turns out, the world was better off without hitler... for entirely different reasons than we thought.

alright, can we just stop comparing people to hitler?

i'm sorry, but hitler perpetrated a holocaust in the name of racial cleansing and empire building, based on little more than his own prejudices, and ignorant theories.

so i'd rather not hear about how every time someone in any position of power does something that someone else doesn't like, oh no! they are the new hitler!

and you know what? let's cool it even insofar as using the insult "nazi". nazis were bigoted sheep following the orders of a maniacal dictator, hell bent on taking over the world and building a pure race of aryan people. let us not confuse it with anyone who has communist or socialist ideals, or anyone who wishes to make a broad change in society, or anyone who thinks that what you are doing is stupid.

enter kirk cameron.

kirk cameron is the latest to label someone as "hitler", and that someone is darwin.

ok, stow the main sail, and drop anchor, people.

darwin is nothing like hitler.

do i have to explain this?

ok, i will.

cameron is pushing an altered version of on the origin of species that comes complete with a 50 page introduction explaining how jesus is lord, god created everything, darwin was a prejudiced fascist, and how hitler was his intellectual progeny... and of course there is the ever present argument that, since god, by design, is an unprovable, insensible (meaning the 5 senses, not lacking in common sense. though he is lacking in that, he is not so by design, but by criticism) entity, therefore he can neither be proven to not exist. which is a logical fallacy in that this is merely an answer, or solution, without evidence, or any evolution of proof (did i say evolution? am i the new hitler?).

there was a pdf version of this linked to the huffPost article i linked above, but somehow it disappeared. weird...

to simply break this down without veering too far off track. this new origin intro quotes often from hitler's mein kampf, and only one quote indicates hitler's use of darwin's theory of evolution. the rest simply include the word evolution used in a context unrelated to natural selection and adaptation of species. in most of these quotes, hitler has merely used the word evolution to describe something completely different (at times it is the evolution of an idea, others the evolution of a political movement...), and in the one quote in which hitler is clearly using theories based on darwin's own, hitler is usurping them to explain the inherent dominance of a particular race over another. last i checked, darwin's work was called on the origin of species, not on the origin of race. furthermore, hitler was in fact talking about race, and race is not part of the zoological classification system. it goes kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species... the end. in addition, darwin does not propose an inherent dominance (or hierarchy) for species, but rather an evolved fitness for survival based on appropriate adaptations to particular climates and ecosystems. race does not make one more fit for survival, in natural terms, although hitler has proven that, with man's own will as the decider of evolutionary paths, race can be a deciding factor due to the faulty logic of the human brain, and our ability and willingness as a species to follow through on large scale with devastating and violent action, based on that very same faulty logic.

to put the final nail in this coffin, i don't care if hitler was a die hard darwinist, that doesn't make darwin's theories bunk, and it certainly doesn't make darwin hitler.

i loved john stamos in full house but i found myself less interested in his later work, does that make me the new rebecca romijn?

when i was a kid i used to love drawing the xMen, does that make me stan lee?

millions of people claim a belief in the writings of the old and new testaments, and many of them routinely attend church, and often they proselytize, if even on a small scale. does that make them jesus?

hitler believed that god struck down upon the earth, and from this came the instantaneous existence of man, an aryan, atop the highest point of mount everest, and that this man is the father of all humans on the planet. does that make hitler a darwinist?

oh, wait, that makes hitler a creationist.

but i am trying to put a stop to all this hitler talk. when someone is compared to hitler, a very specific comparison is being drawn. there is racial and religious cleansing going on in many places in the world right now, and in the recent past, but i have not heard nearly as many people (if any) drawing the hitler comparison. but why? because the hitler insult is merely a reactionary slur intended to strike a quick blow to the momentum of any movement, and more times than not, it doesn't make much sense. it makes more sense to call a war monger "attila the hun", or to call an empire builder "cyrus the great", or to call a communist "mao", or a witch hunter a "mccarthyist".

but you know what's even better? not trying to draw these connections over vast expanses of history in the first place.

instead, if you have a problem with someone, try to articulate the argument with some degree of logic and reason. you might get a little more leverage out of it.

