This Is The Best Joke Ever

A person, belonging to an ethnic group whose members are commonly considered to have certain stereotypical mannerisms, met another person belonging to a different ethnic group with a different set of imputed stereotypical mannerisms.

The first person acted in a manner consistent with the stereotypes associated with his ethnic group. He proceeded to make a remark, which might be considered to establish conclusively his membership in that group. Whereupon his companion proceeded to make a remark with a double
meaning. The first meaning of which could be interpreted to indicate his agreement with his companion. But the other meaning of which, serves to corroborate his membership in his particular ethnic group.

The first person took offense at his remark, and reacted in a stereotypical way.

He Was Asking For It

Could somebody please explain to me why it is that I’m supposed to feel sorry for people who get themselves injured or killed in war zones that they visit of their own free will? I’m not talking about people who go their on business such as those who are there to provide humanitarian aid to the people in whatever country it is, I’m talking about people like
this guy,
who head off to Iraq just because they’re curious about what’s going on there.

Here’s a free tip from me to you. If you want to know what’s going on in Iraq, before you book your flight to check things out firsthand, try picking up a newspaper or turning on the TV. That should give you a pretty good idea of the situation there which last I heard, wasn’t that good.
And here’s a bonus piece of advice for you just because I’m a nice guy. After you’ve done the 17 seconds of research that it should require to rule out Iraq as your vacation spot of choice, call your travel agent and see what the prices are like for Mexico, or some other place where there aren’t quite so many tourist killings and where the worst things you’ll have to deal with are all the foreigners and the lovely tap water. Oh, and who can forget the odd mugging at gunpoint but that can happen to you right outside your own home so really it’s not worth sweating that too much. In fact, the more I think about it, why should you go on a vacation at all? If you want to see people from other countries and experience other cultures, go outside for a few minutes. If you want to drink water that will make you sick and slowly kill you, turn on the sink. And if you want to experience the pure rush that is getting robbed by an armed maniac, loudly count your money while standing near one of those outdoor bank machines and you should get your wish in a matter of minutes.

But getting back to my main point, I’m not sure why it is that we’re supposed to feel bad when some guy who decides that it might be fun to explore the fabulous hiking trails of Baghdad finds himself taken hostage and eventually offed by a group of extremists. Personally, I don’t and I’ve got a good reason for that. His name is
Mark Sokolov.
If you don’t have time to read the story linked above, I’ll explain him to you.

Mark Sokolov managed to survive the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th. He was working in his 38th floor office when the first airliner hit the other tower. He managed to safely escape and did so virtually unharmed. Gee, that was close. But even though he dodged a pretty big one there, Sokolov hadn’t had enough close calls. So what is a man who seemingly wants to get himself killed in the worst possible way to do? If you said go on a family vacation to Jerusalem and walk through the middle of a bomb blast, you would be correct.

For some reason his story made international headlines, not one of which was titled Douche Bag Dad Squanders Second Chance At Life, Kills Family At Same Time. Instead, he was interviewed by just about everyone and he was either treated like a hero or he spoke about his experiences lightheartedly complete with such quotes as “I was obviously a lot luckier last time, This one involved my whole family.”

Does that statement make absolutely 0 sense to anybody else, or is it just me?

But that’s beside the point. It seems to me that if somebody gave me a first chance at life let alone a second one, that I would do everything I could to protect it and treat it like something of value because without your life, all of your other valuables are worthless. What ever happened to that survival instinct that everybody by nature is supposed to have? Maybe some of us were born without one or maybe it’s simply a case of natural selection doing it’s job. But whatever it is, the only thing I’m sad about is the state of the human race as a whole, not the individuals who find themselves in these pickles of their own creation. No, they’re just here to serve as the entertainment while the stronger of mind among us sit back and watch the fun.

Pretentious bullshit

Well, aren’t I in a happy mood? There’s just something that’s been pissing me off, and it pissed me off enough to write it down. Like I said before, I go to school, and I don’t know what it is about other people who go to school that makes them think they’re better than everyone else. For me, I go to school for a reason. To get a degree so I can have a piece of paper so I can say I went to school and now I have some semblance of qualifications. I’ve come to find out that they don’t seem to give a rat’s ass what that degree is in, just as long as you have a degree. I know that this degree is a means to an end, to get out and join the real world.

