We've Moved!
21/10/10 18:16 Filed in: Site news
We’ve switched hosts in order to add some features to all our site. I hope that this doesn’t cause too many problems for you! The Url is the same so it shouldn’t be too bad!
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Tila Tequilla Juggalo Attack
25/08/10 17:33 Filed in: Pop Culture
Well, believe it or not I am not one to keep up with pop culture. I do however listen to the Tell Em’ Steve Dave Podcast. This is where I learned that Tila Tequilla was attacked at the gathering of the Juggalos. I must admit I had no idea who Tila Tequilla was but after spending some time on YouTube I was shocked by the response this incident has gotten.
It’s mostly making excuses for why it was okay to throw things not only at the object of mindless rage but also at the bodyguards who were just there doing a job. Then in an attempt to lighten the mood Tom Green steps out onto the stage and does a little dance! Juggalos threw things at him as well! In fact some people even tried to float the idea that it was ok to throw things at Tila because all the acts got the same treatment!
First of all you shouldn’t be throwing things at ANYONE! This is supposed to be about enjoying musical entertainment, not hucking shit at people! I mean MONKEYS throw shit at people, I thought we higher primates were above that sort of thing?
You can’t blame ICP for this either. Don’t sit on your high horse and make fun of people who enjoy performers who wear clown makup if you’re not gonna say the same thing when Kiss comes to town! This is a respect issue plain and simple. The problem is one of perception.
When we all had to pay for music, it forced us into a certain respect for the artist. If you loved the music enough to pay for it, that said something about you and the artist. Now musical content is more or less free. This has left a void in the marketplace that has been filled with people who crave fame at all cost above anything else ,.. even respect.
So now we find ourselves at a concert, we had to pay an assload of money to get in cause musicians gotta eat too. So out of resentment for the high ticket price we decide that the high cost entitles us a to behave like animals? Is that what this is? Well, if that’s the case it’s your own fault!
If you bought a ticket to that show and you were so offended by Tila’s appearance there you should have stayed home or showed up late. Other choices would have included, beer break, toke at the back of the venue, going for a walk, listening to some other music on your ipod, leaving the venue. The point is, hucking shit from the porta potty onto the stage is way, way down the list of possible reactions!
You simply don’t have the right to throw things at people just because you don’t like them.
It’s mostly making excuses for why it was okay to throw things not only at the object of mindless rage but also at the bodyguards who were just there doing a job. Then in an attempt to lighten the mood Tom Green steps out onto the stage and does a little dance! Juggalos threw things at him as well! In fact some people even tried to float the idea that it was ok to throw things at Tila because all the acts got the same treatment!
First of all you shouldn’t be throwing things at ANYONE! This is supposed to be about enjoying musical entertainment, not hucking shit at people! I mean MONKEYS throw shit at people, I thought we higher primates were above that sort of thing?
You can’t blame ICP for this either. Don’t sit on your high horse and make fun of people who enjoy performers who wear clown makup if you’re not gonna say the same thing when Kiss comes to town! This is a respect issue plain and simple. The problem is one of perception.
When we all had to pay for music, it forced us into a certain respect for the artist. If you loved the music enough to pay for it, that said something about you and the artist. Now musical content is more or less free. This has left a void in the marketplace that has been filled with people who crave fame at all cost above anything else ,.. even respect.
So now we find ourselves at a concert, we had to pay an assload of money to get in cause musicians gotta eat too. So out of resentment for the high ticket price we decide that the high cost entitles us a to behave like animals? Is that what this is? Well, if that’s the case it’s your own fault!
If you bought a ticket to that show and you were so offended by Tila’s appearance there you should have stayed home or showed up late. Other choices would have included, beer break, toke at the back of the venue, going for a walk, listening to some other music on your ipod, leaving the venue. The point is, hucking shit from the porta potty onto the stage is way, way down the list of possible reactions!
You simply don’t have the right to throw things at people just because you don’t like them.
Faith Redeemed?
26/05/10 07:10 Filed in: Religion
With all this “Big Brother” stuff going on these days, government ID that transmits your personal information, implantable identification chips injected into your arm etc., I wonder what this world is coming to. I mean I’ll bite your legs off before I let you stick a transmitter under my skin. As a musician I know all too well that if it’s digital it can be easily copied, hacked and used to make life unbearable! What freaks me out is that many religious folks agree with me!
