Been gone for a while.  Nothing much to say, until now.  Politically correct.  Rape culture.  Police state.  Female privilege.  Racism.  These are words I've seen a lot lately, because I was perusing a site called Best Gore.  On it are hundreds of pictures and videos of various incarnations of death and disease, as well as videos of assassinations.  There are also videos of police actions. 

Now, I'm not here to hash over the deaths or anything like that; if you want to know about this stuff, just look at the site.  What I am here to talk about is the types of people who lurk on this site, every day, growing more and more inhuman as they look at the carnage.  The site's creator claims that he's doing a 'public service', that his site is 'educating the masses on what not to do' so that you may keep your pathetic existence for a little bit longer.  He even uses this as his justification when he went to trial in Canada for what he called 'thought crimes'.  Now, I don't know what the culture is like in Canada; I only have his word, as well as a few others, to go by.  However, if it's anything like the US, then it can't be as severe as he claims.

I'll address the members first, before I move on to other things.  Most of them look at the videos and pictures of the human carnage and belittle or debase their deaths.  A great many of them are strewn with violently racist comments.  Most of the members are anti-black, anti-Jew, anti-Muslim; pretty much anti-everyone who isn't white and 'civilized'.  They're very nearly Nazi-like in their rabid, foaming at the mouth hatred of other cultures and skin colors.  I've no doubt that a great many of them are skinheads at the very least.  The creator himself fully supports these racist attitudes; most of the 'descriptions' of the carnage are peppered with slanderous, belittling, humiliating comments about the people themselves.

Now, onto the real reason I'm pissed.  I don't care that they're racist; I believe every single human being on the planet is racist.  Most of us just don't advertise it.  I've thrown the n-word around a few times on the site myself.  Can't help it; I will always call a spade a spade.  No, the real reason I'm pissed is because the site creator, as well as many of the neanderthals that post there, claim that it is a site for the politically incorrect.  That anyone with an opinion that doesn't follow mainstream society is welcome.  That, my friends, is a lie.  They don't want people with differing, yet still politically incorrect opinions.  They want a bunch of bleating sheep, baaing the same violent rhetoric that they, themselves, espouse.  Take rape, for example.  Many of them slam the videos and pictures of women who have been killed after being raped.  They accuse the women of being whores and sluts, simply because of where the crimes had been committed.  Yet, when I express the opinion that, in many cases, the women who are raped pretty much put themselves in that position in the first place, I'm bitched at for it.  Again, I don't care about that.  But when they devolve into personal attacks, about someone they do not even know, well that frosts my cookies.  That tells me that they're not as 'open minded' and 'free thinking' as they'd like to believe.

I've expressed opinions on the site that go against what they believe, especially about the police.  As far as I'm concerned, if you don't cooperate with what the police tell you, then you deserve the beat-down you receive as a consequence for your stupidity.  The final straw, however, was the way the site creator dismissed me when he removed me from his membership.  I told him that my brand of political incorrectness wasn't accepted there, which is true.  His response was "With pleasure.  We don't need delicate snowflakes with butthurt feelings.  We don't need any more drama queens.  Bye."  Again, a personal attack to a person he has no personal knowledge of.  He doesn't know my personality.  He doesn't know my thought processes.  I don't get offended easily, and I'm too dead inside for hurt feelings.  The response just made me laugh, then it made me angry.  How dare he claim that his site is for 'thoughtful exchange of ideas' when the complete opposite is true.  You can't have it both ways, mister.  You can't claim that everyone has a voice on your site, and every opinion matters, then turn around and lambaste that person for an opinion if it doesn't match your Nazi dogma. 

If you go to the site, be careful.  Don't let them try and indoctrinate you to their horribly skewed, violent, racist ideals.  Don't let them try and change you.  Take every video, and every 'description' with a grain of salt, realizing that they come, not from a direct source, but from the opinions of one person.

