Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Dear America: Everything you learned in Kindergarten is wrong.

Recently, it has become obvious that there are serious structural problems in our financial system. Of course, the cause of this mess is a string of congressional dictates to mortgage lenders ordering them to give loans to dangerously underqualified people. Apparently, requiring your applicants to meet basic requirements like having a job and a credit history is racist and the whole system is racist and you're a racist and fuck racists (you).

Anyway, what really is pissing me off is that the preening cocks that caused this mess like Obama and Dodd and Barney "I love to ram Lenin's shellacked fist up my ass" Frank are getting away with telling us that the big banks "ripped off the American people." Now, he's a politician and his job is to lie to you but I'm just a ranting internet 'personality' so I'm going to level with you.

This mess is your fault.

I'm not saying that every voter in America is directly responsible but by the election choices we've made and the financial choices a large number of us have made, we've gotten ourselves into this mess. Deep down, you know it the Democrats are feeding you a line of bullshit. You know that "the man" isn't the reason these banks are in trouble. You know that the financial institutions didn't 'rip off the American people.' In fact, it is exactly the opposite. The American people voted for socialist weasels who forced them to give money to borrowers that didn't deserve it. The American people ripped off the large banks.

This brings me to the real reason I'm pissed off. Obama is going to get away with it. Obama and his ultra-liberal allies (who fucking caused this) are going to be allowed to lie to your faces about what happened here because 40 years of hippie bullshit has finally corrupted the smart part of your brains. The part of you that accepts responsibility for your own stupidity has been overwhelmed by decades of mottos and sayings and beliefs so fucking stupid that only intellectuals and people with bong resin for blood could believe them. Well, until they were repeated so many times that even the average American believes them without thinking about it.

Fucking hippies

I'm going to go through some of the stupidest sayings we've all heard a thousand times and explain why they're fucking stupid. Then I'm going to yell at you a bit more about how we all need to accept responsibility for our selfish, stupidity and stop blaming people more successful than us for our failings. Sorry, everybody, you aren't the smartest or the fastest or the most talented and, for that reason, you don't deserve the success your betters enjoy. I know it isn't fair. Life isn't.

Money Isn't Everything

Of course it is. If you don't believe it is, you're functionally retarded. Now look, I agree, small squares of green paper with dead people printed on them aren't everything. The number in your bank account isn't everything. Being able to buy a solid-gold house or a rocket car isn't everything. But the economy is everything.

Yes, everything.

Economics is the study of how people use a limited number of resources to fulfill an unlimited demand for them. The best way humanity has ever found to disperse these items in a relatively fair way is to use money. Money is a placeholder that allows you to specialize in juggling and exchange that juggling for food. Were there no money it would be difficult to walk into a grocery store and attempt to trade your ball-handling for a sandwich. I'd call the cops.

What money represents is everything. It isn't just a way to buy things, it represents the only thing of any value in the world: your time. Every minute you work for a paycheck is represented by that number in your bank account. The very essence of your existence is stuffed haphazardly in your wallet. This is why hippie arguments that you shouldn't be so fucking upset about raising taxes because "its only money" are so retarded. It isn't only money. It is your life.

When asked if I would shoot a man who was trying to steal my TV, I say yes because that TV isn't just a thing. It is time. It is a portion of my life I can never get back and the piece of shit stealing it is so useless as a human being that he can't convert his own time into a TV without stealing mine. I say the world is better off without him. And it is better off without this ridiculous belief that money isn't important. It is crucial. It is the only thing, just like winning. Which brings me to...

It doesn't matter if you win or lose, its how you play the game.

Fuck that hippie bullshit.

I'm not saying that winning is everything in trivial pursuits like sports or rock-paper-scissors competitions but let's not get crazy and say that winning doesn't matter. Winning is obviously critical to the very nature of human interaction and life and everything else. Winning is fucking 42 and if you don't believe that, you probably suck.

