Meditations on a dead squirrel.

Another old RD.net post.
Didn't get a big reaction at the time, and I lost confidence in it, and let it sink into the archives.
But...dammit, I like this story, and what it meant to me, and I didn't want to retype it from scratch, so...


When I was about 5-6 I watched a dead squirrel in our back yard slowly get eaten away to nothing by bugs over the course of a summer.

I found it endlessly fascinating.

Led to a chain reaction of what in hindsight, I can see were childish scientific inquiry.

Where was the squirrel vanishing away to?

Well, into the bellies of those mites, maggots, and bottle-flies.

Where did all those squirrel nibbles go away to?

Well, bug poops.

Hmm, howcome you never see bug poops anyway?
Too tiny I guess.

Where do the bug poops go?

Well, the previous summer, I'd watched a dog turd slowly turn white, and crumble away, into what I assumed was "sand".

So, the bug poops are too tiny to see, and vanish into "sand", or dust anyway.

So, everything dies, so this must happen to everything, and everybody.
Even those pesky creepy bottle-flies.

But where does the SQUIRREL go?

Poops, dirt, and even a nibbled on carcass isn't a squirrel anymore, where did HE go?

Well, I noted his disintegrating carcass wasn't too much different from the rusting away Honda Civic in our yard he was immediately adjacent to.

At about 2-3 I'd anthropomorphized the car, and named "him", "Boo-Boo".

If "Boo-Boo", rusted all the way away, where would "he", go?

Nowhere, Boo-boo is/was just a car, "he'd", just be some metal.

"Boo-Boo", was really the people inside, and my imagination.

Was it like that for the squirrel?

What made the squirrel a squirrel?
What made me me?

Got me thinking of souls for a few split seconds, but it didn't wash.

It occured to me, if I died, became a spirit, and left instructions for my carcass to be left rotting in our yard, I could watch the whole thing.

But...I couldn't poke it with a stick or nothin...

Cuz...if ya could, where was the squirrel ghost?
Didn't he realize the show he was missing?

And if that carcass was just his house, why didn't he just get back inside, and drive off those darned bottle-flies working his eye out from the inside?

So much for being a ghost.

So, it instinctively occured to me "he", was still in "there", somewhere, in that carcass, in a deep, deep, sleep, blissfully unaware of being munched on.

And it occured to me, a sleep that deep, there wouldn't even be dreams, no thoughts, no memories, no nothing, it'd be like it wasn't even happening.
Nothing would bother you at all.

How wonderful.

Your mind fades away to nothing, and then your body fades away to nothing.
You sort of literally dream away.

Didn't horrify me at all.

Course, later on, well intentioned relatives gave me booster shots of the Heaven/Hell bullshit that I had to slowly unwind from my ganglion, but I realize I'd had it all sorted out back then with the rotten squirrel.

What was my point..?

Oh yeah, either that nature can never be objectively "nasty".

...or else, I was a weird fucking kid....
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Thought of the day.

In the Ayn Rand rant, I voiced my personal misgivings about the line between confidence, and ego, and how it applied to my own art thusly...

"And this "low self esteem", shit bugs me.
Again, what if you are a fucking hack, and you think you're fucking great, and you don't fucking care?
Ayn Rand offers no antidote to this.
Indeed, such a person doesn't exist in Ayn Rand's world.
If you made money, that's good enough.
If someone paid you, you must be good.
If you're rich, you must be really good.

By that criteria, Britney Spears is the greatest singer who ever lived.

But anyone with taste and a fucking brain fucking knows better.

There's no answer on offer for this in Ayn Rand land.
None.
Her black & white choices are be a dick waving egoist, or accept your doom.
And if you're one who frets about if they're a hack, AND doesn't get rich on top of it, then you must suck.
And that's it, that's all you were worth, throw yourself in the garbage.

The only cure is blind ego, by fiat, from nothing, and if you were paid, then it confirms that ego.
And that's it.
That's all there is in Rand land.

