Digression

I realize that often my posts (or articles, as I call them, for reasons I'm about to explain) frequently and blatantly come off as preachy and annoying. In light of this, I should clarify that at no time am I trying to generate a serious following of minds dedicated to my thoughts, opinions, or theories. In fact, a lot of this is rambling and cranial extradition.

Being dissatisfied with my surroundings comes at greater ease than amusement and so if the blog is disappointing in regards to its level of humour, that's because it's mostly just for me, and I don't really care if it makes anything but a dent in the psyches of anyone reading. That's also why a lot of the jokes I make go unnoticed; the majority of them are funny to me and maybe five other people who I haven't met on the whole planet.

------

Am I the only person who thinks that Goosebumps could benefit from a re-imagining of sorts? If not directly, than in subject matter alone, at least. As a twenty-one year old man, I feel quite a serious lack of whimsical horror anthologies in the format of episodes and seasons. There are shows like Fear Itself, but they're so low-budget and painful at times that it's almost like watching a puppy get stepped on just because you wanted to hear a really loud bark; the enjoyable part of the situation is far overshadowed by its reprehensible  lack of fulfilment.
Anyone who watches American Horror Story knows what I mean when I say "I want this to have a different plot and setting every episode." In the interest of a lengthy arc, perhaps the story could switch up every second or third episode, but the idea is still there.
That would rock.

------

I think my ideal pet would be of an unusual aquatic nature. A medium-sized shark that's tank-friendly, or a large octopus, or a deep-sea angler if I could swing it. Barring one large animal, I'd enjoy several small ones. I imagine watching several shrimp scuttle about in a four-foot aquarium to be rather entertaining. I've heard stories about salt-water tanks that you can have in your home, however the expense is hefty and I'd most likely be unable to foot a bill of such monthly magnitude. That, and when you think about it. Salt-water is salty due to a combination of Earthen gases and large sea animals urinating and ejaculating constantly into unfiltered waters.
So maybe that's something one would want to stay away from.

Marriage is Awful, Weddings Are Worse Pt. 2

In the interest attempting to maintain what little attention span is offered on this vast machinescape, I've separated this post into two parts of semi-equal length. Just makes things easier.

Part 2: Weddings

I've dissected the institution of marriage, extracting whatever emotion serves to cloud what is already a very unnecessary course of action. Weddings are infinitely easier to testify against.
We are a species that prides itself on selfish indulgence and false justifications. Gods are great because they say they are, obesity is a disease, and bigger is better, because it's bigger. That makes it better. Because it's bigger. Shit.
For many, weddings are a celebration created entirely to please family members, largely at the expense of the happiness had by the two getting married. This is a process that rivals Las Vegas for the title of "greatest time-wasting financial black hole." Many spend months in preparation for one or two days, organizing with and paying hundreds of people to ensure that everybody but them enjoys the experience for a few measly hours while cramped into chairs around tables full of people they rarely talk to. The ceremony itself is long and formal, which guarantees that people like me are going to hate existence for its entirety.

While couples could be hoarding their earnings, saving them for the purchase of a home or even for frivolities that are much more enjoyable for a much longer timespan, they instead (often due to direct parental pressure) opt to throw money directly into the garbage, with expenditures that flaunt price tags that shouldn't even be legal. Exploitation of what was initially designed as a day of conventional celebratory entertainment has effectively ruined whatever "sanctity" the ceremony intends to preserve. You're destroying as you create. When you think about it, though, you're not even creating anything good.
Sometimes, during the preparation stage, a couple will, under unbelievable stress and tension, discover things that they despise about each other. Perhaps one half of this partnership isn't as assertive as they could be, and subsequently loses a reservation and must resort to the second-choice venue. For some, this is so pivotal that the entire thing is aborted, and irreversible damage is done to the relationship (to one's "soulmate", as well as with their parents, because if you ruin this you might as well just dig up Grandpa Jones and fuck him right in the ass, since he's already rolled over in his grave). This is a situation that could be avoided entirely if there never was a wedding in the first place.

