No means no!

There has been much debate recently about sexual violence and exploitation and how we define it as a society. For some it is black and white, but for many there seems to be some gray area. Well here is the story of my experience with sexual coercion. Me and my girlfriend (there is a lot of debate on how to define this term as well) were watching the Animatrix on tv. If you're not familiar look it up. It is unquestionably better and more original than the live action films its based on. Anyway we were at a really cool part that involved a mechanical horseman of the apocalypse, and this is when my girlfriend decided to try and initiate sex. I tried to signal through body language I wasn't in the mood, but she just kept pushing and pushing. Eventually she vocalized her frustration making me feel like I had just done something wrong so at that point I gave in and I missed my favorite part of the movie. It has taken me a long time to come to terms with what happened last Wednesday, but I can't deny it any longer I am a victim of sexual violence.

The Digital Immortals

Social media has brought about an age where everyone now has a monument to themselves, a digital monument, but a monument none the less. Everyone comments on world events as if they were a spokesperson, everyone wants to showcase themselves, they want us all to see how interesting they are and what fantastic lives they have. This approach to live has really instilled in people a cinematic frame of mind. They seem themselves as moving through a movie. In fact Facebook now has an option to make a movie out of your posted content. There is literally no event no matter how mundane that is not documented. The best part is instead of having the intended of effect of making everyone's life seem awesome the complete opposite has happened and now no one is impressed by anything because we can all see its fa facade mostly because its one we all put on ourselves. Just think about your grandparents. Remember how interesting it was to see photographs from when they were young? There weren't many of them and it was a glimpse into a long gone age, but now people take several photos a day. Our grand kids aren't going to give a shit and I don't blame, but of course by that time I'm sure everyone will have their own 24 hour channel. We will leave very detailed records of our lives that will exist long after we're gone, well at least as long as the digital information network holds up. Our facebook pages will out live us and if you gave someone the password you could probably keep up the facade of being alive for a quite a long while. Eventually facebook will add death as an event on your timeline. Most of the younger people will probably attend your funeral via skype. The sounds of the various other things they're doing on their computers will drown out the eulogy, but no one will notice because they'll all be creating posts about how much they miss you.

No More Heroes Anymore

People love a hero, or at least anyone they feel like they can call a hero. They love throwing this word around so much in fact that the criteria for its use has been become so minimal and unimpressive to the point where all you have to do to be given the title is develop some sort of chronic illness. Of course we still have your more traditional heroes. You know people who risk life and limb to save others, or in some cases to kill others. Its an odd distinction a fire fighter carries a baby out of a burning building we celebrate this, because he saved a life. When a soldier manages to shoot 10 or 20 people we're equally enthusiastic. Seems like an odd double standard. The prize for these sorts of heroism is usually a medal and maybe a spot in a parade. Now I never found the prospect of heroism particularly attractive. Heroes often die young and I'm not too into that. My goal in life is too live as long as possible even if it comes at the expense of others. If I had the option to live off the blood of children I would, so long as I could live indefinitely. I don't really see the benefit in sacrificing myself for others. There's really only one of me. I can't be replaced. Whereas most other people all seem more or less the same to me and there really seems to be plenty of them so if you lose a few whats the big deal?

I Watched Everyone Loves Raymond, Now I'm Gay!!!

There is a growing belief that the mainstream media is involved in a conspiracy to turn America's youth into homosexuals. This subversive plot initially subscribed to mainly by members of christian fundamentalist fringe is starting to gain some traction in the winder culture, particularly in some black communities. Is the mass media being employed as a psychological weapon to convert the population to homosexuality? Well this may seem like lunacy, but when closely examined there is a strong basis to support the idea. First off consider America's economic problems. One of causes of this prolonged economic stagnation is dwindling consumer spending. Well homosexual males more often have higher than average incomes and much more disposable income as well, and if we're going to talk about problems of such a macro nature let us not forget over population. Homosexuals usually don't have children, and if they do they're often adopted. So you see it is simply sound economic policy to turn everyone gay. It would lead to economic growth and a steady, but much needed population decline.

Are You a Tomato or a Weed?

"Weeds grow very very quickly and dozens of them seem to show up all at the same time. If you're a weed you're never alone. In fact if you're a weed there are so many of you that you end up crowding out the other plants. A tomato plant leads a far more difficult and lonely existence. A lot of work has to be put in if tomato plants are to thrive and even when they're doing really well there are never as many tomatoes as weeds, but when its time to harvest the tomatoes its easy to see why it was all worth it. Tomatoes are a plant that repay your efforts with sustenance. Weeds don't need you and don't do anything for you or anybody else for that matter. Now are you a tomato or a weed?" See how easy it is to come up with stupid inspirational bullshit? All I have to do is paste this over a picture of a tomato and there ya have it, an inspirational meme. People love bullshit like this because they feel like it was intended for them. By now you might have noticed how a lot of these memes are meant to be inspiring while at the same time being a sort of backhanded insult to people at large. Like the message up above implies most people are about as useful as weeds, a plant you rip out of the ground and throw away, while a very few are actually worth something. Everyone wants to believe they're the hardworking exceptional person and its everyone around them that happens to be lazy, mediocre, or simply just stupid. So the end result here is a world where somehow everyone is special and at the same time no one is because that other special person believes you're just a dip shit and they themselves are the exceptional one, but if everyone is so damn smart whose writing all these retarded memes?

