Category Archives: Rants

Guns – Violence – Fuck Jim Carrey

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Well, maybe not fuck Jim. In case you haven’t heard, Mr. Carrey recently released a video parody of Hee Haw, poking fun at insecure, overcompensating dickwads who use firearms to prop up their failing masculinity. I realize his video wasn’t targeting people like me. It was targeting people like Alex Jones; crazy, uneducated motherfuckers, who love spreading hate. Of course you have the flip side of that insanity sandwich with people like Piers Morgan; someone who is equally crazy, equally uneducated, and equally a motherfucker.

I grew up around firearms. Guns are not evil to me. I was taught how to use them. I was taught how to care for them. But most importantly, I was taught how to respect them. And therein lies most of the problem when it comes to guns: people do not respect what they are capable of. A bandsaw does not go around cutting people’s fingers off, but every year in woodshop classes around the world students are losing digits because they failed to respect the equipment. Unloaded guns are responsible for more accidental deaths than loaded guns.

Wait, that doesn’t make any sense, right? It makes perfect sense. When someone perceives a gun to be unloaded, any respect they had for the firearm is thrown out the window. So you end up with idiots shooting their friends, themselves, their family, because they thought the gun was unloaded. When I was growing up, I was taught to treat a gun with respect regardless of whether it was or was not loaded. You pay attention to the business end and you make sure it is always pointing in a safe direction. Period.

We are a violent species. We have been glorifying violence for thousands of years. We always have been and always will be driven by violence. That’s not to say that we can’t do something about reducing it. Taking guns out of the equation doesn’t actually solve anything, because the underlying violence still remains. Yes, guns can dramatically alter the outcome of that violence, but without them violence is still prevalent. People are still getting mugged, people are still being threatened, the only difference is they’re being sent to the hospital with knife wounds and broken bones instead of gunshot wounds–you haven’t solved anything.

Improving our education is one step of many that may help to curb violence. Why are we spending so much time and money trying to demonize guns when we could be using it to improve Little Johnny’s education, to improve his home environment, to help educate his parents? Universal healthcare would certainly help poorer families care for their children and themselves, allowing them to take the money they would have used on that to instead provide a more stable environment for their offspring. Not everyone who is poor wants to be poor. Not everyone who is poor spends their paycheck on beer and cigarettes. Just like not everyone who owns a firearm is as much of a dipshit as Wayne LaPierre.

The final piece of advice I would like to offer to America is this: learn how to love and forget how to hate. Stop watching Fox news. Stop watching MSNBC. Stop reading Infowars. Stop reading Huffington Post. Pull your head out of your ass and begin thinking for yourself. Learn to have a meaningful discussion with someone of opposing views without yelling at them, and maybe you’ll learn from one another. Pull your head out of your ass. Pull your head out of your ass. Pull your head out of your ass.

Guns – Misinformation – Fuck Bob Costas

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Our lawmakers are failing us. Our country’s media has failed us. The knee-jerk reaction to the shooting in Sandy Hook is once again threatening to strip rights from law abiding citizens. I’m not going to talk about that, though. I’m not going to belittle their tragedy by putting myself on a soapbox for my own, personal agenda. What I will talk about is the media, firearms, and a general lack of understanding people like Bob Costas seem to have when it comes to the topic.

I’d like everyone to take a step back from mourning, pretending to care, from overreacting, and from spouting bullshit. If you can’t do that, stop reading right now. For the rest of you armed with common sense, we’re going to have a discussion and hopefully shed some light on some of the crap coming out of our media.

First, we need to stop demonizing firearms. They’re an inanimate object. The evil is found within the hearts of those who take the lives of innocents. They do it with guns in America, knives in China, homemade bombs in Ireland, etc, etc. The methods differ but the root of the problem remains the same: people. That is indisputable. If you feel like arguing that point just remember the part where you agreed to remove yourself from the personal and look at things objectively for once in your life.

Along with demonizing comes editorials about how automatic firearms should be illegal–they already are, and the people who can own them are not the problems. They’ll talk about how assault rifles are powerful killing machines. They’ll go so far as to quote the FPS at which a bullet is fired out of them as a testament to how dangerous the guns are …but hunting rifles are okay. Well, here’s some news: most hunting rifles are considerably more powerful than an assault rifle. They fire a much larger bullet. The amount of energy they create is easily double that of an assault rifle. They are designed to kill things much, much larger than a human being. The only difference here is they don’t come with a black stock and a pistol grip.

