umm...more pet peeves...

Got some more pet peeves...

8. Combatting addiction through education. STOP trying to explain to people who are addicts why they should not be addicts. It DOES NOT WORK. In fact, it serves no useful purpose whatsoever. If you have to flap your gums, go explain the harmful effects of noted addiction to people who AREN'T addicted but are exposed to the scenario in question. This is particularly prevalent with addictions that are traditionally considered to NOT have a physical cause, like people addicted to food, work or sex. But the most annoying is cigarettes. Guess what? Smokers KNOW it is harmful and they want to do it anyway. Get over it.

9. Pretending we are enlightened. You are prejudiced. Stop pretending you aren't. You have preconceived notions about every group or characterization out there...whether it is black people, catholics, engineers, people who go to weight watchers, strippers, people from austria, people with red hair or women. Some of these groups annoy, scare, disgust and/or arouse you. Some of them smell funny. You know, in your head, this is true. You don't have to tell me, I'm not asking you to admit it publicly. I'm asking you to admit it to yourself and move on. It does NOT make you a good person to not think these things...that would make being a good person impossible because YOU DO THINK THEM. It makes you a good person to recognize this about yourself and keep these thoughts from influencing your decisions, actions and behavior. It makes you a good person to treat everyone you meet fairly and with respect, no matter what notion is bouncing around in your head. But, pretending you don't think it is just dumb. "I don't see race/color. That doesn't matter to me." Yes, you do and yes, it does. Stop being an idiot.

10. 'Reboots' or remakes. Look, there are a lot of good stories in the colorful history of entertainment. We all have a favorite book, movie, tv show or song that fills us with warmth when we think of how much we enjoyed it the first time we saw/heard it and how much we still enjoy it today. But, what makes them great is two things...our personal experiences in the context of relating to it and the uniqueness of it in the context of our viewing it. When you try to remake or 'reboot' it, you are stepping on that. You are trying to tap into that positive experience to create something else that should fit along those same lines. This is destined to fail because it insults the original experience. So, please, creative types involved in these endeavors, please just stop.

Look, I know it's hard to come up with something new that is going to be the 'next big thing.' I know there is a lot of pressure to create financial success. And I know that the public is fickle making failure likely and success difficult to predict. I get that. So, I'm not asking you to go up on a mountain and meditate for years until a truly original idea comes to you. That's not fair or realistic. What I'm asking you to do is to take inspiration from the great things of the past and use it to create something that, at least, seems new. Then, tout it for what it is, not what it's influences were. Trust me, it'll work a lot better. We'll all go to your movie and watch it and think it is awesome because the things it drew from were awesome. And someone will make the joke, "hey, I liked it better the first time, when it was called, 'Blossom'!" and we'll all laugh and move on. And it'll be better for everyone.

You wanna make a movie about a bunch of cops who all look kinda young so they get sent undercover into high schools. Great. Should be fun. But, just don't call it '21 Jump Street'. Cuz, then...it sucks.

ok...enough bitchin' for now...

Freedom...

I did my Veteran's Day post on Tuesday. And, despite humorous reports to the contrary, I did actually mean every word. It was not sarcastic or tongue in cheek...I was serious. Now, I wanna have a little talk about the freedom that the veterans have bought us...

Freedom doesn't have limits. By it's very nature, it is limitless. True freedom is known as anarchy and, while anarchy really doesn't work from a practical standpoint, the idea of being truly free has a certain charm. But, we are people, who must live together in a society, and, in a single context, anarchy and freedom seem to go hand in hand, when ultimately implemented, anarchy ends up being one man's freedom to infringe upon another man's freedom. So, we can't have that.

So, we will place limits on our freedom. These limits, IMHO, should center around the idea that your freedom cannot do harm to another person, thus infringing their freedom. Do what you want, as long as you are not hurting nobody else. Seems simple enough and completely fair. But then what does it mean to hurt someone else? How clearly defined does this harm have to be?

Let's look at some examples of personal freedoms that I feel have been infringed at the expense of harm. Some I agree with, others I don't:

Murder. If I kill someone, that is pretty ultimate harm. So that freedom has been taken away upon pain of harsh punishments up to and, in some cases, including my own death.

Rape/Battery. I can't attack someone physically and cause harm to their body. Another pretty clear one...after the results, the victim is undoubtedly injured, so we can't have that.

Sex with Children/Child Molestation. Initiating sexual contact with a minor who has not developed into an adult member of society is damaging on a lot of levels. Children do not have the experience and education of adults and cannot comprehend all of the complex levels of sexual activity and the emotional and physical consequences that go along with that. So, the potential for harm is so great that we can't allow it.

These are gimmes. There's a reason they are all crimes...the harm to the other involved person is pretty undeniable. What about situations that are a little more grey.

Abortion. Is there harm? Some say there is a child, some say it is only the potential for a child. Who's freedom is paramount, the mother or the fetus/child? We currently allow abortion because we don't, as a society, have universal agreement over the definition of 'child' and when life begins. But this is a very controversial freedom because we do not agree on whether or not harm is being done.

Guns. Our Constitution seems to guarantee the right to personally own guns. But, while the vast majority of individuals who choose to own guns, do so responsibility without any harm-related incidents, there are some exceptions in which guns are used to do harm. Again, the potential for harm seems to fuel an argument against restricting the freedom but the argument fails because the gun itself is not harm.

