I found this online, originally in graphic form. Enjoy!
Look for warning signs:
This one’s going to be short and sweet. The Wuhanic Plague talking heads like Bill Gates and Dr. Fauci keep moving the goalposts. From what I’ve heard. Gates says that it’s going to be a long time before we can go back to normal. Fauci says that even when people get vaccinated, they’ll still have to wear masks and practice social distancing. Well, if it works, then why the security theater still?
On a side note, I refuse to get that vaccine. I might’ve caught the bug early on, but if not, I’ll take my chances. If anything goes wrong with that, I’m going to feel very bad for all those canaries in the coal mine. Instead of shooting me up with that vaccine, they can go shoot me with a bullet instead.
True conversation I had with my doctor about Fauci:
Doc: He’s clearly a smart guy, but he’s really been all over the place with this one. Ten years ago, he was all over the place with HIV.
Me: You mean whether we should use Trojans or flavored condoms?
Doc: (laughing) Or poke holes in them!
Anyway, what’s the deal with Gates then? He’s an ascended nerd, but doesn’t even have a medical degree. He’s certainly not an elected official. Who does he think he is to tell the world how we should live our lives? Dude, having billions of dollars doesn’t mean you’re God!
Earlier this year, the Powers That Be told us “ten days to flatten the curve” and I’ll stick to that, thank you very much.
No, I’m not making this up. Once again, truth is stranger than fiction. The Daily Caller excerpted from a safety pamphlet, including the following:
“Make it a little kinky. Be creative with sexual positions and physical barriers, like walls, that allow sexual contact while preventing close face to face contact,” states NYC’s Health Department.
Hasn’t all this security theater gone far enough by now? Come on, people; we’ve moved from one manufactured crisis to another anyway!
By now, it should be clear to everyone that predictions of doom and gloom have been greatly overrated. I encourage everyone to read that, as it will be important background to understand where I’m going.
Other than that, this is a moment to reflect on some of the alternative narratives that have come up surrounding this. These are, of course, what the Powers That Be and those who back their narratives call “conspiracy theories”. Since these are speculative, then it would be a mistake to believe in them without qualification. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to reject them simply because they don’t conform to the “official” story. One might ask, gosh, why does anyone listen to conspiracy theories in the first place? It’s because, simply put:
JOURNALISTS HAVE BEEN LYING THEIR ASSES OFF SINCE FOREVER.
POLITICIANS HAVE BEEN LYING THEIR ASSES OFF SINCE FOREVER.
I don’t mean all of them, of course. (They’re rather like lawyers, where some are honest, unlike the other 95% who make the rest look bad.) Still, all too many journalists and politicians start lying the moment they open their mouths. Therefore, is it any wonder why most of the public stopped trusting what they say as the absolute and unquestionable truth? This is why unorthodox narratives exist.
Again, read the article linked above if you haven’t already done so. The fatality estimates turned out to be four times above the actual figures. Was it because the public mostly has been staying inside? No, they figured that in. Once more, the article has all the stats and links to official estimates, statements, flip-flopping, and all the rest of it.
Am I saying that the virus doesn’t exist? No, I am not. The problem is that things have been blown out of proportion. Members of certain risk groups really are in danger from this, but the rest are not.
There is some useful data from NYC on March 31 which speaks volumes. It shows that there were 748 fatalities among people with certain underlying conditions, 14 fatalities for those with no known conditions, and 170 where it’s unknown yet whether or not they had these underlying conditions. At the bottom of the chart it says:
Underlying diseases include Diabetes, Lung Disease, Cancer, Immunodeficiency, Heart Disease, Hypertension, Asthma, Kidney Disease, and GI/Liver Disease.
I’ll speculate that China’s severe pollution may have been a contributing factor to why that country got hit so hard. They don’t have pollution controls for their factories like we do, one reason why they’re able to manufacture so cheaply and undercut American production out of existence. Thanks, globalists!
One other thing is that the fatality numbers go up considerably in proportion to age, but only those with the underlying conditions. So in other words, if you suffer from one of those conditions, then you’re at high risk, and especially if you’re old. In that case, it’s quite appropriate to stay at home until this blows over.
If someone is otherwise healthy, they’re quite unlikely to die from it. Being old by itself doesn’t seem to be a risk factor. Extra attention to hygiene is appropriate for everyone, but putting healthy people under house arrest is a questionable policy. What is appropriate? The bug has a ten day incubation period. If everyone goes into seclusion for ten days, then by the end of it, you’re either sick and can go for medical attention, or you’re not sick.