Look, at some point children (and slowly developing adults) need to learn that the world isn't on your team. Karma isn't your buddy and luck isn't going to give you a reach around no matter how many times you have that slut at the casino "blow" on your "dice." The only way to succeed in life is to charge headlong into the delight that is human competition and eke out your share of the pie. Without any doubt, there is plenty to go around but if you go through life thinking you deserve something, you're going to end up a loser or bringing all of humanity down with you like these retards buying 300,000 dollar houses when they work at McDonald's.

I know competition is hard and it is depressing when you lose but...

Do What Makes You Happy

Does anyone seriously think this is a way to go through life? Are the concepts of duty and honor and sacrifice so completely dead in this country that anybody can envision a life dedicated solely to the pursuit of his own happiness? While it is clear from the recent market disruptions that the vast majority of people do not understand the consequences their actions have on others, it is even more disturbing that the few that do understand seem completely dedicated to denying it or at least dodging responsibility for it.

Of course, the hippies always were most dedicated to avoiding responsibility. They didn't want to fight for a country that gave them everything so they dodged the draft. They didn't want to study important skills society needed so they invented women's studies and sociology (for more on my desperate hatred of sociology, look at Moron Pundit.) They didn't want to deal with a reality that wasn't perfect so they spent most of their time swimming in a cloud of 'mind-expanding' chemicals. They didn't want to deal with the responsibility and challenge of relationships and family so they preached free love. In every conceivable way, the hippies were as useless as a human being can become.

And yet, prevailing conventional wisdom somehow contends that a music festival like Woodstock was socially important. Fucking ridiculous. Woodstock was one of the most amazing displays of hubris, laziness and selfish waste in history and those pieces of shit have the audacity to call Wall Street bankers selfish? Do you think the traders that killed themselves on Black Tuesday did it because they lost their own money? Only someone with no understanding of honor and duty could believe that. They jumped because they couldn't face the shame and horror of telling thousands of people that they didn't have their money.

And make no mistake, as much as I understand that the CEO's of AIG and Lehmans are rich beyond my wildest dreams, they do understand duty and responsibility. It is that understanding that makes the leader of a company like AIG go to the government and beg them to take a controlling interest in what is, by all measures, the sum total of his life out of his hands.

Of course, the people that took the loans that spurred this disaster along with the (perhaps) well-meaning politicians that forced the banks to create this environment simply don't understand how the world works. How goods and services exchange hands. How the entirety of reality actually works. If they did, they certainly wouldn't think that a poor person with a bad credit history should EVER EVER EVER get a home loan. An honest, responsible person confronted with the ability to take a loan in that circumstance would also want the bank to reject them. But for some reason, these people seem to have no knowledge of the consequences of failure to repay not only to themselves but to everyone around them. Each of these people, and to a large extent most people in the country, seem to operate as if they live in a vacuum. They make choices following this holiest of the hippie doctrines: make yourself happy. Do what you want to do. Who cares if the person that built your house doesn't get paid or the man who wants to get a loan next year can't because the mortgage company is in bankruptcy. Not you. You got your free house and fuck everyone else. Well, fuck you and fuck your stupid idiology. I'm not sure who's more useless, the person preaching this bullshit or the person that manages to believe it.

Unfortunately, we'll never have a politician that tells you how fucking selfish you are because they want you to like them. Too bad that most Americans have lost what seems to be the most important grown-up skill of all, being able to accept when they don't deserve something they want.

Free Love

I touched on this above but it deserves a little extra wrath of its own. Many debates in this country rage because of many people's retarded belief that love is what really matters in civilization. Love is great, don't get me wrong and it is clearly a driving factor in the progress of the human species but it is only useful when coupled with dedication and commitment. Debates about gay marriage, abortion and welfare are all based on a belief that the one thing we mustn't do is interfere with people's ability to love who they want how they want. Unfortunately, society is not helped in any way by love but instead the bonds of family created when love is stable and permanent.

While I don't particularly care if gays are allowed to get married or not, I know that they have consistently made a very stupid argument in its favor; namely that if two people love each other it should be allowed. I ask again, what the fuck does the government care about your love? It doesn't. It cares about a stable environment to raise healthy, productive children who in turn can create healthy, productive families of their own. Again, gay couples probably meet this criteria but they should make that argument, not the former.

