Humans are Selfish, Conservatives more so, and people are Stupid

Let me see if I got this:

• If something good happens to a Conservative, it's because he worked hard;
• If something good happens to a Liberal, it's because he worked hard;
• If something bad happens to a Liberal, it's his own fault for fucking up;
• If something bad happens to a Conservative, it's because some Liberal fucked him over....

...waitaminute...

Actually, I think Jarvis Slacks says it all a lot better, and I think his piece simply emphasizes my long-formed views that humans are naturally selfish, and conservatives simply more so (with narrow-focused selfishness simply becoming a more powerful force the more right-wing you go).

Funny thing, if brown-skinned people are the "thugs," then why is it only the pink-skinned people that ever seem to have an apeshit hard-on for guns and amass personal arsenals that would supply a guerrilla army, before losing their shit and murdering people (by the way, that link is a really fucking great article about the downside to white male privilege, entrenched misogyny, and how the asshats at the NRA soak you for money by pushing the agenda of white male privilege as the Natural Order of things).

And, why is it only pink-skinned people who "need" assault rifles to buy cookies, but we're not surprised when they lose their shit and murder their own family members.

Okay, so now that I've gotten all the feisty and dramatic language out of the way, let's address some conversational disclaimers.

"conservative" - someone who prefers the status quo to change, likes tradition, ritual and consistency. Tends to think small government is good, but also recognizes the value in a strong government to maintain stability, security, and the economy.

"Conservative" - a group of neo-feudalist political hacks who have lied, cheated, and generally hood-winked and swindled conservatives into self-destructive behaviors, often by selling snake oil and inventing "LibDem" bogeymen to be Very Afraid of.

"Tea Party" a bunch of naive fools whose individual worldview generally consists of "I'm right, fuck you!" They also seem to think the US Constitution was somehow holy writ on origin, and that the founding fathers were Christian, suggesting a critical ignorance about both. Lots of misdirected anger. Even the KKK And Aryan Nation think they're easy recruits (no, seriously, Google that one yourself).



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Theological Thursday: The Fallacy of America as Christian

I'm fed up with idiots chanting "America is Christian." Let's just call them all out in one great smashup of memes.

My rant follows the memes, so skip ahead if you've already seen these before.

Funny thing, how so many of the first white settlers were fleeing religious persecution - from other Christians! - have essentially re-invented the persecution.

Perhaps it is in the nature of Christianity to seek martyrdom. I mean, Jesus was martyred on the cross, and the history of Christianity is filled with epic tales of heroes who died for their beliefs. There are even books celebrating people - stupidly - martyring themselves for Jesus.

The problem being that it's easy to die, but once your dead you no longer matter. Oh, some people say "But the memory lives on!" Well, no, because those who remain re-invent the memory to suit the needs of the moment. Look at President Reagan - the memory sold by the spin-media is nothing like the man who really lived, and even those who lived thru the era don't recall correctly anymore. That's just being human.

So, do modern Christians seek martyrdom as a way of feeling like their faith is being tested and therefore strong? Therefore contemporary Christians wind themselves up over bullshit?

I've got a phrase I like to use: "The other holidays used to think Christmas was a good neighbor until Christmas started picking fights with everyone."

It becomes a self-fulfilling agenda: pick fights because you think you're persecuted, annoy everyone, be persecuted, be validated. Of course, that validation comes only by first having been a jerk and creating a problem where peace stood before, so you decide: is it really martyrdom if you started the fight?

And last, but not least... (rant continued below the meme)...

Ah, Sainted President Ronald Reagan - let's keep in mind that by the standards of today's right-wing rant-chant media, this guy was a bleeding heart Lib Dem of the worst kind. He's only held up as some kind of right-wing icon because the "piddle down" economic models that feed the rich on the backs of impoverished slave labor started under his regime, and because prophets, idols and gods are part of the religion of the right-wing. Reagan smashed up unions, carved up taxes (i.e. massive tax breaks for the rich), and blew all his hot air into inflating the deficit beyond sane proportions (like all Republicans do - they borrow money as the government, and give it to the rich, and then tell the poor to eat dirt, because there's no money for government. Give me a "tax and spend" Liberal over a "spend and spend without income" fake Conservative any day).

Mansplaining why women aren't the property of men

And the drive to force women to be human incubators and property of men continues, unabated, and unashamed, and unbelievable.

