Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Welcome to the Life Fail Parade.

To begin with the asking of your position on HACC's admission policy may be a fallacy. Admission policy customarily in this country is seen as a series of accomplishments that culminate in the admittance to something not everyone is capable of. Too bad everyone is capable of getting into HACC. Well, if you have thirty-five dollars.

That said I'm personally grateful for this policy. I had royally fucked up at two other colleges and had very limited options. Some personal advice, cocaine and speed do not a good college student make. I was sad/excited to start at HACC, what I originally thought of as the life fail parade. I then realized that truly it would be what I made of it. Some of the teachers really are amazing and I have always believed a lot of the Profs. should be at a college that would appreciate them. Are my classes for the most part challenging? Not at all. Does this mean I'm smarter than anyone else? Of course not.

We all have our own areas of intelligence and HACC has helped me see this. I have met some interesting people and in fact some life fails, and the life fails are why I no longer take day classes. So is the HACC admission policy good or bad? How can I say? How can any of us pass judgment on an experience we haven't finished. Once I transfer next spring, ask me again.

Because we are Living in a Material World and You are a Slave Labor Girl.

Technology... where to begin. It is both the greatest and worst thing to ever happen to the world. To begin with lets define technology as any advancement created by man that in some way defies nature. This should be an all encompassing definition of every advancement human kind has made from the planting of grain to the tomahawk missile. All of which in the end are both helpful and hurtful.

Let's go back several thousand years and visit our distant ancestors in Göbekli Tepe. Göbekli Tepe is the site of a massive prehistoric monolithic structure. It is also the first area in which humanity grew and processed grains. To feed the large and stable population we invented bread. Bread, wonders of wonder. It fills us so quickly and keeps us going like nothing else. All the incarnations of bread are what allowed us to spread across the majority of the world. This technological advancement created a world in which a constant hunt for food was no longer necessary. It allowed science, logic, art, writing, and music to all occur.

The downside is now almost fifteen thousand years later, we have forgotten that processed grains are unnatural. We have an obesity epidemic sweeping the globe because of processed grains. We have a materialist culture that is built on the backs of food created by slave labor or industrialization of things that never should have been. Factory farms actually produce less food per acre then a small family farm. The food is of inferior quality. It is altered in ways that detract from the nutrients we need from it but hey! At least we do not have to worry about starving, so we can all focus on buying as much plastic crab as possible.

"Fingers Crossed"~Hopefully we will soon be so disconnected from food that we can finally enjoy soylent green. The ultimate technological achievement!

Love Life, Embrace Death, Fuck Christ.

The amount we spend on end of life care is staggering. The billions of dollars that go to keep people alive an extra six months, when there is no chance of them living any longer is a waste. This is not because money is more important than people. It is because we must learn to accept that everyone dies and that effort should be transferred elsewhere. Think of what billions of dollars could do to improve health education and teach people habits that create less health problems.

For instance, most people do not know that diabetes is a real problem if you pour garbage into your body for most of your life. A fraction of the money spent on diabetic care could go to education and prevention, and in my fantasy world, laws limiting what food companies/restaurants are allowed to do without disclosing to the public. The amount of money spent on obesity for instance is staggering and not just in health care.

Look at the cost of clothing. At The Gap an extra small costs the same as an extra large. Hold them up next to each other. Now either the individual buying the extra small is getting ripped off or the person buying the extra large is getting a great deal. Can you guess which one is true? I'm going to say the extra small gets ripped off to pay for the excess amount of fabric needed to swab the obese. If we spent money on health education maybe we would have less multiple X-ers.

Every life has the same worth but we need to realize death happens. Stop trying to prevent the inevitable when it is already happening.

Fun statistic- 100% of nonsmokers die.

Blood X-Rays... Like Blood Diamonds but Even More American

America pays for the world to have prescription drugs. We pay for new advances in medical care that are implemented around the world at a fraction of the cost. It is insane to me the amount of profit major pharmaceutical and insurance companies make. Hershey Medical center turned a 300% profit last year. How is this allowed? Why does everything in this country have to be a business?

