Wednesday, April 08, 2015
We're being invaded by fiction all the time.
Meeting Their Makers: The Strange Phenomenon of Fictional Characters Turning Up in Real Life | The Daily Grail: "Strangely, authors seeing their fictional creations 'in real life' seems to be a relatively common occurrence - especially in the worlds of science fiction and comic books. Alan Moore once mentioned in an interview that he once saw one of his creations, the mage John Constantine (from the Hellblazer series), in a sandwich bar in London. "All of a sudden, up the stairs came John Constantine," Moore revealed. "He looked exactly like John Constantine. He looked at me, stared me straight in the eyes, smiled, nodded almost conspiratorially, and then just walked off around the corner to the other part of the snack bar."
Moore contemplated whether he should go around the corner and double-check if it really was his own character that had walked into the bar, or whether he should just finish his sandwich and leave. "I opted for the latter; I thought it was the safest. I'm not making any claims to anything. I'm just saying that it happened. Strange little story."
Another person intimately involved with the Hellblazer series, artist Dave McKean, has also recounted a 'meeting' with a comic book character: Neil Gaiman's 'Death', from the Sandman series (which McKean created covers for). During the process of travelling to San Diego, someone died on the plane, and as he was waiting to board the plane again McKean says a girl dressed as Death walked off the plane and past him..."
Tuesday, April 07, 2015
Training - "Heaven" is a strong word, but I get what they're saying.
4/7 - squats, hanging knee raise, walking lunges, calf raise, leg xt
New All Time Squat Record - Andrey Malanichev 1014 lb - Fuuuuuuuuuck.
Email Submission: "This is my fitness journey. Age: 43 Starting Weight: 183 Current Weight: 138 Short version of the story: Martial Arts -> Adkins Diet -> Started family, got out of shape -> P90x, lost weight -> lost focus -> juice fast, lost weight -> fell into starvation mode and started to gain again -> wife became Beachbody Coach in Oct 2014 -> did P90 w/ Shakeology -> Max 30 w/ Shakeology -> 21 Day Fix Extreme w/ Shakeology -> current weight. Moral of story: Never give up."
Basically how all religions work.
Human beings are pattern recognition/creation pareidolic/anthropomorphizing machines.
"Pain or damage don’t end the world, or despair or fucking beatings."
The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man—and give some back."
"Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion..."
‘...My current model [or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel] contains the whole Universe and will never need to be revised.’ In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.” - Robert Anton Wilson
"Equality."
Framing matters. Karen Straughan wants to know how to create a society that is forced to care about men. I have some ideas….. | judgybitch: "...feminism bills itself as a progressive movement, yet it employs traditional conservative tropes in order to achieve its ends, and characterizes its appeals to the traditional as “progressive”.
Actual conservatism (whether you agree with it or not) is more honest. It says “women are incapable of X, therefore women need protection from Y, and men must provide that protection”. Feminism says “women are every bit as capable of X as men, but men are monsters whose agenda is to keep women subordinate, therefore women need protection from Y”.
Traditionalism says that sex is something men do to women, therefore rape is something men do to women. Feminism says that sex is something that men and women do to each other, but because of the malicious and malfeasant “Patriarchy” and all the men in charge of it and benefitting from it, rape is not just something men do to women, but a conscious process by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.
Also, because of the political context, yada yada, it’s just not the same when a woman forces a man to have sex. Yes, we think men and women are equal, but it’s still different, because reasons, most of which have to do with how men created a system that oppresses women for the benefit of men.”
Conservatism said “women are temptresses, and it is a man’s responsibility to not succumb to the seductive nature of women, and if he does, then he’s at fault for defiling his own purity, oh and we’ll probably make him marry her.”
Feminism says “women are helpless victims with no sexual agency even though they should be allowed to climb random guys like fire poles and grind on them because how dare you shame her for expressing her sexuality, and it’s a man’s responsibility to not succumb to his own predatory and rapey nature, and if he does, then he’s a rapist and needs to rot in prison.”"
