The Patriarchy Just Wants to Protect Your Pretty Little Face

You know why women shouldn't leave their homes, let alone be politicians? It's not because the patriarchy loses a little more power every time a woman stands up to be counted, it's because women getting shot upsets the poor little mens. Much more so than men getting shot.

We should elect old men to Congress — craggy, musty old men. And if they got shot, it wouldn’t feel so bad. Gabrielle Giffords is a pretty young woman, and no doubt she is capable and intelligent, but I feel protective toward her and it hurts me more to think of her critical wounds than if she was a man.

First of all, if she were a man. WERE! Gah!

Secondly, what kind of fucked up are you that you value attractive women over men? I feel the same about an old man being shot as I do about an attractive younger woman being shot because I actually value human life. You do not. I do feel worse about children being shot, but that's different. Children =/= to . . . oh, fuck, to you children are equal to women, aren't they*? And you're just doing us all a favor by making sure we have no access to power. Because it would hurt your widdle feelings extra if something happened to us.

I’m not sure about old men necessarily, but men are more suited to higher political office, and not because women are incompetent. Leaving aside other more important reasons, there is danger involved. A man’s life is not less valuable than a woman’s, but something in us instinctively feels greater offense at a woman being attacked than a man and that something is a realistic awareness that women are less capable of defending themselves.

Men are more capable of defending themselves from automatic weapons? Last time I checked, men are not made of Kevlar, you misogynist fuck. (Yes, the writer is a woman, and yes, she is a misogynist fuck.) There is an amusing story about the first female Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir. Israel was having a problem with rape at the time, so other male leaders suggested that women be subject to a curfew in order to protect them. She replied that it would make more sense to put a curfew on the men, since they were the ones committing the rapes. That ended any talk of curfew.

My point being that the problem isn't that women are politicians. It's that people sometimes shoot politicians, male or female. We don't solve that problem by getting rid of politicians (although that would solve a lot of other problems), we get rid of people who shoot politicians. They are the criminals, after all.

I hate the smell of misogyny in the morning.

*Children you can fuck! It doesn't take long for the patriarchy to get creepy, does it?

It Is Unecessary to Pornify a Phallic Symbol

The pornification of guns is a thing peculiar to American culture. We love our guns. LUH our guns. Which is made abundantly clear in this post at The Audacity of Logic. (Unintentional irony fail.)

In California yesterday, a seven-year-old had to take on the duties of an adult
by protecting his family from a home invasion. In Norwalk, Calif., the terrified
boy begged emergency dispatchers to send police to his Southern California home
where three armed men threatened his parents, according to a recording of the
call released Tuesday.

Here's how a home invasion works: the invaders burst through your door, guns drawn, pointed in your general direction and terror ensues. Home invasion is a blitz attack, no one gives you a chance to find your weapon. And you should have to find your weapon if you own one in the same home as a small child, because 3,184 children and teens died from gunfire in the US in 2006. More preschoolers were killed by guns than officers in the line of duty. If you're not locking up your guns, you are exposing your children to avoidable danger.

It would probably be a safe bet that this father neither owned a firearm
nor probably believed he should. He probably has house insurance, health
insurance, flood insurance, car insurance, but no way to ensure the lives of his
family from marauding scum who almost certainly would have robbed, raped and
possibly murdered his family, had it not been for his young son’s heroic
actions.

. . .

It may sound harsh, but I am of the belief that any parent who refuses to
take the necessary precautions to protect his family from such harm, borders on
criminal neglect.

No, it doesn't sound harsh, it sounds stupid. Unless the father had a gun strapped to his hip, there is no chance simply having a gun in the house would have protected his family from a home invasion. He would not have had the chance to get to his gun before the armed criminals invading his home had him tied up.

Let's suppose the father in question doesn't care that much about his children and does keep his gun within easy reach at all times. Imagine the scene that would have followed. Three armed men who we can safely say have no issues with pulling the trigger burst into his home, guns pointed at the family, maybe the wife, maybe the children, maybe him. The father grabs his gun and does what? More than likely, he'd freeze because most people just aren't prepared for killing another human being no matter what the situation. Let's suppose, for the same of Audacity's argument, that the father was a trained soldier and didn't freeze. Then what happens? He shoots, which sets off the armed criminals, and more than just criminals get shot. I suppose you could call that "protecting your family", but only in the sense that if you blow up someone's car, they can't then get hit by a train.

