When six year olds attack...

This is not really about kids doing things, but about grown people who claim to be intelligent, but insist upon fighting their battles as a child would.  Kids get upset when they don't get their way.  So do adults, but one hopes that we handle things in a better, more mature fashion.  And we have to handle things more maturely because the way kids wage their battles does not succeed when faced with an opponent with any type of backbone or intellect.

The tools kids have to wage their campaigns are very limited.  They include, causing a scene, yelling really loudly, and just flat out lying to hopefully somehow change the perception of reality around them.

This brings us to what went on at Chik-Fil-A this past week.  As I posted before, some people got all ticked off at Dan Cathy for making statements supporting his view of marriage.  His statements shouldn't have surprised anyone as its no secret that the man is a strong Christian.  However, the dum-dums out there began wailing about hate speech and intolerance.  This is the lying in hopes of changing perception of reality.  Cathy made no statements about hating anyone.  Also his stores do not discriminate at all in regards to hiring or serving customers.  That's tolerance.  That's the definition of tolerance.

The yelling loudly, was mostly done in the way people yell loudly nowadays, on the internet.  There were all these posts and articles denouncing Cathy and his company.  Most of them distorting the truth.  Media matters even posted forged documents.  Then there was the moron who decided to film himself being a complete douchbag to a poor girl working at the drive-thru at a Chik-Fil-A.

Finally, we get to the causing a scene portion in which same sex couples kissed in stores and took pictures, with one couple proclaiming "We win".

But who is the real winner here?  Chik-Fil-A.  They posted record sales this week.  They didn't really react to the same sex kissing thing except with a few amusing bits of giving sandwiches and lemonade to a few of the couples.  That guy who made the video?  He got fired from his job.  So this little campaign against Chik-Fil-A has completely backfired.  This is good, not only because it reaffirms that civilized folks won't cave to an irrational mob, but also because I love Chik-Fil-A.  Its my favorite fast food place ever.

This of course isn't the first time groups have used these tactics.  Remember the stupidity that was Everybody Draw Muhammad Day?  That was been a bunch of people got ticked off that nutjob Muslims made death threats to artists making cartoons of Muhammad and a Dutch cartoonist was actually killed.  This was a case of there being a legitimate issue, but the group that decided to take action did so in the stupidest way possible.  The plan was to put so many pictures of Muhammad out there that Islamic rule about not depicting the Prophet (because they consider that idolatry) would be crushed in the name of freedom of speech and expression.  What actually happened was stupid people got their lulz on and Pakistan shut down the internet in their country.  Why did they do that?  Because the people in that country did not want to see those pictures and it makes western civilization look like a bunch of douchebags.  So the internet, being the biggest tool for free speech around, got shut down because of people abusing that freedom.  Probably good thing because I don't want to see what kind of government gets elected over there riding a wave of anti-western sentiment.

And of course there the biggest example of people throwing a collective hissyfit like a gaggle of petulant children: the Occupy goobers.  Remember when these pinheads were running around saying how they were going to change everything and weren't going to leave their little camps until things changed.  They didn't even know what kind of changes they wanted made, but as long as people who had more money than them suffered, they were cool with it.  Massive fail.  The only thing that happened there was sexual assaults, people getting stuff stolen, money getting wasted, and dopes now have a police record.  But at least some old hippies got to relive their glory days, right?  And the pathetic thing is some people just can't let this one go.  They want to be the liberal version of the Tea Party or something, but have netted zero results in anything productive.  So, the all the lying, yelling, and causing a scene amounted to squat.

So what do we learn from this?

Being louder doesn't win a debate.

You can try to distort truth, but people will only put up with a certain amount of BS.

Causing a scene to try to bully an issue will always fail against having an issue or idea strong enough that a scene forms on its own.

The thing is, these three examples do have legitimate issues at the hearts of them.  Equal rights for homosexual couples, artistic freedom of expression, and current economic/social-political climates are all things that should be up for intelligent discussion and debate so that one day, hopefully, we can make some meaningful progress that everyone can live with.  However, there'll always be those that have that gut instinct to stand in the middle of the grocery aisle and scream and bawl because mommy didn't buy the Lucky Charms.  When and if those people wise up and grow up we have another generation coming up and there's a lot of them with a very entitled mentality that leads to this sort of crap.

So be ready.

And eat more chicken.

LA Prison Blues

OSU! Its Friday, December 9, 2011, I'm ready for a good beating, and the is The Side. Got a Karate seminar that starts this evening and goes all day tomorrow. Really looking forward to it because it should be really great, and I don't have to travel and miss a bunch of work for it.

Quick addendum to Wednesday's post. I did indeed return the cards to Joey at Kings who gave me a refund. He pretty much thought it was BS that anyone would have the cards cheaper in this area, and looked shocked that someone would helm me up over $1.25. When I got home the Missus said that the girl in question claims that she knows Joey and would get the cards from him at a cheaper price. I'm doubting that. I'm going to be having a very good conversation next time I go to the shop.

