WTF, Japan?! How are you still doing that? In the US, one in ten adults is obese. That’s ten times more per capita than Japan. What are they doing over there? I thought most of them worked ridiculous hours in boring office cubicles, and that there was no room to run around because they have so little land per capita.
If I ate any more ramen, rice, miso and sashimi meat, I think I would just become east Asian. Which would be AWESOME, btw.
wow. depressing, Africa. and wtf, Afganistan?
Scully, the religious scientist, disapproves of your lack of brainpower/faith
Atheists are the least trusted group in America, seemingly because of our lack of any moral compass. This hurts my feelings (and my brain’s feelings) because it implies that no one can come up with their own sense of right and wrong; morals must come from a third party because observation and critical, independent thinking aren’t enough to create one’s own moral structure.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that what bothers people most about Atheists isn’t that they think we have no morals, it’s that we don’t have a unified set of morals. Each Atheist must create her own idea of what it means to be a “good person.” Free thought is encouraged, even demanded, and as a result, we inherently have no guidebook for what it means to be an Atheist.
Picard and Riker, a powerhouse atheist facepalming duo!
If there are no rules, it must be chaos! Atheists must therefore be anarchists! But no, of course we’re not. We love logic and science, and welcome theory change through careful study and blahblahblah. We don’t need answers to the big questions (which we can’t possibly know for sure).
As a result, however, there’s this bizarre attitude of, “I don’t know (or need to know) everything, and that makes me better than you.” It’s a conundrum: I’m not so special that the supposed creator of the universe listens to my every thought, and therefore I’m super special. I have no ego, therefore I’m the best; deal with it. LOL
I’m guilty of this for sure, and I’m fully aware of the absurdity of it, so… I am an anarchist! Crap!
it's MASH or something! and they are so, so disappointed.
No no, there’s an explanation, and here it is: I love what my brain is capable of discovering on its own, and I pity people who don’t feel the same about their own incredible thinking power. The thought process is, “Look how awesome my brain is! Hey guys, you have brains too! Wait, what? You don’t want to use them? *sigh* Guys…WTF.” It’s not that I feel superior, I just don’t see why logic fails to pervade religious thought when it’s applied so readily in every other aspect of our lives. Why does anyone swear on a bible in a courtroom when the rest of the proceedings are based on secular law?
I’m not mad, I’m just… disappointed.
I wish this guy were my uncle
I used to really dislike Penny Arcade. Probably because the ex-boyfriend (let’s call him Nebraska McBaldyFat) who introduced it to me worshiped it so damn much. He got just about every joke, and when he didn’t, he’d laugh anyway, then look it up so he could be one of the cool kids.
I have since come around to enjoy the illustration style when I don’t understand the point of their comics, like this one which I fell in love with the moment I saw the final frame.
Halloween is my favorite holiday, way more than Xmas or even my own birthday. I’m anti-slutty costume and I don’t eat the candy, but just love having permission to act like a weirdo for a whole day/night along with everyone else; it’s like we all really are friends. Everyone’s smiling and having a great time. It’s one nation-wide party. Mostly, I dress like a dog and bark at passers-by. It’s pretty fantastic.
I just posted some depressing-as-hell, crybaby crap, so it’s time for something amazing and supercool.
It’s a full, two axis, four quadrant graph of music from dark to positive, calm to energetic.
Dark + Energetic = Linkin Park
Positive + Energetic = Jet
Dark + Calm = Sade
Positive + Calm = Nora Jones
…and a everything in between, including a ton of artists I’ve never heard of, which is always nice. Click the image to enjoy 🙂
When I read about how a group of monkeys got hold of a professional camera in the wild, I thought the article would include shit-throwing and a broken piece of equipment. However, when one photographer left his camera unsupervised and the local macaques decided to investigate, the results were nothing short of spectacular. They were apparently fascinated by their own reflections in the lens, and the sound of the shutter. The combined result was lots of out of focus shots, and a few fantastically engaging self-portraits like this one. Stories like this makes that heart-shaped light in my chest glow extra bright.
Do yourself a favor and see the other photos, and read the article here.
Apparently people are finding my blog by searching for stuff like “giant sword” and “tentacle hentai.” While there will be no phallic tentacles on this site, I like to give the people what they want, and parodying anime is just too easy.
May I introduce Anime Mascot #1: Giant Sword Dude
His bad attitude and drive to complete his unexplained quest is dwarfed only by his ridiculously huge sword. It’s just way too big. Naturally, he’s standing in a pool of blood, and scowling with his weird-colored eyes at the shiny energy/fire he can create when he gets super pissed during drawn-out fights with his arch enemy. His hair is blue so you can tell him apart from his twin brother who we meet in season three. His loincloth is always perfectly placed (no up-the-skirt shots for men), and the giant scar across his chest just shouts, “Don’t you dare fuck with me. My hair is blue, and my hands shit fire.”
This afternoon, on the 40th of my 108 days of meditation, I had an epiphany; I remembered a lesson I had forgotten years ago, and what a shame I lost track of it.
When I first started training, I was so proud to be a martial artist. Two or three years in, I still bragged about training for my black belts. I worked hard at the dojang, and thought that just by practicing what I was taught, I was, in a small way, better than other people.
It took me a long while to figure out that I wanted to be really good at what I was doing, and that participation alone wouldn’t ensure that I would master the styles I studied. There’s a distinct difference between a practitioner of a martial art, and a someone who is dedicated to the martial art. All my fellow students were practitioners. It was only because I joined the school earlier than the others that I out-ranked them. I decided that time alone should not determine my skill level. I had to have a hand in it. My rank would speak less about the number of classes I had taken, and more about myself as a martial artist. I started really paying attention, and realized my place in the world was very small. Being a martial artist meant nothing except what I made of it. The best I could do was to hone my own skills and become the best tool for the style that I could.
It was a difficult transition for me. My pride, which I had cultivated and nourished for years, suddenly had no place to call home. I silenced my heart. My rank became meaningless; no matter what color I wore, I never felt worthy of it. I suddenly felt no competition with my similarly ranked classmates. I practiced silence, occasionally speaking just a handful of words in a day. It paid off, and my form became close to perfect. As Naruto would say, I had found “my way of the ninja.”
I’ve been meditating for ten minutes a day for 40 days, and because of that I thought I was special. I had forgotten that my objective is mastery, not participation. Kung Fu loosely translates to “skill” and “effort,” but even that is not enough to become a master. Even now there is a disquieting feeling in my chest; I can feel my pride rebelling against its second eviction in a decade. It claims that it is no sin to be proud of my accomplishments, and yes, this is true. But the distraction is an unnecessary obstacle. The sense that I have achieved my goal just as I begin to learn a new style is unforgivable. The brown sash I’ve been given will blind me if I let it. For a second time, I must quiet my heart, and retreat to a quiet, humble place.
Be Random, Be Clear 