Post the Fifteenth: Gun Violence, Part 2

Yesterday, there were two more mass shootings. One an hour's drive away from where I live, and just hours later, another in Ohio. Two shootings, in a matter of hours.
Hours.
Dammit, America, we're having words again.
We are the only first-world country where people are routinely slaughtered every other weekend- whether it be by someone driven by racism, or someone who was spurred to violence by the honeyed words of a terrorist organization, or someone who cracked under stress and went postal. We need to be taking notes from the Brits, from the French, from the Spanish, anybody else who has a solution in place- because we sure as hell don't. And if we do- you could have fooled me. So while we hem and haw about what to do, I've got a few ideas of my own to try.
First wild idea: instead of screaming at each other about how we need more or less gun control in order to stop mass shootings, we fucking TRY SOMETHING for a while and see if it works? If not, we go the other direction! And if THAT doesn't work, then we stop screaming about gun control entirely! Personally, I'd be happy simply banning the guns that are expressly built to kill people. Leave the hunting rifles for those who go stalking deer on weekends, let 'em have their fun. Pistols are fine for home defense and law enforcement; whatever. Assault rifles? High-power snipers? Gone. No more.
You just want to take our guns away! We have a constitutional right to-
Shut the hell up. You planning on raising a militia against a corrupt leadership anytime soon? No? Then your right to bear arms can be fulfilled just fine with any weapon that isn't designed to kill eighty people a minute. You don't need a submachine gun to scare off a burglar- a regular old handgun and a couple warning shots will be enough. Most of those idiots don't usually come around unless they're sure the house is empty, anyway. Armed robbery on the street? Handgun or knife. Better yet: take some judo classes, and try to stay away from any rough neighborhoods if at all possible. Minimize your chances of getting pulled into an altercation like that.
Here's another idea, I quite like this one...
Let's STOP covering mass shootings in the news.
But Consoro, these are terrible things and we need to raise awareness about-
-No. Shut up. We know there's a problem. Awareness has been raised, mission accomplished- now it's time to do something about it. And don't even start getting into the gun control debate again: we've heard the case from both sides, and they both need to stop being stubborn jackasses and reach a compromise already. How long are you going to argue, trying to shout the other guy down from the rafters? Twenty nine more people are fucking dead!

All these news outlets, they dig into The Who and The Why- and don't get me wrong, these are good questions to ask- but they also send the message that all you have to do to get famous is to kill fucking everybody you can before the police show up, and then commit suicide by cop so everyone will want to know why you did it. Their story gets spread publicly, more maniacs who feel slighted by the world see this as a means of taking their revenge, and then we get what we have now: a huge goddamned mess of a country where you aren't safe at school, at church, at a concert, as a face in the crowd of a protest- because someone, somewhere, wants to shoot you in the face. They don't even have to know who you are- it's probably easier if they don't, anyway- they want you dead because you're there.
And don't you even start about "good guys with guns", because I'd like you to show me one instance where a second shooter showed up to stop the first, that wasn't being paid to put their life on the line, and who didn't wind up shot themselves when the police mistook them for the shooter. Just one. Can't think of any? That's cause it never happened. If the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, then clearly there aren't so many of the good guys as you'd like us to think.
Got another idea, I think this one will really turn some heads:
Shove your damn 'thoughts and prayers' up your ass.
"Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of this terrible tragedy" is quite possibly the most PR-friendly way to say "Yeah, a bad thing happened and we're sorry- but not so sorry that we're going to do anything about it". And you know what? I'm so, so sick of it, repeated ad nauseum, after every single mass shooting. "Thoughts and prayers", they say, before hurrying off camera. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families". It's a platitude, is what it is, a sanctimonious, over-stated cliche that makes me nauseous and angry every time I hear it. You know what I think about your 'thoughts and prayers'? To paraphrase a movie I'm rather fond of, "You can think and pray in one hand, and crap in the other, and see which one fills up first."
Or, since we're all religious-types here, let me remind you of James 2:14-17.

14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Thoughts and prayers do nothing, unless you do something. I don't want to hear how sorry the governor is that something happened in their state, how sorry that corporation is that it happened in one of its stores- I want to see it. Do something. Don't just vomit sweet sympathetic nothings into a mic. For God's sakes, do something! Draft some anti-violence legislation! Start a fundraiser to get the victims and their families counseling, they've been through a traumatic event! Donate blood, food, whatever you think might help- but don't just sit there farting about your thoughts and prayers if you don't intend to act on them. Anybody can say that they feel bad that something bad happened! I feel bad that it happened; you know what I'm doing about it? Pissing and moaning into the empty vacuum of the internet, hoping that someone with some power, anyone, will pluck my message-in-a-bottle out of the digital sea. I'm doing this because I hope that whoever they are, they read this, feel my impotent rage, agree that things are broken, and work toward setting right what's gone horribly wrong. I can't do much from behind my keyboard- I don't have the money, or the influence, or the connections- but I can do this much. I can put my voice out there, a voice of dissent against the violence. Because chances are, this post won't make a change. But better to put it out, and have it go unnoticed, than to stay silent, and guarantee that it will never reach the people it needs to: people who can do what I can't. Which is to say, anything.
One last idea, and I'm sure you'll agree with me on this...
This has to stop. I don't care how it happens. It has to stop. For the love of all that is good and holy in the world- I say it again: don't just sit there- DO SOMETHING.

Break the cycle. I don't care how.

