The end of this blog

The time has finally come for this blog to die a gruesome, hilarious death. Yes, the theme of deathjestr.blogspot.com, when I created it, was quite appropriate for writing satire, tales of RIT trying to kill me with their cafeteria food, stories of me eating pizza out of the garbage, maniacal rants about wikipedia articles, etc. However, one time when this theme really does become inappropriate is when I start posting my own political opinions - especially opinions about gun legislation. Political rants seem to be something I've been writing a lot more lately and while I know the form doesn't change the content of my arguments or anything, I also know that people never see things that way. Form is important to people - people always pay attention not only to the logic of what's being said, but also to the perceived credibility of the speaker, and people who don't know me are likely to become confused when they see a black page with my freehand drawing of a skull wearing a jester hat and such. In fact, I'll be quite unsurprised if I one day find out that this blog has landed me on a terrorist watch list. Hard to accuse a guy with no criminal record - and who has never even gotten a speeding ticket - of terrorism but I suppose anything is possible nowadays.

So anyway, this will likely be the last post ever made to this blog - but surely its legend will live on for eternity. Although, as with all great legends, Google may decide to delete it because of inactivity. It will (eventually) be replaced by something much cooler and fancier. In fact I'd really like to be able to do more than just edit CSS to change the way things look - It'd be awesome if I had the freedom to do things like play with javascript when I felt like it or to run my own CGI scripts without having to set up some awkward jury-rigged garbage where I host the script on www.cs.rit.edu and put the contents in a frame. Unfortunately, being able to have all the freedom I want without paying for hosting just might require running a web server out of my apartment. Don't laugh. I'll do it if I have to.

Bush: 3, United States: 0

Ahh... Hoodwinked again by our great fearless leader. You'd think we would have learned our lesson by now. $500 billion here*, $700 billion there... pretty soon this is going to start getting expensive. We at least put up a bit of a fight this time, though - the first bailout bill did die in the house of representatives after all, thanks to about 75% of the republicans and 40% of the democrats.

According to many of the news articles I read, the general public was very much against bailing out wall street (not very surprising). However, both bailout bills were able to get through the senate with ease because most of the senators don't have to worry about being up for re-election in November. The bills had a lot more trouble in the house because, of course, *all* the representatives have to worry about re-election. Man it must really suck when your job is to represent your constituents and, because of pressure from looming elections, you actually end up having to - you know - represent your constituents. Life can be a real bitch sometimes.

The thing that sickens me the most about this whole economic disaster is when I hear people whining that deregulation and free market principles are what caused this mess. I do not agree. De-regulation did not create Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. De-regulation isn't responsible for the war in Iraq that we've been "winning" for the past decade, and all the costs associated with it. Free market principles aren't what guided the Fed to cut interest rates time and time again. Free market principles were not the philosophy behind the "economic stimulus" zomg-I-have-an-idea-lets-print-up-a-whole-bunch-of-money-and-hand-it-out-to-people plan. By the way, do you know how the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates? Interest rates have an inverse relationship with bond prices, so they essentially just print up a bunch of money and use it to buy up bonds, thereby raising demand and increasing prices. Shit, I guess printing up boatloads of money and dumping it various places in the economy whenever we please is a bad idea. Who would have imagined?

Ten points to anyone who can figure out why I gave Bush a score of '3' in the title of this post. Points are redeemable for cash. I haven't decided how much cash yet, but do you really care? Its all going to end up being worthless anyway because of inflation.

*Rough estimate for the cost of the war in Iraq** so far

**Notice the date on that link.*** If only Ron Paul had been president...

***Check out my nested endnotes. Cool, huh? I just invented them. Patent pending.

It's beginning to look a lot like September

So I heard the first Christmas song of the year already, accompanied by decorations, lights, and a about five Christmas trees. It was horrible. I guess that's what I get for wandering into Kohl's yesterday. September 26th - I'm sure that breaks all the records from previous years; I usually don't have to start bitching about Christmas music until at least November.

Don't misundertand me - I love Christmas. I just think celebrating it when I can still wear shorts and a t-shirt outside is a little bit crazy. I'm guessing Kohl's decided that since the economy was in a lousy state they'd better start early so they can wring every last little drop of holiday cheer out of their customers' wallets. Hey, if they keep it up, we may no longer be restricted to using evergreens as Christmas trees. I'll just be able to walk across the street, cut down one of my neighbor's maple trees in the blazing hot July sun, drag it into my house, and have myself a merry little Christmas for the next six months.

I'm going to find out who the managers of that store are, and I'm going to send them a calendar for Christmas. And maybe a chia pet too just to insult them.

The end of the world? Oh man not again!

So I heard on the news this morning that the world was going to end because a bunch of crazy scientists are going to fire up some sort of hadron uber-collider thingy and its going to create a huge black hole or something. I'm really scared - I don't think I'm ready for the world to end again. I mean didn't we learn our lesson from Y2K? I really think all our "advanced" technology is totally out of control - this'll be the second time this decade that the entire world has been destroyed by our own technology. We really need to stop destroying the entire planet or one of these days someone is going to get hurt.

I don't know when exactly they're going to start up this hadron-collider death star thingamajig, or whether they have already, but there isn't much I can do to stop it. I guess I'll just spend the last minutes of my life sitting behind a workstation writing python code like it's my job, because it is.

Palin? McCain? McNuggets?

From wikipedia:

"Palin has described the Republican party platform as 'the right agenda for America,' adding 'individual freedom and independence is extremely important to me and that's why I'm a Republican.'"

From the very same wiki page, six sentences later:

"Palin opposes same-sex marriage and supported a non-binding referendum for a constitutional amendment to deny state health benefits to same-sex couples."

I'm not sure I can even describe how I felt when I read that, but it's something like being hugged and punched in the face at the same time.

Individual freedom and independence. Also, your sex life is entirely my business and I should be able to deny you health care based on it. Also, individual freedom and independence. Did I mention individual freedom? Because I want you to have it. Just make sure you don't romantically involve yourself with anyone whose genitalia is similar to yours.

...So much hypocrisy crammed into such a small paragraph, I'm surprised the wiki page hasn't yet collapsed in on itself under the weight of it's own gravitational force.

Oh hey and while we're being retarded, let's just go ahead and support the teaching of creationism in public school as well. (And if we're going to do that we really need to include other alternatives to science in the curriculum.)

Ugh. I can't stand McCain, I can't stand Obama, I can't stand McCain's running mate... I'm thinking it's going to be a symbolic vote for Ron Paul at this point. Or a write-in for Ronald McDonald. Or anyone but the major party candidates.