I’ve been trying, for nigh on a week now, to write a post about something, anything, that didn’t devolve into some rage-fueled rant-fest. I have not succeeded, as you may have noticed by my lack of posting.

I assure you, it isn’t that I haven’t had anything to say, it’s just that my computer can’t take that amount of vitriol and spittle, at any one time, without shorting out and exploding.

So, why now?

I don’t honestly think I’ve gotten any real distance from the things that drive me bat-shit, bug-fuck, screaming at the sky crazy.

But maybe I’ve been able to condense some of them down into something more coherent. Here then, are a few of the things pissing me off lately.

(Warning: if you came looking for a reasoned argument or observation about something, this may not be the post for you.)

First things first; Spoiler Warnings.

It seems like every-fucking-thing I read on the internet or in a magazine has a fucking spoiler warning on it. Can we just stop this, please? If I’m reading about some cultural thing – whether it be a movie or TV show or book – I am doing so because I am interested in information about that thing. I am also doing so in full cognizance that I might come across information I do not currently possess. Hell, that’s the entire reason I’m doing the reading in the first fucking place. So please, knock it off with all the spoiler warnings. If we don’t want to know, we’ll avoid extraneous information sources. And please, for the love of whatever thing you consider holy, stop using that phrase in conversation. You sound like a Victorian governess telling children to hide their eyes from something that might be untoward. I give a little space for people using the phrase ironically, but just so you know, if you use it more than 200 times in a three minute conversation, you’re no longer being ironic. You’re being tedious. And if you don’t know the difference between irony and tedium, well, there may not be any help for you.

Next up: The Fucking Duggarrrrrs

(I add the extra rrr so no one tries to sue me.)

Here’s the thing: I give no fucks about the people or their reality show, generally. But when you have a group of holier than thou asshats telling everybody what is and isn’t right, and comparing homosexuality to child molestation, and then it turns out their oldest son is not only a child molester, but an incestuous child molester, then I think, as a culture, we have not only the right but the moral duty to tell these fucks to sit-the-fuck-down-and-shut-the-fuck-up. Period.

And the thing that really pisses me off about this little cultural cul-de-sac isn’t even the hypocritical morons themselves, it’s the knee-jerk, reactionary dipshits that have sprung, with religious zeal, to their defense. As if what happened was defensible in any way. Oh sure, he spent a few months remodeling homes – as if that were breaking rocks in prison hard labor – and he’s asked God for forgiveness. Well he has, has he? Isn’t that fucking special. He worked construction for a few months and asked his imaginary friend for forgiveness? Well, that just makes it all better, now doesn’t it?

No. No it fucking doesn’t. And anyone who thinks it does is morally bankrupt and should not be able to make any public statement about anyone else’s actions until they prove to the rest of us that they really do know right from wrong and that people who hurt others should actually be punished, even if they are the scion of the house.

So, let me be perfectly clear, in case the above statement was somehow obtuse:

If you believe that, because he said he’s sorry to God, that this means he should be forgiven in the real world, then your morality is faulty. It’s flawed. Your moral compass does not point true. And if you get your morality from any particular religion, you need to take a long, hard look at that religion, because its morality is also terribly flawed and faulty.

If we, as human beings, can’t agree that a child molester should be punished here and now, in this world, then we are well and truly fucked as a species and it’s long past time to let the cockroaches have a go at this civilization thing we’ve been so hot about for the last couple of thousand years.

And now batting: Religious people, in general, running their mouths as if whatever they believe isn’t actually just as much of a gamble as anyone else who believes any thing else is taking.

Come on people. I know you believe. I get that. But how do you not realize that you believe because you’re not sure?

If you were certain of what you believe, then it wouldn’t be belief, it would be knowledge.

You would know.

But you don’t. So, you believe. You trust. You don’t have Faith, because if you had faith, you also wouldn’t need to believe.

Does no one do any real research into the crap they were told to believe as kids? Does no one even want to bother with trying to figure out if it might be true, or if it might be – in all likelihood – just a bunch of bullshit?

And let me say this: if it was just cultural conditioning, just a get-along-go-along kind of thing, I’d leave it be. No one can choose what they’re conditioned with as children and it’s the rare few who have the self awareness to attempt to change it later in life.

So, if you’d keep it to yourself, it’d be no big deal. But why is it that the religiously zealous seem to think it is not only their duty, but their sacred-fucking-right to try to tell everyone else how things should be done and why they should be done that way?

So, please, just shut the fuck up. You don’t know. You have no evidence. You’re just as in the dark as the rest of us, only some of us don’t pretend we’re holding a god damned flashlight while we stumble.

Batting clean-up: People not listening.

(also, closely associated with this phenomenon, people hearing only what they want to hear.)

Really, people? We’re grown adults, many of us partially educated, and we can’t actually listen to each other. And I mean really listen, to everything, not just that first, middle, or last part that either inflames our sensibilities or proves our point, or just makes us feel smugly better about ourselves.

I’m not even going to begin to try to lay blame here.

I’m just wondering…

…Why?

Do we feel we’re not being listened to ourselves? (probably also the case)

Do we feel we already know what the person is going to say? (Not the case nearly as often as we think it is)

Are we just callous, careless, selfish shmucks who couldn’t give a fuck about the thoughts of others?

Have we, collectively, just run out of fucks to give?

All we have ever had is one another.

Everything you see around you, everything built by the hands of humanity, is because we only ever had each other.

How, if you are at all connected, can you let that slip away, be forgotten, fade into distant memory?

We used to be better than that, as a culture, as a nation, and as a species. We used to have the guts, the fortitude, the tenacity to do difficult and uncomfortable things, things that achieved great ends. Now we don’t even have the energy to really listen to one another; to listen and try to understand one another?

Politicians bemoan the state of the world because they say we have drifted away from ideologies.

Religion bemoans the state of the world because it says we have drifted away from God.

But when you look closely, you’ll see that what we have really drifted away from is each other; from humanity.

And for what?

What have we gained?

Does it make up for what we have lost?

Does it?