Immortal Incarceration

Imagine a world where man has achieved immortality. We have not found the fountain of youth and the cocoon is still out there, but rather we have reached the immortality of mind and soul. Upon the completion of our natural life, we are placed into a cloned body at whatever age we deem desired, your thoughts and life experiences are transferred in with you, you have a new lease on life, both figuratively and literally.

Now imagine a person commit a crime of the most horrific nature. For the purpose of this discussion, murder is no longer considered a horrific crime, merely an inconvenience, in a society where everyone can resurrect, I imagine ritualistic dueling to become a major vocation yet again. This something along the lines involving babies, microwaves, genocide, nuclear detonations, sharks/dinosaurs/bears/bigfoot with lasers or a combination thereoff.

What punishment benefits such a crime? Our usual sense of measured punishment is essentially meaningless to an immortal. Modern capital punishment is out, since whats the point of killing an immortal. Modern incarceration is also rather meaningless, what’s a life time of imprisonment to someone who’s life span can span millennium. I think it’s time to get creative. My personal on the matter is that there are three main solutions for a final judgment, with a multiplex stemming from them.

1)Permanent Death. I know this sounds rather close to the modern notion of capital punishment, but permanent death is much more significant. Prisoners sentenced to such an extreme punishment are not told of their fate to be permanently executed until mere hours before the sentence to is to be carried out. This sounds extremely cruel, but I have good reasoning for it. In this futuristic society, people who have repeatedly resurrected have come to terms with death, it is no longer a burden for them. Given enough time, even a sentence of permanent death will be relatively easy to come to terms with, when the time factor is shortened to a 24 hour period, the psychological impact will surely be relative to that of the original crime.

2)Permanent Imprisonment. This solution is less to do with incarceration of the body and more with the incarceration of the mind. Prisoners are forced to live through their own deaths to infinity (or for however long the sentence is, I’m flexible). The catch is though, you use the Permanent Death approach, where the prisoner is told of their impending ‘death’ a few mere hours ahead, thus allowing them chance to visit their own personal demons. Once the prisoner sentence is carried out, the memory is wiped and the cycle begins anew.Yes, this is torture, yes I am a cruel and callused individual, deal with it.

3)Exile. I for one have more preference for this approach compared to all others. In a society without death and hardship (I have no proof that there is no hardship, but it seems to fit such an advanced society), being segregated from it might be the most ultimate in punishment. Exile cuts you of from what you have known for the majority of your long life while forcing you to fall back on your own most basic of instincts for just survival while you confront your inner demons for the duration of your own natural life. This solution also promises the best chance of rehabilitation, if one can confront and accept the fact that man is a social animal and thus needs to abide by the rules of society, they can be integrated back into society once the bears finish mauling his disease and injury prone body. The biggest downfall to this solution is that if a bunch of the exiled super villains of tomorrow band together under a common cause, aka killing you for exiling them, we are all pretty much fucked.

A Brief Discourse on De-Politicizing Politics

One of the major problems I perceive with the modern political process is that it is too stable. In fact I am going to go as far as implicating political parties and the voters directly as the source of this dilemma. In a representative democracy, the voter should be voting for the candidate which best represents their wishes and agenda, however this gets perverted to the extent that the voter, even if they are capable of understanding the issues around them, ends up voting for the party which maybe, kind of, potentially represents their point of view. This, in this liars personal opinion is wrong and flawed.

My solution is as follows, remove party affiliation from the voting process. You as an individual should be choosing a herald who truly represents you, his party affiliation is an added cumbersome mechanism which dilutes the process. Morely (‘More So’ I just like how Morely sounds) multiple candidates who are affiliated with a party should be allowed to run concurrently in a district, ideology within a party is not concrete, there are always fringe members who never have a chance to be heard or voice their potentially valued opinion.

I realize the necessity of political parties, they do serve a purpose, but for the purpose of the election, the party affiliation of a candidate must be kept a secret, this would involve a pact between the electoral commissions, media and the parties themselves to never divulge a candidates affiliation until post election. If someone were to be ‘outed’ they would be stricken from the election and those who leaked the information severally punished.

This brings us to re-election, once a candidates term has ended, they would not be allowed to seek re-election, it would be up to someone else to step in. I realize this places a burden on the electoral process, so the time between elections would need to be increased in order for the newly elected to really concentrate on focusing on the things they were elected to do. Also, as a major positive side effect, the higher then usual turn over would engage more of the population in the political process, which is never a bad thing.

