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I’m having kind of a bi-polar day….

The annoying part about being bi-polar and being smart enough to know it, is that you can see it coming, but you can’t do a damned thing about it.

Today was one of those days. I’ve felt off for most of the day not quite there, willing to do stupid things like telling a customer “I don’t give a fuck” when asked to do something incorrectly…

The day sort of went downhill from there. Two hour commute home, 30 minutes of forced “playtime” with the kids, then off to Volleyball.

Volleyball has been my outlet of late – a place to vent my frustrations, to hang out with people who enjoy a good semi-casual game.

Well tonight volleyball sucked.  My game was off, people were pissing me off.  (OK, people were pissing me off more than people usually piss me off)

So I come back, have a few drinks, watch some TV, and blog for a bit, because I’m hoping that it gets better from here.

It won’t.  Tomorrow is going to suck too – and what makes it worse is the realization that there isnt a damned thing i can do about it.

And tomorrow is date night….   #FAIL

I heard some talking head on some random not-to-be-named news station talking about what a great thing “Tolerance” is.  Racial tolerance, tolerance of sexual orientation, etc.

He’s an idiot.

Tolerance is only a start.

Let’s look at the root of the word “Tolerance”…..  Tolerate.

We tolerate things when we don’t like them but we allow or permit them to exist.

“Tolerance” is a bullshit term that has somehow, in this culture, replaced “Acceptance”.

What we should be aiming for is Acceptance, or even blindness.  In truth I feel like I’ve accomplished that.  I don’t give a rats ass what color someone’s skin is, who they choose to sleep with (or marry for that matter) or which (if any) god they worship.

When hiring someone I will hire the most qualified applicant regardless of  any of these preconceived stereotypes.

Truthfully, would you rather be tolerated or accepted for who you are?

I’m usually the first to say it; this will be no exception to the rule. Bear with me, because this is kind of long-winded.

With the way we raise our children, I’m deeply shocked we don’t have more serial killers roaming the streets.  We fuck them up from day one and expect them to just walk away from it unscathed. Everything we teach them is in conflict.

EVERYTHING. Everywhere is dichotomy.

We teach them to work hard, to be a success, but disallow greed. We tell them to celebrate victories/birthdays/holidays/days-of-the-week with food, but to be a glutton is sinful. We even market to them the car that looks fast, but tell them to ease up on the accelerator.

This back-and-forth mindfuck is especially present when it comes to sex.  We pit males and females against each other from the start, and then we’re surprised when shit blows up in our faces.

Bottom line, society teaches boys it’s ok to want it, to pursue it, and that their goal is to capture it, and to girls that they should hold out until they get something of value. We teach boys to be safe; girls that there’s a price to be paid, first.

Don’t believe me?  Hear me out, because the way our society deals with sex is fucked up on so many levels.  Yet, it’s *ALL* playing right into this whole “sex-as-a-commodity” stereotype that the same educators of the sexes, right-wing-whack-jobs, abhor.

We put forth extreme effort, into sexualizing EVERY part of our culture.  Evidence of this is available, should you open any catalog (selling just about anything) that you get in the mail to any random page.

Think I’m being grandiose?  While writing this, I picked up and opened the first flyer handy, a Target flyer. The model holding the iPod in the MP3 player advertisment is barely wearing anything. Another? Recently, an Ethan Allen catalog profiled a lovely coffee table with a size zero waif lying across it. Ironically, this detracted from the advert, since I couldn’t see enough of the table to tell if I liked it or not.

More: A local flooring contractor’s advert had so much cleavage-baring model that you couldn’t see ANY of the floor in question. Even an advertisement for a local church had a hot model plastered across the page.

Even more: Watch cartoons, kids networks like Nickelodeon, or even Disney.  (Where do you think Brittney Spears came from?)

Sex sells.  Always has. Always will.  People who think otherwise are in desperate need of a reality check, and will always and forever be *WRONG*

And of course it does.  We’re programmed for sex, it’s a large part of who we are. Millions of years of evolution has made it so, second only to food in our list of biological imperatives.  You could theorize that sex is even so enjoyable so the race doesn’t die out (because the number of people willingly putting themselves through parenting would be fractional compared to what it is).

It’s is a chemical reaction that can’t (and shouldn’t) be turned off.  Some might argue that sex is purely emotional. To that I respond: Emotion is a chemical reaction…and so on, ad-infinitum. Sex, the attraction, act, chemical reaction, is not something that *CAN* (let alone should) be turned off, and it can’t just be tucked away for a more convenient time.  To do so puts the human body under intense stress, and is not healthy.

I don’t have a problem with sex being a part of us, at all. What I have a problem with is hypocrites who would have us believe that sex is *NOT* a part of us, or that it’s something accompanied by a mental light-switch that can be turned on and off at will. With the people who willingly teach their boys to pursue the girls, and teach their girls to hold out until they get what they want out from boys – a HORRIBLE double-standard that will always come back to bite us in a big way.

Of course, these same hypocrites are often the very ones wearing diamond-encrusted torture-symbols (crucifix), suspended between breasts enveloped by bras designed to orchestrate cleavage where there wasn’t any. Cleavage barely hidden behind low-cut blouses. These women get PISSED when men stare at their synthetic valley.  (Of course we’re staring at your breasts, you idiot. For the first 18 or so months of  a majority of normal life, breasts were directly associated with getting fed – and that connection does not go away, for men *OR* women.)

Not to mention the fact that between the blouse pointing the way and the shiny-dangly things, well, dangling, you’ve done everything humanly possible, short of a tattooed arrow, to ensure that that’s exactly where we’re looking.

