Ok lets teach the controversy

Ok, let’s teach the controversy and the evidence about everything, not just evolution as creationists demand. When times come for our children to learn about religion, we should bring up the inquisition, the fact that the church preached anti-semitism as doctrine until 1964, that the church tortured Galileo, burned people at the stake for owning a bible in their own language, have the opinion that AIDS is bad, but condoms are slightly worse.

How about we bring up the fact that god when he gave the people of Israel their land told them to just go ahead and massacre whoever was living there, taking only the women “who had not yet felt a man” to keep for themselves. How about we bring up the fact that H.L Mencken wrote a list of 3000 gods that are no longer worshipped? Or maybe the fact that Christianity served a prime role in the subjugation of most of South America through the Conquistadors, maybe the crusades or for those who say “Why do you only talk about ancient history, Christianity isn’t like that now!” perhaps I should bring up the numerous cases of child-rape and other atrocities committed in church run schools and orphanages. The fact that two of the bloodiest conflicts in modern European history were in large part religiously motivated; namely the war in Yugoslavia and the mess in Northern Ireland is hardly up for debate is it?

Perhaps you should teach the children about Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the other 3000 gods and goddesses that are no longer worshipped, they are after all equally plausible.

I’d feel a lot safer knowing that the leader of the country I live in will take into consideration that if I die when sent to war, there might be a possibility that those 72 virgin’s won’t be there, or if they are they might be playing World of Warcraft while waiting for their Battlestar galactic marathon?

I realize that to a believer this sounds absurd, that their church should be forced to have Muslim Monday or celebrate Chanukah, but so is it to want to remove evolution from the classroom. Evolution is not a matter of belief or faith; it’s a matter of facts and evidence, there clear as day for anyone looking at it.

The controversy is that when those of us who accept that evolution by natural selection is a fact, talking to someone who does not is frustrating because the people who are unable to accept the evidence or just plain too uneducated to do so are on a “lower level” so to speak. It’s a bit like when you try to explain something to a child, it requires us to not only simplify but adjust the terms we use to people who are usually unable to understand the terms we normally use.

This results in the “adult” bending over backwards to try and make up examples that the “child” might be able to understand, which again leads to prime hunting grounds for quote mining. It’s not that we do not want to discuss with you, it’s that doing so is as Richard Dawkins once said “Like a geologist debating a flat-earther”.

I’m fairly certain that even if I could lay fossils, DNA evidence, and a 100% detailed demonstration of how man evolved from the early primordial ooze it wouldn’t matter, because the evidence creationists and people who protest evolution are looking for is a half-man/half-ape creature out of a movie and even if they are shown this in the form of the gradual evolution from Homo habilis to Homo Ergaster to Homo Erectus to Homo heidelbergensis and then to Homo neanderthalensis and finally to Homo Sapiens refuse to accept it.

One would have to show a chart from the origin of life on this planet itself, with a complete “family tree” of the slow evolution of Homo Sapiens through its many small and larger changes and all this in order to refute a book written in the bronze age, by primitive barbarians (as exemplified in the opening paragraphs of this text and I can elaborate if needed) who didn’t know where the sun went at night.

Why MMORPG's can never be player friendly in their current incarnation.

Why MMORPG's can never be casual friendly in their current incarnation.

I'm a long time player of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games going all the way back to Everquest and to the latest incarnations of world of warcraft. What all MMO games except 1 of the ones I've played have in common, is that their mechanics alone make them unplayable unless you are willing to invest a certain amount of time.

The core experience of the "Pve Whoring" based games such as Everquest, Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, Vanguard and many more is the fact that you need a certain number of players, be it the old raids of everquest or the "small" 25 man raids world of warcraft offers. Now if the less intelligent developers and publishers behind these games could realize that basing a game off levels is a bad idea to start with, a lot of their problems would be solved. And it would also dawn on them that basing a players power on loot from PvE or PvP content encourages ostracism, elitism, and a host of other less desirable elements to become central to the game.

While I was raiding in world of warcraft (Naxx in vanilla, BT in TBC, and everything in naxx except the lol-king) I noticed that whenever I was in a raiding guild I automatically ostracized people, not because I wanted to really, but because I just did everything with my guildmates, so I basically hung out with the same 30 people on a server of thousands. Sure its multiplayer but its not massive is it?

In Star Wars Galaxies, to some the best MMO ever made, to some the spitting image of a broken game, ran by a company who didn't give a shit about its customers, to me a little of both. But the beauty of the game was that if nothing else its the most massive multiplayer game I have ever played to this day, because it was not working how the developers intended.

Pretty much all high end pve content was solable and myself and many others frequently did so. But since "Soulbinding" (An item cannot be traded to someone else) wasn't in game, quite a lot of the high end pve loot was available to buy in auctions. This meant that even if you personally happened to be unable to solo the "high end" content, you could make in-game money and buy the items from someone who could.

You could make money pretty much doing everything. I was a crafting buff myself, and as one of the top weaponsmiths on my server for over 2 years I made millions upon millions of credits since crafting was smack dab central to the game. Everything was made by crafters, from armor, to weapons, to vehicles, buff foods, buff packs (doctor made buffs), stim-packs (heals) and the beauty of it all was that you actually had to give up combat prowess in order to craft anything worth while.

This meant that your best equipped (yes equipment mattered but not that much) combat character, could also be a crafter, but this meant giving up combat skills. The game worked with "skill points" and each basic profession consisted of 4 trees requiring a combination of skill points (to train) and experience points (to be allowed to train) with a Master box set on top. The different levels of skill cost varying amounts of "skillpoints" depending on their placement in the trees. On top of every basic profession tree, a progression to the elite level for that tree.

Another fun aspect was the entertainers, these mostly non-combat characters often consisted of people who played the game to chat with other players rather than combat, and their role was very important as they could buff a players mind pool and heal battlefatigue and wounds to a targets mind pool.

Since a single player could go out and alone kill off quite a lot of the high end content, and because a lot of the non player characters who did drop good loot were spawns all over the galaxy with short respawn timers there was money to be made from selling loot. Which is how a lot of players made their money, enjoying pve and using their newly found toys in pvp, which was the end-game offered by the game. Now while I still believe it would be possible to make pvp the true end game in an mmo, provided you develop it well and continue to come up with interesting content for it, SWG failed quite badly offering worth while reasons to partake in pvp.

There was the base war but it never really had much of an impact on the game. Being a rebel in an Empire's world didn't really feel risky in any way, except the odd time getting popped overt rebel in the middle of a town full of imps, while alone... on a crafter....with no armor or weapon skills... and a bag full of uninsured weapons going up on a different vendor.

I know I talk about SWG a lot but I do believe that with Raph Koster at the helm, a star wars franchise, developers inspired by the original game, a publisher with funds and the patience to not rush release and the ability for the player to have a truly fulfilling experience with each and every skill and profession in game with the freedom and vision of the original SWG would make the playerbase of World of Warcraft look the population of Chernobyl (0)

Now back on topic. The idea of working together with other players only makes sense when its convenient, when one tiers content in a way that has a tendency to become more demanding on the amount of players, the amount of time each player can put into the game, each players ability with their character, the ability to focus through 10 – 40 minute long bouts of doing nothing but trying to get your abilities rotated in the way they do the most damage or healing, avoiding instant kill damage flying around constantly, managing aggro, and so on.

Alternatively one can partake in World of Warcrafts "ARENA" the gladiatorium where a players ability in pvp is measured, depending mostly on which class and talent specialization he or she has, their equipment, their partners, the hope that they can avoid or even gain an advantage through the many bugs featured in the arena, where the world of warcraft developers show that they couldn't balance on one leg, let alone a gigantic game.

I spent hours reading articles, spreadsheets, running simulators, highly modify my interface, planning out my character, I once spent 10 hours fretting over my talent specialization moving 2 out of 71 points around trying to figure out which spec gave the most dps.

Now I don't do that much work... at work. Lets not forget I wasn't being paid to do any of this, but it was understood that it was required and expected of a raider. As my old guild leader once screamed at me in a fit of rage "YOU WORK FOR ME, I AM YOUR BOSS".

And my paycheck was in the form of rare items, that made my character (not owned by me, but rented to me by Blizzard Entertainment and their 200 page End User License Agreement) powerful and admired. But really it holds no monetary value, it was a source of satisfaction until I realized I was missing out on having a real life because all my available time was spent on a fake life.

This combined with the rewards of such feats so to speak being the "best in the game" it makes it a requirement in order to compete in player vs player combat, there is also the aspect of such clear evidence of what a player has done in game, leading to both ostracism (of those with lesser gear, as they are seen as a lower class of player that has less value in the game), and direct abuse in the form of hateful comments in game, discussions on the forum turning into mass bullying of players on the official forums and in the virtual world.

I never saw this kind of behavior in SWG, sure there was outright hostility between imperials and REBELS (GO GO REBS) on quite a few servers, but this actually lead to much better gameplay because people would pvp, not for rewards, not for gold but for the glory and satisfaction of vanquishing an enemy. I still remember 12 hour pvp sessions with pure joy in from that game.

Since pretty much everyone could get the same gear, the same buffs, the same profession combinations, and so on, everyone could be roughly the same and people did pvp for fun there wasn't the same kind of ostracism. We'd start rolling out of Gatica (My guilds player city) on Dantooine with a squad of maybe 4 – 5 people and just jump from planet to planet, city to city, looking for trouble, grabbing up every rebel who wanted to come inviting them to come on one of many Vent/TS servers, We'd blow some bases, the imperials would come after us and soon the whole server would be fighting.