Go around the loop as many times you like, that's the only answer you'll ever get.

For a guy like me loaded up with angst, it wasn't a fun trip.
All I got for my troubles was dizzy.
And depressed.
And still with unanswered questions".

Well, today, the depressing answer occured to me, that the sort of answer I'm looking for will never come, because absolute metaphysical certitude about my abilities will never come.

Well, depressing for awhile, until I considered that....as horrific as it is that absolute metaphysical certitude will never come....the alternative is...the horror if there were a source of absolute metaphysical certitude.

If some fucking God patted me on the head and arbitrarily called me worthy, while people I love and respect aren't.

Nope, couldn't live like that, and I'm glad the universe doesn't work that way.

Still, tch, damn.

Yeah, I know why people look for that objective standard, it sure is tempting.

But...I refuse it.
Like all the other supernatural security blankets.

Given the choice, I'll take the artistic angst.

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Tch, it's always something.

The "followers", gadget suddenly became an unwieldy behemoth, so I became a follower of myself, and replaced my profile with it, so when you click me, you get my profile anyway.

Bypassing redundancy and all that.

Redundancy Google thrust upon me.

*Sigh*

EDIT- Ugh, can't go to my profile page through that thing.
Well, this is just irritating...
This will take some solving...

EDIT 2- Ah, screw it, I'll live with it this way. Read More......

Lightbulb Baby.

I don't remember this, but my mother told me about it.
When I was a baby, I rolled my walker up to the Christmas tree, and grabbed one of the bulbs, and it must've burned me, but instead of letting go, I angrily crushed it, and cut up my hand.
And I didn't even cry.

Sounds like something I'd do.

And thinking about it, it's kind of the central metaphor for my life.

Reaching out toward the light, trying to feel it, trying to discern its source, pushing on through the heat and the pain, stubbornly trying to get to the bottom of it all, committed to the course right up until the literal breaking point.

Stubbornness in the search for truth right from the beginning.

Heh. Read More......

The Batshit Files.

Or, Another Mind Turd From The Tinfoil Hat Brigade!

I fucking hate conspiracy theories.
That's the thing, they're theories, and not in the concrete scientific sense, but shit people fucking make up, and don't have any fucking evidence for.
But they want you to swallow their insinuations, and get paranoid along with them.
Empty fucking people.

But like religious crackpots like Jerry Falwell, their shit gets respected, and they're allowed on all these shows.

Well, in almost immediate succession, I encountered two instances of a particular strain of it yesterday...


...first on TV, and then on RD.net.

This Freemason/Illuminati bullshit.
I'd encountered it before in various forms, but now it's become an anti-atheist arguing point, so it's really become an irritant now.
Not that it wasn't before.

But encountering it twice in one day, and having had it in the back of my mind to talk about for awhile, I figured now was as good a tipping point as any to get this rant off my chest.

Where to start?
I guess the History Channel.
It pisses me off how much crackpot bullshit History and Discovery have on now.
Never mind the reality shit on TLC, but the crackpot shit is worse, because it damages minds.

The show was called "secrets of the dollar bill", and of course, the symbolism got tied back to some of the founding fathers were Freemasons, and then of course, whenever the Freemasons pop up, for some reason, they invariably consult a conspiracy wingnut.
And sure enough, they had a guy on who's the author of "the new world order".
And what a wing-nutty conspiracy douchebag he was.
All assertions, no evidence.
I mean, not just "the Freemasons did this and this", but "the Freemasons WILL do this and this", and it's this whole elaborate thing, when he admitted a couple segments back, he's never been inside a Masonic lodge, doesn't know any Masons, just "they keep so many secrets, so it can't be good, so must be evil".

Well....let's say you're right buddy. Back it the fuck up.
I refuse to run around like chicken little on no fucking evidence.

Anyway, the imagined endgame of this global conspiracy, is "a Godless world!".

