Quit Your Whining

I'm getting kind of the sick of the "It could be worse" fallacy. Look, I'm not saying that people in first-world countries don't complain about stuff too much,* because they do (I should know, I'm one of them). This is just a terrible argument against it. Basically, any time someone responds to a grievance with "At least you're not a starving child in Africa", I die a little inside.

Essentially, what you're saying is "Shut up, things could be a lot worse". But if we continue with that precedent, we'd end up getting nowhere. If you take that stance with personal issues (i.e: "So what if your girlfriend broke up with you?", etc.), then you just come off as a massive cock. Yes, things could be worse. Does that make th situation suck any less? Not really, no. Things could be a lot better too. I don't think I can handle the amount of apathy that would be created if everyone thought that way.

And when you apply it to politics, it just gets embarassing.** "So what if the city is refusing to pay for street repairs? At least the mayor isn't Hitler!" Guess you can't really argue with that.

*I've taken to calling this WPP ("White People Problems") lately.
**Kind of like my inability to spell this word properly. Ever.

It Can Also Mean "Something That's Almost A Hole"

Similar to what I wrote about last Tuesday, I think it's important that we have a more clear distinction between "depression" and just straight feeling like crap. Now, in academia, there's a very specific difference, but we tend to mix them together a lot in regular conversation, as if they were the same thing. "Depression" is a medical term, based in psychiatry, with a bit of psychology involved as well.* Depression is when you feel like crap for no apparent reason. The world around you doesn't cause depression. It can AMPLIFY depression, but it doesn't cause it. It's caused by chemical imbalances in your brain, and it's how we wind up with people who should be perfectly with their lives, but aren't.**

On the other side, there's feeling like crap, which isn't a medical term, but it should be. That's just where something that sucks happens, and you're pissed and/or sad about it. If you say "I'm depressed", and somebody responds with "Why?", slap the crap out of them, because there isn't a reason for depression.

I find it so interesting that we have reached a point with our society that we need specfic classifications for the different ways we can describe how messed up our lives our. Gives you a great feeling, doesn't it?

*And yes, there is a difference between the two. God, I sound so pretentious right now.
**Yes, some of them are just whiners. Like ADD, depression is stupidly overdiagnosed, mostly by people who don't want to deal with their problems like adults.

Pineapple Was Here

As far as vandalism goes, I think tagging is pretty damn lame. Now, when I say "tagging", let me make it clear that there's a difference between tagging and graffiti...sorta. Tagging is graffiti, but graffiti is not always tagging. Now if certain people could be said to be "street smart", then I'm street retarded, but let's assume for the purposes of this that my definitions are right. When I say tagging, I'm talking about that stupid cursive stuff. Usually done in sharpie. On street signs. By idiots. That's tagging, and it's dumb.

See, because I think that vandalizing city property should be about one of two things. It should either be used to get a message across or to offend people for the lulz.* Tagging isn't really either. You aren't REALLY getting a message across, you're just letting people know that some dumbass with a permanent marker has way too much time on his hands. And no one can read it, and nobody cares. And it's not offensive either. All you're doing is pissing off the poor city-worker sod that has to clean it up. You bastard. That's just sticking it to the working class...which is stupid.

I mean, either get some skill and actually make some damn art, or at least draw a big penis where children can see it. At least that way you might get on the Internet for being such a twat.

*And shoot me if I ever type this out in a post again.

A Quarter For Your Thoughts? Nah...

I think it would be fun to try to make an absurdly large purchase entirely in change. Like, a plasma screen TV or something. Mostly because I wonder if they would actually accept it, or if they'd force you to go out and get it exchanged for, you know, real money.* I guess since it's their store, they can do whatever they want, but I think it'd be pretty hard to turn down like, 800 bucks like that, even if you can pretty much only use it for bus fare. But dude, that's like bus fare for the next ten years of your life.** That's not easy to come by.

I think this would really all bank on how funny the initial reaction would be. I bet in pretty much every major electronics store, the poor sap at the counter would just immediately start smashing the panic button. I mean, they just GOT to get the manager in there, if only so they can just SEE it. "STEVE! Check this out! This guy's got a friggin' WAGON full of quarters? I know, right? Friggin' WAGON!" And then Steve would probably proceed to haul you and your stupid wagon straight out of the store.

