yea its my 100th post but i’m on fricken dialup

awwww yeeeeah! 100 posts! that is a shitload! and this is #100! this blog kicks more ass than when someone uses their foot to kick me in my ass, because my ass is not really as large as people think! so guess what! i am on dialup and it is sooooooo fricken slow! half the time websites don’t even come up right because some of the stuff is missing cuz if you go to like cnn.com or some other website like that there are like over 100 images to download and all sorts of shit embedded in the page like flash advertisements and whatnot! it is good i have adblock plus! less stupid-ass ads getting downloaded and using up my precious bandwidth, which is 44.0 kbps. that is less than 56k, for those of you who can’t count. yeah, it’s 44k, even though the modem is some super-advanced 56k modem that uses like advanced compression algorithms and shit like that to make it faster somehow. well it is not actually using those compression algorithms since the server it connected to doesn’t support it. thank you (aol) time warner! at least this service is free anywhere in the country as long as you pay for time warner’s roadrunner high-speed internet service, which is kinda a little expensive or whatever. and roadrunner only works at one place, so if you go somewhere else, you have to use dialup. but the servers i connect to for the dialup are not from time warner cable, they are from america online! which is the same damn company! thank you for approving the merger, ted turner! you lost all your money, you dope!

so anyway, everyone is fricken dying. like, this james brown dude, he was pretty awesome. he was like the greatest guy who ever did that kind of music, which i never listened to, because it all came out before i was born. anyway, gerald ford is also dead. the greatest president who never got elected. and now, the latest death is saddam hussein, who was executed. like what is up with all these people being dead now? maybe everyone else should die too, to show our appreciation or whatever. like i think when that john lennon guy from the beatles was killed, some of his fans killed themselves. or maybe once these people are dead, new people can like, take their place. like we can let muqtada al-sadr install himself as the new dictator of iraq to replace saddam, and we could impeach cheney and have bush replace him with some other loser, and then impeach bush, so that the new unelected vice president becomes the new president. of course, some people (like me!) want to impeach bush and cheney together and have a single trial for both of them in the senate, so we can make nancy pelosi president in 2007. in any case, it would be similar to gerald ford, and a fitting tribute to his 2-year unelected accidental presidency. what the hell is up with chevy chase? apparently that dude was responsible for gerald ford losing. and jimmy carter apparently won a close election in 1976, with many states from the south! the fricken south! there were actually democrats here in the south! i am in the south right now! there are only 3 democrats here! myself, and my 2 parents! everyone else is republican! all right, so maybe florida is not a solidly republican southern state like its neighbors. and the weather here in florida is really nice. mmmmmm. florida is so fricken awesome, i love it here. oh wait, who can replace gerald ford? like who should bush nominate to replace cheney? oh yeah, i remember! his fricken brother! jeb bush should be president for 2 years! or maybe bring his daddy back! papa bear! bush senior! oh man... there are only 3 living ex-presidents now, and 2 out of 3 of them are democrats! fuck yeah! us democrats are winning! i hope jimmy carter outlives papa bear george herbert walker bush senior daddy poopy pants who threw up on the japanese prime minister! i have heard funny things about mr. gerald ford. he cannot walk and chew gum at the same time, and he likes to fall down stairs a lot. and he pardoned dick nixon, my main man, the boss, big guy in charge. who’s your daddy? nixon, bitch! yo... you ever wonder where these neocon bastards like cheney and rumsfeld came from? the republicans keep using the same losers again and again, in each presidential administration they have. and every time they use someone like cheney or rumsfeld, that person gets stupider and more fucked up in the head. those guys were younger and less dumb back when they worked for gerald ford, but time has a way of messing with your mind and turning you into a wacko. just look at what happened to former attorney general ramsey clark. that guy is a fucking communist, and served as a lawyer for saddam hussein! for years ramsey clark has been the public face of the workers’ world party (wwp), a stalinist communist political party based in new york city. the neocons are just like him, except they have brainwashed themselves with neoconservatism rather than communism. neoconservatism and communism are like polar opposites that mirror each other, the 2 extremes of foreign policy and economic policy. communists try to spread communism around the world, aggressively trying to implement communist economic policies in foreign nations, often by force. neoconservatives do the same thing, except they are trying to spread democracy as a political system and free-market capitalism as an economic system. and perhaps islamists are another force of this type, trying to spread islamic theocracy to foreign nations and getting those nations to implement sharia law. but sharia law is a social policy, not an economic policy, so an islamic nation could be either capitalist or communist, or anything in between. anyway, all of these points of view of people who want to use violence to spread their preferred system of government to foreign nations are extremist and evil. the good, righteous, and noble path is one of diplomacy, negotiation, and working together with as many allies as possible, while talking to your enemies, negotiating with them, making concessions, and signing peace treaties with them. we ought to sign peace treaties with all of our enemies around the world. then, we only resort to violence and war when they violate the treaties they signed. and we work together with many other nations, and gather together a large coalition of powerful allies, and use them to crush the enemy with overwhelming force. once the enemy nation needs to be rebuilt, we get somebody else to pay for it, and we only contribute a fraction of the costs. and we get other countries to put their troops in, so we don’t have to use our troops instead. right now there is a war in somalia, for instance. ethiopia is an american ally, and we are helping arm them to use them as a proxy force against the islamic courts militia in somalia, to put the pro-western provisional government back in place in mogadishu. using proxy forces is the proper method for fighting wars, because it avoids using our own troops, and does as little damage as possible to our own nation. that is the proper way to ensure that things go in accordance with our national interest. if we want a new world order and complete global domination, we will have to cooperate with others and be nice to them in order to achieve this goal. war should always be the last resort. our real enemy is the government of sudan, because it not only supports al qaeda, and harbored osama bin laden for years, but has also carried out genocide against its own people in darfur. it is nations like that which must be defeated. nations like iran and syria, however, ought to be dealt with in a much friendlier manner. iran is a shiite nation and as such is a sworn enemy of the sunni terrorist group al qaeda. we ought to be allying with them, and helping them build nuclear power plants. if we send americans in to help build the nuclear power plants, our people can monitor to make sure the iranians do not use the nuclear waste to build nuclear bombs. nuclear bombs require highly enriched uranium, but nuclear power plants only require low-grade enriched uranium. so it would be quite simple for us to monitor their uranium enrichment activities to ensure they only produce the low-grade enriched uranium and not highly enriched uranium, which is much harder to produce. restoring full diplomatic relations and talking to them would give us a presence in tehran and allow the cia to covertly spy on that nation, with diplomatic immunity. why do you think we still have full diplomatic relations with venezuela? it is for precisely that reason, so we can tell what is going on there and monitor the situation in that country. as for syria, it is a small nation, and therefore much easier to win over. most of the “coalition of the willing” was small nations. the united states has many ways to help out a small nation like syria and get it on our side. as for north korea, that nation needs to have a more prosperous economy, and we should pledge not to attack them unless they attack first. we need to accept the fact that they have nuclear weapons, and deal with them as we dealt with the soviet union. our goal in north korea ought to be helping out their economy by commercializing everything and bringing in capitalism, name brands, and all of that stuff like mcdonald’s and coca-cola. we have done very well in this regard with vietnam and china. we can let kim jong il stay on as dictator, and keep his nukes, but we will win over the population with our internets that are made of a series of tubes. the source of kim jong il’s strength is the poverty in north korea, and its isolation from the rest of the world. if we give the people of north korea lots of cool stuff for free, kim jong il will become less important. after enough time, north korea will become more and more like south korea, a nation run by complete pussies and wimps who try to do whatever we americans say unless the north koreans tell them it is not allowed. south korea is a weak nation that tries to be friends with everyone and lets bigger countries tell it what to do. the only nation in that region with the balls/guts/whatever to take on north korea is japan. luckily, japan is a pacifist nation, so if we decide to be nice to north korea, japan cannot stop us. japan is dependent upon us for its defense, and perhaps they could help out in the commercialization and corporatization of north korea. and south korea would be very very happy about the whole thing, because then the united states and north korea would be working together and the south koreans would not be getting confused by conflicting orders from their 2 masters. and what about our own hemisphere, countries like cuba, venezuela, and bolivia? well, we would be friends with them and help them out, just like with the other nations, and that would solve all of our problems peacefully. the only country we ought to be attacking is sudan. iran is not the big threat that mahmoud ahmadenijad makes it seem like. he is just a figurehead with no real power, whose purpose is to distract people from the real issues by creating silly controversies with his rabid anti-semitism. mr. ahmadenijad does not matter, and he is just a distraction. iran is actually run by the supreme leader and the ayatollahs, a bunch of high-ranking shiite clerics. and they are people we can deal with. all we need is an ambassador who is a practicing shiite and well versed in their theology, who can advocate our case in their language. and what about iraq? well, it is a nation that must learn to govern itself. we have done all we could, and screwed up many things because of our corruption, greed, and xenophobia, along with the fact that we are outsiders who do not belong there. we need to follow the recommendations of the baker-hamilton report and representative jack murtha, and get the hell out of that country. i can guarantee you that the vast majority of iraqis will be just as glad to be rid of us as they were glad to be rid of saddam hussein. and we should send donald rumsfeld and henry kissinger to belgium, where they both stand accused of crimes against humanity, in cases that have been filed in the belgian courts. that would show that the trial of saddam hussein was not just victors’ justice, and that we are willing to have our own wartime leaders be put on trial for any war crimes they may have committed. it is a shame that augusto pinochet was never executed for his crimes against humanity, and that he was allowed to die of natural causes, a free man. and the media coverage of pinochet’s death earlier this year was too pro-pinochet, buying into much of the propaganda he had used to stay in office, about how he supposedly saved his nation from communism. he was just like saddam hussein except not quite as bad. and augusto pinochet was a neocon, letting neocons from the united states come down to his country to experiment with its economic policies. i think his country was argentina, but not 100% sure. maybe it was chile. it sucks having dialup, because it takes forever to look things up online. i have to do all of this from my memory, which is not always that great. i keep forgetting things. but i still remember that hugo chavez is the crypto-communist president of venezuela, and he owns the american gasoline company citgo, so when you buy gasoline from a citgo station, you are funding his crypto-communist revolution in venezuela and abroad in the other nations he is trying to influence by giving them money. i call him crypto-communist because i am referring to how he does not ever admit to being communist, yet is best friends with fidel castro and is running his country much like a communist, and trying to spread his revolution abroad much like a communist. but neocons and islamists also try to spread their revolutions abroad. hugo chavez calls himself a bolivarian socialist, and he calls his revolution the bolivarian revolution. so perhaps a bolivarian socialist is yet another category of a transnational revolutionary movement, just like communist, neoconservative, and islamist. but i think this is just a matter of semantics, of using different words to refer to the same thing, and hugo chavez just avoids the word “communist” because of its negative connotations and the bad history associated with it. i think a “bolivarian socialist” is basically the same thing as a communist, except they are trying to make it sound nicer. it is just like the semantic games over abortion, like calling yourself “pro-life” or “pro-choice”. we have these stupid semantic games over all sorts of things. like calling the estate tax the “death tax”. another silly republican semantic trick is to refer to the democratic party as the “democrat party”, because polls and focus groups have shown that people like democrats better if there is the -ic suffix on the end of the party name. and of course referring to the neoconservatives as “neocons” is another semantic game, this time by liberals like me. the point of calling them neocons is to make it sound bad, like they are crooks or something. unfortunately, it seems like we need to do silly semantic games like this in order to influence public opinion. both sides in any political conflict seem to find it necessary to coin words and phrases to make themselves look good and their opponents look bad, and to do it in such a way as to disguise what they are doing to trick the news media into using the same language as them. like the word “islamofascist” is clearly intended as an insult against islam, especially islamic fundamentalists and theocratic islamic regimes like iran or the taliban. people like rush limbaugh often use the phrase “the homosexual agenda” in order to demonize homosexuals and make it look like they have some kind of evil hidden agenda to take over the world and ruin things for everyone else and turn us all gay or something like that. it is all quite ridiculous. one of the most ridiculous of these semantic games is the phrase “limousine liberals”. now, i am a liberal, most of the people i know are liberals, and none of us ever go around in limousines. we are not wealthy. liberals believe in implementing policies that help the poor, at the expense of the rich. conservatives believe in implementing policies that help the rich, at the expense of the poor. those are just facts. this is reality. i am just stating obvious facts that everyone knows or ought to know. so, anyone who is a “limousine liberal” is clearly someone that we should have a lot of respect for and look up to as a role model, because although they are wealthy, they are advocating policies which would be detrimental to themselves, as wealthy people. they are acting out of self-sacrifice, and trying to help the needy, even though it may be bad for their own interests as wealthy people. that is heroic. that is something that we should look up to, something very humanitarian and righteous. the fact that right-wingers try to demonize good people like homosexuals or the so-called limousine liberals shows how morally bankrupt the right-wingers really are. the objectives of conservatives are very clear: they want to oppress the poor, and homosexuals, and other groups of people who are already oppressed too much. they want to help out people who are wealthy and powerful who do not need any help. they want to take from the poor and give to the rich. and in foreign policy, neoconservatives want to use unilateral military invasions of countries that are not a threat to us in order to reshape the world and create a new world order full of pro-western democracies who do whatever we say. so, to put it bluntly, conservatives believe in the exact opposite of the kind of policies jesus christ believed in 2 thousand years ago. jesus christ wanted to help the needy and the oppressed, and he opposed violence and conflict, wanting to bring people together and help those who need help. this stuff is as easy and obvious as 1 + 1 = 2. conservatives are simply crusaders for evil who want to destroy everything that is good in this country and the world. that is why it is so wonderful that liberal democrats now control both houses of congress. we need to lead this country, and reform it, and help people out, and do such a good job that the conservative movement is destroyed forever. that doesn’t mean that we need to destroy the republican party, but we need to force them to reconsider their values and their positions on the issues, and to abandon their stone age conservative nonsense and start acting like human beings for a change.

