What is absolute truth?

I believe that there is an absolute truth. Here is part of a conversation I had with Liz about the matter:

(6:01:53 PM) spitinacopsface: I don't think universal truth exists
(6:02:43 PM) Sigma386: I do. Otherwise apples wouldn't fall to the ground, airplanes couldn't fly, and fish couldn't breathe underwater. Those are some things I consider absolute truths.
(6:03:19 PM) Sigma386: Well, in their most abstract form, anyway.
(6:04:13 PM) Sigma386: Our explanations of why they do what they do may change over time, but the fact of the matter is they do what they do because of absolute truths.
(6:04:30 PM) Sigma386: And we've written laws to explain those truths.
(6:04:37 PM) spitinacopsface: I don't know.
(6:04:53 PM) Sigma386: Well, I should say "try" to explain those truths.
(6:05:40 PM) Sigma386: And we haven't done too bad of a job trying to explain them, as far as anyone knows.
(6:05:57 PM) Sigma386: Except religious fanatics.
(6:06:41 PM) Sigma386: They do an utterly horrible job of trying to explain those truths.
(6:06:55 PM) Sigma386: And they have been for many years.
(6:08:55 PM) Sigma386: But yeah, I believe in absolute truths, just not in the same way most people do.
(6:09:08 PM) Sigma386: Like I don't believe in a rigid concept of "good" and "evil".
(6:09:48 PM) Sigma386: I don't consider those to be absolute truths at all.
(6:10:06 PM) Sigma386: To me absolute truths are stuff like the laws of Physics, Chemistry, etc. etc.
(6:10:48 PM) Sigma386: Thought the explanations will change from time to time, the rules that have governed those things will always apply.
(6:12:01 PM) Sigma386: That statement, I believe, is an absolute truth.
(6:13:33 PM) spitinacopsface: I guess

That pretty much sums up what my stance on the concept of "absolute truth" is. I believe it exists, and science is as close as we have come to explaining those absolute truths. But they exist in their most abstract form, and they always will apply for as long as the Universe exists. As for a rigid sense of right and wrong, of good and evil, I don't believe in those, because what works for one person may not work for another.

Great essay on the flaws of Capitalism.

http://community.livejournal.com/anarchists/2645949.html#cutid1

EndCiv IV trailer.

There's times I've thought about how it costs so much to so much as exist. This video mentions it, as well as the fact that our society is based on violence, and would collapse without it, and I would recommend it to my friends. I'd donate, too, if I could afford it.

http://submedia.tv/endciv/2010/03/29/premise-1/

So long, Adsense!

I've decided I don't need your bullcrap anymore. For as long as you refuse to submit to my demands, I will go elsewhere for my advertising needs! I will be using Bidvertiser, and if that doesn't work out, there's other sites I know about. The point is, I now refuse to use Adsense, and I will keep refusing to use Adsense for as long as my account is canceled and you refuse to let me re-activate it! And I will encourage all my friends and family to stop using Adsense and go elsewhere for their advertising needs! So think carefully about this, do you want to see all your customers go, or are you going to change and let people reactivate their accounts after they've been canceled?

Adsense sucks.

A while ago I canceled my old Adsense account, reason being I didn't think I would need it due to these PTC sites I've signed up for. Problem is, the setup didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped it would, you don't make a lot of money very quickly with PTC programs. So I wanted to get my old account back, and Google makes it nigh impossible to do that. They really need to change, this is an inconvenience for everyone who uses their service and has decided that canceling their account was a bad idea, like me. And I don't want to use an alternate email address, either, that was cumbersome. It would just be easier to access my Adsense stats for the same email address I use for just about everything else.

I have an IMPOSTER!

I was bored and looked up "BishounenNerd" on Google and as it turns out someone stole my name!

http://tubex.jmbsoft.com/profile/BishounenNerd/

This is not me! And it's not just a coincidence, either, this guy deliberately stole my name! He even has a thumbnail from a video I made on YouTube as his avatar! He even got my date of birth wrong! HA! It should be public knowledge, and he wasn't smart enough to find it! You're not fooling anyone! I don't know who this guy is but he has a lot of nerve stealing my name. One of the main reasons I chose it was because it was unique, something I thought up entirely on my own. I'll probably never sign up for TubeX, but if I ever do, he better give me my name back, or I'm telling people about him and getting him in trouble for this! I worked to hard on that name just for someone to go and steal it on me!

