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Shot this on the subway last week, I think. It’s an ad in a subway train for a law firm. Now, look closely toward the bottom of the ad, to the right.
Yep, that’s their 800 number. Three lawyers (none of them Latino, by the looks of them) form a law firm and advertise on the New York City subway–what phone number do they pick for potential clients to have an easy time remembering it?
1-888 MARGARITA
You know, I’m a practical man, but sometimes Political Correctnes just doesn’t go far enough.
The following comes from fellow Uttererer PixelFish (utterz.com profile: www.utterz.com/~h-PixelFish/profile.php ):
Art from http://tibetanbuddhism.tribe.net/…1a89ec7c46
by M. ParisiIn London, protesters attempt to douse the Olympic flame: http://www.cnn.com/…index.html
Violence in Tibet as the Tibetans themselves protest:
http://www.independent.co.uk/…02732.htmlQuixote from Shakespeare’s Sister speaks about Tibet:
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/…tibet.htmlAngela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, to boycott the opening ceremony:
http://www.sfgate.com/…ate/detailHuman Rights In China:
http://www.hrichina.org/public/A list of violations of China’s human rights:
http://www.christusrex.org/…facts.htmlOrgan harvesting among condemned criminals* in China:
http://firedoglake.com/…-olympics/(*Gonna have to add that "criminal" often means any opposition to official policy in China.)
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I’ve spotted another piece of great Beijing Olympics protest art and I’ll be posting it soon.
Have a listen.
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OK, so why am I blogging about "back up birth control"? Because life is not a simple place and women are (still) treated like second-class citizens in a lot of ways.
Guys: if there was a chance someone could grab you, stick something in you and make you carry around A LIVING THING in your abdomen for NINE months, you’d want some protection against it, right?
I can think of very little that would freak me out more than something ALIVE inside of me. And then to have to carry it around, announcing to the world "I HAVE THIS GROWING THING INSIDE OF ME"–so much for having any conversation start with anything but questions ABOUT the growth. If that weren’t enough, the damn growth would be sucking nutrients from me so fast I have to eat almost twice as much as I normally do. Then, when I finally get rid of the thing, I am on the hook to care for it for the rest of my life–even if I give it to someone else, I still know it’s still out there somewhere.
Or, I could just take a pill and remove the chance of such a thing happening to me all together. The catch is, sometimes the pill isn’t enough because you forget or other drugs mess with it (or vice versa), so it’s good to have back up. Here’s what PixelFish says about it in her Utter:
For those who don’t know, EC (Emergency Contraception) works like an extra strong dosage of the Pill. You receive an extra dose of the hormones that control ovulation, and if you haven’t ovulated yet, your body will put it off for a further five days, by which point all sperm SHOULD have died off. EC is NOT an abortofacient. If you have an egg that has been fertilized, EC does not prevent it from attaching to the uterus wall.
It’s a good idea for any woman of childbearing age to have access to this important medication. It’s just better not to go to the pharmacy and hear that they are temporarily out of it, or worse, to have a pharmacist refuse to fill your prescription. (Although in the US, women over the age of 18 can ask for it WITHOUT a prescription.)
…
And for those that use condoms, you are undoubtedly aware of the possibility of breakage or leakage. Finally, our society is less than ideal and one in four women will suffer from a sexual assault. Having to fight for your reproductive rights right when you are most vulnerable is tough, and having this on hand can give you one less thing to worry about.
So, that’s a woman’s perspective and before that was a man’s.
To me birth control is an issue of self-control–as in, control of one’s self. In our culture we’re sold a bill of goods–some might say, brainwashed even–natural child birth is a wondrous, magical thing and a blessing from God (or your chosen deity). The reality is that such dialog is really just pro-humanity propaganda that doesn’t reflect the reality of our world.
In our current world, a new child represents massive expense in time and money.
1) As mentioned above, the woman carries this organism around inside of her for nine months. If the man gives a shit, he does everything he can to help her through this ordeal–and it IS an ordeal. Your tits get huge, your hormones go crazy and you are essentially a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON because everyone will treat you that way.
2) Before the creature is even born, you’re ideally supposed to be spending buckets of money. Sure, insurance may cover some of the medical, but will insurance pay for the extra food the woman eats to feed the thing inside of her? Will it pay to redo the guest room? Or buy the crib, stroller, baby bottles, diapers, etc? No. Will your employer(s) give you time off? What if you’re self-employed or a career temp?