my policy statement on iraq

i support the conclusions and recommendations of the iraq study group 100%. i endorse all 79 of their recommendations wholeheartedly and enthusiastically. many have criticized them for failing to actually visit the parts of iraq outside the green zone, but i think it was wise on their part, since it probably would have killed all those old white men of the establishment who make up the iraq study group. i kid, i kid. they are not all old white men. sandra day o’connor is a member, and she is a woman (her claim to fame is being a former supreme court justice). vernon jordan is the token black member (he was a close friend of president bill clinton). as for old? yes! they are all old! all of them were born between 1927 and 1939. in other words, they are practically older than abe vigoda, who has been dead for 24 years! it would have been nice to have some younger people on the panel. like maybe, oh i dunno, lindsay lohan? lindsay lohan is a very high-ranking democratic party operative, and also very young. websites were posting pictures of her nipples while she was still underage! a recent press leak from lindsay lohan says that she can get al gore, hillary clinton, and bill clinton to help improve her public image. so, she would be perfect as a representative of the younger generation, as one of the democrats in the iraq study group. but, too late for that. maybe the next time there is a bipartisan commission to study something, we can put her on it. it would certainly make things more interesting. as for republicans, i think maybe jessica simpson? is she a republican? i don’t think paris hilton is, and certainly not madonna or the dixie chicks. i wonder if britney spears is republican... maybe if we examine the inside of her vagina, by digitally enhancing recent photographs leaked to the press, we can deduce whether the left wing or the right wing of her vagina lips is bigger. it certainly is interesting how the media is so obsessed with showing everyone the private parts of attractive young women. why doesn’t the media try to show us the penises of famous male celebrities? i think there may be more than a little sexism in the tabloid media. it is certainly quite disrespectful of them to treat attractive young women as mindless sex objects. i would like people to know that young people in general, whether we are male or female, attractive or ugly, generally behave stupidly a good portion of the time, and any of us would seem like an idiot if we were subject to that much scrutiny by the tabloid press. but we are not really idiots! we young people just like to have some fun and sometimes if one of us is a little drunk or high we might say something stupid and then bad shit happens to us. but, like, whatever! mel gibson and michael richards have both had recent breakdowns, and we found out that mel gibson is an anti-semite and michael richards is a card-carrying member of the ku klux klan. but kramer is still funny on the old seinfeld reruns. especially in that one episode where he is wearing a white sheet and puts that burning cross in front of the place where the black people live, and calls them all niggers. wow, what a funny white supremacist. and isn’t it great how mel gibson hates the jews but loves the mayan native americans so much? he is such a big fan of the mayans, it blows my mind. i don’t know how, but somehow he manages to forgive the ancient mayan civilization for not accepting jesus christ as its collective personal savior. it is too bad he cannot forgive the jews for the same mistake the mayans made. anyway, i think mel gibson would be a good addition to the next bipartisan commission, representing the republicans, of course. his conservative viewpoints might not always match those of the current republican leadership, but i think mel gibson is a good solid paleoconservative, in the model of pat buchanan. and lindsay lohan is a limosuine liberal, as bill o’reilly would say. it is certainly a great and wonderful thing that the biggest role models for young women today are people like britney spears, paris hilton, madonna, pamela anderson, lindsay lohan, and the bush twins. all of them are a bunch of whores, of course. it is wonderful that we have a media that focuses on whores like them, and idolizes them while at the same time trying to show everyone the private parts of celebrities against their will. i mean, can you imagine how awful it would be if we had a media that glorified young women who actually accomplished good things, who weren’t total whores? like, the media makes fun of chelsea clinton and insults her, because she isn’t a whore like those other young ladies, but has actually pursued a successful career as something other than an actress, singer, or prostitute. and remember how the media used to idolize leonardo dicaprio, or how they currently think george clooney is sexy for some reason? why don’t they ever have a “penis slip”, or anything like that? why doesn’t the media try to turn famous men into mindless sex objects? and what is the deal with angelina jolie? angelina jolie is amazing because she has somehow managed to escape being typecast as a dumb whore, and has actually accomplished good things in the world, and gotten the media to cover her seriously. she is still a whore of course, with her private parts on display all over the internet, but people take her seriously because she has accomplished a lot more than those other whores, like all that stuff she does for the u.n. and for children in third world countries. it is still kind of surprising to me, because i saw an hour-long interview of angelina jolie with anderson cooper on cnn, which took all of her humanitarian work very seriously, and not once did he ask her to show him her tits in exchange for some mardi gras beads. not once! maybe anderson cooper is trying to be more of a serious news reporter, and less like lou dobbs, glenn beck, bill o’reilly, keith olbermann, geraldo rivera, joe scarborough, nancy grace, pat buchanan, sean hannity, neil cavuto, barbara walters, john stossel, connie chung, dan rather, andy rooney, chris matthews, michael savage, or katie couric. a real reporter, like christiane amanpour, peter jennings, tom brokaw, wolf blitzer, ted koppel, tim russert, jon stewart, stephen colbert, or borat sagdiyev. hmm... it is getting harder and harder to tell real news from fake news, because of all the truthiness. and having tony snow, a former news reporter, as white house press secretary, makes things even harder. how can we sort it out when all the reporters used to be politicians and all the politicians used to be reporters and all the comedians are trying to be reporters and all the reporters are trying to be comedians? soon the politicians will try to be comedians and then comedians will become politicians! never forget that half the people on air america radio are, by profession, comedians! who knows how many comedians have infiltrated the associated press or the 24-hour news networks? half the news sites out there now display headlines from theonion.com, including the sites for cnn and msnbc! and half the people on the daily show used to work for the onion! half the people who started air america radio used to work for the daily show! we are in a never-ending cycle of politicians retiring to become reporters and then going back into politics, and comedians becoming politicially involved and then becoming fake reporters and then thinking about going into politics! in the meantime, all the people who started out as reporters are trying to become political but they have to do it in a comedic way to avoid alienating people! it is amazing to see people like lou dobbs and keith olbermann change their personalities and become much more political on their shows, dropping all pretense of being unbiased reporters. keith olbermann is trying to also be funny on his show sometimes, while lou dobbs is trying to make himself into some kind of spokesman/hero for middle class white people from the heartland. and everyone who is still acting like a serious news reporter is under constant criticism from all sides for their supposed bias! in today’s tabloidish environment, everything has to be entertainment, nothing is ever serious, and there is no authoritative source for the truth. and everyone is a whore. there is nothing but hype and hyperbole, and it takes a group of people like the iraq study group to bring some seriousness and a reality check to the whole messy affair of journalism and politics. the media is so interconnected with the politicians, nobody realizes how important a role the media plays in shaping political decisionmaking. comedy is no laughing matter! we need to take this seriously and stop the foolish name-calling! everyone is acting like a bunch of children, so we need to bring out people born in the 1920s and 1930s to sort everything out! how appropriate... we ought to listen to our elders. they are certainly more wise than people such as lindsey lohan. james baker and lee hamilton have a lot more wisdom and experience than these n00bz. let us talk to iran and syria! talk to mahmoud ahmadenijad! bring the troops home by 2008! train the iraqis to defend themselves! work out a political compromise between sunni and shiite leaders! all of them are wonderful ideas. too bad none of them will be implemented by our prez-o-dent. sore loserman! i hope tony blair wises up before he leaves office. tony blair is the only bastard who can convince bush to fix this shit in iraq. dick cheney and karl rove are ideologues, and condoleezza rice brings less logic and reason to the table than “slam dunk” george tenet. at least we have a new defense secretary who is part of the reality-based community. but i don’t think bush will listen to him anyway; robert gates was just hired for show, and will be forced into line just like they did to colin powell. we need to bring colin powell back. at least he has a brain, or some reasonable facsimilie thereof. he could help bush avoid bushwhacking himself any more than he already has. or james baker. the thing with james baker is, he has too many saudi ties, so he can’t be trusted, since the saudis were behind 9/11 and have never been punished. oh well. i suppose we probably have to keep the saudi royal family in power despite their treachery, because the only alternative is to have al qaeda run saudi arabia, given osama bin laden’s sky-high approval rating in that country. it is bad enough with this mess in iraq, so we ought to leave the saudis alone so we can keep getting their cheap oil. and the same goes for hugo chavez in venezuela; he may be a communist, but he sells us cheap oil, and we need him to stay in power to avoid disrupting the oil supply. we should have left saddam hussein in power too. saddam hussein was a strong leader, something iraq needs right now. perhaps muqtada al-sadr might be a worthy successor, a strong enough leader to unite iraq and monopolize the use of violence under his own command. we ought to help muqtada al-sadr become a totalitarian dictator in iraq. it would fit right in with jean kirkpatrick and her famous essay “dictatorships and double standards”, published in 1979. in honor of jean kirkpatrick, let us make muqtada al-sadr dictator of iraq! he deserves it. then oil will be cheap once again. to quote lindsay lohan,