I get why people like Audacity say ridiculous shit like this. It's scary to consider that you could be the victim of such a crime. There is comfort in saying, "I have a gun. I won't be a victim." Unfortunately, life just isn't that simple. Owning a gun won't keep you safe, but it could endanger your children.

Help a Sister Out

emmissary, violence, profanity, sex, classics, books, everyone poops
Emissary has made a most shocking admission: she only reads children's novels because grownup novels are too dirty! (And then she found out that children's novels have nice gay people in them, and that's dirty too!)

I am both shocked and appalled at the thought of a grown woman limiting herself to children's novels*, so I would like your help in compiling a reading list for Emissary.

Here are Emissary's requirements:

Well, first of all, I got the book from the children's section (instead of the teen or adult). I tend to read books from there because "adult" material usually means a lot of sex, violence, and profanity.

So, no sex, no violence, no profanity. I presume she doesn't read any religious literature, such as the bible, the book of mormon or the q'ran, because those requirements would certainly exclude those books, but be that as it may, I've tried to help her out.

Sense and Sensibility/Pride_and_Prejudice by Jane Austen. No, wait, sex and violence.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. No, wait, violence.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. No, certainly not.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Is she offended by criminals/criminal activity?

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Oh, right, no sex. Well, you don't actually read about the sex, so maybe that's okay.

Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. It's filled with the "n" word, but that wasn't really regarded as a bad word by the establishment (you know, white people) at the time . . . we'll put this one in the "maybe" column.

No Hemingway, Faulkner, Flaubert, Fitzgerald and certainly no Lawrence, Hugo or Hardy.

JRR Tolkein? Nope, his tales of the triumph of good over evil through sacrifice and love are entirely out. There's violence, you see.

It's sad, really. Emmissary has made every novel worth reading in the last, well, ever, unreadable, and must resort to books like Everyone Poops, because she's decided that every depiction of sex, violence or profanity is offensive, regardless of the context. It doesn't matter that sex and violence are part of the human condition, and that any book that attempts to explore the human condition must necessarily explore them. It doesn't matter that some people talk like truckers on meth, and any honest portrayal of them cannot scrub that clean. It doesn't matter to her the beauty and truth she is missing, as long as her bookshelf remains pure.

I really can't think of anything sadder.

*I read a lot of children's novels because my 10 year old niece has recently discovered the world of books, and I like to know what she's into. Horrifying. Not due to content, I couldn't care less which characters are gay, but the writing tends toward the barely literate, if not the outright dull.

**Hat tip to my friends, who shamed me with their memories of the classics.

Dov Charney needs a Megadose of STFU

domestic, violence, women, misogyny, feminism, feminist, charney, stupid

Dov Charney, owner of American Apparel attempts to sell us on more than t-shirts: he told a reporter that women initiate almost all domestic violence, and that only in 1 out of 1000 cases are men involved.

Sorry, no. Now Shut The Fuck Up.

Gaming Deaths! They're Everywhere!

I am not just an atheist. I am a rabid gamer. I love video games. I cannot get enough of video games. I started with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and didn't stop. Bioshock owned me for about 6 months. Gears of War and Gears of War 2? Can't stop playing them. Fallout 3? I'm 100 hours in and not close to done.

Understandably, I get a little miffed when people start describing video games as Teh Evul. It's the end of Western Civilization! (Civ's an awesome game, why end it?) Video games make people into murderers! (I have yet to see proof of that one.) Video games end marriages and break up families! (Some people will get addicted to anything.)

So, here's Dory, with his own special take on the evuls of gaming. (Of course, he includes the obligatory "I used to be a gamer". So predictable.)

