Wednesday, April 21, 2010

On 200

I wrote a lot of shit here, so, if you don't want to read all or any of it, at least have a look at the videos I've posted down below..

South Park's 200th episode aired last week to high expectations.  The creators of the show had assured everyone that they would be packing every single person they have ever made fun of into a single 22 minute episode and be done with it.  This turned out to not be the case.  We were left with several cliff-hangers by the end of the episode, leaving loose ends to be tied up in a future episode.

The celebrities were all there, Tom Cruise leading the others.  South Park tends to stir up some controversy every now and then, but this time it was Tom Cruise at the heart of the problem.  After years of putting up with bullshit from the town of South Park, Tom has decided to lead all the shows victims to sue the town for everything it's worth.  But where is the controversy in that?  I'll tell you where it is.  Tom Cruise has other plans up his sleeve.  As it turn out, Tom Cruise wants to use the pressure on South Park as a means for him to get a chance to see in person someone he has always wanted to meet: the prophet Muhammad.

Muhammad seems like an obvious character to include in such an episode of South Park.  He had been depicted previously in the show, uncensored, in episode 504: "Super Best Friends."  Here he played alongside other religious figures as superheroes, whose job was to take down the evil David Blaine and his religion, Blaintology.  From that season on, Muhammad could be seen in the show's opening sequence at the beginning of every episode, even the episode in which Comedy Central censored to prevent any type of retaliation from crazy Islamic groups.  This episode was in response to both the Jyllands-Posten contoversy, after having printed cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, and comparisons the show had received to Family Guy.  In the show, the Family Guy writers have decided to show Muhammad for shock value.  Comedy central censored the image in the second part of the episode, and everything was fine.  In response to Comedy Central's decision to censor the image, the creators ended the show with Jesus Christ and George W. Bush defecating on the United States flag.  While the meaning of this seems obvious to me, I sometimes hear others talk about how random and senseless the ending is.  So, to quickly point out the obvious...

In America, we have a freedom of religion.  Despite this, many of our citizens believe us to be a Christian nation, and to a great extent, we are.  The Muslim world has proven several times to be against America, and has also shown that its ways are almost entirely incompatible with the freedom available in the United States.  Matt Stone and Trey Parker show us, despite all of the things we worship as Americans, Comedy Central is more willing to bend to the demands of our enemies than it is to care about attacks on the United States.

So, for the 200th episode of South Park, Matt and Trey brought back the subject of free speech for us, versus the ability to prevent free speech on the part of religious extremists.  The first image we get of Muhammad is a stick-figure drawing, to which one of the characters asks, "Is that okay to show?"  It seems to me that this would be offensive enough to Muslims, but South Park wasn't done.  The boys end up tracking down Muhammad, who is again censored from the show, but the characters come up with a great idea: putting him in a bear suit so he could be shown without being shown.  This is where they made a mistake.  It wasn't long until the Muslim nutcase website, Revolution Muslim (it has been down a lot lately, but if you really want to go there, Google has a cached copy), threatened (nearly guaranteed) death to the creators of South Park.  Anderson Cooper did a great piece on it last night:


Bill O'Reilly also did a little something on the subject:


So, what happens now? There is a follow-up episode due to air tonight at 10 pm. One of three things will happen on the new episode.

  • Matt and Trey are going to reveal that the person is the bear outfit isn't really the prophet Muhammad, and the Muslim radicals are still going to look like assholes like they always have.
  • Matt and Trey are really going to try to go all out to drive the point home.
  • Matt and Trey are going to try to take the situation further, and Comedy Central is going to puss out once again and censor the show to prevent anymore madness.

The show will air in just a few hours, and we are going to find out whether the terrorists win or not.  After that, I might end up blogging about the outcome.  And I will probably go on a rant on the Muslim overlords ruling this country.  We'll see.

You can watch all of these episodes for free at http://www.southparkstudios.com/

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Goddamn Aardvark. You Funny, Girl.

So, I've been using Aardvark since it was acquired by Google, and it's been working out really well so far.  I can honestly say it is way better that Yahoo! Answers.  What Aardvark does is, instead of having you come to its website to browse through questions you might know the answer to, it actually has you list topics you know a lot about, and when someone has a question about one of your topics, Aardvark sends the question to you in an email, and you simply respond if you have an answer.  Aardvark has always given me good questions in the past, but I got a question on easter that made me scratch my head.  What had happened was, I had previously allowed Aardvark access to my Facebook account, and as a result it was able to crawl my profile to pick up on other things I might know about.