F*** the police.

I don't mean that in just a rigid sense as to say "f*** the cops" or anything like that. I'm talking about the regulators, the people who only exist to tell you what you can and can not do, the people who only want to get in your way, the people that write the rules that chain you. They are the "police". F*** 'em.

My mom was in a creative mood today.

She was originally going to make chicken fajitas for dinner today, but she couldn't because she didn't have enough tortillas. So, instead she boiled up some wheat pasta, mixed the chicken and veggies in a skillet and all that, and had some shredded cheese out for us to use. I was blown away by how good it tasted.

Everything has to be new or it doesn't work.

Just a moment ago, my dad was searching for some games that he used to play on my laptop. Well, I helped him find them, and he tried some of them. One of his Blackjack games that he got from the College of Dupage computer show didn't work anymore. Something about it being incompatible with Windows 7. He also tried connecting a bunch of old mice that we had lying around to it, and none of them worked because apparently there isn't a serial port or anything like that. It seems like everything has to be new or it doesn't work. It's wasteful, actually, I have a bunch of old mice sitting around, and they're perfectly good. My Toshiba laptop would agree to that. But all of them have no machine to attach to. Maybe if I buy an old EGA computer or something, maybe I could get some use out of them. And there it is again, I need an EGA computer that's slow to play some of the older games that I have. I have this game called "Perestroika", which is named after the Democratic restructuring of Russia, made by Locus games. All the newer computers I have run it too fast, if at all, and my old CGA Tandy can't process the graphics, and is too slow to run it as well. Again, everything has to be new or it doesn't work. Isn't it possible to make newer machines compatible with old technology? We're losing something valuable if we don't!

I hate money so much right now.

It seems like every problem that comes up in my life has something to do with money. A while back, my parents moved me out to Iowa, but I was completely against it, but I had no say in the matter. The only way that I could have moved out on my own and stayed back home was if I had money. So here I am, being dragged away from my home in St. Charles, and I haven't been happy... In fact, I was so miserable that I couldn't even keep up my grades in school and was in and out. I was unstable, I couldn't think about anything except how unhappy I was that I was forced to do something that I didn't want to do. I felt like an animal caged in a zoo, and that was eating away at me for such a long time. And part of the reason was because I wanted to fulfill this crush I had on Liz, this girl I met in college who is now a friend of mine thanks to social networking. Finding her online gave me a sense of hope, but as it turns out, trying to get back to Illinois has caused many problems, most likely my fault, but not entirely my fault. The problem again is money. And money seems to be more of a problem, too, because she's desperate for cash as well, and she lives in a crappy apartment in Dekalb, and her boyfriend doesn't lift so much as a finger to help her... Yeah, she has a boyfriend, I eventually found that out from talking to her... And she doesn't have people to turn to for help, all her friends in real life haven't stuck with her and now she's got an apartment to carry all by herself with 2 mouths to feed, hers and her boyfriends, and she's struggling to keep her grades up in college. All this because of money, or a lack thereof. And here I am trying to move back to get a job and help her, but you know what? I need money to do that. And I need money to drive a car and money to eat and money to stay in one spot for a while and money to s***, shower, and shave, money to drink... Every damn thing costs money! And I notice this more than ever now because I haven't been spending as much money lately on video games, I can't afford it anymore!

Which reminds me... A while back, I played a little game called Mother 3. It was never released in the U.S., and in order to play it in English, you needed a patch. Well, I played it, and the story is much what I was just ranting about in the last excessively long paragraph. The story starts out in a little quiet place called Tazmilly Village. There, everyone lives a quiet, peaceful life, in harmony with nature. The focus of the story is the Lucas' family, which consists of Lucas, his brother Claus, his father Flint, his mother Hinawa, and his grandfather Alec. After the kids are done playing with the dragos, they eat dinner and decide to head home. But on the way there, evil pig mask soldiers start tearing the forest apart and mutating the wildlife. With the help of his friends, Flint manages to save most of the villages, but eventually it is discovered that his beloved wife Hinawa had been killed by a mutated drago. They had turned violent because of the mutations. Fast forward several years and Lucas is more grown up, and a man named Yokuba comes to town, promising everyone that they will be happy if they get this device called a "happy box" (the resemblance to a T.V. is no coincidence), and that if they don't get one disaster will strike them, and he also introduces money to the village. Eventually things change for the worse, as these new changes cause people to distrust one another, and forces people to work for the one who turned their forest into a chimera preserve. It's all the devices of an evil spoiled brat named Porky Minch, and he wants to summon a dragon to rule the world. But Lucas has to summon it first to keep the dragon from working for Porky, so it's up to him to save the world.