As a corollary, I fully support electoral disenfranchisement, some people don’t deserve to vote, but perhaps this is an issue for another time.

Guiltless Shame

In inner reflection, I have come to realize I have never felt guilt. No, I am not a sociopath, I feel emotion, I just have never felt or encountered guilt within myself. What I have felt is shame and I think the distinction between the two merits discussion. I categorize guilt as something one feels when they feel they made the wrong choice and if they had the chance to relive the experience, they would have made different choices. Shame differs from this, shame is a reflection of one self through the eyes of others, you feel discomforted by your actions which are judged by others, but given the chance you would commit those same actions again.

Let me give you an example, I don’t share often, so feel free to rejoice and judge me. When I was in high school, I cheated of a girl, a really smart girl, in math class, maybe I needed to in order to succeed, maybe I just needed to do it because I wasn’t at good at math as people thought or expected me to be, I am not making excuses of justifying my actions, I just did. I got caught. I didn’t feel remorse of guilt, I felt remorse of shame, I knew that if the opportunity arose again, I would do the exact same thing and still do to this very day, I’ve only gotten more crafty at them.

So my question, one which I will continue to ponder, what truly is classified as guilt, is it an act which when apologized for deems to stop being an aggression?

Little Green Men

Let’s say on a distant planet, there is another civilization/species/etc which is technologically equivalent to us. The only problem is, they are 1/10th the physical size of humanity. We build cars/ships/etc to match our physical dimensions, which rationally follows that they too would build ships corresponding to their own size.

Now, imagine our two species ever met and humanity being what it is, we decided it would be a nifty thing to be the aggressor, that space gold/spice/fur isn’t going to just materialize on its own. These green men, who have adapted weapons to killing their own kind, would surely be lacking the needed firepower to defend themselves against something which is at least 10 times bigger than themselves, never mind the fact that one of artillery shells would probably be size of their entire ship, strategically it would be a massacre. Also, I am discounting the fact that their smaller size means they are more nimble, missiles are pretty agile if you haven’t heard.

Here is where I find this discourse the most interesting, in order to survive they would need to develop bigger ships and large weaponry, can this be truly accomplished in a civilization who have always dealt with items relative to their scale, can the necessity for invention overcome the sociological and psychological factors involved? Also, if this society is ‘on the page’ with what we have on earth in terms of technology, they also probably have a much denser population due to their smaller size and the same crunch in natural resources needed for construction. Bigger ships/weaponry/etc require an exponential amount of greater resources, can they be effectively supplied? Does the smaller species always end up the loser? All fascinating facets on the issue.

-THL

And the mercy seat is waiting
And I think my head is burning
And in a way I’m yearning
To be done with all this weighing of the truth.

This adventure has essentially brought me a crossroads in my faith. When I refer to my faith, I am not referring to a practitioning and ideals one usually associated with an organized religion, but rather a more shacking of the foundation on which I built my preconceptions and understanding. Human evolution is one of these topics. To give me a brief pre-amble, sometime ago (I’m bad with remembering exact numbers, in this case the approximate time frame, if you really want to know, google is your friend), humanity, well pre-humanity as represented by the Cro-Magnon’s, took the great leap forward, they developed the capacity for speech. Speech in this case, is not howling or simply grunting, but the full capacity to grunt in a coherent and structured fashion.

Now there are two possible hypothesis for this development, either something caused the brain of my caveman ancestor to re-organize itself in such a way to fully utilize the vocal centers of our brain (I’m no neurologist, but that the gist) or the alternative is that a birth defect prompted the creation of what we no know as the voice box. Both of these are truly fascinating, but each has their complication, which are really the same problem.

Autistic savants are know for two things, having extremely low general IQ and being exceptionally gifted in a particular area. Their brains are not ‘wired’ in the same fashion as the general population, in much the same way an electrician might make a quick general repair by bypassing a damage circuit, the brain rewires itself, creating pathways through other areas which were never intended to fulfill the damaged areas role. Could the first ‘speaker’ been nothing more then a savant?

The voicebox theory is equally possible, it essentially revolves around the premise of a fetus winning, what we now perceive to be anyway, the genetic lottery.

