Random Thoughts From A Worldly Primate

This post is a blatant ripoff of the frighteningly insightful knowledge-bombs frequently dropped over at Apes In Elysium, which you should be reading instead of this piffle.

~1~
The only real-world use I have ever got out of the Irish language is impressing foreigners or talking about them. This is all I ever expect to get out of it. That so many of my peers are incapable of stringing a basic sentence together in Irish strengthens the notion I've held for years that we are pissing away millions of man-hours keeping a braindead language on life-support. This time and money could - and should! - be put to much better use elsewhere. Traditions be damned, keep a few experts trained up and leave it at that.

Sully's Soapbox: Retard Edition

An article from the Calgary Sun was riding high on Digg this evening, so I thought I’d give it a read. The poster uncharitably posted the link under the heading ‘Resurgence in ‘retard’ angers idiots’, but the article itself was an open lament on how the word ‘retard’ has apparently made a comeback, much to the indignation of writer Michael Platt.

If you’ve got time for it, I recommend you read the article yourself – it’s short, because Platt doesn’t have anything particularly intelligent to say, and he does such a good job of undermining his own argument that you’ll feel more confused than enlightened as to what the point of the exercise was.

Platt opens his article by talking about his days as a naïve, overly sensitive child, who felt the need to stick up for his best friend’s little brother who had a speech impediment:

“With youthful indignation, I made it my mission to tell anyone who'd listen that the word retard was offensive -- what was once a medical term had taken on a hateful connotation, and it was hurtful to good people, like my friend's little brother.“

His central thesis is that the word ‘retard’ is as bad as the ‘n-word’ [“or maybe worse”!], but despite using the ‘r-word’ 14 times without a hint of irony, the word ‘nigger’ doesn’t appear once in the article. Its omission is so flagrant that the article fails to make any impact whatsoever.

Using "retard" to describe someone with a disability is like using the N-word to describe someone with dark skin -- or maybe worse, because those with disabilities can't always defend themselves.

Platt harks back to an entirely imaginary heyday, achieved through years of progress from his language-Gestapo admonishing slips of the tongue, when the word ‘retard’ was never uttered. It’s possible that Platt simply had no social interaction over these few years on account of his penchant for admonishing his friends, but I’m sure the reader will agree that this era he speaks of never happened.

Fast forward to 2009 and we're back at square one.
The R-word has returned with a vengeance, and a day doesn't pass without "retard" being uttered on the radio, on television, and by newsroom colleagues, usually to describe something or someone idiotic.
Whether it's a bad movie, a butter-fingered football play, or just someone acting the fool, "retarded" is once again the adjective of choice.

In an attempt to show off what a good amateur-linguist he is, Pratt reflects on other trends he’s pulled out of his ass:

“Maybe it's a verbal trend that will quickly wither and die, the way "it's all good," and "bling" have rotted away from daily conversation, to the relief of all.”

To investigate this notion, I consulted Twitter:

Damn fools! Don’t they know that ‘it’s all good’ and ‘bling’ are no longer permitted in conversation, by order of Michael Platt, locution tsar?

As part of his hard-hitting exposé on the shocking rise of hate-speech in Western society, Platt solicits quotes from someone who could nearly sound sensible had the story been written by someone else, and who must surely put up with an awful lot of retards: Carmen Wyton: president and CEO of Special Olympics Alberta.

"Language goes through changes, and the trend right now has the R-word very high [...] It's being used in place of 'silly' or 'ridiculous,' and I think if people really thought about what the word means, they would stop using it."

“Wyton says the word is found in the lyrics of many modern songs, stemming back to the Black Eyed Peas' 2003 hit, Let's Get Retarded.”

‘Many modern songs’? Yet he only mentions one! One that was hastily changed to ‘let’s get it started’ to appease the political-correct retards that inhabit this world.

Besides making mountains out of molehills, let get on with the part that rips the heart out of this entire masturbatory sermon of self-righteousness, which is paraphrased rather than quoted:

“[Wyton] thinks pop culture has convinced a new generation that the R-word word is hip, not hateful.”

A-freakin’ men! "Hip - not hateful!" Language is not static or rigid – words take on different meaning; once innocuous words can become negatively charged, and vice-versa. Making people afraid of uttering a word in polite company is what gives it power, so this dude should be imploring us to throw ‘retard’ about with wanton abandon, so that everyone and everything is retarded, thus putting everyone on an equal footing, restoring civility to society and bringing about the utopia that has remained just beyond our grasp for these past few millennia.

