Thursday, April 18, 2013

Paranoid Android

I told myself that I wouldn't get all political and ranty on here...other than ranting about mild things like my family or the lines at Wal Mart or something nice and innocuous like that.  But here's the thing.  I just signed onto Facebook and within 2 minutes, I saw no less than 4 posts from my friends insinuating that the Boston Marathon bombing was some giant conspiracy.  After I quit slamming my face against the floor, I started thinking about this.  Then I had to go take a shower because that's how I roll when I get all enraged.  The flash of coherent brilliance that I had in the shower went down the drain with the shampoo suds, but I still have the ideas swirling around my head...so I'm trying to capture them & get them onto the computer before I get too mad to type.  So forgive the run-on sentences and "we'll get back to my point in a minute" segues. 
This is what I came up with:
Humanity has always had an...affinity...for conspiracy theories.  And I guess it would be all conspiracy theory friendly of me to be all THERE ARE SO MANY MORE OF THESE OUT THERE NOW THAN THERE EVER HAVE BEEN BEFORE! Because, in all honesty, that was my gut reaction.  But, much like conspiracy theories, my gut reaction was just fucking wrong...as gut reactions usually are when pitted against historical data. 
These go back for forever.  There was the "Jews poisoned wells and gave us all the plague" theories.  There were the "Jews eat our children" theories, the Knights Templar conspiracies and the whole "witches are magical" theories of the Middle Ages. 
I mean, the obvious more recent ones are the moon landing, JFK's assassination, the idiot Holocaust deniers, the 9/11 conspiracy people, the Death Panel people, the Newtown shooting, and now the Boston Marathon bombing.  Then there are the just bat-shit nuts ones like the Roswell alien cover-up, the "the Masons are running everything" one, the AIDS in vending machines one, the Obama is a Muslim/Kenyan/Communist/Fascist whatever one, and everything that your Grandma forwards to you, among others. 
It's easy to see how these things get started; there's the natural human inclination to see patterns where there aren't actually patterns.  Take Monsanto, for instance.  I have a BURNING hatred for those people and their policies.  It would be oh so easy for me to be all "they're giving us and cute little goats cancer ON PURPOSE" but in reality, the truth is probably much closer to "they just want to make as much money as they can and just flat don't give a shit about who they hurt while doing it" than it is to "they're MURDERING US ALL BECAUSE...UM....BECAUSE...." and that's where the argument breaks down for pretty much all of the conspiracy theories.
The first real problem I see with the majority of these is what I like to call the "why the fuck would this be real" factor.   Why the fuck with the US government (or whomever) fake a moon landing, fake a terrorist attack, fake a school shooting?  To what end?  If the answer to this question sounds paranoid and bat-shit nuts, then you're probably just fucking wrong about the conspiracy.
The next problem I see is that all of these conspiracies would take hundreds if not thousands (and millions, in the Holocaust theory) of fellow conspirators to pull off.  Here's the deal.  If I tell Amyme to please for the love of GOD don't tell anybody that I have a trap door in my uterus that opens into a parallel dimension and it only opens on every other Wednesday for 48 seconds, then NO SHIT she's going to immediately hang up the phone and call either Tammy or Charity or her HUSBAND or somebody and tell them.  Who will then go "well...isn't that something?" and turn around and tell someone else, and before you know it, people are lining up in my yard to see my interdimentional uterus portal.  All because Amyme couldn't keep a secret.  Gee...THANKS, AMYME!
