One Track Mind

Last night while I slept, a suspicious package was retrieved from a cargo plane.  I know this because I watch the news from time to time.  In fact, given that I was not at work today, I watched the news on several occasions and even flicked from CNN, to MSNBC and even Fox.  On each and every channel, at the times I tuned in, there was nothing but blanket coverage of this event.

All because someone in Yemen decided to send something a bit weird in the mail, the media goes into panic mode and instantly ignores all the actual newsworthy events of the world to focus on this.

Focus really may be a bit of an overstatement of what was going on.  What really happened is the news stations merely repeated the same story over and over again, and then tried to add their own twist to the story by wheeling out one 'expert' after another and then simply presented one 'theory' after another, which really included no end of unsubstantiated drivel from the presenters trying to fill the time.

I have to say, this is something I've always had quite an issue with in America.  Having been raised on a diet of BBC news, the American cable offerings fall a bit flat by comparison.  It's all driven by greed, money, and ratings.  There's no desire to educate and inform the American public, if it bleeds it leads, as the old saying goes.

The scary thing is that this isn't even a story.  This package could have been sent by anyone, and nothing actually happened.  And while there is a legitimacy to reporting on the story, does the coverage really have to be absolute?

I watched an old Penn & Teller Bullshit tonight about Ground Zero.  Nine years after 9/11 we still can't get our shit together and rebuild the tower(s).  And when some retard in the Middle East sends us an unusual package in the mail we shit ourselves and talk about it endlessly for days.

I really wish I could turn on the news, and see some actual journalism.  I really wish we'd stop panicking every time someone said the word 'Muslim.'  There will always be crazy terrorists out there, and while we continue our meddling in International affairs with our military we will always have enemies.  But when one silly package sends the media into a frenzy, we are playing right into the hands of the 'evildoers' who want to hurt us.

Conservative Parents

I happened to overhear a conversation the other day between two conservative parents, who were still in their twenties.  One said to the other, "I've told my kids, they can have a Facebook account when they turn 18..."

It reminded me of a theory I've had for a while now about how conservative parents fuck up their children, despite the best of intentions.

The picture above of course needs no explanation.  All over the country right now, tiny children are being dressed as sluts and paraded around stages in front of a bunch of old pervert guys and sad old women who want to live vicariously though their daughters.  It's not just the pageant scene either, I've seen young parents on Facebook asking their friends to vote on the cuteness of their (usually) girl, for some school competition.

But while I find the entire concept of teaching girls that their worth is only in their appearance, the issue I specifically wanted to post about is that of overly strict parents.  Among conservatives there is the belief that enacting certain laws will magically stop crime.  And among this same subset of conservatives, you'll find parents who think that strict rules, spanking, total control of a child's social life, and spying on their kids will produce a well rounded and safe child.  Some even take this as far as home schooling their children so they can keep tabs on them 24/7.

The fact is, these ideas are, like most conservative ideologies, okay on the surface.  If you only think of the most basic and superficial aspects of your logic, then all this can make wonderful sense.  Strict rules build character.  Spanking provides a deterrent for bad behavior.  A dose of the belt can reinforce a lesson when needed.  Organizing all of a child's social interactions will ensure they don't meet with undesirables (people of a different race, social class, religion, sexuality, gender, political leaning).  Spying on their children will allow them to monitor the adherence to the path they have been forced to walk.  And home schooling will ensure that the right classes are taught, and silly nonsense such as science, gender equality, evolution, and other non-Christian values will be omitted.  With the right grades the little dear might make it into a Christian college founded by a former TV evangelist.

Living in Bible belt I've met kids like this.  Fortunately, no amount of parental abuse can alter the fact that they are human beings.  And at some point, perhaps not today, or even next week, but one day these children will grow up.  They will rebel and finally tell their overly controlling parents to go fuck themselves.  Prior to this final blow up will be a lot of subterfuge and lying to ensure that certain undesirable behavior will remain hidden from the parents.  As a result instead of open lines of communication, honesty and respect, what you have instead is a child who learns pretty quickly that parents cannot be trusted with the truth.  This in turn leads to risky behaviors, carried out without knowledge of the parents.  Useful discussions about drugs, alcohol and sex, never happen because instead the parent simply tells the child that all such activities are forbidden and sinful, so the child does them anyway without helpful guidance or supervision.