Regardless of how powerful a word is at expressing something – it shouldn’t matter unless that negative charge is directed towards something. Words like ‘retard’ or ‘nigger’ can be discussed objectively without avoiding their use – cowering behind ‘the n-word’ is a cumbersome way of capitulating to the moronic notion propagated by politically correct nitwits who maintain that words themselves have magic powers.

Let’s get hypothetical for a moment – if every single person in the world agreed to absolutely remove ‘retard’ and its derivatives from their lexicon, the concept would still exist, but people would still be impaired, both physically and mentally, meaning that one of the PC terms would have to be used until it spills over to describe things that are “ridiculous or stupid”, leading to some cretin taking issue with that word, so we have to spin the wheel-of-euphemism again and see what comes up this time.

A reason to despair 30/03/09

From time to time, something will come to my attention that causes me to cry out in despair for the human race. This is one of those moments.

In recent 'The World is Fucked' news, YouTube has just suspended the YouTube of the James Randi Educational Foundation, an organisation dedicated to promoting critical thinking and defending the people of the world from dangerous people by exposing charlatans and debunking frauds.

In September 2007, before I knew who James Randi was or what he represented, I was up late watching YouTube videos when I stumbled across one of him exposing Uri Geller and Peter Popoff. Pathetic as it may sound, a soundbite he offerred over the course of the video imparted a very real sense of kinship that I'm not sure I had ever felt before, as I heard my (scarcely expressed) teetotalling motivations coming out of the mouth of a bearded 70 year old. It must have been a rather profound moment, given how vividly I can recall that experience, and how the video found itself embedded on my blog within moments.

So far I'm inclined to believe that YouTube's hand has been forced due to complaints mounting against the JREF from retarded YouTuber users who take offence to hearing about the reality in which they live, and I appreciate that YouTube would rather err on the side of caution when it comes to managing their service, but such draconian measures against this vital educational resource only means that YouTube have further diluted the quality:shit ratio on their site.

Why is it that the videos warning that psychics only want your money get pulled? Why not the videos casting atheism as a dangerous pseudo-religion? I don't see how a kindly old man exhorting the merits of critical thinking can be taken offline when shillers of bullshit happily continue with their psychobabble.

Of course, the key difference is people taking offence. That's the problem with beliefs that are indoctrinated rather than independently investigated, or just not founded in solid logic - people who know jack shit about why they believe can only resort to taking offence when somebody calls that notion into question, so they hit the 'report abuse' button. Intelligent people need a critical mass of people to go to the effort of taking offence, so we can start cutting through the chaff online, but it's not going to happen, because when an intelligent person encounters a babbling retard online, they ignore it (maybe even find it amusing).

My despair is only increased by the knowledge that the same scumbag that Randi dispatched all those years ago is back on the streets, taking advantage of more stupid people, because they won't listen to his advice until after the damage is done.



Seriously, stop being such stupid motherfuckers - there are people out there in the world who take advantage of stupid motherfuckers like the people who take umbrage with James Randi.

In short: stop taking offence, start thinking critically. You're only hurting yourself in the long run.

Hairy "F**king Paki" cries racism

Consider me outraged. Two weeks ago, the Daily Mail reported the deplorable tale of a Bedfordshire based police constable who was suing his former employers for heeding the urges of his allegedly racist coworkers who launched a campaign to oust him.

Mr Javid Iqbal, who “was born and raised in Stevenage, Hertfordshire” claims that he was bullied by other officers because of his beard, his accent, and his religious beliefs. He laments that his desire to join the police was because he “believed in putting something back into society”, and says that his beard “is an important part of my identity which helps other Muslims relate to me”.

My stomach churns as I think about the utter intolerance that is taking place here. How dare this hairy-faced fucker show such utter contempt for the British way of life. Shame on him for brazenly broadcasting his callous cultural insensitivity to the dominant culture of cultural insensitivity, which helps Brits relate to one another by highlighting even the most insignificant of differences with abject derision.

I get it, Iqbal – you’re pissed because you got the shitty religion – the one with the weird beard-shaving and food-eating rules, but just because your celestial dictator delves into more minutiae than the majority’s celestial dictator doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to subject everybody to halal meats.

