⛧ First Church of Hypocrisy, Blasphemy, and Self-Righteousness ⛧

Fun idea: take a second-hand thrift-store paperback Bible (if such a thing exists), write on it "free toilet paper," tear out a bunch of pages to make it look used, and leave it in a public bathroom.

That idea inspired by my years-long dream of one day having enough money to go around to scores/hundreds of hotels and motels to steal those Gideon Bibles from them to grind them into paper pulp and make them into Bible Toilet Paper. Probably have printed on it both "Bible Toilet Paper: Made from 100% recycled bibles!" and the following quote from Principia Discordia: "Wipe thine ass with what is written and grin like a ninny at what is spoken."

"Autism moms" committing murder because they can't cope with their kid, and trans kids committing suicide because they can't cope with the hatred leveled at them. If anything, this is opposite of how it should be. If you can't cope with your kid (generally because you're too fucking stupid to learn how to listen to an autistic child's needs and therefore you keep trying to force them to be something they will never be), then either give the kid to somebody who will do a better job (like an autistic adult {but not me, I'd be a horrible parent}) or end yourself, and only yourself. If you murder a child for any reason you go to the special Hell. These autistic moms who murder their kids... if it were up to me, they would go straight to Guantanamo Bay and get tortured to death. Ideally, they should be then reanimated, healed, and start the whole process all over again for centuries since there IS no such place as Hell, so we should MAKE one specifically for people who abuse or kill kids.

Meanwhile, trans kids, instead of listening to these bigots and buying their bullshit about you being less than them, punch them the fuck out. Anyone making you feel bad about yourself for who you are deserves to be kicked in the goddamn teeth. You, trans kid, you're perfect as you are. The bigots are human garbage. The bigots are sociopaths. The bigots are the ones who should be killing themselves, not you.

Don't get suicidal, get PISSED. Don't kill yourself, donkey kick your bullies in the fucking teeth!!! I guarantee you that these bigots are cowards, and if you fight back they will run away crying for their mommies like the yellow bellied cowardly dipshits they are!!!

And if the bigot in your life is your family, well... if they're not actively abusing you, ignore them and bide your time until you can leave. And if they ARE abusing you, well... my dad told me a story that when he finally confronted his abuser with a knife, the guy fled like the coward he is. Of course my dad was fully adult by then and actually knew how to use the knife. If you're still small and weak, well, that's what poison is for. Do a little digging at the library for poisons that have no taste or color, slip a little in your abuser's food or drink. If you kill your abuser, that's self defense.

But I get it if you don't think you can do that. So above all, just persevere. Killing yourself is letting the bigots win. Choose to live. Make every day you're still alive be a weapon of spite against your enemy. When they tell you to kill yourself, tell them "No. You have no power over me," and LIVE. Every day you continue to live is a backhanded slap in the face of bigots! The best revenge is outliving your enemies!

You wake up and you're the only person left on Earth, what is the first thing(s) you will do?

Once I was done being confused and searching for people, I'd find a ham radio set and a book on how to use the thing, and start sending out messages in case there were others. Probably try to contact the ISS, too, just in case.

Once I'd become convinced that I wasn't going to find anybody anytime soon, I'd take some time to mourn and cry. Probably at the same time, I'd start looking for car batteries and equipment to try to rig up something to keep my CPAP running once the power starts going out, and solar panels to charge the batteries, since I literally cannot sleep without my CPAP.

Having determined that everybody just vanished, I would hunt around the neighborhood for the nicest house to squat in because my apartment is so small, and I'm all alone now, so why not? Probably also scavenge stuff from businesses and people's houses as I go. I'd focus on jerky, canned meats, MRE's, and other non-perishables. But I'd also look for porn, books to read, etc.

Oh, and I would have to raid a few pharmacies for my meds. Luckily I don't have any meds I can't live without, so when they run out I'll be annoyed but it won't be a huge deal. About the only thing I'd really need a lot of for my remaining life is pain relievers, since I get a lot of headaches.

I think I would clear all the meat out of the nearby stores, cook or freeze or otherwise preserve what I can, and pile the rest of it in a dumpster, pour gasoline on it, and light it on fire so it doesn't rot and stink up the building, or attract predators. I'd do the same for houses I break into, as well.

