Whole sort of general mish mash

Holding my tongue. Holding my tongue. Holding my tongue.

Posted on 1/28/2010 by Candice

When people are too irrational to bother arguing with, there are a few strategies that can be used. PZ Myers is a proponent of ridicule, and that seems to be fairly effective in many cases. However, if no intervention is required in order to prevent harm to third parties, I prefer to go with the tested and true “don’t feed the trolls” method (if you can call it a method, considering that it calls for doing absolutely nothing). Trolls can eat anything. Even completely ignoring them can occasionally encourage them. However, if a tree falls in the forest blah blah blah, and I think something about a black box full of question marks or an orbiting teapot might be relevant here as well.

One of my favourite applications of troll non-feeding is from The Simpsons episode “Treehouse of Horror VI”, where the characters are sold on the idea that “if people stop paying attention to [advertising], pretty soon, it goes away” by a jingle, performed by Paul Anka. Of course, “advertising” here refers to monstrous commercial mascots brought to life by an ionic disturbance, but if you take the word “monsters” metaphorically, this little song provides excellent instructions for handling bullshit (and it’s currently stuck in my head):

Paul Anka: To stop those monsters 1-2-3,
Here’s a fresh new way that’s trouble-free,
It’s got Paul Anka’s guarantee…
Lisa: Guarantee void in Tennessee.
All: Just don’t look! Just don’t look!
Just don’t look! Just don’t look!
Just don’t look! Just don’t look!

It’s hard to remain passive when confronted by painful levels of stupid (I’ve been struggling all day), but together, we can do it!

I’d tell you who inspired me to post this, but they’re egosurfers, and I don’t want to feed them. If you get information from the same sources as me, and know anything about me (both semi-likely, if you’re reading this), you might be able to guess. But don’t. Because then they will have won.

2009, eh?

Posted on 1/1/2009 by Candice

It’s 3pm. Good morning, everybody. How hungover are you? I made it out okay, I think. Drinking water through the night, that’s the secret. The secret that everybody knows. The secret that nobody bothers with. Apparently it works, though. Who knew.

I’m the only one awake. Me and the cat. I have to work tomorrow, way to waste my day off, everybody. How am I supposed to vegetate on my couch with all the $4 DVDs I bought in Canada with 17 people sleeping on it? Hm?

So anyway. 2008. Let’s forget it, it was garbage. Step number one: wash off the eye makeup that I’m still wearing from last year.

Sucked it up and got me a head shrinker, maybe I’ll be less loony in 2009. Resolutions… poo. Write the Great American Novel. Win Nobel Prize. Become rockstar. Lose 125 pounds. Start smoking, then quit. Start flossing?

I think this is where I traditionally point out that the fact that our year just so happens to be so many days long because our planet orbits the sun more or less one time or so in that period is pretty terribly unimportant to me. And the fact that we’ve chosen this particular day as a marker, big whoop. Good excuse to get drunk, whatever. Who needs one? Birthday in about two weeks. Don’t give much of a shit about that, either. I was trying to figure out how old I would be on various other planets last night, and on which one I would weigh the least, but, you know… vodka happened.

Ciao.

Vote no on marriage!