In a way, the plot makes me think a lot of the way the real world is now. Money is an instrument used by those in power to enslave humanity and make it do their bidding. But this world has no equivalent of Lucas, no one to stand up and stick it to the man.

On a totally unrelated note, I hate to ask this of anyone, but if someone just so happens to be reading this, can they send me $100? It would mean a lot to me. My Paypal email is snow_mage@hotmail.com. Please don't ask why I need it, though, I just do.

I totally misunderstood the meaning of the word "blog'...

I can't believe I didn't realize it before. Blog is short for web log. I know this, and yet I treat it like it's a place where people come to see what I recommend. They don't know who I am. And that just makes me look full of myself. Maybe I am. A dreadful thought, but if it is true then I gotta say, maybe I ought to stop thinking so much of myself, it's really hurting me.

I had a conversation with Liz today. It went a little something like this:

(12:36:28 AM) Sigma386: As I was saying...
(12:36:44 AM) Sigma386: You would have to get A LOT of visitors to your site to make adsense work.
(12:36:56 AM) Sigma386: I'm lucky if I can get one in a day.
(12:38:00 AM) spitinacopsface: Yeah. But how do you get people to read your blog?
(12:38:18 AM) Sigma386: If I knew that, I would be much more successful than I am now.
(12:38:24 AM) spitinacopsface: I would say write it as if you don't have an audience at first.
(12:38:28 AM) Sigma386: I've tried linking to it on various other site.s
(12:38:34 AM) spitinacopsface: Write like my livejournal says.
(12:38:48 AM) spitinacopsface: And search for people who will want to read your entries.
(12:39:01 AM) spitinacopsface: Like look at my huge list of followers and friends on livejournal.
(12:39:07 AM) Sigma386: I have a link to it on Facebook and Mylot.
(12:39:09 AM) spitinacopsface: I found some of them, many of them found me
(12:39:41 AM) spitinacopsface: And many are people who don't share my views or interests but see my enteries as art and read them like they would read like william burroughs or something.
(12:39:59 AM) spitinacopsface: So estabilish something like I used to have on livejournal.
(12:40:14 AM) spitinacopsface: get it so people all want to read for the sake or reading it, as friends or fans,
(12:40:33 AM) spitinacopsface: and don't write about what they might want to hear, just write about every thought you have
(12:41:00 AM) spitinacopsface: I mean I see successful blogs, and that's how they always are if they're not technical info about really specific stuff.
(12:41:27 AM) Sigma386: Mine isn't about anything in particular.
(12:41:37 AM) spitinacopsface: just like some normal person blogs about fighing with her boyfriend and getting diarrhea from the sushi she ate, and people are interestd for whatever reason.
(12:41:45 AM) Sigma386: Recently I did a review of the Alice in Wonderland movie.
(12:42:29 AM) Sigma386: My friend Chris took me to see that.
(12:42:34 AM) spitinacopsface: with me, my writiing is art, and my life is art, and just telling about my day give people something they'd never live themselves and since it is real and not being written for the readers at all it amazes them
(12:42:36 AM) Sigma386: It wasn't that bad...
(12:44:22 AM) Sigma386: Yeah, that's the problem, I guess, I don't think that anyone will be interested in like small shit like that.
(12:44:33 AM) Sigma386: But I guess I'm wrong.

So I think I'm going to change the way I write this. This blog is going to be more blog-like; A journal that I write to. I'm actually sort of afraid, though, people are going to see parts of me that I keep hidden away, stuff that I'm ashamed of. I have a lot of things I'm ashamed of... But, if I don't do this, I'll be stuck in some dead-end job, probably flipping burgers or cleaning someone else's mess. I'm worth more than that, I can read at an advanced level, I'm good at arithmetic and some algebra, and I can actually pick up new ideas fairly easily if I try. So I'd rather be happy and write this blog and make money doing that than doing some degrading job, wearing a uniform and being a tool for the corporation.