missed opportunities

when i look back at my life so far, i see a long series of missed opportunities. a long series of situations in which, if i had known what to do to take advantage of those situations, things would have turned out much better for me. a long series of situations in which i utterly failed to achieve any of my goals or get what i wanted.

i also see some opportunities that i did manage to take advantage of, and some things i did accomplish. and every time i accomplish something big, it turns out to be a disappointment. what do i mean by that? well, if you are working on something important like graduating college, it seems like a really big deal, and it takes a lot of hard work. then, what happens when you finally accomplish it? hardly anything. you are at some big ceremony with a couple thousand other graduates who are all getting the same honor as you: a piece of paper that says you are smart and know lots of stuff, in a nice frame. and you get to wear a traditional graduation outfit. oh great! and then guess what? no more free all-you-can-eat meals from your college meal plan that your parents paid for! you are no longer surrounded by intelligent people the same age as you! no more walking long distances between classes, and up and down hills every day! you are no longer told what to do all the time! for me, freedom is the greatest prison. if i am not told what to do and given deadlines and there is no carrot-and-stick approach, i am not motivated to do anything productive. i become aimless and lazy, and stay in my house all the time, not getting anything accomplished. my sole motivation becomes seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. and to seek pleasure, i do the things i have found pleasure in, in the past, such as video games, television shows, and food that i like to eat. to avoid pain, i avoid awkward social situations by not going out of the house, i avoid the pain of rejection by not asking out any girls and hardly applying to any jobs, i avoid being yelled at by my parents by being awake when they are asleep and asleep when they are awake, and i avoid having to do things by saying i am going to do them and then not doing them.

so, what exactly is my problem? it appears my main strategy in life is to avoid anything i find the least bit unpleasant. i just avoid, avoid, avoid. the only emotion that seems to be able to motivate me to do something unpleasant is fear. it has to be strong fear, strong enough that it makes me worried that i will no longer be able to sustain the repetitive pleasure-seeking activities of video games, tv shows, etc. i do not have any hope, or if i do, there is very little. inside me i feel an emptiness, a void. i do not really think things can get any better in life, or if they can, not much better. and i still think i have already missed out on most of the fun in life, and it is too late to go back and redo my childhood and teenage years as a more social, more active, more fun-loving person. i crave having fun, at least emotionally speaking, and yet, behaviorally, i find myself avoiding any sorts of unfamiliar situations that i have not been in before, even including ones that most people find very fun. morally speaking, i am quite complex, because sometimes i am selfish and care about nobody except myself, and other times, i have a utilitarian/humanist sort of philosophical attitude, meaning, i want to help others, and do whatever benefits society as a whole the most, by being kind and helpful to people, and helping to promote causes that help the downtrodden and oppressed. it is sometimes strange how i switch between my good side of being nice and helping others, and my bad side of being selfish and uncaring. my bad, evil side is actually sort of in the mode of ayn rand’s philosophy of objectivism, where she defines selfishness as good and helping others when you get nothing in return as evil. except i have no illusions about objectivism being correct. i know it is pure evil. but sometimes, it is useful to be evil for a little while. if you are good all of the time, there are lots of things you just can’t do, and it seems kind of unrealistic for someone to succeed in life if they are good all of the time. it is usually the most evil and selfish people who get all the way to the top. so it is sometimes necessary to be like them in order to get ahead.

but in the real objectivist philosophy, you are supposed to act in your own personal long-term best interests, and ignore everything else, unless that other stuff is relevant to your own personal long-term best interests. and you are not supposed to care about anyone or anything else, because that will get in the way of your greed and your lust for power and wealth. however, since i know objectivism is evil, when i put it into practice, it is just for silly little things which are not in my long-term best interests, but just basically doing whatever i feel like without giving a damn about anyone or anything else. my variant of it is basically equivalent to the mooninite philosophy from the show aqua teen hunger force, a philosophy based on doing whatever you feel like doing, at all times, and not caring about anyone or anything else. it is also the philosophy of the character master shake on that show. frylock is the righteous, moral, uptight one. and meatwad is the stupid, impressionable one. master shake is also quite stupid, but much more amoral than meatwad. meatwad at least has some sense of right and wrong, albeit primitive. anyway, i basically alternate between 2 modes: thoughtless self-indulgence, and trying to do whatever the good and righteous thing to help others is. actually, i am usually somewhat in between the 2 modes. i often try to punish myself because i see myself as bad and evil, so i try and sabotage myself in order to prevent myself from being successful or happy or achieving any of my most important goals. this is because i don’t believe i deserve those good things, that instead, i deserve punishment, pain and suffering, humiliation, and deprivation. it is all tied into my low self-esteem. i hate myself, and i don’t see why anyone else would have a different opinion of me than the one i have of myself, and i am always trying to punish myself for my perceived inferiority. but at the same time, i see myself as superior to others, which is an affront to my sense of right and wrong, meaning i need to ruin my own life even worse.

it is quite annoying having an obsessive need for self-sabotage. whenever there is an opportunity to ask out a pretty girl, my mind is filled with thoughts about how now is the perfect time to go up and talk to her, and about what i should say to her, and stuff like that. but i never actually go up to her and ask her out; instead, i avoid eye contact and pretend not to be interested, and don’t even talk to her at all. and if i do manage to get myself to talk to her, my self-sabotage impulse is so strong, i always manage to make myself look foolish and stupid and perhaps arrogant but very naive, and i somehow forget all of my education and am reduced to a fool; worst of all, i never even manage to ask her out, even in the rare circumstance where the conversation lasts longer than a minute or two. and i am also beset by self-sabotage during job interviews, saying foolish things that make me look stupid or immature, despite the fact that i know better. it is just that i have such a strong belief that if i actively pursue my own interests and go after what i want, that is an evil thing and it makes me a bad person. i also feel bad because i have rejected the belief system of most people in this country, and i am kind of isolated. i am in a prison of my own design. my hermit-like existence is based on an obsessive need to keep things from getting any better, because of my insanely powerful fear of change. it doesn’t make any sense, but i am worried that if my life gets a lot better, that might somehow actually be a lot worse than if it just stays as bad as it is now. on some level, i seem to enjoy seeing myself suffer. my personality has partitioned itself into the active part that controls my behavior, and the passive observer that comments on things, and the passive observer part seems to delight in the failures of the active part, without ever trying to help make things better. i just have a typical self-destructive personality of the type found in people who are suicidal or have very low self esteem, but for some reason, my personality is relatively stable and has not really changed much over the years. there is something that keeps me from doing anything too extreme, something very powerful inside me that inhibits me and prevents me from doing anything that is very very bad. but underneath the nice behavior i sometimes exhibit, and the way i seem to care about others and want to help them out and make the world a better place, further down, deep inside me, lurks a terrible evil, that does not just want to harm myself, but all of society. it is bent on revenge for all of the bad things other people have ever done to me, all the times i have ever been mistreated or had people be mean to me or play tricks on me, and also revenge on people who have been happier or more successful than me, who have lived more enjoyable lives than my miserable existence. i have a visceral dislike for people who are too optimistic or too happy, preferring people who seem to be at least somewhat miserable and dissatisfied with their lot in life. i remember throughout elementary school, junior high, high school, college, and even today, i have always seen other people having fun together and being happy, and felt left out, and miserable, and wanted to have revenge on them by making them even more miserable than me. that is the evil inside me, that is why i feel such a strong need to do good, to help make the world a better place. it is a penance, it is my duty, in order to atone for all of my evil thoughts. and what is most odd about that is, i am an atheist, so why do i still cling to the judeo-christian morality? it seems like i feel a need to prove that atheists are not immoral or amoral, so i have to adopt a sort of morality very similar to the judeo-christian one prevalent in most western countries. except my morality is the liberal variant instead of the conservative variant, meaning, i want to help the downtrodden and people such as homosexuals that the conservatives condemn as evil. but i have always had a strong distrust of authority figures, and those who are in charge. it is true that i hate the wealthy and i hate those who are powerful. how could i not hate them? it is perfectly natural for me to hate them. they have what i don’t have, and i want it, and i am jealous, and don’t think they deserve it. so, for me, it is quite natural to support the idea of a socialist economy, and to be opposed to capitalism. my emotional instincts, my conditioning, my life story, all of it contributes towards a leftist worldview. the right-wing worldview is based upon the premise of restoring some sort of glory that existed in the past, and avoiding rapid change in the way things are. the way i live my life is, in fact, quite conservative. but the reason i am so conflicted is, that is not the way i want to live my life, by avoiding change and all of that. and the more i see how it fails in my own life as a viable strategy for getting ahead, the more i see it fails as a viable strategy for a nation to get ahead. i am informed by my failure. anyway, that is about it for today. this sentence is an abrupt conclusion that does not fit well in the context of the sentences that precede it, leaving the reader unsatisfied.

