Fat people

Yeah. I said it: Fat people.
It's been the other side of forever since I've posted on this thing, so I'm going to start ranting about fat people.

I got back from lunch today, and in my normal effort to stave off productivity, I decided to read up on some news. Among other interesting tidbits, I found an interesting article from CNN, link to follow.

Interesting Article

To save you the trouble of opening the article, I'll explain it briefly here... if you already read it, skip down a bit.

Basically, there is a college that says you have to take a health class if you are fat and want to graduate. All sorts of fat people and people who think they are doing great things for America and it's fatties are raising all kinds of noise, complaining about discrimination. I'll get more into this after we have recovered anyone who was skipping down a bit because they were all clickey-happy and read the article early.

Ok. Now that all the children are aboard, back to the rant.

Discrimination.
Kind of a strange word, really.
Essentially, the word just means choosing between two things or people and treating them differently because of it. Of course, modern colloquialism has put a negative connotation to the word, so we can't really wander around talking about the glories of discrimination without being shunned or shot or other nasty things that begin with the letter s.

(Anyone who skipped down a bit and skipped down this far should skip up a bit)

The people who think they are doing great things figure that they have a duty to destroy discrimination, but sometimes I wonder if we are discriminating against discrimination.
On Dictionary.com, a part of the definition of discrimination reads "treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit." (Dictionary.com)

Nobody mentioned in the article really had anything negative to say about the program other than the fact that it was discrimination, so if they go by that kind of logic, they are really just attacking discrimination simply by virtue of its being discrimination. It is my opinion that those persons should probably sit down in a corner and reassess their thoughts on discrimination for a little while.

Little things like this really underline the oddities of our society. Where else could a program be inplaced to do nothing but help people live better lives, with no real negative impacts on anyone, and be declared a discriminatory and unethical program?

It appears to me that people seem to concentrate more on doing what is right according to words and technical definitions than what is right in the real world.

Thought of the day: Society- Square yourself away.

Media

So I was thinking about how it had been a while since I had ranted on here, and it just happened that I read a couple of articles that made me think a little more than usual. Nothing too in depth, just a couple thoughts.

The first article I read was from the London Times.
The article went on about how proud they were of an investigation they conducted that revealed the location of a secret CIA operation in Pakistan.
Seriously?
Is it really acceptable to do that? I know I have a slightly different perspective than most people on issues of that nature, but it seems to me that they are essentially doing reconnaissance work for the Taliban. I know that sounds a little extreme, but think about it.
It was a SECRET CIA operation. SECRET being the key word.
I'm not even sure how to properly comment on how strange that seems to me.

Switching gears, I read an article about how assorted Veterans associations like the VFW and American Legion were against lifting a ban on taking pictures of the caskets of our war dead. I guess I can see why they wouldn't want those pictures taken, respect for the dead and all. I haven't really put enough thought into the matter to have a solid opinion.
The thing about that article which caught my attention was the way they made it seem like a huge shock that the Press Photographers Association was for lifting the ban!
That one is a shocker.
Who would have ever thought press photographers would want to be able to take the kind of controversial photos that will make them money.

Do people think before they publish things?

Plebe's Creed

There is a very well written piece of Army hooah-ness called the Soldier's Creed. It sums up the awesomeness of the profession, and it is one of my favorite bits of info I have memorized. It goes as follows:

I am an American Soldier.

I am a warrior and a member of a team.

I serve the people of the United States and live the Army values.

I will always place the mission first.

I will never accept defeat.

I will never quit.

I will never leave a fallen comrade.

I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough,

Trained and proficeant in my warrior tasks and drills.

I always maintain my arms, my equipment and myself.

I am an expert and I am a professional.

I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.

I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.

I am an American Soldier.

That is pretty awesome, and I mean no disrespect towards it, but I felt that as plebes at the United States Military Academy, we needed our own version, sort of an addendum serving in addition to the Soldier's Creed: the Plebe's Creed.

As follows:

I am a West Point plebe.
I am a student and a member of my class.

I serve the students of the Corps of Cadets and live a rather strange life.
I will always place the detail first.
I will never accept failure.
I will never get enough sleep.
I will never leave a fallen dessert.
I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough.
Trained and proficient in my student tasks and drills.
I stand ready to wake up, study, and complete the homework of the dean in ESP.
I am a guardian of the interior on Saturday nights.
I am a West Point plebe.

Not what your country can do for you...

So today is Saturday, and we had a pretty big inspection, which was rude because I wanted to sleep. I slept in anyway till shortly before breakfast formation, but whatever.

In the boring time that is the inspection, there is very little to do, so between reading a book for English class (crazy, I know) and staring blankly at the beige walls that provide a very nice relief from the gray environment I live in, I decided to read the news.