Now having criticized conservative parents I would certainly balance that with the obvious realization that Drew Barrymore clearly could have used some less liberal boundaries during her childhood.  Sure, she turned out okay, but that was raw talent and some luck more than good parenting.  For every Drew Barrymore there are a slew of other kids who ended up dead thanks to bad parenting.

The only conclusion I can reach is that parents need to be parents.  Not in your face controlling assholes, and not hippies who want to be your friend and smoke weed with you.  There has to be a middle ground.  But whichever path you take, please stop putting little girls into pageants.  It's so fucking wrong it isn't even funny.

Vote Democrat

As we approach the midterm elections I felt a political post was in order.  I doubt there are any Republicans who actively read my blog, but just on the off chance I can convince you, I'll give it a shot.

People traditionally have very short political memories.  So if you are one of those people, let me help you out.

President George W. Bush was a disaster for this country.  As we were attacked on 9/11 partly due to his unwillingness to do his job (remember his record setting vacation count?), he sat there paralyzed with fear, and did nothing.  Minutes after the secret service advised him we were under attack, he finally got up and did something.  He took us into two unnecessary and expensive wars.  Wars he financed by borrowing every penny communist China would agree to lend us.  At the same time he cut taxes for the wealthy (and not just well of; the filthy rich), and deregulated corporations so they could plunder the American people in the most greedy and unethical ways possible (think bankrupting cancer patients, for example).

At the end of his horrific presidency, his only real legacy was the fear he and Cheney sold to the American people, and an economy sliding into the second worst recession our country has ever witnessed.

In any normal country you'd think that the opposition party would win by a landslide, yet still tens of millions of people turned out to vote for old man McCain, and the bimbo tardmonkey he had picked as his running mate.

Our President has had to work very hard to try and put the economy back on track, and all the time he faces Republicans deliberately roadblocking everything he tries to achieve.  From filibuster threats to blocking important government appointees, the Republicans have acted in a despicable way, focused on one goal; to win back control at all costs, without giving a rats ass about ordinary working people of America who suffer as a direct result of their fuck ups.

The Tea Party gained momentum as the new racist front.  The KKK is out of fashion these days, since no one wants to admit freely to being a racist (except the utterly extreme haters).  So those who got mad at Obama because he isn't white, joined a group for the haters, losers, racists, bigots, birthers, and idiots, who just want to hide their real agenda behind a fake one that is more palatable.

It seems like many Americans can get behind the notion of paying less tax and having less government waste, but the reality is the Tea Party and Libertarians don't seem to give a shit about taking actual steps to reduce government waste and help American people.

The elephant in the room in this country is defense spending.  As a nation we are spending almost half of all military spending in the entire world.  That's right, for every dollar spent on the military for every country in the world, our investment is close to 47% of the world military budget.  We have dozens of pointless agencies, over 800,000 people with top secret military clearance, and a military presence in over 150 countries.

When these people talk about small government, and lowering taxes, or cutting social programs, the one thing no one seems to have the balls to campaign for is massive cuts to our military spending.  And until we start thinking realistically about doing this, we are always going to have a problem with balancing the books.

Our priorities are very wrong, and yet despite all this, many Americans are going to go to the polls and vote for Republicans.  These common sense, whiter than white, smiling family men who will cut taxes and government waste and fix our economy.

Of course none of this is really going to work.  Giving Republicans more strength will simply road block Obama for the next couple of years.  The Republicans don't really have any plans to improve our country.  They talk about repealing Obama's laws, pushing for more tax cuts for the wealthy elite, cutting social programs that help Americans get a better life, and returning us to the failures that were the hallmark of the last Republican administration.

