A few posts ago, I introduced my nut-ball whacko sister.

The day after the post, she called me crying. “Thanks for making my DUI public!” she exclaimed. I was surprised that that was the biggest of her concerns. I figured that revealing the ridiculousness of her beliefs to the 8 people that read this blog would have been more embarrassing. We haven’t spoken since.

Her oldest daughter had read it too. She may have read it first, in fact. By her mother’s admission, she was crying too. She blocked me on Facebook later that evening. Her mother had already blocked me weeks before. I had done the very thing I was trying to prevent. Instead of opening their minds to the idea that their beliefs, when put on paper, were ludicrous, I had made them close their minds even tighter. Now, more than ever, they were sure they were right. I had made then into martyrs in their own minds.

I’ve decided that I’m okay with this non-contact because anyone who willingly puts a child in harms way, and then continues to do so after others tell them about it, is a bad person. As long as she continues to refuse to vaccinate her youngest son, I will keep the silence.

As of this posting, she is currently in the ICU recovering from a Pulmonary Embolism, which is a blockage of one of the main arteries of the lung or one of it’s branches. (Thanks Wikipedia). She has a blood clot in her lung. Ouch. She is having difficulty breathing, and has been in the ICU for 4 days now, with no significant signs of recovery yet, which I’m told may be par for the course. I know it can’t be too bad, because she is in a podunk town’s ICU that is notorious for sending patients to a much better hospital 30 miles away if anything is out of the ordinary. If the locals are confident she’ll be fine, she’ll be fine.

Only a few months ago, she was adamant that sickness is caused by sin and that keeping your body healthy with exercise and a good diet was all that was necessary to prevent illness and that prayer did more good than medicine. She recently had some back pain, and after trying yoga, and by my memory, refusing Tylenol, she opted to treat it with a “prayer cloth”, which had been specially blessed by someone at some church to give it healing powers. I find it somewhat ironic that when she suffered a pulmonary embolism, she requested an ambulance instead of her prayer towel.

Deep down she knows it’s all bullshit. I think all believers know deep down that it’s all bullshit. If someone truly believed, with all their heart, that if they died, they went to a palace in the sky forever, why would they call an ambulance? Better yet, why would any Christian become a doctor? A doctor’s entire job is to prevent people from entering heaven. What kind of an asshole would you have to be to believe that everyone gets an eternity of peaceful bliss after they die, and then work your ass off to keep them alive?
And then they name hospitals after Saints for fuck’s sake. What are they thinking?!?

It’s a contradiction for my sister to receive medical care for her condition, but to refuse her son medical care that can prevent other conditions. I don’t mind if she thinks she’s a martyr because I make fun of her, but I don’t want her turning her son into real one.

Introducing, Scumbag Sister:

A tornado recently hit a town close to where I grew up. On facebook, I saw people claiming to offer support to the victims and volunteers in the form of prayer. This is upsetting to me, as much more good can be done with support in the form of money. I have decided to show you, the reader, in simple logical steps why prayer is useless.

Regarding Apples:

We live in a universe where apples exist. When it comes to apples, we could live in three possible universes:

A: Nothing in the universe is apples
B: Everything in the universe is apples
C: Somethings in the universe are apples

There are no other options. Either it’s everything, nothing, or somethings.
Clearly, we live in universe C. Somethings are apples, somethings are not.

Regarding Prayer:

We live in a universe where people pray to God. When it comes to God answering our prayers, we could live in three possible universes.

A: Every prayer answered
B: No prayer is answered
C: Some prayers are answered.

There are no other options. It’s either all, nothing, or some. It is important to note that by “answered”, I mean God gives a positive response to a prayer request. Technically, God could answer every prayer, some with Yes’s and some with No’s, but that would still be Universe C if we accept that God choosing not to intervene would yield the same result as a prayer that went “unanswered” for any other reason.

Which universe do we live in? Well, lets deduce some things about these universes to rule some options out.

In Universe A, every request you make is answered. Since the children of parents who turn to prayer instead of medical attention die, we cannot live in Universe A.

In Universe B, no prayer is answered. Either God ignores your prayers, or he does not have the ability to answer them, therefore prayer is useless.

