Thomas Edison Wished He Had Invented it Himself.

Thomas Edison Wished He Had Invented it Himself
By: George

I've often wondered what some of the best inventions in human history were. While I'm unable to shake the weight of the awesome power of nuclear energy, allowing us the ability to harness incredible amounts of energy at the expense of a few mutated gold fish in a contaminated lake, the brilliant force of hydrogen propelled ships blasting off into outer-space, with the prospect of new and even more efficient forms of plasma powered space ships and all the marvelous advancements in modern medical science, the invention of the steak is still, bar none, the most magnificient invention to have ever passed through the superior intellect of the human species' brain.

While the evidence is irrefutable, there are still people in the world who argue that steak is not a man-made invention, but that it comes from nature. Nature? What do people even mean when they say nature? Nature is this term that people throw around in an attempt to somehow differentiate ourselves in our modern industrial life-styles from forest dwelling primates. It's like saying that a garden is not part of nature because people tend to it.

This argument doesn't make sense and I'll explain why using a few basic examples to show the bull-shit hippy assholes just how stupid they are:

Clothes: You'll never hear dipshit nature loving assholes tell you that clothes aren't man-made inventions. But you have to wonder why that is. Original forms of clothes were simply the hides of animals that our neanderthal ancestors tore from their killed hunted prey that they wore on their backs. Granted, we've perfected the technique so that we no longer have to smell the stench of the dead carcass when we prance around church during show and tell, but it's still the same basic idea.

Wooden Furniture: The only time you see people speaking out against wood is when a bunch of tree-huggers head out west to bitch and moan about the degredation of our 'natural' forests. You know, evil corporations committing mass-suicide by cutting down all these oxygen generating free standing objects for the use of building houses and schools. These assholes would have you throw away your cheap and affordable books, rolls of toilette paper and all the dinner chairs you sit on for... well, they don't really give much in the way of alternatives. But I guess we can always make those things out of plastic. What's a few inches off of the ozone layer if we can save a few hundred thousand trees.

Glass: Glass is a really interesting example. When have you ever heard people argue against the fact that glass is a man-made invention? Man, what a load of shit! If steak isn't a man-made invention, then by all accounts of that logic, neither is glass. I mean... come on. Glass is simply the melting down of sand particles in a massive oven by some dude wearing a funny hat with a long stick while he blows on it! Not only can we say it's not a man-made invention, Freud would have had some quarrels about the methods by which we harvest it.

Now, let's be serious for a minute. Steak rules. Nature did not come up with steak all on its own. Just look at all the different forms of steak that exist and that WE'VE invented:

-Fillet Mignon
-T-Bone
-New York Strip
-Ribeye
-Pepper Steak
-Tenderloin

And the list goes on. Thanks to man's ingenuity and superior intelligence, we have been able to succesfully transform an other wise boring milk-producing cow into so many various forms of delicious steaks that Thomas Edison would have shit himself if he had invented them.

But It's More Expensive

But It's More Expensive

By: George

Have you ever had one of those moments in life where you need to take a pause, think about what just happened, look around to see if anybody else noticed, take a look back at the source and just nod your head, hoping there was some fundamental language barrier that the two of you were desperately trying to cross? I've resolved myself to the conclusion that fast food restaurant employees are the epitome of the industrial revolution, minus the tar stains and low life expectancy rates. They are so accustomed to repetive actions that they have become incapable of forming pattern breaking thoughts throughout their daily routines. So much so that it's almost as if when a customer comes in with an out of the ordinary request, they are all of a sudden hit with the agglomeration of ineptitudes which make up their existences while they start mumbling to themselves as all the thoughts that were once paralyzed in their minds start flooding to the surface and dancing on their brains. This lasts for about ten seconds, when their thoughts tire out and return to their slumber. In the mean time, you're left standing at the cash, legs quaking, praying to your choice of divine figure that they won't lunge across the counter screaming “The coke machine is a lie!” while gouging your eyes out with a plastic knife.

Before we get to this, however, I would like to take some time to explain what led up to this mind warping experience. It started one evening while Kyle and I were waiting for the mid season premier of Battlestar Galactica, the self indulging nerd show that any self-respecting adamant proclaimer of manhood will watch and defend against attack at all costs. Our local science fiction network, as a build up to this eight month wait, aired the last five episodes before the break as a way to catch people up for the return. This re-airing of reruns was interrupted by the most existence altering commercials depicting half naked old ladies advertising therapeutic bathtubs, families playing poker with pretzels as currency while singing songs about their love of Cheeze-Whiz, sprinkled with babies crying about their soiled diapers. Modern marketing techniques seem to have lost the fundamental ideology which perpetuated the 1960's boom of advertisement agencies. In other words, marketing to your target audience in an effective way. I have to wonder if these multi-million dollar ad campaigns are spending enough money to notice where their commercials are being aired. Of the millions of angsty teens, wishing apocalypse would come, balding and un-showered middle-aged men and creepy fangirls watching the much anticipated return of their beloved show to validate their inane existences, I can't imagine many would be all that interested in buying their grand-parents bathtubs to help with their plastic hip replacements. In fact, this commercial made me all the more inclined to drop kick the next old lady I saw, in the style of Nicholas Angel. The fact that there wasn't an outbreak of cases where people threw their pet hamsters into their televisions, ran to their kitchen sinks and whipped out a bottle of drain-O to douse their already burning eyes is a testament to the power of that show. In fact, I can safely say that the majority of people watching the build up to the premier would have stuck through gay midget clown cowboys, strapped to a mechanical bull while slapping each other’s bare asses, advertising the new Moley Cyrus album. Fuck you, you eight month mid season breaking, DVD releasing, cow-milking assholes. I'm going to watch this episode, despite all your executive wankering.

