Category: What the hell was I thinking

Because I Can

Fuckin bitch fuckin goddamn how the fuckin fuck fuck what? Seriously, what? FUCK! I mean, what the fuck? Seriously. Did I really fuckin FUCK! I really did not fuckin realize how fucking sick fucking humans could fucking be. I mean, FUCK! I fucking married that? FUCK! What the fuck was I fucking thinking? I’m fucking sick! That’s fucking sick. Fuckin’ seriously. I mean, who the fuck fuckin’ stays married to a fucking fuck like that for fucking HOW many fuckin’ years? Fuck. Fuck Fuck Fuck.

It’s like a parasite that you can’t remove. That’s it’s name now. The fuckin’ parasite. What a waste of oxygen.

Aw fuck.

End rant.

Multi-Level Marketing (or “I’ll never need math in real life”)

In my life I’ve run across a few multi-level marketing schemes organizations. I’ve never become heavily invested in one, mostly because there’s a little voice in my head that always screams “somethin’ ain’t right here” every time I look into one. Since the cult, I’ve noticed that some of the ones I’ve been approached by (Yeah, I’m talking about you, Primerica) exhibit some traits that reminded me of the practices of cults. I’m not saying they’re cults, but they sure smelled like one.

One thing that never occurred to me until recently is to do the math. When you’re entertaining the thought of joining one of these groups, they spend a lot of time and money wooing you. You see people a few levels up who are simply rolling in cash. Giant conventions in Texas where stadiums of people are cheering a couple who “went diamond”.  A guy who just bought a $200,000 car. Your desire for success and wealth kick in and drive out any kind of rational or critical thought. I sort of figure that the voice in my head that’s kept me out of these all these years are those parts of my brain desperately trying to reassert themselves when I go all googly-eyed at the thought of wealth.

They all operate similarly, it doesn’t matter if they’re selling soap or supplemental life insurance. It goes something like this: you sell X amount of product, on which you make N commission (which isn’t usually very much), but the real way you make money is by bringing in people under you. You build your own “network”. You bring in something like 5 people under you, and on all of their sales you make Y commission, which is not much either. But then they each bring in 5 more people, and by the time you have 4 or 5 levels below you, you’re super mega rich and you don’t have to do a thing to earn it anymore! Woot!

Now, let’s run some actual numbers. At the top of the pyramid is one guy. We’ll call him N0. The count of this tier (0) is 1. This can also be expressed as 50.

The next tier will have 5 people, because N0 brought in 5 people. This can be expressed as 51.

The next tier will have 52 people.  Each member brought in 5 more, so this tier has 5+5+5+5+5 or 5×5 or 52 which is 25.

Tier 4 will have 53 or 125. You should be able to see the pattern by now. Each tier will have 5(N-1) people in it. It’s important to note at this point though, that the total number of people required by tier 4 is 156.  This is 125 + 25 + 5 + 1 or image (If I remember my sigma notation correctly). Nobody is making any money yet though.

Let’s jump down to level 13. If you’re joining a MLM, you’re probably down the ladder a bit, right? This tier requires 305,175,781 member in the organization. 304,687,500 of these do not have enough people under them to make any money. They’re in the bottom 4 tiers. This leaves 488,281 of the members actually making money, or about 0.1%. As a side note, the U.S. population as of the last census was 311,933.344. Let’s go just one level deeper so that some of these people at the bottom can start making some money.

Tier 14 has 1,220,703,125 people, bringing the total number of people in the organization to 1,525,878,906. Wow. The number of people in the bottom 4 tiers is now 1,523,437,500, with 2,441,406 people actually making money now. Wow that’s a lot! It’s also 0.1%. Let’s go another level to get those numbers up, shall we?

At Tier 15, the number of people in the organization number 7,629,394,531. Roughly 854 million more people than actually exist, according to the estimate of world population. Whoops, I think we’ve passed a logic barrier here. Let’s ignore that and run the numbers again. 7,617,187,500 people constitute the bottom 4 tiers leaving a mere 12,207,031 in the range that makes money, or 0.1%. I’m detecting another pattern here.

If we roll this back to more reasonable levels, say 8, Then the organization requires 97,656 people. The bottom 4 tiers have 97,500 people with the remaining 156 actually making money. Only 156 people in an organization of around 100k actually making money sounds abysmal. It’s also about 0.1%.

