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Rabid-Echidna
The spectrum always seems to shift back to the left. What a terrible stroke of bad luck, and things were just starting to go right.

Age 34, Male

I am the walrus

UCSB

Santa Barbara, CA

Joined on 9/10/03

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Rabid-Echidna's News

Posted by Rabid-Echidna - November 8th, 2007


"How dare those egotistical slobs demand something of us? We own the companies, we make the shows and the movies. We produce the entertainment that they rely on to brighten their day. We are TV. We are cinema. How DARE they demand that we pay them when the only thing they're responsible for is writing every word that our actors say?"

Well, Mr. CEO, you've always favored explosions and gunfire anyway, so perhaps you can patch up the missing dialog with more action. The plot isn't important, just have the actors scream a lot and shoot at eachother for an hour and you're guaranteed to have a box office hit. Everyone complained that 300 had too much plot at the beginning and not enough battle scenes, so that should be a clear indication that not only is it not necessary, but it actually takes away from the movie. As soon as the title fades from the movie screen, have Leonidas stab a Persian in the eye with a spear and keep the violence going until the credits roll. Words need not make an appearance at any moment.

Though the idea of movies having no creativity and relying entirely on special effects as a quality barometer may appeal to someone like Michael Bay, it's unlikely to produce any more "great movies". Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas isn't a cult classic because of the scene where Duke is firing his gun out in the desert, and American Beauty didn't win all those Oscars for the blood at the end. The Daily Show won't exist anymore without all those inconvenient people at the bottom writing the words that Jon Stewart is saying, and Colbert will die with him. The two top ranking shows on Comedy Central are gone, all because nobody wants to pay the real creators.

What arrogance. It's like a man is giving you money for doing nothing for several years. You enjoy being given this money and grow used to it, then the man says that he doesn't want to give you quite as much anymore. You get angry and demand that he keep giving you money, so he calls you an ingrate and stops giving you any at all. Some people have grown accustomed to doing nothing and profiting off the creativity of others, and yet have the nerve to try and negotiate with their source of income. The writers aren't even getting the majority of the profit that comes from their work, that goes upward.

So what could justify refusal to bargain with the Writer's Guild? They want a share of the profits that are made from DVD sales and the internet views and the folks in charge would deny them? They should be thanking the writers for making them so rich, and giving the writers anything that's requested without any hint of argument. Greed blowing up in the face of the greedy is a glorious spectacle to behold. An artist is selling a painting and he decides on the price, so the writers will do the same no matter how much the buyer complains. If they don't like it, no more art.

But this is a slap in the face of the people that actually enjoy the art. Those at the top look at it in their usual way by assigning it a dollar value and determining everything based on that number. Anyone who actually enjoys the show is affected by this numerical method of categorization, and it's not like the men with all the money have any real barrier preventing them from sharing the profits and keeping everyone happy. The greed of the few is trickling down and making the masses unhappy, and this does not sit well with the masses.

The most likely outcomes are either that the rich are starved for money and agree to exploit the writers slightly less than before for the sake of being diplomatic, or that the writers are no longer able to strike for economic reasons and must continue to put up with the conditions set up by the people who buy their scripts. The former would be the favorable outcome from people with a conscience, but they're not the ones making the decisions. It will be interesting to watch how this unfolds, and will serve as a good test of whether or not human decency will manage to prevail.

The Writers Guild Is Striking So I'm Not Writing This


Posted by Rabid-Echidna - October 31st, 2007


Mankind has a long and diverse track record of inventing things that are horrible. Be it the latest sniper rifle that can shoot through ten feet of solid concrete or the DVD Rewinder, no physical object can match the basic flaws in the mind of the species that is responsible for them in the first place. The most irksome to me is perhaps political correctness, an invention of man that can be placed in the same category as war and money. Anyone that gets angry at something runs the risk of offending people, so let's try and remove the very language that expresses anger and all use Newspeak instead. I'd say that the people that stand for censorship are gray, lifeless parasites that exist only to attach themselves to creativity itself and gain momentary glimpses of pleasure from knowing that they're making the world worse, but all I can say is that they're doubleplusungood and hope they become unpersons in the near future.

