There is no quicker way to announce to me that you are a charlatan and full of shit than to say, “Well what Jesus really meant was…”
I hear the preachers changing the language with their reinterpretations of some ancient Greek word, I hear them pick and choose which parts of their texts is literal and which are analogies. I hear them revising their “incorruptible” book, and I let it go.
But as soon as I hear some well-dressed preacher standing behind his pulpit of gold in an air-conditioned arena telling his flock of sheeple what he thinks Jesus REALLY meant… That’s just too much for me.
That goes above and beyond the usual manipulation. They have a large book full of imaginary shit but that’s not enough for them, now they’re just making new things up as they go along.
I had to work the other night. This last week has been a bear, I’ve worked long hours every day and even got pulled in both Saturday and Sunday… I’ve been the only tech available while HE took a 2-week vacation. When will I ever be able to relax and take time off? Time away from everything and not just one day here and there extending a weekend so we can go somewhere for someone else? Fuck! When lord, when? When’s it gonna be MY time!? Sorry, slipped into a muddled movie quote there… Anyway, I never thought I’d be happy to see the AntiChris come back to work.
So the other night I went outside for a break and found some of the AT-controllers sitting in the break area. They have their own world and draw a clear line between techs and controllers. Techs keep the world flying and controllers’ shit don’t stink. Something like that… Anyway I was surprised when they called me over. They asked if I knew the stars they were pointing at. They knew it was the “Summer Triangle” but couldn’t remember the names. I identified them: “Deneb, Vega and Altair” although I couldn’t remember the third constellation; “Cygnus, Lyra and…um…”
“Aquila” a voice behind me said. Another controller walked up while we were sitting there and he had his GoogleSkyMap out. It’s a very cool toy and everyone wanted to see it. My brother showed it to me before so I’ve seen it. I stepped aside and was promptly forgotten in the clamor to look at the admittedly cool gadget.
I went back inside and got back to work but I started thinking, what’s the use in knowing things anymore? I’m good at Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy but out here in the real world, what good is knowledge anymore? When everyone is linked up to a hip-holstered internet portal, the only measure of knowledge is how fast you can sling out your iPhone and navigate to Wikipedia.
In a couple of years when the solar max peaks and you guys lose your omniscience because of mass satellite failures, you’ll come running back to me asking, “Hey Morgan, who was that guy with the wicked eyes who played Charlie Manson in that 70′s TV movie?”
I’ll know, without the internet, that it was Steven Railsback. But maybe I won’t feel like answering…
Hey, someone had to say it. I guess this is where I earn the hypocrite title because I’m the one who always says how much he hates sensationalistic journalism and misleading headlines… I’m not really anti-planet, I’m anti-half-assed-hippie. I’m actually kind of pro full-on-hippie, they at least have a sense of commitment to a cause, even if I don’t agree with them all the time. It’s these weekend warrior types who drive big Bubba trucks to work all week and then spend all weekend bitching about how we’re destroying the planet. This BP oil spill has made a lot of the half-ass hippies float to the surface.
I’ve heard enough of this bullshit about saving the planet. Even excluding the extreme hippies who anthropomorphize the planet and claim “she can’t take much more”… the rest of them, for the most part, are not concerned with saving the planet. They are concerned with their living space. The planet is in NO danger from humans. Our ecosystem is in danger, our clean place to live may be in danger but this temperate stage of the planet’s existence is only a small part of a larger cycle and on the geologic timescale, it is incredibly short lived. This bullshit about global-warming, recycling and now the oil spill… It’s all about inconveniencing the humans and has nothing to do with actual concern for the planet.
If you lose your job, your livelihood, or you can’t enjoy the beach because of the oil spill then I understand your complaint. If you have a genuine love for the environment, the human ecosystem, the animals caught up in the oil spill then I understand your concern. But these people are starting to talk about how we are destroying the planet.
It’s another case of taking things too far. Yes, the Gulf oil spill is a damn shame, it’s going to destroy many lives and we will be dealing with this for many years to come. I hate to see it and I feel bad for the people and animals caught up in it. But in the grand scheme, the planet is barely affected.
And then we get the conspiracy nuts who want to make big business or the government responsible for intentionally destroying our lives… Or they’ll call for a ban of the company. How many of you idiots out there who are boycotting BP realize that you are only hurting the local station owners and that it’s probable that you are getting BP gasoline at the independent stations anyway because BP’s wholesale tanks had the lowest price that day? Didn’t know that your local gas station delivery tankers fill up at different wholesalers depending on the day’s price? Neither did I until I did a small amount of research. Same way I found out a little about the oil drilling process and how long it takes to cap an open well. Everyone’s yelling about how long it’s taking them to drill the relief well as if these things go in overnight! In between signing all those petitions, creating FaceBook boycott groups and forwarding all those chain e-mails did you do any actual research about your new pet peeve? Have you learned anything new? But no, I guess it’s better easier to just sit in your computer chair and scream about how we should all boycott a company that you yourself are probably still using. It makes you feel better anyway…
They blame our legislators, they blame the business but they never take on any of the blame themselves. They justify their guilt by saying things like “Hey, I have to get to work somehow” or “My consumption is nothing when compared to the big picture”. These people are wishy-washy, half-hearted morons who will jump on the next bandwagon they see their friends are on. No sense of commitment. If they really cared, do something about it. Bike to work, do without things, change your job if it requires you to go carbon-positive… make real change! Otherwise, shut the fuck up!
