fwaggle.org

We’ve all read stories about how Craigslist is the cesspool of the internet… about how you’re likely to get murdered, raped or robbed on it. Or how you hit up W4M or whatever it’s called, and you end up with something that’s either a dude, or whom gallons of tanning bed lotion and far too many hours at the ol’ salon have turned their skin into an alien shade of orange… in February.

None of that stuff really bothers me personally, because I’m not generally looking in the sorts of areas where these sorts of things happen. Even back when I traded my PSP off for a smartphone, we met in a public area in broad daylight and I was supremely confident in my ability to beat a hasty exit should anything untoward happen.

But no, ladies and gentlemen, there’s a different kind of cesspit on Craigslist, and I feel like I’ve ranted about this before – people who vastly overestimate the worth of their electronics shit.

A P4 with DDR RAM and a five year old GPU is not a “gaming rig”, regardless of how many fans are hanging off the case it’s in.

A rapidfire controller mod is not worth what you think it is.

Your PC, TV, or console, is not worth 90% of retail because it’s 6 months old.

Stop it FFS.

Slacktivism is a term that’s making it’s rounds on the internet lately because of several different campaigns wherein people do absolutely nothing and then feel good about themselves because it’s the thought that counts. You’ve probably seen images on web forums and email forwards taking the piss out of it – things like “we’ve done it guys, we’ve beaten breast cancer!” – and let me say in no uncertain terms that these “movements” deserve to be made fun of.

Here’s why: Slacktivism is worse than doing nothing. The people who engage in this type of bullshit usually tell themselves and others that hey, it’s better than doing nothing. No, it’s not. With that simple hollow gesture of passing on that chain-letter forward, posting your bra color, forwarding Sarah Mclachlan’s latest tear-jerking video on YouTube about animals, changing your profile picture to a cartoon character… you’re doing it because you feel some twinge of guilt. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have bothered with the gesture.

So you follow through with this lame, empty gesture to absolve yourself of guilt that you have absolutely no right to absolve yourself of. It’s an empty gesture that won’t do shit to fix the problem you’re attempting to address in some small way, and if you didn’t feel even a little bit better after doing that small action you probably wouldn’t have done it.

If I get mad at my dog and then yell at her, kick her, or do something otherwise abusive to her… forwarding the SPCA’s latest video to all my friends won’t make that any better. I’d deserve to feel guilty still. Sitting and watching “Animal Cops” with tears in my eyes choking down a tub of frosting as comfort food doesn’t actually help the animals on there – anyone I forward the message to is probably no more likely to lift a finger to help than I am. Unless the company that makes the frosting we’re all weeping into while we watch “In the arms of an Angel” is donating a portion of the proceeds to the SPCA, it’s not helping. That’s what I think is meant by the phrase “charity starts at home” – you simply cannot change the world if you’re not willing to change yourself. So the first step in alleviating my guilt would be to attempt to never do something untoward like that again.

Still feeling guilty? Here’s what I like to do – collect all your change up and then head to your nearest store. Pick up some pet food, bleach, blankets, litter, and other cleaning supplies, pay for them with change you were never likely to do anything meaningful with anyway, and go drop them off at your local animal shelter. If you feel like it’s necessary, come home and post the shit out of your social networks with that little tidbit because honestly, you just did far more than 100,000 people forwarding a YouTube video ever will. Or you can keep quiet about it, comfortable in the fact that next time you see some poor homeless kitty cat getting picked up by animal control, you did your part. Not did your part by some empty internet-based gesture, but really actually did something.

Leave your profile picture as it is. Pull out that refurbished fitness equipment that’s basically serving as a funny-shaped coat rack and sell it on Craigslist, then take that money and do something really useful for kids. Child’s Play is probably a good start, or you can donate it to a charity surrounding any children’s hospital that you’ve done your homework on. You’ll make a real, tangible difference in one sad kid’s life – something that some kid somewhere will actually feel, and believe me when I say that some kid getting beat on doesn’t particularly give a shit what cartoon you watched as a kid.

