Although I had been to busy to write a lengthy piece about the Hurricane and the ensuing chaos, I figured I should at least make mention of it because I might reference it later.
As time goes on I am sure more facts will come to light about what went wrong, but I am sure it is quite obvious now that wrong about qualifies the response in almost all respects. The government failed on all levels, and while finger pointing will continue, it is safe to say that every part of the government shares some blame. The President, FEMA, State, Local, etc, etc all deserve some of the credit for their ridiculous response to this disaster. On the eve of the hurricane I remember thinking to myself … hmm a category 5 hurricane running into a major city below sea level? It didn’t seem to worry the government that much. Obviously we know better today.
Anyway, there are a few things that I want to address because there are some wild accusations going around.
- There was no racial discrimination in the efforts – The official efforts were unsatisfactory anyway, and the reason for the large number of blacks that were stranded and seemingly neglected was because of economic reasons and a poor plan by the local government
- Telling people to evacuate and not having a plan for people unable to is stupid
- I thought the government planned for “WORST CASE SCENARIOS” I mean shit, if I knew the government expected sweet smelling roses in the face of certain disaster I would feel pretty unsafe
Being stuck reading stupid books the last two weeks, I’m sure I am either saying something that has been repeated over and over again or has been totally thrown out of the media, but I don’t care. There are many blogs covering the Hurrican, go there if you want to know real information jackasses.
Category Politics |
What a pain in the ass school has become, in particular one class that is not even part of my major. Hurray to writing intensive courses outside your major .. hurray to Virginia Tech having ZERO FUCKING CLASSES every semester. Thanks guys, you suck.
So, since I want to graduate sometime this decade, I am taking the one available writing intensive that was open, Colonial Latin America. Yes it sucks about as bad as you probably think. Not because of the subject matter, some of it is pretty interesting, but its because I have to read terrible books that were WRITTEN FOR EXPERTS IN THE FIELD. I am not an expert in Colonial Latin America. I know, it’s hard to admit it, but I will. When a book has 100 pages on how far a whisper carries in an ancient andes village and how that affected civilization you know that it was not written for a student. Especially when the book says, “You as an archaeologist,” which as I explained to my teacher is a telltale sign that THIS FUCKING BOOK WAS WRITTEN FOR AN ARCHAEOLOGIST.
So how many such “academic” books have I read since school started 4 weeks ago? THREE! Three terrible dry books. The worst part is I actually have to get up in front of class and explain them to the dwindling class. It took 45 minutes almost last time to explain that curse that they call a book. What made it even worse is that the VT, in all its RETARDEDNESS, has some nice special regulations for a certain parking lot close to the library. Instead of being free to everyone past 5 like every other freaking lot on campus, its specially restricted to grad students and faculty from 5-8. Oh joy. Nevermind that the sign is well before the turn into it from where you go to get to the library. Yes, this was the first time I have ever checked out a book, and no I was not aware of such stupid rules. Not only that but I had the privilege to catch the guy as he was ticketing me. After a nice pleasant conversation in which he stuttered and seemed afraid to even move, I established that he just wanted to leave because he was afraid I would pummel him.
In conclusion, fuck you Virginia Tech! When I graduate I am going to piss on the steps of your school, laugh, and then never donate money although I know you will constantly badger me for it. Take that!
Category Stuff |
So the new HBO show Rome totally fucking rocks. I mean we are talking great. Sure, between the time of Gladiator, Troy, and that terrible miniseries this summer (Empire or something was it?), I thought there would never be a true to toga society drama on TV. Then came HBO, 100 million dollars, and Rome!
Rome is much more realistic than that tired imagery of pristine marble buildings and sterile Roman life. Those of us who have anything more than a passing knowledge of the Roman world know that it was not so pretty. Romans loved their violence, their sex and their political intrigue. I mean come on, what sounds like a better nitty-gritty HBO drama than that? Not only is it usually more shocking than the Sopranos, but the Romans were doing it in Italy 3 millennia before Tony was even born!
The acting is superb, as is expected from a prime HBO show. There are standouts, like Polly Walker who plays Atia of the Julii. She practically steals every scene she is in, playing the part of Roman mistress seductress, plotting the next scheme, perfectly. The two soldiers, who form the unlikely pair and focus in the story, are also well played.
