So I am two days into this organic cleanse that involves eating a rice dish made with moong beans (pronounced "mung," sounds like dung [for a reason]), some kind of spiced tea that tastes like monkey crotch and apples. This thing is supposed to last for seven days, and so far every indication points toward me not being able to do it (also giving me one more fucking reason I never want to visit India).
Of course, I'd imagine the Indian folks I know would be pretty offended to have this associated with them. It's more like an Indian-inspired weight loss tactic with a bunch of spiritual horse shit padding it the same way Micheal Bay is padded in bad movies. It's very obviously targeting white people who want to live a "healthier lifestyle," but to be honest, I don't know how much this will benefit me since I feel like 90% of this stuff is crap to begin with. I mean, I get the science behind it - me drinking a pot of coffee a day and subsisting on preservatives and grease isn't good, and anything to help me break those habits is good, but I think my doshas will be fine without a few gallons of jock strap sweat and twigs.
I am not a spiritual person. I don't sign on to any major religion and steer clear of the "spiritual but not religious" lifestyle. Do I believe in supernatural things? Yes. Do I believe in a higher intelligence in the universe? Well if it invented dinosaurs then maybe less than intelligent, but since it invented the platypus, it might not be smart but it sure is awesome. Do I believe in a mythic father figure up in the clouds who wrote a book about how to die right and punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous in the afterlife? No. Not at all. And not in any sense, since Eastern religious are basically a variation on the theme rather than a different way of seeing things. It's still a social institution that puts man at odds with nature rather than accepting that man is part of nature and all of the natural stuff we do maybe isn't so bad (everyone else is doin' it man).
So for now the cleanse continues, though the only thing it may be cleaning out of my body and mind is my sanity.
Positive note: one week without coffee, first day without a headache.
Progress?
Showing posts with label bitchings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bitchings. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Trolling Sucks Ass - Please Stop
Even before I knew what it was, I thought that trolling was a pretty useless, socially maladjusted activity. Well, last night some people educated me, I learned all about trolling. And I have to say that this new knowledge has caused my opinion on the subject to stay exactly the same.
Here is something I think is true:
People who make puns, or wordplay in general, aren't clever. In fact, it's a social disengagement; a reaction to the content of one's sentence rather than the substance or meaning.
I think it's partly a selfishness thing, like saying, "Well, that's nice, but let's talk about me now." It's also a way to avoid the consequence of actually interacting with another human being, which is a little scarier. They say the mark of a good politician is someone who can talk a lot without saying anything. If this is the case, these trolling motherfuckers could all run for Emperor of the Goddamn Multiverse.
I have not participated in anything really related to internet culture in a long time, and this makes me very happy that this is the case. Holy shit.
Here is something I think is true:
People who make puns, or wordplay in general, aren't clever. In fact, it's a social disengagement; a reaction to the content of one's sentence rather than the substance or meaning.
I think it's partly a selfishness thing, like saying, "Well, that's nice, but let's talk about me now." It's also a way to avoid the consequence of actually interacting with another human being, which is a little scarier. They say the mark of a good politician is someone who can talk a lot without saying anything. If this is the case, these trolling motherfuckers could all run for Emperor of the Goddamn Multiverse.
I have not participated in anything really related to internet culture in a long time, and this makes me very happy that this is the case. Holy shit.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Facts & Figures
I'm writing this as a response to a comment I saw on Facebook by a group I'm part of. I'm not posting directly because I genuinely support what said group is doing and the people in it. Unfortunately, the group relies heavily on statistics from the "We Make This Shit Up As We Go Along" department.
I am all for funding public education - both in terms of mandatory school and public or state colleges. And I'm also of the mind that every American deserves a shot at college. Not that schools should just hand out degrees from overly-specific programs, but at least everyone should try it. And it is true that one stands to land a better-paying job and have a higher quality of life by getting a college degree.
That being said, a figure was quoted stating that the average starting salary of a college grad with a bachelor's was somewhere around 50K a year, and that figure reeks of bullshit. Personally, I've never had a job that pays that much, and I have both a college degree and job training/certs in computer programming. People I know with degrees who have been at their jobs for years don't make 50K. Even my friends who were lucky enough to land really great jobs with unions and benefits don't make that much, so where the hell did this number come from? Time for a lesson in how to fine-tune a Bullshit Detector.
First, check where the info comes from. In this case, the 50K figure comes from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. I don't know who they are either, but since it's a conglomerate of schools who want new students and employers who want new talent, of course they're going to make going to college as appealing as possible, even if it means lying.
And yes, they're lying. The 50K figure came from so far up a marketing executive's asshole its still got half-digested taco stuck to it. More reliable gauges of how much people make are available from sources, like, I don't know, the US Census? According to last year's, the per-capital household income in NJ is 34K a year. That's pretty far off 50K if you ask me, and by the way, that's a few thousand higher than the national average. And by the way again, that's for a household of 2 to 3 people.
Bullshit detected! Shields up!