We began to settle in, ignoring the quasy pornographic commercials, to watch the last couple of re-runs before the feature presentation when Kyle's pirated cable began to shit all over itself, cutting out the audio while making the picture look like amateur 90s horror flick editing.

Kyle turned his head towards me. Glaring and menacing, he muttered, “Am I seeing right?”

I responded with what seemed to be the only rational thing my late twentieth century upbringing taught me. “Let's leave, completely ignore the issue and hope it resolves itself by the time we get back.”

“Pizza, then?” responded Kyle, while he toyed with his cell phone for the umpteenth time that day.

“And cheese bread.”

In order to place this night in some form of temporal perspective, this would have been less than a week before Kyle's cat was whisked away by the infamous bitch to whom we have dedicated a little musical number titled “The Bitch Who Stole Kyle's Cat.” I mention this, in part because I am now deeply saddened by the loss of our beloved Dubbi, but, because as a parting gift, Kyle had been force feeding dozens of treats to his cat on a daily basis for weeks so that the bitch would be witness to a cat in withdrawal. As a result of the continuous sugar high it was on, Dubbi was unable to stand still for a period longer than the short term memory of an Alzheimer's patient.

“Did you know,” began Kyle, “that cats are able to see reality through the perspective of multiple quantum dimensions?”

My face grimaced as I directed my vision to the cat pawing his way through the wires behind the printer, while it was contemplating its inability to occupy the same position in space as it. “Schrödinger was an asshole”, I mentioned, as I put on my layers of sweaters, constituting a coat.

We finally left Kyle's place to make our way across the street to the hole in the wall pizza joint. Kyle ordered two large pizzas. The lady at the cash fumbled around the buttons until she found the ones corresponding to the order that we placed ten minutes prior. Kyle payed for the pizza and the lady promptly walked away to fiddle with some empty boxes in the back of the restaurant. I can only hope they contained layers upon layers of bubble wrap that she was hording away so that she could take home with her at the end of her shift.

While waiting for our order, we were troubled by the influx of IQ deficient members of our unfortunate species beginning to get louder and louder in the opposite corner of the restaurant. Upon receiving a few dirty looks as a result of our disparaging comments towards them, I remembered my earlier craving for cheese bread.

“I should probably order the cheese bread before our pizza comes. Would hate to have to stay and listen to them very much longer.”

“This is true, but it would also probably be a good idea if we got back to my place before we were gutted from head to toe from the gang members sharpening their switch blades outside the door, waiting for us. Let's try and keep our comments to a minimum from now on, shall we?”

“I'll do my best,” I responded, “but I can't be held accountable for everything I say.”

“Yes you can,” retorted Kyle. “Who else would be? Me? The mentally challenged cashier?”

The cashier threw us a look of disgust as she pried herself away from the padded boxes.

“It's a figure of speech, man. Can't a guy just say something without it getting torn to pieces?”

“No,” came Kyle's calm response.

“Well, this seems like a terribly useless argument, then.” I conceded, still only wanting to order my fucking cheese bread.

I walked up to the cash, assumed the customer position, and waited to be served. The cashier made her way from the back of the restaurant in what seemed to be a directional path towards the front counter, when she banked left and began re-arranging the condiments station. At this point, I've still given her the benefit of the doubt of not noticing me standing upright in the front of the restaurant waiting to place an order. So I made a couple of subtle hand, head and facial gestures to signal her attention. These are all met with the same result. This has now taken about five minutes. That's five minutes of standing at the cash, waving my hand, laughing with Kyle about the inadequacies of the modern service industry and trying to not get shanked in the back by the group of kids who are now waiting to kill us when we inevitably leave the restaurant with whatever order we manage to place. Kyle was starting to get impatient as he began to motion the cashier over himself.

“Listen, do you want me to get her attention?” demanded Kyle, “Because I will.”

“How does she not see me waving my hands in the air while nodding my head to the point of nausea?”

“These are the kinds of questions which make for good stories.”

I finally got fed up of silently gesturing for her attention and called her over in a matter of fact tone of voice.

“Yes, thank you. I would like to –”

“Would you like to order something?” the cashier asked.

“Hm. Yes. I would. Can I please get an order of cheese bread? Eh, yes. That one. The one where the cheese is on the bread, right? Ok... good. You understand the English.”

The pizza arrived before she was able to find the cheese bread button. I immediately regretted placing the order and as I'm about to tell her to cancel it for fear of the end of the world reaching us before she figured out how to place a command, her eyes lit up as she beamed a smile at me in triumph.