My server actually had to have enforced "non combat" zones because people were killing each other while shopping!

Gear can play a part but as long as it does, and is available in ways that does require a person to partake directly in long, excruciating sessions of statistics, spreadsheets, buff farming, and so on and it promotes a negative lets say "vibe" to the whole game.

When in addition to this a "master armorsmith" in world of warcraft doesn't gain much of a mastery by getting that title. It means a few more stats (added to make professions more worth it) if he or she is lucky maybe a few special items that are really good for their class,

To be continued soon.

Ok women, you say you want a thoughtful, feeling man

Here is about 10 seconds of my internal monologue from earlier, while I was talking to a co-worker:

Hmm she just touched her hair, that's usually a sign of interest, but then again she might just have wanted to push it out of her face, oh wait there it is again, that is a pretty sure sign, but then again I could be mistaking, I have been prone to assuming the outcome I want. Oh she's resting her head on her hand now, better get her involved in the conversation again, I could bring up music or films but that's so general that its more or less a cliché by now, and just puts me in a box with every other douchebag around this office, psychology is always interesting, but I need to keep it toned down on a layman's level so she doesn't feel stupid, or ask questions I can't answer.
I also don't want to show off how nerdy I can actually be this early because it might ruin the flow of conversation and the frame in which she sees me which would not be good for the eventual outcome. 
Now I need to find a topic within psychology... oh wait she's licking her lips now, definably a good sign, anyway I need a topic that's engaging, interesting and holds the possibility of bringing up more intimate subjects, which could open the door for moving this relationship forward, oh her pupils are dilated that's another sign of interest. 

Ok I think I can cut it off there, my point being that I consider myself very much a thinking man, who is in touch with his emotions. When I say "In touch with his emotions" I don't mean "Will curl up, watch Sleepless in Seattle, and have a good cry" I mean "Will bring you chocolate, tell you that you're pretty and hug you when you're down".

My point being that those 2 also makes me a fairly complex person, and also a pain to deal with sometimes, since I have a long ongoing affair with sarcasm (Don't tell her but I'm nailing her sister Irony on the side) I have a knack for making witty situational observations, which can be a hazard at certain social gatherings, when I may blurt out inappropriate thoughts. As an example:

"Hmm why do Christians have burials when the Bible clearly states that the body is but a vessel for the soul, and once the soul departs the body the body is an empty shell, so in essence you people are crying over an empty fucking shell!"

Quite an interesting observation at a liberal discussion group, not so much at a funeral.

All people are not created equal

Take me for instance, I prefer working late afternoon, evenings and nights over mornings. I don't like making decisions without having time to review the facts and numbers so I can make an informed decision. I don't like not having control, and I strongly dislike minute to minute changes to my schedule.

I tend to prefer redheads or brunettes over blondes, and black lingerie over red or white. While I do like breasts, I do think I'm more of an "ass-man" and a cute/pretty face is a must. I like blue or green eyes over brown, and tend to look for women with a sense of humor, who challenge me intellectually but are not "ballbusters".

I prefer to watch documentaries, comedies or crime shows, not always in that order. I enjoy reading philosophy, sociology, psychology, but also sleezy crime novels, and the works of Stephen King. I do also enjoy some of the classics, mostly Hemingway, Solzhenitsyn and various adventure based novels like "Treasure Island".

I'm not a huge fan of "rave" music, with a few exceptions naturally, mostly because I believe you can find something you like in every genre.

I don't like organized religion, both because I believe faith is a highly personal thing, and also because I believe faith is easy to corrupt. I also don't like people basing their choices on what they think an invisible man in the sky likes, especially not on something as outdated as bronze/iron age texts.

I don't like that the terms "liberal" and "progressive" are considered negative words in politics these days, because in my mind humanity moving forward should be our goal as a species shouldn't it?

I don't like the term "conservative" either, mostly because I think "backwoods moron" is more suitable. Conservative literally means "disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change."

If you just look at that definition it hardly seems like a good thing does it? So one wishes to preserve the status quo which means no healthcare for all citizens, no plumbing, no dismantling of institutions or programs that do not work. No changes to social freedoms and so on.

I prefer beef or pork to chicken or fish, and some form of starchy carbohydrate accompanying it, and I would prefer a heavy sauce to go with it. Oh and an ice cold beer.

I'm for the right to choose abortion, I'm for the death penalty, euthanasia. Abortion because I believe its a mothers choice if she wants to carry something within her for 9 months, now it shouldn't be used as a means of contraception but how to accomplish that is a different debate.

I like the death penalty, not in its current extreme expensive form, but only in cases where the question of guilt is absolute. I also would prefer just shooting the fuckers in public to be honest, right on the courthouse steps after the final appeal runs out.

Euthanasia is something I support because I think that in cases where patients are terminally ill, keeping them alive is torture and a waste of resources. If a person who is going to die anyway wants to die a little sooner to spare him/herself some pain I don't see a problem with that.

On the same note I don't believe that living a long life should be the absolute goal. Sometimes its worth giving up a year or two to enjoy life. Sure you may live to be a 100 if you eat well, keep yourself in shape and so on, and even if you do get hit by a bus while out jogging at least those years living completely healthy felt a lot longer.

These are just a few of the many opinions I have, just because we are the same species doesn't mean we all think alike, want the same things or even remotely understand each other, like the guy at work who can't believe I only want late shifts. We may be created from the same matter, but still when we don't think and feel alike, assuming we are all equal just creates a world where everyone who doesn't share certain values are pushed down.

So maybe the Mayans were right?

I've been a firm opponent of the 2012 myth since I first heard about it, some years ago but lately I find myself believing it more and more. Not because I suddenly have a lot more faith in a fairly primitive people who didn't even know what a bacteria was, or that Cortez was coming to more or less rape and pillage them, but because I have little faith in humanity.
At the moment the Greeks are rioting because their country has maintained an artificially inflated lifestyle with borrowed money. Greece is the equivalent of someone who pays off their credit cards with other credit cards and have more debt than they will ever be able to pay back.
In essence Greece is one of the more extreme examples of what I like to call "The Tea Party Stupidity" or rather the idea that you can reduce the deficit, reduce the debt, reduce the cost of Government and Public Programs such as medicare, while reducing taxes, creating jobs, and increasing peoples standard of living. In essence wanting money for nothing and chicks for free.

In every transaction something is exchanged for something else. So if you want to reduce debt, the money must come from somewhere. It can come from increased taxes, it can come from reduced spending but it has to come from somewhere. If I have $100, and I need to buy food for 5 days and I have to pay back $50 to a friend of mine that I owe him, aka my debt. In order to manage my debt without going hungry, I need to buy food that will feed me for 5 days, for under $50. I can also pay back the $50 I owe my friend, and then borrow from another friend, but what I'm doing is simply procrastinating doing something I hate doing, curb my spending.

Now here is the problem, very few people are willing to pay more taxes or give up any of the benefits they get from the state. Now I'm not talking benefits as in unemployment, and so on, but the things we don't think of. There are such things as roads, public schools, defense budget, war on drugs and so on.
Money does not appear out of thin air, and when someone lives beyond their means for a long time, there will be blowback.

The definition of irony

is a Bank selling a customer a mortage that the customer is unable to pay, but also unable to completly understand. The Banker who lent the customer the money, then gets a bonus because of his/her high rate of income for the bank. The customer is unable to pay, and his house defaults to the bank, however because of all the bad loans the economy starts to crumble a little, so the housing markets drop, meaning that the bank now owns a bad loan (IE they've lent someone money, which they won't be getting back) which eats up their profit, meaning that they can't afford to keep the doors open.
The Bank now runs to the government and gets a bailout which the customer helped fund through taxes. The Bank is now doing great thanks to the bailout, and the banker gets another bonus.

Bread and Circus P.2

I'm a person who always tries to see things from the angle of the person trying to "spread cheeks and fuck ass" so to speak. Let's take a look at an insurance company, now since its a private company, odds are they want to maximize their profits. Now their income comes primarily from people paying them in case shit happens. I pay them a sum of money every month in order to make sure if I get sick they cover my care. Now the ideal customer for an insurance company is a person who pays their premium every month like clockwork and never gets sick. Because the less they have to pay healthcare providers to treat me, the more profit they make on me.

That's why I would never trust a private insurance company for my health, because its in their best interest not to pay for me. Sure Governments have their own ways of fucking you over, but its never purely by intent. If the government fucks you over its because they fuck up in some way, not because they are intentionally trying to screw you.
A private company tends to always be better off by screwing a portion of their clients. I mentioned Goldman-Sachs in my first post on this issue, and as a part of my investment I've read analyst recommendations, I've seen what the big banks say you should do, but I've also seen what they do themselves. Here in Norway we have a big investment portion of DNB (it's short for "The Norwegian Bank") called DNM (DNB Markets) who have operated with a target price of Opera Software of roughly $1.5 per share, at the same time DNM have purchased shares of Opera Software in the millions well over that target price. So they tell their clients to SELL and they themselves BUY.

This is fairly common in business and there should be some law against it. If I go to see my doctor and it turns out I have pneumonia he will tell me I have pneumonia, not that I have a chest cold that will pass in a few days. If I ask my mechanic to take a look at my car, he won't lie and tell me its a death trap, he might put on a few fixes that aren't needed then and there, but he won't screw me with a 10 foot pole if you know what I mean.

