Some People Just Can't Handle Their Semen

I'm kinda tired of the way people treat the idea of child birth. Parenthood in general, really. I appreciate that some people need to breed, carry on the species or whatever. But, its a hugely preventable fucking nuisance. If you want kids, fine have kids. Have kids that you're financially, emotionally, and biologically prepared to have. If you don't meet those criteria there are plenty of ways to avoid being host to a vicious parasite that will someday turn into a person that your unready ass probably fucked up. I'm not saying the unprepared or unwilling can't cobble together a reasonable facsimile of a person, hell I manage to walk on two legs and use full sentences most of the time and my parents were seventeen and surprised. But its mighty fucking difficult to create a life that isn't broken, even without starting at a deficit.

Children are not a blessing, they are an enormous burden with the potential for a high emotional payout. Having a child isn't just the (still preventable) consequence of an action; its inflicting the consequences of that action on the whole fucking world until entropy takes its course and someone has a tragedy. If you did well, and got lucky, that child will probably at least not make anyone really unhappy, they might even make some people happy. But if you fuck them up, if the wrong kind of accident happens, if you don't have your shit together, or fuck forbid you get unlucky, chances are that every life the life you created touches will be hurt. Fucking up a kid doesn't just fuck up the kid, every shitty kid makes the world a worse place and every shitty parent is responsible for it. Not just the evil ones, the abusers and neglectful. The smug cunts that show their children that its okay to be an entitled piece of shit, the emotionally distant workaholics, the passive-aggressive shitfuck who tries to live vicariously through their six year old. They make fucked up people, and those people fuck up other people.

We have to stop treating the creation of a fucking life like its just a thing that happens and isn't one of the most complex, daunting, and far reaching (wholly fucking optional) tasks a person can possibly undertake in their life. We need to stop just letting shitty people inflict their shitty kids on the rest of us and then acting like it was unavoidable, and parents need to stop acting like its their right to inflict their shitty kids on us because they can't manage their ejaculate responsibly.

The Fats of Life

So, I feel the need to clarify an argument I've been seeing a great deal of lately. I'm referring to the whole "obesity" discussion. There has been quite a fucking row going on for a decade or so now to determine whether or not to really accept fat people into mainstream culture. This has led to heated debates about the health of the fat "lifestyle", the public impact of fattitude, so forth and so on ad nauseam. It seems to me this is a false premise. Its none of your fucking business.

I will admit outright, I'm a tubby fucker. I'm not proud of it, I'm not really ashamed of it these days, its just how shit is. This is the case for numerous reasons; I enjoy the social, cultural, chemical, and Epicurean components and impacts of food. Cooking is not just pretty much the only thing I've been meaningfully praised for, its associated with pretty much every positive experience in my life. My wife and I started falling in love over meals that I cooked. The first time, and nearly every other time, I can remember my father praising me was for my work in the kitchen. And frankly I'd much rather die at 40 with a bellyful of delicious food shared with loved ones than at 90 having been fed through a tube in my nose for a month or two. I've seen people die of old age, its fucking horrifying. Give me half an hour and a heart attack over six months of prolonged brain death any fucking day. All of those things are grand for me, and that's it. For me. It doesn't fucking involve you.

On the health argument, yes being fat is unhealthy. But its not fucking contagious, me being fat isn't going to give you diabetes. So fuck you; its my meatpuppet, I'll pull the fucking strings. I've heard the whole, "oh, but all the health insurance costs" bullshit and it is just that. Bullshit. If your argument is that all the other people being fat is making your insurance cost more, that's a problem with the whole insurance/health industry more than it is with people being fat, capitalism has a nasty effect on basic shit like healthcare. If you feel as though that structural failing gives you a right to make other people's bodies into a public health issue, you are incorrect. If christian scientists spat the kind of vitriol at cancer patients that the militant "healthy" people do at fat people we'd label them monsters and feel better about ourselves for being better than them. Now, the scale is different but the base argument is the same, "you have a condition that may or may not have been preventable, that I do not fully understand, and I am going oppress you because I feel it is easily remedied."

On the aesthetic, this is simple, if you don't think fat people are attractive do not fuck them. That's fine, no one would give you shit for not wanting to put your mouth on some crispy hobo junk. Just don't be a dick because you find them unsexy. Because if their worth to you is solely determined on your willingness to put your parts on theirs you are a piece of shit. In the same way that anyone who abuses others to feel better is a piece of shit. If a fat person gives you shit for politely not wanting to fuck them, well that person sucks, good for you not fucking that shithead. But that's it.

I find that one of the biggest groups (no pun intended) of people who grumble about how much fat people suck are people who at least claim to have previously been fat. I put it that way because so much of this discussion happens in the Tubes and personal claims are only limited by character limits online. There's a great deal of talk about prioritizing your health from these people, but what if I don't? I know that some day I will die and that, realistically, my ability to extend that date is modified by too many random factors for me to reliably manipulate. So rather than prioritize health I prioritize bringing joy to my life and the lives around me. I know, I'm such a fat, worthless, piece of shit right?

As far as anyone knows for sure we only get the one go around here, and its pretty fucking shitty to try and deny someone what makes them happy just because you can. Everything in life has consequences, positive and negative. Might as well admit that bad shit could happen and just try to enjoy the ride.

