Winning the War on Goats

Alright, so it's been hot around here, not like Devil's Valley hot or anything, but hot enough that my tubby Scandinavian ass is melting. As a result, I've pretty much only been able to think about how fucking hot it is and how spectacularly I disapprove of that fact. So today I'm going to talk about why I don't like goats.

1. Goats are Smug:

Look at that fucker. Sitting there with its stupid fishy fucking eyes. Judging. Like a fucking goat knows what the world is like. The pressures we face! With their stupid, shitty little horns and their "cheese". Dicks.

2. They're Creepy: Did you know that goats can climbs trees? Yeah, fucking tree climbing goats. Oh, and they fucking scream, and not just the tree-climbers. While that can be really funny when properly framed, imagine it echoing out over the fields in the dark of an autumn night, row upon row of dead, flat-head eyeballs gleaming hungrily in the starlight.

3. Seriously, Look At Those Fucking Eyes: Goat eyes are fucked up. Rectangular pupils give these little bastards a roughly 320 degree field of vision with no frontal blind spot. They also make a visual organ into a hideous, half-open portal to some barnyard hellscape.

Fucking goats. I'm going to go tape ice cubes to my head, hopefully we get some rain so I can write a coherent post next week.

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.

Faux News

So, something that has been stewing in my mind for a while is a really angry tirade on how 24 hour news channels are fucking terrible, what with them creating tons bullshit to fill in all 24 hours. I tried to formulate some form of coherent rant but it quickly became more and more depressing as I realized something: real journalism (at least in the mainstream) is dead.

This sounds hyperbolic, and it kind of is, but not as much as you would hope. 24 hours is a lot of time to fill and since they don't have any way to gain funds other than by being funded by ad revenue and website traffic they have to make sure that they scrape as many views to them as possible. They do this by trying to bring people news faster than competitors such as the internet (good fucking luck there) and by trying to be entertaining/flashy enough to keep people there.

Trying to get news to people fast is what the internet was made for. In an attempt to get news out quick they get information they receive on the air ASAP which is often not fact checked. Remember the Boston Marathon bombing? Fox and CNN jumped on the story and all claimed that an arrest had been made before the actual police had made any movement towards suspects. The FBI actually scolded them for making this error because it could have caused problems. I am not trying to say that the news shouldn't try to get information to people quickly, but at least fact check it. Someone tells you that they are a policeman? Fucking check it. It doesn't take long. You are supposed to be journalists: people who try to get the truth of situations out to people. Being fast is great but when you sacrifice accuracy for that speed, you lose the core of your identity.

Being flashy does fuck all for information. In short this is news agencies trying to get people to watch all of their shit to justify ad companies to add to their unfortunately small revenue. To do this they try to get exclusives, but that only goes so far. A lot of news agencies have started to make small stories into big stories. Seriously, why else would Justin Beiber's arrest be newsworthy. Its not news, its tabloid fodder. You are supposed to be better than that news channels.

On this same note talking about violence constantly and trying to show the world falling into disrepair and how it is on the road to a mad max style society because no one has any morals anymore is bullshit. We are living in the most peaceful time in society yet. I feel like I need to say that I am not trying to say the wars going on around the world are not big or important, they are, but it should be a journalists responsibility to put that war into context. By the way, this also has a massively bad effect on people's psyche. Spending an entire 24 hours analyzing a shooting also desensitizes people to the problem and can create worse moods for people in general while exacerbating or causing depression in people who are prone to the problem. 

I am not saying that we should only talk about puppies and sunshine, that would be stupid. I don't think that you should do any more than reporting the news and putting the news into context. This doesn't fill up 24 hour news networks programming? Then maybe 24 hour news is a bad way of doing things. People are watching television less and less, maybe just make a news website that creates good news reports.

Game of Thrones: Another Example of "No One Can Be Happy"

So I want to start this off by saying that I am a fan of Game of Thrones. I enjoy the world that they are building, and look forward to watching the new season. That being said it is not a perfect series and I believe that fans should address the problems it has so it can become better.

Game of Thrones is one of many series that "ups the stakes" by killing characters. You never know who is safe from the sword of Damocles. This ads tension, sure, but after establishing that anyone can die at any time(*Spoilers/*like when you straight up behead Sean Bean or crossbow-bolt fuck an entire wedding party*/Spoilers*) you should be able to calm down and try to just tell a story. Instead you introduce characters, characterize them for an episode or maybe two if they are lucky, and kill them as a way of reinforcing the "immanent danger" aura the show portrays. I would think a world in which Ice Liches are raising the dead and marching them towards civilization on one end of the world while on the other side of the world a princess is waging war using dragons and freed slaves would be exciting enough without having to worry about constant betrayal.

