Today, on the Chopping Block.
The result of many years of technology and how our bellies portray the American ego at it's finest.
I will start with video games.
Alright people, HALO, Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil and Call of Duty.
Great games?
Sure.
Overplayed?
Yup.
Apparently the world has failed to notice the fact that video games are destroying us. They are turning us into unsociable people, with no aspiration to do anything with our lives. Sure, we are trying now, just watch Nickelodeon or Disney or Cartoon network for an hour or so and there will be mainly commercials designed to make children proactive. It's a great effort.
But get this.
Basketball sucks. The only people good at it are black people and Larry Byrd.
Baseball sucks. The only people good at it are mexicans.
Football sucks. It fucking hurts.
Now, explain to me how advocating these sports is going to get our lazy white asses out of our gaming chairs when there's action, adventure, and, typically, big bouncing tits streamed to our TV via XBOX360?
Let's face it, sports are boring and unproductive. Maybe if adventure camp didn't cost a small fortune and maybe if there wasn't a chance to get killed in the Army, we would be a little more active. I have friends who want to do military service, but are afraid of getting killed. I would reference them to a recruiter (some I know by name) or tell them that they can always do some non-front lines stuff, like being a mechanic or something like that. But they never listen to me.
But video games piss me off to no end.
In conjunction with the above statement, it makes us indecisive.
"I'm really good at HALO and CoD (Call of Duty) and I wanna join the Marines and become a sniper and do all the fun stuff."
I'm not one to lie. I say
"Listen dude, there's more to being a sniper than bunny-hopping and putting heads in crosshairs. you have to take into effect the wind, how hot it is outside, what angle you are shooting at, you have to eyeball the distance to your target, and you have to take into effect the rotation of the earth. Oh, and the whole time you are watching him take the last puffs on his cigarette and you know that you are stripping him away from his wife and kids forever. You will also be tucked deep into enemy lines, if you are found there is no rescue, you will be tortured and drained of every piece of vital information you know before they kill you and show your dead body on national TV."
At this point, they look down, reconsider asking me and walk off.
I studied snipers, I always wanted to be one, I did my homework. Everything I said above is true.
But this brings me to my next topic. Online gaming. Sometimes you find a bunch of guys in their 30's relaxing and having fun, and take the game seriously, (My best memory is Red Orchestra online, we would form squads and I was always the sniper. I had a spotter and and I could call in support like in real life. Realism was the name of their game and I loved it.)
But, again, there is a polar opposite.
You definitely know them. The 14 year old that has a stupid screenname and cusses and screams at the top of their lungs when they "die."
Grow
up
you
stupid
fucking
children.
Just because you are 14 and have no life doesn't mean it's a communicable disease. It's not a cold, it won't rub off and magically disappear. So drop the act and quiet in the fuck down. Even though it has it's indulgences. Like when mom calls them in for dinner and goes AFK. Then you all gang up on his character in game and continuously kill him until he comes back. Then they freak out about it and everyone else has a laugh. But really though, these kids need to quiet down and grow up, it's just a game, and if you are trying to have a gamerscore to brag about it's about time you found a different hobby.
Okay, What's left...
CARS!
The american car today is shit. We are now putting 30-day money back guarantees on them. But nowadays, it doesn't matter. Once, upon crashing a Daihatsu the race driver apologized profusely to the Daihatsu rep who attended the race. The rep smiled wanly and said "it's okay, we make a new one every 23 seconds."
Let's pick apart that statement.
1 new car every 23 seconds.
1 new child born every 6 seconds.
Out of those, there will be around 2 boys for every girl born.
That means...
2 boys that are fighting over one girl in every car ever made 16 years from now.
I dunno about you guys, that does not sound like a healthy way to hold up our economy.
and I'm only talking about 1 out of many hundreds of automobile manufacturers. So now everyone else has a car, slowly draining our supply of gasoline. Most of them will eventually die in a fatal....car crash. Our parents didn't raise retards, but there's bound to be a few hundred idiots who drink underage and drive while high. Is that how we balance ourselves out? For our massive (and still growing) population we are killing ourselves to balance out. But for every one kid that dies in a car crash some mother is having twins somewhere. Stupid. It makes my head spin. Let's stop making cars, it would be cheaper to continue manufacturing parts for the ones we have now, including older models. Improve what we have, instead of building a new car every time we want to throw in a GPS system or a semi-automatic transmission. Making new cars is just as individualistic as making your current car your very own. So stop trading in your 08 Malibu for an 09 Malibu and improve on your 08.
Next topic in cars. Fuel efficiency.
I've talked about it before, my car gets 42 miles to the gallon, on average. That's 504 miles on a single tank. Now, hybrids are just now catching up to my car, which, by the way, was fresh off the lot in 1993. It does not run on vegetable oil, or grease, or methane, or hydrogen. It is still a gasoline car. Do you know why, of all things my car is so efficient?
It's light.
It's got an inline 4.
And it's got a manual transmission.
So not only am I running on a hyper-efficient cloud I'm having all the fun in the world doing it from every stop sign and every light.
If I get in a crash, I will probably die, the fenders are made from plastic and the frame is made from bar stock. But that is what it takes. It is not 5-star safety rated, it doesn't have XM radio in it, actually it didn't have a radio at all in it when my (then) uncle Ernie bought it, hell, it doesn't even have power steering. But it's supposed to be driven by a responsible person who has a knack for driving. Like me.
Isn't driving supposed to be responsible? Does that mean our new features are the result of irresponsibility? I will answer for you, yes. Seatbelts were invented because sometime you hit a tree. They were improved because sometimes you can hit a wall. The Driver's saftey commission was made because sometimes a drunk teenager can hit you in his dad's Chevy Tahoe. Our loss in fuel economy is nothing more than us!
We, as a driving society, have become far too dangerous to be a driving society. There are too many "ifs" involved to make it worthwhile.
during this post, 78 Dihatsu's were made, and 300 children were born throughout the world. Thats 14,400 babies in 24 hours, and 3,744 Daihatsu's.
5,256,000 children a year, and 1,000 plus in that year will die in a car accident by the time those kids turn 18. Some of those kids won't fit into a car because they are grossly overweight. Some of those won't even have a car because they are too busy trolling about on their video games. And some are dying in Iraq while their younger siblings are out wrecking their Daihatsu.
