If I don't post again until Sunday, it probably means my mouse is broken. I'm having a bit of trouble with it, and if I can't use my mouse, I obviously can't update the site. Basically, the cord connecting it to the computer is screwed up, and if it moves in the wrong direction, it can no longer be detected. I had to Scotch tape it into place to keep it from getting dislodged. I'm planning to go out and buy a new mouse on Sunday afternoon, but until then, I have to use tape. It's working again now, but I don't know how long it'll last. Other than that, there's not much to say. My roommate started a trend, and now two or three other guys are picking up on the "Braveheart" theme. They even made cardboard swords and axes. The costumes are pretty disturbing, actually. One of them described it as "three guys with their shirts off wearing skirts." I'm glad I decided not to go out tonight. I am planning on going out tomorrow night, however. My roommate knows about a party somewhere, so I'll probably be going to that. It will be the third party I've gone to since the beginning of college (have I mentioned I'm antisocial?), and the first one that isn't being hosted by a member of the drumline...You know, people in dorms need to stop being so frickin' loud in the frickin' hallways. I thought I should mention that. I think I'm out of material, so I'll stop. My room is being invaded by insects thanks to the warm weather, so I have to get back to killing them mercilessly. Later.
I was just browsing speechcodes.org, and I happened to come across this. I'll let it speak for itself:
Acts of intolerance will not be tolerated at The Pennsylvania State University.
Yet another good reason to avoid Pennsylvania.
I was just going to write about a Halloween-type experience I had, but then I came across this article on RWN. Apparently, the courts can now decide how children should be raised. Where's the ACLU on this one? Where are the cries of separation of church and state? Since when can people be forced to parent their children in a certain way? By the way, you should actually read the article if you don't know what I'm talking about. I'm too angry to describe the situation. Anyway, this is just idiotic and hypocritical. I don't even feel like ranting about it. I just want to quickly mention that Halloween experience I was referring to. I was walking from the dining hall back to my dorm (the 2 are only about 30 yards apart), and I happened to see a few hundred crows circling around the trees on the other side of the parking lot and landing in them. I had never seen that many crows at one time. I believe that's called a "murder" in technical terms. It seemed appropriate for today. I'm actually not doing anything really special for Halloween. At home, I videotaped trick-or-treaters, but I can't do that here. I did spend the afternoon reading ghost stories and some stuff by Edgar Allen Poe, but that's about all I have planned. I don't really feel like leaving the dorm with all the potential for strange behavior tonight anyway. My roommate already scared me enough. He's dressing up as William Wallace (the Braveheart guy), but he only has the "kilt" on right now and is still wearing a regular shirt, so it just looks like he's slowly changing into a transvestite or something. He said that he got face paint, so I'm assuming he'll complete the whole "Scottish warrior" look later. I spent way too much time describing that. Anyway, enjoy whatever it is you're doing tonight. Later.
I'm back at the computer once again, and I don't have a rant or anything, but I want to talk about a few things that happened in the 2 classes I had today (college+Friday=easy). They were both discussion sections, so a lot of the time was spent on discussion, obviously. The first one was for sociology, which I've mentioned a couple times before. We were talking about terrorism and the different solutions to it, and once again, I was amazed at how intelligently it was handled.
We discussed 3 solutions to terrorism: War, homeland security, and appeasement/peace talks. All of the groups basically came to the conclusion that war is necessary to deal with threats, and national security needs to improve to prevent another 9-11. Interestingly, most groups also realized that appeasement isn't a very effective strategy, which the TA didn't totally agree with. I said that "we're not dealing with rational people," referring to Hussein, Bin Laden, and others, and that seemed to make sense, so I guess I pointed out one of the flaws of that strategy.
One girl spent a lot of time just arguing with everything the TA said. At one point, she asked him if he was anti-Bush, and he hesitated for a second, then said yes. At least he's willing to admit it. He actually said he agrees with some of Bush's policies, but is against the war because he "doesn't like killing."
That doesn't make a lot of sense, but at least he seemed to have the minority opinion in the class. He also disagreed with increased security measures and said that war makes people so paranoid that we might eventually make laws against marrying foreigners and using certain words on the phone.
I argued that we have enough dissent to avoid things like that, and we're not going to be like Afghanistan was. His response: "We're not like that...yet." That bothered me. A student cited McCarthyism as an example of what could happen, but I really don't think it's going to reach that level. At the end of class, the TA did something really stupid, so I'm going to write about that. A few weeks ago, I wrote about a guy in my writing class that confused Palestine with Pakistan. I thought that was insane, but today THE TA DID IT!
We talked briefly about religious motivations for terrorism, and he said "Israel and Pakistan" about 6 times in the course of a minute...and nobody corrected him (including me, I guess). I think most of us actually knew what he did but wanted to see if he would figure it out. Overall, we managed to have a "fair and balanced" discussion, which once again tells me that crazy stuff such as those items from the Daily Orange has not taken over SU...yet.
By the way, I'm breaking my posts into separate chunks like this from now on so they seem less intimidating. I realize my writing style is extremely wordy and takes up too much space, so this is the least I could do. Anyway, the second discussion section was for philosophy, another class I've talked about on SIT several times.
We've now moved past abortion and are talking about Kant again (very confusing material; avoid it if at all possible), but we also have papers due in about a week, so the TA spent some time talking about those and went against another college stereotype. He said that many students will try and write a paper that the TA or professor will agree with in order to receive a higher grade.
From what I've seen, this is true, and many professors do grade based on whether the student argues for the "right" position. However, this guy said that he hates when students argue for something they don't agree with just because the person grading it has the same view, and he said that he would actually deduct more points if he saw that. According to him, he can't stand to see weak arguments for something he believes in, so he'd prefer to read the other side and consider all arguments. This guy described himself as a liberal Republican, so I don't know how much that factors into it, but it's good to know that some people grade on quality of argument and not the argument itself.
I apologize if I bored you with that post, but I needed to write about it. Other than that, not much is happening right now. It is Halloween, so some people are wearing costumes on campus, which seems really weird (one guy had a light bulb attached to his head), but there haven't been that many. I think the fact that it's 70 degrees outside on October 31 in Syracuse is stranger than the costume thing. It was snowing less than 2 weeks ago, and now it's warm. I don't know what to think.
I said I was going to post a lot today, but, as the title says, I kinda got bored and gave up. I was going to write some stuff about Michael Moore, but I think everything that can be said about him has been said. Since I have to get up at 9:30 tomorrow, I probably shouldn't be blogging right now, but I do want to post the other thing I was originally going to use for today. I mentioned before that my writing professor showed the "Uncle F***er" part of the South Park movie in class. He used this to enhance our discussion of how subtle messages affect children and other viewers (remember the Disney rant?). Anyway, it was just hilarious to actually sit in a class and watch cartoon characters singing about f***ing their uncles. College is strange. Also, a bunch of people repeated the words for the purposes of discussion. I think I should stop now. It's way too late for this. Before I go, I should point out that I do censor my own writing occasionally, as you can see above and in several other posts. In case you were wondering, I don't necessarily worry about "offending" people. I just have issues with profanity. It's a long story, and you can figure it out for yourself, because I'm going to sleep. Goodnight.
I'm taking a break from posting (there's still a lot more coming later), but I just thought of an answer to Michael Moore. In his book, he asks, "Dude, Where's My Country?" It's to the north, and it's called Canada. Go there now so your "brilliant" socialist ramblings will be appreciated.
Hey, did you ever put something away in a place where it wouldn't get lost and then forget where you put it? I just spent 5 minutes searching all over my room for yesterday's Daily Orange, and then I remembered that it was in a drawer right under the computer. Now that I have it, I can write about a hilariously asinine column from yesterday, and I'll also talk about an incredibly stupid letter to the editor that I saw today.
First of all, as I said yesterday, they decided to put a hex on Donald Rumsfeld. There's a box in the upper left hand corner of the page, and it says "Hex: Donald Rumsfeld." There's a partial picture of a pentagram next to the words, and under them, there's a cartoon of Rumsfeld sporting devil horns and surrounded by fire, and he's pointing angrily at the reader. Under the picture is a brief explanation of why he has been given this "honor."
According to the author: "We curse him because of his dubious, ambivalent public predictions about the duration of the war in Iraq. Though it's no surprise that he sucks, his latest insider memo admits that the U.S. military has a 'long, hard slog' ahead of it, rather than the quick liberation the administration intended."
There's more, but I have a paranoid fear of copyright laws, so I'll leave it at that. This is frickin' idiotic. The fact that they're insulting Rummy with classic idiotarian nonsense is bad enough, but how can a school that prides itself on creating an environment where everyone feels safe allow the publishing of something that uses what could be considered satanic symbols and rituals to do so?
Now, I'm not one of those crazy "Satan is lurking around every corner" Christians, but I really think they've gone too far with this one. Keep in mind, the DO also published a letter calling the Bible a "useless moral guide," and I believe they once featured a cartoon implying that Jesus was a pervert. Sick. Just plain sick. I could go on about the various dumb things this person said about the war, but you can figure that out by reading this excerpt.
Now, on to today's edition, in which a letter to the editor informs us that Syracuse has a gender bias and is intolerant of transvestites! Oh no! Not the transvestites! Here's the situation: In a letter entitled "SU campus coursing with gender bias," the author explains what happened to him over the weekend. According to him:
I attended a Halloween bash Saturday night and opted to dress up in a skirt, stockings, a corset and woman's jacket.Okay, I understand dressing as a woman for a party. It's just for fun. However, he was just looking for trouble with what he did next:
...I went with my partymates to Darwin's later in the evening(I think Darwin's is a bar or a club or something...I don't get out much. -ed.). Only a few minutes in the door, I had a very confrontational young man in my face, calling me a "f***ing faggot."I agree that you shouldn't use that kind of language, as it's just plain ignorant, but why would you be surprised about it? It's a frickin' bar, moron. He continues:
I expected the finger pointing, but two people tried to pull down my skirt, one attempted to remove my wig, and several more questioned my sanity, implying that cross-dressing was not a wise idea.No, really? Cross-dressing? I thought it was as American as flag burning! How dare they point out your gender confusion! Those bigots! Here's the kicker:
I thought this was Syracuse, not Syria. I must say I am rather embarrassed to know that people with such conservative views on gender identity are welcome here.Bingo! There's that double standard everyone was waiting for! So, it's okay if you think cross-dressing is totally normal, but if you think it's strange, you're comparable to Syria (whatever that implies)?
How do these idiots find the door in the morning? It seems to me that if you think conservatives shouldn't be welcome on campus, you're intolerant. That's the real definition. This is yet another example of how tolerance and equality only apply if you agree with someone, which isn't tolerance at all, but approval (interestingly, the chancellor said that one of the goals of the school's diversity program should be for people to move "beyond tolerance to appreciation," which shows that they aren't even satisfied with true tolerance).
It also strikes me as very odd that you can be stigmatized for holding the view that men shouldn't dress as women (unless it's for comedic purposes; I am a Monty Python fan, you know), and that conservative views in general are considered extreme and outdated. I really don't know what to think about all this. Syracuse really walks the fine line between liberal and idiotarian sometimes. I think they've crossed it here. And now, I will publish this post and start working on yet another one.
I was going to wait until after band practice to blog again, but my philosophy professor cancelled class, so I've got the rest of the afternoon off. I don't know where to start, frankly. There's so much to write about. I should probably just break it up into separate posts for easier reading. As long as I've started this one though, I might as well cover a topic. I'll start with sociology. I'll probably have more about this tomorrow, but we're talking about terrorism in this class (which is officially called "SOC 102: Social Problems," in case you were wondering), and the professor is, of course, the guy who thinks reverse racism isn't real and assigned an article about how capitalism is racist (although he may have disagreed with it). I'm actually surprised at how objective the teaching is right now, so I really can't say too much about it, but one of the perspectives presented in a booklet we have is that we have to accept terrorism as a result of our capitalist society or something. The thing I actually want to talk about has nothing to do with bias, however. It's much simpler. The professor was using an overhead projector to display notes, and when we got to the part about solutions to terrorism, one of them was U.S. Delta Force. This is defined as "anti-terrorism squads." However, on his projection, it said "anti-terrorism squids." That's right. It costs $35,000 a year to learn about anti-terrorism squids. Them a-rabs don't like sea creatures! Okay, I'm going to move on to another post now. What's interesting is that if you're reading this later in the day, it's probably the last one you saw.
STOP LOOKING FOR NICKELBACK TABS! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!!!!!
I originally said that I wasn't going to blog today, but I have about 20 minutes of free time (then I have to do work for about 6 HOURS), so I thought I would post a very brief preview of what's coming up tomorrow. Basically, as luck would have it, the one day I have no time to blog is the day that I have a ton of stuff to blog about. Here's a preview: My writing professor showed a clip from the South Park movie (this was the first time I've heard an educator actually say "uncle f***er"), and then we spent the rest of the class talking about "Bowling for Columbine." Sounds good already, doesn't it? Also, the Daily Orange decided to put a hex on Donald Rumsfeld (I'm not joking, people). I'll probably be fisking the little column they wrote on that. In addition, we're talking about terrorism in my socialism sociology class. And, of course, the Democratic presidential candidates keep getting more hilarious. So, that's all coming up tomorrow, along with anything else I can think of. Unfortunately, I have to go to band practice in 20 minutes, and then I have to study for 2 Spanish quizzes and a communications test, so I won't be blogging again today. Be sure to check in tomorrow, because there's going to be a lot of stuff here. Later.
I know I said I wasn't going to post anything else until Thursday, but I had to be online to read some stuff about "Bowling for Columbine," and I eventually made my normal rounds of the blogosphere. I got to Right Wing News and found this article in the daily news section. Now, once again, I don't expect everyone to agree with my stance on homosexuality, but I challenge anyone who doesn't believe there's a "gay agenda" to read this and "Queering the Schools" and not reconsider their position. This one is from Australia, but it's still out there. You'll understand the post title if you read the article (hint: It has nothing to do with Eminem). Okay, now I really am going to stop for the next 36 hours or so. Later.
Sorry about the complete lack of posting today, but I really need to get some work done. I'm taking a quick break from blogging so I can get caught up, so don't expect anything new to be posted until Thursday afternoon at the earliest. Feel free to browse the archives or check out some links until then. I realize I have a certain obligation to provide content, but I have to prioritize right now. Remember, I will definitely be back by the end of the day on Thursday, but until then, I probably won't be updating the content. I will try to make up for it over the weekend, so be sure to check back. Until Thursday, continue to blog safely. Goodnight.
Well, slap a tinfoil hat on me and call me a commie! I actually agree with something on DU! What could we possibly agree on, you ask? We both think that these people are idiots. Seriously. Why the crap would you sink to their level just to make them mad? You're just throwing more logs on the fire here, people. Let the frickin' socialists have their little play date and just leave them alone. Do you think this is actually helping gain support for our causes? Just about every one of the signs in these pictures can potentially make it harder for me to believe in something without ridicule. You're just enforcing negative stereotypes. Here's a fun one: "GOD HATES YOU SODOMITES ABORTIONISTS DRUNKARDS JUST THE WAY YOU ARE!" Wow, this is a proud day to be a Christian, jackass. God doesn't hate anybody. He hates their actions. In any case, why would you throw alcoholics, gays, and abortionists into the mix? They're just going to write you off as a "fundie" anyway, so why waste your time? Fighting ignorance with more ignorance is the real definition of intolerance. If you want people to change, don't insult them (before you call me a hypocrite, keep in mind that these people won't be reading this, so I don't care if they change). I'm sick of people distorting Christianity like this. I also like all the signs about trusting Jesus, believing in Jesus, etc. This is how atheists are created, children. They see this and think that all "rational" Christians support it. Here's a news flash for you: Jesus probably wouldn't approve of this, because he knows that it won't work. I hate the idea that this is what people imagine when they think of Christians. "Oh, look at those bigoted fundamentalists! They're trying to fight a jihad against Palestine! Deluded fools..." What were you people thinking? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!!!!! Let me clear something up: I'm a Christian. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian (although that may change if this keeps up). I believe that some of the groups mentioned here are sinners and are going to be punished accordingly when the time comes, but I DON'T GO OUT IN THE STREET AND SHOVE IT IN THEIR FACES! All they're doing is making it harder for Christians to be taken seriously. You cannot force this stuff on people. Jesus didn't even force himself on anybody. That's why he had disciples and not prisoners. You don't encourage someone to repent if you say, "Jesus loves you...AND YOU'RE GOING TO HELL IF YOU DON'T RETURN THE FAVOR!!!!!!" Of course, like I said, what any of this has to do with the war is beyond me. I think it's ignorant when anti-war protestors go to pro-war rallies, and it's equally ignorant when pro-war protestors go to "peace" rallies (don't expect me to take that term seriously). Leave the moonbats alone. Half of them probably don't even know where the Middle East is. Look at the reactions on the DU message board and explain to me how any of this was effective in supporting the war. They probably think John Ashcroft paid those people to disrupt the march. Okay, I'm completely out of stuff to say about this. I really do have to work now, but I couldn't let that go. I hope that most non-Christians are smart enough not to base their idea of the religion on those groups in the pictures. Rest assured, all of us RATIONAL Christians wouldn't be caught dead doing things like that. We may share their beliefs, but we're intelligent enough to know that you don't express them with hatred. Jesus didn't do it that way, and neither should we. So, that's today's religious rant. I'll probably be writing a lot more of those eventually. I take my beliefs seriously, and I want to make sure that nobody thinks of the people at that protest when they hear the word "Christian."
I just checked my email, and I'm going to be added to the membership of the Alliance of Free Blogs. I'll be putting up a link to their main page tomorrow (it's required of all members), and I'll eventually come up with a fake quote to attribute to Glenn Reynolds. This, along with submitting a post to the new blog showcase, should help me get more attention. Sorry about being so self-centered here, but it is my blog, and I felt I needed to report on this exciting development. Here's another fun fact: In the last 25 hours, I've gotten 28 page views. That's a new record! I have to go to sleep now (Spanish class at 8:30 in the morning. Gotta love freshman schedules), so that's it for today. I may be posting lightly tomorrow, because I have to read 230 pages of Life: The Movie for my communications class. Hopefully I'll get something written by the end of the day though. Oh, and one more thing: I didn't fall during the band performance, but I think someone in another section did. That West Side Story drill is frickin' hazardous. Goodnight.
Read this article from the New York Times, and try to figure out if the Democratic presidential candidates have any plans besides attacking Bush. I can't tell them apart.
Democrats Campaign in Detroit...
300 hits. I've got 300 hits. In less than one month, I've gotten 300 hits. That's awesome. I don't know what else to say. That's just awesome. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. I'm in the process of joining the Alliance of Free Blogs. I just emailed them, so I should get a response within a couple days. Stop the puppy blender!
I had to post this. It's hilarious. I was on Democratic Underground yet again (the mainstream media isn't providing me with any interesting material, so I had to go digging through the compost heap), and I noticed a very interesting development on the message board. It's early, so I can't tell where it's headed, but apparently some people are convinced that Dubya called Iraq an imminent threat, despite the fact that, after hours of searching, they can't find one quote to back up this claim. One guy is even "1000% sure" of it! I can't believe I didn't start reading that site earlier. Somebody needs to find where these people are living, dig them out of their underground bunkers, and confiscate their tinfoil hats (read the endorsement of Dennis Kucinich if you don't believe this one) before they cause any serious damage. You can check this out for yourself here.
UPDATE
I couldn't let this one go. There's another discussion on DU (there are so many things this could stand for, but I'm not going to sink to that level) about how Bush is worse than Hussein. I'm actually going to post pieces of it here to show you how crazy these people can be.
BUSH EVIL NAZI! SADDAM INNOCENT!
Here is a man who put to death hundreds of his own people (Texans).
Yes, he put them to death because they deserved it. I don't see what's wrong with that. Hussein (I refuse to call him by his first name anymore because it sounds like I'm his friend) killed thousands...THOUSANDS of innocent people along with his psychotic sons and brainwashed minions. How those two situations are morally analogous is beyond me, o great and powerful master of liberal rationalization.
He used a needle instead of gas, but that distinction means little to the families of his victims.
Speaking of distinctions, would you care to explain how innocent men, women, and children can be lumped into the same category as convicted murderers who were a threat to everyone around them?
When he's done with Iraq, Bush will have invaded two countries.