Post the Fourteenth: Where's The Love?

I miss arcades.
This seems like a strange statement to open a rant on, but it's true- the penetrating darkness of the room cut only by the glow off of dozens of CRT's, the cacophony of those dozens of game machines all playing their demos in discord with each other, the feel of a light-gun and the weight of the cable that tied it to the machine- and, especially, the flimsy feeling of the buttons on a fighting game cabinet, and the looseness of the beaten-up control stick. I played a lot of Tekken- my brother and I both did, and I considered him something of a rival- and getting to play it on an actual honest-to-God arcade cabinet was a special treat. Sure, we had it on Playstation- but the two experiences were nothing alike. The controller was different, the feel of the game was different, and if you played an arcade machine, there was a chance- even in the dying throes of the arcade age- that someone you didn't know could simply walk up to you while you were playing, and plunk two more tokens into the machine for the opportunity to pit their skills against yours. Sometimes they were better. Sometimes you were. Either way, neither competitor would talk trash to their opponent while the match was going on.
One, because that was poor sportsmanship and you just don't do that. Two, because the staff or mall security could 'encourage' them to leave if things escalated. But three- and I think this is most important: because this setup placed you in prime position to beat the hell out of your opponent if they dared say anything untoward about your mother, raised questions about your sexuality, or slung racial slurs in your direction. We treated each other with respect.
We don't get that anymore, in the age of online-only multiplayer. There's a reason I lament the loss of split-screen gaming; there's nothing quite like sitting on the same couch as your buddy, not only for the bonding experience but also for placing you in range for physical retribution if they pull some janky shit to cheat you out of an honorable win. Anybody from anywhere can scream anything into your ear and there's not a single thing you can do about it because they're miles (or even a complete hemisphere) away from you. Now, sciencey types have called this the "Online Disinhibition Effect", but if truth be told, I like the name that Penny Arcade coined for this kind of unchecked asshattery a whole lot better.

It's the GIFT that keeps on giving.

As charming as the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is, I'm not here to talk videogames. I hinted at it above, but the true purpose of this rant is to take you all to task for the lack of humanity that I'm seeing out of pretty much everyone these days. Quite sadly, GIFT does not apply just to poor sports on Xbox Live.
I try to stay out of politics, partly because I feel that there's enough screaming about that from both sides of the line, partly because both sides disgust me equally. Conservatives scream about commie libtard snowflakes who are too lazy to get jobs and are sucking the taxpayers dry by leeching off of welfare and letting illegal immigrants get away with everything, Obama was a terrorist and Hillary was a criminal, liberalism is a mental disorder and all democrats are completely shit-flinging insane, Trump is a superhero who is going to fix every last thing wrong with modern America- oh, and anybody who gets an abortion or declares themselves homosexual Is Going To Burn In Hell. Then they go to church and sing about how that Jesus guy really knew what he was doing by taking care of the poor and the helpless, and preaching tolerance for all, even those you don't agree with.
Liberals, on the other hand, are content to grumble quietly to each other about how America is now run by a Cheeto with a toupee, our president is the worst president in history and he's going to start World War 3 and blow the country all to hell, and anybody who isn't in support of impeaching the racist sexist president must be a white supremacist neo-nazi sociopath. They're backed up by the social justice crowd, which champions causes I can get behind at the surface level- they're leading the charge against racism and sexism, sticking up for gay rights and standing in defense of the trans community, pushing for a free internet and against rampant student debt. Where I take a step back and wonder what the hell they're thinking however, is in regards to how in their eyes everybody is equal and deserves respect... except if you happen to be a cisgender white heterosexual male. In which case: fuck you, check your privilege, you have no right to even open your mouth in defense of someone less fortunate, because you have no idea how good you've had it all your life. Go crawl back into your scum-hole and don't come out until either you have dyed your hair bright green, shaved half your head, and put on a single earring, or you're wearing a dress and ready to declare yourself a pretty pretty princess. And take that hula girl off your car dashboard, that's cultural misappropriation! Aren't you ashamed of yourself? You utter bastard.
(So much for equality.)
Now of course, all that said, this is the vocal minority of both sides. It's just alarming to me how many people make up said minority, and how vocal they are, and how giddy they seem to be at the idea of burning the other party at the stake for their sins (actual or imagined). Everybody on both sides of the equation has become a cartoon caricature in the other's eyes, even if they're on the same side of the equation: if you're slightly left of Right, you are straightjacket-and-padded-room crazy and should be kept away from voting booths, and if you are slightly right of Left, then you probably think Hitler running the country sounds pretty swell.
I've come to fear the word 'protests'. I'm not against them or anything- rather the opposite. I feel that peaceful protest is inherently a good thing. It's just.... whenever they come up in the news, it's because they've stopped being peaceful. Maybe rioting broke out. Maybe someone decided to shoot into the crowd and caused a panic. Maybe someone decided to drive a frickin' car into a group of protesters because they didn't agree with their ideology. News stories about protests never end well anymore, because instead of holding discourse to try and meet people in the middle and see from their point of view, we as a society have decided that the best and most proper action to an opposing viewpoint is to shut it down as noisily and dramatically as possible. We're so afraid of being challenged on our stances that we simply refuse to let it happen, whether violently or passively. People advertise on Twitter bios and Facebook profiles that they'll only follow/friend fellow Trump supporters, and anybody who doesn't show support by throwing a tantrum at the Left is instantly blocked- regardless of what they had to say or how nice they were about saying it. Meanwhile, the Left sits at their computers, pitchforks in hand, banging their torches against their computer desks, calling for Trump's impeachment (much like, I must remind them, the Right did for years after Obama was sworn in) and hunting down excuses to have the man thrown out of office (ditto).
Let's get away from political parties for a moment and return to GIFT. I posited to somebody recently that there's a line from Batman Returns that could also be applicable to the Internet at large: I am the light of this city, and I am its mean, twisted soul. The World Wide Web is an anarchic stew of free expression; with very few laws to regulate it, anybody from anywhere can say anything that they want with little chance of consequence. I can think of no greater example of the first amendment... and no more cringe-inducing, either. People flock to their Facebooks and Tumblrs and Twitters, heartily liking and reblogging the people they agree with. As for those they don't? They either block, scream at, or scream at and then block anyone they disagree with, gradually building themselves an echo chamber where they will never ever be challenged by anybody who doesn't share their opinions ever. Fuck discourse, the only way to really handle a sensitive topic is to set the person talking about it on fire, in a public forum. Amirite?
It feels like the echo chamber problem has been a problem for a lot longer than the internet, but boy oh boy did the internet make it worse. Now that the world runs on social media, shutting out any opinion that isn't your own can be done with the push of a button, thereby protecting you from all sorts of harmful scandalous opinions such as I agree with this celebrity's statement and you know, I think that popular movie is only okay. Don't get me wrong, I believe that there's a time and place for blocking off those around me- assholes who just want to piss off the world, people who use religion to justify their bigotry and prejudices, political zealots with a large mouth and a small memory, and scum-suckers who have squandered their chance to prove they're a decent human being. I do not, however, believe in using the means available to me to censor someone just because they have a difference of opinion.