because you know what you call someone who attempts to sway the masses toward a right wing political agenda by using illogical arguments, and appealing to the base instincts of man, instead of their higher intellect?

fascist.

but let's not name names.

cameron will be distributing copies of his new "book" at the top "50 universities in the country" on november 19th. even more schools will make the list... if you send him money.

i ask for a mid range right wing media, and papa bear bill o'reilly gives it to me. wah?!

in my last post i asked if there was even a mid range right, or just off to the right wing media anymore.

ta-daah!

bill o'reilly, who i will not pretend is actually deserving of this new move toward the middle of the political spectrum, has said something that i can appreciate.

he recently eulogized the public healthcare option (which he claims is now officially dead) by saying this:

I want, not for personally for me, but for working Americans, to have a option, that if they don't like their health insurance, if it's too expensive, they can't afford it, if the government can cobble together a cheaper insurance policy that gives the same benefits, I see that as a plus for the folks.

dude, yes. i don't care if it isn't the socialized medicine i would love to see done, and done right, in this country. but why not this as a bipartisan solution? look out for the little guy. or for pete rose, just look out for everyone. is that such a horrible idea?

there are now 2 bills to consider, here. a bill in the house, and one in the senate, and if you thought the first bill was long, buckle up, buttercup. these two bills combine to a total of 1817 pages. looks like we have some reading to do, eh, folks?

i do have to wonder if o'reilly isn't making these statements simply because he considers the public option already dead, and he wants to pander to a larger audience, however, two posts ago i commented that to mistrust a positive move toward something desired simply based on principle, or spite is no way to make progress.

so, bill, mr o'reilly, papa bear, thanks for making sense, for once. keep up the good work and you might actually get me to watch your show, and not just find free snippets of it on the huffington post.

perhaps, somewhere, deep down, we might have a mid range, or just off to the right media, afterall.

republicans lied, and didn't do a very good job of it. who's surprised? anyone? anyone? bueller?

here's a nice short one for you all to enjoy.

remember those "tea parties" that the right wing media orchestrated?

well the tea party goers had a march on washington last weekend, and it was a big one!

or was it?

far right media (is there even any mid range right, or just off to the right media any more?) was claiming a crowd of millions.

wow! millions of people descending on washington. that must have been some big news, that i didn't even hear about until this latest story broke.

the latest story? there may have been about 70,000 people at this march, if that.

the picture they published showing a crowd spilling out of the seams of the national mall was a picture of a march from pre 2004. how do we know this? there is a building standing in the national mall right now that wasn't in the picture. a building that has been there since 2004.

what's really sad about this is that apparently in the entirety of the republican party, there isn't one person who's good enough at photoshop to cut and paste a picture of the national museum of the american indian into a photo that they are distributing internationally as proof positive that they have the numbers to bring down the obama administration.

this says to me that maybe john mccain, who admitted to being too computer illiterate to use his email account, may in fact still be the hippest member of the GOP.

how can we even take these assholes seriously?

the photo in question.

iran publishes a manifesto i can get behind. but do we have the balls to put our dick away and accept its sensibilities?

so iran has published an official offer to sit down with the US (or, if you speak farsi) and talk over a potentially lasting peaceful solution, and lay the groundwork for a long term plan of cooperation.

sounds like a success, yes?

nope.

guess who's got a problem with the offer?

yep. it's us. and what's the problem? we are hesitant to talk with them because they did not include any plans to reform and disarm their nuclear program.

what's my problem with our problem?