I find it odd that in this day and age we spend more time out of reality than in it. You do? Do tell, how? No matter what you are doing, you are always in reality. As far as I know, there isn't any way to be anywhere else. When was the last time you considered the lilies of the field? Honestly now think about it. Never. I have never even seen a field of lilies or even one lily in a field. As a member of the USAF I have a couple no of? hundred co-workers. They are constantly hanging out in my office all couple hundred of them? that's quite an office. and shooting the bull. bang! A majority of the time they talk about computer games mainly World of Warcraft. Now I use to be now, you use to be? do you understand time? one of those guys that spent every waking moment playing games. really, you never ate or peed or showered? i find your dedication impressive. I was a AN! AN! avid Everquest and Ultima Online player for several years. back in the day. I loved playing the Quake and watching the mtv? and Unreal series games. But as I look back I can see for several years I was also neglecting my wife and son. again, one guy's addiction is proof of absolutely nothing.

The thing is these games are taking a large toll on our lives. whose? yours, mine? you don't play anymore and i'm just fine. Just look at the recent news related to game deaths. Yes people die playing these games. Here 2 kids in this article have died for FROM! over exertion one word, and did they die in the article or in reality?. Here a Korean couple's 4 month old daughter dies while they game away. that was appalling. These deaths are always popping up in the news. no, they're not. those are the only two i could find. 3 dead people over the course of several years is hardly an epidemic. more people die from being accidentally hanged on their curtains.

Also, both of those stories relate not gaming, but to bad parenting. The parents should have stopped their children from playing to the point of overexertion. The other parents should have fed their baby. That's not a gaming death, that's bad parents.

How big is this gaming addiction problem? we could ask a psychologist, or we could just misunderstand other statistics. World of Warcraft claims to have 11.5 million subscribers as of December 2008. So if you took the total number of people in both New York City and Los Angeles combined you'd have that many people currently playing World of Warcraft. no, a subscriber is not a person currently playing the game. that's all the people currently signed up to be able to play the game. i am a WoW subscriber. I won the game/subscription, played for a few hours, and never played again. That's JUST World of Warcraft. There are at least a dozen other Massive Mutliplayer Online Role playing games out there. name them. Then if you toss in all the other games that aren't MMORPG you have a staggering number of wasted hours. or, you have a whole lotta people enjoying themselves with a video game instead of a tv show. so what? it's only acceptable entertainment if you say it is?

As a matter of fact comma the other day in Church we was talking about how busy we've gotten over the decades. yes, adulthood is busier than childhood. being a parent is busier than not being a parent. oh, how we love the past. How when our parents were young we had more family time. yes, life was more inexpensive back then. less people had to work, blahblahblah. More sit down and relax time. that's not a sentence. More time for Church and Friends. random capitalization Today we bombard our very existence with pointless wastes of time. we bombard ourselves with pointless wastes of time? can you please have a clear thought? one? We sit in front of the computer surfing till our wrist hurt. just the one, huh? at least you're not masturbating. We sit in front of the TV till we need glasses to see. watching tv does not cause one to need glasses. neither does reading in the dark. nor does wearing glasses cause your eyes to deteriorate further. scare me with something that does exist.

My son in fact gets rather upset when he don't have the computer or XBOX to play on. All he keeps saying is "I'm Bored" and I have to get authoritative with him and force him to go outside or read a book or play his trombone. kids are always like that. they'll declare they have nothing to do and then reject everything they have to do. i don't know why, but i clearly remember being that way. When I was his age you couldn't keep me inside period. so, your child is not a clone of you. wow, call the media! or, better yet, berate him into being you. that's good parenting. I loved going out in the wood riding my bike or taking my BB gun outside xbox=less dangerous than a BB gun. you can't shoot your eye out, or anyone else's, with an xbox. I've got to make a change in my kids apostrophe lives because this is already getting out of control. so, you're a bad parent, don't blame microsoft. I know this isn't something my kids are going to enjoy but what choice do I have. question mark! This time they spend burning brain cells

what? could we have that again? This time they spend burning brain cells BWAHAHAHAHAHA! playing video games does not destroy brain cells. in fact, playing video games makes surgeons better at their jobs. i guess if you're not reading the bible, you're developing alzheimer's.

instead of studying God's Word or learning something that is useful isn't showing me being a good parent. your command of the english language sucks, too. I know God don't approve of this way of life. It's times like these I can really admire the Amish. I admire them, too, all the time, but I don't want to be one.

History of Islam in India

This is a fascinating look at the history of Islam in India, with an eye towards understand the violence in Mumbai over the last few days.

As George Santayana said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." As true in personal relationships as it is in world politics.