Nobody wants to listen to anybody anymore, and it's really pissing me off. If your worldview is so fragile that being presented with an opposing viewpoint is enough to make you want to belittle and degrade the person you're speaking to, maybe it should be shattered. I've had it with you people, and how blindly you accept everything that's going on- as a society, we have normalized mass murder, tribalism, and hatred for our fellow man. These things are okay now, because That's Just The Way Things Are.
Am I the only one that terrifies? Because it's goddamned terrifying.
Tearing each other apart because They're With The Other Guys is not okay. That we have some maniac gunning down a crowd of innocent people every other day now is not okay. What the fuck is wrong with you, America? Put down your smartphones for twelve misbegotten seconds and really look at the world around you. Did we learn nothing from the Civil War? Abraham Lincoln, 1858, "A house divided against itself cannot stand"?
And here we are, a hundred and fifty nine years later, repeating that same mistake. Not with slaves, but with opinions. Not from inside bunkers and trenches, but from behind our keyboards where nobody knows who we are.
Wake up, guys.
We're better than this.
The Way Things Are doesn't have to be this way. Whatever happened to that bright, shining future we had as children? We were going to be astronauts and soar through space. We were going to be presidents and run the country. We were going to be paleontologists, and dig up dinosaurs. We were gonna be beautiful ballerinas, or mega-spies with lots of cool gadgets, or famous movie stars who lived in a huge mansion with a butler and everything. We weren't going to take any guff from jerks, and we never had to worry about a bad guy with a gun randomly popping in to kill fourteen of us at once. Why should we? Back then, that was unthinkable.
It should still be unthinkable now.
Maybe we never reached space. Maybe we never got that call back from Spielberg. Maybe we never got to perform Swan Lake on stage. And even if we did, we still got sidetracked, pushed down, walked on, and we wound up abandoning The Way Things Should Be and put it aside for The Way Things Are.
Maybe, just maybe, it only fell by the roadside. Maybe with some care and patience, The Way Things Should Be can still become The Way Things Are. That is, of course, if it's not too late.

Post the Thirteenth: 'Tis the Season for Complaining

A while back, I was considering turning Consoro’s Rants into a full-fledged book called The Tao of Not Giving A Sh*t, with some equally cheeky subtitle like Meditations of a Slacker or the like. There, I would have enshrined my entire philosophy on life, taking society to task for all of its ass-headedness in between anecdotes about my cat and my misadventures in janitorial and how magical girls help me stave off crippling depression.

Ironically, while I was failing to give a shit and being a total and complete slacker, someone else wrote my book better than I could.

Well done Mark you clever jerk

However, there are a couple rants I wrote for the book that never went live here on the site because… well, they were going to be in the book. So, mildly updated, and submitted for your approval, here's my take on the holidays.
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Overcommercialism is kind of disgusting. Understatement of the year, sure, okay. But I've always had an issue with it. I realize some level of capitalism is required for the gears of society to turn, but at this point every company involved has spent so long trying to one-up each other that they've taken to cartoonish extremes to try and get you to spend your money. I always know when Halloween is coming up because sometime around October, everybody starts playing Christmas music and decking out their stores in red and green.

Don’t you laugh and shake your head. You know I’m right.

We've lost what our holidays are about, among all the money-grubbing. Valentine's Day is a pretty egregious example, so let's start there: According to ring peddlers, you are an unfeeling bastard if you don't empty out your bank account to buy your girlfriend a shiny rock. "This Valentine's, show her you care. Give her the gift of Generic Jewelers."

Oh. And you have to shower her with expensive chocolates and fresh roses, too. And take her out to a fancy French restaurant where the prices aren't listed on the menu because if they were your wallet would have a seizure. Nothing says “I love you” like crippling debt, amirite?

