Y'know, it's ironic. Everyone seems to think I'm this complete and utter bastard. Good; great; I've never really given a damn what everyone thinks. But here's the real irony: I'm far nicer to these idiots than I should be. If you really think I'm less than nice to people, factor that, unusual at the practise may be, I actually think about things before I do them. Yes, it's true: I'm perfectly okay with the extermination of at least nintey percent of the world's population. Simply because they're functionally retarded little lemmings.
And why, you may be wondering, am I suddenly willing to admit this? It's very simple, really: I am now officially pissed. This is why:
I live in Denver. Three million of the dumbest bastards in the world live here with me. Want an idea how dumb these losers are? Okay. Denver, Colorado--the last remaining frontier with a population. People here still hate them thar injuns and Chinese; they still think that horses are an efficient mode of transportation; they still think that I've got a bloody crocodile. People here are very very very very dumb.
People here embrace the idea of affixing emissions gear to their silly little Toyotas to prevent the spreading of carbon monixide, yet Commerce City--the Detroit of the west--expels more smog into the air in a day than any car could ever hope to within a year. Then the Denver Zoo, just down the street, has banned open-air smoking, so that the animals--those cute fuzzy things kept captive by sonic warfare--don't inhale anything yucky a mile above sea level. What a brilliant idea.
The malls are smokefree environments now. Just so those cute fuzzy shoppers don't inhale anything yucky, either.
Half of the restaurants, and even a number of pubs, are now smokefree environments.
The flight back to London--that land of oppression from which these bloody idiots fled to create nationwide freedom--is a smokefree environment. That, and the UK's odd prohibition of captive alligators, are the only reason I haven't booked a first class concorde the hell out of the United States of Duhmerica.
So let's assume, for an instant, that there's a benefit to living in this benighted country. What could this reason be. Outside of the bit about the alligators and Uzis being kinda frowned upon back in London, a pack of Dunhill are going for about two pounds fifty, last I knew. For the Duhmericans I've decided may be exterminated, get someone to help you multiply that against one hundred sixty percent, and you'll have a price in Duhmerican money.
Then again, don't bother; it's just become irrelevant.
A couple of weeks ago, cigarettes went, in Denver, from one seventy-five to two seventy-nine a pack. And that was disturbing to both of us smokers. But the Duhmerican majority aren't satisfied with our perserverence. So, at midnight tomorrow night, in twenty-one hours, a pack of Camels will sprint from $2.79 to $4.50ish. Each. What a great example of taxation without representation.
But wait, there's more....
The money generated by this government-sponsored ratehike will go to A) fund the MediCaid programme, to help smokers get over cancer, and B) build concentration camps for delinquent youth who sell meth at each other. Yeah: we're coming to Duhmerica.
And this is neat: I found out about this an hour ago. Then I called KBPI here in Denver to confirm it with Steph, the graveyard DJ; it's true. They--the Duhmerican Establishment--decided not to announce it to anyone at all. The only reason the ratehike leaked at this late date was that the employees of 7Eleven were kinda hinted to that the prices were about to nearly double, and, since a nonsmoking 7Eleven employee is nearly as ubiquitous as an intelligent Duhmerican, were encouraged to hoarde as many cartons of whatever they could find as possible. The grapevine made it to me. And I'm now officially pissed.
See, I'd like to believe that this is a great idea, and that smoking is terribly bad for you, but unfortunately, I can't quite get myself to be that utterly stoopid. See, I'm a genius. Sorry if that belittles ninety-six percent of Duhmericans, but it's true. I'm not the only one, and there may still be a chance for those ninety-six percent to get better. I have a simple formula for becoming a genius. Ready? Here it is:

Learn Stuff.

