Brain Droppings II

Second Brain Droppings, where I list random thoughts I've had in the past few months. This one is going to be a bit lengthy as some of these were mini-blog posts that were not long enough to warrant its own post.

I think if we're going to be in some sort of relationship together, we have to make a commitment to be honest. I don't believe in white lies. If you are not 100% honest, then what percentage of honesty am I getting? 90%? 80%? 70%? Are you being honest about the answer? Do I have to throw everything you say through a filter? And yes, we might have different moral codes about lying to strangers, but we don't lie to our friends. But what if our strangers turn into our friends? We can dodge a lot of possible future problems simply by telling the truth. If you're making up lies about why you can't hang out tomorrow, has it dawned on you that you associate with people you don't care to talk to? If A gets off the phone with B because B says her son is sick and then A finds out from C that B is going to hang out with C instead of taking care of sick people, what A experiences is a permanent erosion of trust. And A may not even be close enough to B to ask B why she is lying to him, and B never finds out that her lie has been discovered, and we go through life like this. It's toxic. I think honesty is key in relationships. I don’t understand how ‘lack of communication’ happens and how relationships suffer due to it. You just communicate what you need to communicate. I’ll take honest, blunt truth over your vague, useless crap any day. You can be blunt but not an asshole, a line exists between the two. I don’t like you, I’m flattered, but we can still be friends. I’ve turned down people this way. Direct, unmistakable, and friendly. Somebody worked up the courage to ask you out, respect them by giving them a straight answer that won’t leave the person with wishful thinking.

This is what I love about the religious. They'll fight tooth and nail to ban abortion, but once all those kids are born and are living in unstable homes, living in poverty and really need society's help, the religious are nowhere to be seen.

Some jimmies were rustled when a news article suggested that League of Legends be an official Olympic sport. What is a sport? Is fishing a sport? Is golfing a sport? Whatever. I'm not getting into a semantics war with people. Everybody loves to game and that is precisely what makes competitive gaming very competitive. So many people do it. In order to be the top, you have to best so many people. The reaction times are superhuman. And teamwork. And strategy. It's hard to do. If you think it's easy money, go ahead, give it your best shot. You'll fail. If you think it's easy but there isn't a lot of money in it, you are deluded but what exactly are you mad about? That some people like to watch gaming competitions instead of people kicking a ball on a field? Did you know that people pay people to run around quickly? Yeah, they call it track and field. Do you know we have CARS? In light of this kind of stuff, don't try to pin anything on competitive gaming.

Wow I'm amazed at all of the comments bashing Americans... What's with all of the stereotyping? It's very annoying and inaccurate when you take a country with millions of people and hold a prejudice that you think defines each of us. And you all think we're the ignorant ones... The irony...

Vegetarianism. I don't think eating animals is immoral, I think killing it is. But all animals die anyway! Letting an animal chill in nature is not the same as packing a million chickens in a pen, raising them to be so fat they cannot stand, lying on top of feces, waiting to be slaughtered, ok? I mean, what if I applied that logic to you? You will die either way. What harm is there for others to kill you right now? The problem is, we're trying to weigh two things: The importance of the life of the animal versus the desire of the human to consume meat this instant. That's the issue here. I don't claim to have all the answers, I just think about things. Maybe a compromise is to kill animals only when they are about to die anyways and eat them, but this drives up meat prices. Maybe in the future, people will look at us similar to the way we look at people who practiced slavery.  Surely SOMEBODY knew that slavery was maybe just a tiny bit wrong when they whipped that slave for the 50th time? No?

So I go to EpicMealTime and I see all these 'meanwhile in Africa' comments on Youtube, and I just want to slap these people around. First of all, this comment contributes nothing in terms of new content. It also fails as a reminder of morality. You don't get to say 'meanwhile in Africa' if you yourself do not bother to dedicate your life to helping dying kids. We both don't give a rat's ass about the thousands of people that die all the time. Saying 'meanwhile in Africa' doesn't go towards making you a better person. Asking other people to donate doesn't really make you more moral, donating yourself is what makes you more moral. There are many things humans do that jeopardizes the well-being of other humans much more than eating too many Big Macs.

