Notes from the Petting Zoo

I bow to the joy of the Chuck Norris meme.

I think “Spectacular Roundhouse Kicks” should be added to the lexicon. It should refer to the literal (or sometimes figurative) kicking of an opponent, usually where the kick will provide the greatest humiliation, such as the face, or (in the case of the figurative) the opponent’s lame ass excuse for an argument.

Spectacular Roundhouse Kicks never happen once — they must land like drops of rain, in numbers too great to count, except with frame-by-frame action on the DVD.

Spectacular Roundhouse Kicks usually signal the end of any useful debate, in fact of the debate as a whole.

The use of Spectacular Roundhouse Kicks is usually reserved for moments when either useful discussion is at an end, or an opponent is simply too damn stupid to know useful discussion is at an end.

Spectacular Roundhouse Kicks as a form of international and state-by-state diplomacy must be encouraged by the masses, which require a level of entertainment that goes far beyond the current media’s unwillingness to actually show what happens when one disagrees with the Vice president, yet still decides to hand the man a gun and go on a long lonely hike in woods with him. Pay-per-view Spectacular Roundhouse Kick diplomacy would rake in a bundle.

A bundle, I say!

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“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

-Frederick Douglass, 1857

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I don’t have a lot of respect for remakes. Even though some are good. For every “Battlestar Galactica”, there are a dozen “Planet of the Apes”.

But I’ve decided there is a movie I would remake if I had the money.

I would remake “The Blue Lagoon”.

I would include sharpened coral, disease, rape, infection, violence, and violently carnivorous animals barely kept at bay. I would include a horrific miscarriage (admittedly, the movie as-is might qualify).

And in the end, when they are found by the English, I would put them in cages and sold from sideshow to sideshow as Animal Children, constantly being teased and harassed and bombarded by their own people. They would spend the rest of their lives in confusion and torment and tears and, yes, blood.

They would perish in the end, stomped to death by a mob of Christians, who came to free them, but eventually had to destroy them to reject what they represented.

The credits would roll silently over the last long closeup shot of their blood and mucous-smeared faces, just the senseless meat being beaten and beaten from above. Each blow rocks the flesh beneath. Silent under the credits.

I want people to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that there is no innocence in the world that we cannot corrupt or destroy and that doing so is what humanity is not only capable of, but of what humanity must do. There is no beauty, only birth, pain, and dying.

People must leave the theater so full of impotent rage and despair that only suicide would relieve them of the burden of their own tremendous guilt.

That’s the only way to remake that movie.

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Why is it that the people who talk to their pets think the people who talk to themselves are crazy? At least the answers are in the same language as the questions!

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Watch how people do it

Is it so much to ask for those who develop searching and sorting algorithms to just try it out on their own selves once in a while? Or watch other people do it and see how they do it, what they try and how they get frustrated?

Wikipedia works pretty good because I can look for all sorts of things on it. Many search tools work great because they are simple to use.

Consider Google. Google’s interface is basically one single window. You can refine and re-sort any time, but the basic interface is one window. Tell me anything and I’ll do the best I can.

Why is this so difficult for people to understand? Why are we constantly faced with “search tools” that look as if the programmers were never ever human?

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I have a wristwatch.

Most of you who know me in person might have never actually seen me wearing my wristwatch. It’s been in a cupboard for nearly a decade. I realized yesterday that I needed a watch for my trip (my cell service doesn’t work), to tell time on-the-fly and to provide multiple alarms.

I hunted my wristwatch down. The battery was long dead, of course, but a replacement was only $1.79. I had hacked together a wire loop to hold the new wristband on, because this case is junk and the band kept breaking anyway.The leather band on it is way stronger than the plastic band it came with.

So.

I’ve been wearing it for about twenty four hours now. This is weird. It feels as if there’s constantly someone holding my wrist, that I have to constantly shake my wrist to get this thing off — whatever it is. Like a cat that’s got a bit of saran wrap rubberbanded to its foot. Always aware of this weird weight on my wrist.

Another digital leash.

