June 18th, 2009

Feed readers: if you can’t see the video, view this entry online.

June 16th, 2009

1. Bill O’Reilly claims he’s an anarchist, and wants to give power to the people, but his entire schtick is about silencing anyone and everyone who disagrees with him, and using his considerable media power to do so. Yet when Ahmadinejad and the powers that be tried to prevent media coverage of the riots following the election. Twitter has become a buzzing hub for Iranians to communicate, despite efforts to disrupt communications. You know what I call that? Awesome surreality.

2. Having “goatse” and pictograms of two girls holding a cup be universally recognized icons of the most horrifying pornography known to man. And being able to laugh with just about anyone in my age group about it, no matter who they are. Why do we all know what this is?? If you don’t, do NOT google. No google. BAAAD GOOGLE. Surreality!

3. Using new media to watch a video chat of a new tv show pitch and the guy doing it casually mentions that he thought he’d try shrooms for the first time. By the way. Watching a guy hallucinate online with live chat… Surreality.

4. Reading blogs like cake wrecks and seeing photographs taken by people you know, have met, and have done disgusting things with. Surreality!

5. No take backs. Realizing that some people understand that the internet is like recording yourself saying, doing, looking and being whatever at any given moment, and sending it out to everyone in the world at once. Whereas others think that they can delete their racist twitter post and put up a lame apology, and everything will be hunky dory. We know what you did. Hssss.

June 15th, 2009

I understand the desire to provide an alternative explanation to the creation of the universe. After all, evolution is just a theory. However, I feel morally obligated to offer a word of caution to the Christians who are campaigning so fervently to get Intelligent Design taught in public schools.

In order to push this alternative explanation, you can’t reasonably say that the intelligent designer is the Christian God, but simply that there was an intelligent designer. I for one am totally alright with that. However, much like gay marriage is a gateway for all kinds of “unnatural” unions, so too is ID curriculum.

Allow me to explain. Once you open the door forcing science teachers to provide an alternative explanation to evolution, namely Intelligent Design, what is to prevent them from identifying what or who that intelligent designer might be?

I mean, what’s to stop teachers from telling kids that the intelligent designer is none other than Franz Baader, Professor of Theoretical Computer Science at the Technical Institute of Dresden? What if? Where does the madness end? Franz is actually kind of plausible. But what if you had a rogue teacher, bent on just fucking with people?

What if he or she suggested that the Intelligent Designer might be Happy Fun Ball? Fuck. We’ll have people marrying snakes and teachers telling kids the world was created by a vengeful toy. People, think before you act. Understand the repercussions of your actions.

If you say that you’ll then lobby to ensure only your God is taught in schools, well, won’t your face be red when people point out that you’ll effectively be forcing your religion onto kids. You big jerks.

June 14th, 2009

For those of you unfamiliar with Nanowrimo, it’s the November group project for writing a novel. The goal is to just do it, regardless of how good or bad it may be. Just to be able to say, hey, I wrote a novel! And, just doing it means it’s far more likely you’ll actually write something worth editing and refining into something really, really good.

My mother recently bought us a 5-year plan book, which basically consists of pages of oddly sized and positioned text shouting, “You’re an amazing person! Honor your ancestors and celebrate your mother!” amongst other stuff. It also makes for a really strange bathroom read. “You can do it! There’s only one person like you!”

Anyway, as I’m reading this, I come to a realization: Just about anyone can get published these days.

“What are you up to, girlfriend?” Manfriend asked me, as I set the book down thoughtfully.
“My five year plan… I’m going to write a book.”
“About what?”
“Magic, Mystery and Adventure.” I replied.
“That sounds excellent.”
“Yes. And maybe we’ll make truckloads of money, and you won’t have to look for a job anymore. Unemployment will simply become… uh…”
“Independently wealthy.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“I wonder if I could just tell people that now.”
“A bold new strategy.”