Proud Parent of an Accelerated Reader

That's what I saw on a bumper sticker on the back of a car today. “Proud Parent of an Accelerated Reader.” I actually had to think about that for a second, because at first those words didn't seem to have any meaning. Obviously in this context, “accelerated” means at a level above some sort of national average, but then that's not the word that confused me. It was the word “proud.” I just don't see how that would be a matter of pride.

Now, I'm all for reading, I think reading is kick ass. You're reading right now, and for that, I love you. Seriously, reading is totally great, and being good at reading is important. But is it really something to be proud of? It seems to me that as a kid I was only peripherally aware of so-called reading levels. I guess people made kind of a big deal out of it, but I just really didn't care. I never knew what level I read at, because I was more concerned with what I was reading.

After all, who cares how well a child can read if he goes on to read is fucking terrible? What if that little fucker goes on to read Twilight? Or anything by Dan Brown? Are you still going to be proud of that little dipshit? Your skill at reading is completely meaningless unless you can read something fucking decent.

It's all part of a very disturbing and disgusting trend developing in places of learning. Primary education has always been and will always be an utter waste of time, but this goes to something deeper. It seems the further we go, the more our schools want to do their best to protect children from accidentally learning something. The objective becomes not to actually learn, but to be able to pretend well enough to fake it. Lessons are not an experience, but an outline for what will be on the test. SAT training consists mostly of pattern recognition, even going so far as to identify what is statistically the most likely response should the student be completely stumped and need to outright guess. All of this to then find out that all these skills you've developed for beating the system you will never get a chance to use again. It's a bit like training to play basketball by memorizing the specifications of the court.

Not to mention how these supposed halls of knowledge consistently reward ignorance. You have grades where you either get a check, a check plus, or a check minus, and they're all pretty much the same thing. You put in some amount of effort, and no matter how small, it will be acknowledged. You have participation trophies, where everyone involved is a winner. You have student of the month awards that everybody has to win at least once. I remember they had this policy when I was in fifth grade, and because I was so rebellious against their bullshit, they almost didn't even give me one. Almost. The bastards didn't even have the balls to withhold their own meaningless award from me. And believe me, I made life hell for the administrators of that school, though that is a story for a different time.

And then we come to tonight, when I almost stormed out of my research methods class at ITT. The teacher was yelling at us because we hadn't managed to correctly interpret the cryptic syntax of his crazy description on the syllabus. We had each done the assignment to the best of the ability using common sense, but because it was missing one insignificant formatting element, he had a fucking conniption. So I started yelling back, that he didn't have a right to talk to us, a room full of adults who were in his class of our own agency, like we were naughty children. I would have walked out too, except that then he kind of relented, and tried to defuse the situation with a joke, and though it didn't really satisfy my complaint it made it kind of awkward for me to leave.

Then while driving home and still kind of seething about it, I saw that stupid fucking bumper sticker, and it seemed to sort of encapsulate everything. Because even though I hate that class and everything it stands for, I am still acing it effortlessly. I suppose when you set the bar so low that a one-legged dog could roll right over it, you feel justified in treating your students like children. I come from the first generation to witness the society-destroying horror of the participation trophy, but at least back then it was confined to the education system. Now it's starting to seep through into the real world, and that's scary. Are we setting ourselves up for a world where it doesn't matter whether or not you try, as long as you put in the time? I suppose you can argue that for most corporate workers, we're already there.

Damn it, trying matters! Don't you see that without doing our best, we're just going to have to settle for mediocre in every aspect of our lives? We're training an entire generation to just give up on what they believe in!

Oh, whatever. I don't care anymore.

A Funny Thing Happened...

So, something interesting has happened. While looking through my recent traffic, there was a decent-sized spike right around when I posted my last entry on the California gay marriage ban. The reason this is interesting is because, random searches for off-kilter pornography aside, I would estimate that this blog is read by a grand total of about four people. That's when I noticed I had been linked from a Mormon apologetic message board.

That alone gave me a chuckle. Because of this, far more people have been exposed to my words than I ever intended, and it's because of someone who obviously disagrees with me. Then I read his post, and my chuckle graduated to become something like spontaneous rapture.

See, this guy decided to analyze my post. He posted it in pieces, with his own little comments after each section, analyzing my "arguments." The word "arguments" is in quotes there because I am referring to the points I made in my rant. Because that's what it was, a nice little rant that I only wrote because I was pissed off and writing about it helped me feel better. But I felt about a million times even better when I saw that idiots were obsessing over my own stupid little blog.

