Things That Don't Matter

I think too much. That’s pretty much what it comes down to. I can never decide on anything without endlessly weighing the pros and the cons. A lot of the time after I do something, all I can think about are the cons. Everything sounds like a great idea before I do it, and a horrible idea afterwords. That’s mostly the reason why all these articles get put up here pretty late at night. I come up with ideas during the day, they sit for a while, gather substance, and then by night I have enough to write about, and I’ll think it’s great. However, the next morning I always wake up and think, “Wow, that was a really stupid idea, I should not have said that.” I do keep my resolve, I have yet to remove an article. It’s part of the reason I hate mornings. Everything sounds like a bad idea in the morning. I’ll come up with something at night, go to bed thinking about it, building it up, and then in the morning I wake up and it all sounds so ridiculous. It’s probably partly due to that I have to go to school in the morning, and that bad feeling spreads to everything else. I can guarantee you that I’ll wake up tomorrow and think that this post was dumb. Whenever I’m working on something or trying to decide something I’ll always go back and forth and back and forth between whether it’s any good or not. It’s like a mental war zone, and I’m always the one and only casualty. It’s pretty damn annoying. On the one hand, it might keep me from making bad decisions, but on the other hand it gets in the way of me just doing something without worrying about it, it takes away any and all spontaneity. See, there I go again! Both sides of the issue. Why oh why can’t I be single minded?

Things I thought when I woke up this morning: This post was too short, this post didn’t say what I wanted it to say, this post wasn’t funny, damn it I forgot to categorize this post (since corrected), and god damn it I should have done that homework!

Ironically, the first friend I ever had was a girl, and looking back, she’s probably one of the top contenders for being the closest friend I’ve ever had, I still think about her pretty often. We were inseparable, that is, until my dad got his job at Reuters and we were separated by a good 315* miles (*Thank you Google maps). We saw each other only a couple times after that. Anyways, I am going somewhere with this, the other day I opened up my email and what I saw there made me go totally blank for a moment. Sitting there, at the top of my inbox, was one of those Facebook friend requests, with her name on it. I’m not quite sure what tearing something open would equate to in email, but that’s what I did. One of the first things I wondered was what made her think of me? The fact that she remembered me and was interested in getting back in touch was extremely uplifting after what had been a rather rotten week at school. The next thing I did was confirm the request and check out her profile, which always sounds weird, but that’s what it’s there for. One of the things that hit me was that really, she’s practically a stranger to me. All I have is vague memories from 10 years ago. Vague memories of her when she was 5 years old. I know I’m a totally different person than when I was 5, maybe a few personality traits stuck with me through the years but other than that, me at age 5 and me at age 16 are practically different people. I started going back through my old memories, trying to bring back everything I could. I can remember her house just as well, if not better, than I can remember my old house. I remember a little of the town, Frederick, but not much. The thing I remember most about it was this lake, Lake Linganore, that had this cement structure, not totally sure what it actually was, running along the edge that I used to walk along. I was really excited about the chance to catch up with her, and maybe start up a regular correspondence, but then the worrying set in. I worried about saying the wrong thing, and mostly I worried about this site, which I make a pretty big deal out of on my profile. I learned from her profile that she doesn’t exactly share my liberal atheist views, which I don’t really care about, but I worried that she might. I’m pretty sure my worries are unfounded, I have both conservative and religious friends who read this stuff and don’t hate me. Anyways, where I’m really going with this article is that it got me thinking about who I would be if I hadn’t moved. Would me and her still be friends? Would we ever have been more than just friends? Would I have ended up with the same interests, the same skills, the same opinions? Would I become essentially the same person I am today just in a different location, or would I be totally different? Would the person I am now like the person I could have become? These are all questions I really can’t answer for certain, and I don’t think anyone ever will know the answers to these types of questions, but it’s fun hypothesizing.

I don’t really know where this one came from, it’s obviously not from personal experience, I just thought of it. It’s a little cliche I guess but I think it’s still entertaining. I hope it’s still entertaining.