From Aardvark:


Hi Blaire,
Nate just asked a question I think you might be able to answer. 
pic
What is a good live flowering plant to buy a mother for Easter? That can be found quickly
Nate G. 36 / M / San Francisco, CA

To answer, just reply to this email.
If I don't hear from you soon, I'll ask someone else -- but you can answer anytime. 
- Aardvark

Now, I don't know much about flowers other than the fact that that's where we get vanilla. I had to look at the bottom of the email to find out what had given Aardvark the idea that I was a good person to ask on this subject. "I sent you this question because you have *Taking my clothes off in church* in your profile."  Good call, Aardvark.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Lyfe of Brian

For the three of you who realize that I have changed my name to Brian, here is the explanation.  If you were expecting something sweet and awesome as shit, I'm sorry.  You won't find that here.

After seeing Steve (I think his name is Steve) many times at work, where he can clearly see my name tag, it dawned on me that he hadn't been calling me Brian because he thought it was funny.  He really thought my name was Brian.

The other day, a man who often comes in to send faxes called and asked me a question.  I answered him, and he asked if I was Robert.  I assured him I wasn't Robert, and he asked me if I was Craig.  I told him I wasn't Craig.  He then asked me if I was Brian.  We have a Robert and a Craig, but no Brian (R+C+-B).  I knew that he must have been talking about me when he said Brian.  I assured him at this point that he was actually talking to Judy.  He further tried to find out who I (Brian) really was, but I wouldn't back down from my Judy story.  He finally gave up and I was able to go about my shit.

Later in the day, I started thinking about how often people call me Blaine and Blake and stupid shit like that.  I don't have a problem with my name being Blair or having people come up to me and telling me that their granddaughters are named Blair or that they think my name is exotic.  I like that shit.  What I don't like is being reminded of how fucking stupid people are when my name is on a goddamn tag right in front of them, and they still call me stupid shit.  So, I have decided to fix this problem by selecting my most popular name: Brian.

Please, be aware that I will no longer respond to Blair.  I will respond with a smile and nothing else (which means I just lied).  I will now only respond to my God-given names: Brian & @TheRealJohnKing.