Food for thought?
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Chopping Block, Ep. 5 ---- Superstition, and it's many products.
Tonight on the Chopping Block!
A black cat hisses at you while you walk under a ladder with your umbrella open in the house.
Superstition, where does it start and where does it end? Sometimes they are house rules, and some of them can't help but be broken.
Did you know, I purposely smashed a mirror, just to smash one? Yeah, I did. I know, seven whole years of bad luck. Guess what? I was asked out twice the next day.
Will someone explain to me why my mother's perfectly fine, even though I have stepped on many cracks in school and elsewhere? She had a hernia, but our family's always had back problems.
Frankly, this kind of superstition follows the same lines of religion, just not on such a massive scale. Ladders were crap when the walking under the ladder superstition was invented. Perhaps a kid's mother said it to protect her kid, and gave the kid a really good reason not to do it.
Love Thy Neighbor.
Because they could be a psychopath.
Black Cats are bad luck.
Because the color black is associated with evil and darkness, insofar, nothing but the color of their fur is dark. Evil, well, all cats are evil lazyasses.
Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.
Because....well...cheating is just wrong anyways.
Smashing a mirror brings 7 years of bad luck.
Anybody who was a child knows that glass is sharp as a mofo and it cuts people.
Again, it was probably some mother trying to give her kid a good reason not to pick up broken glass as well as trying to keep her kid from breaking mirrors to begin with.
Do you see how superstition mirrors religion in many aspects?
But superstition can also spawn the worst thing since the Trojan virus.
Chain Mail, Chain E-Mail, Chain this, Chain that.
so you read this pretty poem about friendship. When you finish the poem you read further that if you send it to 10 people in the next 10 minutes your true love will magically emerge from the darkness and sweep you off your feet.
hmmm. sound familiar?
If you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior, you should form disciples (bible recruiting anyone?) and you will go to heaven.
But if you don't, straight to hell with you.
Oh, and that chain letter, if you don't send it to those 10 people in 10 minutes, a girl with no eyes, nose, or ears will appear by your bedside and kill you.
Okay. Hear me out people. I tried sending one of those wonderful chain e-mails, I was not contacted by my true love, nothing special happened at 11:11, nothing, nyet, nicht.
So I tried another one, this one said a swarm of pestilence will surround me if I didn't send it to 45 people in 45 minutes, as well as the freaky girl that will kill me. But I didn't have 45 contacts anyways and I wanted to try. So I grabbed a cup of coffee and waited to die. Nothing then either. No freaky girl by my bedside. I concluded one thing.
Obviously these stupid chain letters have no bearing on our lives at all other than filling up space in our inbox. Another wonderful failed prospect that doing one little thing will change our lives. It's baffling, and at the same time, so clearly simple.
Same thing with religion. It's been taken too far. Listen, if god was trying to reach us, and the only way he could was through ancient writings, he didn't try hard enough. Where is god right now? Things are so much shittier for the world now than they were 2000 years ago. Where is the almighty god with his son, the savior? Oh, he's waiting for us to clear thing up by ourselves. This proves god is quite the slacker. It's like when there's a fire in your apartment, everyone puts it out and then the fire department shows up. Obviously we don't need a god if he's expecting us to do everything ourselves. Just like that chain letter says your true love will contact you the next day. We don't know if that letter will do anything, but you never know.
I know.
They don't work.
God doesn't work. He started this mess in Afghanistan. Believe it or not.
To Christians, Muslims are scum, and they will rot in hell for not being Christian.
To Muslims, Christians are scum, and they will rot in hell for not being Muslim.
To every religion, there can be only one true religion. And that's their religion. Talk about Elitism.
And look where it got us. I'm obviously going to hell, because I seek the truth in the world around me instead of shutting my mind off and accepting their notion that god is the reason we are here.
This makes me a dangerous person, the very streets of the Vatican would steam as I walked on them.
Why?
Because I have figured out that religion has no bearing on our lives whatsoever. We are all here for a reason, yes. That reason is that a carbon-bearing comet struck earth and it is the only planet known in the universe able to harbor life. We are carbon-based life forms. Everyone's like, well, without god how are we so complicated? How are we so un-basic? It's amazing how many times I hear this. I don't honestly know. It's so damn easy to just say "god" and close the book on it, isn't it? I'm not falling for it. Molecules are mysterious, actually, how our sun is in operation after billions of years is evidence about how we formed from molecules into human beings. Read a little about it. All elements in our universe have some type of magnetic polarity. It's easy to click magnets together, no?
But enough hypothesis.
Frankly, we have no use for religion or superstition. Everything has and can be explained in a logical manner. There is no need to say god when we want to explain the formation of the stars.
So drop the act and listen to reason.
We can't use god as our excuse for being ignorant.
We can't use superstition as our excuse for bad luck.
Time to stop looking for a leadr for your life and time to think of yourself as one. We as humans have an unmatched willpower in the cosmos. Stop being meek and feeble and stand up for yourself, by yourself.
A black cat hisses at you while you walk under a ladder with your umbrella open in the house.
Superstition, where does it start and where does it end? Sometimes they are house rules, and some of them can't help but be broken.
Did you know, I purposely smashed a mirror, just to smash one? Yeah, I did. I know, seven whole years of bad luck. Guess what? I was asked out twice the next day.
Will someone explain to me why my mother's perfectly fine, even though I have stepped on many cracks in school and elsewhere? She had a hernia, but our family's always had back problems.
Frankly, this kind of superstition follows the same lines of religion, just not on such a massive scale. Ladders were crap when the walking under the ladder superstition was invented. Perhaps a kid's mother said it to protect her kid, and gave the kid a really good reason not to do it.
Love Thy Neighbor.
Because they could be a psychopath.
Black Cats are bad luck.
Because the color black is associated with evil and darkness, insofar, nothing but the color of their fur is dark. Evil, well, all cats are evil lazyasses.
Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.
Because....well...cheating is just wrong anyways.
Smashing a mirror brings 7 years of bad luck.
Anybody who was a child knows that glass is sharp as a mofo and it cuts people.
Again, it was probably some mother trying to give her kid a good reason not to pick up broken glass as well as trying to keep her kid from breaking mirrors to begin with.
Do you see how superstition mirrors religion in many aspects?
But superstition can also spawn the worst thing since the Trojan virus.
