I haven't vomited in vitriol in a while so lets get to spewin'!!
There's an old proverb that goes something along the lines of "The weakest dog barks the loudest." That's the classy way of saying "Shut the hell up and stop talkin' shit you pussy."
I'm sick and tired of having to watch shit roll out the mouths of tough guys who think they're badasses and just won't stop telling you about it. If you have to announce to everyone that you're tough shit it means that you aren't, or at least that you have a(n) inferiority complex/small penis/love of kittens/sever lack of self-esteem and are simply compensating. It's like a rapist who's trying to convince people he's not a rapist by walking up to them and introducing himself by saying "Hello, I'm not a rapist, and my name is Chester." I don't just get pissed when some would be hardass is trying to bullshit me but when I just hear it. If you're so tough just don't talk about fighting/doing meth/being in a gang/glaring at old ladies/drinking/whatever go do it, and preferably far away from me... in a hole... being filled with concrete... and bears... that are on fire... and have bear aids... or just go and eat gravel or something I don't know...
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Warm-hearted Pragmatism.
People often accuse me of being an idealist. Someone who believes that the world is good and people are good and good is good and bad is good and that air tastes like marmalade and... blargh... In reality I'm a cynical pragmatist. I believe that people are bastards and that the world is a sick, sad, miserable sack of hopelessness and sorrow. I fully realize that any efforts I make to better things are ultimately going to be fruitless and pointless and may even end in me being punished for them. I realize that we live in a world in which vice, avarice, rapaciousness, and stinginess lead to success and the alternative leaves us weak and ineffective. I know that the base drives, greed, lust, pride, and hunger are what drive us and without them we would not have progress. I believe there there is no great reward in the afterlife for our sacrifices if we don't we resist all of the "bad" things above. I know that there really is no good and evil or right and wrong, that those are only constructs that we apply to reality to classify things for easier understanding; much like numbers and concepts of up and down, they exist nowhere but in our minds. I know what I find vile and loathsome may seem good and righteous to another. I believe that there really isn't even such a thing as objective truth. I know all this and it makes me sick to my stomach.
How then, can I live my life as anything but an ineffectual nihilist ranting about the uselessness of doing anything? Why am I not some gibbering lunatic spouting incoherent revelations at the masses? Why do I bother to wake up and eat in the morning? How do I decide what is and isn't right for me? How do I see any meaning in anything? Simple, I do what works.
I believe that there is no grand purpose so I validify my existence with the belief that I should leave everything a little better than it was before I was there and that's only because I'm a perfectionist. I don't believe in right and wrong so I decide my course based on what works best for me while hurting as few others as possible. I don't hurt others because I feel I should give the same respect I demand. I get up every morning and keep on going because I find purpose in little things, If something made me smile or laugh at all then it was worth waking up. Following the above mentioned guidelines has me taking actions that would lead some to call me an idealist but it's not idealism that guides me, it's just warm-hearted pragmatism.
How then, can I live my life as anything but an ineffectual nihilist ranting about the uselessness of doing anything? Why am I not some gibbering lunatic spouting incoherent revelations at the masses? Why do I bother to wake up and eat in the morning? How do I decide what is and isn't right for me? How do I see any meaning in anything? Simple, I do what works.
I believe that there is no grand purpose so I validify my existence with the belief that I should leave everything a little better than it was before I was there and that's only because I'm a perfectionist. I don't believe in right and wrong so I decide my course based on what works best for me while hurting as few others as possible. I don't hurt others because I feel I should give the same respect I demand. I get up every morning and keep on going because I find purpose in little things, If something made me smile or laugh at all then it was worth waking up. Following the above mentioned guidelines has me taking actions that would lead some to call me an idealist but it's not idealism that guides me, it's just warm-hearted pragmatism.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The Paradoxical Commandments
The Paradoxical Commandments
by Dr. Kent M. Keith
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
I usually don't share things that other people wrote or said because: 1) It's something that you could easily find on your own were you interested and 2) My ego doesn't permit me of admitting that anyone else can say anything important or profound. However, every once and a while I feel the urge to share something I think is very important. Today is one of those times and that something is the paradoxical commandments. I read this a long time ago and it just sounded so right that I could never forget it.
If you've read any of my previous posts then you know how cynical, jaded, and generally angry I almost always am. I believe that we are just a bunch of hairless apes walking on a ball of shit floating in space. I believe that any meaning we try to ascribe to our existence is ultimately just us projecting our desires to feel special. I believe that, in the end, it won't matter if you lived your life in slimy decadence or pious restraint. However, I also believe that the world is filled with enough suffering and I refuse to add to it, furthermore, I believe that if it is within my power to improve the lives of anyone that I should do it. Not because I expect to be rewarded in this life or in some magical afterlife but just because it is the right thing to do.