I hate my fucking life.  My husband passed away two years ago in September, and I live in an apartment complex.  I was told that it would be quiet here; that the residents were relatively respectful of each other.  Bullshit!  The lady downstairs blares her Whitney Houston and other soul records at very loud volumes.  Right now, it's 11:22 p.m. and I can hear her shit clearly.  It's driving me insane.  I've notified the landlord twice, but either she doesn't have a phone, or he's not answering.  Either way, this shit makes me homicidal.  I'm a very quiet person; I rarely watch tv and listen to my music with headphones.  I appreciate that not a lot of people like the kind of stuff I listen to.  I would expect the same kind of courtesy that I show to them.  You know, do unto others and all that.  Am I the only one in the world who respects others' boundaries, and tries to be considerate of others?  My father raised me to always say 'please', and 'thank you'.  I used to say that to my husband when we'd go through the drive through and he'd ask for something.  It's a matter of politeness, for fuck's sake!  How fucking hard is it to, oh, I don't know, RESPECT SOMEONE ELSE'S FEELINGS FOR FUCKING ONCE?!  I put up with this shit all day long on the weekends; I don't expect to have to put up with it all fucking night, as well.

Here's something that takes the edge off, and I hope you think so, too.  It's a website that hosts video-sharing sites, and has a fuckload of movies to share.  It's called TwoMovies, and the url is https://twomovies.net/.  The registration is completely free, they ask nothing of you at all.  Go check it out.

Windows 10.  We who have OS 7 and 8 have probably, unintentionally, installed an 'update' that puts supported adware on our computer, urging us to install the 'free' OS 10 software.  Twice, now, I tried the upgrade.  Both times I was bitterly disappointed.  Here's how it went:

The first time, after a few days, I could not get any of the apps to work.  I could not even activate the Cortana searchbot.  I got nothin'.  So I went back to my user-friendly OS 7 and have been very happy.

The second time, which was just this morning, everything else was okay.  I was able to use the apps, but had absolutely no internet access.  I even called my cable company, and went through a bunch of attempts to fix the problem, to no avail.  She gave me Microsoft's customer care number, and I called it.  I told the man on the phone my problem, and his response was to transfer me to tech support.  Paid tech support.

Now, I get that Microsoft has to make money, and they're not doing it with free upgrades.  However, since the issue wasn't mine, I should not have been expected to pay for the resolution.  It is a common issue with the OS software that the wireless drivers aren't 'compatible' with the upgrade.  And, usually, those issues can be dealt with using the hoops the cable company and I had jumped through for over a half an hour (god love her, she was so patient and kind).  But not in my case.  And, since I seemed to be the exception instead of the rule, I wasn't going to pay them anything, just to have them tell me that they couldn't do anything; that I'd probably need to buy a new computer with Windows 10 pre-installed.  Either way, it was a racket to get my money.  No thanks.  I'll stick to Windows 7, my trusty HP All-in-One, and the Howtogeek website, where I found information to get rid of the adware.

Hello, kiddies.  I'm back.  Tonight's rant is about...well...us.  Do any of you remember the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States?  The one that starts, We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, blah, blah, blah?  Well, I believe it should read We the Pussies.  That's right.  Pussies.  After all, in no other nation on this planet do people whine, bitch, and complain more about what's said than we do.  Everybody crying about word choice, or attitude.  But the most egregious has to be the newest 'fad' of claiming that we are doing 'cultural appropriation'.  What that means is that we, as Americans, do not have the right to eat Mexican food, because we are not Mexican.  We do not have the right to wear kimonos, because we are not Japanese.  Even within our shores, we are committing 'cultural appropriation'.  Young white college kids have no right to listen to rap, r&b, or hip-hop because they aren't black.

Even more egregious is the idea that we aren't allowed, as white Americans, to eat Spanish food, or Japanese food, or Chinese food, because we are 'appropriating' their culture by eating their food.  We can't speak Spanish, or Japanese, or German, or French, because we are 'appropriating' their culture.  Never mind that, for a lot of us, we speak the other languages to get by in our jobs.  Social workers need to be multilingual.  Police officers need to be multilingual. Teachers need to be multilingual. Doctors and nurses need to be multilingual.  And, before you pussified people jump all over this, yes, those people who naturally speak those languages can get those jobs.  However, there aren't enough of them to fill the positions, based on availability, or education.  As well, they need to be able to speak and understand English.  They can't just service their own people; jobs just don't work that way.  Even translators need a college degree, and training to deal with the different types of people every day.  It's beyond ridiculous to expect people to 'keep to their own kind' while living in the same damn country.

