Interestingly Outdated Idioms.

The connection between the heart icon and the soul gives off strange connotations these days. Ancient peoples believed that the heart was the seat of the human mind. Today it's pretty much been whittled down to symbolising emotions of a romantic nature. We know that romantic feelings (which we hold so dear) do not reside in any bodily organ. Below the neck or above the waist, anyway.

This outdated symbolism lives on as it's rather quaint and charming. My Romantic Heart. If people once thought these things to be true, what other human conditions must they have believed to be housed in our various body parts? - My Hedonistic Liver. - My Platonic Pancreas. - My Curious Appendix. - My Impatient, But Curiously Resilient, Digestive System. - My Ululating Ulceration.

Do any of these make less sense than the idea that romantic notions reside in the organ that pumps oxygen to our cells? It's romantic, yes, but we could surely come up with something more modern and apt? Metaphors practically grow on trees. Come on poets, don't just rest on your predecessor's laurels. Get out there and romanticize post-modernity! Maybe it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Like romance, it has nothing to do with reason.

Accessorize, exercise, jizz.

Sex as a subject has become rather pathetic, to be frank. The myth that those who sleep with a lot of random people are really confident is complete and utter horse shit. In my experience men and women who behave in this way are in fact incredibly insecure. Constantly seeking confirmation and reassurance that they are as beautiful as they have convinced themselves. Is that acting secure? Turning sex into some sort of power game or just immediate gratification drains it of all passion. I don't want sex to just be pieces of meat flapping against one another. Marinated in alcohol and anxiety. People shouldn't be picked up like accessories. You are not the centre of the cosmos. Your fleeting happiness is not the answer to the mysteries of life. Get over yourself. And the two of you clumsily jamming your genitals together on your room mates well-worn old couch is not passionate and sexy. No matter how many times you repeat this lie to yourself in an attempt to maintain that  hard on/stay wet. I gave up one night stands some time ago. At first it wasn't a moral choice or even one that came out of any deeper introspection. It was just a path taken out of a practical nature. People in general are absolutely terrible at fucking. Just awful. The quality was never as good as with someone I got a little bit familiar with. People who have such low self-esteem that they pathologically need to swallow another human beings bodily fluids every weekend tend to not have been in many meaningful relationships of any greater lengths. Therefore they have, out of a strictly numerical standpoint, fucked far fewer times. Practice makes perfect. There appears to be a tipping point where the quality of the bedroom shenanigans and the quantity of sexual partners converge and then invert. Both in a grander scheme and in specific situations. Taking pride in appearing sexually attractive to people who will fuck just about anything is like being proud that you are Garry Glitter's search engine of choice. It's at best quite meaningless, at worst loathsome. Tickling the fancy of someone you find to be truly unique. Having them share their innermost contrivances. Being able to disappoint in a painful way. That is sexy. That is beautiful. Poking someone in the groin while trying to refrain from spewing because of the motion and too much tequila is not. Unknown people are not. Acting tough will never be.

Stringbeany Arguments.

Eating meat is not immoral. And the people who claim that it is should fuck off. This is what I'm going to be proving as this little post zips along at a hopefully comfortable pace. The main problem I have with vegetarians and vegans that have chosen their dietary habits upon moral convictions is not that they seem to be stuck in a convoluted circular argument but that they are intolerant and refuse to take a debate. I myself can be quite intolerant, I do not believe that we can all be right about all things at every possible situation, I however always leave an opening for debate. A possibility for everyone to lay forth an argument for their case. No vegan/vegetarian seems willing to do so. They open up with a condemnation of my ethical code and then do not even give me the benefit of questioning their motivations. Claiming intolerance on my part. No sir or madame, you are the one being intolerant. Of course I'm going to defend myself in a more knee-jerk reactionary way if you confront me with ethical accusations. However, underlying my sharpened tone is a well thought out thesis. A series of moral arguments which reach a conclusion. Let me deconstruct some parts of it for you. To lay it bare for inspection. Eating other organisms is required for your own survival. That's a given. Where some draw the line seems very murky to me. Apparently the clincher is intelligence in some form. What exactly does this intelligence manifest itself as? You could argue that a pig or a cow or a monkey are self-aware in one way or another. Alright. Is a shrimp or fish self-aware? Hardly. They only function according to very simple natural instincts. They just mindlessly repeat actions and react to their environment. If anything they are organic machines. Even the more intelligent animals we use in farming owe their entire existence to us. None of them would be here were it not for human ingenuity. Does that not then give us some license to continue their existence? The combined realities of market forces and the physical characteristics of these animals guarantee that they would not be able to subsist without human society. Life's continuation necessitates us generating money from breeding, selling and eating these animals. It becomes a requirement that I enjoy a good steak once in a while for their species to survive. You think a cow would fare well in the wild? They're a bear's equivalent of a bacchanal. That is another point. There are other animals besides ourselves that eat meat. They are out there killing each other. All the time. Are they somehow immoral? Using such logic you would have to concede that they are, something a vegan would never admit though. They have so little familiarity with actual nature outside of Disney movies that they believe animals have human characteristics. Such as the moral concepts of good and evil, personality and emotions. Anthropomorphizing animals into just being humans with fur and strange ears performing little song and dance routines. They are not privy to these ideas we have compiled on life, the world and morality. This is the sharp contrast these highfalutin supposedly ethically conscious vegetarians cannot grasp. We humans are animals, not separated from nature by a glass wall. We are governed by natural instincts and our evolutionary past. Yet at the same time we are unique in that we have the ability to be moral. And if morality is not strictly a human attribute we are without a doubt the only ones who can analyze it. We can formulate strings of thought and hypothesize on the inner workings of our own morality. Lay down arguments on why one should behave and be a certain way and not another. To then communicate this to other minds is absolutely awe inspiring. Either we humans are unique in having the concept of morality (and are thus better) or animals behave in an immoral fashion at almost every point in their lives. This would also make us better than our fuzzy little woodland friends. Which is it guacamole lovers? Inflicting pointless harm and pain on another living and breathing being is to be appalled, of course it is. But why am I in the wrong because I enjoy consuming the carcass of an animal? Most of them have lived a relatively stress free and painless life. Far more enjoyable than a creature in the wild, trust me. If you want change, demand more reforms. Help make sure that farming is done properly. Don't alienate the majority of people by taking a moral high ground of your own construction. If you look closely at it you will discover that it's just a mound of bullshit that you're standing on. Bacon, pork chops, barbecue ribs, hamburgers, steaks, grilled chicken and cutlets. Yummy and enticingly scrumptious. Can I please retain one of the few pleasures in life?

