That Girl Sucks, And I Just Don't Care How That Makes Her Feel.

You know what’s funny? People’s feelings. They’re hilarious. Especially the delicate ones. Such as, when you tell someone that they’re being hypocritical or just plain left-fieldy.

And I’m not saying that because I have none of my own snowflakeishly-thin feelings, and I just revel in the smacking-down of others. Oh no. Not by a long shot.

I, myself, am quite the delicate peacock feather. I require constant care and petting. Never a nasty word can be directed toward me, lest I break down into a wave of inconsolable tears and face slaps. I can take criticism, sure. As long as its criticism directed at someone else. I especially hate being critiqued when I’m actually wrong.

That’s the WORST.

There is nothing more heart-wrenching and equally vile as someone explaining to me why I’m wrong when I’m actually wrong. Don’t people KNOW how devastating that kind of honesty can be? That the truth will not set me free? That it will actually become the shackles, cement boots, and shark-filled waters that will END ME? Does anyone out there have any idea how crippling it can be to learn that you’re a complete nimrod of a twatrocket? Anyone?

I didn’t think so. I’m the only one to have withstood undue torture-by-truth. You are all goody-do-nothings.

I mean, let’s say I was driving my car while trying to download some totally sweet ringtones for my brand new Razr Tronphone. And I’m not talking about some super gay Pac Man sounds. I’m talking Nickelback, off the NEW Nickelback album (totally new sound). So I’m driving and downloading some grand-tastic totally sweet NB soundbites to attach to my parole officer’s number. Multi-tasking because I’m trying to be efficient with my time. You know, conserving nature through efficient time-use and whatnot.

To help stop Al Gore’s global warming.

And I accidentally bump into some asshole on a bike who is riding near the CAR LANE. HELLO, it’s for CARS! All the signs are WRITTEN IN CAR, you shit.

And then he ends up seriously hurt or something stupid. I’m still not getting it, really. I mean, how far is a bike from the ground? So, how far could he have fallen anyway? Two feet? I told the cops that he should stop being such a little bitch and come out of his coma already. He’s seriously threatening to ruin my weekend plans with all this “intensive care” bullshit. Shouldn’t his wife and children be responsible for this? Or the orphans he cares for? Where were THEY when he got on a bike instead of a bullet-proof Hummer to get home from work, huh? Am I the only one who cares now?

Fuck!

Anyhow, so the judge is up there in his tent robe, telling me what a bad driver I am! OMG, WHAT AN ASSHOLE! I mean, I know I should have put the car in cruise control and steered properly with my knees instead of just “letting the wheel go” like that, but it’s so mean to say I’m a bad driver in front of other people! Especially in front of strangers. I mean, that judge is seriously endangering my future by ruining my reputation by saying things like that.

What if one of those people in the crowd is the manager for JC Penny and I don’t get that summer job! OMG! I’ll miss out on the Cancun trip!

I should sue him for “honesty of character”. What a dick.

Hello Garbage Truck Man

Ever heard of some old dude get soaked in gasoline whilst trying to carjack an old lady at some backwoods Texas gas station? Like dude just said “fuck it, I’m taking this old bitch’s Tahoe back to my mobile home so the dogs can have something fancy to live under”?

Well now you have. (if that crazy link bothers to work) What a piece of work. Nobel winner, that guy.

My truck, quite fortunately, is not likely to ever be a target of such wanton thievery. No Denali trim package over here. Oh hell no. I just got my rear view mirror glued back on, and that’s got me pretty excited! Now I can see the urgent gestures of the people I accidentally cut off on the freeway because my steering is so damned loose! Alright! If only the windshield wipers, CD player, and differential would magically fix themselves, it’d be perfect *!

Red rocket, red rocket.

It entertains me to learn how people are judged by their car. If you drive a late model Lexus, you’re a posh asshole. If you drive an Eclipse convertible you’re a titty dancer. And if you drive an older, beat-up pickup truck with four cracks across the windshield, you’re a garbage man.

Apparently.

I gather this from the fact that every day there is new garbage that has been deposited in the bed of my truck. It just appears there, like magic! Trash sorcery! Beer cans, cigarette packs/butts, fast food packaging, dead birds, whole branches, and other unnamed, general detritus refuse. Stankin’ up the joint.

This is done because I obviously enjoy throwing other people’s trash away. I really do. I especially like throwing away food related items, like half-eaten hamburgers and apple cores. That’s awesome. Makes me delirious just thinking about it. In fact, I like dealing with other people’s shit so much, it might be comparable to how much Canada must loving dealing with ours.

Because I KNOW we toss shit in the back of their pickup bed like it was an abandoned apartment dumpster. Like, fuck it.

So, keep that in mind kids: anyone driving a pickup truck is a garbage man. Whether they like it or not. Feel free to drop trou’ right in there to help with the compost!

Fantastic.

*Safe and drivable.

Standards Are Awesome.

Hey! Guess what’s really NOT important?! Readability Level Statistics!

