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This Planet Earth (You'all may never speak to me again)

  
  

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gornorft
12:21 / 02.07.04
According to the Bush administration, anyone who aspires to have so much as a minimal percentange of the number of "Weapons Of Mass Destruction'" that the USA has is evil. North Korea, because of their nuclear weapon development has been branded part of the "Axis of Evil". And they, quite rightly, object to this tag. Not so long ago a now famous dictator named Suddam Hussein was painted with the same brush and had his dictatorship bombed to buggery, only to discover that he didn't even have any WOMD. Have we heard an apology from the Bush administration? No. OK, he was a complete and utter cunt, so are lots of people, so are lots of world leaders. Take Bush Jr for example. For months the news was full of "Suddam iasn't co-operating, we want to send in Weapons Inspectors", "OK, send them!", "We can't find these WOMD, he's lying to us", "No I'm not, I haven't got any!", "Yes he does, we need to drag his scientists to America to interrogate them", "Go ahead", "His scientists are lying to us, Suddam isn't being striaght with the rest of the world", "Yes I bloody am!", "No you're fucking not, we'll bomb you, see if we don't", "Why? I'm not teling porkies, honest..."

BANG BANG BOOM KABOOM, SHOCK AND FUCKING AWE, CNN NEVER LOOKED SO AMAZING, RATINGS THROUGH THE ROOF ARE OUR GODS!!!!

"I think I'd better hide in this hole for a bit"...

................................................................................................

Hello.

Hi.

Have you got a minute for Greenpeace?

No, it's too nice a day for an argument.

Why would we have an argument? I just want to answer any questions about Greenpeace you might have and explain how you can help to save the planet.

Oh God, we are going to have an argument aren't we?

Why?

Well because, for a start, the planet doesn't need saving. It's just a huge compressed mass surrounded by molten rock with a crust on top. It's fine, been fine for billions of years and will continue to be fine for billions more. It's the environment that surrounds the planet that's in trouble and, quite frankly, I don't consider it worth saving.

Um, oh. What?. Why not?

Look, Greenpeace and almost everyone else takes this incredibly narrow view of things that says that what we have is worth saving. I don't. You know of the thing where you compress the entire history of the planet into the timescale of a single year? Earth somehow magically appears on the instant of New Years Day, becomes habitable somewhere on Christmas Eve and Human Beings don't show up until a few minutes before midnight on News Years Eve at the end of the year. The entire recorded history as we know it covers only the last few seconds and each of our lifetimes last less than the time it takes to even think about blinking, let alone carry out the action. And Greenpeace seems to think that these last few seconds are all that matters. As I said, I don't agree.

But what about the animals? What about the rainforests which mankind is wiping out at a rate of...

Sorry but I'm not interested in your statistics about how the rainforests or the animals are doing. They are doing badly, I know! Everyone knows. I simply have a different way of thinking about this that tells me that it's pointless trying to clean up the mess. It's a waste of time taking actions under the expectaion that mankind will somehow stop fucking everything up. We won't! As far as I'm concerned, mankind is a virus. A virus with a finite future and the quicker we destroy everything in sight and make the environment unlivable, thereby making ourselves and, admittedly, everything else, extinct, the better. In a million or so years from now everything will be fine and lovely again with a whole new set of, hopefully, more viable species than the lot we currently have running around killing, eating and flattening everything in sight. THEN the environment will no longer be under threat and the planet, which will have been fine throughout this whole process, can continue to be so without the need of Greenpeace going about telling everyone it's in danger when in fact it never was in the first place.

*The sound of a Greenpeace volunteer walking away*

................................................................................................

John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, the leader of the country wot I live in, is an absolute bloody embarrasment. I wish someone would accuse him of something as interesting as developing WOMD. I really do! Sadly, the most serious thing he'll ever have thrown at him is a proclivity for sleeping with a fluffy teddy bear and having bushy eyebrows.

................................................................................................