Let me mansplain something, because "men's rights to block an abortion" are bullshit for one very simple reason:

A man's "right" to force me to carry a fetus I don't want requires that he have ownership and property rights to control my body. Yep, that's what it breaks down to: in order to force me to perform an action against my will, I must be his property, a second-class citizen, less than human.

That's what it all boils down to. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive and stupid.

Pregnancy is physically and mentally demanding. It is potentially life-threatening. It leaves permanent physical changes to a woman's tendons, joints, pelvis and entire hormonal balance for the rest of her life.

It's not just a one-off nine-month ordeal, in which most women are forced by the physical demands to completely alter their patterns, and many are forced to stop working due to inability to sleep, physical pain, or simple exhaustion.

It's that simple. Sorry if you want to whine about a woman aborting "your child," but it's not your choice. You don't want to see this happen? Then keep your dick in your pants and don't go knocking up women, because you don't get to own us.

Thank God, under the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, I am a person, and not your breeding stock, so you don't get to force me to have sex with you, and you don't get to force me to incubate a child as if I were a breeding dog or prize mare.

Need that "mansplained" again, liittle boy? Okay, how about "You want to treat my body as property? Trespassers will be violated, and beware the dog, because she's a Bitch, and won't bother to bark before she takes your nuts off."

Little boys, your rights to anything growing in my body end at the words "my body," and end of discussion.

Kickstarter - remember people still want to throw money at you later

Memo to anyone doing a Kickstarter ever:

 

Include info about "Oh, crap, sorry you missed the chance to throw money at us for the Kickstarter, but here's how you can still give us your money and get cool stuff [at our store, or by email, or any way at all]!"

It's so damn frustrating to run across some cool game or whatever and not be able to obtain it, because it funded and the idiots didn't consider that the stupid campaign page is still up, so new people will STILL WANT TO THROW MONEY AT THEM!

And in exchange for this brilliant (if obvious advice) YOU owe me one free copy of whatever you're selling! (Or not, just as long as you give me a chance to throw money at you later, we're cool)

:)


 

Musical Monday: M.I.L.O. - "Farvel til 09"

 Some friends of mine met Milo Martin, aka M.I.L.O., a few years ago at the GI Film Festival in Washington, DC.  They watched his film at the Canadian Embassy, then went to dinner with a Canadian Admiral.  Yeah, filmmakers live weird lives.

Anyway, M.I.L.O. is an internationally famous rap artist, from Denmark, who joined the military to fight the Taliban.

This music video was shot using footage from his time in Afghanistan, and is kind of his "going away" to his family, before he left.

Just watch it and remind yourself every damn day that:

1. Life is short;
2. Find something worth LIVING for

Woman: Thou Art Human Incubator - Property of the State

I've been warning about this exact slippery slope for years.

"Young-Woman-Serving-30-Years-For-A-Miscarriage-Receives-No-Pardon"

THIS is the eventual slide we are heading toward in America. The next step beyond this bullshit of spending life in prison for an act of God! is that women become property of the state when pregnant, to "ensure" they can't fuck up the pregnancy. Oh, at their own expense, of course, since we can't possibly have "socialized medicine" to pay for the forced incarceration of the human incubator.

This is insane. This is stupid.  I remember there was a story about another woman there who was being killed by the non-viable fetus inside her, but no one would remove it, because then the doctors would go to jail. And they would not let her leave the country, because she would get the non-viable fetus removed. The woman's only option given to her by the fascist, anti-women authorities was to hope she didn't die until enough time had passed that the doctors could legally induce labor to get the fetus out before the pregnancy killed her.

These pricks are so self-righteous in their "defense of the unborn" that they callously murder and throw away adult life, and tell themselves they are good people.

Related posts

• Slipperyslope: "Raped American Soldier - Birth Our Enemy's Baby"

• "Boys will be boys" means you agree to be butt-raped

Theological Thursday: Romans 1:16-32 - wow, Paul-who-had-been-Saul had been in a mood that day

Someone tried to quote Romans 1: 16-32 at me. She was an angry self-righteous piece of work, and threw in a bit of swearing and antisemitism, as I recall.

So I went and read it again (yes, again, I've actually read the Bible start-to-finish twice in my lifetime, which is twice more than most Bible-thumping tits have done).

Okay, anyone quoting this is a narrow-minded asshat, looking for an excuse to marginalize others, and be a jackass to anyone she doesn't like.

