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11 June 2006 : 11.02
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Here comes...
Dr. Tran!
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10 June 2006 : 16.13
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How cool are these guys? Such a nifty, quirky sound. And nifty, quirky people. Love it! Just discovered them today, and it looks as though you can listen to all of their songs on their site.
Your Head's Too Big, in particular, sounds like something out of a Tim Burton/Danny Elfman puppet musical.
Speaking of music, a song just came on that started with the wailing of the air raid siren that was such a terrifying sound in Britain during WWII.
Wow.. how many years ago was that war? And yet the sound of that siren just cuts right through me and goes straight for the spine. There's instant tension, hairs stand on end, and heart rate increases. Amazing, isn't it? Basic, almost instinctive fear reaction, but based upon something that happened over sixty years ago.
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Your head's too big
It's taking up too much room
Your head's too big
It grows like a balloon
And it just might float away
If you're unluckier than that
Someone such as myself might come along
And it just might pop
It was an accident...it just popped
Your head's too big
It's taking up too much room
It's filling with hot air
You're making your own self swoon
You're in love with yourself
Your head's so big and tall
How is it then your thoughts are small
Your head's so big and tall
You found yourself and lost us all
Your head's too big
It's taking up all the room
It's broken through the atmosphere
You're rubbing elbows with the moon
-Your Head's Too Big,
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09 June 2006 : 16.16
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I was listening to the radio this morning, and apparently there's something like seven single girls for every single guy in Vancouver.
Hear that ladies? I'm a valuable commodity! It's the law of supply and demand.
Please form a line to the right and have your completed application ready.
Actually, an interesting point was raised about how men in Vancouver don't make bold approaches to attract women, and how frustrating this is for the women in question. Hello? Is this surprising? After all of these years of hearing women complain about unwelcome advances, aggressive males, etc etc, you'd think that this would be a welcome situation.
Speaking of single, and therefore of not-single, I note that georgie is again failing to take into account that whole separation of church and state thing. I find it amusingly ironic that someone who can't wrap his brain around the correct pronounciation of "nuclear" should be an antidisestablishmentarian. I would love to see him try to say that.
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Well I woke up today
And the world seemed a restless place
It could have been that way for me
And I wandered around
And I thought of your face
That Christmas looking back at me
I wish today was just like every other day
'Cause today has been the best day
Everything I ever dreamed
And I started to walk
Pretty soon I will run
And I'll be running back to you
'Cause I followed my star
And that's what you are
I've had a merry time with you
I wish today was just like every other day...
-Song For Ten
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So last night I lurked around Death By Chocolate for about five hours with my friend Jozi. I'm not sure whether that's some sort of record, but if it is, I want to be in the book.
Come on, how many people could possibly have lurked around Death By Chocolate with Jozi for more than five hours?
And there was talk about The Importance Of Being Earnest, which got me thinking about how much I love that show, and how long it's been since I did it. It might be time to dust off the old handbag again.
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06 June 2006 : 18.06
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You know, I'm surprised that there aren't more xtian groups bleating about the significance of this particular date. They make a fuss about everything else, after all.
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04 Jun 2006 : 14.20
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Happy rhinoceros day!
Well, every day has to be something.
Why does a mosquito's anticoagulant have to itch so severely for days afterwards? I wouldn't object quite so much to being bitten if it weren't for the ongoing irritation, but this itching is driving me mad.
Oh yes, I'm still alive. Here I am. Ta da. Woo hoo. Woo hoo hoo. 5, 6, 7, 8. Etc.
And now I will listen to Elastica, just to get that out of my head.
Huh. There were a bunch of things I was going to go on about, but by the time I'd opened this file, I'd completely forgotten what most of them were. Bugger.
I'm working mornings now. Gah.. I have to be up at 5.30. How disgusting is that? But being off at 4.30 is fabulous. I feel like the day has barely begun.
Just so you know.
On the down side, I'm now working the same shift as the manbudgie, so I get a full eight hours of him every day. Woo! It's almost enough to make me try to gnaw off my own ears so that I don't have to hear him.
Yeah, I'd like to see me try that, too.
Oh, and I missed the rodeo. I was going to go and hang out with the protesters, and maybe find a way to sabotage the cowboys (like Liquid Heet on the saddle), but I didn't realise that it happened so early in the year, and completely missed it. Bollocks. I'll have to wait until next year now.
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27 May 2006 : 12.18
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This is cool, but doesn't it look like something out of MASK? Remember MASK? Of course you do. Silly 80s toy, but how cool would it be to have a car that could turn into a submarine or a plane or a hamster or something?
Speaking of the 80s, for some reason I'm listening to 80s music. At the moment it's Samantha Fox with Touch Me. Oh dear. It's self-flagellation with synth-pop, essentially.
So we're just about halfway through the Year Of The Prejudiced Oyster, or whatever it is, and nothing's really changed. Let's hear it for the status quo! Woo!
meh. Actually, lots of things have changed, but nothing huge or earth-shattering or anything.
On the positive side, I went out with a dear friend the other night, which is good because I don't see her very often. This is a bad thing (the not seeing, not the seeing) because she's one of the coolest people who ever lived.
Yeah, I have such a crush. :) It must be screamingly obvious.
And tonight there's a new Doctor Who episode. The trailer looks quite scary.. I can't wait! Yay!
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22 May 2006 : 3.00
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It's three AM, and I'm sitting on my couch munching happily away on bacon and onion sandwiches, and watching Doctor Who, Terror Of The Zygons.
I just thought you ought to know.
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20 May 2006 : 18.11
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In other news, humans still suck. Look at this. Look, there's a magnificent hammerhead shark! Wow, that must be the largest hammerhead ever! Let's kill him, take his picture, and then bury his corpse somewhere. For no fucking reason other than that we're human, and looking for recognition, no matter how many innocent creatures must pay the price.
There are few things that make me actually angry, but this makes me fucking livid. They killed this animal to try to break a record! A record! What the fuck!? That was a life they stopped. A living creature who had never done them any harm, who was just going about his life and trying to survive. Who knows how old he was, or how old he might have lived to be? It's sick..
What a beautiful creature, what an amazing evolutionary development.. what a tragic waste. Look humanity, can you stop destroying everything? Please? Just for a century. Just take a century and enjoy how beautiful this world is. Stop paving and killing and polluting and burning, and let this world be the paradise that it actually is, both for yourselves and for every other form of life who shares it.
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20 May 2006 : 16.51
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I wonder how I'm lookin' now. Still lookin' nice. My hair's still nice, my face is still nice, my suit's.. I'm just nice period.
I'm reading Wodehouse. Haven't read him in years, and it's such a shame because he's a joy, he really is. If you haven't heard of Wodehouse himself, you've doubtless heard of Jeeves, the perfect valet who is always getting his master out of trouble.
That said, most people have probably never heard of Wodehouse these days. Reading, particularly of older works, seems largely out of favour today. This is tragic, I think. The written language is one of the great inventions of any civilisation. In terms of achievements, it's right up there with videogames and pornography. How many civilisations failed because they didn't develop writing, no matter how many video games nor how much pornography they had? I think I've made my point.