Since this is Portland, in my house hunting I'd probably pick a house with a chicken coop. Chickens may be mean little bastards, but they're relatively easy to keep, being omnivores. It'd be a long term supply of protein, and I know how to preserve eggs without a fridge or freezer. I haven't done it before, but I remember the instructions. Oh and hopefully I could find a place that also has goats. Which I would keep mostly for meat. (I don't care for milk, and I don't know how to make cheese.) Also I would need some way to control all the Himalayan Blackberry patches that grow around here, as well as the English Ivy once the people aren't there anymore to keep it from going out of control like the invasive weed it is.

Assuming cats and dogs are still alive, I'd let all the cats out of the houses and pounds (except a few of them for pets) and leave the dogs inside because dogs scare me, and I'm gonna have problems with the coyotes soon enough as it is, without having to deal with feral dogs as well. Or... no, scratch that. I'd go to the pound, get the dog-catcher equipment, round up a bunch of dogs from houses, and put them in the kennel for meat later. Feed them some of the meat before it goes bad, then when I ran out of meat, I'd raid the stores for dog food. I'd also raid a pet store so that when I ran out of dog food, I could feed them guinea pigs and other small animals. I'd probably eat the rabbits myself.

I'd go to a sport's shop and see if I can get a bow and arrows, or crossbows and bolts. (I can't stand the noise of guns, and I don't trust them anyway.) It'd be a learning curve, but less so than a gun I think, and I already have a little experience with bow and arrow.

Actually I'd probably get guns and ammo too, but in that case I'd tie them to posts around my property in a great circle, and tie strings around the triggers. Then if any coyotes or feral dogs (some probably were being walked when people vanished) or other critters come too close, I pull the appropriate string and BANG! If it doesn't kill them, it scares them away.

Oh and I would only wear as much clothing as necessary. In warm months, I'd just run around in nothing but sandals and an umbrella, and I'd have a belt with knives, sporran pouches to store jerky and other food in, a water bottle hanging from the belt, and anything else I might need with me when I'm out and about.

I'd find the nearest plant nursery or store with plants in it, and use the seedlings to make a garden for veggies. In the mean time, though, I would make the several hour long walk to the nearest Asian market I know about and scavenge all their pickled vegetables and fruits. Even if they taste bad, I need my veggies, and pickled veggies last longer than fresh ones. Then I'd probably raid the library for books about how to pickle veggies.

I guess once all the seedlings ran out on the annual plants, I'd have to start trying to grow things from seeds. Not looking forward to that. I guess I could also add books about local edible wild plants to my library or book store raids.

TBH, I'm not in great shape, and some places I'd need to go are a long goddamn way away. I do know how to drive, but as others have pointed out, gasoline goes bad. Cars would be useful for a while, but for long term use I would scavenge an e-bike from one of the local stores, as well as a trailer for it. (Using the solar panels to charge it, of course.)

Oh I'd probably scavenge inside the adult shops, too, for vibrators and porn and maybe even sex dolls.

Hmm... if this really happened, I'd also have time and space to go dancing naked in the woods.

Anyway, back on track: I'd probably start going insane after a while, so I'd need some kind of hobby to delay that as long as possible. Probably go downtown with a couple of the dogs I spared from the stew pot, have them carry stuff for me as we went up to the top of one of the skyscrapers and then I'd use a DIY slingshot made of rubber tubing and start chucking large rocks as far as possible just for funsies, see if I could hit any of the nearby buildings. Or if the power was somehow still working, find a freight elevator and drive a car up there and set things up so the car(s) can just drift in neutral off the side of the building. And motorcycles, too.

Or, much simpler to do, I could drive to a military base, break in, scavenge the rocket launchers, and then set up a series of cars for target practice somewhere. Oooh! Better yet: drive to some small town and just completely obliterate it with the rocket launchers. Maybe even drive a tank there and start using it to bulldoze buildings and cars.

Wait, no, fuck that. Go big or go home! I could drive to Seattle and just completely destroy as much of the city as possible.

Eh, that's enough for now.

