Shoggoth The Hell Goo

I spent four hours this morning reading a certain amazing blog, where some guy from Holland (they can't dutch this) grows a bucket of mold. It's way, way more dope than you imagine, I promise.

In other news, I felt fuckin' mellow earlier, but no longer because I have EIGHTY FIVE GEOGRAPHY QUESTIONS TO DO. Fuck this shit.

I'm Going To Make A Few Broad Generalizations Here

And they're going to be correct.

Listen up, readers. Let's stop debating how hot I am (yes, I /am/ better looking than R.D. Jr., move on) and remember something. You lot aren't quite adults. At best, I have /a/ reader who's going to college. Which is /not/ adulthood. The majority of us aren't even that close. Most of you are freshmen. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm just saying that we need to remember that we're still kids (except AJ, he's a man.)

We kids aren't supposed to be debating healthcare. Put down the pitchforks and torches and *listen*. We're 15. We should be laughing at each other's jokes and going to parties and mark should be discovering what his penis is /really/ used for. (zing! :D ) I'm well aware that it seems I'm defending ignorance here. I'm not. What I'm doing is proposing an alternate list of priorities, in which issues that affect adults (and us, admittedly, but there isn't much we can /do/ about it) are left to be debated by adults.

Look, I really have no problems with anyone who knows what they're talking about arguing a point. But that's the point. None of us know what we're talking about, and I'm honestly fine with not knowing for once.

This is getting horribly off message. Let's fix that.

What I'm trying to say in this apparently confused article is this: stop arguing. We're kids, hold on to that, and go and enjoy life. The best part of being our age is that we don't have to care about this, why should we try to? I, for one, am going to let the healthcare bill do its thing and go to someone's house to drink soda and play video games /like a kid should/.

I'm not saying you should be ignorant, I'm saying big issues shouldn't be a regular part of our lives. They should be there, they're important, but stop talking about them like it's all you have to do. I promise you, it isn't.

Look, what I'm trying to say is this: we're kids, stop worrying for a little while each day and try to remember that.

Fanboys (and a brief bit of bragging)

Or, alternatively, "Shut the F*ck Up About Your Damn Mac, Boy".

I hate a lot of things. Bigots, republicans, douchebags, my damn reappearing british accent, having to explain my damn reappearing british accent, having to tell people I'm not on drugs and waiting in lines all make the top seven.

The top seven fails, of course, to take into account the worst thing of all, because it's generally accepted in whatever side of my brain handles logic (whether it be the upside, the downside, the bedside, the blindside with Sandra Bullock, or maybe even the side that makes me such a sadistic bastard, that fanboys will always hold my number one "I hate your goddamn guts and I hope you die in a fire hanging from a razorwire noose around your balls" spot.

It's not the products they endorse. I don't give a shit (anymore) about PS3s, Macs, PCs, Xbox, Verizon, Sprint, or whatever, I think they're all groovy. It's the /way/ they endorse them. Do they talk about their good points? No. Do they detail the fun/brag about the functionality to be found in it? No. Do they bash the opposing side? Yes. Oh god, yes.

Now, Let's take a look at the last few paragraphs. Despite some language, they come off (to me, at least) as fairly well structured, coherent, and pleasing to read. This is what I aim for, as do most people in their writing (and some of us in the way they talk.)

Let's imagine what the last few bits would be like if written by a fanboy, about fanboys (forget the irony. Just imagine.)

Fanbois are the stupidest stupid fuckity fucks bcuz they have no lifes and they suck dick because they suck so hard at doing anything real.

The end. And yes, that gave me a migraine. It hurts.

On top of their lack of even kagel-level intelligence, and an utter failure to grasp the English language, they are completely closed-minded. Talk to one. They don't listen, they wait for a chance to speak. Much like some of the people I mentioned recently, they're utter idiots.

Indeed, this post isn't as deep as the others, but I feel it's a tad more entertaining. Also, to see Chris, Eddie/Mark/Dibs, Austin and I utterly destroy Kagel, click this link.

Homosexuality

Some things blow my mind. Like Republicans, or the fact that I didn't think of this topic. Mad props to Halley for the idea.