And that really is the problem. People see the matte black finish and they lose their mind. They freak out. IT’S GOING TO KILL US ALL, IT’S BLACK! If we were talking about people here we’d be racist. Here’s an example:

http://www.ruger.com/products/mini14RanchRifle/models.html

This is a Ruger mini-14. It’s a semiautomatic rifle. It comes in a variety of colors. Can you hunt with it? Sure! I know people who have used a mini-14 to hunt. Let’s take a look at another rifle.

http://www.ruger.com/products/mini14TacticalRifle/models.html

What’s that? If you said “assault rifle” here comes the mind fuck–THEY ARE THE SAME RIFLE. The only difference here is one comes with a black plastic stock that features a pistol grip. They fire the same cartridge at the same speed and can hold the same size magazine–again, THEY ARE THE SAME RIFLE.

The assault rifle you are so afraid of is not an assault rifle at all. It is not any more dangerous than a hunting rifle, or a handgun, or a shotgun–all of which are equally deadly in the hands of a lunatic. The news media are BRAINWASHING you to further their own political agenda. They want you to be afraid of the black plastic, because it somehow turns the firearm into a “killing machine”. Let’s quote a little from the good old Washington Post, shall we?

“THE BUSHMASTER .223-caliber semiautomatic rifle that Adam Lanza carried into Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday is a frightful killing machine.”

Right off the bat you hate the rifle because it’s a “killing machine”. It’s now associated with a horrible massacre of school children (again, we’re taking a step back here, don’t get emotional on me now).

“A coroner said most of the victims were hit with at least three bullets — and some with up to 11 — that exploded with devastating lethality, tearing them apart from inside. The Bushmaster was a juggernaut of death.”

This is my favorite part. It’s like they hired Stephen King to write the editorial. It was a juggernaut of death–that’s gold. And people still don’t think the media have their own agenda? They’re using these tragedies to make you hate. They’re trying to fuel knee-jerk politics with these colorful, misleading anecdotes. I read another article the other day where they talked about how the “Bushmaster” rifle that was used could fire six shots a second. That’s more bullshit trying to sway your emotions. It’s a semiautomatic rifle. Let’s break it down:

The “automatic” from the phrase is referring to the gun’s action (the part that houses the firing mechanism, ejector, etc). Prior to machine guns, as they were originally called, we had manual action firearms. Once fired you had to manually eject the cartridge in order to load another into the firing chamber. Machine guns removed the manual part of the equation. When fired, it used some of the energy created by the explosion to automatically eject the empty and load a new round into the firing position so you didn’t have to.

Semiautomatic weapons stop there. One pull of the trigger fires one bullet, and the automatic action removes the empty and loads another cartridge. That’s it. If you want to shoot again you have to pull the trigger a second time. Fully automatic weapons will continue to fire as long as the trigger is held down. The rifle used in the Sandy Hook shooting was a semiautomatic. That hasn’t stopped the news media from telling you it’s a military rifle, an automatic rifle, can shoot X bullets per second, etc. All of these statements are false and are used to force you into an emotional response–to demonize the firearm.

I don’t care if you hate guns, the gun community, or even me. I really couldn’t give a shit. But at the very least you should know what you’re hating and why you’re hating it, and aren’t just repeating what the talking heads want you to think. Unfortunately, our representatives are spewing bullshit at the federal level. They want to ban things and they don’t even understand what they’re banning. Can we have a fucking intelligent discussion with our policy makers? I doubt it. How some of these people end up elected is beyond me.

Artificial Happiness

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I have noticed over the last month or two that I have some friends/guild members and family members who have been increasingly vocal about their social exploits, which are centered around, but not limited to, drinking large quantities of alcohol, eating large quantities of unhealthy food, and smoking cigarettes or pot.

Now, I have never been one to turn my nose up at a fun time. I don’t consider myself a square. But, I do like to think of myself as “health conscious”. And my mental dilemma this week stems from attempting to figure out why people can’t have fun without being unhealthy. Why do people have to binge drink when they go out? Why do they have to eat terrible fried food on a weekly basis? And why, oh why, do people have to fill their lungs with shit that they KNOW will kill them faster?