Big private companies live on intentionally screwing people, they gladly sell harmful products that they know are dangerous, they come up with huge lofty words to describe fucking their customers over so that the customer doesn't realize he or she are getting screwed.

A big company that isn't connected to its clients will always look at the bottom line first, then the clients needs and that's where the problem lies. I don't think big business is evil by nature, but I think the kind of people who get into it tend to have a certain mindset. Let's add to it that they can almost freely break the law without being charged with anything serious, and if they do they get a few months in white collar jail.

Business ethics and morals seems to always take a backseat to profit and that's why I would never trust a privately owned company with my health.

I believe Josef Stalin is quoted as saying "Kill 1 person and its a murder, kill 1 million and its a statistic" and the same seems to be true for business. The whole financial crisis came about because of bad regulation, poor understanding of human nature and greed. It's natural to want a little bit more than the guy next door, it's why communism will never work. Sure everyone having the exact same rights, the exact same wages, the exact same living conditions is fantastic, but that's not what make people work hard, being able to get more shit they do not need is.
Of couse I do laugh my balls off every time  I see a teabagger wielding a poster with Obama's face with a Hitler Mustache with the word "socialist" or "communist" under. Mostly because Hitler was very very far right on the political spectrum, while Stalin and communism was on the far far left.

To give a sort of visual demonstration:

Stalin -------------------------------Obama-----------Reagan------------------.W Bush-----Cheney-----Hitler

The republican Party is much closer to Hitler than the Democrats are, but then the democrats are closer to Stalin. Socialism isn't a bad thing as long as it doesn't go to far, just like a free market isn't a bad thing as long as it doesn't go too far. When a CEO makes 300% more than the workers in the factories, the top 2% have more than the bottom 100 million, when a middle class person will die but an upper class person will live, the free market has gone to far.
The problem is that the "teabagger" movement fail to see what is best for them. They think that the Republicans are their party, but the truth is the Republican party only pays off for the top 3% or so. If you are a very rich person, then the Republicans are your guys, but if you are middle class or lower then the Democrats are the better choice.

If people are comfortable with the government dealing with the defense of the country, with medicare, the veteran hospitals, the courts, legislation, medicine (FDA) then why not let them deal with healthcare? There is no doubt in my mind that given the chance Phizer or another huge drug company would bring out HEROIN and COCAINE to everyone if given the chance. I have no doubt that an insurance companies bottom line is their bottom line not whether I live or die, or rather will they make more money off me alive or dead?

Premiums paid + Future Premiums - Cost of care = if this sum is negative an insurance company will want to avoid treating me.

To be continued.

Bread and Circus part 1.

I recently had a discussion with some collegues about sports, and more specificly the wages Football (soccer for the Americans) players get. Now while I do agree that its the market that rules their salaries due to ticket prices, jersey sales and other sources of income. I also maintain that there is no reason why a Football player should make say $40.000.000 a year. I don't care how good they are, how many shirts they sell etc, there is no way that a Football player any football player should be paid more than an AIDS or Cancer researcher, unless that football player can cure cancer or AIDS.
It's an insult to our place in  the world as a species that the Roman Colleseums where gladiators killed each other for freedom, glory and honor, has become a spectacle where 19year olds are offered 10x the salary of a doctor, teacher, police officer, nurse, with 10+ years of experience in their fields.

Now my stance on it is that yes the market dictates what a player is worth, however there is such a thing as the market being wrong. Take the subprime mortage issues, the lawsuit filed against Goldman-Sachs, the criminal behavior of countless analysts and investment banks when it comes to manipulation on the stockexchanges. I still think that we need a stockmarket, we need banks, we even need bankers, but we can regulate them a bit. To a point where if I ask my broker "should I buy X stock" or if my broker calls me and goes "I want to recommend X stock" they should have to be truthful. Lawyers, doctors, etc are not allowed to blantantly lie to their customers, why should banks be allowed to?


We need professional sports to entertain and distract the masses from reality so to speak, but we don't need 19 year olds with salaries of over a million a year. At 19 a gladator prospect would be in "Gladiator School" being beaten the crap out of.  
What people tend to forget though is that in the Roman era of "Bread and Circus"  every other day was a public holiday, most people lived well below the poverty line and relied on state sponsored handouts of grain to feed themselves. The narrow streets of Rome were filled with people in cramped apartments, no jobs since most of the work were done by slaves for free and most of them surviving through some form of dodgy business.

We are not in that society anymore and quite frankly it makes me want to puke to know that in 2008 the National Cancer institute spent about $600 million on Breast cancer research, where the New York Yankee's alone spent about $210 million on their payroll. 
I mean how can anyone justify spending more money on sports than research into cures for diseases? How can anyone justify that a 24 year old who never finished high school makes more in a year than some of the best doctors in the world?
I mean if it was true gladiatorial combat, I'd think the wages were fair, since most gladiators didn't live past their 10th fight, and then you can understand having to take care of a family after you're dead. I've never seen Man-U look to the richboy seats waiting for the signal on whether or not they played well enough to live.

Quite frankly when I used to watch Football, I felt like some of the players did deserve to be punished for being shite.  Look at Gasgoine, he spent his career drunk of his ass and flying high on coke, with some women beating in between and sometimes during, yet he was never truly fired.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I love a good free market economy, it's just that we haven't seen one yet. We will imprison someone for years if he commits an armed robbery, but if Goldman-Sachs swindles their clients out of billions they are never really convicted for it. I mean if some black ghetto dude robbed someone for 1 million it would be an outrage, when a huge investment bank manipulates the stock market, trick their clients into bad stocks,

To be continued soon.

We can never have gender equality

Purely because it doesn't work in the favor of anyone. In my native country of Norway, feminism has nearly eradicated the feminine in women. The women here tend to curse, drink and fight just as much as their male counterparts while still holding the crown in psychological bullying.
We cannot have equality because to most men, women will never be truly equal. Do I mean in terms of salaries and career? No, I mean in the day to day life. I've had women tell me to my face things that would make me break a man in half, I've taken shit from women that I would never do from a man purely because I was raised never to raise my hand to a woman.
However "bitches" know that this is the case with most western men, so they keep exploiting it over and over again. A woman can get away with calling a man a dickless, useless piece of shit, but I had to take a sensitivity seminar and make a public appology for telling a woman "Stop being such a whiny bitch" now why did I say it? Because she was being a whiny bitch.

You see it used to be that women and men were not equal, and as a result women had certain benefits. Chivalry comes to mind, the instinct from a man to protect a woman, and countless others. Now as women have gotten more rights, men have gotten less, women have also adopted more "male" behavior. Drinking, smoking, cursing and sexual promiscuity.

Most of the women I do meet here in Norway represent more male values than feminine values. I'm a better cook than most of them, I can do all kinds of domestic tasks from simple laundry to ironing, in short I'm better suited to take care of people than they are. Now am I saying that taking care of men is a woman's job? No, I'm quite happy taking care of myself, however the values I feel deserve chivalry are gone. So chivalry is dead because women killed it.

If you read love poetry from the days of chivalry women are referred to as delicate flowers, angels, dolls, this hardly fits the women I know. For some reason screaming "Fuck off you motherfucking cocksucker" while swilling cheap beer is not the kind of behavior I feel should be rewarded with chivalry.
The same thing goes for who pays for a date, my rule tends to be if I ask you out, I'll pay, but I also pick where and what we are going on said date. If you ask me out then you pay, and you pick the restaurant.

I don't want some servant, but I do want a woman not one of my guy friends with tits.

Thougth I'd do a little fiction

He stopped for a second, and stared down onto the bottle in his hand. The stench of gasoline mixed with kerosine vapered out of it, pressing its way past the length of cloth pushed into the opening. The bottom of it swimming in the mixture. The dark shadow took a glance at the house across the street, then took another deep hit of the joint in his other hand. A series of images flashed before his eyes, blonde hair, mixed in with pink, deep blue eyes, and a pearly white smile. He stared over at the house again, watching as the lit windows slowly turned dark, the only visible light from the streetlamps.
As the last window turned dark, he looked at his watch, and flicked the wheel on his lighter. Two quick steps forward, his arm stretched out behind him, with the flames licking at the white cloth. A line of tiny fragments formed behind it, making it look like a rainbow of fire before the sound of breaking glass broke the silence.
The gasoline quickly covered the white drapes, sending tongues of fire licking up the walls and across the floor.

He tilted his head to the side and watched the fire burn, cleanse, his soul felt free like the grip around his heart had finally been released. The hand of iron was finally gone, the clouds of pheromones, dopamine and serotonin lifted, and he could think freely. "Like the Phoenix, I too shall be reborn with the aid of fire" he took a deep breath and enjoyed the smell of burning wood, the screams from the slowly gathering crown. He watched her as she ran from the burning building, her pyjamas lightly draped around her, blonde hair mixed in with pink flowing around her head.
Her normally milky white skin was partially covered by soot and she coughed heavily.

"See you little bitch, I told you that you wouldn't get away with your bullshit" he thought to himself as he watched the paramedics drape a blanket over her as she sat with a mask over her face. The flashing lights from the emergency response vehicles flooded the area with blue, orange and red lights. He sunk back into the shadows, and hid among the crowd as the firemen burst through the front door.