Actually, it'd probably be just as fun to just show up at the bank with that and demand that they cash it. The teller would probably want to slap the hell out of you just for making him doing all that counting. Yeah, that'd be worth seeing. My jar's got like 40 bucks in it already.

*Although, the concept of money in general kind of renders the term "real money" inherently meaningless. I mean, money is only money if we say it's money. And now I've typed out the word "money" enough that it sounds like a meaningless string of sounds.
**Typing this made me realize that my brain is so averse to doing math that I didn't even feel like figuring out whether or not this is even close to a reasonable figure, even though I know exactly how to do it.

Flightless Birds

I'm pretty sure the penguins are plotting against us. Now I'm sure some of you are thinking that that's completely ridiculous. After all, they don't have hands. But if you think about it, they would have a pretty massive upperhand if they did decide to try to take over the world. Once you get over the fact that it's ball-blisteringly cold in the Antarctic, it's actually a pretty effective base point. And it's not like it'd be easy for us to spy on them. They're plotting our downfall as we speak.

Perhaps they're causing global warming on purpose, and merely tricked us into thinking that it was our fault. With, I dunno, mind control beams or something. Actually, that'd be a pretty damn good plan. Lowers morale and threatens our livelihood with watery death. And I'm just going to assume that since they've apparently invented mind control beams and some kind of machine that causes global warming, they also have spaceships, so they can just leave once the planet floods.

Then again, if they have that technology, why the overcomplicated melted glacier plan? Why not just have us kill each other? And if you're just going to fly away, why take over the planet at all? This isn't a very good plan, penguins.

And Why Do They Not Even Look Like Real Hearts?

I'm sure there's probably a very interesting historical reason for why hearts became the symbol of love,* but I find it a lot more fun to come up with my own reasons. I like to imagine that there was just some guy that everyone was convinced was right about everything because, I dunno, he predicted the rate of that year's corn production or something. So he started going on about how the heart was the center of love and all that nonsense, and everyone sort of just went along with it. Either he was completely insane, or he wanted to see how much crap he could get people to fall for.

Taking THAT a step further, I like to imagine that every urban legend ever can be traced back to this one guy who loved to screw with people.
"Well, you know, you only use 10% of your brain."
"But that doesn't even make sense Steve. How coul-"
"Bob, have I ever lied to your before?"
"Well, I guess not."
"Exactly. 10% of your brain. Oh yeah, and try not to swallow those seeds."

And then he started a multi-billion dollar soup industry by claiming it cured the common cold.**

*Or possibly a really boring story. Or maybe nobody actually knows. I really don't care that much.
**"Steve Campbell" sounds nice, but I don't think it's true.

I Don't Call it the Butterfly Effect

Sometimes I catch myself getting really, really worked up about chaos theory. I think about how even the slightest difference in any sort of
decision I could possibly make could lead to an extremely long chain of events that results in a completely different outcome. It can get a bit ridiculous sometimes. "How would the universe be different if I hadn't kicked that rock? Sure, it doesn't seem like much now, but what if some guy steps on it later, and he's not wearing shoes, so he breaks his foot and has to go to the hospital, and then he doesn't make it to work, and since he's not there, someone else has to do his job..." This line of thinking usually ends with the president declaring nuclear war on China.

The point where I really start to think I'm crazy is when I start thinking "How would the universe be different if I hadn't thought about how the universe would be different if I hadn't kicked that rock? Did I get preoccupied with thinking about then, and then make different decisions later on because of my slightly altered mood?" Makes perfect sense.

This is why it was so hard for me to watch Back to the Future. I kept thinking "NO! He STILL wouldn't be born because the circumstances leading up to his conception would be completely different! The chance of the exact same sperm fertilizing his mother's eggs would be astronomically low!" It's a great movie, I'm just completely insane.

How much different would your life had been if you hadn't read this? How much different would my life have been if I hadn't added these last two sentences?