the geeks are breeding

As we all know there are nerds, geeks, and dorks. Which are you? I myself am a nerd (the kind who may be seen wearing taped up glasses, reading during recess an correcting my classmates' grammar and/or spelling), in addition to being a marching band geek and your typical fantasy/D&D geek. I was never a gamer, unless you count my profound love of pac man and the occasional game of paperboy.

However, as all nerds and geeks do I eventually grew up and married another geek. Yes, he was the too-smart-for-his-own-good type of geek, but he was also a gamer. At times I wondered if he'd rather make sweet love to his X-box rather than me (and if you're a gamer you would find this understandable). It is because of this unholy union of geekdome that I came to appreciate the world of gaming and sci-fi conventions. I now didn't find it odd at all that dressing like a blue alien and speaking gibberish could be a turn on or that knowing random video game facts could, in fact, get me laid.

In the merging of the marching band geek and the gaming geek I am truly able to appreciate and indeed, applaud this fine display:

glumbert - The geekiest marching band of them all

So stand up all ye geeks. Let the 54th level wizard stand up with pride. Hold your wii-motes high in recognition of this fine art of geekdome.

Violent America

How many of you have seen Michael Moore's movie, Bowling for Columbine? In it, he discusses the issue of gun control and, of course, the columbine shootings. After that awful tragedy, America looked at what would cause such a terrible thing to happen. Was it TV? Video games? I know! Marilyn Manson and the devil's music (rock and roll) . But wait... other countries such as Canada and England have violent TV, Japan has way more violent video games, and the lots of countries have plenty of rock and roll.

Let's look at England. No guns. Not even the police carry these deadly weapons. They have realized that, actually, guns do kill people. So do knives, but you have to be a hell of lot more committed. The gun is the coward's weapon. You don't have to look your victim in the face, you don't have to double think what you're doing... it's really very convenient . But what about Canada? More people own guns there than they do here and yet, where's their violent crimes? Where are their high murder rates? What makes them so different? Or rather, what makes us so different? Why do other countries have murder rates of about 200 a year, while ours are around 11,000? I have a theory.

There's a direct problem and an indirect problem. Let's talk about the direct problem first. America has the perfect mix of poverty, wealth, liberalism, and fundamentalism to breed a nation ripe with anger and full of crime. People in America are, generally, unhappy.

Let's say you're not wealthy. Maybe you're lower middle class, lower class or even impoverished. You can resent the wealthy an strive to be wealthy yourself at the same time. You can't afford health care, even if you're both working or, if you can afford health care, you can't afford good health care and therefore can't afford your deductibles. This is, I believe, one of the leading factors in our society which makes it so prone to violence. If we had a health care system like, say, Canada, the UK, Cuba, France, and pretty much every other industrialized country (and even some which aren't. i.e. Cuba) then quality of life would skyrocket. Healthy people are just happier. It would lower anxiety and worry among lower class Americans (what an awful term to use... lower class, as if the upper class were really better people). I know in my household, half the fights we have are because we're touchy or worried about money in relation to health, dental, and vision care.

Another factor that leads to a nation of unhappy criminals is a poor education system. Among industrialized countries, America has one of the worst. It's simply a statistical fact that less educated people are more likely to commit violent crimes and simply statistical that many African American children are more likely to have a poorer education. The Bush administration would like you to put more emphasis on private schooling in order to get your child a good education, but this is simply unrealistic. (Stay tune for my next blog about the No child left behind act which elaborates more on bush's idiocy) The reality is that most of our children are learning from public schools and these schools are just not doing their jobs, mostly because they're all poor. Schools are some of the first places to be hit by federal cut backs. In my high school, teachers had to buy their own paper, staples, dry erase markers, and other materials that should not have been their responsibility.

Other than the poor education received by students in grades K-12, many students cannot afford to continue their education. Many places around the world, including most of Europe, have a complete socialized education system. Socialized simply means the government pays for it. Many people are objectionable to socialized anything without realizing that most of our education system is already there (though poorly so). The next step is to create a free college education. Again, better educated people are less likely to commit violent crimes.

Now let's get a little more indirect. We know some of the problems in America that breed violence, but what causes these problems? My theory? Fundamentalism. Who's against socialize health care? Fundamentalists and Republicans (which are often one and the same), mostly. Who's against funding our public schools? You guessed it.. Fundamentalists and Republicans. The nice happy countries with lower violence rates are all more liberal than America. Most of the prisoners in jail system are devout Christians. Perhaps this is because Christianity advocates not taking responsibility for your actions (i.e. the devil made me do it or, it doesn't matter cause God will forgive me.). Monotheistic religions are the only religions which say you can be a horrible person in life and still be rewarded for it.

