Don't Stupid and Drive

I'm surprised that the "don't drink and drive" people and the "don't text while driving" people haven't teamed up more. I mean, they both have the same basic cause set out, right? "Don't be a dick while driving". That's a pretty good goal, I think. See, because if doing stupid things in your car was only bad for you, I wouldn't care, for the same reasons I'm not big on keeping drugs illegal. I don't really care much if you want to screw yourself up. It's not my problem. But the whole driving thing is a dick move, because it's bad for other people too. That's just rude guys.

I think they need to play up that aspect more. Most anti-stupid driving campaigns talk about how you could totally get injured and stuff, which is true, but I think it's much more effective to weaponize peer pressure. "If you drink and drive, you could totally kill someone. And then girls will think you're a bastard and won't have sex with you. You murderer." I think that's pretty darn effective. Make someone feel like a total dick. Of course, that doesn't work with sociopaths, so in that case, I'd suggest "Don't commit vehicular manslaughter, because you're probably not going to get a job after that." That's an effective slogan right there.

Although it's all kind of pointless really, since you're not going to remember anything that you learned while sober once you're drunk off your ass. Really, that's kind of the crux of the whole problem. They want you to have good judgment, while ON A SUBSTANCE THAT ESSENTIALLY CAUSES BAD JUDGMENT. So you have to make good judgment BEFOREHAND, which is hard to do. You gotta plan for every possibly situation, and then pray that your drunk ass doesn't decide to ruin everything anyway.

The obvious moral: Never drink anything ever.

That Dog Keeps Laughing At Me

I don't have much to say about it being the beginning of the new school year tomorrow, besides the fact that I think it's really weird that my district has decided to begin the year on a freaking Wednesday. I mean, I'm not complaining about the extra day off, believe me, I just think it's incredibly bizarre. Go to school three days, then go home again, then come back to school for reals this time. Might as well have just given us the whole week off. Anyway, that's all I have to say about that, so let's talk about something stupid instead.

Hunting has got to be one of the most dickish sports in the world, if you can even call it a sport. Especially duck hunting, with the decoys and all that crap. I mean really, tricking some poor duck into thinking he's going to get some, and then shooting him in the face? That's pretty douchey. Not to mention that hunting for sport sounds pretty damn awful when you describe it objectively. "Yeah, we're going into the woods to pump some oblivious deer full of lead. What? Oh no, not to eat them, don't be gross. We just want to kill them. And then chop their heads off and mount them to our living room walls." That's just kinda nasty, isn't it?

Then again, you don't need me to tell you that hunting is awful. I'm sure Disney movies have already taught you all about that. I'm surprised we don't get more pushes for banning the whole thing though. I mean, of coure the animal rights people are AGAINST it, but that's not one of the big things they go on about a lot. Mostly they hate fur, which involves trapping. Now I'm the first to admit that anyone who pays thousands of dollars to wear a dead animal skin is probably going to hell, but at least they're DOING something with it, no matter how stupidly unnecessary it may be. Game hunters though? They just shoot things for fun. That's messed up man. At least PRETEND to have a reason for it.

Happy Do Nothing Day

I like honest we are about Labor Day. For most other "three day weekend" holidays, we pretend that we're celebrating something, and just "observing" it on Monday, which is code for "we really don't want to go to work on Monday and having a day off in the middle of the week would be really weird" (see: MLK Day, President's Day, etc.). But on Labor Day, we are literally just deciding that we don't feel like working. It's one of the few times a year where it's perfectly okay to say that we're having a day off just to have a day off. You can talk about how it's to "honor the hard-working, everyday Americans", but we all know what's it's really for. It's for finally being able to get drunk on a Monday afternoon and have everyone else be totally cool with it.

Although, it is sort of ruined by the fact that everyone ELSE has the day off too, so there's nothing to do. If you want to celebrate your arbitrary day off with a trip to the bar and a prostitute, too bad. They're not working today either. So you have to plan for labor day in advance. Go to the store the day before and stock up on booze so you're prepared. I don't think it's really possible to stock up on prostitutes though. Maybe if you kidnapped them and chained them up in your basement, but that's kinda sorta illegal. Then again, you're already hiring prostitutes, which is ALSO illegal for some reason, so you might as well go all the way and become a convicted felon. You know, that's probably why we don't have three day weekends more often. Too many crimes would be committed.

Of course, another problem is that the REALLY important jobs DON'T get the day off, so if you actually do something that matters, you probably won't get to stop working today. Seems kinda backwards to not let the people who work the hardest take the day off that is there to HONOR THE PEOPLE WHO WORK THE HARDEST. So yeah, Labor Day is stupid. Oh well, THREE DAY WEEKEND.

Buy a House For the Homeless

I think it's kind of screwy to make community service a requirement for high school kids. No, that doesn't mean I think community service is bad, put your damn hand down. However, I think you should volunteer and help people because you WANT to volunteer and help people, not because some school administrator said you had to, or else you don't get to graduate. And really, how freaking ludicrous is that? "What, you didn't complete the arbitrary amount of hours required to get approved by the incredibly fickle lady in charge of the volunteer program? Well piss off, no diploma for you!" That's got to be sending at least twenty five different bad messages. It basically teaches you to hate volunteering, which I think is sort of the opposite of what they were going for.

