Rant-age.
I'm fairly laid back as a rule, but there are a few things that provoke a hissing, spitting rage in me. I'll be keeping these commentaries here, for those who wish to: a) Learn something, b) Get material for making fun of me, or c) I procrastinate. Ask me later about c.
America's Behavior Overseas
My
last assignment in English this quarter was to write an argumentative essay.
Didn't matter what on, so long as I argued something. I think I'll mention it
here too...
Am I the only one who doesn't
think much of America's continued presence in Iraq? Or how about our country's
intervention anywhere, for that matter? Yes, crushing the sardines out of Sadaam
was necessary, when we thought he harbored Weapons Of Mass Destruction, (I find
it a shame that acronym can't be made funny). And certainly for a few
average Iraqi Joes (or Sahim's, whatever) life has improved without that
moustached menace. But many Iraqis want us out. The rest of
the world in fact, seems to want us out of their hemisphere. They sure aren't
lending a hand! Who decided the US should be the world's peacekeepers?
Because we're the strongest? ENH Wrong. Here's my thesis; NO ONE COUNTRY can police the world.
Why? Checks and balances, for one
thing.
Many of us here in America aren't aware that
our nation has been very, very naughty. We don't play by the rules, like
the rest of the nice little UN boys and girls. Are you aware that the U.S. refused to sign a ban against
biological weapons a few years ago? A rep from Washington said 'it wouldn't
be in America's best interests, and would not achieve its goals.' Umm...don't get me wrong here, but shouldn't it be everyone's goal to see
that biological weapons are completely erased from the face of the Earth?
What possible reason could we have not to support a ban like that,
unless we wanted to retain the option to use bioweapons if we felt the need? We
also try and keep our citizens out of international courts, implying that our
justice is better than any other countries' justice. How contemptuous! No country who
plays so fast and loose with international law when it suits them has the right
to go around making threats and bullying other countries! If a nation asks
for America's help, there you go. But we shouldn't overstay our welcome,
even then...
Illegal File Sharing
There is no excuse or reason for it. Now, I'm
not telling you not to do it, I'm just asking you not to try and excuse it, or
deny that it's stealing. ;K) It's a form of protest
against the idiotic record labels, yes, and many see it as the only
alternative to paying 15 bucks for a CD on which there is one track you actually
like. If the artists would benefit from cessation of file sharing, perhaps
I would give in, but the sad truth is that the record labels are pretty much the only
ones standing to benefit from the end of file sharing. Artists! Leave your labels if you possibly can at this
point, and band together to create a fair music-purchasing system
online.
If you get
paid a dollar a song for your work, you're making a TON more than you ever
would under a label. And what do we care about labels? You'll lose advertising
sure, but look at how much stuff is findable on the web without huge publicity
campaigns. :K)
Sport Hunting
Aside from population control made necessary by man's
extermination of natural predators, I hate it. Even if you eat
what you kill, what's the point? You go out in the forest and shoot a
creature who can't possibly measure up to firearms. Then you brag about it, and
mount part of their bodies on your wall. Is going to the supermarket and
buying ground beef any better? I'm going to say yes. The animal that died
to give you that meat wasn't free, had no offspring to protect, and was raised
to die. (That doesn't make it any better, really; I dream of the day when
we get our meat from vat-grown cultures of cow, chicken, heck, tiger meat if you
want it, without killing a single animal.) The stag that you blow a hole
through in the woods was doing just fine without the human race's intervention,
thank you very much. How can you kill something like that? Would
you shoot stray dogs and cats if they were a bit meatier? As for you people who shoot the animal and take only a
trophy...you are sick in the soul and the mind. You won't see me tearing
up if you get gunned down yourself. Karma at work. The animal's
death has served no purpose whatsoever, but to give you bragging rights.
You want some antlers? Go look for roadkill, you pathetic,
morally corrupt fart-in-a-jar.
Is there a God?
