April blah blah day

I am not a fan of April fool's day. I can remember many, many "funny" incidents in elementary and middle school where people would randomly shout to me "your shoe's untied" from across the hall, and as I looked down, they would cackle maniacally, pleased with another cunning prank well-pulled, and move along. Of course, since my shoes were untied about 90% of every day (I have this thing with shoe laces - they just don't stay tied. Ever. Double knot 'em, triple knot 'em, granny knot 'em, it doesn't matter. This is one reason I'm a big sandal fan), usually it just didn't seem very funny to me. I'm thinking to myself "yeah, my shoe's untied... so what?" The hilarity escalated after middle school to actual pranks which could actually hurt people! Wheee! Buckets filled with pig slop artfully balanced on top of doors which would then tip off and brain people, while simultaneously making them very smelly! Smelly unconscious people! Rock! And lots of heart-felt conversations between couples about how they wanted to break up ("not! Ha, fooled you! Gosh, you're stupid. Hey, where are you going?") and how they had any one of a number of nasty contagious diseases ("but baby, it was just a joke! Isn't it hilarious that you got tested?!") and how they really were ready for that three-some with their best friend now ("and then we got him naked and took pictures and it was soooo funny! The best part was when he went out the window and into the bushes to escape, still naked, and got all scratched up. He looked soooo dumb").

But, hey, I've got a sense of humor, and this is in addition to being the first day of the cruelest month and national embarrassed by my president day, a day for laughs and funny stuff. So, here, go read this. It's actually funny. What, you gonna contradict me, you malodorous heap of parrot droppings? Didn't think so. You didn't come here for an argument. ;)

reductio ad wombat

You know what really gets my goat? When people use the argument "but the founding fathers _____" to support a position. This is not only a simple and simplistic appeal to authority, it's also usually fallacious. "But the founding fathers wanted a giant theocracy!", for instance, is an argument that I see fairly often, in various forums to support various idiotic arguments. And of course it's not true, but more importantly, it's not relevant. The founding fathers? Great guys. The ones who were great guys, anyway. But they're dead now, and they lived then and not now. It doesn't matter to me whether or not George Washington believed that the only way to be truly patriotic and moral was through God. Really and truly. He's just this dead guy, you know? Divining the True Intent of the people who founded this country is an exercise is mental masturbation - you'll only come up with what you want to hear, and there's simply no way to really and truly prove what anyone in the 1700's deep down thought about the issue of internet porn or the FCC or semi-automatic weapons being freely available. We have the laws and documents that we have, and rather than constantly harkening back to the glory days of centuries ago and wishing that one of those dead guys were around to really let the other side know that you're right on X issue, we should start trying to look to the future. If our laws are outdated and don't deal very well with modern concepts and problems, we ought to scrap them and make new ones. Copyright? Out-fuckin'-dated. We need to fix it, modernize the concept. Patent law? Ditto. And trying to take an ammendment which prominently features the word "militia" and bend it to thy will regarding modern life and times just. doesn't. work.

Gunyarg. I don't really know why I'm waxing political right now. I usually just keep most of these opinions to myself, because, well, they seem kind of self-evident. I'm going to go play some Disciples with Todd now, because that's a lot more fun than just ranting. For you, too, I'm sure.