I recommend anyone who likes a good action oriented drama with political intrigue (who fucking doesn’t?!) watch Rome on Sundays. Remember, for those of us who are not lucky enough to have retarded fucking Adelphia (thanks for being retarded you idiots, free premium channels), and unfortunately does not have HBO … there is that website.
Category Television |
I was listening to this Best of the 90′s mix I downloaded from that popular bittorrent site, when I came across that dumb song from 1995 “I Believe” by Blessid Union of Souls. Since I was deep into writing a retarded paper I did not really notice until a line came up about ruining the future with things we do today.
Now, there really isn’t much debating about whether we actually do ruin the future with actions today. It is pretty well known that human beings as a whole don’t care much about the future unless it is there immediate future. When sacrifices have to be made today for tomorrow, we usually ignore them or do them half-assed. So is the way it has been and probably will be for a long time. Why? Probably something having to do with capitalism or being mortal and not caring about things that occur after we die.
However, morally everyone is inclined to examine their actions in reference to both the present and the future (as well as the past, if it were possible to time travel). It is the same kind of argument used to illustrate moral responsibility regardless of distance. The easiest example is the drowning baby. A baby drowning in a shallow pool, you walk by, morally you are bound to save the baby. What person wouldn’t? To illustrate why distance doesn’t matter, the details can be changed so that you can “mail in” your saving part, so you do not even have to be there. This is roughly equivalent to sending a check to a relief organization.
Time works in much the same fashion. Imagine that you know the baby is going to drown and by your actions today, you can save the baby. You are morally bound to do so. Of course in social science nothing is that exact. However, one can easily see the parallel is, say, calculating a 70% chance of baby drowning and putting in equal amounts of effort to keep the even from actually happening.
Sure this kind of analysis does not work all the time, and it is very easy to get around it by selectively predicting outcomes in the future that require no effort today (i.e. predicting the best case scenario). But I think if everyone had the same mindfulness to the future, they may yet be able to claim that they are moral people.
By the way, I am not moral, and make no claims to be. I like writing about morality because of 10 people I approach on the street asking if they are moral, almost 10/10 will say “oh yes I am,” which pisses me off to no end. That is about the time where I start systematically destroying their sense of morality. Remember, it is ok to be immoral. Most people are. Don’t worry about what God thinks either … even if he exists he doesn’t care.
Category Philosophy |
Well I guess I have to admit it. I was addicted to World of Warcraft. The key word here is was, and I am happy to tell you that I broke my addiction with a little reflection of just what the hell I was doing and why.
Addiction is probably too light a word for what I was doing. I bought WoW on January 1st of 2005, a little bit later than most people who had started. Immediately I started my MMORPG powergaming routine that I have been doing for years (I may write about my history in other games, but I dont think I approached any as hard as WoW). I can say that WoW is an incredibly designed game and probably worthy of all praise it is given in the press. So great that, thanks to the nice function in WoW to see how many hours you play your character, this lead me to play for 40 whole days in a 140 day stretch. Now to those not familiar, when I say I played 40 days … it means that I was actually at the keyboard playing the game for a total of 40 days, which is 960 hours. Over that 140 days, I played and average of 6.8 hours a day. Not bad.
Now that you think I am totally insane. Keep in mind I am a college junior and that semester was particularly hard actually, with two classes of constitutional law and political theory. I also will tell you that I never once slept for less than 8 hours a day. So with a little calculation, 960 hours of WoW, 1120 hours of sleep out of 3360 hours total. Thats about 9 hours a day left in “free time” which I probably spent mostly eating, going to the gym, and watching TV. There wasn’t much time for class.
Why did I stop this whirlwind of warcraft? What the hell is the point of continuing? I had seen everything, done everything, and was quite bored of doing it over and over again. I don’t think that 100th run of Strat or Scholo (god I hated Scholo) was going to be as enjoyable as the first. My guild was (arguably) #1 on the server. First to Ragnaros on the server, first alliance to kill Onyxia, blah blah blah. Every week I would attend the full Molten Core raid and the Onyxia raid, got some nice epic loot. Every week it became more and more like a chore.
The same thing has repeated in other games I quit playing. After a while you are just doing the same thing over and over again. You beat the game, even if there is no real official beating to be had. Optimized your character for its role, gotten the best loot easily obtainable, been everywhere and seen everything in the game. Why should you keep playing? PVP? Sucks … go play an FPS. The people? Get AIM … you can play an interesting game or do something more useful while you chat.