That’s sort of what we’ve been doing for nearly two months now. Actually, that’s brought a vast improvement, but we’re still getting the doom and gloom. The question is how long this will be necessary before it is a rare disease that can be controlled through contact tracing as usual. First we were told one month, then two months, then six months, then eighteen months, and now some are even saying two years, or even never. As the problem is diminishing, and it becomes clear that initial estimates were off by orders of magnitude, an increasing doom and gloom narrative is shouted at us regularly from TV screens.
Also, people who have those underlying diseases already are quite sick. How many would’ve died anyway, or not too far after? We don’t know the answer to that. It might surprise you to know that not all deaths attributed to Covid-19 are the result of testing. The pathologists aren’t required to test for it; they can write down whatever they consider to be probable.
For example, if an AIDS patient comes to a hospital feverish and coughing (not uncommon for that) and then dies, he might be classified as a Wuhanic Plague victim. The same might happen to an unfortunate homeless guy who succumbs to tuberculosis. I’ve heard of one instance in which a 105 year old lady in Rhode Island, God rest her soul, was classified as a Covid-19 victim without any evidence. How many other misclassifications have there been? Again, there’s no way the public can know this. The point is that although the numbers are merely a quarter of what we’d been told they’d be by now, even that statistic is padded to an unknown degree.
One paragraph at the beginning of an article by The Atlantic, “How the Pandemic Will End”, states the following:
A global pandemic of this scale was inevitable. In recent years, hundreds of health experts have written books, white papers, and op-eds warning of the possibility. Bill Gates has been telling anyone who would listen, including the 18 million viewers of his TED Talk. In 2018, I wrote a story for The Atlantic arguing that America was not ready for the pandemic that would eventually come. In October, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security war-gamed what might happen if a new coronavirus swept the globe. And then one did. Hypotheticals became reality. “What if?” became “Now what?”
No, that wasn’t me. That wasn’t Alex Jones either. Neither was it from anyone who might be accused of being a “tinfoil hat” source. That was from a journalist for The Atlantic. The original has hyperlinks to the sources, if you want to check it out.
Maybe the writer has been interested in epidemiology for a long time? Sure, that’s possible. Maybe he figured we’re overdue for a plague? That’s possible too. I’ll accept that he’s interested in medical topics and made a successful prediction. He might be one of the few “just the facts, Ma’am” journalists left in the country. But what about the other things mentioned above?
Again, “In October, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security war-gamed what might happen if a new coronavirus swept the globe.” The link in the article says that they did a dry run simulation in Brazil and predicted 65 million deaths. Then the real deal hits a different BRIC country two months later! What a big coinkydink! And it’s not just any old bug; neither a variant strain of salmonella, nor a new type of staph infection, nor a mutant variety of chicken pox, nor chirpies caused by having sex with parakeets, nor space pimples, nor any other myriad microorganisms they could’ve picked for a “what if” simulation – it was a novel coronavirus, just like what happened a couple months later for real. This isn’t proof that someone started it deliberately, but it’s legitimate to start asking questions at that point.
Then you add Bill Gates into the picture, Silicon Valley’s poster boy for the New World Order. “I am Locutus of Microsoft. Prepare to be assimilated; resistance is futile!” If that wasn’t bad enough, globalist arch-bungler Henry Kissinger has been inserting his proboscis into this matter. The brother of Rahm “never let a crisis go to waste” Emanuel has made statements too. This is getting to be pretty hinky.
Some of the so-called conspiracy theories have been interrelated with 5G mobile phone technology. As word has it, this will be necessary to increase data bandwidth for the “Internet of Things”, which – surely a big coinkydink – can help track the public better. (Even now, the domestic spying programs from collusion between governments and giant tech corporations in Western liberal democracies are more extensive than the Soviet Union had, or any other dictatorship in the 20th century.) Perhaps you’ve seen the picture of the drone in Britain harassing a hiker, out in the middle of nowhere and posing no danger to anyone. It’s a fair bet that he was tracked by his cell phone, and some computer registered the fact that he had left his home. The corporations and governments have been spying on citizens like this for years, but things like this make it more obvious.
There are some reports of new towers going up, some even on school property. When most people are indoors, this is less noticeable, and a clever way to avoid criticism. But wait – isn’t everyone supposed to stay home if they’re not performing a vital function? Putting in more 5G towers is sufficient cause for construction workers to venture outside and brave the deadly Wuhanic Plague that’s about to wipe out everyone?
I’m not saying that 5G causes the virus, of course. Still, there are quite a few ongoing health disputes. I do have a modest electrical engineering background, and it’s true that danger from radiation goes up with higher frequencies. Cell phone radiation is already bad enough as it is. Quite often I’ve felt my fingers getting hot during a long call, especially when the signal from the tower isn’t strong, necessitating higher power from my phone, merely a 4G model. This happens because my fingers are getting microwaved. When 5G rolls out, lots of fingers might get pretty crispy indeed. Moreover, the “this is your brain on drugs” fried eggs advertisement from the ’80s might get repurposed into “this is your brain on 5G”.