This has honestly made my night, that for at least a little while some asshole not only read my off-the-top-of-my-head purposefully inflammatory post, but was forced to actually think about them. Seriously, this is like catching someone watching a fake newscast on a TV show and thinking that it's real. Not that there was anything fake about my words, the opinions are true and valid, it's just that I probably wouldn't go publishing them in any scholarly journals, because it was just for fun. And I am just loving how it's making people squirm.

And no, I'm not going to link to it, because these people are still assholes, and even though I enjoy laughing at them they do not deserve any of the attention they get. Here, however, are some people I will happily draw attention to:



"What's more harmful to society - two well-dressed men getting married and settling down, or two idiots tying the knot and cranking out any number of additional idiots?"
--Robert Kirby, Salt Lake Tribune

--

"To those of you sitting out there gloating, wasn't it enough to have Stuart Matis' blood on your hands? You wanted more blood? You, the vampires of the human spirit seem to have an insatiable need to keep robbing those of us who are different of our lifeblood and our desire for safety and dignity.

"You have robbed wrongly this time. You have unleashed the fury of a thousand gays. You have piled on the final straw, the last drop, the last nail. You have taken your last best swing and now you will pay the piper.

"The smugness on your faces right now will soon be replaced with a more humbled countenance as you begin to realize how much damage you have done to yourselves and begin to be aware of the sound and the fury that is coming. Enjoy your fifteen minutes of smugness because it will soon be over. Oh man, you have no idea. Go back and read about Stonewall and know that this is its second coming."
--TLC, Exmormon.org Recovery Board

--

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
--Thomas Jefferson

--

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow."
--Martin Luther King Jr., Acceptance Speech, Nobel Peace Prize 1964



Quotes like these remind me of the power of words. But it seems, even words shouted into the void, shouted in vain for no reason other than to please the one that spoke them, can wield power, even if that power is just the ability to piss off some religious nutjobs. Which is a fine and respectable power to have. In fact, this power is as close to a genuine goddamned miracle as I have ever seen.

When I wrote my last post, people sat up and took notice of someone who was, in the grand scheme of things, entirely unimportant. After all, who am I? Nobody really, I'm just some guy who writes his opinions down on a blog because it helps him to organize his thoughts. But it worried them. It worried them that someone cared so much, to see that outpouring of emotion. One man writes a blog to nobody in particular, and they go on the defensive. We are dealing with scared people here, who know that their current state of power is built on a house of cards, and the only way they can keep it from blowing over is to blow back as hard as they can.

So do me a favor. Anyone who reads these words, go out there and piss someone off. Someone who really deserves it. It doesn't take much, and remember that the fact that you're getting to them means that you're undermining their position. Show the world your love, your anger, your indomitable spirit, your righteous indignation, whatever. If the best revenge is living well, then live as well as you can. Do whatever makes you happy, and be proud of it. And if the jackasses of the world get their panties all in a bunch, you know you are doing it right.

Words have tremendous power. Even when you are throwing them away on a dumb little blog. And this tiny little splash that I doubt many people have even noticed still contributes to the growing ripple that will one day change the world.

And that is very cool indeed.

Cynicism Redux, Plus a Bonus Treat

If the Pope’s blatant, self serving game of Pass-the-Blame™ was the straw that broke the camel’s back, then this is the fiery four foot dildo that raped the camel to death and left it lying there in a pile of charred flesh and various bodily fluids. What I am referring to is a commercial by Amnesty International on why you shouldn’t tie a person down and force water down their nose and throat.

In a desperate and tasteless attempt at being clever, the ad begins on a beauty shot of water being poured. The camera then pans downward, and we get a several seconds of high speed footage of a man being waterboarded. Yes, actually waterboarded, as in not a special effect or other type of trickery. That’s right, Amnesty-Goddamn-Motherfucking-International tortured someone to make a commercial denouncing the use of torture.

Okay, so Amnesty International decided that their message of anti-torture was so important that they tortured some guy to get it out there, but the question going through my mind is, why? Who are they trying to convince? Are they sending this tape directly to the White House? No, they are releasing it to theaters to run before the trailers. Meaning its intended audience is us, the general public. To say this caused me to sigh would be an understatement. To say it caused me to throw a pipe through the front windshield of my car would be an overstatement, but closer. Let’s just say it caused me to sigh so hard I might have changed the tides.

