SO! Gearbox released it's 1.1 patch for Borderlands. The game is in serious need of patching - it's net code is unable to traverse even the simplest of ports, and even using forwarding leaves it rife with all sorts of bugs - I for instance can't get the main server list to populate unless I first go all the way into the game, load a map, back out and THEN go to the server list, and also, for some reason am entirely unable to connect with a specific friend despite the fact that we are both able to connect to other players. Add onto that the fact that the menus are clunky and basic video options require you to edit ini files in order to change and you've got a product that was probably not ready to be shipped.

Unfortunately with their 1.1 patch all they decided to do was add SecuRom into the game. If you got the game on steam then the SecuRom files are probably already on your system. It looks like they only take effect if you purchase the Zombie Island DLC (which is limited to 5 installs) but it's hard to be sure.

http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/7397/borderlands11.png

Pretty great priorities Gearbox seems to have - don't bother patching your broken game, just release more paid content and push out SecurRom to all your customers. I'm pretty sure I'll never be buying a game from them or 2k again.

FUCK MAINE! I'M NEVER EATING LOBSTER AGAIN! THEY CAN PINCH MY TAINT FOR ALL I CARE!

If you agree vote yes for no, otherwise if you don't then do.

They wanna teach it in the schools!

FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

Maddow: It's Obama Derangement Syndrome: http://digg.com/d316tnA?t
Again Rachel puts a contentious issue into beautiful focus.

http://digg.com/politics/Chubby_infant_denied_health_care

I think what's truly funny is that anyone is shocked about this. Read those comments, how can anyone be surprised? It shows a great misunderstanding of how a for-profit health insurance company works and assumes some sort of expectation of compassion in an economic system.

Sorry fat baby but we've already set up a for profit insurance industry geared toward providing the least amount of coverage for the most possible money. People don't seem to realize that that's the best the free market can hope to offer - the system is doing exactly what the system is designed to do.

What we need is as a society to realize that compassion is sometimes more important than profit and go with Obama's public option which offers the most coverage for the least amount of money. It's sad that this is such a difficult realization for so many Americans, but before we're able to openly say "sometimes it's not better to let a private individual make a profit off of something" without being shouted down as extremists I'm afraid we're just dead in the water as a nation.

Or in the far more concise way that Mr. Spock once put it: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs [or obscene profit margins] of the few".

So I got in a fight on an image board today (lol go me, I'm a winner at life). Needless to say the topic was stupid and the person I was arguing with was most likely a troll, but it did give me an opportunity to write up a little essay about why the assertion that Fred Phelps is a super secret liberal is baloney, so I've decided to commit it to the slightly less transient medium of Ye Olde Disused livejournal in the hopes that it may some day come in handy again.

Enjoy.



>>760511
Sorry, just gotta revisit this one. First off the idea that that article or indeed the entire wiki is trash because it claims Fred Phelps to be a conservative (which I'll get to in a moment) is ridiculous, in fact it's fallacious, you're simply poisoning the well.

Let's look at the context of the link I provided - was it a link intended to argue that Fred Phelps is a conservative? No it was a link to help illustrate the fact that I was uncertain whether another poster was attempting to employ satire, or if they were being serious, and for that purpose it certainly hits it's mark. Therefor insinuating that I am a retard because I link to that posts really reveals the sort of over-stretching indicative of extreme butthurt on your part.

Now, regarding the issue of Phelps' political alignment it's not difficult to see why exactly this may be difficult to pin down - the man and his flock are clearly insane and certainly any mainstream political movement would wish to disown them.

The thing is, however, that it's only Conservatives which really need to work hard to distance themselves from these guys - the church's whole premise is almost directly in line with modern American conservative ideology - fags suck and God says so, if we just listened to God more often the country would be better off. This fundamental premise places Phelps' church squarely into the contemporary conservative fold before we take a look at any of their still-crazier beliefs and activities. And it is because of those other activities that mainstream conservatism, hell even Fox News' own Sean Hanity, does their best to denounce and discredit the Phelpses, and really good for them for setting SOME standard of people too crazy and hateful to even be a part of Fox News conservatism, lord knows they've been severely deficient in such standards, especially lately.

Some conservatives, such as yourself, take the disowning of Phelps a little too far and attempt to go the extra mile and not only nullify him as a liability to your movement, but actually paint him as an albatross around American Liberalism's neck. This frankly is just a case of attempting to ram a square peg into a round hole - any link you might attempt to draw between Phelps and a "Leftist" ideology simply doesn't fit.