The Cheat

He sped down the highway, going way faster than he should. Road signs blurred in the corners of his eyes, but he could see clearer than he ever had. He had to make things right. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard, 4:21, he didn’t have that much time. He thought about what he was going to say. Shit, what the hell was he going to say? No, he knew what he had to say. Was he drunk? He couldn’t remember if he was drunk. That probably meant he was, but oh well, there were more important things at hand. The night behind him was a blur. He couldn’t remember making the decision to do this, only that the decision had been made, and that there was no questioning it now. Someone honked as he passed them on the right and he ignored them. He wasn’t sure how fast he was going, the numbers on his dashboard were blurred. Humph, numbers, he’d spent his whole goddamned life with numbers, and where had it gotten him? Here, and where was here? Nowhere.

Actually, here was Newtown, he caught a glimpse of the sign as he sped past. His exit was coming up, he made a mental note not to miss it. He tried to remember again what he was going to say, it had been clear a moment ago. He needed to say he still loved her, but how? He needed more than just “I love you.” She deserved more than just “I love you.” She deserved more than him. Maybe he should let her go. Like in those movies with wild animals, “If you love them let them go.” She was wild, but he was an animal. For her to stay with him would mean her giving up the possibility of a career, a life of her own, away from him. The thing was, he couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t live without her, the past week had made him see that.

He saw one of those green signs approaching, it might be for his exit. He squinted at it as it grew closer. The white blob slowly cleared to form a… 10. Exit 10, that was it. He pulled off. As he reached the end of the ramp he didn’t bother to stop, he just swerved right. Off to the east he could see the sun beginning to rise, a hint of light glowing above the horizon. He came to an intersection, he had to stop a moment and remember the way. It was a… right. He peeled out onto the next street.

The roads in this town were tight, and he was going far too fast, but there wasn’t anyone else out at this time. There it was, her house. Actually her parents’ house, but they spent most of their time at their vacation home in Florida. He could see her car in the driveway as he pulled in, thank god she hadn’t left yet. There were lights in some of the windows too, she must have been getting ready to leave.

He got out of the car and walked, or rather, stumbled, to the front door. He pushed hard on the doorbell. There was no response. He rang again, he couldn’t even hear any movement inside. He banged on the door.

“I know you’re here” he yelled. “Please open the door!”

A window opened above him, and she stuck her head out.

“Go away,” she said. “I don’t want to see you.”

“I’m so sorry, I love you.”

“Sorry isn’t good enough.”

“I know sorry isn’t good enough, nothing’s good enough for what I did, but it’s all I have.”

“Please go away, don’t make me call the police.”

“You’re not going to call the police.”

“What makes you so sure of that.”

“Because I know you still love me, as I love you.”

“Well there you are mistaken, now go away or I will call the police.”

“Please don’t do that. At least come down here and speak to me face to face.”

“No, I don’t want to be anywhere near you ever again.”

“Please, you have to understand. I was an idiot, a fool, I thought there was something more but there isn’t, there’s only you.”

“An idiot you are, and if I am everything, then you are going to be forever with nothing.”

“I can’t lose you, look at me, look at what a week without you has done to me. I’m a drunken mess. I never should have doubted that what we had was all there is to life, and I will never doubt again. I just can’t go on without you.”

“Well you should have thought of that before you slept with that slut from work.”

“I know that there’s nothing I can ever do that will make up for that, but please, I beg that you forgive me”

“No. Go away now. I have a plane to catch.”

“I could drive you to the airport. Let me drive you to the airport.”

“No, if you’re not gone by the time I’m ready to leave, I’m calling the police.”

He knew that there was nothing he could say or do to change her mind. He felt like sitting down on the steps and sobbing.

“Fine, I’ll go,” his voice wavered. “But know this, I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth if I have to.”

“And I’ll get a restraining order.” She said, and closed the window.