I hear people going on about this great painter and that great director, but I think that the writer is the most brilliant, and the most underappreciated, of the artists. With the language as brush and the imagination as canvas, the writer can create masterpieces that dwarf in scale and complexity the most magnificent painting or the most breathtaking film. There is, I find, more grace in a well chosen word than in the most perfect ballet, more harmony in an artfully turned phrase than in the most beautiful symphony because words fire your imagination as well as your emotions. Images and sounds can inspire, but words create those images and sounds inside your head, and that makes them so much more effective.
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20 May 2006 : 16.50
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Ooo, how am I lookin'? I'm lookin' really nice. My hair is nice, my face is nice, my suit's nice... I'm lookin' really nice.
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20 May 2006 : 12.31
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There's a nice older lady at work who serves as receptionist. I was talking to her the other day about something, I think it was my reality show Iron Chef Survivor, in which I take Vancouver's homeless and stick them on an island with no food, but several fully equipped kitchens, and we see who's left at the end of the season. Anyway, I said something, and she asked "what does your girlfriend think of that?" to which I replied "I don't have one," and she said "I find that very difficult to believe."
Isn't that a nice thing to say?
Come to think of it, I probably wasn't telling her about my reality show.
Oh, it would work, though, wouldn't it? Particularly if you tell the drug-addled homeless that heroin stays in your system for twenty-four hours, and then get half of them seriously high. There'd be a frenzy as they try to eat each other to assimilate the drug before it wears off.
And if you are concerned that the homeless will be offended reading that, don't worry. If they're homeless, they're not likely to be on the Internet, are they? What, do they have broadband to their cardboard box? Cable to their shopping cart? Not likely.
And speaking of Iron Chef, the cooking experiments continue. Last night was roast chicken, which came out very well indeed. The night before was broiled, marinated blade steak, which ended up so tender that I didn't even need a knife. A fork and a few cutting remarks were sufficient. I'm getting good at this whole cooking lark. Unfortunately, I've run out of victims on whom to test my creations.
I'm feeling pretty good about myself today. I stopped the dexedrine again, and inflated like a balloon, but I'm returning to normal today, so I'm looking much better. And today I got a couple of second looks on the SkyTrain. Ok, one of them was from a boy, but I don't take that to mean that I look gay. Rather, I take it to mean that I'm so pretty that I cross the gender gap.
Bog off, I'm entitled to my delusions. At least I don't think I'm Napoleon. Or believe in a giant pixie in the sky, or something equally ridiculous.
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18 May 2006 : 17.31
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Mmm.. green tea frappuccino. You know, Starbucks is really promoting this Akeelah And The Bee thing, and it makes you think. Well, it makes me think, anyway. And what it makes me think is that it's amusingly ironic that americans have spelling bees. Not only are they just plain silly, but america is the country that took a perfectly serviceable language and simplified it, and now takes pride in being able to spell the words that they intentionally misspell. For the american readers, there's no such word as nite, or thru, and colour and neighbour contain the letter u. And don't even get me started on words like "donut"
So the new machine is finished. You care about this. No, you do. Shut up. It's fabulous. A gig of dual-channel RAM, a 250 GB SATA HDD, DVD ROM and DVD burner, Sunbeam Lightbus, Aerocool Coolwatch, black Sunbeam Transformer full tower case with five freaking fans (hence the Coolwatch), and a whack, a whack no less, of cold cathodes.
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11 May 2006 : 17.04
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So my family bought me a new CPU and motherboard. Finally got me an AMD 64-bit processor. Sw33t. And the motherboard is dead sexy, too. Now I get to build a new computer. My family is awesome.
Now I need new bits and pieces.. a case, etc. And a vanilla latte. Not necessarily in that order, though.
Wow, I'm up to six computers now, and more monitors than I want to think about. This stuff takes up so much space, I'd really better get going on this custom case I want to build. I had this idea ages ago of a free-standing case/desk that houses all of the computers, monitors, liquid cooling gear, powerbars, speakers etc.. It was very loosely based upon an image, forwarded to me by a friend, of a computer case from Japan which was essentially a desk. The case itself was flat, mounted on legs, and the keyboard, mouse, and monitor sat on the top. Very handy little design, and great for saving space. Right now I'm in the middle of a huge horseshoe of desks covered with computer hardware. It would be so much easier to turn that inside out and stick all of the machines and monitors on (and in) one central desk.
And because of my fondness for anachronism, I was going to do it in wrought iron and stained wood, like an antique. The trouble is, I get all enthusiastic designing the thing for a while, and then my attention wanders and I lose track of the project. And when I get back to it, the hardware that I need to incorporate has changed, and so I have to redesign a bunch of things.
Ah well. I'll get to it when I get to it.
Saw Friends With Money last night. It's essentially about the relationships between a group of friends, and over the course of the film it manages, through subtle performances and uncomfortable situations, to make you genuinely not care at all about any of the characters. It goes absolutely nowhere, and does it in such a way that you can't help but be aware of the slow, painful grind of every minute between you and the end of the film. It's like climbing a mountain for fifteen hours, where each line of dialogue is akin to the burning, screaming pain in your every muscle. It's completely meaningless drivel with pretentions of significance, and so I'd recommend that you avoid it.
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07 May 2006 : 19.09
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Ah, the newest episode of Doctor Who, The Girl In The Fireplace, is delightfully written. Some of the dialogue is decidedly Wilde-esque. "You haven't aged. That is very impolite of you."
Lovely! And scary, at the same time.
"Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to purée of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!"-Harlan Ellison
Is it just me, or do bits of March of the Priests from The Magic Flute sound like parts of O Canada?
Speaking of music, just saw the video of Shakira's Hips Don't Lie. My, she's certainly a biped, isn't she?
Still listening to Ricky Gervais. Karl Pilkington on prostate exams:
 | "What I'm saying is, it's worse going in there, knowing that... I mean they've got it on the website, so you're on the bus thinking 'In 20 minutes I'm gonna have a finger up my arse'"
"Is it not something you could test on yourself? You could have a good rummage then without feeling too awkward." |
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05 May 2006 : 17.23
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Multitasking. I'm listening to Ricky Gervais, and reading about concept cars. It's a crime that the Holden EFIJY isn't going into production. I would so buy one. Look at that. Dead sexy, isn't it? Classic design, modern technology, like the Morgan Aeromax.
Well, ok, I probably wouldn't buy it, but it would be beautiful to see something like that gliding along the road, wouldn't it?
I notice that a huge number of concept car designs look an awful lot like they were taken from, or at least inspired by, comic books. What with the bold sweeping lines and over-sized features, I mean. And some of them, like this and that, are very science fiction. Particularly inside. And it is, of course, my love of science fiction that leads me to be interested in these things. god knows I'm not a car person.
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04 May 2006 : 18.11
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"I could eat a knob at night"
Listening to The Ricky Gervais Show. Brilliant. Karl Pilkington is an underappreciated genius, of course. You have to hear some of the things he says to believe them. His views on space and population control and things are remarkable, and have to be heard to be believed.
I've found an archive of his show from the XFM years, too.
| "We all watched 'The Elephant Man' and we were moved to tears, thinking it was a wonderful example of man's inhumanity to man, and my dad just said 'Wouldn't he make an amazing novelty rucksack?'" |
Ooo! Chimpanzee that! Monkeynews, ya fff...