Just because the world sucks it doesn't mean we have to be bastards. Kindness doesn't have to be rewarded, in fact it shouldn't be, it cheapens it. In closing, I think I quote the movie Se7en: "Ernest Hemingway once wrote that the Earth is a fine place and is worth fighting for. I agree with the second part."
by Dr. Kent M. Keith
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
I usually don't share things that other people wrote or said because: 1) It's something that you could easily find on your own were you interested and 2) My ego doesn't permit me of admitting that anyone else can say anything important or profound. However, every once and a while I feel the urge to share something I think is very important. Today is one of those times and that something is the paradoxical commandments. I read this a long time ago and it just sounded so right that I could never forget it.
If you've read any of my previous posts then you know how cynical, jaded, and generally angry I almost always am. I believe that we are just a bunch of hairless apes walking on a ball of shit floating in space. I believe that any meaning we try to ascribe to our existence is ultimately just us projecting our desires to feel special. I believe that, in the end, it won't matter if you lived your life in slimy decadence or pious restraint. However, I also believe that the world is filled with enough suffering and I refuse to add to it, furthermore, I believe that if it is within my power to improve the lives of anyone that I should do it. Not because I expect to be rewarded in this life or in some magical afterlife but just because it is the right thing to do.
Just because the world sucks it doesn't mean we have to be bastards. Kindness doesn't have to be rewarded, in fact it shouldn't be, it cheapens it. In closing, I think I quote the movie Se7en: "Ernest Hemingway once wrote that the Earth is a fine place and is worth fighting for. I agree with the second part."
Thursday, March 18, 2010
I couldn't think of anything witty so I'll title this "Angry Rant!!"
Well, I'm home sick today, my evil little students have decided to bombard me with their germs and I now have an upper respiratory infection for the ages. Apparently I decided that sitting around coughing up rainbow colored phlegm and groaning wasn't making me miserable enough so I decided to dive into the hot mess that is the national news.
Don't get me wrong, I read the news every day. How else do you think I stay so angry all of the time? But I usually don't have time to do any digging of my own for the stories or try to get a feel as to the opinion of John Q. Dumbass out there. Well today I have time in spades so I decided to surf around and just see where the waves took me (see what I did there with the metaphor? It took almost all my willpower not to stick my head in the oven after writing it...). I knew how it would end, it always goes the same way when I start surfing. I check out some news stories, I read what some bloggers are saying about it. Then I check out things they're referencing to see if it's true or if they're idiots manipulating quotes to show what they want. Eventually I come across something so mind-numbingly thick that I have to walk away from the computer for a few seconds so I can walk around and make sure I haven't been catapaulted into a parallel dimension where logic doesn't exist. Today that something was Wallbuilders....
Now, before I return to my rant let me give some backstory. Once upon a time in the bible belt I was teaching social studies in a ultra conservative school. As anyone who knows me may imagine this was like walking on razorblades, and then salt, and then getting kicked in the nuts by a... nut kicking machine designed to do that flick the toe up thing just perfect so that it hurts more and you get sick to the stomach. However, I tried to make the best of it, acting as a centrist voice of reason in a far right filled area. I took no strong stances on any political beliefs(I feel that a teacher never should unless it is fact, i.e. evolution should be taught in science class as it is considered scientific fact, or that global warming DOES exist[but may be less under our control]). However, during the McCain Obama election I thought I'd go out of the standard curriculum between two units and teach the students about the election process and the candidates, nothing crazy there lots of social studies teachers do it. However, it turned out to be all kinds of crazy. I had set up a mock debate where children drew from a hat either McCain or Obama and regardless of your won leanings you were to support that candidate. Half of my students who drew the Obama card seemed okay if discouraged but the next day I began recieving a few complaints. I even had one child's parent demand that her child be switched to the McCain debate team as she didn't want her child reading about Obama. Furthermore, her letter went on to criticize me for teaching about him at all and to paraphrase I was teaching it because I was either dumb or evil.She attatched in her message a printoff from Wallbuilders that described Obama's platform in a way that made him sound, to me, like he was going to be performing back ally abortions on minors while recording gay porn to be shown in classrooms all the while smoking a blunt rolled from the original constitution and stomping on a bible. No wonder she was scared. At the time I dismissed wallbuilders as I was busy doing important things in my spare time like napping and watching paint dry.