To one who is passionate about education, it is really upsetting to see that college isn't marketed differently. It's one thing to take a legitimate state school and bring it down to the level of daytime TV nursing school infomerical, but pulling bullshit statistics from disingenuous groups nobody has ever heard of with extremely clear agendas just creates an illusion for potential students. Not that colleges should be all Debbie Downer and pee in everyone's cereal, but there's a better way to go about it. Maybe if schools stop treating themselves like worker drone factories and practiced a little more honesty instead of promising the world to a bunch of wide-eyed freshmen with dollar signs instead of pupils, and helped them to become more well-rounded and worldly adults instead of more productive workers, more folks would be pissed off about the state of things in this country, and just maybe we'd get some of the change everyone has been screaming for.
I am all for funding public education - both in terms of mandatory school and public or state colleges. And I'm also of the mind that every American deserves a shot at college. Not that schools should just hand out degrees from overly-specific programs, but at least everyone should try it. And it is true that one stands to land a better-paying job and have a higher quality of life by getting a college degree.
That being said, a figure was quoted stating that the average starting salary of a college grad with a bachelor's was somewhere around 50K a year, and that figure reeks of bullshit. Personally, I've never had a job that pays that much, and I have both a college degree and job training/certs in computer programming. People I know with degrees who have been at their jobs for years don't make 50K. Even my friends who were lucky enough to land really great jobs with unions and benefits don't make that much, so where the hell did this number come from? Time for a lesson in how to fine-tune a Bullshit Detector.
First, check where the info comes from. In this case, the 50K figure comes from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. I don't know who they are either, but since it's a conglomerate of schools who want new students and employers who want new talent, of course they're going to make going to college as appealing as possible, even if it means lying.
And yes, they're lying. The 50K figure came from so far up a marketing executive's asshole its still got half-digested taco stuck to it. More reliable gauges of how much people make are available from sources, like, I don't know, the US Census? According to last year's, the per-capital household income in NJ is 34K a year. That's pretty far off 50K if you ask me, and by the way, that's a few thousand higher than the national average. And by the way again, that's for a household of 2 to 3 people.
Bullshit detected! Shields up!
To one who is passionate about education, it is really upsetting to see that college isn't marketed differently. It's one thing to take a legitimate state school and bring it down to the level of daytime TV nursing school infomerical, but pulling bullshit statistics from disingenuous groups nobody has ever heard of with extremely clear agendas just creates an illusion for potential students. Not that colleges should be all Debbie Downer and pee in everyone's cereal, but there's a better way to go about it. Maybe if schools stop treating themselves like worker drone factories and practiced a little more honesty instead of promising the world to a bunch of wide-eyed freshmen with dollar signs instead of pupils, and helped them to become more well-rounded and worldly adults instead of more productive workers, more folks would be pissed off about the state of things in this country, and just maybe we'd get some of the change everyone has been screaming for.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Out Come the Shitheads
I have little love for Steve Jobs. The man really lived a kind of double life - there was the Zen-philosophied technocrat responsible for whole generations of gadgetry, from selling computers out his garage to the most recent iPad 2 and the announced iPhone 5. Then there's the deadly serious businessman, know for everything from firing Apple employees on the spot during a conversation in an elevator to joining the ranks of Nike, Levi and HP in running one of the biggest sweatshops in third world Asia.
But as sure as the fucking tide, not a week after his death, everyone near, on, or over the border of Crazytown has come out to use it as an agenda-based talking point. Margie Phelps, daughter of Westboro Baptist Church leader Fred Phelps (of "God Hates Fags" fame), has made a promise to picket Jobs's funeral for his practice of "[giving] God no glory." Ironically she tweeted this from her iPhone, which drew some anger from her supports. Her response? Tell everyone that's why God created the iPhone.
Thankfully, the only people paying attention to this psychotic are either doing so to poke fun at her, or live so far out in the middle of nowhere they aren't going to bother anyone anytime soon.
The second example of unbridled assholery comes from Wikileaks, which is disappointing considering the site occasionally does something good. This comes in the form of a "suppressed" HIV test showing Jobs was positive. With a little research (IE Googleing it) it becomes evident that the document is faked - the company attributed to the test was out of business. For a website that pushes the authenticity of it's documents, no matter how weird or insane they may be, throwing this out is either a dumb ass attention-getting stunt or a rush to publish something controversial with no effort to verify it.
It makes me sad that the pundits jump on a man's death and shred it for talking points the way a squirrel would devour the last acorn on Earth. Hindsight on one's life is an opportunity for reflection and education, not lube for the agenda ramrod. It doesn't matter if it get coated in God's Gloopy Glory or Conspiracy AstroGlide, at the end of the day you, the reader, is still getting a stick up your ass.