Included on the list of "reasons why this is more of an awful idea than a good one," is the expectation that the relationship is magically made better by these acts alone. There are no words that strengthen a bond between people, because it is not, and never has been, verbal language that ties two people together emotionally. Being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame won't magically improve your batting average. Wining an Oscar doesn't make your acting better than it was before you won it. If anything, it makes you sloppy, acting as a milestone in which you plunge your dick and leave it. Both marriage and a wedding will individually and collectively lower your self-imposed standards for relationship quality, over time.
As well, the presence of a minister directly infringes on many people's "keep your religion the fuck away from me" policy, an ideology that must be relinquished for literally no good reason whatsoever.

In case you weren't already convinced, I'll gladly remind you of the ideas behind the "bachelor" or "bachelorette" party. What we've concocted here is a night that is symbolic of one's transition from being unmarried to the horrible, restrictive alternative. Not only does this offer the opportunity to spend hours in the company of other sexually desirable people in a very suggestive and almost insistent environment, but it brings with it the implication that you can be, and up to this point have been, unfaithful to your significant other. You're insinuating that dating someone is so basic and loose that you could have and probably were fucking anything and everything, but you can't do that after tonight, or else you might lose your mate.
Well, fuck you then, for questioning my ability to commit to another, and assuming I haven't already.

I have yet to be presented with a reasonable use for the traditional wedding, unless your aim is to bankrupt yourself and ensure that whatever offspring you may produce during your "night of consummation" (another big issue; I and many other people like to keep their personal lives person, and your whole family knows exactly what you're doing and is happy about it) will be well-versed in the art of panhandling for years to come. I welcome any contrasting views, and wish anyone luck in trying to sway this giant novel of concrete absolution on the matter.

Marriage is Awful, Weddings Are Worse Pt. 1

The clarification is necessary, because many people will complain endlessly about marriage, when in actuality they dislike a traditional wedding ceremony. Often, the conversation will be the same, with the target being reversed.

I, on the other hand, hate both. Unequally, maybe, but there is definitely a hatred reserved for each as a separate entity.

Now, I understand that these opinions are not unknown or unpopular, and there's much I can't say that won't be reiteration. I'm not trying to provide a new point of vantage on the matter, instead I want to elaborate further, for those who may still be in favour of either institution, because they're both very silly.

Part One: Marriage

Marriage continues to survive as a mildly sexist idea. Though much of its male dominance has ceased to be part of the convention, it still exists for many on the pretence that a woman is leaving her biological family to join a new one under the supposed rule of her male counterpart. It's well established that this was once part of a tradition that included trading a woman for livestock and acreage. It hasn't developed much since then (other than the inclusion of marriage within the same gender), instead undergoing a sort of shrinking process.

It has (probably in the interest of saving time) mostly been boiled down to paperwork that serves the purpose of legally splitting your lifelong accumulations in half and ensuring consequence should you consider any infidelity or abandon any progeny. If you're feeling particularly bold, you can grab some more papers that instead promise that, wish you ever to part ways, you'll be able to do so with all of your belongings. A hefty gamble, as this request is so insulting to some that they'll end the relationship immediately, effectively ruining two lives for an undetermined, possibly indefinite period of time.

Is that an odd custom to anyone else?

What you're telling me, by requesting this certificate of partnership, is that you have moderate difficulty with commitment, unless you're presented with the opportunity to sign something that says you're going to be damn good at it. This is especially true of those who demand this as a form of affirmation; either they can't maintain a relationship without some sort of legal binding, or they're terribly insecure, and think that their significant other will just pick up and leave at any time.

Continuing in that vein, I get the impression that one's ability to connect emotionally isn't a sufficient adhesive with which to hold two people together. Aside from the aforementioned documents, there is no difference in relationship level or quality following the process of marrying someone. Being with someone isn't climbing Mount Everest; there's no peak, after which you never again need to worry about whether or not they're going to stick their dick into - or open their crotch-gape and welcome - another person. there's no "that's it, you're there," moment. It's a continuous investment in your own happiness (or if you're altruistic and sacrificial - you're not - the happiness of another). Marriage as an attempt to promise that happiness in the future is a fruitless venture, because nobody can guarantee anything about the future, regardless of how many dotted lines you handwrite upon. If someone's determined to be adulterous, they're going to do it. If they're presently unhappy, they're going to take measures to alleviate that unhappiness, possibly at the expense of others. Fuck your signature.