The theory themselves don’t concern me, since they are both rational and plausible, what interest me is how we came to capitalize on either scenario. Let’s be frank, in either case, the ‘gifted’ offspring is at a significant reproductive disadvantage. If the child was an autistic savant, the ladies wouldn’t exactly be flocking to him when Conan the Barbarian was just in the next cave over. However, if the savant does find a mate, how does the gift of voice get passed along? The savants ability to speak was not the result of a generic miracle, simply the body’s way of correcting itself, it implies that everyone also posses the ability to speak but just no one had yet unlocked the key to actually making it work, the savants scarred brain simply gave him a backstage pass. This ability then, once demonstrated can then be taught to others through mimic along. If such a case the post-savant generations who gathered the ability to communicate at a more direct yet less primal manner would become the dominant caste, the alpha class of the hunter-gather society if you will.

The voicebox mutation has its own perils, if the ability to speak was just the result of a slight tweak in the physiology of early man, how did early man begin to earn its rewards? In theory it’s possible that it came by accident, more notably some idiot hunter stabbing himself in the foot with a spear and letting out a cry unheard of before, but this seems like a rather rudimentary explanation. Genetic dominance takes a very long time to manifest in a large population, being able to grunt in a higher/lower pitch does not seem to constitute a genetic advantage unless the cave ladies were turned on by a man who can recite a Lord Byron soliloquy in a soothing and deep toned grunt like fashion. It takes even longer if the genetic dominance is unrecognized.

Either case explains the rise in the ability to speak in a certain geographic area, but it does not explain how it spread to all proto human populations. The odds of speech occurring is astronomical, either through accident or genetic fate. The odds of it occurring in two geographically distinct areas is even more remote. Which brings me around to the shacking of the foundation upon on what all my beliefs are built, is there a guiding hand? Is there a manifest destiny which was played out? I believe that man is just an animal, a dominant animal, but still primal at his core, having someone lead us by the leash is not something which I can stomach easily, but which is more plausible divine intervention or playing the lottery which is the human ability for innovation and diversity. Much like the existence of God, both are equally plausible and unlikely simultaneously, they cannot be proven concretely one way or the other. Maybe in the end, I just haven’t matured enough to understand and analyze it fully.

-THL

Black then white are all i see in my infancy. Red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
Lets me see there is so much more and beckons me to look thru to these infinite possibilities.

This leads me to a simple question, I think one worthy of an investigative process. Do first impressions all that count? Can they ever be overcome? Here is an example, prior to this moment, I have had hand in this business relationship, I was the alpha male, the knower and overseer of all, the potential social interaction has potentially subjugated this by giving the client hand to the point where he can start making ridiculous requests without me having overriding power over his stupidity, this is bad.

Before we continue I guess I should quantitatively describe my overall general appearance.  I like comfortable clothing, I am overweight, shaving occurs on a monthly schedule at best and haircuts follow a solstice based schedule. I tend to dress rather shabbily, mostly because I don’t care to dress any other way otherwise and as a bonus people tend to underestimate me. For this meeting I betrayed my instincts, in order to make a ‘decent’ first impression I put on dress pants and a dress casual shirt over a t-shirt, overall very snappy. This apparently was a big mistake, I was out of my element, in my desire to appear ‘business’ oriented my betrayed my winning hand, people like to tell you to dress for success, this is a trap. Dressing for success leads one to overestimate and extend themselves, they are always worried if that piece of lint is actually gone, whether their tie is appropriately tied and so forth, they are in effect more worried about looking like they are ready for success rather then actually succeeding. Dressing casually has the opposite effect, it exudes will and power, especially for first impressions, if someone can be forceful and direct while wearing a hoody and khakis they are on the ball, they have mastered their element. This was my fatal flaw, instead of showing up slouching in a relaxed Maple Leafs hoody, I essentially garroted myself in a dress shirt.

So how does this all effect first impressions? First impressions are not measured by one brief glance, and those people who follow this idiom are idiots. Most rational people measure first impressions over the length of the full first encounter, if one fails to imprint themselves in that encounter then they are doomed to toil as the lesser party in the relationship and it’s a steep hill up to the winners circle.

-THL

Guess I’m a coward, scared to face the man I am

Before I begin my usual tirade, I agree with the author, Godot is dead, He is never coming. So instead of loitering we all got onto the bio-sludge fueled intercity express. What I do think is that the author did not explore the issue further, I think he left out one crucial point, guilt is a luxury, it is something that few can really feel and even fewer can hope to atone and rationalize away. More directly, most guilt can be directly classified as white guilt. A friend of mine was concerned with this label, ‘Liar,’ he said, ‘you can’t put a racial label on guilt, its something that crosses racial boundaries.’ My proclamation is such, this assumption is 100% correct (outliers and extended circumstances aside) when talking about things such as the environment, white guilt is the only true label to attach.