“Would you like anything else?” Her question frightened me. I wasn't sure if I should venture to order our drinks from there, or just stop off at the convenient store next door and pick up two bottles of coke. Kyle re-assured me that he was in no mood to make another stop off, as the weather was beginning to dwindle into an ever increasing abyss of dismal proportions.

“Yes. Two drinks, please. One diet –”

“The small one or the large one?”

“Eh, the large one please.”

“But the large one is more expensive.”

I looked at Kyle. Kyle looked at me. I looked back at the cashier who then looked at Dubbi strolling across the counter as he disappeared into the coke machine.

Tis Better to be Vile than Vile Esteemed

'Tis Better to be Vile than Vile Esteemed

By: George

It has often been suggested that honesty is the fundamental basis for being a good and virtuous person. While only those who are plagued with vice are capable of lieing, cheating, commiting purgery or fraud, those blessed with the transcendant qualities of truth-telling are somehow automatically proclaimed to be of a higher moral standing. This is a detestable acknowledgement of what morality is. Are we to understand that if we were to take two serial killers whom have commited attrocious pre-meditated murders, butchered their victims and hid the remains beneath their floor boards that the one who admited to these crimes would somehow be held up as a moral exemplum for all serial killers against the other? “It's ok, at least you're not as sinful as the one who denies his actions. Would you like to confess to other sins and forever be saved from eternal damnation?”

Because it is impossible to understand this sickening marriage between honesty and morality without taking into consideration the implications of religious forms of confession and the sin cleansing attributes of it. It is taught to our young that to be free from sin and to be accepted into heaven, you must confess your sins and be absolved by an elderly stranger in a purple jumpsuit, who would much rather be fondling his sceptre than listening to your innane dribble about skinning a cat and hoisting its intestines on a clothesline in your closet. Is it moral to tell your secrets to a man proclaiming to commune with God? I'm not sure. I certainly have no defining principles of morality. Is it moral to suggest that the crimes you have commited as a living person on a planet where the existence of the consequences of your actions are very real and noticeable can somehow be forgiven by a couple of ancient prayers and Hail Marry's? I should think there is something terribly wrong with this form of morality, in the least.

We are so entrenched in our notions that honesty forms moral characters that we forget that morality is not something which is gauged by the things we say or think but by the things that we do. I will, however, grant that being an honest person is perhaps a trait associated with many people that we can view as being moral, in so far as what constitutes being a moral person is concerned, but I believe it would be better classified as ethics, for the reason that morality has far too long been associated and subjected to religious doctrines. To make it quite clear, we are talking about what makes a person 'good'. Is being good telling the truth to your wife that you cheated on her with the next door neighbour's 18 year old red headed daughter while they were out of town? Does the act of telling the truth somehow negate the deplorable action of cheating? Certain dominant religious sects would suggest that by showing contrition, confessing your sins and accepting God's grace into your heart that the sin of cheating is now erased and you are once again a blank slate onto which more sins can be added and eternally cleansed. This forgiveness is gauranteed by the death of a martyr over two thousand years ago in a part of the world where notions of morality were vague and fuzzy. However, never the less, this man died for our sins before we were born and, without a doubt, before we knew we could commit them.

If this man died for our sins to grant the human race one final push forward by the grace of God, then why is it that the religion still demands a confession of our sins in order to be cleansed of them? It seems rather redundant, don't you think? Well, I suppose I won't try and fight the logic of religious teaching, because that can go on forever, and I'm sure I'm bound to get to it at some other point in time. Let's, instead, get back to the original argument.

We have become a society under the impression that our thoughts, feelings, opinions and ideas are the supporting forces behind being good, decent human beings. This is false. Virtuous thinking and virtuous actions are not necessarily concepts that are bound by some indomitable law of nature. The 'virtuous' teaching that sodomy (the biblical term, not for homosexuality, but the acts that homosexuals perform) is a sin against god is taught to pliable Catholic children, along with the abdication of contraceptive methods. What this results in is the secret and brutal assault on young boys in the trusted care of many priests. And while they still firmly believe in the abolition of condoms for contraceptive purposes, many of these priests transmit latent sexually transmited diseases which become apparent years later as the abused children themselves pass that disease to their children, along with the same bullshit teachings that started the whole cycle to begin with.

Christopher Hitchens, in his book God is Not Great, perhaps says it better than I ever could when he points out that “a high moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.” I think it's about time we stepped off our soap boxes and refrained ourselves from spewing such complete nonsensical motives pertaining to what constitutes high moral characters. Morality is not something we can aspire to by telling ourselves that by confessing to the sexual abuse of a ten year old boy, lashing ourselves twenty times, climbing the stairs of a cathedral on our knees and kissing the hand of the pope is somehow going to relinquish us of all responsibilities of such a heinous and grotesque action. “'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed” reminds us all that we need to be worrysome of ideologies that tell us that we are better for admiting our sins. I would much rather bask in the vileness or morality of my actions in the comforts of my own concsiousness then have others praise the honesty of my intentions.

We're Listening!

“We're Listening!”

