Can't Stop, Won't Stop

It's incredibly sad that I have to put this at the beginning (for all the good it will do), but for the record:  I'm not in denial about man-made climate change;  I've been a full-blown advocate about this for as long as I was aware of "things".  I couldn't explain all the science to a skeptic if I was forced to (science never having been my strong suit & further proof that I'm not the nerd everybody's always thought I've been), but it's never taken my sense of reason very far to understand that all the shit we've done & are still doing in the forms of urbanization of the globe and insane amounts of carbon emissions to the planet are going to have a fucking affect on it & probably not a good one.  "Tell us what we need to change & let's just do it" has always been my motto.

So why did I completely ignore the little hissy fit that took place over the weekend?  The answer probably has more to do with my attitude towards protests & "protesters" in general & less about the reasons behind said gathering.  .....OK, maybe it has a little to do with that, too.  While sometimes I can be optimistic about our ability to change our ways, when it comes to this subject, I've more or less accepted that it's too late.  WAAAAAY too late.  Every bad thing they say will happen due to global warming is going to happen & as always, humanity is just going to deal with it;  move the goal posts just a little bit further out.  Humans, as animals, have never ever been very good at planning a future that could be beneficial to our kind centuries down the road, but we've always excelled at being self-destructive just as a show of power.   I've just kinda accepted this type of behavior as an example of something an individual can consciously change, but near impossible on a "all humankind" level.  Outside of a authoritarian takeover of all the world's governments & societies (nope, not going to link for that), that change that we desperately needed to turn the tide of our future left our grasp quite a long time ago;  it's not as if there haven't been hard core advocating of change since before I was born & whatnot.

No, I think more of my #smh is directed more at the passionate & extremely emotional folks who took out a significant amount of time & resources to go...march.  Wave signs.  Pose for Vines.  Smell Leonardo DeCaprio.  To me, the right to protest is a Catch-22 that favors the Powers That Be, much in the same way that one of the basic tools of anybody in a authoritative/managerial position is to simply allow someone with an grievance to express it verbally as a direct alternative to actually taking action to help correct said person's grievance;  most likely, the person in a lower placement will be more susceptible to empty promises & go back to being obedient having satisfied the need to be heard.  Usually, unless said social issue affects you directly or changing it is your specific line of work, protesting will fulfill the average person's demand for action & they'll happily go back to their normal lives with their own immediate problems, with less attention paid to whether or not their participation had any kind of real effect.  It's not as if I truly look upon those who "take to the streets" with a snobbish attitude, I just wish God had granted me the gift to be that delusional (some will argue that statement is simply not true, but I digress).  And it's the only feeling I've gotten from watching people protest the Iraq War, any Tea Party gathering, Occupy Wall Street and so on (While I felt going out every night on the streets of Ferguson was a wrong move, especially towards the goal of seeing there be some kind of justice for Mike Brown, I sympathized with those being unjustly arrested & assaulted with tear gas and police brutality; something that was missing on a large scale in just about any other modern protest I can recall).

While the opportunity to make one more aware of a issue can occur at such a gathering, a lot of the people participating in this particular cause seem to be a bit tone deaf to the reasons why others might not come over to their side through facts & science.  A motivation of a lot of climate deniers & those who simply aren't interested in accepting is a inherit feeling that mankind cannot be responsible for anything bad. Yes, the Holocaust was bad, but you know, those Nazi guys were evil, not human at all.  If you can believe in a book filled with the words of Man was given to us as instructions from a God-like deity, then you're going to have a hard time accepting that everything you were ever taught was bullshit.  The idea that as we civilized the planet, we began creating methods of progression that, in fact, were not susceptible to the health of this planet or the other species that we inhabit it with would create an enormous amount of guilt, an emotion that is far too painful for most of society to accept.  It's much easier to live in a constant of denial than to ever examine our history with a new & progressive set of morals and standards (I'll be one to admit I sometimes have had to be brought screaming into certain modern day truths, but since I had to deal with My-Parents-have-lied-to-me-my-whole-life early on, I can change my ways much more fluid than most normal folks).  Crying & making a big show all over isn't going to give anybody on the fence any consideration to change their minds;  who wants to be grouped with all those crazy looking people over there?

I realize that we all taught in school that the Civil Rights Movement was just a bunch of protests that *magically* gave way to causing everyone to start treating minorities "just like everyone else", but we, as adults, know that's all bullshit.  The only thing that came from those protests was the brutal actions of the authoritative law enforcement were shown to average White America on these new TV devices that forced them to question just how strongly they still felt about the idea of White Supremacy than had been the past 1000 years (turns out, it just got pushed down into the sub-consciousness, away from the first thought in the brain).

So, listen, I'm aware that it makes you feel better about yourself, but fucking wake up:  stop protesting.  It's actually detrimental to real change & that's what we all want....right?

The Only Good Thing To Come From #EricTheActor's Death

Over the weekend, beloved Wack Packer & everyone's favorite pain in the ass Eric "The Actor" Lynch passed away tragically & unexpectedly (well, as much as someone who wasn't supposed to live past his teens is; he was 39).  As a hard core Howard Stern show fan, I can say the news was meet with the usual celebrity death is:  complete & utter denial ("please let this be the greatest hoax ever");  general grief ("he'll never call in & totally kill the whole momentum of the show ever again"); & finally, #Jordanshrug acceptance ("Hope you're at peace, Eric, nobody deserves it more").

But I took a little lesson from seeing all the pop media coverage of his death & seeing him top trending on Sunday during a highly anticipated televised Super Bowl rematch:  it's complete possible for we as a society to change our dated behavior,  even low life Stern fans like me.  See, for years, Eric was known only as "Eric The Midget", very much to his own chagrin.   No matter matter how insensitive this could seen (but probably because of how insensitive it seemed to him), that was the only name he would be identified with as far as the radio show & the fans were concerned.  The title "The Actor" was something suggested by him;  an obvious reflection of his delusional self-awareness.   I can't seem to recall exactly what the setup was, where in one of the conditions Howard pledged to finally stop referring to Eric by the Midget moniker & start using the Actor one, but all I know is as hard as it was to break the years-long habit, Howard was true to his word & changed his identification of Eric (most likely, Eric completely & totally reneged on whatever he was supposed to do & probably at the last minute.....man, I already miss the dude). 

Without everybody consciously realizing it, the effect slowly set in & he became Eric The Actor without anybody missing his old name.  It helped that a majority of the relentless ribbing of him didn't come from hateful humor of his condition, but from his uncanny ability to make everyone forget about it & still recognize what an asshole he was (or as he would claim " just the character he was playing";  nobody could be that good without there being some truth to it).  With just the slightest of light influence, change can occur.  It's not some impossible dream, nor does it have to be painful.  It's probably also an asset that the daily search of the Internet to find somebody expressing anything that can be interpreted in a politically incorrect way seems to never hit anything Howard Stern related;  if there was a Eric The Midget slip here or there, it wasn't immediately attacked as a form of regression.  If only all of us real human beings could be forgiven so easily.

 RIP Eric The Actor...thanks for the laughs