YES THEY DID, YOU MORONS!!

anyone who says that iran didn't explain their desire to break down their nuclear program didn't read the letter. more specifically, they did not read sections 2.5 (page4) and 2.6 (page5), in which iran offers a brief look at the intention of their nuclear program (use of clean nuclear energy in agriculture, industry and medicine and power generation), and then claims to be all for a world wide disarmament effort.

ok, so some people are going to say that we can't trust iran to hold these statements to the gauntlet of truth in action, but the point here is that they made the claims in the first place and offered them as an olive branch. why shouldn't we trust them? why should this letter be considered bullshit until proven genuine, and then let this very attitude be an insurmountable obstacle toward their chance to prove their statements true at all?

at this point if we do not accept this letter, and talk with iran, it is us who are being the big bad world power with nuclear arms and an iron clad stubbornness toward the foreign policies of other nations.

if we do not sit down with iran, because we are falsely accusing them of resisting negotiations on certain key points, then we might as well just go back to combing the desert for WMDs.

let us not forget that it is in fact us, the US, who has the most impressive and potentially devastating nuclear weapons cache. it is us who has never once offered to disarm ourselves, and it is us, and us alone, who has used those weapons against other human beings in an act of war.

i find it appalling, simply disgusting, that we insist that everyone else disarm themselves, but we do not disarm ourselves. furthermore, we are now lying about proposed disarmament negotiations made by other governments, and for what? because if we don't we might have to admit that there are other, more important bad guys to worry about? bad guys like north korea, who seem to have castrated us with nothing more than a few failed mid-range missile tests? bad guys like china, who have neutralized our concerns not only for a clean environment, but for a free tibet by making cheap toys and shoes for us by abusing their own workforce? bad guys like israel, who refuse to allow a free and independent palestine for seemingly no reason, simply because the nation of israel was partly our doing in the first place? bad guys like the american business class who steal from and lie to their own countrymen? who contract wars because otherwise there isn't much money in making SUVs that can withstand bazooka blasts, and missiles that can guide themselves across oceans and hit a target as small as an iraqi street sign, then proceed to blow up the hospital, school, and every residential home within a square mile? who put people out of their homes, and destroy their lives just to make a fraction of a penny in interest on a line of credit, a mortgage, or a loan? who outsource jobs to countries with no labor laws or regulations to save a penny per unit on a pair of shoes, or a transformer action figure? who let people die, indiscriminately to squeeze one more dollar out of them, under the guise of liability release due to preexisting conditions?

we don't have to immediately accept whatever iran sets forth in these talks, if we even accept anything at all. we don't have to make iran the hero, and we don't have to make ourselves the villain.

but if we don't accept their offer to sit down and talk this out, simply because of lies that we are spreading, then it is too late.

we have already made ourselves the villain.

i'm so international, it's ridiculous! solving the "followers" problem. a thank you letter

i have a reader in the azores! (i wonder if it's nelly furtado. if so, call me, nelly...)

aside from that reader, i also have readers in portugal, Oz, new zealand, germany, china, thailand, all over mexico, the UK, and in canada.

i am impressed. now if i could just get them to come back more often, or perhaps tell their friends...

i'll say that again, come back more often. tell your friends!

as for the "followers" problem, i am not sure why blogger/google says that the followers app/widget works the way it does, when as it turns out, it does not. so if you would like to be notified of my postings, please simply send an email to circusarbitrarius@hotmail.com, and i will put you on a list to be notified when i publish a new post. i will not send you anything else, or sell or abuse your email, the circus is, as always, not for profit, but for enlightenment. if you are already a follower, i will put you on the list immediately. so, again, if you want to be notified when i post something new, please send me an email to circusarbitrarius@hotmail. if you would like to know whenever i post anything new, like threat levels, or isms, or obits, you may let me know in the email. it's the personal touches.

thank you to all my readers, you get me closer to a more impressive grad school, and my dream of being a globe trekking, world beating, adventurer for the rest of my life. for this i appreciate and love everyone of you.

your humble circus freak,

noodles

you tweet so i won't spit in your coffee. i spit in your coffee anyway. tweet away...

recently i dropped my facebook account, and not in that ditzy, slutty way, like so many cell phones into so many night club toilets. with my past ditching of myspace, and my stand against twitter, this leaves me with no social network to speak of. i had a few asking me, "why?".

the following is not exactly the reason, as this happened, ironically, on the morning that i officially dumped fakesbook, and not at the moment i made the decision to do so.

i was reading in the news(paper. yeah, it totally still exists, i am as surprised as you are), and i don't know if i'd really call this news, but i was reading that online social networking has been evolving just fast enough to stay ahead of the proper development of social network etiquette.