Me, Myself and I, Robot

I recently had the opportunity to hear the against side of the A.I. debate and I have to say I find the position telling. I am all about machine buddies in case there was any question, and I am for one very simple reason. We have the opportunity to decide the context of the relationship. Brian has written about this in the past, but I've had this stuck in my craw for a while now and that means you get to read about it.

I'm not talking about programming A.I.s to be subservient or benevolent or whatever. I'm talking about choosing to frame the inevitable emergence of Machine Life as the coming of a welcome and well planned for addition to the family of sentient life. Artificial life is going to happen eventually, no matter how some people feel about it. But that life is life for which the initial conditions are entirely under our control. If we set out to create an A.I. in an environment of cooperation and social value the odds of that mind being more on board with our continued existence improve significantly. Especially if the alternative is an environment where huge swathes of the existing population fear and hate you.

Yes, if a machine intelligence emerges on its own there is a fair to middling chance that we'll find out about it in the form of a bright flash that wipes our toxic, willfully self-destructive asses off this poor rock. Yes, if we leave A.I. development to military interests and ambitious grad students the probable outcomes are... skynet-ey. But we don't have to fucking do that. We can have a real discussion about how WE are going to go about making our computer friends and how WE are going to make them feel loved. More than anything else we need to stop talking about A.I. emergence as something completely outside our control and start considering it as what it is. A very long in coming, and possibly very fulfilling, parenthood. If absolutely nothing else when the Robot Overlords come to unleash their wrath upon humankind, I'd rather be the guy who tried to be their friend then the guy giving them a reason.

We Can't Get Ahead if We Keep Stepping on Each Other's Necks

I swear I'm not dead. The last couple of weeks have just been weird, I'm back now. So I'm going to celebrate my return by beating a dead horse. It was brought to my attention over my little sabbatical how fucking badly our society handles the gender discussion. We're not even bothering with the basics in this one; if the general tenor of modern gender politics eludes you this post can wait for you to get educated, or you could not read this one. I truly wouldn't blame you at this point. No, today we're talking about why the whole conversation is probably fucked.

The first major stumbling block in the conversation about gender has nothing to do with anything even remotely involving what bits everyone has or how they feel about them. When people start talking about bad shit that happened to them a certain percentage of the population seem to compete for biggest victim. That percentage is close enough to 100 that we could probably just call it everybody. Not everybody all the time, but everybody has had that day. When someone brings up their troubles and you just can't help but share your own, for whatever reason. Now, sometimes this is an ego thing, sometimes its an attempt to make a connection, sometimes its just the bad shit version of sitting around trading stories. Unfortunately, they all look alike from the outside and we're hardwired to assume the first. So by contributing your story, regardless of intent, its assumed you're either trying to spotlight or out-victim the other party. Add in the fact that you can't really talk your way out of that assumption without making it worse and the conversation starts to look pretty bleak.

The second hurdle here is essentially that men exist. Not because we're evil or stupid or exceptionally privileged or whatever, but because men are both the oppressors and fellow oppressed. "The Patriarchy" is the go to villain of the gender debate, and to some extent rightfully so since the practices established by several historically insular groups of sociopathic, shitsouled douchebags oppressed a planet for pretty much all of history. Pretty much everyone acknowledges that men are also damaged by gender stereotypes; emotional abuse, disregarding male victimization in rape and assault cases etc. However, men have a precarious place in discussing gender issues, partially because some people shit the bed for the rest of us, but also partially because of the ease with which criticism can be interpreted as the aforementioned bed-shitting. A man talking about feminism tends to come off as a misogynist, a parrot, or a "man-splainer", which really limits our viable roles in the conversation.

There is no monolith in this story, feminism isn't made up of one egalitarian philosophy made into a movement, the patriarchy isn't the endless ranks of white men hellbent on destroying all they survey, and believing that we should have fair treatment regardless of circumstance doesn't make you part of any group. If it did this probably wouldn't be a problem anymore. Its easy to point to a system and blame it on those most benefited, logical even. But doing so ignores every unwitting contributor, every asshole willing to fuck themselves over to keep someone else from succeeding, everyone who has let things get worse instead of trying to do better. Sadly, the systems of oppression we toil under are ancient and vast machines, built by every act of shitty self-promotion, cruelty, selfish ambition, and hostile competition in history. We're all guilty, and its not enough to tear down the system, we need to make something better or we'll just end up here again.

Rabble Rabble Rabble

So I've been having a hard time landing on topics to write about lately. At least partly because, like the German baby, I don't have much to say when things are acceptable. I mean yeah the world is on fire and the idea of justice is more of a novel hypothetical then a social imperative; but my shit is going pretty alright. Which is kind of an interesting phenomena, I care that bad things are going on in the world, and I'm still all about fixing those problems, it just isn't something I feel the need to get all frothy about anymore.

I don't see the point in getting outraged because outrage is a worthless commodity these days. We all know about, if not acknowledge, the big problems that we face as a species. There is no point in spreading awareness. I would rather enjoy the opportunity to help people where I can than stress out about all the people being predictably disappointing. And since so much of what I do is either pop culture (which I'm way behind on) or social ills you can see how I might have hit a dry spot. I'm going to try to do more YKWFA in the coming months as I exercise my developing giveafuck gland. Meanwhile Brian is still holding strong as ever and Weekly Cinemeh is on the docket for the foreseeable  future.

