I should know better than to keep watching the Republican debates.
But like the glutton for punishment I am, I tune in with the faint hope that I'll hear something new... or interesting... or inspiring... or even just a tiny bit smart. This country has big problems, and I'm still waiting to hear from somebody who can figure it all out.
But that person sure ain't one of the Republican candidates for president. So not only am I wasting my time, I'm also exposing myself to near-fatal levels of bullshit.
Like listening to Rick "Piece of Shit" Santorum once again vomit up some of his outrageous crap...
President Barack Obama actually went to France a year or so ago and was with Nicolas Sarkozy and said that, "Here I am with the French Prime Minister, our best ally in the world." Now think about this. Name one time in the last 20 years that the French stood by us with anything. But in Barack Obama's eyes, that makes them our best ally, because they fought what was in the best interest of our country.
The levels of stupid here are just too legion to even contemplate. Fortunately, I don't have to, as Politifact did an excellent job of debunking this fucked-up statement. The truth is that France has been a true ally to this country for a very long time. They deserve a lot better than to be diminished and dismissed by a piece of shit politician looking to score cheap points.
In a time when the USA has too many enemies in too many places, we need to remember who our friends are...
Despite my loathing of Santorum's never-ending hypocrisy, hate, exaggeration, and outright lies, a part of me still wants to believe that a candidate for President of the United States of America surely must want what's best for this country in their heart. But how can I in this case?
Either Rick "Piece of Shit" Santorum is so evil that he would purposely damage our relationship with a long-time ally just to get votes out of people too fucking stupid to question his lies... or... he himself is so fucking stupid that he doesn't even know when he's lying any more...
Photo taken from Reuters
If you want to find somebody fighting what is in the best interest of our country, Rick, all you have to do is look in a mirror. Everything that's wrong with America is staring back at you.
Sweet! Today my home state of Washington passed marriage equality into law!
Now it's a waiting game to see whether the anti-equality brigade can get the signatures they need to force a ballot vote. Because it's totally appropriate to put equality to a vote, right?
Argh. I don't even want to think about it.
Because it's not like I've already got some things I'm trying not to think about today.
A friend sent me a video that had an interesting take on political issues from a purely humanitarian point of view. Some of the thinking seemed grossly simplistic and unrealistic but, taken as a whole, it was a fascinating look at how political policy doesn't change as much as you'd think from administration to administration.
In the video there were links to other videos. Which had links to other videos. Which had links to even more videos.
But it was the comment threads that were where the addiction lays. Most times they're so incredibly awful that you're compelled to read them. And just when you think you've read the most horrific thing that somebody could possibly say on the subject, you go to the next comment and it gets even worse. The bigotry, ignorance, racism, lies, and raw hatred sucks you into a vortex of stupidity from which not even light can escape...
And if you don't let go before the Point of No Return, you become just as stupid as the animals who are commenting and are compelled to comment yourself. From there you cross over the event horizon and are doomed to destruction.
Don't believe me? It's SCIENCE, people!
Though I don't know that even science can explain why so many people think that the road to destruction is the best course to follow. Maybe if more effort when into studying stupidity, we could find out why they just can't seem to let it go.
Or why there are people who think that the freedoms this country were founded upon demands equality for its citizens be put to a vote.
If I have to listen to Mitt Romney mangle the lyrics to American The Beautiful one more time, I'm going to fucking lose it. The lyrics are NOT "for purple mountain's majesty..." it's "for purple mountain majesties." Those are the lyrics. Those are the words in the original poem upon which the song is based. If you're going to pander to the lowest common denominator with a bullshit smokescreen masquerading as patriotism, you should at least put the effort into doing it right.
Gee. I'm in a bit of a mood tonight.
That's what happens when you start working at 4:30am.
And you have to read about George Lucas telling the world that Greedo always shot first... that everybody is just "confused" and bad people want Han "to be a cold-blooded killer."
I saw the original Star Wars dozens of times... and by "original" I mean the actual film and not the Special Edition crap. I watched it again dozens of more times on LaserDisc. And not once during any of those times did I ever think that Greedo fired first. But, more importantly, I never once thought that Han Solo was a cold-blooded killer. Greedo had a gun pointed on him... he was acting in self-defense...
And, as we found out in The Empire Strikes Back, the guy was a scoundrel.
Which brings me to my point...
If I have to listen to George Lucas mangle Star Wars one more time, I'm going to fucking lose it.
HAN SOLO SHOT FIRST! I'd also go a step further and say that Greedo never shot at all... but I must be confused on that too.
Or sane.
Holy crap, dude.
