Never been one to let the carrier drop

A anonymous comment in my journal, which I suspect probably comes from Qaz:

A real bunch of right-wing wack jobs for ya, Sheer:

http://www.rochesternow.org/porn.html

And by response to it below:

Actually, yes, exactly.

While the tone of the article is entirely reasonable, there are several things taht they assert that I think are somewhat false-to-fact:

We feel that pornography is harmful to women and that as women we have the right to live in a society free of this harm.

This is the first one I want to attack – because I have a long list of beefs with it. The first one is that I feel that football inherently devalues human life by showing that violence – real, bloody violence – as a part of a game is acceptable. Can I demand that my views be used to censor this game that 90 million americans enjoy?

There’s this little thing called the first amendment. WHich is just as well, because if we removed every piece of content that anyone found objectionable, shortly we’d have no content left. I happen to think the bible does a rather good job of demeaning women, can we have it censored?

We dare not grow old or become overweight

Depends on what kind of porn you’re watching, now doesn’t it? I know of fetish porn where the whole *point* is being overweight. Different people are turned on by different things – and one of the beauties of the internet is that everyone can get exactly what they want. I don’t go for porn with perfect body types – perhaps the author of this article does.. 😉

More importantly, pornography frequently eroticizes violence.

Not any that *I* enjoy watching, but yes, you’re correct, it does. However, the people who enjoy this sort of play undoubtedly understand that it is just play. And if we’re going to complain about what people enjoy looking at, isn’t porn sort of a silly place to start? How about the television commercials that show that lying in the name of profit is okay? (Or the political canidates that show the same thing?). Or, how about the commercials that imply that you will only be popular if you are young and beautiful and buy product X? How about football, aforementioned, which shows that violence can be fun? Or children’s cartoons which show that violence is funny? Or COPS, which implies that violence performed against citizens is something to be proud of – we should definately beat up people caught selling plants!

However, we do feel that misogynistic sexual entertainment for men portrays the humiliation of women as “sexy” and presents women as two-dimensional beings.

Well, except that it’s just entertainment, just fiction, and almost everyone over the age of 12 understands this. Why not complain about mysoginistic TV shows like Married With Children? In porn there’s usually very little actual social interaction, so it’s blatently clear that it’s a fantasy world. (Actually, some porn has taken to having disclaimers at the front of the tape, something I ran into lately that amused me so much that I cut just the disclaimer with a video editor and threw the rest of the video clip away (it wasn’t very good, but the disclaimer was hilarious). But anyway, back to my original point – in television shows, there’s not nearly as much framing to indicate that the work is truly fictional.. why aren’t the authors complaining about this instead?

I never said that porn was fundamentally good – I said that it’s a very, very small evil compared with a whole lot of very large ones. And it does have it’s place and purpose.. to help single men deal with their sexual frustrations in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone.

It’s just a visual representation of what they would be imagining anyway. Or would the authors also outlaw imagination?

Eventually, viewing enough pornography can desensitize all of us so that we do not even question the devaluation of women in our society.

I don’t agree with this at all either. I don’t think that porn has in any way desensitized me to the putting down of women, or any other group for that matter.

We believe that the number of rapes and assaults on women would be drastically reduced — but not entirely eliminated — if pornography were to disappear

And on what data do you base that assumption? I think that it would probably remain approximately the same, or more likely increase slightly.

Have you done a study to see if rapists consume more porn per capita than the average male? Perhaps you’d like to tell me about how all those catholic preists have been buying ‘PlayPrePubecentBoy’ all these years? Can we please try and apply a little bit of reality to our assertions?

Many young males state that their first sexual experience was masturbating to pornography. Think of what this pornography then says to these men — that women like to be treated like objects, treated with contempt, and enjoy eroticized violence.

You have got to be kidding me. I didn’t get any such sense at all. You are in the twilight zone, my friend, and reality has apparently passed you by. Why don’t you go ask a few 14 year olds if they feel like women should be treated with contempt? And then ask them where they got that idea, if so? I bet you the answer is far more likely to be Eminem than Playboy.

Who benefits from pornography? Who finances pornography? Who is behind the camera? Who buys it?

