A message sent to me made me think about this idea of “adulthood”.

I realized that back when I was about five years old I formed an opinion on the matter. And when I was ten years old I noticed that that opinion had not changed. And again when I was fifteen and when I was twenty and even now at the  ripe old age of thirty years old: still no change. 

And I hope that when I look back when I have reached the age of forty or fifty or eighty or a hundred I’ll still find that I hold exactly the same opinion. And that opinion is this:

I enjoy being silly and random. I think it is IMPORTANT to be silly and random. Life is hardly worth living if you can’t be at times very very silly and random. People will always call such behavior childish and deride it and say that people should “grow up”. But I think that they are the ones missing out. Who decided that adults weren’t allowed to be silly? Where was it written that the only way to be responsible is to be sufficiently serious and never make a random unexpected decision?

That’s not to say that  adulthood doesn’t bring anything to silliness. Rather I think as you grow older you get better at not just being silly but being silly with style. That’s the main benefit of age and experience. You’re silliness can be more clever. So the five year old kid being silly might walk around pretending to be a zombie, but then an adult can exercise that same basic concept of silliness and write a brilliant song like Jonathan Coulton’s Re: your brains. Same silly. More style.

Moreover silly random stuff can be a lot more effective than boring un-silly serious stuff. Nobody is swayed by the random scholar’s dissertation on the importance of imagination and toys in growing up. But millions of people can come to understand the same concept when they watch a movie like Toy Story 3. And there is no better presentation of the risks and horrors and absurdity of nuclear war than Tom Lehrer’s We Will All Go Together When We Go:

All the people I respect the most past and present are sometimes if not often silly and random. Whether it be Jon Stewart or Kurt Vonnegut or Mark Twain or Neil Gaiman. Some of my favorite youtubers are silly (vlogbrothers). Some of my favorite podcasts are silly (citizen radio). Even some of my favorite Xangans are often silly (happylemming, avenuetothereal, soapandshampoo). Even Einstein was said to have had a great sense of humor and a brilliant wit.

I challenge anyone to refute this basic truism of human existence.  FACT. The most awesome people in history are silly people.

And I may never be that awesome, but I certainly don’t ever tend to miss opportunities to be silly and random as the opportunity arises online or offline, ESPECIALLY if I’m doing it to make a point.  So if that bothers anyone… or annoys people… well too bad. I in no way intend to ever change in the slightest.

Why hello there! How are you doing?

I’m doing very well thank you. Except that I’ve been hearing some vicious anti-liberal rumors lately. People keep saying terrible stuff like “liberals believe in social justice” and “liberals want to help people” and “liberals believe in fairness and equality”.

I know, disgusting isn’t it? I’M a Liberal and I can tell you unequivocally that that has nothing to do with the truth.

Well do you want to know what liberalism is really about? *beckoning gesture* Well then come along and I’ll show you what life is like as a true bonafide honest to Satan Liberal. >:D

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Welcome!  Look around you. As you can see this is my apartment. It’s a studio apartment, no kitchen, no windows, just one bathroom. You’ll note I have all the normal appropriate liberal posters on my walls. Che Guevara, Assata Shakur, John Lennon, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix. The Obama Hope Poster.   And there’s a few paintings you might recognize too.  M.C. Escher. Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can.

   
Not that any of these posters are bad. It’s just that I wish I could proudly post my swastikas. Ya know?

All of this is just for show of course. They disguise my true devotions that we’ll get to soon.

Oh? Are you surprised that there’s no furniture or appliances in my apartment? Well of course not! Everyone knows owning physical items represents an immoral elevation of one’s self above others. We liberals don’t stand for that stuff. Don’t worry you’ll get it soon.

So yeah every morning I wake up on the hard wood floor and immediately the very first thing I do is head to the bathroom to take a bath in the blood of innocents.  Man you have no idea how hard that is to get a hold of. But it’s totally necessary. If I don’t get my bath it totally ruins the rest of my day.

What happens next?  Well come over here and I’ll show you!

Note this hidden switch in the corner of my apartment. As I pull it a tiny little room appears with a small shrine. And here as you can see are my TRUE idols.  Every morning I come here and pray to the Four Great Prophets of Liberalism:  Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao,  Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler. 

             
Each took us one step closer to the Liberal Utopia. They will never be forgotten.

Assuming I receive their blessings, I move back into my main apartment and get ready for the rest of my day.

The first thing I have to do is go over to the computer hooked up in the corner of my room. I have to ask saints Marx and Lenin for forgiveness for owning such a sickening symbol of opulence like a computer but it is necessary for doing my daily chores in reverence to their glorious vision.

               
Without our glorious Saints where would our species be?

I sign online wirelessly. I steal internet from a neighbor’s wireless broadband network of course. He should know that what’s his is mine and the mere fact that he happened to password protect his network doesn’t mean anything.

Once online I start launching child porn and bestiality filled viruses through the internet. I be sure to infect as many church and conservative organization websites as possible! Also I make sure to target any dirty capitalist businesses that I find that are vulnerable. The more charity works a business engages in the more likely their site is to be the target of my ire. Lords of Hell, you have no idea how satisfying doing this kind of work can be!

After about an hour of that I connect to my “special” liberalism network. It’s a super fast network consisting of a series of tubes that predated the internet. We liberals stole the technology as we always do from well meaning businesses that we put out of business via a government take over. Then we made sure only true liberals like me
can access it.  Using this network I start to talk to my many liberal friends around town and arrange a meeting.

Now it’s time to head out. I grab my most prized possession: a Katana that I loving named Occam’s Razor.  And I throw it in the trunk of my car where you’ll see all my other important supplies are stored. There’s a few baseball bats, a couple of crowbars, a ninja outfits, a handful of grenades, some plans for developing IEDs., a suicide bomber vest, and of course about 23 AK-47s.  I frown at such a mediocre collection. Oh well. It’s a start.

What kind of car do I drive?  Why a Volvo of course! Only this one is from a “special” division of Volvo. It was like a super pain to buff out the Made in North Korea label. In the end I covered the remaining outline of it with a Vote Obama/Biden bumper sticker. 

          
Not many be stylin in their ride like I be dawg!

You should check out how tricked out this thing is too! It runs like a dream. It’s a hybrid that has no need to burn gasoline. It runs primarily on garbage, sunshine, and candy stolen from babies. Also whenever it’s parked, octopus like tendrils appear and suck tiny amounts of gas from other cars when nobody else is around. This is what we call fair sharing. Everybody does it. 

Oh you noticed the handicapped parking sticker? No of course I’m not handicapped! All State services exist for the people to use so I feel no shame about that. Look here and you’ll see my roll out equipment for building my own parking space and on the windshield I have a fake easy-pass device I engineered to avoid paying tolls. All as necessary to promote true liberal equality.

As we drive down the road I blast NPR on the radio at full dial. Only I have a special liberal radio that plays the NPR backwards so you can hear all the wonderful Satanic messages telling us how glorious it is to murder the infidels by burning them alive for the sake of true beauty and art. It’s really a heart-lifting experience.

Usually we meet up at either a whore house, the local gay bar, the combination pizza hut & taco bell, or one of the many Starbucks coffee shops around town.  Today we chose a Starbucks. As we arrive I notice my friends are all already there.

And might I add aren’t we all looking absolutely fabulous? Check out all the extremely expensive designer clothes made from all the greatest designers in New York and Hollywood. Also the beautiful gold chains and bling, the elegant shades, the dozens of piercings filled with diamonds and silver and the gorgeous intricate tattoos some are sporting. You’re awed by our beauty are you not?

            
Poetry in motion!

What? Inconsistency?!? You think there’s some kind of contradiction between what we’re wearing and our demands for an austere furniture-less lifestyle?  I don’t understand the question. I mean LOOK at us! Don’t we all look absolutely Ah-MAY-zing!

            
Are we not GLORIOUS?

How can we afford it? Man you’re full of questions today!  No of course we don’t work. Honest living? What a bunch of B.S. We’ve all done what’s necessary of course. Using fake identities we’re all getting food stamps, disability insurance, welfare, unemployment, and social security checks.  And whenever that’s not enough money we have our Bum outfits at home with makeshift signs ready to go out and beg. You’d be shocked at how many people will hand you money if you just pretend to be a homeless Iraq war veteran with two kids to feed. People are SUCH suckers.  Plus we have other forms of income if we need it which I’ll get to momentarily.

Usually we can’t help each other when we meet up like this, especially in a public place. For the first fifteen minutes we start off with hugging but it soon leads to kissing and groping one another. A few orgasms later we buy our Latte’s and sit down to discuss the plans for the day.

We’re not ashamed to be called Latte Drinking Liberals!

After our delicious coffee, a few hits of heroin (some prefer pcp), and a blunt each we all pile into the few Volvo’s we have and head out for our first mission.

         
Just enough to take the edge off know what I mean?

Let me tell you about our motley crew. MOST of us our minorities. Blacks. Hispanics. Fanatical Fundamentalist Muslims. There are a few Jews; they tend to handle our finances. Some of us are mixed. We tend to be young, Most who reach the age of 35 have already been driven by the great yearning to commit suicide on behalf of the Liberal agenda. Most of us are in our early 20′s, though we have a few underage teenagers just learning the ropes. We have a good contingent of AGEDs (Atheist Gays of European Descent). Those of us who are old enough are all college educated. We attended Public schools before college but the colleges and universities we attended are of course all elite and Ivy league institutions that we got into for free. Where else do you think we learned about the awesomeness of liberalism?