To find the picture for this entry, I looked up my model, expecting it to be way discontinued, but I found it right away. Interestingly, Casio sells it for $36, but a jewelry store sells it for $70 (Valentine’s Day special, now only $63 — ain’t love grand?)

I remember why I stopped wearing it (aside from the battery dying). I realized that we are surrounded by devices that tell us the time. Cell phones, microwaves, VCRs, coffee makers, buses, computers, walls, banks, car washes, car radios, and so on. Everywhere we go, people are always trying to make sure we knew what time it was!

The whole thing seems sick, somehow.

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As far as I can tell, urine does not possess significantly caustic or acidic qualities such that it can burn through these filters. Also, rarely does urine possess objects so large that this sort of filter will stop them (I would hear the screaming).

What puzzles me, though, is why are they only sold fifty at a time? Are we moving through urinal screens so quickly because some submutation of human sprays H2SO4 in the whizorium? Are they being stolen and sold on a black market somewhere, perhaps as superhero chest devices?

Now, I suppose there are a few people out there who are eating habanero peppers in sufficient bulk that they can be bought by the quart, but who’s pissing these grills in half?

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Habanero peppers are really hot. I certainly won’t be dicing a couple up for scrambled eggs in the morning, you know?

A couple drops of habanero sauce in a bowl of whipped-up jambalaya is enough to make me create compound word swears.

Once, I ate three habanero fritters. Once. I don’t know anyone who uses a lot of these things — certainly not a lot at once!

However…

The grocery store near me sells them in qurt-size buckets, packed full. I would estimate those buckets contain enough Habanero Pepper Power to lift a satellite into orbit.

Who the hell is buying that many habanero peppers? Are they eating them, or just buying them because they think the peppers are “pretty”? These people must be tough. Can we at least find them so that we can encourage them to mate and breed more people like this? Wow!

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Why does it seem that there is an indirect relationship between the claims of a religion and the actions of a religion? For example, religions that insist they are “peaceful” are the same ones that include “bombs” and “threats” and “burning” and “beheading” and “rubble” and “stoning” and other such unforgettable hits of Modern Man?

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I read an article recently on people who have survived being lost in the wilderness — what they did and how they did it to survive to tell the tale. It was a fascinating article, and contained some very useful things.

One of the things it got slightly wrong, though…

A common factor in all of the people who survived was that they each claim to have experienced a sudden surge of willpower, a sudden determination that they will not just roll over and go quietly into the night, that they will survive.

This makes sense, of course.

Then the article implied that keeping a positive attitude and an unwillingness to just belly-up was a survival factor. A causal. Whoopsie! Although it sounds good, it’s as false as a televangelist’s hairpiece.

That’s like saying tennis shoes cause serial killers by noting that serial killers all wear tennis shoes.

The thing they didn’t mention (which would have been demoralizing, I suppose) is that it’s just as likely that everyone else had the same sudden upsurge of energy and determination to survive. Yet, those folks died anyway. We don’t know they had this sudden burst of courage for sure, because we can’t ask them — they’re already dead. And frankly, I slightly-suspect anyone who survived wouldn’t readily admit “well, I gave up, but somehow didn’t die, and then they found me.”

Looking at the characteristics of successful people can only tell you so much and you can’t necessarily say for sure that the traits they exhibit actually led to their success.

Remember, everyone who won the Powerball bought a ticket, but not everyone who bought a ticket won. Some just bought the farm.

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It’s interesting to note that there is a inverse relationship between the shrillness of a demand for the truth and the ability to accept whatever truth is spoken in response.

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Sometimes opportunity knocks. And that’s all well and good.

But sometimes you just have to kick open the door, hunt down an opportunity, step on its neck and yank its gifts from its clawing fingers.

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Approximately ²/₃ of the world’s population worship the god of Abraham in one form or another. The followers of this god (and the various offshoots) have been the direct driving force or at least the inspirational force behind some of the most violent, horrific acts history has ever known. Massacres, mass murders, widescale degradation, torture, humiliation, the list is endless. And almost every time, if you follow the threads, they lead right back to a clerical robe of one stripe or another, draped over a very, very bad person.

