The Greatest Country On Earth

My fellow Americans,

There's a turn of phrase that keeps popping up and it needs to go away: "America is the greatest country on earth". You hear this said by American politicians in speeches not just to US citizens but in foreign countries as well. You hear it from comedians, just before they criticize something in the US culture. You here it from knee-jerk patriots in cowboy hats, saying it...well, just cuz. You folks need to knock that shit off. Now I know that many of you are, in reflexive Pavlovian fashion, raring back with your standard repost to this sort of thing: "You should thank god you're in a country that allows you the right to say things like that.". First off, if your willingness to speak your mind is contingent upon the government allowing you to do so, you don't know what freedom is. Second, to refuse to criticize the country, because it's such a great country, because it allows you to criticize it, is strained logic worthy of Lewis Carroll. Thirdly, this is my blog so shut the fuck up and listen for a change.

You need to stop saying in public that the US is the greatest country in the world. Not because it's not true, but because it's rude and arrogant. Take a look at the allegory below:

[we're at a big party. People are talking and laughing and having a good time]

Person 1: Hey, John, how's it going?

John: Oh pretty good. How bad can it be? After all I am the smartest person at this party.

Person 1: Uh, yeah. So what's been going on? Haven't seen you in a while.

John: Oh, y'know being smart. Doing smart things. Staying away from the dumb things that you do. I am after all the smartest person at this party.

Person 1: Right. I'm gonna go over here now.

John: Sure thing. Hey if you need the answer to anything just ask. I am smarter than you y'know.

Person 2: Hey, John, have you seen Bob? I can't find him.

John: I don't know where he is. But that doesn't mean I'm not the smartest person here. He's probably off doing dumb things because he's not as smart as me.

Host: Hey, everybody! I have an announcement to make!

John: Yes, yes, we all know, I'm the smartest person here. Thank you for recognizing that fact, but you didn't have to go to any trouble. I know it must be hard for you to understand things like that, not being as smart as me and all.

Host: Actually the neighbors are complaining about the noise, so just try to keep it down.

John: Oh, you silly not smart people. I knew to keep my voice down, because I'm smart. The smartest person at this party in fact. I feel bad for you because these basic smart concepts elude you. How do you survive without my tremendous intellect? etc etc...



See, what I mean? John may genuinely be the smartest person at the party--who knows?--but his attitude is arrogant, conceited, rude, and something that would (and should) get his ass kicked. Also, it should be pointed out, if John continues to congratulate himself on his superior intelligence, he will cease to engage in auto-critique and never feel the need to get any smarter; life is fluid and nothing stays on top of the heap without willingness to change to meet new challenges. Similarly, the United States may in fact be the greatest country on earth, but whether it is or isn't, constantly reminding everyone of that fact does no good to anyone. In fact it harms. It makes everyone else hate us and it stops us from ever wanting to achieve greatness beyond our current level.

Masturbation and Prepositions

Masturbation has a preposition problem.

When discussing pleasuring oneself, if one were inclined to discuss such a thing (not me certainly as I am far too genteel), one is invariably presented with a choice of prepositions and no set rule by which to choose. This applies to all euphemisms and slang terms for masturbation as well. Say you have an erotic image, be it material or mental . Do you jack off ABOUT it? Do you beat off ON it? Do you spank your monkey TO it? Do you punish the bishop BECAUSE OF it? Do you abuse yourself AT it? Do you jill off FOR it? Do you slap your tuna WITH it? What is the verbophile wanker to do to gracefully express his or her self love? Here's a preposition proposition to help guide our usage: TO we can reserve for audio/visual media as it implies a real-time relationship. ON we can use for print media, photos, paintings, or written word as they appear to have a surface for something to be ON. ABOUT can be applied to thoughts or memories. FOR tends to imply that you have a person with you (stripper, jack buddy or circle jerk, voyeur victim, phone sex operator). AT, being locational in nature, shall be reserved for men and ejaculatory women only and shall be used for all material objects at a distance, audio/visual media, print media, photos, and other people, to indicate the motion of a bodily fluid toward that object. WITH would have two uses. 1) When the stimulation is derived from direct contact with the object and 2) with audio/visual media, similar to the usage of TO but implying that your pleasure is synchronized with the subject(s) of the media. BECAUSE OF shall not be used as 1) it is extremely clumsy and inelegant syntax and such a healthy, joyous act should only be spoken of with aplomb and 2) it implies that the act is someone else's fault and there ain't nobody wackin' it but you, ya dirty birdie.

