They ARE Very Sorry

Okay, so I moved to my new apartment. I dropped quite a bit of money in an effort to furnish said apartment and am actually getting close to being done – I still need to get the two bathrooms finished and pick up a few more kitchen needs; however it does appear that I will soon be fully “moved in”… So where do I go from here? What’s next on my silly little agenda that is my life…? I know! I’ll head on over to eHarmony and see if they can find me someone to hang out with – they can match anyone, right? Nope…

The thing is, I was rejected by eHarmony a few years back. I filled out their rather extensive questionnaire with what I believed at the time to be 100% honest answers. The result was a notification that their system could not predict good matches for me. Oh well, whatever… Perhaps I was not being as honest as I should; unfortunately, once you get rejected, you are not allowed to change your answers. I don’t know how long you need to wait before you can try again, but (at least with the email address used for your first attempt) their system is set up to block access to the questionnaire on people that get deemed unmatchable. I basically let it end there and assumed that I had made a mistake with my answers…

Today, however, I logged back on to eHarmony. Apparently, enough time had passed to clear out my old, unmatchable questionnaire and I was once again allowed to give it another shot. Now since I’ve got no reason not to try again, I filled out the questionnaire – this time with the knowledge that my last attempt was unmatchable. I spent quite a bit of time making sure that all of my answers where completely honest. The way I figured it was that, the last time I did this, I did it too quickly and must have made some silly mistake. This time, I was going to get it right. I think it took me somewhere around 2 and a half hours, but I answered all of the questions and this time I know I was 100% honest.

The result: “We’re very sorry, but our matching system cannot predict good matches for you.”

I guess that explains a lot… For one thing, it shows that I was correct in thinking that my answers to the questionnaire a few years back were actually valid. I guess I didn’t make a silly mistake; I actually am unmatchable by eHarmony. But why…?

You see, that’s the rub. They come back and tell you that “ matching system cannot identify high quality compatible matches” based on your responses to their questionnaire; however they give absolutely no explanation as to why this is. They “apologize and regret inability to find good matches” and even provide you with a free “Personality Profile” to let you learn more about yourself and “provide you with valuable insights.” I looked over the Profile provided for me and wasn’t able to find anything that would make me out and out unmatchable. It actually describes me as a pretty well adjusted, rather stable, focused and agreeable man. But then I remembered…

Whilst filling out this questionnaire, I was struck by a few of the qualities it was asking me to rank myself on. There were three in particular that, to me, stuck out like a turd in a punchbowl. They were having me rate the importance of my religious beliefs – after, by the way, I had already chosen “neither religious nor spiritual” on one of the first questions asked. This got me to pondering … “Was my lack of religion the reason I was unable to be matched?”

I would have just gone back and changed my answers for those religious-based questions as a test; however, as I stated above, one is not allowed to change any answers once one has been deemed unmatchable. That, however, didn’t stop me from starting over from scratch with a different email address; and in today’s technical society, who doesn’t have multiple email addresses that they can use, right? So that’s what I did. I started again from scratch with my work email address and changed my name and location. I answered everything as identical to the last time as I could remember except for the religious aspect – there I decided to become a rather devout Christian from the “Church-of-Christ” cult.

The result this time: I was suddenly extremely matchable and given seven pages of matches with 20 women on each. Now remember, this is for the exact same person (me) with the only difference in responses being that I was now lying about my religious beliefs.

Now I’m not really sure how mad I should be about this. It’s just one more blatant example of how religious people can be such narrow-minded, self-righteous pieces of shit. I mean, think about it; why would somebody bother setting up an online matchmaker service and automatically ban non-religious people from using it? It’s not like any atheists are going to join that site in an attempt to pull theists away from their mindless flocks. Maybe we (the atheists) are just looking to find a date as well. But I guess they’re just using that intolerance that their religion has taught them so well…

bis später,

Coriolis

There Really Oughtn’t

I hate people.

Okay, so that statement might be taken the wrong way by many – oh wait, that statement most definitely will be taken the wrong way. Whatever… The fact of the matter is that I, for one, have basically reached the end of my line when it comes to the myriad of idiots in our society these days. And I’m not about to claim that I am smarter than everyone else – far from it! What I am wondering is exactly how have we (the “normal” people) let the admittedly few douche-bags of society have so much power? Or perhaps – as usually seems to be the case – I’m wrong here. I doubt it, but I suppose it’s possible. Hear me out on this…

As I’m sure many of you already know, Penn and Teller have this wonderful show on Showtime named, aptly enough, “Bullshit!” Seeing as I decided long ago not to spend money on any of your premium cable channel offerings (it just seemed like a waste of money to me), it wasn’t until late last year that I stumbled on this show using the rather recently introduced “Instant View” feature on Netflix. Once I discovered it though, I was hooked. Finally! Somebody out there is asking the correct questions and basically showing these scam artists for what they are. Unfortunately, the more I watched, the more I realized what the actual problem is – your average Joe Schmo (at least the one’s living in America today) is more than willing to throw away any and all common sense for the opportunity to believe pretty much anything. If the bullshit were true, life would seem better; therefore people relish the idea of taking blind faith in the bullshit. Whatever happened to demanding proof? Have we honestly turned into a society where belief in ideas has become more important than the search for truth?

