So hey, how's it going?

So, since the last time I was here we got a liberal democrat (or so he says; the day he enters that office is the day I stop trusting him. That's just not what the president's for) into the white house, proposition eight passed, and the media discovered their testicles in regard to what was essentially political slander on the part of the McCain campaign about a week after it stopped mattering at all.
One and a half out of three ain't bad.

So, the world's changed here and there. So have I. So have you, I assume. And thus, so will the blog. We barely had any direction before, true, but now I intend for us to have even less. You guys are going to get whatever drifts through my skull. The anecdotal stories, the inane musings, the root canals described in excessive detail... Alright, maybe I wont get that bad. But again, it is so good to remember that, no matter what happens, I can always go back to the wheel of my little media machine =D
Vroom, baby.

Amsterdam

Yes, this is on the subject of Amsterdam. Yes, it's about the things that they make legal. No, this isn't going to be one of those sorts of blogs. Give me some credit here.

Honestly, marijuana is by my assessment one of the nastiest substances on this earth. On top of the fact that its usage involves intentionally turning off your brain the substance's physical properties themselves offend every one of my senses. I don't like the look, the feel, the smell, the sound of a bag of it crinkling, and I'd throw in taste if it weren't for the fact that I would never put that stuff in my mouth. It grosses me out on every level.
I still say it ought to be legalized though, and not just for medicinal purposes.
Consider, if you will, your common cigarette or cigar. It kills billions per year, it smells even worse than marijuana, it's commonly used in public where it can effect others, and the only way in which it induces pleasure is that, once you're addictive, your day is that much less pleasant when you're NOT using it. Empirically considered, it makes you feel worse. There is no way of using it that reduces the health risks.
For some reason we idolize this particular drug, tobacco. We think it's cool. We see it in movies and think that it looks impressive, the act of inhaling and exhaling a cloud of pollutants, and it does look good. People mistake it for a sign of maturity, or culture, when it's just some poor sap being controlled by a chemical that saps at their lifespan and their money. Because damn do they look good doing it.
Is there any difference between marijuana and various substances legal here in America? It's no worse for you than cigarettes, and is in some ways significantly better for you. It's not chemically addictive, there are other ways of doing it that preserve your lungs, and it has uses apart from the recreational. It messes with your brain, but so does alcohol, and the manner in which it does so is less hazardous. It leaves your liver alone, and doesn't so much kill parts of the brain as release different hormones in it. Nobody will ever kill their spouse in a fit of stoned rage, because stoners can't really get angry when they're stoned and wouldn't be able to do much if they were anyway. It leaves your liver alone too.
In this country, up until 1920 you were able to go to the deli and buy a joint like any cigarette or beer. I say we bring that back. If you must be addicted to something, lets opt for something that kills less people.

ADD- Making the world fascinating and magical since six seconds ago

Before someone decides to point out my faux pas in the realm of political correctness, I actually do have ADD and may thus make whatever comments about it I so please.

This rant, too, can be blamed on my friend The Internet.
The Internet is a frightfully useful chap, ever helpful and vigilant. I would never dream of parting company with the fellow. He keeps me in contact with innumerable friends at once, brings me all the interesting tidbits of information I could desire to search for, and on occasion gives me silly people to laugh at/with.
However, I do believe The Internet has a dreadful habit of conditioning some people to a greater influx of data to keep track of than you really get in your day to day life. As I type this there are a number of other programs running feeding me the goings-on in various small fragments of the world relevant to my interests. I have a tab open in firefox with a forum I frequent. I have my cellphone close at hand for text message ping-pong with my girlfriend. I have two different PROGRAMS for instant messaging open and between the two I'm talking with seven people in three or four distinct conversations. I'm most irate that my email program is being moody, and worry that I'm missing out for it. Maybe I'll make up for it by opening facebook.
I am quite happily a child born to the illustrious fold of the Internet Using World, teeth cut on the spacebar of my father and all that. I'm going to be the last person to ever advocate restrictions of any sort put upon the internet. Even having to pay for it strikes me as unnatural. But we need some way to offset this conditioning so that we can function in boring conditions. In schools students have trouble staying focused on the traditional methods of teaching, and the teachers are responding by trying to make themselves more like digital means of information relay. The problem is that they can't. They're teachers. They can't present that sort of information in such a way that a student can divide their attention between that and their private conversations or whathaveyou, and guess what's more fascinating?
What I honestly think we need is more teachers sticking to the old way of things, with the intention of teaching us to handle less information at once as well as the vast floods of knowledge at our fingertips. After all, the devil's in the details.

Employment

A phenomenon I've only recently begun to experience, and one with a long list of rules and regulations. In todays day and age a job can decide not only your income but your standing amongst your peers, whether or not you even have time to spend with your peers, and conceivably your entire future, depending upon who you ask. I've even had a friend say to me that working as an usher in a movie theater means that I will one day be standing on an airstrip, holding lights to direct airplanes.
Really?
It's becoming all too common for my generation to regard their future employment with a sort of dread, thinking that their first job will decide all their ensuing ones forever. Were its implications not so disturbing I'd probably find it funny.
I'm not advocating living purely in the here and now, but look around you. Consider students that you may know or have known in high school or even middle school classes who had no time for friends, nor luxuries, nor relaxation, nor any time for themselves at all to be spared from the all important goal of their grades, their grades, their grades. And if you ask any of them why they devote themselves to such a goal with this level of zeal, why they forsake all earthly pleasures and a majority of the other ones too for this vocation, what answer will you get?
"For my future."
When did teenagers become such wimps? When did the future become something to regard with fear and horror, something to scrabble arcane writings over like some madman out of a Lovecraft novel keeping nightmares from beyond sanity away from the world?
I'm no advocate of the slacker lifestyle, but neither am I a supporter of allowing the degradation of the self in favor of ones duties. One owes responsibilities to their future, not fealty toward it.