The Phelps gang express no major belief about social justice, redistribution of wealth, multicultural inclusion or really any other key tenant of contemporary American liberalism, and it is my observation that the only links conservatives are really able to draw between Phelps and any sort of "leftist" ideology is by associating them with the pantheon of largely mythical demons that conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hanity like to harp about on their shows. There is a perception that Phelps "hates America" (ohemgee, just like those filthy liberals), and this may well be the case, but again, this is not a liberal trait. Such pundits also still seem to be living in the 1960s, because when they see the Phelps flock picketing funeral for soldiers they take this to mean that, like their own out dated and largely simplistic caricatures of American liberals, Phelps must hate American soldiers (just like those durn hippies). They ignore, of course, the fact that in these soldier funeral protests the crazies of Phelps' gang do their damndest to somehow link soldier's deaths back to America's (mild) acceptance of gays and the fact that witch-hunts for homosexuals (which it seems they'd like to see) are against the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, not due to any sort of misguided anti-war sentiment that they are trying to take out on dead soldiers.

The most salient point I hear in any attempt to link Phelps to the political left (well left by American standards that is) is the fact that he once made a small contribution to Al Gore's democratic primary campaign in 1988. Conservatives bringing up this point, however, gloss over the fact that at the time Gore was opposing a piece of legislation proposing a "Gay bill of rights", so again, it was not Gore's later well known champion of climate change awareness which Phelps was supporting, but instead his anti-gay views, again hearkening back to the socially conservative nature of Phelps' organization.

In other words, sir, you are greatly mistaken, and if anyone behaves as though you are a ludicrous ass for proposing that Phelps is a "RAGING LEFTIE", hopefully you will now have a better understanding of why that is; because you are.

The author [Bob Barr] of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) now thinks it's time for his law to get the boot -- but for political reasons, not in support of gays.

Best part of the article is how he admits it was written specifically to subvert the full-faith-and-credit clause of the Constitution, but that's not even why he supports repealing it! Crazy Libertarian, he's on one side of an issue for bullshit reasons and now on the other for similarly screwy reasons - wonder where he'll stand next.

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Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behavior was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

In other news, catching and prosecuting pedophile Catholic priests still remains a low priority.

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So I quit my job today.

I was expecting to talk to the HR department first thing - they'd sent my supervisor an e-mail asking me to go speak with them as soon as my shift started. I figured it must be in relation to the salaried position inside the company I'd interviewed for two days ago (and really fucking nailed), but first I had to sit through a team meeting where our supervisor had to break it to us that company wide all us peons would be losing our weekends (or split days off) and forced to work 5 hour OT shifts on those days for the rest of the year.

It didn't go over very well, but I didn't care so much, especially if I was about to get that nice salary position. After everyone else slumped back to their phones, ready to work on end for who knows how many days without relief I sauntered over to HR, confident that even if I wasn't going to be promoted right away, at least I have that new position to look forward to - something that'd make all that grueling holiday overtime worth it.

I was mistaken, however, about the nature of my visit to HR's little walled off enclave in the building - it seems that what they wanted to talk to me about - or not THEY but rather the call center's head of HR herself, sitting in her comfy chair in her corner office - wanted to speak to me about was my ongoing e-mailed inquiries to the company's corporate HR Benefits manager regarding how the company handles extension of benefit coverage to both married same-sex partners (where applicable) and unwed same sex partners (where marriage is prohibited). The answer was quite simple - It's the company's policy not to extend any benefits to a same sex partner. Period.

That's right, Dish Network - though they will tell you in training that their health plan etc. will cover your spouse as well - will not cover your spouse if they happen to be of the same gender. I was assured that there are laws protecting the company's ability to make this distinction - I assured the HR director that there is an Amendment to the constitution (the 14th, girls and boys) guaranteeing they you CAN'T do that. In the end we agreed to disagree, or rather we agreed that there was nothing she could do to quell my rage and that further discussion inquiry would not be tolerated. "Any other questions before you go?" was her polite parting - I could only respond by asking if she wanted my employee ID badge now, or once I'd gotten off to the other side of the security door.

In practical terms a company policy like that doesn't effect me at all - I'm not married (not that I could get married in this state) and even were I, the only real candidate on my short list already has a very nice job and we'd likely wind up taking advantage of the benefits HIS company offers. That's not the point here, though - even though it doesn't matter immediately to me, and likely never would, I know that somewhere in the company it does effect someone, and I won't be any part of that. I can't in good conscience work for a company who hides behind their own policies to justify a violation of the 14th Amendment because I damn well know that the government wouldn't do a damn thing about it, and someone has got to. I like to think I was really excelling at my job - the sort of guy that winds up getting his supervisor on the phone a few times a week not to deal with angry customers but to have them sing his praises - I think I was well liked there, and lord knows I don't want to face the job market we're in now, but I'll be fucked if I'm going to remain with a company that seems to think it can pick and choose who's marriage is valid and who's is not for one moment longer than it takes me to make sure I heard right.

