shut up already

i have this crazy idea.

let’s just have the federal government recognize “civil unions” between who-the-fuck-ever (for tax purposes mostly i presume). i mean, “marriage” in the eyes of the state is just a contract between a governing body and 2 separate entities anyway. that’s why the state owns your kids until their 18 and you parents have little real rights to them, but i digress.

so civil unions for all! then everybody can shut up about it. ’cause i for one am sick of hearing it….from both sides.

you could civilly unite with an elephant for all i care. just don’t shove it in my face. stop parading. stop protesting. save your activism for something more worthwhile than what you want to or don’t want others to fuck. please.

PROUD TO BE PART OF THE 1%

of the popular vote….you can guess who i wrote in!!!

the reason we have an electoral college, really, is so that NOT EVERYBODY chooses who will be president. the founders didn’t trust everyone. i don’t either. HOWEVER, i also don’t trust this 2-party system that is so horribly entrenched in the psyche of this country and it’s people.

we shouldn’t choose someone based on popularity….we should choose them on what they stand for, and i’m sorry, dems & reps are the same same thing (2 sides of the same coin)…it won’t really matter which one wins. unless it had been Ron Paul as he is truly Libertarian….if i hadn’t have written him in, i think i would have gone Constitutional party or Nader….the Libertarian candidate this time voted yes for the FASCIST ACT (RE: “PATRIOT act”)…

hey dems & reps…demons & reptiles…teehee

Bottled Water As Bad As Tap Water – well duh!

i already knew this….didn’t you? plus think about the leaching of the plastic from the bottle into the water (there was a bit of a snafu with nalgene bottles not too long ago…), and the price, and the extreme amount of waste from all those plastic bottles. Some people buy all their drinking water in these tiny little bottles, come on! a little ridiculous don’t you think?

i have some 1 gallon glass jars (i don’t like to keep things in plastic…) that i fill with (cheaply purchased) water processed through a whole slew of things but always with reverse osmosis in this mix. and then a lot of the time i send it through a carbon filter again at home…unless i can get my hands on some fresh spring/well water (that i KNOW is good). i have to have the fluoride (and chlorine for that matter) out, which is why reverse osmosis or distillation would be my only water purchasing choices. don’t need any illnesses or brain deterioration from those poisons. (and on a side note, who said that ANY amount of pollutants, poisons, chemicals can be considered safe? what if you (have to) drink more water than the average person? what if you’re an infant or an animal or an invalid or the elderly? why is somebody else deciding what i should be taking into my body….isn’t that my right, my choice? i am not an idiot…i know when something is bad. and poisonous waste chemicals/other people’s pharmaceuticals/etc are not healthy choices in any amount….)

there was a time i got all my water from a little tiny spring that came out of this wall of rocks a few miles from me. sometimes i’d filter that through one of those kanadyne portablbe/camping/survival filtration devices, and sometimes i didn’t. it was good tasting water.

i don’t mind a taste to water as long as it’s a good taste. tap water is gross. bottled water is gross. bleck. don’t offer me any, i’d rather be thirsty.

here’s some snippets from the AP article:

Bottled water has contaminants too, study finds

By JEFF DONN, AP National Writer

Wed Oct 15, 12:17 AM ET

…

The study’s lab tests on 10 brands of bottled water detected 38 chemicals including bacteria, caffeine, the pain reliever acetaminophen, fertilizer, solvents, plastic-making chemicals and the radioactive element strontium. Though some probably came from tap water that some companies use for their bottled water, other contaminants probably leached from plastic bottles, the researchers said.

“In some cases, it appears bottled water is no less polluted than tap water and, at 1,900 times the cost, consumers should expect better,” said Jane Houlihan, an environmental engineer who co-authored the study. …

…

In the Wal-Mart and Giant Food bottled water, the highest concentration of chlorine byproducts, known as trihalomethanes, was over 35 parts per billion. California’s limit is 10 parts per billion or less, and the industry’s International Bottled Water Association makes 10 its voluntary guideline. The federal limit is 80. …

…

The researchers also said the Wal-Mart brand was five times California’s limit for one particular chlorine byproduct, bromodichloromethane. The environmental group wants Wal-Mart to label its bottles in California with a warning because the chlorine-based contaminants have been linked with cancer. It has filed a notice of intent to sue. …

…

Climate Change is Natural

i get this depressed little laugh when people are so swayed by manbearpig’s (if you watch episode 1006 of south park you’ll figure out my meaning if you don’t know already!) global warming creation.

that’s not to say it doesn’t feel a little warmer than when i was a kid; however, i just don’t think people are the solitary reason for it. nor do i feel that it’s a trend that will last forever. in fact, this summer has been rather cool compared to last summer.

