This is How the World Ends

A pox on intolerant dualist culture.
We're not not simply male/female, black/white, gay/straight, chaotic/ordered. We are sentient beings spread across a wide range of modes and that compulsory, illusory choice between 'us' and 'them' is destructive to everyone. 'Them' is a lie. We are all 'us', regardless of how we speak, what we eat, where we live, when or if we pray, or how we make love.
Forcing folks into a box that doesn't suit them is not just wasteful, it's rude and unkind. Deriding people for not choosing to reside in a box is ridiculous. Killing them for it is foolish beyond permission.
Cherish difference because with diversity comes stability. Healthy ecosystems are rich in niches. They weather change well.
When you dehumanize others-regardless of why- you're devaluing your own merit as a human being. And because I'm human too, you're devaluing me. 'Them' is a lie, remember. 'Them' is a way to tap into your reptilian hind brain and get you to react without thinking. 'Them' is fear goggles super glued to your face. The only genuine way to get 'them' to go away is to accept that they are 'us'. And that means when you scream at them, beat them, burn them, force them out, kill them what you are actually doing is abandoning yourself. You are the banality of evil.
Be courteous. Nobody said any of this was going to be easy, but it's necessary.
And (tangent) for pity's sake, don't forget to tip your waitstaff.

When I get short sleep and know it's going to be short my unconscious tends to go hog wild, shredding my recent daily experience into chum for the sleep sharks. As follows:
1) I partake of a LARP extravaganza that ensues inside a mall with a cruise ship mounted on its roof, like if Mall of America decided to strap on pontoons and go to sea.
2)This LARP appears to be some cthonic melding of Star Wars: Clone Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Cabin in the Woods. I realize none of these explain the presence of the mimes but they were there anyway. (Don't ask me, I was ASLEEP, ok?!?)
3)I learn (by grim example, not mine, thank God) that leaping madly from the smoke stack of a cruise liner into its open central section, shouting 'Eat my thunderstick you alliance scum!' without checking to see if your zip line is actually zippy is a tragicomic way to die.
4)I overhear a conversation between 2 adult players in the children's fun area that goes something like this:
'Zeke, aren't these the most precious little redneck zombies you've ever seen in your life?'
'Ma, I venture to say it will be a pure pleasure to be consumed by these undead children.'
5)The term 'scrufulous fuckwidget' becomes an expression of ultimate disdain and once I achieve consciousness I agree wholeheartedly.
By and large, this was one of my better efforts and one of a handful of times I've actually woken myself up laughing.

Space Limited

For my money, the end came in 2029. That’s when the Ring of Fire went catastrophically active and fault lines around the Pacific Rim were cracking like God’s own bullwhip. Pretty much any coastline along the Pacific was fucked: the western edge of the Americas, Japan, China, Indonesia. New Zealand. All toast. The Three Gorges Dam went in one of the aftershocks and took more than 20 million Chinese with it. We’d already been having problems with sea levels-- the mentals had been warning us about that since the last century-- but with earthquakes came a rash of volcanic activity and that amped up the greenhouse gas levels. The ice sheet in Greenland didn’t take it well . 2029 was our tipping point. We couldn’t tell ourselves we had time to fix what was wrong anymore. From then on we were just gonna have to adapt to what was.

The next decade was a bitch and a half so we left, those of us that could. Mostly multinationals, like Virgin or XCOR or Kistler, but some more traditionally regional concerns too, like Arianespace from the EU, and RSC Energia, out of Russia. By 2046, the technology was ironed out so the guys with the money bought in. You know that joke about ‘too many chiefs, not enough braves’? Well the problem was the chiefs didn’t want to share a ship with anyone else. They wanted off the planet, they wanted to be in charge, but the problem is living in space is hard. There ain’t no golf in space. It ain’t comfortable. It’s work, and not the kind that requires a white shirt. More like a die cast gorget that locks into a helmet assembly. What would you do?

Right. They had us build ‘em space stations. Rich man islands where gravity was constant and you could take the fuckin’ suits off. And play some fuckin golf. They left the ships to the hoi polloi and retired to their private fiefs. Those multinational stations became the new city states. It was a typical pyramid scheme: the guys at the bottom did all the grind to support the guys at the top. The guys in the middle thought a lot and tried to avoid the shit splattering everywhere because in space? Shit floats. Except on the stations, of course. There they filter it and use it as grade A fertilizer for their flower gardens. People starving all over but they still gotta have their pretties.

There were waiting lists to get berths out-Earth and you needed all kind of visas and accreditation.I had that, no problem, thanks to the army. Veteran's Affairs finally did something right there. You had to sign reproductive clauses so you wouldn’t overburden the system. That wasn’t true on Dan, but hell, who could expect Catholics to give up reproductive control? Ever been to Dan? It’s a madhouse-- they got their levels kitted out like you’re goin’ to heaven or hell or limbo or what the fuck. Who does that?

Mars wasn’t much of an option. Too inhospitable, too expensive, too damned far by a long shot. I heard 4 fully kitted colony ships got sent out before they scrapped the idea. ‘Course, it was too late for those already gone. Not like they could catch a ride home. Some folks think all those people are still out there, fat and happy, living in some kinda domed paradise. I say those folks are damnfool idiots.