Chain Mail, Chain E-Mail, Chain this, Chain that.
so you read this pretty poem about friendship. When you finish the poem you read further that if you send it to 10 people in the next 10 minutes your true love will magically emerge from the darkness and sweep you off your feet.
hmmm. sound familiar?
If you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior, you should form disciples (bible recruiting anyone?) and you will go to heaven.
But if you don't, straight to hell with you.
Oh, and that chain letter, if you don't send it to those 10 people in 10 minutes, a girl with no eyes, nose, or ears will appear by your bedside and kill you.
Okay. Hear me out people. I tried sending one of those wonderful chain e-mails, I was not contacted by my true love, nothing special happened at 11:11, nothing, nyet, nicht.
So I tried another one, this one said a swarm of pestilence will surround me if I didn't send it to 45 people in 45 minutes, as well as the freaky girl that will kill me. But I didn't have 45 contacts anyways and I wanted to try. So I grabbed a cup of coffee and waited to die. Nothing then either. No freaky girl by my bedside. I concluded one thing.
Obviously these stupid chain letters have no bearing on our lives at all other than filling up space in our inbox. Another wonderful failed prospect that doing one little thing will change our lives. It's baffling, and at the same time, so clearly simple.
Same thing with religion. It's been taken too far. Listen, if god was trying to reach us, and the only way he could was through ancient writings, he didn't try hard enough. Where is god right now? Things are so much shittier for the world now than they were 2000 years ago. Where is the almighty god with his son, the savior? Oh, he's waiting for us to clear thing up by ourselves. This proves god is quite the slacker. It's like when there's a fire in your apartment, everyone puts it out and then the fire department shows up. Obviously we don't need a god if he's expecting us to do everything ourselves. Just like that chain letter says your true love will contact you the next day. We don't know if that letter will do anything, but you never know.
I know.
They don't work.
God doesn't work. He started this mess in Afghanistan. Believe it or not.
To Christians, Muslims are scum, and they will rot in hell for not being Christian.
To Muslims, Christians are scum, and they will rot in hell for not being Muslim.
To every religion, there can be only one true religion. And that's their religion. Talk about Elitism.
And look where it got us. I'm obviously going to hell, because I seek the truth in the world around me instead of shutting my mind off and accepting their notion that god is the reason we are here.
This makes me a dangerous person, the very streets of the Vatican would steam as I walked on them.
Why?
Because I have figured out that religion has no bearing on our lives whatsoever. We are all here for a reason, yes. That reason is that a carbon-bearing comet struck earth and it is the only planet known in the universe able to harbor life. We are carbon-based life forms. Everyone's like, well, without god how are we so complicated? How are we so un-basic? It's amazing how many times I hear this. I don't honestly know. It's so damn easy to just say "god" and close the book on it, isn't it? I'm not falling for it. Molecules are mysterious, actually, how our sun is in operation after billions of years is evidence about how we formed from molecules into human beings. Read a little about it. All elements in our universe have some type of magnetic polarity. It's easy to click magnets together, no?
But enough hypothesis.
Frankly, we have no use for religion or superstition. Everything has and can be explained in a logical manner. There is no need to say god when we want to explain the formation of the stars.
So drop the act and listen to reason.
We can't use god as our excuse for being ignorant.
We can't use superstition as our excuse for bad luck.
Time to stop looking for a leadr for your life and time to think of yourself as one. We as humans have an unmatched willpower in the cosmos. Stop being meek and feeble and stand up for yourself, by yourself.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Chopping Block, Ep. 4 ---- The First Blameless Society
I am sorry to say that we belong to a generation of idiots. Can you believe at this very moment somebody is figuring a new way to leech money out of the government? Worst part is, that we as the rest of society have to put up with it. Not in monetary terms.
Easy case in point. CD cases. Can you believe at one point in time they didn't put plastic wrap on CD cases? I think this goes back to vinyl records even. Yeah, they were open to the public, you could sample the real record before you buy it. Not now of course. Let me tell you how this happened.
Some guy named Joe Schmo who has been around the petty theft block the few times finds himself in a record store where he can easily steal the tapes and vinyls by stuffing them in his big coatpockets. People would come up to the counter complaining their tapes are gone, the records in the vinyl...missing, and the owner gets pissed. Joe Schmo is eventually caught in the process and he goes to trial. In trial he is asked why he stole all this music, why he couldn't stop.
What did he say?
"Because nothing was there to stop me."
Holy shit, every lawyer shrugged and said "he's right, you know" and Joe Schmo walks. The record producers now have to put stickers and plastic wrap on every product so nobody is tempted into stealing. Now we have to deal with it. Those huge machines at Wal-Mart, with a bar-code scanner so you could sample the CD without buying it. Those cost a ton of money to develop, which came from your dad's and my dad's pockets. It doesn't stop there.
The hot coffee case comes to mind. This is mind boggling, a woman goes into McDonalds, and buys a cup of coffee. In a restaurant, they are supposed to keep coffee at a blistering temperature. This is standard so no bacteria can grow in this coffee. That sounds perfectly reasonable, and I'm willing to take five and wait for my coffee to cool down. This lady spills it on herself and gets, like, second degree burns. She takes it to court, complaining there was no "WARNING! HOT COFFEE" label on her coffee cup, there was nothing warning her that her coffee is hot. Isn't that why it's called coffee?! It's supposed to be fucking hot! Maybe if she ordered an iced coffee and it came back absolutely hot, I'd go back and say "sorry, I ordered an iced coffee, there must be some kind of mistake." But no. I think she spilled it on herself, knowing she could get something from this.
She did.
About two million dollars worth. Because there wasn't a label telling her the obvious.
Jeez. Just because there isn't a label saying you shouldn't stick a fork in a toaster because you are going to be shocked...doesn't mean you should do it anyways. We are basically paying for it. Ink isn't cheap. Neither is plastic wrap. We even have to pay the guys who work at the recycling plants.
Don't think you are doing something good for the environment because your cardboard coffee coaster is made from recycled paper, either. You are going to throw it in the trash, where it goes to a landfill. There goes that, huh? I guess you have to have idiots to see the intelligent people....like me. Haha.
Back on subject.
These people are making the rest of us look like idiots. I don't blame them. I'm sure any one of you would take a few volts from your toaster to get an easy million...or six. But still, shouldn't intelligence be ahead of greed? Somewhere, right now, somebody is doing something even the reality show producers would gawk at. Just because nobody said they can't.
