I Think I Broke It

I’m beginning to hate the vast majority of my fellow Americans. Why? Because of crap like this:

President Barack Obama is getting some flack and some praise after enjoying a beer.
He was at an NBA basketball game and ordered a brew. Images of Mr. Obama enjoying a beer have angered some people.
One caller to WWL complained, “People are losing 5, 10, 20 thousand dollars a day in the stock market, and he’s sitting there drinking a beer!” She also said, “It’s insulting… there’s a lot of people suffering.” She insisted President Obama should not publicly have fun during a time of so much pain.

Seriously people, the man is in his forties. He is old enough to drink a beer if he damn well pleases. It doesn’t matter one iota what’s going on with the country any more than if you have a ton of work at your job and you choose to drink a brew in your own home. Some people just need to be bitchslapped.

You can make a point that a man as intelligent as the president shouldn’t be drinking what appears to an American style lager. Bad choice, Mr. Obama. Bad choice.

Tags: Bongwater, Idiot Hunting // Add Comment »

I recently bought a Cingular 8525 and just set it up so I can moblog. Maybe now I’ll get off my ass and write more.

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I love Xbox Live, I’m not afraid to admit. I enjoy getting on to play some Halo or Call of Duty or even Uno. However, like any community that features large amounts of teenagers there are a lot of dumb things that happen, a lot of it simple stupidity in action. This list is in no order besides "I just thought of this one" order and simply lists some things about Live that piss me off to no end.

Singers

If you play on Live for more than thirty minutes you will encounter one of these. These are the idiots, who for some reason or another, believe that can sing well and that they must share this rare gift with all the poor souls trapped on Live in the middle of a game without time to mute them. Here’s a ProTip: you can’t sing, your voice is the audio equivalent of ball cancer and no one loves you.

Little Kids Just Learning To Curse

Okay, let’s face it - all of us starting cursing when we were young, I’m don’t hate them for that. I hate them because they CANNOT friggin’ curse the right way. All of us in my age bracket learned to curse by watching R rated movies, and we never said things like "Shit you man!" (yelled at me during a Halo game). Also, just because you figured out that you can curse if you really want to doesn’t mean we care to hear it in your high pitched, puberty-anxious shriek. Yes, cursing is a hallowed institution during heated completion, and it’s just plain damn funny but only if done correctly. ProTip for these kiddies: Don’t curse me until your balls drop, got it? And speaking of those who are awaiting puberty:

Annoying Little Kids Who Shouldn’t Be Playing In the First Place

I know this sounds like I’ve joined "Focus on The Family" or whatever, but it’s the honest truth. All gamers out there, take note: all those little kids out there on Live/PS Network/whatever who are loudmouthed, annoying little dickweasels are the reason why have idiots like Jack Thompson. If you are kid who is mature enough, and your parents are cool with it that’s fine, but the ones I’m referencing are the ones who are always the loudest, dumbest, most brazen douchebags in the entire game and have no problem letting everyone figure it out. ProTip: You’re only on Live because your parents don’t want to deal with you.

Teamkillers

The bastardest of the bastards. These are the jerkoffs who seem to like to play for no other reason than to kill their own team. Granted, this doesn’t apply to a lot of games but you can bet for every mode that has the ability to kill your teammates (supposedly accidentally) there will be at least one round with one of these idiots in there. As a counterpoint, most players will actively hunt teamkillers, even on the other team. Twice I’ve seen a wanton teamkiller get screwed over when literally everyone playing that game turned on him. It was awesome. ProTip: Teamkilling does cause lots of bad game karma. You will get killed for it. A lot.

Leetspeakers

Just plain annoying. This is the internet equivalent of every dumb kid you knew in school that could barely spell his name. These are the kids who add numbers into words. Most denizens of any networked community openly despise these idiots. Don’t try and reason with them, or point out they suck even while they’re mouthing off about how badass they are. ProTip: Go to hell. You don’t deserve a joke answer.

Tags: Idiot Hunting, Video Games // Add Comment »

To steal a quote from Call of Duty 4 : "Bloody ‘ell, we just got our asses kicked!" We got the crap knocked out of us last night and everybody knows it.  Now, as we lick our wounds we need to focus ourselves and reform our party to the party that it should have been the whole time. Still, we’re in this deep, will we recognize the problem and fix it in time?

First of all, McCain was a weak candidate. Few people were really pro-McCain versus anti-Obama. Yes, Palin helped energize the base but it was too little too late. McCain has alienated the right way too much to have had serious appeal anywhere near Obama’s. Also, Obama ran an incredibly well thought campaign and it paid off. Now we’ll have to see if he lives us to being a president that reaches across party lines or governs how he has in the senate this long.

The problem is that we have earned this loss. We’ve for too long forsaken our principles in favor of bowing in front of the evangelicals and the religious right and this is where it has gotten us.  We are battling an uphill battle now, with our saving grace being the near miraculous retaining of the filibuster. We can no longer stand to fellate the fundamentalist wing of the party. The Religious right had their chance and blew it. It’s time for those of us who are really what the party should be to take back our party. The GOP needs to return to the party of truly limited government, free-market capitalism and reliance upon individualism and liberty, not a narrow view of the Bible.  We need to always respect our religion, but at the same time the Bible itself offered a good example of why the government should be limited (1 Samuel 8). Liberty is never out of style and we need to remember what got us into power in the first place. This will not be an easy few years, but I know we can come out of this in much better shape than we started.  We just have to swallow our pride and reclaim what was stolen from us by our fellow Republicans.