Movie Reviews: Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

How many people remember the books "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carol? I checked the two books out not too long ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. The novels are classic works of literature, and have eventually been made into a cartoon film by Walt Disney. Well, Disney has produced yet another version of the film, this time directed by Tim Burton, and the movie has already sold more tickets than Avatar, which I consider to be a very good movie. Be sure to read my review of it if you haven't already. Anyway, the new Alice in Wonderland movie isn't too bad, but there were some things that I still think could have been better.

The plot of the movie takes place after "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass". Alice is much older, presumably in her teens, and she winds up in Wonderland much the same way as she did in the first novel. However, the plot slowly starts to take a firm twist from the originals, as the residents of Wonderland debate whether this Alice is the one they were looking for to slay the dreaded Jabberwocky, whom the Red Queen uses to oppress the creatures of Wonderland. At first Alice is doubtful and has no memory of her previous visit, but as the movie unfolds, she finally starts to accept that that is what she was destined to do. This eventually drives her to search for the Vorpal Sword and free Wonderland from the tyranny of the Red Queen.

There were some things that I did like about the movie. Disney did take a huge creative license with the movie, and it still felt like Alice in Wonderland, so I had no problem with that. They got away with setting it after the 2 novels, and they even gave the hookah smoking caterpillar a name - Absalom. The movie also had a little bit of cheeky humor, like the scene where Alice is in the Queen of Hearts' garden buck naked because she outgrew her clothes, which made me snicker a little bit.

Despite those things, however, there were some things that irked me about the movie. For one, even though they got Johnny Depp to play the role of the Mad Hatter, there were times were he would seem to randomly pick up a Scottish accent for no reason, which seemed kind of annoying at times. But what bothered me the most was one detail that either Tim Burton or Disney didn't seem to care about. The movie makes no distinction between the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts. In the novels they're 2 entirely separate characters, but in this film the Queen of Hearts is simply referred to as the Red Queen, and it can't have been by accident because all of the White Queen's soldiers look like chess pieces, so they must have known what they were doing.

Overall, if you enjoyed the novels and the original film, you will definitely like this movie. Despite the box office results, however, I still enjoyed Avatar a lot more. I give this movie an 8 out of a possible 10.

The corporation is NOT a person!

... But, for the longest time, America's legal system has defined the corporation as a person. Doesn't make sense, does it? Well, the reason they do this is so that they can get away with white-collar crimes. Some of the corporate goliaths, such as AIG, have gotten what they deserved. But, with the law declaring that the corporation IS a person, it is hard to stop the corporations from doing whatever they please. So we must act now! And I have found a site just a moment ago that allows you to make a stand! It's called freespeechforpeople.org, and their aim is to amend the constitution so that the corporation cannot be defined as a person. Only people should be defined as people.

I highly recommend Ishmael.

I just got done reading this insightful work of fiction known as "Ishmael", written by Daniel Quinn. In it, the writer replies to a magazine ad for a pupil, with "urgent need to save the world" listed as a requirement. He goes to the place listed and finds that he's being lectured on the history of the "takers" and "leavers" from an articulate gorilla. But the lesson the gorilla teaches him rings true in society as we know it today. It's truly something that is worth thinking about. I strongly urge you to look this book up, it's a must-read for anyone serious about changing the world and making it a better place to live.

My friend almost died from eating at Subway.

It turns out my friend Chris, who I have known for several years, almost died at the hospital as a result of some nasty food poisoning. The cause: Something he ate at Subway. If THAT doesn't speak badly of fast food restaurants, I don't know what does. Thankfully, he's still alive, and he's coming to visit me today from out of state. He's also bringing with him an old friend who I want to get re-acquainted with, Liz. I'm looking forward to tonight, I get to re-connect with my friends after a long time of not seeing them.

As if that wasn't shocking enough, my friend Al nearly choked on ice. Why is it that all my closest friends seem to have had near-death experiences? It's sort of creepy and foreboding...