Hello, isn't that called a conscience?
These people put aside their need to make an honest dollar and live life like anyone else to do something that's going to get them in the news, and it's going to get them a lot of money.
Sound oddly similar?
Criminals do that too. So yes. You do know what I am saying now don't you!
These people are stealing from us. They aren't breaking into your house, they aren't taking your girlfriend from you, but you can bet your flat-screen TV you worked two years to have they are stealing from us. Our government is losing money because there's a new loophole somebody finds and puts to use. Granted, the war isn't helping either, neither is our new president's whackjob ideas to jumpstart the economy.
But still, imagine what six million dollars could have done elsewhere. Bullets, guns, that's half an Abrams tank. Six million is enough business loans to start off a whole bunch of entrepreneurs who will eventually bring us out of this mess. But no.
Alas, there is some idiot with a couple Ferrari's, a 100,000 square foot mansion, with a maze and swimming pool, entertaining scores of women with that six mill...because he stuck a fork in a toaster while it was on.
How many lawyers are willing to make that fast a buck?
we should pay them double their fees to not take the case and just throw the idiots in jail.
I mean, 120,000 dollars to the lawyers is better than 6 million towards the bonehead willing to zap himself.
Easy case in point. CD cases. Can you believe at one point in time they didn't put plastic wrap on CD cases? I think this goes back to vinyl records even. Yeah, they were open to the public, you could sample the real record before you buy it. Not now of course. Let me tell you how this happened.
Some guy named Joe Schmo who has been around the petty theft block the few times finds himself in a record store where he can easily steal the tapes and vinyls by stuffing them in his big coatpockets. People would come up to the counter complaining their tapes are gone, the records in the vinyl...missing, and the owner gets pissed. Joe Schmo is eventually caught in the process and he goes to trial. In trial he is asked why he stole all this music, why he couldn't stop.
What did he say?
"Because nothing was there to stop me."
Holy shit, every lawyer shrugged and said "he's right, you know" and Joe Schmo walks. The record producers now have to put stickers and plastic wrap on every product so nobody is tempted into stealing. Now we have to deal with it. Those huge machines at Wal-Mart, with a bar-code scanner so you could sample the CD without buying it. Those cost a ton of money to develop, which came from your dad's and my dad's pockets. It doesn't stop there.
The hot coffee case comes to mind. This is mind boggling, a woman goes into McDonalds, and buys a cup of coffee. In a restaurant, they are supposed to keep coffee at a blistering temperature. This is standard so no bacteria can grow in this coffee. That sounds perfectly reasonable, and I'm willing to take five and wait for my coffee to cool down. This lady spills it on herself and gets, like, second degree burns. She takes it to court, complaining there was no "WARNING! HOT COFFEE" label on her coffee cup, there was nothing warning her that her coffee is hot. Isn't that why it's called coffee?! It's supposed to be fucking hot! Maybe if she ordered an iced coffee and it came back absolutely hot, I'd go back and say "sorry, I ordered an iced coffee, there must be some kind of mistake." But no. I think she spilled it on herself, knowing she could get something from this.
She did.
About two million dollars worth. Because there wasn't a label telling her the obvious.
Jeez. Just because there isn't a label saying you shouldn't stick a fork in a toaster because you are going to be shocked...doesn't mean you should do it anyways. We are basically paying for it. Ink isn't cheap. Neither is plastic wrap. We even have to pay the guys who work at the recycling plants.
Don't think you are doing something good for the environment because your cardboard coffee coaster is made from recycled paper, either. You are going to throw it in the trash, where it goes to a landfill. There goes that, huh? I guess you have to have idiots to see the intelligent people....like me. Haha.
Back on subject.
These people are making the rest of us look like idiots. I don't blame them. I'm sure any one of you would take a few volts from your toaster to get an easy million...or six. But still, shouldn't intelligence be ahead of greed? Somewhere, right now, somebody is doing something even the reality show producers would gawk at. Just because nobody said they can't.
Hello, isn't that called a conscience?
These people put aside their need to make an honest dollar and live life like anyone else to do something that's going to get them in the news, and it's going to get them a lot of money.
Sound oddly similar?
Criminals do that too. So yes. You do know what I am saying now don't you!
These people are stealing from us. They aren't breaking into your house, they aren't taking your girlfriend from you, but you can bet your flat-screen TV you worked two years to have they are stealing from us. Our government is losing money because there's a new loophole somebody finds and puts to use. Granted, the war isn't helping either, neither is our new president's whackjob ideas to jumpstart the economy.
But still, imagine what six million dollars could have done elsewhere. Bullets, guns, that's half an Abrams tank. Six million is enough business loans to start off a whole bunch of entrepreneurs who will eventually bring us out of this mess. But no.
Alas, there is some idiot with a couple Ferrari's, a 100,000 square foot mansion, with a maze and swimming pool, entertaining scores of women with that six mill...because he stuck a fork in a toaster while it was on.
How many lawyers are willing to make that fast a buck?
we should pay them double their fees to not take the case and just throw the idiots in jail.
I mean, 120,000 dollars to the lawyers is better than 6 million towards the bonehead willing to zap himself.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Chopping Block Ep. 3 ---- Owen's Revelation
I don't know if I would call this entry a "Chopping Block" entry. I created The Chopping Block to observe and report on what's going on with us as a species. To come down on our fact and fiction, our way of life. To check off topics on a list of things we have blown way out of proportion.
This entry will then fit into the (among other things) section.
I was talking to a friend of mine about how we as humans are so quick to judge, to talk down on, to kill one another, that, if we could go back in time and give cavemen handguns, we would cease to exist as a species. Then I realized. If we give any group of people now an equal amount of that power, we would still cease to exist as a species. We, as humans, are advancing in technology and relations one step behind what it would take for any of us to kill all of us. Look at it. From knives we made armor, from armor we made long swords, which made better armor, from that, we got firearms, which gave us barriers, and all sorts of stuff. Then we made the atomic bomb, which made us make bomb shelters and the like, which made the Bunker Buster, which made us rethink how this whole "war" thing is done. See where I'm going? We are always one step behind what it takes to kill us all, and at the same time, one step ahead of it, in terms of what's going to keep us from doing it. This is a scary place to be in, as a speck among the human race. Some day we will overstep the rule I have made, and something will happen that will kill us all. At this rate, we will have weapons that will destroy whole continents, but, we will have some way to protect ourselves from it.
