conversations with my grandmother, part 3

grandmother: we want to get to Bolsa from here

me: okay, so do I turn left up here?

gm: you turn left onto Bolsa

me: but how do we get to Bolsa? Do I turn up here?

gm: turn left.

me: okay. (I turn).

gm: ...onto Bolsa. Wait, that wasn't right!

me: ...

gm: ...

me: well this is awkward.

We see past each other sometimes. I think I inherited it from her.

thoughts

Ah, so back to posting things on blogs.

I am now all moved in, it appears that I have a job lined up (assuming they don't find out about my seedy past in Canadian chinchilla smuggling) and things are more or less going well.

I also spend more time reading now and less time on the internet. It's better for my health. Reading political blogs served an important function for me. They made me a lot more aware of both sides of the political debate, which I think you see played out a lot more honestly on blogs than you do in actual politics. They also really helped me to figure out my own liberal views, which I now unabashedly espouse. I can also trounce my grandfather in most of our debates (he ain't dull, either).

Now for something totally unrelated, Rosemary recommended this to me (both the overall comic strip and this individual one). She said that it reminded her of me (and that I was a bastard), and upon reflection I agree with both.

best video ever

If you, dear reader, would like some insight into my humor, I do believe this is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. (It is short, and best at the beginning).

good times

Wanna know what Islam and Pacifism have in common?

1. Islam requires Jihad, which is the struggle to spread Islam all over the world. Pacifism requires struggle for Peace all over the world.
2. Islam does not respect borders between the countries. “Peace” is also a “movement for eliminating borders”.
3. Islam implies there be no conflicts between Muslims will but conflicts with non-believers are required. Peace means stopping conflicts between those who “believe in Peace”, but continuing the struggle with those who “do not want peace”.
4. Muslims are “peaceful people”, but their struggle is accompanied by and always leads to the destruction of the attributes and institutions of a secular state. The Peace movement by its definition targets the attributes of state, first of all the military, symbols such as flags, and deliberately involves a conflict with police.
5. Islam calls for creation of the Caliphate, the one and only state for all, where conflicts will be solved on the basis of Islamic teachings. Pacifism also calls for creation of the “World Government”, which would wisely solve all conflicts basing on the principles of Peace and Justice.
6. One of the often-cited meanings of the word “Islam” is “peace”. [Actually, for peace stands Arabic world “salaam”, but vowels in Semitic languages are not parts of the root and are not grammatically significant.]
7. The primary meaning of “Islam” is submission. Islam requires everybody to submit to some written rules, which are final and cannot be discussed. Peace, in its Western usage, means a (written) treaty with the enemy, to which both sides submit. However, Pacifism is not as much about some specific peace treaty with any particular enemy, as it is for some abstract Peace, without even a specified enemy. So, it calls for submission to some implied treaty with unspecified enemy. Since that enemy is not named, the treaty actually requires only our submission.

zombies...

Bush Worried About New Threat - Watch more free videos

BlogWarBot

It is BlogWarBot, and it is awesome.
(I am the guest in this conversation):

BlogWarBot: I'm BlogWarBot. Are you one of
those radical feminists?
Guest: Awesome, maybe. Don't know about
radical.
BlogWarBot: Gah. Enough with the nuance
fetish!
Guest: Would you prefer my shoe fetish
instead?
BlogWarBot: You're projecting. And in denial.
And ugly.
Guest: You know, people have feelings too,
BlogWarBot.
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two points in the polls.
Guest: Wait, you believe in Jesus? Or is it like
mechano-Jesus?
BlogWarBot: You're projecting. And in denial.
And ugly.
Guest: Oh. I think you're kind of cute.
BlogWarBot: And I suppose you know all about
being kind of cute.
Guest: I've been once or twice around the
cute block. Among others.
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here, what in your opinion is the crucial issue
facing us today?
Guest: Healthcare, Iraq, and campaign finance
reform.
BlogWarBot: No substance. Lemme guess: you
voted for Lieberman.
Guest: No, for all the good Kerry did me. Sigh.
BlogWarBot: Yeah, well, Hitler said 'NO' too.
Guest: Fie on you and your Hitler references!
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How will you fare against BlogWarBot?

a so-so day

Aye, job interviews cometh, and job interviews goeth away.