I’m guessing whoever came up with this idea doesn’t live in America. In fact, I find it hard to believe they live anywhere near the human race. I resent the idea that we need to be told that torture is wrong. I don’t know a single person who thinks waterboarding is all shits and giggles, and then everyone goes home happy. Even if you’re rabidly pro-torture, you still aren’t going to think it’s pleasant. Because that’s the whole point of torture, and every single goddamn person on the planet knows it. Releasing this for public consumption makes a very clear statement, and that statement is “you’re allowing this to happen.” Which is a heartless, terrible thing to insinuate.

You will notice that nowhere in here have I linked to the video. Don’t expect me to. In all honesty, I wish I hadn’t seen it myself. The idea of this running in movie theaters across the country is disgusting and insulting. If someone made me the offer that no one would ever see this ad again, but that Two Girls One Cup would run before every single children’s television program, I would take that deal. Because Two Girls One Cup at least appeals to somebody.

There is, however, another movie I will link to:



Make sure you watch it all the way to the end. Seriously. You won’t regret it.























Did you watch it?

Fuckers?

Ok, good. While my hat goes off to James Rolfe, aka the Angry Video Game Nerd, for restoring my faith in humanity, his latest video brings to the surface a dark secret, one which I can carry no longer. I just don’t see what the big deal with Super Mario Bros 3 is.

Sure, it’s inspired one of the best things I’ve ever read, but I still don’t get the appeal. It doesn’t feel anything like the original Super Mario Bros I fell in love with, and it’s way too long, especially since it has no save system. Super Mario World managed to capture every good point of SMB3, but also retain the tight, crunchy physics of the original. Plus the feather kicks the leaf’s ass any day of the week. The flying in that game is so deep, it’s amazing what a good player can do with it. It’s funny, the way people felt about SMB3, how it was a return to form after the weird experiment that was 2, is exactly how I felt about Super Mario World.

So to those of you who think SMB3 is better than World, you’ve got it backward. Sure, 3 did it first, but world did it better. You’re being blinded by nostalgia. Also, don’t look now, but all those licensed NES games you thought were so awesome when you were a kid are absolute garbage.

Final thought:
My DVR just updated its software, and during that process it decided to download the movie “Wild Hogs.” I don’t think I’ve ever hated DIRECTV more than I do right now.

The Last Optimist

It seems the entire world has gone cynical.

And here I sit, seemingly the last person on earth with a positive outlook on humanity. Every day pop environmentalists decry our voracious rape of our planet, the news brays on about every violent or disturbing act, and men of the cloth berate the nature of their subjects in order to save their immortal lucre. The word human has become a dirty word, and that is deeply disturbing to me.

I’ve already established that I never really had faith in any god, and I believe when used in this way that faith is a very poisonous concept. But I’m not altogether opposed to the very idea of faith. In fact, I think faith is a very important thing for people to have, you just need to have faith in something real. For me, the easiest thing for me to latch onto was people. I believe in people. I believe that our species is doing just great, and that each day we’re better off than the day before. We’ve cured deadly diseases once thought incurable, we can cross continents in a matter of hours, and we can communicate with people on the other side of the world nearly instantaneously. We’ve raised our species’ life expectancy by 50 years. Suddenly, turning water to wine or making a whole bunch of fish and bread doesn’t seem so impressive. Not to mention that unlike those stories, I’ve personally witnessed humanity’s miracles, and so can anyone.

So I was understandably disinterested when while flipping through the radio the other day I came across coverage of the Pope’s visit to the US. After all, someone like Mark Twain can put more insight into a single sentence than that old coot has ever come up with in his entire life. But, every other station was on commercial break, so I continued to listen. And I have to say, of all the misanthropes out there, the Pope is by far the most vile.

As with all matters of the Catholic church, it was only a matter of time before the topic of molestation came up. The Pope did a spectacular job of covering his own ass, and placing the blame entirely on the priests who committed the acts. Now, I’m no big fan of molesting children, but let’s face it, those guys were as much victimized as the kids. When under stress, like say the stress of living your life with no form of sexual release, the mind finds it much easier to rationalize things. These priests have been taught that if they break their vow and defile themselves with women, that they will burn in hell for eternity. Children, on the other hand, are a loophole, more of an indiscretion than unpardonable sin, and they can be forgiven for that. Now that’s what I call a broken system, one where having consensual sex with an adult is a worse crime than raping a child.