Who might want to do things like crash the economy, or roll out sweeping new powers for the government, or pump up the FEAR FEAR FEAR for as long as possible? Now we might have to get a little speculative here, but not too much. If you’re one of those who doubt that any normal person would do such a thing, I’ll have to tell you that these are not normal people. Engineered crises are their go-to strategy. If you think this doesn’t happen, then you need to quit being a hatchling.
Small businesses are getting squeezed by this partial economic shutdown. Some will be able to take out loans, but this isn’t as beneficial as being able to keep their doors open, like the major corporations exempted from the shutdown and now operating with less competition. If this keeps going on for several more months – like the shouters of doom and gloom have been clamoring for – then the results will be that even more of the private sector will be in the hands of large corporations and enormous monopolies. That’s exactly what the globalists want – the tremendously wealthy are the driving force of globalism – but it’s the opposite of where our society needs to go.
Then there’s the anarcho-tyranny agenda. In several locales, prisoners have been set free early. Is there any real reason to do so? Prisoners won’t catch the virus, so long as new arrivals go through a ten day confinement and guards get tested and take care not to catch it themselves. But what’s going to happen when large numbers of criminals who haven’t had their full measure of jail therapy hit the streets? That’s right – bad things will happen, and the idea is for the public to beg the government to do something, anything!
So what’s with the predictions that everyone must stay quarantined for months, years, or maybe even forever? That includes the healthy – people who don’t have AIDS, cancer, COPD, or all the rest of it – who are at low risk. Daily life already is getting to be a pain in the ass from the house arrest, shortages, joblessness, and so forth. If this keeps up for an extended period of time, then the moment a company develops a vaccine, the public will line right up in droves. Wouldn’t that be worth an awful lot of money to some biotech firm out there? That might take a while, so until it’s available, it will be necessary to keep up the FEAR FEAR FEAR narratives even though the rate of new infections in the USA has fallen off sharply.
An even more ominous concern is CONTROL. Are there people in the government who get a massive power trip out of deploying sweeping secuuuurity measures? Whatever the case may be, this has a collateral benefit of a social experiment in which the government can see just how far they can push the public without provoking a reaction. Some quite boldly have called for “temporary” global government to help navigate the crisis. That’s pretty brave to name the real agenda! However, if you think that the arrangement really would be temporary, then I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
There’s been some talk by government officials that to be exempt from quarantine, you’ll have to get a vaccination and carry an immunization passport. That’s right – if you don’t want to do that, then you’re under house arrest for life. Some proposals include using smart phones to track your status, no doubt for your conveeeenience. Another one is to use some sort of quantum tattoo, so that we can be branded like cattle when we get the vaccine. Now get this – the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Koch Institute is bankrolling the research. Don’t take my word for it; this is on MIT’s website. Now we see why Bill Gates is so interested in all this!
A neato side benefit is that officials will be able to wand us at random inspections to make sure we’re complying with the rules. With the digitally encoded information keyed to countless databases, it will be possible to get all sorts of other information about you at their fingertips – your credit score, your shopping habits, your Internet viewing history, and so forth, along with all the things the cops already know about you when they run your license plate. I’m not so sure that the technology for quantum tattoos is there yet. Maybe instead they’ll want to barcode our foreheads and microchip our hands. Sweet!
Was all that too cynical of me? I really hope so.
In Iran’s holy city of Qom, once the fave hangout of that jolly old fellow Ayatollah Khomeini, a cure has been developed for the new COVID19 coronavirus. This is just in time, since it’s now spreading throughout the world and has the potential of becoming a new plague. Medical professionals are scrambling to confront this.
For Iran, however, that simply will not do. An Alaraby article goes into their unique approach:
Users on Twitter describe how the Ayatollah Tabrizian has publicly denounced Western medicine as “un-Islamic”.
That’s hardly a surprise. According to Iran’s ruling class, everything is un-Islamic. They even think that Barack Obama isn’t a real Muslim.
The good news, of course, is their new coronavirus treatment protocol. Three cheers for Iran then! The article goes into some specifics:
According to an Iranian news site, which obtained a screenshot of the message, Tabrizian recommends consuming copious amounts of brown sugar, burning wild rue, as well as inhaling snuff.
I wonder if they have oatmeal in Iran? I have a weakness for that stuff, especially with lots of butter and brown sugar. Well, maybe not; they probably think oatmeal is un-Islamic too. I bet smiling is considered a dark heresy over there.