Anyone who points out that Republicans caused this problem will be met with a sneer and will be told that we shouldn't live in the past, and that it's now the President's fault.  We shouldn't talk about the real causes of our predicament, we should just blame Obama and chase the failed policies of before.

Sadly we don't have real news networks, our education system isn't designed to make people think, so millions of ignorant Americans will head to that polling station and vote Republican, weakening the government for the next couple of years.

America has so much potential, and could return to a position of world inspiration.  But we are badly off course right now.  We are making life harder than it needs to be.  We risk losing so much we will never get it back.  Until Americans wake up and realize this we are going to be in a lot of trouble.

So I'd like to ask you right now to vote Democrat in these elections.  Let's give Obama a mandate to push for change we so desperately need.  Let's show the Tea Party that we don't like hate, and their stupid rhetoric.  And let's tell Republicans that we won't vote for them until they come up with some new ideas for actually improving this country, rather than listening to them bleating on about Reaganomics and other failed strategies.

For God's Sake

Living for ten years in the Bible Belt, I've heard more than my fair share about God, Jesus and all the magic angels.  But this post isn't about God particularly, it's about those people who say, "Everything happens for a reason."  Those that say it, or post it on Facebook, say the words with conviction, as if they are repeating wise words.  My issue is that I do not believe on any level that these are in fact wise words.

Things don't happen for a reason, things just happen.  If you start to believe for a moment that a magic invisible man has decided a life plan for everyone, the first question that comes to mind is why God is such a sadistic racist?  Did God really plan for millions of brown people to starve to death before they reached adulthood?  Did He sit down one night and invent AIDS just so a bunch of kids would catch it before they were born and die in agony as children?  How about Ebola, was that just to scare the shit out of us?

If God really is carefully constructing all these life plans for us, what's the point of existence at all?  Our whole life is just a pre-planned fairground ride?

Most Christians will tell you that God gave us free will.  Freedom to choose to walk in Jesus' footsteps or not.  Of course that's not really much in the way of freedom since allegedly the punishment for straying from the path is eternal torture, pain and suffering.

At the end of the day, it's not for me to tell you what to believe when it comes to your chosen deity.  For many people said deity is very real to them.  But for the love of God, stop claiming that everything that happens in life is some magical life plan; as if you were a pawn in a giant game of God chess.  If we are to assume for a moment that God is real, why would He want to pre-determine everyone's lives for them?  And if He does do that, does that mean that Original Sin was invented by God and used as an excuse to make our lives miserable?

Well thanks for reading my morning God rant about destiny.  All you have to figure out now is whether reading this was part of God's plan.

Geo Ads Die

If there is one thing that is going to turn off a potential buyer, it's being lied to in the first place.  When you start off a business relationship with a lie, it sours the whole deal, even if the ultimate deal ends up a good one.

I remember seeing similar crap on the ads for the dating site True.  There some hot chick would pretend to be writing on her lap top while lying on the bed scantily clad.  The ad was designed to make you click to 'chat' with her, when in all reality she wasn't real.  It's a strange kind of advertising for a site claiming to weed out cheats and liars from its clientele.

In recent times, the latest trend is geo specific ads based on the location of your IP address.  You see ads like "Conroe Mom invents new product."  Or maybe, "Important message for Texas residents."  It's a pathetic attempt to appear local and therefore relevant.  After all, is some local mom from my community really going to rip me off?

It just bugs me to think that a company would stoop so low to create a sale that they would lie like this to get a click though.  The first time I saw this was some multi level marketing / pyramid scheme, where a web page personalized to your home town would appear, talking about a local man in his 20s who was making tens of thousands of dollars a week from his chosen scheme.

Now it seems slightly more mainstream products are jumping on this bandwagon, and they really need to stop and think what they are doing.

No matter how stupid you think your target audience is, and no matter how smug an executive you might be, the vast majority of people are going to see this bullshit for what it is.  So the question is, are the few suckers you attract like this going to be enough to sustain your business?  And if so, maybe you are a crook and not a businessman.

Why Hate? Demand Equality

I was reading an article today about a gang in New York called the Latin King Goonies who recently attacked two teens of 17 and a 30 year old man, all because they decided that these individuals were gay.