What's really terrifying is when this carries over into other areas of daily life. The next time you step foot in a supermarket, stop for a second and listen to the type of music that's playing throughout the store. Chances are it's going to be a song that's a slight improvement on elevator music. Something so dull that it will serve as an acceptable subliminal background noise, but just bad enough that anyone having to actually work in the store and hear it looped every four hours is likely to list it as one of the reasons why they quit on future job applications. The managers were fine, it was a good work environment and you got along well with the customers, but hearing Mmmbop by Hanson played three times every day put you in such a bad mood that the only way to cheer yourself up was to hear a small child crying to their mother about not getting a Snickers bar. As soon as those tears and screams begin, it's like trumpets of heaven stripping away the noise pollution and replacing it with the immensely satisfying sadness of a small, innocent creature.

This is for obvious reasons. Some fucker in marketing would tell you that people buy more from the store when there's soft rock playing, and I would dissect every element of that person's life just so that I could find more things to justify my limitless hatred of them. Just once, I would like to go into Ralphs to buy my single gallon of milk and hear death metal playing over the intercom, then stick around for the rest of the song to hear the customers saying how they're offended by the lyrics about sodomizing the corpses they dug up from the local graveyard, and would rather listen to Sheryl Crow instead. I don't even like death metal, but it would be such a surprise that I would buy more useless shit just out of respect. Anything to kick me out of my auto-pilot and brighten up my day just by knowing that there's someone high up in that company that isn't named Ron and doesn't yell at employees for not wearing name tags while working a job that doesn't require customers to ever acknowledge your presence.

The mentality we have isn't a positive thing in any real sense, only in an artificial sense. It breeds the sort of people that go to work, smile at Bob and greet him good day, then say "I fucking hate that guy" once he's too far away to hear. I want to be able to tell Bob that I'd like to tie him to a chair and beat him repeatedly with a metal bat and not feel like I'm breaking some important code of society. I want to tell the soccer mom that her children are not special, and that by having six of them she's doing nothing but contributing to overpopulation. That your band sucks, and that your office job means your use in life is limited to being an organ donor. That everything you have ever done, thought of doing, and ever will do in the future is wrong. That your life is meaningless, that your dream of becoming the assistant manager does nothing but show what a boring idiot you really are, and that there is no more hope in the world for you. The person on the receiving end would greet this with "Yeah, well fuck you," and Earth would be a better place to live.

This is but another dream in a long line of dreams that will never happen. We need to be courteous and respectful to each other, and instead of having your cashiers tell the annoying customers that they should be subjected to scaphism, the proper policy is to say "We're terribly sorry that we can't help you at this moment, but we sincerely hope that you'll continue to shop at our fine establishment in the future." Not in my store. I would train my cashiers that the proper response to a customer arguing that their coupon for 30 cents off their chocolate chip corn dogs isn't expired would be "GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FUCKING STORE! DRIVE BACK TO YOUR GATED COMMUNITY IN YOUR H2 WITH THE ROMNEY 08 STICKER ON IT AND JACK OFF TO THE O'REILLY FACTOR LIKE YOU DO EVERY NIGHT, THEN CURL UP IN YOUR FUCKING RECLINER BY THE FIREPLACE WHILE LISTENING TO RUSH LIMBAUGH ON TAPE AND THINKING ABOUT HOW YOU ENJOY BEING EVERYTHING WRONG WITH HUMANITY! YOU FILTHY, OBESE, PRO-LIFE MORON, GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FUCKING STORE RIGHT FUCKING NOW!"

My business would probably suffer a bit, but it would be worth it. Raises will be given to any employee that manages to make a customer say anything along the lines of "You're right, I've been putting too much importance on saving trivial amounts of money, and there's no excuse for buying these in the first place. Thank you for making me realize what a fool I've been." I'll have a terrible reputation in terms of customer service, but be number one in customer enlightenment. Enjoy your money, Albertsons, I deal in the trade of ideas.

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I turned this in to my English class as the weekly freewrite, not changed in any way. I'm anxious to see what comments my teacher writes on it.