Thank you, Captain Obvious. Is this supposed to convince us of anything? You seem to have forgotten about your hero Bubba Clinton attacking the exact same country. Oh, and there's this place called Kosovo you may remember. How about Bosnia? Hello? Anybody there?
He governs like he hates Americans, stealing $40,000 from every American family.
This is great. So, if you collect taxes, you hate Americans. That must mean he's at least trying, considering he's lowered taxes and provided refunds on more than one occasion. Meanwhile, Democrats are actually planning to raise taxes, but they're on a mission to "take back America." By the way, how is it "stealing?" Nobody ever came to my house, put a gun to my head, and said "GIMME YOUR MONEY!" Of course, I'm too young to pay taxes, but I don't think that happened to my parents, either. It hurts my brain trying to figure out this logic, but I'm sure you've never had that problem.
He and his father have both linked up with Al Qaeda, even arming them.
Al Qaeda? I thought they were your friends! You should be happy that we were helping those poor oppressed Muslims fend off colonization! Seriously, I'm not sure if we armed Al Qaeda itself, but I am sure that we pretty much wiped them out when they came after us. Shows what happens when you abuse a privilege.
He is the biggest threat to America in our lifetime.
He's the biggest threat to every country on Earth.
Why? Because he takes a stand on terrorism instead of letting terrorists go? Because he had the balls to take out one of the most evil human beings monsters that has ever lived? Because he is actually proud of his country? Because he spent over a year trying to gain international support for military action, and only after 12 years of failed sanctions? Because he believes that murderers deserve to be punished with death? Personally, I think that we're going to get attacked the second one of these spineless Democrats takes office, because they see terrorists as victims who don't know that killing is wrong, and therefore believe that we shouldn't retaliate. They think the best way to make America safe is to take guns away from law abiding citizens, collect all the money from the tax refunds because it still belongs to the government, and appease terrorist nations so we don't offend Muslims. George W. Bush may not be a genius (although he's certainly not the mental midget he's portrayed as; and yes, I heard a talk show host in Pittsburgh actually call him a mental midget), and life may not still be all sunshine, lollipops, puppy dogs, and ice cream for every American citizen, but I'd rather live an imperfect life than not be alive (although abortion advocates would disagree on that point). Dubya makes me nervous with his verbal slips sometimes, and his policies certainly aren't perfect, but I feel good knowing that my president is willing to stand up and take action when evil is present, because, as much as relativism has diluted that view, there is evil in the world, and it's up to the most powerful nation in history to destroy as much of it as we can. Now, kindly go back to your hippy-hole, read Noam Chomsky, and draw Hitler mustaches on pictures of Dubya if you must, but keep your uninformed mouth shut until you can come up with a better way to deal with threats to our country. Friggin' hippies...
To read these comments and several others, go here.
I don't have anything really important to post right now, and my semi-rant about freedom of speech seems to be holding people, but I need to write about something that I notice way too often as I surf the web. What is the deal with people insulting each other's spelling and/or grammar and then using improper spelling and grammar in the next sentence? That post title is a good example. Here's another one: I was reading the comments on Famousidiot.com, and one guy, referring to Sam Donaldson, I believe, says, "[he] didn't even know how to spell Fair and Balance." Well, apparently you don't either, moron! I hate seeing people who are on my side of an argument do things like that. I don't really want to go off on another tangent here, but spelling and grammar mistakes bother me more than about 98% of everything else that I see on a daily basis, and since I spend a good deal of time online, I see a lot of mistakes. I understand how you can make small grammatical errors (I probably make a few of them myself) or misspell a word occasionally, but some of the stuff I see is pathetic. Bad language skills destroy your credibility. A lot of people have written about this, so I won't go into a lot of detail, but the Internet has really destroyed our ability to use the English language. You learn to write from reading, and you learn to talk from listening. If crap like this is the only thing people read, they will start writing the same way. Pretty soon, they'll start talking like it because it's all they know. And don't even get me started on all the profanity that takes the place of intelligent conversation on the web. "I F***ING HATE YOU F***ING F***ERS! F**K OFF AND F***ING DIE S***HEAD!" Wow, what a great comeback. I guess you win. Once again, I've taken a topic, run it into the ground, and singlehandedly drilled a hole to the center of the planet. I think I'll stop. On a final note, I'm going to follow up on what I said earlier about trying to get more readers after a month of blogging. It's now officially been over a month, so I'm going to start trying to get publicity. At some point in the next couple days, I'm going to submit a sample post to the new blog showcase a Truthlaidbear.com, and hopefully that'll get me some attention. I'll probably use "Land of the Free" from yesterday unless I come up with something better. That should at least get people's attention. Also, I said this before, and I don't want to sound desperate, but if you do enjoy SIT, feel free to recommend it to someone who might be interested. I need all the publicity I can get. Speaking of publicity, I now have another incoming link on Pardonmyenglish.com, which brings the total of pages linking to me all the way up to 3. I've linked that page as well, and it's REALLY good, so I encourage you to go check it out. It's written by several different people, so you get more intellectual diversity, which is the one kind of diversity many liberals ignore. That's it for now, I think. I have to do some marching band stuff tonight, so I'll tell you right now that from 8:15 until probably 11:00, I won't be updating. Syracuse is hosting the New York State Field Band Championships, which means that we have to be the token college band that performs to wrap up the festivities. Hopefully, I won't fall again during the West Side Story drill. That would be a bit more embarrassing in front of an audience.
I was just looking through the articles on Democratic Underground trying to find something that I could rant about (I'm getting desperate for subject matter here, people), and as I read about how Bush is a lying, warmongering Nazi who wants to sell the entire world to Halliburton and build an oil pipeline in Iraq, I suddenly realized something very important. America is a great country because I was able to do exactly what I was doing.
I was reading the opinions of a few people who strongly disagree with the government, and some of them even hate the government and the president. And yet, nobody is stopping them. They're allowed to say whatever they want, and the reader can decide what's valid and what's a load of crap.
As much as they say that Dubya has created an environment of fear, or sent out his brown shirted minions, or forced people to blindly follow him, or revived McCarthyism, the fact that they're still allowed to say that proves that we live in the greatest country in the history of the world.
I realize these people are idiots, and I don't agree with them, but I came to that decision by looking at what they had to say, analyzing it, and comparing it to reality. Why is this possible?
Because this is America, and we are free to look at all sides of all issues and form our own conclusions. In this country, we have freedom of speech because we assume that there are enough intelligent people around to cancel out the idiots.
There's no fascist crushing of dissent, as much as some people would have us believe otherwise. There's just disagreement. There's debate. And hopefully, most people will figure out which side has the best argument, and will therefore be able to determine who is right. It's all up to us.
Now, my own activity is another example of why America is such a great country. I'm 18 years old. I'm a freshman in college. I lived with my parents until 2 months ago. And yet, during much of that time, I was able to access information from all kinds of different sources and from a vast range of media.
Now that I'm on my own, despite the fact that I have little credibility in the "real world," I'm free to write anything I want, click a mouse a couple of times, and make it available for anyone in the world to see. I didn't have to go through the government or fill out a form saying that I would avoid certain topics. I can write about anything, and if people disagree, they're free to let me know.
I've gotten slightly off topic, but the point is that I'm only 18 years old, but I have the same ability to have my opinions heard as anyone else with a computer and a brain. It's truly a beautiful thing. What other country in history has ever had this much freedom?
THIS IS WHY TERRORISTS HATE US! It makes me mad when people blame us for terrorist attacks and say that we don't understand them.
I understand them perfectly. They look at America and see all these freedoms that they don't have, and they want to blow stuff up. That's not our fault. That's like a rapist saying, "Well, she looked so hot! How can you blame me?"
And here's another thing to think about: If the terrorists that are against us because they're jealous somehow found a way to get here and, by a miraculous change of heart, wanted to stay and experience it for themselves instead of committing suicide so they could take part in some heavenly orgy, they would be able to do that.
Why? Because we can make anybody a citizen if they're willing to prove they want to be here. We may have some problems, and we may make mistakes, but we've come a long way in 227 years, and we're not going to stop now.
Call Bush a fascist all you want. Complain that your civil liberties are being violated. Gripe and complain that some harmless comment offends you. You're free to do all those things, and due process of law will decide whether your claims are valid. Why? Because you're a freakin' American, that's why.
I don't care what anybody says. To me, America is still a place where anybody can grow up to be president, and anybody can achieve any goal if they're willing to work with what they have. So, instead of complaining about how you're being oppressed and comparing the president to Hitler, get out in the world and improve it.
If you believe in something, support it instead of whining about how it doesn't get enough support. If you're worried about poverty, donate money to charity. That's what America is all about. You have the freedom to take action and change the world, and as long as it's legal, nobody can stop you.
I think I should stop before I go into a string of cliches. Anyway, that's my endorsement of America. I've heard enough childish whining and false accusations. If you don't like this country, get the crap out. You're free to do that, too.
That's about it for me. I'm going to link to another article I read today about patriotism that is much more direct than this one. It's from VRWC, and it's quite possibly the most well-written thing I've ever seen on that particular blog. Check it out:
Oh, and one more thing; In this country, we have a thing called freedom of religion, and as much as the ACLU wants to deny that, it's as valid today as ever. Therefore, I'm free to say...
GOD BLESS AMERICA!
Thank you for your time.
I'm not even going to justify this crap with a fisking. You'll just have to read it for yourself. (WARNING: It's from Democratic Underground, the home of some of the biggest moonbats on the planet. Reading for too long may result in purchasing an electric car and not bathing)
BUSH BAD! BUSH CORRUPT ILLITERATE NAZI! ME NO LIKE BUSH!
I know it's a bit hypocritical of me to generalize like this, but if you read the article, you'll understand why an intelligent response wouldn't do any good.
STOP LOOKING FOR THE GUITAR TABS TO "SHOULD'VE LISTENED!" I DON'T FRIGGIN' HAVE THEM! CAN'T YOU IDIOTS READ?!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry, still no rant. I'm reading a bunch of other blogs, but the content is too outdated to really inspire anything. However, I want to mention something I saw in my dorm. In the bathroom on my floor, there is a poster about a speaker (Mark Regev) who is coming to the school on Tuesday. There are probably more, but I know at least one is here. He's going to be talking about 9-11, the war on terror, the war in Iraq, and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Now, here's the interesting part: He's associated with the the Israeli embassy and a program called "Caravan for Democracy," and is going to be talking about why we need to fight the war on terror. I was shocked. A liberal arts university is actually bringing in somebody who represents the conservative viewpoint! The guy is actually going to be encouraging patriotism and telling people why they should support Israel. Like I said, there are probably more posters, so the fact that this one is in the bathroom doesn't really prove anything. The school itself is bringing in this speaker. I'd like to present this as yet another reason why Syracuse is one of the best universities in America. They may favor liberals, but they don't blacklist conservatives. I love it. I still enjoy writing about some of the dumb liberalized things my professors say, but there hasn't been anything close to what I've seen from other schools. We've still got a long way to go before we reach what could be considered a moderate political atmosphere, but radicalism is generally isolated and usually ignored. Well, that was fun. Like I said, I still don't have a good rant, but it can only be a matter of time before something else upsets me. If anyone has a suggestion, feel free to let me know. The comments work correctly now, so I'll see it right away.
This is strange. When I use Internet Explorer, the hit counter appears on all the archived pages, but not the main page. When I use AOL, it appears on every page, but the posts are screwed up. And, of course, Netscape just plain sucks, so I haven't even tried it. Also, the pictures are slowly coming back online now that my bandwidth limit has been reset. That's what happens when you use free image hosting, I guess. So...what else should I write about? Hmmmm....let's see here....wow. I've got nothing. Really. I'll just keep up this stream of consciousness stuff for awhile. Here's one thing: today is the one month blogiversary of Semi-Intelligent Thoughts. On September 25, 2003, I read the RWN guide to starting your own blog, followed a link to the Blogger homepage, filled out the required sections, and started posting. Now, one month later, I've got some extra features, a couple regular readers, and a hobby that uses up way too much of my time. I'll write a more complete "history" later, but I have things to do in the real world pretty soon. Here's another thing: Default, one of my favorite bands, has a new CD coming out on November 25 (good way to celebrate the 2 month blogiversary if I'm still doing this then). It's called Elocation, and from the Quicktime samples on their website, I'd say it's going to be excellent, even though it sounds a lot like their first one. As far as this site goes, I'm still adding more links to various sources, as you may be able to tell. It's all part of my attempt to get more pages linking to me, but it still helps them, so it's not completely self-centered. Also, most of them are really good. I really haven't written anything particularly meaningful in a few days, but hopefully that will change. I may have to go back to my original plan of writing an extended explanation of one of the quotes from my Book of Semi-Intelligent Thoughts, the inspiration for the blog. I'm about done for now. Before I go, I really have to write about a dream I had last night. I don't know if anyone has played the original "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter" for Nintendo 64, but I dreamt that I was in that game. However, instead of the usual jungle setting, I had somehow ended up in the Carrier Dome, and it was full of people. A bunch of enemies from the game started attacking me, and I fought them off. Then, for some reason, I whipped out the fusion cannon, the most destructive weapon in the game, and started firing it at the spectators. When I fired at one guy, he started singing "Amazing Grace" and then leaped to his death, but the ball of fusion followed him and turned into one of those little red kickballs that elementary schools have. At this point, I woke up. Now, I don't know if that means anything, but it was the strangest dream I've had in several weeks, so I felt like I should write about it. I guess that's what happens when you sleep for 9 hours. I think I'll go now. I have to go make a transaction.
I was going to go to sleep, but I just read something extremely disturbing that I had to link to. I'm pretty sure I've seen bits and pieces of this article before, but I found the entire thing in one place and read through it. I'll warn you now that it may offend you for several reasons, which I won't go into here. I just want to offer a quick introduction explaining why people need to read this. It's basically about how gay activists are trying to indoctrinate children and teenagers into their radical belief system. Now, I realize that because I'm what liberals might call a "homophobic fundamentalist bigot" (otherwise known as Christian), not everybody will agree with my views on homosexuality, but this stuff is really scary. Even if you don't have a problem with homosexual behavior (which is what I object to, NOT the homosexuals themselves), you can't possibly read this article and not worry about our nation's youth. I'll let you see for yourselves, because I can't keep my eyes open much longer.
I'm still not prepared to write a really good rant because A) It's been incredibly boring on campus today, B) I can't access the New York Times online for some reason, and C) It's 1:35 in the morning, and I've been sitting at this computer for about 6 hours now (have I mentioned I have no social life?), so my brain hurts. However, I had to link to this post I just found on Serenity's Journal. It explains why conservatives, in many cases, care more about helping people and being honest than liberals. Seriously, you have to read this. Especially if you're a liberal. My roommate is talking way too loudly into his cell phone, so I'm going to have to go. Here's the link:
I feel really stupid right now, despite the title of the post. After all that time I spent manually typing the HTML codes for various features on the site, I remembered that I could just cut and paste using the edit menu. In the words of the late Chris Farley, "I'm such an IDIOT!!!!" Fortunately, this is actually a good thing, because the comments finally work right. Apparently I didn't enter the code correctly when I originally added comments to the template, and it stuck those huge numbers next to the link. Thanks to this revelation, however, the code has now been flawlessly copied, and for the first time, you can tell when comments have been posted. The alterations haven't affected the appearance of the comments box, and all the old ones survived the metamorphosis, so the only difference is that new ones will actually register. To prove it, I'll add a comment for this post, and it should say "Comments (1)" at the bottom. We'll see. I apologize once again for not writing anything meaningful, but I've had a long week and don't feel real enthusiastic about anything right now. I will refer you to another blog I spent some time on. "Critical Mass," which is in the links section, is all about liberal bias on college campuses. Reading some of the stuff on there made me even happier to be attending Syracuse. We have speech codes and things, but I haven't seen any reports from this school about double standards or indoctrination. I have written about stuff like this personally, but I also occasionally note that the students have a tendency to think for themselves at SU, which is the left's worst nightmare. I seem to have gotten off track, but I'll end by referring you again to Critical Mass. Check it out, and hopefully I'll have a rant by the end of the week...end. That was redundant.
I was just looking at the top referrers on RWN, and I noticed that I had yet to visit one of the highest ranked ones. I checked it out, and now I'm linking to it. It's called "Tongue Tied," and it points out numerous examples of how the Thought Police (I'm capitalizing that term from now on) are trying to take freedom of speech away from certain groups. The great thing is that this page is largely objective. I only read a few posts, but it seems to just report the facts and let you discover the idiocy for yourself. I'm not going to say much more about it, because I want to keep reading it myself, but you can click on the link provided here and in the link section to see it.
-Go to Tongue Tied now.-
*UPDATE*
I'm gradually adding more links to the sidebar. Keep checking, and please visit them, especially the ones in the "Blogs, etc." section. It gives them more traffic, it lets you read a lot more information and opinions, and if they see SIT in their referrer logs, it could result in me getting linked on more than 2 pages, so all 3 parties benefit. Speaking of pages that link me, I'll give them some free publicity just for the heck of it, since they've done me a favor.
VRWC, inc.
VRWC, created by James Finch, was the first blog to link me. Also, without his help, I wouldn't have a hit counter or comments, so please help me return the favor and check out his page.
JawsBlog
Jaws (also known as Josh) is one of my most frequent visitors, and he has a link to SIT on his page, so he's been a big help. He's also a college student, so he deals with a lot of the weird leftist propaganda that circulates around most universities. Also, his blogroll is huge, so that gives you even more options.
So, like I said, visit these pages in particular, but try and check out the other blogs too. Don't forget to check back here, though. I don't know when my next big post will be, but I usually write rants off the top of my head, so they're pretty unpredictable. Thanks for coming here, by the way, whether you're a regular or just visiting for the first time. I'm going to stop rambling now. Later.
I still don't have anything really important to post about, but it's early, so there's still plenty of time. I should tell you that my roommate has his girlfriend visiting, and they spend most of their time watching TV. It's hard to concentrate on writing when there's talking in the background, so I'll have limited opportunities to write extended stuff, but I'll definitely make an effort. I'd recommend that you keep looking through the archives if you haven't seen all of those posts yet, because there are over 50 posts that aren't on the front page right now. Also, tomorrow is SIT's one month blogiversary, so I'll try to do something special for that. I just got an email about the SU drumline website, and they're still working on bios now, but it may be ready before the end of the season (early December). I hope I'll get a chance to link to that. Since I've got nothing right now, I suggest you go to Right Wing News and read John Hawkins' defense of General Boykin. He pretty much echoes my feelings on the incident. I haven't talked about it (and I can't get into details right now because my roommate and his girlfriend are watching "Sex and the City" and I can't frickin' concentrate), but I think the antitheists on the left have really shown how hypocritical they are with that incident. If you don't know what I'm talking about, RWN will clear it up. Okay, that's it for now. I'll be back later, hopefully with something interesting.
*NOTE*
245 hits! Wow. I don't know what to say!
Random quote from Homestarrunner.com:
"Hey, Reggie, is that rhinoceros around?"
-Homsar
(if you haven't seen Homestar Runner, you're missing a truly amazing thing)
I apologize for still not having anything meaningful to blog about, but as long as I can post pics, I'm putting up this one of me holding my bass drum. This should help you to visualize the situation I described in yesterday's "Accidents Happen" post. Just to refresh your memory, I fell backwards last night while carrying that drum, and it hit me in the head as I went down. You can read the full story a couple posts down. In any case, I spend a few hours a week holding and/or playing that drum, so I thought I would put it online. I'll end with a quick story. In the SU drumline, they give each bass drum its own name. Mine didn't have a name because nobody was using it last year, so I called it Biggles, after a Monty Python character name ("Biggles Dictates a Letter," "Cardinal Biggles," etc.). That's it. Here's the pic:
Me and Biggles the bass drum at band practice in September
All right! It worked! I'm not sure how long these images will be hosted, but I can at least display them for free right now. It may be some kind of 15 day trial, but I can't remember. Anyway, here are some of my drum pics.
This is another angle of just the set.
