Five things that I for some reason know.

1. Cashew nuts are, in their natural state, poisonous to humans.
2. Alexander Graham Bell did not invent the telephone, but was rather a thieving bastard.
3. An actor once rescued Robert Todd Lincoln (the son of Abraham Lincoln) from being run over by a train. His rescuer? Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth.
4. Mongolia has a growing neo-nazi movement.
5. The female humpback whale's genitalia is usually fully surrounded by barnacles.

These are just a fraction of the pieces of pointless trivia rattling around in the ol' noggin'. How any of this will ever be of use to me I do not know, but I remember it all the same. Absorbed it like a sponge I did. Yet for some reason I appear to unwittingly deem it unnecessary to recollect directions to any place via car. Like some sort of subconscious environmental activist.

With autumn comes new ideas and the wilting, withering death of old ones.

Hijinks on the High Seas.

Tickle tickle!

Bits and Pieces.

* The reason they're building all these crazy things in Dubai has to be because they can't drink or get their jollies off in some other way. So they build all of these bizarre things. In an attempt to compensate for something. Huge towers and spires and artificial islands and spaceports. But you know what? If it's between going to space and vagina, vagina still wins. Hands down. * What's really messed up about these school shootings is that an alarming amount of them seem to be taking place in the morning. Who the hell has the amount of energy to pull something like this off in the morning? Especially as a teenager. No, murder feels more like an afternoon or evening activity. * Why is it that when someone dies during a race in motorsport they don't wave the checkered flag at half mast? * What if time disappeared and everything happened at once? * If you ever start whispering to someone they're always forced to whisper back. Go ahead and try it. * Just what is a 'walk in shower'? How did people get in before someone invented this apparently amazing new thing? Some elaborate pully system? A poorly constructed ladder? A small tunnel? How about we think through what an expression or word actually tells us before we use them. * I once thought my eyes were open. It turned out I was just asleep under a really bright lamp. * Writing academically about film is like trying to herd cats using nothing but the medium of interpretive dance. * Dogs are the whores of nature. That's just science.

Sports aren't manly.

You would be surprised how many women I talk to think some athlete is the pinnacle of humanity and masculine prowess. He's not even necessarily very good at what he does, which is really the thing that boggles my mind. The mere fact that he's engaged in some ridiculous made up activity is enough for him to be desirable, it seems. When did society go from admiring the athlete to worshiping the sport? The idea that muscular and athletic men are attractive I can understand, it's some sort of remnant from our prehistoric past, further fueled by the media's image of men. The different details and workings of this I'll leave up to Darwinism and sociological research to explain but I think it can be pretty clearly stated that resourcefulness or intelligence come in a distant second for most women. Yes, we've all heard the idea that as long as a man is self-confident or has a sense of humor that's all women really look for. That is complete and utter horseshit. If that were true I'd be knuckle-deep in vagina every other night. We are all, men and women, shallow in many respects. The only real difference is that men are more upfront about it.

Tell me this isn't a little bit retarded... But I digress. My real point here, which I'm fumbling towards, is that sports in and off themselves are utterly absurd and silly. I often make the comparison between sports and live action role-playing. They are both completely made up activities. People put on strange equipment and clothes and meet in some field, everyone plays for points according to some set of rules they've all agreed upon and when they're done they pack up and go home. Only to begin anew in a while. The main contrast between the two is that one group of practitioners are hailed as gods and the other is a subculture ridiculed by most who know of their existence. Oh well, now some might say that sports include a lot of physical activity and thus it's more of a legitimate diversion. Shit a brick. It's all just entertainment. If you like watching sports and cheering for some group of people bashing their skulls together, fine. Have a great time. Just don't expect me to give two shits about when they win or lose. When one person or team finally trumps the others and wins the whole series/season/hoopla they take a little break, and then start all over again! Why do sports, and especially team sports, take up such a huge block of the media's time? Again, it's just entertainment. It doesn't mean anything! At least fiction can grant some sort of insight into reality and truth as well as entertain you. Why are you paying these men, these athletes, millions and millions for frolicking in the sun? As far as sports being manly let me just say this: Get back to me when you've been through the school of getting the shit kicked out of you, like I have. Running around on a field with your friends, hugging some dudes and getting a little dirt on your socks is not any more manly than dressing up as some mythological figure and throwing pine-cones at one another.

Greenpeace.

Greenpeace's problem with nuclear power, deforestation, killing baby seals and such are all well known. It's the face of Greenpeace we've come to know and....know. One might think they are just a bunch of well meaning hippie types, cruising around in some rickety boat. Seldom washing, having hot hemp fueled hippie on hippie filthy sex in their downtime. I know I sure did. Over the years however I've come to have a very different view of these people. I've essentially grown to hate them. Not for their anti-nuclear, no-baby-seal-killing-stance which is all well and good I suppose, even though I don't necessarily agree with them. A whale would kill you and your entire family if it had the chance. No, what makes me hate them are the inane and sometimes insane fringe ideas they also bolster. Let's just talk a little about their fervent opposition to genetically modified foods. Sure, if it was just in an attempt to stomp those corporations trying to wrangle poor farmers into a system of re-buying seeds every year for crops that have been genetically designed to not produce seeds of their own and dying just after harvest. A policy of going after that type of corporate practice would be commendable. But Greenpeace opposes all types of genetic manipulation of crops or cattle. Guess what fuckers? Every type of farm animal alive today has been genetically modified. Just not by such a direct process but instead by selective breeding over thousands of years. Same goes for our crops. So I guess they're against being more efficient? "The technology behind genetically modified (GM) food enables scientists to bypass natural selection and evolution by transferring genes from species that would never normally breed together." More of their insanity here. Wow, holy shit. We mustn't break the process of natural selection! Certainly not in order to feed people. I guess going hungry is a small price to pay when knowing that you've protected some indigenous plant, rodent or bird in some part of Africa. A part where "normal" crops are next to impossible to grow successfully for any longer period of time. I have another little piece of information here Greenpeace: Breaking the process of natural selection is what got us here. Using their type of logic you shouldn't get yourself vaccinated or fly in airplanes because it somehow goes against "nature". For the most part it's not like scientists are crossing a blueberry with a damn octopus. If I could speed up the plantation of genetically modified crops that would yield greater harvests by stomping rodents to death with my boots and kicking over a shrubbery I'd be doing so right now. I unlike Greenpeace like people more than some rare fucking species of hamster occupying an ecological niche in Africa. No, the crops or cattle escaping into the wild would not bring about some doomsday scenario. Oh shit?! The people would have more food to eat, for free? Good God, No! The planet is becoming overpopulated pretty fast so unless you want to start sterilizing people or killing them at the age of 30 like in Logan's Run the only other option is figuring out how to get more food out of the earth. Sidenote: Could someone please explain to me why they keep getting in the face of fishermen? Don't you think they'd be doing something else rather than risking their lives on the high seas if they could? When your father, grandfather and his grandfather were all fishermen you pretty much know where you'll be spending your adulthood. It's not like they go out looking for fish to torture and whales to rape. Having to clean out a hippie from your netting or scrubbing their little dingy of the hull isn't exactly a thrilling prospect.