It's just that simple, people. Learn stuff like ratios, and percentages. Yes, it's true: smoking is bad for you. Duh. But, statistically, less than twenty percent of lung cancer can be traced to any form of cigarette smoke, first hand, second hand, coach, whatever. Looking for another 'smoking gun'? Commerce City--just so that three million of the worlds dumbest mobile livestock can wedge their deplorable little Japanese jokes between my Formula and my destination. And, of course, the number one cause of lung cancer in Duhmerica today are [drum roll] Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus. Now, I know what you're asking yourself right now: 'where can I get some derma--dermi--duh...them thar bigworded thingimujiggers of my very own?!?' Chances are, you already have. Yes folks: Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus are them thar little dust mite thingys you've seen in the ductcleaning adverts. Spooky looking things, aren't they? They measure about one two-thousandth of a millimetre in size, and live on epidermal residue, which Duhmericans call 'dead skin', which comprises ninety percent of household dust. Then you inhale this dead skin, along with millions of nanometric spiders, who freak out about the inside of your lungs, and try to escape by digging their ways out. Trouble is, they rarely make it before they die. Then, they begin to decompose, and become malignant. We call that cancer. Some seventy-odd percent of lung cancer cases, actually.
So isn't it uplifting to know that we smokers--the villans of Duhmerica--are now being charged more than you lot spent at McSalmonella's today, to discourage us from smoking at you.
One problem with that.
See, smoking has a number of benefits, as well. Yup: it interrupts the biochemical imbalances in paranoid schizophrenics, which, for Duhmericans in general, are Big Nasty Scary Crazy People with Weapons. By all means, let's discourage these lunatics from taming their sociopathic insticts with cancersticks.
Granted, they might not find you in particular before they and their chainsaws are apprehended, but it won't matter. See, there's a black market out there; it's not just a rumour or an old joke. It works like this: Duhmericans raise the prices of cigarettes so that the majority of smokers can't afford them anymore, so a minority of capitalists steal them from 7Eleven, and then sell them for half the price that the stores have to charge in the first place. That creates a bit of a problem for the 7Eleven corporate office, which is paying for cigarettes, and then not getting paid back when you buy them from a guy in a trenchcoat in an alley. And that, boys and girls, leads to what we call inflation. Ooh.
At the moment, inflation is holding at an annual increase of approximately six percent. The bitch of it is that minimum wage is only increasing at an average of about four percent. Right now, minimum wage is about a thousand bucks a month--about the same as rent, on average.
So what happens if inflation goes up because a black market develops over cigarettes? More inflation. Which ultimately leads to less income. Great: raise minimum wage again. The only way the employers can pay the employees more is to raise their prices, resulting in more inflation.
And just as that becomes unbearable to the Duhmerican economy, the y2k bug hits, and whatever effects come from that merely compound the problem. Great. Wonderful. Bring it on. We'll hope it brings an end to the human race. Rah rah rah.
So, here's a prediction:
June Cleaver may think it's a great idea to build concentration camps for those poor inner city meth resellers, but it's not going to help. See, I know these kids. They do what they do because they want to, and because they have to. Concentration camps only create a convenient captive market for them.
And Medicaid? Cigarettes used to be seventy-five cents. I remember that clearly. And even then, they had big warning labels mentioning something about cancer. In fact, at the time, they even mentioned how much 'tar' the things had in them. So guess what: if you didn't know that smoking could lead to cancer, and then got it, you deserve to die, you bleeding idiot. No one could possibly be that dumb. I mean, two hundred sixty million Duhmericans can't all be that brainless, can they?
Now, I realise that some of you are nonsmokers who don't really care whether we smokers smoke. I get that a lot. 'It doesn't really bother me'. Good. Great. You get to live. But for all those idiots who don't wanna get cancer from us, or just don't like the smell, or whatever cookiecutter excuse they cling to as if it made any sense at all, they're the first to go extinct in the new world order.
What new world order? The one beginning now. The one in which those of us with brains restructure civilisation. Capone, and others, made a killing during the prohibition of the thirties. It will happen again. Be very, very afraid.
Because a few of us aren't these troglodytical lemmings out to prevent the unavoidable. And we are the last people you want to make angry. And you know what? We're getting angry now.
Raise the prices of cigarettes. We don't care. We'll break into your houses and fence out all your stuff to buy them on the black market. Is that really what you wanted? That's your smoke-free society. Enjoy it.
That's just my opinion; you've been warned.
--Gremlin