As I said in an earlier blog post - Your god is a lousy "What have you done for ME, lately?" kind of jerk, isn't He?

Or, as I said in that same earlier post, maybe when it's all said and done, it's you - little narrow-minded, short-lived, self-righteous, mortal human with "Romans 1:16-32" stickers on your car - who has her head up her ass, and God just looks down and weeps for ALL of His Stupid Children.




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And, least anyone wants to start on me with the whole "Paul-who-had-been-Saul"...

Fuck You If You're Poor, But You Can Fuck Me If You're Rich

I've come into a little bit of extra money. Any one got investment tips for this year?

Those Republican assholes are already trying to strip away the regulatory armor protecting taxpayers from yet-another Republican-caused recession (remember how the 2008 crash was caused by Pres Bush and his "Yes, Massa" drones on Congress? Hint: it was (1).)

Yeah, well, the same morons think it would be great to cause yet another counter-Robin Hood shift of your money to the assholes on Wall Street, same as that trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout of those rich assholes shoved down our throats by.... Pres Bush, actually (remember, the bailout was in October, 2008, and Pres Obama wasn't even elected until a month later, and wasn't actually President until January, 2009).

Anyway, those rich-people-first assholes are about to blow up the economy again, so I'm fishing for some investment advice that won't lose me all my money, and might even ride the wave and skim some cream from those assholes.

Thoughts?

It's class warfare, bitches. Time to get educated and fight back.

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(1) Actually, turns out the recession was global, and it was caused by the same assholes around the world, pulling the same deregulation shit with the housing markets everywhere. Scary shit, the reach these uberich assholes have.

Article 1 about the UK
Article 2 about the UK



Ultron

HANK PYM created Ultron! NOT Tony Stark! Yellowjacket forever! WOOOO!

There Are Only Seven Countries in the World

I live in the United States of "What do you mean there are other countries in the world"?

You know it, and I know it. There are only seven countries in the world.

1. United States - US, baby!
2. Japan - funny looking cartoon characters;
3. India - tech support for everything;
4. Britain - Dr Who - get on that next episode you lazy bastards;
5. China - any place that makes cheap consumer goods is "China";
6. Mexico - where all the dark-skinned people come from (yeah, even the ones we imported-in-chains from Africa in the 19th century);
7. "Arab Land" - where all "Islamamuslims" come from. "Kenya" is just a city in "Arab Land";

Anything else is just a figment of our deranged imagination, because I live in the land of Fox Nation, Under God, indivisible except by superior firepower, and fuck those fascit pigs who think they can take my gun from my cold dead fingers, so help me Jesus!

I  live in the land where 46%  of people  think Genesis  is Real! Because it is! And the Bible can validate anything I want to believe, including that Jesus hates dirty homeless people, and welfare whores hate their babies, and the meek shall inherit the Earth therefore the rich deserve tax breaks and  the poor get drug tests!

Fuck you if you're poor, because obviously you don't want to work hard enough, but if I invest $100,000 when I'm young and never, ever, spend any of the cap gains, I bloody well should be able to leave my children a cool $1million without anyone  having to pay any fucking taxes - take that you undeserving lazy poor people!

My faith is so strong that I can ignore your science! I can ignore your reason! I can ignore your common sense!  All while using Twitter! And the Internet! And flying on airplanes! And  using internal combustion engines that run on refined "fossil fuels" and reading my Bible printed on dead trees, because God made all this happen, fuck your so-called science that can't even explain where the soul came from!

Musical Monday: Kobra and the Lotus - "Welcome to My Funeral"

How the crap does this vid have only 60,000 views? I swear I've watched it 60,000 times!

Anyway, hot chick, hot music, cool vid. Can't go wrong. Hell, she even looks good in dreads and white people almost universally look terrible in dreads. 

I first learned about Kobra Paige when a filmmaker friend of mine edited a short doc about her. Mega-props to Ms Paige - kid knew early on she wanted to be a rock star, and she never let go of that goal.

This last summer she toured fucking Europe with Gene Simmons and KISS!

When my filmmaker friend told me that, my first response was "But, they're so old!" Then she put it in perspective for my by saying "That's like me doing an internship with Steven Spielberg, or you spending a summer with Terry Pratchett."

Ohhhhhh, shiiiiit. Kobra and the Lotus  toured Europe with KISS!

