More things I don't do.

Continuing from the last one, that started with this one...

Where was I? Oh yeah...

Conform.

Goes without saying. Based one of the 4 I's on it, here's a link to that, and it plays into a bunch of the others.

Go with the flow

This is an appeal to turn your brain right the fuck off, be a good little headless ant, and groan with the zombies.
Fuck that, fuck you for expecting it.

Tell you what you want to hear.

Well, geez, I basically have to be a mind reader for that, don't I?
What did I tell you about mind reading?
Go back to the last one, and come back if it slipped your mind.

Be "one of the guys".

Hey, if the other guys are into horror movies, science fiction, a dabble of philosophy, comic books, sex comedies of the 1980's, and turning current events into dark comedy, we're gonna be golden.

If not, I'll most likely "be quiet, and keep to myself".
Anything else is an appeal for me to "go with the flow".

Go along to get along

More "go with the flow", shit.
Eat my ass.

Get on board

Nope.
Fuck you.
See here.
More "go with the flow", but now they want the extra verb of you stepping on a boat to do the floating.
This ads "I consent to this stupid bullshit", to the sheep herding.
Yeah, no.

Suck up

Nope, bite me.
If you earn my praise, it's genuine, and sparsely doled out.
And I don't expect anything out of it.
Not a game I play.
If it were, I've done a shitty job at it.

I don't play the other reindeer games, why in the fuck would I play this one?

Anyone who's ever accused me of this one, drink a fucking bullet.
*Shrug*

Kiss ass

See "suck up".
I don't like toadies, I wouldn't want to have one, I wouldn't want to be one, I lose respect for those who seem to want them.
Ditto the last paragraph of "suck up", for those who threw this at me, even if only inside their nasty little minds.
Drink that bullet.

Play ball

This is a variation on "go with the flow", and "be one of the guys", but they expect you to DO shit.
This is always some of that nasty "training day", kind of shit.
Doing your assigned job duties never falls under "play ball", it's always something "extra".
Fuck off with that.
If "playing ball", was in that undefined "it's what you DON'T do", collection, wow, fuck that guy with a nuke.

Dumb it down.

You're a grown ass adult, you got through high school, you have Google at your disposal, likely off a portable device, and I don't talk like Dennis Miller.
At least, I don't think so.

If your mental age is three, I'm not playing babysitter.
If playing babysitter is "a people skill", I'm glad I lack in it.

Massaging egos, suffering fools gladly, and "being nice", is also more of that babysitter shit.

Do small-talk

I think this is what I really meant by "mindlessly shoot the shit", and it straddles "dumbing it down", and "suffering fools gladly".
But it also falls into "going along to get along".
And the overall arc of it is more babysitter shit.
With a slight dash of sucking up.

I'll talk about what I wanna talk about, I ain't gonna fill the air with jabber to endear myself as part of a larger political game.

Be a team player

I'll do my assigned duties, I'll help out, I'll even play nice with others on the job site, but tack on that "play ball", shit, and call it "being a team player", you're just being a slimy sleaze slithering your crooked shit under the door.
More rhetorical bullshit from manipulators.
Did another of the 4 I's on this whole subject before right here.

I think this encompasses a good bulk of what I suppose the "it's what you DON'T do", bullshit probably consisted of, but...more might come to me....


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Things I don't do...

Continuing from this post... 

I'm not a fucking mind reader, so, I'll probably never nail down the EXACT specifics of what THAT person was whining about, but here's my stab at it.

What I don't do.

Read minds. 

I'm not even going to try.
Fuck you if you expect it.
Tell me what your beef with me is, or fuck off with inflicting your vindictive pettiness or just plain blubbering on me. 

Likewise, not going to play childish schoolyard  games with "signals", or "vibes".

Do detective work.

See "read minds", not gonna find out what your beef with me is by following a flimsy blurred trail of clues.
Likewise, not going to go through a wall of go-betweens like a high-schooler seeking a date.
Communicate with me, or fuck off.