Some people need to get it in their noggins that not everybody craves social contact as much as they do... Being lonely isn't about how many people you are in contact with, it's a mental state. You can be in a crowd but feel so alone inside, or you can be alone but find life rewarding. Your ideals mean nothing to me. So when people say I have no life, I say, thank you. I kindda like life the way it is and I wear the no-life status as a badge of honor, as evidence of an independent spirit.

"Family values" is a phrase like "support the troops". What the hell it actually means when used in a sentence half the time, I have no idea. But it sure sounds good!

If you're the audio engineer for a musician, your job is to make sure the track is in pristine quality when it comes out. So why the fuck do I hear clipping in so many tracks, many of them from big budget artists? Why are you even getting paid?

If my internet is advertised as "up to 10 megabits per second", does that mean I only need to pay "up to" $35 a month?

Why are people so obsessed with being the first to comment on a new video? You were the first poster in one Youtube video out of millions. Great. The world will forever remember you because you were first. Really? It's just spam. Then I scroll down and there are piles of people claiming to be first.

New rule: The next time you say "studies show that..." in a debate, you're contractually obligated to list WHICH study and link it for reference.

Pre World War I, it was odd for women to wear pants. I feel women should not be allowed to wear pants because it's unnatural. Men wear pants, not women. And because of this, I get to make fun of women wearing pants. Let's all go back to Pre-WWI society. Let's put women back where they belong: In dresses only. If a woman wears pants, she's probably a lesbian because only gay people would deviate from what other women are supposed to wear. Attire is stagnant and everlasting. Being weird makes you a creepy person and nobody wants that!

A: Can I ask you a question?
B: You just did.
A: Well I mean, can I ask you a personal question?
B: You can. I believe in free speech.
A: I mean, will you be offended if I do?
B: How would I know, until you actually ask?
A: GODDAMIT ERIC%#*(#%^&(#*&^#()
B: That's not a question.

NSA: The only part of the government that actually listens.

Valentine's Day? What's that? Never heard of it.

'Swag is for boys. Class is for men.'

Superbowl?
Sounds like a marijuana reference.

"If you watch the footage, all the other victims are on the news thanking Jesus for only killing their neighbors and not them, while a crawler is on the screen telling me where I can text money to help them out." -Doug Stanhope, On the Oklahoma Tornado

"The key to happiness is low expectations." -Barry Schwartz

'You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language where a house can burn up as it burns down and in which you fill in a form by filling it out. Why is it called after dark when it is really after light? Things that we claim are underwater and underground are surrounded by, not under the water and ground." -Richard Lederer

Girls like cute puppies. To make girls like you, be a cute puppy.

Sexual orientation is like coffee preference. Why other people care about my coffee preference is beyond me.

Dean Leyeson, a Youtuber that I respect, once made a profound insight on love at first sight. There is no love at first sight. When you first meet a girl, you know nothing about the girl. What if she just killed four people and ate a baby before you met her? Would that change the way you look at her? What happens here is we look at a girl we like and we pretend the girl has all these traits we love. We create a person that never existed. So in reality, love at first sight is love at first fantasy.

I have fallen into love at first fantasy, where I assume what the girl is like before I knew her, and anything that doesn't mesh with it is instantly brushed aside, which is very ironic because that’s direct evidence that the girl I think she is, isn’t, and it’s the origin of my fancy for her (along with her dashing looks, of course). And as time passed I bent over backwards to talk to her at odd hours of the day, worshipping the ground she walked on. What I realized in the end was that while she was indeed a very attractive young woman, she’s not that special. I made her special in my mind. I focused on her and blocked out and had this amnesia about the billions of other girls that exist on the face of the earth. When you have idols, you put yourself under them. Never give other people that kind of power over you. Always maintain your self-respect.

...I need to post my stance on moral relativism on here, pronto. It's listed in my book though. Which reminds me, I'm still working on my book sporadically.