Dog #1: the big dumb stray who comes and goes.

Dog #2: the toy poodle bitch who, rumor has it, may have forgiven the big dumb stray for previously abandoning her.

Dog #3: the yappy puppy who has apparently also forgiven the big dumb stray for previously abandoning him.

Fucking.  Brutal.  Seriously people.  Are you that pathetically hard-up for friends?

None of you are Christians, where do you get the idea that forgiving people who treat you like shit is a good idea?  The actual Christians I know, know better than that, for fucksakes. 

In the future I look forward to laughing at all you idiots the next time you whine and cry at your little facebook pity party about how you got "betrayed" again.  If you still believe anything good about the sociopathic piece-of-shit by now, you deserve whatever you get.

Prodigal sons be damned.

Oh, and on a more positive note, here's dog #4:

Also: this is apparently my thousandth entry.  (Counting all topics, that is, though I'd forgive those thinking that I mean the thousandth entry on this topic alone. )

"For Fucksakes" is kind of a strong term for this particular entry, but since it is about something that does exasperate me somewhat, I'll still go with it.

This article about research at Chernobyl was on the BBC today.  I was particularly interested in these two paragraphs (bolding is mine):

"One of the difficulties of such research is that it isn't really an experiment - it is impossible to control for all of the confounding variables.

"But [the scientists] have been very careful to test all of the other factors that could be important - antioxidants, population size, body size, etc. of bird species and it appears... that there is a shared causal relationship between accumulating mutations over time and the ability to withstand radiation."

I can't help but notice that I have never seen a disclaimer of this kind in any science article in the mainstream press that is about human research, even though you'd think it would be blindingly obvious that such "confounding variables" would be even more in abundance there.

i.e. "scientists" whose "experiments" take the form of "let's do something in a lab with a tiny group of white college students and then extend the findings to the entire human race": this means you.

The lack of this sort of thing is to me all the more indicative that a lot of human research just sets out to prove something that people think they already know.  e.g. that all women really deep down want to be mothers, that fat people are intrinsically stupid, or what have you.  "Surely this is natural since if it isn't, I might actually have to question the way I look at the world and/or stop putting people into narrow little boxes that disallow them from full self-determination!"  Yeah, awesome. /sarcasm

Similar point made in slightly different words in a book that I'm currently reading:

Medawar (1984) has argued that science should not be thought of as the application of an essential method, but as attempts to solve problems using whatever methods appear to produce reliable and useful results.  Chalmers (1990) has supported this view, arguing that we underestimate the extent to which methods and standards in the natural sciences have changed - and are still changing - not in pursuit of the scientific method, but pragmatically, to suit the circumstances of the time... Scientists do not apply quantification to decontextualized objects in laboratories because to do so is intrinsically scientific, but because they can make useful statements about objects by doing so.  These objects have no social life, culture or language; whether studying decontextualized individuals who have all three will enable us to make useful statements about people, is another matter entirely. (Mary Boyle, "Re-Thinking Abortion," 4)

Boyle's point in bringing this up is that if you round up a bunch of women who have had abortions, take them to a lab and make them fill out questionaires about how depressed they are, that doesn't necessarily prove that abortion is intrinsically traumatic by nature.  It could just as easily demonstrate that our culture has unhealthy discourses about how women are nothing if they aren't mothers, in which case maybe the way to lessen trauma from abortion would be to culturally widen the view of what makes women's lives worthwhile, as opposed to assuming abortion is always traumatic and using that as a rationale to ban it.

On a sidenote, this book also (like several others I've read) has a fair bit to say about the oppression of women through medical discourse.  e.g. "women shouldn't go to university because it is bad for their fertility (but let's not worry about men's fertility in this intrusive way even though it takes two to make a baby)," "women shouldn't vote because menstrual cycles make them irrational (whereas men are never irrational!)", etc. 

And I just wanted to note that reading that kind of thing often is partly why I get so annoyed with people who are all hardcore about "religion = oppression, bad! science = enlightenment, good!".  The demonization of religion should not be used to place science on such a contrastingly high pedestal that nobody is "allowed" to criticize the possibility of it also promoting oppression.  It's all well and good to say that science used that way is no longer science, but that doesn't seem to change the fact that there are members of the stupid masses out there who nonetheless go around labelling things as "science" in order to discourage others from questioning them (the previous paragraph providing some good examples).  I would really like to see more scientists criticizing this in order to preserve the "purity" of real science, rather than quietly going along with it because it bolsters the social prestige of their discipline. (That statement is not meant to imply anything about how many scientists actually act which way, I'm just saying, it's my ideal regardless.)