A picture of me actually playing the set (this is the first time I've put a picture of myself online, by the way)
Another pic from before I upgraded my cymbal setup
Another angle of the set w/me playing the snare drum and looking very uninterested (you can also clearly see that I play drums in a basement...under the stairs, next to an old refrigerator, and surrounded by Pittsburgh sports memorabilia...I live in a dorm now, though)
Okay, that's enough for now. I just really wanted to post drum pics, and now I can. Other than that, there's not much to blog about right now. I had a quiz in philosophy today, and only one of the questions was taken from my listserv arguments. That's not very much, but it was still cool to look at a college exam sheet and see my name on one of the questions. I don't have any rants in store yet, so I'm going to wait on that for now. One last thing: It's snowing in Syracuse. Yes, it does snow in October in this part of New York. I like the way one of the snare drummers put it yesterday (this isn't an exact quote, but it's close): "We might as well dress warm, go outside, and welcome Old Man Winter, because he's going to be here for the next four months." The snow is actually one of the reasons I came here, so I don't mind that much, but it's frickin' freezing outside! I'm going to stop now. Later.
Next time I get a hit from someone searching Google for the guitar tabs to Nickelback's "Should've Listened," I'm taking that CD review off the site. Seriously, why do you keep coming here? It doesn't say anything about guitar tabs. I'm a frickin' drummer anyway. I can't play guitar. And why are you always looking for that one song? It's not even that good!!!!! Sorry about that. I've gotten about 7 or 8 hits from people doing this, and I don't like getting excited about another page view only to find that they weren't actually looking for the kind of stuff I write. Of my 225 hits to date, probably less than 120 have been people who might be even remotely interested in my material. Again, sorry about the hostility there, but I don't understand things like this. Also, I got another hit today from someone looking for "intelligent thoughts" on Google. Why would you come to a page called "Semi-Intelligent Thoughts?" I think I should stop before I break something. I have to watch the end of the Yankees game to make sure people know I'm still on their side.
At least that's the claim made in the movie my writing professor showed today. It was called "Mickey Mouse Monopoly" or something, and it was about how Disney apparently corrupts the minds of the world's children. We watched it because we're studying claims, evidence, and arguments, and he wanted us to analyze the various statements made in the movie. This thing was hilarious.
They started off by talking about how Disney controls its own reputation with copyright laws that won't even let people use the word "Disney" in book titles. That was the truest part of the movie. The rest of it was a lesson in what happens when you read too much into something very uncomplicated.
The next part started off by saying that Disney movies enforce negative gender stereotypes. Before I go into that, I'll go off on a small tangent about this topic. I've been hearing a lot in my classes lately about this whole "gender" thing, and it really cracks me up.
Feminists apparently have made it so women aren't allowed to act like women and men aren't allowed to act like men. They claim that there is no difference between the two genders, that women are being oppressed, blah blah blah blah...I'm not overreacting, either. I've studied feminist theories in three different classes already, and none of them are about feminism.
Anyway, their main claim is that "gender" is completely social, and the only reason men and women behave differently is because they are socialized that way. Never mind the fact that science has proven the biological difference between male and female brains, that's just hogwash. I realize this tangent is becoming a bit excessive, but these "gender" people really bother me.
I've always wondered something about them. If men and women are no different, and women are being oppressed, how did it get that way? It seems to me that if we were created in such a way that we could all do the exact same things, then society would be like that.
I'm not saying women should be totally submissive, but it seems like there was something going on in the early days of humanity to establish the system we have.
If some women want to work and do things men used to do, then more power to them, but don't go saying that they're being victimized if they stay home. My mother worked, then she quit her job and stayed at home for a few years while my brother and I were growing up, then she went back to work. That seems like a good system.
Anyway, back to the Disney thing. This movie claimed that Disney enforced negative gender stereotypes. It showed examples of how women are always being rescued by the male hero, and they're usually sexually objectified.
Really? These are frickin' kids' movies. They're not going to notice those things. Anyway, Disney movies are pretty much fairy tales. There are certain roles to be filled in stories like this even if they aren't politically correct.
I don't remember which movie they were talking about (Mulan?), but they mentioned a Disney film where the female character is powerful and accomplishes things, but she goes back to the stereotypical role because she gets married at the end.
I'm not even going to say something about that. Just think about it. Their view is that women are being oppressed if they have a fulfilling relationship.
Disturbing. I've gone on way too long about this, and the second part of the movie was even funnier. They had various speakers talk about how Disney movies are racist. They started out by saying that the early ones only had white people in them, and this wasn't an accurate representation of reality.
Then, they talked about "The Jungle Book." Apparently, the gorillas in that movie represent black people, and when they sing a song about wanting to be human, it actually means they want to be white.
That seems like way too much symbolism to me. They also talked about chihuahuas in a couple movies and how they were stereotypical of Hispanics. One person came on and said something like, "What are kids going to think when they see this? Disney is saying that Mexicans are dogs!"
Of course, they completely ignore the fact that the movie is about dogs. It also strikes me as a bit strange that they complain about there being nothing but white people, and then when they add minorities, they complain about them being stereotypical.
So, what's the message here? "You can add people of different colors, but they still have to act white." That doesn't seem to go with "multiculturalism" and "diversity." This wasn't the end, by the way.
Apparently, the hyenas in "The Lion King" represent inner city blacks, and they gave an example. A woman was at the park with her son, and he heard a group of black children playing behind him and said, "Mommy, the hyenas!" They claim that this proves their point.
That's crap. I believe at least one black person did a hyena voice, so of course they're going to make that connection if they can't see the people talking. Once again, how were they supposed to act in the movie?
If they seemed white, the producers would be racist for not representing other races. If they seem black, the producers are racist because they're stereotyping another race.
Here's yet another fun little argument they gave. "Pocahontas" isn't realistic! The story didn't happen the way it was shown in the movie! She didn't even marry John Smith! Now, here's the crazy part: The people they interviewed were upset because of the historical inaccuracy. They thought it would be better if the movie showed how settlers committed genocide against the natives.
Right, because that's a great movie for children, you morons. It's Disney. They simplify everything. Why didn't they complain about the talking animals in other movies? That seemed pretty unrealistic. I think I'm going to wrap this up now. I have laundry to do (later is better).
I was actually happy with the class reaction to this movie. We were all laughing at the pure lunacy of the speakers, and none of us thought they had a good case. We had a discussion at the end of the movie, and we basically came up with the same points I've outlined above.
We thought Disney shouldn't be criticized for being so shallow, because they have to simplify in order to reach children, and if parents are concerned, they can talk to their kids about it instead of trying to change one of the most powerful corporations in the world.
It's good to know that the thought police haven't claimed the minds of my generation yet. We need to keep up the fight if we're going to save our children and their children from living in an Orwellian nightmare. Remember, these things happen slowly.
This isn't a conspiracy theory, by the way. The thought police are already here. I consider myself lucky to be attending a university that usually doesn't enforce these policies very strictly. Diversity of thought is still allowed at SU. You just have to be careful what words you use.
I really should go. I realize this post was a bit longer than it had to be, and it wasn't as structured as most of them, but keep in mind that I got whacked in the head by a bass drum 2 hours ago. I think that's about all for today. Later.
Well, I tried the solution the BlogSpeak guy gave me, and it didn't work. The comments still have huge numbers next to them. I really don't get it. Anyway, I'm back at the computer (obviously), so I could blog about a lot of different things. I think I'll just list a few of them and see what happens. First, I want to share a fun experience I had at marching band rehearsal. Here's the situation: We're marching and playing "America" from West Side Story. There's a move in the drill where the entire bass drum line takes 24 big steps backwards at high speed. We've done the move about 10 times already, so most of us pretty much have it down. Unfortunately, when it comes time to do it in this particular case, I start marching backwards, but take a couple steps that are way too big. This causes me to lose my balance and fall straight back. Now, keep in mind that I'm wearing a bass drum. As I fall, the drum falls with me. The harness hits me in the mouth, causing me to bite down on my lip, and the drum itself clips me in the forehead before flying over me and rolling about 6 feet back. As I hit the ground, the harness flies off in another direction, and I'm left lying on the turf of the Carrier Dome while the rest of the band marches around me. I immediately get back on my feet, pick up the harness, and walk over to where the drum landed. As I'm attaching the harness, I realize that my lip is bleeding. However, the drill is still going on, and I don't want to let the drumline down, so I stuff a wad of Kleenex in my mouth, walk over to where they are, and finish the drill without further incident. Aside from the fact that my lip was bleeding, I felt fine, and I actually thought the fall was kind of fun (except for the part where the harness hit me in the face). However, even though I was fine, the whole thing was so dramatic that a ton of people started asking me if I was okay and trying to get me to sit down. I just said, "no, I'm fine, really," and acted normally for the rest of rehearsal. So, that was the highlight of my day. It was funny just having random people come up to me for the rest of the night saying, "Chris, are you all right?" It's nice to know people care. I'm still feeling pretty good now, so I don't think there's any serious damage. The only problem is that my lip is still bleeding a little. Considering it's been an hour since I bit it, that might be a sign of trouble, but I'm okay other than that. I just thought I would share the experience. I guess it's better for those things to happen at rehearsal instead of at games. Anyway, back to less painful subjects. I have a lot more stuff I could write about, but I don't want to take up too much space, so I'm going to break this up into two separate posts. If this post is at the top of the list, wait about 15 minutes and then refresh the page. The second one should be ready by then.
You may have noticed that the comments are down. I'm trying to get that gigantic number problem fixed and I had to modify the template, so they may not be there for the rest of the day. Sorry for any inconvenience. On another note, I have a lot to blog about, but I have to leave for band practice in 5 minutes, so it'll have to wait. "See" you later.
I've written before about stuff in SU's daily newspaper, and they sure haven't failed me today. I was going to insert little quotes from this editorial and fisk 'em, but I think it would be better to just link to the actual article so you can see for yourself how brainwashed some university students are. What's sad about this is that Syracuse is actually less crazy than most liberal universities, but stuff like this sure isn't helping anyone's sanity. Seriously, I don't even know what else I could say.
The article speaks for itself. I'm not sure how long this will be accessable without membership, so be sure to read it now. You know what? I'm going to respond quickly to a couple of the really crazy points just to give you an idea of what to expect. This is my first fisking, and it's not going to be that good, but bear with me.
By electing Bush for a second term, we wil be telling the global community that the United States stands for pre-emptive military strikes.So...is that supposed to be a bad thing? I assume you think we should wait for another 9-11 and then debate about it for a year or two before we decide that the terrorists only attacked us because we offended them by being free.
A safe and sustainable existence cannot continue if it is based on the Bush administration's military, economic and political world view.And how are Democrats making the world safer? I think most people can figure out that whining incessantly and calling your opponent a Nazi isn't the most effective way to protect the nation. Terrorists are going to be blowing crap up left and right if they think Americans are too immature to do anything about it.
Pre-emption and bully tactics cannot prevail in a levelheaded and civilized world.Exactly. That's why we're only using these tactics in the Middle East. Last time I checked, countries like Iraq and Afghanistan weren't anywhere near being "civilized" or "levelheaded." In any case, if the U.N. fits your definition of levelheaded, you must have some interesting role models.
It is impossible to exaggerate the implications of what this administration stands for. Apathy and submission have defined the body politic for a decade...So, let me get this straight. One minute, you're saying that pre-emptive strikes and aggressive foreign policy are harmful, and the next minute you're saying that voter apathy is harmful. Make up your mind! Either action is the right choice, or submission and appeasement are.
Telling the world we back Bush is the biggest mistake we can make at this critical juncture in history.
On an interesting side note, has anybody seen other countries endorsing Democratic presidential candidates? It seems like all they do is criticize Bush, but they don't care who takes his place. Why? BECAUSE IT'S NOT THEIR CHOICE! America was founded on individualism, and we're going to keep making our own decisions. If you don't like it, move to Canada.
Click below to read this hilarious piece in its entirety:
Daily Orange Editorial: New World Order at stake in 2004
Well, today has been interesting so far. I started the morning with an oral interview in Spanish (which went horribly, in case you were wondering), and then I had to finish a test from yesterday. Luckily, I write Spanish a lot better than I speak it. After that, I had another test in my socialism sociology class, and I will once again remind you that my sociology professor is the most liberal one that I have right now. He made fun of anti-affirmative action types with one of the questions. It was something like, "Reverse racism is:" and one of the answers was, more or less, "the one and only reason some anglo men have had trouble getting jobs." Of course, the "correct" answer was, "a way for white ethnics to play the race card in public discourse." That's not reverse racism, idiot! And if it is, it's a pretty one-sided definition. Anyway, another question was, "What is homophobia?" and the correct answer was, "negative views and attitudes toward homosexuals." WHAT? So I'm homophobic even if I disagree with them now? I don't even have to call them naughty words first? I think this class is going to provide a lot more rants. Here's another fun fact: I had to read an article for the class about inequality in the garment industry or something, and the author of the article basically attacked capitalism and blamed it for all kinds of inequality issues. He actually said that we should return to a Marxist economic system to eliminate the problem. I don't know if my professor necessarily agrees with this view, but he did assign the article, so who knows? He has also said that he doesn't like labeling people liberals or conservatives, so it's hard to tell what he thinks. On a positive note, he used to be in the air force, so there may still be some sense in him. I doubt a full-blown liberal loony would've joined the armed forces voluntarily. I have to go eat lunch now, so I'll be back. I have a bit more free time now that I've gotten some of that work out of the way, but I'm still backed up, so don't expect any huge rants for a couple more days. I'll try to make up for the length of my posts by using more fun HTML tricks.
USA!
Well, I have once again procrastinated the crap out of my free time, but I did actually manage to get a few things done, so it's not a total failure. On a more positive note, it's been a good day for SIT. Thanks in part to my hyperpublishing around 10, I have gotten more hits today than on any other day since I started keeping track (although one of them was me, so it technically doesn't count). In addition, I think I have at least one more regular reader now, but we'll see about that. And, as if that wasn't enough, I also demonstrated some of the cool new HTML techniques I learned during that time I was supposed to be studying. I plan to employ those in the future. Speaking of the future, I'm adding a bit to the links section as time goes on. I changed the "religion" part to "religion/morality," and I'm going to be adding links to pages that promote traditional Judeo-Christian values. I think I've made it pretty clear by now that I'm fairly conservative in the area of morality, and I want to make sure other people that share my views get linked. I know the "religious right" tends to bug some people, but the ones that are honest and consistent about it (as opposed to people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell) are playing a big role in holding our society together. I think that's about it. Keep the hits coming, and remember, it's called the right wing for a reason. Later.
I know I really shouldn't be posting this, but I couldn't resist.
&
Take that, Blogger's limited options!
this is a great way to waste time when you have a lot of work to do. HA HA HA HA HA!
Okay, I'm going to stop now. Sorry about that.
Holy crap, I've got 200 hits! I don't really have anything else to say; I just thought I would point that out. Actually, as long as I'm typing, I should tell you that I'm experimenting with more features for the blog (like that guestbook thing I added). I'm trying to download a program that will let me upload images and bypass Blogger's stupid rules, but I don't know if that'll work. I guess it really doesn't make that much of a difference. I was just going to slightly modify the Kim Du Toit "gratuitous gun pic" technique and post gratuitous pictures of my drumset. We'll see how that works out.
*UPDATE*
I didn't feel like making a completely new post for this, but I wanted to announce that I just learned a new HTML technique. I now know how to do strikethroughs (like this, for example), and I used my knowledge to make a slight change to my "More Religious Ranting" post from the first week. If you're interested in seeing the very small modifications I made, go look for this post in the 9/28-10/04 archives. I have more work to do now. Later.
I wrote about this before when it was in its early stages, but now the ban on partial-birth abortion has been passed by the Senate and is on its way to Dubya's desk. Considering I've been writing a lot about abortion lately, this really made me happy. If you want to read my opinions on partial-birth abortion, you can go to the archives and find the post entitled "It's About Time," so I'm not going to go into that again. However, I will briefly say that this is quite possibly a turning point in the abortion debate. If we manage to ban this particularly disgusting procedure, it can only be a matter of time before we start challenging all aspects of Roe v. Wade. We just need to keep Republicans in power. It's that simple. If a spineless lunatic like Howard Dean becomes president, children everywhere are in trouble. Fortunately, as nervous as President Bush makes me sometimes, I'm confident that he actually has a moral compass, and he won't let this opportunity slip away. Again, I won't write too much about this, because abortion is basically all I've been talking about for the last week, but I just thought I'd make sure everyone knows about this. I still have lots of work to do, so I may not post again, but on a final note, I was originally going to post this entry with the title, "Yer Baby Killin' Days are Over!" but I forgot that this law only makes it harder to kill babies. Anyway, that's it for now. I'll try to get more written next week.
Newsmax: Ban on Partial-Birth Abortion is Just the First Step
Okay, first of all, I want to apologize for another day with no important posts, but I had to write four more pages of that essay this afternoon, and then I had band practice, so I've only been free for about an hour today. I have a lot I could write about, since my sociology professor decided to give another moronic justification for affirmative action and make fun of people who think it is racist (picture this: A very overweight college professor standing in front of the class, shaking his fist, and saying "THIS IS RACISM!" in a deliberately stupid voice). However, I don't really think I'm going to do that. I have a ton of work to do this week, as well as three tests, so I will probably not be posting much. I hope you can live with that. I will, however, provide a link to a site I've been reading for the past few minutes. FAMOUSIDIOT.com has a great list of stupid things celebrities have said about America, Republicans, Dubya, and other fun-filled topics. Remember, I'm an aspiring writer/director, so I'm going to have to work with people like this if I make it to the big leagues. That is, unless we do something now to prevent celebrity stupidity. I think we should start by implementing a policy that allows us to hit celebrities over the head with blunt objects every time they make a claim that they can't back up with legitimate statistics, but that's just me. Anyway, the link is below, and I'll add it to the template to make it available all the time. Remember, I need to get caught up with work this week, but I should be able to blog more effectively once I've gotten some of this crap out of the way. Seriously, who would've thought there would actually be work in college? Whose stupid idea was that?
Hey, I got 2 pages of the essay written! Hooray for me! Anyway, before I go to sleep, I want to link to an article that was brought to my attention on Moorewatch. It shows how well gun control works at keeping guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens and making it easier for criminals to commit crime. And, it's from the more "civilized" continent of Europe!
Wow, to think that I was actually going to write an essay without procrastinating for a few more hours first! What have I become? Anyway, my efforts to avoid doing real work have led to another new development on SIT: I now have a guestbook. I was directed to Nuns With Nuts from a link in the comments section of Evil Monkeys, and I noticed that it had a guestbook. I investigated further, and now SIT has one too (thanks, Cassandra, even though I don't think you read this much). Therefore, if you want to leave a record of your being here, just click on the big guestbook link at the bottom of the page, but don't say I didn't warn you about the popup ad(s). The whole thing is optional, of course, since you can still just leave comments or read without making your presence known, but I just thought I'd let you know about the addition. I should probably do some real work now. Bye.
Once again, I apologize for the lack of posting this weekend. I really didn't have that much time the last couple days, and now I don't have anything particularly interesting to talk about. Also, I have to write an essay for tomorrow about how me and my younger brother have grown apart over the years, so that's probably going to take me the rest of the night. I will, however, provide a brief status report. First of all, next Saturday (October 25) is the one month blogiversary (I saw that word somewhere) of Semi-Intelligent Thoughts. For that special occasion, I'll probably write a moderately sized and fairly self-indulgent essay about how far the blog has come in that time. And, on a related note, I'm really surprised that I've had any success at all in so little time. That shows you how great the Internet is when used properly. I'll go into more detail next week, so be sure to catch that. Right now, the hit counter is at 177, and that's just from the past 15 days. I'm getting an average of 10 or 11 hits a day, which is pretty much what I expected. As I've said before, many of those are the same 4 people checking multiple times, and I want to thank them especially for their comments and support. It's good to know that someone is actually reading my opinions and occasionally agreeing with them. I'm still not sure how I'm going to go about getting a larger audience, but I did say that I would start actively seeking readers after a month, so I should start working on something. I've actually been posting comments on other blogs lately, and the main purpose of this is obviously to express opinions on their content, but I do include a link back to SIT in the hopes that maybe someone will like it. Unfortunately, none of the people who have come here through comments links have returned, so I'll probably want to try a more direct strategy if I want to bring people here. It's hard to advertise for free, but I hope there's some way to get the blog out there without posting meaningless comments or spamming message boards. I refuse to sink to that level. Again, I don't want to sound desperate, because I realize these things sometimes take more than a year to get noticed, but if you do happen to enjoy the blog, feel free to recommend it to someone. I'd prefer to rely on word of mouth instead of advertising, because honestly, ads make me angry. Don't get me started on advertising. I think I'm rambling again, so I should probably go ahead and write that essay. Remember, there's still a lot of archived stuff to read, and I will be blogging more this week, although I'll probably be cutting down a bit in order to catch up on some schoolwork. I may post again today, but that's just a possibility. Later.
