Life Is Intolerable
POSTED BY: AnthonyT
UPDATED: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 23:44
VIEWED: 5214
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Hello,
I was recently reading some of Chuck Lorre's vanity cards from the Big Bang Theory, and came across this. I thought it was funny, and decided to share it with my fellow forumites.
Maybe we are fighting the wrong political battles?
CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #262
As best as I can tell, life is intolerable. Oh, not always of course. A case can be made for all the big wonders and little blessings and blah, blah, blah. But when you really boil it down, our entire existence rests on a few really ugly premises. First, life, and by that I mean the big life, life with a capital L, must ingest other life in order for it to remain life. Or, put another way, in order to witness the miracle of creation, we must continually eat, and then poop out, a little bit of that miracle. Second, one of the charming side effects of sentient life is emotional pain. The fact that dead and fermenting plant life creates alcohol - a terrific anesthetic for emotional pain - might cause one to think that this is, by nature, a compassionate universe. Think again. Keep dulling that pain with booze and you wind up, if you're lucky, in a church basement sharing your tears with complete strangers. If you're not lucky, you wind up on a waiting list for a motorcyclist's liver. And finally, there is the ever-present knowledge of death. In order to "more fully appreciate the gift of life," we all get to ponder a violently sudden or slow and agonizingly painful descent into oblivion -- after which our beloved bodies turn into the stuff of nightmares. Which brings me back to my original premise: life is intolerable. But rather than go gently into that creepy night, I've decided to start a petition to protest the fundamental conditions of existence. I know it's not much, but it's a start. And damnit, I'm just the guy to do it! The petition is available at chucklorre.com. Sign on now and make your voice heard before you're dead and your vocal chords are being eaten by a swarm of disgusting bugs.
PETITION FOR IMMEDIATE CHANGE
IN THE CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE!
--Anthony
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"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner
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Hello,
More food for thought.
Race in America, per Chuck Lorre:
CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #269
I have long believed that part of our problem with resolving race issues in America is our inability to accurately name what we are. Aside from the occasional Johnny and Edgar Winter, there are no white people. Any child with a box of crayons can tell you that white people are, in fact, beige. The sickly ones are gray. Following this crayon logic, one can easily see that there are really no black people. They are brown. Or perhaps raw umber. Or maybe burnt sienna. Frankly, every time I hear someone comment on America's first black president, I can't help thinking, "No, he's not. He's more like caramel." Which is why I think we should all get in the habit of calling each other what we really are. How can you racially slur a man by calling him "beigey" or "umber?" The answer is you can't. Because that's exactly what he is. The melanin doesn't lie. Buy a box of Crayolas and see for yourself. We are all members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Can I hear a kumbaya?
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner
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To be quite honest, people manage to be racist and still very accurate about color. There was a whole gradation of color in South Africa... very scientific... Same as in Haiti. And black people in the USA know that it is much better to be high (social standing) yellow (golden-skinned) than blue-black. In fact, criminal sentences in the USA are directly correlated to skin color, for equal crimes. The darker the skin, the worse off you will be in a court of "law".
I know you are trying to lighten up (so to speak!) the topic of racism, but this is not the answer, seriously OR in jest!
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Hello,
I had no idea. I guess we can even be racist about shades of gray. So to speak.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner
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Quote:
My grandfather had died, and my mother was trying to explain it to me. . . .Grandpa isn't coming back? No, she said. Not ever again. . . . And I remember saying, hold everything right fucking there. You went to all the trouble of conceiving me, and giving birth to me, and raising me and clothing me and all . . . and you make me cry and things hurt so much and disappointments crush my heart every day and I can't do half the things I want to and sometimes I just want to scream — and what I've got to look forward to is my body breaking and something flipping off the switch in my head — I go through all this, and then there's death? What is the motherfucking deal here? I wasn't having this. This was not fair.
-Spider Jerusalem
Dude, you really need to read Transmetropolitan - you'd like it.
-F
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Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
I had no idea. I guess we can even be racist about shades of gray. So to speak.
Oh yes, as well as shades of brown - remind me to explain the "paper bag test" to you some time.
-F
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Racism has nothing to do with the color of the skin, or shades of color. The Tutsi vs Hutu conflict will demonstrate that much.
Racism is about US vs. THEM, distilled to a childish recognition of some physically (often inconsistently) identifiable feature.
Underlying the universal US vs. THEM conflicts is class. I believe, racism, at the root, is simply disguised classism. So is sexism or religious bigotry for that matter. People who have like to ascribe negative characteristics to people who have not, the better to keep them as have-nots with. Conversely, the have-nots then ascribe negative characteristics to the haves, the better to challenge their power with.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Well, true, although from what I understand the Tutsi and Hutu are actually visually distinct.
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From what I heard those two groups of people weren't very distinct at all, the distinction hadn't come about until about 100 years before? I could be wrong, but that's what I heard.
I thought Anthony's race post made sense. Its true Obama has as much European in him as he does African, he's got half and half, just because one is visually more prominant than the other doesn't mean it counts for more or less. I always found that perplexing because I suspect that Halle Barry has more European ancestry in her than African, or at least half of each, but she's still called "black". I always thought the words we use for skin color are weird. Puffy clouds are white and the deep ocean is black, but skin isn't either, with the exception of albinism, which can happen to any ethnicity by the way.
As for the death one, all I can say is that I love the Big Bang Theory, one of my favorite shows and definitely my favorite sit com.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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Well, it's eastern tribes versus western tribes and distinguishing traits among even those.
Tutsi are generally taller and skinner with very angular faces. The Europeans favoured them for that reason, thinking that the tribe was more full of grace (more like Europeans) than their counterpart in the other tribe. That lead to the Tutsi, a racial minority, being the power in Rwanada and VERY oppressive, until the Hutu took over and retaliated. And the tensions have escalated ever since.
That's not to say that there hasn't been blending that makes most of the tribal identifications pretty pointless, however.
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