If we hold to the separatist attitudes these 'do-gooders' are espousing, then how do you expect us to be able to learn about each other?  How do you expect us to be able to get along if we can't understand each other?  Is it 'culture appropriation' for those of other nationalities to speak English?  You can't have it both ways; if we are 'appropriating' their culture by wearing their clothes and speaking their language and eating their food, then, by the same token, they are 'appropriating' our culture by wearing our clothes, and speaking our language and eating our food.

The direction that all of this comes from is the pussified adults, raised by parents who were so very worried about little Johnny's self esteem that they insisted he get a trophy at the school competitions, just for showing up.  Participation trophies are the biggest sin against children than anything I've ever heard of.  How in god's name are they supposed to learn how to deal with life's realities if they have no idea what failure is?  Doing this encourages them to believe that they will always win.  And that is just not true.  They will fail about seventy percent of the time at what they try, or do.  Without the lessons of childhood, where they actually learn that the world isn't all sunshine and roses, they will fail at about ninety five percent of anything they try.  These are the kids that end up living at home when they're thirty five because the 'world is too hard'.  They don't go on to college, or if they do, they drop out because they flunked that final, fully expecting that they'd pass simply because they showed up.  These are the kids who deliver pizzas at age forty, because they aren't suited to, or capable of, anything else.

These kids never learn that the world is full of winners and losers.  And the losers are the ones who either don't try, or don't believe that they're losers to begin with.  They're the people who stand out in shopping center parking lots, and on street corners wearing brand spanking new clothes and begging for money.  They're the people who drive the latest SUVs and collect welfare checks.  They're the people who have been raised on the public dole and know of nothing else.  Fourth and fifth generation welfare recipients, who know nothing else and are capable of nothing else.  Kids who are raised with such a sense of entitlement that it makes me want to smash my fist into their faces, just to show them that the only thing they're entitled to is a swift kick in the ass.

I've seen a commercial for a new 'reality show' about how 'the internet ruined my life'.  First of all, the internet didn't ruin your life, asshole...YOU did.  If you hadn't have posted that story/picture/confession in the first place, you wouldn't be in the situation in which you find yourself.  Anyone who goes on social network sites to post every little thing about their lives should expect to be humiliated and ridiculed.  It's human nature to attack those who are 'weaker' than ourselves.  And in this society, when you go online to whine about how pathetic your life is, you are showing belly to everyone who reads it.  So expect to be attacked.  Maybe, with enough 'encouragement' from your 'peers', you'll grow a pair and stop expecting everyone else to 'save' you.

Secondly, it is absolutely PATHETIC how people always want to blame someone else for their misfortunes.  Life sucks.  Get over it.  Take responsibility for your own life.  No one held a gun to your head and made you put up that extremely humiliating picture of you posing in the mirror to show off your belly flab.  No one held you over a flaming pit to force you to write that illiterate, horribly written, badly spelled story on a fanfiction site.  Nobody shoved a stick of dynamite up your ass and threatened to light it if you didn't confess your unrequited love for your furby, or your dalmatian, or your polo pony.  The point is, you were not forced to expose the minutiae of your life to hundreds of thousands of voyeurs who troll the internet looking for that next loser to rake over the coals.  Before you hit 'send', or before you hit 'publish', re-read it three times, then have some independent party read it a few times (and your mom, sister, cousin, or bestest friend don't count), and then have someone who writes semi-professionally look it over a few times.  Hell, have an English teacher scan it a couple of times.  Get as much input as you can BEFORE you post it.  Understand, however, that, no matter how well-written or well photoshopped something is, people are still going to rag on it.  We can't help ourselves.  The nature of the beast, don't you know.

Finally, don't expect that, just because you post something 'honest' and 'meaningful' on the internet that people are going to come crawling out of the woodwork, seeking your sage and wise advice on their problems.  It don't work that way.  The only people who would come to you for that kind of thing are the same kinds of losers who post on the internet in the first place.  It saddens me that schools no longer teach any kind of critical thinking.  We as a society can't think past the end of our noses.  We have no capacity to examine a problem closely and come up with a viable and logical solution.  We run to everyone else for that, and they are just as pathetically stupid as we are.  The few of us capable of this kind of thinking keep our heads down, so that we aren't inundated with stupid pleas for help in solving problems that a bright five year old can fix.  It's sad, really, how dumb we're getting.  And the internet is at the forefront of that stupidity.

