I often get emails announcing releases of new books because writers and publishers want me to promote their novels.

Here is the first line from a promotional release of a book titled “In the Void of Lies”: “In the Void of Lies is a tale of infidelity and redemption intermingled against the passage of the healthcare bill.”

I quoted it verbatim, people. What was this author thinking when he decided to promote his novel with such a horribly written blurb? The rest of the blurb is as pathetic as the first sentence.

Why are the illiterate so eager to inflict their bad grammar and non-existent vocabulary on the universe?

I’m in Missouri right now and last night I saw a newscast on a local channel about the growing number of bullying incidents. A State Representative was saying that schools as well as local and state governments had to be held responsible for not managing to stop the bullies from terrorizing their victims.

As usual, everybody was held responsible for the behavior of bullies except the people who had the greatest influence on their upbringing, the parents. Parents in this country traditionally enjoy every right to do whatever they want with their children but are never held to any responsibility whatsoever for the results of their parenting. All these conversations about how schools and governments can stop bullying are completely useless because they expect the educators and the authorities to correct somebody else’s screw-ups without going to the source of the problem.

Bullying could be addressed very easily and very effectively by fining the parents of bullies for every instance of bullying. They are the ones who inflicted these little treasures onto the rest of society, so it stands to reason that they should pay. If a child breaks a window or vandalizes a car, the parents get to compensate the damages. So why aren’t we requiring that the damage bullies do to other human beings is being compensated monetarily?

The fines for bullying should be heavy and grow exponentially with every fresh instance of bullying. Maybe when the irresponsible parents are finally forced to sell their plasma screen TV to pay the fine, they will find time to start spending time with their children and doing something to turn them from little animals into normal, healthy members of society.

More than anything in the world, Peacock desires admiration and his/her perfect partner will be willing to play the part of an admiring audience. Peacock will be endlessly entertaining but will never tolerate any competition in the limelight.

Peacock doesn’t beg for attention and admiration. They have to come naturally. If they don’t, Peacock simply loses interest. If Peacock and Partner go to a party and Partner draws attention to him/herself instead of staring at Peacock with silent adoration, Peacock will feel personally betrayed.

If Peacock gets cheated on, s/he feels completely bewildered. How could anybody lose interest, even for a moment, in such a fascinating show?

 

I want to propose a new game for this blog. Let’s bring the most egregiously, mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly stupid things we read on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or anywhere else during the week and share them here. One condition: the stupid thing has to be something that somebody said completely in earnest. I know we all have brilliant imaginations here but the contest will lose meaning if we start inventing stuff.

The person who brings the the best stupid comment this week wins.

I bet that nobody will find a quote as stupid as the one I saw on the blog of our favorite quasi-philosopher:

Philosophy, like a virgin, is wasted on the young.

Now try topping that!

I will make this post sticky for a while, so scroll down for new posts.

I just had the following dialogue with a student that I really need to share.

Student: I was surprised to discover that the Aztecs were such a Western civilization.

Me: What do you mean by “Western” in this context?

Student: They had such a sophisticated knowledge of science, medicine, technology. . .

Me: As we learned earlier in the semester, the Europeans destroyed their own cultural legacy and had to wait for the Muslims to restore it back to them. Do you remember what the buildings left behind by the Visigoths looked like by the side of the Great Mosque of Cordoba?

Student: It isn’t just that, though. The central values of the Aztecs, their driving force, seem very Western.

Me: Which values specifically?

Student: It’s mainly that they were conquerors, empire-builders. This is what defines the Western civilization. The US and the British Empire created their wealth by exploiting other people.

Me: The Umayyads, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane. . .

Student: I know what you mean but still. . .

I’m now looking for a Western equivalent of the word Orientalism.

I highly recommend this interesting article outlining the battle between psychoanalysts and the corrupt, diagnose-peddling, pill-pushing psychiatrists at Washington University in St. Louis. The article is written by a very unprofessional, gushy journalist but the subject it discusses is very important. If you are wondering how pharmaceutical companies managed to carry out their agenda of feeding stupid, addictive, dangerous pills to all of us by the bucketful, here is a very straight-forward explanation.