Okay, I've been threatening this one for some time now. Cowboys. In 1998. Here's why this don't make no sense...
Let's set the wayback machine to the 1880s or so. Think about the timeframe we're in. The internal combustion engine won't be invented for a couple of years [though, speaking of stoopidity, there haven't been any significant changes to the gasoline motor since 1885] and the computer has recently evolved from the abacus to the adding machine. Television is over fifty years away; the most advanced tool of communication is the telegraph, which sends Morse code across what will eventually become telephone lines. Technologically speaking, life sucks.
So what, without television, satellites, internets, or PlayStations, is there to do in the late nineteenth century? Not much. Go into the sprawl of Denver, with its few thousand people, or Sante Fe, or maybe even San Francisco. Grab a drink in the pub, often referred to as a saloon, score some perfectly legal opium or cocaine, find a hooker for the night...all sorts of socially acceptable fun in the American Dark Ages.
But not for the cowboys. The cowboys don't get to enter the saloons. They don't get to drink much of anything. They can't afford opium or coke. Hookers outclass them.
That's because the cowboy is exactly what he sounds like: a cowboy. A cowsitter. A nineteenth century janitor who cleans stables for pennies a day. But for Lincoln's emancipation proclaimation, the cowboy would be called a slave. Then again, the cowboy would probably be unemployed, since there would still be slaves to do that sort of thing for the upper class.
Now, don't get me wrong. Slavery was a bad idea, though the modernised fiction of the events have been utterly screwed up. To go off on a tangent here, understand that the evil white man never captured any Africans and forced them into slavery; the evil white man was too busy slaughtering injuns right about then. The slaves were a commodity which originated in Africa, where the African nobles [who, unlike those of the twentieth century, were actually negro] sold off the lowest caste to the highest bidder, which, it turned out, was the evil white man. So yeah, it was wrong and regrettable; but it wasn't any race's fault in particular. Both sides were equally guilty.
Knowing that--that A) I've never owned or even rented a slave, and that B) I know the real backstory of the whole mess--maybe you can see why I find it so amusing that the blacks of America are now standing up and letting us know how they got to be cowboys in the wild west, just like them white boys was. Hey, far out; just, tell me: is getting payed what, in today's money, might be as much as twenty bucks a week to do slave labour necessarily any better than doing it for free. Me, I'd think that doing it for free could at least be written off as a hobby, or something else you wouldn't take so seriously as to call it a career.
Okay, so at this point we should all understand that being a cowboy was never anything to brag about. At least, not back when they actually existed. So why now, toward the end of the twentieth century, over a hundred years later, it it so damned stylish to dress up as your favourite nobody and go to a country bar and two-step and hoot and generally emulate all manner of exotic bird and--and--and when in hell did the real cowboys ever do any of that? Never.
People like to joke and complain about how depressing country music is. The old joke is that if you were to play a country song backward, your wife and dog and truck would return. Personally, I'd think the country music of the late twentieth century would seem pretty uplifting to the cowboys of the late nineteenth. Hey Jess: you hear 'bout them there cowboys what used to have wives and dogs and pickups? Hoowhee they musta struck gold or sumpin...
So let's get the record straight on just what a cowboy was. A cowboy did wear a hat, though not a Stetson, since those were a little too pricey for them. Also, to my knowledge, no cowboy ever stapled a dead snake to his hat. Ironic that, though the cowboys of 1998 have a bit of a disposable income, the cowboys of 1898 had a bit of taste. Also, cowboys never had their own horses. If they rode horses at all, it was probably a temp position as they rerouted the cows into a new spot. Horses went for about seventy-five to a hundred bucks for a good one--in today's money, Buicks and Mercurys average about twenty-five grand. Kinda out of reach on a $20/week budget, wouldn't you say?
Okay. Knowing that, what's the fascination with dressing up like some medieval janitor and going out for a night on the town? Who could care? Maybe we should look at this from the other direction...
Let's set the wayback machine [assuming it'll go both ways] for the late twenty-first century. The computer has recently evolved from the palmtop into the wetwired chip implanted into your corpus callosum. Cars run on man-made fuels--possibly even promethium 147, if the world can get that much less stoopid in only a hundred years. But, assuming not...
It's Friday. Not that it really matters now that over ninety percent of the world are effectively self-employed, providing various quasipsionic services over the satphone-based internet. And, after a hard week's thought, you want to unwind. So you go out to the pubs [one of the last standing commercial structures, of course] to unwind and have a drink and listen to music and so on. Where do you go? If you're the sort who, in 1998, might have gone down to the Broken Horseshoe, you'll probably wind up at a themepub where everyone dresses up in coveralls and steel-toed Doctor Martens. Welcome, one and all, to the labourer bar. You haven't got a belt buckle, but you've got the biggest damned pocket protector in the joint. And if you're really hoping to make an impression, you'll have brought, not your sixarm, but your tasslemop. Feeling groovy yet? Elvis would laugh at you.
And now, back to 1998. For a little while. Another week or so, and it'll be 1999. Then 2000. And then, the twenty-first century will be upon us. And in all likelihood, we'll still be plagued with a bunch of losers who dress up to look almost nothing like real cowboys and listen to some cacophany of mistuned guitars and uninspired yodelling. Why? Because no one ever listens. Because no one's willing to take five minutes to look something up before they assume they know it all. Because...well, because the cowboys of 1998 are a bit like the cowboys of the 1880s: brainless, unoriginal twits with just enough free time to go out and do the sorts of things the rest of us would never even consider. And in that regard, maybe the modern day advertising executives and network middle management who pretend to be John Wayne on Friday night are a little closer to the real thing than they might appear at first glance.
That's just my opinion; in a hundred years, it'll have been altered beyond recognition.