Posted on 10/30/2008 by Candice

Hell with Prop 8. Can we repeal marriage altogether? For everyone? As far as I’m concerned, the government belongs out of my bedroom, and out of my relationships period. They don’t have a say in who I can be friends with, they shouldn’t have a say in who I choose to be more than friends with, regardless of the depth or expected length of my commitment. Civil unions for everyone, fine. Let people form whatever sort of contracts they like. That’s most of what a legal marriage is, anyway. Not much different from a business partnership, except that the business is a life and a home instead of an occupation and a shop (say). And most of the clauses that belong in that business contract (that are currently automagically the consequences of being legally married) are perfectly legal clauses to stick into any contract between any two people. Or three people. Or as many as you damned well please. I don’t think even the most extreme religious types have a problem with two men going into business with each other. Or three men. Or eleventy. The main issue seems to be that the entire concept of marriage, and those aspects of it that go above and beyond the black and white letter of the law, are inextricably tied up with things like religion and personal values. Which is fine. But those things are none of the government’s business. I don’t know why that’s not more obvious. It’s all very personal, and really has nothing to do with the logistics of running a city, state, or country, so mind your own beeswax, G-Men. Let’s just make the two things separate. Problem solved. If a particular church doesn’t want to marry anyone but heterosexuals, fine. If they don’t want to marry fourteen transvestites, whatever. Those fourteen transvestites can take their business elsewhere. But anyone who wants to gets to decide to combine their finances, share joint ownership of a home, blah blah blah. Hardly any change from what’s already possible. No big friggin’ deal. We run into a few issues when it comes to children, but I don’t think they’re anything that can’t be worked out. Health insurance is another problem, but here’s the solution to that one: universal health care.

Personally, I don’t much believe in marriage. I think a lot of it is a bunch of religious hoobajoob, and otherwise a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo. Neither of which has anything to do with how I feel about my husband, really. If I wasn’t part of an international couple, I probably wouldn’t have messed with it. It’s more or less a shortcut to signing a whole mess of other legal documents. I truly don’t see what all the fuss is about. Whether or not homosexuals are allowed to marry… is their behaviour going to change? That’s a big, fat, fucking no. What changed after my wedding… Let’s see… I dunno. Zip squat. Oh, right. I had an extra piece of paper lying around. Seems like a whole lot of kerfuffle over a bit of semantics (I got scolded every time I tried to make an argument out of semantics when I was a kid — I would like to scold this entire loopy country in turn). Call them married, or call them two people who live together, enjoy fucking, and plan to keep doing it for a while. What-ever. Nothing meaningful will be different.

Woo is invading my personal space

Posted on 6/21/2007 by Candice

I’ve recently encountered one of more real-life believers of the following woo lies: homeopathic “medicine“, acupuncture, colon cleansing, raw food diets, organic-only diets, detox diets, vitamin C and echinacea for colds, cupping, “The Secret“, psychic powers, ghosts, 9/11 conspiracies, astrology, and various gods (to name only a few).

I know how to handle these sorts of people online — a) ignore them (best option), b) ridicule them (more entertaining option), c) attempt to reason with them (complete waste of time). In person, however, I’m usually at a bit of a loss. How ought I to respond to someone who brings any of these things up in the course of normal conversation?

My first instinct is to hijack the small-talk and start a conversation about science, logic, common sense, and how they person involved has managed to avoid all of these. I don’t usually mean to do it. I think my “mistake” is to reply to them with a phrase like “homeopathic medicine doesn’t work” as opposed to “I don’t believe in homeopathic medicine”. Ugh.

Well, actually. Reply #1 leads to an argument. Reply #2 leads to the response “well it works for me, and it’s better for you than that stuff with all the chemicals in it”, which leads to my brain exploding, and reply #1 escaping my mouth anyway. This just gets me labelled as a know-it-all. A know-it-all who is perceived to be wrong, in fact — the most annoying sort!

Taking homeopathy as an example, most people I run into who believe in it don’t even know what it is! Many of them seem to assume that it is a synonym for “natural” or “organic”, and have been led to believe that both of these are synonyms for “healthy”. Clearly, since healthy is good, homeopathy is win!

Trying to unravel the layers and layers of BS that got someone to the point of believing in something as completely nutty as homeopathy is practically impossible, especially since people don’t like to be wrong, and will usually get angry or demand to change the subject before any reason leaks into their brain.

Should I just brush off subjects like these when they come up, and go insane slowly and silently from having to endure woo quietly, when every neuron in my brain wants to attack it, or should I continue to be the know-it-all bitch. Is there some third option I’ve missed? Getting together every rational person I can find, and evacuating us to another planet, say?

One of these days…

Posted on 6/21/2007 by Candice

…I’m going to get really bored, and stage my own UFO hoax. Whoever is behind this very elaborate one is obviously having one hell of a laugh (there’s more of this BS scattered all over the interwebs, including Flickr sites and yadda yadda, but if you click any of the links I’ve posted here, you’ll be able to find them — I’m not made of copypasta!)