If I, like you, had just come back after a nine month leave of absence on full pay as reward for getting depressed at being crap at my job and writing ‘harrassment’ instead of ‘rape’ on a report, I’d probably be just as cynical in getting more out of the government too, but crying racism for every instance your coworkers tried to eke some enjoyment out of your presence, and blaming the victim for your incompetence just makes you look like a douche.

A source at Bedfordshire Police claimed Mr Iqbal was sacked because he was 'not cut out to be a police officer'. With that beard, and your reluctance to earn money in an honest fashion, one vocation springs to mind:

You find me offensive? I find you offensive for finding me offensive

Political-correctness is dumb

I should've mentioned this in a more timely fashion, but during the coverage of Obama's Inauguration, one of the reports on RTÉ talked about how "African Americans around the world..." were something or other. Y'see - I didn't hear the rest of the sentence because I was too distracted trying to figure out what he meant by 'African-Americans' - was he talking about the black diaspora of the United States who didn't get to be there? Did he say 'the world' when he meant 'the USA', or was he just avoiding the word 'black'? The worst part is that it was a pre-recorded segment, not a live-broadcast, so it wasn't even a mis-speak.

I'm sorry, but 'black' and 'African-American' are not synonymous terms - and if they are - they shouldn't be.

Journalist suffers PMS, writes stupid shit

On the front page of Digg just now there was a story called "Mother Told She Doesn't Have Real Job By Phone Company" - which seemed dumb enough to warrant a click.

The story tells the plight of a stay-at-home mother who tried to buy a Smart phone from Vodafone, only to be rejected on the grounds that she didn't have a "real" job. What's noteworthy about this story is that it was penned by a woman. Quite a stupid woman, I'd wager - one who can't be bothered to appear impartial.

Ewww - they should've sprung for a hand model

If you'd indulge me for a moment, I'm going to pick holes in this story for the purpose of asserting intellectual superiority over a paid-journalist, and balancing some transparently feminist-fuelled moral-outrage with some good old fashioned rationality.

Lyndal Fair, 36, a mother of three, said she was shocked and embarrassed when staff at a Vodafone store told her they didn't sell phones to full-time mums.

Didn't sell "phones" to full-time mums? Not quite. Didn't sell a particular phone to full-time Mums - the BlackBerry Storm - which is a business phone, and only available to customers on certain (business, possibly) plans.

Staff instead suggested she ask her husband to buy the phone for her under his own name

...[Because he has a sodding business!]

"I really felt like a second-class citizen for the first time since becoming a mum," Ms Fair said. "I couldn't believe it. It was like being back in the '50s.

Oh boy - they're playing that card. Never mind the fact that there weren't commercially-available mobile-telecommunications devices back in the 50s, let's just focus on the logical fallacy of framing an inconvenience (having to upgrade your plan) as proof that sexual discrimination hasn't changed in almost sixty years! But the outrage doesn't end there - let's drag in the reluctant husband who has to overcompensate for his lack of giving a shite with some overly-dramatic effusions:

"Being a mum is a full-time job and it's a very hard job - the hardest job you can have - because if you get it wrong, the ramifications for everyone are enormous," Ms Fair said.

'Ramifications for everyone'? Sweet Christ. It's all gone a bit The Day After Tomorrow, hasn't it?

"It's just terrible. You cop it as a mum if you work because you're not at home with your children, and if you do stay home you get hit with nonsense like this."

Poooooooooooooooor women. Will they ever escape this catch-22? Normally I'd muster up a bit of sympathy for such predicaments, but the following splutterance from the author of this piece demands that I ramp up the misogyny for a bit:

Vodafone spokesman Greg Spears yesterday confirmed the no-housewives rule and said getting a man to buy the phone instead was the quickest fix.

BULLSHIT!

Ahem... Now that I’ve got that out of my system, might I propose what the author meant to say?

Vodafone spokesman Greg Spears yesterday confirmed that the handset is only available to customers on certain Vodafone plans and said that getting a family member who was currently employed and on one of these plans to buy the phone instead was the quickest way around it.

"No-housewives rule"? "A man"? The woman who wrote this needs to step away from the keyboard for a bit, lest they underscore any more innocuous tales with egregious shades of sexual-discrimination. To further drive home the utter disregard for any illusion of balanced reporting, the final word is given to “Eva Cox, of the Women's Electoral Lobby”.

