There are many things about the debasement of the political process in the USA and public discourse generally that make me angry.  Not least is the practice developed and refined by the Republicans (and eagerly embraced by the Democrats) that the constant repetition of a lie makes it true.  This manifests in many ways, from Bush making a speech about the economy (which he has fucking destroyed) in front of a backdrop repeating the phrase “Economy showing strong growth” to my personal favourite, deriding a candidate as “elitist”.

The “elitist” one pisses me off the most for a few reasons.  Firstly, in what sort of twisted, fucked-up Idiocracy style universe do you not want the elite running things?  Why is having the world run by unintelligent “average folks” a good fucking thing?  Excuse me, but given the choice between some spoiled, stupid motherfuckers like Bush and/or McCain and eloquent, well read individuals like Obama or Clinton I’ll take the smart ones thank you very much.

My plea to leaders around the world: please be elitist.  Do us all a favour and don’t pander to the lowest common denominator.  There’s a reason stupid people don’t often run things.  They’re fucking stupid.  And they’re almost never worth listening to.  Elitism all the way!

The second reason this line pisses me off is because it’s usually spouted by the most extreme elitists around.  Seriously, I don’t need multi-millionaires enlightening me as to who is elitist and who has the common touch.  Whether it’s mega-wealthy politicians who have led a life of privelege or or gasbag talking head media pricks with multi-million dollar contracts, these fucking hypocrites are the least qualified people on the fucking planet when it comes to knowing the common touch.

It’s enough to make a body angry.

I hadn’t intended to get this angry when I started making the video so i guess this topic must have been getting to me more than I realised.

I have no idea how many people who read this blog are actually in or around Melbourne.  For anyone who is (or can be on July 26th) a few local YouTubers are having a get together in Federation Square starting at noon.

We’ve had these small get togethers before and we’re trying to encourage more people to get out and meet up.  Here’s a few videos I’ve made with guys who have been involved in previous gathering:

I wasn’t going to touch Scientology again for a while because I don’t like to run themes into the ground but some of the comments that appeared on YouTube prompted me to follow up with a story I’d been considering sharing for a while.  There were two main types of comments that prompted me to revisit the topic.

The first were comments from Scientologists.  Some identified themselves as such and said they weren’t so bad.  More often, they claimed to not be Scientologists but proclaimed to support the “Church” of Scientology (CoS) in the name of fighting bigotry.  These idiots were so laughably obvious I have no idea why they insisted on the charade.  I guess they were going with the “sucker born every minute” line of thinking and they assume if they repeat blatant falsehoods often enough at least someone will believe them.

The second type of comments that troubled me were from atheists spouting the “all religions are the same” line.  While that’s a seductive line of thinking, particularly to unsophisticated thinkers, it simply isn’t true.  It’s a lot of fun to say “They have crazy beliefs about other-worldly powers that defy logic?  Sound like every religion to me,” or “Their sole reason for existence is to control the minds and lives of their followers and take as much of their money as possible?  Isn’t that what Christianity has been doing for over 1,000 years?”  The thing is, CoS is different.

From the first contact you have with them, the primary goal of CoS is to manipulate you.  They want to find out what’s important to you, how you think, what you want in life.  And they won’t hesitate to lie to you to bring you into their sphere of influence.  The difference between CoS trying to get your money and, say, the Catholic Church (of whose methods I have intimate knowledge) trying to get your money is pretty straightforward.

Catholics try to guilt you into giving them your money voluntarily.  CoS try to force you to pay for your enlightenment.  Catholics are more than willing to give out their version of enlightenment free of charge.  In fact, like most Christians, they’ll gleefully push their beliefs and teaching on anyone who doesn’t run fast enough.  CoS absolutely will not share their teachings with anyone who does not pay for them.  They have repeatedly sued people who have distributed their teachings freely on the grounds that their copyright is being infringed.

You know, like money making corporations do.

You can argue, sometimes convincingly, that all religions push inherently dangerous beliefs and try to manipulate people.  But CoS is different in that they are pushing a deliberately fabricated set of teachings for the sole purpose of making money.  They use all the cult tricks to attain their ends.  They are dangerous.

In this video, I tell the story of how I took the CoS “free personality test”.  Turns out I didn’t have one.  LOL!  I kid, I kid.  What I did learn from taking this test is that the test itself is dangerous.  It is designed to find out where you are vulnerable.  It is designed to find your psychological weaknesses.  And these people will not hesitate to exploit anything they find.  They will lie and tell you that Scientology addresses you core concerns directly.  This is a lie because this is what they say to everybody.  And it can’t possibly be true for everybody.

This test is the simplest level of contact you can have with CoS.  It is the first thing they do with people.  And it is dangerous.  It is not a harmless bit of fun that might show you a little about yourself.  It is the doorway to letting some really ruthless people take control of your life.  They don’t care what damage they do to you.  All they want to do is widen their sphere of influence.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking they’re the same as any other religion.  That is a lie that they want you to believe.