Despite my generally assholish attitude, I care about people. Like gays. Especially gays. Racism ticks me off too, as any biggotry does, but when someone's a douche about gay people, it really pisses me off. Anyone who knows me has probably realized this by now.

I don't know how it happened, honestly. One of my [many] faults is a terrible memory, so maybe something /did/ happen that set me off on this path of righteousness, but I can't remember at all. To the best of my knowledge, it just sort of clicked one day. I didn't care for a long time, even making little jokes (still no slurs, don't worry) about gays. I view this as rather assholish behavior, but I can't change now what I did then.

According to Scott, he once used the word 'gay' as an insult (ie: that's so gay). This set me off, he says. From his tone, it must've been a commonplace thing and he remembers the event because that was the first time I'd objected to it. I still object to it (not that he says it anymore, but to people in general) because, as I (unfortunately) so often have to explain, I know gay people. There's nothing wrong with them.

Invariably, the next question is directed towards my own sexuality.

I'm straight. Chris and I may have our gay days, but in case you didn't pick up on that, that's a joke. Good times, a bit of variety, etc. I don't understand why people can't immediately comprehend that a straight person would stand up for gays. It alarms me with it's small mindedness [editors note: it's not that it isn't a valid question, it's just that it shouldn't make a difference, especially not as it pertains to the validity of my arguments].

Idiocy is fun to hear about. Unless you have two brain cells to rub together. Then it's f**king awful. Take, for example, don't ask don't tell. GOP forbid (haha, self-reference and irony in one statement. Beautiful.) that gays protect their country. May the long arm of small mindedness prevent those who are different from fighting on our behalf, risking their lives so we can live our own idiotic ones. Pathetically stupid, to the point I want to yell and scream and cry, all at once.

Or prop eight. Oh jesus, the gays want to be married. The buy-bull says they shouldn't be. In this nation of a separated church and state, will you bless our representatives as they prevent the heretics from living their own lives, and doing something that won't affect us at all, in any way?

I've thought about what the world would be like backwards. What if gays were the majority? What if straights were thought to be gross because they fucked the other gender, because the other gender had different parts, and that wasn't natural? What would straights say then? I'd love to see a few of the prop H8 supporters in that world. Love to see them survive for five fuckin' minutes before they had the shit beat out of them.

That says a lot, doesn't it? The minority gets oppressed. No matter what. Laws only matter if the majority follows them, for whatever reason, so they're out. And all we're left with is us. US, people. We forget, in the complexity of the world, that the human voice is remarkable. We can do many great things if we band together and fight back. You look at the great movers and shakers from years ago, and think, I could never do that. Remember, they were people just like you once. And they stood up and said enough. Say enough, people

I've said before the norm is the norm for a reason, and sadly, the new norm appears to be stupidity. The reason for this, quite clearly, is stupidity. Stupid begats stupid, which begats some more stupid until you have a whole 52% of the state as stupid, and enough stupids in charge to think the majority of stupids can take away the rights of anyone else, because there are more stupids.

Come on, people. Haven't we grown up since fifth grade? The biggest bully isn't in charge any more. We left that in elementary school. We're smarter now, and we have loud voices to rally the cause. We get a few more intelligent people together, we can change this. We can change the hate to love, the stupid to smart, the bigots to lovers, and eventually turn prop 8 into nothing more than a sad page in a history book.

It all starts with you. You don't have to rally, not yet. All you need to do is remember that gays aren't freaks. They're people like you or I, people with hopes and dreams and regrets and lives to live. Will stopping them from being happy really make your own life any better? No, it won't. So stop rambling about those flaming homosexuals and think for a second.

You think about what a fucking idiot you're being hating gays, internalize it, then take the first step towards redemption.

You stop.

War

I'm listening to a song now, Fight With Tools, it's a perfect accompaniment to this topic. The song has a mood of unrest to it. What better to accompany unrest, then, than war?

I don't talk about war much. This is because war scares me, not because of the death, that can be found everywhere. Rather, I see it as hopeless.

