Random Thoughts: Some explanations and some other random assorted shit

Well it's been a long time, a lot longer than it seems as a matter of fact, but I am still alive in case anyone was wondering(unlikely). I guess that's what happens when you do mostly the same stuff day in and out, time sort of ceases to have much meaning, one year, four years, all pretty much the same. After having not written for such a long time, I practically feel like I have forgotten how to do it at all. Therefore, be advised that my posts will probably have about ten times more grammar mistakes than previously, which is saying a lot already. That said, one of the reasons I probably have not written more posts is that writing is probably my least favourite form of communication and it can be torture to write even a few paragraphs at time, probably one of the reasons I don't go for much of the social media thing, which seems to revolve around people shooting hundreds of short messages back and forth at one another. In the past I had thought about making YouTube videos as I tend to be a lot better at talking as opposed to writing, and while I may consider that in the future, it seems like a missed the boat on that by about a decade, YouTube is so 2008 or something like that. Twitter, Instagram,  or whatever the fuck social media thingy is out there now, that's where all the action is apparently. As I mentioned before, this post and the following things may seem even more unpolished and rough than in the past, but I'd rather have it that way and actually be able to write something down than worrying about every sentence to the point that it takes me half a day to write a paragraph. Think of this blog and the posts on it as akin to a continuous line drawing but with words instead of lines. 

Because We Care About You... and school sucks

Well I'm back again, I didn't intend to take this long to write again, but due to technological troubles, I was offline for awhile thus making it impossible to post more entries. This is not ideal because my lead in story in this post is now somewhat older news. Anyhow, what I hope to do in this entry is combine several possible posts that I have been planning to do in the past so hopefully despite my lack on consistency in writing here, I will partially make it up by killing several birds with one stone so to speak. 

Okay, I want to start this post with a story I originally came across on attackthesystem.com   about an incident in Montgomery County in the grand old State of Texas where a 17 year old high school student by the name of Diane Tran was sentenced to a day in jail and a fine for contempt of court (I believe) because of missing too many days of school. This despite the fact that the student in question was working two jobs to support her siblings because of her parents splitting up and despite missing some classes over being extremely tired from that out of school work (who wouldn't be) she apparently managed to make the honour roll. Anyhow this story became viral and spread around the world prompting outrage and leading to some donation campaign set up specifically for Tran with a website set up for that purpose. Anyhow, what eventually happened was that the charges were dropped with Mr. Judge Moriarty backing down from his hard line stance to some extent that he took earlier. Anyways, if you are curious about this story, there are more articles here   and probably even more if you care to search for them on the net. Now when I came across this story, I was immediately interested because I had read some articles about a county in Texas with a Judge who was well known for incarcerating students who were chronic truants from school and I had planned to write a blog post about two articles about this 1, 2.

FREE CHARLES MANSON!!

OK, now that I've got your attention, it's time to get down to business. This blog post is mostly going to be about what I will be up to on this blog in the coming months. First of all, it has been a long time since I've been on this blog,  and for that matter, looked at any of this google account including the email (that's directed to you MRDA if you are reading this). Mainly the reason I have not been on this blog is because of work, which because of its nature makes it harder to do what is already extremely difficult for me to do in the first place, which would be writing in this case. In some cases, it took me over a few hours to finish a blog post that was merely a few paragraphs. As a little aside here, I can't stand those right wing libertarians and objectivists (not all of them do this) who worship work and extol it's praises all day along. Obviously, some work can be very rewarding, but I think it's fair to say that a lot of it is just mindless bullshit. It's also a little odd that some of these types will eagerly point out how work is a form of social control to keep people in line (making the assumption that people need to be kept in line) while at the same time rejecting the authoritarian state to keep people in line. 

Happy Halloween!

Well I figure it's either now or wait until next year to make a post about that subject so I might as well do it now. As holidays tend to be times that people can forget about the more troubling aspects of life, I figure that I might as well make a post about my favourite holiday. With the all negativity that has been on (and will be) this blog, I think that sometimes it's good to take a break from all of that and just focus on things that are sources of pleasure and enjoyment. 



As I mentioned before, Halloween is my favourite holiday, one of the reasons for that, I think is that it is one of the most guiltless holidays of all with the whole premise being on enjoyment and fun without any notions of sacrifice, no thanksgiving, no memorializing, no goodwill to others, just a pure celebration of life. I think that's one of the reasons it is dismissed as childish, because children who have not been brainwashed by moralistic bullshit can appreciate that aspect of the holiday far more than most adults. 