Relationship economics

The thing people seem to not get about me is that I am at the bottom, behind the layers of hostile, arrogant, intelligent, and so on, a very sensitive person. I pride myself of putting logic, reason and thought before emotion, of course since I am also passionate things can get heated. However I have a certain point, for me I call it the "sociopath point" which is when you're dead to me.

You could be my best friend for years, and if you do some things off my list, I will cut you out of my life, just as easy if not easier than I julienne a carrot. I can take a lot of flack, I can be an emotional punching bag, or the teddy bear to cuddle when you feel sad, but exploit my good will, take advantage of that I care for you and I will cut you out like a cyste.
I'm not writing this out of anger, I'm just trying to illustrate that every person has a breaking point. Of course the point depends a lot on the person doing the breaking. I have a lot more leeway, I'd say an almost indefinite leeway for my family.  For girlfriends it can be higher than friends, and for friends it can be higher than girlfriends and its totally dependent on the situation.

But but Scelerant how do I reach that point with you?

It's quite simple actually, for everything you do that has a negative effect, you need to do something that has a positive effect. Let's say if someone loses a parent, will I be there to talk to them, console them and so on? Yes I will be, but I will not sit here and listen to the same person constantly whine about it indefinitely.  If someone complains to me every time we speak, and never does anything to change what they are complaining about, I stop wanting to have anything to do with them.
Not because I don't want them to be happy, but because I also want me to be happy, and quite frankly if someone is whining to you daily, you will become a depressed fucker yourself.

See this is what people refuse to accept most of the time when it comes to relationships, its all a trade off. The lesser of two evils so to speak. Every single friend you have has qualities that improves your life in some way, without adding excessive drama to it. If a friend of yours always brings massive drama, and never improves things for you, you don't want them to come around much do you?

If I had a girlfriend who would come over every night when I come home from work, cook me a meal, talk about whatever was on my mind at that time, and then fuck me, that is a huge plus in her "pro" column. If she comes over after I come home from work, demands that I cook her a meal, and then blabbers on about what chick at her job is a bitch this week, then puts on flannels and go to bed wearing a retainer and 3 layers of what looks like used motoroil she gets a big minus for that day.

This is exaggerated of course, because if all I wanted was someone to cook for me, talk to me and fuck me, I'd hire a hooker with culinary experience who's studying psychology. The fact is though, every relationship in your life is a trade off to some degree. I'm good with computers, I fix computers for my friends when they ask me. Just like when my car breaks down I call my friend who's a mechanic. If I need financial advice I'll call a friend who's an accountant. Their professions are not why I'm friends with them, but its part of who they are, and in my opinion friends help each other.

I'm happy to fix a friends computer, or hook up their mediacenter on the weekend. However if one of them came and expected me to wire a full home network with hidden cables and everything I would feel taken advantage of.

Hate it or love it, everything is economics, supply and demand and anticipation. The man who taught me about trading in the stockmarket once said "You're not buying and selling shares, you are buying and selling expectations and anticipations.
You see stocks are traded based on how they are doing now, in comparison to how people think they are going to be doing. If George W. Bush and Dick Cheney decided to invade Iran while they were in office, bet your behind Hallie-burton stock is going up. Now some of you may ask; "What is this Hallie-Burton" the answer is "It's the company Bush and Cheney gave an 8 year blowjob to."

In relationships its the same thing, you tend to hang out with people who have similar interests or you have something else in common with. It could be location, a love of slasher flicks or whatever. Children are often very honest about this, which is one of the few qualities I like about them. "I want to hang out at John's house, he got a Playstation 3!"
So let's just be honest shall we?

Why I think religion is such bullshit

I've had a hard time putting a single reason on why I feel like religion is utter crap and I just think I had a revelation so to speak. It's because every rule God puts forth is fucking retarded.
Do you really think that eating pork is going to come into question on judgment day? Why does it even matter, does context matter? Let's say I was about to die of starvation and I call out to God to please save me. Next thing I know a beautiful suckling pig saunters by, all made from delicious pork. I mean people have eaten human flesh, excrement, bugs, seeds and so on to stay alive, I'm fairly sure a nice side of bacon tastes a fuckload better and is less disgusting.

God helps those who help themselves, so I'm helping myself to a big BLT right now.

Deuteronomy 5:6–21

" you shall have no other gods before me.

Ok. but am I allowed to test other faiths? I guess not. This kind of reminds me of the tales I've read from North Korea where people think they are better off than everyone else, while in reality I would rather spend a few years in an American maximum security prison than in North Korea. Sure in the Maximum security prison I will most likely get raped in every way imaginable and a few unimaginable ones, but at least I get 3 meals a day, sufficient clothing,  decent heat, and health/dental care.
In North Korea I risk being sent to a secret government detention center in the middle of fucking nowhere and slowly get worked, beaten and starved to death, in between bouts of torture. Oh and even if I don't get tossed in a prison camp, I'll most likely starve, freeze, have toothaches, and die from illnesses that are more or less eradicated in the west.
Wouldn't an all powerful all knowing God have slightly more confidence in his own message, that he is willing to let us explore freely all avenues of faith?

God strikes me as using the same tools Stalin, Kim Jong Il and numerous other dictators have used throughout history.

8 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me,

10 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

I suppose this one leaves little up to interpretation, you are not to make an idol for yourself period. So Star Wars action figures, Transformers, every hot little piece of celebrity ass on posters, cars, houses, ANYTHING we idolize is against God, because he is to be our only idol. And damn you if you worship anything else!

That's fucking harsh isn't it? Punishing the children for what the parents have done, not just in 1 generation, but grandchildren, great grandchildren, great great grandchildren. Let me demonstrate if your Great Great grandfather, IE Your fathers, fathers, father, yes it's complicated I know. Basically the dude who fathered your grandfather's father, got handed a gun by Billy the Kid back in the 1850's which he loved and idolized and as such it became the most valued possession in his life. Now God is going to punish the shit out of you.

11 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. 

If you ever used the phrase "Oh my God", "Dear Lord!" or any other use of God's name in any situation where you are not calling for him specifically, you are screwed.




12 Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.

13 For six days you shall labour and do all your work.

14 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you.

15 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.

Seriously? I guess ambulance drivers, doctors, the military, basically any job which requires 24/7 activity in to some degree condemns you to hell. How about farmers who had to feed the livestock on Sunday so they didn't starve?
What if, let's say I'm on a trip with one of my little cousins and he falls and breaks his leg, am I going to hell if I roughly bandage/splint it and carry him to the nearest doctors office?



16 Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

What if your father and mother are not worth honoring? I love my parents more than anything, but we frequently disagree on things and have lively discussions about them. How about parents that abuse their children? Should the child honor them as well?

17 You shall not murder.

Fair enough, how about the crusades, the inquisition, the countless people murdered in the name of God since his first appearance? How about Jihad, suicide bombers, the current "war" between Israel and Palestine. It hardly leaves much up to context or to situation does it?
Let's say that someone breaks into your house, rapes your wife and kids, then tells you he's going to kill them right before your eyes, are you still not allowed to try and kill the fucker, and if you succeed at saving your families life, you are now condemned to hell.

18 Neither shall you commit adultery. 

The Bible is full of adultery, David comes to mind as a prime example. There is also the situation and the context of that adultery. If someone puts a gun to your families head, and says that if your wife doesn't sleep with him he'll kill all of you and she sleeps with him. She is now heading on an express train to hell.
How about if someone is forced to marry someone they do not love, have anything in common with and so on and meet someone whom they do share that special connection?

I'm not giving cheating bastards and bitches a pass here, because for the most part cheating comes as a result of people having no fucking self control and lacking the moral fiber to tell the person they are in a relationship with that they want to split up. But I do suppose there are situations where it can be justified or even judged as the correct action.

19 Neither shall you steal. 

Again, how about context? The Church both catholic, protestant, Greek orthodox, Russian Orthodox whatever have at some point used their power to obtain things they were not justified to obtain. I'm not going to hand out a laundry list of examples of this its evident if you read a history book.

Also what if someone is starving to death, is it wrong for them to in desperation steal food for themselves? No not really unless them stealing the food means someone else is starving. How about if someone is out walking with their grandfather and he collapses in the middle of nowhere. The person runs to a nearby farm and finds that nobodies home but sees a car with the keys in the ignition outside? Does the person really deserve to be sent to hell because he or she "stole" a car to rush their grandfather to the hospital?



20 Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor.

How about if your neighbor is really a Fred West like bastard, and you know that something is up but you're not sure what? Is it really a bad thing to call in a little phonecall and send the cops to his place? If people are getting hurt by you following the commandments then they are causing evil acts aren't they?

21 Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife. Neither shall you desire your neighbor’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

This is the hardest one to follow to be honest. Covet is defined by dictionary.com as wrongfully desiring something. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but I covet a lot of things belonging to my neighbor frequently. Not necessarily my actual neighbor. For instance I saw a really hot married chick at the grocery store the other day and I coveted her quite wrongfully and graphically in the shower later that day.

I covet my neighbors house all the time, he has a sauna, a full size media room with a bar and a very well equipped channel package.

I've never really coveted someone's slave, male or female mostly because if you have literal slaves IE people you literally OWN, not like "0wn3d" in CounterStrike. That's a fuckload worse than coveting someone elses wife, and eating pork, and stealing a loaf of bread, or saying "Oh My God!".