Here is the main thrust of the argument, white people are noisy, obnoxious and often have the most to atone for, I will leave it up to your imagination for what, but to put it gently its pretty much everything. As a racial group within a society we often feel bad about past aggressions and are often the most vocal about perceived atrocities our sense of moral outrage is unmatched. I even have proof of this phenomenon, let’s analyze environmental concern across the racial spectrum.

The environmental movement took roots out of the feminist revival movement in the late 50s/early 60s, these feminist were almost predominantly white females in their early 20s. As time progressed studies have shown that environmental concern was mostly perceived as a problem in middle to upper class white families, those with the most access to education and financial resources. In the late 80s, something unexpected happened, as income disparities between middle class black families approached those of their white brethren, so did the level of environmental concern, this is puzzling, why would such a shift happen.

To answer this, I have coined a new phrase, transcended white guilt. The American Dream is to live in a lovely house with 2.5 kids and a loyal dog who will fetch you your morning paper. This is the original white American Dream, mostly because minorities simply couldn’t afford to dream that ideally, Jeffersons aside. As incomes rose across racial boundaries and minorities had access to proper education, their standard of living rose, they could now partake in the white dream, with that dream came the guilt, they could not longer afford not to pay attention to such petty things as recycling and eco-friendly behavior and not seem crude, they had to compromise to fit in, thus the inheritance of guilt. If you don’t believe the statistics used for my little analysis, Google is right around the corner, literally.

This essentially proves an essential point, you can be rooted in a Christian society, abandon your Christian faith and still not substitute it for another guilt mechanism. Inner city life is hard, if you can only afford to buy non-organic mass feed lot beef or a 1986 Buick Regal instead of the organic grass fed sirloin to enjoy in your Prius, chances are you won’t feel too guilty about your environmental footprint.

To close this little discussion about the thesis that most guilt is a luxury, let’s take the example of the farmer in the developing country. If he has to make the choice between using cheap pesticide (a.k.a DDT) as opposed to a more expensive environmentally friendly concoction, which do you think he will chose? My bet is on the DDT, wildlife and fauna in a 8 mile radius be damned. Will he feel guilty about committing such an atrocity, no, he provided food for his family, he is simply content with the fact that his family is fed.

-THL

Sometimes I’m right and I can be wrong
My own beliefs are in my song

Read, digest, discuss and I will follow up with my own musings later on in the week, it will be glorious.

-THL

I see the vultures perching right of screen

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:7)

Most Jewish sects and liberal/moderate Catholics follow this logic and show biblical proof to validate their claim, however, as with everything in the Old/New Testaments there is contradicting verses to almost any point of view which leads other religious denominations and more conservative Catholics to insist that life does not begin at first breath but rather at conception.

For the purpose of this article, let’s assume this is true, or more accurately, life begins 2 weeks, give or take after conception when the male DNA fragments start to become active with the female segments to form the standard DNA helix. Prior to this while the DNA helix is formed, due to the cell division encouraged by the fertilization of the egg, it is essentially only the female genes which are actually active. Please also realize that I am no expert on the subject, but the wisdom endowed upon me by Wikipedia reassures me I am close enough.

Before moving on, we must discuss a bit of Catholic dogma and its associated spawned literature, most importantly ‘Paradise Lost’, please keep in mind I am not paying attention to the temporal inaccuracies but rather the spirit of the story. In the Old Testament, Satan is fronted as God’s conciliary, acting as his most trusted of servants and allowed to speak his mind, he torments Job in order to settle a wager and leads the vanguard of God’s angelic forces. The Christian view is a tad more different, Satan is no longer God’s favored but rather God’s antithesis; he has fallen from grace, literally.

‘Paradise Lost’ describes the glorious fall, Satan unhappy with God endowing man with free will, raises an army and starts a divine conflicts, the end result of which results in his banishment from heaven. Realizing that God cannot be beat directly, he goes after that which God takes most pride in, he corrupts God’s creation by leading them unto temptation, he prods Eve into taking a bite of the forbidden fruit, it was probably a pomegranate if you want to be geographically accurate, thus endowing man with the initial sin.