Something I don't get: why is it that people will regularly talk about "X breed isn't good with kids," "Y breed can't be an indoor dog because it needs to run around a lot more than other breeds," and other breed-specific behaviors with nobody saying anything against it, but the moment you suggest certain breeds of dog are more aggressive than others - like pit bulls - then suddenly everyone is up in arms calling you a dog racist?

If it's possible to breed behaviors like "not good with kids," "barks a lot," "doesn't bark much," "needs to run around more," and "likes to hunt more than other breeds," then surely it's also possible that breeds that were bred to be aggressive are in fact more aggressive, and therefore more dangerous?

Honestly, it takes a massive amount of cognitive dissonance to believe certain behaviors can be bred into dogs while also believing aggression isn’t one of those breedable behaviors.

The Incubators in Madoka Magica are proof of what I've been saying for years about species like the Vulcans: Not having any emotions (evolutionarily unlikely) would make a species pretty much the ultimate psychopaths. As we see in one timeline, Kyubey would - for lack of a better term - "cheerfully" welcome the destruction of an entire planet full of sapient life forms (earth and humans) to save the universe. No hesitation, no moment of silence for the lost lives, nothing but the satisfaction of a job well done. Lacking emotions, they lack our values. Their ethics are what would be classified as blue/orange morality - IE their ideas of good and evil are on a completely different axis than ours, with very few similarities to ours.

Of course, the Vulcans aren't like that, as they DO have emotions, but they suppress them. Honestly, the Vulcans are even more unlikely than the Incubators, because any species that tried to suppress their emotions like that would have pressure build up and build up until they either had to vent their emotions violently or go insane. I know because I have personal experience trying to suppress my emotions, and the pressure building until it explodes out. For me, it came out in the form of violent angry outbursts. Though some of those were, I'm sure, autistic meltdowns, I know not all of them were. My autistic meltdowns started to reduce in number for many years in my early adolescence as I came to peace with the transition that had been causing them. But then I had another set of issues in my middle adolescence that caused me to start suppressing my emotions, and in place of the meltdowns I had violent outbursts as the emotions exploded from the pressure.

So basically, Vulcans would last maybe a few hundred years before they all went murderously insane and became a plague on the galaxy. Heh, it would be kinda fun to write an alternate universe Star Trek story where exactly that happened.

In fact, the Vulcan killer in that one episode of DS9 kinda proves my point. So many people he had fondness for died, and so quickly, that he went insane and became a serial killer. Even with however many centuries of evolutionary pressure to aid in suppressing their emotions, those emotions overwhelmed his ability to cope and he went violently insane.

Oh and now I'm picturing another story where a Vulcan character is born with some genetic anomaly that futzes with their emotional suppression systems and they lose control.

As to Lt. Commander Data, he *says* he feels no emotions, and he does act more logically and calmly than others, but there are signs all throughout the series that he actually DOES have emotions, they're just a lot more subtle than human emotions. I can understand why he would feel like he had no emotions, when his are so much less intense than human emotions. My fan theory is that his father DID give him emotions, just very subtle ones, and then later made the emotion chip to give him more human like emotions.

Although another fan theory I have, which may or may not contradict that last one, is that Data actually has a condition similar to autism. Plainly it's not the same thing, as autistic people do have emotions and can have very intense emotions at times, and our oddities are basically the result of being overly empathic and overwhelmed, plus a deficiency of the kind of empathy that allows us to understand WHY someone is feeling that way. But since Data has similar struggles of trying to work out other people's emotions and why they're feeling that way, it's very similar to autism in that way. I don't know if any other human mental conditions are more similar to what he has, or if what he has is unique given his artificial origins, but I know I as an autistic person have always identified strongly with Data and many other androids.

But getting back on track: Realistically, a species like the Vulcans suffering under a philosophy that told them to suppress all emotions wouldn't work at all. They'd either go insane, develop lots of stress related illnesses, or give up. As evidence, I present you with Christianity, a religion that is all about suppressing natural desires such as lust, greed, and gluttony under the excuse that they are sinful feelings. Clearly it did not work as intended, or maybe it did, as Western culture's greatest level of conformity to these beliefs yielded the Victorian people, for whom a combo of forced ignorance and forced conformity to Christianity's founding principles resulted in an epidemic of psychological stress and mental illness so bad that without it Freud might never have had reason to invent the science of psychology at all.