Watch this band, and especially Kobra Paige. Hell, Gwen Stefani blew big on a solo career, and Belinda Carlisle and name-your-front-woman-gone-big. I'm telling you, Kobra Paige is going to join those names some day.

Science is cool

Science is cool. It's good to know, that despite the best efforts of the neo-feudalists, scientists press onward with discovering the true wonders that God has hidden deep in the folds of Creation.

Theological Thursday: The Nature of Extremism

It's not about religion - it's about NOT being a dick

(My rant below the meme)

This especially stands out since I learned about the "Freedom From Atheism Foundation," which is presumably some whackjob Christian-counter-point to the "Freedom From Religion Foundation."

Ironically, from what time I did spend choking through the FFAF Facebook page, I suspect members of these two organizations would agree that all religions are bad except themselves. *

Such irony they would have so much in common. Actually, if I'm right, it's merely another marker in how hypocritical these fake-Christians at the FFAF really are.

See, humans naturally have a cruel streak. Sadism - as an extreme manifestation of cruelty - is an aberration, but occasional cruelty is, alas, depressingly normal.

Humans also want to feel good about themselves. That is also normal. We are hard-wired to do what feels good right now, in this moment right here. Don't confuse that with hedonism. Some people take more pleasure from long-range planning and anticipation than they do instant gratification. For example, healthy eaters can say "I am happier right now knowing I will stay fit than I would be right now eating that whole pie."

So, when the two run together, you can get this destructive and vile behavior of "It will make me feel good about myself to go and kill someone, In The Name Of God." Fucked-up thinking by any reasonable standard, but that's the whole point.

Now, atheists - whatever their failures, or not - don't carry around some 3rd-party mechanism to exhonerate their consciences for fucked-up behavior.

And yes, I just called religious holy texts a mechanism to justify fucked-up behavior, because that is exactly how people use them. "I beat that gay man to death, because Jesus hates fags!"  Um, no, you beat that man to death, because you're a sick sack of shit, who would have found some other excuse to be violent, and blaming Jesus is not only convenient, but it gains you instant sympathy from people who so want to be martyrs that they'll ignore the part about themselves siding with a murderous sick sack of shit.

I mean, look at the psychos at Westboro Baptist Church. Any "Christian" who sides with these people "because they're Christian" is essentially saying "Why, yes, I will hurl myself into that fetid cesspool of shit, and wallow with the pigs in the muck, and how dare you tell me I smell like shit for doing so!"  Um, duh? Hello, Good Christians would denounce those psychos as "not really Christian" and move on.

* (Yes, I just equated atheism with religion, but don't get hung up on that right now; stay focused.)

I came, I "SAW," I threw up - no really, I did

I just watched the "Honest Trailers" send-up of "SAW," (1) because I enjoy "Honest Trailers," and I've always been curious how "SAW" got six feature films.

Now, as I've said before, people fascinate me. Really - humans do the most bizarre shit, but after watching this send-up sampler video, I have to say:

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!?!

I couldn't even finish the blurred out send-up mockery. Jesus, that is all so sick. Props to the creators for building that horrific sense of human evil and horror for the only thing more horrid than killing someone is forcing an innocent person to do it for you. But to have dreamed it up in the first place?? Get some therapy people! **shudder**

But, OMG, I can't imagine any person with even a normal human level of empathy (2) being able to sit through even one of those horrid death/butcher/torture porn scenes, let alone six features worth of them.

And, WTF? the people who made those sick "snuff films"? (Someone please promise me those weren't real snuff films!) I mean, people wrote that shit, decided to spend money making that shit, decided to act through that shit, edit that shit, compose music for that shit, and build sets and props and "you just ripped out my ribs" machinery shit.

God, please let the Men-in-Black bring me a flashy-thingie!

---@@@---

(1) NO, I am not going to give you the link to it. If you want to damage yourself, you have to.be committed to it, and know it's your own damn fault, not mine.

(2) To be fair, I have way more empathy than "normal," so maybe I'm not in a good place to judge a "normal level" of empathy.

Selfish Gun Asshats Make "Responsible" Gun Owners Smell Like Shit

This is a memo to RESPONSIBLE Gun Owners.

You non-gun-owners and "Joe the Plumber" wannabes who consider your "right" to carry an assault rifle is more important than a bunch of dead kids - you people go watch a nice movie, or whatever will keep you out of trouble.