--Gremlin

This News of the Stoopid is actually a sequel to The Logical Man is Not a Man of God.
It's amazing: that particular article has gotten the most response, both negative and positive, of any of them. Naturally, more of the Emails were negative than postive, since the majority of 'netsurfers seem to be relatively affluent semireligious Americans thus far. And that's something I really should have considered when writing the damned thing.
So, for clarity, I'll define a couple of things...
'particularly religious' means 'particularly religious' and not 'kinda-sorta-maybe somewhat religious at times, like when the subject comes up or if there's a tax advantage to it'. The whole point that particularly religious people are definitively stoopid is that particularly religious people tend to attack anyone who doesn't completely agree with them for no reason at all. By my definition, a particularly religious person is different from a passively religious person. The passively religious person is either relatively undecided on whether he's religious or not, or he's an intellectual theologian who can see other perspectives, consider them, and abandon them. A particularly religious twit won't bother to consider anyone else's perspective or opinion. 'particularly religious' could also be called 'aggresively religious', which are the Inquistional types who like to launch groundwars against any society who don't agree with them. And that sort of behaviour is, beyond debate, stoopid.
Calling a christian with a brain a paradox is something we like to refer to as a joke. A christian with a brain would have got it.
There's also been the argument that, just before his death, Darwin renounced his theory and turned to god for help. Okay, I'll buy that. But it doesn't make the evolutionary theory any less substantial. Saying that Darwin later abandoned darwinism and made evolution go away is tantamount to saying that, after writing Death, be not proud though some have called thee mighty and dreadful for thou art not so, John Donne died, and the Tenth Sonnet was erased from history...which, for the easily confused, it wasn't.
Finally, and this is probably my favourite type of hatemail, the line That's just my opinion; may lightning strike. Let's have a real good look at this one, okay? It's an opinion. There are a few levels to reality: opinion fact and truth. Truth is truth; end of story. A fact is a provable concept, and may or may not be true; 'true fact' isn't redundant, because there's such a thing as a false fact--'the moon is made of green cheese' is a false fact, not an opinion, true fact, or truth. An opinion is really just anything anyone says which can't be determined through a scientific process. Calling religion an idiotic psychological handicap is largely an opinion, though the psychological handicap of believing in an unseen babysitter could probably be proven true or false. And, by definition, the existence of god is an opinion, because god can't be proven to exist. That which cannot be proven to exist is an unprovable hypothesis, and is therefore an opinion. And if that's your opinion, then you could be wrong.
Not that I came out and admitted that my opinion could be wrong in so many words--I've got to hold back a little bit before I inadvertantly become Dennis Miller. What I actually claimed was That's just my opinion; may lightning strike, which is a bit of an offer, I suppose. Lightning hasn't quite managed to incinerate me yet, so, by scientific process, my hypothesis could probably be construed as a proven true fact at this point.
Which will only lead to more hatemail, I realise. Because the aggressively religious are too damned brainwashed to understand a few important things: you came to my site to read this--that's your fault; you took it personally--that's your fault; you inferred that I might give a damn--that's your fault. Accusing me of playing not devil's advocate but devil's advertising executive is complaining about your own doubts. And I don't really want to hear about them. This is not the door to hell; this is not a recruiting service for the mythical Church of Atheism. My entire point behind the first News of the Stoopid on this subject is that the militant JesusCrispies of the world are constantly trying to recruit those of us who don't give a damn. Hey, call me misanthropic, call me sociopathic: there's more to life than your gods.
To be honest, I wish I could believe in your gods. It would make things so much simpler. I wouldn't have to bother thinking anymore. I could just blame everything on an omniscient, omnipotent alien who never does anything, and never shows itself. Look at this from my perspective: your god is apparently part of a union; otherwise, it might occasionally get something accomplished.
Which reminds me: it. Why It? Greek, that's why. There are two genders to Greek: it and she. God is referred to as an It in the bible, not a she. God is an hermaphrodyte, according to the language in which the bible was written. So please, please, please know what the hell you're talking about before you bother me with your own doubts next time.
I tried just ignoring the unproven theories of the religious--particularly the christians--for years. But there's only so many attacks I'll put up with before punching back. I tried asking questions, and they accused me of being the devil. They threatened to pray for me. And for what? To make themselves a little less obviously doubtful. So: new rules. Oh, and, quite possibly, a bit of a rant...
Do unto others as you'd have done unto yourselves. Any ideas? Here's one: don't bless people who sneeze. Put some thought into this one. You bless me, which is merely pushing your particular flavour of I-don't-get-it-ness on me, and I could just as easily tell you to go to hell if you sneeze. Not that I'm a satanist, but if I were religious at all, that's probably what I'd be. By the same token, the cute little aphorisms that get tossed about like breathspray at an Amway meeting are equally combative: you offer to pray for me, and I could offer to mention your name next time I have a powerlunch with Satan. You tell me 'god be with you' and I could tell you 'Satan likes your tie'. And I might as well, since I don't actually believe in Satan. And if you actually believe in Yaweh, then it doesn't believe in you anymore. Why? Simple: saying 'god be with you' to an atheist is vanity. It's using your lord's name in vain. Tag: you're excommunicated.
If you people wanna do what you're told, then great. But do all that you're told. Don't pick and choose the happy bits from your bibles and forsake the rest, because that makes you so much worse than me. I don't believe in god, and don't really care if you do. That's really all there is to me in that capacity. If you believe in gods, and have a good reason for it, then good for you. And if you're a true christian, or catholic, or jew, or whatever you are--if you follow the letter of the highest laws like you're supposed to in order to be a member of your little theological gangs, then you'll stop trying to pray for me, bless me, convert me, lick me, or whatever it is you think you're going to accomplish by bothering me with your ideals. Be good to your gods or renounce them; there is no middle ground.
That's just my opinion; and that's a fact.