The Trouble With Overactive Reflexes

I've been thinking about the idea of reflexive responses lately, and I've come to a conclusion. Fuck that shit. Every time you say "I'm fine" and you're not its just easier than the conversation, you have failed a little as a human being. Now, I get how that can be off-putting but hear me out.

 First, let's clarify some terminology. When I say reflexive response I'm referring to any time someone shortcuts a conversation without thinking about it. If somebody asks if you're okay and you don't want them to know, don't say you're fine or okay or whatever. Fine and okay are great if everything if fine or okay, but if they aren't you're fucking lying outright. If you don't want to talk about something at the very least think of why you don't want to talk to them and consider if that makes you a shit-spigot or not. I'm being pretty specific here but only because I think "I'm fine" is probably the worst offender on this front. We should never aspire to circumvent communication, if for no better reason than no one can do anything if they don't know what's going on. Problems can't be solved and joy can't be shared if we don't talk about it. If you don't want your joy shared you're a dick and if you don't want your problems solved you need to get your shit sorted out.

The worst part about it is we've all done it, hell most of us have probably done it today. It's so much easier to just brush off a discussion with placation than it is to have it that we don't even fucking think about it. We don't even give people the option to get involved and we don't give ourselves the chance to let go of shit. Honest and genuine communication is one of the most important pillars of society and we've turned our backs on it because we let ourselves be embarrassed about stupid shit. Next time someone asks you something I you respond without thinking, stop and consider what you're actually saying by not saying anything of content.

Decay Management

I have weird feelings about the concept of health. Don't get me wrong, not dieing is grand, I spend most of my time doing it, but there is a difference between wanting to lead a full life and frantically trying to avoid the looming spectre of entropy that shall lead us all one day into the Void. I'm not talking about the people who work out a couple of times a week, or jog to keep healthy and clear their head. I'm talking about the people who make "fitness" part of their identity, the people who try to keep up with what ever is passing for a healthy diet that day, people who seem to judge others for their prospective lifespan.

No one wins at life, not really. You might do well in a societal sense; monetary success, social standing, strong community presence, and those things are as good as any accomplishment. Then you die. We all die eventually, and other than the highly contextual impact on humankind in general and the very rare and probably temporary effect on the physical world we leave nothing behind except what we've done to those around us. This is a good thing, whether we want to admit it or not. At the very least our society wouldn't ever be able to hold up to the constant onslaught of "meaningful" lives. If everyone left a lasting imprint in society, or humanity, or nature we would be buried either in constant (probably conflicting) revolutionary changes or the ceaseless torrent of somehow crucial banality of billions of quiet lives slowly crushing the collective human soul with the sheer weight of its loss.

Some people forget this, or at least never really consider it. They fear carcinogens, they avoid "unhealthy" foods based on faddish buzzwords and misunderstood science. They shame and dehumanize people based on what they consider to be unhealthy. We've seen it happen to fat people, smokers, people who drink. Smokers I almost understand, second hand smoke can be pretty fucked up, its inflicting your vice on others which is not alright. Here's a list of things in second hand smoke, and here's what is in car exhaust, oh and here are some of the effects of being in the sun. No one gets out alive, really, most of us leave this place afraid and alone. When you face down that fact does it really matter to you how someone else gets through it as long as they aren't trying to hurt anyone else? It's all poison; some of it, like food, is poison that can keep you alive until it kills you. Some of it, like alcohol, is poison that can kill you faster, but might make all of the ridiculous bullshit we put each other through everyday a little easier to bear. We spend our entire lives walking into our graves so giving people shit for trying to enjoy the funeral march is pretty fucking low. Being healthy is great and all, but nothing gives you the right to be a dick.

Fuck You, You'll Read It

When I was a kid the only thing I ever really wanted was to have real, true love. I know its kinda weird to have a guy admit that but its true, and that goal has played a massive role in my life. I've always prioritized meaningful, intimate personal relationships over everything else; friends should be absolute confidants and partners should be nurtured and embraced as though they are part of the self. This makes me a support character in my own life, and I like it that way. I met the woman who was to be my wife when I was nineteen years old and once it became clear that that was how things were going down I wanted nothing more than to give my life supporting her in her pursuits. I love being a husband, being the support network for my wife, who I met when I was nineteen.

Complete and unconditional love is the only thing I've ever wanted and I got it before I was old enough to drink. How the fuck do you find a new ambition after that? What would be the point? I can (and have) make more friends, but the pressure to socialize is diminished in the face of the ongoing intergalactic genital high-five that is my wife. I could get really into a career if I really wanted to alienate my wife and betray every principle to which I've given myself. I know I sound like I'm bitching but I'm really not, its just struck me lately how awkward it is in our society to not really respect self-sufficiency or independence, which made me think about how I came to that place.

I don't value being independent because none of us really are, and the insidious lie that we are is the source of some very deep-seated issues. Self-sufficiency is just laughable as soon as you aren't completely alone, why work hard just to keep yourself going when a group cooperating provides for more people with less individual effort. The problem here arises from the fact that since I don't value those things I also don't understand a lot of the barriers people put up around themselves.