Joss Whedon does this a lot as well. In Serenity they kill Wash so as to increase the peril of the climax. In The Avengers movie they kill Coulson to motivate the main characters (This also happens in his agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. series). This eventually stops making me care.

Game of Thrones is a good show. I am glad that they are trying to differentiate themselves from Martin, but at the same time its constant danger has diminishing returns because it makes me stop caring about characters. And when I stop caring about characters I stop watching a show (See Lost). This show is kind of like fried chicken. I loves it but at the same time understand that it is probably pretty bad for me, but at the same time it is so, so good.

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."

Make Console Love Not Console War!

Last week EA announced a DLC coming out for Dragon Age: Inquisition called Jaws of Hakkon. This isn't really new, DLC comes out all the time, but this time this release put a focus on something that has existed for a while in the gaming industry. Until now, companies like Microsoft and Sony paying companies to release exclusive content has been less visible. JoK came out for Xbox One and PC only. Yesterday EA announced that this DLC would come out for every other console one month later.

DA:I has received a lot of game of the year awards and praise and is a much bigger game then a lot of games with staggered DLC. Destiny came out last year too, and Sony paid Bungie to make sure that a bunch of DLC only came out for the game on the PS3/4. This time it is Microsoft who is doing the paying for exclusivity, but at least the PS3/4 will be getting it eventually. Some game companies use these funds to help complete games and DLC that wouldn't normally come out otherwise due to budget restraints, so it makes sense that this kind of thing would be good for developers. That being said, as this Kotaku article says, this is essentially companies paying developers to keep some players from having this content because they picked the "wrong" console.

When I saw the announcement that DLC would be coming out I was excited. Then I saw that it would be for Xbox only (at least for a while) and all I did was get disappointed. I didn't do what I assume this type of gimmick is supposed to elicit: buy the console with the exclusive content. Increased sales is the main reason that companies like Microsoft and Sony do this, and I have to wonder if it works. Unfortunately, it probably does on some level.

I remember when I saw this kind of thing the first time. Soul Calibur II came out with console specific characters. This meant that to play as Darth Vader I would need to buy a copy for my PS2 while to play as Link or Spawn I would need to buy a copy for my Game Cube and Xbox respectively. This is ridiculous. None of the characters were game breaking or necessary so I just picked up a copy for one console and called it good. One of my cousins did what the companies wanted. He bought all three copies of the game. I remember thinking "ah, that's why they did that!".

Ever since, I have tried to not support this kind of behavior, unfortunately it makes money for the companies, so they will still do it. I won't buy an Xbox One to play this DLC. I love DA:I, its a great game, but not worth buying another console for just to get access to a little bit of content. Hopefully if enough people just don't buy into the scheme this kind of thing won't happen any more, but considering its been happening for a long time, I don't know if that hope is futile or not.

We Need To Learn From The Lessons That Herbert West Showed Us.

So I have written something along the lines of this topic a couple of times but it is still something that bugs me. Remakes. This time I was set off because of a very specific remake: The X-Files. I love the X-Files, it was an amazing show, funny at times, tense at others. It balanced the monster of the week and drama genres really well. That being said, the show turned into something unwatchable by the end, mostly due to people splitting from the show as it convoluted itself out of existence.

When I wrote about Fringe I said that shows should get canceled before they get to the point of being terrible, and The X-Files certainly fails that test. It lasted like 2 years longer than it should have, but Fox (the network not the character) calling for 6 more episodes to be produced is fucking absurd. Its basically taking a dead show it ruined over a decade ago and trying to wring more money out of it's corpse. Fuck all that spending money on new shows that might be terrible, lets just Frankenstein this bitch and see how she does on the corner. Because, you know, that always works out for the best. I grew up watching shows like Star Trek TNG and The X-Files, but those shows are done, and I am comfortable with that. I am not craving to know the unanswered questions, I am just sad at how these shows turned bad at the end. Let them stay dead.

This might sound like I am overreacting, and to be fair I am being a little hyperbolic, but this trend also stifles creativity in mainstream media. Broadcast television is getting fucked by stuff like Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix and instead of trying to compete with them by making better shows, they try to scratch the nostalgia itch that these services provide (I have rewatched the X-Files two times in the past few years because of Netflix).

Seriously, thanks to Fox we got shows like the Simpsons, Futurama, The X-Files, Arrested Development, and Firefly. They clearly have the ability to get people who can create great works, so try to create the next Family Guy or King of the Hill rather then trying to rehash your glory days when you had those shows. Then again, they did cancel a bunch of those shows before they hit their stride, so maybe Fox just doesn't know what the hell they are doing. Incidentally, Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix don't just hit the nostalgia spot, they have also been creating new stuff that is good (Deadbeat and Alpha House come to mind) so maybe this is just the death throes of a dying form of media that is trying desperately to remain relevant.