Okay, just you responsible types left?

CLEAN UP YOUR DAMN HOUSE!

Here is an article about some pro-gun nutjobs. I'll restate their own signature quote:

 "They don't have a right to feel warm and fuzzy about me feeling warm and fuzzy about carrying my assault rifle wherever the fuck I want!"

Yes, read the article written about pro-gun nutjobs. These people are so incredibly self-absorbed, selfish, childish, and such intense bullies they entirely miss the part about them demanding their privilege to feel warm and fuzzy about intimidating and frightening everyone around them, while saying it's because they won't be intimidated or frightened by others.

These people make YOU - Responsible Gun Owner - look like shit. Yeah, these selfish children are dragging your "responsible" image down to their level. How shitty are you willing to smell?

How can *anyone* believe there can even be such a legendary creature as a "responsible gun owner" when these asshats are grabbing at the limelight and telling people how special they are and how their specialness trumps dead children.

I mean, really? Do these people really miss the concept that they're chanting "I'm allowed to own this gun to protect MY children, because FUCK YOUR CHILDREN!"?

Clean up your house people! If you really want to call yourself a "responsible" gun owner then you need to join with reasonable non-gun owners in shutting these people down before they start killing your children and saying it was their RIGHT to kill your children.


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Musical Monday: "O Fortuna" by Ysgol Glanaethwy

Ysgol Glanaethwy is a performing arts school in Wales.

These kids are high school students, so mega-props for being able to belt out this kind of sound, and choreography, and then do it on national television. Apparently, they pulled second place in this televised competition - that's huge!

"O Fortuna" is one of the most used and recognizable musical pieces ever. It's got some really bold and dramatic sounds.

This video works best if you close your eyes the first time thru and feel it. Then watch it again to admire the passion and skill of these young people.

So many musical acts now are small, that marketing depends almost entirely on everyone being gorgeous.

With a large choir, the focus can be on how everyone sounds, and these kids sound fantastic!



If you love me, you'll steal my ideas

My Secret Agenda is to get people to use their damn brains. So, please share my posts, so that others will experience the wonder, wisdom and chaos that is me.  :-)

See, you can tell that I really am humble, because I'm self-deprecating: I make fun of myself, even as I extoll my awesomeness.

My Blog Theme Is Human Stupidity

See, the truth of Being Human is that we don't see the world at all. We experience the world filtered through all the shit in our heads. I even made reference to this in an earlier post.

Elyse Gorman says it even better:

How we experience the world is heavily influenced by our beliefs and past experiences.

Our subconscious mind chooses pieces of information to serve to our conscious mind based on what we've programmed it to look for. Identify your dominant beliefs and replace the ones that aren't serving you.

Share My Posts

If you like my writing, the highest form of praise and reward for me is that you share my posts so that other people learn about my writing and are exposed to my message.

Hell, as part of my subversive agenda to get my ideas out into the world, I'm perfectly happy if you steal the ideas and claim them as your own. Even if - especially if - you become rich and famous, the idea spreads into the world, and my sinister goals of increasing common sense and actual use of the brain are achieved :)

Theological Thursday: Freedom From Atheism Foundation - because, you know, fuck you're lack of dogma

A friend brought this to my attention. The Freedom From Atheism Foundation. Because, you know, being a religious prick is so much better.

I don't have a Facebook account anymore, so I had to look at this using a friend's account. Doesn't matter. Pretty much everything there makes no fucking sense.

No, I take that back. Pretty much everything there falls into classic right-wing world of "Fear the bogeyman, he's out to get you!!"

Once you understand that they're trying to fuck with your head, in order to make you feel good about something, and fear some imaginary bogeyman, in order to then panic and do whatever monkey-stupid thing they want you too, it all makes sense. See, it makes sense as long as you understand human behavior, and understand it's a fucking game to these bastards, then you understand the meta-logic of their practical illogic.

Yeah, my friend was nearly weeping to see his otherwise intelligent associates collapsing into single-minded moronicity, because they really want to believe they are persecuted for their faith. I think it's that whole "Christians fed to the lions means you go straight to Heaven" martyrdom complex.

Let's look at these gems of non-logic. (Note that I'm putting the commentary before the meme, not after.)


--

First of all, the claim that atheists believe religion is the root of all evil, and therefore have no interest in solving problems is bullshit. That doesn't even make sense. The desire to solve problems is independent of God, and independent of religion. Loathing assholes who hide behind dogma doesn't stop anyone from living a normal life.