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01 May 2006 : 07.30
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It's amazing what a difference one word makes, isn't it? If look at the clock and it's 7.30 am, and I'm awake, that sucks. However, I just looked at the clock and it's 7.30 am, and I'm still awake, and that's a totally different situation.
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30 April 2006 : 04.21
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Just watched School Reunion, the Doctor Who episode in which Sarah Jane Smith and K9 return. It's absolutely wonderful, though I might have shed a manly tear. In a ruggedly macho kind of way, of course.
Who am I kidding? I wept like a schoolgirl. Assuming, of course, that schoolgirls weep a lot. Which may or may not be the case. I've never been one, so I'm speculating.
It was such an emotional story, beautifully written and superbly realised, about mortality, loneliness, and the people who get left behind, who you touch on your way through life, and then years later think back and wonder where they are now. Oh, and giant bat creatures eating children and trying to remake the entire universe, but that's kind of a sub-plot.
Anthony Stewart Head is in it as Mr. Finch the Headmaster, which should please the Buffy fans, and we see more depth in Sarah Jane than we did throughout the entire time she was in the original series. Lots of other complications, too, such as with Rose's relationship with both the Doctor and Mickey. The rest of the series is going to be very interesting..
Some of the reviews I've read are a little concerned with the apparent continuity problem, as Sarah Jane says that she never found out what happened to the Doctor after he left her, but she was in The Five Doctors and met the fifth Doctor and his companions. To these people I say two things. First, in The Five Doctors she was never introduced to him as the Doctor into which her Doctor regenerated, and so for all she knew, he could have been from before her time. Time travel, remember? She was already somewhat confused by seeing the third Doctor again, even though she'd seen him regenerate years before.
And secondly, it's not important unless you're a fan of the original series, and take it seriously enough to notice continuity errors. If you are, don't get your anorak in a twist. It's not the end of the world. Ultimately, as fantastic as Doctor Who is, new series and original, it's just a TV show. It's brilliantly written and wonderfully brought to life but, well, nothing's perfect. Have to take the rough with the smooth.
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30 April 2006 : 00.46
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On the topic of religion, do we really need any further evidence that it's just plain ridiculous? Well, apparently some people do, and that's why the Muslims now have this, their equivalent of the sports bra. Could it be any more absurd? Not unless she was being chased by Gargamel.
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29 April 2006 : 12.58
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Another easter gone, and still no sign of god. Isn't the lord supposed to have returned ages ago? I mean, I'm often late to work myself, but this is getting out of hand. I'd fire him if I were in charge.
He says, being terribly late to post a comment about the whole affair himself.
Anyway, with easter comes an uprising in religious mania, and so I suppose I should offer some suitably religious quotes. Let's see:
"jesus is risen"
"Fall on your knees"
"Eat of this, for it is my body"
"jesus is coming!"
... hang on a minute...
But let us not forget the true meaning of easter. For most of us, that means indulging in a certain something that is sweet and brown and naughty.
I choose Halle Berry, but your mileage may vary.
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29 April 2006 : 5.44
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Today will be a different look for me, I think. Not for any particular reason, just because. Today I wear a white undershirt and a red shirt by Vestelatino. I have questions about these things.
Why is it that when a girl wears a top like this, it's a tank, whereas when a guy wears a top like this, it's a wifebeater? This is 2006, and same-sex marriages are a part of everyday life. So the female version should be a wifebeater, too. That's only fair.
And Vestelatino.. why do we refer to Hispanic people of South America and Mexico as Latinos, or Latin-americans, etc? How much Latin is there going on down there? You never hear "Ave, ese" or any of that sort of thing.
Speaking of, erm, speaking. You know, the English language is an amazing invention. It's composed of literally millions of words, and those words can be combined in brazilians of different ways in order to express any concept imaginable. So why is it that so many songwriters feel the need to include such expressive lyrics as "yeah" and "baby"?
Come on, people! This is the same language that invented Shakespeare!
Or whatever. The important thing is that it's capable of so much, and it's so underappreciated and underutilised.
"Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers."
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29 April 2006 : 03.21
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Yay! The Doctor Who episode released today is the one where Sarah Jane Smith returns, and so does K9. I love K9. Always wanted a dog just like him. Wouldn't you want a dog who could beat you at chess?
So my theatre has closed. It was a wonderful place, but the bastards who ran it mismanaged into the ground. They had no idea what they were doing, didn't really care, and didn't listen to people who did know what they were doing. So, because of them, there's no more panto, among other things. fuckers.
Anyway, I'm not going to go on about it. It's not like it would make any difference anyway.
What I wanted to talk about was an interesting phenomenon that I noticed. When the theatre was running, there were four women for whom, more than anyone else, it was a major focus in their lives. Not long after the theatre stopped producing its own shows and began to shut down, three of those women became pregnant. The fourth was my own mother, so she'd already learnt her lesson.
That says very interesting things about biological imperative and the human need for purpose in life, don't you think? They're going happily along being devoted to the theatre, and then it's gone, and the biological imperative says "You know what to do."
Ugh, a smoker just came and sat down at the desk next to mine. I think I'm going to be sick. How could anyone go through life reeking so much and be so completely unaware of it? He's probably a nice person, but I'll never get within conversation range to find out without vomiting on him.
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25 April 2006 : 21.25
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Why does everything run out at the same time? Suddenly I have no dishwasher detergent or toothpaste. I'm out of soap, too. I've had to substitute shampoo. It's not so bad, though. My teeth now have a full body and healthy shine.
Actually, you know, some of those marketing claims really are true. I gave my dog a bath with that volume-increasing shampoo, and it's done wonders for her coat. Now, shiny and beautiful, she looks just like a prize-winning Rottweiler. That gives you some idea of how much body the shampoo has added, since she started out as a Doberman.
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22 April 2006 : 19.15
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Which reminds me. My local cable company has introduced a voice over IP service. They're calling it Digital Phone, or DP for short.
A friend of mine who works in porn tells me that DP is the common industry abbreviation for "double penetration" during a scene with two guys and a girl. How apt, considering that the cable company has just introduced another way of screwing its customers.
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22 April 2006 : 15.29
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I just got a spam message, apparently from a Tanja Burnette, which contained that image over there, and the following:
Yes, apparently this ring manages, from outside no less, to hit the g-spot every time. That's quite an accomplishment. Thus, from this advertisement, we learn that "Tanja Burnette" is not actually female, because if he were he might have some idea about where the g-spot actually is.
Obviously, Tanja Burnette is a generated name, and the guy's probably really called Fred Conk or something, but what I don't understand is why he didn't take the time to do just thirty seconds of research when he was writing this message for mass distribution.
His wife/girlfriend is probably terribly frustrated by that attitude.
Honestly, why is the layout of the female body such a foreign country to most men? I mean, there's that whole mystery about where the clitoris is..
The only mystery is how they could miss it when everything points straight to it. Could it be any more prominent?
Well, yes, but that wouldn't help. I have a friend who has hers pierced, and so there's a gleaming bit of silver right there, shining like a beacon, and she says that most guys still can't find the magic button.
I'm not going to get too much into the subject because some people are really uncomfortable with it (though I've no idea why), but guys, take some time, do some research, open a book on anatomy, at the very least. Or even a web site, for christ's sake. Find out where all of the bits are, and what they all do. You spend so much time chasing women, why not learn what to do when you catch one?