--Gremlin

Okay, This News of the Stoopid is actually the result of a request. Sort of. Usually, I don't take requests, but I've been thinking about this idiotic issue for years anyway. So, here it is....

 Political correction.
I know, I know: you think it's called 'political correctness', but that just sounds wrong to me. There's something about the term 'political correction' that just sounds better somehow. Like, maybe, a correction in politics might just be a good thing....
But this isn't really about that. In fact, I'm not entirely certain what's 'politically correct' about 'politically correct' terminology. I mean, think about it: the entire concept of political correction is saying things in an inoffensive way. When in hell were politics ever nice? Did I miss something? I thought politics were all about taxes, and blowing up countries full of technologically underdeveloped brownish people. Maybe not. I dunno.
Anyway, whatever the origin of this idiocy was, it's irrelevant now. At this point, what I'm concerned about is the stoopidity that homosapiens seem to have backed themselves into with this goofy practise. I mean, think about it: how much of the world has become politically correct all of a sudden? What terms, regardless how easily understood and appropriate, have been replaced by these verbose little subchapters we're calling monikers these days? And when the hell did this happen?
I'll deal with this thing one at a time....
Servers. Not the big computers on which websites are stored, but those little people who occasionally remember to bring you more coffee. Those androgynous things. What's a server? Is it male or female? Could be anything; don't ask. We used to call them waiters [those which wait], until we suddenly got waitresses [those which also wait, but are female, damnit]. Now we have servers. Those which serve. Okay. My question: how long until the servers want to be male servers and female servers? Then what will we have? Probably serveronis and serveritas. I wouldn't be surprised.
Flight attendants. I used to be a flight attendant. Then the plane landed. I'd attended the flight. I was a flight attendant. They'll let anyone be a flight attendant these days. There I was, attending the flight, trying to get the stewardess to bring me a White Russian at thirty-five thousand feet. This term really needs to be rethought.
Sanitation engineer. Okay, let's have janitors, known across the galaxy as uneducated labourers, be known as sanitation engineers. Hey Doc: the wastebasket's full again; please empty it on the way to that lecture you're giving at MIT on the proper disposal of bananaberry HazMat, 'kay?
Vertically challenged. Whatever. You're short. Catch the song? You've got no reason to live. Now beat it you bloody munchkin.
Handicapable. Okay, I'll buy that. Capable. Let's wheel your handicapable if legless husk into a telemarketing boilerroom and see about getting the funding to those of us with real problems.
Homeless. Y'know, even before the term 'bum' came along, we had wonderfully colourful words, like 'vagrant' and 'transient'. But now, with all these intellectually challenged losers out there, we've devolved down to 'homeless'. Know what's homeless these days? The Oxford English Dictionary, that's what. No one wants to be anywhere near the damned thing.
Mixologist. What was wrong with being a barkeep? What the hell is mixology? Isn't a mixologist basically a serveroni? Or is it more like a flight attendant who isn't attending a flight? Anyway, the mixologists can drop me off a scotch & soda on their ways to MIT to hear about the proper disposal of bananaberry HazMat.
Police action. Maybe. Judging by the police actions of Los Angeles, I can sorta see how being an LAPD cop and launching a war against defenceless brownish people could get confused with each other.
Lead vocals. Huh? Oh: the singer. Right. The guy who gets all the chicks and makes fun of the lead percussionist with the lead guitarist and the lead rhythmicist. Gotcha.
Illustrationist. This is nearly as bad as the overly cute 'artiste', which is a lot like an artist, but with more attitude than talent. Two snaps and a whoop, Buttercup.
Novelist. I'm not entirely certain what the hell a novelist does. Apparently it's some sort of writer. To me, it sounds more like a trendsetter, which sounds like something the artistes and lead vocalists would be better suited for.
Sales representative. Apparently, someone didn't like the term 'peddler' anymore.
Professional student. Yeah. See Transient.
Administrative assistant. Okay, whatever. Sounds wicked, but my coffeechick would get jealous, okay?
Chief Executive Officer. Man...as long as the boss doesn't find out we've got one of those...
Health Care Professionals, Personal Care Providers, and Paramedical Specialists. Nurses without degrees. You're babysitters, okay? You don't get to touch me.
Website Development Expert. Why lie: I'm a hacker who depends heavily on the influence of Dennis Miller, Denis Leary, and, quite possibly, Dennis the Menace.
I could go on, finding stoopid euphemisms, dissecting them down to reality, and generally ensuring that I'm left with zero employed friends. But what's the point. The simple message: it's time to stop worrying so damned much about who we might insult with the real world and maybe focus, instead, on getting these people to do their jobs without having to assure themselves that they're more globally important than they really are. I mean, I don't wanna go off on a discourse here, but who really gives an all-expense-paid one-way ticket to Malebolgian discomfort what vocational, characteristic, and incidental nomenclature is utilised by which to describe these persons' pre-mortem conditions? We've got deital processing agents interfacing with personal pleasure providers, subadult munitions quality control agents and freelance pharmacists, as well as heirloom aggregation representatives who really need to share some quality time with our mandate enforcement engineers, and all we can brainstorm to accomplish is to share our challenges with our congressional liaisons, who might extend them to the lead vocalist of the domicile--hopefully before the biosphere is terminated by extramerican international relations utensils.
It's time to drop the pretense. That which we call a rose, by any other name, would be a crimsonhued vegetamerican romantic device.
Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be incorrect.