It's a fact that the majority of criminals get busted because they're idiots.  They leave fingerprints, or DNA or witnesses or a note explaining their intent...or if they DO manage to "get away" with a crime, they then brag about how wicked smart they are by ripping off that bank or punching that guy in the face or whatever, and they end up...um...getting caught because they OPENED THEIR MOUTHS.  And this is just for people that like mug somebody or stab someone or steal my Tampons.  Now imagine, if you will, someone rolling up on you and being all "Me and Bob were thinking about planning and executing this plan...we're going to rent some Muslims and get them to fly some planes into the WTC, killing a few thousand civilians and then we're going to make sure to cover our tracks so that we can in turn go to war so that...um.....well....just because me and Bob thought it would be exciting."  What would YOU do in this situation?  Sane people would immediately be all "you and Bob are psychopaths, please leave my office."  Other psychopaths might be all "...go on...?"  But I think the majority of people lean more towards sane and wouldn't stand for that shit.  But imagine I guess that your friend is a big guy or has a gun or something and MAKES you do it.  Fine.  Now you're part of a conspiracy.  What then?  Again, if you're coerced into doing something like this, you're FOREVER a security risk.  Would you not stash information somewhere, start a blog, write a book, tell your husband/wife/dog/stranger at the nail salon, have a deathbed confession?  So all of these people unwillingly involved would have to be watched FOREVER.  and who would watch them?  "Hey Jimmy, I need you to keep an eye on Bill to make sure that he doesn't...uh...publish anything...or talk to anybody...or...um....yeah...but we can't tell you WHY or WHAT you're guarding against, ok?"  That makes even LESS sense, or on the other hand, you'd have to tell the guarders what they're guarding against, and then BOOM there are even MORE people involved in the conspiracy.
Ridiculous.
The last part is mostly for the government-is-evil conspiracies.  Well beyond "why the fuck would they do this" is the idea that your government is DIABOLICAL ENOUGH & SMART ENOUGH TO DO THIS SHIT.  Seriously.  These are the people that tell their office that they're "hiking the Appalachian Trail" and then park their car at the airport and catch a flight to Argentina to cheat on their wife.  These are the people that think Rape Sperm is real.  These are the people that think it's a GREAT idea to fuck an intern, get man-jam all over her dress and then be all "I'm sorry, Monica who....?"  Our elected officials are stupid.  How can people that think that the same fucking moron that thinks that my body "secrets a certain secretion" when raped is capable of carrying out a VAST conspiracy that is...y'know...brilliant?  And before you say that they're just acting like morons so we'll let our guard down, well....NOBODY is that good an actor.   
This last one...the one that had me shouting at my computer earlier is about the Boston bombing.  This Alex Jones douchebag...I'm not even going to paraphrase this asshole.  Here:  http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/false-flag-alex-jones-boston-marathon-bombing-family-231742713.html
Are you done throwing up into your own lap now?  "Off duty" NAVY SEALS were involved in BOMBING AMERICAN CIVILIANS...so that the TSA could feel you up at your next Baseball game.  No shit.  This is this asshat's logic.  And there were people posting this bullshit on FB and going "he has a point."  No people.  No he doesn't have a fucking point.  He's a hack, or he's insane, or he's just a giant douchebag that wants to see how many people will watch his little youtube news channel.  Whatever he is, he does NOT have a point.
A few days ago, 2 women and 1 little boy got blown the fuck up while watching people jog down the street at one of the most famous marathons in the world.  It's a goddamn tragedy.  We need to find whoever did it and set them on fire.  End of story.  A few months ago, a sick fuck wandered into an elementary school and shot 20 little kids.  It was not a "hoax" so that "Obama can take your guns."  It was a goddamn tragedy.  The UN is not coming for your guns either, by the way.  NOBODY WANTS YOUR FUCKING GUNS UNLESS YOU'RE NUTS AND/OR A CRIMINAL.  Obama was born in Hawaii, there are no Death Panels, 11 million people died in the Holocaust, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, and Jews did not poison the fucking wells.
I don't think that we should take everything we see on CNN or FNC seriously.  I think blindly believing every line of horseshit we're fed is ridiculous.  But to go to the opposite extreme and just assume that there's a giant cover-up behind EVERYTHING and that EVERYBODY IS OUT TO GET YOU ALL THE TIME is just as ridiculous.
Carl Sagan said "It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out."  I think that's a good rule of thumb.
   

