Of the Importance of Education (My Week on the Net - Mostly)

This week has been odd. In real life, and on the net.

In real life, I had to start reading the Riot Act to the wankers downstairs: the din is back ("But... we had a plumber dust the fan off!" - Sorry, Cupcake, you need a new A/C unit, not one that's been gathering dust for over a decade), now there's music, too, and they close at 1 AM! 

I hate them. I positively hate them. Excuse my French, but they don't give a fuck about the people around them. They're a pathetic example of "Me, me, me! And the rest of the world can fuck off and die, I don't give a shit!".

Still in real life, one spot of blue sky, singing birds and fluffy... stuff: I work with a few nice ladies, who are being really kind, and that's awesome. When I'm really better, I'll bake them cookies, or something.

Oh, no link, but my Sci-Fi novel is going to be Muff&Sherly - The Annotated Edition (having too much fun adding footnotes!).

On the net... Oh, boy, where do I start?

Well, let's take things in order, shall we?

Last Saturday, I went to bed as it was announced that a zoo had offered to rescue Marius (the giraffe - see prior posts). When I got up on Sunday, it was to see photos of Marius's corpse being dismembered. All the people involved in that slaughter are sticking to their guns, and that's awful. Apparently, the entire planet could have told them not to slaughter Marius, and they'd still have done it, just to show us who's boss. How mature and human is that? (Being rhetorical here.)

We need to teach compassion and empathy, or we'll be the endangered species before 2050.

Next, I caught someone making a joke (or not) about beating his wife. Does he beat his wife? I'll probably never know, but the bottom line is that most boys (because those are not finished in the head) find it funny to joke about beating up a woman. 'Chill! It's just a joke for God's sake!' they'll say, thus patronizing all the victims of abuse. If that's their idea of a joke, sorry, boys, but it's NOT funny, and that shouldn't be a common topic for pseudo-jokes. Who raised you, an amoeba?

This is one aspect of abuse that needs to be addressed... before the next millennium.

Then, I got to read posts by the lil' boy (who's quite a few years older than I, but that's another story) who keeps writing like an escapee from Pirates of the Caribbean on a bad day (he's the bloke who inspired this sordid fairy tale). On a forum mostly visited by (mostly) adult women, that bloke behaves like a peacock that thinks the king died and he's the heir to the throne (or like a bloke in a harem who managed to make the sultan believe that 'Honest to God, Guv', I'm a eunuch'. Your average fox in the stupidly welcoming hen house). 

Since I'm just a visitor there, I'm not commenting, but if he tried such a thing anywhere I'm a Mod, I'd have ripped him a new one aeons ago.

And that one illustrated the importance of teaching respect. And (full) gender equality!

Speaking of respect, the next incident is half lack of respect, half bullying: I've seen famous people who care about animal rights be lectured by some idiot who thought it was good to point out that now that they'd been informed of some issue that was going on, if they didn't act immediately, they'd be as guilty as the people at the source of the "issue". Way to go, you twat! When one's lucky enough to have on our side famous people who, let's face it, can reach a lot more people than Tom, Dick, and Harry, one doesn't risk antagonizing them by comparing them to the very people they're trying to stop from committing abuse.

As well, that reeks of bullying, because that person was basically trying to shame fellow Earthlings into doing something (whether they had the time or not, and as if they belonged to him).

That's when being polite and knowing a thing or two about strategy can be quite useful. 'Could you pretty please lend your voice to this cause; that'd be so kind of you' has got to work better than 'There's issue "ABC" over there. Now you know. If you don't do something this instant, you'll have as much blood on your hands as the actual culprits'; at least, I know how I'd react to the latter...

And today's "fun" was provided by a religious nut. I don't care that he's a bigot and that he's attempting to shove his beliefs down the throats of all Earthlings. It happens that in his miserable attempt at showing the world that he's a dedicated zealot... Oops! Sorry, a Christian, he decided to add an obelus (it's the † symbol, and you can find its definition in the OED) after his name in order to show where his loyalty lies.

Problem? Well, it's just usually used to indicate that a person is deceased, not to show that one's a Christian. Just sayin'...

And that tells us that one should always do one's homework in order to avoid being utterly ridiculous.

Right, I'll go back to adding fake footnotes to my novel.

See you...!