You see the one thing all of these have in common is that they do not take into account context, they don't give a shit about justifiable acts and so on. They do not even make sense! It's much worse to actually RAPE your neighbors wife, or kid, or donkey, than to covet them.
It's much worse to starve to death rather than eat pork. It's a fuckload worse to trick people who can't do fractions into mortgages they cannot pay or even understand.  I'd much rather have a girl with a little experience, who is open about things, who can see things from more than 1 point of view and who educates herself on things, than I would want Sarah Palin.
It's not that I have anything against women in politics, I like Hilary Clinton, I like Madeleine Albright,  I'm not sure if I liked Condoleeza, but she is probably as close to Dick Cheney with tits as you can get.
Sarah Palin talks like she literally had her mind blown.

I'd say keeping your own daughter locked up in the basement while raping her is a bit more evil than say killing her right away, because odds are after 20+ years of rape and torture, not being able to see sunlight, not being able to go outside etc the odds of having a decent life is pretty fucked. Any guy who isn't going to lock you up in a basement and rape you is kind of a catch you know.
It's a hell of a lot worse to invade multiple countries and so on than to kill a couple of people.

So in short while modern laws are too complex, the commandments and bible show a very "teenage" human mindset, not the one of an all powerful being.

The MMORPG question

I'm a long time MMORPG player, I've been involved in gaming somehow since I was about 10 and got my first Nintendo for Christmas. When I was 18 I started getting into MMORPG (Massive multiplayer online Role playing game) my first one being Star Wars Galaxies, sure I tried a few before that but they never quite grabbed me.
SWG was a rather unique MMORPG since due to game balance issues a single player in good equipment could take on Bossmobs in the game. I enjoyed it very much because I could log on, get a set of buffs and get going, if I died or messed up it was my fault completely.
Since I could do most things solo, I was free to log on whenever I had time, my guild was a mainly pvp guild, and while we did have guild events it wasn't every day. Most of the time the guild functioned through guildchat and whispers and not by playing together constantly. Sure we did pvp and did base defenses but that was a few hours here and there.
After Sony Online Entertainment managed to ruin Star Wars Galaxies I moved on to World of Warcraft. The behemoth with 10+ million players, the raid mecca of the modern mmo world. At first I really enjoyed the leveling up to level 60, doing 5 mans with friends and so on. Then we moved on to 40 man raiding which was a rather time consuming task. There were hours of farming for buff items such as flasks and pots, resistance gear, and then the raids themselves which could take anywhere from 2.5 hours to 4 hours.

A sexual sadist has certain steps he or she goes through in order to condition their partner to do their bidding so to speak.
At first the sadist rewards their partner for "good" behavior and punishes them for bad behavior by sulking or similar things.
Once the person is connected to the sadist, the sadist removes "lifelines" to the outside world. This means getting him/her to give up their friends, phone calls to family or other social activities.

Once this has been done the person is usually broken and completely under the power of the dominant sadist.

In the case of WoW like all MMO games it rewards you for playing, but the game also purely rewards you for spending obscene amounts of time in the game. Take an event such as "The flame warden" which requires you to travel across the world, find NPC's and do tasks linked to them. If you do all of them you get a title reward, as you do for all major world events. In addition you get achivement poitns and you get a 310% flight speed drake if you do every world event.
The game rewards you by giving you gear, titles, achivement points, gold, and so on. It also punishes you for "bad" behavior IE not doing the events or raids correctly by costing you time and effort. IE if you wipe in a Raid you end up spending 5 - 10 minutes running back, rebuffing and so on.
In addition these raids are done by 10 or 25 people, if one or two of them make mistakes, you wipe and have to start over.
What ended up forcing me to stop was that I spent about 4 hours Sunday - Friday raiding, and most of the time I did play correctly and still my guild was unable to do the boss in question because a few people usually the same ones fuck up.

People say WoW is just a hobby, or that they swap TV for WoW and if they do that its fine. However a lot of the players I met in the game didn't have much of anything in their lives except the game. Some may not have had much to start with, but the game "divides" you from real life if you let it.
I mean my guild raids from 19.45 to 23.45 Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night. Then there are optional 10 man raids on Friday and Saturday, however some people will give you shit if you don't show up. In the end I felt guilty because I didn't show up 5 nights a week to raid. Showed up before raids to do the daily 5 man dungeon quest.

The game itself and the way its designed ends up stripping you of "real life" in favor of a more fun virtual one. You can hardly blame people for wanting to escape but when the escape slowly becomes your life its dangerous. I've lost several friends to World of Warcraft, they just want to play every single day, never want to go out or do something in real life because to them wow is the best thing in their life.
But when you quit an MMORPG you don't just lose the game itself, but you lose most of the friends you had in the game. People you've talked to every day for months or even years stop talking to you on msn, or make no effort to answer texts and phonecalls.
So not only have you lost most of your real life friends because of the addiction, you now face losing the only social network you have left the people in game.

That's why breaking a wow addiction is so hard, because even if you hate the game you stay for the people you like who still play it. So in the end the game takes over and you lose your real life friends, and when you quit you lose the online ones.
So you end up having to deal with the addiction and the urge to log back in, if not to play just to talk to someone.

Expectations

When I sit down to make a decision, the thought "What would be the best for me" isn't always at the top of the list. Often it comes down to "What would my family think", "How would my family feel" "how would my parents react". Yeah I know these are a bit strange for a 27 year old man to have, but my family are still factored into my decisions.
When I say family I naturally mean my parents, grandparents, siblings and so on, not a wife and kids. In my Supertramp post I talk a little bit about the "wish for adventure" that every young man has, its kind of grown into us through the stories we read. Me, I grew up on "The Hardy Boys", "Bill and Ben", "Morgan Kane". I read other books like the futuristic stories of Jules Verne, I'm not going to list them because I don't know the English titles of all of them. "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson. I still on occasion have dreams of discovery, and adventure, sure not in the exact same way as when I was 10ish but the urge is similar.

Society isn't equipped for this anymore though, for most their great adventure is a 2 - 3 month trip spent backpacking in Europe. Think about a 15 year old boy/man signing on a ship to sail to Asia, America, Africa about 30 - 40 years ago in Norway this was almost commonplace.
The dream of the great white north, for Supertramp, regardless of his mental state at the time (I think he was in the middle of a serious psychological breakdown) was something alien to him, that should be so much nearer to us.
The more technologically advanced we get, the further away from our nature do we go, the more "subdued" our instincts become. Now I'm not saying that everyone needs to strip nekkid and run into the woods, I'm saying that the urge to explore the unknown is human. The need to discover new things is human, but they do not fit into todays society as much. "A High school diploma is the key to the future" oh wait its useless since you pretty much need a bachelor these days, oh wait no maybe a Master.
Sure there are stories of some guy dropping out at 15 and then becoming a multimillionaire but those are rather rare. The level of education leads to people getting out into life later, with more student loans, more responsibilities and so on.

When a person spends from age 6 - 18 in school, then becomes "an adult" and passes into 3 - 4 years of college, then perhaps graduate studies, and a person is in their late 20s before they finish their schooling. At this point the pressure to find a significant other and procreate increases because after all "By the time I was x I had 3 kids".
Sure its possible to have kids until you die as a man but quite frankly I would like to be young enough to still actively take part in my children's life.
I don't want to be the grayhaired dad with the potbelly stretched out beyond the bleachers, who goes out of breath screaming at the ref. Or the guy sitting halfway down the slope drinking hot chocolate while his kids are having the time of their life.

But by the time I have children if I do, I would like to have things relatively well set up for them to be born. I'd like my life to be stable, to have the financial means and time to be there in their lives, and not some dad who has to spend 60 - 80 hours a week at work.
So if I finish school at 27, get a job right away, it will take a few years before I can build up the financial "power" to build or buy a home big enough for my future family. I also need to find a suitable mate, and make sure that relationship is suitable for a child. So time is of the essence if you're looking to sort everything out.

Now sure thinking that far ahead is just distracting, but for someone getting bombarded by suggestion every day, from parents, media, society and so on its a whirlwind of WTF. So many expectations, so many thoughts and options, so little time.

Mental health and modern life

Despite all the progress of modern life, there are a few things that still carry heavy stigma. You can be gay, a tranny, you can be a flaky bohemian, provided you don't have mental health problems. You see despite our progress, mental illness still carries a heavy stigma.
The thing is people with mental health problems can still make huge contributions to humanity as a species. The story of John Forbes Nash is an example, despite the producers and writers of "A Beautiful Mind" taking huge liberties with the story, it does show that a person with mental illness can make a huge difference in their field.
The  truth is that a lot of people currently living in our modern world could use a few hours to a few months on a therapists couch, I've even spent some time there.
All of us, rich or poor, smart or dumb, tall or short, thin and fat, from every religion, every walk of life could benefit from a little while of self exploration, and having a professional as a mirror, or as a magnifying glass. It's very interesting how even the most down to earth of us have issues that bubble to the surface once in a while.

Van Gogh without a doubt had some issues, Einstein the same, Napoleon, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy. All of them clearly disturbed on some level. Greatness requires that one is disturbed to a certain level, in order to obtain the vision of what one seeks to do. Why do you think so many of our prime artists have died to drugs in the last 30 years, some of them great while alive some not appreciated until after their death?

I think that in order to create something great one has to be a little bit crazy. Not Norman Bates in psycho crazy, but a few connections in your head need to be a little different.