Oh no!! Not no God!!
So, y'know, as an atheist, I laughed, and said "GOOD! Sign me up for the fucking Freemasons! Yay, Freemasons!".

Oh, and of course, this was a religious wingnut talking, so naturally, a "world without God", to him means "a world under Satan!".

First of all, dude, there is no fucking Satan.
Second of all, the founding fathers were secular Christians and Deists, and believed in the enlightenment, Satan is the flipside of the Christian coin, and such superstition to them was the endarkenment, so why would they abandon one brand of Bronze Age woo-woo for another?

Okay, maybe it was all a lie, and they were really Satanists!
Woo-oo-ooo!
Da da duummm!!

First of all, again, fucking prove it.
Second of all,...so what?
Again, there's no fucking Devil.
Let 'em worship Freddy Krueger, I don't give a shit.
What matters is what this country was founded on, and I agree with those values, so yay, Satan!

But, of course, it's bullshit.
It's never backed up, all insinuation, all fear mongering, and that's all conspiracy theorist will ever have, because that's what a conspiracy theorist fucking is.
If they had evidence, it would be facts, and they'd be a real historian, but they fucking aren't.
But, they get to play historian on TV, so they think they matter.
And that's the harm it does.
Put crackpots on the History channel, people think it's fucking real.

And that's another thing, they've always got this extra fucking agenda they're trying to sell you on, and the fear of the values of the conspiracy theory is calculated to pendulum swing you over to THEIR values.

And it's almost always a radical right wing christian crackpot point of view.
Well, buddy, if your values are so fucking great, you can sell them to me on their own fucking merits, you wouldn't need to try to scare-monger my ass into fleeing in terror from a bullshit boogeyman.

And getting back to the Christian part of it..doesn't it show a total lack of faith, that he thinks his God would sit idly by, and let an evil cabal wipe his religion out?
Doesn't it show a lack of faith in his religion that he thinks it's mortal?
And...wait a minute, don't the full blown rapture-ites assert that part of the end times is that more and more people will reject God?
And don't they WANT the end times to come, so they can fucking die, and go see Jesus?
So...wouldn't a conspiracy to wipe out Christianity actually be doing God's will?
So...what the fuck are they so scared of?
I don't get it.
But, I guess I can't get it, I'd need an irrational mind.

But yeah, the default position, if there were a conspiracy, is not to flee into the welcoming arms of the values of the conspiracy theorist.
Because...if you're paranoid enough to buy into conspiracies, what makes you credulous enough to assume the conspiracy theorist isn't part of a conspiracy?

And indeed, there are conspiracy theories that make every religion, every ideology, every group affiliation, the mustache twirling demon.

So, who do you trust?

Well, let's assume for a moment that ALL the conspiracy theories are true.
The safest thing, would be to reject all beliefs, and be a nihilist.
Like, a super nihilist.
And a mega-Luddite.
A super duper, misanthropic, mega-Luddite, nihilist.
Oh, shit...they're part of a conspiracy too I think!
So...you couldn't even live, you'd have to go fucking hang yourself.
Oh, shit, that's what such and such conspiracy WANTS!

Okay, so it's bullshit, you can't function that way, you have to believe in something, so you'd have to build your beliefs up from scratch, and figure out what right and wrong are, and do the best you can.

And no matter what you settle on, some conspiracy would/will reflect those values.
So...even in a world of uber-paranoia, you'd have to choose a conspiracy, and try to settle on who the good-guy conspiracy was, because they can't ALL be evil, because they all say all the other conspiracies are evil.

Well, I believe in secular values, and secular culture, I'm socially liberal, I love science, I believe in progress, and its ability to uplift mankind, and I'm a stubborn optimist about all of those things.
If that's part of a conspiracy, then sign me up for it.

If I have to be a paranoid, fear mongering, fear wallowing, unreasonable, illogical, superstitious, emotionally constipated, crackpot fuck like the writer of "the new world order", to be the good guys, then sign me up for the fucking Legion Of Doom.