There’s no such thing as helping for free. If it doesn’t take money or effort, it’s probably not helping. Don’t buy into the bullshit of raising awareness – there’s no such thing. Absolutely no one sees all those faces replaced with cartoon characters on Facebook this weekend and thinks any more or less about child abuse. People who see it are no less likely to hurt or molest their kids, people who see that and then see bruises on a child are no more or less likely to report it. If it doesn’t take real work, real goods or real money (in that order of preference for me, personally) it’s not doing shit.

You aren’t helping, and it’s worse than doing nothing.

… and I’m not trying to be ironic. I really genuinely wonder how braindead you’ve got to be to have anything with the rebel flag on it these days.

There was a teacher recently ejected from school for a day for ejecting two students who said they wouldn’t accept gays because it’s against their religion, and apparently he trampled their first amendment rights. I hate to tell them this, but inciting violence isn’t free speech. Apparently the teacher was wearing an anti-gay-bullying shirt, which started the conversation. An objection to stopping bullying of any sort is implicitly inciting violence.

One of the objections raised is comparing flying the rebel flag to flying a rainbow flag, which I find to be just plain braindead. It’s my belief that the rainbow is not about pride (personally I hate the term “gay pride”, one most certainly shouldn’t be ashamed of their sexual orientation, but “pride” is the wrong word for something that in general should be socially irrelevant unless you’re in a setting where you’re looking for a partner), but about acceptance.

If you’re gay, or even if you just happen to know someone who was the victim of bullying because they’re gay, you might fly the rainbow to show acceptance that how they were treated was wrong. With the semi-plausible exception of the abolition of states’ rights, there was virtually no persecution of rebel flag fliers. No kid is persecuted in school then identifies with the rebel flag to campaign for acceptance of what they’re being picked on for.

In contrast, the rebel flag as it’s used today is almost exclusively a hate symbol. You’ll find people who have it on their pickup truck or on their wall or whatever who’ll adamantly claim it’s about heritage, not racism… and yet they’re almost without exception racists. I wrote a while back about how I really wanted to get a southern cross tattoo as an esoteric (up here, anyway) demonstration of where I came from (the “heritage” argument).

I could probably still do it, and then one someone (incorrectly) identifies me as one of the dole-bludging, indian-bashing mouth breathers from down-under, I’d have to correct them. It’s far less effort to just avoid identifying with that symbol anymore and point out that it’s been ruined by ignorant people – as the rebel flag has, whatever non-hateful meaning you think it has is long gone, ruined by ignorant rednecks.

While there is a fine line between teachers influencing their students politically (something I definitely couldn’t agree with), calling kids out on their bullying isn’t stifling their freedom of speech.

But then again given that many people out here can’t name more than about 10 of their own states, can’t name the five freedoms ensured to them by the first amendment, and indeed a good portion think that global warming can’t happen because God promised Noah he wouldn’t destroy the world again and that megadoses of your common daily multivitamins can cure cancer.

I guess there’s just no telling some people.

Now I know this blog itself is basically spam… I don’t really put much effort into making the content engaging or worthwhile and I barely even proof-read the entries before they’re fired off out into the void for 1 person a month to take a quick look at.

But even on my Hungry Hacker site, which while I don’t often update it, is mostly full of decent (I think so anyway) content and all I seem to get is spam. I try to make an honest effort to leave an on-topic, worthwhile comment on blog entries I enjoy. If it’s Mumble-related, I’ll sign it from MumbleDog (a fleeting moment of commercial exploitation, but I like to think my helpful comments make up for that) but otherwise I’ll just sign it from fwaggle.

But quite frankly, mr “Bioidentical Hormone Replacement“, the idea that you allegedly think my about me page was well-written and thought provoking doesn’t mean anything to me. The three pseudo-random punctuation marks after your generic 20-word comment all but removes any credibility your comment had.

I’m starting to feel like the only people out there who even care about things us no-name bloggers write are spam bots.