What’s that? She wasn’t impressed? Big surprise. What else? Crikey:

She called on women to boycott Vodafone until it changed the policy.

"SECKSIZM!"

Seriously now? I’m sure that I’ve established that women are not being ‘slighted’ here, stay-at-home-mothers are. Wouldn’t a much more effective tactic be to ask all stay-at-home-mothers-and-fathers to petition Vodafone to lower the lofty bar for entry to the exclusive club of BlackBerry Storm owners? Asking ‘all women’ is dumb – as it is based on the assumption that all women would be upset by an unemployed (albeit hardworking) woman being denied a phone, which I doubt many would be. (Manipulating the facts to create controversy where there is none might gain sympathy for the cause, however).

Okay, I haven’t been entirely fair here – I should let this bastion of moral guidance continue with what she was saying, please Ms Cox[hater], continue!

"They need to be careful that Vodafone don't get a black ban after this, or a pink ban, if you want to call it that," Ms Cox said.

"... OH - I GEDDIT!! WIMMINZ LIKE THE COLLAR PINK!!!"

Christ.

Dear reader, please forgive this rather scattered entry, as every time I gather my thoughts, they force their way out in a rather undignified Tourettic flurry of capslock and swearing. I’m probably ripping on a publication that’s not exactly high-brow, but the waves of disgust I felt from seeing it second from the top on Digg has carried me thus far, so why turn back now?

Sexism isn’t cool. But claiming sexism when there is none is less cool, and really only serves the cause of the sexists. So you feminists need to shut the fuck up.

Ruining it for the rest of us

There are many forms of stupidity on this Earth, but no form of stupidity is as frequently, proudly, and ebulliently broadcasted as religious stupidity.

Speaking of stupid, let's talk about my girlfriend. My girlfriend is great, not only because she recognises what stupidity is and shies away from it at every possible opportunity, but also because she occasionally points me towards the kind of stupidity that I find somewhat entertaining, and says something along the lines of "Go get 'em, tiger". Before I continue with this story, it's important to note that this woman, who willingly identifies herself as my girlfriend, lives in the United States of America. Which as we all know, is the stupidity capital of the world.

Anyhow, this not-at-all-imaginary girlfriend of mine went trick-or-treating with her niece in celebration of the pagan festival, Hallowe'en, with the intention of acquiring sugary snacks from altruistic neighbours. Many of these neighbours obliged the little urchins, providing them with artificially-sweetened sustenance, but some seized the opportunity to pontificate to these diminutive-doorstop-denizens.

A colourful envelope arrived in the post today, and inside were the following documents and a card that read:

I thought you'd really, really enjoy these wonderful treats that Rosie received in her trick-or-treat bag last weekend. I grabbed them before she had a chance to look at them (Thank GOD!) [At which point she drew a smiley-face to drive-home her facetiousness - she's thoughtful like that]

Have fun tearing the people who pass these things out to shreds!

Here are the contents of the envelope, bear in mind that each one of these bears a heavy-handed religious message:


Allow me to espouse Richard Dawkins' oft-jeered position that religion often manifests itself as child-abuse for a moment. I try not to entrench myself in any position too much, but I'm very much of the opinion that distributing this insidious mental-poison to a child who is expecting (a different kind of poisonous) delicious treat is an utterly reprehensible and indefensible act.

My concern is not for the atheistic kids - they have probably been prepared for over-zealous attacks on their emotions by their rationalist parents - my concern is for those children who practice a moderate form of religion and are being targeted to embrace a fundamental, evangelical form of Christianity motivated through fear.

The inherent dishonesty of these pamphlets is astonishing. No parent could object to an apparently cute (though patronisingly simple) maze puzzle, a seemingly patriotic pamphlet fostering interest in the democratic process, or what looks like a spooky ghost story making their way into a treat bag, only to mentally molest [tabloid-style exaggeration for the fun of it] the child once they're alone with their spoils. This cowardly trojan-horse approach is reprehensible [hang on a tick - I've used that word already... Let me consult the thesaurus...] opprobrious!