But as sure as the fucking tide, not a week after his death, everyone near, on, or over the border of Crazytown has come out to use it as an agenda-based talking point. Margie Phelps, daughter of Westboro Baptist Church leader Fred Phelps (of "God Hates Fags" fame), has made a promise to picket Jobs's funeral for his practice of "[giving] God no glory." Ironically she tweeted this from her iPhone, which drew some anger from her supports. Her response? Tell everyone that's why God created the iPhone.
Thankfully, the only people paying attention to this psychotic are either doing so to poke fun at her, or live so far out in the middle of nowhere they aren't going to bother anyone anytime soon.
The second example of unbridled assholery comes from Wikileaks, which is disappointing considering the site occasionally does something good. This comes in the form of a "suppressed" HIV test showing Jobs was positive. With a little research (IE Googleing it) it becomes evident that the document is faked - the company attributed to the test was out of business. For a website that pushes the authenticity of it's documents, no matter how weird or insane they may be, throwing this out is either a dumb ass attention-getting stunt or a rush to publish something controversial with no effort to verify it.
It makes me sad that the pundits jump on a man's death and shred it for talking points the way a squirrel would devour the last acorn on Earth. Hindsight on one's life is an opportunity for reflection and education, not lube for the agenda ramrod. It doesn't matter if it get coated in God's Gloopy Glory or Conspiracy AstroGlide, at the end of the day you, the reader, is still getting a stick up your ass.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Why I Don't Like XKCD
Something about the comic that is popular with nerds, geeks, programmers, and philosophy majors (on about the same level as a discount hooker on the first day of shore leave) turns me off. It's pretentious as shit but that doesn't really seem to bug me too much. I, myself, can be pretentious as fuck, given the right subject and blood-alcohol level. And the commentary on relationships, while so emo you could turn it into music and sell it as the boxed set "Songs to Which One Runs a Hot Bath, Slits His or Her Wrists and Drifts Slowly into the Warm Embrace of Death," is sometimes spot-on. And it's drawn with stick figures so most of the laughs and/or tears and/or suicides have to come from the text and/or context and/or content; a rare level of depth I appreciated in any medium but that is particularly lacking from the long stream of goat urine that is the online comic clusterfuck.
Seriously, that goat started peeing in 1999 and hasn't stopped since. What's in his bladder, the North-fucking-Sea?
Here's why XKCD doesn't tickle me in the naughty place it tickles most socially awkward beings of higher brain function. I think it's that in everyday life, I work very hard to make a distinction between being clever and being intelligent - and before I sound like I'm stepping on a box that may or may not be filled with soap, it's something at which I don't succeed very often. On a good day, for every hundred moments of cleverness, we maybe have one moment of true insight. It is those rare meta-moments where we can take a step back, even if it's just one quiet tip-toe, and really think about what we're doing and why. XKCD always seems to nail the joke, but never quite drives it home, and for a comic that is revered for it's depth, it's the stunning lack of depth that always stands out. It's like laughing at a George Carlin joke without really knowing who George Carlin is.
The clencher is that the air hanging around the comic and its crudely-drawn inhabitants is the stale mist of desperation. It seems that the overall point is that we will never find true happiness, and either by our own character flaws or circumstances beyond our control, happiness is temporary and fleeting, and each time it comes we're doomed to forget its fragility and end up crushed, over and over, taking the pain but none of the lessons that come from it.
Of course, XKCD can do whatever it damn well wishes, and there's no real need for it to constantly try to ram knowledge in readers' faces. And given the locus of most online comics, that would just sound preachy. I suppose it's the reaction to the comic that bothers me more than the comic itself. I still won't give it more than one or two clicks a year.
Incidentally, the following is absolutely true:
Seriously, that goat started peeing in 1999 and hasn't stopped since. What's in his bladder, the North-fucking-Sea?
Here's why XKCD doesn't tickle me in the naughty place it tickles most socially awkward beings of higher brain function. I think it's that in everyday life, I work very hard to make a distinction between being clever and being intelligent - and before I sound like I'm stepping on a box that may or may not be filled with soap, it's something at which I don't succeed very often. On a good day, for every hundred moments of cleverness, we maybe have one moment of true insight. It is those rare meta-moments where we can take a step back, even if it's just one quiet tip-toe, and really think about what we're doing and why. XKCD always seems to nail the joke, but never quite drives it home, and for a comic that is revered for it's depth, it's the stunning lack of depth that always stands out. It's like laughing at a George Carlin joke without really knowing who George Carlin is.
The clencher is that the air hanging around the comic and its crudely-drawn inhabitants is the stale mist of desperation. It seems that the overall point is that we will never find true happiness, and either by our own character flaws or circumstances beyond our control, happiness is temporary and fleeting, and each time it comes we're doomed to forget its fragility and end up crushed, over and over, taking the pain but none of the lessons that come from it.
Of course, XKCD can do whatever it damn well wishes, and there's no real need for it to constantly try to ram knowledge in readers' faces. And given the locus of most online comics, that would just sound preachy. I suppose it's the reaction to the comic that bothers me more than the comic itself. I still won't give it more than one or two clicks a year.
Incidentally, the following is absolutely true:
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