Massage egos.

Not even to save my life.
Fuck your ego.

Massage the bruise.

That one jumped out at me, and caused an instant eye roll in this post.
See "massage egos".

Mindlessly shoot the shit.

Hey, I'll talk a blue streak about shit that genuinely interests me with people who I like, and who like me, or whom I just plain assume are interested.
I won't talk about the weather (unless it's really fucking impressive, and of note) or sports, or guns, or the mere act of occupying space, especially with people I don't know all that well.

Likewise, I'm not gonna put on a fake tour guide/stewardess grin, and ask you how the fuck your day was.

All this shit would probably diplomatically warm things over with people that have this cat-like instinct to want to see other lifeforms around them move around more, and I'm sorry if the opposite of this makes  me "look like Lurch", but, sorry, I think it's insincere to put on a mask contrary to how I feel, and I don't think social games like that serve either of us in our human dignity.

Now, what you're probably expecting is not that I put on the social mask, but that I genuinely have the emotions involved with "*stewardess grin* hiiii how has your day been? Blah blah blaahh!!", but, I usually don't, and if I do have those feelings, I don't express them that way, that's just not the kind of person I am.
I'm not bubbly.
Even on the rare occurrence I FEEL bubbly.
So...what you're asking of me (without bothering to ask, I'm supposed to mind-read this bullshit) is some kind of conformity standard of how everyone "should be".

Hmm, scratch those previous "sorrys", while I'm at it.
In fact, kiss my ass.

Life isn't your video game for me to march through like a sprite.
If you see life that way, YOU'RE the sociopath, not I, and your moronic whims based on a 3 year old's emotional mental wiring won't be accommodated in the least.

"Be nice".

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'll actually objectively BE nice.
I don't want you to fucking die just for existing, and I'm not gonna break your shit, I'm not gonna urinate on pictures of your children, I'm not going to spit out your cooking to be a contemptuous dick like a judge on the Food Network, I'm not going to vandalize your car or home.
If you're in a fix, I'll even reach out a hand, and help out, or offer advice.
It may not be the advice you want to hear, and my physical help might be clumsy, but I'll really do my best.

I think that's pretty nice.

I just won't participate in the phony social ritual bullshit described above.
If you think that stuff is "nice", then no, I guess I'm not nice.
I guess we part ways on what we think that word means.

But, if you think I deserve property damage and pain for this "attitude", well, fuck you with a red rubber dick.
Your moral high ground, if it ever existed, vanished, and if you don't see that, fuck you for being a moron.
And if you're a destructive moron, I won't be "nice", about it.

Which leads right into...

Suffer fools gladly.

If you're a horrifying moron, the best you're going to get out of me is I don't run around going "you're a horrifying moron".

That's it.
If you think "my actions", are calling you a horrifying moron, or "my vibe", is doing it...
Yeah, probably, congratulations on being a fucking mind reader.
Again, I'm NOT a mind reader, I can't mind read back what you think you've mind read off me.
Fucking SAY something, or leave me the fuck alone.
Maybe what you thought was "a scary look", was actually me looking past you, and fucking thinking about cake or something.
You're gonna bust my windows because I had a stray thought about a fucking sandwich, or some nice tits?
Yeah, but I'M the one with the "bad people skills".
Yeah, right, bite my ass.

All I can think of for now....

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The body count argument.

It goes like this....

"Theocracy is shitty"

"Oh yeah? But atheism/secularism/humanism has killed millions more than religion, blah, blah, blah".

You know what the answer should be, instead of dismantling the tiresome bullshit factual errors involved with attributing say, the Nazis to fucking HUMANISM?

Point out what a dishonest and asinine argument is to put forward as a DEFENSE of religion "yeah, religion is horrible, but your philosophy is WORSE".

Really?
Really, scumbag?
You'll take on that theocracy is utter shit, not even bother to defend it, and play "body count"?
You're trash.
Complete and utter trash.

Use words to that effect.
It's appropriate.