Now, I'm very much single, but if I weren't I would find a cheaper (but no less meaningful) way to flex my romantic muscles. Take her out to a chick flick. Go for a sunset stroll on the boardwalk. Have dinner at a nice place- just fancy enough to have class, but without breaking the bank. Roses are all well and good, but they inevitably wilt. Chocolates can be shared, which gives them a bit more merit. Memories, though, are best- they last forever.

Next up is Easter, which started as a Pagan fertility festival and then got hijacked by Christianity as the official celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Can someone please, please point out to me where in the Bible Jesus rose from the grave and then went to hunt down pastel-colored eggs and eat chocolate bunnies with his disciples?

Didn't happen.

There's a bit of a drought of holidays there for the next couple of months, with the exception of the Fourth of July- which is spent blowing things up in remembrance of that time we declared we were gonna blow things up. Still, boomies aren't very safe to sell in a supermarket, and so the worst retailers can do is badger us to buy beer and meat for our July 4th barbeque, after which we'll proceed to watch things explode like a Michael Bay film where he gave up trying to justify the special effects around the 'plot'. But then we swing back into things with Halloween, sometime around August (at least, according to retailers).

Seems the costume shops expect any girls over the age of 10 to dress up as a slutty nurse, slutty vampire, slutty witch, slutty maid, or a slutty nursevampirewitchmaid. Guys don't get much better costume choices- their choices are Dr. Lovebush (OBGYN), a keg of beer (complete with tap), or a giant condom (no comment). Sure, there are more serious 'scary' costumes, but coordinating them from what you can find at Spirit Halloween or the costume aisle at Wal-Mart- and still having them look good- is a bloody nightmare (lettuce, tomato, hold the pun). Then there's the mass of Halloween decorations that shops put out every year, many of which I suspect are recycled because not enough people bought them the year prior. Paper skeletons, plastic pumpkins, witch decals for the glass on the door and styrofoam tombstones for the front porch, none of which are truly spooky enough to strike that chord of tension that makes the night so vibrant. And heaven forbid we forget the gratuitous amounts of candy- after all, little ones will be coming around, and you're not about to disappoint them by having nothing, are you? Worse yet, the older crowd might follow up on the promise of "trick".

Thanksgiving is the only holiday I can think of where tradition hasn't been entirely cheapened by money- it started with a feast to bring people (pilgrims and native Americans) together in gratitude, and is still, somehow, a feast to bring people (your family and those in-laws you can't stand) together. The gratitude part is more or less still there, depending on family traditions. We always went, one at a time, each naming off something we were grateful for. Thanksgiving I have no problem with.

It's what comes next that's the issue: Black Friday. The retailer's holiday.

If there is a more disgusting display of hypercommercialism, please refrain from showing it to me. People have been trampled, beaten, and killed in what can only be described as a riot that breaks out in every Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Toys-R-Us in the nation once every November 26th. When the doors open, that's it- all civility goes straight out the window and damn near everybody becomes a shark in a feeding frenzy. All-day sales, but you can only be in one place at a time! And every second you spend in one place, someone is ogling a display full of Christmas Present X at another- a present you have to race over and grab before they're all gone.

Black Friday shopping is a hell of an experience, objectively speaking. I went one year, not because there were any sales I wanted to jump on, but because my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I wanted to see the chaos for myself. So I tagged along with my brother and stood in line at 3 in the morning outside a Best Buy, waiting for the doors to open, observing the people around me while I shivered against the wall (I couldn't move from the spot to warm up, lest I lose my place in line). Some genius had the bright idea to capitalize on the wait, and had driven up with a portable water heater, packets of cocoa, and disposable styrofoam cups, and they were selling hot drinks to the people in line. When it was finally time to go inside, the path the Best Buy workers had laid out was one-way-only for two reasons- first, it was narrow so that it could wind around the entire store in a serpentine fashion and prevent people from mobbing any displays (more than they already would), and second, I couldn't have moved backwards if I wanted to, with so many people trying to pick up everything on their Christmas Shopping List! We eventually found relief in the home appliance department, where we ducked out of the chaos. I leaned against a dryer and watched the throngs of people, and came to the disturbing conclusion that, even at the poor blue-shirts' attempts to organize the chaos with a clear and winding path, Black Friday sales still reminded me of a horde of pissed-off ants attacking the bratty kid who knocked over the hill. And, arguably, both are thinking the same thing (albeit for very different reasons):

"YOUR ASS IS MINE."

That was about 9 years ago. NOWADAYS, retailers aren't even waiting for the clock to strike 12. Workers are required to cut time with their families short so that they can set up for Black Thursday sales, which is essentially a giant middle finger to anybody working at those particular businesses. I haven't shopped Black Friday since, but I can only imagine that the same insane swarm mentality I saw that day now extends to the last few hours of Thanksgiving Day. The only difference is, employees are forced to put up with shittier greed-blinded human beings even longer than they had to previously.

Which, naturally, leads to the last stop on our tour of the end-of-year holiday season: Christmas. What used to be the pagan festival of Yule was, again, absorbed by Christianity and made into the celebration of Jesus' birth. That's all fine and well- but we don't even celebrate that right! While I'm cool with the idea that Christmas should be spent with friends and family, exchanging gifts in remembrance of that night in Bethlehem, retailers have propagated the idea that you NEED to find the right present for those closest to you, even if it puts you in months of debt.