Now back to the main point, if Catholics believe that life begins at conception and that we are all born with the original sin, is the original sin engrained into our DNA, is our DNA in itself corrupt? This brings us back full circle to the standard Nature versus Nurture argument. If we are inherently flawed, contaminated if you will, at the Nature level can our Nurture side truly overcome the original burden. Catholics strive their entire life to overcome and repent for their sins, but if it is hard coded into whom they are can it truly be overcome? Is this a true case of Nurture becoming more dominant, is whom we become more dominant then what we are?

Let’s assume this is true, through life we truly repent for what is hard coded into our DNA, I am leaving aside the argument that this is all just silly rules enforced for 1900+ years to keep the population in check and fear by religious authorities who flaunt the original sin as the pinnacle for the need of salvation, we are successful of throwing down our weary tune, we emerge sin free at the end of our lives, however, life experience does not simply get passed down to the next generation, unless you like bathing in toxic waste on a weekly basis, in that case chances are you are not going to be passing down much except Down’s to begin with. If our repentance is not passed through our genes, the next generation has to deal with the same dilemma, at what point is our debt forgiven.

Meaningful DNA mutation is a slow process, made even slower due to the fact that as a species we don’t really need to adapt all that much, sure some of us might have lactose intolerance or a predisposing for various genetic disorders, but those evolves over hundreds of thousands of years in a closed circuit environment, we are no longer an isolated closed circuit tribal society, there is very little room for natural genetic change, there is, however, ample room for artificial genetic change. Given time, can science cure of us the original sin, can science cure us of guilt?

-THL

I want to live,
I want to give
I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold.

One possible scenario is that based on my seniority I was due for one, this is both unlikely and very remote since the frugality of the establishment is without end. The second possible scenario is one that is most disturbing to me, it means that my work is ‘appreciated’ and a normal person would take this as a mark of pride and drawn strength from it, I am not a normal person. All this act means to me is that I have been putting in unnecessary effort and ethic into my work, this is upsetting to me but also invigorates me to redouble my slack methods since my current bar of sloth has been raised apparently far too high.

But Liar you might say, you are the laziest person we know, how much lower can you go, to this I answer ‘When there is a will there is a way’, laziness is akin to art, it must be shaped and focused in order to invoke the proper emotional response. The second question that the majority of you would have is ‘Well that is a pretty shitty way about going through life’ and I think this question deserves an answer.

I have spent a good portion of the last 10-15 years working for faceless, inhumane and often cruel overlords for whom true merit was not based on personal achievement and growth but rather reaching some arbitrary metric of performance. There was no thanks for a job well done, no reprieve from the cruel wilderness of customer interactions, simply an order to sell more warranties, solve/ignore customer complaints in the most cost effective manner and go on about my business. Meritocracy is dead.

Growing up in a western society we are often taught that in order to achieve something, we need to work hard on it, this is faulty logic. While your grand parents and maybe to a lesser extent your parents were recognized and promoted based on the quality of their work, this philosophy is essentially dead in most places of employment, in a sense we have all been McDonalized. Personal ambition, pride and self respect have been replaced with metric ranging that govern your work day to the minute, there is no longer any room for personal input and that personal distinction that make you an individual. If anything, personal opinion leads to one being quickly ostracized by management and shown the door in a quick and politically correct manner, showing dissatisfaction with a task or perhaps suggesting a way to improve upon a procedure is frowned upon for a number of reason, chiefly among them is that you are demonstrating that those above you might not be the demigod they are projected to be, to error is human, to admit error is humane.

Is there hope for the system, and I use the term system very loosely in this scenario, no. Or more generally, once a certain style of micro management is entrenched, the answer is no, that will be the way things are done from that point on, so why try? I am comfortable with my meager salary, I am not a man of worldly tastes and frankly change upsets me, I like the ‘privileges’ afforded to me as a senior employee and frankly by this point in time my boss doesn’t expect me to be punctual, if I were to voice up about certain things all these things will come crashing down and my privileges will be nothing more then reasons for termination.

Hope most of you have a happy and delightful holiday season, and happy Festivus for the rest of you. I am cooking up a grand post for my next publishing, I promise it will be glorious in its judgementalism and simplifications.