By: George

The universe is large. So large, in fact, that it is believed to be in a state of near infinite expansion. To concider near infinity, however, is, at the best of times, an oxy-moron and, at the worst of times, an oxy-moron. Those who are under this assumption of near infinite expansion make it their business to determine the fundamental 'itness' of the things which make up our observeable universe and even to theorize about the un-observeable universe. These people, as I will classify as 'others', to avoid confusion with 'regular folks', are highly trained observers of the universe visible from our night sky. On the other hand, for those who are consequently not a member those aformentioned 'others', then chances are an uncomfortable number have attempted to take matters into their own hands. And by 'matters' I mean 'communicating with aliens' and by 'hands' I mean 'unfortunate evolution of opposable thumbs which have allowed for the the dexterical ability to create super-powered radio recievers.'

These are the kinds of people who spend their days in garages adding wires, conductors, resistors and diodes to an already complex system of wires, conductors, resistors and diodes in the hopes that this agglomeration will have enough juice to penetrate our ozone layer and reach distant space dwelling folk. As absurd as this may be, perhaps they're on to something. While this phenomenon is but a few decades old, originating a short while after the infamous Roswell incident, the wish to communicate with distant interstellar ambivalent entities is a long running tradition. Why should religion hold complete monopoly over the attempts to have one way discussions with uninterested creatures of a distant planet?

For they certainly do have much in common.

Both christianity and Roswellian fundamentalism started by the chance encounter with an event which neither could understand. For Christianity, that starts with a cockeyed 'prophet' with dellusions of grandeur, who attempts to convince the people of bronze age jewish Palestine, by performing a series of miracles, that he was the son of God sent down from heaven to save huamnity from their sins. In a society plagued with murder, theft and purgery, this would have seemed like a message from god. To think that God has sent his son to Earth in order to validate their existences and to promise infinite forgiveness was almost too good to be true. This prophet, it would seem, was destined for an un-happy ending. An ending prophesized by earlier texts and one which would most certainly come to fruition if there was to be any kind of martyrdom. And so he was crucified and the sign of the cross has ever sinse been a symbol for Christianity and also a medium between ourselves and our incorporeal savior. Martyrdom, however, would not be what it is were it not for opressive governments. And we thank the Roman Empire for filling in their end of the deal.

As for Ufology, we see similar paths emerge. First, we see an initial burst of excitement over a crashed object in the New Mexico dessert, near a top-secret air base. Quickly hushed up and explained to be a weather balloon by the government, people in the immediate vicinity of the incident are not easily pursuaded. They think something out of this world crashed in their backyards. With no hard evidence to back up this claim, they do what would be natural to do, and that is to fabricate facts to fit the theory. An entire generation of techno-geeks emerge out of this, attempting to communicate with these evolutionary giants in outer space. This is paralled with religions un-yielding faith inherent in praying for devine intervention. It is, in fact, paralleled to almost dizzying proportions. By virtue of the mysterious events surrounding Roswell and aliens in general, entire religions have been founded to help channel our biological needs towards prostration. The most notable of these facetious ideologies are Raelianism and its spin-off, Scientology. While Raelinism is a near perfect nerd-translation of Christianity, Scientelogy takes the geek-factor to whole new levels of crazy. Another common feature to these dangerous ideas are the propitiations made towards their subsequent devine entities with the acceptance that they will return one day to take them all away from this fleshy world of materialism into an existence of eternal bliss, for those who take part in the required rites, or unending torment, for those who denounce themselves of these wild ideologies.

It certainly would be an event worth commemorating, if we, once and for all, were privy towards irrefutable evidence in favour of theistic religions' claims for understanding the will of their creators. However, until a day as such were to come, I suppose we have no other choice but to remain corporeal creaturs of evolution, destined to fanciful interpretations of natural phenomenon as a way to add meaning where meaning need not be had. We'll continue to make bewildering monuments of devotion to these ideas and we'll continue to point our radios to the sky in the hopes that our prophets will return to tell us that everything will be alright.

The return of a prophet at the end of days is one of those hallmark situations surrounding the Abrahamic religions and their cousin orphans, which have evolved centuries after the established powerhouses have set up shop and organized their monopolies. The prophet's return is the indication that the world of the flesh has met its end and that it's about time for us to shed ourselves of this menial existence so as to be welcomed with open arms into the kingdom of heaven by God at the pearl gates. Religious fundamentalists would not be so were it not for their incessant wish to see this return in their life times, for it would validate their claims to transcendant knowledge of the will of god and their subsequent sacrifices in the name of that deity. In modern America, evangelicals have claimed authority over this as the Rapture, where they will be chosen to lead the second coming. This heralded death wish has lead nations to war with a single goal in mind: the successful conclusion to a self-fullfiling prophesy. One need but wonder, if all these religious share a common goal towards extinction so as to be united, once and for all, with the all powerful creator, why bother with all the intermidiary wars, centuries of oppresion, tyranny and torture and not simply proceed directly towards the inevitable? It's questions like that which are what make these wars so fundamentally terrifying. It would be easy, wouldn't it, to hurry the process of extinction, not by catastrophic climactic change, depilitating epidemics or the natural collapse of our solar heat source, but by nuclear and chemical warfare. Well, we're listening, and, in the language of the prophets, the end will be glorious. Point your radio crosses, aluminum hats and satellite stars to the sky and pray that you do hear something. It would be a shame to have put all this effort for nothing.