It’s called the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Level, and it’s so awesome I want to commit violence on myself! You see, F—K system does this voo-doo on paragraphs of words and then applies a statistically wow-erific model to fit that set of words neatly into a categorization which (big shocker) correlates to grade school reading aptitude! As in: a score of 5 = 5th grade reading level. 4 = 4th, 3 = 3rd, and 12th = you get the picture.

Unless you, yourself, are a 1. In which case, you’re totally confused by now and wish that your mother/brother wasn’t your sister/grandmother. Or you’re just drooling and searching for horse pr0n.

Back to the F—K method.

Apparently, in the same voice, and while speaking ostensibly on the same level (I only have one level of intelligence, presumably), I can write at a 6th grade level AND an 11.5th grade level! Simultaneously! That makes ALL the sense in the world! I checked it myself using Microsoft Word! It’s so easy to judge nowadays!

I’m sooooo glad we have these rating systems in place to tell me that in order to bring a paragraph from a 6th grade level to a 12th grade level, all I need to do is add run-on sentences and long, multi-syllabic words! Even if I fuck the grammar all up, jumble all the paragraphs into one long-winded douche-wheez, and use big, fake words in all sorts of impracticalishnistical ways! Smartness!

Flesch-Kincaid grade level 1.6 (so, you don’t even need to know English really):

The dog ran very fast. But not fast for dad. I like it when the dog gets beat. My dad beats dogs with his hook hand. His hook is made of metal and rubber. Like my mom’s left leg.

They were in a combine fire together. Mom says they were making me. Two bums came by and found them on top of the other. The bums did their thing. Then burned the combine. Mom’s leg got ate by coyotes after she passed out from the pain.

I don’t like it when dad opens my coke with his hook. It sounds so bad. It makes me cry. Like he just used that hook to open my brain instead.

Shut up stupid dog or I will hit you. With my third leg.

Flesch-Kincaid grade level 7.4 (what almost SIX more years of education can guarantee! Apparently!)

The dog ran very fast, but not fast; for dad. Precociousness. I like it when the dog gets beat because my dad beats dogs with his hooktasticalfullness hand. His hook is made of posthumously metal and rubberfishnets, just like my mom’s left; leggoristicality-o. They were in a combine fire together where mom says they were making me; fistedpainfully when two bums came by and found them on fiddlesticks top of the other. The bums did their thingsteriousnicity; then burned the combine forcedinstitutionalization. Mom’s leg got aten by coyote politicians after she passed out from the painstaticness. I don’t like it when dad opens my coke embroidering with his hook because it sounds so bad that it makes me cry; like he just used that hook to open my brain instead. Shut up stupid dogmaticalstatistician or I will hit you with my third leg bombastic.

Standards are awesome. We need more.

I Came So Close To Respect. But No. Not Today.

He tried to make sense. He really did.

You know, I just can’t get behind all this religious posturing. It ruins a potentially decent message. It’s utter shit to me, but a message as simple as “killing doesn’t seem to be solving any problems” just gets all kinds of RUINED when it’s mummified in the used toilet-paper of religion.

Ahmadinejad’s open letter to Americans is a fine, fine example of what’s wrong with allowing religious rhetoric to lay waste to sound concepts. Here’s a guy, who, best of intentions, simply wants the American people to know that he and his country are not just some gaggle of miscreant sand-dwellers, shooting dogs for sport and spending their every waking hour plotting to destroy the next Freedom Tower. I guess there are idiots, probably in my own neighborhood, who still labor under the delusion that the entire middle east operates that way. But they probably also think Destro and Cobra Commander are real too, as active but silent members of the Al Qaida network. So it's likely that his intended audience isn't into "reading long stuff that sounds all complicated". Like fire extinguisher instructions.

Regardless, dude’s letter is well intended. And for the record, I wanted to hate what he had to say. I intended to be fully biased, and have all my pre-notions of how small-minded a man had to be in order for his eyes to be so small and close together. Like two ear studs inserted a centimeter apart on a full-sized potato.

But for the most part, his sentiment is decent and appears to be an honest appeal to the good nature of the average tax-paying American Joe. But then he had to go fuck it all up with a slew of god talk. Man, what a shame.

My issues, with this specific letter of text, in the order in which they grated on my goddamn nerves:

1. Continually claiming that one’s audience should be “God-fearing, truth loving, and justice seeking” is blatantly disingenuous. Either one IS, or they ARE NOT “God-fearing”. Placing repeated reminders in the letter is little more than obnoxious prodding. He might as well have said “remember kids, God will fucking lightening your ass if you don’t side with me, a fellow God-fearer!” He was only talking to others of religious motivation. Not science. Not logic. Not fact-based reasoning. According to Ahmadinejad, only those of faith are capable of solving/not-starting issues such as modern day imperialism and wanton murder.

Ehhhh... What? That's some double-fucking-speak if I've ever encountered it.

It’s quite possibly the stupidest stretch of vacant common sense I’ve ever had to endure, but, okay then, I’ll pretend it makes sense for the sake of making fun of it. You know, since he went to the effort of writing it all down or whatever.

