Learning from a handyman

It amuses me that people believe a blue collar carpenter had deep stuff to tell the world. He was probably illiterate like Mohamed too.

Here is the cumulation of Jesus’s best advice: “I’ve been a carpenter my whole life. Don’t build yer house on sand, build it on a foundation on bedrock.’ (Later that turned into a proverb about how to lead your life.) To be fair President Abe Lincoln was raised by a carpenter, but then he avidly read books and went to law school and became a great speechwriter, which you don’t hear about with Jesus. We know Jesus was a rough alcoholic prone to angry outbursts too. You don’t hear about him being tutored or mentored when he visited the synagogues either.

Buddha was the son of an aristocrat, who then ran away and wandered alone while thinking and meditating for a few years. Point is he was probably sufficiently educated in childhood about the classics to have a lot more nuanced understanding about how human society operates.

A couple of handyman visited my house the other day and they were rough and spoke in slurred voices about how Obama’s wife looks like a Transvestite and how Trump is gonna fix them dems gud. It does not take much brains to cut and nail a few boards together, just really simple arithmetic -and learning by trial and error – no critical thinking required, it’s all practical stuff. 2000 years ago before there were universities, the flunkies and Mexicans Sears hires to service my house could have been Jesus. Christians who look up to Jesus should seek therapy from their local carpenters, locksmiths, plumbers, farmers, car mechanics, and the guy who fixes your cellphone when you crack the screen.

So one day Jesus decided he was fucking tired of carrying boards and climbing onto roofs to labor in the sun, and being ripped off by taxman and scoundrels who don’t even pay him. He would rather travel Israel like a prophet, entertained by locals while drinking and giving speeches as a guest. And so Christianity began when Joe Smith quit his day job and started lecturing about what he had thought about while sanding planks for his whole life.

My life is shit. I’M GONNA MOVE AWAY AND BE A TEACHER.

I’m tired of doing work and not being paid to the agreement by those fucking greedy Pharisees, while they get paid generously for light work and they can tell all the chicks who is their daddy. I could do that job too. And while I’m at it I’m gonna tell the world that everyone should pay their handymen what is due or they’ll be sent to hell. I’ll say it’s harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to get through the head of a needle, and jab my finger at the Pharisees and tell them to eat shit.

What are the highest power levels conceivable? I know Haruhi can effortlessly reshape or restart the universe unconsciously to her will, and also pull in beings from other universes. The only stronger deity I can think of would be able to do the same to all universes in a multiverse.

 

Still Wondering Why Hitchens Left Socialism

“You can’t lie to the young. You must not bullshit the young. It’s an absolute principle. These people were asking me questions, ‘Seriously what should I do with my life? Should I commit to socialism or not?’ I reviewed it. Is there now an international working class movement linked at the point of production, internationalist that could replace capitalism as was once thought possible. No. There isn’t. Is it in long term decline that idea? Yes. Is it coming back? I don’t think so. Is there an ideology at least, without anchorage in a material class movement, that could at least say it was a critique of capitalism that could transcend it? Not known to me, no. And one’s I’ve seen on offer, not very persuasive. At that point it seemed meaningless to go on calling myself a socialist.” -C. Hitchens

It’s interesting he stopped being a Socialist, although he doesn’t say much about it, and if something made him decide that doesn’t work. He pussy-footed about it, saying it’s not politically viable to join a Socialist movement now, rather than saying he changed his mind and doesn’t work. (And of course he asserted that Marxism still made valid observations, which is why he used to call himself a Marxist even if he wasn’t a socialist-whatever that means.)

Sadly he’s dead, so his political meandering has come to an end – how interesting that he has continually tracked right after starting to the left in the sixties, becoming allied with the Neoconservatives on several issues like the invasion of Iraq. When I age, I’ll be a conservative too, as my mind calcifies, I become resistant to change and cut off and immune to new information. No matter how liberal you are in your youth, usually the world becomes more progressive and catches up, and if you aren’t competing to stay more liberal than the rest, you will wind up as part of another new conservative hegemony if you die of old age while feeling “future shock”.

 

 

 

Life without backyards or parks

When you don’t have a back yard, you tend to desire a park. When neither is sufficiently large, pleasing, free or relaxing, the suburbite tends to venture into the city and waste money on anything that gives some relaxing, some joy of life, a sense of change, or wonderful inspiration. That’s why coffee and tea shops have gotten so popular, as a third place when we are choked for a place to go.

Isn’t it sad? All we want is a garden where we can try planting new things, a sense of wilderness where we can have encounters, and a piece of solitude. Marketers cater to that need, and we get used to going to coffee shops or exploring shopping malls where we are continually tempted to spend money for any satisfaction.

Lately I’ve began to glorify libraries. I might not be getting my exercise, but if I can’t physically explore the local world and discover new things, I can still find rewards in a book. A quiet study hall, a desk with sufficient light and no distractions, while I strain my mind to focus only on the intellectual realm.

Our world would be so much better if we choose as a community to expand our parks and libraries. Picture if we threw all our living rooms together and made a community center with arcades, ball floors and sofas to lounge at, with the best movie screens. If we combined each of our libraries and catalogued them, the local library would expand by orders of magnitude, reaching amazing completion and touching on all the obscure issues. If we put all our green space together without fencing it off, we could take amazing strolls for miles through our shared parks, and maybe community gardens. But I think if liberals really cared about those things we would already have them, and it’s the socialists who care most about community driven sharing.