I was going to sign off for the night, but I just got what I believe to be my third hit from somebody searching for "intelligent thoughts" on Google. So, this is a message to these people: The name of the blog is "Semi-Intelligent Thoughts." That means kinda smart, but not brilliant. I don't know why you're searching for that particular phrase, but unless you're looking for either information on what it's like playing in a college drumline or an assortment of conservative rants, you probably don't want to be here. Also, if you know or happen to be the person who came here after finding my site by searching for "topless statues" on Google, please get help. Why would you be SEARCHING for topless statues? I only mentioned the dang things because I saw a picture of John Ashcroft standing in front of one. You know what? I'm going to sleep. That is all.
Once again, the title says it all. It's 2:16 in the morning, and nobody has been on SIT since 7:50 or something, but I wanted to write something. I realize I didn't post anything today (unless this counts), but considering I've been blogging for almost a month without a day off, I don't think one day makes much of a difference. Besides, the blogosphere was slow today. John Hawkins is on vacation, Jaws is on hiatus, and Frank J. didn't post anything. I figure if their readers can handle them taking time off, then my 4 regulars can survive one day without me. However, as long as I'm writing now, I can talk about my day a little, but then I really want to go to sleep (I've been up since 7 this morning). The football game was awesome. What else can I say? We crushed BC. WE CRUSHED 'EM! The best part of that game was referring to their bailing out of the the Big East. Some of the unique chants and cheers of this game included: "Traitors! Traitors!" and "ACC you later!" Also, we sang that "Na Na Hey Hey" song at the end of the game to honor their leaving the conference. The fact that we won made it even sweeter. Aside from being fun (although very exhausting), today's game taught me a valuable lesson. I learned that I can make it through an entire day of marching band activities on the energy gained from pop tarts, bagels, donuts, cookies, and other bread based snack foods. I didn't have a real meal until 4:30 (fortunately, dining hall food tastes a lot better after a day like this). I actually didn't really do anything else after that, so I can't really write much more. I think I've been watching Homestar Runner cartoons for the past few hours, but my memory of everything after 5 is a bit fuzzy. Anyway, just thought I'd let you know that I'm still alive, and I will probably be back again tomorrow, although I have another paper to write. Actually, that means I'll be writing a lot more here. Remember: it's only work if somebody makes you do it. Goodnight.
I can't come up with a better title, but I do want to post, so here goes. I got back to my room about an hour ago, and I immediately took a couple puffs of my inhaler (asthma is a fun disease, I'll tell ya...) and collapsed on my bed. Why? Because I just went through one of the most physically demanding experiences of my life. If you don't mind me projecting my problems for a while, I'll tell you about my night. I left at 4:50 to go to the Dome, and the walk took about 10 minutes. I got there and put on my uniform, and a few minutes later, the drumline walked back up the hill from the Dome and all the way to the student center, which is about 5 minutes away at that speed. That may not seem so bad, but keep in mind that I was carrying a bass drum the whole time. Them things is heavy (actually, it's only about 10 or 15 pounds, but it puts all that weight on your back). We then warmed up for about 20 minutes and got in line for the parade. Once that got going, the real fun began. We marched from the student center back up another hill, which took about 5 minutes because we were going so slow, and then we marched over to the quad. We marched all the way around it, and then...we marched all the way around it a second time. Now, I'll once again remind you that I was carrying a bass drum the whole time, and the drumline has to play the songs and the cadence, so we never get a break. Therefore, by the time we were done going around the quad the second time, we had been playing non-stop for about 15 minutes. After that, we marched from the quad down to the Carrier Dome, which took another 5 minutes or so. By the time we got there, most of us had such bad finger cramps that we couldn't release our grip on the mallets. The girl next to me (have I mentioned I'm SU's only male bass drummer?) actually had to have someone else pry her fingers off because she couldn't move them herself. That's scary. Luckily, we got to put the drums down and sit for about 15 minutes, and then we once again had to pick them up and go into the Dome for the pep rally. After standing and listening to some guy talk for awhile, we ran...RAN over to the audience area to play (if you've never seen the SUMB perform, we start our pregame show by running onto the field. We had a vote to decide whether we should do this for the pep rally instead of marching over, and the idiots actually decided to run. Can you say "band geeks," children?) Then, we had to stand there...again...and play. This lasted about 20 minutes, although we got to put the drums down in between songs. When the pep rally finally ended, it was 7:55, and the fireworks were scheduled to start at 8. We all wanted to see them, of course, but we still had to run through our halftime show. This took another 15 minutes, and we could actually hear the fireworks going off as we played. When we finally got finished, the fireworks were still going on. I mentioned before that I'm a fireworks fanatic, and I had to see them, so I ran up the stairs to the equipment room (with my bass drum on), put the drum away, then ran down to the exit. As I said before, you have to go up a hill to get from the Dome to the quad, and I ran up the hill, through the alley between the Dome and the gym, and all the way to another alley between the gym and the physics building (or something). I was gasping for breath by this time (I think I mentioned before that I have a bit of what you might call a "weight problem"), but I managed to get over to the quad to see the last 3 minutes of the display, so I consider that a victory. The grand finale alone lasted a good 80 seconds or so, and it was really awesome. Unfortunately, I still had to get home. I started walking very slowly in that general direction, and a couple guys came up to me and tried to get my attention, but I didn't recognize them. Then, one of them said, "hey Chris, I didn't know you were in marching band. What do you play (I was still wearing my uniform at the time)?" I still didn't know who these people were, but I just said, "bass drum." Then one of them said, "drums are cool." I noticed they were going in a different direction, so I said, "hey, I've gotta go this way now, so I'll see you later," while trying to figure out how they knew my name. I'll come back to them in a bit, but I need to talk about my next fun adventure. I was still really tired and a little short of oxygen, but I wanted to get home so I could take my uniform off. Unfortunately, in order to do this, I had to climb "the never-ending stairs." Once again, you probably aren't familiar with Syracuse, but I live in Day Hall, which is one of two residence halls at the top of Mt. Olympus, the highest spot on campus. To get up there on foot, you have to climb about 100 stairs (I counted them last week), and they're not little ones either. They're big wooden ones that are about 8 inches apart, so you have to take huge steps (I also should mention that I'm only 5'7". That makes stairs a bit more difficult). By the time I got to the top, I was literally gasping for breath, and then I suddenly remembered where I had seen those two other guys before. They had actually been part of the big group I went with to see Jim Breuer at the beginning of the month, and I think they actually live on my floor. I still don't remember their names, but at least I know why they recognized me (I may be wrong about this, though). I was still really tired at this point, but I managed to get back to Day and climb up ANOTHER flight of stairs to the second floor, where I subsequently went to my room, and I already described that part. So, now I'm sitting at the computer typing. I think that one's pretty self-explanatory. I still have to wash my socks and memorize the closer for our halftime show, so my day isn't done yet. I just needed to describe my little ordeal, because I'm amazed I survived. I really need to get in shape. Anyway, that's about it for today's edition of SIT. I may post more, but I don't think there's a lot of other stuff to talk about. One more thing: I don't know if everyone's local area will have it, but the football game between Syracuse and Boston College will be on regional ESPN stations tomorrow, and you should really watch it. It may be the last time SU and BC ever play each other, since Boston is leaving the Big East next year. You probably don't care about this, but if you're watching the game and they show the band, you may be able to see me. They usually show us on and off during halftime. I'm the fourth bass drum from the top (small to big), and I already mentioned that I'm the only male bass drummer, but that may be hard to determine on TV. I understand if you don't care, but I just thought I'd point that out. If you do get the game, you can at least see the band when a team kicks extra points or field goals on our side. We're right behind the endzone. Remember, the game starts at noon, so check your local listings and see if ESPN is going to be showing it. It's the biggest game of the year so far, and other than our game against Notre Dame in December, it's probably the biggest home game of the entire season. Well, now that I've typed way too much again, I think I'll go. I have socks to wash. Remember: ESPN, 12:00 p.m. Not everyone will get it in their area, but if you do, be sure to watch. Later.
That title says it all. I'm doing laundry right now, and then I have to go to the store and buy some food. After that, I have to memorize a song and eat dinner, and then I need to get to the Carrier Dome by 5:15 to perform in the parade/pep rally they're putting on for homecoming. THEN there's marching band PRACTICE, which will cause me to miss the fireworks display at 8 (I'm a huge pyromaniac; I don't think I mentioned that yet), and will probably go until 8:30 or 9. When I get back to my dorm, I have to do more laundry, and I have to get up at 6:45 tomorrow morning, so I'll probably want to go to sleep. Tomorrow's agenda includes band practice at 7:30, drumline warm-up and full band pep rally starting at 10, and a football game that starts at noon and will probably go until 3:30 or 4. THEN, I have to go home and work on a paper for my writing class, and I have to call home at some point. How's that for a relaxing weekend? Needless to say, I won't be blogging much for the next couple days. Fortunately, I think there's enough content. For now, I'll post a few more quick updates. First of all, I had my philosophy discussion section, and the TA said that he "couldn't say enough" about how good my argument was, but he still disagrees with me. Is there no convincing these people? In any case, I get 25 extra credit points on the next test, so it works out in my favor even if they don't accept my argument. I'm fine with that, by the way. If everyone agrees with you, you're probably wrong. Also, I want to point out something interesting about SIT. I won't give away any names because they know who they are, but all four of my regular readers have names that start with the letter J. I know it's just a coincidence, but it strikes me as a bit strange. And, since I'm pretty much out of content now and I'm talking about names, I want to write about something that I noticed a while ago and haven't told anyone, but it's really interesting (DISCLAIMER: you may not find this interesting. Do not expect to be entertained). Here's what I noticed. In the Rocky movies, his first big nemesis is a guy named Apollo Creed. Apollo Creed was played by an actor named Carl Weathers. Now, my favorite band is Creed, and their last album was called Weathered. Apollo Creed=Carl Weathers, CD by Creed=Weathered. Coincidence? Probably. But I thought it was cool anyway, and I'm wondering why nobody else has mentioned it. I think the fact that I just spent 3 minutes writing about that proves that I'm wasting time, so I should go now. Remember, you can still read the archives if I'm not posting much. The first 2 weeks have some pretty good stuff in them, although it isn't as focused. Okay, that's enough. Blog safely (that's another thing: I used to put a new tagline on every post, and now I just say "later" or "goodnight" or "blog safely." I need to start coming up with new ones again).
Holy flurking schnit!!! I just witnessed possibly the most insane thing I've ever seen in my life. As I've said before, I just happen to have one of the biggest Yankees fans in the country as my roommate, so a few people gathered in our room to watch the game, and more were in and out as the night went on. It was frickin' incredible. They were trying to make everybody stand or sit in the exact same position they were in when good things happened, and they made some...interesting comments about Boston fans. I won't go into too many specifics, but one guy's comments included hitting people with a hockey stick and finding a place to bury a large number of bodies. I think he also mentioned hiring Osama Bin Laden at one point. Scary. I was especially scared when he mistakenly identified me as a Boston fan. He was on the phone with someone and said, "when are you sending the gun?" Then, a few seconds later, he turned to me and said, "you got two days, b*tch!" Now, understand that I'm not a Boston fan or a New York fan. I'm from Pittsburgh. I lost most of my interest in baseball a long time ago thanks to the magnificent suckitude of the Pirates. However, I think I'm going to be a Yankees fan for at least the rest of the World Series. I think to do otherwise would put my life in danger. Anyway, when the Yankees won, the dorm went crazy. People running up and down the halls screaming, jumping, banging on doors, etc. I don't think I've ever seen people celebrate that much in response to an event that means so little in the grand scheme of things. They're still at it now, actually, although they've quieted down a bit. The Boston fans on this floor were pretty quiet, but on another floor, a couple of them went into a room with two NY fans in it, TP'd the place, and basically dismantled the beds. That's too much. Really. I don't think I can write much more about this, but I thought I should get away from the whole abortion thing for awhile. Incidentally, there still haven't been any real challenges to my position on that issue since the T.A. one, so at least I made a really strong case. I've decided to stop trying so hard to defend it, because I realized nobody was reading my messages (see previous post). I'm going to let someone else try this. I'm tired of casting pearls before swine. Anyway, that's about all for today. Thanks for stopping by SIT.
I'm about ready to give up on this abortion debate. I don't think the other students are even reading my responses or those of others. They just keep using the exact same arguments to try and justify abortion: "If you make abortion illegal, people will find ways to do it;" "It's the woman's body! She can decide what to do with it;" "Why should a rape victim be forced to carry a reminder of her experience for 9 months?" Really, are these people capable of free, conscious thought, or are they just listening to some barely audible moonbat waves that only pro-choice people can hear? The only people who are actually challenging my position are the professor and one T.A. The T.A. tried to say that a plane makes up for man's inability to fly, while contraceptives make up for man's inability to have "safe sex." Now, it seems to me that people can't fly without planes (at least not for very long), but they can still have sex without contraceptives. Just because you decrease the risk doesn't make it okay. Also, he says that contraceptives and planes are both ways of challenging nature, but that's not my point. Sex is designed to reproduce, and planes are designed to fly. No matter what you add or take away, they are still designed for the same thing. I'm about ready to give up on this, because the other students aren't listening and the professor is just arguing in circles. Any suggestions?
Well, class was indeed quite interesting. However, the professor still hasn't necessarily refuted my arguments. He just argued, using Judith Jarvis Thomson's piece, that you aren't necessarily responsible for taking every precaution against something. I still don't think that proves anything based on my design argument, but he left it up to the class to decide who is right, so obviously I made a decent case. In fact, he started off the class by looking at me and saying, "your sh*t is tight!" (college professors seem to enjoy profanity) So basically, he thinks I have a good argument even though he disagrees, but neither point can be conclusively proven as true yet because of the nature of morality. Of course, I detect a hint of moral relativism here (i.e. "that's true for you, but not for me"), but I'm glad the debate is at least a draw for now. Also, I want to thank the people that left comments about this situation. I really appreciate your taking the time to contribute to my insignificant little corner of the Internet. So that's it for now. The debate isn't necessarily over yet, and my section discussion should be interesting tomorrow. None of the people whose arguments have been used on quizzes have been in my section so far, so I don't know how that goes, but it should be fun. One last thing: I have to get up before 7 a.m. on Saturday. Hooray for marching band!!!!
I just checked my e-mail, and Professor Thomas apparently still disagrees with me. However, he says that it is because good philosophy depends on "quality of argument" in addition to agreement. I have no idea what that means, but this whole ordeal has still helped me in a way, because I get extra credit on the next quiz for taking the time to explain my arguments. Also, there will be questions about my messages on the quiz, but I'm not allowed to answer them (obviously). Again, I'm not sure exactly why the professor disagrees with me, but I think I at least made a pretty strong case for my position. The lecture starts in about 45 minutes, so I'll probably find out what he was talking about. I don't mind telling you that I'm a little nervous, but it's not like I can lose points if he comes up with something better. I'm just glad I finally got a chance to debate about abortion (I've been studying methods of argumentation and various cases for and against abortion for the past few months), and I'm definitely not done yet. This was just about the plane analogy. We still have to finish talking about "A Defense of Abortion," and I've read "Unstringing the Violinist" by Greg Koukl (excellent work; you should definitely read it now. There's a link in another post), so I know where the faults are in Thomson's justification. Also, I got a comment saying that sex has other benefits, like endorphins and such, but I'll quickly respond to that by saying that it still serves the fundamental purpose of reproduction. After all, this computer I'm using could work pretty well as a paperweight, but it wasn't designed for that purpose. I just thought I'd clear that up. I'm not arguing that some actions don't have extra benefits. I'm just saying that those are accessories to the main purpose. By the way, I'm still not sure why I'm spending so much time on philosophy when I'm a communications major. I guess it's just a good change of pace.
I think I just blindsided my opponents on the listserv. I posted a refutation of challenges to my argument, and it hasn't been posted yet, but I think they're going to be hard pressed to challenge my position again when they see it. Because I think this is such an interesting topic, I will once again post the text of the message I wrote for the listserv:
ANOTHER ARGUMENT AGAINST THE PLANE ANALOGY
I wrote an explanation of my position on this issue last night that I think was needlessly complicated, so I've decided to try and clarify what I meant. Again, my view is that a couple who conceives through consensual sex (Professor Thomas was referring to this and not rape) is always morally responsible for the child, because they caused the pregnancy despite their attempts to prevent it, and since sex is designed to produce children, they have no excuse. I've decided to temporarily set aside the plane analogy, and instead present an analogy of my own that demonstrates moral responsibility on the part of the parents. (note to SIT readers: I used this analogy yesterday on the blog, but this is a more detailed version of it)
Let's say that you and your friends are bored one day, so you decide to play a game of Russian roulette, which you find extremely entertaining (even pleasurable). You've done this several times before, and nobody has ever "lost" a game, so you have a good track record up to this point. Now, imagine that it's your turn to point the gun at your head and pull the trigger. You know there is only a 1 in 6 chance that the gun will fire, so you have a reasonable amount of confidence that you will be safe. However, it turns out that you got the chamber with a bullet in it, and when you pull the trigger, you die.
Now, would anyone deny that you are morally responsible for your death? You knew the risks, and you knew that your safety wasn't 100% guaranteed, but YOU, and only YOU, chose to pull the trigger anyway. Because you were directly responsible for the action, you are morally responsible for the consequences.
Let's take it one step further. Imagine that, to make the game even safer, you used a special bullet that only has a 10% chance of firing. Therefore, you not only know that you may not get the chamber containing a bullet, but you know there is a 90% chance that you will survive anyway. Unfortunately, when you pull the trigger, the bullet fires. You are still responsible! Unless you are 100% certain that you will be safe, you have moral responsibility, because you are in control of your actions and are the direct cause of the event.
This takes us back to the plane example. If you put your son on a plane, you have a reasonable expectation the he will be safe. If the plane crashes, however, it is not your fault, because you didn't cause the plane to crash. In the roulette example, and in instances of consensual sex, you are in control the whole time, and you always have the option to prevent pregnancy from happening by abstaining from sex or to prevent death by not pulling the trigger.
This also comes back to my argument that planes are not designed to crash, but sex is designed to produce children. Think about the roulette example. If you pull the trigger and the gun doesn't fire, then that's an accident! You may be happy with the result, but the reality is that if that gun had been working properly, you would be dead. The point is that if you take an action that is designed for a specific purpose while simultaneously trying to prevent it from accomplishing that purpose, you are morally responsible if your attempts fail.
On the other hand, if you use something for its intended purpose and it fails, you are not morally responsible, because you were not misusing it. I think this is where [my opponent] was confused. I am trying to prove that sex, and not failed birth control, is the cause of pregnancy. As the roulette example shows, decreasing the risk involved doesn't make it morally neutral. Guns are designed to fire, and if you happen to shoot yourself, you are responsible because you knew that ahead of time.
Just to avoid confusion, I should point out that I reject Kant's theory that motivation dictates whether an action has moral worth. I would say that motivation can add to or subtract from the net worth of an action, but that doesn't change the action itself. Sex is the same thing whether or not it is done for the purposes of conception, so the fact that you may not want a child does not exonerate you. After all, if you fail a test, you may not be happy with that outcome, but you are still responsible for the failure. I'll leave it at that for now, and I'm looking forward to your feedback.
So, do you think I have a solid argument? This just got posted on the listserv as I was copying it (I had to transcribe it, actually, which took a few minutes), so I expect the responses to start coming in about an hour or less. Again, I would really appreciate comments from readers about this argument.
I realize that you may not understand some of the concepts I mention (Kant, for example), but the point I'm making stands on its own. If you think I could improve this analogy, or if there is a problem with it that I'm missing, please leave a comment and let me know. Remember, when you write comments, I will see them. I get notified by e-mail every time someone posts to the comments sections, and I will read whatever advice you give me. Your input is appreciated. I think that's it for now.
By the way, they're cleaning the men's bathroom in my dorm at 8:00 in the morning now, which is when I get up. That's strange to begin with, but it's also a female custodian cleaning it, so you can only brush your teeth or fix your hair. You can't take a shower or anything. That's just strange. Later.
