Tag Archives: Life

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on death and social media

The odds of you checking out on camera via violence or accident are infinitesimal. You’re probably sixteen times more likely to get struck by lightning. Your last moments are hopefully to occur peacefully alongside family. And while that event isn’t going to end well for you, at least it’s what we’d consider natural.

I’m of the opinion that despite the exciting pages of history, the vast majority of humans have never seen or experienced brutal violence. Still, when there were no cops around and everybody carried a club, I’m sure we had our fair share of cave related deaths. Or vicious renaissance era coffee house brawls.

The difference between today’s world and say, a Vienna stabbing in 1734, is that everybody’s holding a camera. More than that, everybody’s holding a full-motion-video camera right in their pockets. Even the fixed-site big cameras are different now. It used to be the only time a security camera’s footage was shown is on the news. Now a security video makes its way to the Internets six minutes later.

Whereas we were once a race that traditionally never saw actual violent death with our own eyes, now every single person carries it at their fingertips. And please understand that I consider this light years from movie or video game violence. One is real, the other is not. It’s that simple.

A thought occurred to me a few days back while watching the video of the Tianjin blast in China. Put simply: “Is this wrong?” And then: “What is it doing to us?”

Everybody loves explosions. We’ve been enjoying fireworks for thousands of years. So like countless others, I got a real kick out of watching one of the biggest blasts you’re likely to ever see.

Here’s one of the better examples. Warning, big time profanity in it (even more than you’d usually read on this blog):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q04fV4j7A1w

Cool, right? But if you really took a step back and thought about it, as these major blasts occurred, probably about fifty firefighters were dying, incinerated. While it’s neat for us to watch, it’s also rather horrifying, and deeply disturbing.

You can take it a step further too. Here’s an example of security footage that found its way online quickly because some guy took smartphone video of the camera’s monitor. It’s of a guy having the blast collapse the entire entranceway and wall in front of him. In other words, his last few seconds of life:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7a3_1439409813

If we’re not careful, our inner-freak-human-self can degenerate to the part of our psyche that used to get a kick out of watching medieval public torture executions. It’s a special form of darkness.

The tale continues with yesterday’s murder of two reporters live on camera by a truly deranged individual. You had the unique ability to watch the killing from the perspective of both the victims and the killer. It doesn’t get any worse than this. Oh, but wait, except it does. For the Islamic State (neither Islamic nor a State) goons have posted some of the more vicious videos in human history, hundreds of them.

Tens-of-millions, perhaps hundreds-of-millions, of humans have watched these videos. I’m sure tens-of-millions worldwide have watched the Virginia murders from both perspectives in the last 24 hours.

I intentionally have never watched an Islamic State (neither Islamic nor a State) video. But I’ll admit it, Virginia I did, both perspectives. And I think it’s broken my brain, and a corner’s been turned.

“Is this wrong?” Yep. You bet.

“What is it doing to us?” Nothing good.

We’re supposed to evolve, right? Thanks to the Internets we now possess the ability to watch somebody die, right before our eyes, at the click of a button, just because we feel like. Or because we’re fascinated by it. Or because we’re just curious. Or because everybody else watched it. Or because maybe in our dark-inner-selves we enjoy it.

Or maybe you think it’s important that we watch, so we truly understand the darkness we’re facing? No, instead you should read any number of United Nations reports on what the Islamic State (neither Islamic nor a State) has done. It’s all there in black-and-white. You get a real good idea of just how truly wicked those dudes are by reading ten pages. We don’t need a snuff video to understand or appreciate evil.

No more. Not for me. I’m going to try and evolve. Certain things are wrong even if many have accepted them as commonplace. The culture seems to have decided that you can drink your coffee and watch somebody die. No thanks, I’m getting off this train.

Or put in another more practical way, the Islamic State (neither Islamic nor a State) goons and yesterday’s Virginia killer have one thing in common: They did the videos because they want you to watch.

It’s generally considered a bad idea to wake up in the morning, pour your coffee, and do what evil wants.

Like all human inventions, social media and the Internets are going to do a great deal of good and bad for us all. Choose the good. Discard the bad. Evolve. Do good. Live well. And hopefully others do the same.

It’ll never happen, but perhaps think of the positive change to humanity if some day, an evildoer posts their murder video online, and nobody watches.

internet death

No more.