Flight 144 is a particularly evil story, in which a chap who killed a guy in a drunken barfight meets two old philanthropists (who have dedicated their life to alleviating the suffering of thousands of fellow humans in Africa) on a plane that goes down. The murderer (manslaughterer?) gets to enjoy the spoils of heaven because he preached at his cellmate, whereas the elderly couple are cast into a fiery pit of some description because they didn't harp on about Jesus enough. (I will henceforth point to this example to show that Christianity doesn't necessarily equate to moral guidance 100% of the time, often getting too mired in the worshipping of idols)


I tend to yammer on about things like this for far too long, and I'm sure my feelings on the matter are somewhat evident, so how about you just erase the last 600 words from memory, and take away the summarized version, from the intrepid trick-or-treater’s father:

You have no idea what religious spoil-sports do on an otherwise great holiday for kids in costumes.

Do things like this happen in Ireland? My mother never let us trick-or-treat when I was younger, so I’ve never gone door to door for demanding sweeties like some kind of Jehova’s witness who only has "one heathen's soul" left on his scavenger hunt no idea of what kind of bullshit the good people of Ireland try to pull.

Watch 20 children get molested...

... mentally, of course.

The following video is fairly old, and I first watched it about three months ago, but in honour of "mock-an-easy-target month" (working title), I thought I'd post it. It's a newspiece from ABC, called "Biblically-correct tours". The premise is that two religious "fuckwits" [Thanks, PZ] take a group of home-schooled children through a legitimate museum, ridiculing any scientific aspects that don't fit with their ridiculous religious beliefs, and obfuscating everything else.



Thankfully, the newspiece is sufficiently sceptical of their nonsense, which helps to restore my tarnished faith in the mass media (and saves me a bit of typing!). Whilst watching this perversion of science, I had to pause every minute or so to involuntarily exclaim, like a Tourette's sufferer, at the absolute stupidity of what I was witnessing. Whilst this video is quite hilarious in its outright absurdity, it's also utterly infuriating.

Science isn't limited by superstitious notions that cannot be challenged - it doesn't start with a framework that everything has to be hamfistedly stuffed into. Nor is it decided in the courts. Reframing evolution as a "philosophy" or "religion" is absurd, and done only because it is not a part of evangelical Christianity. Just to further reflect on how insane this is - the Catholic Church officially accept evolution - (and the pope has a blinking-red-bat-phone direct to God!). We know that science works because people who have never talked to each other can come to the same conclusions through empirical observations; a feat lacking not only in different religious creeds, but also their spin-off denominations. These people are getting so wrapped up in the minutiae of their allegorical fables that they are beginning to unravel the progress of our civilisation as a whole!

Indoctrinating a child with religious beliefs is bad enough, but actively crippling their understanding of the world, and planting crackpot theories is absolutely child abuse. Does anyone else feel disturbed after witnessing just how shameless and brazen the efforts of the religious right are to unravel human knowledge?

Lisbon igNOrance

I generally try not to write about political matters here, as there are people far more talented and interested than I catering to such needs, and it wouldn’t quite gel with the other content on here. Regardless, I present you with this old news. Irish readers will have to forgive me for how broken down things are, but there might be yanks reading!

Last Thursday, the people of Ireland voted on whether the Lisbon Treaty would be ratified; a document that outlines how the European Union is going to conduct its bureaucratic undertakings now that it’s grown to a bloated 27 member states. Out of all 27, Ireland was the only country that handled things in a democratic fashion.

The people of Ireland responded with a great deal of confusion. “Why ask us?” They pondered aloud. “What’s this about? Why wasn’t anybody else asked?” That’s where their inquisitiveness ended. Despite the vast majority of politicians assuring the good people that the treaty was something that would benefit the entire of the European Union, the Irish were more compelled by the claims of tinfoil-hat wearing independents who simply made shit up.

After getting caught up in the hype, and deciding I needed some information, I read about the treaty, and kept track of all the things that I was concerned about, all the things I was happy about, and all the things I was ‘meh’ about. I determined that the only think remarkable about the Lisbon Treaty was how such an unremarkable document could drum up such intense controversy, given all the ‘meh’s on my page of notes.

One of the worst things about the referendum was talking to people about it in the weeks up to it. Nobody seemed to feel any shame in expressing their ignorance, and even tried to present this ignorance as a valid reason for voting “no”! These were the same people who didn’t read the concise information pamphlets sent out by the neutral Referendum Commission, which had a strong TV, radio, and web presence.

I present to you a product of this paranoia: on the day of voting, I got into my car and drove to the end of my village to find that somebody had spraypainted “NO” onto the road four times in fifteen metres. Five miles down the road I saw the same thing.