Anyway, I should probably be doing my real research instead of blabbing about this sort of thing on here.

It is not my intention to get back into talking about this topic all of the time. 

However, it is almost impossible to not encounter rumours via the overlap of social circles.  And such having occurred, I feel the urge to comment on them.

Recently I wrote:

And even as far as the dog himself goes, I admittedly am unsure as to whether this particular dog is just turning around to sniff the vomit, or is in fact lapping it up and/or rolling all over it with full retarded canine enthusiasm, overjoyed that it is even more awesome than eating cat shit or licking used gum off the sidewalk.

I heard a few things tonight that suggested to me that, not only is the case toward the latter end of the spectrum, but there may actually be more than one dog involved in this entertaining behaviour. 

In fact, rumour has it that the latter bitch (which term I of course use only because I'm referring to, say, a female toy poodle) may possibly be so enamoured of this returning-yet-again-to-one's-mistakes activity that not even a slap in the face will dissuade her. 

Which, one could argue, proves (contrary to what ignorant people tend to think) that being a bitch is not the same as being a feminist.

I am actually more tolerant than most people of the idea that there is a place for face-slapping, specifically the consensual bedroom context.  (For the slow ones in the audience: to be clear, we are now talking about people rather than dogs. ) 

I do not get the impression however from what I heard that that is the context here... particularly since if it were, such would imply that the individual in question had ceased to be "boring in the bedroom," and I heard more than enough complaining about that in the past that I would be very surprised indeed if anything changed with time.

It seems, after all, that certain things utterly fail to change with time.

That's okay though: You keep forgiving those who persecute you and martyring yourself for ingrates, and I'll keep condemning the guilty and tormenting the damned.  Put it that way, and it's blindingly obvious why we'll be enemies for life.

On a more constructive note: for Satansakes, if someone hits you in the face on top of cheating on you, talking about you behind your back, making you sound like a miserable nag who he despairs of being the only woman he sleeps with, and then walking out so abruptly as to clearly show what a piece of trash you are to him, don't fucking go back to him or associate with him in any way whatsoever.  If you do, don't be surprised if everyone who hears of you despises you and is genuinely puzzled as to why you don't kill yourself if you're that completely worthless.  Furthermore, if you are going to reward him so richly for being an asshole, and thereby imply that there's nothing wrong with him mistreating women, at least don't even imply ever again that you are in any way a feminist. 

At least the rare times I've rewarded someone for being an asshole, it's been in the context of rewarding effective sadism rather than incompetent romantic-relationship-behaviour.  (These days I repent even that, but that's another entry.)

To repeat my earlier disclaimer on this: yes, I know, it's all rumours, maybe nothing of the sort is even going on.  Maybe there was one encounter and it ended with the sort of fuck-off that it deserved.  If so, I'd be happy to say congratulations.  But given the amount of damage already done to whatever little faith I had in human nature (i.e. rationality, consistency, integrity, self-evolution, pride, etc.) by the two people I'm implicitly ranting about here, you'll have to forgive me if that's not what I see as the most likely reality. 

Final point for now: as I've said before while making these rants, I do not believe in the "right" to "be stupid in peace."  Any comments hand-wringing about how mean I am to either the big dumb wandering stray mutt or the poor little abused poodle will be considered in that category and deleted.  If you feel all self-righteous because you're their "friend" or whatever, it should be blindingly obvious by now that the biggest favour you can do to them is to avoid me and those who talk to me as much as possible, and thereby starve the fuel of the hellfires around here.

Oh, and while I'm ranting about conversational stupidity because I'm grumpy and overtired today:

I get that people enjoy going to parties and drinking and hanging out with friends, and that the non-sober state brings out certain things in people that are seen by many as part-and-parcel of the 'party' atmosphere.

But if someone is too drunk to contribute anything to an intellectual conversation other than retarded, irrelevant sexual crudities that make them sound like a model citizen of the world of "Idiocracy," I'd really prefer that they just went and started their own conversation elsewhere instead of ruining the one that I'm having with someone.

This is unfortunately a recurring pattern I've noticed though: here I am trying to have a conversation about science, or philosophy, or religion, or something else intelligent with a guy, and some dumb bitch who has nothing to contribute to the conversation except "look at my boobies!!!1!" comes along and totally derails the train of thought by either saying something stupid and irrelevant or just jiggling around / poking at the guy talking to me / otherwise being pointless. 