The Supertramp

I recently learned the story of Christopher McCandless and while I do understand his need to search for something beyond the fairly easy life of the 21st century, some things are a bit weird. The need to go back in time is something I've dreamed of quite frequently. Not because I think it was a simpler life, but because I think the modern world tend to throw a bit too much at us. Life in the older times was more about primary survival needs than luxury goods and cravings for things we don't need. So living off the land and separating oneself from being owned by possessions is noble, I wouldn't want to go without most of my shit thought.

However at some point you have to take a look at what is idealism and what is just plain stupid. McCandless or Alexander Supertramp as he called himself on his journey, went into the Alaskan wilderness with a .22 calliber rifle, 400 rounds of hollowpoints and 10 lbs of rice.
No map, no compass, no axe, no decent knife. At the very least anyone heading "into the wild" should bring sufficient equipment. Now for the shotbus fuckers that means; Knife, first aid kit, axe, sharpening stone/iron, clothes suited for the climate and clothing repair kit, a flint or another reliable tool to make a fire. Weapon (s) suitable for what he or she may come across. This means that in an area where you may run into this fellow you might want to bring something with a bit more punch than this peashooter. Shooting a grizzly with that is the equivalent of shooting Fat Albert at 20 paces with a BB gun. Unless you get a direct eye hit that bear will keep coming at you, and now he/she is pissed!
 Maybe something like a proper hunting rifle and a second rifle for small game, perhaps a fishing pole or some form of nets since the rivers tend to have quite a bit of fish in them, you know in case you get hungry. I mean you wouldn't want to starve to death right by a river full of fish, after you try to preserve meat in a way unsuited for the area in effect spoiling it.

Am I calling Chris McCandless a moron, I guess I am. Sure he's portrayed as someone who rejected the life his parents wanted for him, he's not the first nor will he be the last to do that. In the movie we get a picture of charming, intelligent young man, and I'm sure he was. however he cannot possibly have been of sound mind when he went into the wild.
At one point his behavior started to show way to many signs of being reckless rather than on an adventure. I might feel this way since I've grown up among people who frequently go into nature to hunt, fish and whatever else they feel like. None of them would voluntarily go into the wilderness unprepared. My uncle who used to spend weeks in the mountains hunting would do laps where he placed dry goods depots around where he would be hunting later, so that if shit happens he knew where he could find food.

Now am I saying that people shouldn't try to live off the land for long periods of time? No I'm not, I'm saying that if you insist on doing this shit, prepare first. Get a map, get a compass, you don't have to look at either, just have them with you. Spend a little time speaking to people who are used to living in the same type of terrain, the best ways to preserve meat isn't always the same.
Get a fucking first aid kit, with a few bandages and such. Even the great adventurers of history didn't go out completely unprepared. If Christopher Columbus had done what Supertramp did he would have sunk before he left harbor. If Lewis and Clark pulled this shit they would have died before hitting the halfway mark.

Being an adventurer isn't the same as being reckless and having no regard for your own life.

This week's pick for Most entertaining show

The winner is NBC's "The Marriage ref" a semi reality show where celebrities and the host solves the silly squabbles couples get into. The couples are hysterical, the arguments even more so.
This week we have a guy who looks like a biker extra from Police Academy, or a drugdealer from Miami Vice with a love for waxing his harley and watching Mariah Carey.
A husband who's bitch doesn't like his dog, because it keeps trying to eat her.

Finally a 37 year old white, businessman rapper known as "Krispy" who's wife wants to push her head into the sand rather than be seen with him in public.

When I sat down to write todays thoughts, I was psyched to do a take on religion in schools but I'm feeling a bit empty today in terms of writing about that issue. I don't really know what this ramble is going to end up being about. Quite frankly I can't think of anything I feel like sharing, there is a lot brewing beneath the surface but supreficial issues are starting to get boring.
I couldn't care less about religion in schools, gun control or half these issues just because to me they are not worth fighitng over and in the end draw away from the important issues.

To me the future is what is important, my future more than yours to be honest, but that's more or less because all people are self centered to a degree. Wanting your own genes to live is natural and so is doing everything you can to make that happen. However as we move along there are different ways to go about everything,.

Some people thrive in peace, some thrive on conflict, some fall outside the boundaries of society and as a result run off. There cannot be a place for everyone, because we're all a bit different. Sure we may fit into personality types as according to Jung, or be overly motivated by the sexual as according to Freud, or both but it's not just DNA, and electrical impulses or arbitrary boxes we place ourselves and others in.

But regardless of what boring subject I could bore the like 3 people who read this, I want to talk about TV. I fucking love TV, I was raised mostly by it, I spent quite a few years laying on the livingroom floor staring at the boob-tube. But lately I don't get to spend as much time with it as I used to, not that I don't have time, more that there isn't shit worth watching.
I mean sure there are shows I follow but 1 episode everyother week on average that lasts from 20 - 40 minutes isn't much. Especially when they decide to air 13 episodes then not air a single one for months. While I'm sitting waiting patiently for my SCRIPTED entertainment provided by decent ACTORS I have to watch a bunch of over the top, over the hill, and preferably 6 feet under housewives of new york. You know I don't give a shit how "real" they are, if I wanted to see how a housewife lives I'd go next door.
The only thing good that can have "housewife" or "housewives" in the title are porno movies.

Mike Rowe and "Dirty Jobs" was fun for a while, but quite frankly there are only so many times you can watch a dude be knee deep in manure or covered in grease. It's entertaining in a sort of "atleast my life doesn't suck that bad" sort of way, but still there isn't really anywhere to go after you've castrated bulls and cleaned out grease from a tank engine. If he wants me to keep watching, he better get himself set on fire. I mean Rowe has beaten this concept so hard that if it was a stingray it would have stabbed him in the chest by now.

American Truckers, American Choppers, American Pickers,  Sure choppers was funny for a little bit, but only until you realized that a full on cagefight between SR and JR was never going to happen. However if something breaks out in court I have a 20 on Sr.
American Pickers, are you kidding me? The only thing that could make this show entertaining would be a show about a guy spending 13 hours a day in a fucking semi... oh wait.

It's not that I have issues with reality TV, I enjoyed "Jersey Shore" mostly because I wanted to watch Ronnie kick the shit out of "The situation" which never happened of course.It was entertaining in the same way watching a kid take a piss at an electric fence is funny, or watching retards fuck is funny.
It's that it's not entertaining, its not an escape from reality, it is ... reality! I watch movies, TV and play videogames to escape to reality and what's the point of that if I have to watch it?

I know networks love these shitty shows because they cost hardly anything to make and fill up airtime very nicely, especially since you get to easily plug crappy products during the action as well as during the commercials. It's the equivalent of having Jay Leno wear a Gatorade cap and Exxon mobile cap during his show, and a huge f'ing "MARLBORO" stucker on his chin.

But then they also air the same shitty sit-com plots that they have for the last 10 years. The bitchy wife and the lazy, clueless husband. The overly stressed wife and absent minded husband. The only manly guy in a sitcom is played by Neil Patrick Harris, who is a broadway acting openly gay man, who bleaches his fucking hair! They are either neurotic, overly sensitive, overly metrosexual, stupid, clueless or all of the above. The wife is usually a ballbusting bitch, who between emasculating her husband for wanting to not live in a pink barbie dreamhouse.
If sitcoms are any indication of what goes on in American life I understand fully why people cheat. Because they aren't getting laid at home.

Stupid issues: Gun Control

Gun control is a much debated issue but one that is pretty easy to solve. Of course there is the right to bear arms, but I somehow doubt that the founding fathers  imagined people filling their basements and gun cabinets with fully automatic assault rifles and so on. Unless Aliens invade or something this seems rather pointless. I grew up around guns, I've got a hunting license and I've been shooting guns since I was about 7.
If I was to get weapons for home defense it would be 2 weapons. A nice scoped single action rifle, 10 shot magazine or so, loaded with hollow points.. The second one a shotgun, I'm thinking Mossberg 505, 12 gauge , with "magnum" shells.
My choices are rationalized as follows; The longer range single action rifle as my primary "ranged" weapon, and the shotgun as a close to medium range weapon. If a 3rd one was to be added I would go with an over/under (Rifle/shotgun combination weapon) with different ammunition. Probably 12g slugs or something along those lines.

The reasons for leaving out semi and full auto weapons is fairly simple.

1. They tend to be less accurate and thus lead to a higher ammunition consumption per target.
2. They tend to be overkill for most situations.
3. They are less "useful" in moderately trained hands.

My reason for leaving out handguns is even simpler. They are shit for home defense compared to a shotgun. If you are "defending" yourself inside a house, a relatively short barreled shotgun loaded with "magnum" shells or even regular 12g  will turn most things into minced meat at close range.

You can also mount a bayonet on most Mossberg brand shotguns, making them into a rather effective melee weapon should it come to that.
Even for a smaller person such as a woman or small man, by going with a higher gauge shotgun such as a 20 gauge is also possible, this does result in a loss in stopping power of course, but I think the difference between a 12g and a 20g is fairly negligible in terms of destruction at 10 - 25m range.

