A Collecticon of Rants and Thoughts that You Didn’t Have
- Suburban culture. I know it’s dreadful, but never moreso than on reality television. By all means, cheap tv producers, tell us consumers what we should want. Define us!
- Sanitary socks. I came across this headline in one of my high school yearbooks. Despite my efforts, I can’t seem to find any other reference to it. I don’t even really know what a sanitary sock is. This speaks to the idea that high school kids, in this case, the yearbook staff, really are still kids, and don’t really know what the world is like.

- Emotionalism, emotionalists: My friends and I in college went through a high and mighty period during which we thought the stupidest thing in the world we to let emotions guide our lives. In our defense, we were on to something; I see people ride emotional roller coasters to their destructions, all because they couldn’t find the truth rationally.
- Over the years: One thing has become increasingly clear over the years: I can count on fewer and fewer friends. There have been people who I regarded as “kindred spirits,” who have disappeared from my life without explanation. It leads me to believe that they were not really friends, but simply wanted something from me.
- The formula seems to be: Ignore “nice” guys; hook up with douchebag guys; pretend to be surprised when they ignore you, cheat on you or hit you; break up or divorce; say, “All men are pigs.” Repeat.
- The political power grab: The narrative seems to be, “We will consolidate our power so we can make the world the way we want it to be.” But has this ever worked out? Which super-powerful tyrants ever constructed the utopia they claimed to imagine? Stalin? Pol Pot? Are the people of North Korea happy? Have they ever constructed a masterpiece society? Is that even possible? Or do we have to accept that human life is a filthy stew of dissent and dissatisfaction? In the end, it’s important to realize that Hitler didn’t want a happy, productive society. He wanted to destroy the Jews and dominate the world. Beyond that, he didn’t really have a vision. In some ways, Adolf Hitler was mostly successful in achieving his goals. Seeing so many dictators want to the same things, power and control over people through violence and death, really speaks to the fragility of the human psyche. So sure, maybe Donald Trump or Mike Pence or Vladimir Putin could crush all the homosexuals and liberals and atheists and intellectuals, but why would they want to? When has that ever worked? And if it did work, what would be left? Robotic, monosyllabic cretins who have nothing to contribute but 40 hours a week and a house in the suburbs?
- The sexual spectrum: Stop telling me that you don’t mind people “being gay, as long as they don’t force it on me.” No gays are forcing anything on you, and they never have. This is just another way of saying you hate gays. Also, stop saying, “hate the sin, love the sinner,” because sexuality is both an identity and an activity, so if you hate homosexuality, you hate homosexuals. Finally, stop saying that “all gays are born gay.” Until you have met every gay person, you don’t know this. It is very likely that everyone is born in a unique place on the sexual spectrum, and that every person makes choices based on that.
- Peaked too soon: how many people do I know who peaked when they were 18 or 20, then let life blow-dry them with mediocrity? How many true geniuses did I hold in my arms, only to run into them later and hear about their boring jobs and boring kids and boring weight gain? The worst are the “writers.” Saying you’re a writer doesn’t make you one, and a handful of poems in a high school lit class isn’t going to cut it. I’ll never forgive them for not living up to my expectations.
- The hero: I came into the living room to find my wife not in her recliner, but on the big blue couch. She told me she’d been run off by a jumping spider. I found it on the back of her recliner and killed it, but it did give me the willies. Question: why do I welcome these harmless, beneficial creatures in my garden, but am completely revulsed by them in the house?
You don’t put toast in a toaster. You don’t heat hot water. Cows don’t drink milk.

“It is very likely that everyone is born in a unique place on the sexual spectrum…”
Yes!
‘Finally, stop saying that “all gays are born gay.”’
While I agree with your premise here (that we don’t actually know), I think the “born this way” sentiment arose as a backlash to the common “you chose it” accusation. In that sense, I don’t mind people using it. I wish they’d be more accurate and simply say “no, we didn’t choose this.” When people (usually Christians, it seems) claim being gay is a choice, it makes me wonder if they actually *chose* to be straight at some point. Did they, in their early teens, have a mixture of attractions, but decide: “No, I’m only going to followup on my heterosexual attractions?” Because that would be weird.
“Cows don’t drink milk.”
Is this true? (I don’t know much about cows, but I thought they were like other mammals and drank their mother’s milk.)
Adult bovines (cows, bulls, steers) drink water. Only calves drink milk.
Let me also add that asking someone who is gay to “choose” to be straight is just as ludicrous and impossible as asking straights to “choose” to be gay. The next time a xtian trotts this out, tell me to “choose” to be gay for a week, and see how fast they tell you they were born straight.
“Only calves drink milk.”
Ah, I was including “baby cows” in the larger group “all cows”. ;-)
“The next time a xtian trots this out, tell [them] to “choose” to be gay for a week, and see how fast they tell you they were born straight.”
Exactly.
(Except I strongly suspect quite a few of them were born/developed GAY, but they’ve been conditioned to feel horrible about that, and to believe it’s a heinous sin, so they work extra-hard to condemn gayness in others. This is why, I think, so many preachers and right-wing Congresspersons get caught in hotel rooms or airport bathrooms with same-sex partners.)