In Universe C, some prayers are answered, others are outside his powers, ignored, or missed.

Anyone who believes that prayer works must then believe that we live in Universe C, as the damning evidence of unanswered prayers cannot be ignored, and renders Universe A impossible.

I will now show that we cannot live in universe C:

If we did live in Universe C, we are accepting that God has some power to control the events in our lives: deaths, births, money problems, cancer, etc… But, what does he control, and what does he not control?

Once again, we have three options:

A:  God controls everything.
B:  God controls nothing.
C:  God controls some things. (Either He is unable, unwilling, or a bit of both)

There are no other options. It’s either all, nothing, or some.
Now, B is impossible if we are to believe that we live in Universe C from above. This leaves A or C.

If God controls everything, the He sends the very tornadoes that we pray for him to spare us from. He sends the rescue workers that find the children in the rubble, and He sends them away from other children that die in the rubble. If we extend this to it’s logical conclusion, He also makes us pray, rendering our requests to him really his requests to himself, and therefore prayer is useless.

If God controls some things, then it is implied that He has some sort of criteria on which He chooses which prayers to answer. In other words, He has a plan for the Universe, and if your prayer lies outside His plan, then it is not answered. In other words, the Universe is going to happen according to his plan whether or not you pray, and therefore prayer is useless.

In conclusion:

I have shown that either prayer is useless because God commands you to do it (C,A), prayer is useless because the only prayers that are answered are the ones that go along with God’s plan (C,C), or prayer is useless because no prayers are answered (B). Any other option is a contradiction.

Whatever the case, prayer is useless. Donate to the Red Cross instead.
Post your rebuttals in the comments, I will reply with why you’re wrong.

For those of you that have seen my stand-up act, you’re likely acquainted with my sister. For those of you who haven’t yet had the honor¹, a brief background:

I have two sisters. Well, technically I have one sister and one half sister. It is either by chance, or by genetics that my half sister is a nutball whacko. She wasn’t always a nutball whacko; it came about relatively recently. It was a slow but all-consuming transition that left her without the ability to think rationally. I’m told the seeds were planted shortly after she had given birth to her first daughter. Crazy thing about infants, they don’t understand the concept of night and day, so they just cry and poop whenever is convenient for them. Her daughter liked to cry and poop at night, which left my sister awake watching late-nite infomercials about God. God, as you’ll see later, became a key player in my sister’s stupidity.

Flash forward a few years and my sister has had another daughter, moved a few times, and resides in Overland Park, KS. I forget why she moved there. I wasn’t entirely cognizant of the family’s goings on until much later in my life. I’m not entirely sure that I remember even visiting her while she lived there, but I clearly remember the night she moved away from there. She and her husband had had a fight, and he, verbatim from my mother’s teary face, “Took the car-seats out of his car, left them in the parking lot, and drove away”. My Dad woke me up and we went on a midnight run to Kansas City, picked her and her daughters up, and drove them home. My Dad is a machine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They lived with us for a few months and then got back together with her husband and moved into a beautiful house nearby. It looked just like a doll house. It was perfect to raise her family in. I used to babysit for her while she lived there. I would do stupid things like walk the kids to my mom’s work because they wanted to, or let them watch Blade II because they wanted to. I didn’t understand the concepts of “don’t leave the house”, or “nightmares”. She would play Alanis Morrisette and Jamaraquai albums and once she got me drunk on 99 blackberries. She had her first two sons there as well. Sometime during all of this, her husband caved some guy’s head in with a brick and went to Boston for a while till things cooled off. I babysat a lot during that.

Since her family was growing, she moved once again into a bigger house. One night, while working as a bartender, she got a DUI. It was around this time, at least as I remember, that she started flirting with stupid. It started with an announcement to the family that she would no longer be participating in Christmas, as it was revealed to her that Christmas is a pagan holiday. Christmas? A pagan holiday? Who would make such an accusation? The church she had recently started attending, that’s who.