But there are people who I see around me who think that because they are going to school, they are somehow enlightened folk, and they are better than those who don’t go to school. Let me give a couple of examples. Right now I’m taking a course which I can’t stand, but I’m almost done my degree, so I’m sucking it up. It’s about gender and organizational dynamics. Snore snore snore. Basically the whole course just keeps telling us that women are fucked because they’re women and they’re just doomed to get a big fat goose egg on the glass ceiling and never go anywhere. Talk about starting off your self-fulfilling prophecy. Anyway, I heard something in that class that pissed me off. The prof said, “Maybe not as much discriminatory behaviour happens here because this is a university. Perhaps it is more prevalent in the less educated population.” Wake up, sunshine, education doesn’t make a lick of difference in this case. If people want to be dicks, they can be a more educated dick or a less educated dick. They’re still inherently a dick. Open-mindedness and education are two different things. It’s about beliefs, not whether or not you’re used to having to use no. 2 pencils to fill out multiple choice tests.

Believe me, I know. I’ve met plenty of these educated dicks, and they often think they are among the enlightened folk. I worked for departments at the university, and that’s where I got treated like the most shit.

Here’s another example. A friend of mine who’s in my same program said this about her boyfriend the other day, and I wanted to take her and shake her until I didn’t have any rage left in me. “Maybe it’s because I go to university and he doesn’t that I can’t have a conversation with him. I’m just more articulate than him.” Ok, hold the damn poney. I’ve met some pretty inarticulate university students and some people who didn’t go to school who could talk circles around me. Don’t use your level of education as an excuse for why your relationship is failing. If you’re so damn incompatible, why do you want to be with him anyway?

And this was the one that provoked me to write this morning. I’m choking down this bullshit for the class I can’t stand which we’ve all started calling “Men are Pigs” class, and I read this statement:
“The person who fixes your refrigerator probably makes more than the local librarian.”
Well wouldn’t you expect that? I’d rather that my meat not give me salmonella than, woe is me, I can’t find the philosophy of socrates in the library. I don’t understand the theory that because this person has to do with reading, they obviously need more money than anyone else, even though fixing the fridge is kind of more practically important. I think the fridge dude should get more money. Fridge dude might save my life.

Don’t get me wrong, librarians are important and if we can’t read, we’re all fucked because we’ll just believe what we’re told, oh wait that’s happening already. But christ it’s a stupid comparison to make to prove that women aren’t getting enough money in that job, and it’s pretentious to belittle the person who’s doing a supposedly lower status job just because they didn’t go to school.

Ah. I feel better now. Now how to end this post. I just hope it makes someone think, even if they disagree with me and think I’m a raving lunatic. Hell maybe I am. But I’m a raving lunatic who doesn’t think I’m any better than another raving lunatic who didn’t happen to go to school.

Going to the Dogs

Well, if I haven’t already said somewhere, I’m blind. I don’t like that to be in only the second post you read of mine, but since the point I’m rambling towards kind of makes no sense without telling you I’m blind, there it is. I guess not technically completely blind, I see light and sometimes I think a pole is a person and vice versa. Yea embarrassing conversations with street signs and coat racks!

But anyway, I’ve been thinking about getting a guide dog. Har har har what a corny post title. So for people who don’t know, to get a guide dog, it’s not like you show up at the local dog pound with someone and they go, “Hmmm, this one looks about the right size for you. Get ’em a harness! Fleas? Ah they’ll go away.” That’s not really the way it works. Also, benevolent forces don’t run around and give unto blind people guide dogs like they’re the chosen ones. Believe me I have had people think both things. The dogs are specially trained and you have to apply to schools, and there’s more than one school. Yep, apply.

Ok, that was boring. Bla bla bla. But I’m thinking about getting a guide dog, so I called up a couple schools, and my god the differences between the packages the schools sent is like night and day. One sent this super sweet package and said that I could send back the package on disk, tape, email, on the web, they’d even let me phone back and have someone take my application down by dictation, hell if I said I had to send it back in hyrogliphics pounded into rocks I think they would have found a way. These people seemed so accommodating. Sure there was print, but everything that was in print was on tape, and a whole bunch of staff all talked on the tapes they sent, which was cool, cause I’m going to meet these people possibly, so it’s cool to hear them talk.