Normal, healthy single men buy it, because they enjoy it and it helps them to avoid sexual frustration. They don’t, however, entertain any thoughts that it is in any way real. All one needs to do is try to approach a pretty girl in a bar to learn how fundamentally unreal it is. 😉

Or is it the majority of us who want to live in a society which does not allow the subordination, degradation or violation of women?

What you forget is that your entire article is devoted to the degredation of men – stating that we’re such simple and mentally incapable beings that we can’t enjoy a work of fiction without thinking that it’s a basic reality and that we can now go out and perform the acts we see depicted in the real world on anyone we want – or that we would think that there was anything real at all about the work of fiction portrayed – or that it was okay to think of real – i.e. not fictional – people in that way.

Personally, I think porn is *better* than the alternative.. which is to imagine the same sorts of things, only with people that you know because it’s far easier for our imaginations to handle the rendering of people we’re familiar with.

In short, and to sum up:

The first amendment protects speech for a good reason – because otherwise, there will always be some nut job wanting to impress their morals on you for what might sound like perfectly sane and reasonable reasons.

—————————————————————————–

ICE-T LYRICS

“Freedom of Speech”

[Intro]

A-yo Ice, man. I’m working on this term paper for college. What’s the
First Amendment?

[Verse 1]

Freedom of Speech, that’s some motherfuckin’ bullshit
You say the wrong thing, they’ll lock your ass up quick
The FCC says “Profanity – No Airplay”?
They can suck my dick while I take a shit all day
Think I give a fuck about some silly bitch named Gore?
Yo PMRC, here we go, raw
Yo Tip, what’s the matter? You ain’t gettin’ no dick?
You’re bitchin’ about rock’n’roll, that’s censorship, dumb bitch
The Constitution says we all got a right to speak
Say what we want Tip, your argument is weak
Censor records, TV, school books too
And who decides what’s right to hear? You?
Hey PMRC, you stupid fuckin’ assholes
The sticker on the record is what makes ’em sell gold
Can’t you see, you alcoholic idiots
The more you try to suppress us, the larger we get

[Verse 2]

[You have the right to remain silent]
Fuck that right! I want the right to talk
I want the right to speak, I want the right to walk
Where I wanna, yell and I’m gonna
Tell and rebel every time I’m on a
Microphone on the stage cold illin’
The knowledge I drop will be heard by millions
We ain’t the problems, we ain’t the villains
It’s the suckers deprivin’ the truth from our children
You can’t hide the fact, Jack
There’s violence in the streets every day, any fool can recognise that
But you try to lie and lie
And say America’s some motherfuckin’ apple pie
Yo, you gotta be high to believe that
You’re gonna change the world by a sticker on a record sleeve
Cos once you take away my right to speak
Everybody in the world’s up shit creek

[Verse 3]

Let me tell you about down south
Where a motherfucker might as well not even have a mouth
Columbus, Georgia, said they’d lock me up
If I got on the stage in my show and said “Fuck”
So I thought for a minute and said “No,
I wasn’t even gonna do a damned show”
Cos for me to change my words from my rhymes
Is never gonna happen cos there’s no sell outs on mine
But I vowed to get those motherfuckers one day
They even arrested Bobby Brown and Cool J
Yo, they got their’s comin’, cos I’m mad and I’m gunnin’
Homeboys, and there’s no runnin’
I’m gonna tell you how I feel about you
No bull, no lies, no slack, just straight fact
Columbus, Georgia, you can suck my dick
You ain’t nothin’ but a piece of fuckin’ shit on the damned map

[Verse 4]

Freedom of Speech, let ’em take it from me
Next they’ll take it from you, then what you gonna do?
Let ’em censor books, let ’em censor art
PMRC, this is where the witch hunt starts
You’ll censor what we see, we read, we hear, we learn
The books will burn
You better think it out
We should be able to say anything, our lungs were meant to shout
Say what we feel, yell out what’s real
Even though it may not bring mass appeal
Your opinion is yours, my opinion is mine
If you don’t like what I’m sayin’? Fine
But don’t close it, always keep an open mind
A man who fails to listen is blind
We only got one right left in the world today
Let me have it or throw The Constitution away

[Outro (Jello Biafra)]

What they’re trying to do with radio, with this, uh, McCarron-Walter
Act and a lot of other ways, is start by saying that they’re
protecting the public from wicked rock bands, or girlie magazines, or
whatever. But, if you follow the chain of dominoes that falls down,
what they’re really trying to do is shut off our access to information
itself.