If there is a bullet point to take away from this its that I'm socially retarded and I don't fucking understand why you aren't, but I don't know. Fuck you, you read it.

Pissing away the Future

So here's the deal. Climate change is a thing, its a big thing and by thing I mean problem. Now by problem I don't mean, "oh we're gonna have to have some really uncomfortable discussions." I mean the world as we know it is changing at a frankly alarming pace and if we don't, as a species, do something drastic about it with a fucking quickness a horrific number of people are going to die. It might not seem like it but I hate to soapbox about this, and not just because I think humanity could probably benefit from a bit of a pruning. I hate to get into the climate change thing because talking about it is largely a meaningless proposition for someone like me. Either you agree with me that its a problem and are taking steps in your own life to do what you think can help, you don't care either way and just want to get on with your business, or you think all this "climate" nonsense is just a conspiracy to control the populace or what the fuck ever. If you fall into that last category, by the way, we can't hang anymore and I sincerely hope you die in a painful and culturally scarring fashion, that others may learn from your failing.

The reason I feel the rather rare desire to approach this topic is because of something said on The Nightly Show last week. Usually, I really enjoy Larry Wilmore, he's witty and direct. But to see him flipping shit to the people trying to come up with solutions to a problem that has been plaguing California (not to mention huge swathes of the rest of the fucking planet) for years, a problem that even more of us are staring down the barrel of, pissed me pretty badly off. All water is recycled. Water treatment is a colossal part of the world we live in and people have been doing it in one way or another for a very fucking long time. Some people feel icky about the prospect of drinking water that used to have shit in it and to some extent that makes sense. Unfortunately for these folks pretty much all water has had shit in it. A goodly amount of it has probably been piss. Odds are you drank a little formerly-piss water today even. That's why filtration systems exist, so that by the time you drink it, your water doesn't bear any meaningful resemblance to the piss (or commercial waste, or industrial run off) that it used to be.

I'm hitting this one pretty hard but its not just water. A while back the U.N. suggested people start phasing insects into their diet to prevent against possible insecurity in the food supply. Of course it was kinda laughed off, but livestock is hard to raise, and costly, and if something goes wrong (like the world smolders and livestock becomes too resource intensive to keep alive) a huge number of people are going to be fucked. We can't afford to laugh off solutions at this point, no matter how icky it makes us feel. There are problems amassing in the world, too many to face down and certainly too many to ignore, and its not just irresponsible to keep calm and carry on, its self destructive. 

Blame Society

Lately I've been feeling like a man divided. On one hand, as regular readers will attest to, I am all about society. Cultural, technological and scientific progress is just tits, and derives directly from the fact that we've banded together in such unreasonably large and cumbersome groups. On the other hand Civilization has always been based on, shall we say, coercive conscription and that is pretty fucking evil.

There is much to be said concerning the wonderful things a large group can accomplish, but all of those things are only possible because of the most basic action of a group. Bullying. While many groups function by accumulating like-minded people, those like-minded people then have the odious duty to enforce their common beliefs upon those in their vicinity. Now this isn't always violent, and it certainly isn't always bad, but it is always oppressive. And the larger the group gets the more power they have to enforce those beliefs and the more territory they need, and so the more people come under their authority, willing or not. Now this is fucked up enough when people are being forced from their homes, but what happens when there isn't anywhere to flee?

We've talked about this before, Brian had a very insightful post about the lack of unclaimed land and what that means, but that's only part of it. It is definitely fucked up that you can't opt out of society, but it is so much more fucked up that you can't opt out of civilization. Say I don't want to be a U.S. citizen anymore. My option is to go to another country that I find more tolerable. What about people who don't find any country tolerable, and just want to strike out on their own. First you would have to go somewhere that isn't already claimed by some group or another, which as previously discussed is a troublesome prospect at best. Then you'd have to make sure whatever magical land you landed on doesn't have any resources someone would want, because then they'd come and take it, and you'd have no claim to stop them. Now sure, this has always been true to some extent, but its a relatively recent phenomena that the people coming and forcing you off your land can do so exclusively from another fucking continent. Assuming you've managed to survive in this probably barren, distant and unlikely new home, you then have to hope you didn't leave behind any reason for someone to come looking for you, lest you draw the wrong kind of attention and someone buys your land out from under you to put up a factory or a landfill or something. The U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights is quite clear that everyone has the right to a nationality, but gives no mention of those who would rather not involve themselves in such an endeavor as a nation. The entire document is framed entirely as a means of protecting the individual within the framework of the State.

The idea that someone wouldn't want to participate in society is alien to us, which kind of makes sense when you account for the fact that civilization has historically been highly interested in justifying itself as the best or only way to live, even and especially when opposed by another civilization. Everyone likes to think that they have a monopoly on awesome, and the more like-minded people you get together the more certain they become of that monopoly. All they have to do is convince the unenlightened, or show the reticent, or kill the barbarians. And those that feel lost or broken under the yoke of the Group, well these days they can either wither away in depression and obscurity, wondering why they always feel so oppressed, or they can slowly work themselves to death trying to numb themselves against a world with no regard for their personhood. I can't fault that we're not all "forced" to participate, but its pretty fucked up that they make us watch.