Oh you noticed we are driving through a rather nice neighborhood haven’t you?  Rich people. *spits* Don’t worry this is our first mission for today.

And with that we all pile out of our volvos and start going door to door and walking down the street looking for upper middle class white people. We let anyone who is not white go except every once in a while we stop an East Asian person who particularly pisses us off. We prefer picking on men. We encourage man-hating women to join in on the fun of beating the crap out of their husbands. Generally we prefer to stop people who look like hard workers, businessmen, Christians, and military veterans. Oh boy we love picking on the vets!

What do we do to them? Why we beat them of course! We mug them. We smack them around. We mock them. We laugh and point and sneer. Oh you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen their pitiful scared and frightened faces! *giggles* Oh how they whimper and beg for their lives! hahahaha! White people! Rich people! Christians! Vets! They’re such pathetic tools! God I LOVE Beat the White People Day!  You’re soo lucky to be coming with us today! ^_^

Generally when we’re done having our fun we take their wallets and purses leaving the bloody, often raped bodies of our victims behind us. Sometimes we just go ahead and rob some of their homes too just for good measure.

What?? You’re wondering how come the police don’t stop us??? HADES, how can you BE so ignorant sometimes? The police are all on our side of course! They work for the government. The government is run by the Great Obamabot!! We worked damned hard to make sure he was elected. It was a huge worldwide liberal effort. You didn’t think it was a coincidence that we kept having black Presidents in that TV show 24 or in those movies like Deep Impact? Or that we had a Morgan Freeman play God figures in so many films? Or that we had a leader on BattleStar Galactica named ADAMA? Or planetary villains named OSAMA and HUSSEIN? COME EFFIN ON!  Of COURSE it was a conspiracy! Geez haven’t you even HEARD of ACORN? hahahahaha. You didn’t really buy that short form birth certificate crap did you?

The culmination of a century long project! BEHOLD!

You silly person. This has been in the works for sooo many years. Back when we created the Obamabot in the wilds of Kenya. He’s a genetically engineered robot. Thank all the Pagan Gods, Kenya doesn’t have the laws against Stem Cell Research and Cloning and human experimentation that the US has. If it did we would never have achieved our greatest triumph. But we did it. And now we’re living in the AGE of Obama. The AGE of liberalism! And now it’s no holds bar baby!

Case in point our next stop on our journey. Now we get to raid the maternity wards!  Yeah. That’s RIGHT! We drag those pregnant bitches kicking and screaming into our volvos and drive them down to the local Planned Parenthood where they will be forced to have abortions.

We don’t have any preference mind you. Unlike when we’re mugging, it’s not like we try to focus on rich or white mothers. Nooo. In fact we LOVE getting the minority pregnant women. It fits into our long term agenda you see. How you ask? Well as the great Prophet Hitler foretold one day we will all live in a utopia after the human race in its current form is wiped out, our consciousnesses will be transferred into blond haired, blue eyed, pale skinned genetically engineered cybernetic perfect specimens of humanity. It’ll be sooo amazing when that day comes. But in order for it to come to pass first we have to make sure everybody stops having these horrible mongrel children. We’re happy to do our small part in ensuring that happen.

The grateful doctors at Planned Parenthood gladly thank us for our service and pay us our just rewards. We take these rewards out to the countryside where we trespass on some private rich person’s property and setup a beautiful picnic.  There lying out on the elegantly trimmed grass we consume cereal and sandwiches made out of the bodies of aborted fetuses and drink wine out of their blood. And what can I say about such a meal? It both tastes great and has less filling. It’s magically delicious. It’s our ambrosia of meals. Satisfying beyond imagination.

It just don’t get no better dan dis!

You’re probably wondering what we Liberals eat. Good question! While we do love those fetuses they are a rare treat only after we’ve met our quota of pregnant women for the month.  Generally we’re Vegans of course. Some of us have gardens in our living rooms. The rest of us steal from farmers markets and sneak into farms.  Every time we eat a plant though we are careful to beg the plant for forgiveness if it is a plant that can give up its fruit without dying and if it’s a plant like carrot that sadly we must kill in order to consume we are sure to hold the requisite funeral rites over them regretting the need to end the poor plants lives for our well being.

The cows are ALL totally on our side.

There are some of us who aren’t Vegans. They make an exception in order to be able to eat the other great bounty of the Earth, namely the insects. They too are given the appropriate funeral rites before they are eaten but this division creates all kinds of distress within the liberal community especially amongst the Peta branch.

Their deaths serve a greater purpose!

Fortunately we ALL agree that there’s no better food other than fetuses than TOFU. We <3 our tofu. mmm boy.

You don’t want to know what it’s REALLY made of!

After our wonderful lunch we feel rejuvenated and ready to face the rest of the day! We’ve actually only got one more mission left. Infiltration!

We spend the next couple of hours making the more normal amongst us look a bit more like regular working class people. We take out the piercings, comb their hair, switch them into inexpensive clothes.  Then we start painting up signs and placards. We are very inventive about this process. We try to make them as racist and ignorant sounding as we possibly can. Sometimes what we come up with is genius if I do say so myself. Like the Obama Witch Doctor poster? That one was ours. A Classic!

I admit, it was my idea. *bows*

Once our preparations are complete we head out. We find any right wing protests that we can find and we smoothly and elegantly integrate ourselves into the chanting masses. And we rile them up! We get them to chant horrible racist things. We try to get them to assault people or to scream at people and to have no regard for others.

We hold up our signs high making sure they are seen.  If we see our reporter allies, not from Fox News of course, we signal them over with the special hand sign and they come interview us. That gives us an opportunity to pretend total ignorance and immaturity in order to make the protesters look bad. It works really really great. 

We’re GENIUSES I know.

Sometimes establishment reporters aren’t present so we have to film it ourselves and put it up on Youtube. Fortunately one of my friends splurged for a high quality camcorder she brings with us for that very purpose. It’s true we had to whip her repeatedly for several weeks with vicious chain whips in order to punish her for such a gratuitous expenditure of money (I mean REALLY does she think she’s BETTER than us!) but that camcorder comes in handy at times like this.  Anyway once we’ve infiltrated enough protests and conservative meetings and have gathered enough footage it’s time to head home a day’s work well done.

On the way home we stop to piss on the sides of a few graves and TP a few churches just for the heck of it. We can’t wait for the day when we can instead burn down those blasted institutions promoting their “morality” and their “ethics”. Yecht. Gag me.

We also make sure to stop to pick up as many illegal drugs as we can get a hold of. Of course we start with copious supplies of Pot, Cigs, and Booze (we especially love giving the cigs and alcohol to the minors amongst us) but that’s just to wet our appetite. We get all kinds of other stuff: cocaine, crack, heroin, pcp, shrooms, ecstacy, meth, sativa, lsd, dxm, ketamine, you name it. We grab a few bottles of bleach and canisters of oxygen to inhale too just for fun. Of course some of our doctor friends hook us with some of the good prescription stuff too like codeine, oxycontin, and morphine.

           

Then it’s all back to my little studio apartment where I lay out a blanket of New York Times newspapers to cover the apartment floor (they provide them to us for free for this purpose). I start some illegally downloaded porn playing on my computer (sometimes I use Hollywood movies, works just as well) and open up my altar so that we can all gaze upon our beloved prophets. I have a hidden stereo too which I crank up and play some of the great liberal music of the generation. All those peace and happiness hippie songs when played backwards become such incredible satanic messages! It’s great. Some of my friends start bringing in the sex toys, the leather whips and chains and ropes and everything else we might need. And then of course it’s time for the real fun to begin! It’s ORGY time!

I should note since you are an outsider that there are actually pretty strict rules to our orgies. Surprised? What do you think we are, barbarians?!?!  Of course there are rules!!! The most important of those being that Men can only have sex with Men and Women can only have sex with Women. This is to prevent any nasty nasty human procreation which as you know we’re against. Also it’s to promote the importance of exercising homosexuality.

What about sexual orientation? Oh pfft. That’s obviously a concept we made up to piss off the religious people! We all know full well that we can make people homosexual by exposing them to enough homosexual behavior and that’s entirely what we plan to do.

We do have a couple of exceptions. First off you can do any of the underage children regardless of gender just so long as you are as violent and cruel to them as humanly possible. They need to learn early what it means to serve a greater cause and have their self worth stripped from them. We all had that happen to us when we were being indoctrinated why should they be any different?  Secondly you can of course do any animals you feel the urge to do.  In fact that’s highly encouraged.  We have a few monkeys some of my friends brought in for that purpose, one cat, and two German shepherds. Several of my friends regret that my apartment just isn’t big enough to fit their horses and cows into but I promise them that we’ll have an outdoor party one day soon where we’re sure they’ll get satisfaction.

      

Secondly we always invite the requisite number of government bureaucrats to our orgies as dictated in The Book of Liberalism. They stand around in suits with clip boards and record our behaviors to make sure we are all engaging in our sex in the proper liberal manner. I can’t explain all the rules. It’s too complicated. But suffice it to say it’s really comforting to have the government in my home ready to tell me exactly how to handle my sex life for the betterment of everyone. We liberals love letting the government think for us.