--Gremlin

Okay, I've been thinking about this for a while. Years, actually. But it's gotten even sillier recently, with all the new discussions and whatever.
Censorship.
In America.
What's wrong with this picture...
Last time I looked into it, the United States of America were built on two basic principles. The first, of course, was tax evasion, which failed to last. The second was some lark about the freedom of expression. Something like this, I believe...

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Okay, I'll buy that. I have to wonder on a couple of points. Like that bit about making no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Wow. That's good news, I think: I heard about a new one called the BranchDavidians that's supposedly getting started up, or something...
But what I'm mostly concerned about right now is the one about making no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. And since I'm not sure whether News of the Stoopid could ever be viewed as a publication of the press, I have to worry more about the freedom of speech.
In theory, according to Amendment One here, I can say whatever the hell I like. I have that freedom. I think of something to say; I say it; and that's the end of it. Easy. Or is it?
There's the simple issue of slander. Not that there's really any such thing. What most people think of as a lawsuit of slander is really a libel suit. The difference is that libel is a written defamation of character, and slander is the spoken word. Either way, though, there's a certain limitation of the freedom of speech there, I'd say.
Threats. 'I'm going to kill you' is a threat, but it's also a part of speech. I can say it; you can have me arrested for it. So that's another grey area.
So aside from threats and slanders, what can I possibly do to get into trouble next? Legally, I can't really think of anything. At least, nothing particularly constitutional. And yet.
So now we have the Carlin List. Okay. It's a list of seven desperately vernacular words which can't be spoken to anyone, according to the Federal Communications Commission. That is, though the constitution, created by the Agents of the People [those who were actually voted into office], allows us to say whatever the hell we like, we now have the FCC--an appointed committee who aren't actually voted in by anyone at the public level--telling us what we can and can't say. Great. We should be grateful that we can learn how to be brainless from the experts.
Granted, that technically only applies to speech, according to the constitution. There's no technical guarantee that you have any freedom in written words, or images, or whatever. And here's the irony: I can use whatever words I like in a novel, but I couldn't read more than about five pages of Catcher in the Rye on the radio. Does that make any sense to anyone? Is it just me?
What's really funny, to me, is that the Carlin list isn't even composed of the seven words you might have expected. One of them is 'cocksucker'. Think about that. Think about that, and think about the world today. According to the FCC, you can't say 'cocksucker' on the airwaves. Fortunately, we don't have to anymore; these days, we can just use the euphemism 'Lewinsky' in place of that disallowed term. So that's good news.
Given enough thought, I'm sure we could come up with acceptible euphemisms for the other six words on the list as well.
And that's great for radio, and for speech in general. Then there the 'net. And that's a source of great concern. In fact, the concern is great enough that we were bothered with the Communications Decency Act of 1996. You've probably heard of this one. It essentially translated into English as 'stay the hell off the web'. Fortunately, it was dropped in favour of a less generalised concept the following year. This is President Clinton's Official Address on the issue:
 

Today, the Supreme Court ruled that portions of the Communications Decency Act addressing indecency are not constitutional. We will study its opinion closely.
The administration remains firmly committed to the provisions -- both in the CDA and elsewhere in the criminal code -- that prohibit the transmission of obscenity over the Internet and via other media. Similarly, we remain committed to vigorous enforcement of federal prohibitions against transmission of child pornography over the Internet, and another prohibition that makes criminal the use of the Internet by pedophiles to entice children to engage in sexual activity.
The Internet is an incredibly powerful medium for freedom of speech and freedom of expression that should be protected. It is the biggest change in human communications since the printing press, and is being used to educate our children, promote electronic commerce, provide valuable health care information, and allow citizens to keep in touch with their government. But there is material on the Internet that is clearly inappropriate for children. As a parent, I understand the concerns that parents have about their children accessing inappropriate material.
If we are to make the Internet a powerful resource for learning, we must give parents and teachers the tools they need to make the Internet safe for children.
Therefore, in the coming days, I will convene industry leaders and groups representing teachers, parents and librarians. We can and must develop a solution for the Internet that is as powerful for the computer as the v-chip will be for the television, and that protects children in ways that are consistent with America's free speech values. With the right technology and rating systems - we can help ensure that our children don't end up in the red light districts of cyberspace.