“We’re being lied to”, “do the research yourself”, “sheeple”… oh my god I could stab a motherfucker.

For quite some time I was somewhat of a vaccine denier. I admit that, and I’m not ashamed of it. It grew out of (admittedly anecdotal evidence) that many canines which are treated with various vaccinations develop problems more often than those which aren’t. Thankfully, I grew out of that phase before the birth of my son.

But the phrases above are used commonly by vaccine deniers and all manner of other pseudo-scientific claims – that somehow reading every crank site on the internet is considered research. Most of these people who are so vehemently against vaccination consider themselves to have “done the research” but almost none of them have ever cracked open a medical or scientific journal and found a paper that supports their claim – no, their “research” stops short of authoritative journals which are peer reviewed and so can actually have any weight to the argument.

Do you have a firm understanding of immunology? Virology? No? Then how can you possibly have done any “research” if you don’t understand the core principles involved… who cares, mercury is bad and it’s in needles!

You can call it “doing the research”, but really all you’re doing is trading one set of know-it-all opinions for another set of know-it-all opinions. The difference is that the mainstream opinion is held up by peer-review and people’s careers being on the line, and the other is fundamentally no different to late night advertising of the best fat burners. There’s absolutely no accountability in John Q Public’s anti-vaccine blog, and Jenny McCarthy certainly has no medical career to worry about.

No, I haven’t “done the research” – because I’m not equipped to do so. I am certainly smart enough to understand viruses and the immune system, I just don’t particularly care to do so. I’ll leave that for the folks who are paid to spend a decade learning to understand that stuff – the very building blocks with which one can even pretend to understand the issue of vaccination.

That may make me a “sheep”, but don’t pretend that vaccine-deniers aren’t sheep too. They simply have a different shepherd, because unless you have a solid understanding in virology and immunology you are no better equipped to be making these decisions than I am.

Don’t even get me started on other conspiracy theories…

Seriously, US politics has to be the most divided, idiotic circle jerk in the history of the planet. A candidate is making a big hoo-hah about how the words “separation of church and state” aren’t actually “in the constitution” – no, those specific words aren’t, but Thomas Jefferson coined that term when speaking specifically about that amendment. You know, that guy you all love to quote on all manner of matters at tea party rallies? Yeah, he probably wouldn’t agree with you either.

These douchebags parroted on and on about “states rights” when Arizona passed a questionable (I’m not entirely against the wording of the law, but I can certainly see how it could be abused) immigration law, but yet when California threatens to make pot legal and the feds decide they’re going to pursue it anyway these idiots are nowhere to be heard. A government police force overriding the state law on something not delegated to it by the constitution is OK, but yet something that potentially violates basic human rights is a matter for the states to decide?

Kinda gotta wonder how many people who are against pot being legal are only screaming that way because their hydroponic systems and massive grow ops are going to become virtually worthless overnight.

Getting back to the first amendment stuff, let me postulate this… we’re led to believe that Sharia law is currently going on in two cities in the USA, and that that is absolutely terrible thing – yet what exactly is the difference between Sharia law and White, Anglo-saxon Protestant faith-based laws?

What’s the difference between denying women the right to school (allegedly), and the purposeful neutering of science through the teaching of “intelligent” design? If you think evolution is so scientifically shaky, then disprove it according to the scientific method.

The democrats aren’t off the hook either, back up to their usual idiocy of eroding the middle class and turning the entire country into a nanny state filled with taxed-to-death businesses and welfare leeches. They make a big talk about piling taxes onto the richest 1%, but say absolutely nothing about helping small businesses out. Here’s a tip: if you want to get everyone a job, start making it easier for everyone to give themselves a job. It’s my belief that small businesses making under some arbitrary cap (the poverty line for the all the combined families it supports would be a good start) should be tax free – it works out that way if you have kids, sure… but what if you don’t?