On to current business. There's a guy I know on Google Plus, Ryan Drewery. We don't agree on a lot of things, but he's a good guy. I respect him. It seems some people who were arrested at some Occupy LA thing were still in jail even though people that had been arrested for worse crimes weren't held that long. Ryan posed the question: why is this? Its a good question, and deserves an answer.

10 of them.

REASONS WHY THE OCCUPY LA DOOFUSES ARE STILL IN JAIL: THE TOP 10!

10: Less chances of getting sexually assaulted in jail as opposed to their camp site.

9: Gives them something else to bitch and moan about.

8: Technically, they are still on public property.

7: Less homeless people milling about.

6: They're changing their focus to Occupy Jail to confuse people.

5: The jail had wi-fi, so the they can use their iPhones and iPads to go online and gripe about how bad off they are.

4: Jail smells better than their camp site.

3: All they really wanted was three hots and a cot.

2: They refuse to leave until they finish the game of Monopoly they started. Unfortunately every time someone starts winning the game the other players take all his money and redistribute it evenly to all the players. This is immediately followed by all of them yelling, "SEE? SEE?! IT REALLY DOES WORK!"

1: The line "I've done time" doesn't mean shit until you've been in longer than Henry David Thoreau.

MUSIC!

You just know those folks sipping coffee and smoking big cigars are those pesky 1%ers. Great cover of a great song. Hail the Rev!



That's all for me today. Hope to still be in one piece by Sunday. I'm sure i will be, and that piece will likely be bruised. See y'all then.

Complain, complain, complain

Hey guys. Its Friday, October, 7, 2011, I'm running behind, and this is The Side. Got to head out to work so let's jump right to it.

HIPPIES!!

I'm annoyed greatly at the occupy people. To be honest, I'm amazed that its lasted this long. I shouldn't be surprised because they seem like a dim bunch and it hasn't gotten through their heads that what they are doing isn't going to make much of a difference in anything.

At first I wasn't really bothered by it, it was just amusing. One thing set me off though. It was those dopes saying that they represent the 99% of people who aren't the top income earners. I'm not part of that 1% of top income earners, and those shmucks out there do not represent me. First off, unlike them, I tend to bathe regularly. Second, I understand the fact that the top 1% of income earners pay 40% of the total revenue taken in by the income tax, so the moronic statement that they aren't paying their "fair share" irks me in its ignorance.

Some of them are there for reasons that I can get behind. Some are not happy about the government bail outs of certain companies. Others think that there should be an investigation/audit of the Federal Reserve. However, a lot of this gets lost due to lack of cohesion. Basically, you have a bunch of people who are ticked off and they said we're all going to show up somewhere are everyone can join us. Well, then a bunch of people who were ticked off for other reasons. So then you have a bunch of ticked off people with no clear message. That makes it pretty easy for clowns like the Moveon.org people or the Labor Union goons to come in and try to subvert whatever they're doing and make it all about their message.

I really got ticked off over the Brooklyn Bridge stunt when a bunch of them decided they were going to march across the Brooklyn Bridge. About 700 of them got arrested. Good. Throw the book at them. You can't just block off a public bridge because you want to. Emergency personnel may need to cross and seconds may mean a life. When that story broke I completely washed my hands of this.

There's been a lot of comparisons with things like the Arab Spring and tea party movement. Both are bullshit. The uprisings and protests in the Middle East were people dealing with Governments in which they didn't have much of a say. They were left with no other option than to take to the streets. That's also unlike the Tea Party Movement in which people took to the streets for legal and planned rallies. Their message of lower taxes and smaller government was clear. They worked within the system and used the ballot box to effect a change. That's why America is a great country. Despite what some of those occupy people will tell you, your vote does matter. This is still a Representative Republic and you can contact those that are elected to represent you.

Its easy to get ticked off at rich people. Jealousy is a power emotion. It doesn't help at all that our current President includes class warfare crap just about every time he opens his mouth in front of a microphone nowadays. The Pop-Star-in-Chief doesn't understand economics, which has shown greatly over his Presidency, and now he's in campaign mode and looking to fire up people to vote for him again. Folks should be occupying the beltway. So, while there's some of the Occupy people that have a good reason to be upset, the majority are suckers that have been played.

All of them are doing it wrong anyways. Their shenanigans will do nothing but provide some revenue for the cities they're in once the fines get handed down from the courts. If they were smart, they'd go home. Get organized. Get a cohesive message that is actually intelligent and not just "we hates rich peoples", and then use the tools they have been using to gather people in one place to be useless and smelly, to use the system that is in place to effect a meaningful and lasting change.

But I doubt they will. That's fine. Doesn't affect me anyways, since no one's going to "occupy" Chesapeake. I just want them to stop lumping me in with them just because I'm not one of the top money makers in the country. I'm not them.

MUSIC!!

Might as well have some complaint rock.



That's it for me today. Comic book type stuff coming up Sunday. see y'all then.