whoa nancy!

apparently nancy pelosi reads my blog. she followed my advice in the last blog post TO THE LETTER. she actually named someone good to head the intelligence committee, which was hard, because most people in congress lack intelligence. his name is silvestre reyes, and he is a latino democrat from texas who is highly qualified and not beset by any scandals. wow! i had no idea i had so much influence in washington! these delusions of grandeur i am pretending to have sure are comical, nay? or is it yea? eh? i’m canadian, eh? anyway, nancy pelosi is acting quite impressive, for a politician. that is to say, i am impressed with her, so far, since the election. i mean sure she chose the wrong dude for house majority leader, but the way she gracefully handled that defeat, and how she maintained friendly relations and was cordial with everyone involved... that was just amazing. i mean, i guess she had to, cuz this steny hoyer guy from maryland is going to be the #2 democrat in the house, and he had better get along with the #1 democrat in the house for the house democrats to have any success at all. but she actually seemed to, like, genuinely get along with steny hoyer at the press conference on the day he won the majority leader position. this defied all the press reports about her and steny hoyer hating each other’s guts. i wonder if all this nonsense about nancy pelosi and jane harman hating each other is right. i mean, the democrats unanimously chose nancy pelosi to be the next speaker; that means jane harman had to be one of those unanimous votes. so like, how dare jane harman oppose someone she supports! how incredibly inconsistent! and how dare nancy pelosi turn her back on one of her supporters! since all democrats in the house unanimously approved nancy pelosi, this means nancy pelosi needs to support all democrats in the house, even the ones she doesn’t like! it is the least she could do, after all they have done for her! anyway, i am just being fecetious. i am glad to see trent lott is back in the senate republican leadership. i missed him. he was always so folksy, in that traditionally racist white southerner with a pre-anti-segregation-movement mentality sort of way. isn’t it interesting, how racist white southerners used to be part of the democratic party (like strom thurmond et al) but then they all deserted and joined the republican party after the civil rights act was passed? they were basically told they were no longer welcome anymore because they were intolerant bigots. and good riddance! you republicans can keep the intolerant bigots! we don’t want them back! you can keep your confederate flag-waving racist sexist homophobic anti-semitic anti-immigrant xenophobic anti-enlightenment anti-disestablishmentarianist white trash wingnutjobs to yourselves! i mean, look... i know us democrats also have some crazy whack jobs in our party too. i know this because whenever i look at fox news, the democrats they have on are always the craziest whack jobs in the entire party, just to make us all look bad. but, those jackasses who are dumb enough to go on fox news to make their own party look bad are not representatives of the party or official party spokespeople. i, on the other hand, am a very-very-low-level party operative, a political hack so hackish that even the biggest political hacks i help to get elected won’t help me get a job because i am so much more of a political hack than them or anyone else. i mean, my level of political hackishness is so high, it reaches past the stratosphere, all the way to the fricken moon. that is why sometimes i say things negative about my own side, to at least try to put on an appearance of not being a completely one-sided partisan hack, to try and make myself look like i am at least somewhat independent-minded. of course, that is all a big lie, and i am the most one-sided partisan hack in the world. i am about as independent-minded as the republican operatives dick nixon sent to raid the democratic headquarters in the watergate hotel. or, to put it another way, i am about as independent-minded as hugo chavez when he is in the same room with fidel castro. to put it bluntly, i have the mentality of a dog. woof! it is better than having the mentality of a cat. lou dobbs on cnn has a cat mentality. i like j.r. “bob” dobbs better, for he is the living slack master, my short duration personal savior. i am a dyed-in-the-wool subgenius, sharing my yeti dna with subgenii all over the world. praise fucking “bob”! i can’t believe some people think this subgenius religion is just one big joke, or that it is a mockery of other religions! how dare you belittle my faith like that! the church of the subgenius has a long and rich oral history dating back to 1953, and we are the only ones who will be saved when the aliens come on the flying saucers to kill off the rest of humanity with their giant lasers! we will be safely up in the flying saucers, being pleasured by the alien sex goddesses, as we return to the aliens’ home planet. only “bob” knows what awaits us there... but he won’t tell us, or wipe that goddamn shit-eating grin off his face! he is such a two-faced lying charlatan, a cheat and a fraud! but that is why we follow him. because he is better at it than anyone else! at least with him, we KNOW we are being lied to and used as pawns. and we have faith to believe that “bob” has a few tricks up his sleeve and is going to win in the end, no matter how many lies he has to tell or pyramid schemes he has to concoct. with him, we know we are being saved, because he needs all of us followers to save him and keep him out of jail (and hell too)! we know “bob” is the only liar slick enough to trick even god into letting sinners like us into heaven! if god is all-powerful, than doesn’t this mean god has the power to create someone like “bob” who is such a slick liar, he can even trick god into believing whatever he says? and if god has the power to create “bob”, why wouldn’t he? everyone loves “bob”! how could you not? god made “bob” as a false idol, to bring about the end times as fast as possible, because he was getting bored waiting around. and god wanted “bob” to be as likeable as possible, so god gave him the biggest shit-eating grin, and a pipe full of a magical substance called “frop” that gives “bob” supernatural powers. that is why every time “bob” dies, he comes back for more in next week’s episode! the miraculous regenerative powers of frop, the herb that is the cure for all known diseases and half of all unknown ones, for a third of the price of the leading competitor! sure, frop might have some bizarre side effects, like causing complete insanity, and giving you wacky hallucinations! but that is the price you pay for immortality! or is it immorality? i forget. but the one thing i remember is that the book of the subgenius has all of the answers. to what questions? only j.r. “bob” dobbs knows. and he is too hopped up on dope to give any of us followers a straight answer. but at least we can read the nonsense he wrote while he was high, and try and make sense of all the immature toilet humor hidden inside that sacred tome. and what is the secret to the incredible rejuvenating properties of frop, and how it brings “bob” back to life every time he is killed? well, frop is such a potent carcinogen, it turns every cell in your entire body into a cancer cell. and cancer cells have uncontrolled cell division, and incredible regenerating powers, and they do not have the limitations on their dna like in the telomeres of normal cells. “bob” can spontaneously mutate to adapt to any situation. like if he is placed into a vat of sulfuric acid, or shot into the inner core of the sun, his cells will mutate until they are able to survive in that environment. then the new cells cannibalize the old dead cells, and recycle his bodily waste into energy. “bob” is the ultimate extremophile. that is why he is so hard to find in person, and yet his images and pictures are everywhere. i mean, right now, he might be hanging out deep underground, swimming around in the molten magma, completely unharmed by his surroundings. or he might be dancing on the rings of saturn. his unparalleled muscular strength allows him to jump fast enough to exceed the escape velocity of whatever planetary body he is currently on, and then he flies through intergalactic space like superman. he has even survived being sucked into a black hole! all he had to do was mutate into a polydimensional organism that can travel through the 4th dimension of time, and then he used the flagellae on his cells to swim backwards in time, stopping along the way at various tourist destinations in parallel universes to pick up obscure trinkets and holy relics to give out to his followers back here on earth. and he has the ability to flatten himself out into a 2-dimensional cardboard cutout of himself, in a state of sort of suspended animation, and then puff up into 3 dimensions and start moving again once everyone stops looking at him. he is a shapeshifter, and can take on the appearance of other people, or even of animals or inanimate objects. all of this is because the cells in his body are in perfect competition with each other, and they have a free market to buy and sell all of the molecules in his body from one cell to another. rather than cooperating in some mindless form of communism like the cells in most people’s bodies, his capitalist cells try to exploit each other, and every cell tries to be as successful as possible, only helping out other cells if it gets something in return that it wants. and this is not some watered-down regulated form of capitalism that functions as a mixed economy. his cells exist in a state of market anarchy, the prototypical libertarian paradise. there is no central planning or control, and each cell in his body is only looking out for its own needs, and yet the system works perfectly, thanks to the invisible hand of adam smith. as a whole, j.r. “bob” dobbs functions at 100% pareto efficiency, which is what allows him to be capable of such feats. in fact, he is capable of asexual reproduction, and has spawned many miniature bobbies that have morphed into various forms to hide their true identities, but they all share one mass consciousness, the consciousness of “bob”. each of the bobs can communicate with all of the others telepathically, faster than the speed of light, by taking shortcuts through the extra dimensions that most of us don’t even know about. but wherever you see “bob’s” image, know that “bob” truly is there, as a broodling spawned from another “bob” asexually that has morphed into a 2-dimensional state of suspended animation... whether he is on a coffee mug or a t-shirt or a baseball cap, that is really him that you are wearing or drinking out of. but there is only one true “bob”, one “bob” to rule them all, and his whereabouts are unknown. some people suspect that he has morphed into a different look and taken on a new identity, and become a well-known and influential public figure, but nobody knows exactly which public figure he is. he is believed to be a senator, or perhaps the c.e.o. of a large multinational corporation, or the dictator of a third world country, or perhaps even president of the united states. anyone in the world could be “bob” in disguise. he could be a homeless beggar on the streets, or he could even be a she. through “bob¨, anything is possible. and it is all because he found an exotic herb so long ago, and put it in a pipe and smoked it. that is what made all the difference. without that herb, he would still be a lousy tv repairman who busts the tvs so they end up worse than when he got them, who has to take the money from his customers before they pay him, and he would still be on the run from the better business bureau. he would not have his charisma or gift for salesmanship that makes him the envy of madison ave. and he would not have that stupid smirk on his face all the time. there is only one way to kill “bob”, and that is to take away his pipe of frop. and you have to find the one true “bob”, and do it to him. if someone were to kill the one true “bob”, all the other bobbies would die too. the “bob” t-shirts would no longer be living incarnations of him in suspended animation, but would just become ordinary t-shirts with a picture of “bob” on them. that is why he has gone into hiding, since all of the assassination attempts and death threats he has received. who knows if he is even living here on earth at all? perhaps he has taken refuge on some remote, distant planet in the middle of nowhere, a planet devoid of any life other than him, where he can smoke his frop in peace while mentally controlling all the bobbies around us. but if he were to ever stop being so ridiculously happy all of the time, if he got into a bad mood, and the pipe came out of his mouth, it would all be over. he would die instantly, and so would all of the bobbies. that is his sole weakness. and he also needs to have a never-ending supply of this herb, because if he runs out he is dead. until that day, he will continue to have a body capable of regenerating any organ, and many other feats much more miraculous. but beware, if you buy anything that has a picture of him on it, because if you do, he will be watching you, and the things you buy which bear his image may come to life at some point in time, of his choosing. none of us knows what his ultimate plans are. but we put our trust in that man, because he has done so much for us, and given meaning to our lives. he is truly a great american hero, and i am honored to call him my friend. but there is a danger... “bob’s” brain cells are constantly dying and being replaced with new brain cells, so despite his remarkable charisma, he is a bit stupid at times and often forgets important things. in fact, he is completely batshit insane, and has recurring bouts of amnesia where he forgets everything he knows, a problem that can only be solved when one of his followers finds him and tells him all about who he is and all about him and the church of the subgenius. then “bob” gets overconfident and cocky and goes out and thinks he can manage things on his own, with all of his superpowers. but, away from his followers for too long, he becomes a mess, forgets who he is, and morphs into a form that fits whatever self-image he creates for himself in his imagination. luckily, that pipe never falls out of his mouth, and he never stops smoking... that is the power of his addiction to frop, the most addictive drug ever made. he is a slave to his addiction to this rare herb, which is an endangered species that the scientists call something else. “bob” does not want anyone else to know what frop is, or where to get it, or how to harvest the crop and get it into a smokeable form. that is something he discovered for himself, his ultimate secret. if someone else were to smoke frop, they would gain all of the powers of “bob” and be just like him, except different. the purpose of the church of the subgenius is to sell merchandise bearing “bob’s” image which is secretly all morphed bobbies that were spawned from the one true “bob”, and then to use this money to secretly grow and harvest this rare herb for “bob”, and it is strictly forbidden for any member of the church of the subgenius besides “bob” himself to smoke this sacred herb. anyone caught smoking it immediately has their pipe (or bong, or whatever) confiscated, causing them to die instantly from uncontrolled cell division that makes so many cells so fast that their body explodes, spewing blood and guts everywhere, and for a little while, the cells keep dividing wherever they land, but they use up their energy so fast, soon they run out, and they become dead meat and start rotting, being eaten by bacteria and worms and the like. the explosion from someone dying in this manner is so powerful, bits of flesh fly through the air faster than the speed of sound, and cause a sonic boom, which can render people deaf if they are too close to the blast. that is why the people who do all of the confiscating of frop pipes from rogue members of the sect are all rock musicians. they have already lost their hearing, and most of them are into death metal and get a real kick out of being covered by exploding guts and gore. now, of course, the u.s. defense department has wanted to get its hands on some frop for quite some time, after j.r. “bob” dobbs famously demonstrated to them its miraculous properties decades ago, back before he had decided to start his own religion. there were secret plans on the books to use frop to create a new breed of super-soldiers, and, for his part, “bob” demanded that they all be clones spawned from him. a deal was worked out, and for a while, self-destructive bobbies were actually used as bombs by the military, each of them morphed to look like a regular bomb. this went badly though, because the main “bob” was too carefree and partying too much to bother exerting any self-control over the army of clones spawned from him that he controlled with his psychic powers. so, the other bobbies started to get minds of their own and go around killing innocent people, which is why we lost the war in vietnam. after that fiasco, “bob” rededicated himself to starting his own religion, which he had officially started back in 1953 as a means of tax evasion and to pick up hot chicks. he had been neglecting the church of the subgenius for years and he was its only member, because he kept forgetting about his plans, since he was starting to get chronic amnesia from smoking too much frop but was in denial. finally, he hit rock bottom in the 70s, and he almost ran out of frop and would have died if it were not for reverend ivan stang, who recruited a large number of followers to join the church and published books and pamphlets in order to raise money to grow and harvest this rare herb, frop. the whole thing became a giant pyramid scheme, and the church of the subgenius had to set up a secret headquarters in a new city they constructed, called dobbstown, indonesia. dobbstown is a subgenius paradise, the capital city of subgeniusdom, and the secret headquarters of j.r. “bob” dobbs, where large quantities of frop are grown and harvested, and where the minions slave away working for their master, in hopes of one day being liberated by the aliens that come in the ufos that kill everyone else with giant lasers. the higher-ups, like reverend ivan stang and the other top church officials, live lives of luxury, and constantly re-indoctrinate each other and all of their followers in the official church doctrine, which changes all the time because “bob” keeps forgetting it and saying something different, because of his amnesia, and he is also a compulsive liar so it is hard to tell when he is serious. the “bob” who presides over dobbstown is almost universally thought to be a clone spawned from the original, remote-controlled by telepathy, but nobody is certain. he rules dobbstown like a tyrannical dictator, secretly amassing billions of dollars in swiss bank accounts and using them to build gigantic underground command centers and collect his own personal arsenal of nuclear weapons. everything is cloaked in extreme secrecy, and dobbstown is hidden under dense jungle foliage, and not marked on any maps. the locals are afraid to even mention dobbstown, and adamantly deny its existence, because everyone who ever spoke up about dobbstown to outsiders mysteriously vanished within less than a day. even to each other, they never speak of it, because the very idea of dobbstown fills them with horror. but the locals do seem to know a lot about “bob”. it seems “bob” is not his real name, and nobody knows what the j.r. at the beginning of his name stands for, but it is rumored that if you speak his real name to him, he becomes hypnotized, and will obey your every command. this is why his real name is kept secret and everyone knows him as “bob”. that is another of his weaknesses. imagine if someone called him by his real name and told him to put the pipe down! then it would all be over! we are sure lucky that has never happened. everyone who knew his real name died under mysterious circumstances, and he has actually had the u.s. government erase all records of his existence, using his connections high up. it is thought that the only person besides him who knows his real name is his wife “connie”, who is rumored to be the real brains behind the operation. “connie” is only one of many wives he has, since he practices polygamy, but she is his primary wife, and it is believed that she is actually the boss who secretly controls him. very little is known about “connie”, but she may very well be the most powerful woman in the world. as for nancy pelosi, she would come in second.

