Thursday, June 28, 2007

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Gas Boycott, What Was I Thinking!?

Recently I put my foot right in a big cowpile of illogic and thought I should come clean. I was headed out to my step brother's place this past Mother's Day with my folks. My dad informed me of some 'nationwide gas boycott' thing where you weren't supposed to buy gas on tuesday. I thought it was a good idea because it was a market-based solution, not a government regulation one. I thought it was a good way to Stick It To The Man. But the next day my stupidity became embarrassingly obvious. A one day gas boycott, are you freakin' NUTS? What the hell is that gonna do!? Don't buy gas tuesday but wednesday's okay? Ridiculous! I am not very good at thinking on my feet unfortunately.

If you want to Stick It To The Oil Man you simply have to make a LONG TERM CHANGE IN YOUR GASOLINE CONSUMPTION. Better yet, make a short term change by actually consuming gasoline. You will die and Mother Earth will be reborn in splendor. No but seriously, unless you make a fundamental reduction in buying gas they aren't going to see any decline in sales. Reduce unnecessary trips, use a bike instead of a car, move closer to work, buy a more efficient car...these things will actually help. Everything else will be either symbolically good but useless or have the reverse effect.

But fundamentally I am stumped by the fact that complaining about gasoline prices are a favorite pastime of Americans. I am an evil person who wants to destroy the universe which means I commute a long distance to work everyday, burning fossil fuels and causing unborn babies to choke on deadly smog. However, the cost of this earth-raping madness of mine has never really caused me undue grief. Gasoline does not comprise a huge portion of my spending. If it bothered me so much I would have recourse, I could move closer to work. I wish all the gas price complaints were directed instead at something truly nefarious like say the income tax, or our fiat currency system which causes inflation in the first place.

A boycott of a certain product or company seems to be a form of protest. But what was the message of this alleged one-day gas boycott?

"We're pissed about high gas prices and you oil companies can go to hell!"

or was it actually:

"We're pissed about high gas prices and uh, we're going to keep buying it anyway. So yeah, go to hell oil companies! Um, just as long as you can still sell me gas in Hell...please? I need it..."

Let's face it, certain industries have got us by the balls. The energy business is a great business to be in. We all want it, and there's people willing to provide it. Sure we can go without, but well, it's really really nice to have. Sometimes I wish I worked in such an industry. Something like energy, food, drugs, funeral homes...these are industries that will never go away. I work in a lesuire activity industry that's based upon another industry whose golden age is slowly fading into history: model railroading! And it's in the printed page too, another area I worry is threatened by the steady march of progress. But I digress...

As they say in Morbid Angel, "send up our hate\to burn Heaven's gate". Such hate ought to be addressed to Washington D.C. and not the local filling station in my opinion.

(cripes, don't use the spell check on Blogger, it fucks up your text! *doh*)

Chubby Chasers: A Future Federal Agency?

As the USA stumbles inevitably towards its fascist destiny, blithely ignoring all the lessons of history I can't help but wonder if there will ever be a saturation point? Is there anything the feds will stop short of? Is there any War On _____ that will hit too close to home for even the slickest politicians to weasel out of? Personally I think it's gotta be the War on Fat. Nobody cares that much when minority groups have their rights bulldozed by the feds, but when the time comes when being overweight is illegal how will fat politicians possibly legitimize that? Fat people are the majority! America is large and in charge. JimSensenbrenner wants to make sure your papers are in order with his Real ID horseshit, but one look at the jowly mug of this creep and it's hard to imagine this guy pushing a fat crackdown. It would look very bad. I know, we're talking about professional hypocrites here, but somehow I think they'll stop short of the fat war.

All the other crackdowns middle America seems to be perfectly happy with. Yeah, go bust the pot smokers, the cigarette smokers, teenagers who have voluntary sex and get busted for mutual rape, go ahead and bust those terrible Mexicans who come here ILLEGALLY (*gasp*!) go ahead and bust down the wrong people's doors looking for naughty drugs, go ahead and strip search me at the airport; we're Average Americans, we don't give a shit! As long as the Other Guy is getting fucked we don't give two shits, right? But ahh, what's this now? Going to jail for being fat!? Mandatory federal exercise programs? Taxes levied per pound? Food bans? Wait a minute, I'M FAT! NOW I'M A CRIMINAL TOO!!! Oh no! The sky is falling, the sky is falling!

But we're not going to do anything are we? We are gonna wait until the jackboot has got our oesophaguses halfway crushed before it dawns on us that gee, things may have gone too far. Yeah well, what can ya do? Humanity can't seem to get off this ride. Just a continuous cycle of oppression and bloodshed. We don't learn. *sigh*

Listen to movie Gandalf's advice, dammit:

"I would use this ring from a desire to do good! But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine!"

Online Rudeness

Like bazillions of other people I occasionally like watching videos on YouTube. But what strikes me about the site (besides the incredibly poor video and sound quality, but hey you get what you pay for) is the complete and utter rudeness displayed. People's comments are more often than not extremely cruel, vulgar and nasty. I don't want to sound prudish, but the level of intelligence in many of the comments seems to be almost non-existent. My theory is that the degree of rudeness demonstrated in online communication is a result of a complete absorption in the virtual medium. This happens to me all the time too, and it should be something to watch out for. I would have expected less rudeness with YouTube considering there are often actual faces to put with the text, but instead the comments are even nastier than in strictly text based boards.

It is perfectly fine to accurately express one's emotions even if it involves anger and contempt, but in the back of your mind should be the thought, "Would I say these things to the person's face?" I can't imagine some of the youtube idiots being that crass if the communication was in the physical reality. There are better ways to insult and belittle a person that don't involve blatant hostility which often just makes you look bad. Not that genuine hatred and rage should be bottled up or censored, but rather focused in a concise beam.

Comparo

I don't like it when people shorten the word "comparison" to "comparo". I also dislike shortening the word "distribution" to "distro". It's not that I don't understand why people do it, because compari and distri would sound goofy. I just think the full word should be used when the shortened version changes a letter. This menace to society must stop. It is probably the most serious issue facing the human race today.