Neon Robot Piracy

Movies I haven't seen and why I already hate them

2008-01-11T13:23:00.000-08:00

Stupid, yes. Presumptuous, yes. But I'm having fun.

Step Up 2 The Streets

I hate this movie because it is "The Streets". I don't know how they managed to do it, but they have managed to capture every youth cliche from the 21st century in two simple words. I already know what this movie will entail. It will entail all the glossiness of 1980's MTV music videos, especially during the dance scenes. It will entail all the false-hiphop bullshit permeating movies these days. It will entail one obligatory scene about race relations, or, if the protagonist is white (I can't tell), it will entail an obligatory scene about some rich bitch being all snobby to her. It will have someone, probably a parent figure of some sort, trying to stifle her cool hip-hop awesomeness. It will entail her getting doubtful about her own talents, and then someone will say something stupid, like, "girl", for her being referred to as "girl" is absolutely mandatory in a movie such as this, "you got some real skills. Now get out there and bring it"! Or something. It will entail a lot of PG-13 midriff-baring sex appeal. And it will entail a joke-cracking not-as-cute best friend. And a near-silent male love interest. And one life-affirming dance scene at the end. And cardboard cutout snobby villains. And---you know what? This will probably be watched by a lot of people. Everyone my age will love it, love it, love it. Fuck this psuedo-hip "the streets" bullshit. The only people watching this movie will be suburban white kids. Again.

Meet the Spartans

Why? Why do they insist on torturing us like this? Wouldn't it be a lot less expensive and easier on all of us to just go, "Hey, remember 300? Remember Britney shaving her head? Remember Shrek The Third? Cool." That's essentially all this is. The people who direct Epic Movie and Date Movie and Scary Movie and whatever the fuck other Movie need to get a dictionary and look up the word "funny". I looked it up on Merriam-Webster. For some reason, it does not say anything whatsoever about "stating somethingin pop culture and going no further than that".

I saw the trailer for this stupid movie. Very shortly after the trailer aired, the cries of children were to be heard all throughout the land. The sky turned red, the color of blood. The sound of fingernails striking a blackboard was heard on every corner of the Earth. A riot broke out in the street. There was fire everywhere. And the four horsemen of the apocalypse were galloping across the sky.

You know what this trailer actually had in it? It had, I kid you not, a bit "mocking" (re: flawlessly imitating) Stomp the Yard.

WHAT IS THIS MADNESS? Raise your hand if you saw Stomp the Yard. Raise your hand if you cared about Stomp the Yard. Raise your hand if you remembered anything at all about it. Oh, no one? What a surprise.

Even if you did see Stomp the Yard and you do care about it, will you really be amused by a "parody" where it's basically exactly the same as the original except someone's foot gets stepped on?

The voiceover for the trailer of this movie included, "No movie is safe". Shortly after Don LaFontaine was forced to utter this, he comitted hara-kiri to preserve his family's honor. Seriously? "No movie is safe"? Are they even trying? (Answer: of course not.) They don't even try to hide their technique of referencing as many movies as possible for no reason whatsoever. They don't care. All they want is more thousand-dollar bills to wipe themselves with.

National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets

This movie makes no sense whatsoever. First of all, why on Earth would anybody care if their ancestor helped assassinate Lincoln? At most I'd be a little ashamed. I certainly would not try to kidnap anyone, much less the President, just to clear some guy's name.

Second, and most important, how on Earth would this book even come about? Like, let's take the JFK assassination, since that's the most obvious example. So, this book is written "by Presidents, for Presidents". Obviously JFK would probably know very little about his own assassination. So the person most likely to have written that particular entry is LBJ. Now, assuming he wasn't involved with the assassination, there is absolutely no way for him to know what the hell happened there. And no one who was involved has any incentive to tell him. Even if LBJ was involved, why on Earth should he be honest about it to this book? Yes, honor, but if he was involved in the assassination of the POTUS, he has no honor. And you know who seemed likely to be President in the sixties? RFK. If RFK knew that LBJ was involved with any of that, I'd say he'd be a mite peeved. So why should anybody tell the truth to the book, again?

And why would they even conceive the idea? Why would they keep all their secrets in one place? Haven't any of these people heard the term "don't put all your eggs in one basket" in the Ivy League schools they went to?

And the worst part of this all is that this is like The Da Vinci Code for idiots. And the Da Vinci Code is already for idiots. They didn't need to take it any further. One Da Vinci Code is too many already.

In conclusion, I'm judgmenal.

The draft

2007-08-18T01:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/10/war.adviser.draft.ap/index.html

Does it seem selfish when I say that the fact that many of my friends/I would likely be drafted is a very distressing thought?

Because, honestly, I am motherfucking terrified. I'm angry and I'm terrified and holy shit if any of this comes into fruition I think I might kill myself.

A lot of people are saying it probably wouldn't happen, but since around 2005 or so I've been getting this horrible feeling that the draft is inevitable.

BAN CAKE

2007-08-02T04:59:00.000-07:00

I have a proposition for you:

We legally limit cake. All forms of cake. Cakes sold in stores, cupcakes, cake mixes, fruitcakes at Christmastime, whatever.

Think about it: does cake serve any healthful purpose? No. It's not nutritional, and if you have too much of it you could get obese and die. Also, when you buy a cake from the store, you don't even know what's IN that shit.

We will make it so that cake is taxed heavily. First we'll have cake and non-cake sections of restaurants, and then we will ban cake from restaurants altogether. We shall also ban cakes from bars, because God forbid a den of iniquity should have some unwholesome activities going on. We'll ban cake in parks and in public and...outside generally.

Then, beyond the legal realm, we will also use media to push the Evils of Cake. We'll have a bunch of assholes who are too self-righteous for Jackass performing stunts of a different nature: public stunts showing exactly how sick a cake can make you, all the disgusting stuff in store-bought cakes, and how many people die each day from cake-induced obesity. Then, we will pick on the cake industry non-stop. It's full of assholes only interested in money. It advertises to children. It advertises at all. It doesn't warn people sufficiently.

We'll have cake-ed in schools, where people talk about being pressured to eat cake and how Cakes Are Not Cool.

Why not do all this? Because cakes make people happy? Pish-posh. Because this is supposedly a free land? Well, sure. You're free to not eat cake. Because people realize that cake is unhealthy already and they don't need the government and media to force them to pretend to care? What nonsense is this?

Stop picking on the cigarette industry. People know that cigarettes are harmful. People who eat cakes and people who eat cigarettes both realize that what they're doing is not beneficial at all, thanks. They just don't care.

Carlos Mencia

2007-07-20T19:03:00.000-07:00

Here's an idea: let's leave him alone.

No, seriously. There are all these people with no lives who go on about how bad Carlos Mencia is and how "anyone who likes him is retarded" (I've heard people say this).

He makes a lot of race jokes, which he wouldn't be able to get away with if he were white. OH, NO! SOMEONE LIKES TO MAKE JOKES ON A CERTAIN TOPIC? STOP THE FUCKIN' PRESSES! HOW DARE HE LIKE TO MAKE RACE JOKES!

You know, Lewis Black's angry style of comedy probably wouldn't work if he were a young man, because I imagine people would feel, "what does HE have to complain about, he hasn't seen any life yet?" But Lewis Black is a 58-year-old man, and as such, he has the ability to make his comedy in an angry style. Just because he's taking advantage of his position doesn't make him any less of a God. And Carlos Mencia is taking advantage of his position. I don't think he's exacerbating the whole "white people can't say anything" thing.

And, you know, he may make a lot of race jokes, but if they're funny race jokes then who gives a shit. We don't have to analyze everything. Sometimes people just like to have a little fun.

Also, apparently, people are all upset because "CARLOS MENCIA ISN'T HIS REAL NAME?" OMGWTFSTAGENAMENOWAI! No one's going to take you seriously if your name is Ned.

And as for the stealing thing, he does not, contrary to popular belief, steal every bit of his material from somebody else. And I don't even care what Joe Rogan has to say. If you host Fear Factor, nothing that comes out of your mouth is valid.

Greetings from New Zealand!

2007-07-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

It's neat here. I'm in Auckland, which is sort of lik a rainier, quainter Los Angeles. The All Blacks do this thing called the haka before the game, and it's awesome.

Being in a different country makes me realize how much my own country's government terrifies me. I was terrified at the airport. I'm terrified to come back.

The people I'm staying with say that the American government isn't as smart as I give them credit for, but when you hear stories like that one about the man from eastern Europe on holiday who ended up in gitmo, it's hard not to be scared.

People in New Zealand aren't as paranoid as in America. But I guess that's to be expected.

I can't stand radfem

2007-06-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

So I was reading a blog called I Blame the Patriarchy because I'm a psychological masochist. If you're unfamiliar with this particular blog, it's basically written and frequented by the types of people who believe that no man exists who doesn't wish to oppress women. The kind of people that rational feminists have to distance themselves from at the start of every conversation like environmentalists have to distance themselves from Sheryl Crow. It's a perfect blog if you're a fucking succubus.

And it reminded me of a movie I saw (read: was forced to watch) called Killing us Softly. I believe there are three versions, one from the seventies, one from the eighties, and one from the nineties. I watched the 1987 version.

This movie, while nowhere near as aneurysm-inducing as I Blame the Patriarchy, was still slightly on the annoying side. It's about women in advertising and how they're objectified and whatnot. Women in the media, you know. Now, the implication being that the stigma associated with being a fat woman has no parallel in the male universe.

Which is simply not true. Studies show that a woman who lists herself as overweight on sites like match.com have roughly the same chance of getting a response as a man who lists his height as shorter than average. (Freakonomics Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, chapter 2, page 82 hardbound version).

As a matter of fact, I'd say that being a short man would be harder:
1) It's far easier to fix being fat than being short. Yes, you might have some sort of condition to make you fat. That's very unfortunate, but the fact is that for many people, fat is possible to get rid of. I went vegetarian and lost 10 pounds.

Most importantly, fat women always have people to stick up for them. No movie has EVER been made about how short men have been reduced to subhuman levels, and yet there were at least three made for fat women. There has NEVER been an industry for minus-height male modeling. There has NEVER been a Dove ad for short men. NO ONE has ever made slogans like "short is beautiful"! Men sometimes say "I like a woman with meat on her bones". No such term exists for short men. I have heard ONE person throughout the entire history of my existence stick up for short men, and I've heard way more people stick up for bigger women.

I will give you two lesser-known examples of mocked short men: Dennis Kucinich and Frank Iero.

Dennis Kucinich is a very liberal Democratic candidate for President and Frank Iero is the shortest member of My Chemical Romance, the one who neither resembles Carrot Top nor wears makeup to make him look like he has AIDS.

Dennis Kucinich was mocked by both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert (for the record, Stewart and Colbert are 5'6" and 5'11", respectively) as being short. He's a frequent target of this, actually. Jon Stewart, however, couldn't remark on Kucinich without making a comment about his own height.

One of my friends has a crush on Frank Iero (who's pretty hot without the ridiculous emo makeup, I must say), and my other friend (who, herself, is 5'1") said, and I quote, "he's like a mini version of a real man". But, of course, she's a girl so she gets to say that shit. Women complain about fat men who say "no fat chicks", and yet I hear that other shit all the damn time.

Am I saying it doesn't suck for fat women? No. It totally sucks to be a fat woman in today's society. But, seriously, stop acting like you're alone.