Were they right? Sort-of. It’s no secret that the Holiday we know as Christmas had its roots as a winter solstice celebration known as Saturnalia, where people would gather and feast and thank their horned God for impregnating the Earth with his seed so that she would bloom again in the Spring. The pine tree, the wreaths, the tinsel and holly, are all leftovers of this, or other numerous winter traditions. Somehow, the rest of the world knew this and didn’t care, and was happy enough to spend special time with the ones they love, and give thanks to their Lord for all they had been blessed with, ancient rituals non-withstanding. For my sister’s church, what people who lived thousands of years ago did during the winter mattered a great deal, and consequently, it now mattered to my sister.

Now, the stupid hadn’t completely taken hold just yet, and so while she opted herself out of the winter festivities, she allowed her children to take part. This was crucial, as she had four kids, and a Christmas house missing four kids felt empty and un-fun. Christmas is really about the kids, you know. Her husband also stood firm against the stupid, mandating that the children not be “those weird kids who have to leave class when the teacher has a Santa picture to color, or when they do the Christmas pageant”. Remember those kids? Those kids were weird. Poor bastards, missing out on the Christmas pageant. Anyway, it was a little odd, but we maintained.

After a couple years of this, my Dad demanded that my sister “cut the shit and come to Christmas” on the notion that it could have been someone’s last Christmas. She reluctantly showed up, tears running down her face. How dare we make her spend time with her family in the middle of winter? It’s against her beliefs to eat food in a warm house with people who are giving presents during December. The internal struggle must have been intense.

 

“My church says God wants me to stay strong and stay home.”

“But my family wants me to spend time with them.”

 

What was a girl to do?!?

And this marked the last time a rational thought passed through her brain. Family wouldn’t win over God next year. No sirree. As it turns out, my Dad was right. It was someone’s last Christmas. His Father passed away a short time later.

The following year, she took her kids out of public school, opting to home-school them. It hadn’t occurred to me at the time that this was related to her beliefs. I honestly thought she couldn’t handle the stress of her oldest child going into Junior High, what with all the sex and drugs and fashion trends. I admired her for making that tough decision. Takes a lot of brass to home-school 4 (soon to be 5) kids. Good for her.

A few years of this went on, giving the kids gifts at Christmas, birthday parties on Sundays (Saturday is the sabbath, don’t cha know), and teaching her kids at home. Then, two years ago, for no reason at all that I can tell, she informed us that her children would no longer be coming to Christmas either. This was a big shock to our family. Hell, her kids are more than half of the kids at Christmas, what the hell would we do with all the leftover money? I bought a new TV, but that’s beside the point.

It was around the time she pulled the kids out of Christmas that I began to grasp the depths of her relationship with stupidity. I thought it was just a no-strings-attached kind of thing, they saw each on the weekends and Holidays, flirted a couple nights a week, but nothing big. I was very wrong. She had her name put on stupid’s bank account and they were shopping for an engagement ring. This came to me in a discussion with her about creationism, which she was teaching her kids because the church taught it to her, and evolution, which man has discovered himself LIKE EVERY OTHER THING WE HAVE EVER KNOWN. She was adamant that the Earth was between six and ten thousand years old.

 

“What about rocks and fossils that we know are older than that?” I asked. 

“Carbon dating has been proven defunct!” she retorted.

 

Lets break that down.
She is claiming that carbon dating, which is the colloquial stand-in for any kind of radiometric dating, has been “proven” defunct.
A quick Google search led me to learn about carbon dating, which like any other metric of measurement, has a margin of error. Because of Carbon-14′s half-life, it isn’t useful for things older than ~60,000 years. There are other isotopes we use for things that were never alive, and things older than ~60,000 years, both of which would contain 0 of the carbon that we would need for carbon dating.

She must have thought that since carbon dating wasn’t accurate to the day, and since it isn’t universally applicable, that it must be bunk. Well, that’s a misunderstanding I sought to clear up.

 

“Yes, you’re right that carbon dating has it’s drawbacks, but independent tests of materials between carbon dating and other dating methods are consistent within a margin of error, and besides, it’s rubidium dating that has placed the Earth’s age at 4.6 Billion years.” 

“Yeah, old Earth, maybe”

“What?”