His eighth tip is the most striking: “Before bedtime, drench some cotton in violet oil and apply onto your anus”
Will this turn your butt lavender? If so, it’s a small price to pay for curing that nasty case of coronavirus. As a bonus, you’ll get promoted to middle management, because after that, your Shi’ite doesn’t stink. That’s something to think about next time you visit the Ayatoilet.
Now I’ve done it. A few days ago, I quit vaping. December 24 was my last toke. I ran out of juice and haven’t bought any more.
Most people start vaping in order to kick cigarettes, basically regarding it as a safer substitution. I wasn’t a smoker. I started since it seemed pretty safe, and I figured it might help me stay perky and focused. Freud did mention that his cigar consumption did that much for him. Since in modern times we’ve figured out how to do that without breathing the smoke of burning plants all the time, I figured, why not? I could get whatever boost it provided without goddamn cancer or goddamn COPD. I found some pretty good juice too – it was like vaping a candy cane! I took it further than Bill Clinton would’ve done in his wildest dreams, because I inhaled.
Why did I quit now? It has nothing to do with being a better Mormon; I’m still a terrible one. Mainly it’s for health reasons. Vaping might not be as safe as I’d assumed. Surely it’s better than sucking down a pack or two of tobacco leaves, but still, I’ve heard some things. Also, I’m not entirely comfortable with being hooked on anything. Other than that, now I have one less product to buy, and I’m cheap that way.
First, I’ll cover some good news. There are those who say that nicotine is a worse addiction than cocaine. Most fortunately, that’s baloney. In the past, I’ve dated three coke heads, and two were in and out of jail because of that noxious chemical. There’s just no comparison; nicotine is nothing compared to the devil’s dandruff – or worse – Satan’s boogers. Moreover, quitting nicotine isn’t even as close to as bad as quitting caffeine.
There are two ways to kick the habit. First, you can taper down. The other method is going cold turkey. Some might be surprised that cold turkey ain’t that bad!
Whenever I’ve flown somewhere on vacation, I’ve left my equipment behind at home. A vaporizer is a battery operated electronic device with a heating element. Obviously stuff like that is going to get extra scrutiny at an airport. Since all that is just bad juju, I’ve never attempted to bring a vaporizer on board a plane. So what is it like, being in another city without a vaporizer to suck on? I’ll get two or three fairly mild cravings that day, and less the next. Big deal! I’ve seen people getting a little irrational from nic fits before, but experiencing it myself it was nothing like what I expected. Sudden nicotine deprivation certainly didn’t drive me mad.
On the other hand, when I’m at my desk and can’t find my vaporizer, it drives me up the wall! I’m used to having that candy cane to inhale when I’m sitting there. So this is how I realized that habit and ritual actually have longer claws than the nicotine itself. Substitutes like gum and patches will provide nicotine, but doesn’t address the ritual component to it. I did think of switching to jelly beans, but that would’ve been extra calories that I don’t need. I also thought of vaping somewhere not at the desk to break the association, but I didn’t follow through.
One of the cool things about vaping is that there is a very large selection of juices out there. You get different flavors, and different concentrations too. I started out with 36mg, which is as powerful as it gets. That’s what I’ve been sucking down for years. Then lately I switched to 24mg. Going down to two thirds of the previous concentration wasn’t such a big deal. Then the case of asthma that I’d been battling for a very long time went away. Well, how about that!
I searched my supplies and finished off all my old oils, so I wouldn’t have any “sunk cost” considerations. I finished all the fruit blends and chocolate flavors and so forth. Then I bought a new bottle, 18mg concentration. The next steps down were 12mg, then 6, and finally 3. Those bottles were 30mL. Dialing down wasn’t too difficult of an adjustment, but some might prefer to taper it slower with 60mL bottles for each step.
Finally, there was nothing left, so I packed up all the paraphernalia. After that was the tricky part! There was little nicotine in the juice by then, but at least I was toking on something. They do have 0mg oil, and I could’ve got some of that, but it is what it is. So for the next couple days, I was at my desk, thinking that surely the candy cane had to be somewhere within reach… Gollum wants it, where did the tricksy little hobbittses put My Precious?
At that point, I could’ve gotten some more vape oil and fed the monkey. However, I didn’t. I decided that I’d stick to my plans because I am not a bitch. As of now, I’m over the curve and doing pretty well. No more changing batteries for me, or oil leaking everywhere, or gummed up igniters. Anyway, hopefully this inspires someone.
It’s been two weeks since I’ve sucked down my last energy drink. No more soda for me either. Whenever I see my girlfriend at home sipping a Monster, I think to myself, “We wants it my precioussss…” My other girlfriend thinks I’m nuts to give it up.
No, this isn’t because I’m going on the straight and narrow. I’m still the worst Mormon since Joseph Smith himself. They can pry my beer out of my cold, dead fingers. Actually, I’ve figured out enough wiggle room in the Word of Wisdom to allow for beer. (Buy Space Vixen Trek Episode 13 if you want to find out.) Still, I’ll hit the vodka too and make no apologies for it.
