Shit that Pissed me Off – 11/8
Player Response to NFL Bullying Incident is “Man Up”
NFL player Jonathan Martin just quit his job over alleged bullying by another player that included an incident where he felt forced to pay for that player’s vacation to Las Vegas. This is part of a wider allegation that a lot of rookie players are hazed by veterans in various demeaning and (sometimes) expensive ways.
The basic response from many corners is that the guy who quit needed to grow a thicker skin.
You don’t even need a thick skin. That’s what the pads are for, right?
Now I don’t believe I know everything that went on here but I have some experience with bullying and I have to assume that even as a “grown” man, there is a feeling of powerlessness that is hard to overcome. As a young guy trying to make the team, you will feel compelled to just deal with the bullshit because you want the veteran guys to accept you.
Inevitably, you will view that behavior as acceptable when it becomes your turn to do the same thing.
What has been exposed is a cycle of abuse. To defend it is to fail to understand that teaching a bunch of man/boy millionaires how to be grown-up’s is the most valuable thing that the NFL can possibly do.
Shit that Pissed me off – 10/25
Man Claims his Wife is an Unfit Mother Because She’s Had an Abortion
I don’t know what bugs me more – that this dude believes that an abortion proves someone is not a fit parent or the fact that his lawyers convinced a judge he was right.
Probably the judge. Especially considering the same judge who agreed to allow evidence of the woman’s abortion also refused to allow evidence of the husband’s infidelity.
Um…what?
You see, your honor, marriage is a contract. And in this contract, he got to bang whoever he wanted and she got to be OK with that!
If having an abortion means you are an unfit mother, doesn’t it logically follow that it was a really good idea to have gotten the abortion? Therefore, since you knew enough to have the abortion, you are actually a fit parent because you recognized your own capacity to care for a child.
But this fucked up logic aside, we should note that this asshole is a CEO of a major corporation and his lawyers are really expensive. That explains why they managed to convince a judge that evidence of an abortion should be introduced into divorce proceedings but not evidence of infidelity.
Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 10/18
This Story of how a Small Town Harassed and Drove out a Rape Victim
So a 14-year-old girl was raped by the grandson of a Congressman and her family was driven out-of-town. And their house was burned down.
They burned down a family’s house because someone raped their daughter.
I don’t care to count the number of times I have personally witnessed women making a claim of having been assaulted and being met with hatred and disbelief. Beyond the fact that it is clearly human nature to try to blame victims of heinous acts (or we’d all stop doing it), we have the fact there were mountains of proof against the perpetrator of this crime.
Too bad he was a popular football player. We all know that football is more important than a young girl’s life.
How DARE that young woman allow herself to be raped right before the big game????
I read this story and had but one thought: aside from the victim and her family (who have nothing to be ashamed of) nobody involved in this situation should be proud of themselves. They have established a pattern that should never be established.
When teenagers do horrible shit like this and get away with it, they have learned a valuable lesson. They can do it again.
Shit that Pissed me off – 10/11
Saudi Preacher Found Guilty of Killing His Daughter and is Sentenced to 8 Years in Prison
Contrast this with four Saudi men who were convicted of indecent exposure for dancing naked on top of their car. They got ten years and 2000 lashes.
This dude beat his five year old daughter to death. That’s…worse, right?
Except maybe not. She was, after all, a girl. I mean, if he’s beaten a five year old son to death, he might have gotten ten years since that is clearly as bad as dangling your junk around on Youtube.
Hang on…that dude is walking today? I told you that we should have kept our pants on and murdered a little girl!
The fact this asshole is a holy man just means there are a whole bunch of people listening to what he says and believing that if he beat his five year old daughter to death, it was probably because she deserved it.
Shit that Pissed me off this Week – 10/4
New Ulm Creationists Torpedo a Production of “Inherit the Wind”
New Ulm is home to Martin Luther college, which is run by the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. They believe in a literal interpretation of the bible no matter what observable evidence might suggest and “Inherit the Wind” has the nerve to suggest that maybe god whispered to Darwin.
Yeah, that line is in there. The play doesn’t deny the existence of god. It only suggests that maybe god works in allegories every now and again. And why not? He created them, didn’t he?
The bullying tactics engaged are what really get me riled up. The play is was being put on by a community theatre off campus. Unfortunately, the director and some of the actors attended the college. They, apparently, were placed under considerable pressure by their professors and chose to withdraw from the play.
Look! The play includes a big banner that says “Read your Bible!” How bad can it be?????
Is this play so threatening to their faith that they can’t just leave the kids alone? Are they afraid that one play will turn these budding conservative Christians into raving liberals who have the audacity to think that god whispers to them?
College should be where kids go to learn how to think. It would appear that Martin Luther college would like them to do just the opposite.
Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 9/27
Popular Science Shuts off Their Comments
Hey, I don’t really care if anybody comments on a Popular Science article ever again. Comment threads on the internet are typically the realm of madness.
Which is precisely the point. Popular Science shut off comments on their science articles because people are more likely to believe the comments than they are to believe the article.
Yeah. That’s right. People read an article with citations and evidence and they are less likely to believe that than a one paragraph rebuttal that is basically nothing more than someone saying “oh yeah? I know you but what am I?”