Many people will say, "But if you're really Christian you wouldn't break the law". Well yes, but as I said earlier, we don't live in a completely conservative society. Many Christians aren't very Christian at all. Unfortunately these people haven't learned to think for themselves because the real Christians don't want to fund education or health care.

I highly recommend watching Michael Moore's movies, Bowling for Columbine (which can be found on YouTube) and Sicko (a few parts of this movie can also be found on YouTube, though i'm not sure if all can).

Remember, think for yourselves. Love for yourselves.

Why I'm a Vegetarian

Someone on YouTube recently messaged me privately asking about vegetarianism. I wrote a reply and let my husband read it.. he told me it would make a great blog so here it is. Why I'm a vegetarian.



It's true that most vegetarians wouldn't eat meat regardless of how the animal was killed (even when talking about grown meat) because of health reasons. meat, for instance, (particularly pork and red meat) are linked to pancreatic cancer, heart disease, mental degenerative diseases, impotence, colon cancer, and stroke.. just to name a few.

The production of meat creates HUGE amounts of greenhouse gases. Eating meat not only destroys ourselves, but it destroys our home. A meatarian is not only directly killing an average of 95 animals per year but contributes greatly to the extinction of species every day. Rainforests are being cleared for cattle farming because meat is in such high demand. I try more and more every day to live green and being vegetarian is a great step towards that.

as far as plants and pain are concerned. right now our current knowledge of pain is that pain is defined as electrical impulses interrupted by the brain as pain or discomfort. While it may or may not be true that plants feel pain, and as of right now the evidence is towards the not since they lack a nervous system or a brain, it's almost certain it would not be the same kind of pain that we feel. All people must eat something in order to survive and until we create a super pill to take care of our daily dietary needs, we have to cause the least harm possible.

We know that animals feel pain, we know they feel fear, they love, get depressed and they create attachments. Despite what meatarians believe, most animals are nor killed humanely. Slitting a throat is neither painless nor instant. The "bullet" (not an actual bullet but i forget the name of the device) must be used very precisely to kill instantly which it rarely is. Most of the time an animal takes up to a minute to die while seizureing and suffering during that time. Chickens are commonly killed by putting them in individual cages with holes in the top through which their heads go through and a giant chainsaw (for lack of a better word) sweeps across the cages and decapitates them. While this may be efficient and quick, you can hardly call it painless.

In addition to looking at the cruelty of the animal's deaths, we must also look at the cruelty of the animal's life. They are often forced to live in stalls or cages with little to no room to move. Veal, in fact are put into tiny cages where they are not allowed any muscle movement in order to keep them "tender". While a happy cow living as free roaming can live 25 years, most in the milk industry live only 6. I personally eat eggs, but I buy cage free eggs. Piggs are often packed into cages many at a time so that they are literally crawling over each other. The cruelty of the animal's lives are true in the meat industry as well as the dairy industry (unless you're from an agricultural town with it's own dairy farms and you can inspect them)

as to it being human nature to eat meat. it is human nature to survive and yes, humanity has eaten meat in order to do that but that certainly doesn't make it healthy or good for you. Meat sits in the human stomach longer than any other food and is harder to break down. It's linked to more diseases than any other natural food. Other natural foods such as fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, etc all have health benefits and healing properties. Meat does not. I appreciate the need for meat to survive. If i depended on it for my survival I would eat it (i may not be able to kill it.. but that's what husbands are for).

From a spiritual point of view, Buddhists don't eat meat, Hindus don't eat meat, Jews and Muslims don't eat beef or pork. Why is Christianity the only major religion that does? These other religions must know something that they don't

Don't get me wrong, to be a healthy vegetarian you have to study.. a LOT and find out just what foods you need to eat. But once you do that, the rewards are vast and many. Vegetarianism has been around all throughout history. Such well known people as, Einstein, Pythagoras, Plato, Susan B Anthony, Gandhi, Buddha and many other intellectuals, spiritualists and leaders throughout time were vegetarians. The most beautiful writings, poems, and songs through time are about peace, love and the ability to live and let live.

xVenomFangx, I love you.

You make me laugh as I've never laughed before. You're cute, and absolutely unwilling to waiver on your beliefs.

