Goodbye Posterous!!

Sadly, this blog is being moved to http://padd1ngton.tumblr.com/.>

Look for new features and more posting, etc.

Tumblr's bigger anyway. :P

Why So Terrible, padd1ngton?

So, some of you might find yourselves wondering why I’m so terrible fucking awful. It’s a valid question, and it deserves an answer. Unfortunately, since I’m such as asshole, I’m not going to give you one. At least not a straight one.

I’m not a racist or a bigot. I dislike straight people as much as gays; straight people have just as many issues as gay people, to be sure. Gay people are infinitely easier to make fun of (though Bryan Safi of infoMania does a damn fine job “flaming,” if you will, straight people) because they aren’t concerned about their image with regards to straight people which, last I checked, still make up more than 80% of the population (though lately, it seems like all women are bi…probably because the quality of men in the last three decades has deteriorated so rapidly, but that’s another post for another day). I dislike all religions about equally with the exception of Buddhism, and that’s mostly because Buddhism doesn’t come and stuff itself in my mailbox and knock on my door or build mosques in my neighborhood. I do find issue with Buddhism in the sense that it’s a fundamentally flawed, paradoxical religion. Someone online (and I’m paraphrasing here because my memory is shit) had said that in order to achieve nirvana, you had to WANT nirvana…which defeats the whole purpose in the first place.

Races are a fun one for me because people get so red-faced about it and ANGRY, too. Our society preaches equality and talks about our similarities out of one side of its face…but the realities are much starker. People are regularly bred to hate one another just because of where one was born…and our society really embraces the differences, not the similarities, between our cultures. Why is a black man 8 times more likely statistically (on average, mind you) to commit a violent crime than a white man? Because that’s why our society expects. Read the book Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt if you want to know more about this.

I don’t use the irony excuse for my humor. I want you to be as uncomfortable as possible when reading what I write. And I want to know what you think. I’m here to entertain, but I’m also here to try and explain myself. I’m sure lots of people say that, and they’re total blow-hards. I may very well be one of those people, but I ask that you stick around and find out for yourself. I have a feeling it will be worth it for both of us. I hope.

My Thoughts on the Ground Zero Mosque

Hello, faithful readers (yes…all 4 of you)! If you’ve been following the news here in the US, you might have heard about the plans for the Cordoba House; this is a mosque/Islamic community center that is planned for construction about 600 feet away from the site of the September 11^th attacks in Manhattan. Now, all 9/11 conspiracies notwithstanding (because I know that there are some of you that will say that 9/11 was an inside job and had nothing to do with Muslims, and others will say that Osama bin Laden AND Saddam Hussein flew those planes personally), I do have a few things to add to the conversation. A note: anyone who copies this list into a comment below and then replies in a point-by-point fashion will have their comment deleted. I hate that shit, and I’ve not given you permission to do it…so KNOCK IT OFF!!!

Anyway, here are at least three issues I have with this particular plan:

1)      Let’s start with the name “Cordoba.” Not sure if you are aware of where this comes from, but it is the name of a city in Spain where, in approximately 711 A.D., an ENORMOUS mosque was created out of a giant cathedral to signify the defeat of the Visigoths in Spain. This was the beginning of a great time in Islamic history…look up the Umayyad Empire to get a feel for it. This mosque was a symbol to the people of the land that, yes, we conquered you and yes, we are here to stay. Why in the hell would you name something like this nowadays the “Cordoba Initiative?” That’s the $64 question.

2)      I apologize if this offends anyone, but there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. Well…let me rephrase. The people who are IN CHARGE of all of this are not moderate at all. These are people who want to see you and I and everyone else made a Muslim. Ladies…grab your birkas! Some of the demographic projections I’ve seen puts Europe at 60-70% Muslim in the next 40-50 years given current immigration patterns, and the US barely being able to hold on to an 80% share of the non-Muslim population by 2050…and that’s WITH all the immigrants. Moderate Muslims know that there’s no need for a jihad…their opposition will be bred out in a couple of generations. Here is a link to one of the videos I’m talking about (note: heavy-handed Christian overtones in this video are not mine).