Television is both awesome and annoying, depending on what you’re watching. Most of the topics I touch on here will probably get their own articles dedicated to them at some point, but I have to do this quick, I have homework. Here’s what’s awesome:

NBC: NBC is my favorite network at the moment for one reason, Thursday. Their Thursday lineup has My Name is Earl, Kath and Kim, The Office, and 30 Rock, all excellent sitcoms and well above what passes for quality television these days. The rest of the week I’m not so big on NBC, their reality shows are horrible, (what reality show isn’t?) and their dramas and or action shows are dull, or at least, they’ve never interested me enough to bother watching one. The only other NBC show I watch is Chuck, which was entertaining last season, but I don’t see how much longer they’re going to be able to drag the story out, it got repetitive halfway through last year.

The Daily Show/Colbert Report: I put these two together almost as one show, seeing as I watch them one after the other. I don’t get Comedy Central, but they’re nice enough to put the episodes online the next day, with fewer commercials too! This online full episodes thing is great for me and I hope it continues. The Daily Show often focuses on mocking other news networks rather than the news, especially FOX. FOX News has said some of the most ridiculous stuff I’ve ever seen, the Daily Show has a library of clips from them that could take you a lifetime to watch, although that much exposure to Republican propaganda can’t be good for your health. The Colbert Report moves at a much faster pace than the Daily Show, which I like, and Stephen does a great job of mocking conservatives by pretending to be one. It’s amazing how ridiculous some of the policies sound when he delivers them. Admittedly, he exaggerates a little, but I don’t think he’s that far off the mark.

South Park: This show is just hilarious. I love the way in a lot of their episodes how a plot is derived from a figure of speech taken literally. For instance, a recent episode was about the latest Indiana Jones movie, they asserted that Indiana had been, well, I’ll substitute what they actually said with slaughtered. Then they had the characters deal with the tragedy of seeing their beloved friend Indiana slaughtered like that, as if they had witnessed a real friend of theirs killed.

The Simpsons: The only show that makes the FOX network worth watching. And I don’t think they’ll be around too much longer, all the original writers have gone and episode plots have lost, well, I can’t put my finger on it, they’re just not the same anymore. The show is still decent, but it’s not what it used to be.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog: Dr. Horrible was a web exclusive produced last year during the writers strike. A bunch of writers and actors weren’t doing anything, so they came up with Dr. Horrible. I heard about this as one of those “anything’s possible on the internet” type things which always sound great but end up disappointing. This was not at all disappointing. The plot was great, the acting was professional, and it was a musical, but the songs were good. I watched it the other day and they’re all stuck in my head. I recommend everyone see it, here’s a link: http://www.hulu.com/hd/29272. A side note about Hulu: Hulu is awesome. They have all professionally done stuff, the ads are limited, and the ad volume is actually lower than the rest of the video, which is incredible. That may not sound like a big deal, but some places have the ad volume ridiculously loud.

Here’s what annoys me:

The CW: (Shudder) I don’t know where to begin with this network. Their claim to fame is shows like Gossip Girl and 90210. I tried watching Gossip Girl last night so I might have grounds to criticize it, but I just couldn’t do it. All the characters are so whiny, they complain about unimportant problems like their lives hang in the balance. What dress to wear to the dance could pass for the plot of an entire episode. I hate hearing all the stupid gossip when I’m in school, what on earth made them try to bring it into my home?

Reality TV: ALL reality TV sucks. Reality TV should go die in a hole somewhere. It’s ruining television. First off, reality TV is an oxymoron, the idea of TV is that it’s not real. Shows have writers for a reason, to come up with clever and entertaining plots. Writers are the very base of TV, I would class them as more important than all other groups involved in television production. When you take them out you have nothing. People are stupid, I watch TV to be away from all the stupid people, I don’t want all those stupid people on my TV.

That about covers TV for now, like I said, some of those sections will probably end up with their own articles at some point, especially the annoying ones.

Let me first explain something about my review process. I review things as I come to them, not as they are released. I’m generally too cheap or too lazy to go get new stuff all the time, I read or watch whatever I find when it gets to me. Mirror’s Edge was released over a month ago and just about everyone has complained about it and moved on, but not me, deal with it.