Failing all of that, you're saying that if someone ever fucked your life severely enough, you'd take their shit as punishment.

Ultimatums and consequences are no base upon which to build an endless connection with another human.

There are some evident exceptions to the rule that marriage is essentially a useless land-claim. Any couple who marries so that one can garner citizenship, wherever the agreement was conducted, is great. There are few ways to effectively give the middle finger to multiple people from multiple cultures simultaneously, and fucking the system for personal gain (from a third party, an important distinction) has and always will be an excellent example.

Note: many of these arguments rely on surface-level judgement, as some people do have their own, irrefutable reasons for desiring this method of partnership. I'm not trying to defame anyone based on their convictions; I'm trying to defame the principles behind the concept of marriage itself.

Part 2 later in the month.

Semi-Famous People Say Some Really Stupid Shit

Humility seems to be the first thing to make a hasty exit from one's internal repertoire as soon as they garner more than a whiff of  fame. This is less prevalent within the community of the YouTube famous, yet the exceptions are few and far between; the ratio of arrogance:modesty is heavily in favour of the negative. Coupled with that comes the opinion that one (perhaps literally) shits untouchable gold and that everything that may secrete from one's fingers, mouth, or pores, should be heralded as pure genius, even when it's actually something that everybody - everybody intelligent - already understands.

Recently, a man who has proven this hypothesis frequently and publicly in the past took to his Twitter to spew forth a textual cacophony of words in what appeared to be an attempt at a mind-blowing epiphany. To paraphrase, he informed what he must conclude to be a mass of uneducated mush that he believes an individual shouldn't be judged or treated unjustly solely because of the decisions that their region's government makes.

This is a sound statement, and it isn't the belief that irks me. I am disturbed because it is an opinion that nobody has an argument against. 

Now, I'm just one person, but in my experience, people don't live in one particular country simply and entirely because they agree with that country's political platform, electoral or otherwise. This is an established and widely agreed upon concept. It's boggling to me that I've even taken the time to type that out. You don't take up residence in England because you enjoy monarchy. Even if someone moved from a democratic nation to a totalitarian one, no person would jump to the conclusion that they did so because they got sick of voting.

Still, that situation is entirely different from the topic of discussion. You can easily form an opinion of a person based on their political views (although it's largely frowned upon and not at all a reasonable way to determine someone's worth), however it would be completely idiotic to choose their country of origin's governmental choices as a vantage point from which to decide whether or not you liked that person. It's as if the man who made this statement imagines that people think we exist in a world where everyone has political sway in their respective locale's parliamentary offices. We don't. You have to go to school for that. 

This wouldn't bother me so much if I wasn't positive that hundreds of people treated that as if it were a gift from a genius. Given this man's propensity to deliver shit from his many orifices like an overzealous geyser of worthless ideas and yet still be well-received by his many fans, one can make the appropriate assumption that many ostensibly intelligent, avid followers promptly hopped on and rode his dick as though he saved them from a world of incomprehensible darkness by proudly displaying his ability to state the completely obvious. Nobody had visibly challenged his assertion, not because it was false, but because it was so true that it needn't be mentioned. Like they're afraid to tell him that we're not as stupid as he seems to think.

This is a man who has achieved popularity by regurgitating various fluids, screaming profusely and dressing as Batman in almost-public (in reference to his attempt to qualify a "public prank" with the presence of one or two passersby). These actions alone are entertaining until done constantly, and are made especially unfunny by his insistence on proselytizing his thoughts in such a way as to make several people believe he thinks he's been sent from the heavens on a silver unicorn that can cure AIDS with its tears.

Don't get me wrong; I don't think I'm better than the guy. I don't consider myself great, nor do I believe I'm deserving of his popularity. I am pleased with my successes, and don't pretend that I'm more enjoyed, recognized or desired by the growing numbers of "internetters" than many of my cohorts. There are aspects of this man's work that I respect highly, unfortunately there aren't enough of those aspects to redeem his egotism, self-love, condescension and blatant misogyny. 

Rant end.