Beware of MagicJak! They will steal your money!

The following is pulled from my instant messenger:

(6:59:11 PM) spitinacopsface: AAAAAAHHH!
(6:59:14 PM) spitinacopsface: I fucking
(6:59:18 PM) spitinacopsface: went to a government website
(6:59:29 PM) spitinacopsface: for assistance paying bills for the poor
(6:59:32 PM) spitinacopsface: and I clicked on a link
(6:59:56 PM) spitinacopsface: and it told me that I can get a gift card for $250 worth of food if I fill out this survey
(6:59:58 PM) spitinacopsface: so I did
(7:00:01 PM) spitinacopsface: and I am an idiot
(7:00:11 PM) spitinacopsface: so I told it my credit card number for my paypal debit card
(7:00:20 PM) Sigma386: Oh God...
(7:00:22 PM) spitinacopsface: and apparently now I spent $96 on a MagicJak.
(7:00:24 PM) spitinacopsface: Yeah.
(7:00:29 PM) spitinacopsface: From a fucking government website
(7:00:36 PM) Sigma386: Wow....
(7:00:37 PM) spitinacopsface: to MagicJak
(7:00:43 PM) spitinacopsface: makes no sense
(7:00:44 PM) spitinacopsface: but
(7:00:45 PM) spitinacopsface: I think
(7:00:53 PM) spitinacopsface: I am never typing my debit card number to anyone again
(7:01:18 PM) spitinacopsface: How do you go from government assistance to a fucking company's product purchase order in one click?
(7:01:33 PM) Sigma386: Good question.
(7:01:54 PM) Sigma386: I mean why would the government need sponsors?
(7:02:06 PM) spitinacopsface: Well I haven't paid my electricity bill in months.
(7:02:16 PM) spitinacopsface: And April is the month when they can turn off the power on you.
(7:02:24 PM) spitinacopsface: So I've got to get this paid somehow.
(7:02:30 PM) spitinacopsface: I thought this government grant would do it.
(7:02:33 PM) spitinacopsface: But what the fuck.
(7:02:39 PM) spitinacopsface: It is sponsored by taxes.
(7:02:44 PM) spitinacopsface: It says right here on the government site.
(7:02:48 PM) Sigma386: Yeah...
(7:02:57 PM) spitinacopsface: That tax dollars pay for a grant that they use to give money to people like me.
(7:02:59 PM) Sigma386: So why the hell do they need to advertise 3rd party services?
(7:03:13 PM) spitinacopsface: And then they said that there are also grants available for other things, like groceries.
(7:03:19 PM) spitinacopsface: So I was like "cool, I need groceries."
(7:03:32 PM) spitinacopsface: And I clicked on that, an then they were asking my name and shit.
(7:03:51 PM) spitinacopsface: An they want to make sure I am the head of the household so I had to electronically sign that I am over 18 and a bunch of shit
(7:04:01 PM) spitinacopsface: an then they asked me a million more questions
(7:04:15 PM) spitinacopsface: and one was my bank account that I use to pay bills
(7:04:27 PM) spitinacopsface: and I told them paypal instead
(7:04:36 PM) spitinacopsface: and then I hit "submit,"
(7:04:47 PM) spitinacopsface: and then it says "thank you for buying MagicJak."
(7:04:56 PM) spitinacopsface: And now $96 is gone from my PayPal account.
(7:04:56 PM) Sigma386: What the Hell is MagicJak?
(7:05:01 PM) spitinacopsface: a phone
(7:05:11 PM) Sigma386: A fucking phone!?
(7:05:26 PM) Sigma386: And it was from a link for groceries?
(7:05:57 PM) Sigma386: Oh my God.
(7:06:03 PM) spitinacopsface: I am back at the main site, and it talks only of government stuff, not MagicJak. No corporations or anything.
(7:06:09 PM) spitinacopsface: Fucking liars ...
(7:06:14 PM) spitinacopsface: Maybe it is a fake government site.
(7:06:24 PM) spitinacopsface: It is a .com, not .gov or org or anyhting.
(7:06:25 PM) Sigma386: What is the website?
(7:06:30 PM) spitinacopsface: I bet they're pretending to be the government.
(7:06:38 PM) spitinacopsface: familyfinacialhelpus.com
(7:06:46 PM) Sigma386: Yeah, be careful like that, government sites always, ALWAYS end in .gov.
(7:06:57 PM) spitinacopsface: Yeah, I wasnt looking at the URL until now.
(7:06:59 PM) Sigma386: .com indicates a commercial site.