As for I Blame the Patriarchy, it's so goddamn stupid that one post might require its very own dissections. Let's put it this way: She believes that the public school system should be abolished and every child should be homeschooled. (She said it here). Ah, yes, homeschooling. Which is what they did in the wonderful, egalitarian, utopian 19th century. Do you realize how hard it would be to make sure that everyone got a quality education? Yeah, people aren't getting a quality education now, but homeschooling can turn into something intellectually stimulating, or it could turn into parents being too lazy to teach their child how to read.

God-damn.

Tom Tancredo thinks Miami is Third World.

2007-06-23T21:54:00.000-07:00

I shit you not. Tom Tancredo Thinks Miami is Third World.

Newsflash, Tancredo: Just because a city has a lot of Cubans in it doesn't make it third world. I know you're all anti-immigration, but immigrants=/= third world. Uh, neither does cocaine.

But my real beef with Tancredo is that his last name is so much better than mine. Say it with me: "Tancredo". It rolls off the tongue and yet it sounds so badass. I'm jealous.

I don't even know why I'm mentioning this, seeing as how nobody's going to vote for Tancredo anyway.

Speaking of conservatives, WTF is with Dennis Miller. "If I were younger I'd vote for Obama. But I'm a crotchety old man who's going to vote for Giuliani."

ATTENTION, DENNIS MILLER: PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES ARE NOT THE SAME AS A RISQUÉ TEE-SHIRT.

And he didn't even sound like he was saying, "If I had my younger self's political ideals..." No. Just that Obama is some sort of "hip" candidate (to be fair, Obama did put his own downloadable ringtones on his website. WUDAFUXUP with that?)

According to Wikipedia, the end-all be-all source of factual information, John Edwards also says that he's "not ready" to support gay marriage.

ATTENTION, EDWARDS: YOU ARE OVER FIFTY YEARS OLD. THERE IS ONE THING IN THE WORLD YOU ARE NOT READY FOR, AND THAT'S MEDICARE. IF YOU'RE NOT READY TO SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE NOW, YOU NEVER WILL BE. AS A MATTER OF FACT, JUST ADMIT TO EVERYONE THAT YOU DO NOT SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE.

Seriously. What on Earth could you possibly be waiting for? Is this like some sort of policy-abstinence thing? "I promised myself that I'd only lose my stance-virginity after my Sweet 55." What, oh, what, will get you ready? I assure you, unless you find some sort of Kissinger for the 21st century, you will not get any more exposure to homosexuality and supporting viewpoints thereof in the white house. WHAT WILL GET YOU READY?

The answer, of course, is nothing. Here's my theory: John Edwards doesn't support gay marriage and probably never will. It's just that the majority of the people who would vote for him do support gay marriage, so he's just going to act like he's on their side without technically having to legalize gay marriage. We have a word for that where I come from: LYING.

And while we're on the subject of liberal presidential candidates, let's leave Al Gore alone. If he doesn't want to run, then by God he won't have to. If I were him, I wouldn't want to go through the election hell again after what happened in 2000. And, as was said on the wonderful Daily Show, people are going on and on about how Al Gore must be running for President because he's losing weight.

EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO'S EVER TRIED TO LOSE WEIGHT LATER RAN FOR OFFICE LOLZ. You know that show The Biggest Loser? Yeah, they all ran for president afterwards. It was in the contract.

As a matter of fact, I recently lost some weight, and this is because I plan to run for president in the Whig party. I'm going to bring back such important issues as the gold standard (LOL RON PAUL), reducing emissions from horses and oxen, the ethics of slavery, giving women the right to leave a burning building without her husband's permission, prohibition, and closing America's border to Italy.

Damn. Random mini-rants over.

I am a hypocrite

2007-06-15T21:31:00.000-07:00

This is a personal entry, rather than a political one. If that kind of thing bores you, skip it.

Anyway, I reread the entry I wrote about bombs and id, and I realized that I'm a hypocrite.

You see, this is how I make friends:

I meet someone who takes a shine to me. We get close, and they eventually start to like me, usually because they think I'm smart or funny. For a while, it goes great.

Then, after a few months, they see my true colors. And my true colors aren't pretty colors like "burnt orange" or "sea mist blue". No, my true colors would be along the lines of puke green and LA air gray. Let me explain.

After a few months of repeated contact with a new friend, I will usually end up abusing them somehow. If it is at all possible, I will beat them up. If I don't meet up with them that frequently, I will abuse them emotionally. You see, I can figure out the workings of people's minds pretty quickly, and, after a few months of knowing someone, I will know what their weaknesses are. And after a few months, I will attack those weaknesses to the point where my friend is on the defensive and scared shitless of me.

But in no later than a week, I will inevitably be forgiven. Because they're scared of me. And it will keep happening every few weeks or so after that. Just like that.

I hate hurting things. I hate hurting anything of any kind. But when my rage takes over, I become this fucking sociopath. And I hate the fact that the only reason anyone who really knows me tolerates me is because they're scared. I don't want to sentence these people to a fear of me. I know what it's like when you fear someone too much to let them out of your life, and I know it's not pretty. I don't want to give anyone that, but I can't stop. It just spirals out of control. And I try to stop myself, but it's like I have an evil personality that takes over and I willingly hurt so many people and I want it to stop. I don't want to harm them anymore.

Bombs and Id

2007-06-09T15:44:00.000-07:00

So today I was sitting outside a grocery store, reading a so far fascinating book about dying languages, when a man and a woman in their late-fifties come out of the store. The man and woman were having a conversation with each other, and it seemed like they hadn't known each other before today. Now, I don't know what their conversation was about, but I heard the man say, "You know what it is? Technology has changed, but we, as humans, haven't."

And that was very true, and it got me thinking. I was remembering a similar sentiment expressed in An Inconvenient Truth.

I thought for a while about primitive man and animals. I have a general idea of what humans were like then: they killed when threatened, rivaled, or when they needed to survive (a more modern example would be the Donner Party). But, of course, while they did have tools, the tools required some energy be exerted into them (which would prevent people from killing willy-nilly), and it would be very hard to kill even ten people at the same time with these tools. I imagined a caveman being attacked by another caveman, so the first caveman killed the second.

This is sort of like a pre-emptive strike on a much smaller scale. And then I got to thinking that war is sort of like cavemen. Like the Montagues and Capulets, Jets and Sharks, Maury Povich and Jerry Springer, only with bombs. Smart bombs to get one precise person from a distance, nuclear bombs for absolute destruction, chlorine bombs for blinding people, all kinds of bombs.

If we're going to develop the technology to wipe out entire cities, we need to change our attitudes. We can't kill people just because we feel threatened anymore. Cavemen killing one another, they acted on impulse. When something is flying fast at, say, your eye, it's a reflex to guard your eye. But entire nations with machine guns and bombs can't act on impulse.

Freud separated the thoughts into id, ego, and superego. Id is base instinct, one shared by pretty much all animals, from humans to ants to elephants. Superego is thoughts, intellect, etc. Ego is sort of the middle ground between the two. And you can't make decisions, decisions that can destroy the lives of millions of people, based on id. People are made leaders because it is assumed that they will make decisions based on something higher than animal instinct. We've got intelligence, let's use it.

On Plastic Surgery

2007-06-08T16:53:00.001-07:00

WARNING: INCOHERENT RAGE AHEAD

You know what I've heard a lot lately? People saying things like, "Plastic surgery is for shallow people" and "you should be happy with the way you are".

Now, maybe it's just because this issue affects me directly, but if you think that, I would like to invite you to jump in front of a train and do the gene pool a favor. For, you see, if you hold these beliefs, you are:

Stupidly idealistic and naive
Self-righteous
Selfish
Judgmental
Stupid
Callous
An asshole.

NO EXCEPTIONS. There has never been, and will never be, an exception to this rule. I don't care who you are. Try to tell me you're different and you're lying, because everyone who believes this is exactly the same. This is not a generalization, this is not a rule of thumb, this is the absolute truth.

See, here's what I don't think certain people understand: Not everyone is normal.

I know, that's shocking, isn't it? Not everyone gets to be judged as an equal by society. Not everyone in the entire universe gets the privilege of looking in the mirror and being able to be at least moderately satisfied. Some people out there are considered freaks, you know.

There are a lot of these people out there. And now you're trying to say that they shouldn't be allowed to function normally and be not ostracized because you think that they should be happy with themselves? You're saying that they shouldn't be able to save themselves from depression because you think it's "shallow"? Fuck you.

And then there are people who support reconstructive surgery but not cosmetic surgery are even worse, because they think they're so damn smart. "I wouldn't support it if it were just some girl who thinks her titties would look great bigger, but if someone was a burn victim, sure". That's an easy position to take. I have a question: what about the virtually-fuckin'-infinite gray area between those two? Life isn't all easy questions and happy dilemmas that show you the clear path for the right thing to do.

So the burn victim and the girl with the itty-bitty titties are both after the same thing: they want to look better, and, thus, not feel like shit. Why not? Why can't this girl find a way to not feel like shit?

Hey, what were those things that this country was founded on the right to have? Those things in the Declaration of Independence...what were those? Oh, yeah, I remember, "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Plastic surgery would definitely fall under the heading of "pursuit of happiness", because it's happiness with the way one looks. Or did I miss something? Did it actually say "pursuit of happiness only if it doesn't have anything to do with anything society finds unappealing?" Or is "pursuit of happiness" Farsi for "right to go around imposing rose-tinted idealism on others"?

Please forgive my bias on the subject, it's just that people like the above mentioned leave a badness on my brainmeats. It's a personal issue.

Douche and Turd

2007-05-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

I hear a lot of talk about "rocking the vote". Around late October/November, everyone is encouraged to get out there and vote for who should be the next President.

Only one problem: by that point, it's usually too late. They're the general elections, chosen between two idiots, two pussies, two nutcases, or some combination thereof.

The primaries are of utmost importance. I know, I know, "but no one votes in the primaries". And that would be the reason why a lot of people didn't vote in the general election.

Think back, if you will, to 2004. Who did the Democrats elect for the primaries? Why, John Kerry, a man whose entire political platform seemed to be "I'm not Bush, and I'm very good at it."

Does anybody else remember a 2004 South Park episode entitled "Douche and Turd"? Well, if you don't, here's a basic summary:
They were going to have a new mascot, and it was going to be between two write-in suggestions: a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich. Everyone seemed to be getting into the whole thing, and taking sides. Stan was the one person who didn't care, saying he was choosing between "a douche and a turd". There were obvious parallels: Douche=Kerry, Turd=Bush. And the message was: you don't have to vote if you don't want to.

Well, if people had VOTED in the PRIMARIES, maybe it wouldn't BE between a douche and a turd, eh?

In fact, I'm going to say it: Whatever party you belong to, vote in the primaries. If you have to choose between voting in the primaries and voting in the general elections, vote in the primaries. Why?

Well, if more people voted in the primaries, maybe every candidate running for every party would be the most qualified person for the job. Maybe, just maybe, we'll get an election that, rather than choosing between a douche and a turd, would be like choosing between chocolate ice cream and chocolate mousse: awesome either way. And maybe, even with all the voter apathy on the general elections (which, by the way, wouldn't be as prevalent with GOOD candidates), the person that DID win would represent the actual wishes of the American people.

Then again, maybe the general election will be between Mitt Romney and Hilary Clinton. And I'm sure we all want that.

Video Games

2007-05-25T00:16:00.000-07:00

So I recently saw a commercial for the PS3. Now, for all three of you uninitiated out there, the PS3 is overpriced shit anyway.