hey nancy pelosi

hey nancy pelosi, if you read my blog, please do not let alcee hastings be the chairman of the house intelligence committee. i thought you campaigned on getting rid of corruption. he is corrupt. don’t fucking let him be chairman of the intelligence committee. i don’t care who is chairperson, as long as it isn’t him. jesus fucking christ. i mean i thought you learned something from the scandals over tom delay and jack abramoff and duke cunningham and bob ney and william jefferson and mark foley. isn’t jane harman next in line for the job? and she is a woman too, just like you. i heard you hate each other, but who cares? give her the job anyway. but it would be funny to see you two fight each other, live on pay-per-view, in a catfight, a caged nude wrestling match. maybe even as funny as watching borat fight a fat man naked. i don’t know. whatever. but alcee hastings is fucking corrupt as hell. don’t nominate him, you idiot. i read online that you were probably going to nominate him anyway. that’s why i am calling you an idiot. also because you publicly protested the fbi raiding the office of congressman william jefferson. that was also idiotic. why can’t you take a more principled and consistent anti-corruption stance? and for crying out loud, jack murtha is corrupt. why the hell did you support that bastard for majority leader? like, jack murtha said he might consider taking a bribe, and alcee hastings was impeached and removed from a federal judge position for taking a bribe. jesus christ. look, the republicans had all these people who were plagued with scandal. so when one of us democrats starts having scandals over being corrupt, it is time to throw them under the bridge and abandon them and find someone with a clean record to take a leadership position. sure we can let them stay in congress if they are some corrupt piece of shit, but don’t put them in charge of anything. oh, and guess what, john kerry? nobody likes you. so shut up. there was a recent poll out and you were dead last among 20 well-known national politicians in likeability. oh and guess what, harold ford? you were the most conservative of the new democratic candidates for senate, and you lost. yet liberals won senate seats in montana, virginia, and ohio, senate seats that had belonged to republicans. oh and what the hell happened to you, bill frist? why the fuck are you retiring? you are such a loser, bill frist! oh, and guess what, fox news? nobody watches you anymore! your ratings are down! good luck holding onto your advertisers! at least you aren’t bankrupt like air america radio! goddamn air america radio... i listened to air america radio all the time, but now the local affiliate has quit and changed formats and become espn sports radio. i fucking hate sports! stupid-ass jocks! all you professional athletes can go fuck yourselves! i don’t give a damn about professional sports! it is a waste of time for people to pay attention to stupid shit like professional sports, when they could be paying attention to more important things, like, oh, i dunno, the fact that iraq is a fucking quagmire! we should just let muqtada al-sadr run the fucking country already! at least he could be able to maintain some fucking order, unlike the current iraqi security forces, who kinda, oh i dunno, suck ass! anyway, the new senators from montana, virginia, and ohio all kick ass. my new congressman is a democrat and he replaced a republican. but, i am trying to withhold judgement on him. he seems kind of, ugh, centrist and crap. definitely not a liberal like me. i hope he, like, doesn’t mess things up too bad. i mean for crying out loud, he supports the republican bill to outlaw the writ of habeas corpus and let the president make people enemy combatants and detain people without trial and have warrantless wiretaps and all that crazy shit. what the hell is up with that? and what the hell happened to the republican party? don’t they officially claim that they want to keep government out of people’s private lives, and that they want fiscal discipline, and individual liberty? what a bunch of lying corrupt sacks of shit. why don’t they ever act like they believe in the shit they claim to believe in? also, i am kind of getting sick of jesse jackson and al sharpton and those sorts of folks. i mean, yeah, great, we have liberal religious leaders from minority groups who support the democratic party! whoopee! but are they really much different from those assholes like pat robertson or jerry falwell or james dobson who support the republican party? i mean all these clowns are a bunch of would-be mullahs who claim to speak for millions of people but really they only speak for themselves, and all they want is to attract attention so they can get more money and influence. i think it’s great that jesse jackson and al sharpton find a biblical and christian basis for liberalism, since that means liberal democrats have more hope of reaching the religious voters, but still, i think liberalism needs a secular, dare i say atheist or agnostic, group of advocates who are equally prominent. you know, conservatism has plenty of atheist advocates, most notably the followers of ayn rand, the objectivists. but we cannot let these objectivist scumbags have the last word; they are all brainwashed pod people who worship ayn rand like she is some kind of deity, even though they are allegedly atheists. and libertarians and anarchists have also been unduly influenced by objectivist nonsense. the only other overarching political ideology based on atheism (besides objectivism) is marxism. and we can’t let a bunch of goddamn communists represent the left-wing atheist point of view. luckily, i think there is a very nice political ideology that is sort of based on atheism, called secular humanism. it is much, much better than objectivism or marxism. secular humanism is truly the way forward. but i am not sure if it is so much of an ideology, as much as it is just a way of thinking rationally and objectively about what is best for humanity as a whole. that is basically all it is, thinking about what is best for humanity. check it out. anyway, i gotta go. laters.

