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.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, March 26, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
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"
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"
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
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.
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!
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.
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.
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