But this was a different commercial. It had a picture of some guy alone in a room with a PS3 (I don't know about you, but if it were me I'd be masturbating at that point), playing some sort of baseball simulation that was so realistic that the guy was transported into some video-game baseball game, I guess to imply that this was THE most realistic baseball video game EVER.

...

Actually, wouldn't it be better to actually play baseball? You know how people used to do it, where they'd get some of their friends and bases and a stick and a ball and you'd actually physically run around and... actually, no electronics were required. Fancy that.

But, of course, I'm forgetting logic here. Why play baseball when you can play a nowhere-near as fun $500 simulacrum with none of the human interaction that goes along with baseball? Silly me. Silly, silly me. I mean, it's just common sense.

Is this really necessary? All this shit? See, this is why I don't own any video games or play any MMORPGS or go on MySpace. You need to look at the point of MySpace. And the point of MySpace is very similar to the point of bar-hopping.

Now, I understand when something does have a point or is a more efficient way of doing something. Email, for instance, is a more efficient way of sending mail, and I understand that. But you don't have to use technology just 'cause it's technology (Brave New World, anyone?) Seriously.

On Democracy

2007-05-10T16:39:00.000-07:00

"Democracy in Iraq". What a concept, right?

Here's my thought on the subject: if we do manage to establish a democracy in Iraq, it will probably be shit.

Now, the majority of Iraqis are Shi'ites. The Shi'ites have been oppressed by Saddam for many years, while the Sunnis had it easier. And since in a democracy the majority wins, if most of the Shi'ites agree on something, it will probably pass. And I'm guessing that most of the Shi'ites will be in favor of a democracy that is somewhat less fair to the Sunnis. And in a democracy...majority rules.

Which seems to be the attitude coming from Americans: "Democracy is best because we have it!"

See, now, just because it works for us (and, by the way, if Hilary Clinton wins the Democratic primaries, it may not even work for us, anyway) doesn't mean it works for other countries.

Each country is pretty different from the others. America is very different from Iraq. Iraq has a different history, a different majority religion, different levels of wealth and poverty, different resources, different geography, and different people. You can't expect that the system which works for us will also work for this other, entirely different, country.

The Founding Fathers stayed in a single stuffy building, thinking and revising and thinking and revising, in order to make this country's system of government. They even had to start their government over from scratch at one point, because the Articles of Confederation didn't work.

And now, 230 years later, we can't think of even a single way to innovate the idea of democracy. Not a single way to tailor government to suit Iraq. Not a single new idea other than "build a giant wall".

I have an idea. Let's stop being so goddamn lazy.

On being poor

2007-05-06T17:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I go on the internet (particularly on blogs such as this one or message boards), I hear people complain about being poor. On the internet.

Maybe I'm different, but it would seem to me that if you have clean and running water, food not purchased from a 7/11 with food stamps, electricity, shelter, a computer, and enough money to maintain an internet connection on that computer, and enough free time to go on the computer and bitch rather than working, you ain't poor.

Am I poor? No, I'm not. And I acknowledge that. Because I have, guess what, internet.

See, this is how spoiled America is. Just because someone can't afford Juicy means they're "poor" now.

Look, I don't know you. Maybe it really sucks to be you. Maybe you are having some financial troubles (you don't have to be poor to have financial troubles. Meet MC Hammer), I don't know. But unless you've spent a few days in the projects or in a tent city, don't talk about how poor you are.

FUCK THIS COUNTRY.

2007-04-21T22:09:00.000-07:00

Now, when I saw this face plastered all over the goddamn news a bunch of days ago, I was somehow not reminded at all of partial-birth abortions and the bans thereof.

I don't know, maybe it's just me. But for some reason a plasticky-looking adolescent doesn't strike me as the best way to convey that partial-birth abortions had been banned.

So, imagine my surprise when I learned that the news story within was not about partial-birth abortions, but rather about a floppy-haired kid who was voted off American Idol. I'm sure we all know him as Sanjaya Malakar.

And this is why the news media exists, alright: to inform. And who cares about shit that would affect, HOW many millions of people? We need to find out if Howard Stern's stunt worked!

Oh, valiant defenders of truth who are the news media, I can already hear the couples fighting over child support thanking you for keeping them informed on Sanjaya's latest ponyhawk. I KNOW all the pregnant teenagers will thank you for keeping them informed on American Idol. And the raped women? They're all going to send you flowers. And, most of all, I think the American people love you for letting them know what their own government is doing. Oh, wait a minute, you're not doing that, are you?

You know, I think that "freedom of the press" was not supposed to mean "freedom to tell everyone that Larry Dickhead is Dannielynn's father instead of that the White House 'accidentally' deleted five MILLION emails, all of which pertained to Karl Rove". I think it meant the "the freedom to tell the people what they need to know, what the people who are, um, controlling their lives are actually doing with that power".

But maybe that's just me.

Dr. Richard Land

2007-04-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

First: Goddammit, I just fixed my other Chick tract dissection and now it's void, and now the images for this one don't work anymore. So I've officially announced my plans to stop trying.

So, anyway, I just saw Dr. Richard Land on the Colbert Report on Friday. I was very impressed. I may not agree with the guy on all his political views, but i agree with him on one thing: You may have a different ideology or view than someone else, but that doesn't mean you should be an asshole about it.

I couldn't agree more.

So long...

2007-04-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

Rest in peace, Mr. Vonnegut. We'll miss you.

Another Chick Tract Dissection

2007-04-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

Unlike the first tract I dissected, which was just stupid, this one is actually offensive.

Flight 144? Now, that sounds like one of those movies where there's a PARTY ON THE PLANE, BABY, YEAH!

It sounds so very fun.

A quick show of hands--who else thinks that lady's next line could plausibly be "dear me, I do believe I'm getting the vapors!"

Left Panel: Everything is under control. Right. They're both looking at the wing of the airplane that is ON FIRE, and one of the women says it's "under control".

Right Panel: I guess it's not under control, then, huh? I mean, one engine is dead and the other one's on fire.

What are the odds of that? That one engine would die at the SAME TIME that the other one catches fire?

That pilot is totally high. I think he's hallucinating the engine failure.

By the way, I'm imagining him saying, "This is Flight 144"in the same voice that Stephen Colbert uses to say, "This is the Colbert Report".

Alright, I have a hard time believing that this is any kind of a third-world country if the majority of the people who live there are wearing aloha shirts. I'm just saying.

It's hard to make fun of the left panel, because it's all so very sweet. This all, according to Chick, is supposed to be evil, but I can't help feeling a little happy that, you know, people that missionaries helped to avoid starvation are wishing the missionaries well.

But pay attention to how Mr. Davidson is referred to as "reverend".

Dig those two people in the row in front of them. That one woman looks really nervous, and the other one is evidently blind and eating an orange with the peel sicking out of her mouth like we all did when we were kids.

Hold up. That's supposed to be AFRICA?

None of the people who live there look remotely African.

It's also hard to make fun of this one, because building hospitals and schools is a GOOD thing.

Wait just a damn minute. This chalk-white guy is apparently an African, and he was in an African jail which is where he got saved. Yeah, right. A special note to Jack Chick: Most of the people in Africa are either Sunni Muslim, Catholic, or they have indigenous beliefs. There are quite a few Ethiopian Jews, however.

The odds of this guy being "Saved" here are highly remote.

Yeah, I'm sure you led that guy to the Lord. I'm sure. The guy was a criminal. Not only that, he was most likely desperately poor, and had plenty of reasons to believe that either God didn't exist or God did exist but God is an unbelievable asshole. This guy, who's been a Christian for about a week, managed to convert his cellmate to the Lord.

I would just like to point out that Mrs. Davidson's expression is trippy.

And here it is, folks, the ALLEGED BAD THING THAT COMES WITH MISSIONARY WORK. BEWARE THE BAD THING.

This kid is trying to say "Oh, yeah, helping thousands of people lead better lives and have longer life spans, sure fine whatever. It doesn't matter, it means NOTHING!"

How fucking impertinent. Didn't he learn to respect his elders?

Now, is it just me, or does that kid that's supposed to be the "good" one sound like he'd be a horrible person to hang around with?

It's like that South Park episode with Starvin Marvin and Sally Struthers. "Please give us food!" "NOT UNTIL YOU ACCEPT JESUS AS THE LORD!"

Now, to me, the Davidsons sound like REAL Christians as Jesus intended them to be, and then this kid sounds like some psycho.

The ONLY works that matter is Jesus dying on the cross? So apparently it doesn't even matter if you let people not starve? How fucking horrible is that?

What the hell is with that gospel quote at the bottom, anyway? What does it have to do with ANYTHING?

That is the biggest fucking fish I have ever seen in my entire life.

This is a really awesome panel, too. *CRASH* *BOOM* *EVERYONE DIES*.

Your beautiful MANSION in heaven? And heaven is guarded by gates?

HEAVEN IS A CUL-DE-SAC! Tee hee. Sac. Tee hee.

What if you don't want a mansion in heaven? Wouldn't it be more heavenly to some if one were simply able to sleep on a hammock on a beach somewhere, or in an apartment with a beautiful view of a city skyline? I met some people who worked for Yosemite National Park who could have probably gone on to live in a mansion but chose not to.

I guess heaven is really more like the capitalist American dream, and if you want to go against this, not only are you weird, but you're also BLASPHEMOUS.

And here we have him again, folks, Jack Chick's Asshole God (TM).

LOL GOD YOU'VE MADE A MISTAKE! I mean, not like it ever happened before. I like your work with not smiting Hitler. And Pompeii. And AIDS--can't forget that. Although according to Jack Chick, AIDS is only a mistake when a straight person gets it by accident.

Jack Chick is trying to paint good people as arrogant, bad Christians, and I don't like it.

Wait, I don't like how that passage is being interpreted. Couldn't it just as easily mean that someone just went out and helped an old lady cross the street to get some God Cred, and God said "No Sale"? Couldn't it also mean that they themselves were good people but Satan-worshippers?

And couldn't it also mean THIS TRACT MAKES NO GODDAMN SENSE BECAUSE MR. DAVIDSON WAS A REVEREND!

That is one tripped-out waterfall, I must say.

Yes, the good works BLOODY WELL SHOULD count for something, goddammit.

You did ALL the work necessary? While there are still people out there starving, blind, disabled, AIDS-ridden, oppressed, whatever? Helping these people out is ABSOLUTELY UNNECESSARY AND WILL SEND YOU TO HELL!

No, Jack. If that's what God thinks, He is not loving. And you should not be spreading this horrible message. God has a place for people who run around telling others not to care about others and only themselves. HINT: It ain't heaven.

I don't get it. They were Christians. Why are they going to hell, if those passages don't apply to them!

I want to know what that cloud is supposed to be. Seriously.

Now, wait just a damned minute. The sin problem was taken care of once and for all... so there would be no need for Jesus to come into your heart, then?

It was apparently not fixed once and for all. God needs better marketing than Jack Chick.

Dammit, Jack, that's not Jesus. That's GOD THE FATHER.

Here's how it works. The Father is God. Jesus is God. The Holy Ghost is God. BUT The Father is not Jesus, Jesus is not the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost is not the father.

Think of it like water:

Liquid water is H2O. Ice is H2O. Water vapor is H2O. BUT Liquid water is not ice, ice is not water vapor, and water vapor is not liquid water.