And if my beliefs are of the Devil, and if there is a Devil, then I'll be surfing on the lake of fire.

That's my moral choice.
There, my hat is in the ring.
My foot is across the line in the sand.

If I have to turn off my brain, reject science, reject enlightenment, and live in superstitious fear, and paranoid anger, and lose my free will, and free expression, and forsake all the art and humor I love in this life, so the Freemason/Illuminati spooks don't drag me bodily off to Hell...fuck it.

And that's if the conspiracies are true.
I happen to think they're bullshit.
Prove me wrong, supply evidence, ya fuckin' conspiracy nuts you.

Hey, you wanna be Christian, be Christian, I think it's a quaint superstition, and you'd be better off without it, and so would society, but go have fun with that.

You wanna be right wing, be right wing.
I disagree with it, I think Republicans have strayed too far from their core values to even count as conservative, and it's all a sick joke, and I viscerally oppose "social conservatism", and find it a contradiction in terms.
But fine, go have fun with that.
Have your little ideology, but leave me out of it.

BUT..once you cross over into using fear as a tool, and insinuation as fact...you're a fucking crackpot, and you don't deserve my respect.

Blow me.

And let's just look at the plausibility of these fucking conspiracies.
These global conspiracies require everyone be in on it, everyone involved to be a fucking genius, none of them ever make a mistake, none of them ever blab, or leak, or fumble, or fail, or make a deathbed confession, and it's the most perfect and all-encompassing, and perfectly executed plan ever, ever, ever, EVER!

The order of complexity would be well...just about the same complexity required for...a God.
And surprise, there's just as much evidence.
So they require pure credulity to swallow.

Phew, anyway, all that occurred to me watching History Channel.

The second instance of this Freemason/Illuminati shit, came on RD.net, we got a Muslim poster on there called Big Bang, and he's using the Freemasons/Illuminati for anti-Darwin, anti-atheist crap.
Of course, being Muslim, the Jews are in the mix too, and "Liberal", has become a synonym for "Jew", lately, especially with those guys, so it's all a Jew/Freemason/Illuminati/Liberal conspiracy.

See, you can't trust science, because the Jews/Freemasons/Illuminati/Liberals manipulate science to show there's no God.
Y'know, in another one of those greatest plans ever, ever, ever, EVER.

Oh, and of course, that makes Muslim conspiracy nuts instantly smarter than all the greatest scientists whom ever lived.

Bam, just like that, with no effort.

And based on no evidence, just fear, of course.
Just trust them.
Be afraid, and reject modernity, and praise Allah.

Fuck off.

Again, if Islam had something going for it, you could sell it to me without the fear and irrational bullshit.

And once you attack science, fuck you.
Science is the only candle in the dark we have.
Literally, science made candles and lightbulbs.
If you hate science, smash your computer, and leave me alone.
Fucking hypocrites.

But, it just goes to show, it's not just an American thing, this bullshit is everywhere.

Oh, and that reminds me, there's another nasty strain of this bullshit.
There's the liberal/Jew chunk of the whole thing.
You see the white supremacists wallow in this shit.
"The liberal Jew media tells you what to think and feel! You only believe I'm wrong, because you've been brainwashed by the liberal Jew media!".

Well, going back to what I said in the last chunk about Christian crack-pottery, if I have to be an illiterate redneck racist to be the good guys, fuck it.
Send me to Hell.

I've ranted my rants about what's wrong with the media, but it not spreading redneck hatred isn't one of my problems.
If liberals and Jews are keeping the hate out of our culture, then yay liberals and Jews!

And of course, you get a watered down strain of it in the Fox News/talk radio propaganda.
They shy away from implicating Jews, and they're not spouting racism, but they still rail against Liberal influences in the media.

