Saturnalia Update

Salutations friends.  I hope that you have all had a joyous and festive Saturnalia and gave many thanks to the gods of winter.  It is a joyous time for feasting and drunken debauchery, so grab a slave wench and have a grand old time the Roman way.

It has been quite some time since I've been on here (two moon years by standard human temporal evaluation) and I believe you all deserve some sort of an explanation.  You see, there was a storm. It was kind of a big deal.  You may have heard of it.  It was called Sandy and due to my current living situation being situated right in the northward path of that cyclopean cyclone, I was without home or water or power or heat or internet for quite some time.  Each has been restored to me as of the eighth night of Chanukkah, making this year quite the amazing haul as far as gifts are concerned.  In addition, I began a new job and have been trying to adjust and acclimate myself to a new schedule and lifestyle.  Before I knew it, the Mayan apocalypse was upon us and I thought, to hell with it; I'll just wait this out and should we survive, perhaps I'll return to my blog for the new year.

So there it is folks, my long and tiring war against the elements of nature and the repetitive memes of human mass hysteria.  I hope to be fully operational again and destroying planets with my giant laser beam as soon as the the new Star Wars trilogy arrives, but before that, my new year's resolution (the one I'll actually keep) is to return regularly to my blog with more updates from my deranged yet often entertaining piece of brain work.  Or as I call it, Davy.

For the future, I'll work at more Philosophical Fridays, some more In a World Gone Writes, and should my friend and I ever get the time, I have some ideas for vlogs I'd like to make for the site.  For those of you sitting at home who just said, "huzzah, what?" a vlog is a conjugation of "video log" much as a blog is a shortening of "weblog".  You may now all respond with, "ahhhhh."

That is all.  Transmission terminated.

Day 34 - The Terrible Truth About Tiggers

My humblest apple-hoagies, erstwhile travelers of the Internet and other such houses of ill repute. This hath been an unforgiving week of grueling exertion pour moi as I have undergone several changes in my life.

I have been so exhausted and overbusy that it has been impossible to find the time to write up a new Philosophical Friday. Please, I implore of you, seek not your most wrathful rewengi on me, for I am but the messenger to your own thoughts and dreams.

I suppose I could go into some spiel on the nature of time and the teenage existential angst of reality, but tempo non habeo cogere ergo non sum.

I seek to upload what I can and hope to put up a new rant… er, philosophical revelation by Monday. In the meantime, please enjoy the following video of cats doing adorable things, the highest form of Internet entertainment.

In a World Gone Write #2

Researchers at the South Texas University of Previously Inconclusive Discoveries have dredged up another winner:

Three out of four scientists now agree that McDonald's McGriddles breakfast sandwich is the unhealthiest foreign body someone can introduce to their bodies.  The fourth scientist was unable to be reached for comment as he was currently in the ICU dying of a heart attack from eating too many delicious McGriddles.

The title "unhealthiest foreign body" has previously been applied to both heroin and Paris Hilton.

Not to be outdone, even by themselves, McDonald's released in a press conference today their newest sandwich, the McGlutton: a quarter pound beef patty, sausage, and southern fried chicken, served with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and three slices of melted cheese, sitting between two of their large griddle cakes.

McDonald's honorary, imaginary, company spokesman, Mickey Dee, is believed to have said at the conference, "We were hoping to create a sandwich that would kill you before it even reached your stomach.  With over 1500 Calories and large bites, impossible to chew, this monstrosity should stop your heart on its way down your esophagus.

The company, hoping to cash in on the upcoming American election, also unveiled the McRomney chicken sandwich and Obama Mac cheeseburger.  The sandwiches are expected to be released in Europe during the next quarter.  Unfortunately, due to a lack of foresight or geographical concern, both sandwiches are expected to cost the company millions of dollars in revenue which could have been better used solving the current economic crisis.

In a World Gone Write #1

I thought I'd start a new social commentary spoof series.  Welcome to "In a World Gone Write".