They've got to know that taking such a regressive and avoidant stance on the rights of their own workers is going to cost them good people - and today I did my part to let them know just that. So fuck you, Dish Network - not even the worst job market in my lifetime and beyond could keep me from leaving you. . . oh and PS I didn't always wash my hands after going to the bathroom and then sitting down to use another workstation. Chew on that!

So here it comes - the first real test of the Obama administration. he announced his security team today and heading up the Department of Homeland Security(tm) he's picked the Governor of my state, Janet Napalatano. The news media is already all over this one - though a democrat she's in a rather red state, with indeed most likely the reddest sheriff to walk the west since the time of cowboys and outlaw justice.

The press is already scrutinizing her defense of Sheriff Joe Arpaio (sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa county - really the only inhabited county in the state - the rest is little fuck nothing hick towns, excluding Tucson down south) and his many many constitutional and human rights violations. Let's be frank about this, the man is a fascist plane and simple, he cares not one whit for the laws which are supposed to restrain him and instead attempts to enforce every law, be it in his jurisdiction or not, which happens to strike his fancy. Random roadblocks, invasions of Indian reservations, and jail conditions that would make Joseph Stalin proud are the man's hallmarks.

The shit of it is that in this half-bright blood thirsty state the man is a god - to defy him is political suicide, he's a king-maker and if you want to remain governor for long you had better get his endorsement. So Janet did what anyone in her position would - she blocked investigations, she defended the man and stood up for him, and when election time rolled around he gave his endorsement and she won re-election. The national news media is picking up on this now, though, and Joe is under the scrutiny of leveler heads - individuals accustomed to living in locations where when you are accused (as in not even convicted yet - still innocent in the eyes of the law) of a crime you are not thrown in a tent in the desert, malnourished, humiliated and left to survive on only 3 baloney sandiwches a day in 120 degree AZ summer heat - and they are horrified. There is talk already of Janet failing to be confirmed by the congress simply due to her association with this man - and i couldn't be more pleased about that! The nation needs to take a look at what Sheriff Joe has done to this state and there needs to be some outrage - heads must fucking roll!

That dark voice in my head is waiting at the moment, for the Right-wing to pick up on this, to scream bloody murder over the fact that Obama would appoint a Fascist enabler to the head of DHS - The irony will be delicious. It is, in fact, the right-wingers that keep electing this monster, they are the ones who support him, who defend him by asking "why should we have sympathy for the way criminals are treated" (ignoring the fact that the people in question are not convicts) They are the reason that Sheriff Joe has been untouchable for decades in this state and yet I can already hear them decrying Obama for having the gaul to appoint someone tied to the man.

So there it is - this scandal is officially underway, the starting gun has sounded, get to it right-wingers, let's see if you can make record time on making complete fools of yourselves! I sit in eager anticipation of this whole issue really blowing up.

Seems after 8 long years e-Harmony is finally allowing gays - sort of. As part of a settlement in a recent court battle they will be launching a new site for gays - sure their money is just as green, but come on now we can't let 'em on a good Christian dating site!

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Took the day off work - got a sore throat - not so good for answering phones. Figured I'd make a semi current event-related post.

Next time you hear some asshat saying government should butt out of marriage, or that it should be left to the churches, just remind them that's a lot like saying the cops shouldn't seek confessions because that's between a parishioner and his priest. If someone can't wrap their head around the idea of marriage as a civil institution then it's time for them to sit back and actually learn a thing or two about the institution.

Marriage has been around way longer than it's been a religious matter in most cultures - at it's earliest it was almost a purely economic institution - Selling off those burdensome lazy daughters was a good deal for early civilized man, and buying them was a lot simpler than trying to woo for love or the like, an idea those romantic Victorians left us with. You want some real traditional values, you give a parent a fucking goat and some bags of grain for his under-aged daughter.

Furthermore, from a legal standpoint in today's world, it'd be far easier to simply remove the term "one man and one woman" from a bunch of state constitutions than it would be to eliminate civil marriage all together, I mean hell they've only been there for five years at the most, and just over a decade for the corresponding Federal statue (Defense of Marriage Act). Marriage as a civil institution has been in our laws since before the founding of the country and is both a test president and consideration for hundreds of other legal matters such as hospital visitation, inheritance, property rights, child custody, medical benefits, taxation, and on and on and on.