With the exception of "urban" warfare or mass battles I really see little use for automatic weapons. Handguns make sense as "sidearms" for police, soldiers and so on because they are light, and in a lot of cases offer interchangeable ammo with submachine guns.  Assault rifles are really a pure warfare weapon, in a situation where a group works together they make sense since their combined rate of fire create a field of destruction. In urban warefare it makes sense due to the frequent switches from close range to medium range combat in some cases even long range.
That's where the benefit of a weapon like an M16, or AK47 comes into play as they are fairly viable used at long range. Nowhere near a proper hunting rifle but usable. An M4 outfitted with a scope also somewhat fills this role, even though the shorter barrel compared to the M16 does hamper accuracy a little bit.

Since most "I need to defend my home" type activity tend to be stressful, adrenaline pumping action, where you don't really have a steady aim, and where you have to shoot another human being, the drawback of accuracy/ease of defense comes into play. A handgun is "easier" to deflect completely and the odds of missing are higher than with a cloud of pellets flying.

Magazine capacity doesn't really come into play at all, since I doubt that unless the crips are storming your crib you won't need a full magazine. Well situations like Jason Voorhies or Michael Myers showing up not withstanding.
It's also a bit harder for a small child to "play" with a full size rifle or shotgun, of course me not being a moron would prefer to keep the ammunition in a lockbox similar to this one  just because I prefer the small children in my family not to be able to get live ammo!
Trust me on this, if you don't have 30 seconds to retrieve and load your weapon, you are most likely dead or immobilized already. The average person is not a highly trained operative who can more or less fire on instinct, hell most people who own a handgun for self defense have little to no training in using or maintaining it.

So here is how we "fix" the gun issue.

1. In order to purchase a gun you need to belong to a gun club, that owns or rents firing ranges.
2. In order to own a gun of any kind you need to have logged at least 40 hours on the firing range in the last 6 months, and have completed a course on weapon safety.
3. Weapons are to be kept separate from their ammunition at all times,  so your gun can't be kept loaded under your pillow sorry.
4. Weapons can only be modified by licensed gunsmiths.

I think that's a good way to start, and lets get rid of concealed weapons permits while we're at it, if people want to be cowboys they can carry their gun on their hip.

American Politics

As I sit here in my chair and watch American politics, the expression "If only we had a government as good as the people" comes to mind, because quite frankly a government is as good as the people who vote for it. If your population has a large amount of non literate morons, then a lot of your politicians will appeal to barely literate morons.
This is what frustrates the hell out of me with the teabagger movement. They spout slogans without knowing what they mean. They protest single payer healthcare systems because they feel they are socialistic yet also protests big corporations. The thing is you have to make a choice, big business or big government, you can't have none of the above.
If you want small government you need big business to cover the gaps, and if you want small business then you need the government to cover the gaps. Let's take postal service for instance, FED-EX, UPS and so on can deliver a hell of a lot faster around the globe, but they cost a lot more, I would love to see a private company try to deliver a letter halfway across the world for under a dollar.
When it comes to healthcare I will always prefer the government over big business, simply because the government has a lot less motivation in letting me die. A private insurance company make their money off clients that pay their premiums and never need to use their insurance for anything, so any client they have to pay for, is a loss in profit.

When a large part of your population votes against their own best interest, protest their own best interest and so on, democracy is not working in your fucking country. Democracy is based on voting for your own best interest, but a way to large amount of Americans do not know what they are, democracy fails.
John Edwards was without a doubt the strongest voice on poverty in the democratic party, but he gets drummed out for cheating on his wife... and my thinking is "Who gives a shit". Being a manwhore and being a good politician are hardly mutually exclusive, John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Thomas Jefferson just to name a few who pulled off both.

The teabagger movement strikes me as being this strange mass of everything, with no cohesive thought behind. They protest health reform, throw money at and degrade people who have been left for dead by their insurance companies, yet think they are the good guys.

Sarah Palin is the prime example of a teabagger, a person who knows more or less nothing about what she speaks of. Watching Joe Biden's face during the debate was like watching Patrick Stewart's face when Number 1 asked "Captain what's wrong?" and his entire face spoke "I am a fucking classically trained Shakespearian actor sitting here talking to the ambassador from the worm people!"
However she is very very good at tugging at the gunstrings of the "digestive tract is better than brain" people. The thing is a person who is uninformed will always react more viciously to "easy" topics rather than complex, multilayered issues.
The Gay marriage thing, the gun thing, the prayer in school thing, all very easy issues that tug at the biblestrings of an unimformed person. In the end very easy to solve issues to be honest, they will be explored in detail in a series I'm doing called "Stupid non issues"

Religious people do not have much faith in God do they?

See the premise of the Christian faith is that God is all powerful, all seeing, all knowing, knows when you're sleeping knows when you're awake. So why do Christians feel the need to protest and create so much noise about certain things when an all powerful, all knowing, all seeing God would already be dealing with it in rather mysterious ways I might add.
There are some things that seem a bit "off" to me though. Let's take pro-life Christians bombing abortion clinics and killing people. Now I'm not going into how ironic a pro-lifer killing people is, but just thinking about this;

I am not a religious person, I don't subscribe to any specific faith, I simply state that I do not know, yet I would never dream of killing someone for simply having a different point of view than me. So a person subscribing to the 10 commandments definitely should not kill someone, unless they want to end up in Hell that is. Not that I believe in hell just making a point.

A Norwegian Islamic fundamentalist said "I put my faith in Allah, he will take care of me and he is the best planner that exists" as much as I hate religious fundamentalism I respect where he's coming from. He has faith in his God to take care of him, and not only him but the world.

If I was a religious person, I might disagree with stem-cell research, abortion, drug use, promiscuity, pornography, prostitution, or as I call it "Tuesday" but I would trust in God to deal with it, and judge everyone at the time of the apocalypse. Doesn't God say in his word "The Bible" that he is the one to judge, not anyone else? In that case how can any Christian defend being judgmental of others? According to the son of God, Jesus,  one should be tolerant of sinners, somehow the behavior of most of Christian interaction I see is far from tolerant.

Why we need drugs!

So I'm getting tired of watching anti-drug, anti-alcohol, anti-this and anti-that movements. We are living in a society so far away from what we are designed for, it's understandable that some people need something to take the edge off.
On the other hand people with a high tolerance for things, may pick other drugs. Some may go skydiving, mountain climbing, or throw themselves off a steep slope at speeds up to 60km/h wearing a condom suit standing on a pair of planks.
We all have a drug in some form or an other, and regulating which drugs people are allowed to take seems a bit silly. It's a bit like regulating taste. I for instance have never understood drugs like speed and cocaine, why would a person want to be edgy, have a constant runny nose, not sleep for days and literally pay through the nose for it?

People get prescribed all kinds of crap these days, valium, zoloft, vicodin, oxycontin, and that's only the ones on the table in front of me right now. Maybe there is a reason why so many people are on something, because this life is not what we're built for. Are we really getting the amount of work injuries from computer jobs because sitting there hitting a keyboard 8 - 14 hours a day is what we're made to do?
I mean the hunter/gatherer human spent maybe 5 hours a day hunting and gathering, that was it. Of course on some days there was nothing to hunt or gather and on other days there may be more. I doubt though that the hunter/gatherer spent 8 - 12 hours a day at a job, only to spend an hour or two to commute home. Then once the hunter/gatherer is home, the evening is spent stressing out about loans, payments, how personal relationships break down due to time and so on.

Sure humans can cope with stress, people can survive amazing ordeals of stress, the question is what long term exposure to near constant stress does to a person. Doesn't anyone wonder why suicide rates are the highest among teens and young adults? Doesn't anyone wonder why suicide rates are going up across the board? Why more people are on prescription pills, illegal drugs, alcohol, sex addiction, shopping addiction, food addiction, lifestyle diseases and so on.
Maybe if people didn't have to eat lunch in 20 minutes, but could take the time to have a decent meal. Maybe if people didn't have to commute to regional offices instead of local offices. Maybe if holding my mail for 2 days didn't require me to spend 45 minutes on the phone with a customer service rep in India. Maybe people would be able to enjoy life.
The thing is one cannot enjoy life if 8 hours or more of every day is spent doing something you kind of don't like to do. Like it or not a lot of us spend our lives in careers we dislike simply because they pay the bills. My goals are not to be loaded, in terms of money but to make enough doing what I enjoy to live a comfortable lifestyle. Comfortable to me isn't "MTV Cribs" comfortable either. I'm thinking a little secluded house, perhaps on a lake, second level room where I can sit and look out over the lake while I write.
It would have to be a place with a decent year around temperature since 26 years or snow is kind of enough for me, but it would need to have a picturesque fall with rain tapping at the walls, windows and roof. Decent media setup of course since I do enjoy watching movies and playing games.
But most of all it includes the freedom to spend the days doing what I enjoy, when and how I enjoy it, rather than having to rely on someone else's clock constantly. It's not that I might getting up at a certain time or anything, it's just that inventively you end up with something that makes your workday hell. I've had it be customers (when I was working customer service), it was my coworker when I was working the counter, since I had to do his work most of the time.
It can be anything, sometimes its feeling like you're just a cog in the machine, which would be fine if being a cog didn't mean getting slathered in grease and being forced to rub up against other cogs day in and day out. A wise man I know once said "I don't mind working 12 hour days because I get paid 100x the national average every year" yes in his case it was worth it. But how about for someone who works the same 12 hours but for under the national average? Even just barely scraping by, and even at jobs that should pay a fuckload more.
Everyone always talks about how important children are, but the public school systems in most countries are shit. So clearly they are not,  most teachers have more surrender in their eyes than Vichy France and with the exception of math and physics I could probably teach their classes better than them. If schools were important, why wouldn't they be a lot better, or at the fucking least at a point where I have never had to answer a non sarcastic "Who is Stalin?"