I'm sick of "Gays and Lesbians", on lots of levels. I couldn't give a rats who they sleep with, I don't care who they fuck or who fucks them. I just don't. I object to Lesbians not allowing themselves to simply fall under the blanket heading of "gay". Lesbians are gay, why do they need a whole separate word? Blokes that fuck blokes are "gay", women who fuck women are "gay" too, why do we need the expression "gays AND lesbians"? Why doesn't "gay" mean lesbians as well? Coz it does! Why do "gays AND lesbians" have to hold marches in the streets, why do they need parades in Sydney and San Francisco garnering world coverage to attract sympathy to "their cause"? Why do we have to care? Can't they just get on with it without a group hug from the rest of us straight people? I have no problem with anyone doing anything to anyone else, whatever sexes are involved, whatever species are involved for that matter, as long as everyone is enjoying themselves and nobody, or no thing, is having a bad time in the process. Why do gay people need me to say "yay, GO Girl/Boy/Shemale/Transexual/Hermaphrodite" on their behalf? Why don't you all shut the fuck up and just get on with it and stop asking me to sign patitions to allow you to get married to each other? Why the hell would you even WANT to get married? Marriage is a patriarchal ceremony designed and performed within the confines of a religiously based social model. Why the hell are you interested in THAT anyway?

................................................................................................

Why do men who have sex change operations expect to be recognised as women? If there's a Y-Chromosome in your blood, you're a guy. I could stick Porsche headlights on my pushbike but that won't make it a car, let alone a Porsche. Nadia on UKBB is a man. I don't care if he's had his dick sliced and diced and turned inside out and shoved back up into his abdomen, he's still got Y-Chromosomes so he's still a bloke. He didn't "used to be a man", he's just a bloke with his dick sliced and diced and turned inside out and shoved back up into his abdomen. Get over it. It doesn't matter. Yes, there is "Something About Miriam", he makes a not very attractive man trying to pass as a woman. He still HAS a dick. Why should I care? Why am I expected to go "OOOOOHHHHHH!" and "AAAAHHHHHH" and "EEEEWWWWWW" when he tricks other guys into thinking he's a she and still, not surprisingly, fails to find true love in the process.

................................................................................................

I'm just getting started... there will (probably) be more. I'm on a roll. I'm in a BAD mood.
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
12:35 / 02.07.04
Why do twats post this kind of shit on Barbelith in the first place? Why don't you write in to your free local weekly newspaper, where this "Outraged of Tunbridge Wells" bollocks belongs? Can we expect another diatribe along the lines of "Why do blacks expect not to be discriminated against?"
 
 
illmatic
12:51 / 02.07.04
JAMM: Your post is the most stupid thing I've read from someone who I thought was intelligent for a long time. After the sympathetic responses to your various "cries for help" on here, I thought you might be a bit more sympathetic towards the difficulties other people face, or arguments you don't agree with, but no, we get the male menopause in full force. Do yourself a favour and delete it before a queue eight miles forms to rip the piss out of you.
 
 
illmatic
12:58 / 02.07.04
Or someone else delete it. Quickly.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:59 / 02.07.04
Oh, come on! If we delete it we'll never be able to form that embittered, frustrated, dim bigot coffee klatch we were hoping for. Hey, let's do the show right here!
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
13:09 / 02.07.04
what Illmatic said.

JAMM: hello barbelith, I could do with some support.
Barbelith: well, we attempt to be supportive/sensitive so here you go.
JAMM: damn these weirdo oversentitive treehuggers.
Weirdo-oversentitive-treehugers: errr?

Fuck off. basically.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:12 / 02.07.04
C'mon... you're not getting into the spirit of things! How about them blacks, eh? You know, JAMM? Those blacks? The ones you've never met because you are shut in your house playing Playstation, grumbling about queers and consuming the Earth's resources like it was going out of fashion, but that's OK because you WANT humanity to be wiped out so actually you're behaving like a bloated remora clamped to the cloaca of the Earth as a matter of principle? You must have a couple of piquant points about them, eh?
 
 
Grey Area
13:27 / 02.07.04
Haus, you forgot to mention the Yellow Menace. Yes, that's right JAMM, there's a whole nation of shifty slanty-eyes waiting for a chance to descend on your continent-sized island and engage in activities designed to bring down society. Something needs done about them I say.

Just be a nice chappie and fuck the hell off, eh?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:29 / 02.07.04
Dude... do you think JAMM may in fact be... Toni Collette?

That would be upsetting.