Well....what the fuck are these evil Liberal/Jew values it's brainwashed me with?
Assumingly, the indoctrination starts with childhood, so I've gone back to the shows I watched as a kid, thanks to Hulu.com, and I'm not seeing the problem.

Among other stuff, I watched Fat Albert, and He-Man, and those were great fucking shows morals wise.
Look for yourself.
They had little moral lessons, and it was good stuff.
Don't steal, don't lie, admit your mistakes, all things in moderation, good hygiene, etc, etc.
Are those the evil Liberal/Jew values?
They want kids to steal, and lie, and do drugs, and be racist?
Oh...wait...the white supremacist want them to be racist...
But...do even THEY want their kids to be encouraged to lie and steal?
I mean, come on, this is ridiculous shit.
Even the less responsible shows weren't peddling any of that.
Voltron may have been a banal and mediocre toy commercial, but they never said "hey kids! Crime is cool! And smoking is really, really, good for you!".

And if it wasn't being laid down into us that early, I don't see how it creeps in at adolescence or adulthood.

You don't get your politics from TV, you get it at home, or from mentors, or whatever.

You're a good or bad liberal, you're a good or bad conservative.
This "the leebruls are teaching your kids to be evil", shit is just more paranoid bullshit.
And everything that's most childish about the whole partisan thing too.

And finally, there's this strain of it going around from both Muslims, and far-left relativists, the whole "you only think the way you do because of *ominous low piano keys* WESTERN VALUES!!".

Well...maybe, but you can't have your relativism, and say my attitudes and philosophy are western, and then have your objective value judgments in saying another culture is superior.

Objective, or relative, you can't be both.
Any attempt to use both arguments is a verbal magic trick.
And guess what a verbal magic trick is?
BULLSHIT!!!!

And that's who uses that trick, bullshitters.
They objectively pick a value from another culture they despise "the west", for not having, and then try to make you doubt yourself for not sharing that value, by making the ground under you blurry and subjective.
Well, no, sorry, it's all subjective, or it's not.
If it's all subjective, no culture is superior.
And what value gets picked that "the west", is "weak", for not adopting?
Is it some value like "respect your elders", or "wash your feet"?
Nah, it's always some dumb shit like racism, or caste shit, or a violent absolute style of legal system.
No thanks.
Not interested.
If there were a rational way to argue me over to that, you wouldn't need "western indoctrination", conspiracy fears.

It would be self-evident logical stuff that would pierce through any "indoctrination".

I'm not saying MY values are the end-all be-all, but these are all argument patterns I've observed that are demonstrably illogical, and wielded by observable bullshitters.

Don't fall into any of their traps.

They're completely, and utterly, and embarrassingly, full of shit.
They're out to waste your time.
Arm yourself against it.

Conspiracies are batshit.
Ignore 'em until real evidence comes.

Ah, but there's always that fear "what if they're right..and there's no hard evidence until it's too late!?!!?".

Well...then there's no evidence until it's too late.
You want to waste the intervening time living in worry, or being hoodwinked by a charlatan?
Being someone's sucker?
Fuck that.
Be brave.
Stick to people and theories that have evidence.

I'd rather be snuck up on by a plan by the evilest smartest genius ever, then be a crackpot.
If someone's so fucking smart, they can make the most perfect plan ever, ever, EVER that leaves no evidence, and only sweaty-faced paranoid crackpots can deliver the message to warn me, then maybe they deserve to win.

Fine, destroy me.
I'll take the chance.
I'm that fucking risky.

But, maybe that's just me.


(Audio version of this rant available)

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Piddlyshit update.

I've added enough videos to necessitate (IMHO) a video label.

Kind of a no-brainer that I should've added in the first place, but duh....

Anyway, enjoy. :P Read More......

The "greatest generation", fable.

I'm getting fucking tired of this one.

The "greatest generation", fable goes like this...