Here's the video, complete with rockin' soundtrack (that'll be promptly removed, more than likely), recorded from my phone (hence the assy quality).



It’s a shame that the treaty wasn’t ratified, so we could retrospectively laugh at the prophecies of the new Ireland, in which all the men have been drafted to the European Army and sent to battle the US, all businesses have been taxed out of existence, and the footpaths can’t be seen for all the aborted foetuses that litter the streetscapes.

How To Break Your Social Network

It seems that the media have finally gotten around to reporting about the fact that those who sign up for social networking sites are essentially signing away their privacy rights. Of course, this has been met with a collective "Well Durr!" from any discerning users of such sites.

Me? I'm hoping that the media is catching up with the rest of the class just as the momentum of the social networking juggernaut begins to level off. We're all well aware that the seemingly innocuous and mundane personal details that one fills in are being used by big evil corporations to read our mind, but that doesn't really upset anyone. Fewer of us are aware that files uploaded to these sites become the property of the big evil corporation that owns it, and most are now worried that their proclivities for hard partyin' (G left out for emphasis) and hard drinkin' (ditto) will become publically accessible knowledge that will stop them working for some big evil corporation down the line.

Little of this has much to do with what I'm about to talk about though; I just felt like setting the scene.

I'm just sick of the ever-increasing greed these social networks are exhibiting. Third-party applications, in particular are making the utilisation of these sites an absolute chore. Facebook introduced these some time ago, and since then Bebo have jumped on the bandwagon. In theory, these applications generate more features and allow the user a greater degree of customisation, but in practice, they clutter up a profile and grind the user’s patience down to a nub as they try to access the modicum of information they’re actually interested in.

I recently received this invitation for ‘Which 1950’s Pin Up Girl are you?”. Ignoring the flagrant abuse of the once noble apostrophe, I have to ask; could this not be done via a simple link to a quiz on an external, old fashioned webpage, like we did in years gone by? Is it really worth the hassle of signing up for five minutes of inane distraction, agreeing to the Terms of Service that you won’t read and losing legal ownership of your liver over? It could be my fear of commitment speaking, but I’m not very keen to endorse something like that on my profile page for the rest of my facebooking life.

Furthermore, I’m almost entirely sure that this invitation was given to me not because my friend thought it was exactly the kind of thing I’m interested in, but rather because the process of not sending it to me proved unwieldy. Obviously, these products need to be tested, vetted and approved by a governing body before being thrust before 64million users and told to play nice. Have a look at the options I was presented with when offered the app in question:


How dare they exploit my human folly! Of course if I see a button labelled ‘don’t click here’, it’s the first thing my disembodied hand-with-permanently-extended-index-finger is going to want to depress! Of course, for the sake of blog research, I decided to click it, and sure enough, as soon as I committed the deed, four of its friends grabbed me, pulled a bag over my head, and threw me in a van to take me to the sign-up page.

Appalling. If they had included some cute little gimmick for clicking the button, all would be well and good, but to deliberately mislabel something? To lie, on the internet? Heresy!
Another disgusting trend of Bebo and Facebook is that more and more ‘sponsored content’ is appearing, which is fine – us veteran internet users have learnt to ignore advertisements. But sneaking ads into the page where we overview the recent activity of our friends is a bit much.


Julia? Do I know you? What? I’m sorry love, but I couldn’t give a flying fuck about group hugs between people who are being paid to group hug. I also don’t care much for Justincredible.tv, or their employment policies.

Imaginary friends who appear in your Friend Updates is pretty sinister stuff, but the really irritating stuff is the banner ads at the top of the page, which kills a considerable amount of the joy that the personal skin I made gives me (look at it - it's glorious)! This example serves impinges on all of my complaints before: it’s on Bebo despite obviously being designed to look like it belongs on Facebook, it’s an obnoxious ad that impairs on your enjoyment, it pretends to be your mail system, and as a bonus, it molests the English language in the process (well - cops a pervy feel at least).

Click for a better look - it's worth it, I promise!

The solution is quite unremarkable, particularly with regards to third-party apps; moderation. Draft up a list of rules – restrict ads that masquerade as part of the site; assume that the user doesn’t automatically wish to spam everybody they know with app invites; only green light the apps of merit to keep the lazily constructed vessels for ads out of the picture, and finally; make provision for a greater degree of community policing.