I really wish we had good community centers, and places we could be proud of! You cannot find a sense of identity to your town in most of our suburbs, and I know from literature that many of us grow up feeling disconnected when we live in these soulless, boring places. A subburb is the worse of two worlds – a city without monuments, a town without community, a place without bustle, a place without wilderness. It makes you selfish, sequestered, a uninspired and close minded. How do fiction writers or stay sane in these places?! They go to Starbucks and then walk to the library….only introverts obsessed with non-physical things can survive for long in the deserts of suburbia.

Starbucks coffee sucks

Today I’m not writing about religion. I’m just pissed I wasted money, because the Starbucks employees ruined my green tea latte twice! I’m not usually picky, but this time it was just undrinkable. So much so that I went back and complained that it was burnt and tasted like milk with no flavor except the burnt leaves, and I asked them to remake it, except it still tasted EXACTLY THE SAME. I tried to drink it, but it was so bad I soon just walked out and poured the whole glass into the grass, and vowed not to go back to Starbucks. This isn’t the only time they’ve fucked up my coffee, and I’m tired of overpriced, watered down coffee where all you can taste is the creme, and frequently burnt leaves.

I would rather have an asian milk tea these days, even if it was the same price. Plus the store is loud due to the cheesy hipster music, coffee grinders, and tons of white people who sit there forever on their laptops and textbooks spread over the desks as they sip in silence, only sometimes talking to whoever they brought along-the ANTI-THESIS of the political conversation filled coffee shops and cafe philosophes which the Starbucks CEO meant to copy! It’s not just watered down coffee, it’s a watered down culture-as always,watered down ideas are what comercialism pushes off as novelties to the dumb majority. (We see that in Indie games too, when someone copies Warcraft mods or Harvest Moon clones and sells LOL, or Stardew Valley, or floppy bird)

I think I’ve vowed not to go there before, since it’s overpriced, but today I was lazy. But this time will be different, because the coffee was lousy too! May this post let me remember my vow! Every time I am tempted to netray myself, remember the image of pouring that green sludge into the green grass, remember the indignation, and get your revenge by boycotting the worst coffee you’ve had in your life!

 

Tl;dr version: I have discovered a unique and comfy Vietnamese coffee house that sells Kudzu tea and all sorts of weird varieties at a lower cost. Starbucks coffee sucks and is overpriced and they build the same damn store everywhere, with the profits going toward billionaires. If you are not supporting cool mom and pop shops like that then you are my political enemy, and the enemy of the America that I want to create!

Tips for Leaving Silver as Lulu (League of Legends)

(Written for Season 6, August 2016)

My tips for Leaving Silver as Lulu (League of Legends). (Aka things I figured out, in case I ever want to get back into the game and forget how to play like Gold.)

Lulu is my main sup because she is fine in almost any match up, even against blitz or Karma who supposedly counter her. You either poke like crazy, or stay behind your adc and save spells/mana if it’s dangerous. You just hold your cursor over the ADC ready to shield and use Q to give distance, and keep the whimsy for when the ADC Tristina, mid Kat, (or diving sup Thresh) tries to jump in with the damage. Buy twin shadows, sights tne, and Solari for every game, and spam every single item before the team fight ends.

No matter how squishy she is, you can always hide behind someone and cast your spells from a distance in a team fight. So she’s great for staying alive, unlike a tank sup, and since she’s fast you can rescue people a lot with peels instead of being dead. I think she’s one of the better supports to climb the ladder with once you know the mechanics.

Korean Goblins

Korean goblins aren’t so bad, but humans often are in folklore, which happens a lot when you deconstruct mythology through the lens of implicit racism towards outsiders.

Most Korean legends have Dokkaebi in the stories. They are about Dokkaebi playing pranks on mortals or punishing them because of their evil deeds. One of them is about an old man who lived alone in a mountain when a Dokkaebi visited his house. With surprise, the kind old man gave the Dokkaebi an alcoholic beverage and they become friends. The Dokkaebi visited the old man often and they had long conversations together, but one day, the man took a walk by himself in the woods near the river and discovered that his reflection looked like the Dokkaebi. With fear, he realized that he was gradually becoming that creature. The man made a plan to prevent himself from becoming a Dokkaebi and invited the creature to his house. He asked, “What are you most afraid of?” and the Dokkaebi answered, “I’m afraid of blood. What are you afraid of?” The man pretended to be frightened and said, “I’m afraid of money. That’s why I live in the mountains by myself.” The next day, the old man killed a cow and poured its blood all over his house. The Dokkaebi, with shock and great anger, ran away and said, “I’ll be back with your greatest fear!” The next day, the Dokkaebi brought bags of money and threw it to the old man. After that, Dokkaebi never came back and the old man became the richest person in the town.

What is even the point? Don’t race mix? Why take advantage of your friend and abuse him instead of saying you don’t want to hang out anymore?

inb4 I don’t think there is a point, it’s like those stories about people tricking the devil.

Those are usually messed up stories too since they teach kids to break contracts or subvert justice like a Jew. Also, those folktales are hilarious since they turned the big bad devil into a sucker who can be tricked by normal people.