I mean really...
"Well, punching your burka-ed wife around the kitchen for not having her clit lopped off may not be nice, BUT..."

But nothing, fuck you.
Pork face.
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It's what you DON'T do!

Oh, brother...

So, I'm at fucking Toys R Us, the second dose of it, with the fuckin' assholes that busted out my window.

And...I can't even remember what the fuck was going on specifically that led up to this, people were just giving me fucking 'tude, and it was chapping my ass, I came right out and said to one of the dudes "what the fuck is everyone's problem? What the fuck did I do to get shit from people? I'm nice to people, I do my fucking job, what the fuck?", and the guy pauses in thought, like a dramatic beat in a movie, and says "it's what you DON'T do".

Breathlessy, with a tinge of condescension, like he'd just said something fucking deep.

I've reflected on that over the years, and my response, is finally, "go fuck yourself".

Goooo FUCK yourself.

My presence, and labor, was all I owed you jackholes.

I gotta eat your horrible bullshit like it's from Hershey on top of the rest of it?
Yeah, fuck off.

What I DON'T do...Jesus fuckin' Christ...

Okay, everyone, what DON'T I do?
Please, share.
I'm all ears for this.
Really.
Lemme have it.

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SOWTHIFL #37

An Al double feature...

Well, this one proves my point from this rant....

 


And oh, man, why didn't I keep up on the albums after "Alapalooza"?
Cuz, here was the antidote to the awful top 10 music of the 90's in one fell swoop right here...
Ahhhh. :D

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My history with religion.

The topic comes up a lot, and I always meant to do an entry like this for the whole 3 years of the blog, but I'd always think of a more fun idea, or a long project to dig into.

You'd think where I tear into it so much, it did me material wrong in life.

Eh, no, not really, I just never cared for it.
To put it mildly.

See, it never really took with me.

Ma told me the basic Bible stories, garden of Eden, Noah's Ark, Moses, Jonah, Lot's Wife, Baby Jesus, Jesus nailed to a stick, all that shit, y'know?

And I um...never liked 'em.
They were dull, always about desert dwellers in robes killing each other over petty infantile bullshit, and I'd always wonder "where's God with all these miracles now?"
Or, "why aren't there new adventures of God? Why doesn't God do some stuff for a kid like me, with jeans, and a t-shirt?".
Always struck me that he had this obsessive predilection for assholes out in the desert.
And assholes in the desert were fucking boring.
Bible stories just didn't do it for me.

Not when I had fucking STAR WARS!

And that just created more dissonance for me.
Howcome George fucking Lucas could tell a more exciting story for me than...GOD?

What, he can create the fucking universe, but he can't manage laser guns?
What the fuck was up with that?

And there were some religious assholes that were against Star Wars, because the force shit was against their reading of the goofy-ass Bible.

I made a pretty clear and distinct moral choice inside my head, it was a Huckleberry Finn kind of moment, where..if my buddy Luke Skywalker could save the galaxy, and he's not going to Heaven, then...I want nothing to do with the place.

But..I was pretty sure Luke was going to Heaven, and...any asshole who didn't like him..well..not Hell, but they'd have a week's detention or something.

I also made up my mind early on that Hell was for murderers, and people who hurt kids, and animals, and...it wasn't for people that stepped on a crack, or some minor piddly superstitious shit like that.

I didn't know about sex yet, so I didn't know how feverishly obsessed religion was with controlling that.

I did know a lot of Bible stories had "bad", women telling the "hero", to "come lie with me".
So...you just lie down next to the chick?
I never figured out why that was a big deal.
Like...there's some superstitious bullshit of being in close proximity to a chick with the covers pulled over you?
Well...blankets keep out the boogeyman, maybe it's something like that...in reverse.
Chick under a blanket means you're married, so if you blanket a chick you're not married to...it pisses God off..I dunno.
Course, add sex to it, it actually gets MORE foolish.
Nothin' more to know there.