Oral Fixation

I recently decided to get off drugs and it was the easiest decision I ever made largely because it was court ordered. I got ordered into an Narcotic Anonymous program, which is basically sitting around swapping stories about being junkies. Its actually kind of entertaining. Anyway I found out people actually do give head for dope. That's not just a thing in the movies, and what bums me out most is I'm not sure I'd be pretty enough to do that. It would be a really big blow to my self-esteem if I offered a drug dealer head in exchange for drugs and he turned me down. Have you ever seen "The Basketball Diaries"? Well If you haven't its a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Its your typical story of a promising youth falling into the horrible life of drug attention, but manages to kick and discovers his purpose in life in the meantime. Well anyway at one point DiCaprio's character starts exchanging oral for drugs, but there's a twist! The john in this situation actually pays Leo so that he can...SUCK OFF LEO! Wow! Now how many people can say "Yeah someone just gave me all this cash to suck my dick today"? Apparently just one.. Leonardo fuckin DiCaprio!!!

Childhood Delusions

I'm a teacher at an elementary school and for whatever reason we still find it necessary to ask children what they want to be when they grow up. My guess is we do this as an exercise in dissapointment. Sometime down the road they'll look back and think "wow that dream sure crashed and burned." Its a very long term lesson, but a very crucial one. Anyone one of my students said that they want to be the President of the United States of America. I referred them to the school counselor right away. I have to be concerned about the mental health of any child who wants a career that entails lying, theft, and mass murder. Just the fact this kid is only 7 and already thinks he should have control over a doomsday arsenal of nuclear weapons is a little troubling to me, however the school counselor informed me this was not a good reason to send someone to her office and that it was "normal for children to want to be president." So as it turns out most children are suffering from the same personality disorders and delusions of grandeur that make violent narcissists seek out positions of authority, but I just knew I had to do something to make sure this kid got the help he needed, or at least be removed from society so I said he tried to stab me with his scissors. I feel I did a great service today.

Ninja Monkeys

"The Monkey's Paw" is an antique tale of terror that teaches us that sometimes what we don't see is what we really should be afraid of, because what we didn't see what we never got closure on is what haunts are imaginations and stays with us throughout our lives. This simple lesson in story telling provides invaluable advice for writers, playwrights, and filmmakers. Clearly this is a teaching the team behind the original "Planet of the Apes" had in mind when they gave us the iconic tale of an astronaut who finds himself in a world where savage humans are enslaved by superior apes. As the film progresses we find out that what we once though was an alien world or a parallel universe is actually just Earth in the future. This comes to light in the scene where we find the ruins of New York and we hear the iconic line "You maniacs! You blew it up!" This suggest to us that a planet ruled by hyper evolved apes came about because man ultimately destroyed itself. How exactly this happened we can only infer but the evidence seems to suggest war. So we didn't see how this horrifying world came to be but we were left to imagine the horrific events that lead to it's inception. Now the problem is the new movie "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" tries to recreate for us the events that resulted in the ape ruled world we saw in the original film. We are to learn that man created these hyper-evolved apes and ultimately doomed itself. While this adheres to the original themes of self-destruction it does so by replacing the far more intelligent method of telling the story by letting our imaginations fill in the banks creating a more mysterious mythology and compelling story with a lame brained half assed action movie about people fighting super intelligent apes. From now on when people watch "The Planet of the Apes" they won't be left speculating just how the hapless homosapiens seceded their domination of the planet to their secondaries in evolution. They will have that story neatly packaged for them by a Hollywood summer block buster. This movie is a big middle finger to everything the first movie tried to do. don't see it. All it is is a lame attempt to cash in on a classic title as well as the the macabre fascination our dying society has with the bethusian. There's nothing worse when Hollywood tries to cash in on the power of a cultural icon in such a crass a cynical manner. By doing so they not only make a piece of commercial garbage they cheapen the already well done piece of art. Like Terminator 3 and how it completely negated the principle theme of Terminator 2 "no fate but what we make" by saying judgement day was "inevitable" Ok so then that means everything that happened in T2 was pointless...thanks!

Mass Murderers On Your Friends List??!!

