Tag: Things Having Nothing to do with Anything

Bitching About Stupid Shit

The amount of absolutely stupid shit people find to bitch about continues to surprise me. Today’s example of a totally irrelevant occurrence rustling jimmies is Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl commercial. Although I didn’t see it I do know that it involved the song America the Beautiful being sung in languages other than English. How do I know this? Because quite a few people are very upset about it:

The response to the Cheerios commercial Sunday night, however, was all positive — the bigoted social media backlash instead appeared a few minutes later when Coca Cola aired its commercial with “America the Beautiful” sung in different languages.

The calls for boycotts came immediately with tweets like this one from @HappieDays12: “I will not be purchasing any #CocaCola products for the foreseeable future. Pretty sure we speak English in America.”

Similarly minded @Lady_Jay_J tweeted, “Since when did the national anthem get sung in Spanish?! Not a good idea #CocaCola.”

Even today there are people tweeting about this commercial. I’m left wondering why anybody cares. Of all the problems that exist in the world why does anybody waste the time necessary to be upset about the language a song is sung in? Is it because America the Beautiful is the national anthem of the area inside of some imaginary borders referred to as the United States and that most English speakers inside of those lines believe English is the official language? If that’s the reason these people are upset let me help them overcome their pointless complaint. The official language of this area known as the United States is whatever the fuck you want to speak. Nationally, which is the scope we’re working on as the song is the national anthem, there is no official language in the United States.

Now that I have resolved this crisis feel free to find another pointless thing to complain about. I suggest getting upset at the people who don’t know the difference between there, their, and they’re. If you’re going to get upset about something involving the English language then it might as well be something that’s relevance to the language.

The Conveniences of Our Modern World

The conveniences of this modern world never ceases to amaze me. I have access to the collected knowledge of man via a computer that fits in my pocket, can complete a 30 mile drive in 30 minutes or less, can purchase any number of fruits and vegetables from around the world from most grocery stores, and can now get an exorcism via Skype:

SCOTTSDALE, AZ – The practice of exorcism isn’t anything new. It’s been around for thousands of years.

But thanks to the age of technology a Scottsdale reverend says he is getting a chance to help people possessed by demons, all over the world.

[…]

In the age of electronics, exorcisms are done over Skype.

I wonder if he can exorcise demons from my computer. That would hold real value for me.

Beware of Ghost Ships Carrying Cannibal Rats

This is not a story you expect to read every day:

A ghost ship carrying nothing but disease-ridden rats could be about to make land on Britain’s shore, experts have warned.

The Lyubov Orlova cruise liner has been drifting across the north Atlantic for the better part of a year, and salvage hunters say there is a strong chance it is heading this way.

Built in Yugoslavia in 1976, the unlucky vessel was abandoned in a Canadian harbour after its owners were embroiled in a debt scandal and failed to pay the crew.

The authorities in Newfoundland tried to sell the hull for scrap – valued at £600,000 – to the Dominican Republic, but cut their losses when it came loose in a storm on the way.

Sending the ship off into international waters, Transport Canada said it was satisfied the Lyubov Orlova “no longer poses a threat to the safety of [Canadian] offshore oil installations, their personnel or the marine environment”.

I’m mostly posting this because of the sheer weirdness of the story and the creep factor. It is also kind of fun to think of scenarios involving ghost ships filled with cannibal rats beaching itself on an inhabited island. I wonder if rats that turn to cannibalism continue the practice after they’ve found an alternate food source. If so they could be an effective method of reducing rat populations in human settlements.

The Raid: Redemption

I’m usually a little slow when it comes to watching movies. This is mostly due to the fact that I don’t pay much attention to what movies are coming out so I only hear about them after they’ve been released for quite a while. Fortunately my group of friends give me recommendations so I usually end up seeing the cool movies, eventually.

I’m a big fan of martial arts movies. So when one of my friends recommended The Raid: Redemption as a good entry in this genre I decided to look into it. Holy shit, it was good.

Effectively Indonesia schooled every other nation in the art of making modern martial arts movies. The fight choreography was top notch. Rama, the protagonist, didn’t succumb to relying on the same set of moves for every fight, which helped make each fight feel fresh. Too often modern martial arts movies get stale as the later fights are merely replays of earlier fights with new opponents. The Raid also manages to have just enough story to make you care about the characters but not so much that it gets in the way of the balls to the walls action.

All in all I highly recommend this film if you’re a fan of martial arts or action movies.

The “No True Anarchist” Fallacy

I think the most entertaining aspect about anarchism is the fragmentation that exists within the philosophy. Such fragmentation isn’t unusual. No philosophy that I’m aware of has remained united. But anarchism, as a philosophy I personally identify with, is more entertaining to write about than most other philosophies.

There are many heated debates within anarchist communities. My favorite debate at the moment is whether or not anarcho-capitalists are real anarchists. For the sake of transparency I will note that my path to anarchism started in libertarianism and move towards anarcho-capitalism. While I now identify primarily with discordianism, I feel that I’m still marginally qualified to speak on matters involving anarcho-capitalism. With that out of the way, let’s discuss the argument.