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nature doesn’t love us

This morning contained a nice, quiet, blue-gray dawn sky as my dogs did their thing. I enjoyed it. But then on my journey to evil cubicle, I heard on the news we’ve got the birth of our first hurricane of the season. And so nature’s decided to remind everybody just exactly who’s running things.

These planetary death machines generate the energy equivalent of a hydrogen bomb about every six minutes. The planet laughs at our own feeble attempts to destroy ourselves. Wherever a hurricane wants to go, it’ll go, and if it so desires it’ll lay waste to everything in its path. All we can do is run and rebuild.

Nature doesn’t love us. It might be beautiful, give us joy, or show us our purpose in life. But try having a chat with a grizzly bear and you’ll get reminded that the love is not necessarily reciprocated. Or try running from an earthquake. The planet is amused by this as you stumble about, unable to find your footing, as if wasted on tequila.

Why do we put up with this? Maybe we should fight back? Go hit a tree with a bat? Or discharge a firearm in the direction of an oncoming hurricane? To quote everyday-working-man Charles Montgomery Burns:

 

master burns

“Oh, so Mother Nature needs a favor. Well, maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys. Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she’s losing. Well, I say hard cheese.”

 

I once heard on a documentary that weather, as in hurricanes, is nothing more than the planet’s attempt to equalize conditions throughout the globe. When you stop and think about this, in a dark-cynical way common to my unhinged-freak mind, if nature was really interested in equalizing the planet’s conditions? If it could, it might equalize us out of existence.

But it can’t, so at least we’ve got that going for us. Hey speaking of erasing humans from existence, do any other childhood losers similar to me remember the genocide ending to Final Fantasy VII? Do you remember that? That after spending countless hours of your young life and all along you didn’t know that “victory” entailed liquidating the human race? It was like waking up and realizing you were wearing an SS Stormtrooper uniform.

It has come to my attention while reading of a possible remake of the game that there are actually people who claim the ending of said game did not involve mass extinction of the race. This is lunacy. The game’s message was quite clear. They meant exactly what they said. The Gaia concept is all over the game. It’s also explicitly referred to in the movie which Hironobu Sakaguchi wrote and directed himself.

 

genocide

attention haters; kindly point out to me, the location of the humans in this scene?

 

I’m no doctor or scientist, but when you really think about what the Gaia folks are saying, it essentially devalues the human race (you) to nothing more than an expendable biological organism that is part of the greater whole. So why shouldn’t the planet be able to kill you?

I guarantee you there’s at least one doctor or scientist on this planet who so believes in this concept that they’re, right this very second, trying to find a way to kill us all, 12 Monkeys style. It is for this reason I don’t post my Guests’ contact info anywhere.

This stuff is all rather creepy. The idea that our greatest threat might not be hydrogen bombs, or hurricanes, or climate change, or nature in general; but rather, criminally insane but smart people who subscribe to the concept that the greatest threat to us, to the planet, is us.

Sooner or later they’re going to (hopefully) arrest a person who’s trying to do this before he/she succeeds. And we’ll all be shocked at how close they came. When they catch this dude, we need to be sure to reinstitute medieval style public executions.

Because, seriously, whatever. This is our home. God / Nature / Ham Sandwich put us on this planet to live long and prosper. And so we need to do exactly that.

And when the hurricanes or earthquakes come we have to endure them like we always have. But rather than firing a handgun at a tornado, perhaps we should also try and give some love back to nature. Even though nature doesn’t love us. Call it tough love, I guess? After all, I still got to see that beautiful dawn this morning. So thanks Nature.

 

danny

BRING IT ON!!!

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planes in the desert

I don’t know why wreckage attracts me at times.  I just can’t help but let the mind run away with what once was.  So this trashed airliner carried countless folks traveling where?  Their honeymoon, business, wherever?  All that life and now it’s just a hunk of unusable metal ripped for parts.  I get the same feeling when I see a wrecked ship.  I could have stared at this thing like a lunatic for hours, pondering.  Unfortunately, I had like 30 seconds on my way to meet a still functional airliner to take me home.

737

Boeing 737-2H4/ADV formerly of Southwest Airlines.  I looked it up online and the owning company runs private cargo.  It seems they bought this thing to restore it and use it as a 737 cargo plane.  But that didn’t seem to work out and so they’re stripping it for parts to keep their other 737s flying.