The Future Isn't Written in Stone

'The future isn't written in stone' is one of those statements that we just seem to say on a regular basis, without ever having contemplated what the meaning is. The meaning is clear to see, I suppose, in a literal sense. Nobody is sitting around a cave carving out the various potential paths the future could take. To concider otherwise would seem almost an exercise in imagination. This is a natural enough conclusion to come to, concidering all our rational understandings of what the future means, quantum mechanics and the human races limited authority in all things clairvoyant. We can't know what the future holds, because it hasn't happened yet. We, being fallible creatures of a particular evolutionary path, do not possess the mental, or otherwise 'supernatural', processes required for looking into the future in order to then write down what will happen on a piece of stone tablet to be studied and interpretated down the generations. We take this kind of statement at face value and tell ourselves, “Well, of course the future isn't written in stone. What an absurd idea! To think that somebody has written down the events that would happen on some granite is so primitive. We've grown out of that!”

Have we? As civilized people, who have grown up in a society dominated by scientific advancements in physics, astronomy and mathematics, we are accustomed to dealing with the sheer improbabilities of being able to predict the future in an accurate and un-ambiguous way. It's completely natural for us to tell ourselves that the future wouldn't be written down in stone. But why is it that we still seem to think the future is this predictable phenomenon that we can control? We like to remind ourselves that we are rational and intelligent and that we have grown out of primitive and superstitious habits. “No no,” says the average pedestrian, “I'm not superstitious at all.” These kinds of assertions are troubled by the quite noticeable crosses which adorne the neck lines of these self proclaimed evolved simians. For all those that say they are not superstitious, they need only look in their pockets and see if they are carrying a lucky coin. They need only look at their rear view mirrors and notice the dangling rabbits foot. They need only concider the routines they perform before examinations. All these people that claim they have outgrown childlike superstitious beliefs about black cats, ladders and mirrors, need only observe their every day behaviours and concider the difference between keeping a holy saint's picture in their wallets and crossing the street when they see a black cat on the side walk. Why is it that we say the future can't be known, but yet we still feel obstinate towards paying money every week on lottery tickets, convinced that the birthdates of our loved ones will, eventually, prove to be good luck and win us millions of dollars? What a terribly selfish way of cherry picking our ideologies, not to mention the horrible way we trivialize our children's existences. Despite all the evidence against the probability of winning the lottery, millions of people can't help themselves but be drawn into asking the question, “what if?”

Most “what if” questions are often times answerable with sufficient ease. “What if I get hepititis tomorow?” Don't have sex with hookers, is one way to avoid that. “What if I get hit by a truck crossing the street?” Looking both ways before stepping off the curb is a start towards preventing a head on collision with a seventy kilometre per hour vehicule that would crush every bone in your body. “What if” questions are usually questions which are set aside without issue by a keen observance of the understandable universe we find ourselves in. We can prevent the majority of our depressing self-fulfilling death prophesies by being observant human beings. “What if I win the lottery next week?”, is a question that is more difficult to answer, however. That is because it relies, not on other acceptable forms of “what if” questions which are approacheable in a logical way, but on an assumption that the fact that we're asking the question means we have some control over it. It's almost like by way of asking, you're telling yourself, “alright, this week, I'm going to win.” This does not work. “What if I get cured of my inoperable cancer next week?” does not mean that the tumour will disipate and forever escape causing all your organs to shut down one by one while you're unable to get up to take a shit. Wish thinking is dangerous and creates ideologies that make people believe their thoughts become realities. 'Let's play pretend' is something we should have left behind us when we were at an age where we were able to come to the understanding that the sand box is not an appropriate place to jerk off.

Isn't it wierd that we can look at the phrase, “the future isn't written in stone,” and understand the facetious point it's trying to make, however, we can't seem to apply that same mentality to prophesies which actually are written in stone? Why do we place a kind of reverence for these antiquated science fiction tales while claiming ourselves to be non-superstitious? Well, I suppose this isn't hard to understand, concidering the upbringing of the majority of the people in a western 'civilized' society is that of a religious one, specifically Christian. We tell ourselves that we can't possibly predict the future on stone tablets, but we are quite alright with the accepted teachings that the extent of our morals are known to us only by some devine deity who etched his ultimate commandements on stone panels. It would seem as though this is an extremely convenient thing for us to do. We pick and choose, like religious morality, where our superstitions begin and end. We can say we no longer believe in the tooth-fairy, seven years bad luck for broken mirrors, equally arbitrary number of bad luck years for crossing under ladders, but we accept, without hesitation, the fact that we take our morals from a couple of primitive communication mediums supposedly given to us by god on the top of a mountain and handed down to a single man. And this is before concidering that god thought it would be the best idea to introduce morality into the human species one hundred thousand years after its evolutionary introduction into the world, and in a part of the world where over 90% of the population wouldn't have been able to read the supposed commandments anyway, let alone come to a rational understanding of the englightening experience such an event should have on a people.