 

She then explained that God made two Earths, the second after destroying the first. Did you read the Bible and never get that implication? Well, you’ve missed out on a giant part of history.
Here, let me show you:

The Book of Genesis

Chapter 1

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Did you catch it? Look closely. See the word “Now” at the beginning of verse 2? My sister’s church, and by proxy, my sister, believes that in verse 1, God creates an Earth, then, 4.6 Billion years pass, then in verse 2, he destroys the Earth, and uses it’s remnants to create the Earth we live on now, which is explained a few verses later. All the fossils and rocks that are older than ~10,000 years came from this old Earth. Here comes stupid showing off the engagement ring. Doesn’t it look pretty with all it’s sparkles?

It was through my sister’s engagement to stupidity that I learned about evolution. I taught myself so that I could fend off her stupid questions like “If we evolved from monkeys and apes, Why are there still monkeys and apes?”, and the infamous “Evolution can’t explain life coming from nothing!”, the answers to which are “Common ancestry, not decendantry”, and “Abiogenesis is an entirely different field of science” respectively. It was through fending off these questions that I learned about formal logic, which I’ve always had a knack for, even if I didn’t know the fallacy names, and it was through logic that I learned that I had been an Atheist all along, even if I didn’t know it was called Atheism.

Anyway, know that you know the background details, here is what inspired this post: she did not have her youngest child vaccinated.

Well, when you have five kids, it can be easy to forget things like that. It’s a simple problem to fix, a few trips to the county health department will get him protected. Oh, wait, it wasn’t an oversight? It’s a part of her beliefs, like the refusal to eat pork, and home schooling, and the denial of the foundation of modern biology? It was like stupid had sent me a wedding invitation. I called her immediately to object to this unholy matrimony.

 

“If this is about the autism scare, that study has been proven to be false. over 15 independent studies have found no link between vaccines and autism, and the man was disbarred from the scientific community [and later, thrown in jail] for his false study.” 

“Yeah, but this guy I know, knows a guy who had a vaccine when he was old and died or something”

 

Hrmm, Anecdotal evidence had more influence to her than peer-reviewed science. Classic case of ignorance. I got the fix for this!

 

“Why don’t you do some more research, I’m sure you’ll find that vaccines are perfectly safe, and have been effective in wiping out many diseases. Be sure to look up the terms, “Anecdotal evidence”, and “Herd Imunity”.” 

“I will, and I’ll write you a paper.”

 

That was eight months ago.

She recently emailed me what can only be loosely called a “paper” with a 2 page bibliography at the end full of Bible verses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While constructing this post, I accidentally deleted the email containing her paper. She refuses to send it to me again. From what I can recall from the “paper”, her central argument was that “Sickness clearly comes from sin”, and therefore, any attempt to prevent sickness would be in vein. As of this writing, she is suffering from a bout of Infuenza. No need to wash hands or cover your mouth, God will spare your tiny house of small children from the virus if they don’t sin. If only they made a vaccine for the flu…

……..

In closing, this is why I adamantly campaign against stupidity in all its forms. It’s ruined someone I love, and has endangered the health of another.

If no one was stupid, the world would be perfect. Sadly, plenty of people are stupid. Please do your part in encouraging them not to be. I’ll do mine.

_{¹The honor of seeing my standup, not of hearing about my sister}

If you’ve been around me for longer than 6 minutes, you’ve no doubt learned of my disdain for Best Buy. Their return policy screwed me when I bought a camera a few years ago, and since then, I’ve been a crusader for people to go elsewhere. I showed my Grandma where she can get a cheaper phone charger, I sold a BB gift card that I had received for cash, and I even fixed my buddy’s laptop for him when he mentioned the phrase ‘geek squad’. I HATE Best Buy.

HATE

It’s been my experience that Best Buy only exists to take advantage of people who don’t know better. It’s like a catch all for the technologically illiterate. Don’t know what a surround system is, but you’re itching to get one? We’d be happy to help. Does your kid need a new Video Game Box 380? Make sure you get a protection plan. Are you sure you saw the TV on our website for $300 cheaper? Lets check again. Nope, looks like the price we have is right.