This leads to the rampant use of abortion as birth control for people too in love to consider the consequences of their actions. No wonder I often consider "in love" synonomous with "asshatted." As I've lived my life, I've grown more and more sure that marriage before sex IS probably the best (if perhaps not very realistic) way to do things. Instead, people fuck who they want, get pregnant a dozen times and treat abortions like tossing a condom wrapper. I'd be far more inclined to support the 'right to choose' if the choice were made through necessity, not laziness and a desire to avoid responsibility.

Don't even get me started on the results of Johnson's destruction of the poor community by tearing apart families and making them look to their government rather than their community and family for support in times of distress. I hope he's getting buttfucked by Hitler right now.

OMG! THE MAN IS BRINGING US DOWN/ CORPORATIONS ARE EVIL/RICH PEOPLE ARE RICH BECAUSE OTHERS ARE POOR/ETC/ETC

Only someone completely separated from the world of work and jobs and society could possibly believe this. I was forced as a requirement to take a class in Voodoo (sociology) and I recall my barely qualified instructor preaching that Vice Presidents were overpaid and that she could do their job but they surely couldn't do hers. They were just rich white men making sure their underlings stayed at each other's throats so they didn't notice how stupid and lazy they are.

If you believe this, you are mentally retarded. The fact of the matter is, by and large, CEO's and VP's and other executives make so much money because they are worth it. Not only could the average VP of anything come down and teach Voodoo better than this bitch but the first week she was trying to do the "easy" job of being a VP she'd have a nervous breakdown.

The fact of the matter is, people at the top of large organizations like corporations care more about the average American and do more for society than a thousand community organizers or social workers. The people that invest or work for these corporations are constantly on the minds of most executives and they strive constantly to do the best they can for all involved. Are there exceptions? Yes, and you hear about them at length every time they get caught but notice that there are thousands of corporations with many thousands of executives and the corporation-hating media and Democratic party can only find perhaps a dozen such people per year.

Everybody Is Equal

This is so laughable as to make me wonder if people are actually intelligent creatures. When the Declaration of Independence was originally written by Adams (the greatest American that ever lived, in my opinion) it said "All men are created equally free and independent" not "all men are created equal." Adams would surely have laughed at the latter thought. While we are and of a right should be equal in the eyes of god and law, there is absolutely no way anyone intelligent can contend that we are all equal. We each have differing levels of talent and intelligence and physical prowess and for these reasons should be expected to serve very different roles in society. Subsequently, we should expect to be rewarded very differently based on the value of our abilities.

Sorry, dumb, talentless people. You aren't as valuable to society as talented geniuses. Not only is this true but it is just. Society MUST reward those that benefit society the most and value them above other people. It doesn't mean you have to obey them, but they do deserve a nicer house than you.

A little analogy: Many of you believe it is just to take wealth from those with great reserves and give it to others with less. You believe they have more than they 'deserve' even though it is clear that they (in most cases) earned it and those with less can't seem to figure out how. It doesn't matter, they have too much and others need it.

Well, what if we take the example of someone who is very good with the ladies? Should I, as a less successful person have the right to sleep with his girlfriend because he has too much and I don't have enough? What about a talented writer? Should we all get our name on the cover with equal prominence because he is just hogging up all the writing talent and others deserve some.

Of course, none of this makes any sense because we didn't write the book. And we aren't charming and attractive. And we don't deserve to have lots of money because we haven't found a way to be useful to society in a comparable way.

I know it isn't fair. We've been over this.

Violence Doesn't Solve Anything

Yes. It does. In fact, I can think of no surer way to resolve any conflict than violence. It is hard to me to even imagine a problem I have that couldn't be solved by violence. That guy hitting on your girlfriend? Kill him. Not anymore. Somebody double park you in? Break into the car and roll it into the highway. See? Problem solved.