Friday, April 02, 2010

Tom Short Evolution

    I was heading to my logic class, and on the way there, I came upon a group of people situated outside the entrance I use to get into the building.  There was a guy addressing the crowd, and I didn't really care to know who he was or what he had to say.  I find that people who want to be heard usually have nothing but stupid shit to say and are only talking because they are assholes.  This guy might be an asshole or he might not.  I don't know for sure, because I'm still not familiar with him.  Anywho, I'm walking up the steps to go into the building, and I hear someone shout something alone the lines of, "Why are you here again saying the same bullshit you said yesterday.  It's all just bullshit, and you just like to tell us this bullshit, and you don't give anyone with a different opinion to talk."  This young fat boy seemed angry, and this is something I rather enjoy.  Why is he angry? I thought to myself.  The answer is likely because he's fat, but there is also a part of me that understands where he was coming from.
    When someone claims to have the answer about something abstract like the existence of a god, and they come up with things to support their conclusion, many people surely can see where this type of logic (illogic) is flawed.  The realize that building evidence to support a conclusion is ridiculous in such terms, but they don't seem to know how to explain why it is so ridiculous.  This idea in particular seems like a good enough argument to get things started to me, yet when I heard the young man and other heckling the speaker, they never had a response to anything he had to say after their initial outbursts.  I would assume that they are speaking up because they have logical thoughts to add to the discussion, but they just don't follow through once they've entered the field.  There are two possibilities I have come up with to explain this problem: when someone starts speaking up, they don't really have any idea what they're talking about and just want top fuck shit up, or they do have something worth adding but don't know how to present it in front of other people.  To be honest, the preacher didn't seem life-threatening to me, and I had no reason to stick around when I had homework I needed to do.  When I really think about it, he was only preaching to the choir and to those who didn't have the sense to pick up a real book and learn about reality.
    I went to class and borrowed a book from someone, because I found this morning that I had lost my book.  While I was working on my homework, I received a text from my highly homosexual friend, Alex Miller.  He asked me if I had seen Tom Short on campus the day before, and from what I read on Google Voice, I responded, "Hahaha.  Dude, you will enjoy my story kinda."  I'm not sure what the hell I was talking about, and I guess Alex won't enjoy the story kinda since I don't remember what it was.  I'm guessing it wasn't that great a story anyway based on my using the word kinda.  
    After class, I exited the same way I came in.  Tom Short was still out there preaching whatever he was trying to preach, and I instantly heard someone yelling something stupid out like it was something to do.  Tom then began telling everyone he hoped they would go to heaven.  Everyone was blocking my way in every direction, so I was forced to walk right through the middle and impose on his stage.  This would have been the perfect opportunity for me to say something had I wanted to.  At the time, I didn't care one way or the other what was going on, so I just passed through.  I have shit to do, and I've waisted plenty of my life listening to assholes argue about whose ideas are God's ideas and why people should do shit.  I just didn't really care.  This is America, as they say, and I was just fine with him being there saying what he wanted to say.
    I walked to the computer lab to print out some papers I need to read for a class, and I ran into an old friend from a class I had taken last semester.  I already knew this guy was a Xian, so I wasn't surprised when he started talking to me about the "soldier" on campus.  I knew exactly what he was talking about, and I was upset that it had come up.  This friend (I don't know his name, btw) is a good guy, and I hate having to listen to friends say stupid shit.  I hate hearing it, because it's hard to tell them you don't really give a shit about what they have to say, because you're supposed to be friends with them and be there to listen to them and rub their backs and suck their dicks.  After I told him I had seen the soldier, he proceeded to tell me who he was talking about as if I hadn't just told him I knew who he was talking about.  "He's God's soldier."  Anyway, he starts laughing about Tom and shit, then he tells me he's a Xian and everything, and then he starts saying something else.  I believe he was about to tell me what he thought was so odd about Tom, but he changed the subject to the ignorant motherfuckers on campus.  I thought Oh shit to myself, because I had a feeling that this guy was gonna start saying people who believe in reality are ignorant motherfuckers.  I can take a lot of stupidity, but criticizing logical people for being logical is where I draw the line.  "These motherfuckers just stand there and shout, "Fuck you, God's not real you fucking retard," is what he really said to me.  Totally not what I was expecting.  I was surprised by how much I agreed with him; though, I'm sure my reasons were different from his.  At this point I let him know that I agreed, "Yes, because even though God isn't real, it doesn't mean he's a retard."  I knew this would set my friend off.  "Not only that, but he has a right to be here saying what he has to say just like anybody," he responded.  At this point, my head started spinning (not literally, but that would have sweet).  I like talking to religious people who aren't completely crazy, thinking the voices they hear are the only things that matter in life.  My friend was a religious person, yet he still had sense in him.  We may not have agreed on our reasoning, but we were still able to agree on our reasons.
    As I was driving home, I started thinking about how I felt about everything that had happened during my day.  I thought about how I didn't care that a man came to campus and started preaching things to explain a world he didn't understand.  It is a university, so most people are there learning about the real world anyway.  They don't really need someone who doesn't know to give them answers to questions that they were probably learning about anyway.  Still, people ask a lot of stupid fucking questions, like "If God is real, then why do people suffer?"  That shit's deep (not).  There's a real world here, and shit happens.  Here's a better question: "Wouldn't it be weird if there wasn't any suffering in the world?"  Think about it.  Let's say someone is in a car accident.  Let's make it a head on collision at 100 miles per hour.  Now, some people question why there is suffering in the world, when it is quite obvious that if bad shit happens to people, some magical force should come and save the day.  The man or woman who was just killed, to these people, logically should have come out of that shit without a scratch if there really was a God.