Hoping to outlast the recession, certain companies have taken it upon themselves to branch out into other industries.

New from Apple, creators of such high tech products as the iPod^TM and iPhone^TM, comes their latest product, the iCup^TM, intended for use by physicians’ offices and other medical practitioners.  This streamlined containment apparatus comes fully equipped with more than just your standard sterile walls.  Installed with out latest 8-megapixel iSight^TM camera (the same found on the iPhone 5) and Active-When-Wet Facetime app, Apple is proud to let the world know that when you go to the doctor, “I-C-U-P”.

Coming soon to app store, Apple’s mandatory iOS update with built in Penis Size Blackmail app.  Remember, buy our products or else.

Don't Hurt Me... No More

I'm uploading an old rant from Facebook to act as a corollary to the first Philosophy Friday.  This is because a certain girlfriend of a friend of mine (not gonna say who, but you know what you did) thinks that there is someone out there for everyone (there isn't, I did the math) and that you just have to look.  Meet my dating site profile:

Let's face some facts. The dating world sucks. Around 100 years ago, the free, democratic peoples of the world collectively decided to ignore 1 million years of human mating practices and began selecting life partners based on the concept of "love". What a load of horseshit.

And unfortunately for us, we have inherited this flawed system. You see, our parents and grandparents had it easy. Firstly, our grandparents had a bunch of supercool wars to live through which made all of our grandads soldiers and all of our grandmas swoon over their manliness. Our parents, well they had the summer of love, rock & roll, psychadelich drugs, and all sorts of super sexiness. We have Justin Bieber and an internet which is rapidly destroying our social skills through social networking. Also, there are clubs and bars which are most definitely no place to meet the future parent of your children. And if you think it is, well you're a rapidly devolving moron.

Another fact we must face is that you're a liar. It's okay. I'm a liar too. And so is the guy you want to meet. Human nature is to be despicable and to deceive yourself and others. You see, after sighing and swooning over the guy you wish you could meet, when he's staring you in the face, you look past him because, well, he's not really the guy you want to meet. He's no Twilight vampire/werewolf/fruitcake. And when you meet your Cullen, he turns Cú Chulainn and goes blood raving mad on you. And I'm sorry you had to find out this way. Because I know that you're "really trying" to find the right guy.

God Isn't In the Details

Fhtagn, my friends.  Welcome to another edition of Cthulhu Fridays where I take a long, hard look at the madness of the universe and it stares back.  In the last two weeks, I have taken you on a journey into disturbed mind and showed you just how feeble your existence is.  You’re welcome.  I explained my version on the nature of reality and what everything is and exactly why we do it.  It all boils down to life is shit and we’re here to fuck to distract ourselves from how shitty our lives.

But I may have jumped the shark a bit.  After basically giving an overall view of everything, what is left?  Nothing.  Nothing is left for me to talk about.  Can I write an entire essay about nothing?  (Some of you might say I already have.)  What is nothing?  What is the nature of nothingness?  Take it away, Oxford.

Nothing
Pronunciation: /'nʌθɪŋ/ 

pronoun
not anything; no single thing:
adjective
having no prospect of progress; of no value:
adverb
not at all

Nothing is not anything.  Who’d’ve thunk it?  It’s not something.  It’s not everything.  It is nothing.  Nothing is a non-corporeal idea used to fill in the blank space that exists as polar opposite to everything you believe is there.  Anything tangible, if it is, was, or will be, is the antipodal idea running against the void of nothing.  Nothing is an idea.  Ideas are essentially big balls of nothing floating around in your head, screaming to become corporeal objects in real space.  This entire essay was just a stupid idea in my head which I am now translating into reality via a keyboard and a word processor.