For those of you who don't know mr xvenomfangx, he is a youtuber who has many many videos dedicated to proving Christianity. He is a creationist and also runs his own website, thewaythetruth.com. Now, for many of his videos, comments have been disabled, so i'll address them here.

the first video i'll address is Satan Invented Evolution, part one


First, you ask the question, do you believe that kissing a frog makes a prince? yes, I do believe that a frog can turn into a prince. Isn't that the only hope women have left? hehe.. no, but in all seriousness.. no.. no they can't.
2, here, you point out that the humanistic view supports the big bang (or similar) theories and the creationist view says that someone must have done this through magic and someone must be wrong. yes, someone is wrong... I think I know who...*wink, wink*
3, wait.. i'll be back after I eat lunch...
oh, that was yummy..where was I? oh yeah.. number 3. you pose some questions.
who am i? i am protoplasm with a personality and I can make the world a better place for myself, my family, and my community.
what am I worth? I am worth everything to my family and those who love me. okay, wait.. i agree with the pollution thing.. the more of us we get rid of, the better.
where did I come from? well, you see venom.. when a man and a woman love.. well... like.. okay.. are really horny, then one half of each of their DNA combines to make a baby.
next...WOAH!!! What the hell? Did you just say that people who believe in evolution might as well go murder someone? Dude.. you're seriously messed up. Do you really think that our morals are governed by God? In fact, when you do something good for another person, it activates parts of your brain associated with food and sex and releases those feel good endorphines. Even monkeys, those wonderful primates who share 99% of our DNA, have innate, hardwired morals.

anyway.. back on topic. where do i go when I die? well, an athiest will say into the ground. I am not athiest, i am pagan.. so I say reincarnated. (am i really only 2 minutes into this video? feels like a lifetime..)

4. you are saying the devil calls god a liar when he tells eve she won't die if she eats the fruit because god said she would die. But she ate it and she didn't die, did she? So.. God is in fact.. a liar.

5. Adolf Hitler said "if you tell a lie long enough, loud enough, and often enough, people will believe it" Kind of like how the sunday school teacher tells you loudly, often, and for a very long time that God is real and the bible is real and it's all very literal.

6. *in spooky voice* "four and a half biiiiilion years ago!" So.. just how old do you think the earth is?

7. you're saying that over a hundred years ago, people with little education who thought the earth was 10 thousand years old, know more than all educated people, all scientists and all scientific methods which now say the earth is 4.5 billion years old? are you saying that you can't believe something that you don't see? (ya know.. when you said, were you there? did you see it?) Well that's wonderful news! that means that I don't have to believe in God until I see him!

8. talking about the big bang.. "there's no way to observe it, obviously, and no way to prove that it happened" Wow.. how can you use logic like this on evolution but not on Christianity? No one has seen God and you can't prove that he exists! and AGAIN! when you talk about how we don't know how stars form.. saying that the theories aren't founded in fact, but in fantasy.. what do you call christianity?

8. on the subject of macro evolution.. "we've never seen a monkey give birth to a human" wow... i'm not sure you even understand the concept of evolution... so how can you be arguing it? Evolutionists do NOT think that one animal gives birth to another type of animal.

9. you ask where did god come from and point out that there has to be something that always existed.. so.. why couldn't the universe have just.. always been there? what makes that any more of a fairy tale than saying the flying spaghetti monster created the universe?

oh geeze.. i do love you venom... you make me laugh oh so much.. and you make me so confident and sure that there is no God. Thank you.

The skinny on being skinny, part 1

All across the world, men and women are obsessed with beauty. It's oozed and crept into every facet of our lives to the point that 1 in 5 Americans, including children have some sort of mental disorder. We see size zero models dance across our screen, magazines and billboards in a flurry of elegance, beauty and wealth. Men see these and say "wow.. i'd sure like my gal to look like that" and women see it and say "wow, if i don't look like that I'll never find love or be happy" and unfortunately our children think the same things. We have children as young as three years old developing low self esteem, poor body image and disorders such as depression, over eating and bulimia or anorexia. Our children are being told at younger and younger ages that they should look like these models. This is seen in Pre teen sensations like Hannah Montana and Hillary Duff, and with commercial products like Nair Pretty (so your ten your old's coochie can be nice and smooth). Children are having sex younger and younger, girls are getting their periods younger as well as their bodies react to the sexual stimulus around them. In one case in 1995 an eight year old girl got pregnant while having sex with another eight year old on the playground behind a tree. The baby, of course, had to be aborted because there's no way an eight year old's body can handle childbirth. But think about that for a second.. think about a nine year old mother. Can you imagine it? I can't.

Apart from the mental damage that's being done to the general population, there's the issue of the model's health. many models, striving to be that perfect size (size zero) develop eating disorders and drug problems. Cocaine is a nice fast way to shed a few pounds. So is speed. Models are literally dying to be thin.