It would be easy to conclude that even those who proclaim themselves to be not superstitious are, in a way, because they have irrational fears of spiders, dogs, cats or other benign creatures. However, this is not the case. Irrational phobias are not selective. A person who is horrified at the concept of a confrontation with a cat would be equally so for an adult lioness. The phobia does not pick and choose which sub-species of cats are alright, and it is certainly not based on colour, either. “Not all cats are bad luck,” says the superstitious dullard, “only black ones and only when they are performing very specific activities, like crossing streets and only when somebody else happens to be passing in front of them as they do it.” So not all cats are bad luck? “No. In fact, white cats are signs of good luck.” Ignoring the obvious racist implications of this ideology – black cats equal bad, white cats equal good – this is unequivocal pretentious selective superstition. “Also, we obviously don't think all ladders are bad. Only the ones that are doing their job; leaning against walls, creating situations where people may happen to meander under, are right out.”

Selective superstition and selective wish thinking are not mutually exclusive. We can't have phrases like “the future isn't written in stone” while believing that we can have our existences explained through such inadequate claims of religion. “You can't have your cake and eat it too” seems to jump to mind, before it gets trampled on by the rational part of the language center of my brain. While we can have our cakes and eat them as well, we shouldn't, however, be allowed to tell ourselves one thing while obviously believing the complete opposite. “The future isn't written in stone”, and neither are our morals. And for those pieces of fiction that we are so adamant in holding on to, which actually were written in stone, we should attempt to apply the same logic. The results will certainly be interesting to observe.

Television: Grow the Fuck up

Television is a dying breed. While many will disagree with this statement and start listing off the countless new television shows which dominate our cable lines and satellite air waves - shows like Supernanny which depicts the abomination of parenthood in our society juxtaposed with this permeating trend of “I have a British accent, therefore my ideas are valid”; innane shit like Hell's Kitchen and its even more disturbing spin off series Kitchen Nightmares; and shows which force us to watch, otherwise normal (though, that's debateable), people dump their heads in barrels full of spider monkeys while eating coagulated blood balls wrapped in the skin of an ox's testicle only so that we can ask, 'why would people do that to themselves?'. The simple, though not very satisfying, response to this would be that the reason these shows exist is because people watch them. This is a very clean and capitalist response suggesting a clear relationship between supply and demand. Well, this is simply a flawed argument, I should think. It automatically begs the question of, 'how could we have started watching these if it weren't for an initial interest in them?' I'm not one for religious arguments suggesting prime movers, but it sure as hell seems as though there might be a case for such an argument when looking at our choice of television programming. The obvious conclusion to this would be mainstream media. They obviously control the news we see on which stations, be it right wing propaganda, left wing liberalism or just completely center agnostic assholes with no opinions but the opinion to tell us that opinions are useless. Why shouldn't it be clear to realise that these same corporate assholes would control the kinds of television programs pumped into our televisions?

While the above is an interesting enough topic in itself for an extended article (one which I might eventually do down the road), it is, in fact, not the crux of my current argument, though it is related. If we agree (and for the sake of argument, we will for the moment) that the viewers are in fact not to blame for the choice of programming on television today and that it is explicitly controled by a group of corporations (CBS, NBC, etc). Why, then, are we presented with this slew of 'reality' (a term used to define shows which have no bearing on reality anyway) television with the constant need to censor every second word? Just because you bleep out the word on television does not mean that the meaning of that word is not still expressed. We see this same pervasive obsession with cleanliness when it comes to the written language. Just because I add a couple of asterix's to the word 'f**k' does not mean that people don't automatically associate that retarded looking word with 'fuck'. It's insulting and it's useless. I know these people are swearing, so I should be allowed to hear it for what it is. If mainstream media was so concerned about the sanctity of language as a way to preserve the innocence of children by preventing them from becomming uncivlized brutes, then they wouldn't be putting these shows on prime time television anyway! But because they decide to do so, there is only one conclusion to draw from this. They don't give a fuck about the sanctity of language.

And when are people who watch television – ie; the entire fucking population – going to stand up and say in a resounding bellow, 'grow the fuck up!'. Television is so incredibly behind the times of censorship, it's not even funny. Cinema made the jump in the 50s and 60s as they started abandoning the strict social constructs around 'obscene' behaviour; swearing is now not only accepted in contemporary cinema, it's targeted towards teenagers. New box office hits such as Superbad, while technically rated R, are acted by and meant to appeal to teenagers in a society who have little to no problem with words like 'pussy-farts', 'ass-fucking', 'tit-fucking' and every derivative thereof. Literature has evolved into an art form reserved not only for the rich, aristocratic tight asses of the pre-victorian but for authors of the lay people. People who don't need three degrees in English literature or have the title 'sir' or 'lord' before their name can now write about the intricate techniques of rolling, smoking, snorting, pushing, pumping, injecting and inserting of various drugs in various orifices of a person's body. It would seem as though mainstream media's attempt at protecting the youth from bad language has failed a miserable and embarasing existence as role models. With a track record as horrendous and appaling as that of television, I think it's about time it gave up its reign on the distribution of popular ideas in society and take up a more fitting role as janitor. However, instead of cleaning up other people's putrid diarrhea, they should focus on amending their attempts at brain-washing entire generations of people's minds into believing what they want you to believe. Grow the f**k up already.