Yeah, I grasp that I'm not helping here by generalizing, but seriously, this has happened to me multiple times and it totally lowers my opinion of my fellow women.  Let's throw the absolute lowest common denominator into an intellectual conversation - i.e. duuuuuhhh, I am drunk, I have a pussy, I am talking about it in public, look at me! - and then wonder why people go around thinking that many young attractive women are attention whores with no substance. 

I'm not saying these people don't have a right to exist, but I don't understand why they have to monopolize things.  Again, go find your own damn conversation to be in... which is also the advice I'd give to people who are sitting around looking vaguely annoyed because one guy is "talking too much" and "saying all these big words," or whatever the fuck the problem is.  (Related phenomenon: people who act as if talking about science, math, philosophy or anything else 'too smart' at dinner or other social settings is somehow rude.  Why, because you're dumb and can't keep up?  Boo fucking hoo.)

Surely there is some better response to this than either a) sitting there being passive-aggressively grumpy about how you are "being forced to" listen to this guy go on, when realistically there is no gun to your head stopping you from just turning around and talking to someone else, or b) interrupting the conversation with your stupid twat and thereby interfering with others who were actually trying to learn something from it. 

Sorry to be so misogynistic-sounding, but I really haven't had this problem with loud drunk guys.  In my experience, they usually do all congregate together and then go off to do something stupid, like fire off bear bangs or steal bikes or jump in tiger pens or some damn thing. Again, I'm not saying people don't have the right to have fun, but I think there's a way for them to do it without impinging on what I enjoy at social gatherings... or alternatively, if their fun is solely derived from disrupting whatever other people are trying to build up, I'd just as soon ostracize them because they're contributing nothing anyway.

One possible articulation of Godwin's law is, "making irrelevant comparisons to Hitler/Nazis = FAIL, the conversation is now over."

I've decided that I'm going to start enacting a similar law of the form "calling the other person in a conversation defensive = FAIL, the conversation is now over."

My reasoning for this is that in my experience, when someone says to me "you're being defensive," this seems to stand in as code for any of the following asshattery:

"I'm so obviously right that you're not allowed to argue with me."

"I'm a total moron when it comes to understanding human psychology and can't comprehend why you aren't openly embracing my blunt, out-of-nowhere criticism, even though a two-second empathic experiment would illustrate to me that if someone came up to me with blunt, out-of-nowhere criticism, I would get my back up too.  But you're not allowed to have that reaction when I talk to you."

[It's a long one...]

I was disturbed to hear today that my friend believes her ex breached his restraining order while she was away staying with me, i.e. he was able to sneak into her apartment building whilst some unsuspecting well-doer was going in and out and holding the door.  Thank whatever-relevant-deity that she wasn't home when it happened.

I just want to say to the happy-happy bullshit world who thinks that holding doors for people going into apartments doesn't deserve a second thought, and that I'm paranoid for getting pissed off when people try to "sneak in" when oneself is going in and out:

See, see, see, see???  Told you so x 1000.

Fuck I hate people sometimes.

I'm known to really dislike posts of the "all men are scum / all women are bitches" variety, because I really don't see why this is more socially acceptable than "all Jews/blacks/whatever are [derogatory term]." 

That said, there's been a few things happening lately re: gender dynamics (nothing to do with my relationship, thankfully) that I just want to get off my chest.  In doing so, I am not meaning to imply that this is a problem with "all" guys.  Nor am I meaning to imply that the gender dynamic can never be the other way around; I'm just bitching about this particular arrangement because it's the one I personally see more often, and I recognize it may not be that way for you.

So with that out of the way...

As part of my research, I've just finished reading a book entitled "Impossible Motherhood" which is about an "abortion addict."

Oftentimes, people will say that one "shouldn't judge" other peoples' lives.  I disagree with the absolute formulation of this principle.  Rather, I think that one's ability/right to judge is lowest when one knows little and becomes higher the more one knows.

Thus, if someone manages to write a whole book that totally fails to make me look at their life in an at-all sympathetic manner, I reserve for myself the right to make that judgment.

I'm seriously amazed I managed to make it through this book without throwing it against the wall.  Basically it's one big long "boo hoo" tale about how this woman would repeatedly:

1. Get pregnant, seemingly in an effort to tie some guy she's obsessed with to her;
2. Abort it upon "remembering" that oh yeah, the guy is a professor whose main interests are writing books, sailing around the world and avoiding being tied down by family, and is constantly saying things that clearly imply he a) does not want children and b) would leave her if she wanted to have them.

Look bitch, has it occurred to you that if the guy's goals are completely opposite your own, maybe you just shouldn't be with him?  But no, let's have fifteen abortions instead.  (I'm not exaggerating the number either.)