And that’s about it. The rest of the night is a raunchy night of sex, drugs, and rock’n'roll.  Before the night is out a few of my friends will have gotten married to one another or to animals or both. We love our polygamy too. And several of our long term couples who have been in decade long relationships will have gotten divorces. We keep a Satanic Preacher and a Justice of the Peace on hand for such matters whenever we gather.

There’s plenty of fighting too, brutal wild attacking of one another. But that just ads to the blood and bodily fluids and makes the whole experience that much more exciting! Of course the fights also have to be carried out in accordance with the government rules. There have been more than a couple of guests we’ve had to take out back and chop their heads off because they just broke too many rules!

    

This time there are no such unfortunate incidents and once we’ve partied ourselves to near exhaustion we start a little fire indoors (we’ve disabled the fire detectors) and lie around it exhausted and talk about the wonderful future we’re looking forward to. Oh when the day comes when we put every white person into a concentration camp. Oh the wonderful day when we get to string up all true Christians on crosses and watch them bleed. Of course the white people can avoid concentration camps if they take tests to prove that they are sufficiently gay, liberal, and either Muslim, Atheist, or Satanists. And really aren’t all of those things the same thing?

We also talk a lot about the upcoming great Liberalism Conference. It takes place each year on the anniversary of the crucifixion of Christ, one of our great historical triumphs. This year it’s going to be held at Harvard University and it’s said the Great Noam Chomsky will be presiding over the event. Have you ever met him in person. It’s said he can transform a hundred normal children into liberals with a single glance. There’s even a rumor that he once wrestled 2 Crocodiles, Newt Gingrich, 3 live grizzly bears, and Rush Limbaugh all into submission at one time. Truly there is no one better to run the conference than he.

scaaarry!

This is going to be the very first year that we’ll have live video conferencing setup so that we can have our conference not just in Boston but in all the other great centers of Liberalism in the world. San Francisco. Hollywood, Seattle, Boulder Colorado, Las Vegas Nevada, Washington D.C., Wall Street, Paris France, Tehran Iran,  Riyadh Saudi Arabia, Pyongyang North Korea, Havana Cuba, Berlin Germany, Amsterdam Holland, Caracas Venezuela, Sucre Bolivia, Rio de Janeiro, Gaza, Moscow, and of course Beijing. It’s so wonderful to know that there are so many bastions of liberalism in the world where all of the populations are in such lockstep agreement about all the greater Truths of Life! It’s a shame there aren’t more places where the people understand what is needed in the future of this world.

The conference will be chalk full of celebrities too. Guests of honor will include Secretary of State Hilary Clinton who will be bringing along the Obamabot on her heels. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter will be there. So will VP and former VPs Joe Biden and Al Gore. Rumor has it that important heads of state like Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Evo Morales, and Kim Jong-il might even make their appearance.

In addition there’s a whole host of confirmed guests that represent that absolute pinnacle of liberalism. These include:

Daniel Ellsberg, Rachel Maddow, Papa Smurf, Al Franken, Norman Finkelstein, The Joker, Michael Moore, Roger Ebert, David Xanatos, Jesse Jackson, Jon Walker, Benjamin Linus, Terry Gross, Van Jones, Goku, Alan Grayson, Bill Ayers, Dean Baker, Lawrence Lessig, Mickey Mouse, Dawn Johnsen, Cornel West, Nancy Pelosi, Glenn Greenwald, Aang,  Robert Siegel, John and Hank Green, Jeremy Scahill, Anthony Romero, Rick Warren, Amy Goodman, Darth Vader, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Dave Koller, Ariana Huffington, Ronald Jackson, Rod Blagojevich, The Ghostbusters, Markos Moulitsas, Carl Kasell, Dennis Kucinich, Cindy Sheehan, Susan Sarandon,David Feldman, Anna Baltzer, Magneto, Tony Soprano, Renee Montagne, Paul Krugman, Dianne Feinstein, Eric Alterman, Homer Simpson, Cenk Ugyur, Sephiroth, Sean Penn, Rahm Emanuel, Bill Moyers, Scrooge McDuck, Jamil Smith, Diane Rehm, Keith Olbermann, Brian Unger, Skeletor, John Kerry, Joseph Lowery, Jeremiah Wright, Gore Vidal, The Kingpin, Barbra Streisand, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, Sam Harris, Joe Lieberman, Peter Sagal, Justices John Paul Stevens and Sonia Sotomayor, Allison Kilkenny, Lex Luthor, Jamie Kilstein, Juan Gonzalez, Bill Maher, scooby doo, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Bernie Madoff, Ralph Nader, Drunk Uganda, Jane Hamsher, Paul Watson, Janet Napolitano, Patch Adams, Cass Sunstein, The Riddler, Danny Glover, David Dayen, Ken Salazar, Lewis Black, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, Mr. Sinister, Joe Rogan, Michael Whitney, Andy Stern, Sam Seder, The Smokemonster, Mike Papantonio, Melissa Harris Lacewell, Robert Gates, Eric Holder,  Stewie Griffin, Jonathan Kim, Digby, Timothy Geithner, Max Baucus, Sylar, Anita Dunn, David Pakman, Richard Dawkins, Marc Lamont Hill, NeedyGirlfriend, Robert Gates, Doctor Doom, Bernie Sanders, Scarecrow, Ana Kasparian, Marcy Wheeler, The Scarlet Witch, Jason Rosenbaum, Elena Kagan, Greg Palast, Doctor Frankenstein, Kate Sheppard, Matt Yglesias, Laura Flanders, Malcom Gladwell, Dr. Horrible, Kevin Drum, Dylan Ratigan, Johann Hari, Ezra Klein, Count Dracula, David Sirota, John Hodgman, Jay Rosen, John Edwards, Professor Moriarty, Jon Stewart, and many more.

All of those names I happen to know are true Liberal Heroes who agree on EVERYTHING. That’s what makes liberalism so great. We have such a consistent philosophy with no aberrations in our beliefs.

It was said that Stephen Colbert might be there too but honestly I can never figure out if that guy is really on our side…

To think that during this conference we’ll all be able to join together and coordinate an amazing new strategy to bash those conservative bastards heads in just makes my blood boil with excitement!!! It makes me feel like it’ll only be a matter of time before we’re finally able to make our Socialist Marxist Communist Fascist Liberal dream a reality!

           
One day we will unabashedly liter the world with these posters!

With those pleasant thoughts and a final prayer to the prophets and saints to guide our dreams we drift off to sleep with smiles on our faces so that we can be ready for another day of violence and debauchery.

Do you see now? THAT’S what life is like in the world of liberalism. None of this crap about helping people. Nonsense. We are truly devoted to the true path of liberalism and we’ll do everything we can to make anyone who dares disagree with us suffer in the most horrible ways imaginable.

And isn’t it just a wonderful life? I can understand why you can’t WAIT to sign up! I mean I marvel at how lucky I was to be born a true liberal every day of my life. Not everyone gets to experience these joys. And most of you normals are just sadly doomed when the revolution comes.

We have only one real fear and concern and that’s those few rare bastards who seem to have figured out what we’re about!

But no matter he’ll get his due soon enough. He’s really fighting an impossible battle. He might as well give up.

So hurry up and join us! You’ll have to apply of course. Renounce your religion. Renounce your family and friends and your commitment to Justice, fairness, democracy, and capitalism.  If possible see if you can make yourself a minority and sleep with a few minors and animals. If not burning the U.S. Constitution or a U.S. Flag or two will definitely elevate your application. Desecrating a Bible will get you extra high marks.

Trust me, once you’re a liberal like me everything will be GREAT!  Together we can make this world a much better place!

One of the most ridiculous arguments I’ve heard regarding the BP Oilspill is the whole question of whether we should feel sorry for CEO Tony Hayward. Related pointless questions include questions about whether Hayward handled the public relations well, whether Hayward treated safety seriously enough, whether Hayward made too many gaffs, whether Hayward is being unfairly scapegoated, whether Hayward is too arrogant, and of course whether Hayward will keep his job after all of this is over.

Let me say unequivocally to all of this… WHO CARES!

We have this delusional fixation about CEOs. It’s as if we think they have the power to wave magic wands and change the whole course of a company in an instance and so if anything goes wrong it must be cuz they are evil beasts secretly wanting the evil things to occur.   We focus on CEO’s as if everything that happens in a corporation depends on and revolves around the CEO.

But it’s not the case. CEO’s are not omnipotent. Indeed I would say CEO’s don’t matter. So when I blame BP for their arrogance and incompetence,  let me be clear I’m blaming BP.  I’m not blaming whoever happens to be the CEO right now or whoever happened to be the CEO before. Likewise, I’m not blaming the random worker who might have made a random mistake that ultimately caused the explosion. In both cases these are just pieces. They’re tiny little cogs in the gears.  The real problem is the beast itself. A corporation that is structured from the ground up to take risks for profits and to care only about profits above all else.

Replace Tony Hayward with anyone else and I can bet you the results would have been almost identical. The person who is able to get that job has to be someone who shares the values that BP espouses. That is devotion to the company’s bottom line first and the safety and security of the peoples and environments their activities effect a distant second.