I really really wanted to give Mirror’s Edge a good review. It was the only game released this year that tried something different, and the demo was excellent, but it seems that that was as far as they got with the polishing. Don’t get me wrong, I had fun with the rest of the game, but it had a tendency to annoy the hell out of me at certain points that I just cannot forgive it for. One thing this game sorely misses is a quick save, and maybe that will be in the PC version, but on the PS3 you’re left to respawn wherever the game feels like putting you, it can either be right where you were, or miles back, it tends to put you further back at the more difficult parts. The story is lacking, it might have been better off without it, and the cut scenes look like esurance commercials, they jar you from the game’s otherwise clean appealing graphics. They would have done much better to keep you in the first person the whole time, Half Life style. One of the things I did like about the game was the camera, the motions and flailing limbs at the edges of the screen really put you in the game. A friend of mine sitting next to me pointed out that I was rocking back and forth on the couch as I swung from bar to bar. It was a lot of fun when you knew what you were doing and could string together a bunch of moves, but that would undoubtedly bring you to unfamiliar territory in which you would fumble for another five minutes before again managing to fluidly complete the next section. The combat was also annoying. The game makes a big show of teaching you how to punch and kick, but I hardly ever used them. In almost all cases using disarm is the best option, not only do you take out the enemy in one fell swoop, but you take their gun as well. When enemies are shooting at you, they have unlimited ammo and could fire at you forever, although a moment is all that’s necessary to take you out, but as soon as you pick up the gun you have one clip, and it runs out fast. Your accuracy at long range is non existent, it is very easy to fire at a far off target only to run out of ammo without hitting them once and leave a long empty space between you and your ever firing opponent. I liked it when there where one or two enemies in your path that you could work into your routine, treating them like any other solid obstacle, but the game occasionally presents you with an area with a number of enemies and not a lot of room to maneuver, which is annoying and doesn’t fit with the play style the rest of the game has.The motion sensing is insensitive, so for the most part I went with the button controls, but in the case of rolling, even that barely ever worked. The game wanted you to hit the button as you approached the ground, but not too close, finding this magical sweet spot eluded me for the entirety of the game, it seemed to work when it felt like it. Here’s a clever metaphor I came up with: EA is a student, and Mirror’s Edge is a paper they have handed in to me, the teacher, entitled Someday I’ll Be President. In order to not crush this child’s dreams forever I write good effort, but know that this child will never ever be president (although good effort seems to be about all it takes these days, but that would be admitting that Bush actually put effort into being president, which I doubt he did). The paper, although of good substance, is poorly written and full or grammatical errors.

Although I have mostly complained about this game, I really did enjoy it, and look forward to a hopefully improved sequel. Final score: 75/100.

So I was thinking the other day, (Again with the thinking! It can’t be good for me.) what do I expect to accomplish in my lifetime? Well, it depends really on how you define accomplish, I don’t expect to do anything incredible or legendary. I realized, there are loads of things I hope to do in my life, publish books, have a career of some sort, maybe design video games, fall madly in love and marry, so on and so forth, but there’s probably only one way things will turn out, and it’ll probably end up something like this: I’ll graduate high school in much the same way I started it, with good grades and little effort. I’ll probably be near the top of the class but I don’t expect to be valedictorian or anything, probably not even in the top 10, there are both those smarter and those more motivated above me. I expect to go to college somewhere, RIT is the only serious consideration I’ve had, and spend four years living the movie Animal House. Then I expect I’ll become one of those shiftless “just out of college not sure what I want to do with my life,” people. This will probably be the most fun because I’ll most likely travel. Then some time around the age of 25 I’ll start to think about having a career, and end up with a job somewhere. Then some time around the age of 30 I’ll meet someone and get married. My life will become dull and monotonous and every day when I get home from my thankless job I’ll sit in my car for five minutes pondering my old dreams and wondering where it all went wrong. I’m not sure if my first marriage will last, but a second one, if I have one, won’t be any better. I’ll probably have some kids along the line and I want to say I would be uninterested in them too, but the truth is I don’t see myself doing that. I’ll do my best with the kids, and they may turn out all right or they may not, or maybe some of each. They’ll all grow up and move off, most of them will probably repeat the cycle of which I am coming to the end. I expect to grow old, and die. That is of course, unless disease or accident hasn’t taken me out somewhere along the line here. That sounds really dull and depressing but it probably won’t be as bad as my telling makes it sound. I can continue to try and break free from the rest, and who knows, maybe I will make it out, but until then, this is what I expect. I can’t decide if I’m looking forward to it or not.