Now segue back to present day and I'm on Wallbuilders with the sneaking suspicion that I've heard it before. I've already read an article that claims that Jeffreson wouldn't have wanted to keep prayer out of public schools and was halfway through an article about how terrible historical revisionism is (unless it's being revised they way you like) when I realized that this is the same site I from the aforementioned story. I took a look at the site and it passed all my credible site tests I did some google searches about it and realized that it is a legitimate site with regular viewers. Then I took a -20 hit on my Faith in Humanity score which was already dangerously low... I understnad being religious, I understand wanting to practice your religion, I still thin it's stupid but I realize why you do it. That's not what got me, it's that the site, which seems to be popular with at least a large niche, is trying to rewrite history and state that the first amendment was only intended to protect Christianity and maybe a handful of other religions. That it's okay to force Christianity on people so long as the government doesn't come out and say that it is an actual official religion... and to reiterate on the site I was reading articles about how revisionism is a BAD thing.
As an aside this further reinforced my opinion that members of the religious right are so arrogant in their beliefs that they can say without choking on their own hypocrisy that you don't have to right to preach about your beliefs in public while deriding you for being unchristian. This is because, so far as I can tell, they are so sure that they are RIGHT that they don't see it as preaching their beliefs but as enlightening you to undeniable facts...
... Meh... I need a cough drop, I'm done here... damn kinds and their germs...
Don't get me wrong, I read the news every day. How else do you think I stay so angry all of the time? But I usually don't have time to do any digging of my own for the stories or try to get a feel as to the opinion of John Q. Dumbass out there. Well today I have time in spades so I decided to surf around and just see where the waves took me (see what I did there with the metaphor? It took almost all my willpower not to stick my head in the oven after writing it...). I knew how it would end, it always goes the same way when I start surfing. I check out some news stories, I read what some bloggers are saying about it. Then I check out things they're referencing to see if it's true or if they're idiots manipulating quotes to show what they want. Eventually I come across something so mind-numbingly thick that I have to walk away from the computer for a few seconds so I can walk around and make sure I haven't been catapaulted into a parallel dimension where logic doesn't exist. Today that something was Wallbuilders....
Now, before I return to my rant let me give some backstory. Once upon a time in the bible belt I was teaching social studies in a ultra conservative school. As anyone who knows me may imagine this was like walking on razorblades, and then salt, and then getting kicked in the nuts by a... nut kicking machine designed to do that flick the toe up thing just perfect so that it hurts more and you get sick to the stomach. However, I tried to make the best of it, acting as a centrist voice of reason in a far right filled area. I took no strong stances on any political beliefs(I feel that a teacher never should unless it is fact, i.e. evolution should be taught in science class as it is considered scientific fact, or that global warming DOES exist[but may be less under our control]). However, during the McCain Obama election I thought I'd go out of the standard curriculum between two units and teach the students about the election process and the candidates, nothing crazy there lots of social studies teachers do it. However, it turned out to be all kinds of crazy. I had set up a mock debate where children drew from a hat either McCain or Obama and regardless of your won leanings you were to support that candidate. Half of my students who drew the Obama card seemed okay if discouraged but the next day I began recieving a few complaints. I even had one child's parent demand that her child be switched to the McCain debate team as she didn't want her child reading about Obama. Furthermore, her letter went on to criticize me for teaching about him at all and to paraphrase I was teaching it because I was either dumb or evil.She attatched in her message a printoff from Wallbuilders that described Obama's platform in a way that made him sound, to me, like he was going to be performing back ally abortions on minors while recording gay porn to be shown in classrooms all the while smoking a blunt rolled from the original constitution and stomping on a bible. No wonder she was scared. At the time I dismissed wallbuilders as I was busy doing important things in my spare time like napping and watching paint dry.
Now segue back to present day and I'm on Wallbuilders with the sneaking suspicion that I've heard it before. I've already read an article that claims that Jeffreson wouldn't have wanted to keep prayer out of public schools and was halfway through an article about how terrible historical revisionism is (unless it's being revised they way you like) when I realized that this is the same site I from the aforementioned story. I took a look at the site and it passed all my credible site tests I did some google searches about it and realized that it is a legitimate site with regular viewers. Then I took a -20 hit on my Faith in Humanity score which was already dangerously low... I understnad being religious, I understand wanting to practice your religion, I still thin it's stupid but I realize why you do it. That's not what got me, it's that the site, which seems to be popular with at least a large niche, is trying to rewrite history and state that the first amendment was only intended to protect Christianity and maybe a handful of other religions. That it's okay to force Christianity on people so long as the government doesn't come out and say that it is an actual official religion... and to reiterate on the site I was reading articles about how revisionism is a BAD thing.
As an aside this further reinforced my opinion that members of the religious right are so arrogant in their beliefs that they can say without choking on their own hypocrisy that you don't have to right to preach about your beliefs in public while deriding you for being unchristian. This is because, so far as I can tell, they are so sure that they are RIGHT that they don't see it as preaching their beliefs but as enlightening you to undeniable facts...
... Meh... I need a cough drop, I'm done here... damn kinds and their germs...
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)