I look forward to following this one. My favourite part is always where the people on the UFO forums all say “I work with Photoshop professionally, and if this is a phoney, it’s a very good one!” (i.e. the board you’ll get to by clicking “elaborate” above). Yeah. Saturated white backgrounds make it extremely difficult to airbrush things out…

Morans!

I love how the artist here has used several screen names to post pictures to a number of different sites, and gotten a few friends involved to pose as multiple witnesses. It makes the whole thing so much more “authentic” and hilarious.

Roman’s miles: How to find [inconvenient] truth about youself?

Posted on 3/9/2007 by Candice

Roman’s miles: How to find [inconvenient] truth about youself?

Truth about anyone that tries this: Cares too much what other people think about them. Insecure. Uptight. Cowardly. Bureaucratic. Perhaps a try-hard. I hate try-hards.

I dunno, this reminds me of slam books in third grade… “How much do you like me on a scale of one to five? Do you want to be my boyfriend? Check one: [ ] yes / [ ] no / [ ] maybe.”

Anywhom… Youself!

I’ll be rich, I tells ya!

Posted on 12/18/2006 by Candice

No one gets to steal this idea from me… but I’m going to share anyway.

New-agers are always going on and on about chemtrails… and how orgonite “gifting” around cellphone towers etc. can combat them…

And they have all sorts of forums and logs set up detailing their gifting trips…

Well, I figure… all I have to do is lurk around on those forums, write down which towers they’ve gifted lately, and do a little ungifting.

And then sell their orgonite right back to ’em!

Kaching!!!

If only I had a car and/or it wasn’t so cold out. I would totally be out there collecting buckets of the stuff right now.

Happy Generic Holiday Season

Posted on 11/22/2006 by Candice

I know several people (including my husband) that work at Starbucks, and I’ve been told by them that the word “Christmas” is off-limits this year, and that “holidays” has been suggested to them as an alternative. Indeed, itsredagain.com, Starbucks’ holiday website, doesn’t include the C-word anywhere (except where it’s been submitted by users). The whole campaign is based around the slogan “on with the tradition”. However, they’ve slipped up. Sean brought home some food in a Starbucks paper bag, last night. The text printed on it includes the phrase “suddenly, like the flipping of a yuletide switch”. Hm. Maybe archaic synonyms for Christmas are considered acceptable? Or maybe Starbucks has decided to celebrate a pagan form of Yule this year? Starbucks, you are fail! Oh, whatever. Don’t use the word Christmas. Fine. It doesn’t make your red and greeny, holiday tree-y, Nutcrackerry, candy caney, twinkling starry, wassailingey holiday any less Jesusy. Who do you think you’re fooling, here? Is anyone about to mistake a red and green Generic Holiday for blue and white Hannukah? Diwali and Ramadan are both over. Chinese New Year isn’t until the end of January. So I’m not tricked. And I’m still terribly offended. Terribly. And I’m still going to boycott you. But only because I hate coffee. And excluding any free food friends or family might bring home from work.

Wait, what?

Posted on 10/2/2006 by Candice

“Canada’s New Government”? Blah blah blah, some shit about some scientist or whatever. This is too stupid to even comment on. I’m guessing that everyone else agrees, since there are only 300-some articles to be found about this on Google News, and most of them don’t seem to be related to the rebranding. But this needs more attention. Now I’m going to go vomit!

Church of Scientology of Illinois

Posted on 1/14/2006 by Candice

I found the local Scientology loony-bin by accident today while walking home from dropping off my rental car (oh yah — so my car is totalled and I won’t be driving again any time soon…)

And now I must find some poor sucker to attend some of their meetings with me, because I feel that it would be most entertaining. First I need to memorize all of the “correct” answers to their personality test. They show their Orientation film several times a day. For free (then once you’re hooked, they jack up the price). Let’s bring popcorn! This movie must be available for download somewhere online. Please, Xenu?