One more point here, which is that while I am trying to finish this before midnight so that my blog will list this post on October 31st, I happen to think that Halloween should continue past midnight even though by today's reckoning that is another day. After all, these are just human conventions, putting the beginning of a new day at 12:00 AM, why not another time. As far as I am concerned, Halloween should still continue until at least the first crack of dawn or at least until the first bit of morning light in the east, which would be until at least past four or five in the morning at the latitude I am at. 

DRUGS!! part 3: Legalize All Drugs

Okay, I have dealt with different aspects of drugs before, but today I am going to give my view on what the policy on drugs should be and specifically I am aiming see this at these liberal (and libertarian) wimps who go half-way on this issue.


Okay, now to my main point. My unequivocal position on the issue of drug legalization is that all drugs (including all "hard ones") should be legal completely and with restrictions on buying and selling etc. As for children, I say let them have whatever they want, I really don't care that much anymore. If stupid crazy parents want to inject heroin into their kid's eyeballs, I really couldn't care less. As far as I am concerned, people that stupid have already made the mistake of breeding and have probably already doomed their offspring. That last point is especially true if you accept genetic determinism (many anti-drug conservatives do) which leads to the conclusion that the real root problem here is not drugs or anything else, but rather the wrong people breeding.


Another thing I want to address in this post is the phenomenon of many so-called advocates of drug law reform who always become wimpy and make stupid compromises like only advocating the legalization of marijuana or advocating the legalization of other drugs but adding strong regulations to that. Incidentally, that is one of the reasons I dislike the whole marijuana lobby and  the most visible marijuana users aka potheads  (among many other reasons). The funny thing about those potheads is that it is their actions that sort of make the anti-weed contention that marijuana rots your brain more than a little plausible. I of course do think marijuana should be completely legal like everything else, I feel no reason to somehow elevate it into some sort of miracle plant.


Lastly, the libertarians who falter on this issue are some of the most annoying of all. I suppose one reason some might be reluctant to advocate full legalization is their desire to not lost respect from the mainstream and/or attempt to convince more people to adopt libertarianism. Speaking as someone who holds what might be broadly characterized as a libertarian position (a very unenthusiastic libertarian I might add) the fact of the matter is that libertarians in their more moderate form do not have much respect from the mainstream nor have they gained any converts by watering down their views either. The reality of the situation is that the majority of the population doesn't agree with libertarian ideas and that's all there is to it. Anyhow, I think that's all I have to say about this issue.

The Free State Project and Civil Disobedience With My Own Take on The Whole Idea of Peaceful Protests

 Note: This blog entry  deals with events that have involved those associated with the Free State Project, specifically in Keene, NH. In order to understand my post, you will probably need to have followed recent events in the movement as I am too lazy to give a full background story here. The reason that I am writing this is to get some things off the chest that have bothered me about his movement for some time. The latter part of this post will deal with more general issues surrounding the nature of "non-violent" protest in general. 

As those who follow the doings of the Free State Project (specifically the Free Keene actions) may know, Ian Freeman, one of the hosts of Free Talk Live, who recently sentenced to 90 days in jail for his role in this incident that occurred last summer. If you what more details about this incident, go to Free Keene  and go back a few posts for more details.


Now a lot of people in the comments sections of some of the blog posts on that site are making the usual attacks on Ian and other activists. The sad fact is that one of them claims to be a left anarchist and yet smears Ian with what amounts to typical right-wing smears, entitled, spoiled, etc. As an aside here, it's interesting to note that many right and left "terms of abuse" are actually very similar to each other. The right decries the "privilege of today's kids in contrast to the conditions of people of earlier generations and they hold them morally guilty for being born in a certain time period. The left holds white people guilty for their privilege as opposed to poorer non-white people so there is a similar thing going on in my opinion.

Why I Took Away The About Section On The Sidebar and Changed The Words Below The Title

Well that title is probably one of the longest titles you will see on my blog. As the title says, I made some changes on my blog. At one time I had a message that I can't remember now exactly, but it was somewhat of a disclaimer for this blog informing any potential reader that what I wrote here was nonobjective and that they should refrain from criticisms of me. I also had a self-deprecating line below the title. The reason I took these off is that I think they at some level, were a manifestation of my insecurity and that they would in a sense be preventing me from improving my confidence through writing. As the main reason for writing this blog is to improve my written communication and my confidence in expressing myself through writing by putting out my work in a somewhat public forum, it would be detrimental to that effort to try and preempt criticism of what I have wrote. I figure that if some people do come and hurl insults here, it will be an opportunity for me to improve my confidence by being exposed to that scrutiny. I think the new tagline for my blog best expresses how I want others to approach my writing here   


