. The only thing left is to somehow find ways to live on the bottom of the ocean, which probably wouldn't be very practical, but I think that can easily be dealt with by counteracting it with how sick it would be to live underwater.

And then of course, there's space. Now, I firmly believe that everyone needs to just stop arguing, stop having wars, and just focus entirely on colonizing space, together as a species. Once we have the first couple of moon bases set up, we can start having wars again, but I think there are more important things than killing each other. Like being able to kill each other in space.

I Wanted To Be a Lumberjack

Sometimes I wonder how people end up in their careers.* Like, what sort of decisions in your life could possibly lead up to joining the bomb squad? I mean, if you got a whole bunch of little kids in a room** and asked them all what they wanted to do when they grew up, it would probably take a very, very interesting child to say "I WANT TO DEFUSE BOMBS". I dunno, maybe the pay for the bomb squad is really, really good. It damn well better be, considering it's basically like being a fire fighter without all the glory and sexy calendars. Also, it's one of the very few jobs where making even the slightest mistake will kill you, your coworkers, and everyone else in the building.

I mean obviously there are some people who work crappy jobs, like fast food and such, but they can't help it. They're just down on their luck and can't find good work. That's different. I'm talking about the people who have these jobs that are important, yes, but it seems odd that anyone would ever CHOOSE to do them. "You know what I'm going to do with my life? I'm going to be an ELECTRICIAN. That's my dream. I'm reaching for the STARS." Seems like kind of a weird idea. Most of them probably don't get there on purpose, but how do you even get into that situation.

I'm probably going to look back on this one day after getting off my nine o' clock shift as a discount pancake salesman and feel awful.

*I'm not even going to bother talking about teachers who hate kids, we're all already well-versed on the incredibly aggravating subject.
**NO.

Like the Police but in Space

So who exactly enforces international law? Let's say I'm out in the middle of the ocean, I dunno, on a boat or something. And let's say some guy on the boat with me gets all uppity, so I do the honorable thing and stab him in the face. And let's say everyone else are a bunch of pussies, and they get indignant about it and want to turn me in. Who are they supposed to call? The Coast Guard? I don't think so, since I'm in international waters. Anyway, I can just look this up later, but I'm using it as a segue to something else. Like the awful segue I'm doing right now.

Have we decided who has jurisdiction in space yet? I mean, let's say personal space crafts become ubiquitous, and people are just flying up into space all the time. What if I stab somebody THERE and I got caught somehow. Who's allowed to arrest me? Am I still under the control of whichever country I took off from? I mean, I know we'll probably have laws from whoever colonizes the moon first, but what about open space? I think this is the sort of thing we need to plan ahead on.

That's our problem, I think. Are we planning ahead for these kinds of scenarios? Or are we just gonna go with space anarchy? Actually that would be kind of cool in a sci-fi kinda way.

Not that it matters anyway. NASA's broke.

The Afterlife May or May Not Totally Suck

I wonder how many people who say things like "Oh yeah, I'm totally going to hell for this" consider what that might actually mean. Now, when I say "people", I'm also including myself, because I make that joke all the time. Of course, if you're atheist, you can just write it off as a one-liner and not put too much thought into it, but with my "I refuse to confirm or deny anything at all" mindset, it's sort of a troubling thing, when I really get to thinking about it.

For example, let's say there is a hell, and people are condemned there for a pointless existence of eternal torment for their wrongdoings in life. I think we can all agree that that would be pretty messed up, right? Okay, so then let's say that you can be sent there for not following whatever specific, arbitrary guidelines turn out to be the right ones for getting into heaven. I don't really think that's fair, is it? I mean, if you just weren't raised on it, you really didn't have much of a chance, did you? And really, ETERNAL torture? Eternity is pretty damn harsh. What if you just didn't know better? Doesn't really seem fair.

And that's what's sort of scary. I mean, what if you're just wrong, but you never really had any way of knowing the distance. See? That's why you believe in the Pretty Cool God. He doesn't pull crap like that. Perhaps maybe if there's an afterlife, we could be measured on whether or not we were dicks, not what invisible sky person we did or did not believe in. That'd be nice

Taking Me Seriously Part 5

I don't believe in the Freudian interpretation of dreams. That is to say, I don't think that dreams have any sort of inherent symbolic meaning. Now, in psychology, dreams are a bit of a touchy subject, since even neuro-scientists aren't one-hundred percent certain about the full reason behind our dreams. They're pretty sure they have the basics down, but there's still some disagreement within the community. What this means for psychologists is that the entire concept of dreams is still widely open for interpretation, and there are many, many different theories behind how dreams should be read, as a form of psychoanalysis. I make no claims that I am absolutely certain about anything, the following is just a few theories I have.