And yeah, it gets people to do work, which I guess is good for the community but I don't imagine people who have been forced into doing free labor do a very good job. I mean, when you're just going somewhere to collect your damn hours and then blow the whole thing off, there's probably a pretty high percentage of shoddy work going on. No, that doesn't apply to every situation, but it's probably a valid enough concept to be worth complaining about. You end up with a lot of poorly painted fences and drywall replaced with superglue that way.

And I'm not sure if this is a problem anywhere else, but at my school, it's basically impossible to get the hours legitimately, because they only considered about four things to be viable. Animal rescue didn't count. City clean-up didn't count. Fundraising didn't count. But random, stupid crap done for the school did. Really, I think they really taught a lot more kids the joys of BSing, rather than the joys of volunteer work.

Life Isn't Fair

So when did the phrase "Life isn't fair" become a catch-all argument for "You are never allowed to complain about anything ever"? Yes, life isn't fair. I think we're all perfectly aware of that. Donald Trump has more money than you. It's pretty readily apparent at this point. But really, when you just get completely screwed in a way that benefits someone else, and your complaints are countered with "Well, you know life isn't fair", don't you just want to punch that jackass? Probably not, I imagine you're a lot more well-adjusted than I am. Maybe you just want to shove them a little bit.

And it's interesting to me how we tell children this with such enthusiasm. "Teacher, Bobby* set my pants on fire and nothing happened to him, but then when I put cyanide in his apple juice, I got in trouble!" "Well, Jimmy, you know life isn't fair." Screw that man. That is a terrible way to placate children. It's like trying to comfort a kid who thinks his grandma went to hell after she died by saying "No you ignorant child, there's no such thing as the afterlife!" Just because something's true doesn't mean you have to say it.

You know, I bet if I start pointing out the unfairness of life often enough, I could eventually alienate everyone I know.
"My husband died in a boating accident this morning."
"Well, life isn't fair."

"I got AIDS from that slutty chick down the street."
"Nobody ever said life was fair."

"Your best friend just died in a fire."
"OH MY GOD STEVE!"
"Hey buddy, life isn't fair. Calm down,"

*You know, I've never actually met a kid named Bobby, but that name always seems to come up when discussing the fact that children are stupid.

Satan Ate All the Thin Mints

I wonder if the devil is actually not that bad of a guy, and God has just been taking part in a massive smear campaign for the past few millenniums. Maybe Satan is just one of those guys that's only kind of a jerk, but he did something that really pissed off God, so now God hates him. Or hell,* maybe Satan's actually a pretty cool guy, but he stole God's girlfriend or something. You know how those things always go. So then God kicked the crap out of him and made him go live underground. Which, you know, I guess is okay, since he's God, but that seems like overkill to me. Satan must have done something really, really uncool for God to say "Alright, screw this, you get eternal torment. How do you like THAT?"**

Or maybe God's just one of those guys that majorly overreacts to stuff. Like maybe Satan just made a couple ribs on God's mom, which really pissed God off because he never even KNEW his mother, and Satan was all "Come on man, we're just joking around", but God wouldn't listen because he was being all melodramatic. And then he remembered that, oh yeah, he's God, and he has superpowers. It's probably easy to forget that sort of thing in the middle of an argument. You know, too many distractions. You can't keep up with everything ALL the time. So then God decided that Satan needed to shut the hell up. So he did so. Violently.

Or...

Satan's an evil bastard and God is an all-loving deity. But where's the fun in that?

*These puns are going to be sort of inevitable for this one.
**The Bible apparently says that Satan doesn't rule hell, he just lives in it, and it sucks for him too. Seriously, look it up.

Burn Them All Alive

This is going to be a less disturbing than the title would imply. Maybe.

I bet people wouldn't be so excited about being able to eat lobster and crab if they didn't look so terrifying. Now, I'm not going to go on some vegetarian rant about how humans are the devil because we eat meat, because I'm not a vegetarian. The thing is, we're usually averse to eating animals that look weird. I mean, cows and pigs are pretty standard looking. There's nothing particularly jarring about cows and pigs. But if some guy was all "Here, eat this Madagascan lemur", you'd be all "Dude, no, that's nasty". Or maybe you wouldn't say it like that. I don't know how you talk. Anyway, I think lobsters and crabs sort of crossed that line twice. Lobsters and crabs are so freaky-looking that we're perfectly okay with dropping them into vats of boiling water for the sake of nutrition. If crustaceans looked like tiny cats, but tasted exactly the same, no one would eat them, because that would just be weird. Well, maybe the Chinese would.

I also like how crab is one of the few foods that you have to put a considerable amount of effort into eating. You can't just put a whole bunch of crab legs in a bowl and gnaw on them while you sit on the couch and watch Star Wars. Well, I guess you could, but you'd get crap all over your face and your wife would probably leave you. Also, you'd break all your teeth, but those aren't important anyway. Point is, it almost seems like it was designed to be an effort vs. reward thing. Crab is a much, much larger pain in the ass to eat than chicken is, but crab is far more delicious. Creationists should start using that. "God made crabs delicious because he hates people from Maryland."

I do like how most places that sell lobster let you pick out which one you want them to burn and maim horribly. You know, as if it's going to make any difference. "Oh yeah, I'm definitely going to have to take that one. That one looks good." It's like trying to differentiate between...individual lobsters. Seriously people, what?