Most aggravating to me on this point was the feminist-toned introduction to the book, making it sound like these "Great Men" manipulate women into living in their shadows, when in my opinion, buddy sounds like an acceptable catch for a woman who wants to have a strong, independent life: insisting she pay her own way, discouraging her from being tied down by family, encouraging her to write, teaching her to sail, etc.  At least in my reading, her not making the best of this had a lot more to do with her own weak excuse for a personality than it did with flaws in him.

This article can plausibly be read as a thorough STFU directed at intelligent design enthusiasts and hippie New Age tree huggers alike, as well as anybody else who goes around thinking that nature is all sweetness and light:

When Animals Attack!  On Gordon Grice's "Deadly Kingdom"

My personal favourite part: guy who goes around gushing about love and animals in a totally obnoxious barf-worthy manner ends up... getting torn to shreds and eaten by bears. 

i.e. no, just because you go around radiating "love" does not mean that the universe gives a flying fuck: an excellent lesson in realism, in my opinion.  To me, this sort of thing is the ultimate in self-absorption - I feel this way, therefore the animal must feel this way! - and therefore deserves to be punished.

Incidentally, I don't think one needs to be an atheist to hold this perspective.  I know a Christian or two who I am very confident would agree that the guy in the article who walks up to the lion, calls upon God to save him "if He exists," and then gets eaten by the lion, is an idiot, period. 

I tend toward belief in some kind of spiritual force/entity out there in the universe myself, since in my view, Satanism precludes slavish dependence on a "savior" outside of oneself, but actually does not dictate one way or the other when it comes to the existence of spiritual forces/entities. 

But I see no reason to assume that such a force/entity "must" manifest in the form of universal love-and-harmony, and that the lack thereof "proves" that it doesn't exist.  To the contrary, I actually find the concept of a Lovecraftian "God" who is horrifying and incomprehensible from a human perspective to be one of the more plausible formulations.  Why?  Because life is so often horrifying and incomprehensible from a human perspective - just as the article I think illustrates.

If it isn't "to you" because your life is great right now, maybe spare a thought for all the people (and other beings) for whom that isn't the case, and may the thought you spare be something other than "they're just doing it to themselves because they aren't positive thinkers like I am!"  Yeah, you go tell all the rape victims and starving children in third world countries and Holocaust survivors that. /sarcasm 

I found it interesting, on that note, how the "blame the victim" thing actually comes up with the animal attack issue also.  As if people can't bring themselves to believe that such a wonderful, well-ordered universe would visit misfortune on someone who doesn't deserve it, so they have to make up some bullshit in order to preserve their personal illusions.  God is all-powerful, God is all-good, why is there evil in the world?  People seem awfully quick to throw out the third bit ("there's no evil, all misfortunes are deserved!") whereas I think it's clearly the second part that needs to go ("God isn't all-good - oh look, there's evil in the world, fucking duh!") .

This friendly little note goes out to the following parties:

1. Anyone who is comparing their leader(s) to Hitler/Nazis because of some rights violation that is utterly petty in comparison to Auschwitz;
   


2. Anyone who is calling the Gulf oil spill "America's Chernobyl" on the apparent assumption that being an unemployed American is as bad as dying of radiation sickness;
   


3. Anyone who goes around saying things like "woah man, I got raped!" and thereby implies that losing at a game / getting ripped off / whatever is comparable to having your bodily integrity violated + exposed to the threat of disease and the potential burden of unwanted life;

SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP. 

Seriously.

You whiny, pathetic, cowardly, spoiled, thoughtless, self-entitled pieces of shit. 

Boo hoo, your life is boring and comfortable in comparison to most of the world, so let's go find someone else's atrocity to latch onto for sympathy points. 

And/or let's go tread insensitively all over someone else's trauma, because you feeling 'included' in every single thing that's going on is sooo much more important than the actual harm done to anyone else.  /sarcasm 

On a mostly-unrelated note:

If I were a government and I had people running around setting random shit on fire and collecting blood with the sole intention of pouring it all over the place, I don't care what they're protesting, you can bet I would stomp them into the ground. 

Anyone whose idea of 'protest' entails spreading random bodily-fluid health-hazards all over the place seriously needs to get flame-throwered. 

Such would be the law in my personal villain-kingdom, anyway.

Edit: Oh, and one more from the land of media stupidity: why is Miss USA posed in sexed-up lingerie seemingly as part of the contest, yet apparently "in trouble" if she turns out to be a pole-dancer?