These recent developments in social networking sites has me logging on less and less, which I’m sure hurts their bottom line, since I spent less time looking at their obnoxious ads. During my weekly logins to stalk the few remaining friends I have, it becomes increasingly more tempting to click what should be a very red and very shiny button.



I'm hoping that the recent bad publicity that these sites have been getting, coupled with a disgruntled community that voices their disdain at the way things are going will change matters, but I doubt it. The implications of exiling oneself from a powerful social-tool are far greater than I'm willing to put up with.

When I inevitably make a pariah of myself, it'll be in a much more dramatic fashion, and will possibly involve a public setting, a violent expulsion of bodily effluvia, 16 eunuchs coated in oil-based lubricant, and a mallard... Better make that two mallards.

One For the Lay-deez

All Chick-flicks are the same. This is a universal truth embraced by all men. Women aren't quite as willing to attest to this fact. At least not to me.

As a form of personal protest, I will accurately predict my way through any generic chick flick I cross paths with in as obnoxious a manner as possible (the first time I grimaced my way through The Notebook this habit led to my then-girlfriend suggesting we watch something I hadn't already seen).

The worst part about all of this is that the purveyors of this cynical heart-string-tuggery are getting proportionately lazier with each additional million dollars they make off their homogeneous product.

I submit, for your inspection, a picture I took of a DVD-double pack whilst doing some last minute Christmas Shopping.


Just look at that picture for a second. Let it sink in. Now think about the blatant similarities between the pictures. Are they even trying to propagate an illusion of individuality between these films? Would you not think that at some stage, during the shoot for whichever of these was taken last, the unwieldy named Mr. McConaughey would stop as he realised that he had leant against a female co-star before, and say something like

"Um... I think I may have posed like this for another easy paycheck film. What do you guys say we mix it up a little and at least have me stand on the other side or something?"

To which the film's producer would reply:

"Nonsense. Too much effort. In the five minutes it takes to move you over there and re-calibrate the lighting rig, we can churn out another four scripts for films like this. Besides. Women are stupid. They don't deserve any better."

Can we get a new cash-cow? Maybe convince women that they love films about hilarious anthropomorphic animals? I'd happily accompany my girlfriend to something like that...

Nyctophobia

I arrived back in Ireland after a rather splendid Thanksgiving in Wisconsin (as you may be aware), and I thought it only fair to detail the kinks of reacclimatizing oneself. (doesn't the word 'acclimatize' just look so wrong?)

That's right - I'm talking about how I fared upon returning to my native lands after a meagre 8 days around the football throwin', burger-guzzlin', signpost shootin', Jesus-lovin', monster-truck watchin', light-beer quaffin', imperial-system measurin', rock-music makin', chicken-flavoured-biscuit chompin', Hummer-drivin', icecap meltin', country invadin' ragamuffins that we know and love as simply; Yanks!

Truthfully, I only noticed one small detail, and it didn't occur to me until long after I left Shannon airport. The following night, when driving in my car I was unusually anxious, if the speedometer was anything to go by. Despite the fact that I was on the same roads that have taken me home for the past four years, my 10 minute journey took 20. The reason?

Fear. Fear of the dark.

That's right folks! After 8 days of being a passenger on a small offering of the State's brilliantly lit (not to mention straight as an arrow) road network, I managed a reprise of a fear most people forget about around the same time they retire their training potty (mine was called Mr Gobbles).

Initially, I was appalled with myself - I was being ridiculous! But upon reflection, I realised that maybe hurtling headfirst into the black abyss at 100 kilometres an hour guided only by small beam of light to cut a swatch into the pitch-black before you might be something that we as a squishable species should shy away from!

What's worse, when your eyes finally manage to adjust to the scant few drops of luminance on a country road that features no public lighting, and your photoreceptor cells are suddenly flooded with the glaring headlights of the oncoming car that has come out of the bend you only saw pop out of the black a second ago. It's at this point that you are no longer driving based on what you can see - you are now blindly flailing the wheel around in whatever mental-snapshot you managed to take of the 10 metres of straight road ahead of you, and you're hoping your vision comes back before any dog/tree/child/wall/Yank/ditch imposes itself into your path.

Sounds exhilarating, yes? So is ingesting 1.5 litre bottles of sherry anally (twice). [Seriously - if you only ever click one link on this site - let it be that one!]

Sully's Soapbox: Political Correctness

[Mario Party 8 Recalled due to disability slur]

Christ.