Alternatively, if the Vulcans felt strongly enough about the evils of their emotions, they might have had the scientific progress to use genetic engineering to remove or modify their emotions. Now I don't think it would be a good idea to get rid of all emotions, as fear motivates people to avoid things that hurt or kill them, pleasure rewards them for procreating and eating. The closest humans get to having no emotions is those with severe depression becoming apathetic. I suppose logic alone could be used to motivate people, but given that logic is highly subjective, there being all kinds of things that are logical on the surface but end up being completely bad ideas, I think there would come a time when a culture with only logic to guide them would go just as wrong as a species with emotion guiding them.

Of course we know the Vulcans didn't remove their emotions, they suppress them. Which just wouldn't work, as I've said, because of building internal emotional pressure. Oh sure, there's the pon farr every 7 years, but I honestly don't think that would be enough of a vent to make such a species capable of continuing without insanity or mental illness. So no, the Vulcans are completely unrealistic and would never be possible as a species in the real world.

But setting that aside, assuming the Vulcans were able to remove their emotions, they would lose any possibility of a normal moral compass and would likely develop a logic-driven blue/orange morality. I think the Incubators of PMMM would agree wholeheartedly with Spock's quote "The good of the many outweighs the good of the few or the one." Which is very concerning. Whether Vulcans lacked emotions or suppressed them so well that they may as well have had no emotions, either way their logic would develop an blue/orange morality that humans would have no way to comprehend. So in the unlikely event that the Vulcans could exist as the Star Trek universe has them, there's no way in Hell that humans would ever become friends with them. There would just be no way. Oh sure, we'd start out friendly, but slowly here and there we'd come across more and more incidents that revealed the extent of their blue/orange morality, just as we see in PMMM with how the magical girls figure out Kyubey's moral axis. And just like PMMM, humans would - possibly in as few as a hundred years or so - work out enough of the Vulcan morality axis as being utterly horrifying, through incidents that showcased that species' willingness to sacrifice many sapient lives for what would seem truly bizarre or random reasons to us, and conclude that Vulcans are The Enemy.

Speaking of, the Federation's horrible Prime Directive sounds like something that a species with blue/orange morality would think of. Sure, on the surface it sounds like a good idea, but given the many examples we see in Star Trek of it being used to prevent giving aid to sapient life forms when their entire species is about to go extinct from a natural disaster just because they might worship the Federation's people as gods, one has to wonder about it, as that doesn't sound like something humans would think of. In fact, the humans of Star Trek frequently betray that Prime Directive. Could it be because the Vulcans are the ones that came up with the idea, and it's an example of an idea from a species with blue/orange morality? I think so. Because it doesn't sound like something humans would come up with for their own use. Not unless human culture went completely sideways into unknown territory before the founding of the Federation, and the evidence does not support such a thing having happened.

The other day, there was this post I saw on Tumblr that was talking about some service that will bait "your man" with a "catfish" to see if he's cheating. I read it to understand it, and then scrolled by like "Ooookayyyy..." But today I thought about it again, because it bugged me. My initial response to it today was "Boy it would be funny to see that backfire on somebody. He gets the catfish and he's like 'Who is this? How did you get this number?' She keeps trying to bait him, and he's like 'I don't have time for this BS' and blocks the number."

But then I started to think about why the post bothered me so much, and I figured it out. First, that the whole thing of trying to out a cheater, that whole culture of jealousy and doing all kinds of privacy-invading shit to try to out a cheater, just struck me as creepy and wrong somehow. I wasn't sure why, at first, but now I know why: because if a man were doing that shit, most of my fellow feminists would be calling him out on that bullshit, calling him out as a stalker or an abuser or something (not sure the right term). But because it's women doing it, oh suddenly it's crickets all around.

Now I'm not saying the two things are equal in their wrongness, no. Men have a lot of social power and privilege that means when they do that kind of jealous boyfriend thing, most of society supports them, to a point. It's viewed as a sign that he cares, that he's protective, when in fact he's anything but. And the way men and women express jealousy (perhaps even how they *feel* jealousy, but that's speculation) is very different, generally. In our culture, female jealousy tends to be based out of insecurity, fear of how they'll manage without their partner, and a lot of times out of fear that their partner either doesn't love them or doesn't respect them. So their expression of their jealousy expresses these feelings, and then can and often does lead to stuff like trying to out a cheater, and if the suspect is not, in fact, a cheater... well, that can damage a relationship.