Bring forth the comfy chair!

When this economic crisis hit the first thing that went through my mind was: "Well, that's going to come out of my pocket." And surprise surprise, it is! Did anyone actually have any doubt that our rich overlords would be paying for their fuck-ups with our money? No sane person should feel even the slightest tinge of astonishment. On the other hand it might come as some shock that there are people out there that would gladly use your carcass to heat their house. Just toy around with that thought for a moment. Inside of your head. Chew on it and taste the pure amorality of this concept. Does it scare you? Well it should. There are such people - and they are the ones in charge. They don't care about you. They don't give a shit about you. And they would without hesitation use your body as kindling. I'll freely admit that I have little compassion for most people. I do however possess these funny things called morals, ethics and a sense of shame. Niggling little thoughts that thankfully make me take a step back now and again. Mental barriers that block my immediate instinct to steal and savage whenever possible. Such barriers are not set in stone however. Greed cancels out shame. Absolute affluence and power warp your perception of reality to such an extent that any identification with another individual becomes impossible. Make no mistake though: the ones in control are not whimsically aloof or unaware of the public's situation. They don't want us to eat cake, they want us to eat shit. An international malevolent plot is not what's upholding this status quo. Not in any direct way. There is no vast clandestine society of rich socialites. Communicating with each other by whispering through secretive channels. The Illuminati, the New World Order and Lizardmen are not running the show. If you believe this you're a certifiable idiot. Nevertheless there is a conspiracy of convenience and common interest at play. A parasite will latch on to its symbiote the same way every single time. It is in the organisms nature. No intricately laid, agreed upon scheme is required. We are a resource, a commodity that can be utilized. We have earned nothing in their eyes. We exist only to serve them. We are alive by their good graces. We should rise up and slay them. We won't, there's something shiny on television.

Back to you in the studio.

Dear television humanoids, please stop showing me weather reports all the time. For the love of all that is holy please stop! Neither I nor anyone else living in the 21st century has any use for them. Also, I have no idea what those little  arrows and lines on the map really mean. Is that the direction the weather is moving in? Isn't weather all around us all the time? Sort of like the Unitarian definition of God?

Weather used to play a huge part in the lives of everyday people. It dictated what you could do, and when you could do it. With little chance of escaping it. Man was subject to patterns of nature he couldn't quite understand. Over time we have tried to develop new ways of understanding weather systems and their causes. Doppler radar and incredibly complex computer models have given us small advances in our knowledge of these phenomena. But a modern person has no use for this information.

What the hell does any of this mean?

We live in houses, drive cars, wear proper clothing and work in climate controlled office buildings. A normal person does not spend hours a day outside exposed to the elements. That only happens if something has gone awry. Besides, chances are they won't remember what the weather man said this morning anyway. They were too busy trying to wash the vomits stains out of their dress socks. Big promotion coming up!

Unless it's a huge hurricane of shit heading my way it won't affect my life in any real way. And I think such an event would warrant a small segment of its own. Somewhere between the feel-good story of a kitten being rescued from a well and the sports results. I don't need to know the possible weather four days from now. For most of us simply looking out the window before deciding for or against wearing a jacket should suffice.

What's the weather going to be like tomorrow? More or less like yesterday. The earth won't suddenly start spinning backwards on its own axis. It's not going to start raining upwards. Hot won't be cold. And November is not going to be a pleasantly sunny month. Meteorology is mostly just guesswork in front of a green screen. Suit up and let's roll.