It’d be nice if the republican party uses their defeat in 2010 as an excuse to reinvent themselves, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. They’ll probably bank on the public being so pissed off with the democrat taxes and almost nothing to show for it that we’ll be seeing Palin run in 2012 and she just might win – solving nothing but taking us in a completely opposite direction of stupidity.

I’ve been keeping track of a “todo list” on the whiteboard next to my desk, and my list is currently huge. We have a ton of winterizing to do on the house, because I’d really, really, really like to be warmer this winter than in winters past.

On top of all that, we’re not going to stop cutting wood every weekend – which sucks, because every damn week I end up hurting until friday after cutting wood, and then friday I finally start feeling good, only to go out and cut more wood again on saturday. Boo.

I need to call back State Farm… I called them once shortly after we ran a bunch of car insurance quotes, because the quote we got from Farmers was much, much cheaper. Our agent’s office said they were really busy, and they’d call me back – and they haven’t yet. I’m hopeful they can match Farmers’ rates, because I’d rather stick with the same company, and their offices are closer to us.

The stove and chimney still need lots of work before we can start a fire this winter – the blessing in disguise is that while we might moan a bit about it being chilly (it’s really not that bad in the house), we’re not burning wood yet. It still needs to be done ASAP though.

Finally, there’s an absolute ton of Mumble-related work I’d like to get done.

I’m not sure, but I think the average YouTuber might be borderline retarded. Personally, I try and avoid the comments section on videos, because every time I indulge in reading them I feel dumber for having done so.

It’d be nice if there was a way of filtering slideshows out the way Flickr lets you tag screenshots so they can be excluded. Hey dumbasses: this is a video, this is fucking not. In fact, dear reader, if you want an exercise in anger management… try to find an actual video clip of the famous Simpsons song “See My Vest” that isn’t some dumbass slideshow.

Which brings me to my next rant – the re-posts. It’s not enough that one douchebag puts exactly 11 images to 60 seconds of audio and calls it a “video”, it’s that two hundred and fifty other dumbasses will come along and think they can do the same thing better, assuming they don’t just out and out steal it and re-post it verbatim.

I guess that’s my major gripe about YouTube, is that people think they’re contributing stuff when they’re really not. Now I’m not perfect, most of my contributions are formulaic gaming music videos which are now missing the audio. Exactly one of them is informational, and another video I uploaded is black and white footage of my dog. I’m not exactly an internet superstar, and I don’t pretend to be.

But people who re-post shit like a certain auto-tuned “song” so they can get views to their channel instead of the person who should be rightfully collecting them; to the 13 year old who thinks they’re going to be famous for doing nothing but cursing on camera, and to their parents who think it’s okay and/or that anyone other than internet pedophiles are interested in what your kid has to say; and of course to the people who post slideshows in the guise of video…

… go die in a fire.

My phone is off-contract on August 10th, which is pretty exciting for me. I thought I would wait all the way through until my contract was up, because then I’d qualify for “new every two” – a much touted feature when we’d originally bought our handsets. Apparently they took that feature away from sub-lines “quite some time ago”, so I wouldn’t qualify for it anyway.

So I decided to call up on Thursday, after Sabriena watched one too many videos on the “Droid Does” website. The glowing red allure of giant oversized novelty pulse oximeters had their tractor beam trained on her, and she was really excited about the idea of it. She couldn’t understand why I wanted one, and then she watched the videos of all the neat stuff they can do.

So I’m on the phone with a Verizon rep, knowing full well even if I ordered them that day, it wouldn’t ship until the 4th… then I was told no way, no how, I would have to wait until the 10th to re-up my contract. I can’t order the phone right then and jump the inevitable queue, I would have to actually call back on the tenth.

I was a little bummed, but today I decided to call back and bug them again – maybe being a little closer to my freedom date they’d be more inclined to put the lasso back on me for another two years. Today, they offer me some “special upgrade offer” where I can order one today and blah blah blah. Awesome, so I place the order – and now they’re back-ordered until the 18th.