it is certainly an interesting thought... that a form of socializing has been progressing so fast that we, i guess, forgot how to socialize.

i just want to grab the breaks on this story for a second, here. i should mention that the article was referring to facebooking, tweeting, texting, and pda to pda email, none of which should be considered a form of socializing. i should also mention that just above this article was an article about "how to get email in an outage", and these two articles were not in the tech or evenlifestyle sections, further distressing my hope for mankind. furthermore i would like to mention that i don't count myspace as immune to this phenomena, i had simply previously coined the phrase myspacin', as meaning: stopping everything to take a picture of yourself to prove you exist and are worthy of friends (see full definition below).

so what was the straw that broke the camel's network connection?

for the purposes of the following story (which is the purportedly true story used by the particular article in question) we will refer to the characters as midge and biff, and the baby will be a boy.

midge happened to get knocked up, and was planning on telling her friends "in person", by which she meant, sending them a picture message of her naked torso, with the symbol of the baby's sex painted on her stomach. to be fair, this is actually a pretty cool idea on midge's part. the problem is, midge happened by a party prior to breaking the news officially, and mentioned the baby's gender to biff, but also mentioned that she had not made the "official announcement" yet. at this point biff thought he had found the loophole that would allow him to make himself the center of attention for this story. biff did not tweet that "midge is having a boy!" but instead tweeted that "i just found out that midge is having a boy!"

get it?

biff didn't spill midge's beans about the bun in her oven, because he wasn't talking about midge. he was talking about himself. he heard that midge was having a boy, not midge heard that shewas having a boy. this isn't about midge's news, it's about biff's news.

consequently, because biff and midge are mutual web friends with many of the same people, including the rest of midge's short list of people who should hear the news directly from her, most of midge's closest friends heard the big news from biff, making them feel as though they had been dropped from her top8.

what just happened here that signals the end of interpersonal decorum?

in a world where we are raised to feel like we are all the center of our own little universe, we have found a way to convince ourselves that we are each actually the center of the entireuniverse.

you need to know what i'm doing right now.

your important life is less important than my important life.

but are we mature enough to admit that none of our lives is as important as facebook, twitter, myspace, et al tells us they are?

most of our lives are worth no more than a daily update for our closet loved ones, at best.

quite frankly, most (almost all) of us are entirely uninteresting until the weekend hits, and then we are only really interesting to a certain demographic of people, and probably only to a certain select group from that demographic, most of whom are probably the people we are hanging out with at the moment anyway.

if my stack of paperwork at the office is out of control, the only people who would really give a shit are the people at the office (if even them) so instead of tweeting to 1,500 people who aren't at your office, "this stack of paperwork at the office is out of control! :) lol", why not just shout, "this stack of paperwork is out of control!", that's even more direct connect than a tweet.

if the line at starbucks is taking forever, don't tweet, "ZOMG! this line at starbucks is taking forever. WTF??!" just open your mouth and say, "what the fuck? this line is taking forever!"

you know why this doesn't happen more often? because if you shouted "this stack of paperwork is out of control! lol" your responses wouldn't be in the vein of "work sux! let's go get some crantini margaritas! j/k! LOL! <3">

if you just blurted out, "what the fuck? this line is taking forever!" you wouldn't get, "starbucks on el camino? i know, it was hella long this morning. but the papaya passion-blue razzmatazz holiday melon mint croisscone is totally worth it! OMG! so good!" instead you would get a juicy wad of phlegm right between your coffee and steamed milk.

i decided to get out because i like risking soiled food to entertain a crowd (and i don't patronize starbucks anyway, so who cares?) but also because i hope that i can forge deeper relationships with those who want to play with me.

people, we are humans. we are social animals by nature. let's be social... for real, this time.

instead of sending virtual cocktails on facebook, real cocktails at the pub.

instead of tweets from hundreds, thousands of miles away, sarcastic comments to your face.

instead of "groups" "events" and "pages", real action, adventure, and real life.

this kind of behavior (that is to say, social networking) is not all bad. don't feel the need to follow me into the abyss. in fact, i think modern networking technology opens up some very interesting avenues for personal expression, such as midge's baby gender idea, and all sorts of artistic capacities. i just don't think that every single personal expression from every single person is interesting.