One of the articles, from the San Diego Union-Tribune, was a big rant about how angry some Marines were about not being able to use their military ID cards as valid proof of drinking age in the state of California.
I guess that's kind of legit, but then the writer went on a tangent about how horrible it is that these young men could go to war but not get a drink.

The mayor called that ironic.
Don't get me started on how much that doesn't make sense.

It's the laws and the constitution that those of the armed forces (and cadets like myself of the kinda-but-not-really armed forces) signed up to protect.

Silly people, tricks are for prostitutes.

Interesting Development

Look at me go... updating and things like that. I wonder how long this will last.

Part of me wasn't sure if I should even rant about the following topics since they're mainly controversial or political in nature, but I came to a couple realizations:

1) This isn't exactly a widely read website.
2) It's my blog, so I can say what I want! Freedom of speech, darnit!

So here... we... go.

Let me start off with saying that being a member of the military... sort of... that whoever the Commander in Chief is, he's my boss, and it's my job to support what he's doing and the whole "serving the people of the United States" and defending the constitution concept, and I'm all for that.

Now that I've declared where I stand (even though I'm sitting at the moment,) I can rant with no, or at least few, caveats.

I've been on Facebook a lot because I have no life to speak of, and I am friends with a person who always has a status about how amazing it is that Barrack Obama was elected because he's black. Last I saw her status was something to the effect of "counting down the days until a black man is president."
My roommate was watching the news and there was a whole thing about how it was so fantastic that there was going to be a black president.
I may sound a tad bit racist, but I promise, I'm going somewhere with this.

Now I may be completely unfounded in saying this, especially because my exposure to the outside world is rather limited, but I think that as great as it is that our country has elected a black guy to the head of the nation, it would be about a million and a half times more important if there was no big news about the race of the candidate.
When everyone, of all races, can finally talk about how it's so great that Obama was elected because of his merits as opposed to the color of his skin, that will be a milestone worth ranting and raving about.

In current times, who really cares if the candidate is an African-American? As far as I'm concerned (and I know that means relatively little,) the African part isn't necessary at all!
When I talk about who I am, I am an American. That's it. I don't go around ranting about my German-American pride, or how I'm a proud Dutch, French, English, Scottish, Irish, or any other kind of American.
I'm simply an American.
I can't help but wonder what the difference is.

I think I'll stop there for now.

Grammar Mini-Rant

Woah! Two posts in as many days! Crazy, I know.

I've ranted about grammar before, and Lord knows that I make many mistakes when I'm writing, but I can at least say that I hit the spell check before I post things, and sometimes even re-read things to make sure I don't sound like a complete and total moron.

Evidently not many people do...

I was reading the news today because I'm a good little plebe, and I noticed a lot of typos in news articles.
Oh well.
Not really going anywhere with that.

Acronyms and abbreviations are great, don't get me wrong. I use them all the time in conversation but I make sure I know what they mean.
Lets take "ttyl" for example.
One of the more common acronyms on the interwebs, it stands for "talk to you later." I explained that because evidently that is not common knowledge.
Today someone told me "ill ttyl to you later" and I wasn't really sure how to respond...
Part of me wanted to call them out on their stupidity, and part of me kind of wondered if she really was that stupid as to actually go around telling people she would "talk to you later to you later."

I had another thought.
And I lost it.
I feel that this post is somewhat less for that.
Life goes on.


HAHA!
Irony.
My favorite.
I hit "post" before I used the spell check.
Outstanding.

The Spirit and Other Miniature Spurts

While I can assure you that this little piece of ambiguous frustration will not have the eloquence of any of Miguel's rants, I still feel the need to type with my angry face. Grr (The noise my angry face makes [Yes, my angry face makes a noise.])

Where to start.... The movie The Spirit...

Well starting at the beginning... It started with cats.
What's up with that?
We joked that the cats were a bad sign.
Sadly we weren't joking.

Next came the random soliloquies.
I can understand a random aside, even Shakespeare used them, but he did something that the writer of this movie did not do: He made sure that they were appropriate for the situation. My favorite was when the protagonist was riding an elevator, and he was giving an excellent monologue to a villain that wasn't even present!

Towards the end we were shown the mentally-questionable detective with an assault rifle with about ninety-seven flashlights on it. I hope that was meant to be funny.
Just before the marvelous display of arms was the swarm of 50s-era police cars supported by about two platoons of Apache attack helicopters... Maybe I'm the only one who has a problem with that....

My favorite The Spirit comment...
A character's name was "Sand Serif" unless my ears deceive me. I am convinced the characters all called her Sans Serif.
Had a new character introduced herself as "Times New Roman" I am fairly sure I would have caused damage to the theatre...

All of my remaining comments today can be surmised in one phrase...

"Emo Safari"

And one picture...