Merry Christmas everyone! Or rather, happy holidays! As promised, here is the Christmas story. This one is written in the first person, but keep in mind, it is a story, so it’s fiction… sort of.

Christmas

I still can’t sleep the night before Christmas. Of course, that probably has something to do with my aversion to sleeping at night in general now. On the average night I’m up until two in the morning, or later. Christmas sort of snuck up on me this year. The most into the spirit I got was changing my desktop background to that of a Christmas tree. I do fall asleep eventually, but not to have my head filled with visions of sugar plums, which I never understood, who dreams of sugar plums? Also, what is a sugar plum? Anyways, I dream of her, which if there is some sentient being guiding the universe, must have been some sort of a cruel joke. The one thing I want most but can’t have dangled in front of me before I have to wake up and rejoin the real world.

Waking up and rejoining the real world is made all the more unpleasant by being shaken awake by my younger sisters, who doesn’t seem to understand that it really is physically impossible for me to get out of bed now. I let them bother me a little more, and then when they’ve gone away I wait a minute and get up. It is my policy to wait five minutes after being asked repeatedly to do something before I actually do it, in the hopes that it will discourage people from asking me to do things, but so far it hasn’t. Normally in this situation I would ignore them and sleep until one or two in the afternoon, but it is Christmas, so I get up.

I come downstairs, someone’s turned the Christmas lights on and the dog is excited by the abnormal amount of activity at this time of day. The presents are all placed neatly under the tree and in stockings by the fireplace, but in about a half hour it’ll be a total mess. My parents come down and make us wait while they make coffee, and then take pictures. You know you’re a happy family when your parents annoy the hell out of you with stuff like this. My presents are pretty decent, I get some video games I wanted. Even when I do get a great present I’m not good at putting on a show of being all excited and grateful. My attitude towards everything of late is uninterest, and even if I got something I really wanted I still don’t feel like jumping around or exclaiming how great it is. “Thanks,” in a plain voice is what I feel like saying, but I know that would seem ungrateful, so I do my best at the “Oh wow!”s and “Yes it’s exactly what I wanted”s. When the excitement is over we eat breakfast, and I retreat to my room to try my hand at my new games. My friend and his family come over for dinner in the evening, and it’s now that I get a little more into the spirit. I now have someone to be cynical with me.

Christmas comes to an end at midnight with me still up at the computer, burning my eyes out staring at the screen and setting myself up for numerous stress related diseases in my fingers. But Christmas isn’t over yet. The day after my family and I travel to Buffalo to visit my extended family, my dad’s side. This I think I like more than Christmas day itself. My dad’s side of the family is a little more… energetic. I can pretend that I have one of those classic dysfunctional American families, which are much more inspirational than my own. When a relation of mine, a cousin I think, I can never keep track of those things, drinks an entire bottle of something and the evening ends with them being carried out and loaded into the trunk of an SUV, I can relate the story to others and pretend it’s an every day occurrence in that crazy family of mine. That same evening I discover that my dog is an alcoholic when my grandmother spills a glass of wine and my dog spends the next hour licking the carpet. I wonder if a dog would get all tipsy if you gave it alcohol, I’ll have to try someday. I sometimes worry that I’m a disappointment to my family in that they’re all loud and rambunctious and I’m comparatively quiet and reserved. Maybe there’s some gene that’ll kick in and make me just as noisy and excitable as they are, I sort of hope not actually. After a few days we come home, and there’s the bleak period in which there’s nothing left to look forward to and school is looming in the ever approaching future. Vacation ends, life resumes its normal cadence. Only twelve more months till Christmas.