People no longer see healthy people as the product of the health care machine, we only see the cost of the cogs. It is insane that a pill of aspirin costs over fifty dollars when one is admitted to York Hospital. Why? To cover overhead for the uninsured, the underinsured and the poor. I hear a lot of people bleating about the constitutionality of the current health care reform. I don't care. I couldn't care less about my freedom in the land of the brave when children are carried to their grave from lack of health care. I couldn't care less about your fears of socialism when the mentally ill are left to wonder the streets and starve because we refuse to fund the proper care. I refuse to see how it's a problem for you to have mandatory health insurance, you have to have it for your car and a car is worth a lot less than your life... or at least it should be.

You have problems with the current health care bill? That's fine. Get involved then, write every member of the local, state, and federal government; put pressure on them all to work for change. I cannot except people though who are against national health care. You can be against this bill and have another plan that you feel should be implemented but to be solely against national healthcare... how are you anything but heartless and blind? Step out of your selfish American, "I protect me and mine," mindset. No one deserves to suffer and die when there is a way to save them.

Monday, March 8, 2010

In Vitro Fertilization is Selfish

I saw that another blogger had written a post about In Vitro and I just wanted to come out and say that I think all forms of unnatural pregnancy are wrong. Even some forms of natural… the Duggers. This is because there are so many children in the world this world crying out for love and attention. I am not a woman, so I cannot say what biological urges there may be to create life in one’s self but I can say giving birth does not make someone a mother, it makes them a breeder. If you hit thirty and truly have a desire for children what is wrong with adoption? If your heart is bursting to show love to a child how does it matter how the child gets into your life?

As a gay man that wants children, I have rather odder options than most. I can’t just make one. My husband and I have long talked about adoption and how we would want to help children lost in the foster system. We have friends who are looking for a surrogate for their child and I think this is wrong. It’s nothing but vanity: this need to have a genetically matched child.

Adoption should be easier and cheaper. There still needs to be rigorous trials to make sure one is a fit parent but there should not be unnecessary hoops and ten month waiting periods. We as a society should see that every child in the world is taken care of, before we even consider allowing more to be born.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

"We blow a might horn of plenty out here."

I always find the finical complaints of most middle class Americans hilarious. The society we have created is so narcissistically entitled it takes my breath away. I was reading an article the other day on ways to cut back of living expense; you know, like skipping your five dollar latte every other day and cutting back on unnecessary purchases. What I enjoyed about this is that the article was written for the ever so pitiable men and women who went from 250k a year to only 100. What poor, poor men and women. We really should have a fund for people to maintain their excessive and wasteful lifestyle; poor souls with houses hundreds of thousands of dollars underwater.

Wait, dial it back a minute. I’m pretty sure the rampant need of these people to always have more, more, more is what caused this recession: this belief that we are all entitled to our own home, full of state of the art electronics and 2-37 cars in the garage. I’m sorry that people have to cut back on their excess but is that really a bad thing? Maybe they’re learning what we poor knew all along, there is more to life then the accumulation of worthless crap and using said worthless crap as the meaning of your life is truly pathetic; and very American.

I would like to say that the “American Dream,” is destroying every aspect of the world. This need for bigger, better and newer is more dangerous to every facet of society than any issue other then overpopulation. The way many Americans are able to absolve themselves of any moral reasonability to either their selves or the world is astounding. These people live from self induced crisis to self induced crisis; eyes blind to anything that’s truly wrong in the world.

Monday, February 8, 2010

The world is not logical. It is not black and white.

I find it interesting when people have strong convictions, and firm beliefs. How is this possible? People should be changing and growing every day. A human being is the product of its environment, regardless of any natural characteristics or predispositions. Take homosexuality for instance, it is something one is born with. Now they can choose to deny or embrace it based on their particular upbringing but ultimately its part of them. It’s just their choice what role it will play.

It astounds me how many of my classmates have strong beliefs about such a variety of topics. How? What makes you sure you’re right? How can any of us, me included, speak for groups that we are not a part of? How can we understand people we have never met? The idea of formulating arguments is interesting. Learning how to logically deduce a valid answer seems worthwhile but ultimately feels worthless.

Now this is where things get a little fuzzy. Logic is devoid of feelings so if it feels wrong, logically, take out the emotions and one can produce a valid response. The problem is, emotions are what make us, what drive us. They may only be the physical release of specific chemicals into the nervous system but they are part of us, the physical, affecting the mental, if there even is a mental to affect. The mental being a series of chemical reactions on the physical level. It all really is in our head. What is reality, what is perception?

Take everything with a grain of salt, no literally a grain of salt. You need it to run your nervous system.