Psychiatrists get huge amounts of money from pharmacological companies to destroy any method of treatment that could actually solve patients’ issues. We get inundated by endless messages about “brain chemistries” that just happen to be out of whack for no particular reason and require we take pills upon pills upon pills in perpetuity. Every shade of human personality is classified and listed by the psychiatrists in the employ of Pharma companies as “disorders” that need even more medication. Of course, all these drugs have enormous side effects and people are exhorted to take more drugs on top of the ones they are already taking to deal with the side effects.

This terrifying situation gets to the point where psychiatrists – who historically have eagerly collaborated with every inhuman dictatorship and every brutal regime – poison small children by labeling them with a host of completely meaningless diagnoses and medicating them to the state of complete zombification while their already medicated parents stand limply by. This makes a lot of sense because most people are very lazy and possess a consumer mentality. Who needs to make an effort and conduct a slow and complicated work of solving one’s issues through analysis when you can pop a pill instead and temporarily dull the symptoms? And when the symptoms come back, you can pop two pills, and so on.

These medicated populations who spend their entire lives destroying any shade of their personalities with medication are very easy to control and manipulate. Are you wondering why people sit there silently while the education system in this country is eroded, their pension accounts are raided, and their civil right are being stolen? That’s all because they are barely conscious after all the psychotropic medication they have consumed in the last 20 years.

Of course, the article isn’t very recent and I fear that things have become even worse since then. All that anybody can do at this point is educate people and create spaces that are free from the ideology of “chemical imbalances kept in check by pill popping”. These should be spaces where people can discuss more enlightened approaches to psychological health. My blog is one such space. If anybody can recommend any other spaces that share a similar goal, feel free to do so.

Reader Stringer Bell asks:

What do you think about cultural appropriation? The blogger at womanist musings is strongly against it. Stuff like wearing native american garb at halloween, using sacred or otherwise meaningful ethnic symbols to sell cute tshirts, and so on.

I wouldn’t mind it in the least if people wore (ate, sang, drank or used in any way) the paraphernalia of my cultures. I don’t see a problem with people who are not Jewish wearing yarmulkes because they like the look or want to cover a bald spot. Neither would I mind non-Ukrainians wearing the Ukrainian ribbons on their heads. The ribbons are beautiful, and it would make me happy to see people who want to promote this great tradition.

I also love it when people try to learn how to make borscht even though I know that unless you were born with borscht in your blood stream, you will never make it as good as mine.

I know, however, that many people are, indeed, bothered by cultural appropriation, and who am I to argue that their feelings are wrong? I would love to be able to wear saris, for example. I think saris are beautiful and they would suit me perfectly. But I don’t want the Indian women who live in my street and who wear saris every day to be offended. Maybe one day we will develop a friendship and I could ask them how they feel about people from other cultures wearing saris. In the meanwhile, I will ask my readers. How do you feel about symbols of your culture being appropriated by other people?

Yes, I know that my writing has become angrier recently. I’m going through a complicated time and it’s accompanied by growing pains, I guess. The blog exists to let me vent and I need to do more venting than usual these days. Bear with me, people. I will emerge as a result of this transformation as a much more complex and interesting human being.

You live, you learn. And sometimes what you learn is not very heartening. I heard people mention charter schools here and there but I never had the time to research what the concept meant. Reader Kyle, however, shared the following definition of a charter school:

Charter schools are not privately-owned. Charter schools are essentially a hybrid between public schools and private schools. They allow the freedom in teaching and curriculum a private school provides, but are publicly-funded and owned.

I can only hope that Kyle made a mistake at this late hour of the night or confused charter schools with something else because the idea – the way it is formulated here – sounds appalling. Does this mean that I, as a taxpayer who pays quite a lot in federal and state taxes, am supposed to pay for something like this? Why should the public pay for anything – and I mean, absolutely anything – but state-provided education with a uniform set of curricula? Does this mean that any freak can start a “school” where any sort of idiocy is being peddled as learning (say, dinosaurs living by the side of humans or the US winning WWII and spreading endless joy all over the world) and I have to pay for this with my taxes as long as this freak show can get its dummies to pass some standardized multiple-choice idiocy of a test?

Reader Z kindly left the link to this article on charter schools but it didn’t explain much to me. For obvious reasons, I don’t care who gets accepted where. I care whether taxpayer money goes to fund schools that are privately owned and that choose their own curricula. To put it bluntly, is there a chance I pay for children being taught about people riding dinosaurs?

I prefer to hope that this is not happening.

The kind, wonderful and amazing person who is promoting my blog at RationalWiki: I like you. You are beautiful and have a great taste in blogs.