The reason this is currently my favorite argument is because it’s quite clear that traditional anarchists, who identify with socialism, don’t like the term anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-capitalists don’t care what traditional anarchists like or don’t like. Traditional anarchists are spending a great deal of their time and energy explaining why anarcho-capitalists aren’t real anarchists and anarcho-capitalists are saying “We don’t care. Have fun with your semantic argument.” If you participate in any online anarchist communities you quickly learn that traditional anarchists have a tendency to isolate themselves from anarcho-capitalists. This isolation has two effects. First, it creates an echo chamber where ideological dissent is crushed. Crushing ideological dissent is the most effective way to ensure your movement never advances. Second, it leaves anarcho-capitalists free to go about their business unfettered. While traditional anarchists are telling anybody who will listen, which is only other traditional anarchists, that anarcho-capitalists aren’t real anarchists, anarcho-capitalists are expanding their philosophy and proselytizing to gain more memebers.

What’s even funnier is the common justification traditional anarchists give for spending so much time declaring anarcho-capitalists heathens. Their reason is that they are trying to prevent the term anarchism from being hijacked. Considering the majority of the world believes anarchism is synonymous with molotov-cocktail-throwing-asshole-who-wants-to-bring-death-and-destruction-down-upon-all I believe it’s accurate to say that the term has already been hijacked. The definition of anarchism used by traditional anarchists is a minority definition compared to the definition used by most people. At this point traditional anarchists can only claim to be trying to reclaim the term. If I were going to reclaim the term anarchism I would start by trying to change the common vernacular definition.

As for me, I don’t care. One of the reasons I identify with discordianism is because it encourages schisms and cabals. You don’t have to worry about philosophical arguments about who is a real discordian because the philosophy itself encourages everybody to define the term however they want. That frees me from worthless semantic arguments and allows to go focus on what I love: promoting the idea of freedom.

E-Mail Servers: The Bane of My Existence

E-mail is a really shitty means of communication. The amount of spam versus the amount of legitimate mails is skewed heavily towards the useless advertisers and phishers, the underlying software to run an e-mail server is complex, and there is no way to implement complete security and anonymity. Why am I complaining about this? Because I spent all night upgrading my e-mail server.

There’s no point to this post, I just wanted to bitch and moan.

What Probably Happened with Those Cuban Weapons

After the government of Panama detected and seized Cuban weapons bound for North Korea the general sentiment seems to be that those glorious people in Panama, who have the decency of being allied with our glorious government here in the United States, stopped those dirty Cuban communists from shipping weapons to those dirty North Korean communists. I’m wondering if a different scenario played out:

Cuban General: “Hey, Mr. President, we have to do something about all of these explosive ordinances. They’re getting old and we’re worried that they’re becoming unstable.”

Cuban President: “Can’t you detonate them in the ocean or something?”

Cuban General: “No. The Americans will get their panties in a bunch and you know how they are when their panties are in a bunch.”

Cuban President: “Yeah. Damn it, I don’t want to spend a bunch of money to dispose of those old relics.”

Cuban Bean Counter: “Why don’t we put them on a ship bound for North Korea? That way we can get the Panamanians to dispose of them after they catch them going through their canal.”

Cuban President: “Brilliant!”

Deux Ex: The Fall

As most people can probably guess I’m a huge fan of cyberpunk. There’s something really cool about the idea of merging man and machine to create something that far exceeds the capabilities of any natural person. The Deus Ex series is the epitome of cyberpunk in the video game world so I was pretty excited when Square Enix announced a new new entry in the long running series. However, I was hesitant because it was announced for iOS and to this day I haven’t played a first person game on a touch device that had even remotely decent controls.

Much to my joy I think Deus Ex is the first game to finally get the control problem solved. Although Square Enix didn’t do anything revolutionary the little shortcuts make a world of difference. Moving around in the game is done with the traditional on screen “move” zone and “look” zone. Moving your finger in the “move” zone moves your character around and moving your finger in the “look” zone moves the camera relative to your character. Where Deus Ex improves things is that you can move to a location by double-tapping it. Although it sounds like a very minor addition it saves you a lot of finger waving. You can also target an enemy, which locks your camera on it for firing purposes, by tapping them.

I haven’t made it far enough into the game to make any kind of formal judgement by the controls have impressed me. With any luck we’re entering the stage of touch screen gaming where first person shooters become enjoyable.

Asking the Important Questions

I’ve mentioned my love of newspaper opinion sections before. Those sections give a rare glimpse into the thoughts of the some of the most… interesting individuals in an area. Here in Minnesota opinion sections are often filled with some of the most insane rants known to man. Thankfully, in all of the insanity, one man has risen to ask an important questions:

Did the City Council’s actions opposing preserving marriage make the citizens of Duluth vulnerable? Duluth suffered a flood six months later, on June 17, 2012. Instead of accepting the truth that the City Council’s unnatural actions contributed to the city’s vulnerability, it was chalked-up to a bad infrastructure or global warming.

I once knew a guy who cheated on his wife. Years later the east coast was hit by a super storm. Did the man’s infidelity make the east cost more vulnerable?