Now the other school. Let me just shake my head. First of all, they sent me a CD with some stuff about the realities of living with a guide dog. Sweet awesome cool. But on this CD, which only had 15 minutes of recording on it I might add, it kept saying there was a section about how to apply. Guess what? They neglected to record that section. Then, everything else in that package was in print, including the infamous instructions on how to apply. Luckily, through the joys of technology, I have something that will scan print and turn it into text that my computer can read. So I scanned every page of these papers, and there were a lot of papers. A ton. Among them I found a fliar! A fliar! What in the blue sweet holy christ am I going to do with a fliar? Post it somewhere? Are they really that broke for money? They seem to like repeatedly telling me that they are a registered charity, on every page of the papers, certain costs I will have to pay for, and instructing me on how to fund raise so the school will be there when I want another dog. Holy crap is the building I’m staying in during training about to cave in?

I also notice that it is repeatedly instructing me to please print on the form. If I’m blind enough to need a guide dog, how do they suppose I’m able to a. read the stuff without scanning it, and b. be able to print between the right lines? ” Oh crap. I just told them my name was Canada. Oh shit what do I do now?” I hear you. “But Carin, people with all kinds of different degrees of vision get guide dogs. Maybe it’s big and they assume you can read the print.” I stop you with this. Next, I came across something that killed me. My computer clearly said, “Guide dog application for training, small print version.” Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t remember specifying to them, “oh sure send me the small print version.” I do remember them asking me if I could read large print, but I said no. That does not mean send me small print. That’s like saying, “He’s in a wheelchair, so even small steps are trouble. Well how about we send him up these big ones?” I don’t know. You’d think, “I can’t read large print.” means “find another way than print to give me the shit.” Even if they sent the print along, cause I have to have other people fill some of this shit out. but at least give me another way to do the application.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a super nutty crazy accessibility advocate, so bad that if you so much as send me one piece of print, I cry discrimination. I accept that this is a sighted world, and of course sighties for sighted things are going to send me print first. I’ll ask if there’s a way for me to do it another way, but if it has to be print, so be it. But this is a school to help blinks get dogs to make sure they don’t hit things they can’t see. If I can’t see a hydro pole, how am I going to read this paper with little black specks on it, and write little specks back?

Ok now I have thoroughly bored everyone. I didn’t mean to make this into a preaching session. It was just shit that I was thinking about cause I just finished scanning every last blessed piece of paper from one of the schools. Maybe I’ll have something more interesting to say tomorrow.

Doing My Part To Rock The Vote

This might be a little heavy for a Saturday morning but that doesn’t make it any less interesting or thought provoking.

These are the very much simplified results of a study of various fascist regimes around the world that have played a large part in history. The basic finding was that all of them have 14 things in common with each other. As I read the list of characteristics I couldn’t help but think about a certain neighbour country of mine to which a lot of them seem to apply. I’ll let you all form your own opinions on that, but to me the list and the facts as presented to me in anything I’ve ever read or watched that looks like it has any credibility at all are pretty hard to ignore.

The 14 Characteristics of Fascism

Here I am

Well, Steve has decided to let me pollute what was once his and Matt’s site not only in the comments section, but on the main site. Oh the humannity! Things will never be the same! Anyway now that it’s too late, mouhahahahaha, here I am. My name is Carin if you didn’t know. If you haven’t already looked at something of mine and gone “What the hell is she smoking?” You can find a couple guest rants of mine in the archive here, I have some columns up on Salty Ham, and if ya really wanna see it, I have a really antequated site doomed for death soon that is so old now that honestly it shouldn’t see the light of day. The poor site, I had so many ambitions for it. But anyway. Here I am to splatter crap all over this site whenever the hell I feel like it. And I’m sure I’ll come up with ample opportunity. I’m finishing up a lovely degree in Psychology, and no that doesn’t mean I think Freud is god and I want to analyze every last one of you. But it does mean I get lots of things to rant about. Either that or I’m just a really big bitch who could be living under a rock and still rant about things other than how I was trapped under this boulder and wanted out and how nobody would help me and…ok so maybe I am a giant bitch. Either way, I hope you’ll at least get a kick out of me talking about who knows what. Or maybe I’ll piss you off, piss you off enough for you to send me hate mail about what I’ve said. I hope not, but there it is, and anyone who’s a spammer? None from you! No! more! spam!