I'm back! I couldn't get access to the blog (or any other BlogSpot page, for that matter) for about 2 hours, but I'm here now. I just want to write another brief and pretty much meaningless update on that philosophy listserv I talked about earlier. Basically, the pro-lifers are destroying the pro-choice...ers. They tried all the classic arguments, like "the child will grow up in poverty," and "if a woman is raped, she has no responsibility to take care of the child (one person even went so far as to say that a mother could not have any love for a child conceived by rape)," and "if you use birth control but you still get pregnant, abortion is okay because you didn't want a baby," and so on. We've basically cut down all those positions, and it's slowing down a bit, but I think abortion has lost the debate for now. I'm a little disappointed because we didn't get to the plane crash analogy and my response, but we'll probably talk about that in class on Thursday. Anyway, I just thought I'd let you know that the pro-life postion has prevailed in Syracuse University's PHI 191 class...for now. By the way, the class itself is really interesting, and I may talk about it more in the future. It's taught by Laurence Thomas, who has written 3 books and dozens of articles on moral philosophy, and he really knows how to keep the audience interested during lecture. Plus, if you get lucky, you can point out a flaw in one of his arguments like I did and make yourself look really smart (I'm getting a bit too egotistical these days). So, now that I've given another free advertisement for SU, it's about time for me to go. I do have work to do...eventually. Later.
*UPDATE*
The pro-choicers are fighting back! They're trying to refute my arguments, at least. I just spent 40 minutes responding to a couple challenges, particularly one that said IN THE TITLE that I was wrong. This guy tried to say that my "planes aren't designed to crash" argument was inaccurate because contraceptives aren't designed to fail, but he missed the point of my argument, which is that sex accomplishes its true purpose without contraception, and planes accomplish their purpose when they don't crash. You don't need to add anything to a plane to get to your destination, but you have to add to sex to prevent pregnancy. This guy called contraceptive sex an "alternative purpose," and I'll grant that, but it isn't the original purpose. Again, crashing a plane into the WTC could be considered an alternative purpose, but it's still harmful. I really need to go to sleep now, so...goodnight (it's currently 1:11 in the morning).
I don't really have anything to talk about right now, but I just want to say that I am sick of popup and popunder ads. They're horrible. You're just reading a page, minding your own business, and then this big frickin' window just pops up in your face. Popunders are even worse, because you don't see them right away, and they sometimes spawn more if you let them go. The worst ads are popups that turn into popunders. You try to click the "X" in the top corner, but the ad jumps under the other windows, and you end up closing the one you were actually looking at! That's wrong. What makes these people think I want to give them my business when they just made me close the page I was trying to read? Idiots. That's all, I guess. Deport Michael Moore to Canada.
*UPDATE*
A popunder from another page just spawned under the Blogger publishing window as I was proofreading. What did I tell you?
Wow, the listserv discussion is heating up. Someone said that tadpoles and chicken eggs are not frogs and chickens, so they are not the same thing. I just reminded this person that those animals are still in the process of growing, but they don't need to be fertilized or altered by any outside force. They just need to rely on nature. I also pointed out that you could use this logic to justify murdering toddlers, since they aren't adults. I'm not going to post about everything that happens in this discussion, but I want to make up for the boring crap I've been writing for the past few days. Also, click on the "Michael Moore Hates America" link and go to the filmmaker's journal. There's an interesting commentary there on how "tolerant" Moore is, and it points out that he is an anti-American socialist hypocrite. I have to go eat dinner now.
I just had a rather interesting time in my philosophy class (Ethics and Value Theory). We were discussing Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion," and we looked at several of her arguments. I don' know how many of you have read this, but it uses some incredibly flawed analogies to try and justify abortion. I don't want to take up a lot of space explaining all the points, but I'll cover a couple of the main ones and why one of them has put a lot of pressure on me. First of all, she uses an argument that fetuses are not human. I think this is a load of crap (pardon the "attacking your opponent rather than their argument" tactic, but it is a load of crap), but let's see why she thinks this is true. Apparently, in her view, an acorn can potentially become an oak tree, but it is not an oak tree yet. Therefore, she says, a fetus is not human even though it can become human. This isn't right. I actually just posted a message to the class listserv about this (which hasn't been sent to my mailbox yet for some reason), and I'll just repeat it verbatim here:
Thomson says that an acorn is not an oak tree, and therefore a fetus is not a human. I think this is a flawed analogy. I realize that an acorn isn't an oak tree, but I'm assuming that said acorn hasn't been planted yet. It has fallen from another tree, but it isn't growing. Once it's been planted and fertilized, it becomes a tree, no matter how small it is. Thomson thinks that an acorn is analogous to a fetus, but in reality, it is analogous to an unfertilized egg. The acorn can't become a tree until it is fertilized, and an egg can't become a fetus until is is fertilized. Once the egg and sperm combine, the result is a fetus, just as an acorn becomes an oak tree once it is planted. In my view, the fetus is human in any stage once the egg and sperm combine, and I'm no expert on plants, but I don't know what else you would call a tree that has started growing. That's why the analogy is flawed.
Now, that wasn't the topic of much discussion in class, because the professor decided to just accept it as true (which surprised me, because he's usually very intelligent with these things). Later, we were discussing the issue of responsibility in pregnancy and what role that plays in abortion rights. The professor gave us an example in which a couple has consensual sex with as much birth control as possible, but still conceives a child. He then asked us whether they are responsible for that child, or if it can be aborted because it was an accident (not his exact words, but definitely his point).
Before we discussed it, he gave us an analogy. In his example, he puts his son on a plane from New York to Los Angeles, taking every precaution to ensure that the child is safe and comfortable, but the plane crashes and his son dies. Then, he asked if there is a degree of moral responsibility on his part for putting his son on the plane. I have a problem with this analogy, and I actually spoke up about it in class (FYI: this class is held in an auditorium and has several hundred people in it). I said that the analogy doesn't make sense because of the intentions of the parties involved. In the professor's view, the child is an accident in the same way that a plane crash is an accident.
I'll grant that you may not want a child or a plane crash, but look at the situation. Sex is designed to produce children. There's no way around it. You can use all the birth control you want, but sex is still meant to cause pregnancy in its empirical form. On the other hand, planes are not designed to crash. Planes are designed to take you from point A to point B. Therefore, if you get to your destination, you have accomplished the purpose of flying, whereas with sex, if there is no conception, then you have not fulfilled the original purpose of the act.
If my professor's analogy were accurate, it would mean that every time a plane crashes, it has done the thing it's designed for, and when it safely reaches its destination, it does so by accident, and everything that keeps it from crashing is just to prevent it from doing what it was built to do. By his logic, the 9-11 terrorists were some of the best pilots in the world, since they figured out a way to crash the planes by themselves.
Something is wrong with that view. Pregnancy is not a plane crash. Birth control isn't meant to accomplish the real goal of sex, it just prevents one possible result. Sex that doesn't result in pregnancy isn't a plane crash either, but it certainly isn't analogous to safely reaching the airport.
Incidentally, I'm a protestant, so I think birth control is fine (within marriage, of course). I'm just saying that sex is meant to cause pregnancy, so if you fail to prevent it, you're still responsible for engaging in an act that is meant to accomplish exactly what it did.
Here's an analogy for you: imagine you're playing Russian roulette. You pull the trigger, and you don't get shot. Guess what? That was an accident! Guns are meant to shoot things, but since you got lucky and got an empty chamber, you lived. Just because something is good doesn't mean it can't be an accident. This doesn't entirely relate to my professor's analogy, I just thought I'd give another perspective.
I hope this is a valid argument, because I now have to defend it. We're going to be discussing it further in class on Thursday, as well as on the listserv. Also, it'll probably be on a quiz. If anyone has anything to add to this, please post a comment and let me know. I don't want to look like an idiot.
By the way, just because this is my blog and I can talk about myself, I think I should point out that I got a round of applause from many people in the class when I gave my "planes aren't designed to crash" argument, so apparently they thought it was good. I'm rambling, so I should stop. I'll keep you up to date on how the discussion goes, and again, please let me know if there's something I should change about my argument.
MORE INFO-To read Greg Koukl's refutation of Thomson, click on the following link: Unstringing the Violinist
I have another quick post for this afternoon. I'm having trouble focusing because my roommate is watching TV, but I'll try to put the words together. There's a guy in my writing class that makes me wonder what the college admissions people are thinking sometimes. First of all, we were looking at some citation tips in one of our books, and he was looking at the book of the person sitting next to him. The one with the book asked him if he forgot his, and he said something like, "I didn't buy any books. F**k books." That's serious dedication. It makes me feel like an overachiever. That was great, but he said something later that topped it. We were looking at the conflict between Israel and Palestine to study different points of view and claims vs. evidence, and we were each supposed to bring in 3 articles about it. When we were told to get them out, the no-book guy said something like, "I got mad articles on Israel and Pakistan!" Pakistan?! I thought maybe I misheard him, but then he said it 2 MORE TIMES! How can you find 3 articles and not even know the name of one of the countries? PAKISTAN? The best part of this is that when I was walking back to my dorm, he came up to me and said, "Claims and evidence. You'd better get those straight. Start paying attention" (I got claims and evidence confused during the discussion). I just said, "That's good advice coming from someone who doesn't even have the book." That shut him up...for about 2 seconds. I'm not going to go into the rest of the conversation because it wasn't as ridiculous. I'm just wondering how this moron got into a place like Syracuse. He's not even a minority! He actually had to have a good application (that's not racist; it's reality)! What were they thinking? Anyway, there's another rant. I have a four page paper to write for communications that I haven't started yet, and it's due tomorrow morning, so I'll probably be working on that tonight instead of blogging. Also, here's a tip for readers: don't play Curveball. I know I told you to play it, but now it controls my life. It's so incredibly addictive, and level 9 is impossible, so it makes you keep coming back. Don't get hooked on it unless you have some time. That's all. Nothing to see here. Move it along. Go back to your homes. The hounds will be released in 4 minutes.
I was just posting to the comments on Right Wing News on the topic of 9-11 and the roles of Clinton and Bush in causing/failing to prevent it, and I think some of the information there proves how horrible Bill Clinton's policies on foreign affairs and national defense were. To see for yourself, go to RWN and click on the comments under "Five Things Other Conservative Websites Do That Annoy Me." The comments labeled "CMD" are mine. You'll notice that I posted a rather uninformed comment at the beginning about how Bush and Clinton both failed to act on intelligence, and a few people came along after that and set the record straight. So (insert cheesy piano music here), I've learned something today: don't post comments on a big site like RWN until you know what you're talking about. I'll definitely do my research from now on. The positive side of this is that I now know just how incompetent Clinton was, and how lucky we are to have Dubya defending our country. Yes, I'm still calling him Dubya. Later.
I was checking my referrers once again, and I eventually found out that I'm now linked on JawsBlog. I'd like to thank Jaws (I don't know his name) for that. I have a link to his blog on SIT. Check it out. There's more good conservative stuff to read, and he has over 4,000 hits, so he must be doing something right. As long as I'm posting, I'll briefly give a status report for SIT. The hit counter is now at 110, so apparently people are still coming here. That's always good. I'm going to keep posting on a regular basis, but I'm trying to get motivated to work a little harder for my classes, so I may be updating a bit less in the next couple weeks. I will be writing about any examples of liberal bias or socially offensive things that happen on campus, and hopefully I'll be able to keep up with the news. I thought I was going to get a social rant out of, conveniently enough, my sociology class today (with the professor who thinks we invented reverse racism), but he didn't say anything that particularly annoyed me, so I'm out of luck. I will say, however, that I've noticed something about sociology/social studies teaching types: they're boring. My sociology teacher last year could put the entire class to sleep in 5 minutes, and my professor this year isn't much better. Is there some kind of rule that says sociology has to be taught as blandly and unemotionally as possible? I think there is. I'm not going to say too much more about this, because it would just take up space. I'll be back later.
All right! The counter's at 101! I feel really happy right now. They were both from the Blogger page (I republished a couple times in the last few minutes), but that doesn't change the fact that I've got over 100! That makes me feel a bit more professional. I don't want to seem like I'm bragging here, but over 100 hits in 8 days is something to talk about when you've been blogging for less than a month. Thanks to everyone who came here, and keep checking for more.
Once again, I apologize for the overall lack of posting this weekend, but there seems to be a lack of interesting stuff happening around here (incidentally, I'm glad I didn't have to be at the football game, because Syracuse got annihilated), and there aren't a lot of good news stories to write about. There's plenty going on, but it's all about stuff that I don't really care about. I like writing about social issues, and it's been nothing but politics and economics and things. I want to write social rants!
Anyway, I did come across an interesting post on the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, and I followed Misha's link to the main article by Michelle Malkin (how's that for name dropping?). It's all about Cruz Bustamante and how the media completely ignored the fact that he belongs to a racist organization. I'm sure all you conservatives out there are aware of this fact, but apparently the "unbiased" media decided to completely ignore it. You'd think they would at least make fun of it on the late night talk shows or something, but there was nothing! They made fun of his weight and made up stories about him gambling or something, but nothing about the fact that he belongs to a "bronze" supremacy group! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!
You can read about this in the article, which I have linked below for easier...linkage, I guess, but I'll give you a paraphrased overview of one of the most interesting parts. Bustamante belongs to an organization called MEChA (I'm not going to bother writing what that stands for), which, among other things, treats latinos as a superior race, wishes to topple authority, and intends to conquer the southwestern United States because of historical claims.
Does that sound familiar to anyone? Superior race...anarchy...conquering land you say is rightfully yours anyway...did the media screw up and attribute this to Schwarzenegger, because they were calling HIM a nazi while completely ignoring Bustamante, who actually belongs-repeat-BELONGS-as in present tense, at this moment, right now, etc., to an organization whose goals can be compared to Hitler's!
"Well, he's a Democrat, so the First Amendment allows him to belong to that kind of group, but since Schwarzenegger decided to betray his country and run as a Republican, he doesn't get the same rights. In fact, since he is a LEGAL immigrant, we're not giving him any sympathy at all! How dare he become a 'naturalized citizen' and speak 'English?' Plus, he's white. That's a dead giveaway! If he's white, speaks English, and is in this country legally, then he must be evil! Bad Arnold! Bad!"
Okay, that got silly, but I guess I did manage to crank out a short rant this weekend. Anyway, you can read it in slightly more logical terms in Michelle Malkin's article. Since I'm a college student, I'm basically not allowed to speak up about this kind of thing (they might call me a racist if I criticize a latino group), and I'm in New York anyway, so it probably wouldn't do much good, but I urge anyone out there who's living in the free world and/or California to speak up about this. I really think conservatives need to take action and put an end to ridiculous double standards like this.
Just to make sure you get the point, I'll break it down once more: Arnold=related to a Nazi, may have praised Hitler for his speaking skills. Bustamante=Currently a member of an organization that wants to conquer part of the U.S. and take away the rights of non-latinos. Media=Criticizes Arnold, ignores Bustamante. There, is that clear enough? Seriously, do something! Talk to someone! There's gotta be a way! This is for the good of the nation!
Even if you'd prefer not to take orders from an eighteen year old, you should try and make a difference with this issue. That's the end of today's rant. Before I stop, however, I want to add another update about the blog. The counter is currently at 97. 97 hits in 8 days! I'm really happy about that. I want to thank everyone who has come here, and I realize that many of those hits are from the same 2 or 3 people (you know who you are), so I want to thank you especially. Hopefully, I'll eventually get more attention and become a part of the mainstream right-wing blogosphere, but I know that takes longer than 3 weeks. I don't expect to be blogrolled on Right Wing News or Instapundit after less than a month, but a blogger can dream. Anyway, thanks again for coming back, and I will post again soon. Later.
Bustamante, MEChA and the Media by Michelle Malkin (article is from August, but is still very relevant)
Hey, sorry I'm not posting very much interesting stuff this weekend, but I'm a little short on subject matter. Also, there's still plenty of archived stuff to read, so you can always go there. Until I think of something else to write about, I'll post another link. This goes to the website of Vic Firth, the company that makes the drumsticks I've been using for the past 6 years. If you go to their "Media Vault," you'll find a bunch of drum solo and drum corps videos for your viewing pleasure. I've been watching a lot of them lately, mostly because I've been away from my drumset for almost 2 months and I'm suffering from withdrawal symptoms (remember; drumming isn't a skill, it's an addiction). Anyway, check those out. Even non-drummers can appreciate drum solos.
Play Curveball! It's incredibly addictive! Good luck getting past level 8. Oh, and I think there's a blog here too.
This is just a temporary post, but I want to quickly put up an update about one of my original ideas. When I started, I posted some entries from my "Book of Semi-Intelligent Thoughts," the journal-type thing that inspired this site. I also said that I would be going in depth with some of the entries and explaining their full meaning. I think that since the news is getting a little slow (although that may be changing soon), I should do that over the weekend. I don't know which one to write about, but I probably will pick a couple. Also, George Hill just sold his BlogShares of SIT, but since it's not real money, I don't really care that much. Later.
In case you haven't noticed, I've been trying to link to more stories lately. In this case, I found a good piece about the Rush Limbaugh incident. Personally, I don't think Rush should've said what he did, because deep down he knew people would take it the wrong way, but that doesn't necessarily mean he wasn't on to something. Also, being a Syracuse student and everything, I don't think he should've implied that McNabb is underqualified (even though he was actually criticizing the media), but there was still some truth in his statements. This letter I'm linking to has some great content about liberal racism and false diversity, and it fits very well with the rants I've been writing for the past couple days. Enjoy.
*UPDATE*
I've decided to change this post a little. It seems there's a lot going on with issues of race in the world right now, so I'm going to link to every story about it that's interesting (just for today). The Rush story is first, but I'm putting some more under it. Racism is the "hot issue" on SIT this week anyway.
An Open Leter to ESPN on Rush Limbaugh
Racial Accusations Backfire on Democrats (not the actual title of the article)
Only 8 hits today. That's a bit less, but still good considering how new SIT is. I want to post a couple things before I end for the day. I've been reading through the posts, and I realized that I use the phrases "by the way" and "anyway" in just about every one. I really need to think of something else. Actually, that's all I wanted to say. Goodnight.
Sorry, I couldn't come up with a better title. Anyway, I'm really bored right now, so I decided to write about something I've been pondering recently. In this country, we have a tendency to use words the wrong way. Everybody knows this, of course, but we say certain things as if they actually sound right. There are two specific examples I have in mind. First of all, why do we add the suffix "-aholic" to certain words (workaholic, chocaholic, shopaholic, etc.)? It sounds good at first, but what people don't realize is that it makes no sense. The word "alcoholic" is just "alcohol" plus "-ic." That's it. If we wanted to do this the right way, we would say "workic," "chocolatic," and "shopic," but those would sound really stupid. I realize that the way we do it is just a play on the whole alcoholic thing, but we shouldn't add part of the word "alcohol" to every single addiction. The second thing that bothers me is adding the word "gate" to every scandal. Dubya supposedly lies, and it's called "Uraniumgate." I just saw Newsmax call the Arnold thing "Gropegate." Also, I'm from Pittsburgh, so I witnessed "Sausagegate" this summer with Randall Simon. Why do we do this? The original Watergate scandal was named that way because it happened at the Watergate hotel. It wasn't a scandal about water, it was a scandal at a hotel called Watergate. Despite this fact, we still feel the need to add a gate to every scandal that happens in this country. As long as I'm writing about misuse of words, I want to mention that the way we use the word "homophobia" is also wrong. "Homo" means the same, "phobia" means fear. Homophobia=fear of things that are alike. We should say "homosexualphobia," but that wouldn't fit on a standard picket sign, and "homosexualphobe" would take too long to yell at passing social conservatives. That's my language rant for today. By the way, just so I don't seem elitist, I'm guilty of two of these word invention techniques (I used the word "Rushgate" a couple days ago on SIT, and I videotaped myself playing a drum solo over the summer and called it "Drumaholic"). Once again, I'm out of material. I really think the entire world slowed down today. I'm not sure why, but nothing on the 'net has been very interesting. Before I start to ramble (again), I'm going to stop. Remember, sign the petition! The link is on the right under "Michael Moore." It's for the good of honest filmmakers everywhere. Trust me.