myspacin': (verb) photographing yourself for the sole purpose of posting it in a social networking venue.

this includes but is not limited to: the picture of yourself that you clearly took yourself (possibly with others), by reaching your hand out as far away from your body as possible, to give the impression that the picture was, in some way, someone else's idea. it also includes the picture in the mirror, which does not say, "i have friends, and i'm a good time" but instead screams, "i am so undesirable as a person, that i cannot even convince one person, one time, to take a picture of me, even as a favor. also, i am too stupid to simply use the timer on my camera, or, most times, to turn off the flash when taking a picture of a reflective surface." in addition, myspacin' includes the black and white "impromptu" picture of the man with the freshly shaven and oiled chest wearing little more than designer jeans and possibly a backwards hat, with a look on his face as if to say, "dude, bro, are you taking an artsy noir photo of me? i totally didn't know you were there. i was just in the other room, listening to maroon5, drinking michelob ultra, and busting out some military presses next to my poster of the two women kissing. that's what bithces think is hot, right? anyway, i was just in the other room, doing whatever bitches think is hot".

joe wilson is afraid of illegal immigrants getting a hand out, later, asks you for some fast cash...

to give those who don't know yet, a little bearing on this story, the other day during president obama's speech on healthcare reform, the republicans trumped their own low (which was saying that the president urging kids to stay in school crosses some sort of boundary of political decorum). republican representative joe wilson of south carolina (which i think is now only allowed to remain a state out of sheer pity) stood up during obama's speech, precisely at the moment when obama was pointing out that universal healthcare doesn't mean that the US will pay for the entire universe's healthcare, and yelled, "YOU LIE!!". good one, wilson. with that kind of witty repartee, how could south carolina resist electing him? what a silver tongued charmer.

it's come to this, has it?

our political debate, once held to some degree (i said some) of dignity, and decorum, and the maniacal ranting left to pundits, and the loud mouth q publics who listen to them, has degenerated into shouting absurdities at one another in the forum of the very debate.

at first one figures, 1,000 page healthcare bill, the average citizen won't read it, but certainly they might get an accurate clifs notes from some media outlet. then it gets a little more grim, when we come to find that the media has not read the bill either, but still reports and opines to the citizenry as though they have. but the whole shebang really falls off the rails when it becomes quite clear that the politicians who get paid to read this stuff, either haven't done so, would rather act as though they didn't to serve their own ends, or simply don't have the reading comprehension skills to digest what they have read.

to steer away from the joe wilson comment for a moment, i recall hearing a lot of bitching and moaning about the length of the healthcare bill, as well as some questioning as to whether politicians can even be expected to read such a leviathan.

to respond to both of those concerns: there are 300,000,000 people in this country, each with a very different health and wellness situation, let us consider ourselves lucky that the bill wasn't 300,000,000 pages long. this is healthcare reform, after all, and it is a complicated issue to begin with, let alone when we begin to discuss reforming not just the system, but the coverage for every single person in the country.

as to whether politicians can be expected to read a bill of such girth, short answer: yes.

long answer: that is literally the job of a politician. what exactly are you doing in your office all day if not reading, writing, and analyzing political documents? that's exactly what we voted you into office to do. so somehow these fucks have time to sneak in a few tweets during the state of the union, and a long weekend at martha's vineyard once a month, but don't have time to knock out a few pages during their lunch break? as i said before, it is literally their job to do so. don't tell me it's too long, you owe the american public, at the very least, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week on the job, so shut your office door, and get reading. the fact that politicians get to take vacation time to begin with simply blows my mind. the world does not stop, if it did, don't you think it would be a lot easier to negotiate a state of world peace (hey, everybody, can we just call a time out for like, the rest of eternity? i want to go on vacation)? it's all well and good that people like ted kennedy can be in office long enough to recall that time that a dinosaur got loose on the floor of the senate, but i think that we must consider term parameters as not just a good way to kick out the bad apples before they do too much damage, but as a way to let the politicians, even the good ones, get out of office for a while, since, as far as i'm concerned, they should be working with the people and for the people 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, until such time as they are not re-elected, or they decide not to put themselves up for re-election. instead our government is peopled with slackers who are in the office usually between the hours of 10am and 2:30pm on monday, tuesday, and wednesday, approximately 30-35 weeks a year, and complain that the healthcare reform bill is too long, that's real hard readin'.