Basically, no matter how you roll the numbers, 99.9% of all members of the organization lose money, while 0.1% of them actually do make money (in varying degrees).

By way of comparison, roulette contains 36 possible numbers, so the odds of winning by betting on a single number of roulette is just below 3%. You’re actually more likely to get rich by placing your entire life savings on a single number of roulette than you are by joining a MLM.

Thank you, little voice in the back of my head. And thank you Skeptoid.

Occasionally I wish there were a God

So I could flip the fucker off. 

It would be so easy.  Blame all of this shit on God.  Everything in my life that’s going wrong, wrong job, wrong wife, God’s fault.  Losing my son to the fringe fundamentalists; watching him heading down a path that will waste all the talent and brains he has until it’s too late… so much like me… why would God do this to me?  To him?

Spent the best years of my life trying to be somebody I’m not.  Spent my few healthy years living somebody else’s dream while my own slipped away… why God why?  Why would you let this happen to me? 

But alas, the answer is all too clear.  I did it to myself.  My rage and anger is properly placed on myself.  I saw the direction things were going at work over a year ago.  I did nothing.  I saw my wife’s penchant for fringe fundamentalists over a decade ago when she involved me in a cult.  I let it go.  I saw the increasing insanity of her new fringe religion over a year ago, maybe more.  I’ve done nothing.  I objected to homeschooling five years ago but she did it anyway.  I let it happen. 

I’ve completely and utterly failed myself and my children.  The crushing weight of this guilt would be so easy to schluff off on an imaginary supernatural being who was supposed to watch out for me.

Oh how easy it would be to weasel out of my guilt that way.  I suppose that’s the last of the God Virus in me, like that cough you have for a week or so after a bad cold.  I find myself wanting to blame somebody else for my own failures, and a God would be such an easy target.  After all, he wouldn’t fight back now, would he?

So I sigh and resign myself to the fact if anybody is to blame, it’s myself.  I take a deep breath and set about fixing all the things I’ve let fall to shit.  Here we go.

The Evolution of the Cowboy

As I write this, I’m sitting here watching Cosmos on Netflix on my XBox.  Coolest XBox feature EVAR.  I’m reminded of this video I watched the other night.

I know what he’s talking about.  It’s the oddest feeling when you’ve learned enough science that suddenly everything starts to fit together.  I’m reminded of the common Christian claim that Atheism or Science is a religion.  The stupidity of that claim aside, I’ve realized something: These kinds of moments are not unique to religion.  Religion has these kinds of epiphany moments.  So does music.  I remember my first musical “Moment” during a performance of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.  It was amazing.  I think I’d like to call it a Musicgasm.  You simply can’t imagine it until you’ve had one, it’s unreal.  They’re far too few and far between. 

Religion can have the same kind of moments.  I had one in the cult.  A Godgasm, if you will.  I know the allure of it.  People believe they’re feeling the presence of God.   It can be very hard to reason with someone who has had a Godgasm.

This is a Sciencegasm.  It’s totally unique, yet familiar.  I’ve had one.  Apparently that’s all you get.  It’s that moment when you realize that the Universe is glorious and amazing, awe inspiring if you will.  Everything clicks, and you realize just how awesome it is to be a part of the Universe and to understand it as we do, and it doesn’t require a supernatural being to appreciate it. 

What’s cool is that it only gets better.  We actually understand very little about our Universe, but we learn more every day.  A hundred, a thousand years from now, we’ll know so much more, but still not everything.  There’s always another amazing, awe-inspiring discovery to make. 

I can’t explain the unbelievable feeling of understanding how the pieces fit together, how we fit into our world, our Universe, and how even though we’re a small seemingly insignificant part of it, we’re still a part of it.  Atheism is just as, no, more gratifying than Religion.  I wish everybody could see this, but Atheists don’t proselytize.  I’m not recruiting for the Atheist cause.  None of us do.  The only reason we’re in a fight with Religion is frankly because they started it.  At some point teaching science became blasphemy.  At some point realizing that we don’t need a god to be good became a threat.   At some point no longer needing an imaginary Master became an affront.  When we fight back we have reason and science on our side, but facts are meaningless to people who have already made up their minds. 

It seems every Fall I undergo some kind of mental change.  I evolve into a newer, better being.  Well, sometimes it’s better.  This blog has chronicled my evolution over the past few years.  It’s time for another change. 

