Here Be Dragons
Some of the editing here is a little silly, but I thought this was a pretty great introduction to skepticism. Here’s hoping this show gets of the ground, I’d absolutely love to see it.
Haven’t Done Anything for N-philes for a While.
Me being mean to a game I thought everyone knew was going to suck.
David Foster Wallce on Life After Graduation
I found this over at the Wall Street Journal. It’s adapted from a commencement speech he gave about three years ago, and I liked it enough to think it deserved a repost over here. It’s a tad lengthy, but worth your time.
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”
If at this moment, you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise old fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish. The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude — but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense.
A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here’s one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it’s so socially repulsive, but it’s pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real – you get the idea. But please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called “virtues.” This is not a matter of virtue — it’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. (more…)
I Hate Horses.
Well, this guy does anyways. I’ve been digging through this website for a while and can’t stop laughing. The comments on the posts are incredible. Take, for instance…
rachelle said… If you think this website is funny, YOU ARE WRONG. this had better be a joke because if it isn’t I’m going to contact the authorities and have it shut down. you have admitted to violence against horses and whether you like them or not, violence against animals is ILLEGAL.
I hope you go to jail for this.
you are sick.
dog food dale said…
Rachelle, you need to SHUT UP!!! You are clearly a stupid horse lover! Why don’t you go roll around in some shit with your horsey friends. Tonight, when I’m beating my horse, I’m going to give her an extra whipping for each retarded comment you make. So keep it up, YOU’RE KILLING THIS HORSE!!! If you actually have a horse you are in big trouble. the authorities can track your email you know. they can find you through the internet. if you think this is just some anonymous blog where you can dish out all your hate and report your crimes, boy are you ever in for a surprise. if i were you i would get rid of my horses fast. and you better not kill them either because i will find out about it.
i am watching you “DALE”
and another thing. for all of you people reading this and think it is all a big joke and what not.
the offices of homeland security can track your internet addresses too.
if violence against horses isn’t terrorism, i don’t know what is. and you people reading this and giving these sickos attention is only contributing to the crime. so if you don’t want to be charged as an accomplice you better just turn around and leave.
ever heard about what happens to people who “VISIT” child porn sites?
well this is exactly like that.
i have a cousin in the army. i know these things.
Some more gold…
anonymous said… If you guys will quit posting the douchebag will fade away. It is obvious that his mother denied him the titty when he was young, and he gets an itty bitty hard on when people acknowledge his pathetic existence. So just stop arguing with him.
i support the horse hatred! so no i wont stop posting! horses are dumb and completely useless animals! think of 1 good use for me… not riding, we have cars and i love pollution just more suffering of stupid ducks and shit. theyre not good eatin, it’s like eating a damn pigeon disease bag! why the hell do they even exist?! just to piss us off and shit in our face! while i have nothing wrong with horse-hatred per se, i do have the problem with the blogger’s and commenter’s use of the word ‘gay’ as an insult. are you implying that being gay is equivalent to being stupid, ugly, unhip, or some other negative quality? if so, you are a bigoted asshole. shut up, gaywad.
I think it’s pretty obvious that “dog food dale” runs the website as a joke, but he’s certainly pissed off some actual morons in the process.
Some days I love the internet so much it hurts.
That Guy REALLY Likes Pictures of Himself.
I’m not exactly sure how I ended up there. I think it might have been some kind of internet trap, ala “the Rickroll” or “tubgirl” (which I will not be linking to). Regardless, I somehow ended up on Sean Hannity’s website, and couldn’t help but noticing how much he likes putting pictures his face all over the place, most notably behind other pictures of his face, as if he was checking himself out or something. Anyways. I went ahead and circled and counted them all to save you the trouble.
My Thoughts on the Election
So a lot of mixed feelings for me last night and this morning. First, the good.
- Obama wins presidency. Thank god. Lots of people celebrate, others cringe in irrational fear and call America dead. The rest of the civilized world pats us on the back for not being complete idiots for the first time in a pathetically long time.
- Kay Hagan won the Senate seat in North Carolina against Elizabeth Dole. In case you didn’t know, the Dole/Hagan race has been close for quite some time. Dole decided it was a good idea to scare voters into winning with her insanely sleazy ad that insinuated Hagan was “godless.” Writing about the many reasons this ad pissed me off would take all day, so I’ll just say I’m pretty happy about Dole loosing by a good margin.