3) After the child is born, the money output is incredible. Not just clothes and saving for college, but there’s food and entertainment. Suddenly there are toys, vacations get more expensive, and as the kids get older they eat more and more and more.
4) When the child is born and even when the pregnancy is first discovered, to make sure things go right, you really should accept that your own life is over. You are now life support for that child. You are supporting the next generation of humanity–think it will develop fine if both you and your spouse have dayjobs? Think the kid will mentally grow by sticking him or her in daycare, expecting Disney cartoons to educate them or some babysitter?
Look at the world. The current crop of adults were raised largely by divorced and dual-income families. Virtually ignored as children, most of us now can’t find Iraq on a map despite the fact that our country is occupying it. We’re supposed to believe that terrorists could attack and kill us at any moment, yet, I think I’ve seen more pregnant women since 911 than I have in the whole of my life before 2001. Our economy has been dying for years but most of us are just starting to notice now. Our environment has been dying for decades, and only now are we talking about doing something about it. Our planet is running out of oil, water and recent food crises in India and Africa suggest that food stocks are low, too–our planet may already have too many people on it.
So, please: practice birth control and have some extra BC laying around, just in case.
Child birth isn’t magical. It’s biological. It’s a force of nature and it WILL find a way. You shouldn’t feel obligated to play along. A child doesn’t make a woman (or a man) feel whole. A child doesn’t give your life meaning. In both cases, the results can be found by doing things that don’t require you to take responsibility for another human’s life.
Sorry, I really did mean this post to be about women’s rights. Damn, I’ll have to write about those some other time.
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"A new report has found that a record 1-in-100 American adults are behind bars. According to the Pew Center, the prison population has grown by 25,000, even though the rate of violent crimes has decreased. 1-in-100 black women are jailed, compared to 1-in-350 white women. 1-in-36 Hispanic men and 1-in-15 black men are in jail or prison. The US has the highest rate of prisoners in the world, with more than 2.3 million people behind bars."
I think there’s something seriously wrong with a society that has one-hundredth of it’s population in jail. I know some people want to just blame only the individual criminals for this, saying that these people have a choice to commit crimes or not. While I agree that they do have that choice–I do wonder about a society that produces people that allows such choices to be acceptable.
I sometimes feel like we’re the inverse of the Soviet Union–but in a bad way. There was a case of a Soviet serial killer. If I recall correctly, there was just one cop who was treating a string of murders as serial killings by one man. However, he got no support from authorities because "The Soviet state does not produce serial killers."
Obviously, they were in denial and I think if we only lay blame for crime at the feet of the criminals we may be guilty of the same crime the Soviet "authorities" committed.
And I’m not even going to get into the fact that minorities make up the majority of jail populations because CLEARLY it’s their fault. I mean, COME ON–you just KNOW it’s in their genes!
/sarcasm
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Does this bother anyone else? I don’t see what a kid says about a school administration or official or teacher has to do with anything. I know they’re kids, but don’t they have the right to speak their mind?
Sure, the parents have the ultimate say, but forcing kids to muzzle themselves seems like we’re training them to be passive and silent when they become adults. Too many passive and silent adults are what allowed the Iraq war to happen (not to mention other things, not quite as bad).
When you consider the tameness of the student’s words, it gets even more oppressive sounding. It’s not like she dropped the F-bomb or called anyone a C-word–the last time I checked, the words she used could be heard on latenight TV.
Perhaps I’m biased since I’m not sure why people get so hung up about "swear" words. Words are just words, folks. They’re not magic spells, they don’t put a curse on you, they only have the power we give to them.
I understand that certain words are inappropriate in certain circumstances and I understand the social rules, but I don’t understand the legal ones. Dick Cheney told a member of Congress to "fuck off" for crying out loud. Our leaders are setting these examples and we get mad at a teenage girl for calling someone a douchebag?
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An earthquake registering 5.3 on the Richter Scale was felt by residents across Israel at 12:36 pm Friday. The trembling lasted for 19 seconds and shook structures in many major towns and cities."
Yep, in today’s day and age, in one of America’s strongest allies in the world, there are politicians that actually believe a little man-on-man action some how makes the ground angry.
My Atheism *entirely* aside, one can easily make the case that this claim is absurd. If God hated TheGay he’d have sent San Francisco into the sea decades ago and razed West Hollywood to the ground. Then again, Greece did get hit with a quake today. O_O
But seriously, gays=earthquakes?