I'm afraid that some day our luck will run out. Our heads will be on a platter for some stupid reason or another. We really have never left the cavemen stage, in terms of power and how we use it. We are all still primitive, and we are all still using primitive weapons. The two are conjoined I am afraid.
Example.
Cavemen fought each other with clubs and shields made from sticks.
later, in the dark ages, they would consider this fighting primitive.
in the civil war, fighting with muskets and cannon, we would think of that as primitive.
in WWII, fighting with cartridged bullets and advanced aircraft, we would consider that type of fighting primitive.
Just keep fast-forwarding to today. If this was a movie, we are still recording. Some day, the weapons we use now are going to be "primitive."
So let's face it!
We are still primitive!
Just fighting with new clubs and sticks, new swords and armor! We will never leave this set of mind.
I find myself scared for what the future brings, sometimes.
This entry will then fit into the (among other things) section.
I was talking to a friend of mine about how we as humans are so quick to judge, to talk down on, to kill one another, that, if we could go back in time and give cavemen handguns, we would cease to exist as a species. Then I realized. If we give any group of people now an equal amount of that power, we would still cease to exist as a species. We, as humans, are advancing in technology and relations one step behind what it would take for any of us to kill all of us. Look at it. From knives we made armor, from armor we made long swords, which made better armor, from that, we got firearms, which gave us barriers, and all sorts of stuff. Then we made the atomic bomb, which made us make bomb shelters and the like, which made the Bunker Buster, which made us rethink how this whole "war" thing is done. See where I'm going? We are always one step behind what it takes to kill us all, and at the same time, one step ahead of it, in terms of what's going to keep us from doing it. This is a scary place to be in, as a speck among the human race. Some day we will overstep the rule I have made, and something will happen that will kill us all. At this rate, we will have weapons that will destroy whole continents, but, we will have some way to protect ourselves from it.
I'm afraid that some day our luck will run out. Our heads will be on a platter for some stupid reason or another. We really have never left the cavemen stage, in terms of power and how we use it. We are all still primitive, and we are all still using primitive weapons. The two are conjoined I am afraid.
Example.
Cavemen fought each other with clubs and shields made from sticks.
later, in the dark ages, they would consider this fighting primitive.
in the civil war, fighting with muskets and cannon, we would think of that as primitive.
in WWII, fighting with cartridged bullets and advanced aircraft, we would consider that type of fighting primitive.
Just keep fast-forwarding to today. If this was a movie, we are still recording. Some day, the weapons we use now are going to be "primitive."
So let's face it!
We are still primitive!
Just fighting with new clubs and sticks, new swords and armor! We will never leave this set of mind.
I find myself scared for what the future brings, sometimes.
Chopping Block, Ep. 2.5 ---- NASA and it's relationship with the Moon.
Yes, Episode 2.5,
this is a minisode, according to FOX
Okay.
We have all heard something by now about this little "impactor mission" to the moon. This mission has been called Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)
What we are planning on doing is basically shooting an SUV-sized bullet at the moon and using a satellite to pick up the plume of dust and shit and see if a full-time moon base is in order, or sane.
Keep in mind, this bullet is going to be going 5,000 miles per hour.
Now, this is something spectacular, this plume can be seen by anybody with a sense of direction and a pair of binoculars. But, someone always has to ruin our fun.
Some kid named Eddie Rose says:
"Keeping in mind the tidal influence of the moon on Earth, remember also that our bodies are composed of the same percentage of water. What if this sudden disturbance sends everyone (and everything) living on Earth crazy?"
Right, a two-ton flying chunk of metal is going to blow the Moon out of it's common and relatively undisturbed orbit.
Listen, punk, look at a picture of the moon and tell me what you see.
CRATERS!
IT'S BEEN HIT BEFORE DIPSHIT!
The moon is covered in craters caused by asteroids made of every single element we have ever heard of. Big, small, you name it, it has probably hit the Moon before. Again, let me point out that the Moon is far bigger than a pretty dot in the sky. Actually, much of it's composition equals that of the Earth's mantle. It's not made of cheese. It's solid and has mass. Maybe if we hit Europa ir Io or Triton (all moons in our solar system) this would cause said effect. It's not going to kill anyone out there, but our moon's a little closer.
and some people are so daft to say something like this. This is by someone named Ragaroiox:
"This is the stupidest idea I have ever heard of. These are the “greatest minds of our generation.” Yeah right."
Let's explore some other options then. Let's train about 100 scientists to be astronauts, and let's make a huge drill that is able to penetrate deep enough into the Moon to see if we can find water.
Now, with the economy the way it is, this amount of technology will cost about the same as our current national deficit.
Food for thought?
So our next best option is to send some huge fucking bullet flying into the moon at almost 3 times the speed of a rifle bullet and we'll collect the crap that flies away from it.
Sounds reasonable enough. It's great for the ole Budget.
I have studied orbital mechanics to the best of my understanding as a kid, and I'm taking an astronomy course in college. Let me tell you this.
I don't know what kind of physics is involved with calculating the explosion this will make. But we have set off more than 100 atomic bombs on the surface of this planet and we have had NO deviation from our orbit around the sun. We are hitting the moon with ONE object that is not exploding, not doing anything but hitting the moon, traveling at or less than the same speed as an asteroid. Explain to me how this will cause some catastrophic event that will cause the moon to be sent careening away from the earth, or orbiting in a different direction. It won't.
This all goes back to my first blog, where I said that humans feel as though we are causing an impact on something that is far bigger and so much farther beyond our control than we can grasp. We aren't. Take it to heart.
Trust me, The "greatest minds of our generation" know more about that rock floating around our planet than even I do and would know if we would be doing something bad. We wouldn't.
Get over it. Watch the show.
this is a minisode, according to FOX
Okay.
We have all heard something by now about this little "impactor mission" to the moon. This mission has been called Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)
What we are planning on doing is basically shooting an SUV-sized bullet at the moon and using a satellite to pick up the plume of dust and shit and see if a full-time moon base is in order, or sane.
Keep in mind, this bullet is going to be going 5,000 miles per hour.