You know why I don’t go out of my way to bike to the store or move closer to work so I save gasoline on a 75 mile daily commute? Because I don’t fucking care about saving the planet. Not in the way these pseudo-hippies are screaming about. I probably care more about the planet than they do, it’s the humans that I’m not so sure are worth saving. So purely out of self-interest, I’m hoping that real change does come but I’m not making loud, senseless gestures that do nothing but announce to all who will listen that I am a sensitive caring soul who is somehow better than the guy next to me who isn’t holding up a picket sign. Hummers and SUV’s everywhere I look and I’m expected to believe that we’re really trying?
One day it will come to a head and we will be forced to deal with it. I expect that the transition will be traumatic. You think 4$ gasoline was expensive? You’ll yearn for those days when we really near the end. But that’s the only way to get people excited about things, hit them in the wallet. Humans have devolved to the point that unless it costs them money, it doesn’t concern them.
Hopefully we’ll die off and make room for another species to have a chance at the big game. I’m all for human extinction. I’m not planning it, I’m not even rooting for it. I just know that it’s coming and I’ve accepted it. I also think it deserves a bonus giggle if we caused it ourselves. But we’ll go soon enough and your “Mother Earth” will still deal with things like this latest oil spill. (Come to think of it, what are the possibilities of an earthquake or volcano shifting the crust enough to rip open an oil deposit?)
George Carlin summed it up pretty well when he said, “The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles… hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages… And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference?”
So “bad” shit will still happen to the planet, there just won’t be any humans here to assign blame and feel superior.
When you read an article on a news website do you ever read the comments? Unless it’s on a tech website, I try to ignore the comments because when I do see them I am amazed at how ignorant the vocal segment of our population is. I look at these comments and I cringe. I know I don’t feel that way, I have a pretty good feeling that most of the people I know don’t feel that way. So it’s not our entire society that is at fault, the rest of us just don’t speak up as often I guess.
The outright hatred and bigotry that these people spew is horrifying! It gives me the impression that the general public is fucking dangerous! I know trolls are responsible for some of it but there are some people out there with very clear concise arguments, and their arguments frighten me. This week alone I have read three articles where I delved into the comments section. It was like being in a Hitler Youth recruitment office. These people are hurling racial epitaphs and making arguments based on outdated stereotypes. Many of the arguments reduce to “The Bible says so!” So you can’t take them serious but you HAVE to. These people are real, they are breeding and they vote. If they organize, they can overrun us.
And that’s starting to happen. Television news programs give us the headline, a detail or two and then they drop the line, “But let’s see what you have to say about this” and they’ll pull up comments from their fucking Twitter of Facebook page. I’m not talking about Jerry Springer, this is the local NEWS and CNN!!! I hate this! I DON’T CARE WHAT THE LOCAL IDIOT SAYS ABOUT IT, JUST GIVE ME THE FUCKING NEWS!!! And you know they have to screen out the really crazy shit but the comments are STILL nuts! And every time the news “reporter” reads out a comment it gives an air of respectability and authenticity to the idea that the local mob’s opinion counts for shit. It doesn’t. But that won’t stop them.
I think that much of this is due to the idea that you have a screen name and the illusion of anonymity. People get brave in their words when they don’t think they’ll ever get traced back to their lips. I am willing to bet that if you had to give your real name and address when you made a comment that these outrageous statements dwindle down to a few nuts in basements wearing tinfoil hats. Okay, yeah I know it’s not safe to put your real data out there because of fraud but you know what I mean. If there was a way to make people own up to their statements, maybe they’d think about a few of them before joining the mob.
Accountability. Maybe everyone gets one on-line account? You sign up for every message board, every porn site, every class lecture, your church, your job… under the same account. No more “anonymous” accounts. And all your posts are logged under that account. And when a person goes on one site calling for “x”, people from his “y” can see it… This actually sounds a little frightening to me. I have about ten e-mail addresses just for the purpose of separating my porn from my church from my job… But the anonymous factor is the biggest blame in this mob mentality comment sludge.
But “anonymous” is not wholly at fault either. I see this spilling over into blogs and e-communities where most people do know who is speaking. People find their comfort zones and feel safe in their niche so they are comfortable in spouting off a lot of crap that they might not have done in person. I’m guilty of it myself although I make a point of overdoing it so everyone sees the joke. I’m the guy who refuses to put “lol” at the end of a statement just so everyone knows I’m joking. Either you get it or you don’t. I’ve been put in some weird situations where I had to explain myself because someone thought I was serious, didn’t get the joke. But that’s okay. Accountability doesn’t mean infallibility. I can be wrong, I can refine my statement or even agree that I was out of line. But if I say it without a face I don’t have to discuss, I can just spew. And that’s all I see on many of these news organization comment threads, raw sewage spewing from the keyboards of the faceless anons.
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