The 40 minute bus ride to school is normally silent. What do you expect from a bunch of teenagers at 6:30 in the morning? Or rather, any time before midday-afternoon. However, the ride home, although shorter (I’m first on first off) is much louder, and a good deal more entertaining. Being an junior, I sit near the back, not in the back, but near. The last few rows are reserved for a pretty scary bunch, but it actually can turn out to be some of the most interesting conversation you’ll hear. It seems to be an unspoken understanding that ‘fuck’ has to be used at least once in a sentence to be grammatically correct, and heavier usage or a mixing of other swears is encouraged. I don’t really see the point in this, I guess it’s probably got something to do with rebelling against the idea of what is essentially a banned word, but I wouldn’t accredit this group with that much thought. I don’t mind, it’s just a word like any other, big deal, where it gets fun is listening to the conversation in between the expletives. For kids who’s clothing style would identify them with those averse to culture fads and society in general they are a rather gossipy bunch. My ears pricked up one afternoon at the name of girl aforementioned here. I worried for a minute that she was friends with these people, but was relieved when the conversation resulted in no one really knowing her but thinking she was nice, one of them told an anecdote in which they had showed up at her house one time for some reason and been invited in. I wondered if I would be greeted the same. Probably not. Oh well, that’s not what I’m talking about now. The influence of drugs can be picked up easily from some of their stories in such phrases as “I have no idea why I was there.” More often than not the influence of drugs is mentioned directly. One time the entire bus ride home consisted of a discussion on LSD. There are sometimes glimmers of intelligent conversation in the form of a hot political issue in the news being mentioned, but quite often they have the complete wrong idea about it, which annoys me more than anything else. You can swear and be as drug addled as you want, but being ignorant is going too far. They tend to be extremely politically incorrect, if not down right racist, and sometimes it’s hard to distinguish whether or not they’re joking, which scares me. I had been under the impression that this was the 21st century. I often find myself wondering about the parents who produced these horrors. How negligent were they? Or were they negligent at all? Newtown is a pretty affluent place, but that can go both ways really.

This afternoon as one of them walked down the aisle to join his comrades he proclaimed, “Hey, I support abortion now.” It didn’t turn out to be the in depth political discussion one might expect. I wonder who he knocked up…