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22 April 2006 : 11.22
Ka mate Ka mate
Ka ora
Ka mate Ka mate
Ka ora
Tenei Te Tangata Puhuruhuru
Nana i tiki mai whakawhiti te ra
Upane Upane
Upane Kaupane
Whiti te ra
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You know what the best bit of women's figure skating is? No, not the outfits, although I'll grant you that that's the obvious choice. To me, anyway, the best bit is that triumphant arrival before the routine, where they glide out onto the ice and lift their arms to the crowd proudly, almost arrogantly, as if to say "here I am. Adore me." It's such a striking pose.
And speaking of sports, I've mentioned before how I think it's funny that american football players have this image of being big tough guys, they're a sort of symbol of the strong american man type, but they wear forty pounds of armour, thickly padded trousers, and a fuck off huge helmet to protect themselves while they're out there playing, essentially, rugby. (for eight to ten seconds at a stretch before they stop to have a rest.)
Now, compare a yankee football player to these guys. Typical america, isn't it? All show, all noise and posing. Compare a football player to a real rugger, and.. well, you can't, can you? I mean, look at the limbs on those bastards. Particularly that big bugger at the end there. Muscles like Volkswagens, he has. They play a rougher game, with no protective armour, against guys who are just as big and scary and vicious as they are. So take the armour off an american football team, stick them shorts and rugby shirts, and set them up against the All Blacks. It would be fun to watch for, oh, about thirty-five seconds.
In case you're wondering, that's the New Zealand All Blacks performing their Haka, which is a Maori dance. Sort of a combination greeting and challenge. It must be bloody terrifying to be on the opposite side of the pitch and see that at the beginning of the match, don't you think?
Of course, impressive as the sight is, you'll never see an american football team do a Haka. Aside from the cultural significance, they're just not suited to performing the Haka. Some of the words have two or more syllables.
Speaking of Manly Men (TM), it'll be rodeo season soon, if it isn't already, so here's something that I don't understand: if you're in a movie theatre, and a man on the screen gets whacked in the baubles, you can hear the "oooooh..." of sympathy of many of the men in the audience. It's a well-known fact that a kick in the chicken causes paralysing pain, which is why protecting his giblets is such a high priority for the typical man.
And yet, when the rodeo comes around, big, tough, manly men think nothing of taking a fellow male mammal and wrapping a strap around his tackle, and then tightening it to the point that the pain is unbearable so that he jumps frantically around trying desperately to dislodge the iron grip on his goodies. And people watch this for entertainment. There's no sympathetic "oooooh..." from the men in the audience here. They cheer, they laugh, they want more.
I mean, wouldn't you think that there would be some sense of the unimaginable pain that the poor animal is experiencing? Some sense of horror at what is happening? A human takes a boot to the cobblers and that's bad, but a bull or a horse gets his widgets in a vice and people cheer?
People say that animals don't feel pain the way humans do. Yeah, sure looks that way.
So here's what I propose: since rodeos are all about manly men proving how manly they are, why not cut out the middle bit, and strap the cowboy instead of the innocent animal? He wants to prove how tough he is, after all. How tough do you have to be to voluntarily press your delicates?
Oh, but it's a contest, isn't it? So what we do is we have the strap on a rope, like it is for the cowboys riding the bulls and the broncos, so that when you pull, the pressure is on. Then we strap two cowboys, and give each man's rope to the other. That would be a real contest.
They want to play stupid macho games, that's fine, as long as they hurt no one but themselves.
I want to know why the SPCA and the government haven't stepped in and put a stop to this torture. It's probably protected as heritage. Bah. Maybe this year I'll go and join the protest. It won't accomplish anything, but maybe I can throw something heavy or sharp and knock the cowboy off the poor animal he's abusing. See what it takes to make the audience go "oooooh..."
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15 April 2006 : 11.14
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Fantastic! The first episode of the new series of Doctor Who is broadcast at 7.15 PM tonight in the UK. That's, let me see, eight hours ahead.. which means that it starts in one minute. Eeee! Excited!
I particularly can't wait for week three. K9 and Sarah Jane Smith. Wonderful!
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15 April 2006 : 02.16
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Speaking of religion, I had a conversation the other day. It went like this:
him: Happy easter, and god bless.
me, sympathetically: This must be a difficult time of year for you.
him: Why do you say that?
me: Well, at this time of year, jesus is supposed to return, and yet year after year he doesn't. Some people have been waiting all their lives without any trace of him. That's got to be hard on your beliefs, particularly as he's six years overdue now.
him: ...
And I thought that I might have heard, somewhere deep in his head, a quiet click as his brain switched on. Might just be wishful thinking, though.
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15 April 2006 : 01.22
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Some silly girl intercepted me as I was leaving he SkyTrain station the other day. I was heading toward the street, and there were two people, a girl and a boy, standing beside the main door. They couldn't have been more than seventeen. Anyway, the girl called out to me as I went past, so I turned and politely asked what she'd said, and she repeated "Is there anything you'd like me to pray for for you today?" with a pen hovering over a pad of paper.
How sad is that? These two kids should be out enjoying the things that life has to offer, not accosting passers-by with religious drivel, and depriving themselves the fun that they could have been having. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to stop and lecture her on the error of her ways, so I settled for telling her that she could pray for me to get my wish that she'd go out and have a good shag, and take some time to enjoy life, rather than wasting it in servile devotion to a fictional deity. She didn't like that, but she was too busy being pious to tell me so. What a waste.
Generally, you tend to get one of two reactions when you tell someone that their religion is nonsense. Either they explode, or they start to think about what you've said. The latter is, of course, far less common. Most religions get their tendrils into people when they're young, and every year thereafter makes it harder to break the habits of a lifetime. I can't imagine that it's easy to confront the idea that the religion upon which your entire life has been built is a pack of lies. Makes you respect that much more the people who do manage to break free of it.
The people that I don't understand are the ones who actually convert to a religion when they're old enough to know better. I suppose it comes down to the fact that some people need life to have meaning, and if they can't supply that meaning for themselves, religion comes neatly packaged and ready to fill the void. Even realising that, though, I don't understand how an intelligent person can fool herself enough to actually buy into it. Sure, maybe religion gives a sense of meaning, but how much do you have to forgive in terms of the contradictions and the sheer impossibilities of religion in order to take that supposed meaning seriously? I mean, for something to pass as the meaning of life, it must be coherent in and of itself. Look at the bible-based religions. If you have to suspend your disbelief to the extent that you can take the idea of a big bearded pixie in the sky seriously, that you can accept, particularly if you are female, blatant sexism built into the very nature of creation, that you can ignore the nonsensical and provably false claims of the central doctrine of that religion, that's a hell of a lot of suspension of disbelief. How could a rational mind possibly conclude that one must distance one's self from reality so much in order to find the meaning of that reality? If religion is true, it must slot neatly into reality in a way that nothing else possibly can, and yet most of it is at odds with reality. There is no room in reality for the claims of religion, there is nothing to support those claims, and the smallest amount of education in any field can reveal that.
Take a look at any field in the sciences, from physics to linguistics, and you can see that for yourself. Religion was created to explain the inexplicable, to explain why the sky flashes and the seasons change and why men and women are different and how life began. Now that we have science, now that we have fact, isn't it time we grew out of these faerie stories?