The biggest danger to CoS is former members breaking free and letting the truth of their inner workings be known.  Their greatest hope is to gain more and more converts before the truth about them is known widely enough.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to amuse myself during my lunch hour by shooting a short film in an empty office building during my lunch hour.  It was more popular than I expected and many people asked for a sequel which I really wasn’t expecting.  Apparently people wanted to know how I got out.

I like to oblige.  Although I had intended for “Ghost Office” to be a stand alone little snippet I put a little thought into how to do a sequel.  And so here it is, your sequel where I finally find an exit.

I’ve spent today deep in hypochondria.  Every little muscle twinge and pain in my body has made me think I’m suffering some serious injury as a result of a little mishap on the tram yesterday.  One of our public transport choices in Melbourne is a rather extensive tram network.  The trams have a certain charm as a mode of transport but they have to share the roads with other vehicles which leads to occasional misadventures when some bastard in a car cuts off a tram and it has to stop suddenly.

Actually, the shitty tram drivers cause misadventures all on their own with sudden jarring stops and starts at each stop.  Most drivers, however, have mastered the art of smooth acceleration and deceleration.  This is important as one of the drawbacks of the tram is that 9 times out of 10 the fucking thing is so overcrowded you don’t stand a chance of getting a seat.  Sometimes the jolts are so severe that holding on to a strap doesn’t cut it.  Every now and then there are injuries of the broken bone type.

I didn’t see what caused my particular calamity but I’d like to have the chance to give a serve to the prick that made the tram driver jam on the brakes.  And possibly the tram driver if the severity of the stop wasn’t warranted.

It was a weird experience.  If it was a few seconds later I would have been safely in a seat.  As it was, I was in the middle aisle facing towards the back of the tram.  And then Mister Sudden Stop paid a visit.  The tram wasn’t going very fast but coming to a sudden dead stop was more than enough to end my standing up-ness that has seemed so stable just a second before.  I was seriously airborne.

For the briefest of moments I was like unto Superman.  I was flying.  For about a metre.  And then it turns out that gravity has more super powers than me.  And I landed square on my arse.  Luckily this was a padded landing and I didn’t land right on my coccyx because I probably would have broken it.  As it was, the shock wave from the force of my landing shot straight up my spine and into my skull.

The force of the shock to my head was so strong I was actually convinced that I had hit my head on something.  But there was nothing behind me.  You can tell it was a massive shock because all I could manage expletive-wise was one loud “SHIT!” as my butt crashed earthwards.  Anyone remotely familiar with my swearing habits would know I have no problem with launching into a long string of profanity when faced with even a minor setback.  In this case I was too stunned.

I sat there for a moment thinking (but not saying ) “fuck, that hurt!”.  It was probably only a second or two until two guys tried to help me to my feet.  They were either side of me, each holding an arm and they’d lifted me a little off the floor.  I figured, yeah, getting up is a good idea.  But I couldn’t do it.

I was still stunned and my inability to get up had me thinking I’d suffered some sort of traumatic brain injury.  Then I realised the “helpful” blokes were actually holding me at an angle that robbed me of all leverage.  I couldn’t get up under my own power and they weren’t lifting me all the way to my feet, they were just sort of supporting me.  I didn’t want to seem rude and say “let go of me you idiots” but I was still too disoriented to come up with a more subtle way of explaining the situation.

So I’m being supported by two blokes, stupidly saying nothing which I’m sure makes it look like I’m concussed.  I’m not completely convinced that this isn’t the case myself.  Another few seconds and the worst of it passes and I manage to get to my feet and find a seat.  I’m still shaken up though.  So much so that I don’t even think of going up to the tram driver and screaming “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT ABOUT?”

And today, every little thing convinces me I’ve suffered to debilitating injury.  And I should be suing the fuck out of the tram operator.  Minor headache?  I’m probably bleeding into my brain.  Sore back?  I must have cracked a vertebra.  Aching shoulder?  Not sure what that means but I’m sure it’s the trams fault.

Uncontrollable outburst of rage?  Clearly the trams fault.  I was never prone to that before the accident.

I’ve been planning a bit of an anti-scientology rant ever since I read about a kid getting charged by the cops in England for holding a banner that had the slogan I used for the title of this post.  This article suggests a pretty disturbing scenario with the cops involved possibly owing more alliegence to scientology than they laws they’re supposed to uphold.

Then I found this article that gives details of the secret scientology paid 8 million dollars to try and cover up.  If you weren’t sure if scientology was actually dangerous, read this article.  If it doesn;t freak you right the fuck out, there’s something wrong with you.