The Customer Is Always Wrong


Posted by Rabid-Echidna - October 24th, 2007


600 square miles burned, 1300 homes destroyed, 350,000 more evacuated, an estimate of 910,000 people darting from the flame, and a satellite image of Southern California makes it look like the entire state has taken up smoking. The wind is as relentless as ever, the fires still not controlled, and people caught in the middle left with an ominous black smoke cloud that filters out the sunlight leaving the land draped in apocalyptic orange. 361,000 acres are left as little more than a gigantic black cigarette burn in the wake, and after not too long statistics stop losing their meaning. How does one comprehend 910,000 people? With the deaths of three people it's possible to gain insight into the lives of those three. Learn where they worked, how they grew up, hear stories about their lives from people that knew them, but statistics are more impersonal. You can't think of 910,000 people in terms of individuality. It becomes nothing more than an impersonal number by which damage can be assessed. A handy reference while doing a research paper on the effects of the 2007 fires in Southern California to make the report look more professional.

Already there's talk of the coming failures in the system. They will receive the sort of federal help that the survivors of Hurricane Katrina were granted, the insurance companies will deny their claims and perpetuate the image that you're insured unless something bad happens. There will be paperwork, lots of people in business suits saying that they're sorry, and the history of humanity will have another scar for the pessimists to glance at and cringe. Already there are rumors that the fires were started by Al Qaeda, showing that it never takes long for the Paranoid American mentality to blame a major disaster on the invisible enemy that's everywhere at all times and that must constantly be feared lest we be caught off guard and murdered.

Going by the more widely held idea that it's impossible to tell if the fires were even started by arson, I think it's better to avoid jumping to conclusions. This is not 9/11 all over again, there's no need to start with the conspiracy theories yet. Another Loose Change video circling around the web and making everyone hate the government serves no purpose at the moment, that can be decided based on whether or not Bush decides to give Schwartzenegger the requested money to help pay for all the damages after the fires are extinguished and to help get supplies to the people that have been evacuated and are now residing in baseball stadiums and shelters. Even if he doesn't, the negative repercussions come later. The fire is far from under control, and even the self-obsessed evil would be unwise to ruin its own image by denying help to those obviously in need.

Being in the moment is a different experience entirely. It wipes away all the frivolous nonsense and manages to shock people back into rationality. Knowing that there are people you knew in high school that are attending Pepperdine and might have their college burned down, or talking to them online as they say they have to clear out of the area because they can see the fire over the hill sends a different message. It's no longer about who should get the blame like it usually is, it's about focusing on the important issue of how you can help out your fellow man in the meantime. The only thing more ominous than the smoke is the knowledge that all sorts of bureaucratic hellfire is going to occur after the flames have died down and everyone will go back to sleep.

But despite the inevitable inundation of excuses, this is a glimpse into what may very well be the true spirit of humanity. Only the cataclysm can pry their eyes away from the everyday distractions and make them focus on the big picture. Those images of people in a frenzy, grabbing their children and fleeing will work as a tool in addition to being an account of the devestation; a necessary and forced awakening that transcends the political division, the selfish mentality, the superficial ideology. An almost ethereal positive reaction that occurs only as a side effect of all the sadness and despair. Another one of those fleeting feelings, but one that contains no hint of malice despite being surrounded in darkness. Somewhere in the wreckage, the fire will leave a sparkling diamond of what humanity as a whole could be.

The Colossus Phoenix


Posted by Rabid-Echidna - October 17th, 2007


2:30 AM, and I can't help but wonder whether this senseless nocturnal lifestyle serves any practical functionality besides "I'm not tired enough to go to sleep right now." Looking at it as a means of discouraging myself from watching TV works, since the only thing playing on every channel are commercials for Girls Gone Wild and a bunch of idiots grinning about Extenze. If pharmaceutical companies have taught me one thing, it's that I can become a respected doctor just by wearing a white coat, hanging a stethoscope around my neck and standing in a doctor's office. If I actually needed any of the pills these people are telling me I need, I would go down to the doctor's office and he would prescribe them to me. "Do you wake up tired in the morning?" is not a good enough excuse to make me head down to the hospital and demand some Ambien so that I can fall asleep at night, I'll just keep going to bed at 4:30 in the morning and waking up at 2:00 PM instead. If I actually did buy some Ambien I'd probably just end up taking it and then procrastinating about actually going to sleep long enough that it would reveal that special side-effect that they don't talk about. For some reason they don't bother to stress the fact that it becomes a hallucinogen if you don't retire for the night right after taking it.