I appreciate How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Both versions, actually- it's impossible to beat Boris Karloff reading a children's book aloud, especially when that book is one of Dr. Seuss' most treasured classics. However, while I cringe at the live-action version and how much it deviated from the original (and a couple of really bad jokes that I know had to be in the script, as Mr. Carrey is usually funnier), it does a very good job of pointing out what Christmas has turned into, and asking in a voice I could only dream of replicating here on my soapbox:

"REALLY, PEOPLE?"

This, I think, is actually its selling point. It conveys well the hectic pre-Christmas season, the stressed-out 'must get everything before it's too late' mindset, and drops into the middle of it all a little girl who looks around and asks, "But... why?" She redeems the irredeemable Grinch, charms our hearts with her child's sense of curiosity and idealism, and at the end of the movie, when the entire town is pissed at the two of them for tearing apart everything they know, she helps them realize that all the fancy shiny distractions that have become part of the holiday are just that- distractions. We aren't celebrating togetherness with friends or family anymore, we’re celebrating an excuse to blow a whole lot of money we may or may not have in a feeble attempt to buy somebody else’s love.

But... why?

I don't care about where the origins of our holidays lie, but rather that some money-grubbing assholes have dictated how we have to spend them. It doesn't have to be about the money- it shouldn't, anyway.

I like passing out chocolate to little Darth Vaders and Princess Elsas and Ninja Turtles, just as I liked getting chocolate from strangers when I was their age. It's about getting to be something more exciting for the evening, even if you're merely wearing a sheet over your head, and that tiny thrill of danger that comes with walking block after block through unknown neighborhoods, expanding the boundaries of your world, and- even if you're too old to go trick-or-treating- you can still celebrate fear by taking a walk through a graveyard in the dead of night looking for ghosts, or popping in a monster movie, the kind that makes you tense without having to resort to spreading gore everywhere. Those are the best kind.

I like sitting around the table, reflecting on those things I usually take for granted, and gorging myself on tryptophan-laced bird flesh, dinner rolls, pumpkin pie with whipped cream. It's about sitting down and spending time among other people, extended family, maybe friends, and sharing a hell of a lot of food. It's about breaking out of the digital hermitage we've inflicted upon ourselves, where we've put more and more distance between ourselves even if we're sitting in the same room. It's about having something to be thankful for- from a Hollywood idol toasting their success, to the homeless cherishing that there's a roof over their heads at all, if only for the night.

I like being sneaky and getting my family things they wanted but didn't know they'd be getting, things they might have mentioned offhand but hadn't seriously considered. I like sitting in front of the fireplace, sipping hot cocoa and watching movies with everyone until Mom passes out in front of the TV. I like diving under the tree to get at the presents closest to the wall, slowly un-taping and neatly unfolding the wrapping paper from around a mystery gift as my brother- half amused, half exasperated- tells me to just tear it off, it's all getting thrown away anyway so there's no point in being tidy about it. It's about spending time with the ones you love, being generous, being humble, being grateful even if you didn't get what you wanted off of your list, letting your mother, your cousin, your lover, know that you care about them, and want to see them happy. It's about peace on Earth and goodwill to men- if only for a single day, the world stops and all of the asshattery, the cruelty, simply goes away for a few hours.

It doesn't have to be about the money.

Post the Twelfth: Celebrity death is tragic, not trendy.

Apparently righteous indignation is something that comes in shorter bursts these days. I realized a lot of my frustrations I've been venting on Twitter, in streams of tweets, and I think it's past time I brought some of those over here where they belong: the rantspace where I scream and beg for common sense. So allow me to expound on my most recent tweetburst by knocking some heads in regards to celebrities again.

So Prince died recently. The artist, I mean. He was famous enough that even I, who tend to occupy a very cozy space underneath a rock where the world can't piss me off, knew who he was: "that dude who did Purple Rain, right? I should listen to that someday". Standing in an FYE, listening to my brother making small talk with a cashier, I learned that all of the Prince albums in the store had sold out post-mortem. Of course they did, was my first thought. And then I felt bad for thinking it. And then I felt frustrated again because I felt bad about feeling cynical about people cashing in on what's currently trendy: mourning the loss of a star.
Because that's what that is. It's folks hearing about the loss of someone famous, jumping on the pity bandwagon, and remembering him for a month or two because that's where the party's at. And then, at the end of that second month? Onto the next shiny object. I got frustrated because I'd seen it before.
This is a man who, for the most part, we (or at least I) have heard nothing of in the past decade, who I have only ever heard mocked in regards to the phase in which he was "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince", whose music failed to reach me in any capacity (or at least in any capacity where I know that he, specifically, was the one singing it), and who managed to straddle a line between just obscure enough to ignore and just famous enough to be a pop culture icon. I only ever heard about him when he was being poked fun at on Family Guy or Robot Chicken or whoever else was using him for a cheap gag that day. Checking his Wikipedia page, I had no idea he was still producing music past the 1990's until I saw his discography at the bottom listing him as having put stuff out in 2015. In short, he was relevant once, but not anymore, and yet after he died the internet exploded with the tears of a million fans.
I'd seen it before with Michael Jackson. He was universally made fun of for being a pedophile and "the only black man to ever become a white woman", but the day he died, billions of crocodile tears were shed. Suddenly all of the things ever said at his expense went silent, a game or three was released bearing his name, and everybody waved a fond farewell to him with the DVD of his final concert, now available for the limited-time price of some number I can't be assed to remember.
You hypocrites. You don't get to say one day that they're an embarrassment to the human race and then turn around and say that their death is a tragic loss of talent. Pick an opinion and stick with it.
Now clearly, I don't mean to say that we're not allowed to mourn the death of someone. Michael Jackson's passing kind of hurt, because I was introduced to his greatest hits in middle school by a teacher of mine, and came to appreciate his music shortly before said teacher died. It became a sort of emotional link for me- this guy made catchy tunes that also reminded me of someone I lost. But as discussed here, I don't believe in celebrity worship. To see everybody bawling about Prince as if they were personally injured by his passing, makes me wonder how many of them actually are affected in that same way.
God knows that to someone out there, Prince's music was a light that led them out of the darkness of suicide, a safe place where they could escape from bullying, a fond memory of a shared kiss with one's first love, or a thing they could turn up to drown out fighting parents. That's fine- That's a positive thing! But me? I won't pretend that this famous guy who had zero influence on my formative years, whom I had never met, and whom I was given no reason to care about, left me anything but completely and totally unfazed. I feel that it is a far greater disservice to his memory to play along with all of the grief for a week or two and then toss it out the door in favor of the next SCANDALOUS thing to happen in Hollywood (or the musical equivalent thereof), than it is to admit that while it sucks, I simply don't care.
To his family and his true fans: in your time of mourning, I offer my actual condolences. I'm sure he was a great man, and a talented artist.
To everyone else out there, the ones who crawled out of the woodwork to buy out FYE's stock of Prince albums, answer me this: If you were really a fan, where the hell were you all this time? If you actually gave a damn about his work, you might have gone out and grabbed those sooner. But you didn't, and you don't. You're just another parasite in the horde, riding the bandwagon because it's 'in' to feel sad about him. Move the hell along, nobody needs your kind of sympathy.