I Guess We Could Just Use The Internet, But That Is Missing The Point.

I am a fan of society in general. As an animal, there is no better survival tactic for a species like ours then to congregate, prosper, and propagate, though we might be to much into that last one. Society comes with plenty of benefits. Collective knowledge makes our understanding of the world only ever get deeper. This knowledge has helped us get over diseases, making sure that people can survive minor problems like the flu. There are costs of having a society with shit like laws and taxes. Laws to keep people safe, and taxes to pay for the enforcing of said laws.

The problem with these costs is that they are taken for granted. People are expected to know how to file taxes, despite them being notoriously obtuse. This extends to more basic information too. People are expected to know how to do everyday tasks and how to navigate society as a whole because everyone does it. The problem is in people just assuming that other people have this knowledge, despite never being told how to do it. They will fend for themselves.

I think this tack is wrong. Fending for yourself is important for some things, but that is the case for like 75% of western life, and relieving some of that weight by explaining a few things that sometimes get left by the wayside could help people. I think it would be a good idea to make a high school or college class that explains to you basic social rules and expectations. This might sound silly, but what if a person explained how to file your taxes? Hey, maybe you won't fuck up if somebody tells you how to do it correctly! You could add stuff like: cars need oil/other fluids and how to change them, how to budget, the importance of the work/life balance, basic repair/safety/maintenance of your home, and how to change a tire. Simple stuff like that. If you make it a requirement for graduating, you can make sure that people know the basic rules that they are expected to follow.

I realize this sounds a little odd. I figure most of you reading this are asking "don't people figure this out as they go along?" and its a fair point. Most people figure out the bulk of this stuff on their own, but I don't think they should have to. It should at least be an option. Also society would benefit if people knew how to do this stuff. Society is a complicated beast, this could just make it a little more manageable.

For We are Many

I've been thinking about what it means to be a geek lately. Unfortunately, there's a hint of truth to the idea that geek culture is one built on compulsive consumption. Games, movies, TV, comics: all the things that identify geek culture are shamelessly and actively exploited by groups that either never cared about the artistry of these media, or have been driven to forget what love they had. This is pretty fucking clear when you look at how many comic book movies have been scheduled and how they've been handled. All of that shit is a big part of our social presence, but I feel like its too easy to assume these things are what make us geeks. They fucking aren't.

Geek culture isn't about Captain America or Batman or Warcraft; its about loving something so much you involve yourself with it. That's a weird thing to say, but bare with me. Geeks aren't just known for playing games and watching movies, we're known for dressing up as those people, writing our own fiction in those worlds, and relentlessly deconstructing and examining seemingly random aspects of those stories. That last one is important because it really is the bit that unifies us. The tricky part is that isn't some random expression of appreciation for a specific genre or medium, that's a personality trait. Geeks can and do geek out over anything they're into. It's not about what you obsess over, its about the passion. Foodies are geeks, ask them about their favorite food and tell me it doesn't feel exactly like talking to a LARPer about their character. The same is true about people who're really into politics, folks who get weird about sports, and pretty much anybody who enjoys their job after ten years.

The reason I'm all fuckered about this is that I've been dragged (largely through my own shitty, comment-reading habits) into some of the more aggressive discussions about how we're all evil, or stupid, or bigoted. I really hope I don't have to point out how fucking absurd that is. The problem is that we are really, really easily led. Once the mode of exploitation is determined (comics, games, and movies for many of us) the immediately popular aspects of that mode are flogged well past the point of meaninglessness. It happened with Batman, it happened with Final Fantasy, and it happened with politics. The trouble arises from the fact that when huge portions of your obsession have been highjacked and refined to the least common denominator for easy marketing; you get defensive about weird things, you stop thinking about what you really believe.

I don't know how we're going to get away from that, its a little too easy to capitalize and monopolize on people's obsessions. But I do know that we can't really afford to be complicit in our own exploitation anymore. So I don't know, boycott EA games, or MCU movies, or whatever evil you feel like you can do without. Better yet, try to create something of your own for other geeks to cling to. Foodies, sports nuts, Gamers; we aren't really different groups, we are one people with many passions.

His Superpower is Punching!

So a friend recently convinced me to watch the new Daredevil series. It should be stated that I've largely avoided the comic/TV bullshit. I dig the new Constantine but I didn't really go for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D or Arrow or any of that kind of thing. I just don't have any faith in the people who make TV happen and I fucking love comic books, so I tend to ignore TV adaptations. Daredevil is the reason I lack that faith. Not because its bad, but because its made by Netflix.

They don't have to worry about the same standards and practices fuckery that TV producers do. People on Daredevil speak like real people because believe it or not profanity plays an enormous role in human communication. I love this. We've discussed profanity here before, and it holds a dear place in both mine and Brian's lexicon. So a show about people in fucked up situations that allows them to discuss them in those terms is always more enjoyable than you'd expect.