If nothing else, it reveals interesting things. I usually just end up browsing YouTube for something worth watching, and there's something funny about Mitt Romney telling a terminally ill person in a wheelchair that he would rather see the guy die from muscular dystrophy than legalize medical marijuana. This is the best humanity has to offer? This is our republican front runner and possible future president? How can creationists keep up the idea of intelligent design when basic observation of human behavior would suggest otherwise? At least if they took the side of evolution there would be nobody to blame. I'm tempted to say that creationism is a valid theory at one of their debates, but argue for the side that God is like a kid shining a magnifying glass on an anthill. He designed us poorly on purpose just so that he can have some entertainment as we all kill each other and fill the world with bureaucracy and prisons. Not the most popular religion, but I'm willing to be diplomatic. Christianity is wrong, but so is atheism. God exists, but he's an ass.

But perhaps that's looking at the wrong people. Politicians haven't been looked at as heroes since the great depression. It's like everything after FDR has just been a downward spiral and things are only going to get worse until a nuke "accidentally" goes off somewhere and the whole world fires off everything they have at each other. Considered tragic to some, but I won't really care since I'll have seen it coming. Every country in the world killing off another country, and every single one of them doing it for the right cause. These are not the heroes of the world. I respect the comedians, artists, musicians, great writers and poets, all the people that create something for other people to enjoy. The people who don't make it a life goal to be more powerful or rich than someone else, and are unwilling to compromise their integrity for the sake of a higher dollar amount. Bill Hicks, Hunter S. Thompson, Alex Grey, Jimi Hendrix, all of them managed to transcend the twisted view of the American Dream. They had tapped into something more important than having the most money in the world, and instead chose to refine that special something they had found.

There isn't much point in being one of the super rich types. After a certain level of income I would run out of things to buy, and my billion dollars would sit in the bank while I occasionally took out $20 to buy a movie off Amazon. After a while it just becomes money for the sake of having money, without any actual use for it. You can buy a giant mansion that you don't need, a fast car despite that you can't drive more than 80 miles per hour anywhere, trick some vapid trophy wife into marrying you so that you can pretend you're attractive, then after that you have to be creative. There's nothing you can buy that's going to add any real value to your life, and the only goal I have in my life in terms of money is to have enough that I can live somewhere and pay the dogs in the credit card and loan companies enough that they'll leave me the hell alone. Ideally they wouldn't exist, but they're so ingrained into America that unless someone physically kills the people running them the problem will never be resolved.

I tend to idolize the hippie culture of the 60's and be upset that I missed out just because it serves as a fine example of what the world could be, despite all the flaws that came with it. The premise was so attractive that hundreds of thousands of people were flowing into the Haight-Ashbury and it couldn't sustain itsself anymore just because of the sheer population of the place, which then led to crime everywhere. You couldn't let your cat outside because a speed freak would eat it. I would have liked to see the good conditions spread out further, rather than having a central gathering area that didn't function correctly. Events like the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock everywhere you look, rather than soulless, manufactured garbage like Hannah Montana selling out concerts at $3,000 a ticket. A counter culture that would be so powerful that it would destroy the current one and no amount of politicians sending police to beat the hell out of war protesters and kill them with shotguns would be able to stop it. Reagan could send in the national guard to shoot CS into all the funerals he wanted, but people would actually fight back. Suddenly we go from beige colored skyscrapers and negative assets to a bigger version of the countries that are actually worth living in. Patriotism might actually be justified for the first time in several decades.

Just a dream, however. That ephemeral wisp of hope that rockets out from the depths whenever I query what a good world would be. John Lennon's "Imagine" made a reality. No fear of hell or nor need for compromise in the hopes of heaven, no devotion to country or personal God, no sense of need for material objects and therefore no greed, and everything ends with "And the world will live as one." Not in our current state, that's for sure. I fear Hicks's prophecy may be the only reality left, and that his vision for the future will also fade into obscurity while the divisions grow stronger. My only real hope remains unrealistic at best, and only the seemingly inevitable worldwide holocaust will be the deciding factor.