Anyway all these little annoyances are why the world needs drugs. Imagine the following for a minute;

Every stoner, alcoholic, pill head etc without their drugs and imagine how many annoying fuckers would die because of those drugs not being there!

Happiness and Perfection

They are both concept which very much attract me, but truth be told they both exist as a mirage, something to drive us forward. Be it an illusion of a heaven after you die, where all your desires are fulfilled and there is no sorrow, or jealousy, sadness, depression, where everyone you love is safe and you wake up every day with a smile. Or perhaps a life very different from the one you're leading.
One of the funnier things we tend to neglect in our fantasies of perfect happiness is who we are in them. We tend to believe in that perfection is attainable but if it is, it only remains for a moment, and then it becomes a memory. See perfection literally means "That which has no flaw" and the thing is everything has flaws. If there is a God, he/she/it made a few mistakes. Things like placing massive amounts of oil underneath the seat of several major religions, and made sure that each one of those religions are fairly crass against people of the other religions.
Not publishing a new version of the Bible seeing as a book that happens to be over 2000 years old may not take into account the changes that happen in about 3000 years.
I mean the central story still works, people as a general rule are pricks, a lot of people are out for themselves, there is still prostitution, deceit, lying, violence, wars, persecutions and so on are still around strong. People can still identify with some of the characters, personally I would love to see the Father/Son moment between Isak and Abraham right after an angel had to stop Abraham from killing Isak but I digress.

Everything and everyone has flaws, nobody can live on this earth for a lifetime without eventually getting fucked over in some way, for some it never seems to end. Happiness can be destroyed in seconds, and depression can be turned around in days, but the feelings themselves tend to go away a little with time. My grandmother and grandfather used to tell me how they were even happier together in their old age than they were when they were young. A lie of course or self-deceit, even possibly a little from column A and a little from B. I say this not because I am a hopeless cynic, because I'm not.
I just happen to know very well the effect of various items that changes brain chemistry, and nothing is as strong as the feeling of falling in love with someone. It's a whole body experience with virtually no crash, that can go on for months and months. Our bodies are highly complex simple machines, the tasks they do and how they function are very complex, but the means at which it does them is very simple. Losing weight for instance is hard, because it used to serve us a function to store a lot of fat when the seasons made it so some months there was fuck-all to eat and other months a horn of plenty.

It's not that I don't think a person is unable to be happy, it's that I doubt a person could be happy every day, because after a while happy would become normal. If you haven't felt really bad, you don't know what good feels like.

sentimentality

Who wins when your sentimentality fights your desires, when you keep doing something that once served a purpsoe for you, but has now become a waste of time. What does one do when the place one goes to escape becomes a prison?
Sure leaving is the obvious choice, but what if the prison still has a few things holding you back, be it from sentimental value or something else?

The value of something?

What decides the value of something? Is it societal pressure as we see with diamonds and gold, or is it increase in living condition as with a new house? Is it set by supply and demand, as in the cornerstone of a market system, or is it purely sentimental and arbitrary? Maybe its a bit of all of them.
I value some family pictures, a few gifts, and trinkets more than things that hold a much higher monetary value. On the other hand I have things I valued a lot in a different time. When I first purchased my Zippo lighter, an original not a knock off I felt like it was the coolest thing ever, now it mostly collects dust. Not because its a bad lighter but because its just so much easier and more practical to buy disposable.

Anyway with values attached to everything, we've kind of blocked out when it comes to ourselves. It's considered a faux pas to show or say anything that gives the impression that you see people as having a value just like a watch or book. It is quite true though, for me anyway. You see while most people tend to pretend like they don't notice, they distance themselves from people who have low value to them, and gravitate towards people who have high value. If you have a person in your life that just takes from you, or that you don't enjoy spending time with, you tend to not spend time with that person. There can be other reasons, I don't go to visit my grandfather in the home much because;
1. He is senile so he doesn't remember if I was there, or even who I am when I go there, and when I do he sleeps most of the time.
2. It's excruciating to watch a person you look up to, who has been a person you saw more or less every day of your life until you were 18, turn into a shell of his or her former self. Watching a person become just a body, like their personality being ripped away is more painful than them being dead before hitting the floor.

Sorry for the short tour through sobville, I wrote that because it illustrates that sometimes you avoid a person not because of a lack of love for them, but to take a path of least pain. Now if you have a person who is improving the quality of your life in it, then you tend to want to keep them. Now the value of a person is relative, in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. It can be having the newest shoes and clothes in a subgroup of fashionistas or the Sheen brother without a rap-sheet when they need to explain the dead hooker.
Regardless of that, we all assign values to people. I am honest about doing so and while it does sometimes lead to regretful situations and probably a result of our development.

Among a species the goal is to survive and reproduce, any successful species has to do this. In a world where I am programmed by nature to get my DNA to survive, or to use the literal term "blood" as its used in historical texts, assigning values makes sense. The closest thing to my DNA is the DNA of my siblings, my cousins, and so on. So in order to make my families DNA survive it does make sense to protect them, and to help them. Now a single family isn't much of a force and doesn't offer diverse enough DNA so add a few more families and you have a small community. Now the people of this community will value a member of their community over an outsider unless that outsider offers them something more worth than their members.
Sacrifices to the Gods in ancient and to a degree modern times is an example of a social group valuing the goodwill of their God(s) over members of other groups and in some cases even their own group.

The bad thing about democracy.. it doesn't work.

Who are we kidding, no country is truly democratic at best our civilized western "democracies" are ruled by special interest groups and agendas. In a not so distant future more people will die from obesity than from smoking, why has so little preemptive work been done? Shouldn't "Gutfillers" have labels on them? I see no reason why products high in carbohydrates, sugars, high-fructose corn syrup and other unhealthy sweeteners shouldn't have big white labels on them with warnings.
The thing is the sugar industry and corn industry make lots and lots of money, and want to keep making lots and lots of money, preferably so much more that stock prices go up year after year even if the companies are doing extremely well already. So the sugar and corn industry grease a few pockets, use their connections and so on to oppose bills that would hurt their income. Let's take a senator or congressman from Nebraska one of the biggest corn states in the US, would such a man want to work for things that hurt his or her voters? The answer is obvious isn't it?

Renewable Energy is a field we need to do a lot more work in as a species. Countries like China and India are slumbering giants, China is already a big name in global business as a manufacturing nations, but they also have a huge market for goods in their own country due to a huge population more and more becoming consumers. So a need for more energy will be needed as more and more of the world become developed and needs to fuel industry and population. Unless something of biblical proportions happen the population of the world won't go down, the supply of oil will dwindle. People will want things like electricity, plumbing, air-condition, good heating, and the nice things that goes with a higher standard of living. Which it is reasonable that we will see as more of the world become industrialized.
So the need for energy goes up and the supply of a lot of traditional energy is running out, even with improved efficiency in all parts of the chain. So solar energy, wave energy, wind energy and water energy are all renewable sources that can provide a lot of energy cheaper and more green friendly. The second line of defense is something like nuclear power, which isn't as dangerous as it used to be since there has been technological improvements since it was placed in the doghouse.
Anyway the Oil business which is huge today, since most cars require it, all planes require it, has a lot of money gambling on the future of energy. Now they don't want to stop the research into alternative technologies completely, they just want to slow it down. Mainly until they have phased their assets into the new technologies, and have liquidated the obsolete assets. So they have their lobbyists working.

The media has the power, but they abuse it as they see fit. Can anyway disagree with that Elliot Spitzer was a much better governor than David Paterson and even if he had a relationship with a $1,000 in hour hooker was probably significantly better at the job. So who benefits from Ellitot Spitzer having to resign? The other party, the media who made money off the news about the scandal, I don't think the people benefit by having a less qualified official in office, but that's where we end up. If I was overly focused on politicians relationships, I'd be much more concerned with Dick Cheney's relationship with Hallie-Burton, than any sexual relationship politicians have. That is if you're watching their job performance, money is a much more effective motivator than sex,

Now democracy is meant as a system where the people control the country to a degree at the very least. Now the problem is that the people have to go through so many middlemen. Every middleman has his or her agenda, so does every aide, every secretary, every congressman, every senator, every lobbyist. So who wins out the people or the system?

What people forget is that democracy just like totalitarianism, communism and so on all end up with the same result when taken to an extreme. You end up with an elite who has the majority of wealth, influence and every other currency and a gradually worse off middle and lower class. This is exactly what we see in the US today, about 2% of the population has the influence, the money, and the power, while the rest are somewhat tag-alongs. When you take into account that the 2% have control over the media, the politicians, the lobbyists and so on how can that be a fair system?
You see there is no real difference between Stalin's elite and his purges and the various political elites that snipe at each other through the media. The only difference is that Stalin literally killed you, while the democratic elite prefer character assassination.

So in the end the only way a real democracy would work is that every single person eligible to vote has a button on their phone to vote yes or no on laws. However this brings up another problem, most people in a democracy do not know the democracy well enough. You see people tend to vote against their own best interest and vote with their gut rather than brain. I mean looking at what the 2 American parties say they want, most American's would be better off voting democratic instead of Republican. However the Republicans are better at bullshit. You see here is the thing, guns, religion, abortion and so on are non-issues. They are not important in the long run but they win elections.