So what is the biggest idea in the history of mankind, so hugely, enormously grand that it permeates the popular consciousness across all social classes on earth?  God: it is the biggest, most conceivable long con in the history of the universe.  Every culture on the planet has a god, or gods, or the idea of god, or even the recalcitrant denial that such a being should, would, or could exist.  For the sake of argument and time, I am going to stick with the god I know, the Judeo-Christian behemoth that fought all other gods in some cosmic game show (probably Wheel of Fortune) long ago and won the right to let his followers act like they’re more benevolent than everyone else through slaughter and other acts of violence.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Judeo-Christian deity, here is a quick history.  Some three to four thousand years ago in the land of Canaan (now Israel) on the banks of the Great Sea (now Mediterranean Sea), the various Canaanite tribes were a nomadic and polytheistic group of people.  One tribe, located near modern Jerusalem, were staunch followers of the Canaanite war god, Yaweh.  Being a “war” deity, Yaweh demanded a lot of war and violence and stuff, and the proto-Jerusalemites were happy to oblige.  They conquered the other tribes, vanquished their gods, and gave Yaweh all of their powers until at last, he was the only god, king of kings, lord of the universe, and all that.  It was only later that cosmic irony decided to plant the “City of Peace” right on their home turf.  In order to distance themselves from their vanquished brethren and absolve them of blood, the last of the Canaanites rewrote their history, claiming to have hailed from the far off land of Babylon under the leadership of a man named Abram, likely a tourist who just sort of got caught up in things.  You know, sort of “wrong place, wrong time” and all that jazz.  Thus, Abram and his progeny got blamed for the murder of an entire race and the subsequent destruction of his religion and many more to follow.

After many thousands of years, the God of the Jews has been absconded, metamorphosed, and mutilated, but he’s never quite gotten over that whole “god of war” phase from his pernicious teenage years and those who worship him continued to wage war and shed blood in “his name”.

I have two separate theories on the nature of god.  The first involves quantum physics and a massive amount of tachyons.  The second is a bit more subtle.  As we all know, in a macrocosm, time moves in a liner fashion with causes always preceding effects.  This brings into question two things.  A) What caused the beginning of the universe and B) if god created the universe, what created god?  Can something simply exist in eternity?  I’ve already explained how Yaweh was gradually changed into God, so was there something preceding him?

Gods were concepts that man created long ago to explain natural phenomena that he was not yet scientifically equipped to explain.  Why does the sun rise each day?  Why does it rain?  Why do I get an erection in the morning?  For these answers and more, please consult Ra, Thor, and Aphrodite respectively.  A single God born from a pantheon of gods having amalgamated them into his being should not be able to exist before his conception.  That’s where ideas and nothingness come into play.  Human ideas are extremely powerful things.  They can turn nothing into something, as I previously demonstrated by typing a few words onto a keyboard.  The brain is an electrical apparatus that constructs thoughts by using carefully controlled electron bursts.  Thus, your thoughts actually exist in some fashion on a quantum level.  In quantum physics (and here it gets really technical, so if your nose starts bleeding, please excuse yourself), subatomic particles (such as the electrons in your brain) act outside the normal realm of what we perceive in the macrocosmic world.  Effects can precede or run adjacent to the causes the sparked them.  All cultures have a concept of god and with the popular practice of monotheism in the world, the majority believe or acknowledge the idea that there is a single god or vehemently dispute that same fact, ironically throwing fuel onto the fire simply by acknowledging that such an idea exists.  The collective conscious of humanity essentially constructs God at the dawn of time simply so that the universe will come into existence.  Man creates God in the past so that the universe can begin and man can himself be created.  I’ve never liked that explanation for things because it is far too complicated and postsupposes that we are to blame for creating a faulty product.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote, “Got ist tot.”  Translated into English, this phrase reads, “God is dead.”  Religion was created by man to have a twofold purpose on people’s lives: A) to govern society with a strict moral code and B) to dispel the insecurities people have about death.  Gods, who were already maintaining natural law, got caught up in the whole thing and began overseeing religion as well.  So long as each of us act through our own moral code, follow the rule of law, and laugh in the face of death, as man’s understanding of the world around him becomes clearer, gods will be needed to answer for less and less mysteries.  Man will kill his gods through the power of science and wisdom, relegating them to the stuff of legend and lesser dreams.

