Cupid is the original drive-by artist.

OK Cupid is a whoremonger.

OK Go is an enabler.

My first response to being insulted with "stay classy" was, "That's such a classist view! Are you seriously using socioeconomics to try to tell me what I should do?"

In case you haven't seen it . . .

These are our future mothers and our current voters. It's good to know they're responsible and mature. Right?

[03:43] moritheil: Life.
[03:43] moritheil: Making shit complicated.
[03:44] Gakar: it usually does. thats why i try not to have one
[03:45] moritheil: It's the only way to be sure.
[05:07] Gakar: no, taking off and nuking the entire site from orbit is the only way to be sure

I'm coining this term because it's every bit the bullshit that heteronormality and other forms of normality are.

Spatiotemporal normality is the irrational belief that just because you were raised with a certain set of standards, or you feel positively or negatively over a set of things, your standards must be right and should apply over all time and space.

Oddly enough, I see a lot of it in religions about an entity that transcends time and space. This despite the fact that in, say, the Bible, when God tells people to do stuff, it often makes no sense to them and/or violates their conventional senses of morality, dignity, or propriety. Have we ever thought about why that is? The usual explanation is "because morality stems from God and therefore what He says is always right" but maybe it's also that "peoples' concepts of morality are typically self-centered bullshit."

Look, four thousand years ago things like being strong and looking beautiful were considered morally virtuous. That's not a typo; study Greek history or the history of dueling and you will understand that our concept of virtue was always a bastard idea, chained to competence and trampled upon by expediency. Even now, we don't like drunkards, gamblers, and those who simply aren't successful. We like to pretend that they are morally inferior, when it could be an issue of competence or really terrible timing.

What's the main principle of Western morality anyhow? The Golden Rule? "That which is harmful to you, do not do to others"? Fuck that. That's fear of reprisals. That's not what is right.

I see people up in arms over gay marriage, or silly erotic drawings of imaginary characters which might be under 18, and I think: these are our deep convictions? This is our grasp of ultimate moral truth? This kind of crap for which we clearly had different standards not long ago, and clearly will have vastly different standards for in the future? This is what people want to be remembered as standing for?

This isn't a strictly Western phenomenon: witness all the fatuous attempts to whitewash the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH)'s marriage to a 9-year-old girl. What difference does it honestly make if it offends your concept of propriety? I want to take all these scholars and ask: where's your faith? If you honestly believe that he was a divinely appointed lawgiver who expounded the moral code for the entire Middle East (or beyond), why are you trying to place your entirely modern, aesthetic disgust above him? Is it too much to ask you to believe that a moral man could have done such a thing?

Conservative Christianity isn't any less guilty of whitewashing: it's turned Jesus from a wandering liberal Jew to a figure who encourages people to kill like "good soldiers" and blesses their sniper scopes. And let's not forget that Judaism, which gave us "Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world" also gave us the modern Jewish state - or more to the point, the modern Israeli army.

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself."
- Sir R. F. Burton

Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Matthew 26:52

His followers are now cast as abortion clinic bombers.

"The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr." - Mohammed (PBUH).

His followers are now cast as fanatical martyrs.

Are we just really, really good at hearing only what we want to hear?

"Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?'

Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you. 11 Depart from me, you evildoers.'" Matthew 7:22

"Believe, if thou wilt, that mountains change their place, but believe not that man changes his nature." - Mohammed (PBUH)

"And Jesus answering said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you, and suffer you?" Luke 9:41

People say "the winners write history" but I now think that history is usually written by those who didn't get the memo.

Death Note fans, eat your hearts out.

(Start typing . . . )

Bruises heal. Bitterness festers.