So next time some asshole wants to confuse their stupid little ceremony and the legal one which has actual legal ramifications you can tell 'em to go fuck their church, we don't give a shit who they let in and who they don't. Our commitments to each other will be no less because of it, and nothing is going to stop us from engaging in long-term exclusive relationships of a deeply personal and even spiritual nature. If it's the sacredness of that bond they are worried about then we're already ruining it and they can't stop us - all we want now is for the law to catch up to us.

I had to head out to the local electronics store today to pick up a few spare odds and ends for a PC I'm building - unfortunately the nearest reputable electronics dealer is about a dozen miles away in another city and I don't have a car, so I'd have to be taking one very long bus ride.

With nothing to read or listen to on the way there I thought fast and came up with a much more entertaining way to pass the time - A criminal spree of vandalism and civil disobedience! I got off the bus at every intersection along the way which had a "Yes on 102" sign and cut it down with my trusty wire snips (also known as a dyke for maximum poetic justice) and then damaged the sign as to the best of my abilities and left it laying there before moving on to the next bus stop and catching another bus to head slowly, and in stages, do my final destination.

Prop 102 is a local ballot measure seeking to further ban same-sex marriage (already Illegal by state statute) on a constitutional level, and has the most inane ads on TV and argument in favor in the ballot guide which never once mentions gays, but instead imply in code that somehow if gays were afforded civil rights then families couldn't go on picnics anymore, children could not hike with their father through our beautiful desert parks, and straights would no longer be able to marry one another - basically that fags ruin everything good happy and wholesome - so naturally these signs have been on my hit-list for a while.

Being that all of these signs were at busy intersections I figured I'd get caught either by some angry motorist, or have the cops called on me as I rather blatantly and obviously vandalized a political sign, but in the end it seems apathy won out and no one even really gave me much of a glance.

My very first crime spree has gone off without a hitch. Take that pigs and fascists alike! Signs left untended are now subject to my brutal reign of violence!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/clay.aiken.ap/index.html

So as it turns out Clay Akin was gay all along. How could this be? He was the epitome of heterosexual manliness. My world has been turned upside-down and I'm left grasping at the grass to keep from falling into open sky. I don't know how I can carry on.

The fun fact of American Politics these days is that there are indeed some left-wing economic ideas out there, but they're all on the Republican side.

I used to be firmly of the stance that in Federal Politics in the US there is no such thing as a left-wing. This held true for quite a while, only marginally left-leaning idea in that arena we've seen really sine Reagan was the idea of reforming Health-Care, and even that is hard to paint as left wing unless you believe that the entire industrialized world outside of the US is completely left-wing.

If we look at recent events, though, the Republican Party has turned into a bunch of closet Socialists. They have abandoned the idea of financial responsibility in favor of sticking with Big-Business regardless the cost. Their own policies of complete de-regulation in the financial industry have backed themselves into a corner, with no oversight and no regulation on acceptable lending practices banks have become ever more predatory, treading well past the point of reasonableness such that nearly all industry standard practices today are those which would have been criminal usury 30 years ago.

Well the bubble has finally burst, so to speak, the financial lending industry has finally learned that you can't squeeze blood from a stone by way of trying to extract debt from black people they systematically tricked into thinking they could own a house. Unfortunately the ability of homeless blacks to pay off debts is much lower than analysts predicted, and so where does that leave all these financial giants?

Well Unlike the poor people they preyed on, the lending industry execs aren't getting thrown out into the street - they've got some powerful friends in Washington - the Republican party who's policies let them rape American consumers and get themselves into these sorts of messes in the first place. So great is the Republican Party's love for big business that rather than stick to their free-market rhetoric and let these lending businesses succeed or fail by the merit of their own actions, they have decided to fly off the left wing and nationalize them.

There you have it, by far the most left-wing policy in the United States since FDR, and who are the masterminds? The very ones who've been trying for the better part of a century to destroy FDR's legacy, and they still have the nerve to call themselves conservatives.

If Republicans truly believe in a completely unregulated free market then they'll stop trying to privatize profits of major corporations while socializing the losses. Our great nation is more than just a support network for big business, and they'd be wise to realize this before they themselves are thrown out on the street in November.*

*This post originally posted with an old "fgsfds" macro (google it).

I got ratted out pretty heavily and wound up having to go on the defensive regarding an assertion made on a forum earlier today so I figured I'd commit it to the eljay here for future reference.

As suggested by Bryan Sykes in his book Adam's Curse: A Future Without Men there are inherent flaws in the replication of the Y chromosome, and as such it is conceivable that thousands of generations from now, that men themselves may become extinct.

