Old Posts Need Love #1

I was going through my old posts, and I'm proud of everything I have written (and very proud of some of it).

Here are some oldies, but goodies, that haven't gotten as much love as I think they deserve.

Lord, grant me the strength to enlighten those who will listen, and ignore the rest, because I have better things to do

One of my many "stupidity annoys me" rants, with some good scientific flavoring.

Can't Vote? Blame a Republican

This is an ongoing issue.  For well over a decade, the GOP have been flogging the bogeyman of fraudulent voting, and then strained like crazy to find any examples of it.  As I recall, the one or two examples they did find, were a small handful of votes, and - whoa, no way! - black people.

Not to be confused with the dozens of cases of white people  doing "voter registration drives" and then tossing all the ones marked Democrat (which is not illegal, but is extremely unethical and immoral, because it's called lying), or making fraudulent registrations (which is illegal).

When really, the entire function of "voter ID" laws is really to stop "the wrong kind of people" from voting (like  tens or hundreds of thousands of lawfully eligible voters blocked from their Constitutional right to vote).

Abortion (Y/N?) is not a valid question, you asshole

A basic root cause argument. Like "making feeding homeless people stops people being from being homeless, right?"  or "make drugs illegal, and people magically stop wanting drugs, right?"

Anti-Troll: Avoid Pointless Fights With Friends

This is true in daily life, as well as in social media.  It becomes so easy to knee-jerk argue about everything, when often, there is no point, nor value, in arguing, and doing so just creates conflict where it serves no purpose and benefits no one.

Musical Monday - "Wrong Side of Heaven" - Five Finger Death Punch

Military veterans deserve so much more than they receive. This is a powerful vid.

---@@@---

In hindsight, there isn't a lot of theme here among these oldie-but-goodie posts.  Maybe for the "Old posts need love 2" I'll do a theme.

#IAmIcarus

Batting 5000! Holy crap!

view count	days (delta)	days (total)	views per day during the period	posts (delta)	posts (total)	views per post (total average)
1000	94	94	10.6	85	85	11.8
2000	72	166	13.9	52	137	14.6
3000	34	200	29.4	28	165	18.2
4000	21	221	47.6	16	181	22.1
5000	15	236	66.6	12	193	25.9

Only Hitler was "Hitler" - Memes That Piss Me Off

(Just so we're clear, the meme is here because I'm calling it bullshit.)

Frankly, I took offense at the comparisons of Pres Bush to Hitler, and an allied country has found Pres Bush guilty of war crimes, so he's probably the closest any US President will ever come to being like Hitler.

Ergo. No surprise when I'm significantly more offended when the asswipes who screamed Pres Bush was the Second Coming of Christ have been screaming a thousand times louder than anyone before, that Pres Obama - who did not manufacture a war, who did finally bring Osama bin Laden to justice, and who did make it possible for tens of millions of Americans to finally get access to the privileged system of healthcare farce we have in America, is Hitler. The hypocrisy is staggering.

This meme is the icing on the cake by not only illogically, erroneously, callously and sloppily comparing an intelligent, educated and accomplished stateswoman to Hitler, but then does so by deliberately attacking what should be a common value that Jesus himself espoused - specifically this meme unambiguously derides common human decency - then yeah, I consider the authors to be pure, unadulterated scrum, and anyone who cheers this meme to be foolish at best, and a callous, selfish, ignorant sociopath at worst.

#MemesThatPissMeOff

Musical Monday - "Sweet Dreams" - the Eurythmics

People fascinate me.  

You can imagine the meaning of the lyrics.  Bit risque back in the day, but seemingly prophetic in hindsight.

Imagine how much stranger they are today, where latex and bondage fetishes are practically normal.

It remains a fun song, after all these years. And Annie Lennox just has a gorgeous voice.

Finally, something displaces "Bathroom Query" on my Most Viewed Posts list

Hurray! I was starting to think nothing would displace that damn "bathroom query" post ;-)  (It was at #3 position for a bit.)

What's also interesting, is that it took an homage to the great, masterful, and amazing Sir Terry to displace the "anal intruder" rant.

I'm honored, though confused, why my post about D&D 5e has been so popular. I'm totally flattered, so won't question it too much. I'm thinking I hit just the right notes in my comparisons to other game  systems that have come before and how things have evolved.

#IAmIcarus

Fictional Friday: The *ing staggering legacy of Sir Pratchett

I wonder if Sir Terry Pratchett had any clue, while he was alive, the legacy he was leaving, and how much he has shaped the future.

Some of the most brilliant and creative minds in the world have devoured his writings.

By the vehicle of his words, his fingers have been inside our heads, pushing neurons around, and leaving their indelible mark. 

It is a -ing legacy that is -ing impossible to measure, but perhaps one of the most -ing powerful and -ing deep legacies anyone can -ing imagine.

Rest Well, Sir Terry, for you have achieved what may be the greatest goal ever - to have left the world a better place than you found it.

Thank you. We miss you.

Cool Quotes 1 - things that matter

We all are someone else's sack of shit once we do anything that matters.

--Kabuki Kaiser

This was actually part of a longer philosophical comment by Kabuki Kaiser, but I just loved that one single sentence so much, I grabbed it and ripped it out.

In context, it was beautiful, but out of context, it's poetry.  

Let's face it:  most of us do nothing that matters. Really, we wake up, we eat breakfast, grind through the day, return home, rinse and repeat.

By doing things that matter, we piss people off. We piss them off for a lot of reasons: sometimes it's simple as opposing them, other times it's because they are jealous.

In the end, it's important to make a difference to at least one person. It's important to live life consciously, make choices, do things that matter, and yeah, even piss someone off sometimes.