Why put myself through this misery then? It’s because I don’t like to be hooked on anything. Also, if I cut out the soda and energy drinks, it saves a few hundred bucks a year. (I can buy more beer, right?) I might start drinking caffeinated beverages again at a later time, but rarely enough that it won’t be habitual. Best of all, my receptors will be normalized and it will be effective again, and caffeine won’t be something I must consume regularly to function normally.
So how’s it going so far? I wasn’t as hooked as some people are, so I haven’t suffered headaches. Still, I’ve been dragging ass. I think I’m over the worst part of it. Even so, it’s been difficult. When the Viet Cong discovered one of their soldiers hooked on opium, they’d throw him in a hole in the ground for three weeks. Maybe they had a point with that.
Addiction is a very old problem, with serious consequences for society, and for individuals too. The compulsion caused by chemical slavery is so bad that crackheads will sell their bodies to get a little rock the color of toenail fungus. They’re not all from bad neighborhoods; some came from nice families and made a dumb mistake. Men will do that too; that Less Than Zero stuff is for real. I’ve never smoked Satan’s boogers; I’d rather drop a cinderblock on my foot. However, I had a dream about it once, and it was like confronting an evil spirit.
Modern science gives us a better idea of what’s going on, but treating it has been a frustrating pursuit. There are drug therapies out there – good pills to get over bad pills, essentially. Still, it’s been pretty well demonstrated that an opiate is an opiate. Certain antidepressants might help recovering addicts, though they’re not perfect and can have undesired side effects of their own. Ultimately, so far there’s no silver bullet, and perhaps there never will be.
The traditional focus has been on chemical addictions, which have been documented since the ancient Greeks, if not longer. Then there are the behavioral addictions which have received much more attention in modern times. Here’s what we do know at least.
The way mood-altering drugs work is by changing the activity of neurotransmitters. The big three are serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. Some drugs bind to one or more of these receptors, imitating the natural chemicals already floating around in the synapses. Others inhibit the reuptake of these neurotransmitters, which increases the amounts existing in these connections between the brain cells. Some do both; for instance, cocaine is a dopamine agonist and also inhibits its reuptake. (It’s all fun and games until you’re feeling invisible spiders crawling all over you.) There are also cannabinoid receptors and opioid receptors, which God or evolution put there for unknown reasons. Alcohol, benzodiazepines (Valium, Xanax, etc.), and barbiturates operate on the GABA receptors.
So effectively this temporarily raises the wattage in these neural circuits. These various neurotransmitters do different things, which is why getting drunk is a different high than getting stoned, etc. If these drugs are taken regularly, then homeostasis kicks in, and the brain starts producing less of its own natural neurotransmitters. That’s what gets people hooked. This means that when addicts go cold turkey, they feel terrible until the homeostasis process starts increasing natural neurotransmitters to normal levels again.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen overnight. For example, it takes two or three weeks of constant opioid use to get hooked. After discontinuation, withdrawal symptoms will slowly subside at the same rate. The Viet Cong therapy for heroin addicts was pretty effective, which involved tossing them into an oubliette for three weeks. That’s a lot faster than a methadone taper-down program, and being put in a hole in the ground surely wouldn’t easily be forgotten.
So that’s how drug tolerance sets in, and eventually addiction. It’s been said that the first time someone sniffs coke will be the best high he or she ever gets from it. After that, cokeheads are simply trying to re-create the experience with increasing quantities. It becomes a perceived need, like hunger and thirst, which the user never had before.
Another factor is downregulation. Unnaturally elevated levels of neurotransmitters will make their receptors less sensitive. When an addict isn’t high, the natural neurotransmitters are at a reduced level, and what little is there is has become less effective. That’s why addicts deprived of their drug of choice will feel like chewing gum on the bottom of a shoe. This is usually reversible with time, but not always.
Eventually, hardcore cocaine addicts (and abusers of other substances that affect dopamine) may develop anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. At the extreme, they even can fry their dopamine system entirely and develop Parkinson’s. All throughout, death by overdose is a real possibility. (All these are more reasons why cocaine dealers and smugglers deserve to be taken out and shot.) Finally, some drugs cause outright brain damage, like meth or inhalants. MDMA (Ecstasy) burns out synapses, a process that begins pretty quickly. That’s the reason they get “e-tarded”. Why do you think they call it dope?
Other than getting a chemical high, there are behavioral ways that people modulate their neurotransmitters to produce thrilling or otherwise pleasurable feelings. This is why people ride roller coasters, chow down on food, and (of course) get laid. What could be more natural than that? I’ve tried skydiving once; it was a pretty rattling experience, but afterward I wondered why anyone would stick a needle in his arm when he could jump out of a plane instead.