It doesn't matter who wins big come the November elections, there's going to be a lot of unhappy people. It's unavoidable because the level of venom being volleyed back-and-forth between Republicans and Democrats has reached critical mass. We're mere seconds away from a full-on thermonuclear explosion of hate, and you just can't come back from that.
And every time I watch the news or catch up with current political events on the internet, a part of me wonders if we should just carve up North America in a way that will keep us from destroying each other.
I'm talking about the establishment of Jesusland and The United States of Canada...
This has been a joke and internet meme for a long time. But the thing is... there's a very serious truth beneath it all. Why not create political divisions that make sense? Wouldn't people be a lot happier if their government more closely represented their beliefs and values?
And while I don't know that Canada would agree to be dragged into this mess, I'm thinking that the majority of Americans might actually go for it. The hatred is just so overwhelming, relentless, and balls-nasty that I'd do just about anything to make it stop.
Except...
Here in my home-state of Washington, we've got a scary level of hatred all our own to deal with. And now that same-sex-marriage is going to be signed into law next week, I can only imagine that it's going to get even worse...
Though I really do hope my fellow Washingtonians over here in Redneckistan will do the right thing and help same-sex-marriage pass if it ends up being put to a vote. With acceptance of gay marriage reaching new heights every day, you just never know.
But that's just one issue out of hundreds.
In the end, even if we were to establish Jesusland and The United States of Canada, Washington would still be divided. I'm sure other states would have similar lines of separation. So while the majority of people would probably be happier eventually... there's still going to be a large segment of the population who are angry, bitter, and unhappy.
So what to do?
A pity we can't just all cling to the things we have in common and work from there...
But, alas, those things are getting to be few and far between.
Remember the good ol' days when being "Americans" was enough to unite us?
After work I had to go to the grocery store.
And while I hate shopping of any kind, I'd have to say that shopping for groceries is the worst. Probably because, unlike the joy of shopping for sayyyyyy... a flamethrower, nobody likes to shop for groceries. They're expensive and boring. What's to love?
But I needed hamburger buns and chocolate milk, so off I went.
Where I had a more miserable time than usual thanks to some really bad parenting going on.
Usually when I see parents who don't seem to know what they're doing with their children, I refer them to my best-selling book, Minding Your Kids in Public for Dumbasses...
But, because I am feeling generous this evening, I am going to provide an excerpt with some critical insight on child-rearing for FREE! Yes, that's right... I'm giving away FREE PARENTING ADVICE! Just one of the many benefits of being a Blogography reader, yo.
CHAPTER SIX: SHOPPING
Here is a blueprint of a typical grocery store. And here's you shopping for frozen pizza back in the frozen foods aisle...
And here are your kids way over here going ape-shit in the bakery aisle...
GUESS WHAT? YOU FUCKING FAIL AS A PARENT!
NOW PUT DOWN THAT DAMN PIZZA AND GO MIND YOUR FUCKING KIDS, YOU STUPID ASSHOLE!
Otherwise they might get abducted.
Though this is probably not a bad thing. Then at least somebody would be watching them.
No need to thank me. Knowing that I'm making civilization a better place is enough for me!
What a freaky-ass day.
I can only guess that this has something to do with the Chinese New Year beginning. It's The Year of the Dragon, after all. And while I don't put much stock into the Chinese Zodiac, I do think it's a pretty entertaining and well-thought-out concept. Especially since Dragons have Rats and Monkeys as bestest friends, which is kind of cool if you ask me...
My day started when I went to get into my car and drive to work. And found that I couldn't. There was a sheet of ice a quarter-inch thick covering everything... including the door. This meant fifteen minutes of scraping ice out of the door seams with the bottle opener on my keychain. Then another ten minutes chipping ice off the rest of my car with an ice scraper before my vehicle was fit to drive. It wouldn't have been all that bad if not for the fact that my bottle opener broke, giving up its life so I could go to work. I've had it for over a decade and used it often, but don't think I ever actually opened a bottle with it.
Once I finally made it to work, I was plagued with a series of inexplicably bizarre phone calls (and here I was just saying how much I hated talking on the phone!). The bad news is that it wasted entirely too much of my time. The good news is that I got to alleviate my boredom by getting caught up on Facebook and Twitter.
I also got caught up with entertainment news and learned that Seal and Heidi Klum were breaking up their marriage after seven years. I dunno why, but I was pretty sad to hear it.
And speaking of marriage... I then got caught up on news news and learned that Washington State's Legislature has enough votes to pass marriage equality. Whether this actually happens remains to be seen, but I am really happy that my gay and lesbian friends here in The Evergreen State are one step closer to being able to celebrate their relationships in marriage just like opposite-sex couples can!
Of course, all is not big gay smiles here in The Pacific Northwest...