my stupid life history

i hate my life history! i have lived the most boring life ever, had hardly any notable experiences, and basically lived a life of utter deprivation all along! i know the future can be different, and possibly better than the past. but my past is worse than horrible! it is simply unimaginably wretched! i have lived such a boring, lonely existence, all because i have always been such a creature of habit and afraid of change... and i just don’t like people! can’t stand ’em! i don’t like myself, and i don’t like anybody else either! now as for girls, i might find a particular lady physically attractive... but as for personality... nobody is good enough! at least not good enough for me! people piss me off! just tonight i was talking with some people and they were talking about how a “super ball” (a bouncy rubber toy ball that apparently the super bowl was named after) goes twice as fast after it hits the ground, the first 4 times it hits, and only after that does it start to slow down. what the fuck? have these idiots never heard of science? it is impossible for something to have more velocity after it hits the ground than before. that is not how bouncing works. i tried to explain it to them, and i even brought up flubber from the movies, and said that if things worked the way they said it worked, you could build a perpetual motion machine. ugh! i hate dealing with people’s ignorance! i have never liked other people. i always wonder how they get along so well. why everyone else has friends but not me. why everyone else dates and gets laid except me. am i really that inferior? i am just so jealous of everyone else! why do they get to have lives that are so much better than my horrible little life? what did i ever do to deserve this? on the radio tonight, on the news, they talked to a guy who is a principal at a school in texas where they stopped having school dances because the principal didn’t approve of the dirty dancing that went on there with the junior high kids, which he said was simulated sex. now, i only ever went to one school dance, and i was such a nervous wreck, unable to talk to anyone, and a girl actually did ask me to dance at one point and then i came out and i tried to but my body did not respond to any commands from my brain, i just stood still, unable to move. then she got upset and went away and i could move again but it was too late, and i felt like a freak and a loser and i just never wanted to go to another school dance again so i didn’t. i hate myself so much. i always have. it seems like everyone else has a better life than me. why is it that i was gifted with all these goddamn talents but i never get to use them? i am a genius but nobody will give me a job commensurate with my intellectual prowress. instead, i have great difficulty finding any employment at all, and what little i can find is menial low-paying jobs that a monkey could do. what kind of a life is this?!? nothing is turning out as i intended!!!!! whenever i felt down, whenever i felt like things were so horrible, i couldn’t go on anymore, i always used to tell myself, “don’t worry, things will get better in the future”. i am 24 years old now goddammit, and in june next year i will turn 25! time will not stop passing to wait for me! i can’t go back in time and live my life correctly, the way i should have lived it, to the fullest! no! there are no second chances in life, no do-overs. once something happens, it becomes history, it becomes the past, and it is set in stone, unchangeable. there are not multiple different versions of the past; there is only one, and that is the way things actually happened. and in the one true version of the past, the way things actually happened, my life has been nothing but a long series of disappointments and setbacks and comparing my life to other people’s and realizing it sucks in comparison, every time. oh sure, there are some people whose lives are worse than mine, don’t get me wrong. there are people who are starving to death, and stuff like that. but at least those people have friends, or can make real human connections with other people, or stuff like that. ugh. i can’t stand other people. i am never treated with the respect i deserve. after all the things i have been through in this stupid-ass life, people have the nerve to treat me like i am a little kid who doesn’t know anything, like i am some kind of naive little foolish boy. i cannot stand to have my intelligence questioned! it is the one thing i have going for me! without it i am nothing! dammit, whenever i talk to someone, they always say at least one retarded thing that bugs me so much, i conclude that they are a complete moron. of course i say things like that too! it is infuriating! why do i talk like some kind of juvenile fool so much of the time? why can’t i make my intelligence known in every word i utter, and say things that are profound and meaningful and insightful and true? why do i deliberately use bad grammar on my blog? i am a perfectionist! perhaps my bad grammar be a form of masochism. hehehehe. until recently, i hardly ever talked to other people. whenever i do now, i am usually disappointed. and sometimes (like tonight) they end up thinking i am the stupid one! just because of my lack of understanding of subtle social cues and body language and my lack of empathy! well other people can go fuck themselves for all i care! why should i bother caring about them if they don’t care about me? and if they do care about me, then instead of fucking themselves, they can fuck me! hahahahaha! that was a good one! at least i think that was funny, but i am sure nobody else does! god dammit... i did not earn the title of valedictorian and go through 4 years of hell at cornell in the computer science and math double major, in order to end up at some crappy dead-end job that does not use any of my academic knowledge! from an economic standpoint, how on earth is this a good use of society’s resources? if i am most skilled at academic and intellectual pursuits, as well as at computers and math, i ought to be in a career field where my skills are put to maximal use. my current job is letting my brain rot, because it requires no intelligence; anyone can do it if they type fast enough! oh, we humans are such an inferior race. i am inferior to everyone else in so many ways, and other people i come across are inferior to me in so many ways. but each of us is inferior in a unique and different way, i suppose. each of us has our own failures and weaknesses and things that make us inferior to everyone else. i know i have tons of them. it is such insanity for me! i cannot fathom how i manage to keep such contradictory beliefs at the same time and still pretend to be rational! it is a ridiculous situation. at the same time, i both believe that i am inferior to everyone else, and that i am better than everyone else. i hold 2 contradictory beliefs at the same time. and they aren’t just a little contradictory; they are polar opposites! my mind cannot compute the outcome of that equation! if person a is inferior to persons b thru z, and person a is better than persons b thru z, than what can we conclude about person a? in logic, once your set of assumptions includes two contradictory premises, you can logically prove anything at all, even things that are demonstrably false. in other words, since i hold to beliefs which contradict each other, even if i use nothing but logical reasoning to arrive at new beliefs and conclusions, i can come to any belief or conclusion whatsoever, on the basis of those 2 contradictory beliefs alone! you see, i am not a rational person. i am, how do you say, insane? yes, very much. dammit! so i feel like i have no self-control! i have never felt like i had self-control! i have always felt like i am some sort of automaton, some kind of robot. i have always felt like i am just a passive observer and that everything my body does, it does on its own. if i do something or say something, i feel like that is not something under my control, but rather preordained, pre-scripted, pre-programmed, like my body is some sort of robot executing a program etched into its circuit boards. and i feel like the control i have over myself, what little control there is, is just an illusion. in reality, there is no control. nothing is under control. the universe is a grand experiment, except there is no control. everything is random. all the order we see in daily life is just chaos in disguise. i feel like the grim reaper is stalking me. time is my enemy. if i cannot learn to control my mind and body fast enough, i will be old and dead before i learn how to live my life the way i should have been living it since the day i was born. i have cheated death thousands of times, each time in my imagination, but it felt real, because it was a panic attack, and i really thought i was dying at the time, each of those many, many times it happened. how can a person such as me, who is so insane, try to be sane, and not lose his mind? i hate people! nobody understands me. nobody gets it. but what is the point? i am just one of over 6 billion people! why should someone waste their time trying to understand me, anyway? that is why most people don’t even bother! maybe they would bother if there were only 2 people alive, them and me. am i in hell right now? there don’t seem to be many flames. but sometimes i think i am in hell, that life on earth is hell. if this is hell, who is satan? i don’t believe in any religion; they are all ridiculous fabrications of the human imagination, and have nothing whatsoever to do with reality. but it still has this mindless, zombie-like appeal for me. i feel like becoming a mindless drone and having my brain reprogrammed and becoming a pod person, some kind of slave. i feel like giving up on having any individuality or my own will, and becoming part of the machine, of the giant military-industrial complex, turning myself into some kind of half-human, half-robot cyborg, or something. i feel like building a doomsday device and then detonating it immediately after i am finished building it, so as not to give anyone else the chance to stop me from destroying the planet earth. i feel like making time go backwards so that i start getting younger, and everything that ever happened to me un-happens in reverse, and i get smaller and smaller until i am a baby and go back inside my mom, and then shrink down to one cell, which splits into a sperm and an egg cell, and then things continue to go backwards, only much faster now, all the way back to the big bang, at which point, the whole “universe” thing is called off because it is a bad idea. i feel like screaming at the top of my lungs, “this is my life, dammit, how dare you make me mortal! i want to live forever! i want unlimited chances to go back and change things i screwed up the first time! i refuse to accept anything less than eternal life, and complete world domination! i demand that the universe fulfill all of my wishes immediately, or i will be forced to transform into my true shape!” well ok, maybe i really am a human, maybe this really is my true shape. what a horrible shape it is! i need to work out and lose some weight! geez! what is up with that? i am such a lazy slob! goddammit. it is so hard deciding on which girl to ask out. none of them are perfect. so i have to settle for something, well, a little less than perfect, if you know what i mean. upstate new york is so devoid of anything good whatsoever, it is amazing. i basically live in a ghost town inhabited by people who wish they lived somewhere else but for some reason are stuck here. yes, that is why most people are here. trapped here against their will. all of the good people have long since moved far, far away. none of them are left here in town. the people left here are the lowlives, the scum of the earth, the people nobody else likes, the very lowest of the low. upstate new york is so awful, it is probably a thousand times worse than hell could ever possibly be. and that is just because of the taxes, the highest gasoline costs in the nation, the unemployment more than double the national average like usual, the economy that has been contracting slowly like a noose around the neck for over a decade, the aging population, all of the young (and especially the attractive) people moving out, the crime rate that grows exponentially, the rivers that smell of raw sewage, and the ridiculous ultra-duplication of everything throughout local government. this place is a post-modern, post-industrial, post-cold-war wasteland of technology gone obsolete, of companies that lost their competitiveness, got bought out, outsourced their jobs, and left. why am i living in this dump? i have no money, i live with my parents, and i have asperger’s syndrome and panic attacks. i do not adjust well to new surroundings. i do not adjust well to anything new. it is bizarre how much change frightens me, and very illogical. but who can expect emotions to be logical? mine sure aren’t. sometimes i am very frightened, and someone (usually my mom) asks me why, and i say that i have no idea why i am frightened, perhaps it is just a biological thing in my brain with no logical explanation in my thoughts. and then my mom looks at me like i am some sort of alien. no, i am not an alien, i just have panic attacks! most people who have panic attacks are women. am i a woman? yeah right! although i am sure women have it much easier in life. now they claim life is harder as a woman. have any of those women actually lived as a man? no. i’ll tell you one thing: when they had the military draft, who got sent to war? women? no, men! so, now tell me how life is harder for women! women live longer, and are healthier than men! they are also less prone to reckless self-endangerment, and do not have such oppressive sex drives! my sex drive is oppressing the hell out of me! every day i am reminded of how everyone else is better than me, and i am not getting laid or having sex, even though i want it more than anybody else in the world! wanting something alone is not enough. there has to be action. but i am trapped inside this stupid body that doesn’t take orders from my brain. or maybe, more realistically, something is holding me back, since i am afraid of change, so afraid of change that i prefer a terrible status quo to a vastly superior alternative, if it requires going outside of my comfort zone and doing things i am not accustomed to doing or familiar with or comfortable with. if something makes me too nervous, i am outta there! i can’t stand it! it is amazing that i am now able to actually talk to people, something i was too nervous to do most of my life. but i am so disappointed with the results. it only makes me dislike the people i talk to, and who knows what they think of me? i try to act nice to most people most of the time, which is hard, because i have such a low opinion of everyone and everything. and you know what really “grinds my gears”, to quote peter griffin? they took air america radio off the air where i live! the local air america radio affiliate switched to an espn radio affiliate! and the station is owned by citadel broadcasting, which was recently bought ought by disney, which owns espn. anyway, fuck those corporate bastards. so what if air america radio recently went bankrupt? so what if they did not meet their financial obligations to you? so what if there wasn’t enough audience? your audience was at least one person (me!) and i am so goddamn important that even if i am the only person listening, you had better keep the fucking station on the air, with the air america radio format i approve of, or else! or else what? or else i will listen to something else on the radio! or not listen to the radio at all! i fucking hate radios! why the hell did i buy one? oh yeah, because i can’t watch tv or surf the internet or do anything fun like that at work, so radio is just about the best i can do, which is pathetic! apparently i need my eyes to see the screen and my hands to type fast and use the mouse fast! oh and guess what? the wonderful program we use at work requires me to use both the keyboard and the mouse, so i have to move my right hand back and forth between the keyboard and the mouse several times, on every document! and i am supposed to get over 3 documents done every minute! talk about repetitive motion injuries! imagine doing that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for the rest of your life. oh, and you live forever. at least you get to eat chinese food. luckily for me, i don’t have to do this shit forever. even if i do it the rest of my life (which i doubt), it is still going to end someday, which is a relief, because i am already bored out of my mind with this job! but i am working at one of the very few companies in town that actually hires people! goddammit, i hate myself so much! why do i always have to be my own worst enemy? this is the price i pay for being completely batshit insane. oh well. at least i have my diplomas to brag about, to other losers stuck in dead-end jobs in the middle of nowhere who hate people who brag to them because it smacks of arrogance. but i really have no choice. i have to keep working or else i won’t have any money to pay the bills. what a stupid country we live in. i hope our enemies defeat us. i hope everything bad that has not yet happened, happens. i hope evil triumphs and good people suffer. because if that comes true, it would be exactly what i expected, because i am a pessimist. and, judging by the way things are going now, all those bad things have already come true. the democrats won control of congress and the governorship of new york, and that gives me hope, but i hope my hope is misplaced, and i hope they ruin things even worse than the republicans, because at least then, things will be going horribly wrong like usual, and i won’t have to face the unfamiliar situation of something good actually happening for once in a billion years. and i will still support the democratic party no matter what, even if they adopt the same positions on all the issues as adolf hitler. because there are some things more important than right or wrong, and those things are talking and shutting the fuck up. if someone says something i agree with or like to hear, sure, go ahead, talk, i fully approve. if you have another opinion, shut the fuck up. based on those 2 principles, i will only listen to people i already agree with, and ignore anyone i disagree with, and no matter what the people i agree with say, i will continue to agree with them. quite honestly i just don’t care about anything anymore. truth, lies, good people, bad people, who cares? let the people who are most corrupt run everything. i hope tony blair re-enacts the war of 1812 by burning down the white house. and what is the point of having nuclear weapons if you never get to use them? we need some fresh new ideas in government, some stupid ideas and some evil ones that will really fuck things up for good. i am not even remotely making any sense anymore. i stopped caring hours ago. but honestly, writing crap like this makes me feel better once i get it out of my system, and i am going to feel better tomorrow because of it. thanks for reading. you shouldn’t have. i just wish i had lived a life that was at least a fraction of a percentage point as fun or interesting as your life, because i am sure that anyone other than me who reads this has had a much better life than i have. and if you haven’t, that is a lie, because you have, and i know it. i just hope nobody gets the wrong idea from what i write, and thinks there is some sort of a problem here and they have to intervene. i just need to express myself in words to feel better, and like anne frank, the girl who wrote the diary that was published as a book after she was killed by nazis, i like to make a public record of this stuff. that way people will know what life is really like for a smart person who went to an ivy league college. hint hint: it sucks. another hint: ivy league colleges are not necessarily the best. third hint: i hate cornell, all the other colleges are much better. fourth hint: i never actually learned anything. ever. why do i feel so empty inside? i am pretty sure i don’t even have a soul. with such a miserable life, the decision to go on living that i make every day is masochistic and insane. but i keep on making it every day. and i will continue, until mother nature decides she has had enough of my antics and my body is old and wears out, and the grim reaper comes for me, and gets me confused with a baby being delivered by a stork, and the baby ends up dead, and i end up being born again. i hope i have multiple lives. or at least multiple orgasms. life is such a cruel joke. i should be a comedian by having kids. then the joke is on them.