That’s why we see all the money spent to avoid negative press. That’s not any particular evil person’s decision. That’s because BP is a corporation. And like all corporations, like the entire corporate culture, it thinks that it both can and should control people’s opinions by controlling what story results they get in Google searches and what dead animals they see on the beach.

It’s not even really BP. BP might be a particularly atrocious company by any measure looking through their history but the other oil companies are by and large not much better if at all. All five of the other major oil companies testified before congress that they didn’t have the capacity to cope with a major oil spill like the kind BP faced if it had happened to them.  That’s a vast understatement I’m sure. I’m guessing barely any of them even bothered to do anything more than the bare minimum they are required to by law. That’s how they work.

Modern corporations are fundamentally a bad design.  They encourage immorality and recklessness by their very nature. They externalize costs to maximize profits.

If you create systems that encourages people to behave in bad ways, we shouldn’t be surprised when the people within those systems behave in bad ways. 

Just as we shouldn’t be surprised when newscasters sacrifice journalistic ethics for access or when politicians lie to curry votes or when people in living in inner cities commit crimes in order to prove themselves.

It’s the system stupid.

That doesn’t mean people don’t have personal responsibility for their actions. Of course they do. Just as we didn’t allow the criminals during the Nuremberg trials to claim “following orders” as a defense from their culpability for genocide, so too when all is said and done with the heads of corporations and all the management have to face the consequences of their actions which might mean the loss of a job or the end of their entire life’s work or even universal condemnation.

No. I’m arguing that often our focus on the individuals is a way to avoid asking ourselves the deeper questions. It IS scapegoating but not to protect any particular politician. In a way we scapegoat our entire way of life by saying “See all we have to do is get rid of Tony Hayward and people like him and then everything will be just fine!”

But that’s not true and deep down we know it’s not true. Tony Hayward is irrelevant. He’s a distraction. When you combine:
1. A top down totalitarian profit focused cost externalizing corporate regime
2. A lobbying dependent, fundraiser focused, corporate captured government that believes that the only good regulation is NO regulation
and
3. A society and an economy that is dependent upon and addicted to dirty, dangerous, and destructive energy sources

You will eventually get tragic outcomes.  And until we change at least one of these and preferably ALL three we’re still going to have a society extremely at risk of disaster after disaster after disaster.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

According to the news a lot of people in Britain are also complaining that the US is being too anti-Brittish in their response to the BP tragedy.   This I think is absurd. I can guarantee you that this scale of a disaster would have provoked equivalent outrage no matter what company was responsible for it. American or otherwise. Though we should be happy it is a British company and not like say an Iranian company…. then there would probably be war.

The idea that Obama is doing something wrong by referencing BP as British Petroleum is an arguable point. It’s probably deliberate but probably has more to do with catering to generic nationalism then any particular beef with Britain.

Three other important facts need to be said about this whole Britain versus America dialogue that is emerging in the media. First the idea that this such a harsh attack on BP is sort of belied by the simple fact that BP is almost as much of an American company as it is a British company.  43% of BP shares are owned by American citizens.

Secondly, it should be noted that Britain has in the past been brutally aggressive in attacking American behaviors even in their parliament. During the financial crises there were many who were quick to blame American banks in particular for the crises. And there are plenty who attack the US for going into Iraq.  And that’s perfectly reasonable to me. Those things really ARE our fault.  But it’s ridiculous to whine at us about those things and THEN come back and whine that we are being too tough on you for an oil spill that is wrecking our coast and has almost NO impact on you whatsoever.

Thirdly the idea that the American Congress was too mean to poor Tony Hayward when questioning him today because they interupted him too much and made him admit to things and that they were that way to him because he was British is just too ridiculously laughable. Only someone who hasn’t seen our Congress in action could ever think that. That’s how Congress works when questioning people. It’s impolite. It’s often childish. It’s rarely fair. But yeah every time I turn on CNN and watch our Congress in action I cringe and wonder how we ended up with so many McCarthyites in our branches of government. Trust me, it’s not Britain specific.

Yeah Americans are going to be angry. But honestly with the exception of the very rare utterance of “British Petroleum” I’ve seen very little to suggest that the American people are blaming Britain for this crises in any way shape or form. If people in Britain think that we are I can only imagine they just aren’t getting the same news sources we are getting here in the US.  I would suspect that the news they are getting must be very biased and considering how awful news is here in the States that’s really saying something. Really blame here is focused on two main culprits. The company BP, and the US Government. As it should be.

*   *   *    *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Next I want to talk quickly about this idea floating about that those stupid boycotters and protesters are only hurting poor Mom and Pop owners of gas stations and it’s totally unfair.

Yeah on one level it’s true. I heard on the news that only 100 of the 700 “BP” branded Gas Stations are actually owned by BP (I’m not sure if that was US-wide or just in the South). And yeah I’d agree as a pragmatic matter if users know they should definitely target their boycotts on the things that hurt BP the most like the other oil based products they sell.

But on another level I have to say Who Cares? 

I mean it sometimes seems like we Americans have this weird notion of protest that says when we protest we should never ever hurt anyone.  So we have to tiptoe around our protests and not do anything controversial and be sure to only march along the permitted streets and only on weekends so nobody has to miss school or work and don’t bring any kids along and etc etc etc.

Of course the history of effective protest is quite different. It’s the ones that BREAK the rules that have the biggest impact. It’s the ones that create a crises that have the best impact and even better if you can create such a crises without causing any physical harm to anyone causing your protesters to look utterly reasonable.

But NOBODY said your protests can’t hurt anyone economically. Nobody said there can’t be economic collatoral damage too.

When the protesters in Birmingham Alabama were fighting for civil rights they basically shut that entire city down with their protests.  Was there collatoral damage in that? Of course! Lots of people who probably weren’t racist and probably didn’t even support segregation probably were significantly hurt by the constant disruption to their business. Police officers were undoubtedly negatively impacted even when they were just doing their jobs. Did that fact stop the protesters from marching? Did it stop the sit ins? No! Because the people protesting new that what they were fighting for was more important.  If people had a problem with what was happening then they knew what they had to do to stop it. They simply had to give minorities equal rights.

These non BP-owned “BP” stations face a similar condition. If they are upset about their loss of business and the unfair hardships they are facing it’s clear who is to blame. It’s BP. What’s keeping them from changing their gas stations and relabel them as non-BP and ensuring that they have no connection to BP whatsoever if they want to avoid being caught in BP’s dark umbrella? If they want to get this to stop they need to work with the protesters and the boycotters to get BP to do the right thing.

It’s sad I admit for innocent people to be caught in the crossfire of this conflict. And I do feel sorry for them. But overall the core injustice here is that there is an oil company that treated the Gulf of Mexico like its own personal playground and the results were atrocious.

*   *   *   *    *    *   *   *   *

Lastly on the oil spill I want to note that, although this might just and most likely is just silly rumors but the news coming out of Russia on the Oil Spill here in the States is just out of this world.  There is a world of difference between the worst case scenarios they are talking about and the worst case scenarios we are talking about here in the States.  I read an article where they were saying things like if the Americans aren’t able to plug the leak we can basically kiss the Atlantic Ocean Goodbye.

The stories I read said that this information was coming from Russian Scientists who BP called upon early on because they have an advanced kind of submersible technology and that those Scientists saw a massive leak in the ocean’s floor that dwarfed the one we are seeing on television and several other smaller fractures.  And they were arguing that we need to nuke the entire area in order to have any hope of sealing the many ruptures. They claimed that the US had forced them to remain silent about what they saw.

It was hopefully just a couple of crazy stories I read and has no real impact on what’s really happening and indeed I don’t trust the Russian press a whole lot especially when it comes to reporting something that’s happening a half a world away. And just as we have a long history of misrepresenting Russia to build up anti-Russian sentiment, Russia also has a long history of misrepresenting the US to build up anti-American sentiment. So yeah it should definitely be taken with a grain of salt.

I couldn’t find either of the articles just now after a cursory search and I foolishly didn’t save them, but if I do I’ll be sure to link them here.

But it would be sort of explicative if this were true and we are not only not getting the full story but not even getting a fraction of the correct estimates? That might explain why the government isn’t really trying that hard to prevent the oil from reaching the shore but just want to make a show of trying to prevent it. Maybe they know it is impossible.

Of course the real reason I doubt this story is that if it were true I suspect we’d have other separate independently verifiable estimates of oil spill size that were vastly out of line with the official estimates that might hint at it. Something like various scientific institutions would be studying satellite data and sounding the sirens of alarm and the news media would be eating it up.   Generally I don’t think there are big far reaching conspiracies that are so powerful that they can cover stuff like that up.

But if it does turn out to be true, or in the future we mess up and make the oil spill hit the true worse case scenario of a total blow out of the entire reservoir, or if we are just never able to seal the damn hole and it keeps getting worse and worse,  I want to take note that I was the first to say we may be living in a new era of mankind such that we might end up measuring time using the point of the oilspill as a pivot point.  We should start measuring time in days and years after oil spill.

Today I believe is Day 60 A.O.

Words cannot describe how upsetting and rage inducing I find the news related to the BP Oil Spill we’ve been hearing over the last couple of months.