No More Thursday Massacres


Posted by Rabid-Echidna - October 11th, 2007


Wes Anderson is personally mocking me. Making a new movie, advertising it everywhere, then showing it in about five theaters in the entire United States. I didn't know he was going to take "Now showing in select theaters" to such a new extreme. The solution seems to be to wait for it to come out on DVD, then buy it and place it next to every other film that he's ever made, just because I like him that much. If only the feeling were mutual, it wouldn't be an hours drive to the nearest theater to see The Darjeeling Limited.

Not only that, but now I have to refer to an online guide on MLA formatting to determine whether or not I need to underline the name of a movie. Though I wouldn't go so far as to say that the English language is stupid, it has adopted some rather abstract and pointless practices for the sake of being formal. It seems like the equivalent of the SAT test. Learn a rich and diverse cornucopia of grammatical nuances and rules to abide by when citing references, then leave school and the average person wipes their memory clean of the information. Important aspects of life command a solid place in long term memory, so maybe our very biology is fighting against learning this sort of intense refinement of thought, which is problematic when you describe yourself as an English major. Push through it, get the degree, then try and use it after college in moderation so as not to appear pretentious. Nobody wants to be the sort of person that's lecturing their friends on the differences between the usage of "effect" and "affect."

Not to say that most of the current social trends are any more interesting. The current model of the average teenager is completely paradoxical and the fact that it's been maintained this long is nothing short of a miracle. The basic formula has always been to eliminate the old way once it becomes too boring, or to rebuild after the previous structure has either self-destructed or has been killed by a certain ruling member of society that didn't happen to agree with it. The new generation has adopted the "emo" culture, and there doesn't seem to be any concrete reason as to why. The fundamental idea of the emo culture is that every other way of living is terrible, but so is this one. The music is based on how much the members of this group should hate themselves and that the world is a cruel place, so they all don black makeup and write terrible poetry about how their parents won't buy them a new cell phone. This is of course parodied on many occasions by me, just because I enjoy the concept of shadenfreud.

But why is anyone attracted to this sort of lifestyle? How does it perpetuate itsself? By all logical standards it should be rejected at first sight, and anyone who's actually miserable enough to follow it will eventually perform the highest and most honorable act there is in emo society: killing themselves. Despite the fact that it's naturally repellent to potential newcomers and self-destructive to those who are already in it, it's still present just about everywhere. On my brief journey to the Thousand Oaks mall I would see large amounts of these people, usually moving in groups of three. The males wear tight girl jeans that look ridiculous and have haircuts that resemble Flock Of Seagulls rotated 45 degrees around the top of the head. They wear chains that aren't connected to anything and black lip rings. It resembles a warped and dulled down version the old punk scene in terms of style, except now instead of cursing the name of the government and everything associated with it, they hate themselves and cry a lot about nothing in particular.

Maybe it's just designed as the complete opposite of the hippie generation. The general mentality then was to love yourself, everything else, and wear colorful and clothing to express that. Now it's hate yourself, everything else, and wear nothing but black. Instead of Jimi Hendrix and The Byrds we have My Chemical Romance and Fallout Boy. Hopefully this forms a cycle, and in 40 years everyone will once again be filled with "creativity enhancers" and trying to get rid of all this negative energy. This will be followed shortly by futuristic Lyndon Johnsons and Richard Nixons demonizing all these happy people that are spreading the word of peace and understanding and outlawing the very way of life, then the futuristic Charles Manson will form a murderous LSD cult and add a few nails to the coffin. Then everyone will get jobs working in a large, beige colored building with a stack of papers on their desk that needs filing and the professional title of "Assistant manager of regional distribution and marketing demographics research." The company's name is "Smith & Smith Associated".

As for me, I'll just laugh at everything within my field of vision and continue sleepwalking through the omnipresent daydream with a cheery smile on my face. There's no point in securing a false sense of self-loathing for yourself. Stop writing poetry that includes lines like "I am a black crow crying tears of blood as I drink from the deep well of absolute blackest despondency," I used to write those for high school English assignments during the poetry section of the course as a way of seeing if the teacher was dishonest enough to tell me that I was creative. I'd like to think so, but certainly not because of that.

