If there's one thing we can learn from history, it's that we don't learn from history.

I have this deep fear that we're plunging headlong into a second McCarthy era, only instead of combating communism, we're combating terrorism. What has happened? We are in an age where people are accused of treason for making negative comments about the US. People are being imprisoned without being charged for anything particular. US citizens are constantly observing the activities of everyone around them, reporting them to authorities for the slightest deviation from normal behavior. Does this sound familiar?

The US government is hell-bent on a ludicrous campaign to eradicate some amorphous force that can never truly be eliminated without claiming utter control of the thought processes of every human being on earth. I have nothing but fear in my heart for the next few decades. We have no hope. The downward spiral has begun, and the people of the United States of America are only causing it to accelerate...

Alright, I plumb don't get it. To my knowledge, nobody reads this blog, because I've never told anyone about it. (This blog is for myself and the anonymous masses.) Yet my hit counter continues to increase. But at the same time, Concrete Abstractions, Refract's sister site, has had no visitors. How strange. I'm quite confused, and I think there must be a bug in YACCS' hit counter. Someone enlighten me.

So someone I know has "Good things happen to good people...I now live by that" on their profile. All I can do is laugh heartily, shake my head in sympathy for their naivete, and go on my merry way. But I'm not a cynic.

So I dated this girl for a year and a quarter. She cheated on me, I forgave her, so she dumped me. People wonder why I have no interest in dating.

But actually, the nasty ol' breakup experience isn't the reason. That year and a quarter was probably the best time of my life. But simultaneously, I think that our breakup was the best thing that ever happened to me. I've realized how fantastic the single life is. So free! So fun! So...free! While we were dating, we figgered we'd end up getting married, but now that it's over, I honestly think that I want to stay single the rest of my life: the thought of marriage just sounds so drab. Blah! So if you're single, be happy, and let us all rejoice! :-D

Hmm... My counter keeps on going up, but I can't figure it out. I've never linked to my blog, I've never told anyone about my blog, and I don't read my own blog. Did people just stumble across it? If so, gotta start writing more, and writing more substantial stuff. Frivolous posts are just a waste of time, nobody wants to read them, I probably don't even want to write them, but I do anyway. See, I'm wasting our collective time right now. I'm just a cruel bastard.

Encouraging Thought For The Day

Everying that you do comes back to haunt you. So you're perfect or you're fucked. Or both. So why worry? :-)

Oohhhh, man. First off, if you haven't visited Write That Down yet, you're missing out. (Link to it on the left, BTW.) But he posted something absolutely fabulous that I have to illegally repost here:

---
Following the backlash of San Francisco's Ninth Circuit Court banning the Pledge of Allegiance in schools because it contains the words "under God," the California Atheist who originally filed the lawsuit has been receiving hostile telephone calls and death threats from Christian extremists, saying he is no better than John Walker Lindh and the Taliban.


The Christians have a point about the Taliban being no good - what with it being based on an absolute monotheistic religion condemning and threatening the lives of those who don't worship their god and all.
---

Alright, here's my $.02 on this uproar regarding online music sharing.

First of all, I strongly disagree with claims that the ability to download music has hurt record sales. Personally, I would not have bought a single one of the 15-20 CD's that I've purchased in the last year if it were not for the ability to download music from those albums. And most of my friends are the same way. Those people I know who only download music are those people who don't buy that many CD's anyway, so they're not hurting record sales by much. But record companies want to restrict access to this music. They want us to have to blindly purchase these albums, having only heard one or two songs from them, and then not have the ability to return it if we don't like it. We should be able to either sample the CD or to return the CD if it's crappy. They don't want us to do either. I think the reason album sales are declining is because good music isn't really being made anymore. Labels aren't giving musical artists a chance to become popular: if you're not huge right off the bat, then back into the garbage you go. This isn't the way to encourage CD sales. Sell good music, and people will buy it. Be patient again.

On top of everything, they want to now restrict what we can do with the CDs once we've already paid $15-20 for them! They say we shouldn't be able to make copies and that we shouldn't be able to listen in our computers, which means we can't listen to them in our car/portable MP3 players, etc... Some go as far as to require every playback device to have some sort of authentication: even the speakers! Now we can only listen on RIAA approved devices??? If we paid for it, why can't we listen to it however we want? I know that almost every new CD I get, I make 2 copies of it: one MP3 copy for my computer so that I have quick access to my entire music library, and another CD Audio copy for my car. Never is more than one copy of it playing at once, so I don't feel like I'm cheating them in any way.

They seriously need to take a step back and re-examine this issue. If they pursue this much further, they're going to be losing many, many more customers. Myself among them.

Sigh. Since I got back from school a month or so ago, my parents haven't dragged me to church. I had hoped that it was becauset they had started to realize that my beliefs differed from theirs and that they were being mature enough to accept that and allow me to make my own choice. I never brought it up because I assumed it was a sort of silent agreement and that it was tough for them: I figured it would be even tougher for them to talk about it openly. Today my mom was bitching at me for a few things, no big deal, and then she paused for a while. "While I'm on the subject of being honest with you..." Uh, oh... She said that she doesn't mind that I generally don't have time for church while I'm at school--right, that's the reason I don't go to church when I'm at school...--she does want me to go while I"m at home because "it's what a Christian family does." Blah. The church they go to really bites ass: it's nothing but singing, with only a 5-minute sermon. Hate that crap. So I bargained with her: I still have to go to church whenever possible, but I get to go to a different church. Oh, well. I wonder what would happen if I was honest with her and told her that I was an atheist... Nah, I don't mind dying, but I don't want it to be at my mother's hands ;-).