Well, even if it is true, we shouldn’t worry because THERE IS A CURE FOR GAY!
Just last night, after a 3-hour marathon of "America’s Funniest Videos" on ABC Family, said family network ran an episode of Pat Robertson’s "The 700 Club." If you’ve never seen it, "The 700 Club" is a religious "show that is one-part "news" show and one part "Regis and Kathy Lee". On the episode last night they ran a story about "recovering gays."
That is to say, former gays and lesbians who are now "healing" themselves and choosing to serve Jesus. Luckily, I hit record on my DVR the moment I realized what they were talking about. That’s where the video in this post comes from. Essentially, they claim that "therapy" can bring you back to heterosexuality.
Two words:
Ah-stounding.
Is there really a cure for loving who you love?
For those gays and lesbians who believe they weren’t given a choice in the matter, is there any real "heterosexuality" for them to go back to?
Again, my Atheism *entirely* aside, it is a fact that homosexuality exists in humanity and has for more than 2000 years (probably for much longer than that). It’s also practiced in animal cultures, like the Bonobos (look ‘em up). In the 21s Century, it seems positively ostrich-head-in-the-sand-like to make claims that:
1) Gays cause earthquakes
2) Gays can be cured
I have no problems with religion when they can accept reality–or at the very least when they don’t force their views onto people. I believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but I’m entitled to mine, too.
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This post was originally written as a comment to a post at Mashable.com by Stan Schroeder about how media companies need to do a better job at distribution than the pirates in order to beat them. Before I continue, I’d just like to point out that the word “pirate” is probably an unfair term to be used in describing those who share coyrighted files. Original pirates were killers and would steal ships and cargo–both physical items–and then kill the owners. All music and movie “pirates” do is effectively make photocopies. The owners are alive and have only lost a fraction of the imagined value of their property. And can you really blame these “pirates”?
In today’s economy where money seems to be worth less and less every day, gas seems to cost more and more every day, people are finding that they live in a world where more and more people can’t afford to pay for things like movie tickets and music.
Humans seem to need (or at least be addicted to) art (even bad art). So if they can’t afford to pay full price they make the smart business choice and go for the cheapest price they can find.
It’s OK for record executives to make the most money they can, but it’s not OK for the consumer to save as much money as they can. This seems unfair since record company executives are perceived to make more money than their acts and the CDs they put out mostly suck. Why are they getting rich off of generally sucking when they could and should just be scraping by?
The solution to me is obvious: the record companies need to make less money and offer more value.
If you want to continue charging $15 for a CD, then make it worth it. Make sure all the songs on it are good. Include cool premiums, like keychains, toys or other cool items. I disagree with the suggestion that record companies should add more digital content since it will be pirated along with the music. The extra stuff has to be only available by buying it in stores.
I do agree with many who say that evolution is the key here–like it or not, the consumeristic environment is changing. Evolve or die, sadly.
Complaining that consumers are “greedy” or “selfish” or “disrespectful to the property of others” won’t change the fact that consumers are reacting to their own environments and adapting. They don’t want to go without so they’re evolving, too.
I’m sure everyone wants their favorite bands to survive and feed their families. But don’t blame “pirates” for not wanting to pay what, to many, are absurd prices for generally lackluster product. Wasn’t it Radiohead, just last year, who made more money letting consumers pay what they wanted than they would have if they’d released their CD in stores?
Stop defending the old ways and let’s all evolve together.
…If you want to.
WHY you’d want to is beyond me. The post I linked to above, written by a guy calling himself "Espresso Sucking Pavement Dweller" or ESPD for short, is all about the lousy design of the plate. ESPD is right–the black on red banner is hardly readable (it looks like it says "944" to me) and the clipart used for the Towers look like completely different buildings. He makes a few other points, including one about how others will criticize this license plate for reasons other than design.
Let me be one of those people. Let’s begin:
1) Since when do you have license plates memorializing terrorist acts? Isn’t it a little ghoulish to use the deaths of those 3000 people on 9/11/1 as advertising for a war?
2) I’m of the belief that America is stronger than a few thousand Muslim extremists. We can handle anything they can throw at us and the idea that we need to fight "The Global War On Terrorism" seems like over-dramatizing the threat of Al Qaeda and terrorism, in general. If you look at the statistics, cars, cancer and AIDS each kill more people every year than terrorism (more: http://thepete.com/…0-points/).
3) Oklahoma is fighting the war on terror? How’s that, exactly? What does Oklahoma have that Al Qaeda wants?