Now, this is something spectacular, this plume can be seen by anybody with a sense of direction and a pair of binoculars. But, someone always has to ruin our fun.
Some kid named Eddie Rose says:
"Keeping in mind the tidal influence of the moon on Earth, remember also that our bodies are composed of the same percentage of water. What if this sudden disturbance sends everyone (and everything) living on Earth crazy?"
Right, a two-ton flying chunk of metal is going to blow the Moon out of it's common and relatively undisturbed orbit.
Listen, punk, look at a picture of the moon and tell me what you see.
CRATERS!
IT'S BEEN HIT BEFORE DIPSHIT!
The moon is covered in craters caused by asteroids made of every single element we have ever heard of. Big, small, you name it, it has probably hit the Moon before. Again, let me point out that the Moon is far bigger than a pretty dot in the sky. Actually, much of it's composition equals that of the Earth's mantle. It's not made of cheese. It's solid and has mass. Maybe if we hit Europa ir Io or Triton (all moons in our solar system) this would cause said effect. It's not going to kill anyone out there, but our moon's a little closer.
and some people are so daft to say something like this. This is by someone named Ragaroiox:
"This is the stupidest idea I have ever heard of. These are the “greatest minds of our generation.” Yeah right."
Let's explore some other options then. Let's train about 100 scientists to be astronauts, and let's make a huge drill that is able to penetrate deep enough into the Moon to see if we can find water.
Now, with the economy the way it is, this amount of technology will cost about the same as our current national deficit.
Food for thought?
So our next best option is to send some huge fucking bullet flying into the moon at almost 3 times the speed of a rifle bullet and we'll collect the crap that flies away from it.
Sounds reasonable enough. It's great for the ole Budget.
I have studied orbital mechanics to the best of my understanding as a kid, and I'm taking an astronomy course in college. Let me tell you this.
I don't know what kind of physics is involved with calculating the explosion this will make. But we have set off more than 100 atomic bombs on the surface of this planet and we have had NO deviation from our orbit around the sun. We are hitting the moon with ONE object that is not exploding, not doing anything but hitting the moon, traveling at or less than the same speed as an asteroid. Explain to me how this will cause some catastrophic event that will cause the moon to be sent careening away from the earth, or orbiting in a different direction. It won't.
This all goes back to my first blog, where I said that humans feel as though we are causing an impact on something that is far bigger and so much farther beyond our control than we can grasp. We aren't. Take it to heart.
Trust me, The "greatest minds of our generation" know more about that rock floating around our planet than even I do and would know if we would be doing something bad. We wouldn't.
Get over it. Watch the show.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The Chopping Block, Ep.2----- Music and the world around it.
On the Chopping Block today?
Music, and how the world wraps itself around it.
Where would the world be without music?
I would be smoking pot, my friends wouldn't.
I would have about 600 dollars to my name, due to the fact I didn't get any instruments, or anything to listen to them on.
Jimi Hendrix would just be a name, so would Eddie Van Halen, so would Johann Sebastian Bach.
Music has done a lot of wonderful things to our world. It gave us a means of expression, a way of reaching out and touching the other side of the world.
do you know what else touching the other side of the world from your chair needs?
Imagination.
It made me think I was a hotshot fighter pilot in third grade, it made me think I was killing bad guys with a sword of the ancients, while my parents saw me whacking weeds in our yard. This is what separates music from toneless noise. Without an artist's imagination, we could not use ours to take us elsewhere. Without an MP3 player, study hall would have been just a creative way to say "nap." I wrote many papers in my study hall, blissfully ignoring my math, my social studies, everything else, I would write in study hall because that was when we could listen to music, and music adds fuel to the fire of my imagination. So you see how I didn't go insane in High School.
A guitar lick can say many things. What does the guy want to say? What does it make you want to say? As a musician, It makes me want to go home and play, if I'm not home to begin with. To sit in my room playing random notes until I find that one note the guitar player used and I would use logic and what I already know about music to figure out the rest. From this little "phrase" or "lick" I can make my own "phrases" or "licks." This is why music is going to last forever, we learn how to talk by listening to others talk, then we figure out our own way to do it. We learn to play music by listening to others do it then by doing it ourselves. But there is always the antithesis.
Rap.
We all know it's brainwashing garbage, and many listeners will complain that, Owen, it is music.
It's not. Simple as that.
Okay, then, imaginary fiend of stupidity, tell me how I can listen to one guy rap about his friends getting shot, then attempt to rap about my friends getting shot? Or how about how his party was the one event in the world better than New Year's Eve? Any party I create will barely cause a dent in how we all live our lives. Many can, anyone with an elementary sense of how to rhyme and a deep inner pain can become an overnight Rap sensation.
Wonder why music is failing?
Because there are about 12,000 rappers for every good guitar player on the face of this planet.
Dime-a-dozen rhyming idiots are taking up all the shelf space reserved for musicians who put real effort into their work. Rap is just a further extension of hormones. This is why it sells, because the only people who buy it are pubescent children or adults who never grew up. Well, looky here, every rhyme this sunglassed guy with a scowl makes about having wild group sex, the girls will shake their asses because they want to know what kind of guy they can pull in with it, and the guys, driven by his natural instinct to reproduce fervently as soon as he's able, will be pulled into this jiggling magnet, and soon enough he will have six kids, no money, and no way to do anything with his life.
Okay, that was extreme, but I've seen it happen. Rap promotes promiscuity. Promiscuity leads to overpopulation and needless rape and pillage. It's happening, all around you. Believe it or not.
"But Owen, How do you know everything?"
I don't, and I don't claim to. I'm just observing the world I see with the eye of a scientist and a logical, level-headed person. You would be surprised to see how quickly logic can turn you into a person with an ounce of sense.
But.
Back to music.
Does rap require imagination? No. Basically, rap music (I hesitate to call it music, but it's a popular term and it flows well with my thought process) is a play-by-play account of a person partying with the rich and famous. Or it's a play-by-play account of someone getting their paycheck.
I don't need imagination to think of a party!
I don't need imagination to think of getting a paycheck!
I need imagination for things like epic battles with swords and shields!
I need imagination to think of angels fighting demons!
Notice the dramatic shift in subject matter. Parties, Paychecks. Battles, Fights. We all have a youthful aggression.