Men, on the other hand, tend to express jealousy in a very territorial manner, fighting with others over their territory. Male jealousy (in the West, anyway) also tends to be more violent towards women because of how they're taught to objectify women. Women are their property, and if that property refuses to cooperate, they can get rid of that property, one way or another (or so they tend to feel).

So no, not the same in their wrongness at all, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be called out just because the person doing it is a woman. Feminism means equality of the sexes, and therefore posessive behavior needs to be called out and disparaged regardless of who's doing it.

But at a more fundamental level, what bothered me about the post was that I just don't 'get' jealousy. I've posted before, I think, about how I just don't 'get' jealousy, mainly because I'm fairly sure I've never felt it, ever, in my life. I have felt a lot of emotions in my almost 33 years of life, but never jealousy, from what I've been able to figure out. Which I feel grateful for, because jealousy pushes people away; jealousy is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it would be a really difficult life being pansexual/bisexual (as well as polyamorous) and jealous all the time, so I feel I dodged a bullet there.

Sure, I've felt envy here and there, but envy and jealousy are not the same thing. Envy is an emotion that makes you strive to achieve something; you envy someone's bike, envy makes you go out and earn money to buy your own bike. You envy someone's political power, envy helps you strive to achieve your own political power. You envy someone having a lover, it helps you strive to get your own lover. Whereas jealousy is fearful and posessive; you feel jealous of someone's bike, jealousy makes you steal their bike. You feel jealous of someone's political power, jealousy makes you tear them down or kill them. You feel jealous of someone having a lover, you try to posess their lover (or them, depending on preference). You feel jealous of a loved one talking to others, it makes you act in a way that is posessive, controlling, and hoarding---and nobody likes being the object of jealousy; and thus, jealousy and love are mutually exclusive. Jealousy may arise from a certain kind of "love" (selfish love, if you can call that love, which I don't), but when jealousy arises, it pushes love out; the two emotions cannot coexist for long.

Yes, I said it; jealousy and love are mutually exclusive emotions. Oh, it may not seem so, but it's been my observation that what a lot of people mistake as the emotion of love is actually something else, some kind of pseudo-love, and not real love. Real love is not jealous, and is not selfish. But pseudo-love is entirely selfish, and highly prone to jealousy. That whole "you complete me" or "I can't live without you" stuff is not love, that's pseudo-love. I have only ever felt real love, non-selfish love. Not saying real love is selfless, though; real love is neither selfish nor selfless.

Another point of clarification: the emotion I deem "selfish love" is not the same as occasionally being selfish in a relationship, even when that selfishness is a little excessive. Selfishness can be good in small doses, but it's toxic in larger doses, and large doses of selfishness can occur even in a relationship based out of true, non-selfish love.

Where "selfish love" differs from real love is in its most basic qualities; selfish love is a fear-based emotion. Out of fear of loneliness, one may cling to another in what they think is love, but is actually fear. And if the other person loves you back, either genuinely or also out of selfish love, the relationship will always be tenuous at best when one or more person in a relationship is feeling selfish love. Wait, let me coin a better term for selfish love: phoboeros. (Foe-boe-air-ose, from phobos meaning fear and eros meaning love).

This line of thought kind of clarifies my thoughts on polyamory versus monoamory, too. Because polyamory, by its very nature, makes phoboeros self-defeating. People who are only letting themselves feel phoboeros are not going to last long as polyamorous people, because they're just going to constantly be jealous and miserable the whole time if they try it. Of course, phoboeros is always self-defeating no matter what, but it's a lot easier to manage a relationship based in phoboeros if one is in a monoamorous relationship. Which is NOT in any way implying that all or even most mono relationships are based in phoboeros, that is not even REMOTELY what I am saying, but I have to add this little proviso because I'm sure SOME moron will read my post wrongly and make an entirely inaccurate assumption about what I'm saying. I am merely saying that polyamory does not lend itself well to phoboeros, that poly relationships based out of phoboeros will fall apart a lot more quickly than a mono relationship based in phoboeros will. Which should be a self-evident fact.