My first thought is that perhaps these people think that they are above the health problems presented by excessive indulgence. They have a tendency to exemplify the minority as an excuse. “My grandma smoked for 65 years and she doesn’t have lung cancer!!” (what other problems does she have?) “A glass of wine now and then is good for you!” And it can be. But I have never seen these people only drink a single glass of wine.

So what they mean to say is they believe they are immune to the negative effects. And this concerns me greatly. I transcribe for multiple pulmonologists who have 20-40 different patients daily, and while I cannot disclose specific information, I can say that the percentage of people who have lung issues from smoking…extremely high. The correlation between alcohol obesity AND heart issues is also quite obvious and prevalent. And I can’t make these figures up. I see them on a daily basis.

Consequentially, when I see close friends and even relatives regularly drinking, smoking, and eating badly, I instinctively warn them. “These things are bad for you.” “I’m worried about your health.” They seem to be tickled by my concern. “Oh, I know it’s bad for me.” So they do know. Why not stop, then? WHY IS THERE A NEED TO SELF DESTRUCT? Is your life no fun unless you smoke, drink, or eat greasy food? Then you SERIOUSLY might need to step back and self-examine a bit. The whole point of life is to be able to be happy without an excess of shit that makes you artificially happy.

“Smoking is addictive!” people say. My friend Laurel made a good point about this to me today – ever seen someone quit when they have a child and then start back up afterward? All the time!! It can’t be that addictive if you can QUIT STONE COLD TURKEY when you have a child!! So what is calling them back to it afterward? Could it be a subconscious desire for self destruction? Boredom? Obviously they cared enough for the child to stop smoking in an effort to preserve its health…so why can’t they do the same for themselves? Food for thought.

I try to put myself in these people’s shoes. I really do. In high school, I understood that people had nerves and concerns and alcohol and pot easily dull these. But are the long-term side effects of these terrible habits worth the loss of the nerves and worries? Not to me. I just don’t get it. Yes, I understand that you’re stressed and the cigarettes makes you feel better. I understand that you have trouble talking to women, and 6 beers really helps with that. But have you really sat down and thought about what 6 beers three times a week will do to your body eventually? Or what a pack of cigarettes per day will do? Or fast food every day?

I just really want to see my friends and family be healthy and live a long time. I know they’re smart people. It tortures me inside that they would indulge in such self-destructive activities consistently. I would love to just spend time with all of you and show you how much fun you can have while not causing your body to fall apart. I want us all to live as long as we can and enjoy life.

Stop believing you’re above health risks, stop being an idiot, and start being healthy and happy without artificial means. I promise, you can do it.

Bigotry, Not Empathy!! Oh, wait.

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So, I read an article this morning.

News Article Link

If you’re too lazy to read it, I’ll give you the gist. Mexican man has stomach cancer. He works at Golden Farm to support himself, his wife, and children. They do not allow holidays or sick days for the man to get chemo treatments. He shows up to work every day, basically until he is too sick to do so and is sent to the hospital. Man dies.

Sad story, right? I thought so. Is it really legal for companies not to allow sick days? Apparently so, depending on the state. Not only that, but the man is quoted in the article to say that he didn’t want to take a day off for fear of his job. God forbid he take a day off FOR CHEMOTHERAPY.

Now, the article bothered me. Of course. Regardless of who it was written by or biased towards, it seems inherently evil to me that the workers at this place don’t have any kind of a feeling of security in their jobs. They’re easily replacable. Sick? Too bad, find another job. Piece of cake in this economy. I’m fucking loaded, so I can find any old Mexican off the street and offer him a job for shit wages. I don’t give a shit about you or your chemotherapy.

But further than that were the comments on the article. I am literally ashamed to say that I even inhabit the same planet as these sad, bigoted pricks.

There are currently 6 comments total. Of the 6, 5 of them think the man’s death is his own fault. The 6th talks about which City Council speaker should win.

Let’s take a look:

“He should have gotten chemotherapy on his 147 sick days, two days a week off.”