Quite aside from which, if you're going to join a cult, why wouldn't you join a Dionysian one? Why on Earth would life be full of wonderful things that you're not supposed to enjoy? What kind of great meaning is that?
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14 April 2006 : 21.42
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So just because I've nothing better to do at the moment, I've been watching Max Headroom. I've managed to obtain both the UK original and the US remake. I used to watch it when it first aired, but I'd never seen the original, and it's been so long that I barely remembered the remake. The original is gritty, rough, and brilliant. It's street, it's dirty, and it's real, in a "no future" kind of way. The remake is, predictably, simplified and clumsy. The rewriting is awkward, and the characters are nowhere near as self-absorbed and horrible as they should be. They made them fluffy and/or squishy. Particularly Bryce, who is supposed to be a nasty spoilt genius child, but right down to replacing the Shakespeare-quoting street thug. There aren't even any blanks.
Typical yankees. The remake is huge budget and tiny brain. The dialogue is simplified to the point that it's hard to watch because there's no subtlety to it. They have to hit the audience over the head with every little point because they expect them to be too simple-minded to grasp the concepts. And with good reason. Even the dark, grim, colourless ambience of the original has been ruined by lots of bright, colourful lighting. It's almost unwatchable. To the point that I started typing this because it wasn't holding my attention. It seems that american audiences just aren't sophisticated enough to appreciate anything involving nuance or subtlety. And the writers they brought in were dreadful. Even through the americanisation, you can still see the difference between the original writing and the incredibly clumsy patching that the yankee writers did. For example, in both versions, Bryce tries to kill Carter when Carter breaks into his lab to watch a tape. Bryce goes to a lot of trouble to injure Carter, eventually causing him to crash into a barrier arm (which is where the Max Headroom name originates), and then laughs about his little victory. In the yankee version, however, a later scene shows him saying to Carter that "I thought they'd killed you. I'm glad they didn't." and Carter, in typical yankee hero fashion, replies "Me too, kid."
Buh? That in no way fits with the rest of the writing up to that point.
Max Headroom is one of those series that is widely acclaimed by science fiction fans everywhere, but if you've seen the yankee version, do yourself a favour and find a copy of the original. It's immeasurably better.
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08 April 2006 : 16.01
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What am I watching here? It's a trailer for Turbo Jam, which is apparently the latest Tae Bo-type workout thing. Feh. If you want to take something like that, why not study a real martial art? When was the last time you saw a fat kung fu master?
Ok, aside from Sammo Hung. He's a pudgy bastard, but I don't think anyone dares to tell him.
In other news, I really need one of these. It's a Tardis phone flasher. The idea is that it flashes when you receive a call or text message. I don't know whether it works via bluetooth, or whether it's just sensitive to the radio signals that the phone uses, but it strikes me as a very handy thing to have, and not just because it's in the shape of a police box. I usually miss calls when I'm in my car because I don't hear the ringer over the music, and the phone is in the central console, so I don't feel the vibration. If I stick this on my dashboard, though, the beacon will let me know. Yay!
Besides, it's nifty. Not that I have have to justify it to you. Shut up. Don't judge me.
Don't you hate it when people say that? "Don't judge me." I'll bloody judge you if I want to. If you don't care what I think, what difference does it make anyway?
Quite apart from which, it's automatic. You observe, you judge. That's the way people work.
In other news, I came across a post which describes jesus as a "magic Jew on a stick."
Giggled about that for ages.
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"Motherfu..
I mean @!#?@!"
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07 April 2006 : 13.37
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There are many things about which I wonder. I wonder why christians are such freaking whackos, for example. But just at the moment I'm wondering how much less impressive Toccata in D Minor would have sounded had it been written for accordion. Or harpsecord. Or kazoo. Would mad scientists still insist upon playing it?
And while I'm about it, why are there no Jewish mad scientists? "Mad? What do you know from mad?"
Speaking of the wackos, if you read that article, one of the students misses an easy shot in a game of ping pong, and shouts "praise the lord!"
He clearly didn't play enough Q-Bert when he was young.
I wish that I could enroll in that freakshow of a school. Just for a couple of days. That's as long as I'd last. But think of the fun I could have!
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07 April 2006 : 12.39
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Public Service Announcement
For those people on the Internet who may not know, be they retarded, or not speak English as a first language, or both of them at once (see "american"), u is not a word. It is a letter. Similarly, c, y, r, b, 4, and 2 are not complete words in and of themselves. They might sound like words when you say them aloud, but they aren't. So don't use them as words. You fucking idiots.
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07 April 2006 : 00.24
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So, weird thing. Tonight I was at a comedy night, and a couple of the comics were discussing how I look like Russell Crowe. Personally, I don't see that at all, but I realise that I'm hardly an impartial judge, so I thought I'd put it to you, the viewing several, to be the judge. One of the pictures below is of Russell Crowe. Now, I'm not going to tell you which one. That's what you have to figure out for yourself. I know, it's stupid, but bear with me, and we can just put this whole resemblance thing to rest once and for all, ok?
I know, now that you see the pictures side by side, it's obvious which one's Russell Crowe, isn't it? I don't know how people get these ideas, I really don't.
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06 April 2006 : 12.39
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Nine days to the release of the new series! Yay! So exciting! I can't wait to see K-9 and Sarah Jane Smith and the Cybermen and.. just.. everything.
Speaking of British telly, I've recently discovered two new programmes. Hex and Hyperdrive.
Hyperdrive is a comedy show in space, featuring a crew aboard an enormous space ship three million years from Earth. Ok, no, but if you set a comedy show on a space ship, comparisons to Red Dwarf are inevitable. Hyperdrive has all kinds of things that Red Dwarf didn't have, from advanced computer effects to an apparently huge budget, but one thing that it doesn't have is "funny." You know, the thing that actually drives comedy. It lacks charm, it lacks humour, it lacks funny characters. Just setting it in space isn't enough to make it funny. I watched the pilot episode, but it was terrible. Still, I thought, you can't really judge a series on its pilot. They're usually awful. Look at ST:TNG. So I watched the second episode.
Well, I tried to watch the second episode. About halfway through I determined that my initial conclusion about the show was correct, and had to stop it. In fact, the only bit that made me so much as chuckle was one which was only funny because of Star Trek. In Star Trek, the enterprising (ah ha ha) young lieutenant announces that there are hull breaches on decks five, six, and seven, and the ship is venting atmosphere, and the captain orders them to do something involving emergency forcefields and structural integrity. In Hyperdrive, there's a hull breach and the ship is losing air, and the commander declares that "air is for girls!"
Yes, that's it. The only even smirkable moment in the first 1.5 episodes of Hyperdrive. Hardly worth the effort of typing the description, was it? But when in a room of a ship where there is a hull breach, and that room is venting atmosphere, some characters are worried that they'll be sucked out into space. Others, more correctly, are afraid of being blown out into space. Hyperdrive, however, both sucks and blows. It's just that bad.
Hex, on the other hand, is really good. The characters are fabulous, even the ones you really don't like, the effects are not too overstated, and the story is quite gripping. Comparisons to Buffy are inevitable, but that's really not fair. Buffy is fluffy fun, most of the time. Hex is way more heavy, and way more about the individual characters. It has funny moments, but they counterbalance the unpleasant moments beautifully, and the contrast makes each that much more effective.
