Lust vs. Trust

Call me naïve if you want, but I’m of the opinion that we, as a society, really need to once again start focusing a bit more on adherence to what is appearing to be a now long-lost characteristic – fidelity. And it’s not because I’m jaded due to any recent betrayal or anything – heck, I haven’t been in a position where this situation is even a possibility for so long that to even presume that would be silly – it’s more of an emphatic request to those that are in a position where cheating is an option to have some self control. Nothing good ever comes from betraying somebody that you are supposed to be loving. People get hurt, lives often get ruined or severely screwed up and all because some dumb-ass decided to throw away loyalty to satisfy lust. It’s stupid…

I’ll be the first to admit that my appeal is being put forward out of pure, unadulterated selfishness. I honestly believe that greater adherence to fidelity would be a big plus for people like me. Not only would it bring personal values back into the mating selection process but it would weed out all the douche bags (and believe me, in today’s society, there are a lot of douche bags) that don’t even try to hide the fact that they’ll fuck anyone they want regardless of situation. Sadly though, these days it seems that being a douche bag is seen as a plus for many. It’s like willingness to be faithful is a sign of weakness. This I do not understand…

Don’t get me wrong now … I completely understand the desire to be with an attractive mate; however I was under the impression that human beings were supposed to be intelligent. Aren’t we able to separate ourselves from the primitive urges that have always existed as a method to guarantee the survival of the species? I’m pretty sure that we really needn’t worry about whether or not enough people are reproducing in order to keep our species around – that game was won long ago… Shouldn’t we be a bit more concerned with the newer game of making this life as pleasurable as possible? I think so. I also think that the damage done on the “big picture” through infidelity far outweighs any pleasure obtained. Life, after all, is a marathon not a sprint.

I would also like to remind everyone that the individual that is in a relationship is not the only guilty party when it comes to infidelity. No … far from it – it takes two to tango and anybody that is willing to tango with an involved individual is, at least from my perspective, worse than the de facto, commonly defined cheater. Not only is this person guilty for disrespecting an often times unknown individual by having sex with his or her partner, this person is also to blame for tempting the cheater to begin with.

Please feel free to leave a comment on this posting if you disagree with me here. I mean, am I crazy? Am I the only one that feels this way? I doubt it. Why then is the world the way it is? Shouldn’t it be common sense that people shouldn’t behave like this?

And fine, I do realize that people fall out of love every day. A lot of the people that are involved in these encounters consider them justifiable due to something missing in their actual relationship. If that’s the case then why keep it secret? Nothing is stopping these people from breaking off their relationship prior to looking elsewhere for love; but no, that’s not an option. It’s better to continue the charade with the known entity and keep the new activities secret. That way they get to have their cake and eat it too. Damn the poor sap that is stupid enough to believe the lies – he (or she) doesn’t matter anyway. Right…?

bis später,

Coriolis

I'm Somebody!

Woo-hoo! I’m a somebody!

My office phone – the one that’s been sitting on my desk since I started working here last October – is fully functional. And by that, I mean that it will now ring when the number is dialed as well as take a message if I am not here to answer it. This may not seem like a big thing to pretty much anybody; but I see it as a step in some direction – perhaps the right direction…?

You see, when I started working here, I attempted to configure the voice mail on this phone. The main reason was to hopefully get the message waiting indicator to stop flashing. I figured that the messages most likely weren’t for me and, in the off chance that somebody was to call my phone and leave a message, resetting the indicator would be a good thing. I was, however, completely unable to access the phone’s voicemail features even with the handy NEAXMail AD-8 USER GUIDE and company provided Voice Mail Instruction printout as references. I could get to the company directory (which, of course, I was not included in) but never could figure out how to reach my extension’s voice mail.

Turns out that something was screwed up in the phone network and my extension (2831 – as clearly displayed on the business cards I received) wasn’t accessible at all. I could make outgoing calls from this phone, but there was no known method for getting this phone to receive incoming calls. This, of course, pretty much made my business cards useless… Oh well, what did I care? If anyone needed to contact me, they could always call my cell number. I even suggested that my cell number be used for my business cards however, when I received the cards, the inoperable number was on them.