I mean, for fuck's sake, atheists don't want monuments - there's nothing to build a fucking monument to, not to be confused with religious people who build monuments to everything - no, wait, I take that back - the Muslim Taliban destroy every fucking monument they find, including historical Buddhist artifacts, as attempts to make graven images of God, which are a religious affront.

(Really, that latter point comes down to the warlords in charge of the Taliban psychopaths just desperately trying to find any way to keep the psycho-soldiers busy, lest said psycho-soldiers turn on the warlords - shit, that's why the US Navy has their soldiers painting the damn ships all the time, and why the Army has their soldiers running five miles a day - got to keep those soldiers busy or they start looking for shit to blow up, and often blow up shit belonging to the general and other idiots-in-charge.)





--

Here's another goody that simply makes no fucking sense. Hm, man is sick in the head and kills people, because "he has no God." Yeah, how about those ISIL fucks - bunch of religious pricks, murdering and butchering in the name of God. Yeah, okay, happy little meme bent on poking the bogeyman and claiming the moral high ground by climbing a mountain of cottage cheese. Being a sick bastard has nothing to do with - or without - God.





--
 

Not sure who Peter Singer is, but I think we're back to having a fucknut and claiming God magically makes someone NOT a fucknut. Let's see, God ordered the Hebrews to get a bunch of people drunk, cut off the tips of their dicks, and then murder them. God ordered some guy to butcher is own son as proof of loyalty, then said "Psych! Don't kill your boy." And my favorite - God hardened the heart of Pharaoh to ensure there would be seven plagues and God could show off His power (or as a friend of mine says "To show he had a bigger dick."). Yeah, God's a proven winner. Yet another case of "bogeyman fever."






And WTF is up with the hammer and sickle? "Atheists are Soviets"? Oh, wait, I'm sure that's somehow supposed to be "without God, you get Godless communist anarchy"! Yeah, um... what?

Yeah, these "Freedom From Atheism Foundation" people scare me - not because they seem to have a hard-on for "God," but because they have a hard-on for scaring people, jerking with their emotions, and not worrying a damn about chasing bogeymen. Anyone who pulls that kind of shit is prepared to hurt people and not give a fuck, because they're on a power trip, and those kind of people scare me.
 

 

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Political Parties - One Evil Is Far Worse Than the Other

Political email: "We desperately need your money to win this election against the evil pond scum, so we can save the world for decent people!"

Him: "Which party sent it?"

Me: "All of them."

Let's be clear that I'm talking about professional politicians here, not mom & pop & Johnny, too, and certainly not you. I'm not talking about philosopies, or words people say. I'm talking about the people who stand up and say "Vote for me, because that Other Guy is Evil!"

Now, y'all know I actually make an effort to hear what people are saying (not just listen, but hear), which is why I consider the greedElitist Opportunistic Pig party to be the real evil scrum (because A-they act like it, setting new low bars for vile behavior daily, and B-they lie about it harder than anyone else).

I'm not even going to pretend the Democrats are not rats. But the sick truth - in my considered opinion (and if you think I'm a mindless parrot of propaganda, let's have a talk) - is that if the Democrats are like rats, then the Republicans are like Rat Kings frothing around in the cesspits they grow in. Meaning one candidate may crap on you (Democrat), but they other candidate is going to turn your entire world into shit, beam with pride over it, and tell you to quit whining about it, you ungrateful little worthless wretch (Republican).

In this case, the choices really are no-brainers, especially for women, because - as evidenced by GOP policies (not rhetoric, but policies) - you don't deserve equal pay for equal work, you really should stay at home, and really your only function is to incubate any fetus that any man shackles you with, and your approval is not required.  Conversely, those GOP bastards will legalize every form of contraception and pregnancy termination the moment they decide they can make more money (and seize more power) off fewer babies than they can make convincing poor people to be overburdened and drive down labor costs.

Cops vs Militia: We all lose (It's Class Warfare, Bitches)

We've got two sides to the downward spiral:

• Congress dumping military surplus equipment onto police departments, creating an increasingly militant civil law enforcement group;
• paranoid/delusional right-wing militants being goaded by neo-feudalist media moguls into obtaining their own para-military equipment;
• thus forcing law enforcement to upgrade in order to deal with the militias and vigilante wannabes;
• thus legitimizing the paranoid fantasies of the militia and vigilante wannabes against a "police state" (and ironically dragging the left-wingers in with non-delusional concerns about the same thing) thus ....