So now that I’ve made it clear that I’m nuts, hope you’ll still stay around. If I’ve already scared you, which is quite possible, Apologies to Steve and Matt for driving all the traffic far, far away.

New People

Since Matt has pretty much dropped off the face of the earth and I haven’t had as much time to devote to this place as I’d like, I’ve decided to add a new writer to the mix. Some of you will probably know her from the comment boards and I’m sure that a few of you will recognize her as one of the people who used to send me rants to post. You might even recognize her from her stint on
Salty Ham,
where she wrote a great column that a lot of people liked, including me. So please welcome Carin to The Comet. She’s got lots of great ideas floating around in her brain and hopefully she’s got the time to share them with all of us. I’m looking forward to reading what she comes up with and I hope you will too. If nothing else her being here will give you a break from reading my stupid crap all the time. Welcome to Vomit Comet Carin, it’s nice to have you around officially.

Still Want That Flu-shot?

One of our loyal Vomiteers, Brad, pointed this story out to me. HEALTH CAMPAIGN MAKES ‘L’ OF A MISTAKE

I thought they gave you those shots in your arm. Now I’m definitely not getting one.

An embarrassing spelling mistake has caused Nova Scotia’s Health Department to recall thousands of pins meant to support the annual flu-shot campaign.
The letter “L” was omitted from the word “public” on pins given out to health-care workers.
The pins are attributed to the “Office of Health Promotion and Pubic Health Services.”

Things I’ve Been Thinking About

I don’t understand sports fans who riot when their team wins. What sense does that make? When they lose that’s different, I can almost see where they’re coming from there. Although, any adult who’s not a part of the losing team but still takes things that seriously probably has some separate issues of his own that he should look into. But forget about that, for our purposes here it makes some sense that emotions would run high for fans watching their team’s quest for the championship come to a negative end and it also makes sense, knowing that some people are prone to act out with raw emotion when that happens, that riots are possible. You’re frustrated, you’re angry, you’re sad, you’re a whole range of emotions and sometimes that can be hard to handle so it’s not impossible to think that somebody could say to a group of people, “I’m so fucking mad right now that I’m going to turn over a few cars, set some stuff on fire and maybe loot a few buildings. Who’s with me?” But when you win, it’s a celebration! Things went your way! You’re happy, you’re excited, you’re pleased, you’re a whole range of emotions and given that those emotions are different, it doesn’t make all that much sense to think that a guy could say to a group of people, “I’m so happy right now that I’m going to go out and turn over a few cars, set some stuff on fire and maybe loot a few buildings because I’m proud of my city and my team. Who’s with me?”

Am I the only one who finds it ironic not to mention highly amusing when I hear that organizations for the blind are holding focus groups?

The expression “odd jobs” bothers me. I think it’s because of the way people use it to describe ordinary things. Cutting your lawn or shoveling your driveway aren’t odd jobs because everybody does that. You see it all the time. Getting paid to sort dryer lint into coloured piles on the other hand, that’s an odd job.

I got myself one of those Ikea credit cards a little while ago, but I can’t figure out how to put it together.

I saw a report on the news a while ago that talked about a new school in California exclusively for overweight kids. Hold on, that’s not the joke. In addition to teaching students all of the usual skills such as reading and writing, they will also learn how to count calories at meal times as well as take walks every morning. No, that’s not the joke either. During the report a guy came on and said that the school would be a positive environment for students because they wouldn’t have to worry about being made fun of. Ok, whatever. There are a couple of ways we can look at this. First, allow me to play the voice of experience for a second, and not because I’m fat. I spent pretty much all of my elementary and high school life in a school for blind people. And while we may not have spent a lot of time making fun of each other for being blind [and that’s not to say that we didn’t spend any time on that], we quickly found other reasons to insult each other. It’s human nature. Put a bunch of people with commonalities together and they’ll turn on one another anyway by exploiting each other’s differences. But the ribbing they’ll get from each other will be nothing compared to what they’ll get from the kids who go to the regular schools once they figure out that Jimmy from down the street goes to Fat Fuck High, which will happen around the same time as they see him getting on the school bus with the forklift on the front of it. And if anybody has a problem with that joke and wants to beat the hell out of me, catch me, fat ass, catch me.