It seems that for the faithful having such an implant is equivalent to taking on the mark of the beast! This is nonsense of course but it is one of the few examples I have found of delusional belief actually doing some good in the world! I don’t think this redeems the idea of religious belief, but I needed a snappy title to get you here so, there you go!
This does however make me wonder how this accidental sanity can be useful in the future. I think what I need is a program where, you type in what it is you want to do, and it finds the scripture that supports you, no matter how incredibly stupid the idea! That would be amazing I think. You could type in “behead the mailman” and It would give you chapter and verse, from any and all religious texts.
I mean that’s probably what Fox News does!
CLICK HERE TO TWEET THIS
It seems that for the faithful having such an implant is equivalent to taking on the mark of the beast! This is nonsense of course but it is one of the few examples I have found of delusional belief actually doing some good in the world! I don’t think this redeems the idea of religious belief, but I needed a snappy title to get you here so, there you go!
This does however make me wonder how this accidental sanity can be useful in the future. I think what I need is a program where, you type in what it is you want to do, and it finds the scripture that supports you, no matter how incredibly stupid the idea! That would be amazing I think. You could type in “behead the mailman” and It would give you chapter and verse, from any and all religious texts.
I mean that’s probably what Fox News does!
CLICK HERE TO TWEET THIS
Why I am going to Jailbreak my ipod touch
I recently bought myself an ipod touch. Great device love it. What I don’t love is the iTunes billing practices. A while back I bought a game for my ipod nano and everything was fine, or so I thought. Fast forward to a few days ago when I wanted to check out some free apps for my shiny new iPod touch! Apparently the game I bought for may Nano didn’t actually go through on my credit card!
No problem, I’ll just go buy one of those iTunes cards and pay for it that way. Nope sorry wrong, fail! No matter what I do it won’t take my money! I have 25 bucks in my iTunes account, I owe $6.77 shouldn’t be a problem and yet it is. So now not only can’t I pay the bill I also can’t get my 25 bucks! It’s such bullshit but it’s totally par for the course with apple these days. They know this is a problem they just want to fuck me and countless others out of their money.
Next thing you know they’ll start coming out with a new operating system every year so that they can make the computer you bought a year ago obsolete. Oh wait a second they’re already doing that.
So Apple, if you won’t let me buy apps fair and square, I’ll just hack my iPod touch and get all my apps for free. Guess what it’s YOUR FAULT! You turned an honest person into a thief with your bullshit. Once I figure out how to do this, I will go ahead and show all my friends how to do it too and we will have parties where we drink beer and jailbreak iPods. Maybe we’ll even buy up all the used ones we can find, jailbreak them and sell them with all the cool apps pre-installed! Sure it’s illegal, but I tried to do things legally and look what it got me! Fucked for 25 bucks! Thank you Steve Jobs!
Bottom line, out of the adversity YOU caused (you meaning Apple) a whole new industry is born. You can buy a used 8GB second gen iPod touch for like 80 bucks. Once it’s jailbroken and all the cool apps installed you can sell it for 120. If someone really needs the money you can pick them up for 60 and flip them for 120. This is Canadian funds I’m talking, but no matter where you are it’s definitely a way to make money!
I haven’t done any of this yet, but I am on the verge for sure. Apple used to stand for “insanely great products” and products that “just work”. Now they stand for making profits by giving you a size 9 poop-shoot!
CLICK HERE TO TWEET THIS
No problem, I’ll just go buy one of those iTunes cards and pay for it that way. Nope sorry wrong, fail! No matter what I do it won’t take my money! I have 25 bucks in my iTunes account, I owe $6.77 shouldn’t be a problem and yet it is. So now not only can’t I pay the bill I also can’t get my 25 bucks! It’s such bullshit but it’s totally par for the course with apple these days. They know this is a problem they just want to fuck me and countless others out of their money.
Next thing you know they’ll start coming out with a new operating system every year so that they can make the computer you bought a year ago obsolete. Oh wait a second they’re already doing that.
So Apple, if you won’t let me buy apps fair and square, I’ll just hack my iPod touch and get all my apps for free. Guess what it’s YOUR FAULT! You turned an honest person into a thief with your bullshit. Once I figure out how to do this, I will go ahead and show all my friends how to do it too and we will have parties where we drink beer and jailbreak iPods. Maybe we’ll even buy up all the used ones we can find, jailbreak them and sell them with all the cool apps pre-installed! Sure it’s illegal, but I tried to do things legally and look what it got me! Fucked for 25 bucks! Thank you Steve Jobs!