I don't believe in dreams being used for psychoanalysis. Not in an overly-specific manner anyway. Now, if you're having recurring dreams about being attacked by dogs, then yes, this is probably a sign that you have a fear of dogs. For more broad subjects, dream content can be a useful tool for studying phobias, desires, etc. However, I don't believe that dreams can send very specific messages, especially when they're increasingly cryptic. There are some psychologists who will tell you that if you dream frequently about, say, being eaten alive by your own bed, this means that you have some sort of primal fear of sleep.* I don't think that your brain sends you subliminal messages through dreams, because your brain is you. Your brain can't send you messages because you and your brain are one entity.

I'm more under the impression that dreams are a result of your brain being forced to perform some sort of activity while dormant. Since it is essentially impossible to think nothing, but you aren't giving yourself any sort of conscious commands, you simply begin firing off random thoughts, as something to fill the space in between. This is how you end up with very odd dreams with vaguely familiar elements. Those are your memories manifesting within your own dreams. Or something along those lines.

*This example is obviously ridiculous, but it's more to demonstrate a point than anything else.

A Complete And Utter Waste of an Article

I've never understood why people say that you have to "let your muse take over" and "let the writing do itself". As far as I can tell, that only works if your entire audience is totally tripping balls, and won't be able to tell the difference between something that you put the slightest bit of thought into and a bunch of random words you threw into a blender and called art. You can just make up any joke about some author you don't like there, I'll wait.

In an attempt to test this method, I deprived myself of sleep just long enough to lose roughly 50% of my cognitive abilities, then just started typing stuff. I wrote down everything that came into my head. The following is the result of this test.

I think there's a difference between the idea of purple and a sandwich that oh my god you just took the there is blood on my carpet. Someone is going to have to clean that up or the mayor is not going to take my fruitfly salad out of the crap crap dammit why are there so many bugs in here. There's like forty frikkin dogs in my house and I haven't even left for lunch yet and the dinosaurs are taking the last soup kitchen and god damn it feels good to be a gangster. If they are fifty of the last thirty seven then I hate to think what happens when the fish hit the side of a frying pan when you drop your face like the doctor and the doctor and he says to you he says oh my god I got trapped. No quotations. That's how he rolls. Like a shot to the face on the moon when you hit the I have a cup on my desk why are there so many I can't even see how the lamp got on that fan moon moon moon I'm not just making things up I'm even thinking and also making and correcting for typos and I'm still planning out the next sentence paragraph oh penis why did I say a bad word I got lost in the what okay seeya hello. Pie is an easy one, that's a random word no it isn't get out of my house taco atheist sheez that's not okay. Bone.

Right, so that actually turned out pretty well. It would certainly save a lot of time if I just wrote everything like that, but of course then I would probably start hating myself for it.

Don't Say The F-Word Part 2

I like how HBO decided that since they don't really have much of a reason to be the "Home Box Office" anymore, since our sattelite companies already have a monopoly on the "cheating us out of our money for movies" business, they've decided that they're just going to be "the swearing channel". Have you ever watched a show on HBO? It's basically like watching something on a different channel, except they just drop a whole bunch of gratuitous f-bombs for no reason whatsoever, as if half the dialogue was written by a bunch of cheeky third graders.

And then you get people like Bill Maher, who seems to be trying very hard to have a good political talk show, and then occasionally he remembers that he's on HBO, so he'll throw like twelve swear words into one sentence to make up for the past hour. And the guests almost never swear, because they don't have a contract that dictates that they have to offend at least three different grandmothers per episode to stay on the air.

Of course, this is mostly just the result of every other channel being run by massive pussies. Or rather, the FCC being run by massive pussies. Or rather, the entire planet being populated by massive pussies.

Comic Books Are Surprisingly Unrealistic

I wonder how the world would actually react if a superhero actually showed up in our reality. That's a very, very tough question to answer, because it's something we simply would not have any sort of preparation for.* I guess it sort of depends on what kind of guy got the superpowers. Now, if we just assume that he'd be the morally upstanding type and want to use his powers for good, we can have some fun with the speculation.