4) As I mentioned in point 1, this plate is just an advertisement for a war–for killing people. Has "The Global War on Terrorism" brought us Bin Laden or even a single conviction on actual terrorism-related charges? So far it seems like this whole thing hasn’t meant–well, I could be off color, here, I’ll just suggest you refer to the acronym for "The Global War On Terror" only remove the "Global."
As Super Duper Tuesday is tomorrow and the next presidential election is in seven months, don’t let 911 and mentions of the wars, Al Qaeda and other fear-mongering scare you into voting for one person or another. Vote with your head–not your fear.
Do I think we should go after Al Qaeda? Definitely. They do want to kill some of us. However, a war on a few thousand people with no country, no army, no nukes, and no obvious hierarchy seems like blatant, soulless, overkill. Plus, it’s just what they want us to do.
Who knows? Maybe Bin Laden will see this license plate and give up. But I’m thinking it’ll just make us snobby cityfolk point and snicker.
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This isn’t some jaunt he took so he could pick out a new child to adopt. Clooney went in as a representative of the UN–cornily called a "UN Peace Ambassador," he’s actually doing some great work. He spoke with people in the Darfur region who had been displaced by violence brought upon them by the Sudanese-government-sponsored militia that rape and murder locals to get them off the land. If memory serves this is happening because the land has oil underneath it.
I couldn’t find a transcript of what Clooney said, so I’ll paraphrase:
"One-hundred-percent of these people blame the government for displacement. It’s not disease, not disaster, not an act of God, not famine–the government of Sudan. I spoke with a woman who had been raped and set on fire two days before and she asked me to please send the UN. Not the US, not the UK, not the Russians, but the United Nations. They are believing what you are telling them. Don’t let them down."
In case you couldn’t tell he’s guilting the shit out of the UN to actually bother to help Africa.
He’s got a tiny bit of history with Africa, you see. A couple years ago, he and his father, himself a veteran newsman, literally sneaked into Darfur to witness some of the atrocities that have been committed there. They weren’t with the UN then, but they did it anyway.
George Clooney is *finally* someone we can look up to. Sure, he’s one of those "phony Hollywood-types" with a villa in Italy. But he’s actually doing something good with the gobs of money he’s made off of us.
How many "Hollywood-types" do that? How many rich people do that? Not only is Clooney a good actor and filmmaker, but he’s a good person and I’m tempted to call him a hero.
He seems to understand that every thing each one of us does is a message to the future and has said on more than one occasion that he doesn’t want to be on the wrong side of history.
The people of Sudan need money, supplies, weapons, stability. On two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US has spent about $1 trillion. Just *think* how much good that money could have done in Africa.
I’ve long ago given up on the mainstream news for any information other than breaking news of disasters, so I don’t know if they’ve covered Clooney and what he’s done. But I’d much rather be hearing about Clooney and what he’s witnessed than whether or not Hillary faked her cry-fest a couple weeks back.
As far as I’m concerned, George Clooney should get a medal.
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There must be violence against women - Yemen Times by Maged Thabet Al-Kholidy
YOU HEAR THAT WOMEN?? A male, Muslim writer for YemenTimes.com says there MUST be violence toward women!!
SWEET! I can't wait until my wife gets home from the supermarket!!
The good bit of this post is the stuff on the DVD warning that "They're Coming to Your Town." I LOVE it when Christian extremists believe that gays are the ones with the agenda when Christians have a manual (the Bible) and weekly propaganda-reinforcement classes (Church services and Sunday School for the kids!). Who's *really* got the agenda, tough guy?
1) It’s just "Godzilla" crossed with "Blair Witch Project" and is,
therefore not terribly interesting (to me) or original. Of course,
thanks to the average film-goer’s inability to recognize being
manipulated (Bush’s second term, anyone?) most people are probably
looking forward to this movie. It’s JJ Abrams-produced, so I’m guessing
that like MI: III it’ll be over-produced and under-written (read: it’ll
be vacuous, pointless fun).
2) The use of the decapitated Statue of Liberty head smacks of serious
RudyGiuliani-ism. It capitalizes on our (literal) post-traumatic stress
disorder that we are still suffering from after 911. Why else would
they take a national landmark like the SoL and behead it the way Muslim
extremists do to their enemies?