All of that said, I’m proud of my county for progressing in just 150 years from the horrible act of owning property in other human beings to a black man running the greatest country on the planet. I’m very proud of John McCain for accepting and conceding with great grace and humility. I want to congratulate Barack Obama for his victory and wish him the best for the presidency. Unlike some, I will not say he is not my president because I am diametrically opposed to his beliefs. He is the president of the United States and is president for all of us.

Tags: Politics // 2 Comments »

Via Rachel Lucas, I get a link to a Republican consultant’s remarks from a focus group. I’m going to attack two of the dumbest statements on there, mainly because they have the amazing effect of lowering my nonexistent faith in humanity.

 

I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President.”

I’m not even going to mention the obvious raping that sentence gives to grammar -seriously, every time someone writes a sentence like that a English teacher dies. Effects on teacher populations notwithstanding, the idiocy of wanting the government to control everything is laughable. Hell, maybe the government should turn its attentions away from buying out failed companies and get the ones who actually make money then maybe the government can figure out how to work without a gargantuan deficit. In any case, the idea of a government-ran company during Reagan’s president is laughable to even the most ardent Reagan hater. Reagan was quite minarchist and one of his best quotes was "The seven scariest words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’" Are people really this dumb?

I’m sick of paying for health insurance at work and that’s why I’m supporting Barack.”

Well, that answered my last question. This question has aroused more anger in me than anything I can recall as of late. This lazy sack of shit doesn’t like having to pay their own bills so they decide everyone else should. That’s too damn bad because despite everything the One has been promising you here’s a big dose of reality: Nobody else owes you jack shit.  There is no one in this world, save the parents of children, who owe anyone else anything simply because they exist. Yes, you may owe someone else because of an agreement you made, but that’s it. I don’t owe this waste of carbon health insurance simply she exists. I can’t force myself to understand how so many people in this country have been taught this horrible collectivist mindset that they are entitled to whatever they think they deserve simply because they are here.

I’m probably going off on a rant here (yes I am a fan of Dennis Miller, why do you ask) but I just cannot take it any more. We are becoming a nation of mindless sheep who care about nothing save for "bread and circuses" as long as it is on someone else’s dime. We are taught that nothing is our fault, we’re all winners, and the State will be there for you.

To sum this up before I get my blood pressure up too high, I’m going to paraphrase Stephen Crane’s immortal quote:

A man says to society "Sir, I exist!"

Society replied "Yes, but this fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."

Tags: Politics // Add Comment »

A lot has been mentioned as of late, especially with the odious mentions of socializing medicine, of the "right to healthcare." What no one seems to mention is exactly how this right to healthcare would be funded, since the answer automatically invalidates its status as an actual right.

The thing about actual rights is that there is no cost forced upon others to provide for the existence of the right. The right to believe what we want, assemble where we want , and write what we want - so long as no one else’s rights are infringed in the process- costs nothing. My choice of religion has cost nobody a cent, not even me. Even my right to own firearms to my discretion has cost nothing to anyone save myself, and that’s the only way it should be.  No right causes anyone else to forfeit any of their property, and with that line in the sand the right to healthcare fails.

The same argument kills the "right to housing." It is not my place, nor anyone else’s, to provide another person with what they think they are due in life. That does not mean it’s not moral to give to charitable causes that help those who need housing, healthcare, etc. What makes that act moral is that the individual freely chose to donate part of their income which they earned. I have no right whatsoever to demand that portions of others’ income be devoted to anything that pertains to me. After all, when I demand that others’s income should be transferred to me to satisfy my demands, I am no longer working in the realm of right and have in fact descended to the level of the common thief- I am taking what was never mine in the first place.

The idea of socialized medicine is directly tied to this, as it not only requires everyone to pay for everyone else, but it removes the true source of innovation in any industry: competition. I’ll leave destroying the myths of social medicine to other writers, or perhaps a later post, but it fits in here as a large-scale version of the "right to healthcare" fallacy.  It doesn’t matter if I am forced to pay for one other person’s bills or a thousand, it is against my rights to force me to do so. The ultimate test for a true liberal (I mean that in the REAL definition, not the modern American term for "socialist") is if an act is coercive or voluntary, and no right is ever induced by coercive acts.

This should define rather easily all rights that exist, and not those made up by socialists trying to use the language of liberalism for their own gain. There are rights that are not named specifically in the Constitution that do exist, as pointed out by the Tenth Amendment. However, all of these are the rights of the individual to follow their own path in life away from the forces of others. No one has the right to demand anyone else to pay for them, and guising it under altruism makes it no better.