Say you want to get something done. Why would anyone do anything for you, unless they have an incentive? Now, there are two kinds of incentives. Positive and negative. Positive being, of course, money, or a service. Negative is a threat. The threat of destruction, usually. Sometimes of property, sometimes of family, but most often, of someone's own human body. I'll go out on a limb and say you already know what that's called, violence.

Wars are, quell surprise, based off violence. The whole concept of war is we get some violence sticks and you get some violence sticks and we whack each other until someone says enough and hands the other one something of theirs (money, land, their nuclear warheads, whatever). Pacifists want us to lay down our violence sticks, (or at least the nukes) and all live in a pleasant world free from all the terror that a war represents.

I'd love that, let me be honest. As a teenage boy, I still have some of that childhood love for guns and the good guys beating the bad, but I'm level-headed enough now to realize that that's a childish enamorment. It's been said before, I'll say it again. War is hell. /Hell./ No shit, sherlock. That's why pacifists are busy telling us to put the violence sticks away.

The pacifists, in this case, miss the important thing. Remember the incentives I mentioned earlier? "Ahh," you say, you don't need me to make the last leap for you. Say everyone puts away the violence sticks. Say we establish a worldwide organization to make sure everyone keeps them away. Say we even hand them some money for being good little countries. Well, here's the thing. If one of them. /One/, takes out the violence stick for any reason, then the only thing we can do is take our collective sticks out, and collectively beat the shit out of him. And then it's war.

You can't honestly expect people to forget violence. It's always there. Smug idiot in your face? You bitch slap that little jerk into next week. Need an incentive everyone always understands? Violence. Violence. Violence. VIOLENCE. It doesn't go away. I'll go as far as to say it's an instinctive part of a human being. So you know that someone is going to take out the ol' violence stick at some point, probably not to long after the peacekeeping thing was established, and go ahead and whack the hell out of the poor schmuck who wasn't looking.

War is a terrible, terrible thing. I have the deepest respect for those soldiers who fight in it, or at least those who liberate or defend, and nothing but contempt for those who start it (not necessarily the first to invade, just the first to wrong us to the point that we have no other option). It isn't going away. In an ideal world, we'd have never even learnt of violence. Unfortunately, we have. Violence begat War, and now the two are part of an untouchable cycle of hate and destruction.

The only solution that ever held water, at least for a little bit, was the Ultimate Weapon. Mutually Assured Destruction sprang from this concept. Both basically represent the same thing, that if you can assure that /everyone/ dies, no one will. The thing is, though, I think you know deep down that /someone/ would try to use it, to cheat MAD. Try to wipe the enemy off the face of the planet with whatever hellish weapon was the latest when they went apeshit enough to try.

Humanity, you sadistic bunch of fucks. Why did you have to create this hell on Earth?

Life

Music. It has amazing effect on the human psyche, you know that? I mean, just listening to Handlebars, by Flobots, makes me want to go anarchist. I just thought I'd open with that, as the unbelievably powerful song is going to have an effect on my writing today.

Writing, unsurprisingly, about life.

Millions of thinkers have spent their respective lives... thinking about life. Life is a confusing thing. I mean really confusing. Try and decide what's alive, right now. Human? Easy. Dog? Of course. What about that plant? Sure, I suppose, er... maybe. Now how about a rock? What's to say they aren't conscious and screaming as we mine them, we're just deaf to them? This paragraph isn't to make you feel bad about digging in dirt, I want you to grasp exactly what we can't: life. We are nothing short of completely incapable of comprehending what it is to not be alive. Sure, we're fairly sure that rocks aren't living, but we wonder plenty about what happens when humans die.

That created religion, I think. Because it was comforting to think there's a reason that your love is staring blankly at the ceiling, that if you're good and kind to the world, when you pass on you'll greet her and spend eternity with your other half. Maybe that's how it is. I don't know, because I'm not better than you. I'm completely incapable of comprehending death much the same way you are.