 

Musical Monday: Amaranthe "The Nexus"

"Melodic Death Metal with a Positive Message," is one way the members of Amaranthe describe themselves. Of course, this naturally elicits outrage from hardcore death metal fanatics, but I don't care about that; I just like the music.

I think this was the first Amaranthe song I encountered, so I'm especially enamored of it.  

I love Elize Ryd's voice, and wish I had her hair. Oh, I know it's a video, so her hair has been styled to Hell and back, but it looks great, and wishing I had her hair is fantasy, so why not wish for the fantasy hair while I'm out there. She's got a nice powerful style, full of poise, grace and confidence, which you can see across her many videos. She allows the video directors to sell her beauty, but does not allow herself, or her performance, to be overshadowed by her appearance.

There's a segment where a guitar guy - Henrik Englund, I think - leaps in the air, and I just think it looks cool. He comes down, slamming on the strings, all rage and power. Henrik has a great growl, but seems a bit too raw. A bit too much screaming and not enough screaming-to-a-tune, if you know what I mean. seems more like just shouting, than singing.

Reading the Wikipedia entry for Amaranthe is an education. "Melodic Death Metal"? Seriously? And what's up with the "clean/unclean vocals"?  It's really fascinating how we - as a species - like to have nice, tidy compartments for everything. We like to understand things, and so we invent and modify vocabulary to make this happen. Oh, I'm sure these goofy terms have legit meanings and serve legit classification purposes, especially for hardcore music fans (I'm a very casual music fan), but to an outsider it just looks silly, and that amuses me.

Patric Ullaeus directed this video. His is a name I've seen now on a bunch of videos I like, so I think I'll check out his whole library.

Just Being Snarky: Motivation for Getting Out of Bed On A Cold Morning

There are only so many variations on the theme of "God loves me; I'm so happy" in the world,

...dude who has convinced someone that blind enthusiasm trumps skill or talent,

..on the radio station I use to force myself out of bed,

..and frankly, I've heard better ones,

..but thank you,

..for helping drive me from my warm bed so I can face yet another glorious day.

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Theological Thursday: Clockmaker-in-a-box

It's a kind of poem. This poetic piece is vaguely inspired by the "Watchmaker Analogy," but really has been inspired by observations on human behavior.

If you are unfamiliar with the "Watchmaker Analogy," then check it out. Like a lot of theological precepts, I considered it flawed in that it starts with humans and tries to work backward to define a god that would have created humans - this is probably clear in the prose, below.


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Clockmaker-In-A-Box

I put you in a box, Clockmaker, because then you are small, and I can understand small, and because I can understand you, that makes me Special.

Build for me a small world, Clockmaker, because in a small world, I am large, and that makes me Special.

Build your world for me, Clockmaker, in ways I can comprehend, using simple ways, and narrow borders, because then my comprehension makes me Special.

I cannot understand, Clockmaker, the idea of an infinite, unbounded Universe, because if others understand things I do not, that makes them Special instead of me.

I cannot comprehend, Clockmaker, how if you are bigger than me, infinite, that I can comprehend you at all, and if I cannot own you, Clockmaker, than I must fear you.

If you are infinite, then why would you care about me at all, Clockmaker, for I can only understand Huge, and not Infinite.

Because I cannot understand Infinite, Clockmaker, then I cannot understand how you can love me, because I am simply a mote.

I cannot understand, Infinite Clockmaker, that the fact that you can, and do, love me, tiny speck among infinite creation, makes me more Special than I can ever dream of being.

If only, Clockmaker, I was not too afraid to release you from the box I have put you in.

 "Clockmaker in a Box," Copyright (C) 2012 by Icarus Anne Riley. All rights reserved.

Happy New Year! Post Number 100! Wooo! Fist Pump!!

That's it; the entire message. I'm just geeked. :-)

Apparently, I'm a bit prolific as a blogger. I mean, "human stupidity" is just so fecund with rant potential, how could I be any other way ;-)

Post #100. What an awesome way to start the new year, especially since it was pure coincidence. Serendipity, or what?

You guys are awesome!  HUGS to everyone!

Image copied from Karen Tyrrell's blog

Model and Body Paint Artist Lex from MadeYewLook

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