I wound up in my father-in-law and his wife's garden shed last week (never mind how!) and noticed that they had four or five big containers of Roundup stored inside. Seriously? It's not that I began judging them for using Roundup. If somebody wants to purchase and use poison from Monsanto, who am I to vociferously point out that they're monsters? What I did judge them for is how they are loudly and adamantly opposed to Monsanto's bullshit practices that hurt farms and reduce the amount of variety in agricultural yields and yet they're still buying Monsanto's products when it suits their own needs and desires! This is the problem I have with most people and their supposed belief system. Their belief system only really means anything when it's stopping other people from pursuing their wants, needs, and desires. But if it somehow gets in the way of keeping pests out of your garden? Well, I guess an exception can be made to any belief. It's the same problem I have with people crying out for forgiving college tuition. Look, I'm all for free college education but if you think the system that currently exists where people pay exorbitant rates and wind up in debt for decades is wrong, don't fucking participate in that system. Even if it fucking means you don't get a "real" college education. Sometimes the person making sacrifices for their beliefs and their ethics will wind up being you. Don't always expect other people to make those sacrifices for you. Or go to a State school nearby one of the big name universities and spend all your free time at the big name campus meeting people. Because that's the only real benefit of expensive universities! It's getting into the right crowds and getting to know the people who move in those circles. The name of the school on the degree barely matters when you can wink at the person in the interview and name drop all the right names!
The college tuition thing is, of course, an easy one for me to argue about since I got my college education in the nineties. But it was still expensive, depending on where you went. I chose to go to San Jose State University where tuition was maybe $6000 a year? I think? I don't remember! Maybe that was a semester but then that sounds like way too much for SJSU! Whatever it was, it was affordable. Of course, I now clean floors for a living with my San Jose State University Literature Degree, so maybe I'm wrong about the need to go to a better, more expensive school. Although I think my main problem with my status in life is my lack of ambition and my missing need to prove anything to my absentee father. Hell, my main reason to go to college was that I wasn't ready to be an adult. And my main reason for getting a literature degree was because reading and writing about what I read is what I enjoyed doing. I wasn't thinking about my future career. Also, I own my floor cleaning business, so maybe I'm doing better than I've actually presented myself as doing.
I'm not saying everybody has to be a martyr! But you should realize that if you have a problem with the system, participating within the rules and confines of that system is only helping to perpetuate that system. Maybe not participating won't destroy the system, but at least you can serve as an example to others that they can get along a different way. And if enough people get along in a different way, living outside of the regular system becomes a second, viable option for future dissidents! It's much tougher now that the frontier has disappeared. It must have been nice when all you had to do when you disagreed with the majority was to pack up a suitcase and head West. It must have been even nicer when heading West just meant climbing into a covered wagon instead of climbing on board a rickety old ship to cross the Atlantic. Fleeing from a system to set up your own somewhere else is always easier than changing the system, even if you have to genocide some people to live your dreams of freedom. At times like that, you just invent some stupid phrase like "Manifest Destiny" and you're suddenly not as evil as the system you were fleeing from! Unless it was the evil system that invented that phrase in the first place to manipulate disgruntled people into leaving the cities where they were just causing trouble and sending them out West to do their dirty work for them by killing the natives.
You know what? Never mind! Anything you do, you're probably doing at the behest of our lizard lords! Maybe we should all just give up and enjoy the next season of our favorite television shows. And if that gets too boring, we can all get angry over a stupid comic book.
Yeah! Why do I think I'm Scooby Doo?! I can't unmask the evils of the world! I'm just as biased as everybody else! I just happened to read Catch-22 and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and The Grapes of Wrath and I suddenly think I can beat the fucking system!
Once Alec Holland gets what he needs in Nanda Parbat which is the Clenched Fist of Fatima, he has to walk home. So I guess the world is going to end long before he can get back to Louisiana. Unless, of course, Steve Trevor and ARGUS can think of something!
The Titans are off planet? Why the fuck are the Titans off planet?! It's not like Starfire is still in the group! Not like they'd help anyway. What about reaching out to Spyral? They have Midnighter and Apollo's home number!
Alec introduces The Spectre to the Clenched Fist of Fatima and says, "We need to talk." Hee hee. I bet.
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