Interestingly
enough for a writer of shamelessly perverse literature, I was raised a Christian
by my parents for 13 years. When I began to rebel, I pushed away my parent's
faith, but silently. As I continued to endure sermon after sermon, Bible class
after Bible class at my Christian middle-school/High-school/College, I
questioned and doubted my 'faith' instead of merely rejecting it. Is there
a God? There's plenty of evidence pointing that way. Evolution is proven
on the micro scale, changes within a species, but I don't subscribe to the
theory that macro evolution (species changing into other species) is responsible
for our present world. I do, in fact, think it's more
likely we were created by a higher being, not simply masses of goo that became
sentient over billions of years.
Is our God the
Christian God? I dunno. The bible is a very unique document, even
compared to other religious texts, and there is plenty of truth in it,
particularly in Proverbs. I don't like the Bible's stance on homosexuality, and
certainly my own erotica-writing lifestyle won't put me on God's 'mortal of the
month' board. My worry is; am I going to hell? Are all
my friends, who I care so much about on the MUCKs, going to hell as
well?
Or even worse,
will I go to heaven because I said a prayer when I was five and genuinely
believed for a time, while my friends end up in hell and curse my name every
second of their eternal torment for not living a better life and convincing them
to accept Christ into their hearts?
All of you
who know me have probably never even guessed I worried about this. But how
can I tell you anything when I'm sure of nothing, myself? And several of
my friends are stolidly anti-Christian, some for good reasons. It's a constant nagging worry in my mind, that intensifies
into pain when I really think about it. Am I damning the people I
love? Will
my hesitation and uncertainty doom them to an eternity of hopeless
suffering? Or am I just as doomed for what I do in life? Or even
worse, there may be no life after death whatsoever. This life may be our only
shot. Thoughts like that make me want to pitch the TV, quit my office
job, and go see and experience the world. No one can know the perfect
truth, no one can ever be sure what comes after death, since (surprise) you
haven't been dead. You can't assume to tell me what to believe, and I
can't assume to tell you. Faith is only goading yourself into believing.
Whether it's a lie you're putting your faith in, who can tell?
Furries are simply
anthropomorphic animals. 'Anthropomorphism' is giving something human
attributes. You can anthropomorphize just about anything, like 'The
screen door screeched in agony as I opened it.' But when you
anthropomorphize animals, you generally give them human speech, human minds,
more human-style expressive faces, often a bipedal stance, and most often in the
furry genre, a much-nearer-human-than-animal physique. It's closer to say most furries are humans with fur, muzzles,
animal-ears and tails.
Many have digitigrade
legs/feet, like foxes and dogs, critters which walk on their toes.
Some
furs are 'non-anthro', which generally means they look just like a normal animal,
but are anthropomorphic in other respects like intelligence and speech. My character, Anima, is a twenty-foot long male
black panther, non-anthro. His only distinguishing feature from wild
panthers (aside from the
unnatural size,) is an intricate mask of silver facial fur, in curlicues,
loops and stripes. (Imagine an elaborate theater mask, bleached into the
fur around my eyes.)
Of course, there are plenty of other
creatures that come under the heading of 'furries.' Mythical creatures
like unicorns, gryphons, dragons, nagas, lamias, mermaids, dolphin morphs
('phins) and other aquatic morphs, and many more. The reptile anthros are
sometimes referred to as 'scalies' to set them apart from
furries.
For the sake of
convenience, most furs are 'equipped' similarly to humans, though knots, barbs,
etc. are common enough.
Judgmental
Thinking
I hate when people judge me by
looking at me. But I'm guilty of it too. I'm uncomfortable around
mentally and physically retarded folks, elderly people, etc. I don't
want to be, I want very much to be able to see the person for the person they
are, not the wheelchair, the slack jaw, the color of their skin, whatever!
There are degrees, of course. Handicapped folks I'd be happy to get to
know. Their legs don't work right, or they're paralyzed somehow. 'Man,
that sucks. So, what do you do for fun?'