How about those Greeks, JAMM? They come over there, they take your jobs, they're better at football...
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
13:32 / 02.07.04
but perhaps I can hijack to moan as I've had several ridiculous conversations with people I'd really expect to know better along the lines of "'how come queer/black pride?' how unfair, when there's no 'straight/white pride'" Which tend to leave me gibbering speechlessly

Gaaaaaaragh. thank you. feel a little better now.
 
 
gornorft
13:36 / 02.07.04
These are such stupid replies! Have you actually read what I wrote? I'm not AGAINST anyone. I'm not discriminating against gay people, I don't hate people who want to save the environment, I don't want to line post-ops up and single them out for ridicule. I just want everyone to get on with their own lives and stop expecting positive affirmation from the rest of the world. I want humankind to stop behaving like a Jerry Springer audience, whooping, cheering and booing everything and everyone in sight. I simply don't CARE if someone is gay, I do care that gay people seem to need everyone else to not just accept them but to encourage them to parade about going "look at us, look at us, we're proud and special". They aren't special, they are just people like the rest of us. I couldn't give a flying fuck about their sexual preferrences one way or the other. Surely that's the epitome of acceptance and equality. The sex change thing is simple biology. I'm fed up with sensasionalist television shows exploiting the whole thing and making out that something magical or important is going on. It isn't. It's just people having operations to make themselves happy. Fine! Good on them, go for it. Just stop expecting people to ignore basic scientific logic as to what determines what people actually are.

I knew this would be offensive when I posted it but I didn't expect people to completely not realise that what I'm basically saying is that anything anyone wants to do is fine as long as everyone involved is happy with it. I merely object to being constantly put in a position by the media or people in my face on street corners to actively care about how they wish to live. If everyone thought the same way then we could all just get on with life without worrying about what everyone else thinks. In the end it doesn't matter, as I said, we're just a virus and we'll wipe ourselves out eventually.

That's a good thing, surely.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:43 / 02.07.04
Surely that's the epitome of acceptance and equality.

No, you halfwit. You can't claim that you want everybody to be free to do what they want to do, then slag people off for behaving in ways you don't like, like seeing gender in different terms to you. I suspect we understand you a lot better than you do, not least because we are a lot smarter than you.

Now, we could try to explain why you are being cretinous, but I really don't see much point. You don't seem likely to be able to grasp the arguments. So, we can just chalk it up to the male menopause and hope you buy a pocket fan or open a window or something.
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
13:44 / 02.07.04
Hmm, I see another barbelith seven page shitstorm coming on. Can the meterological management of the moderators save the day?

Watch this decend into hell until you find out.

BTW JAMM, I appreciate that there are certain issues that you would like to discuss and no matter how controversal they may be I completely support your right to an open forum of debate. However, I would think that it would be far wiser to do them one at a time, a little more coherently presented and possibly in a more appropriate section of the board.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:47 / 02.07.04
And, hang on... didn't barbelith give you lots of "positive affirmation" when you demanded comfort for your job travails/abortive relocation to be with object of ill-fated Internet romance/ill-fated Internet romance and so on?

It looks to me like you are operating a double standard here.
 
 
illmatic
13:49 / 02.07.04
So to abbreviate that - "fuck off anyone who bothers me or tries to appeal to my better instincts". That's it basically, isn't it?
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
13:52 / 02.07.04
I just want everyone to get on with their own lives and stop expecting positive affirmation from the rest of the world.

So why do you care about this:

Just stop expecting people to ignore basic scientific logic as to what determines what people actually are

Or rather, what you consider to be basic scientific logic.

Just get on with your own life, and stop bothering us with your wafty notions of what people actually are.

Also, and I really can't be bothered to get heavily into this, a couple of final points. There is something valid and useful to critique in endless exploitative documentaries, but the sensationalising is precisely mostly a 'point at the freaks' appeal, not a 'look how amazing transpeople are'.

Also, if you can't engage with the idea that not everyone's life is like yours, and your standards/experiences/power/lack thereof don't have universal relevance, the discussions' going to get a little circular.

Simply put, and can't be believe I'm doing this again gay PRIDE, black PRIDEetc=corrective/antidote to years/decades(dependent on the individual bigotry) of SHAME messages from culture.
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
13:55 / 02.07.04
JAMM, until I have the same basic civil and legal rights that you enjoy, which I do not, being a shouty queer, I will continue to keep shouting about the unfairness of it until the law is changed, so you may want to hide in a cave for the next twenty years where you won't be bothered by the likes of me "flaunting" my sexuality in your face.

Cockdrip.

Are you sure you're not Jeremy Clarkson?
 
 
illmatic
13:56 / 02.07.04
They aren't special, they are just people like the rest of us.

Arrrgghhh.... can't you see why this is such a moronic statement? Assertion of pride is not claiming speical rights and privelges over "the rest of us". JAMM, I think you're special but in an entirely different way.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
13:58 / 02.07.04
Hattie, will you dance with me?