If they can’t do it by law they know there’s other ways to do it.

It’s national protection from porn week.

I think I’m going to be sick.

I have BAD news for you, Dubya. This time, you’re pretty much on your own.

Hear that empty sound? That’s the sound of all the voters who’ve never looked at porn..

Really, this is pathetic. My first experience with porn was at age 14 – Dan, bless his generous soul, replied to my curiosity about the female form with a playboy. Shortly thereafter I discovered newsgroups, and found not just porn, but porn in my own personal flavor.

I really don’t think it warped me for life.

Of all the things our children need protection from, pornography is about #9999661863.

I mean, really. Sex happens, FUCKING GET OVER IT ALREADY! That goes for the rest of you right-wing whack jobs, too. Look, if God really does exist, then S/HE INVENTED SEX! Okay? So can you stop whimpering about how some human somewhere might be enjoying a bunch of ones and zeros that happen to render into a naked female body, and find something _meaningful_ to worry about? Like the wars on false pretenses? I think those are a lot worse than a few naked girls.. or guys..

[actually, that’s what Bush is really upset about. Gay porn. because he’s secretly attracted, and doesn’t want to admit it. Or perhaps because he’s seen some photoshopped picture which put his head on the body of someone with equipment that matches the size of his brain..]

Hm. I guess that was moving over into slanderous territory. This LiveJournal post is intended as humor only. I know nothing about the size of bush’s reproductive equipment. Standard disclaimer here.

No, really, this is SICK. After starting a war and spending (read: moving into Halliburtan’s pockets and hence Cheney’s) billions of dollars to repair the damages done with that war.. (not to mention the billions that war cost), Bush thinks we need protected from a few naked women?

No, my friends, we need protected from Bush.

You better all be registered to vote. You all don’t vote again and I’m going to kick your collective asses.

I’d like to think that between alienating gays and their friends with Marriage Protection Week and alienating everyone who can remember being 14 with Porn Protection Week, Bush is going to have a very, very shallow turnout at the polls..

.. but on the other hand, I’m sure he’s doing wonderfully with the religious right. In between this and the whole partial birth abortion thing..

Why am I still awake at 8 am? Well, I got wrapped up in some parking meters..

I had another good studio session with Ron, for which mp3s will be shortly forthcoming. We did a couple of multitrack recordings of much shorter duration.. and a couple of live improv bits which did not make it into multitrack format [hence there will be no edits, sorry folks, what you hear is what you get, distorted moments and all]

All in all, a good time was had by all and good sounds were again produced. (Well, *I* think good sounds were produced. And I’m sure Scott will like it – 😉

mp3s at

http://www.sheer.us/stuff/RonJam-10.22.03.mp3
http://www.sheer.us/stuff/RonJam-10.22.03-2.mp3

I’m going to go sleep now. I’ll wake up somewhere around 6 pm. 😉

I miss P.

A good letter to SCO.

By the way, I think that truly SCO has passed Microsloth, and now holds the new world title for ‘bastion of evil’.

Personally, I hope they get sued into bankruptcy. The sooner the better.

Can’t sleep. P. stayed here last night [after my pathetic spineless begging, but we’ll not talk about that eh? ;-)] and then missed alarm, so drove her to work. Still bothered by this whole Ghent-dying thing. Sent the virtual equivilant of flowers to M. God, I’d hate to be her right now. Took a bunch of quizzes – memesheep that I am. Baahh. Baahhh.

kiss on the lips – you’re sweet and simple but
quite daring. you move for the kill confidently
knowing the other person wants the same thing.

What Sign of Affection Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

img src=”http://images.quizilla.com/V/violetone/1061446762_gsdovescry.jpg” border=”0″ alt=”When Doves Cry”>
“When Doves Cry” (by Prince)
How could you just leave me standing,
Alone in a world so cold?
Maybe you’re just too demanding.
Maybe I’m just like my father–too bold.
Maybe you’re just like my mother.
She’s never satisfied.
Why do we scream at each other?
This is what it sounds like,
When doves cry.