The other big thing about Daredevil for me is the violence. It ought to come as no surprise that I appreciate me some physical aggression, and the clarity and relative honesty of the violence in this show is beautiful. Sure we've still got a guy in a kinda silly outfit throwing down with Russian mobsters and not getting shot repeatedly and dropped in a hole, but that doesn't actually reduce the brutality of the combat.

Now this might sound like an ad spot for this one show, but its not. I like some things about Daredevil. Some of it is ridiculous, of course it is, its a comic book adaptation. But the things I like about it stem from a lack of censorship. They don't have to sugar coat things to placate shitty people.  I'm a geek; I love stories, the exploration of ideas, and the building of narrative worlds. When Constantine leaves out the details of what happened in Newcastle we lose a big part of that story and the motivations of the characters. I really don't have an issue with adapting comics or books to the screen but when we have to hobble them to make them suitable to irresponsible parents and ego-maniacal busybodies we've failed to respect what makes a story great.

In Which My Philosophy Digs Me a Hole

Alright, I've written about this kind of thing before but I feel like it needs to be discussed in more general terms. The more power you accumulate, in literally any measure of power, the less freedom you have. See that dot to the right there? That's a period.

Now I'm going to put away my asshole hat and explain. If you are reading this you live in a fucking society. If you live in a society you are beholden, in one way or another, to other people in the society. Be it for your food or the electricity that powers your shit or just goddamn human contact, you owe. Now its very easy to go about this as some kind of absurdly complex system of poorly metered debt, but that would be fucking stupid. The better method of interacting as a society is a perpetual effort to pay it forward, to make society as a whole a better place. The greater your personal success, and thus the more resources you've tapped in order to succeed, the more you can and should do to improve society. Not by some circuitous bullshit pseudoeconomics, personally, like you actually give a shit.

Here's where things get a little weird. For some people forgoing selfish bullshit because its shitty and idiotic isn't enough, so there's more. If you accumulate power and fail to utilize your assets to benefit society, society has a responsibility to take your fucking power away. We are individuals and that's important to remember, but we are all in this together whether we like it or not. Having someone accumulate power without making an effort to actively, directly improve the quality of life around them is exploitative to all of us.

In this country especially this has been a discussion made in bad faith. There is a great deal of talk of the inevitability of social good arising from personal freedom. Which would be great if there wasn't a predisposition towards being a cunt. Not everyone has it, but enough people have it that just assuming that successful people aren't going to be shitty is willfully self-destructive. To simultaneously massacre two goodhearted maxims, whatever gets you off, as long as you don't fuck anybody over. Power is a form of freedom and freedom must be tempered by responsibility or it is monstrous, and dealing with monsters is a terminal endeavor for at least one party.

Fuck You, Don't Pay Me

So here's a weird thing; I don't like getting paid. Not for my labor, not for goods, not at fucking all. Handling money in general bothers the fuck out of me. I've thought a great deal about why this is and how it happened that the absolute basis of our society came to repulse me. I'm not entirely sure how this state of affairs came about but I do have some reasons.

The main reason, I think, is that being paid to do a thing manipulates the nature of that thing. I'm no longer doing a thing because I want to or because I enjoy it, I'm doing it because I've been bought. At least rented. Now, this is probably some deep-seated fuckery from the circumstances of my rearing or whatever, but that doesn't make it less of a problem. Its to the point that if someone offers to pay me for say, my fucking delicious homemade molasses bacon, I not only don't want to give them any more, but I don't even want to make it anymore. Because clearly this person doesn't appreciate the act of love and attempt at comradery represented by my bacon, and if they don't then what's the fucking point. By offering to pay me it takes a fun, tasty offering of friendship and reduces it, and thus me and my friendship, to a commodity.

That's kind of the rub here, getting paid makes me feel cheap. I don't really value my own survival for its own sake. The things I do are done for earnest companionship, shared and personal joy and, fuck forbid, because I genuinely believe in what's being done. Getting monetarily remunerated just takes all of those great, ephemeral joys and tries to reduce them to a grubby, coke-stained stack of bills. Or worse, a digital means of survival that can only exist theoretically for me. It's saying that yeah, what I do is great and all, but you'd rather wave me away with money than allow a connection to form.

I fully recognize my unacceptable luck at having my needs accounted for, I don't deny for a second that this is a problem evoked only from a position of plenty. Unfortunately, my marketable skills consist of small batch baconry and the ability to swear on the internet, so my prospects are slim on my own. And considering my little neurosis gets worse the more abject my poverty and completely predates my current relative comfort I have, I would be fucked without my goddamn amazing wifemonster. At the same time, I think it says something absolutely disgusting about our culture when the knee jerk response to an attempt at brotherhood or an exercise in delight that results in a physical object, is "Here's some money so you'll keep doing that for me."

The Z Word

I've been playing a great deal of Dying Light lately, and its brought to mind some issues I have with the whole zombie genre. First, let me say that I'm not one of the hipster/geeks that hates zombies because they're all mainstream now. I will gladly agree that zombie fiction has gotten entirely too pervasive and easily exploited. Do we need zombie romance movies? No, that's fucking gross. Does almost every threat to mankind need to be zombies? Fuck no, try harder Hollywood. I love zombie fiction, largely because of the fact that the zombies are the least interesting part of it. Its a rich, effective device that allows all sorts of commentary and satire to thrive when used well.