Yes, I’m sure he did. But if you’ve ever had or known someone who has had cancer, you need to get chemo more often than that. God forbid these immigrants (because immigrants /= people) are allowed two days per week off. They should be working seven days a week WHILE GETTING CHEMOTHERAPY at night so that they can survive. Sick days? Man up and work while you’re on chemo. Pussies.

…

Really?

Have these people ever had chemotherapy? Have they ever REALLY been sick? Here’s where the whole empathy part should come into play, but it doesn’t. Everybody who works should be working 40-70 hours per week, and… health care? Days off? …Puuh-lease.

Others took it a step further:

“As sad as this is, if they are going to demand sick time, then they should all be on the books, paying into the till.”

Yeah..okay. Who said they weren’t on the books? No one. They’re Mexican; that automatically means they’re illegal immigrants here, apparently. Whether they’re illegal or not, they’re probably not “paying into the till”, so. Their problem! Obviously.

…

Seriously?

And a final one:

“He had 14 hours each day (the hours he did not work) he worked to go to the hospital……..he did not have to worry about the kids, as his wife did not work (hmmm–is this code for illegal immigrant)”

Oh, okay. So he should have worked for 10 hours, then gone to the hospital for a few hours of chemo, then to bed, then back to work the next day? I’ll refer you to the “Chemotherapy Side Effects” section, below.

Oh, and the wife not working is code for illegal immigrant, huh? Or could it just be BECAUSE SHE HAS TWO FUCKING KIDS TO TAKE CARE OF AT HOME? GEE FREAKING WILLIKERS.

God forbid she needs to stay home to give her children an actual education and upbringing instead of shelling out however much it is per week to have her children taken care of by some random assholes for five days a week. Nope, it must mean she’s an illegal immigrant. After all, her skin IS brown.

It seems that these bigoted pricks are the same ones who bitch about how illegal immigrants are destroying our country and that we should randomly do searches on people who aren’t white, or pull them over. The same ones who think that everyone should make it on their own, without welfare and food stamps. The same ones who think that poor people getting enough tax cuts to buy a FRIDGE is exorbitant.

And so on.

No one seems to be able to put themselves into other people’s shoes.

Chemotherapy? Psssh, deal with it. Lose your hand? Pssh, deal with it. Three kids to support? Pssh, deal with it. All your problem.

But have they ever HAD that experience? Have these people ever been just born into poverty?

Some will claim they made their way all by themselves. Sure you did. Your parents never helped you or gave you money. You never received a loan from a bank. The government never helped you. And it shouldn’t help others who are in need, either. Why? Because it’s THEIR FAULT that they’re in need.

Even further than that. Have these people ever had cancer? Or chemotherapy? The fact alone that this man worked while receiving chemo on and off is bloody heroic. Here’s a list of side effects from chemotherapy:

Chemo Side Effects

I challenge all of you bigoted, entitled assholes to get that sick and still go to work without ever asking for a sick day. Pick about 15 random symptoms from that list and imagine yourself with them every day for a year. Or better yet, make two or three lists of 15 symptoms apiece and switch up the lists on a daily basis.

Yeah.

Keep on trucking.

Put yourselves in someone else’s shoes for once instead of just taking off your own shoe and throwing it at them. Empathize instead of immediately judging. Seriously. I’d recommend it. Maybe by the time you’re 85 you’ll feel like a HUMAN BEING again.

Mythology and the Propagation of Stupidity

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Most of us are familiar with Greek Mythology. We’ve all been told at least one story about how someone defied the gods and was punished with some kind of natural disaster. I have always been a fan of how magical and interesting these tales make the world seem. I can imagine, when there’s a tsunami, that a huge Viking-like blond dude with a trident is pissed off and playing with the ocean like a kid would play with Tonka trucks. Exciting, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, though – it’s a myth.

Where am I going with this? Down the Information Superhighway; or, in our current case, the Misinformation Superhighway.

The Internet seemed like a great thing. At first. You could get information quickly and easily without having to pay. Videos of anything you could imagine became readily accessible. One would think that from this platform would spring thousands of possibilities for education. Scientific journals would be available to enlighten us on current research topics. People already in school would easily further their educations, and people not in school could actually glean information to the point of having the equivalent to a degree.

Well, in our dreams, at least.