Truth! - part 4

The following statements are true. Anything that seems less than true is probably a hallucination, you party animal, you:

The maternity and childbirth industry is based, not just on assisting the furtherance of the species, but also on obscuring the truth about childbirth. The iconography in particular is a good example. It's all storks and soft smiling babies and ornate baby carriages and all manner of softness and niceness. Depending on who you talk to, this world either has a mild overpopulation problem or a "holy shit it's monstrous" overpopulation problem. People would have less children if the maternity industry changed their iconography to be more honest about the process: crying babies, blistered nipples, stretch marks, huge distended vaginas, graphic depictions of episiotomies, all manner of "cheesy substances" as the medical books call them. We're not primitive people that will mistake our child for food anymore. I think we're evolved enough to handle some honesty.

Putting seat covers on public toilets is pointless. There is no germ that could survive indefinitely on a toilet seat without a human host that's going to be stopped by a piece of paper. Conversely, there is no germ that could be thwarted by a piece of paper that could live outside of a human host. Also, ask yourself, what part of you touches the seat. It's not your anus or your genitals or any other unprotected body part. It's your buttocks, a fully skin-covered, sanitarily sealed slab of flesh, no more sensitive to germs than your shoulder or your forearm or the middle of your back.

There is a great deal of denial that goes into eating healthy. Brown rice is not delicious. It'll do for nutrition, but it's not delicious. Claiming that brown rice and fruit sweetened desserts and carob and soy cheese and garden burgers taste as good or better than fried food, butter, processed sugar, wheat, and non-soy real dairy cheese is a transparent and pathetic lie. The greatest culinary scientists in human history have devoted their collective intelligence to making the bad-for-you food taste better, because if you eat it they make money. That's just the facts. Claiming that health food tastes better is like claiming that third world sweat shop labor isn't cheaper. It is. It's horrible, but it is cheaper (for those of us that don't work there anyway). Eating healthy is a great thing to do, but you don't have to lie about it.

To my ear, Vietnamese often sounds fake. Like they're just making up an Asian sounding language. Don't know why.

Sunshine does not automatically make a "nice day", any more than a pretty face automatically makes a nice person. If the sun is shining, and the sky is blue, but it's 20 below 0, it's not a nice day. It's fuckin' cold!

Halloween is about death and evil and fear. It's a time when we take back these negative feelings and celebrate our ability to triumph over them. Like black men calling each other nigger or gay men calling each other faggot. It should therefore not be cute, but joyously horrific, like Rob Zombie's id. The smiling happy jack o'lantern, the smiling happy scarecrow, the cute black kitten, the pretty little girl dressed as a pretty little witch, all that Hallmark crap has gotta go. Mind you I'm a bit of a ghoul year round, but this isn't about my personal taste. It's about remembering why you're dressing up in the first place, and not fearing the darkness.

Listening to your I-Pod in public seems rudely unsociable in some situations, but if you think about it, it's not any more rude than reading a book in public.

People often pay lip service to how difficult it sometimes is to do the right thing. I never understood this because it seemed exceedingly simple to do the right thing; dishonesty requires maintenance, hatred requires energy, hurting people requires effort. However, I've learned it's not that the act of doing the right thing is hard, it's that the consequences of doing the right thing are hard to endure. Many good people miss opportunities for wealth and position simply because they refuse to step on others.

Photographic realism, and naturalism in art are all very interesting, but not artistically (my definition of artistic). They're interesting in the same way juggling and acrobatics are interesting. You don't necessarily experience the emotional content and the expression of the artists so much as you sit back and say "Wow! How do they do that?".