As mass murder becomes an increasingly popular past time in the United States there are a lot of questions we are going to have to as ourselves as a culture, especially when the mass murderers are people we know. Thanks to facebook and other social media outlets we all now "know" far more people than was ever considered possible by previous generations. The criteria for claiming to "know" a person is quite a bit less stringent than it was just over a couple decades ago. Well now people are finding they "know" plenty of unsavory characters. In a country full of mass murderers and empty digital interpersonal connections its time we lay down the ground rules for what to do when someone on your buddy list shoots up a school, blows up a bus, opens fire on a shopping mall etc etc. Say you hop onto facebook one day and you find out friend #216 has just gone on a shooting rampage through city hall kill 4 and injuring 9. What do you do next? Do you de-friend this person right away? Well you could, but then others might accuse you of being dramatic plus you might miss what people post on their page. Should you post on their page as well? Is it your duty as their friend that you are concerned about some of the decisions they've been making? "Hey bro saw what you did with those pipe bombs today....not so cool man". That might be one way to go. What if this person is more than just a digital acquaintance? What if you have pictures with this person, pictures you're tagged in?! Should you untag yourself right and try and suppress that history, or should you hop on your page and use those past documented encounters to claim to have some unique insight into all of this thus finding yourself lavished with attention? Well considering the culture I'm sure many will chose the latter. Remember there is no such thing as bad press! What if you're official in a relationship with this person? Do you break that off? Would that show up as a life event on your timeline? Would it say "Brandy and Jeff are no longer in a relationship due to his recent shooting spree"? I suppose all of these questions will answer themselves just a little bit more with each new mass killing. Maybe in the future we can go back and reference this. I'm sure we won't have to wait long.

Who Won the War?

I've spent a large part of my life reading about the second world war. Like many boys I was enamored with accounts of the dog fights over London, the Blizkrieg into the Soviet Union, the super nifty black uniforms donned by a genocidal Hun army. The largest conflict in human history and the birth of the atomic age whats not to love? However I think there is a very big and somewhat obvious lie about this war, and that's the lie that America won it. When you look at pictures of postwar Germany and Japan its easy to see why someone might think this, but I'm looking around now and I'm wondering where's America's universal health care system? Where is America's living wage laws? "Where is America's high speed rail systems? Japan and Germany have all of these things and they supposedly lost the war. Well if they lost the war how did they end up with all the good stuff and America ended up with the crumbling infrastructure, broken health care system, 50 million people in poverty, and the seemingly daily episodes of mass violence? Those don't really sound like really worth while spoils to me.

Vote and Die!

I'm not really a fan of eugenics. Something about a pseudo-science that gives inbred oligarchs a license to commit mass murder in the name of building a better a future through a process of genetic distillation just doesn't sit well with me, however I must admit I am starting to come around. There are certainly people out there who not only shouldn't be trusted to breed and raise children they should probably just be excised from society as expediently as possible and I have found a full proof way to identify who these undesirable gene pool polluters are. America loves theatrics so they've decided to keep up the illusion of presidential elections. The country will be holding yet another one of these tiresome and tedious events in 2016. As of now its looking like we will have the freedom to chose either Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush. Jeb Bush comes from a very prominent family of mass murders and war criminals. His father is George Sr put on a show for the country using his camera guided bombs in Iraq back in the 90s and his invalid son went back a little over a decade later to execute a failed and bloody occupation of the country that left it in a state of civil war. Hillary of course is the wife of another famous criminal whose resume includes such accomplishments as Somolia, Kosovo, and NAFTA. Yes at this point the oligarchs must just be laughing at us. So I propose when 2016 rolls around and people are told by their various reality tv idols its their patriotic duty to select which corporate puppet they want to to lord over them we wait for the bumbling heard to show up at the polls and when they go into the booth to select either Clinton 2 or Bush 3 an automated cattle prod emerge from the floor and deliver a lethal shock to their junk. When its all over we will be rid of millions of empty headed people who were really just taking up space. As a bonus many of them will probably be obese and we can send their meat to some African country in the grips of a famine. It will be the the country's greatest humanitarian project yet.

Liking Our Way Towards A Better Tommorrow

Someone needs to conduct a study that will quantify approximately how many likes and shares it takes to fix a societal problem or social ill. If we committed a sufficient amount of resources to solving this problem than we can have this word running in tip top shape by the end of the year. Its only been within the last decade that people discovered liking something on social media is the first step towards fixing it. If that isn't the case than how come we feel fulfilled after we've clicked the like button? Clearly that is a sign we have taken a solid stance on the issue and have done all we could to try and fix it. The rest well that is up to god, history, the market, Jay Z or whatever vague omnipotent forces you feel shape events in this world. I for one believe the world's best hope lies in some undiscovered meme that is so overwhelmingly positive that once it enters the global data stream the world will have no choice but to better itself, and with all the work being in this field we can't be too far away! Just wait world the people on the internet are going to save you!