It's that last paragraph that really confuses me. How in hell do you protect children from the freedom of speech? What the hell does that mean? Children should be seen and not heard; they're protected from the freedom of speech. Is that about right? Or is the idea here to censor what's said to kids? And why? Are we planning to kill them off before they become adults? Is the idea here to make sure they live short lives and never encounter what the rest of us take for granted? You wanna protect kids from something? Protect them from politicians. I think that's a healthier environment for kids: the make-believe land where there are no stuffed suits playing with people's lives and making six figures a year just for being the Lewinskies of the world.
I think maybe it's time to give Strom Thurmond the sack and find someone who isn't vainly attempting to legislate morality. What, precisely, is this loser's problem? What, that people are uploading jpegs of ugly sluts Lewinskying bowling leagues? Who really gives a damn. People upload jpegs of their cats, too. What if I were a feliphobe? Could I get a law into effect to lose all images of Fluffy? Or maybe we could lobby to have all images of the BMW Nazca deleted, since looking at one makes me feel kinda bad about driving a Formula. Is that why Strommy is so upset about pornography on the 'net? Have you seen this guy? I mean, I'm not just giddy over the idea of pornography on the 'net, because I deal with enough of it IRL. Looking at Thurmond, I have to assume he's got other reasons for hating it that much.
Still, while words are theoretically protected by Amendment One, images technically aren't. But that's easily remedied. After all, what's a picture worth? Any idiot will tell you that a picture is worth a thousand words. Words make up speech. Speech is free. Therefore, images are an alternate type of speech. QED.
And if that's too far out a concept, here's a better one, since we're on the 'net: an image is a number of kilobytes, and kilobytes are thousands of bytes, and bytes a little sequences of zeros and ones, and zeros and ones are characters in words. And if that's supposed to be something audible, listen closely to a modem sometime. That weird noise is a form of speech, spoken in a binary language. Are there any further questions.
Of course, there are those--possibly a senator from South Carolina or two--who won't be able to understand such newfangled thingamajiggers as that. Fine. In that case, I've got a better idea.
We've got the VChip on the drawing table. Wonderful. I don't know what VChip stands for--presumably the Vulgarity Chip, or something. Whatever. I have a new proposal. I propose the invention of the SChip. The Stoopidity Chip. The Stoopidity Chip would block out all stoopidity before it ever reached us. That includes everything from the politicians: if they don't want us to use certain words, sorry, that was blocked; if they don't want us seeing certain things, sorry, that was blocked. And let's not forget the parents' groups which got all this started in the first place. Where but in America could you find a group of lemmings with enough free time to ban a Venom figure that electronically said 'I'm gonna eat your brain', but not enough free time to notice what they're buying their kids for Christmas. Think about it: if a kid is old enough to walk into ToysRUs and buy a Venom figure, or a copy of PrimalRage, or whatever it is, without Mom's help, then what in hell are we pretending these kids don't already know about? Last time I went to ToysRUs, located there between the Freeway of Smouldering Carnage and the International House of Profanity at Interstate Two-twenty-five and Mississippi, a twelve-year-old wearing a FUCT TShirt asked me if I had any rock. Good thing Mom got the world's coolest Venom figure ripped off the market, apparently because she was still bitter that it had eaten her brain.
Sure there are some unpleasant things out there. I'm not going to pretend that everything I encounter is just ginchy. But I'm also not real interested in the fictional world which Strommy and Tipper Gore and Rush Limbaugh seem to inhabit. I saw Demolition Man, and that's not really my idea of eutopia. No quero Taco Bell, and damnit, don't try to tell me what I can and can't say in the Land of the Free.
That's just my opinion; [CENSORED].