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What boring nonsense. Someone give me a fucking topic to write about for my next English paper so I don't keep writing this shit, or my next one is just going to be about how 12 Oz Mouse is the best show ever made.

Ramblings about things that nobody cares about


Posted by Rabid-Echidna - October 5th, 2007


Most of my blog posts are poorly written ramblings I write for my English free writing class. this week's installment:

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I don't think of myself as a very good consumer. I don't think I've bought anything from a store in over a month, and I don't have any intention to do so any time soon. Advertising doesn't work very well since I always look at it as a test for the companies. A general rule is that the less a commercial has to do with the product they're supposed to be selling, the less I trust them. If you have to try and be funny to sell whatever it is you make I'll just assume that you have to compromise for the fact that it's terrible. So far Geico is at the absolute bottom, they've shifted away from the direction of saying anything about their insurance and instead made their ads about modern day cavemen and talking geckos. At least it's not surprising to find out that the company is run by people that fit into the collective idea of "they," and that they buy speed cameras for the police so that drivers get tickets and have to pay more money for Geico insurance.

It's too easy when there aren't any companies that are trustworthy anymore. I think I'll just sit here and write about why I don't trust these companies based on the ads they make.

Countrywide Home Loans - There are too many businesses in the world that don't do anything other than shift money around. The friendly looking spokesman talking about how low the interest rates are and how easy it is to borrow money from his company isn't going to get rid of the negative image of loan companies. The basic formula has always been to give people money and then cripple them with interest to the point that it takes them 50 years to pay it back and end up paying five times the initial amount when it's all added up. Keep on smiling and saying how great you are, I'll trust you because you're wearing a suit and look professional.

Truth - Non-smokers are far more annoying than smokers. We already know that smoking causes cancer, you're not giving anyone any new information. I doubt that there's a single person out there who's going to see this and suddenly have a revelation. "Cigarettes cause cancer? You've got to be kidding me. I'm going to stop smoking these things right now." I'm almost tempted to start smoking just to spite these people. Walk right up to them while they're throwing dolls into a trash can to make a point about infant mortality or something and blow the smoke right in their face. "My god, these things are fucking delicious."

WIN THIS PS3! - Answer this question that everyone in the world can answer and win this free video game system. All the credibility of spam emails and pop up ads on internet sites. At least they're more tasteful than the "How many people died in the Virginia Tech school shootings?" one that I saw the day of the Virginia Tech shootings. I guess it doesn't take long for the brilliant minds in marketing to jump on a national tragedy. "A bunch of people just died at some school in the east, let's capitalize on this!"

Perhaps I'm just too cynical. Maybe there are some companies out there that have basic human decency, but none of the big ones seem to show it. One of the few fantasies I have is a world that manages to function without money. There's certainly no need for any of this intentional deception, but without the motivation of monetary gain I figure it would sort its self out completely. No stocks, economy, corporate fraud, nothing.

I've distanced myself so much from the consumer society that it doesn't even make sense to me anymore. Feeling that I'm obligated to get a job, I went down to the Thousand Oaks mall for the first time in about a year and can't figure out how any of the stores maintain their existence. There are about seven stores that are devoted entirely to selling sunglasses, about nine that sell nothing but diamond jewelery, and the majority of the other stores sell clothing. I didn't know there was enough of a market for sunglasses that there could be more than one sunglasses store in any given location that could sustain its self. Does this mean that there's some massive demand for this specific, obscure item that I don't know about? Buying a pair for five bucks at a pharmacy isn't good enough, so it's necessary to get multiple pairs and buy them from fancy stores where all the employees wear black business shirts with ties and slick their hair back. There must be a high concentration of oculophiles living in my general area that stroll around on the streets with a pair of shades hanging around their necks, wearing another, and a third pair pushed up on top of their heads, and I can only wonder why I haven't seen any.

I've had a long running hatred of diamonds. The idea that you only love someone if you're willing to buy them a small, useless rock is completely absurd. If the argument that being shiny is the reason it's symbolic of love, buying a cubic zirconium for $10 should be just as valid, but that's never seemed to work quite as well. The only reason diamonds are significant is because they're expensive, and the idea of attaching a dollar sign to what's supposed to be one of the greatest and most pure human emotions is disgusting.