And thus we will flaunt our polymorphously perverse sexualities and racial miscegenation ...

IN YOUR FACE
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:02 / 02.07.04
someone who I thought was intelligent for a long time

Hahahahahahahahaha.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
14:09 / 02.07.04
Oh and your understanding of Pride events here:

Can't they just get on with it without a group hug from the rest of us straight people?

is so woefully dumb as to be laughable. Pride events are about creating a temporary autonomous zone where for once in our lives, heteronormativity is not the norm by which all is judged. And also to express our sexualities without giving a fuck what 'you straight people'* think.

Which otherwise, for many is dangerous, illegal, stressful...


*note. Very few straight people I know fall into this category.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:14 / 02.07.04
Guys, I think you're being rather harsh on the guy. I mean, wouldn't you have some issues with people who got to have sex if you looked like this?
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
14:21 / 02.07.04
We have confirmation, he has hit the bone, I repeat he has hit the bone.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:26 / 02.07.04
Now, now, Flybs. This is like sex. Plenty to explore before aiming for the face.

This topic goes over some of the issues surrounding Pride marches. I suggest, JAMM, that you have a read and come back. Then this thread covers some issues around gender orientation. I suggest etc.

What have we missed?
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
14:31 / 02.07.04
Common Sense, reasoning, appreciation of other persons view point, hypocrisy, heteronormacy, race for starters
 
 
gornorft
14:36 / 02.07.04
Argh.
No it's NOT "fuck off anyone who bothers me or tries to appeal to my better instincts"
It's "fuck off trying to manipulate how everyone should react to you according to the pigeon hole society, or you yourself, has/have decided that you should occupy". Not caring if someone is gay or has had a sex change is not a bad thing, it's adjusting your responses to people according to such narrow criteria that is a bad thing. Why is everyone so upset at someone saying that everyone should be able to just get on with it, whatever "it" may be for said person, without expecting everyone else to actively participate by attending a parade or watching a television show or signing a petition supporting whatever life someone chooses to live?

OK so a lot of people do care about how other people choose to live and do think it's important to have their say for or against certain lifestyle choices. But why shouldn't I be allowed to simply not care - and by "not care" I don't mean "let 'them' suffer", which seems to be the general inference among you, I simply mean let everyone get on with whatever makes them happy without expecting everyone else to need have an opinion under threat of being labelled a bigot for merely wishing others to lead their lives without my personal opinion being forwarded one way or another. Why am I expected to have an opinion? I don't! I simply wondered why women aren't happy using the same word for their sexual preference as men. It's a question of grammar, not predudice!

Yes, I had a dreadful time a while ago and yes, a lot of people were lovely and supporting of me, as an individual, regardless of my sexual preferences or pre or post operative state or religion or skin tone or ethnic background or anything else that singled me out as a member of any specific group within society other than, simply, a person.

Why would anyone want to be pigeon-holed? Why should it matter to anyone else who someone should choose to spend their intimate moments with? Why should a person, because they have made a particular choice, either by design or genetics, expect anyone else to pay attention to them or those choices? Why should everyone else get so upset merely because I choose to lump a bunch of things together in a seemingly (to you but not to me) incoherent way, don't appreciate the need for several words to describe the same thing, cannot fathom the allure of the state of marriage to people who generally don't fit the stereotypical group for whom it was created, object to those who think that "the planet" is the same thing as "the environment", am perplexed by the needs of various groups to have others cheer for them rather than just getting on with it and think that the current political situation is abhorent?

That's really all I said, I just did it in the most inflammatory way I possibly could becaue I'm like that, not because I'm stupid.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
14:40 / 02.07.04
now, now. To disagree with someone's views/point out their ignorance doesn't have to be a character assassination.

The points alone are ridiculous enough.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:40 / 02.07.04
Um... JAMMkins, I think it may be the rampant transphobia that's pissing people off too, y'know. Would you explain that?
 
 
Sax
14:48 / 02.07.04
As far as I'm concerned, mankind is a virus

Marriage is a patriarchal ceremony designed and performed within the confines of a religiously based social model.

I could stick Porsche headlights on my pushbike but that won't make it a car, let alone a Porsche.

Aaaaand now for the original ideas.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:55 / 02.07.04
Not to mention the fact that, although you may not want to get married (exceot for when you *did*), you still have the option to, so I don't quite get why you're so upset about other people wanting that right, even if they choose not to exercise it. There is a very interesting discussion to be had about gay marriage. You're not havng it.