So..yeah, these were just goofy fucking stories about goofy fucking people, and it was all boring, but I wasn't allowed to say so...and God could read my thoughts, so I wasn't allowed to think so...I just stuck to Star Wars.
Kept my focus on the good shit, and didn't kill anyone, or rob any banks, or blanket-cover someone else's gal.
And...I didn't want to do any of those things anyway.
Seemed pretty pointless.

But, also, my Dad was always atheist.
He never made much of a THING about it, but once in awhile, there'd be some Catholic mass type deal on TV, and he'd compare it to people dancing around with a bone in their nose.
That always stuck in my mind, I use it today.

Course, back then, I thought "oh, wow, he's gonna piss God off with that line".

...but, I didn't ever think he was going to Hell.
That was for assholes, and Dad wasn't an asshole.

My Grandfather on my mother's side was also an atheist.
He talked about it a bit more, he always had contempt for it.
When my mother went through a holy-roller phase, he was like "I always thought you were smarter than that".

And my Uncle tells a story of one time, we were at some church fuckin' thing, a wedding, or funeral, or christening, or...somethin..and Gramp grumbles to my Uncle quietly "tch...they believe in maaagic".
Real sneering hate in his voice.
I can't convey it in text, trust me, it's funny.

And, as I hinted in the last post, church was always creepy to me.
I didn't go much.
A little bit when I was like...3.
That was my mother's holy-roller phase, but more on that later.

Church to this day creeps me out.
And bores me.
Take The Simpson's version of church, it was pretty much that.

I just remember having a pad with me, and crayon scribbling a bunch of pictures of the Hulk, and being bored out of my fucking gord.

And what little flicker of understanding of the shit they were saying creeping me the fuck out.

I think it would have creeped me out to the point of hair standing up on the back of my neck if I'd understood it for real, with an adult's understanding, but more on that later.

So, yeah, church didn't do it for me, Bible stories didn't do it for me,..it vaguely planted the notion of God into my mind, but...the real clincher against religion,...was dinosaurs.

The Bible didn't mention dinosaurs, and that was a real big stumbling block.

And cavemen, where were the cavemen?

Were Adam and Eve the first cave-people?
You weren't allowed to use that word to describe them...I guess not...

The stories didn't jibe.
And no one I'd ask back then bothered to try to make the stories jibe.

But, yeah, just like with Star Wars, I mean, you can have a reality with dinosaurs, or with no dinosaurs, and boring desert assholes on top of it, which do you think is gonna win in a kid's head?

Fucking DINOSAURS, man!!!

Also, between butterflies, and The Incredible Hulk, my imagination was obsessed with transformation.
Still is.
Once I saw pictures of apes turning into men, and fish turning into lizards, that was pretty much it.
That made total sense to me.
Evolution had its hooks in.
I didn't grasp the finer details, but the basics, those paintings, had me at 5.

I keep hearing about these grown-ass fucking people that have difficulty with evolution, that find it "counter intuitive".

I found it INTUITIVE at fucking 5!
FIVE!!

You people are dumb!
Fucking dumb!
Counter-intuitive...
Jesus fucking hockey pucks!

Look at a cocoon, look at fetuses developing, bam, there it is.
Shit, a leaf turning color!
Fuck sakes, people!

Shit, it was creationism that was counter-intuitive.
I had to have that bullshit walked out for me.
"Did you ever wonder who made all of this?".
"No".
"Well, where do you think the trees come from?".
"I 'unno, they were always here, weren't they?".
"What about before you were born?".
"What?".
"You know, before you were alive".
"...um..I've always been here".
"No, there was a time before you were here, don't you remember it all starting, and before that, there was nothing?".
"Well...if there was...I wasn't there...I guess I just woke up, and it started".

Went around in circles like that, had no intellectual interest in these theoretical tree builders.
Seemed to me, the trees took care of themselves just fine.
They minded their business, why shouldn't I?

So..right from the start, sloppy salesmanship of this concept.