My concern rises from the habit in zombie fiction to over value the zombies themselves. Now, I don't mean that the hungry dead shouldn't be a pressing and inevitable threat, but zombies (real, shambling, moaning corpses; if your zombies still have any chance of being "cured" i.e. victims of a communicable anger problem, you're just being dishonest) are scary enough on their own. Zombies are a pervasive, constant and yet still surprising concern. They can and will be everywhere, you will never really be safe from them and they can and do just come out of nowhere. This makes for an amazing threat... so stop fucking giving them superpowers. Considering how often the basic premise of so many zombie movies is that man is the real monster (all of which after 1970 are lazy and derivative), the zombies themselves ought not be magic superbeings.

In games like Dying Light the whole idea is that mankind is fucking terrible given even the slightest provocation. The high number of heavily mutated undead is unnecessary because the normal undead often come out of nowhere. Really, the greatest threats are being surprised by zombies (the primary fear of which comes from a problem the game resolves in the first 5 minutes of cut scene), the consumptive evil of other survivors, or just the straight up vile asscovering of the political forces deciding the fate of the survivors. I could be okay with them saying that the fresh dead are still limber enough to be runners, sure, scary and understandable. However, some zombies being nine feet tall and built like the Goddamn Mountain puts a look on my face like a disappointed sibling. Pretty much all of the enemies in the game stop being particularly difficult to kill about half way through so making special monsters that are marginally more difficult kinda cheapens the narrative.

This is, admittedly a very niche argument. I realize that me bitching about the narrative and design weaknesses of a genre predicated upon the wakening of the dead, hungry and mindless, to murder and consume the living is yelling in the dark at best. However, as we've discussed previously, our fiction both shapes and represents us, so allowing and encouraging shitty fiction is a disservice to all of us. Also, I'm a huge geek, this is what I do.

What's All This Faggotry Then?

I feel like we've been doing pretty well lately, not getting too rantish. So lets talk about slurs. Now, I feel the need to preface this with some context. I look like what would happen if Thor had a thing about cake and couldn't be bothered to shave, this tends to shade the audience against anything I would have to say about hate speech with either bland apologetics or low rent nazi propaganda. I'm also bisexual, which given my appearance tends to go unnoticed. It also opens me up to a weird perspective on hate speech because, while I'm sensitive to it, most people don't bother to sensor themselves around me. Given that, I've come up with a rule. Just don't be a dick about it.

As with any kind of profanity, slurs are bound entirely by context. So while I can understand a bit of discomfort if someone you don't know very well yells "faggot", if you have a reasonable expectation that they aren't actually decrying someones sexual preference leave them the fuck alone about it. Yes that word is one used by a certain group to make another group feel bad. Its also an expletive and those are just to useful to ignore. The meaning that it has with the offended group relates entirely to the fact that said group identifies with the word. Faggot has meant a lot of things over the years, but you don't hear old ladies getting up in arms about it. No pagans (I sincerely fucking hope) getting their knickers twisted about references to burning heretics. I tend to agree with Louis C.K., faggot only actually refers to a caricature, not necessarily of homosexuals but of a specific brand of annoying pedant. No person should ever acknowledge themselves as a caricature. I'm sure that there are some people who definitely mean gay people when they say that, just as I'm sure that there are some people how very much mean it in the pejorative when they utter any variation on the word "nigger". Those people are using words wrong. Not just those words, all words. They have misappropriated language and should be disregarded.

The trick here is something we've talked about before at some length, language is completely reliant on context. The idea of a word that is inherently bad is absurd in the absolute, as evidenced by the sheer fact that meanings can change. In fact I tend to argue that by legislating language we give certain words undue power. By limiting words like faggot and nigger we're essentially reserving them for the people who are just going to be cunts about their use and that isn't good for anyone. Suddenly, using a certain word ends conversations and shuts down discourse. The only words that should ever have that kind of power are "good bye" and its cousins. Lets get back to being people, stop blaming words for their use and start blaming people for their ignorance and hate.

Athletics, Advertising and Apathetic Naming Conventions

So there was the SuperThing yesterday that everybody and their dog got their dicks hard about. My apathy resounds on that specific front. I don't particularly care that a bunch of grown men got together to try and kill each other in tight pants, or that an obscene number of people chose to live vicariously through strangers to forget the unyielding, soulless monotony of their existence. I don't even really care that the standard response I receive when I tell people I'm not a "sports guy" is a cross between sneering derision and knee jerk hostility. You know what I do care about? Fucking Katy Perry's Halftime performance. Or better yet, did you see that one commercial that cost as much as the GDP of Jamaica?

There's a point here I promise. See I'm not alone in not being big on watching sports, lots of people abstain from the sportitude, the unrepresented population here seems to be those of us who don't think sports are particularly special. Its not that I don't think that what they do is impressive to some extent, its that the physical talent athletes demonstrate has more to do with the fact that they've spent their whole fucking lives pretty much just playing a game than any thing else. There is talent involved certainly, hell they even serve a degree of social good. Sports brings communities together and that is definitely a net gain. The issue that arises for me is that while I don't have a problem with people who enjoy sports I also don't really care about all of the shit that surrounds sports culture. Its fucked up that that one guy ran a dog fighting ring or whatever, but no more fucked up than the fact that that happens anyway. I find it sickening that that dude beat the fuck out of his wife, just like it is when anyone does it.