So avoid Hyperdrive like a cliche, and see Hex immediately.
Which reminds me, a word of advice for actors: if you're in a show, and a friend comes to see it, don't ask them what they thought. If they liked it, they'll tell you. If they didn't, and you ask them, they'll either have to tell you that they didn't like it, and thereby risk upsetting you, or lie to you, and they probably don't want to do either. And if they do, they'll do it without being invited. So don't ask your friends what they thought of your show. Thank them for coming, and buy them a drink. That is all.
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06 April 2006 : 03.25
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There are so many things about humanity, and specifically western society, that don't make any sense. For instance, and I've mentioned this before, why do we have gender-segregated washrooms? On my office floor, we have two female washrooms and one male washroom. Why? Everyone does basically the same things in there, and everyone knows what sort of equipment the other gender is sporting. So why the big secret? It's not like you ever even encounter anything gender-specific, anyway, anatomically speaking, so even the most uptight person should be ok. There are privacy screens and stalls and things, so no one sees what anyone else is doing, and yet we insist that girls use this washroom and boys use that washroom. Isn't that a little elementary school for an office full of grown adults? Not that there's any particular reason to want both sexes in the same washroom. It just seems stupid and childish to have them separated. Like you're going to get girl-germs or boy-germs by using the same washroom, or something.
Actually, I can see an advantage. Maybe the men wouldn't be quite so disgusting if they were sharing the washroom with the women. Honestly, there are perfectly functional fascilities there boys, so what's with the need to mark your territory? I'd say that they were pigs, but pigs tend to be a little more careful. They don't try to spray every available surface. Maybe if we made up a children's rhyme, that might help. "Lift the seat before you excrete. You disgusting wretch. What the hell is wrong with you?" has a nice ring to it.
Perhaps the psychological effect of sharing the place with womans, however, might be more effective in causing them to stop being such vile slobs.
You know, drawing comparisons between humans and other animals isn't a bad idea. Take the magpie. Humans have very magpie minds, don't they? They are, as a general rule, fascinated by shiny things. Shiny can mean literally shiny, like gold and gems, or gimmicky, like bells and whistles. How many people ever actually play the games or listen to the FM radio on their cel. phone after having had it for a week? How many people ever used picture-in-picture except when showing it off to their friends? But they had to have it. It's shiny. Like a good many of the features on next year's model of car, or computer, or toaster.
And knowing this little secret about human mentality has practical value. I offer the following anectodal evidence:
I used to sell cel. phones. It was shortly after I'd graduated from tech school and discovered that what I really didn't want to be was a programmer after all, so I was between directions at that point. Anyway, the Ericsson T28W had just come out. It was a dead sexy phone for the time, but quite expensive, and therefore hard to sell, even with its many advantages. I, however, managed to sell dozens of them thanks to the magpie factor.
I'd tell them that it was a world phone, so they could use it in any country that had GSM. Whatever. I'd tell them that it included Tetris. Uh huh. I'd tell them that it used a lithium polymer battery, very advanced. Ok. Then I'd suggest that they have a look at it themselves, and as I handed it over, I'd press the release button on the side that caused the keypad cover to spring open automatically, and watch their eyes light up. Shiny! Sale, every time.
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05 April 2006 : 23.37
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[ chuckle ][ snort ]
Kid #1: Paper beats rock. BAM! Your rock is blowed up!
Kid #2: "Bam" doesn't blow up, "bam" makes it spicy. Now I got a SPICY ROCK! You can't defeat that!
-Overheardinnewyork.com
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05 April 2006 : 02.22
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Sadly, The Case Of The Strangled Nurk was rubbish. But points for trying. There aren't enough people around these days who appreciate The Goons.
So I find myself on the horns of a dilemma. I..
Now there's a thought. Why's it always the horns of a dilemma? Why's it never the buttocks of a dilemma? Why does one never find one's self on the daringly pierced genitals of a dilemma?
Anyway, for the last few weeks I've been seeing the occasional ant in my apartment. Not a big thing.. they send the occasional scout in order to determine whether I've left anything out that they can collect, and I haven't, so they don't send foraging parties. I can live with that. Unfortunately, yesterday they decided to swarm. It's that time of year.
If you're not familiar with the dating habits of carpenter ants, this is what happens: all worker and soldier ants are female, but infertile. The only fertile female is the queen, but she's fertile enough for the entire colony. And there are males, too, who lounge around the colony contributing nothing and waiting for sex to happen. Typical, really. Of course, once the mating is over with they just die. They live solely to shag.
Leading up to mating season, the colony produces new queens and new males. On the day, the new queens and the males move out of the colony through one of the entrances and gather outside. Then they swarm, meaning that they all take off, mate in the air, and scatter to find new locations in which to establish colonies. There are massive numbers of airborn ants at these times because so many of them are bound to be eaten by birds, etc.
So the other night I was stamping about my apartment when I noticed a winged ant under my heater. Feck. That meant that the ants didn't realise that my apartment wasn't outdoors (of course they didn't), and had decided that it was a convenient place to gather just before they swarmed.
Right, the last thing I need is queen ants swarming in my apartment, but I wasn't about to hurt them just because they'd chosen a bad launching point. How are they supposed to know? So I spent the best part of yesterday chasing queen ants around with liqueur glasses, catching them, separating them from the workers, and putting them into a large container to keep them from taking off. An effort hampered slightly by the workers realising what I was up to, and attacking me for stealing their queens. Carpenter ants have a hell of a bite on them, let me tell you.
Of course, it was fascinating to watch their behaviour. The new queens emerge a bit like jet liners exiting the hangar. They appear outside and just stand, waiting, while the workers rush around them cleaning this and checking that. The males are interesting, too. I only saw one or two of them, but they look virtually nothing like the females. They have small, pointy heads without the big woodworking jaws, and thin, pointy little abdomens. They look more like flies than ants, really.
Anyway, I've succeeded in collecting more queens than I can count and putting them into containment, but I couldn't capture a single male. So I have a problem. If I release the females outside, they might swarm, but without any males there won't be any point, since they need fertilised eggs in order to establish a workforce at the site of the new colony. But if I let them go inside, they'll swarm in my apartment.
Bugger.
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02 April 2006 : 15.32
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Bugger. Vancouver Opera's Don Giovanni has come and gone, and I didn't get a chance to see it.
Valkyrie needs food badly
But, dear listeners, to enjoy in its place, I've found... this! Yes, a Goon Show/Buffy The Vampire Slayer cross over fanfic thing.
"Henry: Oooh Min, we've run out of stakes. You can't get the wood you know." -The Case of the Strangled Nurk
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01 April 2006 : 19.17
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Popping back, for a moment, to the subject of ridiculous superstitions and medicine, a recent study performed by Harvard Medical School using 1800 patients and three christian groups has shown that.. now, let me get the wording right, because this is important.. the study has shown that prayer does bugger all for heart patients.
Patients were divided into three groups, with one group knowing that people were praying for them, and two groups being told that it was a possibility, with one of those groups being prayed for and the other not. That way there's a control group in order to consider the placibo effect.
Predictably, the prayer made no difference at all. In fact, the group of people who knew that they were being prayed for actually had a higher instance of post-surgery complications.