This is Pastor Ken Hutcherson who is heading up some backwards anti-equality organization had this to say about Washington State Governor Chris Gregoire... "She might as well change her name to John Wilkes Booth because what she’s doing now is trying to put a bullet in the head of one of the greatest traditions that has ever existed and has built our society, and that is marriage between one man and one woman."
Far be it for me to speak ill of a man of the cloth... but what a fucking idiot.
What "puts a bullet in the head of marriage" is DIVORCE you dumbass. And why drag President Lincoln into this? Perhaps you hadn't heard, but the man eventually ended up fighting for equality of peoples in kind of a big way. Not really the best example you could have used.
But whatever.
What's important is that dinosaurs like Pastor Ken are slowly and steadily becoming a thing of the past as new generations of Americans understand that FREEDOM means that you sometimes have to accept shit you don't want to. Don't believe in same-sex marriage? Then how about you don't fucking marry somebody of the same sex?
But I guess I should know better than to try and apply logic to situations like these. To entirely too many people, it's only "freedom" when everything goes your way.
Today my blog has joined with thousands of other sites that are going dark in protest of SOPA & PIPA legislation, both of which have the scary possibility of destroying freedom of expression on the internet.
Of course since my site is dark you can't read this... but, if you're in the future now, you can take a look at what Blogography looked like today by clicking on this link (thanks to Zachary Johnson for the awesome code!).
If you are so inclined, you can read more about SOPA & PIPA here.
If you would prefer not to get into the gory details, suffice to say that SOPA & PIPA are trying to do a good thing (crack down on internet piracy) badly (by destroying the internet). It basically boils down to politicians sucking up to lobbyists at the expense of the people they are supposed to be serving.
I absolutely support fighting piracy. I work with industries which have been damaged by people stealing their property, and I know the havoc it causes. So when idiot politicians who have been duped (or bought) to defend SOPA & PIPA are saying "we're fighting to save American jobs!"... they're actually talking about people like me. But they're not speaking for people like me. Because I would never support this kind of stupid shit which would do nothing to actually stop piracy. Ultimately SOPA & PIPA are more about censorship than justice, and I'll have no part of it.
The only internet that matters is a free and open internet.
Anything less, for better or worse, is unacceptable, and nobody should be given the power to change that.
Maybe it's because this has been one very tough week, but I've had it with stupid-ass bullshit. I am done. And I mean done. What keeps me going is seeing other people who are tired of stupid-ass bullshit actually taking the time to confront it. And today I ran across a doozy.
As I've reiterated many, many times now on this blog, I automatically assume that anybody who makes personal attacks against someone is probably overcompensating for their own problems.
Anybody who attacks a person's sexuality probably has a problem with their own sexuality. Anybody who feels the need to attack somebody's religion probably has a problem with their own faith. Anybody who attacks how somebody looks probably has a problem accepting how they see themselves. Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera.
Oh... and lest we forget: Anybody railing against gay marriage probably has a problem with their own marriage...
That would be Amy Koch.
Amy Koch is the Minnesota Senate Majority Leader. She coauthored a bill to amend the Minnesota Constitution so that "Marriage between a man and a woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in Minnesota." Thanks to her efforts, Minnesotans will vote next November as to whether discrimination gets shoe-horned into the State Constitution.
At least she was the Minnesota Senate Majority Leader. She recently resigned in disgrace for having an "inappropriate relationship" with one of her staffers.
In other words, a dirty cheating whore had the balls to dictate marriage morality to her constitutes.
Obviously we should blame the gays for this.
Fortunately, they have accepted responsibility and are making an apology...
Dear Ms. Koch,
On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community's successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage. We are ashamed of ourselves for causing you to have what the media refers to as an "illicit affair" with your staffer, and we also extend our deepest apologies to him and to his wife. These recent events have made it quite clear that our gay and lesbian tactics have gone too far, affecting even the most respectful of our society.
We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry. And we are doubly remorseful in knowing that many will see this as a form of sexual harassment of a subordinate.
It is now clear to us that if we were not so self-focused and myopic, we would have been able to see that the time you wasted diligently writing legislation that would forever seal the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman, could have been more usefully spent reshaping the legal definition of "adultery."
Forgive us. As you know, we are not church-going people, so we are unable to fully appreciate that "gay marriage" is incompatible with Christian values, despite the fact that those values carry a biblical tradition of adultery such as yours. We applaud you for keeping that tradition going.
And finally, shame on us for thinking that marriage is a private affair, and that our marriage would have little impact on anyone's family. We now see that marriage is more than that. It is an agreement with society. We should listen to the Minnesota Family Council when it tells us that marriage is about being public, which explains why marriages are public ceremonies. Never did we realize that it is exactly because of this societal agreement that the entire world is looking at you in shame and disappointment instead of minding its own business.