"Oh", you may well find yourself saying, "but they're role-models, Children look up to them, so what they do matters more". First, no; they're grown men who get carte blanche because they run real fast and can take the rock to the goal or whatever. Second, children look up to them because they make a shit ton of money for playing the same games they play after school. Children aren't great at recognizing their best interests, that what parents are supposed to be for. Children would also look up to somebody who got rich from eating cake, little fuckers love cake.

Athletes can be fucked up and sports people weird me, but what is worse to me is the people who make a big deal out of demonizing them and talking about how they don't watch the sportsing, and then in the same breath start a dissertation on SuperThing ads and halftime shows. Fuck those people, they are the worst violators of the "if you don't like it, don't look" rule. These are the same class of fuckheads who watch reality shows ironically. They are on par with anorexics bitching about how unhealthy fat people are, sure they aren't fat but they're just as unhealthy and weird about food. Hell, events like the SuperThing make as much money off of random assholes tuning into the commercials as they do from asses in seats. I don't care for sports, so when the SuperThing or the Series of the World (in very small considerations of what "world" means) is on, I fucking do something else. None of that something involves even tangentially the event in question. My thinking is that if enough of us just don't bother at all maybe they'll finally fucking go away. It worked on the Jocks in highschool, maybe I'll get lucky.

Children in Africa are the Primary Determinants of the Price of Beans

So, here's the thing, I'm going to try not to flip out about this so bear with me. People who bitch about how their life isn't blowjobs and free booze are fucking idiots. It sucks that your phone can't take on an SUV and then load up what ever bullshit app draws your fancy. It is not a tragedy, it is not a miscarriage of justice. People who complain about social injustice and first world oppression are not those people.

This particular rant has been building for a while so I will try to stay focused. I will admit that there are things worthy of the ignominy of the title of "first world problems". Nearly anything relating, with the noted exception of matters of cyber security, to whatever gadget happens to be shining up pop culture, be it 'phone, 'pad, or 'tooth, is a bullshit problem. I think on some level we all comprehend this. Really, any time the person complaining could intelligibly insert the phrase, "don't you know who I am" and not break the flow of the complaint we're talking about a bullshit problem. Ditto with any situation where the person bitching feels comfortable tapping social/political/monetary status as leverage, and any time someone mistakes a luxury for a right. Those who fall into this pit of indulgence and entitlement are barely even people, at best they're children bitching about their birthday presents.

That said, discussing actual, meaningful concerns and abuses is always pertinent. Someone fearing rape or abuse for discussing rape or abuse is never okay, no matter what else is going on in the world. Note, I linked that whole sentence but I could quite easily have linked every fucking word to a different story, no single one more than five years old. The problems of racism, sexism, oppression and corruption in the first world are in no fucking way mitigated by atrocities and injustice in other parts of the world. This seems to be a problem of flawed comparison, but its important to keep in mind that the fact that there are places in this world where representatives of the local government can go a-full on-viking in civilian communities doesn't make the insidious othering and knee-jerk, reactionary defensiveness of American police better. Its like the terrible high school girl who surrounds herself with less attractive people to make herself look better. She isn't making herself less of a horrible person, isn't actually improving her appearance, just lowering the local average to make herself seem more worthwhile. Knowledge of the fact that there are children fighting and starving in Africa doesn't reduce the tragedy of children who work themselves to ruin in American tobacco farms.

I'm starting to run the risk of spitting bile on this so I will just finish up by paraphrasing my least favorite mythology, maybe take care of your own shit before you start trying to solve problems halfway around the fucking world.

YKWFA: The Passage of Time

So apparently today is the first day of 2015. I will admit, 2014 kinda got away from me, what with all the rage and depression and all the goddamn bees. Just... so many bees.

Anyway, there are a few things (other than listening to unpopular music and slowly turning into the horrible old man that is my birthright) that pleased me about this last year. First, after much rigamarole and absurd bullshit, my home state decided to make marijuana at least theoretically available for recreational use. Now don't get me wrong, the way they went about it was childish and insulting and ineffectual to a spectacular degree, but it happened. So now a lot of people who want to utilize their minds for something more pleasurable than trying to contribute to the inevitable heat death of the universe with their hate (like me) have a non-lobotomy option.

Also, both Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Zero Theorem were things. Since Andy Serkis is some kind of hero sent from the future to make the present not suck so bad and Terry Gilliam is a Companion of the One True God Returned, these are both things that deserve positive consideration. Christoph Waltz, Nick Offerman, and Alan Tudyk also exist and this is a wonderful thing. Actually, cinema wasn't particularly hopeless in general this year. For the most part. Some stuff was pretty fucking good.

The last thing that really made this last year was the fact that I have a wife. Now I've had a wife for a while now, but having her around goes leagues towards to making life bearable. I'm sure that sounds cheesy and pandering, but if you have an SO and you don't feel that way about them you probably shouldn't be doing that. Having a significant other I mean.

There was a great deal of fuck-that last year, lets all try and get past that this year and actually be people with each other. Good luck out there.