Which 80’s Song Fits You?
brought to you by Quizilla

SLUTTY. You know what you’ve got and how to use it
to you’re ultimate advantage.

What is your lingerie style?
brought to you by Quizilla

Paging universe: Death is getting old.

So tonight we lost two more – one who I knew only periphially, but who was a good friend to many of mine, in Socal. One I thought I knew better than I did. Another suicide.

This is really starting to upset me. (And my grandfather on my dad’s side, who I can’t say i’ve known very well, or liked, had a near brush with the reaper, but it looks like he’s going to pull through okay). Of course, I can’t imagine I’m the most upset, by a long shot.

There’s something very upsetting about watching your friends deal with the loss of their friends, and being able to say nothing, do nothing. I can very much understand how a afterlife would get invented, just because there’s something so upsetting about the terminal NO CARRIER – the link light, once gone, does not return.

I fear very much that the person that is me lives only in the sack of protoplasmic hardware that I haul around in my head. While, as someone once said to me, ‘I would prefer to live in a world with a afterlife’, I can’t fool myself. I’ve worked with computers and analog circuits and so many machine things enough that it’s not difficult at all for me to understand how humans can be just another machine. And, in fact, it’s very difficult for me to understand – especially given the data, including what people are like after car accidents and cancer – how we could be anything but.

I’d so like this world to be different than it is. In many, many regards, but this one most of all. I wonder if it is because I believe the things I do that I consdider war, violence, death to be so horrid. My mom can feel okay about voting for Bush even though he resulted in the death of thousands of innocents based on a lie – because she thinks surely they were all sent to heaven. In my world, there is no heaven, no hell.. while there might be a god – almost certainly is, in the sense that there’s something bigger than humanity formed by humanity, something bigger that all life formed by that life – I can’t believe that we are saved. No one has ever shown me any evidence that I am wrong.

I’d so like to see it.

My heart goes out to Megan, Spisak, and the other friends on my list who knew Ghent. I’m sorry for all you’ve lost – but I beg you to remember all you’ve gained. Life is precious and unpredictable, and ends at unexpected times for unexpected reasons. There’s nothing that can remind one more how important it is to be with your friends and lovers, while you can.. while they’re still breathing, and you’re still breathing. Because that goes away, and we have no idea what comes after. Unless god has come down and written you a personal email – unless you’ve had absolute and undeniable communication and you know you’re not crazy [which puts you several points ahead of me], you don’t know. I don’t know.

I wish I could say this will cause some basic change in my life, but I’m unlikely to give up two wheeled vehicles. You know the risks when you get on one.. no chassis to protect you and half the rubber for traction. But they’re still fun.. and almost everything fun is dangerous. On the other hand, I promise not to drive any bikes so massive that they couldn’t be stopped in a hundred feet.. 😉

Everything is variable. Everyone ends. For every life, there is a death.. something sobering to remember. Every person I talk to tomorrow, every person I hug, every person I send a email to.. will – in historical terms, very quickly – die.

So let’s live while we’re here, eh?

Again, my condolences to you all.

http://www.amiright.com/parody/misc/disney0.shtml

heh heh

S.

Yes, I actually go back and reread parts of my journal from time to time. How narsaccistic (sp?) is that?

Anyway, this is from a couple months ago:

[root@gateway lists]# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 4127076 147656 3769776 4% /
none 192292 0 192292 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda2 12096756 3576228 7906044 32% /usr
/dev/sda1 15385852 352572 14251720 3% /var
/dev/sda2 192251992 17187412 165298668 10% /home

and this is from now

[root@gateway home]# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 4127076 374936 3542496 10% /
none 192292 0 192292 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda2 12096756 3665188 7817084 32% /usr
/dev/sda1 15385852 306704 14297588 3% /var
/dev/sda2 192251992 55080820 127405260 31% /home
[root@gateway home]#

Let’s face it. I’m a digital packrat.

[Now to be perfectly fair: part of that is that I hadn’t done backups before that first df, and I have been backing up my workstation to this machine..]

But still. At this rate, I’ll need more disk by next year. Of course, I guess I could throw out some of those TV shows I never intend to watch.. 😉

S.