We are monetizing sex, every last one of us.  Assigning it value. Where there is value, there will always be a debtor/debtee relationship. It starts out with a subtle, honorable-seeming “if you give me a commitment you’ll get sex”, but it *NEVER* stops there.  Sex becomes something that women dangle over men’s heads to get what they want out of them, and then when the sex stops, they’re amazed that a guy would go elsewhere.

Think that’s a bit harsh?  Let me put it to you this way: By teaching a girl to hold out for marriage, you’re teaching her to only give up the sex when the guy gives her something of value, in this example, the commitment.  It’s only natural for that equation to become ingrained within the subconscious mind, causing all sorts of bad habits. From the beginning, girls are taught, using linear thinking, that sex is something they can use to get what they want, and *THEN* we chastise them for using the tools at their disposal. This isn’t all there is to it: women using sex as a bargaining tactic.

The problem is, more often than not, it doesn’t go both ways.  If sex can be used to secure the commitment, why isn’t it ok to use the commitment to secure sex?  Doesn’t it make sense that once you’ve made the agreement to trade sex for commitment that both parties need to keep up their end?  Why do women feel that once they have the marriage license in hand that sex doesn’t matter anymore?  Conversely why do men feel like it’s ok to cheat even when everything else in the relationship is perfect? (Hint:  When you put a stop payment on a check, it negates any contract contingent on that payment.)

And we wonder why our divorce rate is so high.

Women bear the brunt of sexual responsibility.  Like it or not, nature has saddled them with the ultimate responsibility: getting to bear the kids, often being the main person raising them. They inherit the ultimate responsibility by just by virtue of their gender.

Men have their responsibility in this as well, but let’s face it folks, men SUCK* at responsibility – that’s our teaching as well.  Society doesn’t teach men to revere a sexual relationship with a woman, or fatherhood, though over time some learn better than others.

Men and women both are not taught from the ground up the ultimate responsibility that is to be had, and we DO NOT teach them to take responsibility for who they are as people, human beings, potential parents, and for the little lives they might create.

This cycle has to end.  As long as sex is used as the hook, and the club, we will never have REAL relationships, only business transactions wherein no party ever truly observes full disclosure.

A pretty lousy one actually.

So my wife and I went to see the new Star Trek movie last night, as a part of the whole Mother’s Day weekend extravaganza that you have when you’re trying to honor a woman who can manage to hold our kids in some semblence of order.  (Did I mention that she keeps me in line pretty well too? – Bygones)

So this was great for multiple reasons.

First, the last movie we saw in theaters was “The DaVinci Code” (Great movie but pedantic compared to the book) so an outing without the kids is kind of a rarity for us.

Second, we are both AVID Die-Hard Trekkies…  (She even went in her “Starfleet Acadamy Alumni” sweatshirt – which made her stand out here in Redneckville, Virginia as the *ONLY* one who dressed up for it – we also stood out that we were two in an audience of TEN – God I hate living surrounded by morons.)

I wanted to start a thread on the new movie and get opinions.  I think this movie did a wonderful job of pushing Trek into the 21st Century, as well as opening the door and hopefully encouraging a whole new series of TV and Theater productions.

In discussing the show, I would ask that you preface your comments with “SPOILER:” if you are going to give away anything pertinent to the plot, the plot was such a brain twister that I’m not really willing to give any of it away myself, but it’s hard to keep that a secret while discussing WHY this movie sort of changes things…

Oh – and one thing i can say without giving too much away.

The actor they got to play Kirk was good.  Got the whole attitude thing down to a T.

The actor they got to play Spock was better.  Looks, mannerisms, all right on mark.

But the guy who played Bones, in my opinion, stole the bloody movie.  He nailed it *SO* well that I really thought a few times I was looking at a much younger DeForest Kelly.

Anyway, like I said, a little diversion, because Dammit Jim this is a geek’s rant site not IMDB.com…

…It’s granting a request, which, while nice, isn’t the same thing.

My wife said this to me some time ago, and it took me a while to realize that the ramifications of the statement are staggering.

This concept rings through in all avenues of life.

In work: If you have to ask for a raise the raise is not really a statement of appreciation of your hard work, it’s merely acceptance that it would probably be more expensive to train your replacement.

In Holidays: If you have to ask your spouse/significant other for a specific present, even going so far as sending them a link, it’s not gift giving, it’s shopping with someone else’s credit card.

In meal planning:  See above, if you’re planning a special event for someone and you have to ask them what they want, you really don’t know them as well as you think you do.

In Sex:  If you or your spouse or significant other has to ask for sex, then the other partner isn’t *REALLY* willing but is instead just giving in, probably in hopes of getting a decent night’s sleep.  (as a side note – if you’re relationship gets to the point of having to ask, I suspect it’s all downhill from there.)

It is true – the only real gift is the one that’s given without prompting, without scripting, and without expecting anything in return.

We as a culture SUCK at gift giving.

The Kiss

I love chocolate.  The taste, the feel, the way it stimulates the brain in ways very little else does.

I have a weakness for it.  I think about it it often.  I think that as far as addictions go it’s fairly harmless, I don’t want it every day, but when I feel the urge it’s nice to have it within reach.

My favorite chocolate is mixed, the big assortment where you’re not sure what’s coming next but you know the next will be better than the last.  Some with nuts, some without, it’s all good.

But sometimes, more often than not actually, I just want it plain.

Chocolate is one of those things that is enjoyable alone, but best when shared with someone you love.  It’s a most thoughtful gift, especially when given unprompted.  Accepting the gift of chocolate is a high honor to the person giving, though it is usually expected that you’ll share.

Chocolate can be a powerful force in the universe, but is commonly misused, thrown at just about any dish regardless of fit or taste.  Too often it’s given away freely, when gifts of this magnitude should truly be saved for the ones we are closest to.

I hunger… And then maybe something to eat….