I write fanfiction.  I enjoy it tremendously.  I also write songfics, utilizing songs that I find fitting for certain situations.  My fics are mainly slash, and I also have some crossovers.  My primary domain is Harry Potter, with crossovers into Death Note, Kuroshitsuji, Ouran High School Host Club, and Fullmetal Alchemist.  I tell you all of this because I have a bit of a rant.

I make absolutely NO money with these songfics.  I don't think I'm doing any of the musicians or songwriters any disservice in using their songs to base oneshots off of.  In fact, in posting the lyrics into a fanfic, I'm actually spreading the word of their musical talents and prowess, free of charge.  I'm doing them a favor, for fuck's sake.  So, I find it a little ridiculous that anyone would take offense, or be angered at the idea of songfics. Yet, when I recently posted one, a Fullmetal Alchemist songfic to the Ginuine song "Pony", I received a rather terse email, suggesting politely that I should take it down before someone reports me for it.  I've got several songfics up on the site.  In fact, I've got some that utilize relatively new songs, such as Chevelle's 'The Red'.  I've never received ANY censure for using these songs.  But Ginuine?  Really?  A song done in 1999?  Besides, the version I listen to is by a band by the name of far.  I even enclose the standard industry info at the beginning of the story.  I don't see where I'm infringing on any copyright when I'm making no money whatsoever from the 'fair use' of it.  I get the public domain deal.  I understand that it's not considered public domain until the copyright expires.  If that's true, then how do the lyrics get published EVERYWHERE.  I got them from a lyrics website.  There's tons of them out there.  As well, they're published in the liner notes included in the CDs.  Besides, don't karaoke nights constitute copyright infringement also?  I mean, you can't possibly tell me that some jackass' friends aren't filming them with their smartphones, just to post the video to YouTube.  Come on, already!

In conclusion, I don't think my harmless use of song lyrics in my fanfics harms or in any way steals anything from the artists I'm using.  I don't see what I do hurting them any more than those karaoke dipwads who end up on YouTube, to the humiliation of themselves and their families.  In fact, I think THOSE are the ones who do the artists a great disservice.  After all, who wants to hear some tonedeaf hack warble that Kid Rock/Sheryl Crow country mess duet, which gets one million hits on YouTube.  Might as well watch the auditions for American Idol, come to that.

Since I'm new to blogging, and since I don't really care for social media in any way, shape or form, I'll just use this spot to...vent.  I'll start with a little info about myself, then go from there.  First, I'm fifty-three years old.  I'm a recent widow; my husband of thirty years passed away September 30, 2014.  He was my soul mate, and I miss him horribly.  To add insult to injury, I had to plan his cremation on my birthday, which is October 1.  Needless to say, I no longer celebrate birthdays.  I'm a long-time atheist, but didn't recognize myself as such until fairly recently.  I grew up with religion, kinda, and did attend church, where I was 'saved'.  When I got older, I did get baptized; however, it didn't stick very well.  I can't subscribe to a 'higher power' that would use punishment because it wasn't pleased with the way things were going.  It supposedly gave us 'free will', which means we have the choice to live and believe as we wish.  But, to hear the bible thumping jesus freaks tell it, their white-magic god rewards those who are blindly faithful to it, and punish those who are not.  They subscribe to the notion that they are the perfect 'soldiers for christ', while at the same time belittling and humiliating factions of humanity for their beliefs, their skin color, their sexual orientation, their gender, ad nauseum.  It's enough to put me off my food.

There.  That finishes my first rant.  Chime in if you wish.  Or don't.  I really couldn't care less.

I was in a very bad way when I posted this.  The holidays are nightmarish for me.  My brother passed away Christmas Eve 1994.  He was 31.  He died 20 days after his birthday.  My father passed away New Year's Eve 1995.  He was 60.  He died 20 days after his birthday.  So the holidays are meaningless to me.  Add to that, I was grieving deeply for my soul mate.  So, I came off a little hostile this first post.  I'm better now.  I still don't give two figs for what anyone thinks of me, but I'm in a better mood to not care.