3)      The popular belief (and again, we’ll skip the conspiracy stuff…at least for this post) is that militant Muslims flew planes into two of our tallest buildings, killing 3000 people because their God told them that we all deserve to die for our beliefs. Now, less extreme individuals from the same religion would like to build a monument to their people (including the ones who did this) about 600 feet away from the site of the disaster. Let me put it another way: I’m going to lead my army into your village and burn your town hall to the ground, killing anyone who gets in my way…and I’m going to do this because my God says that your God is evil and must be destroyed, along with you. After I’m gone, some less insane people who believe in the same God that I do come to your village and convince the surviving residents that a great idea would be a shrine in our God’s honor…to embrace the peace between our two cultures. And the money that was used to destroy your town hall in the first place came from THE SAME PEOPLE. Corporations have been doing this for years: they create a problem and the gallantly offer a solution for the problem they created (read: they fund both sides of wars). Does this seem incongruous to you?

As of today, it’s going in, and there’s not a damn thing that you or I or anyone can do about it. I’m sure I could ramble on another 100 reasons why this shouldn’t be allowed to happen, but no one is going to listen anymore. America and Europe and everyone else have their head stuck so far up their asses with liberalism and political correctness and concerns over memories of things like the Crusades or Australia’s Sorry Day…no one wants to be seen as intolerant anymore. Well, guess what? Islam’s not a religion. You see, any religion that imposes itself on the populace as law isn’t a religion at all…it’s a political ideology. And EVEN IF IT WERE A RELIGION…do you call me a racist for making fun of a Christian or a Buddhist? Probably not, huh?

This was kind of a long one and I apologize. Thanks for making it to the end, though.

In General... (your input needed)

Overall, what article of clothing would you find to be the most humorous to leave in a pool of your own vomit in a hallway at a party with roughly 80 people at it, most of which you didn’t know? Your only asset? The party is in your house.

Additionally, what flavor of <insert brand name of flavored sugar/water beverage mixed from packages and stirred in pitchers> would you think a mass suicide would be best suited by?

Your answers below.

Lazy Obligatory Thursday Blog Post

Yeah, well…what the hell did you do today?

What pisses YOU off?

I know what pisses me off. Pop culture, the economy, the way our government “tells us the truth,” mob mentality, overly sensitive pricks who have nothing but righteous indignation and time on their hands (and probably a Bible hanging out somewhere). I know that I don’t like injustice, and I don’t care for fake shit and people who aren’t who they pretend to be. I DESPISE television, and I hate the way corporations treat “the small people.” And people who call Pink Floyd a “he.” *shudders*

I know this about myself…and if you read my blogs, you probably know all that too (and if you didn’t, you do now). So let’s not talk about that here…

Instead, I want to know what pisses YOU off! I want to hear all about it. Feel free to post down below (anonymous posters welcome…I turned that shit off a long time ago) any amount of complaining and bitching. I want to hear about what makes YOU mad, and why. GET PISSED AND TELL ME!

Your Money...My Money...But Not Really...

I’ll start this off with the caveat that I have a rather limited perspective on international finance and the minutia of things like currency trading and hedge funds, nor do I know any of the douchebags who regularly partake in these probably rather fun and exciting activities. I will tell you that I understand the following part of the system pretty well…and hopefully, you will too after you read this. Don’t worry – I’ll go kinda slow like.

All money comes from a bank. Maybe your local bank…maybe THE BANK…the Federal Reserve, where money sort of comes from. More on that in a minute – for now, just remember: all money comes from a bank. Banks don’t just give away money though, do they? They LOAN the money out. Even the big bank, the Federal Reserve, does this with our government. That’s not the half of it, though. You see, a bank can take in a nice round amount of cash (for argument’s sake) of 10 billion dollars. Now, we learned our lesson from the Great Depression…so the government makes a bank keep a certain amount of cash on hand in the event of a “run on the bank;” basically, a situation in which everyone withdraws their money at the same time for whatever reason. This is usually about 10% of the total cash they’ve taken it or loans they’ve promised. What about the other 90%? Well…that gets loaned right out to folks…with interest. And they deposit it (eventually) in a bank…and the whole shit starts all over again.

The simple truth? Banks create money out of nothing. And it’s a closed system…no new money is actually created. So…if no new money is created…where does the money to pay the interest on all of those loans come from?

Hmmm? HMMMMM? I thought so.