Why is everyone so upset at someone saying that everyone should be able to just get on with it, whatever "it" may be for said person, without expecting everyone else to actively participate by attending a parade or watching a television show or signing a petition supporting whatever life someone chooses to live?

That's not what you are doing, you halfwit. For example, how does it help or hinder "getting on with it" if you refuse to accept that a FTM transexual, say, is a he rather than a she? It doesn't, except insofar as it might offend or upset the person and demonstrate that you are a halfwit. Basic courtesy does not seem to me to be "active participation".

Why am I expected to have an opinion? I don't!

Well, clearly you do. They are badly thought-out, prejudiced, halfwitted opinions, but still opinions. "Women who are attracted to women should have to use the same term that men who sleep with men do". That's an opinion. "Chromosomes are what make people men or women". That's another. They are badly conceived and badly expressed, but they are opinions.

So, yes. "Because I'm like that" and "because I'm stupid" are pretty much not mutually exclusive right now. You are like that *and* stupid, if by "that" we mean "immature, attention-seeking and dim".

Now, go and read those threads, for starters. You might learn something. For example, you might entertain the notion that pride parades are not put on for you, in expectation of a group hug. Or that gender is a bit more complex than you think. Or that you are too cretinous to process these concepts. In any case, it will be educational.
 
 
Psi-L is working in hell
15:04 / 02.07.04
I can't really better what previous people have said JAMM, being temporarily dumbfounded by the lack of thought and subtlety that had gone into your posts.....but hey look on the bright side. At least people are still talking to you...
 
 
Old brown-eye is back
15:08 / 02.07.04
Or at least at you.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
15:19 / 02.07.04
I simply wondered why women aren't happy using the same word for their sexual preference as men. It's a question of grammar, not predudice!

In Your Opinion.

And on the trans stuff. Why doesn't someone have the right to 'get on with their life in the way that they want to'. This including, presumably, being addressed in the way that suits them best. Why do they have to have your opinions on their gender forced on them.
 
 
Sekhmet
15:39 / 02.07.04
I made the effort to curb my knee-jerk reaction to this and actually respond to your points, JAMM, such as they are...

Bush/Iraq - You're right. Bush sucks. The war is a Bad Thing. No one seems to be arguing with this point, at least...

Greenpeace - Yes, there is a difference between The-Planet-Earth and The-Layer-of-Organic-Life-Forms-Covering-Its-Surface. Without a major effort, we puny humans will not destroy the big rock on which we currently swarm. Point taken. "Save the planet" is convenient shorthand for "Save the human race and all the plants, animals, and nifty things that we're killing along with ourselves, at least pending the inevitable day when we'll be bombarded by cosmic rays or hit by an asteroid or something and we'll all die anyway", which simply doesn't fit on a legible bumper sticker. Some people consider this a worthy goal and some not, largely depending on their opinion of whether the human race is worthy of being saved, which largely seems to depend on how many people have pissed you off recently. In your case, I guess it's a lot. I have days like that too, when I wish someone would just press the damn button and blow us all to nuclear dust so the Big Rock can start over. But I do plan to have children, and I'm naive enough to hope that maybe they'll be nicer people than I am. Hopefully they won't have to live underground like Chuds.

John Howard sounds like a lovely man. Anyone who sleeps with a teddy bear can't be bad.

Gay Pride - So, okay... think about the fight for black rights, or the women's suffrage movement. You don't get equality of any kind by sitting quietly on the back of the bus, or meekly using your separate water fountain, or doing your man's laundry. You have to get attention, keep the issue in the public eye, and create controversy until you change enough people's minds to make something happen. That's how these things work. They're not looking for huggles, they're waging an ongoing battle against the straight hegemony. Dig?

The transsexuals thing throws me a bit. You do realize that there are combinations of chromosomes other than XX and XY, right? Like XXY, for example (Klinefelter's syndrome). There are biological hermaphrodites who have both sets of genitalia. Gender is a little harder to define than "Y equals man", or even "penis equals man". And since you claim not to care about people's lifestyle choices or sex lives, why do you care if a person calls him or herself gay, lesbian, male, female, or whatever? Do you deny people of ethnic descent the right to call themselves what they want? This honestly puzzles me...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:29 / 02.07.04
This thread on marriage might also provide some useful pointers on why, although not *everyone* wants to get married, some people who currently cannot might *like* to...
 
  

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