Yes, that link is correct, they ran a fake ‘bestbuy.com’ website in their stores that had different prices than their real website to avoid the very price matching they advertised. They sell protection plans that start at the date of purchase rather then after the manufacturer’s warranty (which almost all consumer electronics have) expires. This means if you buy a 1yr Best Buy warranty on a TV that has a 1yr manufacturers warranty, then you’ve bought nothing, as the geek squad will just ship the TV to the manufacturer for repair.

Like a slim shouldered transvestite, they take advantage of those that don’t know better.

Here are 3 places you can always get electronics cheaper than at Best Buy: Monoprice | New Egg | Tiger Direct

Monoprice is a place for cables. Dirt cheap cables. Best Buy sells this HDMI cable for $120. Monoprice sells this HDMI cable for $2.64. Best Buy can take advantage of people who don’t know better by claiming “Our cables are super gold plated oxidized shielded to ensure video quality, those cheap cables aren’t”, but the problem with that claim is that HDMI is a digital signal. It’s either on, or off. Cable quality has no effect on a digital signal. Best Buy is banking on you not knowing that to earn them $117.36.

My experiences with Best Buy are thus:

In 2008 I decided that I needed an HD video camera. I went to Best Buy to look at various models. Upon finding one that fit my needs and budget, I was informed that the only camera left of that type was the floor model, which they would sell to me for a $50 discount which brought the price down to $849. My mistake was not doing the research before I went to Best Buy because, as soon as I got home, I looked on the internet to see what others had to say about my camera. I immediately found the exact same camera on Amazon for $699.

I took the camera, which never left the box they put it in, back to the store to ask for my money back, or at least to refund the difference. I was told that they do not price match websites, only ‘brick and mortar stores’. An understandable policy, as any loon can make an electronics website and advertise prices. I then asked for my money back. An even return on the trade we had made only hours prior. I was told that the camera box had been opened, and therefore can only be returned for an identical camera. I told them that the box was open when they sold it to me, and this fell on deaf ears. It was then that I hatched a plan.

I took a key from my pocket and popped off one of the buttons from the camera. Damages are handled differently than regular returns you see.

I took my damaged floor model to a second Best Buy to exchange for an identical camera. ‘Certainly’ I was told, ‘I can’t believe they sold you that, they should always inspect a floor model’. For a $50 upcharge, I was handed a sealed box containing an identical camera.

I took this new, UNOPENED, camera to a third Best Buy, and returned it for a refund, citing the cheaper camera on Amazon. I was told I would get a check in 2-3 weeks, as returns for that value aren’t done in cash. That was the day I swore to never set foot in a Best Buy again.

Today I went into a Best Buy to get my girlfriend’s laptop fixed. You see, while I was away on business, she decided that she NEEDED a new laptop. And oh, did she need it RIGHT THAT SECOND. I told her to wait until I was back so I could help her pick a laptop that would be at an optimal price/performance ratio. She did not wait. Instead, she brought her Dad to Best Buy to pick out her birthday present laptop. She picked one with a price and performance that was well beyond optimal. The predators at Best Buy also tricked her father into purchasing a one year protection plan on the laptop to the tune of $100. 7 months later, the DC jack, the part that the power cord plugs into, became loose and required repair. I was chosen to carry the laptop into Mordor.

My first point of action was to remove the hard drive and battery from the laptop, as is customary with all computer repairs that don’t involve the hard drive or battery. I also did this because the Geek Squad has a nasty reputation when it comes to personal information or pictures. I’ve seen plenty of women naked after they took their laptops in for repairs, and who knows what else they might take copies of for themselves. Browsing histories, credit cards, anything that’s on your hard drive might be subject to Sticky-Fingers McGillicutty over at the Geek Squad. I also removed it because of the horror stories surrounding ‘helpful’ programs that the Geek Squad might see fit to install on your behalf. Programs that they later might charge to remove.

I entered the store with the laptop and went to the repair counter. While I was waiting I witnessed two customers, a woman and a man, both in the evenings of their years, pick up computers they’d had repaired. The man was charged over $500 for whatever he had done, and in addition, was sold six months of ‘ask a geek’ to ease his mind in case later problems arose. When it was my turn, I laid the laptop on the table, handed the Geek my receipt, and explained the issue.