Having a strange force (either a giant monster or alien menace) desimate
New York City just encourages viewers to fear anything that is strange
or alien to them–like Islam, or, say, dark skinned folks from other
countries who speak a foreign tongue. In short, it encourages us to be
racist and reactionary.
Am I reading into things? Maybe. However, I heard about a study done
by the US military into torture tactics used against terrorism
suspects. If memory serves, when an officer asked enlisted men if they
thought torturing Iraqis was OK, some responded "If Jack Bauer can do
it, why can’t we?"
So, the threat of media encouraging certain types of behavior is real.
I think if this movie was coming out ten years ago I’d have been first
in line to see it. But now? I hope no one will. There’s too much fear
in our culture as it is.
And we all remember what FDR said about fear, right?
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 A screencap from DrudgeReport.com as I type this. |
…and please don’t be shocked. I won’t go too far in this post–both because I already wrote a post about this that a WordPress plugin ate (see: here and here) and because I’m getting tired of complaining about America’s collective pretend naivety. I’m not following the news about this “massacre” (can we really call just nine people dead a “massacre”?) because it’s just too frustrating to read about the “shock” and “horror” of the tragedy.
Don’t get me wrong, my heart goes out to the victims, the friends and family of the victims and to the friends and family of the shooter. Everyone is hurting here and that’s bad. I don’t deny that. However, we can’t be shocked about this sort of thing anymore. Remember the Virginia Tech Killings? Those were less than a year ago. Our society produces this sort of person from time-to-time. In the great scheme of things, it’s no big deal. It’s a huge deal to those directly involved and, as I said, my positive thoughts and wishes go out to everyone who has to deal with this horrific tragedy. But, as I said back in April of this year regarding the Virginia Tech Killings, the “national shock” is such utter bullshit it’s amazing. Reuters.com just reported on various car bombs killing 23 in Iraq while U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was visiting the country.
But, OH NO! Some WHITE PEOPLE GOT SHOT IN NEBRASKA!! Let’s keep our eyes on the real danger here, folks. Random white kids freaking out because of chemical imbalances or societal mixed messages (or both) is not going to topple America.
I can’t remember where I stumbled across this cartoon, but it’s pretty awesome:
Check out more dry wit in comic form at xkcd.com or click the comic above to check out the original page.
Which reminds me, I’ve got to start posting my comics again one of these days…
 King George of America pats an American on the head. Photo:Reuters, nicked from smh.com.au. |
And yes, I’m referring to you reading this. Of course, I’m also referring to myself, writing this. We’re all turkeys–assholes, fools, idiots, selfish bastards, pretending to be oblivious or actually being oblivious to our dying world.
Still reading?
Sucker. ^_^
One of the big dangers I think religion brings to the table is the idea that there is a god with a plan and everything is cool because He is in charge and He knows what he’s doing.
The things is, there is no god–upper case or lower case “G,” there is no plan. Yes, this is all random–we exist because of a cosmic accident.
See? Now, didn’t the universe, this planet, and your life just become way more amazing and valuable?
If you picked up a deck of cards and threw them across the room, they’d just fall to the floor, making a mess. Well, what if you threw them across the room and they all landed in such a way as to create a house of cards? Wouldn’t you just about shit yourself with awe? I would.
But another thing I would do is protect that damn house of cards with my life. What an amazing thing to have a house of cards fall into place by pure accident!
Well, guess what, folks. Yep, our world, our existence is a house of cards. It wasn’t built by someone–it just came into being. How do I know this? Because there is precisely NO evidence of a god, but there’s is PLENTY of evidence that the universe is made up of swirling balls that can sometimes (at least once) provide the randomly right combination of crap to, quite accidentally, create life.
Enter human religion and it’s urge to put all the responsibility on God and His Plan. This gives permission to millions of people throughout history to do unspeakably horrible things to other people. This also gives permission to humans in the twentieth century to just “trust” in “God” that everything will be cool. It’ll all just work out. It’s on our fucking money for Christ’s sake! “In God We Trust.”
Yeah, great idea, folks. Well, guess what, there is no God to trust. So if we trust God, we trust no one. If we trust God’s plan we trust nothing at all.
Enter the industrial age and the age of fossil fuels. Oil gives us gasoline, chemicals, plastic and cheap EVERYTHING. Oil is so fricken’ cool that the US government convinces the biggest oil-producing countries in the world to only trade oil in US dollars, thus locking the very life of the US economy into the oil machine. Oil gives America everything it has. Everything.