What? These actions cause more problems than they solved? Well, that's not what you said. You said violence doesn't solve anything. A more accurate statement is "Violence is so blunt and traumatic that, while it could be used to solve any problem, it should be used sparingly and with great care." I know that doesn't really fit on a bumper sticker but nothing intelligent does. I mean, placing "you can't hug your children with nuclear arms" on your car bumper is like advertising your extra chromosome.

Anyway, I'm so tired of this "everything you need to know, you learned in kindergarten", "are you smarter than a 5th grader*" bullshit philosophy that everything in the world can be summed up in simple, broad platitudes. For people that are constantly preaching that everything is gray areas, they sure are locked into a belief structure as simple as Forrest Gump's fashion sense.

Mean Poeple Suck

Sometimes I'm pretty sure this means "honest people suck" or "people smarter than me suck." Only in the modern PC world could denying a poor person a loan be considered "mean" or even illegal.

While being rejected for a loan may seem mean, you have to learn that sometimes the correct thing for another person or organization to do is to be mean to you. I once, in my stupider younger years attempted to get a loan without any collateral to which the loan officer responded with great sarcasm and condescension. I was outraged at the time but over the years that disdain has served me well because I didn't deserve a loan. What I was asking was essentially an insult to him and his institution. To think that they should just give me money and expect to be treated as an adult was ridiculous considering I'd walked in a proved I wasn't one.

In the end, people who whine about mean people suck. Put that on your bumper.

* I am smarter than a fifth grader. Way smarter. Only in modern America could a child knowing that a furlong is 660 feet be confused with superior intelligence. For example, I know how to drive a car which, last I checked, is far more valuable knowledge than the intricacies of the English measurement system. The idea for the show is cute but the title returns to that most annoying of trends in which people delight in explaining how things aren't like they obviously are. Oh no, running is actually bad for you! SURPRISE! You'd think that a decrease in violence in Iraq was due to.. um... less violence but a study conducted THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY about something completely unrelated like light patterns in Baghdad PROVE that is isn't! Think 9/11 was done by terrorists? THINK AGAIN SIMPLETON! Chimpy Retardiburton McBushitler orchestrated the most ingenious, diabolical attack on America without leaving behind ANY EVIDENCE! Oh my fucking god! Throw aside your preconceptions! We're in a zany, wacky world where anything is possible and the only people that toe the company line are brainless dinosaurs who hate black people and yearn for a return to the days of wife-beating and TB wards.

Fuck off. I'm smarter than a fifth grader. Smoking pot is bad for you. Alexthechick is hot even though she's on the internet and filled with irrational fears.

Deal with it.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

That's Some Fucked Up Shit Right There

Yesterday in the evening I was waiting for my sister to come visit so I decided to take my little daughter to the playground behind my apartment complex. While I attempted to convince Luci that the kiddy swing was supposed to be fun, not a novel form or torture, I was approached by some neighborhood immigrant children.

I noticed an obvious hispanic accent (probably an island or maybe South American) as the older sister, a girl of maybe 12 (I'm pretty certain she's more like 10) engaged me in conversation.

Her: "How old she is?"

Me: "About six months."

Her: "That's as old mine is."


Me: "..."

At this point I assumed she had mispoken in a non-native tongue and meant her brother or sister cousin...

Her: "She's with her grandmother...."

Umm...

Her: "With my mother."


Uhh...

Her: But mine is a boy. The father goes to my school.

It is a rare and amazing occassion when I have absolutely nothing to say. I quickly did some math in my head and realized that, even assuming a very generous age of 12, this girl had gotten pregnant at the age fucking 10 years old! In my ignorance, I thought you needed to be a fucking teenager to have kids.

Then I remembered that girls had started menstruating as young as nine and fertility goes along with that.. Still, that means someone had sex with a 10 year old (at the oldest) and got her pregnant. And she had it. And it survived.

And she's fucking raising it.

That's some fucked up shit right there.

I'll leave you with her most disturbing sentence, "I had to give mom the baby so I could go out and play... have some fun."

What the fuck is wrong with the world?

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Man, It's Dusty In Here

Good thing I brought my feather duster and maid outfit.

Good luck getting that image out of your head.