So either prayer does fuck all, or god is a sadistic bastard playing games with people's lives. Either way, prayer is utterly pointless.
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01 April 2006 : 15.23
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How does one compensate for having a small car?
Speaking of cars, I finally get to put mine back on the road. It's been seven months that I've forced myself to be carless, and god I've missed being independently mobile.
Speaking of god, why is it that biblethumpers never seem to have an answer when you ask them "If god is all-powerful, why did it take him six days to create the Earth? And why did he need a rest afterwards?"
Speaking of stupid, I was trying to have an intelligent conversation the other day. It went something like this:
me: ... and so a three dimensional universe is impossible because you must account for duration. Just as an object must occupy the spacial dimensions length, width, and depth, so it must occupy a period of time, however small. An object without duration is just as impossible as an object without depth.
her: I'm pretty!
me: [ sigh ]
Ok, maybe it wasn't quite that bad, but intelligent conversation is so hard to find, isn't it? Most people just don't want to think. It's not necessarily that they're stupid (though most people are), it's that not only are they too lazy to learn, they're too lazy to even be curious about what they don't know. They don't want to know, and so the possibility of having an intelligent conversation with most people is remote because they don't have anything intelligent about which to converse. Science, philosophy, religious debate, most of it is a lost cause because people are too lazy to think about any of it.
If you need evidence that humanity is lazy, you need only look as far as the universal remote control. Not only can people not be bothered to take the three or four steps to the television to change the channel or adjust the volume, but even going to the trouble of picking up a separate remote control for the stereo is too much of a hassle. How pathetic is that?
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31 March 2006 : 16.36
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My mother made a comment the other day to the effect that I'm a misanthrope.
Oh bum. Does it show? And here I thought I hid it so well, too...
Speaking of mothers, everyone's getting all down on Gwyneth Paltrow because she's pregnant and dared to have a Guinness the other night.
You know, that's really not a bad thing. Yes, Guinness contains alcohol, but one pint every few days with food isn't going to be more than the mother's system can filter out, and more than the developing offspring can handle. That's why doctors prescribe (or at least used to prescribe) Guinness to pregnant mothers. It's full of iron, among other things, which is very good for a developing human. How do you think humans in the wild coped with fermented fruit? The mother filters out the alcohol, and passes the rest of the nutrients on to the developing offspring. It's only if you're a complete moron and put more alcohol into the system than the filter can handle that it becomes a problem.
And I know whereof I speak. When my mother was pregnant with me, and with my brother, she drank the doctor-recommended occasional pint of Guinness. Today, my brother and I are both strong, healthy, strapping lads. And mentally there aren't any problems, either. I joined Mensa, after all. That indicates poor judgement, but not a lack of intelligence. And my brother could, too, if he cared enough about them to bother. Fortunately, he has higher priorities than intellectual masturbation.
That all sounds self-congratulatory, but there's a point to it. The occasional pint of Guinness didn't do me any harm, nor my brother, and indeed may have had a positive effect upon our development. And while that's obviously anecdotal, it's good enough for me. :)
I suspect that the reason for changing the advice is that people have no sense of moderation. If you tell them that they can have the occasional pint of Guinness, they'll be getting obliterated every night. They won't stop at one, they won't keep to just Guinness, and they'll end up doing much more harm than good. Because people are stupid.
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30 March 2006 : 19.14
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Yay Pam!
Seal hunters are vicious bastards who should be shot on sight. And they ruin our international reputation, besides. Good to see people standing up and saying something about it, at last.
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29 March 2006 : 16:06
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Ahem: duh.
A study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, and quoted on the BBC web site, states:
"It was found the data did not show spinal manipulation was effective for any condition - except for back pain where it is superior to sham manipulation, but not better than conventional treatments."
and
"The researchers said that, as spinal manipulation had been linked to mild side effects in around half of patients, such as temporary stiffness, and - much more rarely - strokes brought on by damage to the vertebral artery in the back, it was not something which should be used instead of other therapies.
-BBC
So cranking your spine around has side effects? You don't say! And it's not as effective as conventional therapy? No way!
Wow, you'd almost have to be a complete blithering idiot to go to a chiropractor, wouldn't you?
If you're not familiar with the basic theory, and I use the term in the loosest possible sense, behind chiropractic "therapy," it is that all of the body's disorders, diseases, and other problems, are caused by problems with the alignment of the spine that they call "subluxations."
No, seriously. They actually believe that if you straighten the spine, the body can repair all of the other problems it might be encountering. Asthma, for example, or arrhythmia, are somehow related to the alignment of your spine.
Don't believe me? Check out the "origin & history" from the McTimoney Chiropractic Association web site. An excerpt:
"Chiropractic began in 1895 when Harvey Lillard, janitor of the Ryan Building, where Daniel David Palmer, a practitioner of 'magnetic healing' had his office. Palmer began questioning Lillard about his condition, Lillard explained that 17 years before he had been stooping when he felt something give in his back; almost immediately, he'd lost his hearing."
So the guy who came up with chiropractic "medicine" was also into such gibberish as magnet therapy? He was a specialist in the field of nonsensical medicine over a hundred years ago, and yet chiropractic "therapy" is supposed to be taken seriously?
And the best bit, that somehow the misalignment of this janitor's spine had caused his hearing to be lost.. that's hilarious. Because, you know, it makes perfect sense that the nerves between the cochlea (part of the ear) and the auditory cortex (in the brain, a few centimeters away) would take the scenic route down through the spine. That's the only way that the transmission of information between the ear and the brain could be interrupted by a misaligned vertibra.
Honestly, how gullible, and indeed ignorant of basic anatomy, do you have to be to believe this stuff?
Mind you, people believe all kinds of things. Some of the ridiculous alternative medicines (with links to the appropriate sections of Quackwatch):
Reflexologists believe that there are pathways throughout the body that can be manipulated by poking and prodding the feet. No, honestly, they think that by pressing pressure points on the feet, the flow of energy, blood, nerve impulses, and nutrients can be directed, and that somehow this can heal problems with the body. They call it a science, but it's been shown that if you go to several different reflexologists you'll get several different opinions about what needs to be poked and prodded. It should also be noted that no one has ever found any evidence at all of these pathways on which their entire business is founded.
Magnet therapists believe that weak magnetic fields somehow cause changes in the body, even though the magnetic field of an MRI, which is practically strong enough to rip the iron out of your blood, has absolutely no descernible effect. Putting a magnet on your head won't cure migraines, and sticking a magnet down your trousers won't cure impotence.
Homeopathy was developed in the late 1700s, that time of medical wisdom that gave us leeches and bleeding. Well, right away it sounds good, doesn't it? The basic principle is that by applying tiny amounts of substances that cause symptoms similar to what the patient is experiencing, this will somehow cure them.
... the hell? And people believe this?
"Naturopaths assert that diseases are the body's effort to purify itself, and that cures result from increasing the patient's 'vital force.'" (Quackwatch). Oh, right. And here I thought that most diseases were due to the micro-organisms that we can fucking see, or to genetic factors. Silly me. Of course, it's the body's "vital force" getting a bit low that causes cardiovascular disease. That cold you get every year? It's not a virus, it's your body trying to purify itself. Nevermind what you see in the microscope! It's toxins in your body that cause it. Please.