Given how loving and understanding Jack the Tripper's God evidently is, I'm sure that mistaking one member of the trinity is some sort of sin that will earn you ETERNAL HELLFIRE. Because God is love.

Oh, and those people WERE Christian. This track makes no sense.

Yeah, but before you died on the cross, didn't you say to help those in need?

I don't like how Jack Chick focuses on how Jesus got killed instead of what He taught. Focusing on how Jesus got killed leads to genocide, usually. Besides, Jesus' DYING is not the point of Christianity. Jesus' teaching is.

Hell is made of spaghetti?

That is the crappiest excuse for a flame I have ever fucking seen. It looks like a dog ate part of the tract.

The angel on the right is panhandling. In Hell.

Blah, blah, blah.

Chain letters

2007-04-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

Goddammit, anyone who actually believes that a fucking email could have any control over how their romantic life is or whether or not werewolves will leap out of the screen and kill them in their sleep is an unbelievable dumbass and needs to lay off the booze.

Think about it: just because some asshole types something doesn't mean it's going to happen. No, Jesus did not start that chain letter. I'm sorry to say. Fuck you idiots who believe this shit.

DICK CHENEY IS WATCHING YOU!

2007-04-09T13:37:00.000-07:00

He sees you when you're sleeping; he knows when you're awake....

That's very creepy, I must say.

The Most Hated Family in America

2007-04-08T00:15:00.000-07:00

Hey, kids, guess what time it is?

It's No Rant Necessary time!

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven

Actually, I take it back, a rant is necessary. Well, it doesn't have the fire and brimstone of a rant, it's more of a comment.

The children are not to blame. Look at one of the earlier ones (number three, I think). There's a conversation that goes like this (by the way, the eclipses mean that I don't remember what happened and my computer takes forEVER to reload):

REPORTER (to young Shirley): Do you know what the sign means?

YOUNG SHIRLEY: No.
...

REPORTER (To Old Shirley, [whom I will refer to as Shirley for future reference]): Your daughter doesn't know what the sign means.

SHIRLEY: Fags. Troops. Flags. ... Is that too complicated for you? Noah, what does your sign mean?

NOAH: It's this nation. It's a nation of fags and fag-enablers.

SHIRLEY: That's EXACTLY right.

NOAH: Oh! Fag soldiers! Fag soldiers!
...

SHIRLEY: What else can you be to damn yourself in the eyes of God if you're not a fag?

NOAH: Uh...Swedish? Soldiers?

SHIRLEY: But if you're not a practicing fag but you still support them, what are you?

NOAH: A dyke?

Now, I blame Gramps. I blame the older generations. I blame that asshole who once was a Libertarian but decided to switch and uproot his whole damn family. But I do not blame the children and the young adults. They were indoctrinated from the very start, and they never knew any better.

When that kid got hit by the drink... it was sad. It's not this kid's fault what happened to him.

But the older ones...I hold them responsible for twisting the Bible into their own thing to fit their need to hate people.

And, while they do have the right to do this (first amendment), it's still horrible.

Goddamn, this makes me want to cry.

Lewis Black is AWESOME

2007-04-07T23:24:00.000-07:00

Now, I watch standup all the fucking time. Comedy Central's good for standup. And I like it a lot. But I usually don't ever feel like going "AMEN! TESTIFY!" When I do, it is an extraordinary experience and puts the comedian (who is able to do it ONCE) in the Golden Hall of Fucking Fame. And when people get close to making me have that moment, they're still in the Golden Hall of Fucking Fame.

Now, with Lewis Black: Black on Broadway, I got bombarded with those TESTIFY moments, one after the other. And it was AWESOME. It's sort of like dancing really hard and being insanely tired but keeping on going because the music and the party and the dancing and the ecstasy you just took are all that fucking awesome.

He gave me about fifty of those moments in an hour and a half. He has transcended the Golden Hall of Fucking Fame. There is not an element out there to capture how thoroughly awesome he is. I want to cry, that's how awesome he is.

Some of you may be saying "Now, NRP, you're just saying that because it was Secret Stash and it's 12:30 and you hardly had any dinner. You're not making any sense." No, I have things to back up my claim.

They don't know shit [about health]. Because each person's health is different. Each person has their own unique health. What's good for you will kill the person next to you. Because each person is like a snowflake.

He's absolutely right. There are vegan bodybuilders. My friend went vegan (and did so responsibly) and her nails came off. Different strokes for different folks.

And there are all these goddamn health reports. "Dark chocolate is good for you".

No, it fucking is not. Because it's chocolate. You don't eat chocolate because you want to improve your health. You eat lean white meat and spinach salads when you want to improve your health.

And eggs. My GOD. Are they good for you? In January they were. In February they were not. In March they were. And now they're not.

He's right. And that's not the only thing he said that was awesome.

"They have destroyed water."

Fuck bottled water. There are people in third world countries who drink anything if it's less thick than fucking maple syrup, and meanwhile "ooh, I don't want water unless it's slightly carbonated and quintuple-filtered and sold in an environment-killing plastic bottles."

That's enough on Lewis Black. And, no, nobody is paying me. I just was inspired tonight.

Degenerates, Degradation, and Atrocity, oh my!

2007-03-26T15:23:00.000-07:00

PURE EVIL!

So I was watching Maury Povich today because I was curious to see what the deal was with the show, and I also had nothing better to do.

I should have known. I really should have known after that South Park episode. But South Park always exaggerates things, so I thought that Maury would only be mildly offensive.

Little did I know that South Park actually toned it down.

The theme of this particular segment was "Is my man cheating on me because I'm handicapped?"

Yes, really. So they did lie detectors to see if they were lying or not, and, uh... they all lied. All the guys cheated on their one-legged sweeties.

Now, the way people in the audience were reacting, it was almost as if they were enjoying this. There were people crying and pleading and arguing on stage, and they were just sitting there as if real humans in real pain from their lives was created by God (read: Maury) for their entertainment.

Yes. Let's make people's private affairs a public matter, shall we?

And the people who watch this show and LIKE it are all like "Hahaha, lookit the stupid trailer trash they deserve their pain!"

Uh... so poor people's misery is somehow more entertaining? All right, then. You can explain that to Satan when he's boning you in the ass after you die.

Now, there is truth to the German proverb "Schadenfreude ist die schönste Freude (denn sie kommt von Herzen)" (Which means "Schadenfreude is the most superb kind of joy becase it comes from the heart"). I've laughed at Enron and straight-A students getting Bs and TVs on fire and Rush Limbaugh's hypocritical drug problem just as much as the next person.

But this is too much. Someone needs to take this motherfucker down. Someone needs to kill him.

I nominate myself. I'm off to Home Depot to buy some shovels and cement.

And maybe if it's a good killing, they'll put it on Maury on a segment titled "I killed someone who deserved it!"

Also, what the hell kind of name is "Maury Povich", anyway? A first grader could make up a better name. Mr. Asswiping Cocksucker Douche, your parents were high when they named you, so I think you have a lot of nerve exploiting people when you could just as easily have ended up on a show with a segment entitled "My parents were snorting coke when they named me!"

Talent.

2007-03-24T19:18:00.000-07:00

The fucking Pussycat Dolls, man, So six slack-cunted skanks with no talent objectifying themselves wasn't enough, was it? Now we need another ho to...fill the void?

Um, I have a better idea. No.

Remember when you were a musician because you were musically-inclined? Yeah, that actually used to happen. And your songs were remembered because they had a good melody and words with some degree of depth to them? Remember Harry Chapin?

And actors used to be famous because they were able to act. Now more people have heard of Lindsay Lohan than Indina Menzel. And, you know, Indina can actually act. I know, right? And she can also sing. And what can Lindsay do? ...Why, she can destroy herself with drugs and alcohol.

And what is with everyone knowiong about Paris Hilton? She doesn't even ostensibly do anything. I mean, aside from producing that godawful Stars are Blind song that all the radio stations seemed to want to play for several torturous months.

Now she wants to be treated like a functioning member of society? She had her chance. She doesn't have talents that go beyond the ability to stick an entire watermelon up her vagina, and she should absolutely not pretend otherwise.

And for that matter:

Dear Ron Howard,
You played a dorky ginger in a bad show from the 70's. Last time I checked, this does not make you a director. So for the sake of our sanities, cease and desist.

Goddamn, pop culture sucks.

I'm sorry to say that Ann Coulter and I have something in common...

2007-03-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

We're both mysoginist females. While I think that women should be allowed to vote and everything, I really hate all of them.

It's always concerned mothers and soccer moms. It's always women who are all sanctimonious about lookism and rape, as if it never happens to men.

Let me tell you a story I heard:
The principal of my school (a feminazi, to be sure) told us of a girl who went to our school (all-girls'), and then went on to a co-ed high school. The girl came back complaining about how the guys at the school would hang out at the foot of the stairs and make comments about the appearances of passing girls. The principal said, in a half-indignant and half-sad way, "Have you ever heard of a girl doing something like that?"

Yes, cuntface. As a matter of fact, I do believe that happens all the fucking time. Or have you just been turning a blind eye to everyting females do that's bad? Because females are all good and men are all evil.

Fuck that. When's the last time you've ever heard of a man smack-talking about someone behind their backs and then pretending that everything was cool to their face? When's the last time you've ever seen men wear tight, revealing clothes and then say, "Um, I'm up here, sexist."

I'm sorry, but I'm really just sick of women.

Important Christian Issues

2007-03-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

This shit pisses me off.

Oh, yes. So here we have a man who's for the Earth and against torture (WWJD) and these asshats are saying that he's losing focus of the "important" issues. Such as the school system's treatment of sex, gay sex, sex leading to pregnencies, premarital sex, and so on.

Hey, you guys, what do you think Jesus would do? Let lake Michigan turn dark gray and opaque? Allow people to get tortured? No, I think so, too. That's what he said in the Bible, right? To NOT respect your fellow man, to NOT act in the interest of people other than yourself, and to NOT try to improve the world we live in by any means other than to stop allowing people access to condoms and having gay people pound each other.

God-fucking-dammit.

A lovely look back on pop culture

2007-03-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

Black Eyed Peas:
2003
2006

Nelly Furtado:
2000
2006

Academy Award Winners for Best Actress:
1977
2006

I believe this speaks for itself. Is there anything that can't be ground down into a barely palatable paste? This all reminds me of a a book I read once.

Nothing is allowed to have a soul anymore in this entire fucking planet. Goddamn.

I am a tree-hugger

2007-03-15T18:23:00.000-07:00

And not only that, but I also breathe air, drink water, eat food, and live on Earth. I need resources, dammit.

Pardon me if I want those things to remain intact. Pardon me if I don't want my lungs to turn black before I'm 20 because of all the methane and God knows what else in the air. Pardon me if I don't want to have to wonder what kind of tumor my spinach will give me. Pardon me if I would prefer to have drinking water be some sort of whitish clearish color as opposed to dark brown.

"Oh, but environmentalism will impede progress of corporations". Ah, yes, corporations. God bless them and their hearts of gold. And, obviously, it is absolutely impossible to make progress of any sort without killing the environment. The only way to conserve the Earth's resources at all is to become a cave-dwelling freegan nudist.

Haven't these people heard of moderation? Is it so horrible to be able to recycle things once and a while? Would alternative fuels really kill anybody? What about public transportation? Could it possibly destroy you? Could adjusting your thermostat a few degrees make you die of hypothermia? Would it possibly kill you to try and turn off appliances you're not using?