Everyone KNOWS that you can’t trust results from experiments that use beakers! Some guy said so on the internet!
We benefit from scientific research every day of our lives but somehow, in spite of everything science does for us, we are more inclined to believe FrankNFurther2098 than someone who is publishing a researched and peer reviewed article. The practical result is that Popular Science is turning off their comments so people will pay attention to the science and not the bullshit.
Shit that Pissed me off this Week – 8/30
The Shitstorm Surrounding Miley Cyrus
So Cyrus did a performance at the MTV Video music awards that was two things: 1) Blatantly sexual and 2) Artistically awful.
Now the VMA’s are about the most gaudy ridiculous spectacle in music so the fact she was part of a gaudy, ridiculous performance should be neither shocking or upsetting. That’s what the show is all about.
The fact people are pitching a fit because she exhibited hardcore sexuality when she’s only (gasp) twenty is what is really bugging me here. Because if Miley Cyrus was a twenty something guy grabbing his crotch and dancing suggestively and her name was…say…Michael Jackson, hardly anyone would be complaining.
Woo!
Cyrus, though, is a girl woman and she’s not Madonna.
Of course, Madonna got all sorts of crap for being brazenly sexual as well.
Having watched the video, I think that the performance was awful. Her singing was breathy and not in her strongest range. She was more interested in showing off how “grown up” she was than in being a good singer (and she is a good singer – even if you don’t like what she sings). Her “dancing” consisted mostly of gyrating and sticking out her tongue. The three songs they chose to mash-up don’t really fit together. What was with the teddy bears anyway? I fucking hate “Blurred Lines.”
The fact that Cyrus engaged in suggestive dancing should not be the subject of criticism. It should be the fact she did it badly. If you want to be perceived as grown up and sexy, be grown up and sexy.
But while we all comment about Cyrus, we need to remember one thing. She gave that performance to get attention. And she got a lot of it.
Shit that Pissed me off this week- 8/23
It’s actually been a pretty boring week. Not too much that really annoyed me. Perhaps I’ve been looking in the wrong places.
They Cut Down a Grand Old Tree at the Renaissance Festival
This is not a “fuck the management of the Renaissance Festival” screed. While I sometimes feel that way, the issue here is not one of any idiot running the festival but rather the cost of our human needs.
Near a group of rocks at the MRF grounds, there was an oak tree that provided shade for years. That tree stood over the old peasant banquet and sing-along and it even provided some shade to the old juggling booth. All of those things were long gone but the tree remained. Until now.
The tree wasn’t sick (so far as I know). They cut it down because they had to run new power lines on to the site and it was in the way.
I don’t know if they could have run the lines somewhere else. Even if they could have done so, it probably would have resulted in some other tree being destroyed.
But that tree had history for me. That tree meant something to me.
That tree there. They one right between these two lovely ladies (photo by Eric Knight).
And it is the inevitable cost of human progress that we destroy things that get in our way. Over and over and over again. It isn’t a problem with the Renaissance festival. it is a problem with the way the world works.
I guess it doesn’t piss me off. It makes me sad.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 7/26
Pastor Says that He’s Never met Anyone who Didn’t Regret Having Sex Before Marriage
I must assume, then, that he’s met very few people who have had sex before marriage.
I need to meet this guy because then he will have met one person who is completely happy with the decision to have sex before marriage. Then I’ll introduce him to a whole lot of other people. Many of whom are Christians.
See, I’m used to self-righteous idiots like this talking out of their asses. But why say something so easy to refute? Especially because the guy has to realize that what he is saying is bullshit, doesn’t he? How can you not realize that what you are saying is bullshit when you say something so incredibly stupid?
I’m betting a million dollars that this dude has never regretted having sex outside of marriage.
In fact, when presented with evidence that what he said was bullshit, he turned off the comments on his post and deleted all of the comments that disproved his statement. Because when faced with evidence that you put your foot in your mouth, the best thing you can possibly do is destroy the evidence. And this jerk would probably want to ask me where I get a moral compass without god.
Seems like god hasn’t done him any favors in that department.
Grail Diary 
Shit that Pissed me off – 11/1
Fox News Lies with Statistics
Normally I don’t bother writing about Fox news because they are a biased source and who really cares when they say stupid shit? The people who watch and believe Fox news will continue to watch and believe Fox news no matter how often the bias is shown.
But bad graphs really annoy me, you know?
Take this one:
HOLY FUCK! Look how many more people are on Welfare than have full time jobs! That’s a huge amount of….waitaminnit.
Actually, that’s only about 900,000 people but it looks like a whole lot more than that because of the scale they chose for their Y axis. When you look more closely, you will see there is actually no scale on their Y Axis. If we assume the bar on the right is equal to 101.7 million, the bar on the left, which is five times as big, ought to be equal to over 500 million. But it isn’t.
Because the axis doesn’t have a scale. They just picked a bigger bar and a littler bar and slapped numbers on them.
Their numbers, by the way, are also total bullshit. Even if they got the numbers right, though, this graph would be a travesty.
Being biased is one thing. Being biased and stupid is unacceptable.
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