And what the fuck is with this latest rash of husbands going to rehab for “sex addiction”? Come on … sex addiction?! Are you kidding me?? There is no such thing as sex addiction. What’s next? We’re going to be treating people for oxygen addiction or food addiction (oh wait, that second one already exists…)? I hate to say it, but if the male of our species weren’t “addicted” to sex, you and I (and pretty much the entire human population) probably wouldn’t be here. The problem is not that these guys have an addiction; it’s that they have a penis. Personally, I consider these guys weak. I’ve written about this before and my opinion remains unchanged. Society attempting to justify infidelity as a disease, however, is pure bullshit.

But that’s what we’re looking for, right? – A way to justify our actions without having to actually legitimize them. That way we can do whatever we want and pass any consequences onto somebody else. For these “sex addicts”, it’s not their fault – they’re the real victims here. I guess if they did the impossible and didn’t sleep around on their wives they might have had to suffer blue balls for a bit. Sure, they could easily alleviate this on their own (it’s called masturbation and man has been doing it since man has been…); but I guess that’s too much to ask of these alpha males. No … it’s far better to give them a pass and let them do what they do so well – it’s not like they’ve promised not to do it… Marriage, after all, is such a dated concept.

Then there’s this new fad (and “fad” is how I would best describe it) where peer groups and, even more disturbingly, school officials are being blamed for teenage suicides. Now I understand how somebody committing suicide always has a devastating effect on those that loved them; however when was it decided that the best way to deal with these tragedies was to find somebody else to blame? We’ve all been teenagers. We all know what teenagers need to go through. For those that forgot, it’s called “growing up”. Each of us had our own unique experiences during this period and each of us found ways to cope. Unfortunately, this journey is more difficult for some; but that’s life. Holding friends (or enemies) and teachers responsible when a teenager fails to cope accomplishes nothing more than passing the feeling of failure (because I’m sure that’s what the parents feel) onto somebody else.

So what we end up with is kids being punished for being kids and adults being punished for not being able to see the future. And how, exactly, should we punish these (what should I call them?) “accomplices” for the extremely vague crime that they are supposedly guilty of? Throw ‘em in jail, perhaps? Oh, I know, let’s make the school pay millions of dollars to the kid’s parents – that’s almost as good as a resurrection I suppose… After all, the kid would still be alive if the school did its job … right?

But that’s not exactly what I’m on about and before I get too far off subject, let me return. The point I am eager to get out there is that people need to stop taking often asinine claims as truth based purely on faith. And yes, I include all religions in this basket as well. We are currently living in the most scientifically advanced era that this blue-green sphere we have chosen to call Earth has ever seen. Why, I ask, are so many people almost eager to ignore basically everything we’ve learned to get us here? Fear of the unknown is no excuse to act like a lemming…

I watched the latest episode of South Park last night – the “Medicinal Fried Chicken” episode – and almost died laughing. That show always does a wonderful job of pointing out the absurdity of our culture, usually in an even more absurd way – men purposely contracting prostate cancer in order to legally purchase weed … classic… This is yet one more example of what I am getting at. I’ve been to Amsterdam. I lived for nine months in Germany where (and I doubt many of you are aware of this) it is perfectly okay to posses up to 10g of marijuana for your personal use. They understand the dangers (or lack there of) associated with letting people smoke grass if they so choose. However here, in the “land of the free”, you’re not allowed to – although, in more and more states, this restriction is only being placed on healthy people. Now how stupid is that…?

And it all goes back to somebody, somewhere, insisting that some fact existed (smoking marijuana is a “gateway drug” for instance – that always cracks me up…) supporting whatever agenda (usually religious – always about controlling others…) they want to push. What this oftentimes results in is a loss of freedom and it’s looking more and more like nobody cares. The anti-smokers out there have basically outlawed smoking (any and all, not just pot) in pretty much any public area (if this hasn’t hit where you live yet, just wait – it will) using lies. They blatantly over-exaggerate the effects of breathing secondhand smoke to make it seem like this nuisance to them is life threatening for all. It’s not and nobody is insisting that anybody stay in an uncomfortable environment – I’m sure nobody would miss these tight-ass, presumptuous kill-joys if they decided to leave the bar… But making it illegal for all to smoke … isn’t that going a bit too far…?

I don’t know … perhaps I’m missing something here. Did I miss the meeting where it was decided that everybody should stop considering others and just assume that whatever belief system they’ve decided to subscribe to is the only valid viewpoint that exists, even when this system is based on nothing more than pure faith? As Penn Jillette so often puts it, “When somebody says ‘there ought to be a law,’ there probably oughtn’t.”

bis später,

Coriolis