Let's forget about models for a second and think about the average person. After all, I already did a piece on modeling. This is a piece on weight and health in general. Most doctors or nutritionists, when they want to see how healthy you are, check your BMI or body mass index. Underweight is defined as a BMI of less than 18.5, normal defined as up to 25, overweight up to 30, obese up to 40 and morbidly obese is anything over that. The biggest problem with judging a person's health based on this system is that it doesn't take into account bone density, muscle mass or fluid retention. Here's an example of someone, based on their BMI, who's morbidly obese: (picture to the right). Now that really doesn't seem right, does it? If that's morbidly obese then what's obese? Hell, what's normal? This scale, not only doesn't take other factors into account, but is also severely outdated. It doesn't matter how skinny or fat you are, your health is not directly related. For example, did you see the episode of Opera with the fat aerobics instructor? In fact, this is a growing trend all across the US. Personal trainers and aerobics instructors alike are no longer rail thin. Being trim and muscular has little to do with being cardiovascular fit. What is that? It means that your heart is healthy and your arteries are unclogged (which is the only reason that being overweight is supposedly a problem). There are many skinny-fat people in the world. People who are thin and look completely healthy but have little muscle and almost pure body fat with clogged arteries galore!

There's such a stigma in our society and weight and health are always 100% related and they're wrong. In fact, from an evolutionary standpoint, being skinny is about as unhealthy as you can get. If you're thin and eat tons then you have a racing fast metabolism. Good for you, right? But, if something were to happen where you had less food, you'd be out of luck. During a famine you'd be the first to die and if you were suddenly to become dirt poor with no help, you'd cost way too much to feed. In many places around the world fat is still seen as the ultimate beauty because larger women are better for baring healthy children and they're easier to take care of. (In a hunter gatherer society a fat person would have needed far less care than a skinny person, maybe this is why thin people today are still seen as high maintenance)

What's more, a study conducted in 2000 by the nobel prize-winning genetecist who was jointly responsible for discovering the structure of DNA, found that overweight men and women are generally happier and have better sex. Extra fat has the added bonus of boosting endorphines, those chemicals in the body that make you happy and stimulates sexual desire. Watson (our geneticist), theorized that long ago men would have spent most of their time looking for food. The reward for all this gathering would be eating and gaining weight, meaning that a thin man would need to spend more time hunting and was less successful. Watson concludes, that in evolutionary terms, thing equals discontent.

Think about it, who's ever seen a thin Santa Clause? Think about a grandma, isn't she usually plump and smiling, getting ready to bake fresh cookies? What's your idea of the typical grumpy old man? He's thin and bony, always scowling. There's a stereotype that fat people always have a good sense of humor and that they have better personalities. How many times have you heard someone say that if you see a knockout babe that has a good personality, she must have been fat at some point. (There's a good example in Shallow Hal)

One thing i'm not saying is that it's okay to be unhealthy at any weight. I'm not saying celebrate being fat no matter what. I'm sayig celebrate your health, no matter what. If you're fat and healthy then go with it! If you're thin and healthy then go with it! But don't think that your weight makes you unhealthy (within reason).

The skinny on being skinny, part 2

Every one of these girls is underweight and unhealthy. You cans see ribs and hip bones sticking out.

who wears short shorts?

Your 10 year old, that's who! Nair has come out with a new product called Nair Pretty, targeted at little girls between the ages of 10 and 15. "Because Pretty isn't a look, it's a feeling" is their slogan. According to the Q&A section " application is simple and removing hair (especially in hard-to-reach areas) is a snap! " excuse me? what hard to reach areas should a child just hitting puberty be removing hair from? Can someone explain to me WHY a ten year old needs to have a nice smooth hooha?

As if the world of pre pubescent beauty pageants weren't bad enough, perpetuating an image of your sweet little daughter as a grown up sex symbol. What mother in her right mind would encourage her daughter to use this product? The last thing we need in today's sex driven male society is somebody telling out daughters how unnatural body hair is and how ashamed they should be. My guess is the same women who are applying caustic chemicals to their child's hooha are the same ones dressing them in skimpy outfits and putting makeup on them. Is it any wonder that ramsy girl was raped and killed? It's like begging pedophiles to come and have a go at your kid.

Look at this kid to the left? How old is she? five? How old does she look? Fifteen? I could do a whole series of blogs about beauty pageant moms and the damage they're inflicting on their children, but this blog is only for Nair, which I am now boycotting.

“So you’re at an age when the childhood fuzz is becoming thicker and coarser hair. It’s time to give some serious thought to removing it.” One question: Why? When we were ten (i'm 22 now) I wasn't even thinking about body hair! Boys were still icky and had cooties! Ten years old is fifth grade.. not even out of grade school and already worrying about what'll happen if some boy wants to feel their "radiantly smooth legs" (quote from the Nair site) and they find *gasp* hair!

Everywhere our children look these days they see sex (pageants, bratz, media, and other kids to name a few), do we really need to make it worse by assuring them that they can be as smooth as all the beautiful people in cosmo girl magazine which gave this product the "kiss of approval". Seriously.. how sexy do you want your little girl to be?