-THL

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Advertisers are obviously opposed to this, the end goal is MORE billboards not less, if the cost of doing business goes up that will mean either a smaller operating profit or taking down ‘non commercially viable advertising medium’ a.k.a billboards from various segments of the city. So in order to get the public on their side they are putting up billboards in order to alert the public that the government is at it again, those ol buggers are implementing YET ANOTHER TAX, oh the humanity. Here is my question, would not the cost of the anti-tax billboards been enough to pay the relatively small tax for a segment of perpetuity, is whining to the general public that the cost of displaying fancy big adds going up going to raise an uprising? They are essentially giving up the profit that could have been garnished from actually renting out the space, its absurd, I for one welcome the change, maybe I can now go have a peaceful smoke on my balcony without a giant faux-smile telling me that my teeth can be 10 times whiter if I buy this particular vibrator with bristles on it.

The current ‘TV Tax’ commercial spam is yet another example of this. In most civilized countries, cable and satellite companies have to pay a pre set carrier fee in order to show local programming. In Canada, it has been the standard practice that all cable and satellite companies get to carry the same programming that is available over the air for free in any given market. This of course is not fair to the actual local stations, I use the word local loosely since most of them are now part of a giant conglomerate themselves. With the huge downturn in advertising revenues, the producers want to be paid for their programming, there is nothing wrong in that except it would cut into the operating profit of the cable companies. Instead of absorbing the cost into themselves like a good chap, the distributors, who are never ones to lower the cost of programming judging from my cable bill, want to pass the cost onto the consumer. Hence the ‘tax’, which turns out is not much of a tax at all, it’s just the cost of doing business getting forcibly put onto the consumer.

I’m sure everyone here remembers the ‘system access fee’, the fee that was supposed to go towards improving the network, hence improving national infrastructure, at least that was the line fed everyone, including the people selling the product. I used to work for a major national cell phone provider, I am guilty of lying to the consumer just as they are. Well as it turned out, first as rumors then as fact, this was just another way to get an uptake in monthly revenue per consumer, the system access fee was nothing more then a ‘hey I can get more money of these chumps’ the actual infrastructure upgrades was being funded by national and provincial tax grants.

YAY FOR BUSINESS.

-THL

There is a drumming noise that’s inside my head

Today’s post is going to be a culmination of my TV watching from the previous night, I don’t often have a chance to just sit down on the couch, turn my worries of and just browse the modern medium, it’s really quite interesting, I can see why this TV thing really took of. Thus, here is a brief insight of the questions that have begun to plague me from my journey into a nights worth of moving pictures.

House

Last nights episode centered on a single theme, and before the argumentative correctionist insist that I missed the main plot story, this side story was much more interesting. The story is as follows, an gifted individual who could have been one of the leading minds in theoretical and applied physics, instead chooses to dumb himself down with cough syrup abuse in order to relate to the woman he loves. His knowledge and intelligence is a burden upon his very soul, there is no respite from it outside narcotic abuse, I will not speak if this is technically possible from a medical standpoint, but rather to the metaphysical implications of his stance.

In most non western cultures a dowry is still required in order to officially sanction a marriage or in the very least a relationship, it varies from culture to culture, with some taking the stance that the male party should pay while others take the more ‘traditional’ approach that a father has to support his daughter and her new husband and thus is entitled to pay a dowry. The implication from this is such, the House patient in question is essentially paying his intellect as a dowry to his new wife, he realizes that in order to connect to her he has to give up a portion of his ‘wealth’, in this case a brilliant mind. However, the episode obviously covers this point, is that not living a lie. Is happiness attained through non natural means truly happiness, how would that be any different than for a husband or wife going to a doctor and getting a life time supply of anti depressants since that is the only way they can manage to retain their happiness in an obviously corrupt and broken marriage.

The other main corollary to this is ignorance truly bliss? Is intelligence a burden? One can certainly argue that it is, the more you see how things fit together the more one sees the finer cracks within view. Is not seeing the ‘big’ picture often the best outcome, is simply focusing on your small piece of the puzzle the only respite from the problems all around us. This is a fallacy, in a way the person who does not wish to contribute or at least acknowledge the big picture is simply ignoring the problem until it goes away, well problems never really go away. In the best case scenario they get solved by people who are forced to see the big picture, in the worst, they go ignored until they reach critical mass and cue the ‘revolution’ where the big picture is always certainly for the personal gain of the few.