Did I say that many of the aforementioned things would save a lot of money? Did I also mention that alternative fuels would alleviate oil dependency? And, you know, we're sort of dependent on Middle East oil, which is why you have to pay three bucks a gallon for regular?

Did I mention that there's this school of thought that says that we should try to conserve what we can of Earth but it's stupid to think we can live without leaving a trace? I know, right?

But no. No no no. This is absolutely unacceptable because...well, just because. Our corporations are apparently all-important. And it never occured to anyone that these corporations would need some resources to still, um, do what they're doing. I believe that point was very well outlined in The Lorax.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I admit it. I am a tree-hugger.

GITMO

2007-03-12T18:06:00.000-07:00

Hey, does anyone remember when America was about humane treatment? Remember when people seemed to adhere to this crazy idea that torture was BAD? Does anyone remember when people cared about Habeas Corpus?

No? Oh, right, that seemed like such a long time ago.

Let's discuss torture:
If you are being tortured, you want it to stop. And if you know there is something you can say to make it stop, you will most likely say it.

Notice that it's "what you can say to make it stop". That doens't necessarily mean it's the truth. If the torturers don't know any better, you could say anything. If I were being waterboarded, I'd admit to killing JFK.

And not only that, people get to be there violating Habeas Corpus and the right to a fair trial.

Hey, assclowns. What would you think if someone in Iraq were torturing American troops like this? I bet you'd hold the exact same stance. Because this is totally fair.

The saddest part is that this is just another day with 8 years of this shit. Everyone's become immune to outright atrocities like Scooter Libby and Whitewater and GITMO. It's all in a day's work now.

Mindfuck of the year.

Censorship "for the family"

2007-03-09T18:15:00.002-08:00

All these things have one thing in common: they have all been (attempted at being) censored at one point or another by people concerned about their "family values".

See, here's the thing: these fucking parents think that since they don't like something, it should be eliminated entirely.

Yeah, that's right. Just because YOU feel the need to trap YOUR kids in a bubble, everyone else in the planet has to remain inside that bubble as well.

You can't control the entire world based on your parenting methods. You don't spank people on the street for being out after your kid's curfew. This may surprise you, but the entire world does not stop and start at your command.

And parental overprotectiveness--WTF?

Newsflash: The actual world contains hatred, sex, passion, profanity, depth, sorrow, death, torture, pain, and disappointment. And if you try to shelter your kid from that forever and ever, your kid will be psychologically fucked. This happened to a girl I knew, where her mom protected her from everything, and she ended up sticking her hand in hydrochloric acid.

You're doing your kids wrong if you try to stunt them.

I'm not saying that kids should start watching porn, but seriously....

YA shit in general v.2, or How YA is an Example of Society

2007-03-08T21:14:00.000-08:00

The original was here.

You know what else pisses me off about this shit that's allowed to be published? This also occurs in books for children and, to a lesser extent, supposedly adult women, but I see it most prominently.

The popular characters and/or bullies are treated as completely two-dimensional characters. Now, with bullies in particular, you have this wonderful opportunity for a fleshed-out character. I mean, one would logically assume that something would lead someone to go out of their way to antagonize people, right?

Let us take a minute to analyze the typical YA popular person:
Shallow, bad grades, party-girl, rich, pretty, mean, treats everyone like absolute shit, has absolutely no redeeming qualities to her besides looks and money. And, of course, she's not that pretty, for that would impugn the beauty of the heroine. So, really, the only thing she has going for her is money.

There's an old adage that says "Money can't buy happiness". Well, whether or not that's true is debatable, but money definitely can't buy popularity. Rich people in working-or-middle class environments sometimes find themselves alienated. Also, rich people, and I know this is a shocker, can be eccentric or introverted or otherwise unlikely to be popular. Sure, it helps to be rich, but you can't become popular on wealth alone unless you start sharing it with people.

What, ultimately, makes a person popular? Charisma. But this has never ever been mentioned in any YA books. As a matter of fact, the YA antagonists are usually extraordinarily uncharismatic.

Also, why is this person going out of their way to be mean to the protagonist, anyway? I could understand some idle, passive-agressive stuff, but these people are usually going OUT of their way to do it, at no benefit to themselves. Why? These people obviously have issues.

Christ said to love thine enemy. And then Judas Iscariot sold His life. And so recommenced the age of "assuming that thine enemy is subhuman."

Because that's what people do. They assume that their enemy's minds are pure evil and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Fuck this. How do you expect to make anything right if you don't understand it?

Oh, but that's right, the whole world has to lay itself at your feet and bend to your every whim.

Goddamn.

Anna Nicole Smith

2007-03-06T21:24:00.000-08:00

You know what, media? She's dead. And we know that. I, for one, haven't been in a coma recently, and therefore have seen the rest of your coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death. All two weeks of it.

I'm sure that's what she would have wanted. To be disgraced on national media, have details of her private life revealed to the entire country, and have the news probing into things about her baby's father that are entirely her personal business. I'm sure she would have wanted everyone to hear that she have an 11-year-old a lap dance, because that was quite clearly her proudest moment. I'm sure she would have loved to have everyone hear about her drug addictions and the turmoil she faced in her life with her son. I'm sure she would have wanted everyone to subtly mock her (while pretending to pay their respects) with boob shots that make her look like a five-dollar whore rolling on the side.

So not only does this disrespect her and all her loved ones, but it also disrespects, um, everyone else that deserves airtime. How many people have died in Iraq and Darfur during these weeks of coverage?

How many were reported? How many were given more time than the scroll-across-the-bottom headlines?

Yeah. "We need to take time off from telling the people things that they actually would find useful to know to disrespect the memory of a late B-list celebrity."

The media in general is fucked. It has all this fucking bias that no one pays attention to. "Oh, it has a liberal bias so we have to start Fucks News." But, meanwhile, the media has taken a turn for the worse that everyone seems to treat as a given.

The news media no longer exists to inform. It exists to get people to watch. And they use a variety of tactics:
-"Everything is out to kill you! More on this at 11! Or you could just watch The Simpsons and not know how to protect yourself against certain death. Your choice." (Ex/ Anthrax)
-"Watch us! We have the story before everyone else!" (Ex/ 2000 Elections)
-"Watch us! We're fun! We're not boring!" (Ex/ NASA Astronaut/Diaper/Drive 900 miles)

Among others. And all this brings us to one conclusion:
The Media exists to sell itself.

The media should value itself over a cheap soap opera. Would you have as much respect for the Food Network if it had Rachael Ray taking five-minutes from preparing her food to mudwrestle a prostitute so that the Food Network could attract a male audience?

No.

The media can control anything. If it wanted to, it could bring this entire country to its knees. It could have made everyone vote for Nixon again if it wanted to. It's the controlling force of the nation. It has so much power, and with great power comes great responsibility. And, obviously, these people are full-grown, reasonably well-educated adults in the media.

So, of course, the media has to make itself into a fucking game. The dominating force of our country is a whore. Congratu-fucking-lations.

I'M MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!

(I apologize for my triteness, but no media rant is complete without that.)

Thank you, God

2007-03-04T23:09:00.000-08:00

It's about fucking time.

It's nice to see that one-tenth of states in the whole nation aren't afraid to be told that they're tree-huggers who are following "fallacious" science, but it's not enough. It's been pretty much established as a fact that there is global warming. "Oh, but we may not be causing it, so lets keep driving our stretch Hummers with all that room that no one could ever possibly need." What these mofos don't seem to realize is that reducing carbon emissions is beneficial to pretty much everyone, with or without global warming. But no. Since there is one graph from 1990 that seems to show that this is a somewhat natural, we get to keep burning up our foreign oil because we're too lazy to walk a block to Walgreen's.

I'll save my rant on environmentalism and climate change for later. For now, I'm thankful that something is being done and that a few people in this country are smart enough to look past parties and try to help the only place we've ever called our home.

Diets

2007-03-04T20:51:00.000-08:00

If there is a God, this asscrack is burning in Hell, and all the people he helped to get heart attacks and become weak as overcooked noodles are jacking off on his flaming, shit-covered body.

That douche is a shining example of everything that is wrong with American society. It used to be that people would be thin by exercising and eating a balanced diet.

Now that has the entire country collectively shitting bricks. That is the enemy. That causes obesity. That can have a big, burly man screaming like a little girl, and it's all because of Dr. Robert "Cocksucker" Atkins.

He comes along with this new diet where you can eat all the red meat and grease and trans fats that you like as long as you don't eat any carbohydrates, and everyone latches on to it.

This is a prime example of people being obsessed not with how something is, but rather how it looks. A quick lesson in 4th grade level biology: proteins are good for making enzymes and new cells. They are necessary to do such, as a matter of fact. Carbohydrates, however, give us energy to do everything, including making the aforementioned enzymes. Without carbohydrates, the body begins to devour itself for energy. Not only that, but after a while it goes on starvation mode, thereby slowing down your metabolism.

Does that sound remotely healthy to you? It shouldn't, because it's not healthy in the slightest.

"BUT I DON'T CARE IF IT'S HEALTHY! I DON'T CARE IF I'M VIRTUALLY STARVING MYSELF! I DON'T CARE IF I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO TAKE A SHIT WITHOUT ENDURING UNBEARABLE PAIN EVER AGAIN! I DON'T CARE IF I'LL LOSE MUSCLE MASS! I DON'T CARE IF I'LL BE SO WEAK THAT I WON'T BE ABLE TO RUN ANY FASTER THAN THREE MILES AN HOUR EVER AGAIN. I DON'T CARE IF I'LL GAIN BACK DOUBLE WHAT I LOST IF I START EATING LIKE A NORMAL PERSON PERSON AGAIN. I ONLY WANT TO BE THIN."

Oh, is that how it is? Being thin is all-important, and it doesn't matter how many heart attacks you have in the process? Fine. We'll see how important being thin is when you're meeting your maker before you turn 40.

We've reached a point in our society where people are now encouraged to think that physical beauty is more important than life span. This will not stand. Yeah, I agree that you should be taking care of yourself. But when I looked last, "taking care of yourself" meant willpower, balance, and exercise. Now, with this new diet willpower is utterly meaningless, balance is discouraged, and exercise is impossible since you have so little stamina that you'd pass out if you tried to get on a treadmill. "Taking care of yourself" does not involve overindulging on unhealthy crap so long as you don't gain any weight.

And this Atkins diet is affecting people even when they're not on it. The first thing people think when on diets is not "exercise more" and "balance my shit". It's "less carbs". It's hard to burn calories with no energy to do it, fuckwits.

This asshattery needs to be stopped. Dieting is not only about being thin, it's also about being healthy and having energy. And if people were to look past image (goddammit), maybe they'd see that.

The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus

2007-03-04T15:25:00.000-08:00

For your consideration:

That's a link, people.

Twilight and YA in General

2007-03-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

I want to find the spooge-guzzling cunt that wrote this drivel and use a red-hot machete to slice her a new buttcrack.

If you want a brief synopsis of the plot, here it goes. But be warend, it will turn your stomach.