So I’m a little butt-hurt I’ve got to wait an extra two weeks because they took three days to offer me a deal that any salesman worth his salt would have offered someone who was two weeks away from being able to switch carriers anyway.

I had a brief exchange with someone today over the use of the internet meme “<object|adjective>fag”, in which it was basically asserted that it was homophobic of me to use it.

To the offended party, first let me say if you’re actually a homosexual and felt offended, I’m deeply sorry. It wasn’t my intention. If you’re not (and I think this is the case), in my mind it’s just another example of people taking offense to something that doesn’t affect them personally.

Assuming for the moment that I meant offense by the term, or even that I simply implied homosexuality with the term (it should be noted that in the typical use of the meme, describing someone as homosexual would involve calling them a “fagfag” or a “gayfag”, and that this is not redundant),  and you’re not… are you offended that I implied you were, or are you offended that I made the assertion without knowing either way?

It doesn’t matter, because I’m not the least bit homophobic, or racist for that matter. My feelings on both subjects are exactly the same: we need to spend far less time than we do thinking about things which are irrelevant, namely, that which makes us different. Race, skin-pigment, and of course sexual preference are no more related to intelligence, morals or any other social measurement than the color of your hair or how long your middle finger is in relation to your index finger.

Hate is a stupid feeling, particularly when rooted in something a person can do nothing about such as skin pigment or sexual preference. It’s the refuge of neanderthal types, ignorant people who have no place in society. In a sense, memes like “ps3fag” serve to help defuse the negative connotations associated with the word – when most internet-savvy people hear the word “ps3fag”, they automatically start thinking of someone who plays a PS3, or perhaps a PS3 fanboy. Unless the person hearing the term is a complete idiot, they very rarely associate it with a homosexual who plays a PS3, and certainly not someone who became a homosexual from having played a PS3.

In a similar sense with “gamers” copping a bad rap recently in the media because a huge percentage of them have used the phrase “that’s so gay” to describe something unfavorable. It’s a meme… an idea that grew organically by exploding in popularity through imitation.

When a World of Warcraft gamer hears that Blizzard are planning on showing other players their real name and exclaims “that’s so gay”, they’re merely expressing displeasure. They’re not insinuating that having your real name exposed on the internet without your express consent is akin to a tender embrace between two consenting male adults. The usages of the words are about as related as the phrase “dark forces stand ready” is related to people of sub-saharan african descent – which is to say, not at all, unless you happen to be at a Klan meeting.

There is of course the small chance that some folks will feel empowered by the use of such terms (referencing a metafilter post RE: the Blizzard fiasco), because they actually do feel the same way and think you do too. But honestly, there’s really no changing these people. They think the way they do because they’re too stupid to think otherwise, so for that reason a racist will always be a racist and a homophobe will always be a homophobe even if they’re in a sea of opposing opinion, and nothing will ever change that. Using the term “newfag” is no more encouraging to the homophobe than breathing next to someone is encouraging them to breathe.

Is it crass? Sure, but no more so than saying any given off-color word of your choice (ask the late George Carlin for a list of them), nor is it any more crass than making a blond joke (in fact probably less-so, because blond jokes are typically targeted at people who are in-fact blond).

Of course I’m not trying to say that such words should enter the lexicon of polite conversation in these definitions, but it should be noted that gaming circles, social networking, and other places aren’t typically places for “polite conversation” anyway. I certainly wouldn’t go up to my grandmother at a family reunion and refer to her as an “oldfag”, but that’s not to say that I wouldn’t address a friend older than I who’s huffing and puffing while we’re out playing Paintball as such.

In the context of gaming (and social networking, given that I’m married and not cruising for members of any sex) – it’s simply none of my business who you like to physically express desire for, so none of my comments should be taken as assumptions of such.

If you’re a homosexual, try not to take offense when a gamer exclaims “that’s so gay”. By using the term in a negative sense they’re not necessarily implying that being gay is a negative thing any more than being happy would be a negative thing. There are exceptions, of course, but they don’t deserve your attention, much less your outrage.