15
Jan
If you are my friend on FB you know I got fired on Wednesday. This is a situation that sucks. What I have noticed, tonight, is that everything that seemed important and/or fun is sort of just grey. I don’t like this. The last thing I need is for this to last. To put it in perspective: I am at a bar celebrating a friend’s birthday and posting this from my phone. But don’t cry for me Argentina, I shall be fine. I just need to get over the hump.
11
Jan
I have been thinking about a lot of things lately. One of them is why I don’t post more stuff here. I post links of FB so why don’t I write more articles here? This is easily answerable in a single word: overload. What I mean is that we, and by we I mean me, receive so much information constantly that taking the time to ponder anything is a rarity. With all of the information constantly delivered to us by every device around us, even screens in the elevator here at work, taking the time to sit and think is becoming more and more rare. This is a damn shame. So along with all the other things I will fail at this year I want to make a concerted effort to take the time to think about things. To reason some things out. To actually write about things that mean something to me.
Slowing down is never easy and usually by the time I am slowing down I need something like the damn TV to shut my brain off just so I can go to sleep. I think that getting back on my ADD meds will really help this. The meds haven’t been necessary for work, although it’s getting to that point again, but I do think they will help me with my other goals such as simplifying my life, which is still a work in progress. I am actually following through to completion these days without much of an effort. But the brain still works in overtime.
So as I try to take time for the things I want to do I also have to make sure to have time for the things I must do. This balance is something I have never been good at no matter what. I seem to do one or the other but have decided that it’s time to fix that little issue. This really isn’t a promise to post more here but rather that when I do it will be more of what it is. More thought put in to the writing, more logic applied, less ranting (not that a good rant isn’t cathartic or necessary once in a while) and in general hopefully easier to follow.
Have fun storming the castle…
10
Jan
Yeah I couldn’t come up with a catchier title so that’ll have to do for now.
So I had a little exchange with someone I have known for quite the long time and it didn’t go well. The guy is really quite out there and I have always known that but his, for lack of a better word, tolerance for opinions that differ from his has apparently found its limits. Mind you I wasn’t espousing anything crazy. In fact it was quite the opposite. I was mocking a website dedicated to chemtrails, the NWO, and air elementals (Sylphs). Yes you read that right: air elementals. Apparently I made the mistake of using the words “tin-foil hat” and that set old boy off. I tried to be cordial and non-confrontational but it was to no avail. I was unfriended (oh the horror) and told to “Fuck off”. Now I am not writing this post to bitch about the other person involved mostly because I am glad to rid of him and I’ll get to that in a minute. I am really writing this post because I am done with trying to reason with unreasonable people. No hard feelings but if you are a 9/11 truther, believe that the government is using commercial jets to spray the population with chemicals to help the NWO do population control, think that Zionists either control the world already or are trying to, that David Icke shouldn’t be locked up for his own good, believe that the federal reserve is part of a NWO plot, or hell believe that there’s a NWO to begin with and whole slew of other whacked out conspiracy theories then please don’t bring them up around me. I don’t want to lose any good friends over this but if you have allowed yourself to be deluded by the espousers of any of the above or anything resembling any one of them then you need clinical help. At some point I may expand this list to include folks who claim the Catholic church is the Whore of Babylon and other crazy religious beliefs but I think keeping it to politics is enough for now.
Yes I am being mildly offensive with saying that some people need clinical help but sometimes the truth is harsh. Plain and simple. I try to be a skeptic but I also try to be a logical and critical thinker. If you consider the odds of any given conspiracy theory being kept anything near secret then you really must suspend disbelief in order to believe in pretty much any of them. They fall so far out of the range of rational thought that it is just outrageous. Hell there are plenty of conspiracy theories that line up with my world view to a large degree but after you get past the first level they just become unreasonable and impossible to believe.
I have seen some folks I thought were intelligent people begin espousing some these theories recently and it has just made me sad. Now I am not asking you to change your beliefs. I respect your right to believe any insane thing you want to believe. But please don’t bring it up around me or try to prove any of these whacked out theories to me. After my little exchange on FB with the previously referenced old friend I have decided that my life will be much simpler if I just walk away at the first mention of any key buzzwords, for the record that includes Alex Jones and usually Michael Savage, and not bother trying to convince the folks drinking the kool-aid. I want to say I am sorry if this offends any of my friends but all I am asking you to do is keep the crazy to yourself.
So watch this and enjoy the rest of your day:
Maybe I should come up with an actual list of buzzwords and publish it here to help out other people…
So apparently there are some new Air Jordans on the market and people are damn near killing each other for them. So down here, in the swamp that is H-Town, Quannel X says that priorities must change in the home, which is correct, but also calls out Michael Jordan and says he has a responsibility to lower the prices on the sneakers. In fact he goes on much longer about MJ than he does about the family values. Quannel is known around these parts as a rabble-rouser who calls himself a community activist and I honestly have no respect for him. I do agree that priorities need to change in the homes of the thugs who were trampling people for these shoes but I do not agree that MJ shoulders any blame at all in the actions of these crowds. Sure Quannel has a right to say that he does but it’s just plain ignorant. MJ has sold the rights to use his name to Nike who in turn uses it to promote their shoes. Neither MJ nor Nike is responsible for idiots who line up for sneakers and then act like animals trying to get them.
Let me be clear that this is not about the race of the idiots being violent. This has nothing to do with skin color. We saw ever race acting like morons on Black Friday for the same reasons and over less expensive items. People are morons regardless of the color of their skin. Acting like animals over consumer products is just idiotic. On Black Friday a man died in a store and people stepped over him and kept going. He didn’t get killed, he just died, and no-one stopped to help.
The manufactures and the stores selling the items are not responsible, in the least, for the actions of the morons who hurt people in order to further keep up with the Joneses. It is the sick society in which we live that allows this to happen and then blames everyone but the people perpetrating the violence. Until we begin to teach personal responsibility again this will only get worse.
I know my words aren’t that deep on this subject. I know I am not citing a lot of sources but this is fucking common sense folks. If you hit someone in the face in order to get a pair of sneakers, or a Barbie doll or anything else you are a thug and nothing more.
Well not really so much clowns or zombies or being eaten but I can’t sleep. I finally cleaned up the plugins, updated the theme and generally tweaked a few bits behind the scenes. So it’s back to irregular updates on random topics.
I have been thinking a lot about my post concerning nostalgia and I think I may have been wrong. I was on the right track but think I may have come to the wrong conclusions along the way. I can’t put it in to words just yet but there’s an idea or two floating around my few remaining synapses. I’ll get around to sorting it out soon enough.
I have a ton of stuff on my plate at the moment including my top albums list for 9b, which I need to get done before Christmas, so there’s not likely to be a lot around here until the holidays are over. I have a dozen things I want to spew words through the keyboard about but in reality things are just a bit hectic. I really should make the time to get this stuff down because it would make things in my head less confusing but if I could ever sleep I wouldn’t have the time. In the meantime you could always read my wife’s blog: /usr/bin/mom.
Before I fade in to the ether for quite possibly the rest of the year here are a couple of friends on mine sharing some Christmas music:
That’s it for tonight and if I don’t drop back by here before all is said and done then I hope you all have a merry Christmas and dammed happy new year. I know I will.