Sure, we can hide behind clinical charts, quantifiable data, but the truth is, life and death are powerful, powerful things. I am alive now. I am a fantastic thing, as are you, reader. And your neighbor, they're fantastic, too. So is your dog and the bird outside your window and even that kid you hate in 4th period. Why? Because they're alive. You're alive. Try and grasp what that means. Your heart is beating? Neurons in your brain are communicating? You're in good enough health to take that next breath painlessly?

No. Those are not what it is to be alive. To be alive is so, so much more than that. Life is the thrill of discovery, the warmth of joy, the pain of loss and the crushing weight of regret. Life is putting that next foot in front of the last, taking another step, even if it's towards the eventual oblivion that might await us all. We don't know, we can't know, so we move on. We carry on. We live.

Living is hard to appreciate, as it's all we've ever known. You can't imagine not being alive because it isn't anything. It's a nothing. That's why we're alive, because it's a something. I contend that the point of life is not love, it is not to be rich, or to learn guitar, or attract a girl, or anything. The point of life is you. You, reader. You are the center of your own little world, the world that you see that contains everything but your own face.

When you live, you do. You do, you bring joy and pain and hate and cruelty and love and happiness and most of all LIFE to others. You are the reason everyone else is alive, much the same reason everyone else is the reason you are alive.

This may be getting confusing. Allow me to clarify.

What do you think about in the morning, or late at night, or when you meditate or dream or scream or cry or smile? You might answer, "Me." Well, you aren't me to a thousand million people. You're you. And in some small way, you play a part in their lives, an act of selflessness or selfishness, love or hate, joy or sadness, or any one of a million other things, that you brought them. You are, to me, not me, but you. I think of the effect you've had on my life, it's grand.

Still confusing.

What I'm trying to say (and failing miserably) is that you live for me and I live for you. We all live to have an effect. Great men and women who leave their marks on history are hardly better than a man who helps a fallen boy back to his feet. Why? The only difference is in numbers. Both change, what's that, /lives/.

Downright hopeless, now.

Look, let me be perfectly clear: we live to make an effect. On history or on your son, it matters little. The important thing is we live to do. To be the change. To strum the chord, to help the man to his feet, to cry, to scream, to yell and rage and fight and smile and hope at the very, very end that it was all worth it to end up there. Whether it end on the godforsaken soil of a battlefield, your coffin made of shells and bodies, or buried in an English cemetery in oak and a suit, life is a constant struggle which begets joy and suffering. Maybe in equal measure, maybe not. The important thing is that you clutch those joyous moments to your chest and remember them, look to them for warmth as you live. Live well, readers. Live as you wish and live to make the world as you see fit, from the seat at the top of a corporation or from a stool in the middle of a drum kit in the middle of a stage, do as you will with this life.

It is, after all, the only one we have.

I Think I Need A Sign

It'll read: "Sadistic Bastard" and I'll wear it around my neck.

Let me clarify. I was reading through some of my favorite posts today. Going through all the ones about shannon, and reading all the comments to see what you lot (and that anonymous who bashed halley, not to be confused with legs) and I smiled. Why? Because it showed me a lot about who I can be.

I can be evil. I read that I'm ruining Shannon's life, and it makes me laugh. Not at that (well, a little) but mostly at the idiocy and lies that other people spread. Because it makes them feel good. It makes them feel right, it makes them feel secure and warm and fuzzy inside!

Seriously, though, I'm evil. I make Haitain (and now Chile) jokes, I insult people, and I don't even care. Why? Because I'm /evil/. Does that amuse anyone else?

I mean, look at society. We're good, we're upright, law abiding citizens. Except, deep down, we're selfish jerks. I own that. I'm open about it. And people respect me for it (I, uh, think. Be honest in the comments!) it's a very different perspective on life, and it really opens your eyes. It also is great fun. Really.

This brings me to the point of this rambling post: I'm willing to leave standard, humorous content (for a time) to write about life, love, and all that orange-crush-drinking jazz. I want to know how many of you would enjoy that, as to my knowledge, you enjoy this blog because it's funny. These posts would be witty (I hope) but not necessarily hilarious.

As this is a big change, I want your feedback. Which means commenting, you lot. It's that or I bother you in real life. Who wants to be seen with the sadist? (No offense to my fellow evildoers. I love you all.)