From the bottom of our hearts, we ask that you please accept our apology.
Thank you.
John Medeiros
Minneapolis MN
Brilliant.
And which politician or religious leader will get the next apology? My money is on Rick Santorum. Anybody who hates homosexuality that badly is bound to have a few dicks in his closet.
The weather was not pretty today.
It was one of those hazy/misty/foggy days that made me think that my eyes were defective every time I looked out the window. Much like my life, things in the distance are a blurry mess. All I can do is focus on what's in front of me.
Not the view out my window... it's Glacier Bay in Alaska!
Unfortunately, what's in front of my right now is the possibility that telemarketers will be able to call me on my mobile phone thanks to the new "Mobile Information Call Act" that dumbfuck politicians whose mouths are permanently attached to special interest dick are trying to fuck us with.
And, I'm not going to lie to you, the very thought of having to pay for somebody to harass me is close to pushing me over the edge.
I hate... HATE... unsolicited calls of any kind. They enrage me so badly that I turn into an unbelievable bastard when somebody dares to disturb me with them. This includes charitable organizations, politicians, activist groups, credit card alerts, fraud bulletins... ALL of that shit. I don't like to talk on the phone with people I know... being bothered by people I don't know causes me to go into a thermonuclear meltdown.
The dumbfuck politicians behind it claim this is needed to modernize our laws so that critical information we need to survive is allowed to be robo-called to mobile phone customers.
Fuck. That.
There is no information... none... delivered by an automated dialer that I need interrupting my life on somebody else's terms. And, regardless of what the dumbfuck politicians say, you just know that eventually the law will lead to telemarketers being able to call. They'll exploit some loophole or bullshit technicality like they always do, then everybody with a mobile phone gets screwed.
The only law that I want on the books is one that says "YOU DON'T GET TO FUCKING CALL ME EVER!" And it should apply to everybody except those I've given my expressed permission to dial me. Permission which can be revoked at any time. Period.
This whole mess is how we know that politicians no longer serve the people they claim to represent. They serve special interest groups, lobbyists, and their wallets. Because, honestly now, who in the hell would ever want this law except special interest groups, lobbyists, and the politicians being paid by them? NOBODY! That's who. It's like asking somebody with an email account if they want spam.
Obviously our political system is very, very broken when stupid-ass shit like this sees the light of day. It's not a Democrat or Republican thing any more... that ship has sailed. Now it's just people with political power fucking over people without it. Again and again.
And we're told we have no choice but to sit down, shut up, and take their abuse.
Riiiiiiight.
Anarchy. It'll be here sooner than you think.
So there I am driving home from work when all of a sudden a pickup truck down the street ahead of me screeches to a halt and starts backing up!
My first instinct was to do nothing. This would be the THIRD time in FOUR months that somebody has backed into my invisible piece-of-shit car. I might as well pick up another insurance check out of the deal.
But then two thoughts hit me at once...
So I honked my horn. They screeched to a halt again (one car-length from my bumper) then pulled forward into a parking spot so I could pass.
And I bet you a million dollars they were cussing me out for daring to honk at them, even though I saved THEM from hitting ME.
The dumbasses.
I tell you, the only thing keeping me from wanting to be abducted by aliens right now so I can leave this shithole planet behind is this...
I read the first book of George R. R. Martin's epic "Song of Ice and Fire" series, A Game of Thrones, because of a glowing employee recommendation at Powell's City of Books. I liked it well enough that I bought the follow-up, A Clash of Kings when it came out a few months later. A couple years after that, A Storm of Swords came out. It was supposed to be the last book of a trilogy, but Martin decided he wanted to keep going. I then gave up because it took FIVE years for the fourth book, A Feast for Crows to come out... and frickin' SIX years after that for the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, to come out (this past July).
The reason I gave up was because the last thing I want is to get all invested in the series only to have George R. R. Martin up and die before he finally finishes the story (presumably with book seven)...
Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin — ©2011 HBO/Helen Sloan
But thennnnnnn... HBO unleashed an Original Series based upon the books that has been getting rave reviews and awards. Whenever I travel, I always try to catch it when my hotel has HBO. I've seen roughly half of the ten episodes...
Love it.
I was thinking I'd watch the rest of the episodes when the DVD set was released, but HBO isn't releasing it until frickin' MARCH (and it's priced like EIGHTY DOLLARS or something) so I went ahead and ordered HBO. Now I've been watching it via On Demand, and am pretty amazed at how faithful they are to the book (or what I remember of it).
But now I am back to worrying over whether George R. R. Martin will die before the HBO series can be concluded. Even worse is the thought that Martin will complete the books in a timely manner, but HBO will cancel the series before they've adapted all of them.
The dumbasses.
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