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Dear Congress:

You’ve taken a economical three page example of governmental failure in action and turned it into a three-hundred page behemoth of pork and blatant pandering that would make a street walker bashful. The bailout was already a bad idea and you’ve proven me wrong about the limits of stupidity by somehow making it worse. Instead of letting idiots pay for their mistakes, your intentions are to make us, the taxpaying droves, shoulder the blame. Instead of the consequences of inept decisions on loan recipients you’re giving idiots a reassuring pat on the back and a soft "don’t worry." So instead of making us take the hit, I offer a modest proposal: you pay it. That’s right. Congressidiots who agree with the plan can chip in and make it happen. Take all those damned payraises you love so much and shove them up the dirty asshole you call the bailout. Otherwise, veto it. As a final note, referring to both the bailout AND the endless amounts of pork that seem to spontaneously arise from every bill, related to the pork or not, here’s my response.

STOP. NOW.

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I’m a total chilehead. I love spicy food, and sometimes I do get in over my head (my first experience with Dave’s Insanity Sauce is the best example) but no video perfectly shows what life is like as a chilehead as this one:

Oh and BORK BORK BORK!

Tags: Bongwater // Add Comment »

I’m tired of politics, which is full of dipshits lately, so I’m going to add to the much neglected music category. Here’s my list of the five best new metal (not that godawful nu-metal) bands.

5. Mastodon

Often categorized as a New Wave of American Heavy Metal band, I find that they are much more of a progressive metal band. This band features top notch musicianship, along with complex arrangements all tied together with great songwriting. Blood Mountain would be my vote for metal album of 2006 if A Matter of Life and Death wasn’t released the same year. My personal favorite song of their’s is Crystal Skull.

4. Dragonforce

Take straight forward power metal, and speed it up three times its normal tempo and you encounter Dragonforce. Possessing guitar solos that cannot be performed by mortal humans, Dragonforce takes every single point that detractors of power metal attack and add more of it, yet no one can dispute just how damned good the musicians are. Check out Revolution Deathsquad for a good example, and listen after the solo section to hear them drop in the Masters of Puppets riff.

3. The Sword

The purest doom metal possible. These guys kick way too much ass, and to be honest there’s never a bad time for the original heavy metal. The lyrics and titles are a bit goofy, but the band still rocks so hard. To quote a friend describing a similar band they sound like "stampeding T. Rexes." Check out any song off their new album Gods of the Earth for pure metaldom.

2. Shadows Fall

Take all the best of the NWOAHM and add in the best from classic thrash and you get Shadows Fall. Every album it seems they get better and better, and the new release Threads of Life is no exception. Jon Donais is the first real guitar hero out of this generation, and he absolutely deserves it. Bonus points for guitar solos that actually sound musical and not just randomly strung together bits of "look how fast I can play." Check out What Drives the Weak from the album Fallout from the War for a great example. The intro solo is excellent.

1. Between the Buried and Me

Thanks to my little brother for introducing me to these guys. It may sound like I’m gushing, but this band is the most progressive metal band I’ve ever heard. As much as it pains me to give me that credit over Fates Warning, I have to say that Colors is simply a masterpiece. Moving from time signature to time signature at a moment’s notice while simultaneously adding every genre they can think of (they have a effing COUNTRY breakdown in the middle of devastating awesomeness) there is no band that sounds anything close to this. Expect these guys to give birth to the next revolution in metaldom.

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I’m going to take to task two points of PSH (pants shitting hysteria) that have come up in the last few weeks. Normally, I’m okay with humanity running around like the retarded and panicky animals that they are, but lately I’ve been easily angered by the irrational behavior we seem to exhibit as a group. That, or I’m just an asshole.

1: The Large Hadron Collider

Wow this has been big. It’s the greatest scientific study of this generation and as usual the incoherent ramblers of the neoluddite movement have come in force. Too many people have bought into the lie that this will cause a black hole to swallow the Earth or turn the earth into a quasar. For an intelligent answer, check out Stingray’s post on the subject. The main problem is there is nowhere near enough mass from the particles collided in the LHC to cause anything dangerous to mankind, let alone that the micro black holes decay quickly thanks to Hawking radiation. Besides, every day nature causes atomic reactions quite similar to that: in fact, lightning strikes cause oxygen atoms to bond and form ozone, or O3. But, the idiots who whine and cry about things like the LHC never worried about science; who needs reason and logic when ignorance will do?

2: The Latest Gas Price Spike

Last night the local news (and screw them for it) broadcast a rumor that gas was going up a whole dollar today. Nevermind that a jump of that size (over 25%) has never happened in this area, idiots still lined up like cattle to fill up before the horrors of the next day. In the town I live in, Bernie, there are under 2000 people period. However, I passed the town Casey’s last night and saw a line that extended a full block on both sides. How f*cking stupid are people? Besides the size of the jump (actual jump: 20 cents), basic economics tell us that these idiots are making the prophecy fulfill itself. When the supply of gas stays roughly stationary, like it is now, and demand sharply increase, like it did last night, unless the demand quickly drops then the price will raise. Yes, you read that right. The sheep mentality of going as soon as commanded like some drunken frat boy of an instinct may actually make the price worse than it was to be originally. But, again when PSH hits reason and logic go out the window. No wonder I’m a cynic.

Tags: Idiot Hunting // Add Comment »