Oil also gives the air and water an absurd amount of toxins. The toxins in the air create a blanket for our planet, warming the Earth unevenly, causing a disruption in weather patterns that we are already seeing the results of. The toxins in the water are now poisoning nearly every fish on the planet. It turns out that the oceans have absorbed something like 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which actually helped thin out that blanket mentioned earlier for a time. Soon, the ocean will stop accepting the CO2, and as sea life (not just fish) dies thanks to all of these poisons, they will release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thus creating a spike in that blanket making it worse than it’s ever been.
Our planet is dying.
We’ve all been willingly ignorant. Why read up on this stuff when Paris Hilton is going to jail? Why read about how our economy is built on the trade of oil in the form of petrodollars when the Xbox 360 is so much fun to play? Why come up with solutions for the planet or even ways to get off of this planet when the latest episode of Lost is on TV?
I blame myself as much as I blame you and everyone else in our stupid, fat, lazy, scared, irresponsible culture. I can only imagine how many people died in Iraq so that I can have my Nintendo DS that is made of plastic made from oil. I don’t want to think about the crap inside the laptop I’m using to type this incredibly heavy-handed post, because I know some of it fueled a horrible civil war in some African country.
We go about our lives in the United States (and other Western countries) with this feeling of entitlement. We have RIGHTS. We have things we DESERVE.
No.
We don’t.
All we have is luck.
We were born and we were born where we were born.
We have so very much to be thankful for.
So, enjoy your turkey. Be thankful for it, your days off from work, your DVD recorder, your home, your significant other, your car (if you have one), your kids (if you have any), your job, your money, your supermarket, your Netflix account, your Best Buy, and, of course, be thankful for your very life.
Thank me for writing this post because you know god damn well that no one else is saying this shit and you know it’s true. Why soft-pedal this reality?
Is it hopeless? Futile? Is there even any point, at this point?
The system was made to be virtually impossible to tear down.
For 200,000 years humans have existed in their current biological form. The Industrial Revolution has only occurred in the last hundred years.
Of course there’s hope…but not for our way of life.
So, be thankful for that, too, while it lasts.
Oh and turkey skin. Be thankful for that, too. It’s the best part of Thanksgiving, IMHO.
This is an interesting post, make sure to read all the way to the end.
So, on November 14, 2007, Democracy Now did a story on the rise of hate crimes across the US. They talked about the Jena 6–the six black teens who were involved in a truly messed up case that started with them being threatened with a noose hanging from a schoolyard tree, all the way to having one of them facing ten years in jail for attempted murder. They also talked about the case of the seven minority lesbians who are in jail now because an instance that began with an asshole straight guy sexually harassing them ended with him getting touchy feely and them getting stabby-stabby. However, the most disturbing case they reported on was the case of Megan Williams who was kidnapped and, well, I’d rather not try to describe it when she did a perfect job of it herself for the AP, have a read (or don’t, it’s pretty god damned disturbing):
They were torturing me. They all passed a knife around that was — and stabbing me. I was trying to get away as they were stabbing me, and they were holding me down and stuff. And they smothered me with a bag. That morning, I had a bag wrapped around my neck and everything. They choked me. They made me eat dog poop, rat poop and human. They made me drink their urine. And each time, they braided some switches together, and they were beating me across the back. They tore my clothes off me and everything.And then they took me up to a lake. They said that was the place they were going to cut my throat and throw me in, and I was never going to come back and see my family again. They were just telling me that they were going to kill me.
And, you know, I was — they made me take a bath in a trash can. They wouldn’t let me use the bathroom. I had to use the bathroom outside. I had to sleep outside. And they told me if they even remotely heard me once, that they would go out there and kill me. They poured candle wax in my hair. They pulled my hair out when they were cutting it with scissors. And, you know, they were just scary.
They had me tied up. I couldn’t go anywhere. Like the time when they left, they were going to go get some beer and stuff, and when they came back they said they were going to finish me off. And before they even got back, I had already got loose. I found a knife and cut myself loose.
I heard the police coming up to the driveway. When I’d seen the police, I just — you know, I knew it was, you know, my chance to get out. And if I didn’t, I was going to die anyway. And then, that’s when they see me coming out there, and they thought — they said I was going to lose my leg, when they see about the stabs. And I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. All I kept saying — I was thinking about my momma, also wanting to come home. And every time I close my eyes, all I see is that knife, the one they kept stabbing me and stabbing me. It’s just — you know, it’s a nightmare.
Aren’t we humans wonderful?