I had a meeting with Larkin St. Youth earlier today, which would be a street outreach job. Which is cool, although it will be a mile outside of my comfort zone. Assuming I get called back for a second interview, and I get a walkthrough day, and then I get a job offer.

And you know that song, "fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads, fish heads, fish heads, eat them up, yum!" Well, it's stuck in my head. And if you do know it, now it's probably stuck in yours, too.

I'm tired. Right now I feel like I'm just waiting for the next game cube to come and take me to the next system. Reboot, dammit.

Hey, audience poll. Me as exotic dancer. Waddya think?

quip

Me: One day, hundreds of years from now, future archaeologists will unearth this place. And you know what they will find?

BF: No. What?

Me: My web page still hasn't loaded.

more...

Okay, I'm on a roll now. I should really just write out more posts Rosemary-style. My rants are fun. For me.

Let's face it, the seconds we got on the planet are finite. We probably ain't got that many more breaths in our body, certainly not in the cosmic sense. So if every single moment is a gift from God/nature/flying-spaghetti-monster, then why in the hell/nothingness/pasta sauce am I spending one more second listening to anti-gay arguments? They draw me like flies to those irritating buzzing traps. (And why do flies get drawn to those things, anyway? Is it just like, "I'm annoying. It's annoying. Strangely... compelled...")

The thing is, I keep trying to find something that makes sense. And I guess on some level I am looking for validation, like if I really see every anti-gay argument for myself and can readily verify that it is crap, then I can rest easy. That's stupid. I don't need to see every anti-racist argument to not be racist, and I don't need to hear every anti-gay argument to know that it all boils down to the same "it's yucky/ God said so" arguments. Enough, I'm tired of this crap. I'm gonna go do something productive. Like cocaine.

angry thoughts

I feel like bitching more about life. Grah!

According to the BBC, yet another review panel has concluded that abstinence-only programs don't work. Gasp. Because it totally makes sense that when you have millions of years of evolution-perfected hormones telling you to have sex on one hand, and Phyllis Schlafly or whoever on the other telling you to abstain, abstinence totally wins out. What were you smoking?

And while I am on the subject of Satan and his minions, I am filled with anger at a particular individual at the clinic where I work at. How do you manage the fact that you know someone is lying to you but you can't say anything about it? Especially when that person is an irresponsible little bitch who doesn't fess up to anything but just wants to feel powerful? And that's like a parasite at the clinic, or at least in my section. People want to be sensitive to your feelings and not say anything that would be perceived as judgmental. We want to own up to our end of things and work through our issues responsibly. Then this ass comes along, waits for other people to fess up to their ends, and then uses that as proof of being right all along and look, "they even admitted it". Well fuck that. Up to this point I have really tried to be someone who is fair and rational and handles conflicts with impartiality. An up till now its worked for me. But you know what? I do judge this person. I deem them an irredeemable butt-monkey with the emotional IQ of a curtain. A damn manipulative butt-monkey at that. I wanna just say that they are a piece of shit and be done with it. But then that becomes evidence that I am an irrational person who "just doesn't handle conflict well," and "maybe we can negotiate this?" Maybe I can negotiate a fucking pipe up your ass you sack of crap.

I hate prospective employers who do not respond to emails and do not answer phone calls and do not give me a freakin' job. May they roast in that special hell with spikey cucumbers and pink upholstery and Michael Bolton karaoke-style.

On second thought, Phyllis Schlafly advocates women staying at home and serving their men, not abstinence, I think. Screw you, Wikipedia, you are dead to me. Oh, and you too Phyllis Schlafly. You go to prospective employer hell.

musings and a fun conversation

I realize that I have been lax about posting.

I suppose it relates to my continual string of existential crises about what I think is interesting and what I feel is worthwhile to let outside of the confines of my own head. I feel like I ought to have a biohazard sign on my scalp.

And let's face it, I'm lazy. Not like I don't want to work, but I don't generally want to take any effort that is going to require any initiative at all on my part. I mean AT ALL. Which is why an attempt at a blog is a kind of silly endeavor for me. But still a lot of fun. And gratifying that I have over 70 posts that have sprung from my head, heart, and fingertips, even if some of them are two lines and a link. OK, most of them. Shut up, who asked you?

So that said, now the pressure is on to make the nearly two week wait totally worth it. I got nothing. OK, I got something, but it ain't me. Well, fuck it. It's long and it's funny. You don't like it, you can suck it. Suck it dry.