The details of the attack are pretty disgusting, beating, torture, sodomy with a small baseball bat and plunger handle, burning people with cigarettes, robbery, false imprisonment, theft etc.

But what really struck me more than anything is that these gang members are so stupid they would risk their lives over a hate crime.  I certainly understand why some crime happens, for example, you rob a bank to get money to spend on your drug habit or whatever else floats your boat.  In many crimes there is a clear end result where if you avoid capture you have gained something.

In this case, the gang members, most of whom have already been caught, are going to be charged with a series of very serious crimes, and just for good measure the crimes will be noted as 'hate crimes' which ups the ante somewhat in the prison sentencing.

For such a brutal attack that is also a hate crime, some of these 'Goonies' are going to spend the best part of the next ten to twenty years in prison, where they will most likely become a lot more familiar with hanging out with a bunch of men and sodomy.

And that's the bit I find hard to understand.  There was never an up side to this crime.  A night of hurting another human being (or three), and then many years in prison.  Who knows, the fact they were in a gang, and this was such a serious hate crime could see them locked up for life.  What a tragic waste of a set of lives.

It is so sad how so many people have so much hate in them that they are literally willing to risk life in prison in exchange for lashing out at a person who is not like them.

Unfortunately, until we learn to accept gay people, and afford them the same rights as EVERY American, this kind of attack will continue.  When we take a group of people, and label them as less than human, suddenly almost any kind of action can be justified.  Everyone needs to play their part to change society from parents to teachers, police to the government.  Religious leaders too need to stop spewing their messages of hate.  Most sections of the Bible used to justify anti-gay sentiment also instruct us to stone people to death for various frivolous 'crimes.'

If you're on Facebook consider following this link and spreading awareness for equal rights for all, regardless of sexual identity.

401K

I just wanted to point out that my last post marks my 400th post since I started this blog in November 2005.  I'd like to thank all my many readers for sticking with me, and all the international perverts who find my blog because of the article I wrote about Simpsons Cartoon porn.

Sadly I don't have a record of how many readers I've had, but I do know that I've had 136,000 unique visitors in the past two years.  I've seen visitors from 160 countries.  The top ten countries are:

1. United States
2. Germany
3. United Kingdom
4. Canada
5. France
6. Australia
7. Mexico
8. Italy
9. Sweden
10. Argentina

 So thanks for reading, I've enjoyed writing it.  See you all at post 500!

Consolidated Communications

So I called Consolidated Communications, my pitiful cable company, because they owe me a massive rebate on their crappy and over-priced service.  I simply have not had time to reach them yet, due to my busy work schedule.

Here was my route to wonderful customer service:

Thank you for calling Consolidated Communications...
For English, press one...
To establish new service press one...
For billing, press two...
For customer service press three...
Please note that your call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance purposes.  Please have your customer number and PIN available.  You will find this information on the top of your bill.
Please enter your ten digit customer number followed by the pound key.
That response is not valid.
Please enter your ten digit customer number followed by the pound key.
That response is not valid.
For business, press one.
For residential, press two.
Thank you for calling residential customer service.  Unfortunately, we are a bunch of lazy fucktards that don't open at the weekend.  After all, why the fuck would you want customer service on Saturday?  It's not like you have a job, I bet you spend your fucking welfare on this $140 cable service don't you?  Well you fat couch potato loser, why don't you call back when it is convenient to us, which is 8am to 5pm Monday to Friday, and never on the fucking weekend.  Get it?  We hope you fucking die, goodbye.

Now I admit, I made up the bit in italics, but the rest is exactly what happened.  I am tasked with punching in a bunch of random buttons on my phone for five minutes, only to be told that these bastards don't even open at the weekend.  Call me crazy, but why not mention that at the beginning of the call?  Offer me the choice of using the automated service or calling back during business hours.  Isn't this common sense?  And seriously, who doesn't provide customer service on the very days most Americans get off work?

Maybe next time we move, we'll find a decent cable company.  I'm thinking of going Dish...