I have now reached 800 blog posts in less than two and a half years.  In the same time period I’ve uploaded about 650 videos to YouTube.  There’s quite a bit of crossover between the two, i.e. some videos have used blog posts as scripts and some blog posts have been little more than the posting of videos.  But all in all, it’s an accomplishment that I would have doubted I would reach before I started.

I have often used these types of milestones to reflect on what I’ve learned so far.  Today I’ve been considering all the people I’ve pissed off by daring to have an opinion.  And you know what?  I’m better than them.  By and large, I’m better than every person who’s ever been wound up by something I posted online.  I say that with no irony whatsoever.  They suck and I rule.  They are full of fail and I am full of win.

How do I justify this conclusion?  I could easily rest solely on the abundant evidence of my supreme awesomeness.  Anyone who would even consider gainsaying the overwhelming rightness of my anger is clearly a loser by definition.  But why stop there?  Instead, I shall bury the doubters, haters and trolls with my infallible logic.  The following list shows the common denominators shared by every single person I have managed to piss off online:

1. They do nothing  None of my haters have contributed anything of value online.  They don’t maintain their own blogs.  The don’t create videos.  All they do is occasionally vomit out drive-by abuse.  And they think that puts them on an equal footing.  This is because they are stupid.

2. They are insecure  One of my favourite things has been to deliberately provoke insecure people.  I pissed off people on the left and people on the right, atheists and religionists, young and old, people from all walks of life.  I’ve also gained fans from all these groups.  What the difference between the fans and the haters?  The haters are so fucking insecure they can’t see the slightest challenge to their desperately clung to world-view without collapsing into a gibbering heap of reactionary stupidity.

3. They are frightening intolerant  These people can’t even conceive of co-existing with someone who doesn’t conform to their rigidly constrained views.  The violence of their response to differences (of opinion, lifestyle, etc.) can be truly breathtaking.  On occasions when I’ve seemed like that it doesn’t count because I’m actually right.

4. They have tiny little penises  Including the women.

5. They don’t get irony

Every now and then I see someone else in action and I go “Now THAT is how you do anger!”  Today’s example of well-justified anger at its finest is former Los Angeles County prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi.  This guy prosecuted Charles Manson.  He was so pissed off when OJ Simpson got away with murder he wrote a book called Outrage.  And now he is speaking out in the strongest terms against George W Bush saying Bush should be prosecuted for first degree murder.

He isn’t coming at this from a moral point of view, he’s saying according to criminal statutes Bush is guilty of first degree murder.  Okay, I’m pretty sure he’s coming at it from a moral point as well.  But he’s framing it in legal terms.  And then he’s using some very colourful language presenting his case.

For those of you who are not cursed with a short attention span, following this link will take you to a partial transcript of a 2 hour speech he gave along with a lot of video footage from that speech.  Even if you think you have a short attention span, I urge you to check it out.  When you make your career presenting in high level courts you end up with (or maybe start out with) quite a gift for oratory.  And it is awesome to see an intelligent, eloquent, experienced, impassioned speaker get really fucking angry.

OK, I know some people will still use the short attention span cop-out so I’ll provide you with some highlights:

On why Bush should be prosecuted for murder:

“In my book… I present evidence that proves beyond all reasonable doubt that George Bush took this nation to war on a lie, under false pretenses, and therefore under the law is guilty of murder for the deaths of over 4,000 young American soldiers who died so far in this war.”

“If a conspirator, or anyone for that matter, deliberately sets in motion a chain of events which he knows will cause – that’s the key word – cause a third party innocent agent to commit an act, the defendant is criminally responsible for that act.”

“Bush can only wash his hands of culpability if he did not take this nation to war under false pretenses. If he did, which the evidence overwhelmingly shows, he is criminally responsible for the deaths of all those American soldiers who have died fighting his war in Iraq.”

On the American right wing:

“There are no more repugnant, hypocritical and un-American – and that’s the word I want to emphasize – un-American people in our society today than the right wing.”

On possible mitigating circumstances for Bush and Co:

“And there is one thing that I should probably say in partial defense of these people that goes in mitigation, arguably reduces their moral culpability. And what I’m talking about is that many of these people are incredibly stupid. And they make up for their stupidity by being extremely ignorant. And when you combine stupidity with ignorance that’s a toxic combination.”  

Some general fun quotes:

“And the question I have of you, is how evil, how perverse, how sick, how criminal can George Bush and his people be?”

“What type of a human monster is George Bush?”

“If I ever killed one person in my life, even accidentally – a car accident – I’d never have another perfect day as long as I lived. George Bush is responsible for the horrible deaths of thousands of human beings and he is talking about having a perfect day. Bush’s plans to have a perfect day right in the middle of all the death and horror in Iraq goes so far beyond acceptable human conduct that no moral telescope can discern its shape, form and nature.”