Fortunately there are occasional bright spots that come out of this crisis that can cheer me up. For example, the brilliance of this comedy sketch is simply beyond words:

I need a word that starts with “P” that stands for incompetence, reckless greed, and monstrous evil.  Because whatever that word is BP is definitely Beyond that.

While of course I think a comedy sketch should be more than sufficient to prove that point. I have other evidence too:

For some reason this quote was missing from the videos above (might be unconfirmed):

Don’t forget also that BP was both deceptive and dishonest when setting up this drill site.

In the spill scenarios detailed in the documents, fish, marine mammals and birds escape serious harm; beaches remain pristine; water quality is only a temporary problem. And those are the projections for a leak about 10 times worse than what has been calculated for the ongoing disaster.

There are other wildly false assumptions in the documents. BP’s proposed method to calculate spill volume judging by the darkness of the oil sheen is way off. The internationally accepted formula would produce estimates 100 times higher.

The Gulf’s loop current, which is projected to help eventually send oil hundreds of miles around Florida’s southern tip and up the Atlantic coast, isn’t mentioned in either plan.

The website listed for Marine Spill Response Corp. — one of two firms that BP relies on for equipment to clean a spill — links to a defunct Japanese-language page.

In early May, at least 80 Louisiana state prisoners were trained to clean birds by listening to a presentation and watching a video. It was a work force never envisioned in the plans, which contain no detailed references to how birds would be cleansed of oil.”

“_ Beaches where oil washed up within weeks of a spill were supposed to be safe from contamination because BP promised it could marshal more than enough boats to scoop up all the oil before any deepwater spill could reach shore — a claim that in retrospect seems absurd.

“The vessels in question maintain the necessary spill containment and recovery equipment to respond effectively,” one of the documents says.

In case you needed another reminder of how bad things are. Here’s a glimpse of this oil from under the ocean:

And don’t forget all those birds you see covered in oil on the news every day have almost no chance of survival.

But while we’re mocking BP for sheer stupidity let’s not forget there’s been plenty of THAT to go around:

There’s also this from Republican Alaska representative Don Young:

But if you strangely think Democrats and the Obama administration are coming across as angels, think again.  I highly recommend reading this lengthy article:

Or you can watch these videos that include an interview with the author of that article here.

Both political parties share significant responsibility for the anti-regulatory culture of Washington that was indirectly responsible for this oil spill.

But let’s get back to BP.

Their cover up and attempts to avoid responsibility are even more sickening than their pre-spill mistakes. From setting up a bogus call center to blocking reporters from talking to clean up crews to buying up all the Google Adwords to control the story.

Then there’s of course the dithering over whether to pay shareholder dividends.  Meanwhile BP is super ambiguous about whether they tend to try and use the $75 million liability cap currently existing in law to avoid paying damages. And instead of voluntarily setting up a large escrow fund to pay liability payments it looks like BP will wait for the Obama administration to legally compel them to do so.

I don’t even have to tell you about all the shenanigans with regards to misreporting and covering up the amount of oil that spilled.

Let’s not forget that this is all during a time when BP has been doing quite well profit-wise:

Nor is this kind of immorality and incompetence new for BP. Indeed it’s a marked element of their entire modern history.

From their role (with our help) in the overthrow of the Iranian Democracy:

To their role in the brutal conditions and exploitation of Iranians that encouraged the Iranian revolution that created said democracy in the first place:

The company subjected Iranian workers to deplorable working conditions, paying Iranians considerably less than foreigners. The following passage is how the director of Iran’s Petroleum Institute described those conditions:

Wages were 50 cents a day. There was no vacation pay, no sick leave, no disability compensation. The workers lived in a shanty town called Kaghazabad, or Paper city, without running water or electricity … In winter the earth flooded and became a flat, perspiring lake. The mud in town was knee-deep, and … when the rains subsided, clouds of nipping, small-winged flies rose from the stagnant water to fill the nostrils. … Summer was worse. … The heat was torrid … sticky and unrelenting—while the wind and sandstorms shipped off the desert hot as a blower. The dwellings of Kaghazabad, cobbled from rusted oil drums hammered flat, turned into sweltering ovens. … In every crevice hung the foul, sulfurous stench of burning oil … in Kaghazad there was nothing—not a tea shop, not a bath, not a single tree. The tiled reflecting pool and shaded central square that were part of every Iranian town … were missing here. The unpaved alleyways were emporiums for rats.”  source

To the 2005 Texas City Refinery explosion:

To the Alaskan Prudhoe Bay Oil Spill that was caused by corroded pipelines:

Red flags and warning signs had been raised about corrosion on several occasions both from within and outside the organization but had been ignored.  … A company report in year 2005 said BP based its corrosion-fighting on a limited budget instead of needs.

Employees had raised their concerns before the actual incident, which were ignored by BP management. In an e-mail to a company lawyer in June 2004, Mr. Kovac, an official of the United Steelworkers union representing workers at the BP facility, forwarded a collection of his earlier complaints to management. … Initially BP denied that they took money-saving measures maintaining the pipeline. Robert Malone, the chairman of BP America, cited a report commissioned by BP which concluded that “budget increases alone would not have prevented the leak”. He later admitted that there “was a concerted effort to manage the costs in response to the continuing decline in production at Prudhoe Bay”. One of the reasons for the pipeline failure was an insufficient level of corrosion inhibitor, a liquid which resists corrosion of pipeline by the corroding liquid, which is water. John Dingell read from an internal BP email that said budgetary constraints would force the end of a programme to inject corrosion inhibitor directly into the pipeline system. The process of injecting corrosion inhibitor directly into a pipeline, though costly, is much more effective than injecting in a process plant.

…

The leak detection system measures the volumes of fluid entering each pipeline segment and the volumes of fluid leaving each segment. The system triggers an alarm if the volume measurements don’t match up. The leak detection alarm sounded four times during the week before the spill was discovered, but BP interpreted the leak detection alarms as false alarms. BP is now investigating the potential for developing a more sensitive leak detection system.“

To terrifying reports of negligence in safety at BP’s Atlantis Platform:

To the generally horrible safety record of BP in general:

Meanwhile, BP pretends to be “Beyond Petroleum” and the “Green” oil company. Only that’s nothing but a blatant lie:

For example, in 2009 BP further affirmed that it was never truly committed to alternative energy when that division of the company in London was shut down.  Vivienne Cox, the director of solar and wind power for the company resigned at the same time. Shortly before the entire division was cut, BP’s solar projects in both Spain and the United States were ended, cutting hundreds of jobs.

The same time last year BBC reported that BP had decided to shift its priorities from being “green” to being “responsible,” backing away from their environmentally friendly commitment.  “  source

But AT LEAST we have BP’s “heartfelt” apology:

So I guess everything’s just fine then! Right?

It’s scary sometimes how deep arrogance and incompetence can run within the centers of power in this world.

I recall seeing an article the other day that said that boycotting BP was “foolish”. Similarly I heard a radio commentator argue that investors were being “silly” by running away from BP stocks. This is absurd. BP shares have fallen over 40% for the same reason consumers are choosing to do everything in their power to shop elsewhere. Namely, BP has shown in nearly every way imaginable that they are one of the most corrupt conniving corporations on the face of the planet and that they haven’t the faintest clue what they are doing. They simply appear to have no interest whatsoever in being a responsible global entity. Nobody trusts BP as far as they can throw them.

For reasonable people the benefit of the doubt only goes so far. There is a point where people do something so wrong that they should no longer be given any slack. There is a point where all that matters is that they be held accountable and be made to pay for the harm they’ve caused.  This is important not just for them, to ensure that they no longer make similar mistakes, but also for everyone else too. It’s to create an example that convinces people that they cannot act with reckless impunity. So that they know that they have to take into account the possible unintended consequences of their actions when planning for the future.

No one should shed a single tear if BP goes out of business or is taken over.  The simple fact is we’d be much better off without them.

I was responding to an email in which someone wrote about something that I vaguely remembered writing about on my blog. Thanks to Xanga’s new search your own blog feature I was able to quickly find the entry in which I mentioned the thing mentioned in the email.

So I read it. And…. geez.  The entry kinda shocked me. It was an entry from way back on December 13, 2007. It was a long time ago.

In reality probably nobody but me has ever read this entry. The original post only had one comment on it and since this was back before the “reply” feature was added to Xanga it was actually a reply to something I had commented on his or her blog and not at all a reply to what I had written. It’s before you had view counts too so I can’t even tell if anyone has even viewed it.  It’s a a really really long entry and it takes me a while to get to the most interesting points  so it would not surprise me at all if I’m the only one who has ever taken the time to read this entry in its entirety thus far.

But I hope that changes. In re-reading this entry even though I barely remember writing about it and barely remember the events that triggered the writing of it, I still find the entry to be really really good. It’s meaningful. I think it has a good message and interesting ideas and was definitely worth writing. And it even has significance to me today that I could not have foreseen years ago when I first wrote it.

Or maybe lots of people read it back in the day and just hated what I had to say so much that they had no desire to pick a fight with me by posting a reply. That’s possible too. If so. Well… meh. *shrugs*

So I’m re-posting it in the hopes that maybe some of you will read it today and NOT hate it. Hopefully you’ll find some meaning or significance to it. Or if not then at least perhaps a little entertainment in it. Perhaps if nothing else you can marvel at how different my style of writing is today than it was 3 years ago. Or perhaps marvel at how similar it is.