Find yourself in the gutter in a lonely part of town
Where death waits in the darkness with a weapon to cut some stranger down
Sleeping with an empty bottle, he’s a sad and an empty hearted man
All he needs is a job, and a little respect, so he can get out while he can
We always need to hear both sides of the story
A neighbourhood peace is shattered it’s the middle of the night
Young faces hide in the shadows, while they watch their mother and father fight
He says she’s been unfaithful, she says her love for him has gone
And the brother shrugs to his sister and says “looks like it’s just us from now on”
We always need to hear both sides of the story
And the lights are all on, the world is watching now
People looking for truth, we must not fail them now
Be sure, before we close our eyes
Don’t walk away from here
’til you hear both sides
Here we are all gathered in what seems to be the centre of the storm
Neighbours once friendly now stand each side of the line that has been drawn
They’ve been fighting here for years, but now there’s killing on the streets
While small coffins are lined up sadly, now united in defeat
We always need to hear both sides of the story
And the lights are all on, the world is watching now
People looking for truth, we must not fail them now
Be sure, before we close our eyes
Don’t walk away from here
’til you see both sides
White man turns the corner, finds himself within a different world
Ghetto kid grabs his shoulder, throws him up against the wall
He says “would you respect me if I didn’t have this gun
‘cos without it, I don’t get it, and that’s why I carry one”
We always need to hear both sides of the story

———————————————————————————

Tonight, I did something very odd. (My mom will be happy. Well, no, she won’t, because I’m not going to tell her that I did it) – I joined a christian chat group – to give the reasons why I feel christianity is fundamentally wrong, and to honestly find out how people reconcile themselves to these.

I didn’t learn anything that compelling, although I did meet several christians who didn’t feel that their views were absolute truth and should be applied to other people, which was cool. No one could explain to me why killing someone should save the world [and in fact every explanation I got only made it seem more wrong..] or why god changed personalities completely from the old testiment to the new testiment.. [this is a really big problem for me. God just doesn’t change personalities like that, methinks..]

I’ve been backing up somewhat from my original statement that there is no god. I don’t think I’m really exactly a athiest any more.. once you’ve experience vibe, it’s hard to claim there’s nothing bigger than individual humans – it seems unquestionably true to me that humans aggregate to something larger than we are as individuals..

But Christianity still seems, well, just wrong. I like to think I’m mostly over my anger at my parents in attempting to force me, through a wide variety of coercive methods, to be Methodist.

Why does it seem wrong to me?

1) It seems to me a fundamental contridiction to say that god created the human race as we are and that being homosexualility is a sin. If god created us (not something I’m neccesarily willing to stipulate – there are a awful lot of really vicious bugs in humanity, which makes me think that maybe we evolved. On the other hand, there’s a awful lot of beautiful and complex things that make me think maybe we were designed. And sometimes I think it’s a mix of the two) and if some of us are gay, it’s because that’s how we were made. You don’t think being homosexual is built into gay people? Well, let me ask you this, is being heterosexual a choice? Could you suddenly start lusting after people of your own gender tomorrow if the herd required it? let’s not be silly here.. homosexuality is no more a choice than heterosexuality.

2) IT seems to me unbelievable that god would only provide one right answer, and if you didn’t happen to guess that right answer (or be born into a family that supported it), you’d be condemned to hell. I mean, I can’t make Christianity make sense to me, and I’ve tried, so I should be condemned to a eternity of suffering? 80 years – eternity – 80 years – eternity.. this makes no sense to me at all. It does seem beleivable to me that perhaps we just get sent back over and over until we get it.. (actually, this makes a _lot_ of sense to me.. resonates, you might say..) so I might be able to throw in with the Bhuddists.. but, as a friend of mine pointed out, many of the american ones seem to be as flaky as a bowl of special K..

3) In fact, the idea of any being both being mercifull and loving, and condemning souls to torment for eternity, seems fundamentally flawed.