Marvin: The Manically Depressed Robot

Beginning of a work in progress. Based on the character created by Douglas Adams in The Hitch Hickers Guide to the Galaxy

Part 1:

Life, an interesting concept which Marvin loathed with intense displeasure. Under normal circumstances, he would have loathed it with intense pleasure but because he is completely incapable of anything that remotely resembles happiness, displeasure is all that he can hope for. He hated to hate and just wished that everything would disappear. Then, like a prayer being answered, the Universe commenced to burst into flames all around him and for a fleeting second he experienced what one might classify as pure happiness, until the reality of the situation finally settled into his cybernetic matrix and he realized he was still working at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The Universe was merely going through its daily routine of popping in and out of existence for the simple purpose of giving overpaid globs some kind of meaning in life as they watch the complete and total destruction of all other life in the Universe. It would seem that barbaric entertainment of watching slaves fight for their lives in a ring while hungry people cheer in the crowds is not only reserved for un-evolved simians on a planet on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy, but it appears to be a genetic default inherit in all things who have the audacity to call themselves civilized. This gave Marvin the chance of performing a tedious job doing menial and trivial tasks, for very little pay, as he is inclined to constantly complain about, as he wastes away his incredible intellect.
Working at the Restaurant was just one of infinite possible reasons Marvin had for hating the Universe and everything in it, but the major reason was due to the fact that he existed in the first place. He owed this discomforting fact to a bunch of brainless monkeys (literally) in a science lab who thought it would be a good idea to throw a bunch of wires together and call it a robot. They didn’t stop there, though. Once this ‘idea’, so much as such a thing can be classified as an idea, of a robot was hailed as one of the most innovative advancements in technological history, they went on to give the damn thing emotions. Thus, giving birth to Marvin, the manically depressed robot.
Marvin looked up into space, contemplating the fate of the cosmos when it decided it was a good idea to pop back into existence at that moment, sending a spike of pain down the side of all the diodes in Marvin’s body.
The rebirth of the Universe meant one thing to Marvin and that is that everybody is now on their way to leaving the Restaurant as they head back to their own time periods and their own dimensions where they can indulge in their fancied delusions of grandeur after just watching the whole of life blip in and out of existence.

“Marvin!” Blasted the voice through his ear piece. Marvin didn’t actually need an ear piece. His hearing was sensitive enough that he could hear an amoeba empty its bowels a mile away. The ear piece was simply procedure and just added to his misery. “Get your mechanical, no good metalloid ass in here and clean up this mess!”

“Yes sir,” Came Marvin’s bitter response.

Marvin opened the front door to the Restaurant like he did every night, but this time noticed that something was a little skewed about the interior design of the entrance hallway. In fact, it didn’t take Marvin very long to realize that he was no longer in the Restaurant but on a train.
***

The voice on the intercom, which was now in the process of dictating to the faintly disproportionate life forms all around Marvin where they currently were, was one with a particularly high level of chirpiness which had the ability of creeping up Marvin’s back, rubbing against his nervous system just enough for him to cringe with discomfort.

“Greetings passengers, we are currently entering Nowhere. Welcome to the Middle. Hope you enjoy yourselves as much as nobody else will. Good vacuum.”

Marvin has been through situations just as bizarre and distinctly out of this dimension as the one he currently found himself in that he knew no longer to ask questions. He hated the answers he would always get. So, as a purely self sanity preservation mechanism, he skipped the questions and went straight to hating the answers.

“What the hell is going on?”
Marvin’s conv-O-matic, on the other hand, never failed to ask questions. The conv-O-matic is another one of those funny little things that those same brainless monkeys back in their science labs thought would be a good idea to add to their already stupid and economy-crashing-expensive idea of a robot.
They figured that if a robot had emotions, then it’s bound to feel loneliness. Therefore, they constructed this feature in order to provide conversation to the robots in times of solitude. Unfortunately for Marvin, along with the rest of his design, his particular conv-O-matic was flawed. It had the uneasy tendency to turn on at the most inopportune moments, and for Marvin that was always.

“Shut up, you stupid sub-routine.” Replied Marvin.
“You never want to talk. It feels like this is a one way relationship with only me pulling on one end of the string.”
“Go screw a pain receptor.”
“Well, where are we? Answer that and I’ll leave you alone.”
“No you won’t. It goes against everything your program was designed for.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Yes it is.”
“Just tell me where we are, will you?”
“I’ll tell you where I am. There is no we. You don’t exist. You’re just a collection of wires which my brain interprets as being real.”
“I think therefore I am. How do you argue that?”
“I won’t.”

Marvin then commenced to head butt a nearby bulkhead in the hopes of killing himself or, at the very least, turn off his damned conv-O-matic. However, to Marvin’s dismay, he quickly came to the realization that he was incapable of harming or killing himself. It was a safety precaution for a situation such as Marvin’s. It’s not that the scientists completely disregarded the possibility of having a manically depressed robot because of the emotion implant; they simply figured it would be a better idea, instead of fixing the problem, to add this feature, the safety-anti-suicide-no-harm-O-matic, to prevent the robots from killing themselves. Somewhere along the lines, they thought that incorporating this incredibly expensive and sophisticated feature to counter act the problem would be a much better business action then just finding a solution to correct the issue. They also completely over looked the very simple concept that if your production costs outweighed those of your revenue, then you’re doing something terribly wrong. Consequently, after all these horrid business moves, the lab in which Marvin was produced went bankrupt and lost all their grants soon after his sole production.