To me it feels really different. The kind of blogger I was back in December of 2007 was really different than the kind of blogger I am today. The things I wrote about were different. The way I FELT about the things I wrote about were different. And what they meant to me was even more different.

And I really kinda miss that old blogger. I wonder what really happened to the December 13, 2007 version of Nephyo?  Why did he change? And I wonder if I haven’t lost something from back then. I feel as if maybe I’ve changed for the worse.

It’s an important thing to contemplate because I’m kinda starting with a new and deliberately forced change in my blogging style right now. The new audio blogs and the more video embeds are part of that. I’m kinda pushing myself to be a little different and go a bit outside of my comfort zone and I have no idea how it will turn out.

But reading my old blog reminded me quite forcefully of why I felt the need for a change. I haven’t really liked blogging like I used to like blogging lately. I’ve felt some of my blogs mattered, but they mattered only in a superficial way and only to other people.They didn’t really matter to me. Not in the same way my old blogs did. There was something sort of inauthentic about my blog over the last few months. It didn’t seem to reflect my inner mind as much as my old blog did. It was more about the surface thoughts that were of interest to me here and now and sharing the random tidbits of knowledge I’ve picked up in my daily wanderings. And while there’s certainly a place for that in blogging. It isn’t what I want my blog to entirely be. It’s just not as much fun to write that stuff. It’s too ephemeral. It doesn’t last.

I don’t think if I were to look up any of my blogs from the last two or three months 3 years ago they would have the same impact that re-reading this blog from 2007 had.  And that’s what I want to change.

I can’t go back the December 13, 2007 Nephyo. He’s gone. He passed away peacefully and the June 12, 2010 Nephyo was born out his ashes. But maybe the current me can learn a bit from his old incarnation

And every once in a while I think it makes sense to honor those old incarnations of Nephyo by re-posting some of their better works from the age old days of yore.  So I’m starting with that blog I found today. It was called “Tragic Figures”.  Probably a bad title in retrospect. It should be called something like “Our Inner Tragedies”. In any case if you have an interest read on below the cut tag. Enjoy!

[CUT-TAG="Read "Tragic Figures" December, 2007"]

Tragic Figures
Originally posted December 13th 2007 at 9:51 AM.

I used to hate the show Smallville. I mean there were things that I thought were ok about it I guess or else I would have never watched it at all. You get the excessive eye candy and fan service, so I guess you could watch it just for that. In addition the season premier’s and finale’s are decent or at least a cut above the regular season episodes. If you even have the slightest passing interest in the mythology of Superman it can be a little interesting to see how Clark’s story unfolds and how they manifest his powers using modern day special effects. The season premiers and finale’s are good for that aspect since you get the cool powers stuff with a minimal of the soap opera fluff that takes up 99% of every other episode.

But what I really hated about the show was the very premise of it. The idea behind Smallville is to make Superman more human and believable by showing how he grows up and all the hardships and sorrows he faces. And so throughout the series they play all this sappy music and over dramatize stuff and try to make you feel so sorry for poor poor Superman.

And I just can’t get on board with that. I can’t suspend my disbelief.  He’s SUPERMAN for christ sake. What does he have to complain about? I mean really. What the heck is so bad about his life? Give me even ONE of his powers and I guarantee you I’d be dancing in the streets I’d be so happy. Super hearing, Super strength, X-ray Vision, Heat vision, Cold Breath, Invulnerability, Super Speed, Flight, the ability to heal by standing outside in the sunlight. Sheesh. What I’ve got to fight some super villains in exchange for those powers? Big frickin deal. Sign me up. I’ll take it in a second.

It’s even worse because you the viewer *already* know how the story is going to unfold. When he’s done dealing with all these silly little childhood dramas, he’s going to be Superman, loved and revered by all the worlds people, savior of humanity many times over. He’s going to fall in love with the woman of his dreams and basically things will work out between them, more or less. We know this. We also know he’s going to get to live on a space station and hang out with super heroes  every day. How awesome is that? And he’ll even have a pretty nice day job as a reporter in the mean time.

So boohoo Clark. Cry me a river. How are we supposed to believe his life is so tough because he has to deal with green cryptonite and red cryptonite and phantoms and a friend who betrays him and unrequited love and lost love and all the other nonsense they try to squeeze into the story to fill season after season of bullshit.

What’s with this rant?  I have a point. I even think it’s a rather interesting point this time. Bear with me if you dare. I’m getting to it.

Another show that created similar feelings in me was the show Heroes. In this show the character Claire is  the biggest example. She seems to whine and whine to me and I just don’t get what she’s so upset about. Her power is incredibly awesome! She’s like wolverine. Eternal youth, immortality, and her blood can be used to heal people. And she has an awesome dad who would do anything for her and on top of all that she  just happens to be incredibly beautiful.

So when she spends half the first season complaining about how terrible it is to be different, I just rolled my eyes. And when she spent half the second season complaining about how terrible it is to not be able to be different I just wanted to gag. Her character is just a big stupid teenager cliche. It is a manifestation of the stereotype of all people in a certain age group being all “woe is me” all the time. And I just call bullshit on that.

There are other annoyingly tragic figures in Heroes too. There’s Niki and Peter for example. But they at least have more reason to complain. I mean Peter is worried about a little thing like *exploding* because he can’t control his powers and Nikki has an evil psychopath living inside her for a while. Still, I think, even if I were them I’d be a little more positive about my lot in life. I mean they’ve got to take the time out every once in a while and look at themselves and think “Wow. I’m incredibly awesome!”  Why don’t they do that? If I had their powers I sure would.

That’s why I like Hiro in that series. When he discovers his powers he gets happy. He gets excited. He’s mastered time and space! How awesome is that? That’s how you’re supposed to feel when you find out you have a super power. That’s how I’d feel. So what if I have to face super villains? And as for people potentially experimenting on me… well let them try! I’m the master of time and space after all! Bring it on!

A friend of mine introduced me to the preaching of Joel Osteen. It isn’t usually my kind of a thing and neither of us are very religious but I occasionally find it interesting. He’s a very talented speaker and much of what he says is quite true. He reminds us of things that are obvious but that we nevertheless far too frequently forget.

In the last episode of it I saw he was preaching about this topic sort of. He talked about how negative we are all in this society. And how important it is for is for us to sometimes take a moment and look back at ourselves and see the good in us. To stop and say “I did good” rather than keep saying “this sucks” or “I suck” or “Man I screwed up so bad”, etc. etc. That’s what I find missing in Smallville and Heroes. The characters rarely take a moment to pat themselves on the back or to look at all of the good aspects of their lives. Claire never stops and says “you know, even though all kinds of screwed up things are happening in my life, at least I can regenerate and whatever else may be true, that’s just frickin awesome.”

But I said I used to hate these programs because of these aspects and that’s true. I don’t feel that way any more, or at least not as much. Why not? What changed? 

Well I thought about this from a different perspective. Everyone I’ve ever encountered has had hardships and dark times and moments of sadness and vulnerability. Everyone I know has sometimes spoken about it or blogged about it or mopped about thinking about it. Everyone has a tragic aspect. A part of their life that they look at and wonder “oh why oh why did it turn out this way” and “if only it could be different”. 

But you know for any given person there’s probably somebody out there who if they were to hear the story of your tragedy would think about it in much the same way as I think about Clark and Claire’s stories. “Oh big deal!” they’d say, and “What the heck do you have to complain about?”

Likewise there’s probably somebody (and maybe a lot of somebodies) out there who reads my blogs and thinks “oh what a whiner!” and “geez, if I could write like him, I wouldn’t be complaining.”  And when I describe experiences and events that happen in my life they think “oh stop complaining! My life is SO much worse than that!”

 Just like I read many other blogs and think “well damn, I wish I could write half as well as that!” And I read about the extraordinary experiences others seem to be having, the incredible lives they seem to be leading even as they sprout their angst filled description of their hardships and sorrows and I think sometimes in my heart of hearts, sure I’d take that life. In a second. It isn’t half so bad as the writers make it out to be.

Maybe there’s a theoretical worst life in the world that somebody has that nobody would trade for but for most of us I think we see our lot in life as bad because it’s the only one we’ve ever had. It’s our personal tragedy and as much as we lament over it, there’s somebody out there who would take it in a nano second.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if we could do a sort of random life exchange. It’d be an opt in system of course.  IF you love your life as it stands you wouldn’t be forced to change it. But all the rest of us who at some point or another even if it is only for a single instant feel overwhelmed by the tragic nature of our experiences could just choose to be added to the life exchange pool. Then they’d just get a new life randomly assigned from amongst all the others who’ve opted in the pool.

The interesting thing about such a system is that every potential life you could get is going to be tragedy in some sense or another. Somebody thought it was a tragedy and indeed tragic enough that they felt at some point like giving up and taking a different life.

And yet… I wonder if it wouldn’t end up with people being generally happier? Everyone gets a new life and when they look at that new life they see it much more positively than the original occupant just because it’s different, just because it’s unique, just becuase it’s NOT their old life. The one they felt was so intolerable that they had to run away from it?