From the School Library Journal:

Headstrong, sun-loving, 17-year-old Bella declines her mom's invitation to move to Florida, and instead reluctantly opts to move to her dad's cabin in the dreary, rainy town of Forks, WA. She becomes intrigued with Edward Cullen, a distant, stylish, and disarmingly handsome senior, who is also a vampire. When he reveals that his specific clan hunts wildlife instead of humans, Bella deduces that she is safe from his blood-sucking instincts and therefore free to fall hopelessly in love with him. The feeling is mutual, and the resulting volatile romance smolders as they attempt to hide Edward's identity from her family and the rest of the school. Meyer adds an eerie new twist to the mismatched, star-crossed lovers theme: predator falls for prey, human falls for vampire. This tension strips away any pretense readers may have about the everyday teen romance novel, and kissing, touching, and talking take on an entirely new meaning when one small mistake could be life-threatening. Bella and Edward's struggle to make their relationship work becomes a struggle for survival, especially when vampires from an outside clan infiltrate the Cullen territory and head straight for her. As a result, the novel's danger-factor skyrockets as the excitement of secret love and hushed affection morphs into a terrifying race to stay alive. Realistic, subtle, succinct, and easy to follow, Twilight will have readers dying to sink their teeth into it.

Realism, subtleness, succintness? Is that the sound I hear coming from that book? Really? Because I could have sworn that was the sound of this plot being done a million times before by lonely-ass acne-scarred 12-year-old girls across the entire fucking Western hemisphere.

But for those 12-year-olds, it's fine for them to do that. They don't know any better, and they're using their stories to release the tensions of Bobby Jones not thinking that they're cute.

But, seriously. Look at this:

That is the face and atrocious haircut of a full-grown adult woman. With a suburban name like "Stephanie Meyer", she almost certainly went to college. She's also seen at least 30 years or so of life. And during those thirty years, she probably experienced some shit. Normal thirty-year-olds have experienced pain, passion, love, hatred, fear, etc. They know the ropes of life. Someone they know has probably died. They've probably witnessed betrayal and other shit like that.

So how on Earth does a thirty-year-old come up with this? How could a nineteen-year-old come up with this? Reading this shit, one might have thought that Meyer spent her entire life in one room, not knowing anyone, warching teen dramas on the WB.

I seriously think that you'd have to be lobotomized to write this shit. There's no possible way that any actual person over the age of fifteen would be able to do this without clawing their eyes out, with the possible exception of Paris Hilton.

So we have the main character, Isabella "This-is-Hella". HURHURI'MSOWITTY. Anyway, she's the very typical YA heroine: Better Than You (TM). She's prettier than you and supposedly smarter than you and more guys like her than you. Asd a matter of fact, her life is way more perfect than yours could ever aspire to be. And yet you're supposed to empathize with her anyway because she bitches all the time about the Token Flaw In Her Life. In this case, it's divorce and moving to a new town. OMGWTFNOBODY'SEVERWRITTENYAABOUTTHATLOLOLOLOLOLZ. And then, of course, the Totally Hot Enigmatic Mysterious Guy With A Secret (TM) falls for her. She finds out the secret, but she loves him anyway and they continue with their Forbiddon Lurve (TM).

Now, some of you may be saying that this all sounds like sour grapes, but I'm going to get to the point of this rant.

Twilight is not the only abortion of a marginally-tolerable book out there, but it's a very good example and I've been hearing far too much hype about it.

It didn't have to be like this. Just because the target audience is in middle school doesn't mean that the books have to have the intellectual level of a rotten banana.

There was one YA book that I liked. It was called Rx. It had a moral. It had personal growth. All the good stuff that makes a book worth reading. And yet it was still YA. See, the thing of it is, just because a book is meant for children doesn't mean that the characters aren't allowed to have personalities. And that there can't be internal conflict or a moral.

This is what happens. These ass pirates at publishing companies accept about 5,000 pieces of garbage for every YA book of reasonable quality. Then they hype crap like Twilight and Eragon so that at small bookstores those are the only things available.

And then when some 7th grader walks in to a Barnes and Noble, she will head to the YA section because she's meant to. She will see shelf after shelf stacked with nothing but crappy books. She wants a book so she will buy one. And then, after buying some crap like Gossip Girl, she'll be told by all the reviews and her friends and teen magazines and shit that this is the kind of thing that she should be reading. She will think that reading story after story about beautiful, interchangeable rich kids from Manhattan being degenerates is something she should be doing.

This shit is supposed to be "cool". This stuff is being pushed onto people until they grow older, at which point they read everything described as "catty" and given four stars by Us Magazine, the great connoisseurs of fine literature, and those seventh graders grow up to become this. They'll read the same YA with more sex in it, and they'll watch plastic surgery shows. And then the pretentious pricks ask what the hell happened to society to make women do that.

It's requiring all the self control I have not to go to the nearest bookstore and open fire on the YA section.

Oh, man, Switzerland....

2007-03-04T11:19:00.000-08:00

And on the lighter side of the news....

They said that Lichtenstein was nice about it, but I'm sure that they were laughing their asses off.

And in other news, I somehow got the URL for news from the Caucasus.

Wow...

2007-03-03T23:57:00.000-08:00

So it's apparently necessary to satirize satire now. And here I thought that Fox News couldn't get any stupider than it already was.

Seriously, why? South Park makes fun of environmentalism all the time, and I support environmentalism. But South Park is still an incredibly funny show, and I can learn to laugh at it even though I disagree with it. Also, I happen to watch Joe Scarbrough's show, even though he's a Republican. He makes a lot of sense and I like the show.

But no. NO. Over at Fox News, such a thing does not exist. Over at Fox News, they had to crap their red-white-and-blue underwear that shows such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report not only had the audacity to exist, but also to be funny.

And it calls itself a "show for the rest of us". Yeah, right. This "liberal elite" bullshit. Let's take a minute to adress this.

Look at that map. Please note how most of the counties are purplish. Not only that, but the bluest counties in Texas are by the Rio Grande. And for you dumbasses who can't figure out what that means, this indicates that minorities (Mexicanos, anyway) tend to vote more liberal. Same with Florida. While the purpleness in the wang part is also caused in part by Jewish grannies, the Cubans probably factor into it significantly. Also, acknowledge the very blue strip of counties in the south, spanning from Louisiana to west Georgia. Also take a moment to look at the bluish purple counties in Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. There are also several purplish blue counties in Colorado, and some very blue counties in northern New Mexico.

This, to me, seems to indicate that liberal elitism is the kind of elitism where everyone can join them. What kind of pussy elitism is that?

And, while the liberal elitists are bowing down before golden statues of Alec Baldwin, the down-to-Earth folks at Fox News are showing how in touch with average Americans they are by pushing for more tax cuts for the rich and more privatization. You know, I totally understand how making the rich at no benefit to anyone else is "reaching the average American". Because, honestly, who doesn't want to have to be unable to put food on the table so that Mr. Suave can afford his third yacht thanks to lower taxes? What poor person DOESN'T want their children unable to succeed no matter how deserving they are because public schools are getting no funding and might be handed over to be run by some guy who owns a credit card company? I mean, isn't that supposed to be the American Dream?

Now that I've gone off on my mini-rant about the whole liberal elite stuff, let me talk about Half Hour News Hour again.

They apparently took it upon themselves to make fun of something that makes fun of something (....?), and they don't even create that funny of a product. For example, they came up with such cutting-edge humor as making fun of the over-tolerance of the ACLU (which has never been done before), making fun of the short amount of time Obama spent in the Senate (OMGNOWAI).

What the hell do these people have against humor? When Stephen Colbert went on the ORLY FACTOR, Billy-boy spent the next segment trying to analyze the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, refusing to accept the slightest possibility that people like the show because it's funny, but instead went for the obvious solutions of "the people who watch it are stoned". That's Occam's Razor right there.

Fuck Fox News in general. "Fair and Balanced". Yeah, right. I'm sorry, but I wouldn't call Fox News Fair and Balanced, in the same way that I would not expect a see-saw with seventeen people on one side, no one on the other side, and one extremely light, frail person sitting on the center to be any fun whatsoever.

Fox news is always talking about liberal bias in the media. The media is not perfect. It's sensationalist (Y2K, MySpace, killer bee scare, Anthrax scare, etc. ), and it seems to want to entertain the public rather than inform them (devoting all their time to that story about the astronaut who drove across the country in a diaper being a prime example), and it has their priorities out of order (as well as on Anna Nicole Smith's death, spending seveal months talking about the Laci Peterson case, Terry Schiavo). But, for all its flaws, it does try to tell the truth, and yet Fox News is always talking about the Liberal Media.

Listen, assholes. The mainstream media is way, way, way less biased than you guys are. Having Hannity scream at Colmes whenever he (Colmes) meekly attempts to get a word in edgewise (which is usually a word of assent to someting Hannity said, by the way), is not "Fair and Balanced". Having Ann Coulter rant on and on about vague topics is neither fair nor balanced. And nothing to do with BILL ORLY is fair or balanced. The "liberal media" such as MSNBC tries to be fair (Scarbrough and Michelle Malkin are both on that particular channel)

And why was this even started, anyway? "OH MY GOD, NO ONE'S GIVEN A VOICE TO RICH WHITE MALES! WE NEED TO GIVE THESE POOR PEOPLE A VOICE RIGHT NOW!"

Hey, Fox News, let's have a brief introduction to how newpapers : Most of the articles are as true as they can get them. Then they have a few news analyses, an editorial page, and an op-ed page.

You cannot claim to be Fair and Balanced if your newspaper is entirely editorial pages.

And then people who watch Fox News are always going on about how they're not buying in to everything the media tells them.

Yeah, because COUNTERCULTURE IS ALWAYS 100% RIGHT! There is a time and place for counterculture stuff. Music, movies, art, nightclubs, bars, and clothing are all perfectly fine times for "underground". But I, for one, would not trust an emergency room that claims to be counterculture and nonconformist. Call me a mindless drone, but I'd go for the regular hospital.

And another thing, by watching Fox News and talking about the Liberal Media, you are, in fact, doing exactly what your media is telling you.

Fuck it, man. Just fuck it.

Requiem for 95.7

2007-03-03T13:12:00.000-08:00

The last oldies station in the entire city has been bought out by these assholes from L.A. who want to pretend they're from here but fail miserably at using our slang.

"The" 8-80. Hahahaha. That's almost as good as when the L.A. assholes who bought out the other oldies station (Oh 99.7, We Hardly Knew Ye) talked about "Solano" County.

And now they're all, "We're not like the Los Angeles people who bought the sellout stations. Just remember that as you go down 'The' 8-80. Doesn't this extremely pathetic attempt at sounding like a San Franciscan PROVE that we're one of you and definitely NOT from L.A? No? Okay, then I love to get my ass rammed. NOW we're one of you. Right? Right?"

And if you're not from Northern California, you have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about.

At Margie and anyone like her

2007-02-20T20:14:00.000-08:00

So this one blood-belching vagina in my school said that she liked being incarcerated at YI. Which would be fine except for the part where she had to snowshoe four miles with a knee that didn't work. And so I asked her how the hell she was enjoying it, and she said it was because she hated her parents so much. Suspecting that her parents were abusing her, I sympathetically asked her why. And she proceeded to go on about how her parents had their priorities wrong. They were buying a house that was too big, her mom kept telling her not to talk back (while also encouraging her to be "open" with her, she was an accident, and so on.

Hey, I have a suggestion! Why don't you stick a welding torch up your vagina, you brick-fucking cunt? What is this shit? Even at a private goddamn fucking school the majority of people have it WAY WORSE than that. You want me to pity you, you whiny bag of flaming shit? Okay, I feel so bad for you that your parents have a big house. I feel so bad because your parents have money. And I'm pissing myself pitying you because your parents have "their priorities mixed up". And what, exactly, are their priorities? The education of you and your siblings. Raising you properly. Providing enough so that you can all live comfortably. Helping you pursue your passions. Pushing you to succeed in life. Now, is it just me or are those admirable priorities? No, obviously not. You are, after all, the all-knowing fucking teenager and you should decide that your parents should have-- what priorities? Pardon me if I fear to imagine your ideal parental priorities.