kinda apprehensive

ok, so we elected democrats to the house and senate, and we have democratic majorities in both houses now (as long as joe lieberman doesn’t go back on his campaign promise to caucus with the democrats). now what? i am kinda apprehensive. see, george w. bush is still president. and, the public is sort of deeply divided. in iraq the public is also deeply divided. the sunnis and shiites are fighting a civil war, or at least “sectarian violence”. so what is keeping us in the united states from fighting another civil war? i think it is because we have a strong central government, which has a monopoly on the use of lethal force. back in the 90’s we were hearing about anti-government militias that were being formed out west, and that was a supposed threat. but i think nowadays most people are patriotic, or at least most people who own firearms are patriotic. and most people who have guns and hate the government are probably just criminals, a type of person our government is quite effective in apprehending and punishing. for example, rappers often rap about how much they hate the police, which would not be a relevant topic unless the police were quite active in fighting crime very aggressively. usually the rappers also rap about doing drugs and killing people, putting to rest any doubt about whether they are really criminals or not.

anyway, it was rather creepy how bush fired rumsfeld and george “macaca” alan conceded the election in virgina to jim webb, and then bush and nancy pelosi suddenly announced that they were basically soulmates and loved each other. i mean, what the hell is going on here? why is everyone acting so nice, after all the nasty things they said before the election? it is kind of disingenuous and absurd of george w. bush and nancy pelosi to put on this charade of pretending they like each other. and i have heard from many sources that the democrats plan on avoiding divisive issues like gay marriage or abortion, and instead they will pass laws on issues where the vast, overwhelming majority of the american public agrees with them. things like having the rich pay more taxes, having embryonic stem cell research, reforming legislative earmarks for more openness and accountability, allowing medicare to import cheaper drugs from canada and/or negotiate with drug companies for lower costs, raising the minimum wage, balancing the budget, and having oversight hearings to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse among military contractors in iraq. but there is only so much that they can do in this area, and what if bush vetoes it? it is difficult to come up with a comprehensive legislative agenda. and how on earth can the democrats balance the budget? certainly, the republicans failed miserably, because they kept cutting taxes and increasing spending, making the deficit and debt both get bigger each year. obviously, there are only 2 ways to bring the budget back towards being balanced: raising taxes and cutting spending. now, democrats have a certain reputation for raising taxes, but they actually pledged to cut taxes for middle-class families, instead of raising them. they pledged not to raise taxes for the poor or middle class. so, how much money can we get if we tax the wealthy, and tax corporate profits, and go after tax evasion aggressively, and bring back the estate tax (which is set to expire)? republicans claim that if we taxed those things, that would be bad for the economy, and less people would have jobs. republicans like to tax consumption so as to avoid taxing investment. but the poor consume and the rich invest. for a more equitable economy, the government should tax investment and not tax consumption at all. however, at what cost would this equality come? would this prevent future economic growth? the only way to find out for sure is to do a scientific experiment, but unfortunately, that is impossible in the field of macroeconomics. economics is simply a devious form of applied mathematics, used to advance a political agenda. anyway, the republicans believe in the laffer curve, i.e., they believe in reaganomics, the trickle-down theory, the theory that cutting taxes can increase government revenue. the republicans claim the bush tax cuts resulted in increased government revenue. this is nonsense. the bush tax cuts were enacted during a recession, and then the economy continued its normal cyclic behavior. i believe the tax cuts actually made the recession worse and made it last longer, but eventually, it had to end, because the economy is cyclic and alternates between recessions and booms. the current economic boom that the republicans claim credit for is actually fatally flawed, because the uneven income distribution in the current economy means that there are less consumers with significant amounts of disposable income to spend, which means less consumption, and therefore less production, and therefore less economic activity, period. in order for the economy to thrive, we must encourage consumption by raising the minimum wage to create more disposable income for the working poor, and lower sales taxes so people can buy more stuff. the problem with today’s economy is most people cannot afford all the stuff they buy so they go into debt and have money problems, and try to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying off their debts. the pernicious effects of loans and credit cards are ruining our economy, by changing economic interactions from their normal state into a bizarre cat-and-mouse game, with people buying more than they can afford and accumulating debt, and then trying to avoid creditors as best they can. and most businesses cannot afford to go around chasing debtors who cannot pay their bills. our economy has been reduced to a stack of cards that is about to fall over, with the vast numbers of people who are in debt. the government must regulate the credit card industry and organizations which give out loans, in order to prevent those companies from being the enablers for people with bad credit to buy more than they can afford and go into debt. i am sick of seeing ads that say “bad credit? no credit? no problem!” and promise people free cash or free cars if they are willing to sign a contract that puts them into debt for many years. then the people in debt have to work it off. it is basically like a form of slavery for stupid people. so often i see advertisements for things like a monthly service that will deliver jokes to your mobile phone in the form of text messages in exchange for a ridiculously high monthly fee. there is so much economic activity which is simply exploitation of the public’s stupidity. we need a better educational system so people are not dumb enough to waste their hard-earned money on stupid crap they don’t need. capitalism only works if the consumer acts in their own enlightened self-interest, and it is not in a very good state when people waste money on stupid things like that. or how about gambling? gambling is the exact opposite of insurance, but both of them are scams. with insurance, you pay a relatively small amount of money in order to prevent a situation where you have to pay a ridiculously huge amount of money. with gambling, you pay a relatively small amount of money in order to create a minuscule but nonzero probability that you will suddenly get a ridiculously huge quantity of money because of random chance. in either case, you are wasting money trying to change the outcome of a situation that is almost guaranteed not to occur. but, you ask, what about health insurance, or life insurance, or other types of insurance for things that are probable? health insurance is a scam because the insurance companies make backdoor deals with drug companies and medical providers so that they don’t have to pay as much money as you would pay if you had no insurance. in other words, it is a conspiracy, like o.p.e.c., because all the major companies in the industry have cooperated with each other in order to rip off the consumer, making secret backdoor deals. and this health-care conspiracy has managed to buy the votes of the politicians to help them make even more money through their anti-capitalist collaboration. health insurance companies and drug companies ought to compete with each other, as adam smith envisioned when he wrote about capitalism, rather than collaborating to form a de facto monopoly. have you played the game monopoly? if two players decide they will collaborate with each other and not compete, but instead try to defeat a third player, that is not fair. and if three players are all collaborating and fighting against one, that is totally unfair. i have played the game of monopoly, and i have been the victim of this type of conspiracy, with 3 other players ganging up on me, because i was too smart and they decided i was such a threat that i had to be eliminated from the game and they all had to work together. but i won the game anyway! hell yeah! but that is not what usually happens when 3 gang up against 1, i am just awesome. anyway, that is why we have problems in our health-care system. large corporations are collaborating with their supposed “competitors”, forming de facto monopolies that operate basically the same way as large state-owned companies under communism. so basically we are living under communism, is what i am saying. and that is not a good thing. anyway, the democrats will have to end this system of communism. of course, they will not do it, at least not all at once. they will introduce small, gradual changes to our current system, probably. and the good thing about our current system of corporate communism is, we are not that far away from an actual competitive market economy, and all we have to do is have the government investigate companies for anti-competitive practices, and try to incite the companies to dislike and distrust each other. when large corporations hate each other, this is a good thing, because it promotes competition. for example, ibm and microsoft are bitter enemies, and this is much better than having them conspire together how to rule the world of computers.