Or am I wrong?  Would the people who engage in the exchange suddenly experience through comparison a greater appreciation for their OLD lives. So much so that they want it back? They might say “Man I didn’t realize how GOOD I had it before! What the heck was I thinking going into this life exchange?”  So maybe we have to add in a sort of 30 day life-back guarantee. Your life is reserved  for you for 30 days so you can jump back  to it if you want but after those thirty days are up your life might be given away at random to another life seeker. So you’d best decide well. Old life or new? Which do you want? It’s likely to be a tough choice but then again even if you miss your thirty day window, if your new life gets intolerable you can always re-enter the roulette and get another random life. Maybe you even get lucky and get your old life back or something even better.

Anyway thinking about all of this lead me to start to doubt my earlier disgust at the depiction of tragic heroes. Maybe it’s ok, I thought, for Superman to be a tragic figure? And maybe it’s ok too for Nephyo to be a tragic figure? Sure other people have got it worse, maybe much much much much worse, but so what? Is it so bad a thing to see and recognize the tragedy in our lives and to feel bad about it every once in a while? Maybe that’s just a part of being human too?

I’ll probably never like Smallville. It’s just too cheesy. And Heroes I only watch for the cool powers since the plot is never ever going to make a lick of sense. And maybe I’ll never be the hugest fan of Clark Kent or Claire Bennett, but I don’t think I’m as likely not to be disgusted by them anymore. They’re over dramatized, over idealized versions of characters, but even so they’re just like everybody else. Drama and tragedy. It’s not so bad. Is it?

A friend of mine once suggested the idea that someone could be attracted or repulsed by the tragedy in another’s life. That the sorrow and sadness could appeal to you or it could push you away. And that a more tragic figure might be more preferable to some than a not tragic figure. Or a more tragic figure might be impossible for others to deal with than a less tragic figure. So it’s that idea of preferences I blogged about before (12/10). I’d never thought before he mentioned that that tragedy was a feature of people that could attract or repel. It makes sense though, but I just never thought about it in that way.

And so I thought about this and wondered where do my preferences lie along the continuum of tragedy? Am I attracted to or repulsed by the tragic? My prior opinions of Clark and Claire seems to suggest a repulsion but at the same time many of my other interactions in life suggest the opposite.

I’m not entirely sure the answer to that question, but I do think that at least understanding tragedy is really important to me. How the tragic aspects of someone’s story shapes who they are. How it makes them who they are and what they are and why they think the way they do and act the way they do. I really care a great deal about understanding people, especially people I come to care about. And I think understanding the tragic aspects of their lives is essential to understanding a person.

More than that though, I do thing I have a lot of a low level attraction to tragic figures too. And yet I don’t think that’s weird or bad either. Think of it this way, would you enjoy a story that had no sadness in it? Would you care about the characters in a book if they experienced no sorrow, no angst, no fear, no dread, no uncertainty whatsoever? Would you keep reading if nothing bad ever happened to anybody and everything just worked out with a minimal level of effort?  I certainly wouldn’t. I would despise such a story. It would repulse me to no end.

And it’s like that with people too. If I meet someone who just seems so dang insufferably happy all the time, it drives me nuts. I want to strangle them! I just don’t believe it! There’s gotta be something there that they are hiding I think. Life is never all sunshine and lolly pops.  Everybody’s got a tragic aspect. Everybody’s life has drama in it. I can’t confirm those statements with 100% accuracy since I haven’t examined every person’s life, but I believe it whole heartedly nonetheless.

At the same time, I also think I have a low level repulsion for certain kinds of tragic figures too.

Consider the short story “The Second Kind of Loneliness” (see yesterday’s post).  I’m sure most people end up reading this and end up thinking about how bad loneliness sucks. They will feel bad for the main character. Maybe they think that they can relate to his feelings. But overall they just think at how terrible it is for society to let someone become that lonely and how important it is for human beings to interact with people and become a part of groups. That old adage that human beings cannot survive alone. That’s the line of thought most people will have. Sure they may be a little disgusted by the choices the main character makes, but that feeling will be dwarfed in most people by how sorry they will feel for him. In short they will pity him.

Which is exactly what he would have hated the most.

Me, I too think that I can relate to this character. I think I can relate a lot more than most people. I felt exactly like he’s felt. I’ve been alone in the woods starring at the night sky isolated from the world and feeling that brooding loneliness. And I’ve been at a party or a gathering shy and unable to relate to anyone feeling that other kind of loneliness too. I’ve felt it far too frequently. And yet I don’t feel sorry for the main character in this story. Not at all. I don’t think what a sad life or how terrible that things turned out that way for him. Nor do I even particularly feel angry at him or disgusted by him.

The main character’s problem is, in my opinion, not that he was lonely. That isn’t it at all. So many people are lonely and lonely in so many different ways but they deal with it. They live their lives. They find happiness or at least a level of low level joy to get them by. Somehow they cope. Why couldn’t this character?

No, his problem is in my opinion that he lets his tragedy, the tragedy of feeling alone, become his entire life.  It became the focus of his existence. Nothing else mattered to him. He felt no other joys and no other pleasures and thought of nothing except in relation to how it related to his tragic loneliness. Every interaction he ever had made him berate himself for being too lonely, for lacking courage, for being too self-pitying.  Even out in the extraordinary expanse of space alone amongst the stars he can’t find simple appreciation of the beauty he sees. Rather the vast emptiness of space is but a metaphor for the emptiness of his own life. It’s all part of the tragedy.  The lonely soul who is so much more on the inside than anyone knows. As beautiful as the vastness of space, but just as empty too.

He made another mistake too. When faced with this tragedy and letting it build up and become more and more a significant part of his life to the point that he couldn’t stand it anymore, instead of facing it, he did the worst thing he could possibly have chosen to do.

He ran away.

He thought he was running away from the loneliness. He thought that it was being around people having to interact with them, being awkward and shy and afraid were what was making him lonely. He thought he could run away from interactions and escape that second kind of loneliness. He thought he could escape his tragedy.

But what he ended up escaping was everything else that was good in his life. He ran away from Earth and all its joys and pleasures, hardships and sufferings. He ran away from the chance to grow or change or become something else. Yeah he escaped those awkward moments when he might say or do the wrong thing, but at the same time he lost everything else too. Nobody could hate him or  be disgusted by him when he was alone on that star ring, but nobody could praise him or commiserate with him either. He abandoned his entire life. The good, the bad, and the ugly. And all that he was left with, ALL that he had left, was the thing he couldn’t escape no matter how far he went, no matter how far he ran. His loneliness. His tragedy. Because in the end when all is said and done, our tragedies are inside of us. You can’t escape them by running away. And in the end doing so only makes you feel worse. Much worse.

Reading about this made me feel, not dislike, but a sort of low level aversion to this character. The opposite of the attraction I feel toward some aspects of tragic figures. The way in which he coped with his tragedy disturbed and repulsed me.  It just feels so wrong. There’s so much that is extraordinary in life to take pleasure in and to find joy in that you don’t need to become so overwhelmed by one aspect of your existence, even if it is such a big aspect as one’s feelings of loneliness.

And you know you can do that with any tragedy not just the tragedy of loneliness. A person can become overwhelmed by a tragedy of loss or a tragedy of impending disaster or a tragedy of conflict or a tragedy of exclusion. Everyone has at least a little bit of tragedy in their lives, in their pasts, and in their imagined future. But not everyone lets this tragedy become their soul defining characteristic. Not everyone feels as if those feelings that arise from the tragedy in their lives are their only feelings or the only feelings that matter to them. Not everyone makes the mistake of running away from their tragedy only to find it an ever looming un-escapable presence dwelling in every tiny corner and recess of their minds.

It’s doing that that creates the problem in a character like the main character of “The Second Kind of Loneliness”. It’s when you are consummed by your tragedy that mere sadness and doubt and fear gets transformed into shame and sorrow and bitter guilt. It’s then that you might contemplate killing yourself. Or it’s then that you can become as the main character in this short story did, a monster.  But if you let yourself be the totality of yourself. To see the good and the bad, the sad and the joyful, then I don’t think a little thing like feeling lonely or any other tragic character aspect can destroy you. It will only make you stronger.

On the other hand now that I think about it, if it is a mistake to be consumed by your tragic aspect, I think it is just as much if not more of a mistake to overly ignore your tragedy. I don’t have any good short stories that illustrate that, but I have observed it in the real world.

There are those who don’t want to live as part of a tragedy, don’t want to think about the bad things that have happened or are happening or might yet happen to them. They just shut it all out and pretend like nothing’s wrong. They want a world that is without that sense of darkness or fear within them. So they pretend it doesn’t exist or that it didn’t influence them to make them who they are. They want a world that really is all sunshine and lolly pops and they live a life in which they strive to bring that about in their daily livings.

And I feel as much an aversion to that attitude as I do for the overly tragic figure. Because I know it just doesn’t last. Tragedy can’t be suppressed and repressed and made to just vanish and disappear. They don’t go away that easily. Instead they build up when ignored behind the scenes hurting you more and more until one day you won’t be able to take it anymore. The stress of trying to be something that nobody ever really is, the sorrow-free existence will drive you insane just like the excessive obsession with one’s sorrow drove the main character of “Loneliness” insane.