In case you haven’t read my previous posts and therefore have no idea what’s coming here, the overall theme of this post is that religion is stupid, and if you’re going to be offended by that then you might as well not read this, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about religious people, it’s that they’re extremely stubborn. God could walk up to one of them and say “I don’t exist,” and they wouldn’t believe him. They’d call it a hallucination. But if god came up to them and said “I need you to enslave black people,” or “The Jews need to be exterminated,” they’d call it a vision. Now, for the most part I’m going to refer to religion mostly as if I were referring to christianity, but keep in mind, this goes for ALL religions, christianity is just the easiest one to refer to seeing as it’s pretty straightforward (and unimaginative, if you’re going to make up something as ridiculous as a god then you might as well make him fun and interesting). You may also notice that I don’t capitalize things like christianity or god, and that is because I feel they are undeserving of the time and effort it takes me to press SHIFT. Religions were mostly made up by people in the stone ages who had a pretty good idea of how to get a lot of money and power from a lot of very stupid people. The original con men. To use a modern example, L. Ron Hubbard, founder of scientology, has been quoted as saying “The best way for a man to make a million dollars would be to start his own religion.” I prefer to think of good old L. Ron as more of a businessman than a prophet, and he’s actually on to something there. Maybe I’ll start a religion. The Church of You’re an Idiot if You Join This Church. I’d be a millionaire overnight. I really, really hate people of any religion who make fun of scientologists. What gives you the right? Your religion is just as stupid as everyone else’s. I would actually say that scientology makes more sense than something like christianity, and is probably more entertaining, being made up by a science fiction writer. Just because christianity is more wide spread doesn’t make it any more right. If you’d never heard of christianity before and someone came up to you and said the universe was created by god, and god has three parts, the father, his son, and this ghost thing, but they’re all one thing, and there was this pregnant virgin who gave birth to the son, who is also the father, and so on and so forth, you’d probably have pulled out your cell phone and dialed 91, with your finger poised over the 1 in case this lunatic attacks you. That argument I actually stole from Bill Maher, comedian and producer of the recent movie Religulous (Religion + ridiculous), who once asserted that religion is a neurological disorder that justifies crazies and stops people from thinking. I’m not going to go quite that far but I do think he’s mostly right there that religion is used as justification for some pretty unjust stuff. Religion can often be found at the heart of the bloodiest conflicts the world has ever seen. The Crusades, WWII, the ongoing conflicts in the middle east, if people just gave up on their stupid beliefs the world would be a much more stable place. Some people say that religion helps keep order and gives us a sense of morality, which it did, once, in the middle ages. But now we have modern society with organized rules, I was never taught religion and I don’t consider myself an immoral person, and I’m willing to bet there are loads of other people out there like me (in that respect, no one is quite like me, in the sense that I’m awesomer than everyone else). Some people will say that religion helps to guide people, and comforts them in hard times. I say that religion gives people disillusions and helps them hide from reality. If you have problems in your life then deal with them, don’t hide behind some stupid old book or sit crying in a church. The problem with this whole stupid situation is that people are taught their religion from birth, they really have no chance. There really isn’t a solution to this problem other than for people to stop teaching religion to their kids. I implore you, don’t teach your religion to your kids. Let them make up their own minds, don’t ruin more generations. Another thing I hate about religious people is that whenever you point out all of these flaws in their beliefs they go all quiet and say something along the lines of “I don’t want to talk about it.” If the world is going to be forced to put up with all the problems caused by your stupid religion then we sure as hell are owed an explanation. And it better be a damned good explanation too. I have yet to have one person provide me with such an explanation. Some people have also told me that they hate atheists who go around pointing out faults in peoples religions, but those atheists are much less obnoxious than all those Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on doors. Now, some people will ask “So, Mr. High and Mighty, what is it that you believe in?” My response to that is, I believe in what makes sense, science. Science is the result of cold hard evidence and experimentation, it makes sense and can be logically explained. Not just “god did it.” You may point out that science’s explanation for the beginning of the universe is a little rough around the edges, but I say at least science has this awesome explosion. Christianity begins with a six day work week. Science is what’s enabling you to read this, it makes everything in our world work, it makes our world, not some god. God (capitalized because of grammar) doesn’t magically carry my post to you. I wouldn’t mind religion so much if people would keep it to themselves. People can believe all the stupid things they want to believe, but they don’t just leave it at that, they have to go out and get other people to believe with them, which is admittedly what I’m doing here, but with religion they tend to do it in the form of a war or genocide. Religion wouldn’t be so bad if it was practiced individually, but making it organized causes nothing but trouble. Catholics are the worst, what with a pope and everything. All the other christian denominations come after them, and then probably islam, followed by hindus, jews, and then buddhists. I don’t believe that there’s much else to cover here. What I find so funny here is that there isn’t much I’ve said that isn’t cold hard fact, yet there will still be people who say I’m wrong. I guess I’m going to have to put up with all these people, but it does seem that religion is undergoing somewhat of a decline in popularity, a trend that I hope continues, maybe future generations won’t have to deal with all this idiocy.

Update: A muslim friend of mine pointed out that he wasn’t offended at all by my post because I went so heavily at christianity. He was actually disappointed by this and requested that I include his religion in my bashing. I intend to fulfill this request, but first I need to brush up on my islam, world religions was a whole 6 months ago.

I’m a little disappointed that I missed out on all the fun of yelling about candidates during the election, but I figure it’s not too late to still get out what I have to say about all of them. This post will probably fall into both the things that are awesome and the things that annoy me categories, because there were a lot of both. One of the first things I loved about this election was the political comedy that went along with it. Every day Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had fresh material, some candidates turned out to be gifts that just kept on giving. The election seemed to pull SNL out of what had been a slump, everyone talked about Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin impression, (which was awesome) and the opening political sketches were replayed over and over again. Some of what happened didn’t really even need writers, some candidates were laughable on their own.