My theory is that if he just showed up one day and started trying to stop crime, they'd try to arrest his ass. If they somehow managed to catch him, they'd find a way to lock him up I suppose. Now, if he escaped, he would probably never be able to show his face in public again. Everyone would know who he was. So if he was smart, he'd just tell the local police force about how much ass he can kick. Then the military would catch wind of it, and he'd start winning wars for us.**

Oh, and if anyone decides to be a supervillain, we're totally screwed.

*I've heard the CIA has a series of documents detailing what exactly the US would do in the case of an alien landing, but I'm not entirely sure if that's true. Or if I made it up or not.
**That always confused me. Why do most superheroes only stop crime, instead of using their powers to really help their country out? Maybe they're super anti-war.

The Past Is Just Boring Anyway

It's sort of hard sometimes to face the reality that eventually, most of the culture and such you've experienced throughout your life will only be vaguely remembered, and be extremely homogenized in the minds of your great great grandchildren. When you think of say, the difference between 1910 and 1915, you probably don't really imagine that things had changed that much in those five years, but think about how much different the world is now than it was just five years ago. Hell, things fall in and out of style within months, sometimes even weeks these days, so it's sort of difficult imagining that people will just assume that the entire decade we just went through was mostly all the same. Hell, I know that people are already doing that to the 80s and 90s, so as far as I know, the 00s (which I have no actual way to say aloud) will probably end up the same way.

But then I get to thinking that maybe things didn't change nearly as rapidly back then, but the internet and other technological wonders have made it so that things become fads and then die out very, very quickly. Hell, look at internet memes.* We consider them to be old after what, a week? I can't figure out whether things actually were a lot slower say, twenty years ago, or if I just think of it that way because, again, I think of everything as basically happening around the same time, when it really wasn't like that.

I'm gonna give myself a headache again.

*I do sort of like the idea of future generations considering internet memes to be important cultural benchmarks though.

My Head Hurts

Every once in a while, I get into this train of thought where I begin to realize how odd it is that we have laws in our world. I'm not saying that laws are a bad thing. No, let me make it perfectly clear that I think anarchists are morons. Anarchy is kind of like communism, in that it would work perfectly fine if people weren't dicks. Unfortunately, people are MASSIVE dicks, so it's not exactly suitable for anything at all. However, sometimes I just find it very odd that we, as a species, designate authority figures and let others tell us what to do. And we consider that perfectly normal. There is no natural law of the universe that prevents you from killing other people or robbing a shoe store, but the police are going to arrest and confine you for it. They can lock you away and never let you out. We do this to other people, and we're okay with it. I don't know, maybe this isn't coming across, but that line of thinking somehow makes me all existential every time I think about it, and it scares me sometimes.

And really, how much can they really do to stop you from just getting on a boat, finding an island in the Pacific, and declaring it a new country? Sure, you probably wouldn't last long, but can they really do anything about that? Can the United States government REALLY tell you "No, you have to stay here"? I mean philosophically speaking. It's not like that people who are in government are somehow different from regular people. They just have power. But really, what does that power mean? They have power because we say they have power. And sometimes, they have power because they say they have power, and we believe them.

I have to go lie down...

They Could All Go Away, I Wouldn't Notice

While I still haven't entirely decided how I feel about the whole thing, I'm really glad that Osama getting shot has made people shut up about the royal wedding. Normally, we'd be going on about that crap for at least a week, but now people are talking about something that actually matters, which is incredibly refreshing.* See, because the royal wedding is a completely stupid waste of airtime. At least now we're getting news dedicated to something that has to do with real politics, instead of the pretend politics that the British royal family participates in.

It really fascinates me that people care so much about the stupid wedding. You guys are all aware that they're just people, right? I don't care how much "royal blood" they have, they're still just people. They're not descended from gods, nor do they have some sort of divine right to lead the free world. I realize that I've bitched about this before, but I want to make this perfectly clear. The royal family is the British equivalent of Paris Hilton. They have displayed no reason to be famous and rich, they just are.

Oh yeah, we're totally screwed for shooting that guy. I'm not really concerned with what exactly is going to happen, but it's exciting to know that things are at least going to get interesting again, if only for awhile.

*Yes I am very aware that by talking about it now, I am adding to the problem. Shut up.