I am tempted to call the character in question a coward, he is squandering his gift for personal gain or at least some of personal satisfaction. It is akin to Solomon not asking God to bestow him with intelligence and leadership qualities but rather a humble yet happy life, to quote the much addled and overused phrase, with great power comes great responsibility. However, the inner me can at least appreciate his stance, all he wanted was to be happy and appreciated, shedding his mantle was the cost, love is both sickening for the sacrifices it entails and yet at the same time it seems almost magical and mystical, man’s true original sin.

Daily Show

This was a re-run of a previous episode which I apparently have not seen, the guest at the very end of the episode was Lou Dobbs, I won’t go into the details of the episode and interview, all of these can be easily accessed through the Daily Show website, but rather one of the points brought up during the interview itself. Mr Stewart brought up the point that while most republican presidents tend to carry over their baggage to their democratic successor, it is only at that point that baggage becomes an abomination to American standards and ideals. Case in point, big government, George W. Bush was the biggest ‘big government’ proponent in recent history and yet the current administration must wield the blunt instrument of government it inherited to the cries of conservatives about how unruly and wasteful government has become. ‘You are killing America!’ cry the mob.

My concern is not who is right and wrong, there is no right and wrong, there is only fact and personal stance on an issue, being at either end of the political spectrum only proves that you are already inherently wrong, the fact that you cannot comprehend or stomach the idea that perhaps there is a better solution to a problem that lies somewhere outside your comfort zone is proof enough that your view was wrong to begin with.

It is almost as if both ideological camps have grown so ingrained in their methods of protest that is laughingly predictable and just makes a mockery of them both. To put it simply, conservatives rely on the uneducated masses and the few power elites to reach something that can only be described as critical mass, strength through numbers, I could be writing about the fake Soviet/Chinese/N Korean show rallies and I would use the exact same language. Liberals on the other hand, fewer  in numbers but more media savvy tend to focus on focused attacks and points, instead of trying to be the blunt instrument and breaking down the wall by bashing their heads against it, they use a chisel to poke away at the weak points. What happened to civil discourse, what happened to talks between two parties that could end in something productive, compromise is always key, it appears that has been lost to the world at large.

WWE Raw

What the fuck happened, seriously. I know its fake, I know its heavily scripted but wow. Words cannot describe the abomination this ‘entertainment’ has become. What happened to the bigger than life icons and fights. What happened to the grunge and at least the effort to maintain an aura of authenticity, it truly made me sad. I am going to go Youtube the macho man/ultimate warrior fight, maybe grab some fizzle pop, a dr pepper and relive my Grade 5 childhood.

-THL

Birds flying up on high know how it feels. It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day

Snow White then finds a nice little cottage in the middle of woods, occupied by feeble minded midgets. These midgets in return for her ‘hospitality’ treat her like a living goddess. Essentially, the story becomes Snow White and the Seven Gimps, in return for any sign of affection they adore and lavish her with fancy gifts, you might ask what these fancy gifts entail, jewels, they slaved away daily in the mines in the hopes of bringing her a trinket, diamonds are a girls best friend. Snow White on the other hand continues to bombard and ridicule them for their retard like demeanor, and yet, they keep trudging on, feeding of the humiliation, its a very freudian story apparently, probably meant to resolve the issue of where the 7 dwarfs actually come from.

Now, some might point out that Snow White was not a dominatrix, but rather a faghag (legit word, look it up), she was the woman in the middle of the gayness, I don’t think this is accurate, the dwarfs showed no affection for one another, its basically a giant no-homo gimp bromance. In fact, I think they might have been eunuchs, in the final scenes after Snow White is seduced by the prospect of more controlling powers (the magic apple), they are so struck by a sense of duty for a noble stranger, they almost commit ritual suicide in order to cleanse their own spirits, I mean seriously who chases a full blown card carrying witch, it’s just a bad idea in general. Now, what did eunuchs do in ancient and not so ancient history, aside from singing a really high pitched note, they were indentured servants to the daughters/wives of rules, this entire puzzle fits together so well.

Finally, the closing of the story, Snow White is awakened by a kiss from a prince, mind you, she has been lying in a crystal coffin for an undetermined amount of time, which leads to the following train of events; the prince is a closet necrophile, he is so ashamed by making out with a live person and having his secret uncovered that he agrees to marry the formerly comatose princess, Snow White trades up for 7 poor gimps to one rich gimp with an extra bonus fetish and they all live happily ever after.

-THL

Preacher was a talkin’ there’s a sermon he gave, He said every man’s conscience is vile and deprave