Bottom line, out of the adversity YOU caused (you meaning Apple) a whole new industry is born. You can buy a used 8GB second gen iPod touch for like 80 bucks. Once it’s jailbroken and all the cool apps installed you can sell it for 120. If someone really needs the money you can pick them up for 60 and flip them for 120. This is Canadian funds I’m talking, but no matter where you are it’s definitely a way to make money!
I haven’t done any of this yet, but I am on the verge for sure. Apple used to stand for “insanely great products” and products that “just work”. Now they stand for making profits by giving you a size 9 poop-shoot!
CLICK HERE TO TWEET THIS
Battered Believer Syndrome
16/04/10 02:34 Filed in: Religion
Battered wives believe that their husbands love them. Battered wives believe that they deserve the beatings they get. It’s not true, nobody deserves to be physically and psychologically abused. Unfortunately these women still believe it. They also believe that one day things will get better, they just have to stay the course. This time he’ll treat her with respect, this time will be different. It’s an illogical cycle that leads to a loss of self worth that can completely destroy a personality.
Victims of these crimes are reluctant to seek help or call the police. It’s wrong, and deep down they know it but few people bring themselves to put a stop to it. The abuse just escalates until it reaches a tipping point, usually resulting in violence. The only way to stop it, is first to understand the behavior then to break the cycle.
Religion works the same way. Religious faith is a sister syndrome to battered wife syndrome. Religion tells you that you’re nothing, but that jesus loves you anyway. You’re a wretched lowly creature and you don’t deserve god’s love, but he loves you anyway. If you think that this is a lovely sentiment, that’s your first clue, you may be a victim of battered believer syndrome.
It seems more than just probable given all that we know, that we started out worshipping nature. Once we realized that so many things in nature have a logical and predictable pattern, nature became somewhat more understandable. But we still had questions that we could not answer, so we invented god. It’s now several millennia later and we can all see the obvious trend, the longer we as a species live the more we learn and the more like our imagined god we become. So why do so many people still believe that our collective delusion created us?
Well, all promises of an afterlife aside, I think that some who consider a godless universe realize that we humans may be on the top rung of the ladder. That would mean that we are responsible for everything and everyone on this planet, and maybe someday other planets as well. If we’re it, if it’s all on us, haven’t we failed? I mean we’ve got this amazing planet and look what we’ve done with it. Wars, crimes, greed, genocide. Is this human nature? Are we doomed without some celestial parent who will break up all this nonsense at some point? Not only that do we humans deserve this existence that we’ve been born into?
Who really cares? We’ve got these lives. We’ve got this planet. We have the power of our choices. We can choose not to support the catholic church, an organization that allows child rape and protects the rapists. We can choose not to believe in some ancient script written by people who could not even conceive of the world in which we now live. When someone tells you to do something you know is wrong in the name of god or islam or any deity you can choose not to do it! If you really want to feel like you deserve this life you first must be brave enough and dare to live it! You have to choose not to believe in things that can’t be proven, or don’t make any sense!
Some time ago I watched a Christopher Hitchens debate in which the moderator suffered from some sort of birth defect which made walking difficult. This moderator believed that in death god would grant him a perfect new body that would have no such defect. How ironic that the very religious organization to which he belongs is against stem cell research! The very area of medical technology that could allow (maybe not him) people to walk and function in the way that most of us take for granted. If that’s not battered believer syndrome I don’t know what is! This person actually thinks that he’s not good enough to walk without impediment unless god says that he is!
Science empowers people to do things that we’ve never done before, does religion do that? Science tries to find answers that we can all share, no matter what race, where we live or who we are. Religion DOES NOT even attempt to do this and it never will. God will not stop beating you. It doesn’t matter how good you are, how pure your spirit is. God will never stop holding you down, blunting your imagination, making you feel powerless to change the world you live in. It’s time to call the authorities, ask the questions and find out how to take control of your life. Imaginary friends can’t guide you, no matter how many people believe in them!
There is no god. Don’t take my word for it, the information is out there.
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Clinging to the god that divides us
08/04/10 05:03 Filed in: Religion
Victims of repeated rape and abuse often begin to identify with their attackers. Battered women often won’t testify against the men that abuse them. In both instances the victims will often protect the very people that are the cause of all their pain. When someone says they love you it’s a powerful thing. Many of us don’t hear those words enough, a few of us not at all. Tell the preacher that nobody loves you and you know what the reply will always be. Jesus loves you.