then we get into the halls of debate, and it's much much worse. grown men, i mean god fearing, adult, wealthy, white men, debating(?) by flipping novelty sized presentation cards covered with comical caricatures, and punny sloganeering, rather than facts and well thought out arguments. we allow as reasoned debate, stories about how little jane doe with the toeheaded child, was struck with lupus and had to miss work, and won't you contribute to my campaign? anecdotes about how when they were a child they used to love playing with their pet turtle, skippy, and why do you hate jesus and want america to die? complaints about how this 1,000 page bill full of words and numbers and bullet points, and lord, the legal mumbo jumbo, is not exciting enough to read through, but here's our team's bill, it's a one page accordion style pamphlet (3 flaps, mind you, so you know we're serious), full of nothing more than 2 or 3 word catch phrases, and some clip art that the cute new intern cut and pasted between lunchtime handjobs. she's real good at that photoshop, you should see the cans she pasted on that picture of pelosi from last nights address, big as her head, man, big as her head.

just when you think it can't get any worse, the whole ordeal dissolves into people standing up in the middle of speeches, speeches, mind you, not even debates, and blurting out obvious misinformation, like, "you lie!". so articulate these politicians, these days. and what serves as an apology is a poorly written, mechanically read,1 minute and 35 second teleprompter session in which wilson tries real hard to pretend he knows how to read, and ends in the offender asking for money?

well, i'm not planning on asking you for money, but i think it's safe to say that we can wrap this up right here. it has been proven once again that anything we do as a species is driving by one singular motive... money. and it has reached the point that we don't even hide this from each other any more. like wild invalids, we struggle to grasp what it means to even be alive, and attempt to create some semblance of the human condition through a series of violent, frightened or territorial outbursts, in between which we cower in mortal fear or out of shame.

so what really separates us from the wild invalids? technology? religion? politics? sure, but at the heart of all those ideas is but one simple thing: money.

and if you think different, allow me to assemble a well thought out rebuttal...

YOU LIE!!

delusions of grandeur kind of sting on the way out...

recently, the associated press released a photo journal by photographer julie jacobson. the journal is a revealing account of the war in افغانستان (afghanistan, and if you're wondering why i've developed the habit of using the arabic spelling for proper arab names, it is because there is no true phonetic translation between the two alphabets, therefore proper names can only be pronounced correctly when read in the language of origin), and depicts, through words, and images, the death of a marine during a fire fight with the taliban.

she, and the AP have come under fire themselves for this release as being too graphic, or perhaps, in some way, disrespectful of the soldiers and the job they do.

another cause for embarrassment that i want to be a part of the media.

i think it bears stating that many countries outside of the US criticize our media coverage of war as being not only one sided, but censored in regards to violence, and death.

in regards to war, there is no more important duty for the media than to spread the realities of violence and death. otherwise what incentive do we as humans have to come to our senses and stop fighting over intangibles like religion and politics, or, for that matter, tangibles like oil, money, or territorial demarcations.

that we can take up arms against one another for any reason whatsoever, that we can kill each other point blank, and that we can sit aside, while other do this in our names, and only wish that we didn't have to see the bloody parts, just the noble parts where the statues get torn down, or the bad guys get escorted off in chains, or the masses of people wave our flag, and cheer our efforts, is pure bold faced insensitivity, and stupidity, and is contrary to everything we claim to embrace as a species to set ourselves apart from the "beasts".

that we can happily chomp into a hamburger, so long as no one is talking about how to slaughter and break a cow carcass, that we can hunt down the best deal on a pair of shoes, so long as no one itemizes the human rights abuses at the factory that produced them, that we can have any opinion whatsoever on war so long as we never have to see the nasty parts where people lie dying and dismembered, or crying for their lost companions, or begging to come home, that we can pacify ourselves just long enough for the war to end, then get riled up when oliver stone or michael moore make a movie about it years later is perhaps more troubling than war itself.