But yes, the primary thing I want people to walk away from this post with is, that we need to call out stalkery/possessive behavior in relationships regardless of the gender of the culprit, because that’s shitty behavior no matter who is doing it.

I learned some cool things about misinterpretations most people have made about the Bible, from a Christian I know who actually does real research and is a true Christian and not just a CINO (Christian In Name Only):

* The thing in Leviticus that says to stone adulterers does NOT mean to kill them with rocks. It was a specific cultural reference to a shaving stone, and interpreted within the proper context means adulterers are to have their pubic hair publicly shaved. It was meant as an embarrassment that they could learn from, not a deadly punishment. Somewhere along the line, people forgot that meaning and misinterpreted it, and ever since then we've had people doing the wrong thing.

* Eve was NOT made from a rib. Most mammals have a bone in their penis called a baculum. Properly translated and interpreted, Eve was made from Adam's baculum. This actually makes more sense, because ancient peoples would have noticed the lackulum of baculum more than the fact that women had an extra rib, because it would have been obvious to anyone who had anything to do with most male mammals, whereas the rib thing only becomes plain to people studying corpses; and since most human corpses back then were buried or burned LONG before the bones would have been exposed, I doubt anyone noticed the rib thing until modern times.

* Back in Jesus's day, slapping someone on one cheek (I forget which one) meant, among other things, "You are beneath me." But slapping them on the OTHER cheek meant "We are equals." So "turning the other cheek" was actually forcing the other person to say "we are equals," or else be embarrassed. It was the equivalent of "standing up for yourself." So most Satanists and atheists who claim it's weak, are wrong. Turning the other cheek is actually pretty badass.

 Human beings are omnivores. We need both short-chain AND long-chain proteins, and human bodies cannot make long-chain proteins. The only place to get long-chain proteins is animals. So meat eating is literally in our biology, and there's just no changing that fact without re-engineering our DNA. The only human society on the planet to even APPROACH veganism is India, and even they eat fish, dairy, and some birds. Jains don't count because they're the Indian version of hardcore vegans (hell, Jains tend to make hardcore vegans look like clods); even if they DID count, Jains will eat things that are already dead by natural causes, so even they sometimes eat meat.

Maybe you can be somewhat healthy as a vegan, but could your children or their children be as healthy? After all, most vegans ate meat once upon a time, or breast milk. If you want to try it, fine; just stop being raging self-righteous assholes about it, because the whole of humanity going vegan is about as likely as God and Satan forming a rap band and playing live on VH1.

If you're really concerned about the environmental impact of meat, and the feelings of the animals, what you should try instead is helping to get cheap vat-grown meat invented. Either that or encourage people to eat insects; they're a good source of protein, they are EVERYWHERE, they're easy to raise, and they eat pretty much anything. Read David Brin's short story "Natu-Life" to see how such a lifestyle would look.

So yeah, face facts and think outside your own personal box. Stop using environmentalism as an excuse and find more viable alternatives. Otherwise you're just one more religion condemning natural human needs.

I was thinking earlier about Christianity and Islam, and made some interesting observations.

Consider the following facts:

* The majority of Muslims are good people, following the pillars of peace and charity pretty well. Given this truth,

* The "Muslim" extremists are rarer but more violent, typically, than "Christian" extremists. "Christian" extremists are a lot more common but tend to not be as violent. "Christian" terrorists are rarer and tend to have smaller targets, killing fewer people.

Given these facts, and given that terrorism is the last resort of people who don't think they're being listened to any other way, I think the reason the "Muslim" extremists are more violent is because extreme "Muslim" believers are so much rarer than their "Christian" counterparts. They don't have the same high numbers to support them, so they get more extreme in their behaviors than their "Christian" counterparts that have more community support.

Then add this fact: Islam traditionally values knowledge and science, and Muslims are the reason modern Western culture turned out so well, by preserving ancient knowledge and coming up with their own maths and sciences as well.

Of course, all this means Mohammad did a better job of reforming his culture than Jesus did in reforming his. Not a perfect job by any means, just a better job.