Instead, the Internet is currently a cesspool of propaganda and stupidity. Anyone can write a blog post or an article. Anyone has the right to believe anything they want, because all of the information is free to read and use. Not only that; it’s convincing and provocative, just like the Greek Myths. I mean, what’s more appealing; the sun rises and falls because the planet is rotating and moving in a specific way, or the sun rises because a dude in a fucking chariot driven by unicorns is TOWING the sun across the sky for us?

I rest my case.

The popularity of the information found on the Internet is inversely proportionate to the truth it contains. The more lies and conspiracies an article contains, the more “likes” and “views” it receives. My brother-in-law Kurt wrote about how reality is really mostly boring, which is why we have science fiction, fantasy, television, etc, etc, to spice up the humdrumness of it all. This is a fact people tend to forget as soon as they turn their computers on. Intelligence instantly evaporates when we are faced with a piece of writing that is controversial or conspiratorial. We have this weird human instinct to gravitate towards lies to make our lives more exciting. Let me exemplify it a few different ways:

Health: Last week, I spoke to a friend of a friend. This person, who I will call Moltox to avoid offending anyone with an existing given name, informed me of a number ways in which current medicine is incorrect. He told me that eyeglasses are bad for you and that there are other, better ways to deal with our health which, for some reason, I had never heard of! He proceeded to link me to various very poorly-made websites that preached about auras, energy, and mental strength, but sold 2500$ golden balls to carry around with you that would “align your energies”. This person told me that he could choose which foods are healthy simply by focussing on them and merging his energies with the food’s. He told me that he could move bones into place with his mind and that he has healed people this way before.

Sounds mind-blowingly exciting, doesn’t it? Maybe like something you’d catch on an old episode of Star Trek? Warning lights go off while reading it at all? Next thing you’ll hear is that this person refused to go to the hospital for lung cancer because he was convinced he could crush the cancer with his mind. Well, survival of the fittest, I suppose. If people are THAT prone to naivety, I say let them fade out. It will give the human race a better chance as a whole. It’s brutal, but it’s true.

Next example.

Let’s go with politics this time. As it is election time currently, shit is far worse. What’s really amazing is how every website and blog suddenly has accurate graphs and charts with numbers showing how Obama killed the economy. Or how much money Romney spends. Or how much he will take away with tax cuts. Amazing how everyone knows these numbers!  Do you have any idea how easy it is to make a graph from your house with a simple paint program? Allow me to demonstrate:

BAM. Amazing, isn’t it? Now check this one out. Instant conspiracy. A person’s weight graphed against the number of donuts eaten – but look at this! Lo! And Behold! If you EAT ENOUGH DONUTS, you won’t get fat anymore. The government has been lying to us all along! Obama has withheld this information from us the whole time!

Do you see how dangerous this can be? If I can spend literally 45 seconds making this graph and writing a two-paragraph blurb about how donuts are actually good for you, imagine what people with time on their hands could do.

A snap of the fingers, and…

The president wasn’t really born here anymore! The government only puts grains on the top of the food chain because it’s the cheapest food to produce, and grains are causing the diabetes epidemic!! Ye Shiwen didn’t really win any Olympic medals! Table salt is actually ground up glass and sand! The President is secretly trying to suppress us all and has opened up secret concentration camps to torture people! Using a piece of paper instantly kills five trees in the rainforest! There are abortion factories where the Devil encourages young people to have sex and then profits monetarily from their abortion procedures! Oh, and Harry Potter is not only written by the Devil himself, but reading the books gives you magical (Satanic) abilities like telekinesis and pyrokinesis!

Believe it or not, these are all articles that have not only been written (some by the Onion), but BELIEVED. By millions of people. They caused a spread of propaganda over the Internet in a matter of hours. It is embarassing that this is what people are doing with their time instead of using the Net as an educational tool. They read and wait for the familiar feeling that “Wow, I was right, the government is screwing us over.” It’s almost like a drug. The more unbelievable the article is, the more they are inclined to believe it.

Can this be reversed? Probably not. But I implore anyone who is reading this to do more, better research when you hear/read about or see something. If this blog post scared you, good. It should. Stupidity is contagious and we need to vaccinate against it.

Don’t take anything at face value.

—-

Extra thanks to Kurt Foster for writing his own rant and further inspiring me. If I can get a link to his at some point, I will include it here.