Maybe instead of using that energy to transform kids into brainwashed zombies flashing 44's on TV, we should use that same energy to....oh, I don't know, make more doctors, make more EMT's, more....airline pilots....more.....anything but these gangs of black people shooting each other because they crossed the wrong street!
Will anyone realize how stupid and futile it is to fight one another like this? This is what's happening in Africa! Look what's going on over there!
Malaria!
AIDS!
Senseless killing over what?!
WHAT?!
Property.
To the people of the world, look around you and see what this junk is doing to us. I can't stop it. A lot of us can. But I can't. It pains me when I seem to be the only one who can see what's happening in a world where people can't take a second glance at what's happening around them when they are so intently focused on what's in front of them.
I'm not a god, nor will I ever be, but I want you to stop, look at what's going on in the world. and try to do just that. Try to just....look. It's like watching two dogs fight behind plexiglass. They can't hear you. They never will. It hurts don't it.
Welcome to my side of the table.
Music, and how the world wraps itself around it.
Where would the world be without music?
I would be smoking pot, my friends wouldn't.
I would have about 600 dollars to my name, due to the fact I didn't get any instruments, or anything to listen to them on.
Jimi Hendrix would just be a name, so would Eddie Van Halen, so would Johann Sebastian Bach.
Music has done a lot of wonderful things to our world. It gave us a means of expression, a way of reaching out and touching the other side of the world.
do you know what else touching the other side of the world from your chair needs?
Imagination.
It made me think I was a hotshot fighter pilot in third grade, it made me think I was killing bad guys with a sword of the ancients, while my parents saw me whacking weeds in our yard. This is what separates music from toneless noise. Without an artist's imagination, we could not use ours to take us elsewhere. Without an MP3 player, study hall would have been just a creative way to say "nap." I wrote many papers in my study hall, blissfully ignoring my math, my social studies, everything else, I would write in study hall because that was when we could listen to music, and music adds fuel to the fire of my imagination. So you see how I didn't go insane in High School.
A guitar lick can say many things. What does the guy want to say? What does it make you want to say? As a musician, It makes me want to go home and play, if I'm not home to begin with. To sit in my room playing random notes until I find that one note the guitar player used and I would use logic and what I already know about music to figure out the rest. From this little "phrase" or "lick" I can make my own "phrases" or "licks." This is why music is going to last forever, we learn how to talk by listening to others talk, then we figure out our own way to do it. We learn to play music by listening to others do it then by doing it ourselves. But there is always the antithesis.
Rap.
We all know it's brainwashing garbage, and many listeners will complain that, Owen, it is music.
It's not. Simple as that.
Okay, then, imaginary fiend of stupidity, tell me how I can listen to one guy rap about his friends getting shot, then attempt to rap about my friends getting shot? Or how about how his party was the one event in the world better than New Year's Eve? Any party I create will barely cause a dent in how we all live our lives. Many can, anyone with an elementary sense of how to rhyme and a deep inner pain can become an overnight Rap sensation.
Wonder why music is failing?
Because there are about 12,000 rappers for every good guitar player on the face of this planet.
Dime-a-dozen rhyming idiots are taking up all the shelf space reserved for musicians who put real effort into their work. Rap is just a further extension of hormones. This is why it sells, because the only people who buy it are pubescent children or adults who never grew up. Well, looky here, every rhyme this sunglassed guy with a scowl makes about having wild group sex, the girls will shake their asses because they want to know what kind of guy they can pull in with it, and the guys, driven by his natural instinct to reproduce fervently as soon as he's able, will be pulled into this jiggling magnet, and soon enough he will have six kids, no money, and no way to do anything with his life.
Okay, that was extreme, but I've seen it happen. Rap promotes promiscuity. Promiscuity leads to overpopulation and needless rape and pillage. It's happening, all around you. Believe it or not.
"But Owen, How do you know everything?"
I don't, and I don't claim to. I'm just observing the world I see with the eye of a scientist and a logical, level-headed person. You would be surprised to see how quickly logic can turn you into a person with an ounce of sense.
But.
Back to music.
Does rap require imagination? No. Basically, rap music (I hesitate to call it music, but it's a popular term and it flows well with my thought process) is a play-by-play account of a person partying with the rich and famous. Or it's a play-by-play account of someone getting their paycheck.
I don't need imagination to think of a party!
I don't need imagination to think of getting a paycheck!
I need imagination for things like epic battles with swords and shields!
I need imagination to think of angels fighting demons!
Notice the dramatic shift in subject matter. Parties, Paychecks. Battles, Fights. We all have a youthful aggression.
Maybe instead of using that energy to transform kids into brainwashed zombies flashing 44's on TV, we should use that same energy to....oh, I don't know, make more doctors, make more EMT's, more....airline pilots....more.....anything but these gangs of black people shooting each other because they crossed the wrong street!
Will anyone realize how stupid and futile it is to fight one another like this? This is what's happening in Africa! Look what's going on over there!
Malaria!
AIDS!
Senseless killing over what?!
WHAT?!
Property.
To the people of the world, look around you and see what this junk is doing to us. I can't stop it. A lot of us can. But I can't. It pains me when I seem to be the only one who can see what's happening in a world where people can't take a second glance at what's happening around them when they are so intently focused on what's in front of them.
I'm not a god, nor will I ever be, but I want you to stop, look at what's going on in the world. and try to do just that. Try to just....look. It's like watching two dogs fight behind plexiglass. They can't hear you. They never will. It hurts don't it.
Welcome to my side of the table.
Chopping Block, ep.1----Global Warming Paranoia
yes, you heard me, Global Warming Paranoia!
AHHHH!
because everyone else is talking about it.
Okay, people, listen.
We live on a planet that is tilted approximately 23 some odd degrees away from the sun. It rotates and orbits around this burning orb at the same time. Okay, astronomy lesson out of the way, the planet is NOT perfect, and we all can agree to that.
let me throw another lesson at you before I continue.
If the Big Bang was January first, and today was December 30th on the cosmic calendar, our recorded history as humans (that means everything we wrote down or drew on a cave wall) would only take up the last 20 seconds of Dec. 30th.
Okay?