Now another reason I put that up initially was because I am hesitant to throw out stuff that could be nonsense and thereby adding to the theatre of absurdity that makes up certain portions of the Internet. Today, there are radio hosts who make truckloads of money spewing out completely uninformed opinions without the slightest idea of what they are talking about. Though that came to mind, when I thought about this issue further, I realized that most of my writing is analysis of subjects based on my own personal beliefs which are for the most part in the subjective realm. I certainly do realize that many people will not agree with my conclusions on many issues, but the reason for that, I suspect, is due to a difference in value systems as opposed a difference in the degree to which I or other people are informed about a particular issue. Having said that, if anyone reading this detects any error in any post on this blog, past of future, and if they point it out to me with evidence to substantiate their claim, I will be more than happy to correct my mistake. If I'm wrong than I'm wrong, I happen that the inability to see and correct one's errors is not a healthy form of pride, but rather an ultimately self-destructive personality trait that unfortunately is not that uncommon. 

Drugs !! part 2

This is a follow-up post to my 2nd post on this blog entitled Drugs !!, thus the title of this entry, Drugs !! part  2 (maybe this will become a series, who knows) . In the previous post, I discussed the argument made by some that if drugs were legal and easily available, a large chunk of the population that had never used them before would rush to try them lured by the irresistible appeal of heroin, cocaine, meth etc. As I explained in that post, I think that such an argument is absurd, and today I want to go after another common idea out there about drugs and drug usage that seems stupid to me. 

This is the claim that if people for whatever reason no longer had to work, most of them would do drugs as well as other destructive behaviours in addition to not engaging in any productive activities. I implication here is that people are basically self-destructive morons who must be kept in line through labour because that is all most people are fit for. Now personally I think this argument is bullshit and well I think it's dangerous to project one's mindset onto other people, my own life experience bears out such a conclusion.

When I recall periods of my life that were the most enjoyable and  "carefree" the last thing on my mind was a desire to use any kinds of drugs including for that matter alcohol. Now on the other hand, when I have had to do things I didn't like, school assignments, classes, jobs, those have been the times that I actually wanted to take "mind altering" substances. Recently, I have started a very mind numbing and tedious job which basically involves just pushing paper, and I can tell you that some days, I really feel like I could use some really powerful stimulants, caffeine just doesn't work well enough for me. I have felt this way in the past when I was doing jobs with similar qualities and  that is one of the reasons that I find the argument above so ridiculous. 

It is this no job which unfortunately has prevented me from updating this blog as frequently as I would like to. My goal here from the beginning has been on improving my own writing primarily and as well, perhaps providing some material of interest to anyone who might happen to stumble upon this space. My goal has been to have at least three blog posts a week, something I have not been able to fulfill so far. Hopefully as I keep writing and my confidence improves, I will be able to churn out these entries faster. As for ideas, I have a backlog of posts that I intend to get around to so I think that should not be too much of a problem.  

I am anti-social (and proud of it)

Anti-social, a common label put on people who do not go along with a lot of the bullshit p's and q's of social interaction. I have certainly been labeled anti-social in my life more than a few times. The thing I find is that this issue like others is always framed in the way that the majority is right and healthy while the minority is wrong. A lot of these idiots that use the anti-social label seem to think that most of society is good while there is a small group that just refuses to kind along with the rest. I don't think that's the case at all, rather what I see in the adult world is the same kind of schoolyard bullshit only hidden behind a few more layers of socialization. The same game of domination and submission and the whole know your place in the pecking order that goes along with that. Now in my view, that is what is really anti-social, but for most, that is just reality and people that don't like it just need to grow up.

Well, I say fuck that. Furthermore, if saying that and having that attitude makes me anti-social than as the title of this post  says, I am more than proud to wear that label. The reason for this is that if society must be that way than I also say fuck society. For one thing, there are few people in this world that I feel close to and if I could be in a world without people and maintain the same level of development and civilizations (perhaps via advanced robot technology) than I would take such an option if it was actually available. As a little aside here, maybe my anti-social nature is what makes me feel drawn to cats which I am by the way, that explains the  picture associated with my username. 

Honesty

One of the things I have been pondering lately is the subject of honesty and how its opposite, dishonesty, is really harmful to the individual in the end just as much as it is harmful to the people that person deceives. This post will be a break from my (so far) usual bucket of hate that I spew forth through my keyboard and instead will provide what I think might be some practical advice to people based on knowledge gained from my own experience.