Now the not so good.
- Pretty much every proposition set out against gay rights looks like they went the wrong way. Gays are now having rights taken away from them instead of given. Extremely dissapointing. Grow up, America. Some people who have wieners like wieners. It isn’t going away. Deal with it and realize that gays aren’t about to destroy the fabric of the country.
- All my local guys pretty much lost, which I guess I expected, since I live in Texas, but it would have been nice to see one or two of them make it.
- For some reason (okay for quite a few reasons) I really wanted to see Al Franken win the Senate seat in Minnesota. Instead he lost it by 570 votes in a race that totalled about three million ballots. They’re going at a recount, but I’m not holding my breath.
- Ted Stevens from Alaska keeps his Senate seat. What the hell? Is there some kind of retard virus going around in Alaska or something? Did they not hear that Ted Stevens is a convicted felon? So conservative states would never vote for an atheist or agnostic, no matter how qualified, but we now have proof that they’ll vote for a convicted criminal who will end up incarcirated during his term. What’s that organization that wants to have Alaska seceed from the Union again? Where do I sign the petition to get this to happen? The world gives you a collective slap on the back of the head and calls you an idiot, Alaska. The only thing I can think is that Stevens talked Alaskans into believing that prison is like a series of tubes and is easily escapable.
I’m happy about the presidential election. Really. But I do think the selection of the progressive candidate is (on the whole) less an endorsment of the ideals he ran on and more a rejection of what everyone saw as a third term for Bush, as supported by the voting down of so many progressive propositions. The really important thing, obviously, is what happens when Obama takes office and the supporting House and Senate get seated. If Obama and the Democrats can continue to win the hearts and minds of Americans while getting progressive legislation passed and the Republican party struggles to pick up the pieces, we should see some great things happen. However if the Republicans get their collective act together, throw the right buzzwords out there and Obama stumbles a little, we’ll probably be see the pendulam swing back to “caveman land” faster than I like to think about.
Hurricane Ike Pictures
These are way overdue. Honestly, I completely forgot that I had taken them. Anyhow, on with the show, yes? Thanks to future technology, you can click any of these pictures to see higher resolution versions. They can also be found on my Flickr page.
We’ll start out with a few pictures of my place boarded up before the storm. The first is our slading glass door, the second a window in the front of the house. We need a fresch coat of paint on this place. And yes, “Rock Me Like a Hurricane” is a little cliche, but hey, I was under a lot of pressure. Hurricane pressure.
These two are from my brother’s girlfriend Gina’s place, which is where we ended up staying through the night of the hurricane, thinking her house was safter than ours. Turns out our house stood up fairly well and hers got messed up something nasty. The first picture here is two pictures, one of her ceiling and the next of the floor. This got way worse later. More of the ceiling caved in. Insulation everywhere. The next one is her backyard. Fence knocked over, crap everywhere.
The first picture here is my backyard, all floody and stuff. The last three pictures are kind of blurry, due to the fact that I took them while driving so there was wet glass in between the camera and the subjects. Yep, I’m a big one for safety. Taking pictures while driving on a wet road in a Hurricane-devastated area with debris and downed trees and power lines down all over the place. In the third picture you can see a stuffed moose on the dashboard of my car that my little sister gave me like a year ago. <3
Well that’s all the hurricane pictures I have for now. Hopefully I wont take any more of these for a long time.
G.I. Joe Public Service Announcements: The Meme That Keeps Being Funny.
Personally, I like the Sarah Palin one more, but most people I’ve showed seem to prefer the John McCain one. So I’ll just post both.
So the election is on Tuesday and it seems all but certain that Obama will be our next president. I’m interested to see how America will react when the numbers come in. I’m also curious to see what happens in some of the local elections here in the Houston area.
More than anything, though, I’m just ready for this election season to be over. It’s been a long time coming, and I’d like to be able to think about something else for a change.
Oh and holy crap, just when I thought this election couldn’t get any weirder. For me it borderlines on hope-inducing, but I might just be saying that because I live in Texas.
