Month: November 2009

Thanksgiving

Not withstanding the soiled nature of the holiday, thanks to small pox blankets and other unimaginable cruelty that goes along with the murder of en entire set of cultures and people.

I’m taking this moment to write about the things I am thankful for.

This is not an exhaustive list, but just to give some idea of what I appreciate in my life.

1. I am thankful that my parents are still alive, together, happy, healthy, and nearby. I know they love me and I they know I love them. This is hands down the one thing I am most thankful for. That I have true parents.

2. That I have a home, enough to eat and drink, clothing, safety, warmth, and shelter. This we ALL deserve. I don’t care, even the most hated among us.

3. That my health, which while less than perfect is FAR and away from truly problematic. I am aware of what I have and don’t have.

4. That my phobias while crippling can be avoided. Some people have no safe places.

5. My real friends. The people that have a vested interest in my happiness. I wish I could do more for theirs.

6. For all the little things that when you really think about it aren’t so little. My computer, my fridge, my knife, my guns, my toys, my pictures, my books, my movies, my games, my everything.

7. My options, not only do I have enough to eat and drink but I have the kinds of things I enjoy eating and drinking.

8. My freedom, I have not been randomly and wrongfully convicted as so many have. For this list I have put aside my anger, and merely note how thankful I am that this has not happened to me or anyone I care about as of this writing.

9. My solitude. I have had my own house since I was 17, and I have spent the majority of my life with roommates, this makes we appreciate having my own space.

10. I am thankful for my readers, for my ability to express myself, and for a reasonable belief that at least a few people see my work.

11. I am thankful that you have have not done the harm you could have, for you self discipline and restraint and ethics.

12. And finally, my hope for the future. Technology. I am thankful that technology is expanding, and growing more accessible by the millisecond. I am so Very thankful that I have a reasonable hope of seeing the true ascendancy and transcendencey of humanity.

If I were a religious man I would thank god for these things, and though I am a deist and believe something enforces the physical constants etc, I do not believe it hears or thinks or is a living thing. So thanking it would be pointless.

So in a way, I am thanking luck, and all of you. Any of you are capable of ruining these things, and yet for whatever reason you haven’t. Bravo, and hold on, it will soon be better for all of us.

John Wayne’s Ghost: The Birth of “Emo”

We’ve moved past fearing Jews in the neighborhood. We’ve moved past tolerance for beating your wife. We’ve moved past thinking blacks in schools with whites as dangerous. We’ve moved past seeing the red threat around every corner. We’ve moved past black and white TV, and father knows best.

But John Wayne’s ghost still lingers. Men are still expected to throw themselves on the grenades of society to protect the women and children. We are still expected to suffer silently, to do as we are told, to kill and die on command, to act is if our very purpose for being is to live up to a woman’s idea of what a man should be.

Nothing has as much power over a John Wayne type than a socially aligned scolding, a questioning of “manhood” which always boils down to rational risk aversion negation, or sublimation of the individual will for the good of the state.

So clear has this trend become in the modern mind that a phrase like “man up” was coined, which means simply “act as your gender stereotype demands over your personal feelings.” Why do we tolerate this shit?

What if I said to a woman… “Woman up, I need this floor scrubbed?” What would happen then? What if I said “Grow a vag and get me a sandwich?” I’d be a sexist misogynistic pig.

If you see a woman crying, and you walk up to her and say “quit being emo.” What’s the first thought? Insensitivity, callous disregard for the suffering of another? You see a man crying and you say “quit being emo” and people laugh. “Oh cry me a river, quit being all emo butthurt, man up and get to work.” What’s the first thought? I’ll bet it something about trying to understand WHY the man is crying, and instantly making a set of value judgments about the validity of his emotional display.

When men cry, they have to have a reason, and not just any reason mind, you a GOOD reason. Men are expected to hide ALL emotional displays. Unless they are violent, in defense of the status quo, anger, or snide gloating, and perhaps lust, so long as its for a socially sanctioned target.

John Wayne’s emotionally crippled sexist legacy lives on.

Entitlement

During this season of healthcare debate the morons incapable of checking the sum of their ideas for logical consistency tended to whine about entitlement, painting an image of lazy greed, a sort of working class fat cat.

I’ll be blunt, I do feel entitled to government healthcare, and indeed a paycheck. Here’s a list of why.

1. They make it illegal to kill myself, which means my living is forced on me by the state, therefore the state is responsible for it.

2. The state of intellectual property law and economic regulation generally makes competition by improvement impossible. Innovation is illegal.

3. Protection from death from outside sources is already an accepted government responsibility, from seat belts, to the FDA, to the Army, regulation and expenditure to protect us from death is everywhere.

4. The state has the authority to kill us if it so chooses, therefore they have the responsibility to keep us alive.

5. They have far more power over me than they have responsibility to me already. From telling me who I can marry, to which plants I can eat, to what color I can paint my house, the state intrudes on virtually every aspect of our lives to the point that it may simply be easier to make a list of legal activities and assume all else is illegal.

6. Our taxes and labor keep the state alive, we deserve a share of the profits.

7. I am prevented from exiting, as Ruby Ridge and Waco and the countless other examples of social abstinence being disallowed demonstrates.

8. I do not actually own my land, my home, or my body. I rent via taxes.

9. Congress and convicts gets free healthcare.

10. And perhaps most importantly, I didn’t break the law today, which serves one and only one purposes, to keep those in power, in power. I didn’t execute a multimillionaire, I didn’t black out the eastern seaboard, I didn’t drive a truck full of explosives into a federal building, in short I didn’t behave just like the government does and help myself at the expense of someone else, just because I can.

They owe us.

The people that whine about entitlement typically are doing so out of fear, insecurity, and callousness coupled with a Horatio Alger self serving mentality that they through pluck and determination earned what they have, which is based on willful ignorance of civics, economics, and sociology, plain and simple.

They are afraid like daffy duck’s rendition of Ali Baba, that some of their precious wealth is going to be taken away to care for the unwashed masses. And so they hoard and block and whine and cry. They also deeply fear the angry lower classes being made healthy, and so they should given their rapacious exploitation.

But ours is a government built on rebellion, and they have made themselves little better than the kings we fought and died to be free of, and now they don’t even have the common decency to protect the peasantry from the plague, unless of course its virulent and lethal enough to begin to temporarily interrupt their gluttonous accumulation of wealth.

Oh then its time for a barely tested vaccine. Because they care about us just so much.

LIFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What part of “life” is unclear?

If they make it impossible for me to live by “legitimate” means, not even be rich, just live remotely comfortably, I naturally like anyone else will seek other means.

If they are smart, if they want to add a few decades onto the life span of their hold on this rotting corpse of a system, they’ll start handing out medical care.

See also: http://underlore.com/islanders/