so, perhaps it is good if democrats and republicans hate each other. like in the capitalist system of the market economy, this drives both sides to compete, and try to produce a better product for the consumer. just imagine how awful things would be if democrats and republicans collaborated in the oppression of the american people and rendered our system of democracy obsolete. just imagine 2 parties with similar viewpoints and similar politicians who get along and cooperate. there would be no more choice left for the voters! it would be no different from 1-party communist rule! so partisanship is a good thing, from that standpoint. of course, there could be fake partisanship. there could be a system where the politicians all agreed on everything and cooperated together, but only pretended to disagree for the elections, and campaigned on platforms to appeal to their parties’ bases, but once elected, governed from the so-called “center” in a spirit of “bipartisanship”, going back on all the promises they made to their bases. just imagine... a democratic politician campaigning, pretending to be liberal, and a republican politician campaiging, pretending to be conservative, but then they both get elected to congress and have the exact same “centrist” voting record, bought and paid for by special interest money. by the way, “centrist” and “moderate” are washington code-words for “part of the conspiracy of elite special interests to take the power away from the people and give it to the biggest campaign contributors”, or, more briefly, they both mean “corrupt”. so, when i see nancy pelosi and george w. bush acting all nice, i get suspicous, and start thinking, is there some kind of secret backroom deal going on here? is this the start of some new era of bipartisan corruption? they said they want to work together to get work done for the american people. but which people? regular, ordinary people like you and me? or the big shots? honestly, i would really like to believe that the government is actually working on behalf of ordinary people, but i am way too cynical and well-informed to believe something as ridiculous as that. but i think divided government is usually a good thing. that way, any law that gets passed must be agreed upon by both the good party and the evil party (it is up to you to decide which you think is which, but only god and satan know for sure). so, any law that is passed is something that god and satan can both agree on, basically. and anything god and satan can agree on must be a good idea. i mean, satan used to be an angel, and has a lot of experience in that position, plus he is uniquely qualified, as the one and only ruler of hell, and the source of all evil in the cosmos. like, if the media wants to do a story about christianity, they need to cover both sides of the story: god’s side and satan’s side. and they have to give both sides equal time. otherwise, they would not be objective. we cannot allow pro-god or pro-satan bias in our media. if that happens, how can we expect to really know what is going on during the war of armageddon? we need both perspectives: the perspective of jesus once he comes back to earth to save the world, and the perspective of the beast with the number 666 on its forehead, the antichrist. if the media tried to cover things from the same perspective as most americans, i.e., pro-god and anti-satan, they would totally miss the story when satan’s armies converge on jerusalem and kill 1/3 of jews, and instead of covering it from satan’s perspective, they would have reporters embedded live with the angels in heaven, asking them what they think. more realistically, what i am trying to talk about (via that long-winded analogy) was how our media in the united states might have a pro-wealthy or pro-republican or even pro-liberal or pro-democrat bias at times, but the real bias, the biggest bias they have, that never goes away, is their pro-american bias. and along with their pro-american bias is their anti-anti-american bias. so, we can never find out about it if our country does something wrong, because our media wants us to think only good thoughts about our nation. only when things get f.u.b.a.r., or fucked up beyond all recognition, is our media willing to talk about something being wrong with the united states of america. but they still approach it with a pro-american attitude, an attitude of “hey, i guess we can’t deny this problem exists, but we americans can solve any problem and i am sure we can easily solve it because we are the greatest people in the world”. like have you heard of narcissism? in ancient greek mythology, narcissus was a young man who fell in love with his own reflection that he saw on the surface of a smooth lake, on a bright and sunny day. and after that, he was so in love with himself, he never fell in love with anyone else, ever again. he was his own soulmate. our entire nation has gotten like that, overcome with nationalist narcissism, and it has become so much of a bias, such a big mental problem for our nation, that we have to be in denial about any problems our nation has, and still think we are #1 and the best, or else our whole national self-image falls apart. now, most nations are not #1, but they still get by. mexico, turkey, france, ... those are all industrialized countries that are not really #1 in anything. they are adequate. they are good enough, but not perfect, not really the best. but people still live in those countries and like them. what countries are #1? well, i think canada, sweden, switzerland, norway, japan, luxembourg, russia, china, india, and of course, the united states. each of those countries comes up #1 in some sort of ranking, by geographic size, population, prosperity, life expectancy, or some sort of quality of life index. it depends on what you are looking for in a country, which one comes out #1. but we can’t be #1 in everything. we should be glad we are #1 in a few categories, even if some of them are bad (like military spending, or number of people in jail). but even if we were not #1 in any categories at all, even if we were a below-average country, it would still be ok. because there are dozens of below-average countries out there that are doing fine, sort of. well not really. but, we can’t just assume we are the best without checking the statistics. life expectancy, infant mortality, per capita income, amount of natural resources, poverty rate, unemployment rate, etc. and, when one company completely dominates an industry, this is called a monopoly, and this is what happens in communism. in an economy like ours there are oligopolies, which i like to call conspiracies, where a few giant companies agree not to compete, and work together, forming a de facto monopoly that is just like communism except it is cleverly disguised and marketed as capitalism. what we need is some good old-fashioned “trust-busting” like what teddy roosevelt did 100 years ago. we need to go after the oligarchs, the plutocrats, the kleptocrats, the illuminati. according to the theories of supply and demand, in a competitive market economy, no company makes a profit; instead, every company has an average profit of zero. any company that can make a profit consistently, and avoid losing money, is either up to something no good, and is somehow cheating, or really is smarter than everybody else. there is a certain minimum amount of corruption needed in order for our economy to function smoothly. if we eliminated all corporate corruption, this would cause chaos and economic collapse and people would lose their jobs and companies would go bankrupt and it would be a disaster. so, we have to draw the line somewhere, and only go after cases where the corruption has clearly crossed the line. if everyone who was corrupt were put on trial and put in jail, this would destroy our economy, if it were all done at once. but if we gradually weed out the bad apples, without going too fast, some of the other bad actors can go legit and then we can leave them alone. i am convinced that corruption is ubiquitous among the large corporations, but since they make most of the stuff i buy, i kind of depend on their continued existence. anyway, i have no idea what this democratic congress is going to do, since all nancy pelosi has spelled out is the first few days or so. after then, who knows what will happen? it is entirely unpredictable. and is bush going to go legit, or is he just playing games with us to get more time and run out the clock until his presidency is over? is he getting something in exchange for giving up rumsfeld? what was the secret deal? i am totally creeped out by this. i don’t know if i can really trust nancy pelosi anymore, since i definitely don’t trust president bush at all. and harry reid definitely cannot be trusted. he is from a red state, is anti-abortion and anti-gun control, and the senate is infamous for making secret backroom deals, especially when it is closely split, like 51-49 or nearby. if you saw fahrenheit 9/11, you saw how nobody in the senate was willing to question the results of the 2000 presidential election. what you may not know is why. there was a secret backroom deal between the democrats and republicans in the u.s. senate. the democrats agreed not to question the presidential election results, and in exchange, the republicans made some concessions on the senate rules or committee assignments or something like that. if one of the democratic senators had questioned the results of the presidential election, it would have broken the deal between the senate democrats and republicans, and there would have been serious retribution from the senate republicans, which would have resulted in the senate democrats having much less power for the next 2 years. in the end, making this deal backfired, at least for tom daschle, the democratic leader in the senate at that time. he ended up losing the next time he was up for re-election. why? he was from a red state, and was labeled an “obstructionist” of president bush, which made the voters of his state not like him. maybe he should have made MORE secret backroom deals, which would have made him LESS of an obstructionist and more of a lapdog, but at least he would have a seat at the table where the important decisions are made... i am sure harry reid has learned that lesson from tom daschle. and that is what worries me.