Still, excess is a danger, a fact known to ancient Greek, Chinese, and Persian philosophers. In The Republic, Plato pointed out that a life of excess produces higher highs and lower lows, but the lows predominate. Meanwhile, in a life of moderation, the modest highs predominate over the modest lows. Therefore, moderation is rational.
Immoderate food consumption can be a problem, which I’ve had to deal with myself. Kleptomania and pyromania are behavioral addictions too; they get hooked on the rush of committing crimes. Video games can be habit forming, leading to vast amount of wasted time and lost productivity. However, occasionally deaths have resulted from self-neglect or neglect of children during all-day poopsocking sessions. These behaviors might start out as being fun, but eventually become a drag, though it’s still difficult to quit.
Flashing, voyeurism, and other perversions can constitute behavioral addictions. An unexpected effect of modern technology is that porn induced erectile dysfunction has become an epidemic among 20-somethings. Typically, they’ll have to start watching more extreme content to get the same thrill. So they might start out watching bikini models, then a year later they’re beating off to tentacle porn. Rather oddly, there are many anecdotal reports of straight guys sometimes ending up watching gay stuff. Some get curious enough to bang a dude and get grossed out by the experience, they aren’t actually gay, so they don’t really like giving blowjobs and all that.
Behavioral addictions can be pretty stupid and irrational, of course. Still, that’s what happens when things like that get established in the limbic system’s pleasure / reward circuits. MRI studies show parts of the brain lighting up during a porn session, the same ones that light up in cocaine addicts. There’s no dumb dust involved, but someone doing an hours-long edging session to hardcore porn is tweaking his dopamine too.
Chemical addictions also have a behavioral component. A junkie cooking heroin in a spoon will get a thrill in anticipation even before the needle goes in. It’s much like Pavlov’s dog slobbering as soon as he heard the dinner bell.
So in one way, addictions are essentially very bad habits. The traditional explanation was moral weakness. In more recent times, addiction started being seen as a psychological problem. Others considered it a disease. This results in reducing the stigma which (as the theory goes) will encourage people to seek help without feeling bad about it.
A schizophrenic can’t help being crazy, and (again, as the theory goes) neither can an addict. Thus, it’s no more of a moral fault than catching the flu. Other than that, “alcoholic” sounds at least a little better than “habitual drunk”. When it was a new word, it put a fresh spin on things. Still, we’ve stepped too far away from personal agency. Furthermore, when people do bad things, they should feel bad about it, and others should call them out on it. Ultimately, people have the capacity to choose between right and wrong.
Would anyone smoke crack right in front of a policeman? Of course not; the crackhead will choose to wait for an opportunity to do so unobserved, since getting busted means going to jail for six months. Therefore, addictive behavior is a choice, though it’s a lot harder to “just say no” after someone is hooked. So addicts who want to quit have to become their own policeman.
The famous 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are the following:
AA and similar programs do work for many people. If it gets them where they want to be, then they should run with it.
Still, I do have a few quibbles with some of it. The thing about being totally powerless over alcohol, to the point that only an act of God will work, seems somewhat disempowering. Further, all that might be pretty hard to swallow for an atheist. Step 3, however, does very clearly indicate that a rational choice is involved in breaking free of this bad habit. If a wino doesn’t want help, will God miracle him out of his bottle of Thunderbird? Probably not.
So the power of reason is the essential part, and I’m sure Plato would’ve agreed. The rational mind belongs in the driver’s seat.
So the results of my diet and fitness efforts are that I’m down about 30 pounds from when I started back in late December. I could be doing better, but I’m not complaining too much. My waist has shrunk quite a bit and I’m into pants that I haven’t worn in ten years. My muscle definition and vascularity are a bit sharper. I’m wondering how this is going to affect how I’m treated once I’m where I want to be. Hopefully the transition in process from off-season linebacker to gym rat will get me a better reception, though I’m afraid I might look a bit like a knucklehead. Anyway, going from blue collar work to white collar work set me back, but I’ve now made significant strides to fix it. I’ve taken a week off, might cheat just a bit more, then back into the routine.
Concerning the situation in Syria, there is plenty of commentary on the missile strike in response to the gas attack, but I’ll add some of my own. Given the scanty evidence available now, it’s not entirely clear who was doing the gassing or if it really took place. There are parties who would be willing to spread false rumors in order to make the regime look bad (well, worse anyway) or to get us involved. In any case, the “shoot first and ask questions later” approach on our part seems to be a bit ill-advised. I’d prefer that we don’t get sucked into this. In general, Assad isn’t exactly a candidate for sainthood, but if he got deposed, none of the other parties that would be likely to fill a vacuum of power would be an improvement.