Everyone in the WWII Generation went to WWII, everyone acquitted themselves heroically, everyone came back Republicans, everyone gleefully got on board for Eisenhower's Donna Reed/Father Knows Best America, and then the Baby Boom Generation invented social criticism and dissent from thin air, and ruined paradise.

Fuck that propaganda.
It's not real history, and it feeds a retarded social agenda.

First of all, every ingredient of that little fable is demonstrably false or at best grey.
Yet all of those have to be objectively true in concert for that narrative to work.
But that's the narrative that's being sold, and it grates.

I mean, let's look at each one...


...did everyone go to the war?
Obviously not.
And it's never really openly claimed...but it seems to be vaguely assumed whenever the WWII stuff comes up in the media.
And that assumption is never challenged.

And was everyone who fought in WWII a hero?
Look, even ignoring emotionalistic stuff about what makes a hero, and avoiding calling anyone's grandpa out there a coward, did every single last vet mow down a thousand Nazis, and save all his buddies?
Come on.
For those stories even to work, some one was the rescue-ee.
For there to be a hero, there had to be some poor shlub.

And that's before we even get into the grey fuzz of the guys who nothing really interesting from a war movie perspective happened to, and they just dubbed around, and pooned French whores.

And they all weren't Republicans.
Fuck, FDR had 4 terms, someone was fucking voting for him.
Yet it's the conservatives that typically use WWII to drumbeat the war shit.

And everyone wasn't on board for the whole little Donna Reed robot world of the 1950's.
That WWII generation was full of dissent.
That generation saw novels like "The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit", and the rise of Playboy magazine, for fuck's sake.

But then you have to suffer this fairy tale that life was like the filmed propaganda of that day, and social conservative backward douchebags like Anne Coulter spinning this yarn that it was all The Hippies fault, and if we could just go back to "traditional values", America would be full of sweetness and light.

Would you give me a physical fucking break??

And it doesn't help that these same fucking people exploit these 80 year old codgers for their shit. They'll prop 'em up in front of a camera, and they'll nod along with whatever the bullshit is.

Hey, get me one of those vets who thought the war sucked, and that war in general sucks, or that Patton was a fuckenasshole, or that hated Ike, or spanked it to Playboy, and thought Hef's articles were right on, and thought the Hayes Code was a piece of shit, and that films under that censorship were largely banal mediocrity, etc, etc.

Get me one of those guys.

That's the guy I wanna hear from.

They never put that guy on Fox News.

And it's not like they aren't out there.
That's part of the "greatest generation", fable.
That those guys aren't out there, and if they are, they're somehow magically not worth listening to.
Well, excuse me, I'll take a guy who lived through those years over friggin' Anne Coulter, thanks.

And of course, the final ingredient, the baby boomers ruined everything.
Fuck you.

Like I pointed to above, Hugh Hefner, Sloan Wilson, Betty Friedan, the Beatniks, etc, etc, were doing their thing, and had the ball rolling long before the first hippie was getting his first whiskers.

And anyone with a brain, access to Google, or hell, anyone with access to parents and grandparents can knock all this shit down.

And yet it persists.
This black and white, dumbed down, Cliff-notes, fable-ized version of history.

And it would only mildly annoy me, except that, again, like I said, it didn't feed this butt-ugly retarded social agenda.

One that in my opinion, actually denigrates the sacrifices of the vets.

What freedom were they fighting for, if they're going to be exploited as props in their dotage for this propaganda shit?

It annoys me.
At best it annoys me.
Usually, I get shout at the screen level pissed, and after awhile tired out, and gloomily bored.
And the latter is the mood I'm writing this in.
Gloomily bored with this "culture war", horseshit, and the mountain of lies it rests on.
And this is just one of 'em.

But again, it ties into all my other rants, and shows America has this big fucking reality problem.
Can't fucking face it for some reason, so people want these pre-packaged little myth patterns.

Well, sorry, this is another one I'm kicking in the dick.
And I'm doing it for the vets, not against them.

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