Now, here’s where it gets interesting for you, the reader.
I truly believe acts like the ones described above are truly, truly horrible. These people who commit crimes like this should be thrown in jail for life. However, I don’t like the idea of calling what they do a “hate crime.” This punishes people for what they think and not what they do.
As a rational society, we should act when wrongs are committed, but should not act more when really bad wrongs are committed. The punishment should fit the crime, not the thought behind it.
Who is worse?
1) The man who kills indiscriminately?
2) The man who kills only certain people who fit his own criteria?
Man #1 might kill anyone–gay or straight.
Man #2 will only kill gays.
That means that Man #2 is a threat to only a percentage of the population.
I know it sounds odd, but basing these choices on how much hate is involved is so arbitrary that it will definitely result (if it hasn’t already) in unfair sentences.
Wrong acting is a crime. Wrong thinking isn’t. So, wrong thinking behind a wrong act should not make it a worse crime, punishment-wise. Discriminating against those that do misses the point. You can’t legislate against hate. You can only legislate against acting on that hate.
Do I think any of the men and women who committed the above crimes should get away with it? Of course not! But I don’t think they should get harsher treatment because of their beliefs. That’s not fair.
Man #1 above, who kills 30 people of various races and creeds could get 30 years to life while Man #2 could see a life sentence, flat, because he hated the race or sexual preference of the person he killed.
I’m just using those sentences as examples–the law in your state may impose different sentences.
The point is this: prosecute all crime, leave the judging of motivation to a higher power.
Twitterererer BloggersBlog earlier today microblogged about an article at NewScientist.com that endeavored to explain why some people are more rude online than they are in real life. The article was entitled “Don’t Flame Me Bro’” and had me smiling. ^_^ there I go again.
Here’s a cutting to give you an idea of what the article concludes:
Social psychologists have known for decades that, if we reduce our sense of our own identity - a process called deindividuation - we are less likely to stick to social norms. For example, in the 1960s Leon Mann studied a nasty phenomenon called “suicide baiting” - when someone threatening to jump from a high building is encouraged to do so by bystanders. Mann found that people were more likely to do this if they were part of a large crowd, if the jumper was above the 7th floor, and if it was dark. These are all factors that allowed the observers to lose their own individuality.Social psychologist Nicholas Epley argues that much the same thing happens with online communication such as email. Psychologically, we are “distant” from the person we’re talking to and less focused on our own identity. As a result we’re more prone to aggressive behaviour, he says.
I interpret this as a feeling of less or no responsibility. I got into an argument a few months back with a friend about how the FBI had arrested a man for distributing un-aired episodes of 24 on the Internet. The thing is, the argument happened online. I don’t think it would have happened at all in person because both I and my friend are much more polite in person. See, I view my website as my sandbox. I do what ever I want here. I also have a clear sense of who I am and why I have this site. I know all about being responsible for everything about ThePete.Com. However, in the same way I’m the boss so I can also not care about what I do or say on here. As a result, I let more of my feelings out than I would if you were sitting here with me now and, likewise, I say much more of what I really think (though I am pretty honest in real life, too).
Of course, other people come to my site, or to other sites and they have the same sense that they can get away with whatever they want–because it’s the Internet and largely anonymous. The catch is, that doesn’t matter. When I go to someone’s site and leave comments, I know that I’m leaving something in someone’s living room. If it’s a giant, steaming pile of dung, they’re not going to welcome me back because it’s a pain in the ass for them to clean up after me. I know this, because it’s happened to me on countless occasions over the past ten years of running this site.
Sadly, there is no solution to this problem. On the Internet, as in life, ideally, you need to be conscious of your actions and how they effect others–yes, the consequences of your actions online are generally much less pronounced than your actions in the real world, but they exist nonetheless, even if you can’t see them. It’s the digital version of the Butterfly Effect.
As in the real world, there seems (to me, anyway) to be a jarring lack of responsibility being taken by most people in America these days. Whether it’s corporate bigwigs failing to see the damage they’re causing to people and the planet, or the asshole in the White House thinking “Move On Bloggers” are any less Americans than he is. Whether it’s people downloading music for free or the people running music companies that get rich off of charging too much for too little, far too many of us are setting bad examples.
We’re all connected, is my point. There are very few actions one person can take that will not effect someone else (even if it’s not immediate) somewhere else. As such, we all need to be more conscious of how we act toward each other.