It’s ok I think to every once in a while stop and say “Man this sucks!” It’s a good thing I think to every once in a while admit to yourself that you wish that things could be different and that you hate the way things turned out.  It can be an entirely good thing I think to one day go off somewhere and scream and scream and scream and shout and rage at all the things that aren’t the way you want them to be and that didn’t turn out quite like you wished and dreamed. Or to write long rambling blogs or journals about it. Or to find someone receptive and rail at them and tell them all about all the stuff that hurts.

It’s ok to be pissed off about life. It really is. Doing so doesn’t mean your a bad person or that you are wasting your life. It isn’t really so bad a thing to pity yourself sometimes either. Doing so doesn’t mean that you aren’t making the most out of your existence. Doing so doesn’t always hurt you. Sometimes it helps. It’s a lot better than shutting it all in and pretending like everything is all always alright.

I think it’s all just two sides of the same coin. Whether you are running away from your life in hopes of escaping your tragedy or you are running away from your tragedy in hopes of escaping your life it just won’t work. Running doesn’t help. At best it can give you a temporary reprieve. But at worst it can end up exacerbating the problems. Since your life won’t disappear and your tragedy won’t go away not as long as you live and breathe. But the running can make you feel terrible. I’ve done both of course in my short life time. That’s probably why I have an aversion to both attitudes. In my experience running away always feels worse by far than facing the thing from which I was running.

I don’t know if I really said all the things I meant to say on this topic but I think I covered the important stuff. So I guess I’ll just end it right here. I’ll close with an amusing only slightly related youtube video just because.

In the United States we basically have two ascendant schools of economic thought. One is more or less Keynesian and the other is basically the Chicago school. Our government never actually does exactly what is prescribed by either of these schools but plots a course somewhere in between the extremes.

Neither of these are fundamentally transformational economic ideologies. They are more like ideologies about how best for government to work with the system that we have in place now. And that makes sense. It’s far more rare for people to advocate changing a society from the ground up and to implement a new system. And after what was universally seen in the west as the abject failure of communism the whole idea of “start over” economic philosophies were strongly seen as dangerous and counterproductive.  That’s part of why economic discussions in the US sometimes don’t seem as broad as they do elsewhere in the world.

In any case if I had to summarize the philosophies as quickly and simply and flatteringly as possible I’d do so like this:

Keynesian:   The government should invest in their people and society all the time (through whatever means they have). But that is most important to do when times are tough and we are in an economic downturn or a recession.  Government investment can pull us out of the recession by stimulating the economy through encouraging consumer spending which in turn encourages business investment. But if Government is going to cut back, it should do it when the nation is prosperous NOT when the times are tough.

Chicago:  The government should minimize its spending all the time (and every other influence it has on the economy). But that is most important to do when times are tough and we are in an economic downturn or a recession. Government dis-investment can pull us out of a recession by stimulating the economy through encouraging businesses to invest and hire which in turn spurs consumer spending. Recessions then will correct themselves automatically in the shortest time possible.  But if Government is going to increase spending, it should do it when the nation is prosperous NOT when the times are tough.

Obviously these are super over-simplifications and I obviously altered the basic idea in order to create symmetry between the philosophies. But I think this gets at the essence of what the philosophies are about.

Basically both assume government, as it is, is doing something somewhat wrong and needs to alter course a bit to ensure that we keep the economy strong.

Both also have a Horror story to tell if their sage advice is not heeded.  And the horror story for both schools is almost identical.  Basically they describe the disastrous turn of events where government Deficits get too high but the economy continues to stagnate.  The downturn turns into a recession. The recession turns into a depression. Inflation runs amok. Unemployment is out of control. And everything generally just sucks.

The details of how this suckage happens differs somewhat in each school but the details aren’t particularly relevant. The point is both say “if you don’t do what I say, we’re in for a WORLD of hurt!”

Right now the Keynesians are telling a pretty drastic, though I think compelling, story of the possible future we might be heading for because Government are turning away from stimulus and running headlong toward deficit reduction.  The story goes Europe and China and the rest of the world are cutting back on spending to improve their bottom lines in the hopes that America will again become the spender of last resort for the whole world. The American consumer will again start over consuming like we did during the last decade or two and that will ultimately lead all these other countries to be able to cut back and improve their treasuries and eventually re-obtain economic security.

Only one problem, says the Keynesians. The American Consumer isn’t having it any more. We aren’t going to prop up the rest of the world with our spending habits because our individual debt is too high, we no longer have the housing market as a crutch, and we’re generally fed up with the idea the US being the world’s piggy bank. And what’s more our government isn’t going to make up for that lack of spending especially not when the rest of the world isn’t on board too. In addition the anti-spending deficit-hawk forces in the U.S. are JUST as strong as they are everywhere else in the world and they are in the process of capturing our government. US consummer spending won’t increase like Magic so without government help it aint gonna happen.  So instead we’ll do the same thing everybody else does and cut spending and try to reduce our deficit.

The end result will be a terrible race for the bottom where the main people who suffer are the people who find that these austerity programs invariably target the poor much more than the rich, reducing spending on social programs like social security and medicare and public education and postal services and what have you.  And in the end that race won’t actually solve anything.  Deficits will continue to rise and will even rise faster because the economies now don’t make any money and don’t produce anything forcing more deficit reduction and more cutbacks which in turn lead to lower production. Etc. etc. etc.  At each point int the cycle it’ll be increasingly difficult to use Keynesian strategies to pull ourselves out of it, but we better hope that we at some point see the light and change course.

But if we don’t….well then you reach that doomsday scenario I spoke of before. Depression. Inflation. yatta yatta yatta. Only now the deficits are so high we no longer have the leeway to spend our way out of it. We’re totally screwed.

So my question is… okay… so if that’s a seriously possible outcome…. what’s plan B? 

That seems to me to be what members of neither school talk about very much. They talk a great deal about how to avoid the doomsday. But they don’t talk a lot about what to do if we FAIL to avoid the doomsday? 

So is there a plan B? If we get to the point where we can’t increase spending nor can we reduce spending or interest rates or whatever in any kind of meaningful way that will pull us out of a nightmarish economic slump, is there an alternative? IS there a different strategy we can switch into to change course that will dig us out of a gigantic hole that we dug ourselves into at least until we can get back on track and start to engage in the proper Keynesian or Chicagoan or whateverian strategy that keeps us away from such problems in the future?

Would we have to like convene a great meetings of nations and businesses where we all agree to like forgive all debts and start from scratch again? Or maybe we agree to try something different? We say screw capitalism, this shit doesn’t work any better than communism. Let’s put our best minds together and see if we can come up with something brand new that might actually create some long term stability. Or What?

Or maybe we do nothing and things will slowly in like ten or twenty or fifty or a hundred years correct themselves on their own?

Or is all hope lost? And we might as well grab ourselves a drink and await the impending Armageddon?

Presumably we’d be in pretty uncharted waters for a global economy if this were to happen right? I mean we might have examples for smaller countries but not for the planet as a whole.  So does anyone even know what Plan B is? Has anyone even thought about it?

Or are we all just praying that what we’re doing now will work or we’ll get lucky and things just aint as bad as they could be so that even if we screw up a lot we’ll still be more or less a-okay?

Many times I’ve considered doing some kind of an audio or video blog if only because at times it seems like there are a lot of not fully formed thoughts bumping around my head that would take far too long collect into a coherent written work. But the problem with that is that I am exceedingly uncomfortable just talking randomly into a microphone or on camera while knowing that I intend to share what I’m saying.

But every once in a while my roommate and I have fairly interesting conversations about various topics often with considerable overlap with the topics that I’d like to blog about. One day we had a really great conversation on Education that lasted like half the day and afterwords we were both thinking “damn, I wish we could have recorded that!”  So that very day we went out and bought a higher quality PC microphone just in case we might try to record our conversations in the future and turn it into a joint audio blog or podcast or something.

So far we’ve recorded three of our conversations but the first two were full of a lot of junk and we aren’t sure if we’re going to post them. If we do, we’ll have to edit them considerably first. 

Below is our third recorded conversation. We were considerably more comfortable this time so I figure it’s probably okay to post it unedited even if it is a bit long. I’m still pretty uncomfortable as you’ll no doubt notice. But it’s good enough.

The topic of the conversation is Can Games be Art. We started off planning on talking about more stuff but ended up talking for an hour and half just on this topic  Here are links to the articles that inspired the discussion:
Ebert’s “Video Games can Never Be Art”
BBC World Have Your Say Soccer discussion

The first voice you’ll hear is me Kellen aka nephyo. The second voice is my roommate Mari of the many names.

So without further adieu. Here’s my first and depending on how it is received perhaps only audio blog. I apologize in advance for the extremely loud sound of the air conditioning in the background throughout part of the discussion

If people are interested in these kinds of audio based discussions I will post more. And perhaps in the future if any of you want to participate we can setup a skype connection and talk about stuff together.

Also if you have topic suggestions or other suggestions ideas please feel free to share.

I’ve explored many different genres of music over the past couple of years trying to decide what my favorite was. I’d like to announce that I’ve finally come to a conclusion. I now have a favorite genre of music.  To put it simply:

I likey the silly music.

What do I mean?  Well let’s show some examples.

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