And her mother being ambiguous about her parenting! Oh, Lordy! How terrible! That's so horrible that Bono should start raising money for you and take his focus away from the starving children of the world you poor, poor thing. And it's not even your mom's fault because she was brought up in Guyana where you said nothing to your parents but then moved to America with all the "be open with your parents" ideas and got confused. But it's absolutely inexcusable!

Which brings me to the larger part of this rant: listen up, you spoiled white (and yes, Margie, you fucking Twinkie, you're WHITE) brats. You're ALL whining about how "your parents don't understand" and how YOU KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERYTHING and whatnot. First of all, your parents understand better than you'd think. Maybe that argument would be applicable if this were the early 70's and your parents were brought up in a time where the biggest problem in schools was rampant gum-chewing and you're being faced with death threats in the girls' bathroom, but this just so happens to be the 21st century. Your parents have seen it all. Hell, my dad went to a Catholic high school and he was also a hippie. But that's not the issue, here. No, the issue is that in most of your cases (it should go without saying that I'm excluding outright abuse or neglect or otherwise genuinely atrocious parenting, but I'm sure some douches would point that shit out) your parents are, in fact, trying to raise you right. They care about you, and they're trying to understand. But here's the real kicker: your parents are human. You may now slap me for my obviousness. But, seriously, as humans, they make mistakes. They have flaws. Your parents are not going to be perfect individuals just because everything in your life has to be amazingly perfect because nothing's ever good enough.

My parents have tons of flaws. Their priorities are not how something is but how it looks. My father has anger management problems. My mother allows herself to submit to the will of all her latest womancrushes, for better or for worse. But you know what? I love and respect them, anyway. See, I adhere to this truly novel idea that not everything in life has to be perfect. I know, I know. Isn't that SUCH A WEIRD CONCEPT? Next you'll be saying I'm going to get a job as opposed to begging daddy for a car.

Oh, and stop whining. Seriously. NOTHING in your life is hard. You can all quit pretending to be bisexual. Would I allow myself to be fucked by another girl? Yes. Am I bisexual? No. Because I have only been attracted to one person of the same sex my entire life, whereas I have been attracted to countless males. Yes, I suppose I am slightly bisexual, but that doesn't mean I'm going to make a big persecution complex out of it.

I don't particularly have anything against you if your life is absolute smooth sailing. Quite the contrary; I'd sort of pity you. But if your life isn't really that bad, you need to accept that. And if you consider yourself oppressed by The Man in any way, or if you consider your life "hard", allow me to blind you by sticking a machete in your eye. Then you'll have something to complain about.

You fucking cunts.

SIDE NOTE: It appears that the images from my dissection aren't in operation. I'll probably eventually get around to fixing that.

Chick Tract Dissection

2007-01-31T20:16:00.000-08:00

This one is about "OMG JESUS MUST BE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS!"

What the hell is that? It's taken them that long to cope with homework? Usually kids only do stuff like that if the teacher's done something particularly bitchy recently. And WTF is with them slashing the tires in front of the teacher? Is anybody that stupid?

And what the hell, a "War Zone" school has a WASPtacular name like "Westmont"? Since when are there ghetto high schools in fucking Connecticut?

My experience is that the worst schools are named after Presidents or other somewhat famous people. E. G. Galileo, Hoover, Lincoln, Washington

NOT Westmont.

They think they'd win a battle against their teacher? They think they'd be trusted over someone with a college education? They, who are known as delinquents? Even if their teacher had a record as a liar and they were top students, she's be trusted over them. Excuse me while I laugh hysterically.

"Hi, I'm scared of this school and everything in it, so I'm just going to walk up to some disdainful-looking stranger and hope she doesn't bash my head in with her Calculus book." Wow.

Also, note the smorgasboard of sinners. We have someone in an ambulance, a public display of affection, a girl being stangled, some kid smoking a joint, some kind of sale going on, and a gang rag on that one kid's head.

"There are a lot of scary kids here in Westmont, Connecticut. Why, we have a few toughs here who are working class! And some Catholics! And a few honor students who trade perscription drugs! It's a jungle"

Moose? Moose? What the hell kind of nickname is that? Yeah, I'm pissing myself because of some kid named Moose. There are kids at parochial schools with scarier nicknames than that.

Also, Moose calls his subordinates "snakes"? How does that make any sense? Shouldn't he be calling them "reindeer" or something?

And in the second panel, it looks like Chick is aiming for more sinner smorgasboards, but instead it looks like two kids having an interpretive dance competition on their cafeteria tables.

Man, I can only imagine how many times Mr. Chick must have been beaten up in his high school days, because this Moose character is absolutely ridiculous.

He takes the Gospel tracts? Just because they belong to somebody else? Bully=/=kleptomaniac. Any real self-respecting bully, upon hearing about gospel tracts, would go "HA! What a fag!" And leave them there.

I really don't like his bully. I must resist the urge to rant about him.

Note the stacks of paperwork on the Principal's desk, indicating that he's SO BURDENED WITH PROBLEMS THAT...Oh, Lordy.

What the hell are the pictures on the wall? We have some sort of gang-member alumnus and a two-headed dog.

That principal is awfully nervous. He looks like he's on crak.

And they respect a guy who's less book smart than they are? Even in drug circles they have a slight respect for the literate (see Freakonomics). Also, I mean, wouldn't the kid who could read be able to claim leadership because he can, you know, read? If any of them couldn't read, it'd probably be the inferiors. See, I love how Chick thinks that just because they're teenaged bullies, the rules of sociology don't really apply.

I love that right panel. So we have some sort of bald alien dude with a floppy nose, then to the left Mr, Crackhead Principal, and then a... what the hell ethnicity is that? Is that like a Hispanic NBA player with a Jewish nose and a hollowed-out 12-inch television for a skull?

What the hell is wrong with Indignant Father's mouth? It looks like he's some sort of fish. And there's a ninja behind Indignant Mother.

No, it is not a "literal war zone". A literal war zone would involve millitary combat. Slamming people against lockers and slashing tires doesn't count as military combat, I'm sorry to say.

Wow. Mr. Jittery Principal certainly smoked a lot of crack before this meeting.

And what the hell is with the parents acting like children? They're adults. Jesus Christ.

It looks like Moose was just stabbed in the heart. What's he doing standing upright?

*GASP* The LORD? WOOOOOOOOW.

Ha, I can just imagine how that prayer went:
"Dear Lord, There's this kid named Moose in my school who beats me up all the time! He took away my tracts! I hate him so much! I really, really hope he stops beating me up! Once, I had to stay home from school for a day because he punched me in the stomach so hard! So, to repeat: please make him stop! Please, Lord! Ohbythewaycanyousavehimtookthx Amen."

Now this is really pissing me off. "FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE, I'M AFRAID!"

Chick knows nothing about bullies. NADA. He is absolutely no better than those stupid tweenage girls who write stories that involve EVIL popular people because she herself was picked on by a popular person, although to nowhere near the same extent.

I know what beiing a bully is like, and let me tell you, it's not being fearless. Being a bully means living in a constant state of fear, rage, and denial. And you most likely bully people because you're so afraid of yourself that you have to take it out on other people. Rage begets fear and vice versa. Didn't it ever occur to Jack Chick that there might be a reason that bullies beat other people up all the time? It's not because they're possessed by Satan. It's because they hate their lives and themselves, they're afraid of what they're turning into, and they don't want to show weakness. So they'd cover it up by inspiring fear in others. Because then it lets them realize that they're not the only ones who are weak. The only way to deal with fear is to turn it into rage or an abhorrance of something. In most bullies' cases, it's weakness. They don't want to be weak. And when they make other people feel weak, they'll feel stronger in comparison. And, deep down inside, they know that they're being weaker than their victims and they know that this means that they won't amount to much, but they still have to cover it up. They hate themselves but they can't stand hating themselves, so they hate other people.

If Moose was afraid of nothing, he wouldn't be a bully. Plain and simple.

If "Loving thine enemy" means "assuming that every sin they commit has no psychological backing other than blatant sadism", then Jesus was really, really bad at picking the right words.

What kind of bully admits their fear to someone who they victimized? Doesn't it occur to him that the victim would really get off on that?

Wow, instaconversion. Because, of course, a Big, Tough Bully (TM) would totally want to follow all someone else's rules.

God loved us so much that he sent a guy to die for our sins?

I love my mom. So should I send a guy who's about to die to her doorstep because I love her so much?

I'm way too lazy to go through this whole "being saved" thing, so let's just say it's the same old bullshit: some gullible sinner gets down on his knees and starts pleasing God (feeling His sweet salvation all over his face).

Wow. So they couldn't have gotten saved when they were reading the tracts to him?

Moose and the Snakes (giggle) were SINGLEHANDEDLY responsible for all the crime? Why didn't they just kick them out?

MORAL OF THE STORY: there needs to be God in public schools. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be saved, but whatever.

BLAH.

There's more, but you can imagine "DRUG USE IS DOWN! GRADES ARE UP!"

Chick=major league asshole.

The Blasphemy Challenge

2007-01-21T19:02:00.000-08:00

Some of us have heard about this. There have been many mixed responses to it.

My personal response was something along the lines of, "FUUUUUUCK ME!"

I have seen some bullcrap on the internet before, but this is a valid contender for the most unadulterated bullcrap ever.

What the hell did the people who started this shit expect to accomplish with it? Honestly. It's not going to turn any more people atheist, it's not going to make people any more accepting of atheists, it's not going to do anything except piss people off.

The people who are doing it seem to be under the impression that they're being badass and sticking it to the man. Yeah, that's really badass, using the anonymity of the internet as a tool to help you insult Christians on a level that would make most kindergarteners roll their eyes. And, no, they are not sticking it to anybody. Sticking it to the man would involve doing or saying something that has seldom been said or done before. And it may surprise you, but most Christians are well aware of what their place is on the blogosphere hierarchy. "LOLZ YOU MEEN THAT IF EVERYBODY ON THE GODAM INTERNETZ IS OBNOXIOUS TO XTIANS THAN THEYLL REALIZE THAT WE DONT LIKE THEM? OMGWTF." You are not the first goddamn person to go around assholishly trumpeting your atheism on the internet. No, it is not ballsy to proclaiming it anonymously. Ballsy would be doing it in the middle of an Evangelical congregation in the middle of the Bible Belt. No one can shoot you online.

And another thing. Most people seem to be all "OH, BUT THE CHRISTIANS ARE OPPRESSING US, AND WE'RE JUST RETALIATING!" Yeah, "retaliating". You honestly think it's retaliating to attack them in a place that they'd never in a million years go to, anyway? That's like trying to kill a man in New Jersy by firing a gun in Oregon.

Which brings me to my next point: what the hell is this supposed to even do? Well, I'll tell you what it doesn't do. It doesn't help the atheist cause in any way whatsoever. Let's just say you have some agnostic, or some religious person who's beginning to doubt their upbringing. So they, possibly, want to become atheist. But what do you think the first thing that will come to their mind regarding atheists will be? "A bunch of obnoxious teenagers who were Satanists last year and Wiccans the year before that"? Is that really the idea you want to send to people? And it's not just the people "converting" (if you will). It's also those with religions. You all claim to be doing this because of "persecution of religion (or lack thereof)". And so apparently it's going to help alleviate "religious" persecution by further perpetuating the stereotype that atheists are cocky and obnoxious? Fuck that.