Post the Eleventh: Gun violence. It's your fault, America.

I don't particularly like being topical. Months after something is posted, it's no longer a part of the public consciousness, which means that it doesn't have any lasting value.
However, I think that in this case, I'll use a few current examples. Because really, enough is enough.

A movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Sandy Hook Elementary School. And more recently, Lone Star College in Texas. All of these places were hit by some gun-toting lunatic who thought it would be a good idea to wipe the floor with unarmed innocents. I don't find it alarming that these things are happening as much as I find it alarming that these things are happening with increasing frequency. Civilians like myself want answers. Lawmakers want to make it harder to get guns, as if that'll do anything to stop further shootings from happening. We don't need more gun control. We don't need less, either. Changing gun laws has done piddly-squat so far to curb gun violence, because the recent shootings aren't a cause, they're a symptom.
America was founded on violence. We are a country, literally forged in blood, and we glorify strength and loathe weakness. For decades, we have honored an unspoken "MAN UP, YOU PUSSY!" mentality, and we try and shoulder all of our problems ourselves because we've bullshitted ourselves into believing that the only reasonable response to adversity is to face it with the unwavering strength of a modern-day Hercules. The problem is thus: We can't do that. We can't. We just don't possess that kind of mental fortitude. And where does that leave us?
People are cracking under the weight of their problems, and they're going crazy and deciding that making everybody dead is a good idea. "MAN UP!" is getting people killed, but instead of taking a moment to rethink our philosophy, we're all too quick to jump to quick fixes. We've convinced ourselves that it's our laws, not our thinking, that are the problem at hand- but again, changing the law has done nothing, and I mean nothing, to stop gun violence. I'm seeing two to three week gaps between reports of mass shootings- that's insane. I was in middle school when the Columbine High School Massacre hit the news. Now, things like Columbine are happening on a near-monthly basis. That's a terrifying trend.
Now, personally, I'm a touch hypocritical in my beliefs. I have issues asking for help, and I'm not a very sociable person, but I firmly believe that what needs to happen is that everybody stops trying to be Superman. We can't carry the weight of the world on our shoulders alone, nor should we try. We hungrily devour rags-to-riches stories, where a lone man crawls out of the gutter they're in, makes a stand, and claws their way to the top with nothing but their own blood, sweat, and tears- that's the American Dream, and it's amazing to see it realized. However, we need to stop thinking that we need to achieve our dreams alone. We don't. And we need to stop thinking that others' problems aren't our own. They are. These two simple factors are what I think are the key to ending needless violence: When we ignore the problems of others in favor of ourselves, their problems become ours. Swiftly, unexpectedly, and often violently. We need to get people the help they need before they reach that critical breaking point. I'm not saying, "Psychological evaluations for everyone!", because there aren't nearly enough shrinks to go around. I am, however, saying that some little preventative maintenance is in order. We need to keep an eye on others. Ask them if they're all right. Stop ignoring warning signs. OOC is serious business. America, we need to take a look around outside of our bubble. We need to make sure everybody around us is all right before we worry about ourselves.
Nobody else needs to die.

Post the Tenth: Let's talk religion.

Okay, this is one of those topics I said I'd never cover, but here it is. Confronted by a survey by one of my teachers, I was asked my beliefs in God. Do I? Don't I? How much, or how little? Here's the extended version of my answer.

Personally, I believe in God. I believe there's some sort of intelligent force behind the creation of the universe for the following (technically incorrectly labeled but still amusing) reason:

Oversimplified... but the point remains.