“The DC jack on this laptop is loose, the cord just wiggles around in the jack and it won’t take a charge.”
“Did you remove the hard drive and battery?”
“Yes.”

He then fuddled with the register and walked into the back, emerging minutes later to inform me,
“I can’t ship the laptop without the hard drive.”
I informed him, “You don’t need the hard drive to fix the power jack.”
“Without a hard drive, we can’t test the repair.”
“All you have to do it plug in a cord and see if the light comes on. It can pass a POST without a hard drive.”
“I just talked to the guy, if I ship it they’ll just ship it back.”
“Which guy? The Toshiba guy?” Toshiba had manufactured the laptop, and I was assuming, since the laptop likely had a one year warranty, that they were just shipping the laptop back to Toshiba.

“No, the guy at our repair center. They run a ‘Complete Diagnostic©’ on every laptop, and they can’t do that if there’s no hard drive.”
“I don’t want a ‘Complete Diagnostic©’ run on my laptop, I want the DC jack fixed.”
“I’ll go get my manager”

He then returned with a manager, who wore a kind of shiny badge on his belt, symbolizing his power over the other, lesser geeks. He explained,
“They need a hard drive just in case they have to replace the entire motherboard. If that happens, it’s likely that the Operating System will need to be re-installed.”
“I don’t want you to re-install my Operating System, I just want the DC jack fixed. Is there some kind of waiver I can sign that will exempt me from the ‘Complete Diagnostic©’ or any other repairs?”
“No.”
“I’ve been on the internet long enough to know not to give Geek Squad my hard drive. I don’t want your bloatware, and I don’t want you digging through my documents. I just want my DC jack resoldered.”
“I ship it all or I ship nothing”
“Then I’ll take my chances with the manufacturer”

I snatched the laptop up, and left, fuming. I had a bit of l’esprit d’escalier when I realized I should have demanded service because of the $100 that was paid. I was disappointed in myself for not bringing this up when it occurred to me that I could just go to another Best Buy and have the fight again.

The second Best Buy accepted the laptop. No questions asked.

HATE
Here‘s a whole forums of people who had bad experiences with the Geek Squad.

Did you know they stopped making Mucinex nasal spray? That shit was awesome; it dried up my nose like a tumbleweed. I have to listen to my son suck snot up his nose while I’m writing this, so decongestants are on my mind.

So, my websites got hacked. Yes, sites. Plural. They’re all hosted on the same server, you see, and my assumption is some Indonesian pre-teen, bored with his nightly routine of sucking many, many cocks, decided to add a few sites to his hacker resumé. Why he picked me, I’ll never know. Why he left me a way back in is a matter I can chalk up to sloppiness or inexperience.

I’ve hacked my fair share of things, and the #1 rule for blatant hacking (which he did, erasing all my homepages and putting up his own logo and contact info) is to change the passwords. That should be the first thing you do. As soon as you access the thing you want to hack, you make sure no one can change what you did. Take control and own that shit.

It can’t be sloppiness. Sloppiness infers that he was on a time limit, and the FBI certainly isn’t watching you hack some shitty blog from a pompous know-it-all in Oklahoma. Hell, I don’t even go to my own websites. Why would I? I know when they update. He had all the time in the world. I didn’t even find out about it until my friend sent me a text, so no, this guy has to be inexperienced.

I hacked my very first computer over a dozen years ago. I’ve tricked people into bricking their machines, changed my grades in high school, installed trojans onto public computers so I could pop up messages about the users being too fat, and turned on girl’s webcams when they were sleeping among many other boring exploits. Actually, watching girls sleep is pretty boring too. I thought girls had crazy lesbian orgies when they slept over at each others houses, but I’ve confirmed that that doesn’t happen every single time.

I once snuck out of a Saturday detention, ran around my high school, jimmied open a window, and changed my civics grade. I spammed pornography to the entire school district from my principal’s email. Once, I got into a girl’s email after she slashed my tire, and I emailed her favorite teacher that I was going to set her house on fire. The next day, there was a substitute. As it turns out, that teacher had, 14 years previously, lost two children in a house fire. She called the police who called the FBI. I denied everything. I was later told the FBI tracked the email as originating from some computer from 3 towns over. That was the end of my hacking days.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, no one will fuck this tiny dicked Indonesian. His nerd sweat and neck beard dry up vaginas faster than mucinex nasal spray.