Combine that with the fact that we currently have available a method for conceiving offspring with two female parents and it begins to seem as if the human race may well continue on without a male gender.

Naturally this odd vision of the future begs the question of just how such a society might function. As I bought up, men account for roughly 86% of all violent crime and make up 97% of the US inmate population (which in turn accounts for nearly 1/4 of the world's total prison population). Furthermore violent behavior in males is an in-borne trait likely with some old evolutionary benefits, meaning that placed into the same "power seat" type positions which men have dominated through out history women would likely not act as violently.

Therefor it is reasonable to conclude that a future society which is dominated by women would be greatly less violent than a society either dominated by men, or with large numbers of males.

Pretty simple, right? The conclusion flows right from the facts, but man oh man if I didn't get called a sexist or "Hitler" more than was strictly reasonable. . . even for the internet. Has anyone else discussed this topic in the past? And moreover, did you find that reactionary angry men were quick to become defensive and try to accuse you of hating men? These allegations took me very off-guard, as my own supposed man-hating tends to take the form of sucking their dicks an awful lot - a fact which didn't seem to quell my detractors accusations.

This one deals with why Chiropracty is not AOK.*



>>When I leave his office, I do feel better. At least for a little while anyway. And I think that means something.

What it means is you are gaining the benefits of a placebo. There is no genuine medical benefit aside from that - you'd do just as well to have a doctor administer a sugar pill and spend half an hour in a hot tub.

I'm sorry if I'm a bit vicious on this subject, but I have a very negative view of the "alternative medicine" establishment. . . largely because it is neither an alternative, nor is it medicine, but most greatly because in many cases it actually DOES hurt people. Be it through distracting or discouraging people from seeking actual medical attention (In much the way that Scientologists do with their cure-all dianetic auditing therapy), or in the case of dumb-as-shit Chiropractors who offer to work on your baby who's bones and joints are still mostly cartilage and stand a real risk of severe injury from their quackery.

It's simply wrong to support or waste your money on these scheisters. If you want the sort of piece of mind that they bring I'd gladly take your money myself and smile and tell you what a great person you are, or wave my hands over you and declare that you are healed.

I link you now to two relevant blogs for further reading:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/
http://crapbasedmedicine.wordpress.com/

*Original post was accompanied with a picture of Fact Cat, The cat who knows things because of his leanings.

Sometimes it even rises to the level of "Serious Business" for that reason I've got two rants from image board threads I figured I'd repost here. . . hell why not.

This first repost regards my views on Ron Paul crazies.


>>You talk like you would be a fan of Ron Paul, but then you also mock him.

Ron Paul has never struck me as the sort of man to address any of these sorts of issues. His followers seem to mistake him for some sort of populist champion of the people, but judging from his policies things simply could not be farther from the truth.

The man is Herbert Hoover bought back from the dead. I'm not sure how one can look at his platform and think that he'd have lifted a finger to do anything about the banking crisis, or corporate scandals or any other economic problem that occasionally pops up.

His solution to every problem seems to be de-regulation, he's a mystic and superstitionalist of the worst sort, convinced that the free market can do no wrong. He wants a world where there is nothing standing between the average citizen and complete and total exploitation by a corporate plutocracy. The man wants to dissolve the FDA for fucks sake. He's high on too much capitalist theory and not enough practical observation.

I'm far too in favor of a managed economy and a nation of laws and civil protections to ever consider voting for Ron Paul.

Then, of course, on top of everything the man's a creationist, and of course his ramblings on the federal reserve boarder on conspiracy theory (if not blatantly treading into that terrain). Yes, the Federal Reserve central banking system has it's flaws - especially with irresponsible men at the helm, but it's a damn sight better than the Gold standard was, and somehow the rest of the industrial western world seems to be flourishing with it, as has America for the entire length of it's reign as a world superpower. It's not the Federal Reserve fucking up our economy, if you ask me that line of thinking is a total red herring.

Think of how much unscheduled downtime FA is missing out on with all of this scheduled down time. . . there's gonna be a huge backlog once they get up and running again.

"An Honest look into the false rumors surrounding Obama."

This is a pretty convenient video - I doubt very much that anyone actually reading this has any trouble with any of these idiotic misconceptions, but linking to this video may be helpful for you when you come across those thick-skulled individuals who do. At any rate it's much easier than re-typing the same well established repudiations for the umpteenth time.

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"A teenager is facing prosecution for using the word "cult" to describe the Church of Scientology.

The unnamed youth was served the summons by City of London police when he took part in a peaceful demonstration opposite the headquarters of the controversial religion in London."

Haha oh wow. Different culture across the pond, I guess. I wish this kid well.

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