4) While we’re on this whole ‘making sense’ issue, the whole idea of god having his son killed so that you can be saved makes none. Zero. Zip. Twist it any way you want, and it still makes no sense.. except one, and this is a extremely twisted view of it. If you view the bible as a history of god.. of what humanity thought they’d learned about a supreme power.. and if you stipulate that Jesus really was the son of god.. (not something I’m willing to agree to, except insofar as we might all be children of same) then if you view killing Jesus as a test of just what god would put up with without smiting horribly, then okay, fine, what you could say is ‘what we learned from the whole Jesus thing is that god will forgive *anything*. Quit worrying about your sins, you ain’t done nothing.’. (well, unless you’re Dubya or Hitler or something…)

I could go on for a while, listing things about Christianity that just won’t make sense to me, but the basic upshot is that I can’t make the religion make sense to me. And yes, I’ve heard the argument that I must have faith first, and then understand that god works in mysterious ways, and then after I’ve accepted the fact that the religion makes no sense and had faith, then it’ll all make sense and I’ll have found god and all will be well with the world.

Well, I can’t accept the bootstrapping conditions.. and I don’t get the sense that I have to. I think I have some basic inate sense internally of what is right and wrong, and I think it’s sufficient to my needs. And yes, I will insist that my religion strikes me as being correct before I accept it. If I ever do.. I think they refer to this as personal spirituality.. 😉

But anyway, they were for the most part nice people. They just all struck me as a trifle misguided. I was pleased, though, that I was able to walk away without a single attempt at removing their misguidedness. If they have their faith, more power to them.

Now if only they’d stop trying to ask that I live my life according to their view of what’s moral. Specifically, if they could get over the whole gay marriage thing, it’d be really nice. If they could let go of the abortion thing, it’d be even nicer. And if they could stop starting wars, I’d be ecstatic. [Now, to be fair here, I know that almost all religions were against Bush’s most recent war. But I bet after that partial-birth abortion thing, they’re going to flock to the polls in record numbers to re-elect him. Sadly, it seems being faithfull has a rather negative impact on your memory]

Hmm.. we’ve devolved into one of the two or three standard endings for a journal entry by me, a political rant. That doesn’t seem that productive.. even I am tired of listening to myself rant by now. For that matter, even I am tired of listening to myself whine about my relationship, so I’ll let that one go too. I’m also really tired of being sick, so I think maybe I’ll just go to bed in the hopes of feeling better tomorrow.

I have to admit, it was odd not smoking up tonight, it being friday and me not having gone dancing this week and all. But only in a not-following-habits sort of way.

I’m soo tired of being sick.

I found out why my embedded C compiler broke. SP4 and Ms Embedded C++ do not get along. No idea WHY that is, although I think it has to do with SP4 replacing one of the DLLs that the M$ WINCE compiler uses.

Ah well.

I figured I’d detract a little from my angst and inability to compliment someone successfully to write a rant in the general direction of the consumer electronics industry.

I have a 35mm SLR. I don’t use it much, because I hate film.. there’s just no instant gratification there.. but it has, without a doubt, the best user interface I’ve used on a camera. The shutter speed is a nice easy to spin dial on the top, the apeture control is right behind the focus control on the lens.. exactly where it should be, since the two are so intrinsicly connected. [If you’re not into photography, just tune out now.. ;-)]

I plan to buy a nice digital SLR, paying large chunks of money for it. That is, I plan to buy a digital SLR as soon as I find one that I can ajust exposure time and apeture/iris without having to wander through sixty menus.

It’s like the whole music and pc vs. mac thing. I like being geeky and wandering through menus and figuring out IRQs and things, yes, sure, but not while I’m trying to be artistic. A good test of a user interface for a artistic product, like a camera, is whether it ever requires one to refer to the manual. A properly designed artistic product shouldn’t, IMHO. Controls for exposure, iris, whatever, make ’em big fat dials, with clear labels and a clearly labelled ‘automatic’ position for when we’re feeling like letting the micro deal with it.

Please don’t make me figure out any more complicated user interfaces. My brain is full.

Moral of story: Do not make jokes that involve trophication or objectification of females. Period. It’s a sore spot for them, probably because of the last 500 years.

Anyway, if you all would like to yell at me some more, I’ll be over here. Have fun, please, by all means. I will certainly acknowledge that what I did was wrong, even if my intentions were not dishonorable.

But I won’t apologize for my friends-only, stream-of-conciousness writing – and if people are going to get angry with me based on what I put in here, perhaps I should just start using the ‘private’ setting instead. Not encouraging though, at all.