So let this be a warning to all the people who are looking for financial assistance, be sure to stay away from this site, they are a SCAM! They will steal your money, like they did to my friend here. They will pretend to be a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, when all they really want is to sell you a phone.

I finally have my license!

Today is a big day in my life, because today I have finally become the proud owner of a driver's license! I literally had to beg my parents to let me take the exam, but I was able to convince them, and the end result is that now I finally have a license. The only downside is that because I'm not insured, I can't drive the vehicle, so my parents are going to be getting a quote tomorrow, since they need to do some stuff with State Farm, anyway. But what this means is I can finally take driving jobs! And from what I heard there's a bunch of them in Dekalb. This could be the key that solves my dilemma. We shall soon see...

I lost weight yet again!

Between my paper route and me cutting GMOs and stuff with MSG and HFCS, as well as eating more fruits and vegetables and drinking water and tea, I'm losing weight. And I've reached a new personal record! I'm 192 lbs. now! I don't know how I'm doing it, I've splurged so much in the last couple days. Maybe my body actually needs all that food, I dunno, but I'm just happy that I'm seeing results on the scale. Sadly, though, my spare tire doesn't seem to have gone away, so I'm going to try working out every now and then, so that I don't overdo it, and so I tone my muscles, since that's important for my metabolism. That's what matters the most right now is getting rid of that because it's extremely unattractive. But I'm one step closer to completing my New Years' resolution of cutting down to 180 lbs through dieting and exercise!

Please give me a job, someone.

I'm trying to move in with my friend Liz, and she's having a rough time of things now. I need to be there for her so she can pay her rent and so she has someone who will be there for her emotionally instead of sleeping on the bed all day long and wasting her money and resources. I'm looking for a job, preferably close to West Lincoln Highway. Can somebody please hook me up with a job? She really needs me, and I'm doing this for her so that she can be happy and live a good life! Is it too much to ask? I'll do almost any type of work, and I'm not incompetent or anything, in fact I can learn pretty much anything pretty quickly? Anyone?

I hate Account Now, here's why!

A while back my friend Liz was in need of a bunch of money, and she told me about this thing called AccountNow. She has a credit card with them, and she told me that if you sign up with them, they give her $20. Well, I decided it would be a good idea to help her, and so I signed up for one. However, neither of us had any idea of what we were in for. She ended up getting a new card from them, and they still charged them for it. As if that wasn't bad enough, they charged her to call them. To call their number they apparently charge a hidden fee for that. There was also another charge they issued her, and she couldn't even figure out what it was for. So, she opted out of her card and now I'm trying to do the same, but I couldn't figure it out. They don't make it easy to cancel your account. And to make matters worse, their customer service is downright horrible! I asked them how I close my account, and they didn't even respond to my message. So, I tried sending an email asking them to do it, and it simply said they had a problem sending it.

In conclusion, you do NOT want to deal with these people, they are only out for your money, and they will try to make sure you can't opt out of their service. Do NOT trust them, you're better off getting a checking account at a local bank and getting a credit/debit card with them so you won't have to pay any fees. Me and Liz learned this the hard way.

Another great documentary; The World According to Monsanto

I saw this movie a little while back called "The World According to Monsanto", which is a documentary about Monsanto's perverse influence on agriculture by developing GMO, or Genetically Modified Organism, in order to sell Round-Up, which is harmful to the environment. The movie also mentions the beef industry and Monsanto's connection to rBGH (recumbent Bovine Growth Hormones) and bovine antibiotics. I'm not sure whether I can post the video on here, but I'll link you to part one on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3OedIuaZto. The other 9 parts are posted as video responses.

If you prefer to watch it as one big movie, you can try searching for it on Google, but I've never gotten it to work on there, it usually doesn't load for me.

After you watch this movie, I highly recommend you tell all your friends about it and encourage them to boycott anything related to Monsanto. Because, as it's said, you are what you eat.