Science Fiction... Double Feature...

Doctor Frannnk will... Create, a creature...

As you may guess, I'm a big fan of the Rocky Horror Picture Show (another positive influence of that girlfriend I mentioned). Largely because it's a movie where I can sit there in the theater, hitting on aforementioned girlfriend and shouting snarky comments at the screen while occasionally being pleasantly accosted by the actors. I could live like this, in that theater in Chelsea where we're encouraged to celebrate the profane and delight in our love of the vulgar (because lets face it, people will always love bad things).
Really, many problems with the world today could be solved by making the audience participation version of the Rocky Horror Picture Show more accessible to more people. The movie has the intellectual requirement of your average episode of Winnie the Pooh, frontal nudity and some of the best rock music of its age. These are connotations that the alternative lifestyle community wouldn't suffer for the having of. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, and transsexual/gay lifestyles. Works for me.
Really, alternative lifestyles need to work on their pitch to America at large in general. What media representation do they have? Victims in various news specials and Will and Grace. Not exactly what will endear you to the nation. Bad news sells, but it depresses the buyers, and does anyone actually like Will and Grace? You already get accused of pushing an agenda, at least do so effectively.
You've made some good points to the nation at large, don't get me wrong. There's no reason you shouldn't be allowed to marry; you're hard-working, law abiding Americans and you deserve it. This is also your biggest problem. People don't like hearing about what other people deserve, or like being told that they're being unfair. It's like arguing with your parents when you're a teenager. No matter how right you are or wrong they are, the more right you make yourself out to be the more upset they get. You get better results when you point out how you getting what you want also gets them what they want. And there's plenty! Additional loving families to adopt orphaned children, more marriages being conducted and thus keeping the wedding cake business alive and thriving, another group comfortable with their stereotype and thus able to entertain the public with them better than this Will and Grace nonsense. You have plenty to offer America, we all know, but the opposition wont unless you get out there on the airwaves and offer it!
Remember folks; sex, drugs, rock and roll...

The Nation of New York

The suggestion has been made numerous times that New York State excuse itself from the nation, on the basis that we don't have much to do with the rest of those other 49 lesser states anyway and there are some people you really just don't want to be associated with.
This is of course rather silly. We're talking about a state whose capitol city alone has to import a substantial amount of its own fresh drinking water to keep going. We have next to no farmland, no naval presence worth the mentioning of, no means of production of mechanized units of war and ARE SURROUNDED BY AMERICANS! Canada as well, but they don't have as many roads going into us. While our police force may dominate in regards to defending ourselves against incursion we'd have no way around any sort of blockade that America would undoubtably put up to starve us into rejoining them. We would be labeled insurgents or terrorists or rebels and be a classier Tibet, and do just as poorly if not worse. Our economy would soon follow, as nobody will be willing to sell stocks in or immigrate to a country with such a big enemy doing so well. We'd be properly pinned.
Of course, there's also the simple fact that we're americans. Yes, we differ from other aspects of the nation, but it still wouldn't have happened anywhere else. Yes, we get influenced by a majority vote of people who never met us. Middle america, that great morass that I assume is largely dominated by cornfields and amusing drawls, does inflict her bias nationwide and cause many to simply cast aside their votes, on the basis that it constitutes too little power to make a difference; your proverbial drop in the bucket.
Little do they realize that all the water in the whole freaking bucket is made of drops, and by letting theirs fall on the dirt they're making a greater difference against themselves than if they aimed for the bucket. I abuse my own metaphor, but I think the message gets across.
"We can't control the goverment." Yes you can. Look up what happened with the Watergate scandal when Nixon was caught, or the funny little ways in which Congress has legally bitchslapped that chimp in the whitehouse. "I'm part of the minority party, my vote will be wasted." It's definitely wasted if you don't use it. You want it to do more? Go convince people. "The brainwashed legions of the opposition shall smother my opinions in their deluge of questionably legible jargon." Ohh, I love ones like these. Wrong on a few counts, starting with the fact that they're no more brainwashed than you are. Every perspective has their own venue of propaganda. Liberals have the Colbert Report, Conservatives have Fox, Feminists have Lifetime, Introverts have the sci-fi channel, and as you can see these days any drooling simpleton can start his own blog and yell what he thinks for all to hear. Even the infamous Middle America is a bunch of people who, while largely shown as being set in their ways, are no less intelligent than the rest of us. If we think they're wrong, and I assume we do, then let us convince them! Send missionaries to educate these fellow americans! After all, you can't lead a fight against ignorance. Ignorance isn't something you fight. It's something you cure by talking to those afflicted with it.

I don't know if this is a commonly espoused view amongst those outside New York City, but a popular way of looking at the nation these days is the Little America Idea, which is two or three people yelling at each other and one's always quoting irrelevant sections of religious scripture when they're wrong. It isn't two or three people and there is no side who always does or doesn't know what they're talking about. It's billions and billions of people. Whether or not they're just standing there yelling at each other is up to us.

I would like to thank my girlfriend, for putting up with my blathering long enough for me to get enough material to write this.

Alas, dear readers!

... Both of you. Or the three of you dear readers, possibly.
Regardless, however many readers I may have I must claim sanctuary from their gaze for two days, as my internet access will be severely limited. I shall make this up to you with not two but THREE posts over the weekend. So really, it all ends well for you.