The only reason I would keep playing is if there was some kind of evolving storyline and regularly added content. Not dumb expansion packs that are explored, exploited and farmed within 2 weeks of release. With WoW I do not see that even remotely happening, seeing as how when I quit (in May 2005) they could barely give us an update to fix bugs every month. Promises of PVP systems simply don’t cut it because every battle has the exact same dynamic almost, once the powergamers figure out what works best.
So, to all you future WoW users, current users, and future users of any MMO: try to think about what you are doing. Why are you playing? Where is it going? Is it worth it? You will know when to quit then. Never worry about the time spent and throwing it away because it was a game that you got enjoyment out of (or else why were you playing), so that alone is never a reason to stay playing. If more people realized these points, perhaps the companies would realize their revenue falls out a few months after release and they would create games that capture our attention years after we start them.
Category Games |
Today I am officially grateful to the rising gas prices. As I will explain later, I hate my school, Virginia Tech. For a number of reasons, one of them being that parking is terrible. Yes there is a bus system, and no I do not use it. Buses suck. I think everyone can agree with me there.
It seems that the raise in the price of gas has caused some students to give up driving their cars to class. It was much much easier to find a parking spot today, and usually being a busy day (Tuesdays and Thursdays) yesterdays events are probably to blame. Instead of driving around the endless corridors of parking lots, avoiding assholes and women who can’t drive worth shit, looking for that one space that the other 100 people are looking for, I was able to find a spot within 1 minute of entering the parking lot. Quite an improvement from the normal day where I have to hold myself back from going into a suicidal rage when some dickhead decides to quickly steal the parking spot of the guy who I had been patiently waiting for to back up and out of.
Kudos to the gas prices and my improved parking situation. All you dumbasses driving shit cars and beaters who don’t have enough money to pay for gas, stay out of my parking lot. Maybe I will get less dings now.
Category Stuff |
This is my first post and rather rushed because I am busy doing some work, but I just had to comment on the gas price hike that has happened today.
This is something that I will write on a lot, but it is a good example of how 99.99% of the population does not even attempt to critically think about things that are going on around them. What is worse is that most people will actually express an opinion on something that they have thought about for a total time it takes for their mouths to start spewing whatever bullshit they are throwing out of it.
OMG&#^#^# Gas is so expensive! Why do I have to pay this price? This is ridiculous! Someone better do something because this is absolutely ridiculous! Blah blah blah.
Oh wow! Yes, there is some ass in a room at his evil chair trying to think of ways to make you pay more at the pump. Maybe he masterminded the hurricane that took out refineries and oil platforms. Perhaps he is responsible for OPEC, the shrinking oil supply of the US and it’s non-OPEC imports, and every other factor that affects global oil distribution. Yes that must be it. Afterall, the world revolves around *you* and has nothing to do with economics, geology or *heavan fucking forbid* other countries.
Seriously, people, let’s think about this for a while. Some quick facts .. the world oil supply is going down. We have hit our general peak production and while new technology could allow exploration in parts currently inaccessible, it is generally common knowledge that oil will not last forever. The US relies on so much oil that we have pretty much cleaned out most of the non-OPEC controlled nations, meaning more and more oil comes from OPEC. OPEC does not want to lose their oil so fast and so cheaply. They see oil coming to an end so they want to extract as much money from it as possible, basically because those nations, with few exceptions, are desert shitholes with nothing BUT oil. Bottom line : OIL ISN’T GOING TO BE HERE FOREVER. THE PRICE WILL ALMOST ALWAYS, IN THE LONG RUN, GO UP. CHEAP GAS IS GONE .. FOREVER.
Here are my suggestions for America.
- Stop driving your gas guzzling SUVs you idiots
- Walk, Run, Bicycle to where you want to go, afterall you are not only ignorant but fat as well
- Stop complaining
That about covers it. So next time you start to complain about the price at the pump, make sure your complaint is along the lines of “I am so poor I can’t afford this gas, but I realize why it is priced this high” or at least “I’m a fucking moron who doesn’t understand why gas is priced so high, but I am going to complain to this guy sitting next to me in the gas station because I am a blubbering moron.”
Category Politics |