Okay, it turns out that when I don't have marching band practice in the evening, I get really bored. Unfortunately, I have nothing to write about, so I'll just mention a few more random things. First of all, I've only gotten 5 hits today. I'm not complaining or anything, since any hit is good, but that just seems like a change in the pattern. Also, the blogoshpere in general seems to be a little dull today. Everyone must be exhausted from that whole recall thing. Well, I think I'm out of material already. To tell you the truth, I just wanted to post something else. I usually get a couple hits when I publish. I know it's a little sneaky, but I need to bring people here somehow. Hopefully, I'll get something to write about before the end of the day. Now that I think about it, I haven't really looked at the New York Times yet. Maybe they've got something I could rant about. We'll have to wait and see.
This is hilarious! You should read it immediately.
I just finished taking a philosophy quiz on the moral theories of Kant, so my brain hurts a little, but I'm blogging once again and celebrating SIT's 2 week anniversary (don't worry, I'll stop this anniversary crap in about a month). There's a lot to talk about concerning the blog today, and I haven't checked the news yet, so there may or may not be a rant on the way. Apparently there's no Daily Orange today, so I can't criticize the liberal editing staff, but I'm going to check some news sites soon. Until then, I'll write about the blog. As I said yesterday, SIT is now available in Google search results, and I've already gotten 2 hits that way. I also have a piece of slightly more interesting news to report. I checked my referrer log and clicked on an unfamiliar URL, and I found out that three people have invested in SIT on BlogShares. It's worth $1,309.53, which seems pretty good. Personally, I'm not interested in the fantasy blog stock market, but it's good to know that people are including my site. As long as I'm part of this, however, I might as well try and increase my value, which means I need to add more outgoing links and generate more hits. If you're interested in buying stocks, it's $1.34 per share. Go here to check it out. Also, if you are Harry Kingsley, David Fletcher, or George Hill, thanks for the publicity. That's about it for now. I hope I can get a bigger audience from the increased exposure of the blog, although I still don't expect to be famous or anything. As far as I know, and as far as my stats tracker tells me, I only have 1 or 2 regular readers right now, but any random link could result in a daily view, so I'm optimistic about that. Thanks for coming to SIT, and I will return later.
SIGN THE PETITION TO REVOKE MICHAEL MOORE'S OSCAR!
Hey, I've got two quizzes tomorrow, I have to procrastinate. Anyway, I decided to end today with a brief status report. First of all, I may have an interesting situation. My stats tracker tells me that someone else at Syracuse got to the blog from Google. I kinda hope it's nobody I know. Unless they agree with me. In that case, I could start recruiting minions (insert sinister laugh here). In any case, Google has given me two hits already, and the counter is now at 64. Incidentally, I realize I may be giving away a lot of information about who comes here, but I made the tracker private, so I'm actually hiding information. On some sites, you can just click on the hit counter and look at the data for every visitor to the page, but I opted to keep that information to myself. That's all for today's Semi-Intelligent Thoughts. I expect to have some interesting times in the next couple of days, since Google should be sending me some unsuspecting victims...I mean viewers. Also, I'm going to be adding links to more conservative blogs and music sites over the weekend, and I already mentioned that I'll be blogging like crazy during the next few days. Hey, it's Fall Break, and I want to enjoy it by flaunting the fact that I have absolutely no social life. I've run out of things to type, so I should probably do my Spanish homework. Also, I have to keep an eye on my roommate and make sure he doesn't try to kill himself over the Yankees' loss. So, until next time, blog safely, and revoke Michael Moore's Oscar (on a final note, I'm going to be watching "Bowling for Columbine" for my writing class in a couple weeks. Maybe I can give it a verbal fisking.)
*One more note*: It has come to my attention that more people have contributed comments to my joke site, "Evil Monkeys," than they have to SIT. And the monkey site only has 18 hits! Maybe I should reconsider which blog is more important.....or not. I just got an idea. As long as I do have comments available, I'll ask people a question. Do you want me to link to "Evil Monkeys?" I think it's dumb, and it may cause you to question my sanity (as if you haven't done that already), but it is funny in a certain way. I haven't updated in a couple days, but if you want me to link to it and add some more monkey fights over the weekend, let me know. People seem to be enjoying the pure stupidity of it.
I just did a test, and I'm happy to report that Semi-Intelligent Thoughts now appears in Google search results. Just thought you'd like to know that. I'm not sure what keywords go here, since I searched with the title of the site, but I am positive that SIT is at least listed. By the way, I have a long weekend coming up. After my philosophy class ends at 2:00 tomorrow, I have no more classes until Monday, and I'm pretty sure there's no band practice tomorrow night. That means there will probably be a ton of posts this weekend. Unfortunately, I have other things to do right now, so I may not post anything else tonight. Sign the petition to revoke Michael Moore's Oscar if you haven't already.
*UPDATE*
The Internet is really fast. I already got a hit that was referred from Google. Apparently someone searched for "intelligent thoughts," and my blog was in the top 10 (#7, to be precise). That's pretty fast considering I've only been doing this for two weeks. I just wish I had more time. Also, the person that came from Google MAY have signed the petition to revoke the Oscar. I'm not positive about that.
Unfortunately, I managed to procrastinate to the point of no return, so I have very little time to blog today, but I want to quickly cover another example of racism from liberals that I heard today. My sociology professor covered racial discrimination and similar topics today, and he eventually got around to talking about affirmative action. Right away, it was obvious that he supports it, because he talked about how many people it has helped and how much more diverse the work force is. Those are obviously good things, but people like him always seem to ignore the fact that they have been manufactured and aren't necessarily the result of a change in society. As I said yesterday, jobs and admissions are meant for people who deserve them, no matter what color or nationality they happen to be. The professor, of course, decided to give his position on this view, and he introduced it with the question, "Why can't there be reverse racism?" This struck me as a bit odd, because he's already decided that there is no reverse racism, despite the fact that certain people are still singled out because of their race. According to his view, affirmative action is not racist because the white male majority (also known as the evil white patriarchy) is still making the policies. Therefore, he says that we have "invented" reverse racism to mask our own racist views. I really hope I'll get the chance to write about this for his class, because I could really get into a topic like this, but since I have a blog, I'll try out an argument now. In my view, affirmative action is racist even though white males are making the policy. The problem in my professor's view is that he (by his own admission) views racism as one race dominating another. That premise results in the belief that racism can only be perpetrated by the majority, in this case white males. I find that to be deeply flawed. Racism by domination is only one form. In reality, racism happens whenever a person considers race to be the most important part of an individual's identity regardless of character, reputation, personality, skills, etc. In fact, according to my "Language Master" (a computerized dictionary), racism is simply discrimination based on race OR based on the belief that one race is superior to another. In the case of affirmative action, the racism lies in the fact that decisions are made based solely on race. That's racist. And I also disagree with my professor's view that white people are not racist when they implement affirmative action policies. Even though they put themselves at a disadvantage by doing this, the fact remains that they are discriminating based on race and ethnicity. I call that "360 degrees of racism." Even if a person's racism is disadvantageous, it is still racist. My philosophy professor actually gave a good example of this. Back in the days of slavery, if a slave accepted the belief that he was inferior, he was called an "Uncle Tom." African-Americans who are believed to treat whites as their superiors are still called this today. This is a case of 360 degree racism. Even though the person views himself as inferior, he still takes a racist position. That's my opinion. Any time you treat race as the most important factor, you are a racist. It's as simple as that. I think I should probably do some actual work now, so I'll sign off. By the way, I think Arnold Schwarzenegger's English is actually getting worse, but maybe that's just me.
50! The counter's at 50! That's pretty good for 3 days, I'd say.
By the way, will anyone else not be surprised when dozens of women accuse President Bush of groping them next Fall? I bet Hillary Clinton will be one of them.
I have a great rant for today (but it's REEEEEAAAAALLLLY long, so don't say I didn't warn you). I was sitting outside the auditorium and waiting for my Communications lecture to begin, and I decided to actually read the chapter that we were going to be learning about.
Well, as it turns out, the very first page made me so angry that I decided to write about it on SIT. I can't write it verbatim because that might violate some copyright law, but I can post a summary of what the intro to the "Legal Controls and Freedom of Expression" chapter says. It begins by talking about September 11 and describes the battle of free speech that followed.
If I can briefly quote (again, I'm not sure about the laws, but I'll credit the book at the end), it says "...the normal conditions of freedom of speech and press became a casualty of chest-thumping patriotism."
Do you hear that? It's the sound of a brainwashed liberal idiot banging the keys of his computer until something anti-Bush comes out. Kinda like that "infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters" thing. If you give a liberal a computer and a deadline, he will write something that bashes President Bush.
The book then talks about three journalists that were fired for criticizing Bush after 9/11, and it uses Bill Maher's infamous "the terrorists were brave because they died for their cause, but Bush is a coward because he uses missiles" comment and the subsequent criticism of Maher as an example of "attacks on dissenting views."
What? He said something idiotic and was criticized for it. Why is that a restriction of free speech? In any case, I find it ironic that a guy who calls himself "politically incorrect" constantly does the politically correct thing, which is, in this case, criticizing the president. Don't act surprised at that. Everyone knows political correctness is a tool of the left.
And then, of course, the book quotes a journalist from the San Antonio Express-News, who writes, "Somebody pinch me. I'm beginning to think that this is 1954 and that Sen. Joe McCarthy is alive and well and running roughshod over the Bill of Rights."
That's asinine (I like that word). If people criticize you, it doesn't mean they're taking away your First Amendment rights. I don't remember seeing anything in the Bill of Rights about freedom to say whatever you want without fear of criticism.
In any case, if you criticize the government, you've basically given everyone else the right to criticize you. Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, and a ton of other people need to realize this. If you criticize, you will be criticized back.
That's called democracy. If you don't like people disagreeing with you, then SHUT THE F**K UP! That's the best solution I can think of. I'm not even close to being done with this rant, by the way.
The best part of this intro is the picture that accompanies it. On one page, there is a big photo of John Ashcroft with one of those topless statues behind him (I just thought I would mention that). The caption on the next page says, "On previous page: U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who has restricted many civil liberties in response to the September 11 attacks."
Do you people ever actually pay attention to the news, or do you just go to your little conspiracy theory sites and listen to people calling Ashcroft a fascist? Since when is John Ashcroft guilty of "restricting civil liberties?" Name one example, and I'll give you the contents of the Box of Mystery. OOOOOOOOO! What could it be?
That was dumb. I apologize. Seriously though, accusing Ashcroft of restricting civil liberties is not a good way to start off the chapter. In any case, this was, without a doubt, the most blatantly biased thing I have ever read in a textbook. Ever.
In my 18 years of life, I have never seen any so-called "educational material" that's so obviously left-wing. What I find ironic about this whole thing is the whole "Rushgate (good word, isn't it?)" thing going on right now. Rush Limbaugh said something on the air that could be interpreted as racist, so he was forced to resign.
Interesting. So, if Bill Maher calls the president of the United States a coward, he's exercising his First Amendment rights, but if Rush Limbaugh says something that SOUNDS-repeat-SOUNDS racist, he's a big fat idiot and has to resign. I want you to think about that for a second. Don't say or do anything. Just think. Maher=hero, Limbaugh=racist. Can anyone tell me what's wrong with that?
I'm not going to write about this anymore, because I'm on the verge of ripping that textbook to shreds. This doesn't end with the textbook though. We talked about the whole "patriotism" thing in class, and the professor (who is actually moderate in his political views, if you can believe that) asked if questioning the government could be considered unpatriotic.
One girl decided to take the typical moonbat position, and she said something like, "it's our duty to question the government if they do something wrong. We're just as patriotic for protesting the war as we are for agreeing with it."
Now, she actually said something dumber, but I decided to paraphrase it so it would be intelligible to right-wing nuts like me. Basically, she thinks that you're patriotic if you question the government.
Now, I'll agree that the First Amendment gives us the right to question, but she apparently thinks that you're only patriotic IF you disagree, and that people who think the government is doing a good job are just going along with the crowd (again, I didn't capture her exact quote here, so it seems less harsh).
I can say a few things about that position. Yes, questioning government is healthy, but who the crap said that you have to disagree? The reason we ask questions is to arrive at an intelligent answer. You don't pull a Janeane Garofalo and just protest because it's trendy.
Hey, I questioned the war when it started, but I eventually decided that it was a good thing after analyzing all aspects of it. I spent the better part of last year questioning my religion before I came to the conclusion that Christianity is true. You question so you can take the right position.
It becomes unpatriotic when you compare Bush to Hitler and say that you hope Saddam wins. That's anti-Americanism no matter which way you look at it. If you don't like it, move to Iraq.
I probably could've phrased this argument better, but you get the point. There's a difference between exercising your constitutional rights and just being an a-hole.
Amazingly, this isn't the end of the post. I want to talk about something else that caught my eye in today's edition of "The Daily Orange," SU's student newspaper. Aside from the front page photos that show a gay student dancing and two lesbian students kissing at the "Big Gay Dance," the headline at the top of the page just screamed "liberalism."
It says, "Study Says Race a Minor Factor in Admissions." Now, any logical person would think, "that's a good thing. College admission should be merit-based." Keep in mind, however, that this is a college newspaper.
I read a little bit more, and I found out that I was right. The opening paragraph reads, "Although many colleges pride themselves on their efforts to increase diversity, a recent national survey suggests that some admissions offices may not take race into account enough when admitting students."
WHAT WHAT WHAT?! That's a bad thing?! Race-based admissions policies are racist, you idiots! What are you thinking? According to the article, "Only about one-third of universities and colleges actually consider race and ethnicity in their admissions policy..." That's terrible. There shouldn't be any consideration of race and ethnicity.
A couple paragraphs later, it says that Syracuse's "...general criteria for admission are high school course load, high school profile, standardized test scores, personal essay, recommendations, extracurricular activities, special talents, good character and competition with other applicants."
This is seen as a problem? That's what it's supposed to be based on, you racist liberal...okay, I need to calm down. Here's the best quote of the article. According to one student they interviewed, "If they didn't [consider race and ethnicity], our schools would be very white." Can you imagine a conservative saying, "well, with these policies, our schools are too black." That guy would be stigmatized for the rest of his life!!!!!!
Another interesting fact from the article: "...74 percent of the surveyed schools use specific recruitment tactics to increase application and enrollment of underrepresented racial and ethnic populations."
That's wrong. You should recruit smart people. If minorities meet the criteria, then by all means let them in, but don't push white people aside just because some "underprivileged" student whined about it.
Let me tell you, race-based admission policies make me sick. You can't force diversity on people. Instead of trying to create a diverse environment, people should learn to interact with whatever group they're placed in. If it's 14,995 white people and 5 black people, they should learn to interact. If it's a mixed group, those people should learn to interact.
You can't create some idealistic environment of diversity because it fits your racist worldview. I really don't understand how people can see this as a good thing. It's blatantly racist. Blatantly. Unfortunately, racism is apparently nonexistent unless it comes from a white person (other than Michael Moore).
Honestly, I feel insecure as a white male in today's society. I feel like people are going to blame me for all the world's problems and call me a racist if I complain. That's not right. I really think I've written too much, but I needed to get this out.
Why can't we move on to a colorblind society where character takes precedent over the color of your skin or the place where you were born? How long are we going to linger in this reverse racist limbo where racial and ethnic discrimination masquerade as diversity? When will it end?
I hope you read that whole thing, because I spent a lot of time on it. I have about 10 pages worth of essays to write today, so that was a good warm-up. By the way, I'll end my race rant with an interesting observation. My roommate (who still doesn't know I have this blog) walked in when I was about halfway through this post and turned on the TV.
In an extremely lucky coincidence, he turned to Comedy Central, and they were showing Saturday Night Live. The sketch was the one with "Sparkle-Brite" toothpaste, if you know it. It's the one where they advertise toothpaste by showing Tim Meadows (black) kissing Molly Shannon (white) for a really long time.
The ad execs are very uncomfortable watching it, and when they hear that the commercial is going to be shown at the Country Music Awards, they blow up the advertiser's car.
I've never understood why this sketch is funny. Really. It was made in the mid 90's. Was anyone still uncomfortable with interracial couples by this time? It seems like that sketch might have been funny in the 60's or 70's, but why did anyone think it would be funny in the 90's?
This implies that race is still the first thing people look at, and that a decent amount of people still see something wrong with interracial marriage. That makes no sense. And that's what I'm saying here.
We need to realize that not everybody is the same color, but if we happen to be in an environment where a lot of people are white, it doesn't mean that racism is to blame. It might just be because there are a lot of white people.
Think about it. Republicans oppose affirmative action because it treats minorities as inferiors who need a helping hand. Democrats support affirmative action because, unfortunately, the right has been stereotyped as the "evil white patriarchy," and minorities are portrayed as victims of millennia of oppression. That may be true of the past, but this is the 21st century, and we're beyond racism. Let's start acting like it. Have a nice day.
Documentation:
Textbook quotes taken from "Media and Culture-an Introduction to Mass Communication," by Richard Campbell, Christopher R. Martin, and Bettina Fabos. Copyright 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's of Boston, Massachusetts. Specifically, chapter 16, "Legal Controls and Freedom of Expression," pages 536-538. There, now it's all nice and legal.
Newspaper quotes taken from "The Daily Orange" for October 7, 2003. Article is "Study Says Race a Minor Factor in Admissions," by Jean Stevens. By the way, happy Math Literacy Week.
Well, once again, I lied about it being the last post of the day, but I'm trying to put off those papers for as long as humanly possible, so I'll write a bit more here, although it is kind of ironic that I'm writing in order to avoid writing. I want to talk a little about this whole Red Sox/Yankees rivalry. It's insane. It's really insane. The people on my floor were losing their minds over the Red Sox game. Meanwhile, the Yankees fans were insulting them. I heard things like, "Boston is gonna lose this game. You know why? Because BOSTON SUCKS!!!!" Of course, when Boston won, their fans started yelling and running up and down the halls, knocking on people's doors, the usual. I've mentioned that my roommate is a huge Yankees fan, so I'm a bit nervous about Boston and New York playing each other in the next series. One of his friends here is a big Sox fan, and I think they may have some problems. I said something like, "You and John aren't going to fight to the death or anything over this, are you?" His answer was, "Maybe if it goes to game 7...if John dies of 'natural causes' after Boston wins, I can't be held responsible." That was frightening. I'm glad I'm not taking sides with this one, being a Pittsburgher and everything (the Pirates still suck). One girl (the one who had the friend visiting-see Saturday's posts) even locked her roommate out because of the Boston/New York rivalry. I think her roommate is the Red Sox fan, but I'm not positive. In any case, this is going to be an interesting couple of weeks. I want to quickly write about one more thing before I really do sign off for the night. I was reading the NYT online again, and I saw an article about how humane lethal injection is. Apparently, if they don't use the right amount of chemicals, the inmate will be paralyzed but still conscious when injected with potassium chloride, which stops the heart and will "deliver the maximum amount of pain the veins can deliver, which is a lot." They're apparently worried that this is inhumane and are trying to find a way to make it completely painless. Give me a break. Why are these people so worried about how much the prisoner suffers? I thought the whole point of lethal injection was to make it easier on the people watching. Did it ever occur to them that the reason the person is being executed is that they have committed a crime against humanity and don't deserve to live? We're not talking about euthanasia here, we're talking about execution of convicted criminals, many of them guilty of multiple murders. Why should they be able to cause all that pain and suffering and then just doze off into death? At times, I think we should just inject them with sulfuric acid and watch them melt from the inside, but that would probably be a bit gratuitous. However, if there's a way to cause as much pain as possible without allowing onlookers to emphathize with the prisoner, as they can with electrocution, gas, hanging, firing squad, and other methods, why should people protest? The guy's going to die in a couple minutes anyway. It's not like he's going to sue anyone. I realize that my Christian beliefs allow for an eternity of punishment, but I really think that we need to send them off properly. What really confuses me is the fact that the same people who protest this kind of thing are usually the ones who defend abortion. That just doesn't make sense to me. At least with the death penalty, the victim has done something to deserve it. I'm not going to get into wrongful imprisonment or anything here, but I think that in cases where the prisoner is proven 100% guilty of murder, he should not be allowed to die peacefully. I'm pretty sure Timothy McVeigh was conscious when he died, and personally, I hope it was incredibly painful. Furthermore, if we catch Saddam Hussein, we should just give him the potassium chloride without all that anaesthetic crap. Once again, I think I went too far, but this is my blog and I'll say what I want. I hope you'll see the logic of my position. Later.