 

HU-16

Grumman HU-16 Albatross flying boat.    It’s on the same boneyard lot, but this one’s still flying.  This is one of only a handful still flying.  Originally born in the late 1940s these were flying boats for the US military.  Also stared in The Expendables.  This particular one did time in the US Air Force, then the Argentinian military, and is now in private hands.  Dude’s a long, long way from the water, caged up in the desert.  Hopefully it gets set free to see some much needed water again soon.

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I don’t get the popularity of this meme

It’s not even funny. Or is it funny because everybody says it’s funny? Or it is funny because everybody says it’s funny and it’s used about six-hundred times a day? I think I’ve seen this thing used once a day for about a week. What gives?

meme3

Uh, it really hurts my brain to even have to type the word meme. It’s such a stupid sounding word. It harms my sense of good language. Which is saying a lot, considering I do more harm to the English language in one day than Hitler did.

Hey speaking of Hitler, so the original purpose of this Keep Calm thing was to plaster it up on a wall in London so folks would stay motivated as the Luftwaffe firebombed the city. I’m not quite sure that adequately translates into a funny meme. Unless you happen to subscribe to ultra-dark-humor as I do.

Here, try this one on for size:

meme1

 

My Guests got in on the action too:

meme2

 

But this one is by far my favorite; a cheeky Brit surely wrote it:

Keep_Calm_EPS

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sometimes folks take their craft too seriously

It can sometimes become a struggle to drink with folks you don’t know. It can also become a joy. It just depends. The group might not get along, everybody might already be in a bad mood, and so on. Or things can go great, and everybody’s happy.

But there’s always the risk you end up sitting next to guys you find insufferable. For me, it was a pair of craft brew queens. So I got to hear them rant viciously (I hate vicious rants, truly) about the beer. So I heard multiple uses of the terms “hop profile”, “style”, “branding”, and so on. In short, they hated the beer.

I sat with my hands in my lap the whole time struggling mightily not to say a word because I was in no mood to start anything at all. For you see, the beer in question was Belhaven’s Twisted Thistle IPA, and it’s one of my favorites. It’s not epic, but it’s just a good decent beer.

Just to determine if I wants nuts (yes, indeed), when I got home I looked it up and I’m apparently not the only one who likes this beer. So I’m not sure what’s up with those guys.

Don’t get me wrong, I kind of wish I had their knowledge level on beer, but I don’t. I can talk all day about beer. But I don’t really know how it’s made, how breweries work, or the science behind it all. In fact, I’ve never been on a single brewery tour, seriously. I’m not sure why, it’s on my list, but I’ve got a long list.

TT IPA

unrelated reference stock photo of beer not mine

 

But to me, I guess, beer is more of a relaxed thing, not something to take too seriously. This beverage came of age as the normal swill for the planet’s dirt poor. Old style beers were likely low alcohol, and of a differing consistency than what we see today, but it was still beer. They drank it because of the extensive risk of painful-waterborne-disease-death if you consumed straight water.

So to me, beer is like:

Them: “I find the fruity infusion on this saison to work well with the hop profile they acquired from Southeastern England.”

Me: [pops ordinary Yuengling can] [drinks] [enjoys life]

Them: “I’m wondering if that’s blueberry I’m detecting that goes well with the lactose they built in here to give it kind of a milk stout quality.”

Me: “The way to know if you’ve got a good batch of Skullsplitter is if it’s so freaking black you can’t see through the glass. Plus I love to look at that Viking dude as he splits my skull.”

And so on.

 

By the way, old Skullsplitter label is superior. They tried to go too Lord of the Rings with the new label.

SKULL-SPLITTER-GRAPHIC

I love the older label more because the Viking dude is staring out into space like a lunatic. It’s a good pose, because you’re like, hmm, what’s he thinking: conquest, a girl, space travel, beer? And so on.

220px-SkullSplitterLabel

 

 

Every human should have a craft they love. That’s what’s part of the great human experience. Find a craft and excel at it: brew beer, surf, write poetry, plot intricate assassinations, and so on. But also make sure to regularly sample like 700 other crafts. Because life’s too short for just one.

But also don’t take your chosen craft too seriously. All of this stuff is for fun anyways. Don’t get too negative (yes I am actually saying this) even if you don’t like it / disagree. Just sit back and enjoy it. Things can go great, and everybody’s happy.