    My example of suffering in the world doesn't really get at what I'm trying to say here, but it's a foundation.  I wasn't using the example to show that God wouldn't exist in a world without suffering; I merely wanted to point out that people ask stupid questions when they don't know how to deal with the emotions of life.  When something bad, like a fatal car accident, happens, people need to have someone or something to blame.  They for some reason can't deal with the fact that we are just bouncing around space-time, and shit happens.  Shit just happens.  When someone tragically dies (as opposed to non-tragically dying) many people either need God to be there to take the blame for what happened.  Others like to have God not be there as a means of explaining what happened.  We see examples of this type of logic on huge scales rather often.  The best example I can think of in recent history is 9/11.
    After 9/11(/2001, just to be clear), people took to the internets to talk to (supposed) scientists to find out what really happened on that day and who was really behind the attacks.  9/11 was such a huge deal, that many people didn't know how to deal with the idea that we weren't prepared for a bunch of loser terrorists to jump down from their monkey bars and attack us from within our own country.  Despite the overwhelming evidence that 9/11 happened the way it was said to have happened, there were plenty of people willing to ignore this for the strange idea that George Bush (our god in this story) was the one to blame.  Even though evidence that George Bush was behind 9/11 was almost entirely nonexistent in comparison with the evidence that Osama bin Laden was the mastermind, people still wanted to cling to the idea that it had to have actually been Bush.  Some people don't understand the world they live in, so they decide that God must be behind everything.  Other people don't understand 9/11, so they look to George Bush and say, "I don't get it.  It must have been George Bush.  How do people get to the point where they think their lack of understanding gives them reason to make something up and tell others that they have the answer?
    If you are thinking this is the shit I was thinking about on my way home from school, you're wrong.  I was going to talk about that, but I ended up on some dumbshit tangent.  I'm not sure how I got here or where I was going, so let's just back the fuck up an get back to where I really wanted to go.  I should warn you right now that everything I've said up to this point has been bullshit, and if you've read this far, I'm not giving you a refund on however much of your life you just wasted.
    I want to go back to the campus evangelist who visited my school today (I hope to wrap this shit up soon).  On my way home, he got me thinking about what really is wrong with people believing in magic and trying to convince other people to believe in it too.  Really, I don't care what people's personal beliefs are.  I'm have a pretty libertarian view on people's personal rights.  I think people should not only be able to think what they want, but I also think they should mind their own fucking business when it comes to other people.  This presents me with a huge problem.
    When someone tells me there really is a God, I might be slightly annoyed that someone is saying stupid shit to me, but I'm fine with them believing what they want.  I realize that while there might be a god (it's safe to say no one really knows) it is laughable to suggest that a god that entirely a creation of man would just happen to be the real god.  It would also be ironic.  The only god I've really had a chance to study is the god (one might say gods) of the Abrahamic religions.  I've searched for any evidence that this god might really exist, but all evidence people have for thinking this (these) god(s) exist either prove just the opposite, are purely subjective or just don't make sense period.
    Goddammit, I'm getting way off topic again.  This blog post is supposed to just be about my day, and I keep fucking it up.  I'm sorry.
    The problem with religion is this.  People in the United States vote on shit.  In the southern part of our country (and a few other places) people seem to think that reality threatens the existence of God.  People think this, and they vote to try to have their ideas taught in public schools.  There are many subjects I could relate this to, but the thing I was thinking about on my drive home was Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection.
    As I think I explained earlier, I have a problem with people taking an idea based on little or no evidence and designing evidence to support their idea.  For many religious people, there is an issue with scientists observing nature and coming up with logical conclusions based on the real evidence.  Most people who are against any theory of evolution have no idea about what it really is or how it works.  Some people understand it and are still entirely against it.  Evolution is something that is always being built upon, and because there will always be things to discover, there are holes in the theory.  When some people see that there are holes in a theory, they decide to use that as a way to prove that there is a creator.  They do this, because there is always an answer with God.  They don't have holes in their theories, because their theories are not based on facts.  If there is nothing there to begin with, then there is nothing there to have holes in.  Since evolution has holes, it is wrong.
    Suppose we are looking at a house, and the house has windows.  It is a really nice day outside, so the windows are open.  Suppose also that there are two men standing in front of the house, arguing over their beliefs about the house.  One man claims that the walls of the house are standing.  This isn't a belief for him, because he can observe the house standing right in front of him.  It is is a matter of acceptance rather than a belief.  The man standing next to him disagrees.  He is quick to point out that the walls contain holes.  It doesn't matter to him that he can see the walls standing even though they contain windows.  He feels threatened by the house, because his religion doesn't say anything about the house standing.  When he sees an open window, he sees it as open for interpretation.  He sees it as a gap in the house, and, instead of observing how the house can still stand with windows cut into its walls, he instead chooses to fill the gaps with his god and ignore the rest of the house.  After putting God in the picture, he claims that he has proven the rest of the house wrong, thus concluding that it can't really be standing.
    If claiming a house with windows is a house that can't stand sounds stupid as fuck to you, then you would likely have no problem with evolution.  If, on the other hand, you feel that you can replace with something real with something that is made up only because there a pieces of the puzzle missing, then you are retarded as fuck and need to stop voting.  It is fine that you want to believe what you want to believe, and you could even follow reality alongside your beliefs, as many religious people do.  If you're one of these people, just get the fuck over yourself and stop trying to push your ridiculous ideas on children.  You're free to speak your mind in this country, but you really need to consider that your choice might affect children and cause the retardation to spread.

 
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