Life has been truly ridiculous the last month. Whether it be three jobs, a baby, family, friends getting married or just working on a totally awesome Zombie video game (details coming soon) I just haven't had a chance to breathe. When I do get a moment, I tend to post my good stuff over at DPUD since it will be read by far more than the three or four people that stop over here.

I'll be unveiling my new part-time consulting company via its new website shortly. In addition to other professional services, I intend to offer blog installation, maintenance, programming and update services. Also, I want to provide scripts for anything from polls to random phrase generators, etc. I've got pretty solid talent at programming in PHP, Javascript, ASP, etc (if I really list it out it sounds like bragging these days) so I can interface with most any blog engine you happen to be running.

Also, I think I'm going to start posting a bunch of pictures of my daughter and other photographs I take. I'm trying to train myself to use GIMP to create good logos and other web graphics and, while the progress is slow, I'm getting somewhere.

Eventually, you'll all want to purchase your products from Moron Solutions. No, I'm not kidding. Not even a little.

Moron Solutions: We don't think we're smarter than you.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

100% Bitches*

100%ALCOHOLIC


* - I'm going to go ahead and claim my exceptional score is because I bartended for two years but you make up your own mind.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

PHP Bleg

I'm not sure how tech savvy my readership is but I have a rather complicated, obscure problem with PHP and consuming web services that I could really use some help on.

Anybody?

Monday, June 30, 2008

The Lights Aren't Off Yet

I know it has been pretty quiet around here because I've been posting most of my good political and odd news stuff over at doubleplusundead.  This blog, however, is not dead.  I think I'll use it to focus in more on personal stories, Wisconsin news and other oddities that may otherwise clutter up DPUD's fine establishment.
 
I had intended to cross-post most of my material here but found that to be tedious, to say the least.  Beyond the fact that I had to post an article twice, the method by which Blogger translates text into HTML is different than mee.nu (it has to do with converting line breaks) so I end up having to do a lot of code cleanup to get it to look right.
 
Other topics I will continue/start to write about here include computer programming, web consulting and the future of several personal projects I'm working on including a book (Sci-Fi), a computer game (it has to do with killing ZOMBIES!) and the company I'm starting that will not only offer professional services to businesses but provide myriad blog installation and software solutions to the world at large.  I hope to make my professional website available soon at www.m0r0n.com
 
If only I had an extra 5 hours per day!  Anyone want to lend me some?

Tragedy and Parenting

Before I had my daughter in January, I could have never fathomed the agony a story like this must produce:
A 3-year-old girl drowned in a pool at a friend's home in Milwaukee.

Officers said it happened at a home near 80th Street and Tesch Avenue at about 6:30 p.m. Saturday.

Police said the girl might have been wearing a flotation device earlier in the day, but took it off to eat dinner.


While I can't even imagine surviving the death of my daughter, I have many family members who have lost children and they all say "You find a way, you have to."

The worst part is that the child had the water wings on and took them off to eat. This oversight by the parents will inevitably lead them to endless self-recriminations that are, obviously, undeserved. Yes, they probably should have noticed but life is fast and frantic and children are as kinetic as quicksilver. The reality is, terrible terrible things happen and no amount of care can prevent that.

I must qualify all of this by saying that I regularly go into my daughter's room to check if she is breathing and have an absolutely irrational terror about walking when my daughter is on the floor for some reason. Vivid images of me stepping on her skull flash into my mind and I almost have to immediately sit down.

Who knew you could ever care about something so much? Even with the risk of such terrible loss, I can only pity those who have chosen not to have children. I'm not better than you, I just feel sad that you'll never know the most powerful love in the world.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

I'd Like You to Meet My New Girlfriend


That's right. A fucking bread maker. After getting back from my vacation out west I bought some supplies for making bread and fired that little darling up. Result?

I have finally achieved true bliss. I only made basic white bread but it was fantastic. The quality difference between store bought bread and the stuff you make yourself cannot be overstated. And the recipes I can try are many and varied! Homemade banana bread? I win.

I just fucking win.

I hope to never eat store-bought bread again.