Today, however, things are looking up! The phone is now completely functional on my extension – 2830. My business cards are still useless due to the old, incorrect number but the problem with the state-of-the-art phone networking system has been solved and I am also now even included in the company directory. As I said, I’m now a somebody… I suppose I could just hand-edit the cards and change all the 1’s to 0’s but that’s kind of tacky. Something tells me that a new set of business cards are already in the works – I didn’t request any but it wouldn’t surprise me too much if they just suddenly showed up – when it’s something I really could care less about, it usually works out … it’s those damn relevant issues that seem to give me trouble…

What? You’re still reading this nonsense? I figured that nobody would make it past paragraph 2…

bis später,

Coriolis

Semper Fido

A US Marine gleefully tosses a puppy into a ravine in Iraq – apparently to its death (ABC News). That’s pretty bad. The fact that he was stupid enough to post the video on YouTube isn’t much better. I mean what was this dipshit thinking??? Oh wait, never mind, he wasn’t thinking. We don’t train our military to think, do we? No, and especially for Marines, we train them to kill. The worse part about this whole “puppy tossing” incident is that I believe it’s going to become huge. There are already a bunch of people declaring war on this guy … “war”, on a “guy” for allegedly killing a “dog”…

Now don’t get me wrong here – it’s horrible what this guy allegedly (the conspiracy theorists are already at work with the “possible fraud” aspect of the video) did – killing an innocent puppy for the pure thrill of watching it die makes me think he could probably use some help taking care of his inner demons – but, I think that the unbridled outpouring of vengeance against him is, in many ways, far worse. He’s going to be feeling the wrath of society based on his own stupidity but I wonder if going after this one idiot is really that important. Shouldn’t we, as a society, be far more outraged about the reason this douche bag was even in Iraq? Or am I mistaken in thinking that the thousands (perhaps more – although I seriously doubt less…) of innocent human lives that have been lost be a bit more of a concern than one puppy?

This, of course, gets me to wondering exactly what level of life needs to exist for society to even begin considering its destruction a crime. I guess it all depends on the life form’s cuteness factor. See, that’s where this guy made a horrible mistake – he chose to take his aggression out on a cute animal. Cows, ducks, lambs, etc. are slaughtered daily for consumption; nobody even flinches when an insect is killed (on the contrary, it’s almost always viewed as a good thing) and don’t even get me started on plant life – we all love our beautifully manicured lawns… Heck, even humans (from what I’m told – the highest forms of life on this planet) are seen as disposable if their belief system doesn’t mesh with what society (or at least the part of society that believes it’s in control) has decided is right. But somehow the act of killing a cute little puppy has the power to offend far more than all the other deaths combined. I’m almost certain that there are even those out there that would like to see this evildoer put to death, himself, for such cruelty to a cute, innocent animal. Yeah, that would be considered apt punishment to some – the old “eye for an eye” adage taken to its usual level of insanity…

I don’t know … before you decide to jump on the bandwagon and even consider getting too upset over what this guy did, you might want to step back and view this thing from a broader perspective. Yeah, what he did would most definitely be considered extremely cruel to pretty much anybody in our society. Is it, however, much (if any) crueler than what he may need to do as standard duty over there? And I do realize that this, in no way, justifies what he did; however when young men (heck, pretty much children) are – for their first “professional” job – sent to fight a war, you’ve got to presume some noise. We need to understand that expecting these guys to all be able to cope with the situation smoothly just isn’t going to happen. Heck, often times initial careers chosen by civilians can prove to be more stressful than anticipated – there’s not much more stressful than war…

It’s a shame that it wasn’t an Iraqi soldier tossing this dog – this video could be used as PR for this war without a foreseeable finish line. Or wait; are we even fighting the Iraqi soldiers anymore? I don’t think so … from what I can gather it appears that the Iraqis are supposed to be on our side fighting somebody. Al-Qaeda? I don’t know. I guess we’re fighting that mystical creature known as “terrorism” together. It’s rather a shame that the Iraqis didn’t really need to concern themselves with this anti-western terrorism until we turned their country into a haven for it … but I digress… Wouldn’t it have been great to see one of those stereotypically clad terrorists tossing that poor puppy to its death? Yeah, that would give us yet another aphorism that we could wrongly place on our already mangled understanding of the Middle Eastern culture. Unfortunately though, it was an American. I think that’s the main reason that it is so upsetting … Americans are supposed to be the good guys … right…?

bis später,

Coriolis