And here’s why the Pope is the biggest cynic in the world: he can make this whole stupid, scary situation go away just by saying the following words, “I decree that priests can have girlfriends.” But he doesn’t say that, and one begins to wonder why. Actually, that wondering person is rhetorical, because I know exactly why. Because priests have been celibate since the church was founded, shit, it’s even in the Bible. To admit that they’ve been wrong for almost two thousand years would severely undermine their base of power. Admitting your organization is fallible when your whole claim to fame is based on divinity is definitely going to cause some upheaval. Sure, the Catholic church has had a lot of fuckups in the past which they’ve had to apologize for, but they’ve never had to go back on one of their core doctrines before. The Pope is scared shitless of this reaction, so instead he continues to ruin lives so he can keep wearing his fancy hat. If you’re not grasping the severity of the situation, I’d like you to note that following sentence contains absolutely no hyperbole. If you have the opportunity to end a great deal of suffering just by speaking a phrase, and you don’t, that makes you among the worst people in the world.

It only lasted a few minutes, but after hearing it I felt completely drained. It was depressing. Worst of all, I could feel myself starting lose my humanistic optimism. Because this was starting to feel like a pattern. I remembered when the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo scandals broke, and in a fit of ass covering, the sole guilt of these terrible practices was dumped on a bunch of innocent soldiers who were just carrying out their orders. I thought of how Utah leads the nation in unreported rape cases, because nobody wants to contradict the crazy old men who were considered prophets who said that a woman should choose death before surrendering her “honor.” It becomes very hard to remain hopeful of human nature when so many people independently do the same terrible things.

All the same, I refuse to accept it. Maybe I’m completely wrong, maybe the true nature of humanity is ugly, rotten, and evil. But I can’t live my life believing it. Because thinking this way is poisonous and abusive. You know how when you know someone believes in you, it makes you want to do your best so you won’t let them down? Well, I’ve decided that I’m going to be that person for the entire human race. So, against all evidence to the contrary, I’m going to believe in people. And even if it doesn’t do any good, then I’m still going to do it anyway, because I’m going to be way happier than the cynics. Because to me, the world is a more beautiful place than they can even imagine. And you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.

It's been too long.

It's 3:45 am. You're on the road, completely alone, except for the music pumping out of the speakers. Your name brand portable music player is hooked to your car through an adapter plugged into the tape deck, bridging the gap between old technology and new. Your car cannot handle the new device; it is in a transitory state, as are you. You don't know what you want to listen to, so you tell your player to play all your songs in random order.

You are not alone for long, as you soon detect the flash of headlights in your side mirror. A red light up ahead soon brings you side by side as you stop, waiting for no one. As your playlist flips over to the next song, the opening strains of “Don't Stop Believin'” fill your car. Not long ago, these notes played over the final moments of the last episode of a popular TV show, and you are embarrassed to seem so predictable. Of course, it wasn't your choice, but all the same you turn to see if the person next to you has noticed, knowing full well there's no way they could have.

The person is alone in their car. It seems like this late at night, everybody is alone. They remain alone, for as you regard this person, they look straight ahead, taking no notice of you. Their face is half obscured in shadow, so it is hard to make out their expression, but the overwhelming neutrality of it shines through the darkness. They show absolutely no emotion, yet you're drowning in pathos. The situation says it all, they like you, and all the other cars on the road, that now are nothing but pale flashes off in the distance, you're all in a state of transition.

Authors have long probed how a physical transitory state reflects something of the human condition. They tell of brief meetings on buses, planes, trains, in waiting rooms, stations, and terminals. But as far as I know, none have documented the phenomenon at stoplights. I suppose these locations are more seductive; you have plenty of time to kill, and the people involved can engage in conversation. This works better in a novel, but as an experience, nothing is so perfectly succinct as these 30 seconds.

Back in the car, the light changes, and instantly you're alone again. The other person now cares only for the road ahead, and try as you might, you cannot lose yourself in that person again. Your old companion remains practically as close as ever, but now you are insurmountably divided. You've been bitten by a snake, and now it has gone, and you have only the sting to keep you company. And then you hear these lyrics:

Strangers waiting
Up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching
In the night
Streetlights, people
Livin' just to find emotion
Hidin', somewhere in the night

And suddenly what seemed so cheesy before is now uncomfortably appropriate.

Sometimes life is maddeningly clichéd.


SIDE NOTE: Today's Pearls Before Swine is fucking awesome.