Yeah... no. I don't buy that the universe randomly, perfectly exploded into being. The chances of that happening- or at the very least happening in such a way as to produce us- are (pardon the pun) completely astronomical.
But here begins the heresy: I also recognize that the Bible is flawed. Things get lost in translation from the original text (because- and let's face it- ancient Hebrew to modern English is impossible to pull off without violating the intended meanings and implications of every word and phrase). Politics happened, leading to re-translations. Ideals changed with the centuries, which led to re-re-translations. And that's not even getting into the other such problems plaguing the self-contradicting mess we have today. The point to all of this is: you're not reading God's Word. You're reading the literary equivalent of God's Word as filtered by a game of Broken Telephone.
But of course, that's not the end of our religious woes. No, that hardly scratches the surface. People have taken the words written thousands of years ago and mistranslated and mistranslated again as justification to be serious dicks, completely ignoring the core values written in the very same book. Whether it's offhandedly remarking about how gays are disgusting and that God doesn't love them while claiming to practice a religion that teaches tolerance and peace, telling people with a smile that they're going to burn in the eternal fires of Damnation because they're Presbyterian instead of Catholic, or having their child sing a song in front of the entire congregation about how Ain't No Homos Gonna Make It To Heaven... they have all completely missed the point. Christianity preaches tolerance and peace, so beating a man to death simply because he has a boyfriend is in direct violation to your supposed faith. Furthermore, the first of the Ten Commandments- set forth by God when we made it clear we wanted to govern ourselves- is "Thou Shalt Not Kill", which translates into modern English as "don't freaking kill people, dickweed". Next, saying that God doesn't love homosexuals is equally retarded, because God is often referred to as a being of unending love and peace, whose grace is enough for all of mankind. Not, "all mankind, except for you guys over there". If He was offended by their existence, they wouldn't exist. Kinda comes with the whole "all-powerful creator of the universe" thing.

I like this guy's style. He knew what he was talking about.

Ask me about the theory of evolution. I will tell you that it is not an affront to Christianity, does not undermine God in anyway, and, in fact, God used evolution as part of His master plan to help his subjects "go forth and multiply". They can't very well go forth and multiply if they can't adapt and change to survive their environment, now can they?
Yet, people seem up in arms about EVOLUTION, EVOLUTION, claiming that believing in it and believing in God are mutually exclusive, when the two can go hand in hand perfectly without conflicting at all. Big Bang and intelligent design? THOSE are mutually exclusive (unless, of course, we claim that God Himself kicked off the Big Bang, which is an idea I'm willing to accept as valid).
I'm not atheist, but at the same time I don't know that I really align to any of the major branches of the Christian faith. Organized religion, in my mind, isn't a wholly bad thing, but it's not entirely a good thing, either. Like-minded people gather together to talk about and hear about and learn about the God they believe in, which is great. But it presents two problems: First, the opinions of the preacher can become the truths of the congregation. And if the opinion of the preacher is that "God Hates Fags" (looking at you, Westboro Baptist), then the congregation could start to believe that God hates homosexuals, and take hateful action against them.
That's bad.
Second, they're not traveling outside their comfort zone. Debate can be a healthy exercise that nurtures understanding, but as of right now we have denominations pointing fingers at each other screaming "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG" when they practice basically the same beliefs.
And that's stupid.
I'm a truth seeker, always have been, and the truth is that we don't know the truth. We'll never learn the truth until we've clocked out. Now, what I believe that there is someone up there, surrounded by millions of smaller someones. I believe in God... just not the same God everybody else seems to.
I believe that the Bible is a perfectly reasonable set of guidelines, that lost its own way somewhere down the path. If you look hard enough, you see what it was trying to say, as long as you don't take everything there as perfectly literal. Because things do get lost in translation, let's face facts: every version of the Bible, after the first, is an adulterated copy.
I believe that God is a loving and caring being who has a sense of humor. You're probably not going to Hell if you crack a joke in church, doubly so if it has something to do with Him. And since He loves all people, big, small, male, female, gay, straight, it's pretty pathetic to pass judgment on somebody for violating God's law, when He so generously sent his son to make sure we weren't all eternally screwed even after we'd flipped him the middle finger multiple times.
I believe that maybe the worst things that happen to us in our lives- the stupid, inane, unbelievable crap that causes us to lose belief- happens for a reason. A tragedy can bring together two people who wouldn't otherwise have looked at each other before it happened. A Midwestern family moved out into the middle of nowhere Southwest by an abusive husband can leave him and then find someone new, unexpected, who makes them happier than they've ever been. The death of a family member can be the catalyst for conversation and the healing of decades-old scars. Without these terrible events, things never could have gotten better. Despite appearances, I think He is looking out for us. The movie Evan Almighty (much as I dislike it) stated it wonderfully in a scene between Morgan Freeman (playing God) and whoever the heck was playing the main character's wife: God tells her, essentially, that people keep asking for miracles and assistance, but it's easier for them to overcome future trials if He lends them the strength to overcome, instead of simply overcoming it for them. People don't grow when everything is done for them. They have to face challenges. And when they do, they make their own miracles.
Of course, I could be ostracized by saying any of this in public. Even though I'm actually saying "God exists", the moment "but..."leaves my lips is the moment I've gone from saved to damned in the eye of everyone in earshot.

Methinks my kind doth protest too much. Then again, you probably gathered that.

In conclusion, I'm going to Hell no matter what I do, so I'm going to stick to my heresies and see where that takes me.