On this blog I’ve made some friends.  I’ve realized that conservatives, or at least Republicans, do not represent my values as a human being.  I’ve advocated Henry Rollins for President.  I’ve argued against voting party lines, and I’ve voted straight Democratic tickets.  I’ve espoused the virtues of Taoism, and I’ve abandoned it because of the value it places on ignorance.  I’ve ranted.  A lot.  I’ve geeked out.  I’ve complained about religious intolerance, I’ve been intolerant of religion, and I’ve abandoned religion altogether, although I’m pretty sure that actually happened a very long time ago.  I’ve really only just recently admitted it to myself.  I’ve cussed, and blasphemed, I’ve hoped, and I’ve wondered.  I’ve deleted the whole thing in a moment of anger, and I’ve painstakingly restored it after regretting my actions.  I’ve had spiritual epiphanies, and I’ve despaired for the entire human race.  I’ve grown as a human being, and it wasn’t always pretty.

I’ve discovered a lot about myself over the past few years.  Anybody who reads this blog regularly probably has too. 

I’ve been thinking about a new direction for several days now, and I think I’m going to do it.  Hopefully I don’t lose what little audience I may have acquired spewing vitriol over the interwebs for the past few years.  I’m absolutely in love with science right now, and I think I’m going to begin posting about this.  For one, just so that I’m not just bitching all the time.  For two, hopefully somebody will begin to see just what is so amazing about all of this.  For three, it’s a nice convenient place to keep track of the things I’ve learned.  Crap I wish I’d paid more attention in school!

With any luck the tone here will change.  With any luck I’ll open a few minds.  Mostly, I just don’t want to forget this stuff.  I would love nothing more than to return to college right now and rack up several doctorate degrees in various fields of science, but that’s simply not reality given the cost of living and the cost of college.  I’m also desperately trying to save for my children’s college, and sending myself back to school doesn’t help that cause. 

Well, here we go…

Help! My Wife is a Religious Nutjob and She’s Teaching my Children Creationism

This’ll be a short one.  I just found the Google results for that sentence entertaining. 

Help! my wife is a religious nutjob and she’s teaching my children creationism

Results 1, 2, 3, and 5 pertain to Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell.  If you vote Tea Party, this is what you’re voting for.  Welcome to the new America.

I wonder if this is how homosexuals feel

I hate labels.  I hate labeling myself, but it’s usually the easiest way for people to get pretty close to my views, so for the sake of argument, we’ll call me a liberal atheist.  This is, for all practical purposes, my current location on a long road I started down about ten years ago.  I doubt this journey is done yet.  The truth is, I’m pretty sure I’ve always been this way, I just didn’t admit it to myself for a long time.  Being liberal or atheist is somewhat of a frowned upon thing here in the middle of Jesus central. 

So it’s a little lonely out here.  My wife is a bit of an over-zealous Christian (it’s the source of most of my daily drama), all my friends, most of whom are smart people, deny the fact of evolution, worship a non-existent god, and vote Republican. 

After years of denying who I really am, I did a lot of soul searching over the past 2-3 years, and finally just admitted it. 

Now I don’t seem to have a lot of friends.  Just today, the one friend who seemed to more or less share my views told me that she found Jesus.  In fairness, she’s had some rather harsh personal problems lately, and skepticism doesn’t offer much in the way of comfort during times of emotional distress. 

I suppose if the opposite were true, if I were a Christian in a land of Atheists, I could spend this time pretending God was here with me and telling him all my problems.  I suppose I could just construct an invisible friend too.

So I started wondering, when somebody realizes they’re gay, they probably have a hard time finding someone to share this with.  Parents and friends aren’t usually very receptive to that kind of news.  It’s probably pretty lonely.  I find it hard to believe that anybody chooses to be gay.  Seriously, who would consciously choose the pain that comes along with it?  The only choice is the one to stop lying to yourself and be honest about who you are.

That’s what I did.  Yea me!  The rewards of being true to myself are a little underwhelming.  Thanks for listening, my five or so readers.  I appreciate the sympathetic ear.