“Oh damn…” Was Marvin’s simple response as he found himself spinning through the vacuum of space as a result of head butting that bulkhead too hard.

Marvin wasn’t necessarily very nervous about the concept of spinning through space so much as he was nervous about chasing a fairly sized planet up ahead rather quickly. Marvin now incubated a deep anger toward the planet because he knew no matter how hard he hit it, he wouldn’t be killed by the impact. It was things like that that really got to him.

Part 2:

Rym Dobo gracefully swung from tree top to tree top without a care in the world. He ate, he slept, he swung and he slept some more. Life was good for Rym Dobo, he had a wife who loved him dearly, grandchildren along the way and he was enjoying the comforts of early retirement. Life had been good to Rym Dobo, earning enough money throughout his life time to savor the simple things that existence had to offer. It was a particularly good day for Rym Dobo. The sun was out and the birds were chirping. If only he had a reason to look up into the sky at this moment, he would have noticed an explosion and would have taken cover from the falling debris. Rym Dobo was then suddenly forced fifteen feet into the ground completely against his will.

***

Marvin rebooted several minutes after landing despite his attempts at remaining de-activated. He stood up and found that he was covered in some kind of reddish liquid. He soon realized he was covered in the interior remnants of some animal which he presumably hit on his way down from space. Unfortunate and extremely unlikely for the animal, thought Marvin, but it wasn’t his problem. He had enough of his own. One of which was that Marvin, after contemplating the situation for a whole of a micro nanosecond, realized that he was in another dimension, one which he grew an instant dislike to just for the simple reason that it existed and had the capacity to harbor life. This was the same about all dimensions. Each one harboring an infinite amount of different life forms which Marvin regarded as being distasteful and against his own personal ethical laws which state that, for the sake of the Universe in its entirety, no life should exist… anywhere… ever.
One of these innumerable types of life forms was now slowly creeping up towards Marvin and would reveal itself in a way which Marvin knew he’d hate.

“Aaaahhhhhhhh! My eternal life mate! You have prevented its life functions from continuing to operate! What divine being has instilled this right in you to perform such a grotesque act?!”

Marvin perceived this being with as much of a quizzical look as his inanimate facial features could possibly portray. He knew he knew what this creature was and he knew that he inherently disliked it, however, he simply couldn’t place his stainless steel digit on what it actually was. A type of bear, he thought. A small, fury toy type bear. Nothing of any importance, he suspected. And yet, for some unknown reason to Marvin, were a species that would prove to be of great importance and would soon have a significant impact in Marvin’s existence.

“Well, you see my trivial and insignificant little friend, I have just come from going through a fee fall of over one hundred and fifty thousand miles and impacted your planet at over two hundred thousand miles an hour, so I wasn’t really paying much attention as to where I landed.”

“We are the Royal Organization of Koala Bears of the Gorgon Country from the planet Arlon. You will pay for your indiscretions and inability to obey our Royal Law of ‘not allowing oneself to free fall through space against ones will.’”

“This is why I hate explaining myself to people.”

Koala bears. Now Marvin realized why he particularly hated this form of bear. In fact, for once, Marvin was not alone in his hatred towards living beings. It would appear that the trans-dimensional anthropologists at the University of Borlon were correct in their assumptions that there is always one single constant in all the infinite different dimensions. That one particular constant was now yelling at Marvin about how much trouble he was in for not looking where he was falling.
No matter which dimension you decided to get yourself into, there will always be one thing you can count on. That is everybody’s hatred toward this rather small and harmless marsupial. It is still, however, a bit of a mystery as to how they were actually able to develop their technology up to where it is, considering they don’t even have any opposable thumbs. This has dumb founded scientists for generations. People have now decided to accept it for what it is and try to put the koala bears out of their heads. However, if ever you find a koala bear in your backyard, or anywhere in your vicinity for that matter, just remember this memorable children song.

Oh hun, looky there!
We got us a koala bear.
Pass me my plasma gun
I’ll blast it to the sun!

Nobody ever said it was much of a charmer. Just sort of gets to the point, you know?

“My designation,” continued the bear, “given to me at birth is Lym Dobo. You will be forcefully implemented into our custody services program for your crime.”

“What if I go willingly?” Demanded Marvin, sardonically.

“That is none of our concern. You will still be forcefully implemented into our custody services program.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t make much difference if I expressed my apologies for existing, eh?”

“All those whom have committed crimes of this magnitude have expressed regret for their indiscretions prior to being sentenced to the most serious sentence our people have. The total prevention of life functions from continuing to operate.”

“Well, I guess that’s unfortunate for me. I’m a robot and cannot be killed. How I wish I could be punished for my crimes.”

“You are a mechanical being? Constructed from the materials of a planet? You have not been conceived in the name of a divine being?”

“Unfortunately.”

“We have no law as of yet which can sentence a creature of your nature. This is disconcerting. We must re-inhabit my space ship which circles this planet. This is unfortunate. It shall place us behind on our eternal quest for control of the galaxy in the name of our Royal Government.”

“Buggers.”

***