And I’ll close with Bugliosi basically summing up my life philosophy.  He’s raging against Clinton prosecutor Ken Starr (who he calls “one of the most reprehensible figures in American history”) and he says:

“I seem to be getting more angry and acerbic and caustic and that’s because I am always in a state of rage, how can I help but be?”

I enjoy my own outburst of creative anger but occasionally, I just like to sit back and watch a master.

Wax on, wax off.

Just making a quick catch up video for those who might be interested in some things that happened to me recently.  The first couple of things are just some garden variety morons I’ve been dealing with.  Everday occurrences for me.  But I was kind of excited to be interviewed for a radio program.  There’s a national network in Australia aimed at the youth market called TripleJ.

As I rarely act my age, this is the station I listen to.  And when I heard they were doing a story on anger management I had to call up.  Anger gets a bad rap - someone has to stand up for it.  If you want to listen to the interview, follow this link.  My bit starts at about the 8 minute mark and goes on for around 3 minutes.

One of the more interesting aspects of spending time contributing to online forums (including this blog and YouTube) is getting a front row seat into what is essentially the biggest anthropological experiment in the history of humanity.  In fact, it’s a widely held misconception that the internet has its roots in a military project. 

What actually happened was a bunch of very smart people sat around and came up with the idea of creating a worldwide computer network that would provide a method of interaction that appealed primarily to people with poor social skills.  An integral part of the plan was to remove the primary constraint that makes most people behave reasonably (namely, the fear of being smacked in the mouth).

The central hypothesis of the experiment was that a significant proportion of the human race will behave like total jerks if you give them the chance.  Well done those boffins.

All sarcasm aside, I really do see some value in bearing witness to what seems to be the proliferation of anti-social personality disorder that one sees online.  (N.B. sarcasm will not actually be set aside in the writing of this post, that’s just a figure of speech)  It certainly helps that I’ve chosen an angry persona for my online activities – at the very least, the morons I have to deal with on a daily basis provide plenty of fuel for angry rants.

But it also goes well beyond that.  I have come to realise that the insane behaviour of trolls/haters/ whatever you want to call them is a useful reality check.  Not in the way they usually mean.  Here’s a tip: anyone who claims the reason they are behaving like an obnoxious piece of shit and harassing people online because they’re “keeping it real”, “speaking the truth to the posers” or anything similar is an A-grade fuckwit.  If you’re such a fucking genius, create something of your own rather than spending all your time trying to drag down people who are actually doing something.

Where I find this behaviour to be a useful dose of reality is that it keeps me from forgetting one important fact: There are some really fucking stupid people out there.  And I’m not talking solely about uneducated people (many people without a significant formal education are wonderful, insightful, thoughtful people.)  I’m talking about people who will believe any shit that’s fed to them, particularly if it plays into their prejudices.  I’m talking about people who go beyond ignorance to the point where they aggressively assert their ignorance and loudly celebrate it as a virtue.  You know, as opposed to taking some crazy approach like giving thoughtful, reasoned consideration to topics.

You’re not exactly separating yourself from the herd by saying you don’t believe the media.  Many people say this reflexively.  Ironically, they’re usually the ones who will automatically believe outrageous lies (like Barack Obama is a Muslim) so long as it fits into their set-in-concrete bigoted mindset.  But when you put yourself out there, even in a very small way like I have, you see something very interesting first hand.  People will deliberately make up lies about you.

I’m not talking about people who say I’m not funny as opposed to bowing down and worshipping me as the god-like being I am, so far beyond their comprehension that they could never hope to understand how much better than them I truly am.  No, I’m talking about people who fabricate lies out of whole cloth.  Not people who draw incorrect conclusions about me.  I’m talking about people who spread stories that they know for a fact are untrue.  They assert that easily demonstrable lies are the truth.  I’m talking, in short, about people who are deeply, deeply fucked. 

It’s easy to translate that into the obvious media liars - the tabloids, gossip mongers and entertainment “reporters”.  When you pay attention to them for a while, it becomes clear that gossip magazines don’t just exaggerate, their favourite trick is to start with a photo and then completely fabricate a story to go with that photo.  “Ooo, look at the bags under her eyes… let’s say she’s on drugs.”  “Hey, there’s a shadow on his cheek… let’s say it’s a black eye from a night of drunken brawling.”  “Check out her having the audacity to tell the paparazzi to fuck off… let’s say she’s violent and out of control.”

Like I said, it’s one thing to know in the abstract that the media are probably lying.  It’s quite another thing to get first hand experience of some people’s compulsion to lie.  I mean, I’m nobody and yet people feel compelled to make up stupid bullshit about me.  So why should I be surprised that when something that actually matters is on the line (like, say, a US Presidential election) that self interested thugs spread the most vile shit imaginable? 

And nothing is so extreme that you won’t find some freak willing to believe it.  Even I don’t believe that George Bush is a pedophile rapist.  But apparently there are those who do.