Racism

A couple of days ago I created a fake twitter account for the purpose of poking fun at the Tea Party.  I think I may have to stop.  In just a couple of days of poking around for links I found evidence of the most extreme racism I’ve ever seen.  I mean, stuff you might expect from the 50s (or more likely the 1850s), but it’s all recent.  Here’s the most extreme example I’ve found yet (warning, not for the faint at heart):

 http://www.ep.tc/tea-party-comix/

I actually started to feel sick.  Pretending to be a stupid racist Teabagger while mocking them is taking it’s toll on me after just a day or two.  What I’ve found, the evidence of such extreme racism from the Tea Party, from Fox News, from bungholes like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, I can’t handle it.  It’s too much.  Maybe I’ve grown up sheltered, but I didn’t know people were still like that.  Sure, I knew some people were still racist, but not like THAT.  They’re intentionally stoking a fear of black people in white people in exchange for political capital.  It’s sick.

I’m profoundly disturbed by this.  I do what I do because I know the human race can be better than we are.  We can evolve into something better.  We can do it sooner rather than later.  We can be a world of wonderful people, and we can do it within my lifetime.  We can, but we won’t.  Perhaps I’m naive. 

I have moments like this where I just want to give up.  Just go back to my white middle class home in the suburbs good paying job with a wife and two kids life and forget about all of this, just like everybody else.  But that’s how they win.  When those of us who would oppose these things, when those of us who would stand up for what’s right, when those of us who would strive to see the human species become worth saving just give up and shut up.  They’re wearing us down.  I heard it in Michael Moore’s voice at the end of his most recent movie, he’s wearing down.  So am I.  So is Obama.  So are a lot of people.  

Perhaps we’ll mature someday.  Perhaps we’ll become a species that we can be proud of.  Perhaps we’ll get past all the stupidity, small-mindedness and pettiness of our current age.  But not today.  Maybe tomorrow.

I’m going to bed.

The Top 5 things about being a non-smoker that suck

I’ve had a few ideas for posts that ran along the lines of top 10 lists, however, I couldn’t come up with 10 for all of them, so we’ll go with 5.

The Top 5 things about being a non-smoker that suck

Oh, that’s right.  I may have forgotten to mention that to you guys, I used to smoke.  In fact, I smoked for a -very long time.  As I moved to Minnesota, decided that it seemed as good a time as any to quit.  That was fuckin’ brilliant.  On the other hand, I’ve made it some 10 weeks now with only a few cheats.  Oh, and by the way

I WANT TO FUCKIN’ KILL SOMEBODY!!!!I could really use a smoke

Perhaps I should start with Tobacco Executives.

It’s not easy.  However, as my body goes through the rather painful detoxification process from some twenty odd years of injecting myself with some of the worst poisons known to man, I’ve noticed a what the surgeon general should be putting on cigarettesfew side effects that suck.

1. Everything stinks.  When I was smoking, I had a diminished sense of smell.  Before I started smoking I had a rather strong sense of smell.  Now that I’ve quit, the sense of smell is starting to return, and it sucks.  Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING stinks.  Especially my apartment building.  And it’s not just one stink, oh no.   That would be too easy, I could get used to it.  No there’s one -bad smell in the garage, another bad smell in the lobby (made worse by the fact that they’re painting this week), yet another god awful smell in the elevator that smells a lot like people that don’t bathe, and just for good measure, a horrid death-like stench in the hallway outside my apartment.  Probably from the guy hanging leaves over his fucking door. 

2. I’m hungry all the damn time.  And I’m gaining weight like crazy.    Last night I ate an entire box of Honey Nut Cheerios.  Not one of them ever saw milk.  Nicotine is an appetite suppressant.  Guess what happens when you go off your appetite suppressant you’ve been on for twenty years?

3. I’m sleepy all the damn time.  I suppose spending 20 years on a stimulant might tend to cause you to develop a certain tolerance to it.  During the day I can’t stay awake, and at night I can’t sleep (note the time this was posted). 

4. Stress.  Cigarettes are a coping mechanism, and Nicotine reduces stress.  Today is my first day off the patch, and I’m feeling some heightened stress.

5. I’ve got nothing to do after meals.  I have to say, that There are certain health risks...was my favorite cigarette, the one that came after meals.  When I’ve just eaten, that’s when it’s the hardest.

I don’t know how tobacco companies managed to come up with such an insidious product.  Even more surprising is how they seem quite sincere when stating that it isn’t addictive or dangerous.  I’ve heard cigarette addiction compared to heroin addiction.  I can’t attest to how hard it is to quit heroin, but this is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  Now I’ve got struggling with this for the rest of my life to deal with, because you never get over it.  I’m still waiting for that magic payoff when I magically feel better and enjoy the smell of everything around me.  Still waiting….