In fact, it’s probably the case that there has never been a greater force than religion on the planet devoted to creating or inspiring pain, death, and mayhem. It’s about as anti-humanity as you can get without actually being a Master Assassin from the Death Planet in the Killer Nebula.

For the longest time, I’ve seen this. I mean, it’s not as if you can hide this obvious of a pattern for long, and even my rudimentary knowledge of history shows it to me. I doubt that — if I dig further into the degradations and tortures of the world — I will discover less of religion’s influence.

When I normally mention this, within a heartbeat or two, someone will say “Oh, but those are radicals. They don’t understand the true nature of our religion. They distort it and twist it into something ugly. If only you knew how it really was…” and for a long time, I believed what they told me. I believed that maybe this person or that person was a sick fucker and used religion as an excuse to do things.

But…

I have read the original texts (to be fair, English translations). I have read the lists of crimes and the punishments and the commandments and the crazy rules. These folks that are radicals and are following their particular holy book are doing exactly what the books tell them to do. The ones that aren’t are the ones who are betraying their religion. They’re the craven apologists while their brethren continue doing exactly what they have all been told to do. The stereotype of the mellow, relaxed, loving-everybody faith follower who is secretly repressed and violent and nasty can’t be that far off the mark, based on what has been happening in the world the past several hundred years, and what’s playing in our local politics is any indication.

If someone claiming to be me does Bad Things, I do what I can to get out there and kick that person’s ass. Or at least I strongly support efforts by the authorities to kick their ass. Because this is my reputation on the line, here. What people think of me is based on what is done in my name.

It’s about time these followers of the god of Abraham did the same thing. If this really is a religion of peace and brotherhood and love, then someone is shitting on its good name and hiding within the folds of its clerical robes. And no one’s doing anything about it, except protesting ever more shrilly how these “radicals” don’t really represent this particular religion or that particular religion (curiously enough, the actions of those radicals happen to support “the cause”, and these religions aren’t exactly going out there and rebuilding any churches or compensating families or anything responsible like that). And yet, more people are killed. More buildings are bombed. More hate flows from their mouths like napalm vomit. And I’m just talking about within our own borders, here!

Hey. Religious people. Put your money where your mouth is. Your honor is at stake here. You need to make extraordinary efforts to stop all of these idiots. Or, alternately, stop claiming they aren’t you. Because that line is getting old.

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“Muhammad cartoons ‘global crisis’”

It is said we define ourselves by our nemesis. Those against whom we choose to take up arms, we choose because they have exposed our weaknesses. We are tolerant of things that we do not see as a threat, but the closer they get to our blood supply, the more nervous we become.

Looks like World War Three will be the ‘Toon War. I can’t decide if that’s funny or not.

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“Ain’t no skin off my nose!”

I’ve recently discovered this aphorism. I really like it. I like that it’s simple, I like that it’s goofy, I like that it reminds us that there are a whole lot of things that simply aren’t as important as we might have thought.

Would it be a more interesting place if we all tried using this phrase at least once a day? Would people fuss less over things that weren’t quite so close?

I guess it’s just another way of reminding us to consider our perspective. Is it hurting or otherwise affecting me? If not, then why am I noodling in it?

“Ain’t no skin off my nose.”

So absurd, I’ve just got to use it. I can’t wait for my next meeting.

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Do something you didn’t expect to do.

Do something someone else didn’t expect you to do.

Do something you want to do, even if you’re a little uncomfortable doing it.

Do something you must do, even if you’re a little uncomfortable doing it.

Do something that is silly, as in has no observable value outside of whim.

Find the silver lining in one thing today that happened unexpectedly.

Find one lesson in your day that you try very hard to learn.

Give something away — no charge, no strings. Doesn’t matter what. Stuff, a treat at lunch, your time.

Take a one-minute nap. Set a timer if you have to.

Encourage one person who is having trouble speaking, to take their time and make their point. Listen carefully

Thank someone today for something unexpected. Be specific about what you are grateful for.

If you’re in an argument of any kind, pause, think, and say “You know, you might be right.” Run with that.

Fill up the toilet paper cupboard in the bathroom — even if there’s still lots on the roller.

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