Osteopaths: dates from 1874, but is essentially the same principle as chiropractic nonesense with one important difference: osteopaths actually make use of real medicine and medical technology. However, would you trust a "physician" whose discipline is based upon the belief that "diseases are caused by mechanical interference with nerve and blood supply and are curable by manipulation of 'deranged, displaced bones, nerves, muscles -- removing all obstructions -- thereby setting the machinery of life moving'," a school of thought established by a man who, in his own autobiography, claimed that he could "shake a child and stop scarlet fever, croup, diphtheria, and cure whooping cough in three days by a wring of its neck."? Yeah, me neither.
Acupuncturists think that by poking the patient with needles they can cure various problems. Which makes no sense at all. However, studies have shown that the results are much the same whether jabbing specific acupuncture points or just poking people at random. And better still, using a fake needle which doesn't actually penetrate the skin, but looks as though it does, produces the same result as an actual acupuncture needle. So it's all fiction.
Traditional Chinese "medicine" is based primarily on concepts like chi and meridians and the same pointless rubbish on which acupuncture is founded. And the supposed health benefits are just as fictitious. Worse, the principles on which it is based often require some innocent animal to be harmed because the "doctor" needs a gall bladder, or cartilage, or some other stupid thing. These sick fucks should be deleted from society so that no more animals have to suffer for their "medicine."
Ear candling... heh.. ha.. hahahahahahahaha!
Oh.. oh wow... I don't think I'd heard of that one before. The idea, as I understand it, is that the candle is supposed to create a vacuum in the ear, thereby drawing all of the debris from the ear canal, and somehow from the sinuses, and even the brain. Honestly, that's what they think. Inasmuch as they do think. What they don't seem to realise is that a vacuum of less than a third of the kind of strength necessary to suck the wax out of your ear would rupture your tympanic membrane (ear drum), nor that there is no direct route from the ear to the sinues or the brain. And even if there were, the damage that the introduction of a vacuum would do to the brain scarcely bears thinking about.
Come on, people. Our current medical science has been developed over literally thousands of years. We've advanced biology, chemistry, genetics, and many other fields beyond the wildest imaginings of even a hundred years ago. You can see the evidence of this all around you, from the computer on which you're reading this to the increasing lifespan of each succeeding generation. In the midst of the incredible advances in medical science, why revert to superstition and witchcraft?
There isn't time or space enough to go over all of the other drivel that people believe, but have a read through Quackwatch.org to see what people can be suckered into. From "faith-healing" to "detoxification," alternative medicines are ridiculous. If they worked, medical science would adopt them. Why wouldn't they? Better ways to heal injuries, better ways to treat diseases, and better ways to make money. If you could just load someone up with magnets to cure disease, or crack their spine, this whole antibiotic-resistant superbug problem wouldn't be anything like as serious.
But the fact of the matter is that alternative "medicine" is alternative because it's worthless, except to the people who make money doing it. It's based upon gullibility, and the placibo effect, and nothing more. Unless you count greed. Its claims are contradicted by not just our knowledge of anatomy, but by common sense. If you're sick, go to a doctor, not to someone who's going to take your money and jab you with needles or poke your feet or twist your spine around. At best, they'll do absolutely nothing, and at worst, they'll introduce new problems that might be worse than the original. A bit of a stiff back is nothing compared to a stroke.
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26 March 2006 : 18.16
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Gah.. I can't seriously be the only person whose skin crawls at the thought of pregnancy, can I? The very idea turns my stomach violently. It's so obscenely biological, the thought of something developing inside like some grotesque parasite, feeding, moving, distending the body to make room for itself as it grows.
[ shudder ]
Anyway, what brings me to this subject is that I was talking to a friend about abortion. I know, dangerous subject, but interesting for all of that. She was saying that once a life has begun, it's not right to terminate it. My argument is that that's an unreasonable basis for making such a decision because life never begins.
Except, you know, for that once.
What I mean by that is that there isn't any point at which a life begins which was not previously present. When an organism reproduces, existing cells divide. So when a human is conceived, development is triggered in an existing ovum, but that ovum is already a living cell, formed by the division of another existing cell, which means that it's activated, but it doesn't magically come to life.
Once you've established that fact, you can trace life all the way back to the first single-celled organism which started it all. Life ends all the time, but it never actually begins.
That being the case, the question isn't whether it's right to abort a new life because there's no such thing as a new life. The single ovum develops until it becomes an independent life form, so the question is "how close can it get to being an independent life form before it's no longer ok to terminate it?"
That depends upon what we mean by independent, doesn't it? Is it ok to disconnect the life support of someone who's brain dead? They're a fully functioning human aside from the fact that they don't have a functioning brain. So what's the point of keeping them alive? Does it do them any favours? No, it's just a question of the people making the decision feeling guilty.
It's the same with abortion. The developing zygote doesn't have self-awareness, it doesn't have consciousness, it doesn't even have all of its bits fully formed, and it certainly can't survive on its own, so how is it different from the brain dead person on life support?
And yet there are still people who get all upset at the thought of terminating something which, until a little while ago, was just a single cell. They go on about its future, how it deserves a chance, etc etc.
But what they don't seem to take into account is that we're not talking about a person. We're talking about something which has the potential to be a person, but isn't one. If potential is what they're concerned about, they should be upset at the lost potential of every single ovum which goes unfertilised. They're no different, just because they haven't been activated, right? Each of them has the potential to be a person, right? Yet somehow it's ok to make the decision that this month you're not going to get pregnant. You're going to let that ovum be expelled, and die, and it will never grow up to be a person. But what's the difference, really? Ultimately, until the thing is conscious, it's not a person, and it doesn't have a future.
Getting right down to it, the difference between an unfertilised ovum and a fertilised one is that the latter has begun to divide. So what's the problem? We don't want to remove something that's dividing? But we're ok with removing cancer, which is also a cluster of cells which are dividing. So that's not it. It must be what it's developing into.
And that's where I don't see the problem. The zygote is developing into a human, sure, but, and this is the important bit, it isn't one now. It's a cluster of cells, and if you want to cancel it, it will never know because it isn't conscious. Why worry about its future when it doesn't have one? Why worry about what you will take away from it by aborting it when it is, as yet, no more an independent life form than is the single ovum? Until it develops consciousness, it's not a person, it's a thing, and it's stupid to think of it any other way.
And yet people do. Someone gets pregnant by accident, and even if she can't afford to keep it, or has no place for it in her life, she gets this idea in her head that she has to give the thing a chance. The bottom line here is that if you aren't ready to breed, you shouldn't be doing so, whether you're pregnant intentionally or unintentionally. You're concerned about the future of the cluster of cells that could potentially be a human, but what kind of future will it have if you can't look after it? It's stupid to throw away your entire life over a blob of cells just because you know what it might eventually become, regardless of what it is now.
But then, people are stupid, aren't they?
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26 March 2006 : 13.22
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It's curious that people swear that you can feel someone watching you. Common sense tells you that it's impossible, of course. The eye is a passive receiver, which means that it is impossible for you to feel that someone is watching you, even if you were sensitive to all sorts of things that you aren't, because the watcher isn't generating anything that you could detect. And yet it's an established phenomenon, one of those thin | |