Post the Ninth: My thoughts on 9/11

This post is going to make any Tea Party readers I have call me a fascist communist socialist terrorist Liberal, any Texan readers I have chase me with deer hunting rifles, and any New Yorkers stare at me with hatred and loathing.
As I explained on that account, though, this wasn't written to make friends. None of my rants were.
They were written to make people think. To poke fun at how messed up society is, while simultaneously slapping the heck out of the reader and ask why they were perpetuating the things that make society messed up.
I'm losing readers from this post. I don't care. It needs to be repeated over and over until someone hears the message.
On with the rant.

So. It's September 11th, the 9-year anniversary of when some maniacs crashed a couple of planes into two of America's tallest towers. Buildings that had once been symbols of capitalistic spirit and free enterprise were reduced to rubble, hundreds of lives were lost. We responded with war.
A war I have never supported, will not support, and can't bring myself to support any time in the future.
Our country can't seem to keep its noses clean; we've never known that elusive thing called 'peacetime'. Korea. Vietnam. WW1. WW2. Desert Storm. Even more that are eluding me at this present moment in time.
I remember an activity in high school, where the teacher was trying to gauge where we stood on certain issues. He had one end of the classroom assigned as 'yes' and the other, 'no'. When we were asked about if we thought we should be in Iraq,  I was the only one standing on the 'no' end.
I couldn't believe it. Out of a class of, what, 30 students? I was the only one who thought the whole affair was ridiculous? Our excuse for going into Iraq had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden. Why weren't we chasing the man who ordered the towers crushed? He was the one who started the so-called War on Terror, why weren't we making him a higher priority? On top of that, why couldn't we seem to stay out of trouble, or keep our noses out of foreign wars?
Regardless of that, I still netted a few very dirty looks from my peers. After all, anybody who didn't support the war on terror must support the terrorists, themselves, right? I think the teacher was the only one who actually got what I was saying.
I'm not a patriot. I lost that when we started into this ridiculous thing.
I remember getting chided by my middle-school teachers for refusing to do the Pledge of Allegiance- That was my way of protesting this thing, this conflict, we didn't belong in. A silent, peaceful protest. No picket signs or yelling, no running rampant through the streets with an AK-47 in one hand and a Molotov cocktail in the other, just simple hardheaded refusal. They finally compromised with me and said that I didn't have to recite or anything, I simply had to stand with the rest of the class while it was going on. I didn't believe from the start of it that we'd found WMD's in Iraq. I couldn't explain it. It felt fake. It felt wrong. And I was prepared to make myself a social outcast for as long as the war was going to last.
We're still there, what the hell.
I want to see the troops home. We've killed enough, we've been killed enough. At this point we're only making a nuisance of ourselves. I may not support this war, but I won't blame our soldiers for fighting in it. I'm standing for my beliefs. They're standing for theirs. Our beliefs may not be the same, but the hell if I'm not going to respect them for putting their lives on the line. They are far braver men and women than I. I know one of them personally. He's a good guy.
I want to see peace. Or some semblance thereof. This whole affair has made me feel as if we've been strung along the entire time. There was so much misinformation from the Bush administration flying around ("WMDs" included) that it's almost as if he wanted to find a reason to start a war. I cannot, will not, support that kind of blood-lusting behavior. Not from a fellow member of the human race, and especially not from the leader of an entire nation.
I remember when people's idea of dealing with the problem was simply to "Nuke them Iraqi's!", to get rid of the lot of 'em. My brother had a friend of Middle-Eastern descent at this time, and was appalled and offended by this mentality. I was too, honestly. I'd met the friend. I doubt he'd be capable of much more than swatting a fly.
I don't believe that where someone is from dictates how they think. I think that their experiences make them who they are. A boy who has lived in New York all of his life isn't going to grow up to become either a mugger or a stockbroker, one or the other. If his family is poor, he may consider becoming a stockbroker to help them recover, or if he was abused, he might become a mugger to take out his frustrations... but those two aren't his only options. Likewise, somebody who grew up in Iraq or Afghanistan isn't necessarily going to grow up to become a terrorist, and it's horribly wrong of us to assume they will. It's a one-dimensional, racist mentality, and it pisses me off.
Nine years ago, we were a swarming beehive of loathing and fury. How DARE they do this to us? And you know what, I was one of them. But I got very tired of it very quickly, took one look around the hive, and saw that no good could come of this.
It promoted racism.
It promoted mass slaughter.
It was not for the good of this country.
It was not for the good of the people.
It never has been.
Hate begets hate, evil begets evil, destruction begets destruction. It has never changed and it never will. There is nothing to be gained by the slaughter of millions. We've royally screwed everything up, and we can't stop sticking our noses where they don't belong. We have never known peace for more than two years at a time, and THAT is why I cannot, WILL not, support this war.
September 11th is a touchy subject for me. I feel sorry for the families who lost members to the terrorist attack, to the war, to the complete and utter SNAFU that has been our country since September of 2001. I feel sorry for the soldiers who have to go out there knowing that one misstep, one moment where they aren't on guard, and they could lose their lives to a bomb or a sniper or whatever else. But dammit, enough is enough. And I'm tired of it. I've been of the opinion, for a few years now, that what's past is past and that we need to let it go. By making it a big thing every year, we're only reopening the wounds of those families, who have lost fathers and sons and mothers and daughters. Yes, we need to remember. But we also need to make it a quiet ceremony, a silent memorial for the lost. It's only then that they can recover, that they can move on and move forward, to better and brighter days.
I think we could all use a few of those.