Becoming the model consumer has no appeal to me. I think I'll continue to get my kicks from human interaction rather than attempting to gain happiness by surrounding myself with things that I don't need. A billion dollars and all the fancy gizmos that technology can produce are never going to be acceptable substitutes for the fundamental things that make a life worth living, no matter how much the materialistic viewpoint disagrees with me.

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WALL OF TEXT. PEOPLE? MORE LIKE SHEEPLE, AMIRITE LOL? My aim is to scare away the two or three people that might actually read this. The joys of being irrelevant to the new generation of Newgrounds users.

If that wasn't enough, PHYSICS JOKE!

Spoiler:


Posted by Rabid-Echidna - September 27th, 2007


NOBODY READS BLOGS. NEWGROUNDS IS MYSPACE. "AMERICA IS THE BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD," SAYS UKRANIAN FOLK SINGER LEGEND CELLARDOOR6.

DRUGS RUIN LIVES; THIS COULD BE YOU IN THE NEAR FUTURE.

This just in:


Posted by Rabid-Echidna - September 10th, 2007


I spent it watching Chaser's War on Everything and reading shit for sociology class.

I should go to another country and get drunk. Or just do it here. It's not like anyone gives a shit. Maybe tomorrow.

Birthday hooray


Posted by Rabid-Echidna - September 7th, 2007


SO, despite that pest of an idiot being incredibly inconvenient for roughly a month, at least some good came of it. I've been trying to track down a Wii for a while, unsuccessfully, and the second time he came back he informed me that his pal was selling one. Getting one from Gamestop seemed kind of futile, since their shipment makes it so you have a very small chance of coming across one. They don't know when the shipments of Nintendos are coming in, so they tell you to randomly call them between 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM, when there might possibly be some in stock.

After doing this for about two weeks to no avail, the guy calls me up and says that he's trying to sell it again. I go there, give him my $400, and get his Wii along with a bunch of extra shit that he had bought for it. On the way back home I check in to Gamestop to buy Corruption, only to have the cashier tell me that there was a Wii in the back that nobody knew about yet. Whatever.

Wii + Metroid Prime 3

Doubleplusgood like no other.

This just in:


Posted by Rabid-Echidna - August 30th, 2007


Any sort of simplicity in life seems to have been eradicated by this endlessly stupid society we've all constructed. I can't help but think that we might be better off doing away with the majority of the human population and reverting to hunter-gatherer tribes.

Recently, I ran into a spot of trouble with a certain friend of mine. I wrote some shitty, rushed topic about it as the event was still in motion, and the end result seems to be rather different than what I had originally thought. At first I thought this so called friend of mine had tried to steal $2000 from my bank account, only to later find out that it was from my parents' account. At a first glance, this is basically the defnition of an ingrate. We took him into our home, fed him every day, let him do whatever he wanted for a week and a half before he moved on, then he tried to rob us as a final act. Anger is the initial raction, but add desperation to the mix and it becomes pity.

I was unaware that he had been ostracized from his entire family. He got into some sort of argument with his parents and they basically threw him out on the street with no means of survival. You would think that there might be some sort of community support group he could go to in this situation, but it appears that you're more fortunate to be a dog or cat if homeless than an actual person. After drifting around between various places or residence, I was the next person on the list. No money or belongings to his name, he needed at least some base amount of financial security, whether or not it was to be acquired by less than honest means.

So now I'm left with three options:

1. Kick him out into the street to die
2. Go through with the legal action that we initially started and send him to jail
3. Try and get his parents to take him back

Total abandonment and damnation to hell seem to be a bit extreme, but the last option proves problematic as well. His father is supposedly in Norway, and his mother proves to be incredibly difficult to contact. She promised to retreive him provided that he acquires a job with which to support himself, but we've not heard from her beyond the initial conversation two days ago. I'm not considering the first two options unless he kills someone for some reason. Money isn't real, I'll wait for some real evil to be done before I get all draconian on his ass.

But whatever. It's up to him what he does now. I'll let him stay here again until he can contact his mother, because I'm a good person. Plus, it's hilarious how awkward it was eating dinner with him after we'd sent the cops after him. SILLY BEN, WHAT WERE YOU EXPECTING?

The Number Is Insufficient, Euthanize the Swine