The GAME retail chain has recalled the seemingly innocent Mario Party 8 mere hours after its release, citing the fact that the game contains "a swear word" as the reason.

For years now, I’ve been growing increasingly fed-up with notions of political correctness, and I have to say, this one takes the biscuit. Recalling a chart-topping kid’s game because the word ‘spastic’ is featured in single line of dialogue? Madness! Why are people so easily offended all of a sudden? The fact that Nintendo UK felt they had to resort to such a drastic, expensive measure to safeguard against ‘concerned’ members of the public, looking to retard the growth of the Video-game industry troubles me a great deal.

As a person with a deep and genuine appreciation for the English language, who takes personal offence to seeing ‘texting language’ used in inappropriate forums, I feel compelled to point out the factors at play here that genuinely upset me.

The word was used in context. I don’t care how much of a niggard you are when it comes to freedom of expression, regardless of how much a word sounds like something offensive, or can be construed into something offensive; (a queer affliction brought about by (ab)users of a language), if it’s used in its original context, it’s fair game.

The English version of this game was translated in America. Are we suddenly unaware of language variations between cultures, despite years of hearing the word ‘fanny’ (a crass colloquialism for the female genitalia here on the British Isles) from imported media? Children and adults alike have been listening to it for years from the likes of trusted family entertainment sources such as Sabrina the Teenage Witch and The Simpsons, and probably since before the Flintstones. Why the double standard?

The intent to offend simply wasn’t there! If the game featured a person with cerebral palsy, and that character was the recipient of the ‘spastic’ label, then maybe I can understand the reaction, but as an instruction to make a train wobble? Good grief!




The underlying issue I’ve had with matters of political correctness all along is the fact that it’s complete and utter bullshit. All of it. Switching to euphemisms doesn’t do anybody any favours. I find it more insulting that a person who is crippled has to be labelled ‘disabled’, or ‘differently-abled’. One implies outright uselessness, the other is just condescending. Cognitively disabled? Please. Look up the meanings for 'retard' and 'disabled; - which has a more positive connotation? Having to stay within the confines of political correctness is also an exercise in futility, as the shifting paradigms make navigating the linguistic minefield more hassle than it’s worth. The end result; people are less likely to talk about 'real' matters amongst their peers, for fear of causing offense.

Language is a technology, people – we need it to communicate, and though it we identify concepts, and no matter how many times we keep re-labelling the concepts, it doesn’t matter, because these new labels become offensive in time. This isn’t just my radical thinking, either – look at this Wikipedia article on the Euphemism-treadmill to get a more comprehensive insight as to what I’m whining about.

Can we just stop with the controversies? Can we stop being so ridiculously sensitive? Not just with regards to euphemisms, but also a healthy respect for the flexibility of language?

Ireland’s Taoiseach (‘Prime Minister’ to our overseas friends) was the subject of a great deal of negative attention, with people calling out for his resignation (bear in mind he was only just re-elected) because he made a ‘suicide joke’. When I conversed with some of my friends about it, they were quick to denounce the act without even a loose idea of what the word was used in relation to. This is what Bertie said during an address to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions conference;

Sitting on the sidelines, cribbing and moaning is a lost opportunity. I don't know how people who engage in that don't commit suicide because frankly the only thing that motivates me is being able to actively change something

If that offended you just now, stop; slow down, read it again. It’s completely innocuous. This as an affirmation by a public figure that he has the positive energy and the drive to push forward and make things happen, and says that those who idly moan need to take a more aggressive approach.

He did not say ‘I think suicide is funny.’ Nor did he did not say ‘I think people who commit suicide are stupid’. He did not say ‘I have no sympathy for those who have lost loved ones to suicide.’ Those meanings were harvested by those looking for a reason to be upset, and shame on the media for entertaining these people and their warblings.

I’m aware that this has dragged on about 500 words longer than it ought to have, and it wouldn’t have killed me to organise my thoughts before putting my hands on the keyboard, but my final plea to anyone who reads this is; please stop sucking the joy out of the English language. Please stop making certain phrases taboo for the sake of it. To be offended by the label attached to a concept is so abstract it’s absurd.

Let’s turn our backs on these black days, pay no heed to the chinks in the chain, and.... Okay – you see what I’m doing here, yes?

Life’s too short, let's just enjoy our language.

Agree? Disagree? I want to hear about it!