The Recreational Nihilist Articles

Don’t do it. Seriously. Don’t do it. Just. Don’t. Do. It. Don’t even think about doing it. It’s all in your head, don’t you know. So don’t. Okay? Just don’t. Don’t whine. Don’t complain. It’s a mental recession, see? Get it? You’re mind is receding. So stop whining and go spend the money you don’t have on things that are too expensive – like food or gas. And if you can’t, well, stop whining anyway. You’re liable to upset McCain’s top economic policy advisor, Phil Gramm. He thinks the U.S. is already too much of a whining nation. http://www.washtimes.com/news

Part II

Last week, I ended by asking whether or not China really deserves to host the Olympics. The reason is simple: the Olympics bring along more than good sportsmanship and a fuzzy feeling of international camaraderie. If money were manna and it fell from the sky, one could light a torch in honour of the Olympics. In other words, the Olympics are a reward. It is fame and fortune for the lucky host country. But what, exactly, are we rewarding?

I’m not one for sports. Ask me about golf, and I’ll tell you about a B.C. strip I once saw in which B.C. explains the rules of golf to the Cute Chick – the fewest swings the better – only to get asked, why play at all? And when it comes to football, I still can’t quite understand the appeal of a giant time-out with a few moments of gaming in between.

When I asked global warming skeptics what it would take to make the case for global warming, what standard of evidence would be satisfying, I was being perfectly sincere. I’d really like to know what the threshold of evidence is for answering the question as to whether or not global warming is real and whether or not we are the cause. It’s like a game, in a way. You win when you achieve the winning conditions defined by a set of rules. So, what rules would satisfy global warming skeptics? What are the winning conditions?

Dear Global Warming Skeptics:

I have a confession to make: I don’t understand you. I don’t understand why the scientific consensus is unpersuasive to you. I especially don’t understand the anger and contempt directed towards environmentalists in general and advocates like Al Gore in particular. But I do want to understand where you’re coming from because the quality of our environment requires honest, open discussions between people with different perspectives, especially since there are difficult choices to be made.

Eminent domain undoubtedly needs to be reformed, but why must propositions like 98 include baggage – what some call a Trojan horse – like rent control? The seeming inability to craft straightforward propositions is precisely why 98 comes across as self-serving political posturing for narrow interest groups rather than serious, voter-driven policy. Patt Morrison has it right when she calls for “gutsier legislators” and “ballot measures that don’t require rocket science, brain surgery or forensic analysis to figure out.”

Eminent domain undoubtedly needs to be reformed, but why must propositions like 98 include baggage – what some call a Trojan horse – like rent control? The seeming inability to craft straightforward propositions is precisely why 98 comes across as self-serving political posturing for narrow interest groups rather than serious, voter-driven policy. Patt Morrison has it right when she calls for “gutsier legislators” and “ballot measures that don’t require rocket science, brain surgery or forensic analysis to figure out.”

So the California Supreme Court did it. The judges overturned the ban on gay marriage (http://news.yahoo.com/). It’s a significant civil rights victory, of course; a triumph in the name of capital-L Love. Bravo! Yet I can’t help but feel that it’s a shame the victory had to come through the Supreme Court rather than the people themselves, a result that hysterics burdened with an excess of conservatismo will make use of as they attempt a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

When I was a kid, I played with Transformers, fascinated with the ability to transform a car or plan into a robot and back again. But unlike my best bud at the time, I was rather particular about which Transformers I’d collect: only the good guys, the Autobots. And so it was with just about everything I played, even with video games. I simply had no interest to inhabit, even in fantastical sense, the role of a villain. So I can’t quite relate to the fascination with villainy that underlines many crime movies, horror movies or even video games like Grand Theft Auto IV, which is currently breaking sales records. I struggle with the idea of games in which one can murder cops, run over pedestrians, and so on, just as I struggle with the notion of being entertained by violence in films.

I’m feeling very soured by the primaries. No surprise, right? A lot of people are rather soured. But it is. McCain is getting rose-scented air blown up his…nose…and the smitten collective political awareness seems reluctant to admit that this is a guy who is bushier than Bush, a flip-flopper who wasn’t so gung-ho about leaving troops in Iraq (see http://www.msnbc.msn.com) before becoming more gung-ho than Cheney on a hunting trip, a man who loves an angry pastor but doesn’t get called on it. And ­what about McCain’s soulmate, Hillary Clinton? Among many of my friends and acquaintances, a trend emerged. Clinton started out as a strong, whip-smart lady with a strong grip on policy issues, a candidate fwho wouldn’t be all that objectionable if she won the nomination. But after praising McCain over Obama, waffling over Obama’s religion (he’s Christian, not Muslim…and there’s nothing wrong with being Muslim, dagnabit), and dragging on that Rev. Wright nonsense. After her surrogates lamely attack Joe Andrews by questioning his Hoosier credentials, when he was born and raised in Indiana, studied in Indiana and so on, (http://www.mydd.com/story) she now elicits comparisons with Rove-style Republican campaigning, with all the nausea and disgust that comes with it. And all this doesn’t start touching on the increasingly lack of foreign policy difference between Clinton and her new pal McCain. Bomb Iran, eh?