Anyway, eventually, it registered, and I just took my mother's word for it that this "God", person built everything,...but then it always hit me how the story always jarringly veered off.....

God makes trees, and kittens, and grass, and rainbows, and...and then he starts killing shit...and then he starts taking sides in boring petty desert asshole wars...and then I'd always fade out on it.

"Wait a minute, the kitten-maker tree-maker guy, and this boring war asshole...I don't think they're the same guy... something's screwey here...".

It was, little Mike.
Your gut nailed it again.

I remember a moment when Ma made me try to pray..and bawling.
I got fucking stage fright for God.
Here's a fucking guy that could turn a bitch to salt if she looked at him cross eyed, and now I gotta step up to this open mic?
Fuck that.
I never prayed again, always managed to duck out of it, then it got to be long enough, it was never pushed again.

Like I said, stuck to Star Wars & Hulk.

Later on, Dinosaurs started breaking the whole thing down.

Oh, yeah, my mother's holy-roller phase...

She got roped into the Mormons for awhile.
They were really fuckin' creepy, they ARE fuckin' creepy, and that was the creepy church I was dragged to.

And that was the creepy shit I heard, some Book Of Mormon shit that didn't jibe with the Bible.

I think the story was she got roped in,...cuz she couldn't get anyone to answer her questions about the Bible, and the Mormons actually did detailed Bible study shit...but, that's how they rope you in, then they start injecting The Book Of Mormon into it more and more, and then it's JUST the Book Of Mormon, and then the creepier stuff creeps up, and Ma wasn't street-savvy to that bullshit yet, I guess, but it creeped her out, and she got the fuck out.

And that's when Gramp said "I thought you were smarter than that".

Mormon's are creepy, they probably keep her in some file somewhere, and will send her to some science fiction planet after she dies, or some bullshit.

Ugh.
Madness.

When I got a little older, like...6, or 7...prayer...made less and less sense...

God never seemed to talk right back, like in the Bible, it just seemed like people were talking to themselves...

It seemed very much like a game of make-believe.
It looked exactly like my childhood games of make-believe.
I remember making the faux-pas of asking if it was make-believe.
It was to my mother when some holy-roller relative was over for company, I forget who, but it raised a stink.
Maybe it wasn't a relative, maybe it was one of the fuckin' Mormon assholes.

It really did seem like it was a game of make-believe, but you weren't allowed to call it make-believe for fear of shouting, or a spanking, or a fuckin' lightning bolt, or...something.

Oh, there was never a pounding, but my head got bit off.

So yeah, it was a game, and part of the game, was you must NEVER say it's a game.

And you must NEVER ask why...because...no rational explanation, just RARRR!! WAAHH!!! Sniffle!

Then...I knew for sure, something was REALLY screwey with religion.

I really pulled away from it then.

Didn't have the balls to be atheist, but I just focused more on my geeky shit.
More comics, etc.

Then...about 10-11 years old, the televangelists starting becoming big in the 80's, and then I knew, REALLY knew something was screwey with religion.

Then, the big question was "why does God always seem to ally himself with such...FUCKING AAAAAAAASSHOOOOLES?!?!".

Well, my answer at the time was, in no decently run universe, would these people be messengers of any deity, so, they're fucking liars.

Course, I still had no answer for why God didn't perform real miracles, foremost being, turning these peckerfaces into salt, or a whisp of silverfish.

But...I don't even think I cared anymore....I kept my head down, and focused on fucking cartoons.

Guess I was apatheist at that point.

By high school, my cute line to anyone who bothered to ask was "God? Well...he's the ultimate plot gimmick".

I guess I stick with that.

Covers the bases no matter where you are.

Went through a Deist phase in my 20's, cuz I thought that's what Stephen Hawking was, and Deism got me into Thomas Paine, which unlocked the real history of this fucking country, and all the lies we've been told.

Then...I clung to that pretty stubbornly until I read "the God Delusion", and then I went full "militant", atheist, whatever the fuck that means.

Theists pulled that propaganda phrase out of their fucking asses, ask them.