Before I sign off for the day, here's a funny story. I started a blog a couple weeks ago called "Evil Monkeys," and it's basically a series of posts where a guy describes fighting a bunch of killer monkeys, and they usually end up hurting him. I didn't mean for it to be serious. It was just a joke, a way for me to have some fun. However, I decided to add a hit counter just to see if anyone was seeing it, and 13 people have been there in the last 2 days! Someone even put a link to it on their blog! This is a public service announcement for any new bloggers out there. If you have a blog, people will find it. It doesn't matter how much you post or how good it is, people will find it. My hit counter is up to 44 now, so I'm feeling pretty good about the future. It still seems like most people aren't staying very long, but at least they know I'm here. Okay, I have work to do, so it's time for me to go. Remember, every blog gets viewers. The key is to install a Sitemeter tracker so you know that people are coming. Goodnight.
NOTE: I'm not going to link to "Evil Monkeys" because it's incredibly stupid. If you find it, it's best to just ignore it.
Go here if you want a good laugh. According to their "religious freedom" page, if your religion involves marijuana use, you should be able to violate drug laws, but if your religion says homosexuality is wrong, you're a bigot. Brilliant. Just brilliant. These people are a great example of what happens when you open your mind too much and let your brain out. That's all I wanted to post. Later.
Okay, I was sitting in the dining hall eating a bowl of soup (as if you care), and I somehow started thinking about campus speech codes. You know, the ones that deem certain words offensive and create protected groups. At one of the floor meetings, my RA told us that we couldn't say things like "that's gay" or "that's retarded" because "you never know who you're offending." That seemed a little strange to me, because that means anything that offends a large number of people can be considered hate speech. I wonder what would happen if I started an organization to protest the name of the school because the word "Syracuse" is offensive to us. We wouldn't even say why it's offensive, but we'd try and get a petition with 1000 signatures saying that the name of the school is hate speech and should be changed. Hey, if it offends enough people, it must be offensive, right? We could even come up with some stupid reasoning for the argument. "In our group's secret language, the word 'Syracuse' is a derogatory term for Mexicans. That's not very nice. We need to change it!" Would they have to change the name of the school because it offended us? It's a stupid reason to be offended, but none of this so-called "hate speech" is really that bad in context. I can understand certain words offending people, but every group shouldn't get special protection just because they're different. In any case, that's how these words started. Somebody decided to use a certain word to insult a group of people, others started using it, and it eventually became "hate speech." What I find odd, however, is that not everyone is protected from being offended. Here's an interesting example of hypocrisy: I'm overweight. If somebody wanted to call me fat, or fatty, or some other annoying word, they could get away with it. That's not right by their own logic. Every group should be protected! I'm rambling again, but this was just an interesting thought. Could you make a word hate speech just by saying that it offends you? I encourage college students to try this one out. By the way, I really am overweight, but I don't go crying to the authorities whenever someone makes a fat joke. I just deal with it. Other people should learn to do the same. One more note: The counter's at 40! I'm impressed. People still aren't staying very long, but it's good to know that someone is actually looking at my work.
Just thought I'd add a quick note here. If you have something to say about one of the posts, feel free to add a comment. I know you can't tell how many comments there are, but I can use the Blogspeak editor to see if there are any new ones, so at least I'll know that you had something to say. I'm still trying to figure out how to fix the comment counter, but remember, if you write a comment, I will see it. Thanks.
As promised, I will include a list of the different kinds of posts that I make for the site, but I want to cover a couple other topics before that. First of all, the hit counter is up to 34, and I think all of them came from VRWC. One of them even stayed for 15 minutes! I really appreciate the publicity, and I hope everyone comes back. Also, I've noticed that spam is getting much more clever. It's not as easy to identify as it used to be. Before, it would say something like "Free Prescription Drugs," or "Hottest XXX Teens on the Net," or, "Work From Home and Make More $!" Back in those days, you could just delete it because you knew it was worthless. Now, they trick you into opening it. I just got an e-mail, and the subject line said, "Hope This Helps You Out." I thought maybe it was a visitor to the site with a tip on how to fix my comments or something, but it turned out to be another one of those "work from home" ones. That's not right. You shouldn't get people's hopes up like that. That's equivalent to a telemarketer calling you and saying, "Hey, What's up, buddy? I heard you needed some advice. Well, I suggest you replace your roof!" Anyway, if you're going to be an idiot and send spam, at least make it obvious that it's a useless e-mail that no sane person would respond to. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I'll put up the list. As you may know, I have no theme to this site, and it's kind of an "omniblog," covering all different types of blog topics. Therefore, there are several different categories of posts that I write. Maybe I'll start identifying them in the title sometime so you know what to expect. That would be an interesting change. Anyway, here they are:
-Lists: This is an example of a list. I pick a topic and write a list of things that fit the topic. Pretty self-explanatory.
-Political rants: Whenever something political makes me really mad, I write about it. I usually end up using the words "left-wing lunatic" at some point.
-Religious rants: I'm a Christian, so I get offended by a lot of what goes on in daily life. When I see something that either makes me embarrassed to be a Christian or makes it hard to be a Christian, I write a religious rant.
-Social rants: Anything in culture or society that makes me angry fits this category. For example, yesterday's post about reality shows would be a social rant.
-Dorm stories: Get it? It sounds like "Storm Stories!" That's a TV show! Anyway, dorm stories are posted when something strange or entertaining happens in my residence hall. There are a lot of "interesting" people on my floor, so these happen a lot. This category may also include college anecdotes that happen outside the dorm, but I really like that name.
-Reviews: If I get a new CD, watch a TV show, see a movie, or partake in some other form of entertainment, I may review it. So far, I've reviewed Nickelback and Jim Breuer.
-Blog reports: When something happens to the blog, I talk about it in a blog report. Another self-explanatory one.
-Miscellaneous: Anything that doesn't fit into any of these categories. That doesn't happen much.
I hope that helps you enjoy SIT on another level. Remember, sign the petition to revoke Michael Moore's Oscar if you haven't done so already. There's only one more signature today than there was when I signed it. Again, I don't know how current it is, but it feels good to put your name on it. They even let you add a comment. I wrote, "Give the Oscar to someone who deserves it!" Even if they never send the petition out, it really is a good way to release aggression. Not much else to write about yet. I have two papers due on Wednesday, and I haven't started on either one of them yet, so I'll probably be posting less frequently until then. Fortunately, I have this Friday off, so that's another long weekend. I should do a lot more posting then. Keep checking for more.
Just a real quick post to end the day (it's actually 1:50 in the morning, but I'm changing the time so this goes in the right section. Being a webmaster is fun). First of all, I got a total of 17 hits today. That's exactly what I wanted. It's amazing how many people came here from the "recently updated blogs" list at Blogger. This means people actually go through that list and read the pages. What's really scary is that all the hits were unique. That means that more than 10 people thought "Semi-Intelligent Thoughts" was interesting enough to look at. Unfortunately, most people haven't been staying for more than a couple minutes. I guess I need to be more interesting. Also, about 5 or 6 hits were referrals from VRWC. That happened really fast. A couple of those people actually took the time to visit the archives, so I appreciate that. In all, I now have 27 hits, and when you take away the number of times I affected that before I told Sitemeter to ignore my IP, you get about 24 or 25. That's not bad. I would like to thank everyone who read anything on here, even if you just took a quick look. I'm new at this, so I still get excited when the counter goes up. It's a bit of an ego boost. Hopefully, more people will leave comments and things eventually, although it might be a good idea to try and fix those huge numbers next to the word "comments." I e-mailed Blogspeak about it and they said to re-enter the code, but that didn't fix it. Any suggestions? I'll end today with a brief anecdote about a rather strange person on my floor. I don't know his name, but he has a tendency to come up to me in the bathroom and ask me really weird questions. I was washing my hands today, and he came up to me and said, "You got a haircut again?" This was odd, because I actually hadn't gotten a haircut. I got a haircut a couple weeks ago, and this same guy asked me where I got it, but that was a while ago. So I said, "no," to which he replied, "you get a haircut, like, every two weeks." This annoyed me, so I said, "I didn't get a haircut." In response to that, he muttered something under his breath and walked out. That is one of the most bizarre things that has happened to me in my first month of college. Why the crap did he think I got a haircut? My hair grows really fast, and I'm actually in need of a haircut now! I haven't even shaved in about 3 days, so I'm even hairier than usual! What was he thinking? And why did he not believe me when I told him I didn't get one? This dude genuinely bothers me, to tell you the truth. A couple days ago, I somehow got to talking to him about my major, and I said I was studying TV/Radio/Film. I told him that I wanted to be a writer/director, and he said, "that's one in a million. You'll probably have to move out to California, you know." He then said that I wouldn't make a good director because I'm shy (I actually am kind of shy, but who cares?). I told him that that's why I was plannning on writing the stuff down first, but he just said that I would still have to sell it to people. That's really annoying. To make things worse, the conversation eventually came to my college choice, and he criticized me for going to Syracuse because, in his opinion, I could've stayed in Pittsburgh and gone to Pitt or the Art Institute. That's not a good way to interact, children. You don't criticize someone's choice of colleges and career aspirations and then expect them to be on good terms with you. I successfully controlled the urge to smack him around a bit, and instead explained that if you put Syracuse University on your resume, you can basically get a job anywhere. I then walked out of the bathroom (this was right after I had taken a shower, by the way) before I did something I might regret later. I really shouldn't be writing so much about this guy, but he's really irritating. Did I mention he has an annoying voice? He's one of those people whose voice never really finished changing, so it's all high-pitched and trembly. I'm sure a few people can identify with this. I just hope he doesn't read this. That wouldn't help the whole social thing. My roommate's going to sleep, so I should probably do the same. I'll post again tomorrow, but I have a lot of work to do, so it may be a little less than today. Goodnight.
*UPDATE*
Hey, my roommate actually wasn't going to sleep. He's writing an e-mail right now. Anyway, I've decided that tomorrow, I'll write a list of the different kinds of posts I make for the blog. Since I don't have a particular focus, I write stuff in different categories. For example, that last thing was a "dorm story," and my piece about reality shows was a "social rant." More about that tomorrow.
I know I'm posting kind of sporadically today, but I really need to vent right now. I just saw an advertisement on Fox for "The Next Joe Millionaire" or something. HOW PATHETIC CAN YOU BE?! From what I understand, they're going to tell a bunch of European women that the guy is worth 80 million dollars in oil. The advertisement featured a woman with very broken English saying, "I think I'm going to enjoy this lifestyle." If you mean humiliation, you may be mistaken on that one. I've never understood reality shows. The only time I ever watched a reality show was "Survivor 2," and I only watched that because 1) I got extra credit for talking about it in my Spanish class, and 2) Amber was from Beaver, PA, which is where my parents are from. I've never been able to stand any other ones, and I even stopped watching that one after Amber got voted off. Whoever decided that "reality" means putting a bunch of socially inept, mentally challenged, but still physically attractive people together on an island should not be allowed to roam free on the streets, and the person who started this whole "deception" trend should be taken to a secluded location where he believes a new mansion is waiting for him. Once there, he should be locked in a small shack for 6 months with nothing to eat or drink but water and moldy bread, and he should be given a TV that only gets reruns of Rosie O'Donnell. That'll teach him. Reality shows are idiotic. They take gullible people and exploit their unfortunate mental shortcomings for ratings and advertising space. This is roughly equivalent to putting a bunch of retarded children on a huge stage and telling the audience to laugh at them. It's wrong! What really bothers me is the fact that these morons become celebrities for their televised antics. Personally, I would be embarrassed to see myself on one of those shows. I'd rather be on "Cops" than "Survivor." And these women that go on shows like "The Bachelor" and "Joe Millionaire" should really be given psychological help. How can you be stupid enough to think that you're going to meet your soulmate on a game show? Especially on Fox! They're the masters of exploitation! I don't think I can milk this topic much longer, so I'm going to stop. By the way, James Finch gave me a brief plug on VRWC, so apparently someone likes my work. Be sure to go to his site if you get the chance. He's a bit better at this blogging thing than I am, and we need as many conservative blogs as possible. This is one type of communication that the liberals won't conquer so easily. I'm up to 22 hits now, and I'm starting to realize that this is a serious thing. Sitemeter predicts several hundred hits by the end of the month. That's exciting. Anyway, keep blogging, and remember that there's a difference between "reality TV" and reality (this includes some things on CNN).
I really don't have much to say, but I get new readers when I update the blog, so I'll quickly post this. I added a link in the "Michael Moore" section that goes to a petition to revoke his Oscar. I don't know how current it is, but you should still sign it. My signature was number 3,669, so apparently a lot of people have contributed to this. Even if you like Michael Moore or disagree with the second amendment, this is about respect for the film industry. Like I said before, I'm planning to be a writer/director, and seeing people like Moore abuse the privilege that filmmakers have makes me sick. Go to Bowling for Truth and read about his "documentary," and you'll agree that he may deserve an award, but not for nonfiction. Sign the petition. By the way, the hit counter is currently at 19. Where the fudge are all you people coming from? I just started counting yesterday! Thanks for reading my blog, in any case. I hope you'll come back. Also, check out the links. I don't link people unless they're really good. Later.
*UPDATE*
What did I tell ya? I got reader number 20 less than two minutes after I posted this! Whoever you are, thanks!
I have to go eat dinner before the dining hall gets too crowded, but I thought I'd let everyone know that I updated the links (as if you couldn't tell by LOOKING AT THEM). I manipulated the HTML a bit with my limited knowledge in that particular area, and I managed to split them into separate categories, making them easier to go through. You can now choose from "News/Politics," "Religion," "Music," "Michael Moore," and "Syracuse." I expect the list to grow in the future, which is why I created these categories. If you happen to have a blog and are reading this, I can give you a link in exchange for one on your page provided it fits one of the categories. The only downside is that the extended list pushes new posts to the left, but I guess that makes them look bigger. Kinda like wearing tight pants...hmm, I've said too much. Also, the hit counter now says 11! I've hit the big time, baby! One more observation before I go: Why do people in dorms insist on yelling and clapping every time their team does something good? Do you think they can frickin' hear you? The people on my floor take sports much too seriously. I heard one guy say something like, "I hate the [I forget which team he said]! I hope every f***ing member of that team dies!" That's a little harsh considering they're just playing a game, don't you think? Oh, well. Maybe it's just because all sports suck royally in comparison to hockey, and I can't get enthusiastic about football or baseball. In conclusion, hockey=good, other sports=bad. Don't forget that.
Well, I didn't have anything to post about again, so I decided to go to the New York Times online and browse until some piece of liberal propaganda made me angry enough to write something. That was a good idea, because just about every headline today shows the obvious left-wing bias that they constantly deny.
Here's a few examples: "Report Offered Bleak Outlook About Iraq Oil," "Complete Coverage: The Struggle for Iraq," "Ex-Minister Says Blair Knew Iraq Had No Banned Arms," "C.I.A. Chief Caught in Middle," Is that enough for you? I can just see them sitting in their little editing meetings or whatever they do. One guy would say, "Hey, here's a story about soldiers rebuilding an Iraqi school and giving candy to all the children! Can we print it?" Then the editor would say, "Bush bad! Dead soldier good! No war for oil! Vote for Wesley Clark! Arnold groping! Graaarrr!!!" And then he would rip the arms off the guy who suggested the story so he could never write again.
Seriously, could you people be any more frickin' negative? I'm a cynical pessimist and I get depressed reading your headlines! I like the headline, "The Struggle for Iraq." That makes it sound really bad despite the fact that we pretty much control every part of the country except the Sunni Triangle, and I'm fairly certain that a few dozen arabs with RPG's and AK-47's aren't going to chase off a few thousand trained U.S. troops. And of course, they have to include as many stories as possible trying to convince people that we went to war for the wrong reasons. They seem to be going after Tony Blair now, since Dubya has become such a straw man for the Times that they don't even bother mentioning him anymore.
There's another interesting article here that says, "In the Face of Death, an Undercover Life of Guns." Apparently it's about police officers that pose as criminals to investigate firearms. I find the headline odd because it makes an effort to put "guns" and "death" in the same sentence. The little description thing under it talks about how the officers "pose as criminals to deal with criminals." Right, because everyone who has a gun and doesn't wear a badge is a criminal, you moonbats. I just skimmed through the first page of the article, and it talks about how they stop gun trafficking, but it doesn't say WHAT KIND OF GUNS! This is brilliant. "Hey, I've got an idea! Instead of talking about illegal firearms or violent crime, let's villify the guns themselves...again!"
In the article, the officer being interviewed says, "...we know we've got a gun out there...This is a moral issue." What? WHAT?! What kind of guns? I just read the second of 4 pages, and they still haven't identified what kind of firearms are being investigated. It just says "guns." Actually, it talks about shotguns and pistols and things, but these are legal! It mentions assault weapons once, and that's it. Another fun little tactic is how they set up the scenario for an undercover gun purchase. The way they describe it, you'd think it was a drug deal if they didn't put the word "gun" in the story.
This is idiotic. I know they're taking guns away from dangerous criminals, but why do they spend the entire article talking about how bad the guns themselves are? They don't talk about how many people they've arrested, but they mention how many guns have been confiscated. They even take the time to describe officers being shot and mention how afraid they are of guns. This is going too far. It's obvious they're trying to make people feel sorry for these officers and support gun control.
I think I may have gone too far with this rant, but after taking AP English last year, I'm able to get a lot of meaning out of a few words (I had to read James Joyce). Maybe this is why the liberals are against war. "Yes, I think Saddam Hussein should be deposed, but...guns? Someone could get hurt! Why don't you take this whiffle bat? It's really loud but doesn't hurt much. There, play nice, children!" How dumb can you be?
I should stop. Really. I'm going to start breaking things if I think about this much longer. By the way, the counter hit the big 1-0 at 3:00 this morning. According to my stats, someone on the University of Idaho's domain was reading my blog. That's intense! I realize that 3 or 4 of the hits are from me, but 6 or 7 is still pretty good for one day.
I noticed that other blogs don't really update much on the weekends. Why? That's when you have the most time! I've never understood that. I'm in college. I have homework every night. On weekends, I have lots of time to put off that homework, and I like to work on my blog and read other blogs. I don't understand why so many people take weekends off. Do you see this as work? Blogging is a hobby, not a chore! I guess people who get thousands of hits a day do need to work a little harder, but I still think if they updated more on weekends they could get a lot more hits. Weekends are when I read blogs the most. I can't be the only one.
Anyway, that's it for now. The guys across the hall are yelling at the Giants game. They have to watch it on a computer because it's not being broadcast on TV in Syracuse. That's dedication. I'll end with a question: How many blogs could a blogger log if a blogger could log blogs? I expect your answer to use the metric system. This is 10% of your grade. Don't F it up.
I know it's 1 in the morning (at least it is in New York), but I felt I should comment briefly on some of the other blogs that are out there. I was just browsing through some of the recently updated blogs in the Blogger index, and most of them are pathetic. Some of them are just two posts about absolutely nothing, and lts f thm hv evrthng speld lk ths! Worse than that are the ones that are like, "OMG, I wuz ROTFLMAO @skool 2day b/c sum chik 8 2 much BTW this is OT &...O, BRB, LOL! ;)" That kind of butchering of the English language is meant for message boards and DNC memos, not blogs! Have you people heard of spell check? HAVE YOU?! Not everybody understands what you're trying to say when you don't spell it right. Also, people give their blogs asinine names. I was browsing through the index and seeing things like "I hate you all," and "F**k all you f***ing f***ers," and "Q&FHSL#*%&!(D(DJF|||||\\\||\|" Plus, some of them are in Spanish. Why are they in Spanish? Isn't there like...El Blogador...or something? I just realized I'm rambling, which is incredibly hard to do when you have a delete key available at all times. Anyway, it's amazing how many terrible and useless blogs are out there. Do people expect to get readers with this crap? I'm amazed I actually got people to read mine, and I would be extremely surprised if some of these weird sites got any traffic. If you're going to write that badly, just keep a journal. Don't go leaking your grammatical diarrhea into the giant toilet that is the Internet. Sorry, that got a little graphic. I probably should stop posting things after midnight. That's when the medication wears off (that's not a joke). So, in conclusion, I'll probably have meaningful content tomorrow, but it might just be more of this. Something political needs to happen so I can rant about it and find another way to instruct people to hit John Kerry with a baseball bat. My first plan didn't work, but I'm not done yet. Goodnight.