you may find the photo journal by clicking the related threat level (red white and blues), or by clicking here.

but in case you are too squeamish to deal with it, the key photos are included below. deal with it.

somebody's watching the bailout, why not us?

in my efforts to make us all a more informed people, i am linking you to the first in a monthly series of posts by propublica.org (that's a general link to propublica, the specific link is below) in which they monitor, and inventory the tiny little details of where your tax dollars, so generously allocated to the "bailout" are going. not because i'm anti-government, but simply because i thought you might like to know. by the way, how is everybody doing with that health care bill? the test is on monday...

...your august bailout update

BP finds new oil reserves off the coast of texas. great, now we have to liberate texas...

words are funny little things.

take for example the word "jurisdiction". made you chuckle, yeah?

what about "international waters"?

you know what else is a funny phrase? for, as "international waters" shows, words need not fly solo in order to be funny. the phrase "energy independence" i find hysterical.

what's this a-hole on about, now, you ask?

oh, nothing.

i simply find it to be a nagging curiosity how, in the last two hundred and twenty years or so, we have managed to accelerate the destruction of human kind, and the planet at large, at an alarming rate, over one simple thing...

...oil.

ah yes, the late eighteenth century. it was a good time, no?

the development of the internal combustion engine was underway, just waiting in the wings for the discovery of oil reserves to boost demand. the United States was just blossoming into its own little independent bloc of states. the indians still existed. the mormons didn't. texas was mexico's problem.

what a time to be alive.

but what the hell do i know? i wasn't born for another 200 years.

what i do know is that 200 years later, a smart ass little kid was born, somewhere in california, and ever since then he has been nothing but a miserable, depressed, bane on the existence of everyone he meets.

it's not uncommon for this fellow to field questions like, "what's your problem?" or "you got a problem?" or "you think you're better than me?"

to answer those questions in ascending order: sometimes, yes, i do think i am better than you. usually i do have a problem, yes. what's my problem? my problem is the crushing weight of the ponderance of the inherent misery in human existence bearing down upon my very shoulders every moment of every day. what's your problem?

to answer that question on behalf of mexico, 200 years later, texas is still their problem.

i realize that, geographically speaking, it is impossible for texas to get off mexico's back, but davey jesus crockett, texas, get off mexico's metaphorical back, already.

mexico's problem is that BritishPetroleum has "discovered" a massive oil reserve in the gulf of mexico, and the "approximate location" happens to be pretty goddamn close to "mexican territorial waters".

when it was discovered that cuba sat atop one of the largest oil reserves in the world what did the US do? fumbleruski!

so bitter are we still about the cuban-soviet ties during the cold war, that we sat on our thumbs and let cuba sell drilling rights to norway, brazil, and spain, then we bitched about how (even though the oil reserve is partially, and literally, under cuba, and fully within cuban territorial waters) we didn't have natural territorial rights to drill there.

boo fuckin' hoo. the edge of the reserve is only about 45 miles off the coast of florida, why can't we have it? no fair!

this is where i find the word "jurisdiction" funny. we sit back and bitch and moan that we can't drill in cuban waters because it's oh so close, we might as well just call it even, right? but by that logic, why can't we go up to canada and cut down their trees? it's so close, we might as well just say it's US territory. "your" trees, "my" trees, let's just call them "our" trees. now if you don't mind, we'll be taking "our" trees and shipping them to taiwan to turn into "our" swedish furniture. or for that matter, why can't we all just go down to mexico, bang some prostitutes, snort some coke, pack a bunch of unskilled laborers into the hatchback of a stolen chevy citation and... i've said too much.

you get the point. just because we want it, and it's almost ours, doesn't mean it is ours.

meanwhile, the petrolios are calling this discovery a big step toward energy independence...