i find it silly to think that the earth herself cannot go through cycles. everything else does. i’m not saying to use that as an excuse to be wicked to her. she’ll get you eventually. but when i think about all these wealthy bigwigs leaving way more of a “carbon footprint” than i ever could expecting me to front the cash to make the world a better place…….hey, i already use way less utilities than the average person. i’ve lived without utilities. i don’t just drive to town on a whim…..and if i lived in a city i wouldn’t be using a car. but you really can’t afford solar paneling or other really cool get-you-off-the-grid-but-still-have-power-to-run-your-laptop-for-work-and-communication-etc devices when your earnings are poverty level. and guess what, i receive no benefits or aid from the government/taxpayers either.

and florescent bulbs aren’t the answer. they contain mercury. and blow just as quickly as incandescents in my house. sometimes quicker. and i know they do better in “turn them on leave them on” areas. they still blow. i’m lucky to get a few months use out of them, and i hate the type of light they give off too. so unnatural. gave me massive headaches every single day when i started middle school (went from an old elementary school without florescents to a brand new middle with nothing but…)

but here is something interesting i came across some weeks back to demonstrate the fads of science:

in the june 1965 issue of National Geographic, that’s Vol. 127 No.6 on pages 794-795 they have this large picture of Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska. but it’s the caption that really interests me:

“Tortured ice pinnacles 60 to 100 feet high dwarf visitors at the face of the Mendenhall, a glacier that melts faster than it moves forward. Scientists predict that the face may begin advancing again toward the end of the 20th century. By then, as their study of climatic cycles indicates, colder temperatures and heavier snowfalls will have replaced the relatively warm and snow-scant winters now prevailing along the Alaska coast. Mendenhall Lake, 115 feet deep near the glacier, did not exist when this century began.”

science has fads too. it has philosophies. it has its own religious fundamentalists. i really don’t believe we know much more than the ancients did. we have a lot more technology…but since when did technology improve us as humans? it made some things easier, but have we truly changed for the better? have we truly become more intelligent, or have we merely altered our culture, our language so that we are merely different today–not better. big words and big machines do not a genius make.

gods & gurus

the simplest way to express my feelings on religions/cults/philosophies (including those “anti-religious” paths of science/politics/sociology/etc) is that i don’t worship anything. you could call that my “belief system” i suppose…the belief that absolutely nothing, no matter how wicked or wonderful, is worth my mindless and utter devotion. and why isn’t it? well, i see no justification for denying myself to give it all to something a) that’s just like me or b) that isn’t like me. nothing in existence, known or unknown, could ever prove to me that it needed me to belittle myself for it. really, if i was some omniscient, omnipotent being i certainly wouldn’t be going around begging other beings to bow down to me. that kind of desire seems to only come from some weird need for a power/ego-trip…which if you truly were so omniscient/etc, i don’t think you would need. (so, why was yahweh so jealous of all those other “gods”……hmmm? remember, he was only “god of the mountain.”)

granted, some people may just be in that kind of mental/emotional state of development where they actually have some need to blindly devote themselves to something seen or unseen–perhaps to learn that they really don’t need to be doing that. it just seems to me that worship & devotion of any nature makes you completely forget yourself. at that moment, you stop developing. you as a person no longer exist nor can you grow because you have traded yourself for the worship of another being. i prefer to keep the freedom of my own being. to be able to discern life without the colored glasses of any one set of dogma. some might find that selfish i suppose, that the whole point of life is to deny yourself–to “altruistically” give of yourself. but i think if you take a good look, you’ll see that most of the time there is no actual “altruism” occurring….and if you’re giving yourself away just because that’s what someone else or some book told you to do, well…remember, you can’t help anyone else until you’ve helped yourself. your issues don’t just disappear because you’ve devoted yourself to someone/something….in fact, they tend to come back quite a bit more powerful and problematic because you denied yourself for your object of worship.

then there is always the struggle to unlearn social conditioning…to cease merely reacting to everything because that’s how your family/peers/society does it. so many people nowadays speak about a global worldview, but i do not find the concept possible if we are all simply reacting to everything because that’s how the generation before us reacted. i myself am not immune from reaction. i’m much better at recognizing it that 10 years ago and, albeit not as often as i would like, better at consciously choosing an action. i don’t find it an easy to task to undo the conditioned aspects of oneself, but in the long run it’s the only way to global improvement–and that global worldview. how can one respect another and coexist peacefully if we all are just reactive creatures, with little actual thinking and slaves to our emotions/beliefs/gods/gurus? and i’m an emotive person too! i’m all for recognizing a feeling, but you really need to combine some mental thought with all that emotional reasoning to come up with an action and not just a reaction. i will have to admit that the balance of daoism has something going for it. (and no, buddhism is not an answer. it forces a lot of denial/repression especially in westerners, and has had quite a violent history. to me it’s no different than any other religion as much as they try to say it’s not.)

so, i don’t worship anything. even the trees i love so much, even the earth, the forces of the universe….nope, nothing. doesn’t mean i won’t hand out some respect where it’s deserved, but i won’t grovel before anything. i’ll shake hands, look it in the eyes (if it has either of those), but i won’t kiss its feet. and it better not try to kiss mine. that’s so annoying!