Ironically, that friend that I argued with about the FBI is no longer my friend–not because of that argument–but because of another blog-comment-battle about whether John Travolta should have been cast in the movie version of Hairspray. This is what it’s come to. A friendship lost over something as ultimately stupid as who got cast in movie.
The Internet is indeed a powerful tool. It can create friendships and destroy them. It can save lives and it can end them. It can change the world for the better or it can leave it exactly the same.
It all depends on how we want to use the Internet.
What helps me be more responsible on the Web are the following:
1) Remember there’s a difference between criticizing and complaining–the former is constructive and the latter is destructive.
2) Ask yourself if the thing you’re about to do or say is something you’d want others to copy. Would you want 1000 other people leaving this kind of comment (on your website)? Every time you do something, someone else could view your actions as permission.
3) Pick your battles–don’t fight them all. For every retarded argument about John Travolta you can have, there’s a serious debate about the FBI you can also have. I ask myself, do I really want to be wasting time arguing this? Or is there another debate that I can waste time on and maybe learn something, too?
I don’t always follow these points because I’m not perfect. The thing is, I do try to be responsible and, if that NewScientist.com article is any indicator, there are a lot of other people out there who should be trying, too.
When I was a kid, I remember seeing print ads for Virginia Slim cigarettes. They had a slogan that was something like “you’ve come a long way, baby!” which, I assumed, signified that in the early days of smoking (the late 1800s to early 1900s) women-smokers were frowned upon by society. Here, in the present, it’s perfectly acceptable for women to smoke!
What a wonderful message! Cigarettes=liberation from the man’s world!
Ahem.
Well, while cigarettes came to signify something else entirely since those days, it seems like women still can’t shake off the man’s expectations, even when they are given the choice. A post from Mashable.com reports on how the number one most popular website for women is CafeMom. According to comScore.com, a sort of Nielsens for the Internet, CafeMom.com got 90 million page views in October of 2007.
“CafeMom” is the woman’s site that gets the most hits out of all of the sites for women. So, women still define themselves as baby-machines, it seems. Why aren’t there women-tailored business sites? As in, sites that give advice to aspiring business women? And if there are, why aren’t more women going there? I feel like I can only assume that, generally, women would rather be mothers than successful business people and this is where, I feel, society is still deciding for women what they want to be. It’s not just telling them what to be, it’s already convinced them that being a mom is something you must want to do. Also, women are dropping the ball in failing, utterly, to think for themselves.
The number two site in comScore’s list? BabyCenter.com.
See what I mean?
So, last night I was doing research for my part-time blogging gig when I came across a post on Engadget.com about how former KISS tongue-man Gene Simmons thinks all file-sharers’ “…freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth.”
Resisting the urge to post a comment saying that “I’d like to see every leather-faced, washed-up, has-been rocker stop making crappy TV shows and just quietly go into the night instead of forcing us all to bother with them,” instead I added the below comment to the pile of 140+ already there (apparently, there are a lot of people who have pro and con opinions on file sharing):
If someone came into my home and made a perfect copy of my TV and then walked out, I wouldn’t care because it’s *not theft*. See, I still have my TV. Now, if I had built that TV from scratch and someone came in and made an exact copy of my TV and walked out with it, it’s still *not theft* BUT I would want a REASONABLE fee.
NOT an unreasonable one.
$10-$20 for a CD or DVD?
Ridiculous. I paid $3 for that shitty Radiohead album (and it was crap, I think I deleted it, I don’t remember) and plan on going back to pay Saul Williams $5 for his since I actually like it.
This is how REASONABLE people do business. Unreasonable people have to make every damn dime they can and be as ridiculously rich as they can be probably because they have nothing else going for them in life.
I wouldn’t turn down that kind of money, but going after it aggressively? Sorry, “seeing how much I can get away with” is not my idea of a way of life or a way to do business.
Hey, here’s a thought: remember when the USG banned alcoholic beverages? How’d We the People deal with that?
We drank anyway and eventually it was made legal.
Welcome to the future, folks!
Here it is… take it!
Moderation, folks. You want to charge too much for your stuff? The market will speak. This is the capitalist way of things. You want to be a capitalist? DEAL with people spending as little as possible to get your stuff because (odds are) you spent as little as possible to make it.
This goes to the whole Writers’ Strike thing I was talking about the other day. If the studios would just be reasonable, I don’t think anyone would be striking.
But, nope! Extreme Rulez so, everyone wants to get as extremely rich as possible.