As one of the only intelligent species that inhabits this rock, we feel we must take it upon ourselves to keep everything perfect. This is why we mow our lawns, organise our washed dishes, dust our shelves and tables, and so on. This is of course, part of our overly complicated mating dance to get with the other half of the species, but it is, largely, our attempt at keeping everything in our world pristine and sparkling. This comes to the invention of running water, textile manufacturing, and Cub Cadet, John Deere, and New Holland, to name a few. Our planet has had more than one Ice Age, and no I'm not talking about the movie where Ray Romano plays a talking mammoth. Even though we could have been fine with only one of those. Our planet has endured many hundreds of billions of years without humans in the mix. And we have the audacity to think for even a moment we are causing what's going on now?! Let's face it. Going green is nothing more than another attempt at keeping our world pristine. Too much trash? It gathers and dispenses heat, and it smells bad. Landfills. About 70 years later we are realizing this is bad for our environment?! Bullshit, I says. It's because we are overfilling our landfills. Trash is spreading because our first idea (landfills) didn't take into account that we are multiplying at a rate of a new person every 6 seconds. This makes more trash. Well, shit, look at that, our towns are expanding, and so is our pile of trash. looky here, a new suburb next to a landfill! Guess who's going to fill it. Nobody with an aspiration to make over 50,000 dollars a year. So guess how they make money? MORE KIDS! And guess what that means? A sparkling new suburb in a landfill. Until the kids all start getting sick and blame it on the government? Ever wonder how thinking green can affect your home? There you go. We are using going green to explain to ourselves what's going on with Earth. We are coming upon another Ice Age! End of story! Recycling's good. Less trash. More room for humanoid expansion. Soon we'll be living in graveyards with our children complaining the water tastes like dead people. I'm glad I won't be around to see it. I chuckle at the prospect. Don't get me started on what the hell Toyota started with the Prius. Everyone driving a Hemi Challenger, Charger or Mustang will look at the Prius people and say "wimps." Everyone Driving the Prius will look at said muscle car owners and go "pricks." Welcome to high school. My eagle Summit gets a whopping 42 to the gallon, can you believe it?! it was made in 1993 and runs on....GASOLINE :0
You know we have become a society of lazyasses when we don't want to learn how to drive a manual, even if the cars are 16 years old and don't look like Japanese Ferrari's. Get over it. I am willing to sacrifice a little chunk of my manliness to drive a car I barely fit in, But I can drive to the western edge of Iowa and back on one tank of gas.
Point is....
One Space Shuttle mission adds as much damage to the ozone as we will in our entire lives. Stop trying to be good to our earth and just let things happen the way they are supposed to. We, as humans believe we have an impact on something far bigger than we can imagine. Stop looking at the hole in the ozone layer and start looking at the holes in our society where a school shooting is treated about the same as a car bombing in Iraq.
WAKE UP PEOPLE!
What we do today will have as much impact on our environment as trying to take down a barn with frozen peas and a straw.
Enjoy what we have.
We will be long gone by the time the new Ice Age rolls around.
AHHHH!
because everyone else is talking about it.
Okay, people, listen.
We live on a planet that is tilted approximately 23 some odd degrees away from the sun. It rotates and orbits around this burning orb at the same time. Okay, astronomy lesson out of the way, the planet is NOT perfect, and we all can agree to that.
let me throw another lesson at you before I continue.
If the Big Bang was January first, and today was December 30th on the cosmic calendar, our recorded history as humans (that means everything we wrote down or drew on a cave wall) would only take up the last 20 seconds of Dec. 30th.
Okay?
As one of the only intelligent species that inhabits this rock, we feel we must take it upon ourselves to keep everything perfect. This is why we mow our lawns, organise our washed dishes, dust our shelves and tables, and so on. This is of course, part of our overly complicated mating dance to get with the other half of the species, but it is, largely, our attempt at keeping everything in our world pristine and sparkling. This comes to the invention of running water, textile manufacturing, and Cub Cadet, John Deere, and New Holland, to name a few. Our planet has had more than one Ice Age, and no I'm not talking about the movie where Ray Romano plays a talking mammoth. Even though we could have been fine with only one of those. Our planet has endured many hundreds of billions of years without humans in the mix. And we have the audacity to think for even a moment we are causing what's going on now?! Let's face it. Going green is nothing more than another attempt at keeping our world pristine. Too much trash? It gathers and dispenses heat, and it smells bad. Landfills. About 70 years later we are realizing this is bad for our environment?! Bullshit, I says. It's because we are overfilling our landfills. Trash is spreading because our first idea (landfills) didn't take into account that we are multiplying at a rate of a new person every 6 seconds. This makes more trash. Well, shit, look at that, our towns are expanding, and so is our pile of trash. looky here, a new suburb next to a landfill! Guess who's going to fill it. Nobody with an aspiration to make over 50,000 dollars a year. So guess how they make money? MORE KIDS! And guess what that means? A sparkling new suburb in a landfill. Until the kids all start getting sick and blame it on the government? Ever wonder how thinking green can affect your home? There you go. We are using going green to explain to ourselves what's going on with Earth. We are coming upon another Ice Age! End of story! Recycling's good. Less trash. More room for humanoid expansion. Soon we'll be living in graveyards with our children complaining the water tastes like dead people. I'm glad I won't be around to see it. I chuckle at the prospect. Don't get me started on what the hell Toyota started with the Prius. Everyone driving a Hemi Challenger, Charger or Mustang will look at the Prius people and say "wimps." Everyone Driving the Prius will look at said muscle car owners and go "pricks." Welcome to high school. My eagle Summit gets a whopping 42 to the gallon, can you believe it?! it was made in 1993 and runs on....GASOLINE :0
You know we have become a society of lazyasses when we don't want to learn how to drive a manual, even if the cars are 16 years old and don't look like Japanese Ferrari's. Get over it. I am willing to sacrifice a little chunk of my manliness to drive a car I barely fit in, But I can drive to the western edge of Iowa and back on one tank of gas.
Point is....
One Space Shuttle mission adds as much damage to the ozone as we will in our entire lives. Stop trying to be good to our earth and just let things happen the way they are supposed to. We, as humans believe we have an impact on something far bigger than we can imagine. Stop looking at the hole in the ozone layer and start looking at the holes in our society where a school shooting is treated about the same as a car bombing in Iraq.
WAKE UP PEOPLE!
What we do today will have as much impact on our environment as trying to take down a barn with frozen peas and a straw.
Enjoy what we have.
We will be long gone by the time the new Ice Age rolls around.
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