Smoking. The use of tobacco products was legal for a long time because the harm was not clear or, later, limited to the user. However, it became a common belief that tobacco use had the potential to harm others, so the freedom was restricted. The focus seems to be reasonably aimed at preventing the harm to others but, recently, the unpopularity of tobacco use has led to crossing that line. The question becomes...what about hurting one's self? Where does the limit of the infringement of freedoms in the name of preventing harm lie? As smoking restrictions become more and more complex, this question will need to be addressed.

Speech. We can say what we want, right? This is a biggie, not only because this is a long revered freedom in our country that is most often clearly omitted in other societies, but because it is one that we exercise with regularity. Further, we've long established that, as adults, we exist in a world where words cannot constitute harm. Sure, words can be hurtful but that doesn't really hurt us, so we are willing to leave this pretty much unrestricted.

Why do I bring all this up? Well, recently, I've seen a backlash against freedoms. People that are quick to cry foul because the exercise of freedom is repugnant. And they demand restrictions on the freedom in the name of preventing clearly undesirable results. For example,

There's a guy, Rev. Fred Phelps, who has come to believe that God punishes our society's tolerance for homosexuality by causing deaths in military contexts. Seriously. And, as such, he tries to address this issue by protesting at the funerals of gay men and military veterans killed in the line of duty. Say what you want about this... (Personally, I'll say it is lame, fucked up, class-less and completely disrespectful. I wouldn't lose any sleep if someone choose to beat this man's ass, as long as that someone is arrested and charged with assault and battery and pays his or her debt to society)...This is FREE SPEECH. This is freedom.

There's a company, Amazon.com, who we have all come to appreciate and admire. They sell a book called the 'Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct'. This book is, technically, legal. Of course, the conduct it advocates is not but the book itself does not guarantee or even cause the conduct. Again, say what you want about this...It's FREE SPEECH. But, this didn't stop everyone on my twitter feed, from that guy I met a party one time to rapper/actor Ice-T, to lose their minds about this...Yes, it is deplorable and disgusting...but where does it end? As of now, I can't find the book on amazon's site. I guess they bowed to pressure and took it down. My relief that some mentally ill pedophile might use this book as a courage catalyst to act on his broken emotional feelings and harm a child is not outweighed by my disgust that we so quickly lose sight of the exercise of freedom on Veteran's Day. But my disgust is still there.

Freedom is important and must be respected. There are ways to deal with idiots without restricting everyone's freedom. When a woman named Rebecca Rooney realized that the death of a local soldier, Sgt First Class CJ Sadell, in Afghanistan would draw the attention of Rev. Phelps, she didn't take to twitter or the Supreme Court to advocate and establish a restriction of Freedom. She took her freedom out and exercised it better. She organized town residents to show up early and take all the parking spots at the funeral. When Rev. Phelps' group showed up, there was no place to park. And, as anyone who has gone to the mall at Christmas will tell you, no parking is a bitch. I mean, it's important to spread your mistaken and despicable misinterpretation of the Lord's word, but not if you have to walk like a half mile up the road to do it. So, they went home.

Like almost everyone I've seen today, on this veteran's day, I too am proud to be an American and thankful for our veterans' work to protect that way of life. But, when I think of Rebecca Rooney and the fact that Sgt. Sadell's two sons didn't have to endure any idiots at their dad's funeral, WITHOUT anyone stomping all over freedom to do it, I'm even MORE proud.

Veteran's Day

Thursday is Veteran's Day. And as I see the platitudes and shared facebook statuses begin, I want to add my two cents to the apparently insincere masses.

I love freedom. I like being able to do what I want when I want how I want. America has a lot of problems. But they all pale in the light of the freedom we have. This is why America is and always will be the greatest country on Earth, no matter how hard we work to fuck it up and how many problems we manage to create. Because, at its fundamental roots, it's about freedom.

Now, whenever you have something nice, there is going to be someone who is jealous and wants to take it away from you. This is human nature. It doesn't matter if it is an order of fries, a Cadillac Escalade or a government of self-determination and opportunity...someone is waiting to take it from you. As such, we have to be prepared to defend our nice thing. That's where the military comes in.

The armed forces are there in defense of our way of life. Because of this, they are to be respected. And Veterans, which are current and past members of the military, are also to be respected. At all times.

It matters not that they may not be altruistic (they get paid.) It matters not that some of them had, due to various circumstances, little in the way of other opportunities. It matters not that some can and have chosen to use them offensively, as a sword, rather than a shield. It matters not that we spend lots and lots and LOTS of money on them. Those are all fair points worthy of discussion and examination. But they do not compromise the respect.

It doesn't matter than fighting really never solves anything. It doesn't matter that our maintenance of such a significant force may have exacerbated the very problems they are meant to solve or lessen. It doesn't even matter if you believe that your God has told you that military deaths are caused by the existence of homosexuals. None of this, indeed, nothing at all, compromises that respect.

The men and women of the armed forces have taken the brave step of devoting a portion of their days on this earth towards the defense of our freedom. They have put up their very lives as possible payment for this freedom. You enjoy the freedom. Even if you hate it, you enjoy it. If you didn't enjoy it, you would have already left. So, you have NO CHOICE but to respect them for it. Disagree, dislike and even argue against, but DO SO WITH RESPECT. If, for no other reason, then because I said so.



You can ignore Veteran's Day. You can roll your eyes at the dumb statuses that friends on Facebook will ask you to 'post for one hour.' You can delete the chain emails that tell you to send this to 10 people if you appreciate Veterans. You can even tell yourself that I am an idiot as you read this. (wouldn't be the first time.) You can do all these things because you are free to do so. And you are free to do so because many many souls have been sacrificed in the name of that freedom. So, when you do this things, do them respectfully and in remembrance of that.