...Both ideologies hold men more to account than women. Both ruthlessly exploit conservative ideas about men and women. But only feminism says that it’s about treating both genders equally. When we are fighting feminism, we’re often also fighting conservatism. But I’m sorry, a shotgun wedding is less bad than 20 years in prison. The acknowledgement that women are “temptresses” (that is: women have sexual agency) is better than the assertion that a woman in an abbreviated latex dress and stripper heels shouldn’t have to endure the “male gaze”. The claim that women are dependent on men and should be appreciative and respectful of the men they’re dependent on is better than the claim that women are independent and need men like fish need bicycles, while women rake in 75%+ of available government benefits that are funded disproportionately by men. Marriage, even to a harpy, is better than being impoverished paying child support to a harpy who accused you of DV and got you jailed for it and who won’t let you see your kids, and who has you thrown in prison for non-payment because your DV record got you fired from your job, and then claims that she’s all about “equality” between the sexes. I’m sorry, but it is. Feminism is traditionalism dialed up to 11. When we fight feminism, we’re fighting extreme traditionalism. Moderate traditionalism can wait."
Let’s Talk About Reproductive Rights And Why Men Should Have Them Too | Thought Catalog: "Let’s start with legal parental surrender, normally identified as Safe Haven laws. These laws allow women of infants of varying ages (it depends on the state) to leave an otherwise unharmed infant in a designated spot, at which point she is absolved of all social, legal, financial and moral responsibility. The laws were enacted to prevent women from simply abandoning infants they did not want. Four states are very explicit that only women may take advantage of haven laws (Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota and Tennessee) but the rest use the word “parent”, which is obviously gender neutral. But in practice, no father can surrender his infant without the mother’s explicit permission, so these laws are de facto only available to women. Women are also under no legal requirement to identify the father of their child and if the father is not listed on the birth certificate, he has no legal rights at all. Certainly men can pursue legal rights by establishing paternity, but it is up to men to enforce their rights. Women can, and do, surrender infants for adoption without notifying or identifying the father of the child. These are very high risk adoptions for the adopting couple, because there is always a chance the father will appear and attempt to assert his rights, but the fact remains that women can, once again, relieve themselves of all social, legal, financial and moral responsibility for a child they do not want. Men cannot do any of those things. They have no say in abortion, which is correct and right. But once a living, breathing child exists, only the mother can legally absolve herself of all responsibility for that child...
The most common argument against men having reproductive rights is the old “keep it in your pants” one, which we would never accept as an argument for why women should be forced into parenthood. Having sex is not consent to parenthood for women, so why should it be for men? The next level of argument is that “only women can get pregnant” but there is no direct relationship between pregnancy and parenthood, as all the step, foster and adoptive mothers can tell you. We could, theoretically, allow women abortions, so they can avoid pregnancy, but still require them to legally adopt a child from the foster care system, for example, for every abortion they have. This is rather like the situation men find themselves in. Would we ever in a million years suggest this is a rational or sane thing to do?
...What would reproductive rights look like for men? Well, rather similar to what they look like for women. When an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy occurs, the woman, and only the woman will decide if her body will host that pregnancy to term. But even after the child is born, she may opt out of parenting that child by surrendering it for adoption. If men had the same rights, they too would be able to legally surrender their rights and allow the mother or any other individual to assume legal responsibility for the child. It’s not even that hard to administer. Do you or do you not wish to assume responsibility for this child? But it hits on an uncomfortable truth. Culturally, we seem to think that men are utilities and that children belong to their mothers and are entitled by birth to male resources. Men are not allowed to choose parenthood, but will instead have their rights trampled in the “best interests of the child”, a condition that does not apply to women. It’s hardly in the “best interests of the child” to be aborted before birth, and we do not hold women to that standard because their bodily autonomy trumps the best interests of the child."
Saturday, April 04, 2015
Friday, April 03, 2015
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