For someone who feels like nobody loves them these three words can seem like salvation. However for most people jesus would have to exist in order to love anyone. So even when you present a clear and logical case supporting an atheistic world view, the thought of losing the only person that loves you, proves to be more compelling than logic or reason. A delusion replaces reality.
But what about those of us with an abundance of love in our lives? Why would someone in these circumstances surrender their sanity in order to gain the love of the saviour? I think this stems from our perception of what love really is. Religious indoctrination of children installs the idea that god’s love is love’s most pure and perfect form. If this perfect love doesn’t really exist, does that mean that the love you feel for others and that others feel for you is a fallacy as well? Of course not, but these are the sort of concepts that religious leaders use to raise the stakes. The underlying concept being “god is love” therefore no god equals no love.
Whatever your circumstances the holy book has got a hook to snare you. Starting with these basic concepts and moving on to religious services. You sit in a room with many other people, you sing songs, people smile at you, nobody feels alone. You feel good, maybe even feeling quite euphoric. Then you’re told this feeling is god’s presence, the holy spirit or some other such nonsense. If your concept of love itself would be shaken in a godless universe, it’s not really a stretch that you would be willing to believe that these positive feelings are a result of god’s love. After all you have been conditioned from an early age to believe this lie. “Yes Jesus loves me, the bible tells me so”. Who is going to deny love? I mean god’s love is free right? And he’s not around to do anything objectionable to make you refuse his love. God loved us so much he sent us his only begotten son, to die on the cross. So what if god, jesus and the holy spirit are one and the same entity. Who cares if jesus did not actually die. The bible says he rose from the dead like some sort of zombie. It’s ridiculous! Religious organizations have been able to get people to believe these ridiculous things for centuries. Up until recently It has been the perfect crime! It’s a heist designed to steal your mind!
Enter science and technology. The scientific method, and the system of pier review produces information that is as close to the truth as is possible. No god, triune or otherwise could hold up to this scrutiny. Not only that, the very mindset behind scientific endeavor trains the mind to be resistant to religious dogma.
Religion strikes back! By camping out on what appears to be the moral high ground, the leaders of the faithful can undermine science. Never forget that the only reason they can occupy this moral high ground is that we in society allow it. After all, does it make sense that an organization directly responsible for killing thousands of africans on a daily basis (ie the vatican), is allowed to take the moral high ground over those of us who want to use science to unite the world?
Religion has been around for a very long time and hasn’t produced anything close to an ideal world, so maybe it’s time to stop clinging to gods that keep us from understanding each other and the world that we live in.
Squidoo,...SQUIDONT!
21/03/10 19:14 Filed in: Computers & Tech
A while back I, like many people jumped on the Squidoo bandwagon. For those of you who don’t know what Squidoo is, it’s a web service where you can create single topic single page web sites called “lenses”. You can monetize these sites by signing up for various advertising campaigns etc. If you have 50 of these “lenses” you can become a “giant squid”. Sounds good right? Well not so fast there sporty! You now have to maintain and update those 50 sites, cause if you don’t Squidoo won’t feature them anymore. This means nobody will be able to find them!
They have some pretty lame excuses for refusing to feature your lenses too. From the looks of it some sort of robot occasionally looks at your site and determines things like, is your title appropriate for your content etc. This leaves little room for tongue-in-cheek jesting or sarcasm!
Anyhow once the novelty wore off I stopped checking in on my Squidoo pages. Today I had a look for the first time in ages. 14 of my 17 Squidoo lenses were no longer featured! I couldn’t help thinking, what a waste of time! So I will be transplanting my Squidoo pages back into this blog here. If you’re considering going the Squidoo route, don’t bother just get your own blog instead!
They have some pretty lame excuses for refusing to feature your lenses too. From the looks of it some sort of robot occasionally looks at your site and determines things like, is your title appropriate for your content etc. This leaves little room for tongue-in-cheek jesting or sarcasm!
Anyhow once the novelty wore off I stopped checking in on my Squidoo pages. Today I had a look for the first time in ages. 14 of my 17 Squidoo lenses were no longer featured! I couldn’t help thinking, what a waste of time! So I will be transplanting my Squidoo pages back into this blog here. If you’re considering going the Squidoo route, don’t bother just get your own blog instead!