BONUS

I wrote a joke in the style of my friend, James Draper:

My can opener is broken. More like a “can’t” opener.

That’s yours to keep, James.

I’m going to die. It’s unavoidable. I’m reminded of this everytime I look at my watch, which I bought to serve the purpose of reminding me. Whether the end of me comes from a car wreck, a home invasion, or old age, I only get however much time I get, and that’s it.

My only disappointment with this arrangement is that I won’t get to see the end of humanity.

It’s going to happen, one way or another. There are a shit load of things wanting to kill us at any given time, and we can’t stave them off forever. Whether the end comes from disease, starvation, war, or some extra-terrestrial event leading to one of those three, it’s coming. Our survival is just a repellent, either actively or by chance, of these things that we will eventually succumb to.

Not that I would receive enjoyment from watching our species die off, but it would be kind of neat to know what does us in. Will it be a super drug resistant bacteria? Overpopulation? Climate change? Nuclear holocaust? Asteroid? Alien invasion, either by microbes or intelligent beings?

The bright side is that some things will survive: the things we’ve created. I can only hope that some aliens arrive at our planet a few millenia after we bite the dust, and decipher the remnants of our collective knowledge, and after throwing out the useless bits that have eroded away, or were blown up, they stumble upon a single sentence of intact information. They can only find one sentence to sum up the entirety of the human race. I hope it’s a fart joke.

Fart jokes are truly timeless.

Earlier today, I felt very passionate about something; something significant that happened recently that you likely have opinions about; opinions that are probably wrong.

It’s not easy to be right all the time. It’s a burden to carry around knowledge that you don’t want to hear, and not about stupid things like technical computer details or animé, no one wants to hear those things, knowledge about how you’ll always lose at a Casino if you play long enough, or that just because something happened after something else doesn’t mean one caused the other.  You don’t want me to explain away the dreamworld you wish you lived in. You like to believe the things you believe, no matter how stupid. Joy comes from hoping your lottery ticket is a winner, not from knowing it very likely won’t be.  I too become joyed when thinking about how I’d spend millions of dollars that just appeared in my lap, but I’m not foolish enough to spend money on the chance. Unless the jackpot is over 200 million, because a statistically insignificant chance at $200 million is worth a buck where the same chance for $20 million isn’t. That’s a simple risk v reward analysis.

Anyway, I know things. I know a lot of things. I spend a lot of time reading new things and reflecting on old things.  I have opinions, but they’re based on facts, not like your opinions. Your opinions are based on anecdotes and conjecture, unless of course your opinions align with mine, but they probably don’t.

I’m probably smarter than you. If so, that’s something you didn’t want to hear, but it’s something I know and it’s something I have to carry around with me. Normally I wouldn’t bring it up, but the problem comes from there being so many more of you then there are of me, and with so many of you around, you like to discuss and make opinions on things you don’t understand. That’s a problem for me. I’m forced to live in a world numerically dominated by people who are wrong and don’t like being told so.

“How many legs does a dog have, if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”
– Abraham Lincoln

Whatever it is probably doesn’t work the way you think it does, and pretending it does doesn’t make it so. Wishing it does doesn’t make it so. Having faith that it does doesn’t make it so. Knowing that it does doesn’t make it so. Sometimes it appears that it might be so, and that only reinforces you, but things are the way they are, and you can either accept them, as I have, or be delusional. You’re probably delusional.

I used to think there was an answer to this problem: tell you that you’re wrong, but you don’t want to hear that. You want it to work in the way that you want it to work. You’re happier if it bends to you rather than you bending to it. The truth is, you’re not smart enough to bend yourself to it, and you’re not smart enough to understand that it’s not bending to you. The notion that there may not be an answer to this problem is another problem for me.

And so the passion that I felt for the recent event becomes dull, because even if I told you why I’m right, you’d just go on thinking you know better. You don’t, and you’ll probably never know it.

I only bought this domain because it was witty, I’m not yet sure what I”ll do with it.