I’ve worked on planet and off, in space and out. Rode a marine tug out past the Belt once ‘cus my shuttle was holed by debris. Three years of my life, near enough, lost to space junk. I’ve been all over and I’ll tell you, the moon’s your best bet. Kinder than ships, cheaper than stations. They’ve got enough food and water to go around, barely, even if the water has contraceptives in it. Not such a bad deal for an old guy. And the gravity’s light so my knees never have to be replaced, even if my eyes do. It’s as good a place as any to die.

The Trade

Brianna loved chocolate more than anything. More than God, more than Justin Bieber, more than her kitten Marcel or any of her siblings. The fact that she could now trade said siblings for that magical elixir was beyond lucky; it was the kind of thing that convinces an otherwise rational person that the world and all its satellites genuinely revolved around her.
Of course that’s what happened.
The world didn’t care that she’d found a slightly unorthodox use for her hyperactive brother Evan or her tomboy sister Mags. The world rarely pays attention to iniquity unless someone makes a video for Youtube and it goes viral. Brianna didn’t have a smartphone or wish to document her arrangements. Her mother was working 80 hour weeks at the call center. Her father was ‘whoring with that bimbo’, according to her Grandma Peach. Nobody noticed except to congratulate Brianna about how clean the house was and, in the same breath, to warn her about her weight and her skin. Chocolate, it seems, causes both acne and belly fat.

By Jove, I think I've got it!

Way back in 2010, a movie came out called 'Blue Valentine' in which Ryan Gosling performed oral sex on Michelle Williams. It was sweet and hot without being particularly gynecological and yet it netted the movie an NC-17 rating from the MPAA.

In response Gosling said "There is something very distorted about this reality that they've created, which is that it is OK to torture women on screen...Any kind of violence towards women in a sexual scenario is fine. But give a woman pleasure, no way. Not a chance. That's pornography."*

The public outcry was so large that the MPAA caved and changed their NC-17 to an R but it's really hard to argue with his conclusion, particularly in light of the recent ramp up of the 'legitimate rape' thing the conservatives are pushing. The subtext is that if a woman gets pregnant from such an attack she must have (secretly, of course) enjoyed it. You have to wonder, though. Why is it so much worse to show a man giving a woman pleasure versus victimizing her? Finally, I think I have an answer.

It's wasteful.

Per the 'conserve' portion of their nomenclature, conservatives merely want to husband their resources. Romance, as everyone knows, is a black hole when it comes to time, money, and energy, especially when you could be using those resources for positive things like world domination. There's prostitution, I suppose, but they're not too keen on that idea either despite the fact that buying a quick fuck has got to be more economically frugal than spending thousands on dates and jewelry.

Maybe it comes down to the fact that, historically speaking, prostitutes aren't the best mothers. STD's, addictions, and extreme poverty are endemic. Prostitutes in antiquity were more likely to attempt some form of birth control (which, incidentally, conservatives are also famous for not liking). Plus, you had to negotiate. So much easier to find a nice girl tending her flock of fluffy sheep and have your way with her. This behavior nets progeny AND they get to hoard resources that would otherwise have been wasted on her (who only a couple centuries ago was chattel for God's sake-- those were the days.).

Put that way, romance is fiscally irresponsible in these dark economic times. Better to show our nation's young how the true winner behaves-- with force. Take Genghis Khan, founder of the largest contiguous empire in human history which stretched from the Yellow Sea in the east to the Black Sea in the west. According to DNA evidence, by 2003 our man Genghis had roughly 16 million modern male descendents. This doesn't even take into account his female descendents since it was based on Y chromosome studies- and he wouldn't have cared anyway since Mongols famously had only one use for women.

It's clear that fortune favors the rapist.

Interestingly enough, biology favors the rapist too. In a Canadian study from 2007, researchers found that "Reflexive vaginal responding may have had fitness benefits for our female ancestors because vaginal vasocongestion produces lubrication, which reduces the likelihood of injury and subsequent infection during vaginal penetration. Ancestral women who did not reflexively lubricate would have been more likely to experience injuries or infections that could have rendered them reproductively sterile or resulted in their deaths."**

In other words: she gets wet because if she doesn't you will tear her and she will possibly die. She's not hot for you, asshole, she's protecting herself.




Footnotes for those who wondered:
*Robles, Celina "Ryan Gosling: Female Pleasure Is "Pornography," According to MPAA" (Eonline.com 12.07.10)
** Abassi, Jennifer "What Our Eyes Say About Our Sexual Preference" (PopSci 08.08.12)

The Sacred Basilica of Linguini

I have only two things to say:

Polyvore is a truly vicious time suck.


Carbo Diem

I've had many conversations over the years about the inherent weirdness that is Japanese culture. Most often, dropping the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the bizarro censorship practiced during the Occupation are pointed to as pivotal mechanisms for the weird. After some very interesting research, I've come to the conclusion that it's just how island biodiversity manifests itself in the hearts and minds of these particular islanders. I'm not saying that brainwashing and radiation might not play a part but I resent the implication that tentacle porn is somehow my fault. Historic shunga says otherwise.