As for my writing projects, I’m still working on Space Vixen Trek Episode 4 and Episode 17. Inspiration is coming along, slowly… For the latter, I’ve been doing a bit more study on conspiracy stuff and kooky UFOlogy, and it’s coming together.
I’m up to my 42nd post on Return of Kings, with two more in the pipeline. That’s where most of my political content is these days, though I do have some old classics here as well. I’m a bit afraid of getting typecast as a political writer, though there are worse fates that could befall me. One of them would involve being the sort of political writer that National Review would hire 🙂
Other than that, they’ve issued an article (not mine) called “How To Meet And Date Mormon Girls“. The only thing missing from that is cultural notes about Jello and turns of phrase such as “Oh my golly!” (I’m technically Mormon, but I’m a very bad one, and I do like beer… Actually, I found some wiggle room for the Word of Wisdom to allow Mormons to drink beer; you’ll have to get a copy of The Final Falafel for the details!) The article is pretty much on the mark as for most Mormon ladies being prim and proper, though with a subset who are anything but. I had one as a girlfriend, rather briefly, who happens to be a preacher’s kid. She’s quite fair and delightsome (bonus points if you get the reference), and sophisticated, and also quite wild in bed. I miss her…
There’s been a lot of negative talk in the Manosphere about fat chicks. Some say that fat acceptance is a subversive manifestation of cultural Marxism. If we posit that this is a factor, then it’s only half of the picture.
Remember that the cultural Marxist playbook is about keeping everyone dissatisfied and stirring up divisions in society. Given that, it’s not too much of a stretch to see that another angle of attack would be to make guys dissatisfied with almost all women out there. What I mean is promotion of the “heroin chic” as the epitome of feminine beauty. I’m not convinced that cultural Marxism is behind all this, but this does lead into an important point.
The Overton Window molds public opinion; the short version is that certain positions are deemed “acceptable” and others outside are considered “extremist”. This window shifts over time, and this can be deliberately engineered. That’s something that propagandists in television and Hollywood have been using to great effect to nudge the public closer to accepting SJW agendas. That, of course, has moved our culture light-years to the left. (For example, who in 1986 – or even 1996 – would have predicted that the US military would start paying for sex changes for soldiers in 2016?) However, the Overton Window also is a good model for how society is led to consider what is hot and what is not.
Here’s what I’m talking about. The average American body mass index has gone from 25 in 1960 to 28 in 2002, thus from the upper end of “normal” to the upper end of “chunky”. As of 2014, the average man is 5’9″ and weighs 196 pounds; the average woman is 5’4″ and weighs 169 pounds. This puts the average 2014 BMI for men at 28.9 and women at 29.0, almost in the officially fat range.
Meanwhile, the public’s tastes haven’t followed the trend. Instead, the ideal feminine body type being promoted (later I’ll discuss who’s promoting it) has gone from the “normal” range to the “underweight” range (BMI 17-19; likely BMI 16 means dead). That sounds like quite a recipe for dissatisfaction, doesn’t it?
I can hear it already – “to hell with American women”. Actually, the rest of the world isn’t too far behind. Trends are going up everywhere; like feminism, this isn’t just something we can run away from and expect it will never catch up to us. Actually, the Middle East is right up there with us, and Pacific Islanders are leading the pack.
Standards of beauty vary from one culture to the other. They change over time too. That being said, there are some attributes that change according to the dictates of fashion, and others that are basically set in stone. We’ll cover the former now, and the latter in the next section. Female body weight is one of the changing standards.
Ice Age statuary includes a number of female figurines, all extremely chubby – no doubt this ideal represented abundance, very desired in times of great scarcity. Greco-Roman statuary typically represented what we’d consider verging on full figured, though not too busty. From Renaissance paintings, we see a number of quite voluptuous women. Ideals in the 20th Century varied somewhat, but ended up going sharply downward, and today’s legacy is the “heroin chic”.
What caused weight to go up in post-Industrial Age times? First, the public is working easier jobs, getting less exercise, and relying more on automobile transit. Food became very cheap and plentiful by historic standards. At the same time, it got increasingly less healthy, full of processed crap from agribusiness. Eventually, the public (both women and men) started getting a lot bigger. The jogging fad of the 1970s and the popularity of weightlifting not long after didn’t quite stop this trend. In the 1990s, we started spending increasing amounts of time glued to our computers, with predictable results. These days, interest in children’s sports has dropped dramatically. Finally, there’s a lot of confusion about what diets are best.
Meanwhile, the fashion industry pushed for increasingly thinner models, and Hollywood followed along. Consequentially, the ideal of feminine beauty versus what average women actually look like became increasingly distant.