To put it in simple terms, doing this shit is rude. Openly mocking somebody else's beliefs is, in fact, rude. "But" you may be saying "they mock our beliefs all the time, so it's only fair that we should be able to do it to them!" How old are you, four? "He started it, so I only teased him back! Nyeah nyeah nyeah!"

And it's not even that profound. It's not like it's the "Disprove Biblical Inerrancy and the concept of God" challenge. It's not the "Make a speech about the rights of nonbelievers" challenge. It's not the "Use logic to explain to religious people not to force their beliefs on the governement or others" challenge. No. The challenge doesn't ask you to do something beneficial to anyone. All the challenge asks you do to is deny the existence of the Holy Ghost. Good for you. Want a fucking cookie? You're not going to convert anybody.You're not actually disproving anything. You're just saying "this is my belief" without elaborating or supporting it at all. Hey, wait a minute, haven't some other types of people done that? But who, oh, who, could it have been who did that? Why, could it posssibly have been the people you hate?

And some people are saying that "It's not about putting down Christians, it's about standing up for atheists!" Bullshit. If it weren't about Christianity, why would you be doing something that is only forbidden in Christianity? If it's only about atheism, shouldn't you also be trying to slam YHWH or Allah or Ganesh? Wouldn't it just make more sense to slam the idea of God or a higher power in general?

If you're atheist, good for you. You have every right to be atheist. But that doesn't place you at some sort of plane above the religious people. And if you think so, you're absolutely no better than the people you were claiming to avoid. Being an elitist prick and treating other people as beneath you based solely on their beliefs sucks, no matter where you are. And, no, don't give me that crap about "but they base it on blind faith, and I'm basing it on science!" First an foremost, the concept of the Holy Ghost is pretty much unable to be disproven. So denying its existence is also based on faith, but a sort of anti-faith. And treating people as inferiors and mocking their beliefs, no matter what the context, is rude. And, in this case, absolutely pointless. Atheism is a belief. You have a right to it. But that's the thing. By doing this crap, you're sinking down to their level, and then sinking even lower by pretending that you're smarter than them. You didn't like it when they did it to you, so why the hell do you expect them to like it when you do it to them? So, what, you avoid Christianity only to happily oblige to somebody else's intolerance? What kind of hypocritical shit is that? You're not above the, so stop fuckng acting like it.

-This has been a message from NRP, an irritated agnostic.

There is, in fact, a God

2007-01-21T11:25:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had one of those days where you have a giganting, bulging ball of stress or anger at the base of your neck? I know I have.

And what do I do when I have my throbbing stress ball?

I play a computer game.

But not just any computer game. Oh, no. I play a computer game where you torture things for the sake of torturing them.

Such as this one.

Oh, boy. There is absolutely nothing better than to kill things without killing anybody. And, if you wish, you can imagine all those little stick figures are your asshole teachers or parents or bosses or comrades or coworkers or what have you.

God/Allah/YHWH/Shiva/FSM was working through the fine people who designed these games. Screw the Bible, this kind of thing is truly divinely inspired. For no matter what Scripture you turn to, it will always say that God is Loving.

And what better act of love than to work through man to help relieve the stress of all mankind?

And if this wasn't divinely inspired, then these people are simply the greatest people ever, so they should be worshipped. Or, no, what's it called, how Catholics view Mary and the Saints? Venerated. They should be venerated.

So I guess the moral of the story is that even if there isn't a God, there are some pretty awesome people out there.

Rant about homophobia

2007-01-20T22:40:00.000-08:00

So apparently this asshole thinks he can convert just about anyone against homosexuality by citing sources from the Bible. His religious views are "proven" in his tracts by having some fundie cite passages from the Bible, which immediately gets everyone on their knees worshipping Jesus. The problem with that is that in order for the whole "citing Bible passages as means of conversion" thing to work, the people being converted would already have to believe in Biblical inerrancy. Which, therefore, would render the conversion sort of redundant. Oh, and in a few of them (mostly the evolution and "Catholic conspiracy that runs everything not Fundamentalist Christian" ones), he cites some extremely unreliable sources. Many of his tracts will feature someone saying something like this: "ALL MURDERS THAT HAVE EVER TAKEN PLACE ARE A CATHOLIC CONSPIRACY, BECAUSE THE CATHOLICS WANT POWER OVER YOU!"* *For more information, read Judas McFundie's book "Catholics are Sodomizing, De Facto Devil Worshipping, Baby Raping Heretics", an absolutely impartial collection of unbiased facts, available from Chick Publications."

This particular tract was dissected (and excellently, I might add) here, but I still want to rant about it. Or, rather, what it stands for.

Because this is the kind of shit I've seriously had it up to here with. I know a few people who don't believe in gay marriage, and, while I don't agree with them, I can generally tolerate that.

This fundie bullshit that activates intolerance and bigotry, however, simply will not do.

Just because your Holy Book says that buttfucking is a sin doesn't mean you get to go around treating people different than you like shit. I believe that Surah 109 wins this argument. (And, yes, I do realize that it's the Qu'ran and not the Bible, but it's still an awesome passage).

Seriously, Jesus' most important message was to love thy neighbor. Did Jesus necessarily agree with every single belief that the people who came to Him for help had? Probably not. That didn't stop Him from healing them, did it? And what about the story of the Good Samaritan? Weren't the Samaritans considered beneath everybody else, too? Or did I miss a story of Jesus's?

"Yea, and My Follower did stop at the sight of a man bleeding on the ground. And yea did My follower stop to helpeth him up, but then the stanger did sayeth, 'I thanketh thee, for thou art kind. Homophobes did beateth me up, for I know men as most men know women.' And My follower did calleth the man on the ground a biter of pillows and a packer of fudge, and then My follower did spend the duration of his Earthly life protesting the man's existence, preventething him from gaining employment, and shunning him in My name, as he should, for the man had been a fag."John 3:11

As far as I know, Jesus didn't teach anything of the sort. So what the hell is with all these goddamn people going around calling people "faggots", protesting their employment at Wal-Mart, sending them to anti-gay camp, and kicking them out of their house for being gay? Well, apparently if your holy book says it about three times in various ways open to interpretation, you're allowed to violate all concepts of morality in order to uphold it, right? It's absolutely okay to violate somebody else's rights if you think something they're doing that doesn't harm anybody else is wrong, because we all know that it's your will is superior to their will because you're Christian and they're amoral queers.

Fuck that. THEY'RE NOT HURTING YOU! As a matter of fact, they're not hurting anyone else, either. Yeah, you can disagree with them. Yeah, you can think it's immoral. I disagree with Republicans. Does that mean I'm going to kick my kid out of my house if he turns out to be a Republican? Does that mean I'm going to protest Republicans being hired at my local souless conglomerate? Does that mean I'm going to send my kid to be indoctrinated at "anti-Republican camp"? It sure as hell doesn't. I was under the impression that this was supposed to be a free country. But now we have Rob Reiner telling where we can and can't smoke. Now we have the FCC and RIAA and MPAA telling us what we can and can't say or show. Now we have all these goddamn "concerned mothers" trying to pull anything not G-rated from existence, telling us that we can't get a goddamn break from supressing our anger all day. Now we have fundies telling us what we can and can't stick in our vaginas/stick our cocks into and when we can and can't do it and how we can and can't do it in the privacy of our own homes.

And check out an example of this anti-gay crap:

Gee whiz, Mr. Chick, does that mean that I can say any derogatory word I want if I'm cute enough? Wow, why didn't I know about this earlier? All those years of being afraid of letting the C-word slip could have been forgone as long as I batted my eyelashes and made my voice high-pitched enough.

This kid later goes on to say "but my Dad says that it's wrong!" So apparently you get to mistreat other people as long as you do it in the name of righteousness. Screw that. If someone isn't harming anybody by what they're doing, you probably shouldn't be mistreating them. And, yes, there are a few exceptions, but they are far more likely to occur in a cliche action flick than in real life. And by calling people you don't even know a derogatory word, you are, in fact, mistreating them. And it's not righteous.

And, another thing. If your Holy Book says it, make sure it's in a valid part of your Holy Book. Leviticus is a religious text on crack. And don't give me that bullshit about Biblical Inerrancy. That's absolutely not possible. For example, it started with Adam and Eve, correct? And then they had Cain and Abel, correct?

Okay, so where the hell did the next generation come from? Cain killed Abel, and they were both male anyway. Is a woman just going to spring up from the ground whenever you need one, ripe for the fucking? The movie 40-year-old Virgin wouldn't have much of a premise, would it?

And another thing: "Converting" gay people is impossible. What you actually do is you make them repress it. It's been biologically proven. So don't think that just by "showing them the light of the Lord", you can make them

Look, you're within your rights to disagree with homosexuality. That doesn't mean you get to mistreat them. Because, think about it: what's worse, violating human rights or fucking a consenting person who happens to have the same sexual organs as you?

I'll end with this controversial quote:

Rant about my goddamn potential high schools

2007-01-20T21:42:00.000-08:00

Alright, listen up, you elitist fuckwit schools:

YOU ARE NOT BETTER OR DIFFERENT FROM ALL THE OTHERS!

There, I said it. All your ideas to make your school "different" blow like a saxophone player. EVERYBODY ELSE had the idea for having 80-minute-long periods or whatever the fuck. Get over yourselves. And, no, your schools are not diverse. They are WASPtastic and affluent, just like everybody else's. No, having Jews and Asians doesn't make you diverse, I'm sorry to say. And I don't really care for "race quotas", but if you're going to be all lily-white, you should at least come to terms with that and not put your entire school in denial. No, I don't mean advertise as neon white, but just try to avoid the topic in your goddamn brochures.

US: Not showing grades until junior year is a horrible idea. It doesn't eliminate stress, it puts it off until later, and it makes it worse because when you're a junior you have no fucking clue what you were doing in 9th grade.

At LHS: A monkey could pass that test. Honestly. Stop thinking you're so elite, because you're really not. You look elite because you have about 8 times as many people as everybody else. And if you have 875 goddamn people per grade, you're by odds going to have a few alumni who win Nobel prizes or something.

At UHS: Yeah, yeah, you have better matriculation than everybody else. Fuck off, we really don't care. The people who attend your school are so snobby that I'd rather be in the company of stupider people than spend four years with you blowhards.

L-W: You stole techniques and curriculum from everybody else.

BHS: No one on the fucking PLANET wants to get out of school two hours later. Jesucristo.

And no one else besides me undertstands this rant. That's fine. I have to protect my identity and location and whatnot. For further explanation: Where I live, you either apply to your high schools or you attend one of those places that are frequently featured on the news or in statistics of the craptacular public school system.

And all these places try to advertise themselves as "ooh, look how fucking spectacular we are, we're different from everybody else (but not really), we're nonconformists (but not really), we're tolerant of people who aren't the same as us (but not really)".

Fuck that. If you're going to suck balls in a certain area, that is what is known as a "weak point". One extremely bad idea is to present that weak point as your strong point. You don't see men going out presenting their balls to everyone going, "I fucking dare you to punch them, sissy-ass, 'cause it won't hurt." No. What they ask you to punch is their abs after ten thousand sit-ups.