Nowadays?
My fevered impulse to "fix", the world has leveled off to a deep, deep, DEEP gloomy disappointment with...most people.

Human race...I thought you were smarter than that.

And yeah, I'm atheist, in case you couldn't tell.

So, yeah, those that have said Christian kids kicked sand in my face or something, go fuck yourselves.
Dummies.

That's the story.

Nothing so dramatic,  just a long process of thinking.


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Why the Weird Al version is always better.

Ranted here about how Weird Al got me through the 80's (along with Freddy movies, and MAD magazines, and all that good stuff).

And I always noticed, the Weird Al version of a song was always better.

As much as I liked 80's music...I look back, and the stuff that's made it through the time barrier as my batch of beloved songs....didn't tend to be up at the top of the charts.

The stuff in the top 5, the stuff MTV tended to play all fucking day...was the shit.

And the shit tended to be...well, the stuff Weird Al goofed on.

I generally knew that the Weird Al version was better, and that the real version was crappier...and vaguely knew why....

But, I can wrap words around it now, and if I could travel time, I'd explain it to myself thusly...

Well...I gotta take the long way around, Mike, so bear with me...

I gotta start with...grownups are liars.
So, let's pick apart some lies.

Religion? Fake.
Religion got grown adults to believe in a big invisible man in the sky.
And...maybe you went along with it, because grownups are supposed to know what the fuck they're talking about...but in your deepest heart of hearts, you always knew it was shit..that's why it always felt creepy to be in church.
It IS fuckin' creepy.
Your gut knows, your lie sense knows.
The creepy feeling is in struggling against your lie sense.

Then, comes patriotism.
Patriotism says your country is right, no matter what it does.
Well, your gut knows that's a lie.
If you rob a bank, it's bad, and you're called bad, and you go to jail.
Your grampy goes bad, robs a bank, he's gotta go to jail, you're gonna have conflict, but it's fucking wrong.
But patriotism says, if America robs a bank it's GOOD.
It's GOOD that it robbed a bank, because it's America.
Well, America can't rob a bank, but it can rob another country, and they'll call it a war.
Yayy! Yay, war! Wave your flag!
So, patriotism is a lie.

And patriotism uses religion.
"God bless America!".

Then comes advertising.
Advertising is a little patriotism for a company instead of a country.
"Our apple juice is better than their apple juice!".
Then they sing a terrible song about it.
Just like the terrible national anthem.
Then, you see on the news their apple juice had fucking alar in it.
Well, I guess they weren't the best.
So, they were lying.
They're all lying.
And some of advertising's lies use patriotism and/or religion.
You're not a "real American", if you don't swill this beer!

So, now we come back around to music.
I think the term "the music industry", says it all.
"The steel industry", "the timber industry", "the record industry".
They're just another company.
They'd put alar in your music if they could.
Well, they do, Madonna.
Madonna is musical alar.
Shitty music is a commercial for a record company.
Just like those awful jingles that stick in your head.
They're doing a fucking dance for their mini-patriotism for a company.
For money.
That's it, a buck.
They're whores.
Some of 'em let their shitty songs become shitty jingles.
It's happening to the boomer shit now, but you watch, this 80's shit will get raped in the 00's/10's.

Music made under those conditions is almost always gonna suck.
A thin trickle of real musicians gets through the filter, but it's a thick fucking filter.

SOOO, that's why the Weird Al version is better.
Weird Al is a nerd, and nerds are smart, so he's smarter than the dummies that make "real", music.
It takes a  brain to make fun of things.
And that's why it heals your brain to listen to it.
Humor kills the lie.

And that's why those tapes are gonna get you through this doofy fucking decade.

What gets you through the 90's?
Yourself.
Cartoon your fucking brains out, kid.
Like your life depends on it.
Because it fucking DOES.
They're gonna do every nasty trick they've got to MURDER your brain.
Fight.

Yeah, that's what I'd say....

And I think that sums it up.

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