What does a Barbie doll have in common with chubby Ice Age figurines like the Venus of Willendorf? They have bust-waist-hip proportions in the ideal range. The reason why this is ideal is because this is associated with fertility. A woman with typically masculine proportions – flat chest and narrow hips – would have the appearance of being physically immature. Also, a woman whose waist is larger than her bust and hips – similar to a guy with a beer gut – probably has metabolic syndrome, which generally includes PCOS. So the reason why neither look particularly feminine to us is because it’s a matter of natural selection over hundreds of thousands of years. So it’s natural to desire any woman with curves in all the right places, whether she has a classic slender hourglass figure or is quite voluptuous – it’s all good.
So instead of thinking of the ideal woman as someone who looks like she just got out of a POW camp, instead we should look to the movie superstars of the past: Mae West, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Mamie Van Doren, Sophia Lauren, Raquel Welch, and so forth. None of them were exactly tubby, but they certainly had curves in all the right places. This is certainly not the “heroin chic” ideal that Hollywood and the fashion industry today is lauding as the epitome of womanhood. Once more, these represent ideals, and not all – or even most – of the public will fit the bill.
The point is that we should, as individuals, ignore the efforts by the media and the fashion industry to push the Overton Window to a body type that’s both extremely rare and a bit unhealthy. It also wouldn’t hurt if we loosened up our requirements a bit, within reason. This opens you up to a more target-rich environment. Think about it – if 80% of women only give the time of day to 20% of men, does it make sense to weed out all but the skinniest third of the takers?
It’s no secret that the fashion industry is dominated by gay guys. Hollywood certainly has an above-average proportion of gays too. The fact is, the male aesthetic is linear and the female aesthetic is curvy. The “friends of Dorothy” just don’t appreciate curves. Gays like “twinks” quite a bit, so they’re projecting the female equivalent of what they like onto public tastes. Thus heroin chic it is.
This isn’t the first time that fashion standards have gone a little crazy. Chinese foot binding, African lip plates, and facial piercings over here – need I say more? Worse, what you see is not always what you get. Due to airbrushing and photo processing, women on magazine covers – and increasingly in the movies – aren’t really what the models and actresses actually look like anyway. In fact, with Photoshop, you can even make a supermodel out of a slice of pizza. So the question is this: should we accept what the gay fashion designers say is the ideal feminine type, or go back to the curves we like?
Another factor is social pressure, best illustrated by an old joke:
Q: How are fat chicks like mopeds?
A: They’re fun to ride until your friends find out.
The Manosphere is a bit guilty of this too, with guys bragging about skinny “HB9s” and “HB10s”. Really, who cares what your friends think, or especially someone online you’ve never met?
Sure, everyone has standards. If your love life is everything you want it to be, run with it. If not, then making reasonable compromises is the most rational strategy. This doesn’t mean that you have to regard a really big one in the same way you do a skinny one, or even date her if you don’t feel like it. Remember, I said reasonable compromises!
I have standards too. Beyond a certain point, things do get a little bit iffy. Still, I’ll cut her some slack if she has enough good characteristics to compensate. For instance, a pretty face and great hair go a long way with me. I would have missed a good number of opportunities if I’d felt bound to arbitrary standards set by other people. My first really skinny girlfriend was my third girlfriend. (Unfortunately, she had some personality issues, and we’ll leave it at that.) I’m not sorry that a woman who today would be average-sized took my virginity.
I have enough data points to describe some of the good characteristics of fat chicks. They usually aren’t stuck up, and personality is important to me, no matter what she looks like. (I know how to deflect a Bitch Shield, but I don’t bother to game someone who thinks she’s God’s gift to men; that attitude is a complete turn-off.) Many are freaks in bed. I’ve found that the skinny ones – with some exceptions – are a little more likely to be pillow princesses. Finally, big gals almost always have one advantage: huge tracts of land, all natural. I love to bury my face in a big pair of sweater puppies!
Although I encourage a reasonable amount of flexibility in personal standards, I consider it a bad thing for people just to let themselves go. There comes a point where it starts getting unhealthy, and people should respect their bodies. The fact is that waistlines have been expanding both for men and women. (Not all that many guys have warrior physiques these days.) It’s a complicated issue, and it’s not going to go away overnight. Better information about diet, more exercise, and doing something about the crap that agribusiness puts in our food would go a long way.
I’m also skeptical that fat shaming works. The usual result will not be to take heed, but rather to reject the message, or run home crying and break out the ice cream. Some might consider that funny in a junior high sort of way, but it’s certainly not constructive. Let’s remember that honey catches more flies than vinegar. Many of us have improved our physiques; myself included. If we can find an opportunity to subtly bring this up and provide some constructive information, that will give better results.
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