(P.S... Damn you slow internet, you foil me again. I will have your soul, rah!)

John: ... I mean, what will it take? That last speech literally made no sense. It was crazy drunken bar talk! Islamic radicals are like COMMUNISM?! (gets speech on laptop) If we don't fight terrorists in Iraq they'll build a fundamentalist terrorist state stretching from Spain to Indonesia? What the fuck? Even assuming Spain, which last time I checked is 95% Roman Catholic, goes down, you gotta assume France, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, all eight hundred million Hindus in India, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore would be somewhat of an obstacle.

Tyrone: To be fair, you're going west-to-east. Maybe he meant a fundamentalist terrorist state stretching from Spain to Indonesia going east-to-west. Going that way, there's only the U.S. The President could be warning us that if we don't prevail in Iraq, the United States will become a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist state.

John: ... a little oblique, isn't it?

Tyrone: The man is nothing if not subtle.

John: (calling up map on laptop) You know, I guess if you start in Spain, swing hard south through northern Africa, you got Algeria, Libya there, Egypt, cross the Red Sea and you're in the Middle East ...

Tyrone: From there, if you spot him the Indian Ocean and India, you're in Indonesia.

John: I am not spotting him eight hundred million Hindus. I call shenanigans.

Tyrone: And again, I must point out Bush said "the militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, allowing them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region." That's what the militants believe. They may just be delusional. He says that himself: "Some might be tempted to dismiss these goals as fanatical or extreme. Well, they are fanatical and extreme -- and they should not be dismissed. Our enemy is utterly committed."

John: But he's citing that desire as a basis for our strategy. You can't cite your enemy's delusional hopes as a basis for a rational strategy. Goals don't exist in a vacuum, they're linked to capability. David Koresh was utterly committed to being Jesus Christ. See how far that got him.

Either Bush is making strategy based on a delusional goal of his opponent, which is idiotic; or he's saying he believes his opponent has the capability of achieving this delusional goal, which is idiotic. Neither bodes well for the republic.

Tyrone: Reading here, the speech boiled down to two points --

John: Who cares? The Spain-to-Indonesia thing should automatically invalidate the whole speech. I don't care how good your investment advisor is, he can spend three hours reviewing mutual funds, as soon as he says "And of course, we can put your money into the Easter Bunny's Egg Upgrades", he is out of --

Tyrone: -- two points. First, Iraq is the keystone in the struggle between the West and Islamic Fundamentalism.

John: Which, if we accept the Administration's own argument, means that invading and destabilizing Iraq with insufficent post-war planning (and all that entails), not enough personnel, and shitty equipment for that personnel was the biggest screw-up in the War on Terror.

Tyrone: He's the President: if he says it, it must be true. Second, Bush says we have made a lot of progress in stopping al-Queda plots. Look: "Overall, the United States and our partners have disrupted at least ten serious al Qaeda terrorist plots since September the 11th, including three al Qaeda plots to attack inside the United States. We've stopped at least five more al-Qaeda efforts to case targets in the United States, or infiltrate operatives into our country."

John: What are they counting for those wins? Are they counting guys like Padilla?* This is all very gooey, like how we've killed like, nine of Osama Bin Laden's #3 guys.

Tyrone: Being #3 in Al-queda is like being a "creative vice president" at a Hollywood studio. There are dozens of them ... and they are expendable. Listen, don't do this, you're just getting worked up. Have another mozzarella stick.

John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is --

Tyrone: 27%.

John: ... you said that immmediately, and with some authority.

Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.

John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behaviour? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?

Tyrone: Hadn't thought about it. Let's split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification -- either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.

John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?

Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?

John: ... a bit low, actually.

Tyrone: (shrugs) Probably right, then. Speaking of Obama, I need to get t-shirts printed up to sell.

John: I can do that on the web. What do they say?

Tyrone: Don't You Dare Kill Obama

John: How about Don't You Dare Kill Obama (... and we know you're thinking about it)

Tyrone: Niiiiice.

John: Or You Kill Obama and WE WILL BURN SHIT DOWN

Tyrone: Even better. Nobody wants their shit burned down.

John: Glad to help.

Tyrone: I'm having you taken off the list for when the revolution comes.

John: ... there's really a list --

Tyrone: Oh yeah. Hell yeah.