Hey, the counter's at 8! The more the merrier! Unfortunately, the same day I found out that people actually read this page has also been one of the slowest days so far. I can't think of anything to rant about, and nothing's really happening around SU right now. It's just cold and rainy, and a couple guys have been playing football in the study lounge for some reason. Seriously, I have nothing to write about today, although I seem to be writing a lot about the fact that I have nothing to write about. Maybe I can just post a few more random thoughts. First of all, I had to delete a great post about how to deal with French people because it turns out they didn't sell missiles to Iraq as was originally reported...actually, I'm not sure what they decided, but the original story was that Polish troops found 4 French-made anti-aircraft missiles that said "2003" on them, and Chirac denied knowledge of them. From what I understand, France stopped making the kind of missile that they found 10 years ago, and the 2003 was the inspection date (which still sounds a bit strange to me). Don't get me wrong, France still sucks, but this post was really great, and now it's irrelevant. In other totally random news, I was browsing the archives at Townhall.com last night, and I saw something in an article that made me physically sick. Apparently, some kid said "God bless you" to his friend when he sneezed in class, and he was promptly suspended because he may have offended atheist and non-Christian students. That's disgusting. I genuinely thought I was going to vomit for 10 minutes after reading this, and the only way I could stop it was by banging my head on the desk until the pain was distracting enough. That's all I'll say about that particular incident. Some people on my floor had a little fun last night that I could write about. A girl down the hall has a friend visiting for the weekend, and a few guys decided to mess with him and make him think that the entire dorm was insane. To do this, they each played different "characters" when they introduced themselves. For example, my roommate pretended to be gay, another guy wore a cowboy hat and pretended to be a hick, and another one acted drunk and kept falling over and laughing (what's really funny is that this guy actually got lost once when he was drunk, so the character was believable). Apparently it started getting old after a while, and my roommate just said, "okay, that's enough of this gay stuff," and introduced himself. The "drunk" guy, however, continued to act drunk for the next ten minutes. Eventually, he said, "want to know how many drinks I've had tonight?" A couple seconds went by, and then he said, "none!" At this point, the girl chased him down the hall (almost knocking me over in the process, I might add) and started hitting him. That was hilarious. I am really bored right now. I apologize to anyone reading this for the first time. I usually have better material. Go to the archives and read my other stuff, but don't judge the whole page by this post. I decided to try reading through all my posts up to this point, and I timed it at about 50 minutes. That's a decent amount of material for a week. Plus, I read really fast, so other people may take longer. By the way, I have "Another Hole in the Head" from Nickelback's new CD stuck in my head, so it must be good. I should really stop. Actually, now that I have a comments section (which still isn't working completely right), I'll take suggestions from readers. If you have any ideas for stuff I should write about, post to the comments section and tell me. I'm thinking about writing some essays based on the BOSIT entries, but I can't decide which ones to use. I'll see if anyone responds to that. Also, I'll remind people once again that flames, trolls, mindless profanity, etc. will be deleted immediately. I'm serious about that one. In any case, whoever the 5 or 6 people were that read this page today, I hope they come back. I'm going to stop now, but I'll keep checking periodically for suggestions, and I may have an idea later. Remember, there should be some great rants coming up next Tuesday, because I have two papers due on Wednesday. Homework=creativity. It never fails. And remember (recycled line alert), when you assume, you make a Democrat out of the University of Maine...or something like that. Keep those blogs rollin'!
I've got a stats tracker! It took a bit of semi-intelligent thought (HAHAHAHAHA), but I got a Sitemeter tracker on the page. This means that I now officially have a real blog. I can't get much information, but I just wanted to know if anyone was coming here. I hope this isn't a waste of time. Later.
Thanks again to James Finch of VRWC. You can now post comments on SIT, meaning that you don't have to e-mail me to make contact. I'm still working out the bugs (like the exaggerated number next to the word "comments"), but at least the thing works. I'm now working on getting a hit counter, but they haven't sent the html code to me yet, so I may have to wait a few minutes. In any case, I now have a way of knowing people are reading the page without them having to contact me directly, so you can disregard all that crap I wrote before. I feel a lot more professional now. Blogging rules.
This is a rather exciting day. I just checked my e-mail, and apparently somebody actually read the blog! I'm happy about this, of course, although I am a little nervous, since this means people will actually see my writing now. Also, I've apparently been added to the blogroll at vrwc.us (in the "daily reads" section, no less). In return, I will be adding said site to my links. In reply to that webmaster's question, I cannot add a hit counter or comments section at the present time because I'm using the free version of Blogger, which basically allows me to post and archive, nothing more. I wish I could do more, but being a college student, I don't have enough time or money to add a lot of bells and whistles to the site. In any case, thanks for contacting me, and I hope you're not the only person who ever reads this. Since I have at least one reader now, I suppose I should probably try and focus my efforts a little more, but I think the site is okay the way it is. I'd rather have a place for a journal and political rants than choose one or the other. I know John Hawkins says that lack of a hook is a bad way to attract readers, but I'm going to stick with what I know. That being said, I don't really have any good ideas for today, but I've only been awake for 50 minutes, so maybe something will come to me later. Also, since I will probably be getting readers now, I just want to reiterate that you should only e-mail me if you have something good to say about the site or if you have a suggestion. If I receive anything that I perceive as hate mail, I will delete it using the "report spam" button in AOL Mail. That'll learn 'em. Anyway, I'm glad to be a part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and hopefully this is the start of something big. Blog on!
*UPDATE*
I received an e-mail from James of VRWC, and he told me it is possible to put comments on your blog. I checked it out, and it turns out there's this thing called Blogspeak that's made for people using Blogger (blog is a funny word)! I'm in the process of adding it to the site now, so I should have comments sections by the end of the day. Thanks for the tip!
VIGODAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is, isn't it? I just got back from Jim Breuer about 20 minutes ago, and I can say that the show was definitely worth the 4 dollars I paid for my ticket. The show got off to a rough start because some guys on one side of the auditorium were chanting, "Jim! Jim! Jim! Jim!" and then a couple people came out to thank us all for showing up, and they got the crap booed out of them. After that, the opening comic, Paul Bond, came on and did some decent material. He needs to lay off the masturbation jokes a little, but other than that, it was good. His funniest joke made the PC types in the audience uncomfortable, but being a Republican, I thought it was great. Want to know what it was? Okay: "You know, when I was a kid, I was Asian, but then I got disoriented." He also invented a word for stupid people who aren't quite at the retarded level. He called them "pretards." I don't care how PC you are, that's funny. He ended with some song parodies, including one called "That's Why I Always Use My Hand (what did I say about the masturbation stuff?)," sung to the tune of John Mayer's "Your Body is a Wonderland." That was a bit awkward, but it was hilarious nonetheless. After that, without even a brief delay, he brought out the half-baked goat, Jim Breuer. This guy is really good. The applause was great, and he had a lot of energy. Now, if you've never seen Jim Breuer perform, you may not realize that he has a slightly different style than other comics. Instead of preparing a routine and telling the same jokes every night, he lets the audience decide which jokes they hear. For example, some guy in the audience yelled "METALLICA!" and Jim did his impression of James Hetfield returning something to a store ("Do you have a receipt?" "YEAAAHHH!!!!"). And then, of course, somebody yelled "Goat Boy!" and Jim ended up telling us the origin of the character and doing a lot of baah-ing. He actually didn't do a lot of new material, but it was great seeing all this stuff live after watching him on TV for so many years. One new bit that was really funny was his story about when he got a job at SNL. He described his thoughts at the time as, "I'm gonna buy a kangaroo!" After that, he hopped around the stage for a while as the audience laughed their a-holes off (is that physically possible?). Another new story was about Dave Chappelle getting his car stolen. The story was pretty funny, but the best part was the visual aid. Jim pointed out that Dave Chappelle is really skinny, and then he just picked up the microphone stand and set it up at the front of the stage. He didn't have to say anything, because we all cracked up at this point. Get it? Microphone stand, skinny black guy? It's hilarious! Oh, yeah. He also talked about how the two of them were planning on doing a spinoff of "Home Improvement." According to Breuer, "He's black, I'm white. He eats chicken, I carry a briefcase (don't get offended; he said it sarcastically)." That was great. He also told a story involving his Joe Pesci impression, and even though I had seen it on TV, it was funnier live. For those familiar with Jim Breuer, he did the "are you gonna thank me for giving you a career" story. He ended the show with a routine that some girls in the audience requested (they even made a sign). This, of course, was the "stomach party" routine. This is where he talks about drinking being like a party, where more and more strangers come in until tequila ruins everything and the stomach says, "everybody, get out!" We gave him a standing ovation at the end of the show, and he brought out an old guy whom he identified as his dad, but we'll never know for sure. In all, it was a great night. I would go there again. I don't really have anything else to blog about today. Unless I think of something else, that's all for today's edition of SIT. I have a long weekend coming up with no football game, so I'll probably be asleep until Tuesday morning. Also, I have two papers due next Wednesday, which means I'll probably get my best ideas for things to post about on Tuesday afternoon. I'm usually the most creative when I've got a lot of homework to do. Remember, laughter is the best medicine. Just don't tell that to a guy with emphysema. Goodnight.
Yes, that's right, it's now been one week since Semi-Intelligent Thoughts took on the blogosphere. As far as I know, I haven't gotten any readers yet, but maybe I've gotten thousands and they just haven't e-mailed me...yeah, that must be it. By the way, I've changed my mind about the whole "this page is for my amusement...I don't want a lot of readers" thing. I still don't want a huge audience or anything, because that would be way too much pressure. However, I have decided that I am going to start actively seeking readers next month. By then, I should have almost a hundred posts, which will probably be enough to keep people busy for a while. I'm not sure exactly what steps I'll take, but hopefully my links will get picked up by somebody's spider and lead them back here (I'm not sure if that's how it works because I'm new at this). All I want is maybe 10 or 20 people a day. That's it. Oh, well. I guess I'll have to wait and see. As for today, I can't really think of anything to write about, but I have 20 minutes until I have to go to band practice, so I'll just talk about random stuff. First of all, I was on my way to philosophy this afternoon, and in the midst of a conversation, some girl said, "I had to self-medicate myself." What? I believe that's called a double reflexive. What other person can you self-medicate? Are you schizophrenic? That's almost as annoying as when people say, "my classes start at 8 a.m. in the morning." That's the only 8 a.m. there is! And now, the weather report: The weather up here kind of sucks today. A few people told me that Syracuse gets cold really fast, but I thought it would at least hover in the mid-60's for a few weeks. Apparently I was wrong, because it's windy, rainy, and about 50 degrees. That's not right. If you know anything about Syracuse, you probably know that it snows here more than pretty much any other city in the U.S., so I'm expecting that to start happening by next week. I heard that it snowed on October 13th last year. How pleasant. In other news, the words "gay pride" were written in pink chalk in two different places on the stairs that go down to the campus from my dorm. Okay, we get it, it's frickin' gay pride week. Keep it to yourselves. As for events that I'm actually interested in, Jim Breuer (a.k.a. Goat Boy) is coming here tomorrow, and I've got my ticket all ready to go. I'll post a review or something telling you how he was. Hopefully I won't accidentally walk into the "Big Gay Dance" they're having in the same building. That would be really awkward. I can't really think of anything else to write about right now. Remember, if you are actually reading this (I know that's unlikely after a week), please e-mail me and let me know. I put a link at the top of the page so you don't even have to know my address. Seriously, I want to know if anyone is seeing these. Until next time, drink your milk, get 8 hours of drugs, and don't do sleep.
Well, it seems I couldn't come up with anything else to blog about today besides that abortion thing. Because I value the readers who will one day find this in the archive, I thought I would just post a quick list of thoughts.
First of all, universities are way too liberal. A lot of people know this, but they often don't realize how bad the problem is. I've said before that Syracuse is the best university in America, and I still think that's true, but that doesn't mean I can't criticize them for being way too liberal. I'll just list a few examples here that I would've posted earlier had I been blogging for more than 6 days (yes, tomorrow is SIT's one-week anniversary!)
Bill Clinton spoke at commencement last year, and the students thought it was a good idea. Apparently, however, Rudy Giuliani either was here or was supposed to be here before that, and it made people uncomfortable because he was "too controversial."
Now, I may have missed this, but when did Giuliani get impeached for lying under oath about committing adultery and being an accused rapist? Oh, I get it. It was supposed to say "too conservative," but they accidentally printed it as "controversial." Those words are pretty much synonymous these days anyway (yes, Giuliani is too conservative in the mind of a left-wing loony).
Speaking of Clinton, my writing professor made me incredibly angry today, and I don't know how I managed to refrain from leaping out of my chair and beating him over the head with his own giant backpack. Must've been that Christianity stuff that stopped me. Anyway, he was talking about how we often project our fears onto others because we don't like to criticize ourselves.
He then said, "We're so afraid of our own lies that we mercilessly persecute our president..." at this point, I thought he was actually going to defend Dubya, but then he said, "...for committing adultery." What the frick is that?! CLINTON LIED UNDER FRICKIN' OATH! THAT'S ILLEGAL!
Keep in mind, however, that right after Wesley Clark announced he was running for president, this same professor said, "I think the presidential election has been decided today." When a student asked if Bush was running again, he replied, "Yes, Bush and the huge financial machine that supports him are running." This guy is supposed to teach writing, not mindless political rhetoric.
I've mentioned this already, but it's "Coming Out Week" at SU. Of course, they usually just refer to it as "Gay Pride Week," but that's not the official name. In the lobby of my residence hall, there are rainbow streamers and upside-down pink triangles that say "LGBT Week" and have little smiley faces on them.
And while they shamelessly promote homosexuality, they attack Christianity. For example, a gay student was beaten up by a couple of guys using "homophobic language" (they were also drunk, by the way, and not necessarily "gay-haters"), and the school responded by having a ton of support events. Now, I'm not advocating beating up gays, but why do they have to call it "hate crime" and "bias-related?" They were just drunk! They didn't know what they were saying!
To get back to the Christianity thing, a student wrote a letter to the school paper saying that Christianity was to blame for this attack and people need to stop being so dogmatic. The title of the letter was the best. Are you ready for this? It was, "Bible a Useless Moral Guide."
Does that seem a little strange to anyone else? "Oh, gays, they're a protected group. Even saying the word 'flag' is a hate crime because it sounds like 'fag.' Christians? Those homophobic bigots (I use that term sarcastically a lot)! They're endangering perfectly normal homosexuals and 'transgenders' (please don't get me started)."
If somebody wrote a letter entitled, "Homosexuality Immoral and Unhealthy," they would probably be arrested and charged with hate crime. Does anyone else see the frigging double standard here (I just realized that "frigging" is only cool when spoken)?
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. They're showing a movie tomorrow called "It's Elementary," and it apparently deals with issues facing homosexuals. Where are they showing it? Why, in the basement of the chapel, of course! Things like this are the reason I don't go to church anymore.
Yet another fun little nugget is from an article about Kate Clinton, the lesbian comedienne (I use that term loosely in both the gender and occupational sense) that performed last night. One of her jokes, according to the article, challenged "the 'unquestionable' nature of scripture." She then said that, "the Bible is Google for Christians." Now, I'm not even sure why that's funny, but it's just plain ignorant nonetheless.
To make it worse, the reviewer said that it was one of her funniest jokes of the night. What the F is funny about that? When Dave Atell (that might be spelled wrong) was here and he told a joke calling Riverdance "partly queer with a chance of fag," the reviewer attacked him for "marginalizing" gays and being insensitive. DOUBLE F-ING STANDARD!!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!
At the convocation for the Newhouse School of Public Communications (shameless plug alert) the chancellor (I think) said that, among the things communications students should be aware of in current events, we should know that "the war in Iraq is not going well."
Did I miss this too? The last time I checked, Saddam Hussein was in hiding, Uday and Qusay were dead, and U.S. soldiers were playing with liberated Iraqi children and protecting people from terrorism. That sounds great to me. I wouldn't want to be there, but I'd rather be there now than a year ago.
There's probably more that could go here, but I have Spanish homework (tarea de casa en la clase de espanol) to do. Among other things that have happened, I had to wait 15 minutes for a washing machine in the laundry room today because some jagoff was using three at once. There should be a rule about that. How can you have enough clothing that you need 3 machines on the same day? I just needed to wash my socks. I have so many that I only need to wash them every 2 weeks, but apparently that was too much to ask of Mr. I'm too Good to Wash Clothing One Load at a Time. Also, a girl was using 3 dryers at once. That's idiotic. Just put all the clothing in one dryer and run it for 80 minutes. It'll dry everything eventually.
What else...my roommate's cell phone just rang...again. I'll talk about him. He was panicking a couple minutes ago because he couldn't find his "Boston Sucks" t-shirt, but he eventually tracked it down, and now he's watching the Red Sox lose to Oakland. This guy is a serious Yankees fan. He roots against Boston even when they're not playing New York! There's probably a lot more stuff I could write about my exciting college career, but I don't want to waste too much of your time.
I'm already wasting mine. I'll end by giving a free advertisement for a great website. Go to the links section and click on IMAO, and you'll discover a vast collection of right-wing comedy by Frank J. This guy is really frickin' funny. He has a way with words that can make any sentence funny. For example, if I were to type, "Cows eat grass in big open fields," it would just be boring. Frank, however, would find a way to make it funny, probably by adding ninjas and saying that he hates monkeys. I'm still reading through his stuff, but what I've read so far is pure genius. Nuke the Moon!!!
Reading this article gives me hope for the future of humanity. If you didn't click the link, I'll quickly say that there is a ban on partial-birth abortion, or dilation and extraction, or D&X, or cold-blooded child murder, etc. on its way to becoming law. This is frickin' beautiful. If we get rid of D&X, it's only a matter of time before we start challenging all forms of abortion. This is a slippery slope I wouldn't mind sliding down. The type of abortion in question is done in the latest stage of pregnancy where abortion is still legal. According to a description I read at Stand to Reason, the "doctor" basically takes the fetus halfway out of the womb, jams a pair of scissors into its skull, opens it up, and sucks the baby's brain out with a little vacuum-like device. Did I mention the child is alive while they do this? THE CHILD IS ALIVE! WE DON'T EVEN DISSECT FRIGGING FROGS WHILE THEY'RE STILL ALIVE!!!!!!!!! It amazes me that somebody was actually sadistic and heartless enough to legalize this disgusting procedure in the first place, and I wish this ban could've been passed before millions of innocent children were annihilated in the name of "choice." Of course, some left-wing loonies are saying that a ban on PBA is unconstitutional. Aside from the fact that that's what they say about every law Republicans try to pass, why would they think that? Where in the Constitution does it guarantee the right to torture and murder unborn children? I must've slept through that part of my 8th grade civics class, because I really don't remember it. If I can rant a little more, I'll give my position on abortion. It's wrong. There, I said it. Abortion is evil, destructive, idiotic, and barbaric. The only time abortion should be performed is when keeping the baby would kill the mother. That's the only time. And even then, it should be done in a more humane way than this. If a woman can survive a pregnancy, she should not be allowed to have an abortion. Now, in rape cases, I think adoption is an excellent option. There are thousands of people out there waiting to adopt, and they would love to care for a child and relieve a woman of a duty she didn't ask for at the same time. We should do very nasty things to rapists, but we should not punish the children. It's not their fault. And, in terms of pregnancy as a result of consensual sex, I think women deserve what they get. If they're not ready to have a baby, they shouldn't be screwing so much! If you get pregnant because you were too drunk to use birth control or something, it's your own fault and you should deal with it. Adoption comes to mind here, too. I'm sorry this rant isn't more original, but I have a pretty conventional position on abortion, so I can't really say anything new about it. Anyway, I'm pro-choice. I believe women should have the right to choose not to have sex, and they should choose to deal with the consequences if they waive that right. Once a child is conceived, that child inherits the right to life that all innocent humans have. I'm still amazed that some liberals think killing terrorists is racist and imperialistic, but killing babies is a way to exercise constitutional rights. What are these people smoking? All right, I've got work to do. I have another rant in mind on why Fall is the worst season, but I may not get around to that. So, let me leave you with the knowledge that I saw a huge frickin' centipede on my way to Spanish today, and the fire alarm went off 2 minutes before class ended. I'm not saying the centipede started a fire or anything, but two strange things in one day...interesting...
*To read the aforementioned STR piece about D&X, click here.*