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Dreaming is Free

Sometimes I'll have a dream that's so strange or vivid or overarchingly NORMAL that it'll throw me for a loop for a few days.
I've always had really vivid dreams, and usually they're pretty strange as far as dreams go...I can remember dreams that I had when we lived in Arizona, which means that I was 3 or 4 at the time.  The only period of my life when I didn't have crazy dreams was when I was heavily medicated -- I guess a cocktail of anti-depressants, xanax and sleeping pills made for a kind of sleep amnesia.  It took me a few weeks to notice that I couldn't remember my dreams anymore, and once I realized it, I missed them.  After a few months, I started getting pissed off that I couldn't remember.  Once I went off the crazy pill mix, it took maybe 2 months to start remembering my dreams again all the time.
I also had a dip in dreaming activity for a month or so after each kiddie was born.  The frustrating part of those periods is that I'd dream...I'd know that I'd been dreaming, I just couldn't remember...unlike when I was on the crazy pills, when I'd go to sleep and wake up 10 seconds later to find that 9 hours had passed and that I'd sleep-cooked an eggplant lasagna.  Strange times.
Last night I had this crazy dream that involved missing a train, Brad leaving me behind at some weird big house to "catch up" after I'd finished packing my stuff, his stuff, and Kevin's stuff (a friend of ours from Florence who wasn't even in the damn dream...just a suitcase full of his stuff!!)  Needless to say, I missed the train and I tried to talk this girl Michelle (a friend of Brad's from Florence that I've only met one time) into driving me (in a Jeep...with no top...at night...in the rain...) to the next station to try to catch the train there. 
It didn't work.  We kept getting delayed...in loading the Jeep, in a traffic jam, at the station itself...but I never felt frantic in this dream.  It was like mild irritation, and I was annoyed as hell at Brad for taking off without waiting for me. 
Sometimes I dream that I'm smoking.  Which is pretty odd, as I've never smoked in my life.  I've actually been working on writing down my serial dreams.  I rarely have what I'd consider typical serial dreams; the ones where my dreams turn into a soap opera, and there's a progression.  But what I DO have is the same damn places, buildings, images that appear over and over in my dreams.  The dream itself will be different, but the landscape is all recycled.  It's disconcerting.
I'm rambling right now because it's 230am, I'm exhausted and stressed to my personal limit.  So...I guess I'll stop for tonight. 
Sweet dreams!  <3

Monday, April 15, 2013

Murder thoughts

I hate laundry.  Like...it's a problem.  I had an apartment in Charlotte that had a washer & dryer in the bedroom & I would live out of my dryer until all the clothes were gone.  I used the washer as a laundry basket.  Maybe it's because I did time in a Dry Cleaners, but it could be because I'm an utterly lazy piece of shit.  Either way. 
So I'm a "grown up" and have a "family" and I'm a SAHM or whatever, so I force myself to do laundry.  Tons of fucking laundry.  Anybody that has kids knows that a toddler can go through a minimum of 2 entire wardrobe changes in a day, and an infant can hock up all over 5 different outfits by lunch.  But what isn't mentioned is that my husband can also go through fucking 3 costume changes a day.  Every fucking day.  And he does this weird...thing...with his pants so that when he takes them off, one freaking leg is ALWAYS inside out.  And he leaves his belts on the pants and he NEVER empties his pockets. 
We came to an agreement years ago that any money that I find in the dryer is mine to keep.  I think of it as a paycheck sometimes for doing his ridiculous amount of clothes.  Plus, he's a cyclist, so he has SPECIAL clothes that have to be washed in a SPECIAL way.  Asshole. 
Anyway, so he went on this...rampage...today, cleaning.  And by "cleaning" I mean that he just made new piles of shit all over the house.  There's a mountain of clothes in the hallway.  There's bookbags all over the kitchen floor and bike parts just EVERYWHERE.  But the part(s) that make me want to set his face on fire are the aforementioned pile of laundry in the hallway and the fact that he did some laundry and then DUMPED THAT SHIT OUT RIGHT ON THE SPARE ROOM BED.  He did this while I was taking my once-a-month-get-out-of-the-house-solo-before-I-murder-people day.  He thinks he was "helping."  But what he did was dump THREE fucking loads of laundry into a giant T-shirt, Jeans & Spandex mountain in the center of the spare bed. 
And the best part?  Did he do any of MY clothes?  Did he do any of the KIDS' clothes?  Fuck no.  He actually dumped the laundry baskets out (which is hilarious in itself since he REFUSES to put his clothes in the basket...) and sorted HIS clothes out and only did his.  No shit.
So yeah.
:)