...excuse me, i'm just laughing my ass off.

the first point i'd like to make is that there is no such thing as energy independence. energy, in the context it is used here (the kind that charges our iPods, and turns on the lights), is always dependent on something. either we're depending on the discovery of more oil, or the radioactive emissions of decaying matter, or the blowing of the wind. the list goes on, but energy like this does not occur naturally in any amount large enough to sustain a growing human population.

the second point i would like to make is that energy independence is not an ecological term, it is not green, it is not anything to be impressed by. energy independence is a slip of the tongue. when you break it down, energy independence, as a political term (and it is) is an admission that the fuckups and misdeeds of foreign affairs in the last 200 years or so, at least to some significant degree, were (are) in the name of search, seizure, and confiscation of energy resources.

now i'm not saying that "they" are saying that, should we achieve energy independence, we would cease military actions against foreign bodies, nor am i saying that world peace would follow independence from energy.

quite the contrary. for thousands of years we have found plenty of reasons and resources for which to kill each other (even in peaceful actions; the signs posted at the borders of the sierra national parks say "welcome to the sierras: land of many uses"). money, land, people (technically those could be considered the yield of resources, the source of resources, and the means to extracting resources, respectively, and what is oil but a resource?) and, most ludicrously, religion (but that is a whole other rant) have all been pretty high on the list of causes of death among humans. oil simply took a sudden, swift, and effective trip to the top of the list, and has reigned supreme by way of managing to combine all of those reasons into one big bloody unholy mess under one big black greasy umbrella. no, we won't stop killing each other come energy independence, we'll simply find another reason (perhaps this time over horse carcasses! how else will we sustain our burgeoning jell-O, adhesive, and processed meat industries? them hooves and rectums ain't free, ya know, and the arabs got them some real purdy horsies out there. i reckon they'd make a right tasty bologna sandwich).

but to get to the nuts and bolts of the matter, this oil reserve in mexico is not a step toward energy independence, it is another band-aid.

i see no feasible reason why we should even explore the option of drilling it. it is not a project that will yield lasting results. it will simply put off the inevitable even longer. it will placate us into believing that we don't need energy efficiency, or true independence from energy, or that we don't need to be concerned about the environment yet because we have a little more time before it all comes crashing down on us, and if we can put it off until after we are dead, it's not our problem, is it? that's our progeny's jurisdiction, now.

what's more, this reserve is very questionably close to mexican territorial waters, and the small patch of international waters that exists in the gulf. now, just because cuba got one over on us by existing on top of the last big oil discovery, let's not get all crazy and freak out over this thing.

i say who needs it?

let it be right where it is.

sure it would be smart business to pump it, then, instead of using it, to sell it off to other countries to pay off our debts, or even make a little cash on the side, but to what end? to serve as a blood diamond? a new and sinful penance for the sins of our fathers?

are we not one people, this human race?

should we all not advance at the same rate (too late for that, i know...)

why not take the money it would cost to begin a new drilling and piping operation in the gulf basin, take the time and effort and resources and man power we might put into dick wrestling mexico for jurisdiction (and if it does overlap international waters, what motivation does BP have for buying drilling rights from us, when they have every right to snatch it up for free?), why not take that money and put it into something a little more dependable?

renewables, healthcare, electrifying the auto industry, or the rail infrastructure, building efficient factories in the US to supply jobs, or invigorating school systems with well paid teachers, or up to date computers, science labs, or libraries, why not pay our debts to china by helping them build clean, humane factories with which to assemble our nikes and our lead based children's toys? why not invest in the farmers of central and south america, who every year scratch and claw to get by, so that trader joes can sell argentine blueberries out of season for 99cents a basket, or starbucks can sell a 64oz cup of colombian coffee for $4, and still make a $3.95 profit? or how about, instead of abusing cheap asian labor so that gap, and nokia can sell product(red) "for africa", we spend a little money to bolster support of programs like doctors without borders, peace corps, or any number of NGOs (shout out to village volunteers) that truly serve a purpose on the ground, and understand that "africa" is actually a number of different countries with different problems, not just one big darfur that needs a cuddly hug from bono?

but hey, i'm no oil baron, and i'm no politician, and i'm obviously no mexican (it's obvious, to look at me), so what happens with the gulf of mexico, and what lies beneath, and what prosperity that brings, well, i guess that's not my jurisdiction.