I
myself am overweight. Rather severely so. I carry it relatively
well, but I'm a pudge-muffin. 9,9 I hate being heavy; it's very
inconvenient, and uncomfortable (how many of you are overweight and forced to sit
in average student desks? It blows.) If I gain another inch in my belly, I
won't be able to ride amusement park roller coasters anymore, because the bloody
harness won't close.
Some people will just
stand up and tell me, 'Cut out the double whoppers and get some exercise, whiny
fat boy!' And you know? They're right, that's exactly what I need to
do. But they don't have any idea, (for the most part, and those who do
know will nod with me) how hard it is to fight your way back to a normal
weight.
But I'm
lucky! My condition is changeable, if I can muster the willpower and
determination to shed the 150 pounds I'd need to in order to reach my height's
'ideal' weight. Retarded folks are forever handicapped by a cruel whim of
nature, and nothing they do can erase that. Perhaps in the future
we'll be able to repair paralysis and regenerate nerves, but there will still be
defects we can't fix. There are even slight defects, you could even call them
mal-adjustments. A slight slur in speech, or a tendency to talk much too
loud, or to have virtually no control over what thoughts of yours come out of your
mouth. Others have no empathy, and cannot for the life of them understand
why they have no friends. Still others never learned how to get along with
people, and it's purely painful to watch them try and fail. I am
lucky enough to be reasonably well-spoken, intelligent, and
socially-adequate in most situations. I'm not the life of the party,
that's for sure. I'll be in a corner, hoping/dreading someone will talk to me. I
always intend otherwise, and it always happens that way anyways. But so
many have it so much worse than I do! They're the ones that would never make
it to the party, or if they do, they end up embarrassing themselves, or earning
fleeting glances of pity/unease from the rest of the partygoers. I HATE that I
am one of those glancing people.
I may not agree with
everything Jesus preached, but Unconditional Love is one of the greatest ideas
humanity has ever coughed up.
And boy,
do I wish I was any good at it. I'll keep working at it... If others
can accept a quiet, oddly dressed, roughly-shaven fat kid, I can accept the
drooling overly-loud wheel-chair bound man who rolls around
the halls at my college, looking for someone who talk to
him.
Okay, so, I've discovered
another flaw in myself over the past few years. I have a bad case of road
rage. It doesn't help at all that so many people I encounter on the road
seem to be drooling idiots.
Is it really that hard to
do the speed limit? I can't tell you how many times I've gotten stuck
behind someone rolling sedately along, five, ten, even fifteen MPH under the
limit. (Listen people, some of you may not have anywhere to be, but I do,
so be polite and at least do the speed limit.) Some of them brake at green lights. The ones that actually do
me the favor of turning off of the road I'm on, come to a complete stop before
doing so.
Many of these people are old, with poor eyesight? They're
driving more slowly to protect themselves and others?
YOU ARE TOO OLD TO
DRIVE. TAKE THE BUS. Okay, that covers old people.
Now, how about the idiots? They're middle-aged or younger. They
could be driving anything. I've seen idiots on motorcycles, in sports
cars, SUVs, trucks (a LOT in trucks) and beat up Japanese cars just like mine.
They turn and change freeway lanes without signaling (it's the fashion in Ohio, apparently) and have no situational awareness
whatsoever, usually because they're glued to their cellphones.
STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM THEM!
A word on the Jerks. Jerks can be rather skillful drivers, but their goal
when they're out on the road is to piss you off. This can include
tailgating you (even when you're going 20 MPH over the limit on a surface
street,) passing you on a single-lane off/on-ramp, passing you only
to get into your lane and slow down, and who knows what else.
SHOOT
THEM IN THE FACE WITH A BAZOOKA.
Finally we come to the
insane. I have no idea what's specifically wrong with these people, but they're crazy.
Symptoms can be similar to those exhibited by the Idiots and jerks, but
you never get the feeling it's intentional like the jerks or see any hasty
corrections the idiots might pull. They simply drive like they're the only
car on the road, totally unpredictable. If someone insane gets you in a
wreck, please remove their brain and send it to me for
analysis.