--Gremlin

Y'know, the American language has become so far removed from English that there are now British-American dictionaries on the market.
What I would call a lorry, you would call a van; what I would call a van, you would call a pickup; what I would call a pickup, you would call a prostitute. And if you want to drag that out full circle, imagine a prostitute named Laurie.
And what I would call a mate, you would call a friend. And what I would call a fag, you would call a cigarette.
This isn't about cigarettes; this is about fags and their mates, by American definition.
Homosexuals exist. That's not news. Have a look at the Romans if you think this began recently; then try to watch American Gladiators with a straight face. Hey Billy Wirth: kiss-kiss.
The thing is, I just don't care. My logic is so simple that a gaybasher could almost grasp it. I'm not gay; I have no intention of becoming gay; so I have no reason to fear homosexuals. QEbloodyD.
Why are people so terrified of homosexuals? How could it possibly matter to you? Seriously, I've asked homophobes about this. Wanna see some replies?
Probably the most common response follows 'I don't want them looking at me'. Yeah all right. Let's look at this logic for a moment.
Understand that the sort of loser who 'don't want them looking' could easily become an Elvis impersonator if only sequins weren't so damned dainty. Really. These people make Meat Loaf look like Sebastian Bach: the bat out of hell was in too much of a hurry to scrape off that resin-like coating of fryolator grease before hitting the BowlARama.
Take a good look at a homosexual. Sure you can tell them from everyone else. How? They're the ones with enough taste to dress that way. Now, think about this: if Dinah the disheveled waitress back at the Porkrind Cafe and Truckstop looked at you like you were yesterday's turkeyroll, do you honestly believe that Jay the flaming fashion consultant over there is seriously contemplating your lice-ridden nether regions? To be blunt: what's the point of being gay if you can't spot an asshole when you see one?
Don't get me wrong: I've been hit on by homosexuals, but so what. It's harmless enough. They ask; you tell. And it's so easy. A simple 'sorry, I'm straight' pretty well ends the conversation right there. And then, they usually buy you a drink anyway, by way of an apology for presuming.
Compare that little scenario to the epidemic of being hit on by something that's certainly female, though its exact species is impossible to determine without a hood sequencer. That 'sorry, I'm straight' line will serve as no defence against The Creature That Sent Darwin Back to the Drawing Board. Perhaps you've met this anomaly. She's got those three teeth the colour of Vietnamese tigerstripe camouflage, that wild Tina Turner got rained on hair, that 'Born Free or Die' Harley Davidson knockoff TShirt with last week's pizza clinging to the eagle like the cargo of the Exxon Valdez adhered to seagulls, and is so damned obese that she's got more contemporarily sized fat chicks orbiting her. Meet Deimos and Phobos; back off bitch, he's mine. And getting Jabba the Slut here to work out that no means get the bloody hell off my planet is almost as likely as Marilyn Manson hosting the 700 Club.
Yet Flintstone here, whose only shared trait with Isaac Azimov is the WeaponX sideburns, would prefer to be ogled by The Beast That Swallowed Nell Carter than a member of the pink collar crowd. Why?
Because he's homophobic. And I think that's a pretty accurate term.
Let's define it, shall we? Phobia: an intense fear or hatred of a particular thing. Acrophobia: an intense fear or hatred of heights. Xenophobia: an intense fear or hatred of strangers. Homophobia: an intense fear or hatred of thyself.
Yup. homo is Latin for 'thyself'. Look it up. Okay, get someone to look it up and read it to you. Slowly. Euphemising the polysyllabic terms into American.
Homophobia is fear of thyself. Fear of your own reflexion. The dude with the pink triangle over there. You are what you hate; you are what you fear.
You, the chronic homophobe, are terrified of what Brian the well-dressed queer represents. You've ingested so much tryptophan in your milk&porkchops that the only thing your lazy little brain can grok is that something about a homosexual is so organised, novel, and exciting that it scares the hell out of you. And so: you beat him up, just to eradicate that nagging self-doubt in your ability to expel testosterone into Birtha's formerly anaclastic snatch.
And this is a personal issue for me. No no no; we've covered that: I'm not homosexual; I have no particular intense fear or hatred of myself. It's personal because I have a number of friends who are gay. And that number is decreasing.
This friend of mine, Joel Larson, was gay. No secret; he never tried to hide it. He was just a cool guy. He didn't really dislike anyone; he never started fights, or even arguments. He lived in Des Moines, which is not a homofriendly city. So, he moved to Minneapolis, which, compared to Des Moines, is a pretty cool place.
To make a long story short [though hopefully not to depreciate it] a homophobe began stalking him, and eventually beat him to death as Joel was walking home just after dark. The shocking motive, it turned out, was that the killer was a homosexual. A closet case. He couldn't admit it to himself, or his family, or his friends. He couldn't admit it to Joel. Well, not in so many words. Instead, he communicated his self-conflict by beating my friend to death.
To my knowledge, Joel had never hit on the guy, or even glanced him over. Joel, like so many homosexuals, had taste.
But Joel didn't subscribe to the Michael Jackson philosophy of hiding what he was. He didn't really flaunt it--certainly not the way these troglodytic labourers flaunt their all-American, cornfed, womanising gaybasher personas. He was just this cool guy who was exterminated in a manoeuvre that Adolf Hitler would admire.
So here's my suggestion for all you gaybashers out there: next time you get edgy enough to kill a homosexual, identify the real problem and give Kavorkian a call.
Hey, if that catches on, we may eventually put an end to country western singers, too.
That's just my opinion; get off my ass about it.

--Gremlin