So… what about those of us who don’t “fear” whatever “God” is being tossed around so irreverently? Are we the problem? The non-fearers? Are we what’s wrong here? Are we the reason why everything is (pretty much always) all fucked up? Well, last time I checked, the only “Godless” leaders of ANY known nation, or any other set of murderous humans, incorporated or otherwise, for that matter, were Communists. The EXTREMELY RATIONAL reasoning behind removing religion from that socio-political structure, while wholly impractical and extremely oppressive, was to ensure that there would be no MURDER along religious lines (which is a guarantee as long as religions are allowed to practice competitively). But, as is human nature, if any communist did indeed shed their religion, then they simply picked up bureaucracy instead. But for the most part, they were all religious as hell anyway. Secretly. They simply played the part of non-theologians to keep from having their heads lopped-off by competing closet-theologians.

Now that the Soviet Union is gone, everyone is super-religious again. Shocker. And the Chinese are split between a return to their respective Eastern Philosophic routes and the coastal worship of an exploding Market Economy. And of course, violence along lines of delineation is beginning.

N. Korea is black hole of who-knows, so I'm not sticking anything in it here.

I don’t think it unfair, or a stretch to state that the injection of religion into a political text of any kind will be IMMEDIATELY POLARIZING. Until every living human being honestly and truly believes the exact same thing about everything (perhaps as programmed robots, made by programmed robots, which could only have come from some imagined universe somewhere far beyond current human comprehension?) any disputing of this polarization FACT, ironically, simply proves that it’s true.

Let’s face it, if a Muslim even says the word “Jew”, people get upset, regardless of the context. Like “don’t talk about my people! You aren’t allowed!” or “dude, I don’t think it’s appropriate that you be mentioning them. Ever.” It doesn't matter what they said about "the other" group. Just mentioning names ruffles feathers.

And don’t get me started on how atheists feel when they’re even MENTIONED by ANY other religious group. If the pope were to say “there’s nothing wrong with being an atheist,” which he would never say, but if he did, there’d be a large coalition of atheists who would react with “DON’T PATRONIZE ME YOU OPPRESSOR OF THE MIND AND FREE THOUGHT. I WILL PAY NO TITHE TO THE SPAGHETTI MONSTER! Ever.”

Fools get upset over beliefs. Even without provocation or reason. Maybe it’s the caffeine. I don’t really know. Regardless, the polarization occurs.

2. I’m tired of the over-misuse of the term “immoral” between cultures. Any staunch follower of Islam stating that a non-follower of Islam was acting “immorally” is ridiculous. They’re “immoral” because their “morals” are different than yours. Stop acting like morals are finite and carved in stone. They aren’t. They’re liquid, and can be VASTLY different from one population, group, gang, prison block to another.

You might as well be trying to tell a sea otter that it’s activities are “immoral”. It's ridiculous.

This will always bother me. The semantic arguments that surround morality. It’s the newest lazy-man’s approach to making any random-ass point into a touchstone argument. Telling someone who is far outside your culture that they should believe something because it is “moral” is just as ridiculous as someone from Mozambique telling Alaskans that drinking tap water in Anchorage will definitely result in African dysentery.

Morality is contextual. Locally and culturally so. There’s no definitive.

You realize that in some cultures, what we deam as "innappropriate" homosexuality between boys and older, married men is PART OF THEIR MORAL CODE? As fucked up as that sounds to me, they honestly believe knowledge surrounding what it means to “be a man” can only be passed on this way. So they have these rituals surrounding it. To an outsider, it’s all kinds of crazy pedophile-sounding. But to them, they’re like “whatever man. This is how we roll.” They might consider our preference to just let boys figure shit out on their own as “immoral” and “irresponsible” in terms of youth education. And based on their moral code, hey, guess what? They’d be right.

To be clear, I AM NOT ADVOCATING THIS. I’m just sayin’ it exists, and according to their own compasses, passes for “moral”.

So, Ahmadinejad’s tossing around of any “morality” related words is meaningless in the given context. Probability says that he’s not talking about the same “morals” as those held by his audience (but by pure coincidence, he could be, one never knows! Aha. Ha.).

Again, with religious folk, who are likely under the erroneous impression that only one set of morals exists, all one has to say is “doing ______ is immoral. Do you do ______?” and motherfuckers will be falling all over themselves to say “oh good lord no! NEVER! I’m a god-fearing moral person, I am!”

Touchstone arguments. Lazy shit.

3. Then, of course, there’s the ever-popular “justice and truth” claims. Wow. I figured by now, no politician, regardless of their revolutionary roots, would be so asinine as to claim this as an aim. Governments cannot guarantee this. You know why? Because statistically speaking, it would likely involve the removal of that same government which is supposed to be providing the guarantee. A government hand over authority/power? Oh, right. And understandably, that has never happened. Nor will it. How would a self-serving government honestly know when it was stepping beyond the bounds of "justice and truth"? I don’t think it’s a stretch to state that all governments, over their entire course of existence end up making sacrifices and compromises which amount to injustice and manipulation of SOMEONE/thing. It might be a stated “goal” in the bylaws, constitution, or whatever. But it’s the first lofty pipe-dream to get shelved as soon as real governing starts happening.

I won’t delve further into that one. It’s just so stupid it makes me want to cry.