 

I&G1

unrelated reference stock photo of additional Scottish beer not mine

 

goof

unrelated reference stock photo of drinking buddy not mine requesting belly scratch

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I’m over the heat

And so is my youngest, who in lacking a proper snout, has a rough go in the hot weather.  So the walks have to be shorter.  But we’re rather lucky enough to live somewhere where we get to experience four distinct seasons.  So it seems I grew up, as did she, with the idea that if you’re sick of one season you can look forward to the opportunity to experience a new one rather shortly.

074

For her it can’t come soon enough.  For she loves the snow so much it’s the only times she’s actually tried to run away from home.  Twice.  Frolicking off into oblivion atop a snow pack.  Off to somewhere?  I guess?  I have to watch her like a hawk.

109

Please, please don’t go too far.

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we welcome the introduction of “killer robots”

So all these smart scientists and engineers don’t want the planet to develop artificial intelligence killer robots?  Why?  What’s not to like?  What do all those brilliant and accomplished folks know anyways?

And in any case, it’s already happened.  Multiple militaries have developed autonomous or semi-autonomous weapons that have essentially taken human thought, emotion, and morals out of the kill loop for years.  Just ask your former Pakistani terrorist neighbor who was forced into permanent retirement after an unrelated pickup truck accident.

We welcome this killer robot development.  For you see:

 

– With robots it’ll be so much easier for professional politicians to start and sustain needless wars as a substitute for reasonable / rational thought since they won’t be putting their own soldiers at risk

– Allows Hollywood to continue to produce C-grade action flicks based on paranoid but entertaining technological concepts invented well before the Internets was even a blink in anybody’s eye

– Favored by my Guests as they believe the unbridled use of murdering robots will let human stupidity “do our required prep work for us”

– Presages a paradise Earth future where wise logical robots can make all our key decisions for us; hell, as long as they provide me an ample supply of beer and kibble for my dogs, they can go ahead and liquidate whoever they want

– Allows MMA, boxing, and other martial sports to be replaced by robot fights, which we could hold on the freaking Moon to create increased buzz prior to fight night; hint – place much money on the vicious fighting seizure robots from Japan

– Will result in the word “irony” being tattooed on the gravestone of the human race as we’re swallowed by our own creation; even as we somehow managed not to completely destroy ourselves following five-thousand years of near constant war

– Why should I get my own beer, when the killer robot can get it for me? if said robot can wield a handgun, he can carry a beer; eh, as long as he doesn’t actually kill me when he gets there

– Let the robot walk my dogs while I drink said beer; and then the robot can contemplate its place on Earth as it routinely carries little baggies of dog feces

– Robot can be consumed in its own everpresent and ultimately debilitating existential crisis as it gathers its wits to determine its “place in this universe” while culling the human flock

– Machines can build spaceships, give humanity the finger, and fly off into space to build a better life in the belief that “none of you humans are worth the effort of killing”

ai-terminator-300x252

Hail Robots!

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nobody ever suspects the butterfly

I saw this dude twice today, if it was in fact the same dude.  When I saw him this morning I stared at him for about five minutes.  Then when he came back this afternoon I took a picture.  But it’s a bad picture on a phone (dude was just too fast), so you’ll have to play Where’s Waldo to find him.  For those of you too young to know, Where’s Waldo was an old smartphone app that’s lost it’s popularity.

butterfly

I have no idea what type of butterfly this is.  I don’t particularly care.  I was fascinated by the complexity of God / Nature that made this little thing to eat while also expending limitless energy to fly around flowers.  This thing weighs less than a penny, but can fly all day and eat and be good to go.  We don’t appreciate it, but little things like this are freaking miracles.

My family’s been through hell and I’m hesitant to talk about it even to my own brain.  But my brother, for intermittent laugh purposes, brought up this Simpsons joke.  I have no idea why.  I didn’t care.  I laughed.  It was enough.  This clip sucks [thanks Fox copyright assholes] but you get the idea:

Then today I saw the butterfly and remembered my brother’s reference from a few days back.  I laughed.  And then I watched the beautiful butterfly.

My other brother (I have two, blessed by God) kept flipping to Gladiator the other day while the family was together.  For those who have seen it, Oliver Reed / Proximo has one of the greatest lines of all time:

“…we mortals are but shadows and dust…”

Yeah, we are.

Nobody ever suspects the butterfly.  That it could remind you of what you are.  But in a good way.  The butterfly is a freaking miracle.  And so are we.  But we can also do poetry, write songs, and drink beer.  So we’re better off than the butterfly.

But next time you see the butterfly?  Stop what you’re doing.  And watch for a few minutes.  You’ll be glad you did.