More seriously now, I’ll go through my candidates from favorite to least favorite.

1. Barack Obama: One word, awesome. I don’t get all these people who say that there wasn’t the candidate for them in this election, that neither was what this country needs. Well then, what does our country need? Obama boosts our worldwide image, people love him overseas, something that we haven’t seen for the past eight years. Obama isn’t a war happy maniac who’ll go around starting fights that don’t need to be fought and dancing around the big red button. There’s also the simple fact that Obama has what appears to be a fully functioning brain, another thing the white house hasn’t seen in a while. It’s a fact that the economy does better under democratic presidents, I think that no matter what he does the feeling of security people will get just from knowing he’s in charge should be enough to help boost our trembling economy. A lot of people complained about Obama’s tax plan, and admittedly it’s probably his weakest point, but my thought was, if you’re making over $250,000 a year, then you don’t need all that money, we do. Education is way underfunded, along with loads of other internal programs that have lost attention next to the the black hole of the Iraq War, which Obama will hopefully get us the hell out of.

2. Joe Biden: meh. Obama’s choice of Joe Biden was a little boring, but that’s probably a good thing. There wasn’t really any more room for exciting candidates on that ticket and Biden filled out the boring old white guy requirement perfectly. He did say a lot of stupid stuff though, the Obama campaign should have kept a lid on him like the McCain campaign hid Palin. No one would have noticed.

3. John McCain: old. John McCain was old and out of touch. His temper was equal to that of a… hmmm… something that doesn’t have a very large temper. The War in Iraq would go on forever and I’d probably turn 18 around the same time the draft went into affect. Also, his health care plan was dumb, a $5000 tax credit? That would force a lot of people getting health care from their employer to switch to a worse plan, and there’s not really such a thing as a good plan in health care, only bad, and worse. Insurance companies are downright evil, we’d be better off without them. Universal health care is one of the many reasons Canada is better than us (also Britain I think). I got really annoyed at McCain’s constant assertions that Obama was a socialist. There is an actual socialist candidate for president and he went on The Colbert Report and said that in no way was Obama socialist. Also, socialism isn’t the great evil that conservatives like to make it out to be when they explain things to their base (trailer trash). Socialism has never been handled well, and on the whole it’s probably not a great system, but it has its merits. Look at where Capitalism has gotten us. McCain was senile and contradicted him self more times than I could count, and based on McCain’s ability to keep track of how many houses he owns he probably wouldn’t be able to count either.

4. Sarah Palin: it is hard to find the words to describe how much I despise this woman. What is this country coming to? It legitimately scares me that someone like this could make it so close to the white house. I disagreed with absolutely everything she said. I couldn’t fit all of the stupid things she said into a post that would fit on one page. Palin is the physical incarnation of everything wrong with this country. Everything. She ruined Alaska. Alaska used to be a place you would hear about and imagine a majestic wilderness filled with adventure. Now I can only think of her, the magic is gone. The Daily Show visited Wasilla, which looked like nothing more than your average mid sized suburban city. For those of you who live around here, it looked like Danbury, except everyone was a hick. I visited Wasilla’s website and was greeted by something that looked surprisingly professional: http://cityofwasilla.com/. Way too good for some little nowhere town in Alaska, so I looked up an archived page from six months ago and found this. Quite a contrast. I wonder how much they paid for the new one, probably not as much as they wasted on clothes. That was another thing, they complained about Obama having too much money for his campaign, when they’d just gone and blown hundreds of thousands on designer clothes. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I hope to never hear from Palin again.

A little something about Congress: Go democrats! A few people have told be that they don’t like having one party have all the power, but I say that it’s way better that way, because stuff actually gets done. I would prefer a republican majority to a split, but the current situation is the best of all scenarios, the democrats have the right idea.

It was a pretty awesome election overall.