However, as the old gods leave us and return to the firmament, what new horrors will fill the void they leave behind?  Ia!  Ia!  Shub Niggurath!

Somebody Once Told Me the World is Gonna Roll Me a Blunt.

I think it was Smashmouth.  I could be mistaken.

Here we are again, my friends, for another Philosophical Friday!  Wait, it's Monday you say?  Sorry, I jumped to the left, stepped to the right, and before I knew it, I got caught in a time warp again.  Oh well, since I'm here anyway, all set to ramble, and five days ahead of, behind, or sideways to schedule, I might as well make some sort of rant.

But what to get all angry on the internet about... hmm... Ah!  I've got it!  In the gross social order of things, here are the gross things people do to themselves in the name of social order!

Tattoos and body piercings, or as I like to call them "standard masochistic bodily mutilation practices" are two of the more popular forms of self-inflicted harm performed by those who have a Johnny Knoxville fetish.  I may be a little bit old fashioned on the idea, but art belongs on canvas so that you view it and gain some insight in the world, not on your lower back, covered halfway up by an article of clothing, only to be revealed when you bend over as what appears to be a strange growth of hair.  

I've been there with friends as they went through the surgical pain of "inking" without localized anesthetic.  Why, oh why would you let someone use a needle to inject poisons just under the epidermal layer of your skin, causing a permanent discoloration to the affected area?  They don't look cool, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise, and they continue to look worse with age.  As Robin Williams once put it, you get the barbed wire design, and by the time you turn 70, it's a picket fence.

And speaking of needles piercing skin for no adequately explained reason, body piercings.  Tell me, do you like the thought of someone taking a sharp object and running you through with it?  Hold on.  Let me just go get a spear.  Stand still a moment.  Okay, let me first state that I don't really have a problem with the common earlobe piercing.  Practically every woman in America at least has her earlobes pierced or will eventually.  I still find it to be just another act of self-mutilation, but I've learned to live with that fact that everyone is a borderline psychotic idiot.

My real issue stems from every other piece of flesh man and woman have ever decided to run a metal barb through.  I once met a man who had so many piercings, you ran out of places to cut open, so he pierced his damned wrist.  What the hell is wrong with you?  I can't imagine that this wasn't painful, and if it was, I hope that it was excruciatingly so.  That being said, considering that in the whole of human history, man has sought ways to escape pain, as you have run headfirst into it, please seek psychological help immediately.  Tongue piercing people, in particular.  Tell me.  Did you hate the taste of everything?  Did you always find that there was a missing ball of metal in your mouth?  Were you just annoyed with the fact that you didn't speak with a persistent lisp?  WHY DID YOU DO THIS?!  I need answers like you don't need another hole in your head.

Need to calm my nerves.  I could use a cigarette.  No, mom, I don't smoke.  I'm just using that as a segway to the next item on my agenda.  Yeah, smoker man, you're as stupid as tattoo dude.  I honestly believe the only reason smoking has such staying power in the west is because our civilization wouldn't be here without those little death sticks.  Tabacco is the backbone of American economics and thrived when cotton couldn't cut it.  Perhaps this is because smoking cotton is not nearly as addictive.  Just as a reminder, cigarettes are like instant jaundice.  So if you ever wanted to look like a Simpsons character, take up smoking.  You'll look and sound like Patti and Selma.  If this doesn't sound appealing to you, but you're smoking anyway, I'll be along to collect your lungs.  Trust me, you won't be needing them anymore and they'll thank me for parting them from you.

What other sorts of stupid, revolting things do people do to themselves?  Well, there are mullets, but that's a story for another day.  Have fun at the metal detector, folks.