Wade-Giles Fuckery, and Not Deadpool/Buffy Slashfic

Alright folks, this is going to be a (hopefully) short nerd rant. We all know by this point that I have no patience for traditions built on bad ground. Today's shining shit shack of social standards revolves around the process of romanizing languages. I appreciate the value of converting non-english languages into characters comprehensible to english speakers/readers, it would just be great if we made any effort to do that. For instance the Gaelic word Samhain is pronounced sowwan or sahwin. That third letter is a fucking m and has no goddamn place in that word. I've heard the argument that its silent but silent letters are a hold out of a system whereby people use the ability to write "accurately" to enforce social barriers, so fuck that arbitrary elitist bullshit.

Arguably the most pronounced example of this stupidity is Wade-Giles transliteration. This is a method of converting Chinese, which is nuanced and beautiful, into English without any consideration for how those words are spoken. You may have noticed this renders the technique essentially useless for actually learning or communicating the fucking language. There is a chart at the bottom of that link that compares different phonemes and how they are written in Wade-Giles, which was established by two brits at the height of british cuntblubbery in China, and Pinyin, which is the method actually used by the people who speak the language. If you check that list you'll notice that WG seems to have valued exotic spelling conventions over anything even vaguely approaching accuracy.

This isn't super uncommon in romanizing languages, but it is fucking absurd. We romanize languages so that we can learn that language or at least be able to pronounce relevant words without sounding like a fucking moron. So I vote that we start actually writing things phonetically, or at very least consulting with native speakers before we decide how we ought to pronounce their words. Maybe someday we can live in a world where Daoism doesn't set off spell check and its foundational book isn't written as onomatopoeia for an old timey cash register.

Bad Romance

So, every time I watch a movie or a TV show something inevitably happens when a male character and a female character meet, the show turns into a rendition of the beloved narrative game, Trying to Fuck. There is something odd about TV shows that make it so that every time eligible people meet (sometimes ineligible too) there has to be that undertone. You know, little glances at each other with smiles. That kind of shit.

This isn't bad on its face. We are supposed to like characters on TV, so them getting it on and/or finding love is supposed to make us feel good because something good happens to someone you like. I have no problem with this, except when it happens in every TV show ever. Seriously, I can't think of a TV show that didn't devolve into primary characters putting their genitals together.

My problem comes from the "need" for people to be paired off (most of the time in male-female relationships) and the subsequent enforcing of social stigma on sex with people who aren't an S.O. I don't mean cheating on people, that's fucked up and you probably shouldn't do it. No, I mean one night stands, friends with benefits, or casual sex. This also reinforces the idea that men and women can't be Platonic friends.

Basically by showing only one type of relationship, you reinforce stigmas against alternatives that have nothing really wrong with them. I get that its a ratings disaster to do something that's unpopular, but I wanna point something out to TV and Movie producers: you get to help decide what is acceptable. Also, if people freak their shit out about your TV show, more people will watch it, just to see why. Also Also, if a side story about characters romantic lives "ruins" your show, it must have been pretty shitty to begin with.

The Path to Agoraphobia is Paved with Good Intentions, Poorly Executed.

Over the course of the last several years I've pretty much completely lost the ability to functionally interact with people. I'm not completely sure when it started but it probably had something to do with the fact that I stopped leaving the house. There was a period in which I could only afford to leave the house if I was looking for or going to work and even then bus fare was a prohibitive expense. Preexisting antisocial traits started to assert themselves more aggressively as my whole interaction with society was relegated to news-bites and poorly contextualized academia (thanks higher education!). Over time habits were established in such a way that I could no longer come up with reasons to go out. After I was told outright not to get a fucking job the idea of leaving the house fell even farther from a necessary evil to make ends meet to the least interesting or meaningful way to waste my wife's money, so I just stopped.

I've come to understand, with some work, what a bad idea this was. Justification became rule, rule became habit and habit became neurosis. Now the thought of doing anything at all, much less anything out of the house is accompanied by a combination of panic, apathy, and rationalizing my inaction. Now I can't even trust myself to be able to break the habit without outsourcing my motivation to someone else. I will get better, I have to.

Thanks for playing therapist, beloved internet. Now I'm going to go psyche myself up so I might be able to do something today.

My God, Its Full of Stars

Writing my post from last week got me thinking about human endeavors and how far we have come as a species. While I was lost in this reverie something got caught in my craw. Humans built the pyramids of Giza. These things are marvels of engineering. Unfortunately, there is a group of people who disagree for various reasons.

The bulk of these people believe that humans couldn't have built them because they are aligned with stars, are made of massive stones that couldn't have been moved easily, and are such a massive undertaking that it is impossible to conceive of how they did it. So, I am going to try to point out a few things that try to refute these worries. This list will not be exhaustive, it will just cover a list of things that I found in my googling.

On the first point, the astronomical exactitude of the pyramids. Egyptian astronomy dates back to the 3000's BCE, when they were making star charts on circular stones, more than 400 years prior to the building of the earliest pyramid. This means that all you would need to do is plan where to put stuff prior to building, something that anyone who has run a city does because they don't want shit to get out of control. Its called urban planning and its been around since people needed to use space efficiently. In fact, Egyptian cities are famous for it.

Second, moving large rocks isn't hard. Here is a guy moving a stone henge sized rock by himself. Just a dude in his backyard. Archeologists found large sled-like machines in Egypt that move very heavy weights around easily if you wet the sand in front of them. All it takes is a little bit of knowledge and experience to make hard tasks far simpler.

And finally on the third point, if only the things you can conceive of as you are now are possible, then humanity is doomed. Just because a person doesn't understand how something happened, doesn't mean it didn't.

The bulk of these and other arguments against ancient peoples building massive structures is based on the idea that people from back then must have been stupid. Ancient people didn't have cranes, so they couldn't have built tall things. These arguments ignore evidence and make assumptions. Yes, they had less tools to work with, but that doesn't mean that had none. All our tools today are just improved tools from long ago. People have always been about as intelligent as they are today, we just have access to more information. All we are is slightly less ignorant than back then.

And lastly I want to talk about a conspiracy theory: Aliens built the pyramids. I am not going to say it didn't happen. I might have happened. Show me proof. If you can come up with proof that doesn't rely wholly on what you just think might have happened, then I will consider it an actual possibility. Yes, archeologists don't know 100% how the pyramids were built, but their arguments are based on evidence not just spastic speculation and occasional doses of crazy.

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.

In Which I Tell Superman To Fuck Off

So I want to talk about Superman today. I don't like Superman. He is a Mary Sue, and because of that he is insanely boring. He doesn't need to fear losing because he is invincible. Sure you might say, "oh, but kryptonite makes him weaker!" and sure it does, but how often is it a lasting threat? If kryptonite was a meaningful weakness then superman should have died a long time ago. Fuck, on that note he is basically the reason comic book heroes don't need to fear death.

I will admit though that having a hero who is supposed to represent all the good in the world who is happy and a symbol of hope (Despite what Zach Snyder seems to think) is a net positive. What I want to talk about specifically today is that Superman and superheroes like him are bad for the world they inhabit. Stopping crime is a good act, I think we can all agree, but with the basic powers that superman has, he hurts the world.

Humans are an amazing species. We have adapted to the world in ways that other species can only dream about. Hunter/gathering doesn't provide a stable food source for us? Invent agriculture! Don't like walking long distances? Boom: horse and cart. Not fast enough? Car. Still not fast enough? Super sonic fucking planes. To hot? Lets create a device that can make it freezing in your house. Sure, some of these changes fuck with us in bad ways, but hey its only been 14,000ish years, we are still working out the kinks.

Why has this adaptation occurred? Need. I joked about not going fast enough up above, but faster forms of travel allowed us to transport goods to areas of the world where they are needed. Refrigeration and agriculture both allowed us to have far stabler forms of sustenance. What superman does is eliminate need. Social changes to eliminate crime will never need to take place because a superhero is taking care of it for us. We become reliant on a higher being for an entire form of ethics and it will never solve the core problem (stuff like treating drug addicts as people who suffer from a disease instead of criminals /programs to increase funding to inner city schools and improving the neighborhoods they are in).

You can see why this happens. We tend to default to the easiest solution to a problem that we can see. Superman is the perfect easy solution. This is why I dislike him. He puts himself in this position. Instead of only using his powers on enemies that we can't stop (i.e. other supers) Supes stops basic fucking robbers. This is like using a tactical nuke to take out a mouse you saw in your kitchen, way fucking overkill. I appreciate how easy it is, and that superman thinks its his responsibility because he has the power to do so, but it stunts personal/societal growth, and that's a problem.

D.C. brings up this problem in a different context with Sinestro, so its clear that they know it is a possibility. I know that this shit is just comics, but comics, movies, and television are our modern equivalent to mythology. Mythology is supposed to be a template for how people should act as we've discussed before. In the case of Superman, there is a major failing and I think its important to point it out. Easy solutions aren't always the best solutions.