the darkerside to rants

Let’s all party hard.

[Currently listening to: Serenade fur streicher Nr.13 G-dur, KV 525 "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" 4. Rondo. Allegro from the album "Mozart: Eine kleine Nachtmusik,Serenata Notturna.3 Divertimenti" by Herbert Von Karajan]
So, it seems a light rail development in Phoenix is hitting a roadblock (yes, pun intended).

Outside of the fact that there is once again a NIMBY crowd on a crusdae, some of the comments are pure Gold.

• Bob Chevalier, 66, moved into the area in 1964. He is worried light rail will bring increased traffic and the criminal element into the neighborhood. The city calls option one “neighborhood improvement but it looks like a neighborhood tear down to me,” Chevalier said.

“They claim moving the lines over the west side will cost them an extra million over the cost of buying all these houses, I don’t believe that,” he said. “What’s a million?”

Yeah Bob, we all know crime doesn’t pay and that criminals have to rely on public transit to being able to offer their drugs. As for what a million is? That’s the amount of money you will have to fork over as part of your taxes. So next time you star whining about high taxes that you are totally fine with the Government spending an extra million if it benefits you and your paranoia.

• Robert Antram, has lived in the neighborhood since 2005. “Light rail doesn’t make a difference to me because I drive my automobile,” he said. “I’m in the second row of houses east of 19th, so I feel I’m safe.”

Yes Rob, you are safe in that second row,. The Light rail Train will not jump your house and instead go for your neighbours…. Or are you implying something else entirely here?

Boy, I am so glad the people learn….. NOT

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

Seneca the Younger

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

George Bernard Shaw

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Epicurus

You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep-seated need to believe.

Carl Sagan

A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

Albert Einstein

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Aldous Huxley

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don’t know where it goes
But It’s home to me and I walk alone

• If God had intended us not to masturbate he would’ve made our arms shorter.
• The very existence of flame throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.
• Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.
• Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?
• I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
• There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.
• Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
• Religion convinced the world that there’s an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there’s 10 things he doesn’t want you to do or else you’ll go to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! …And he needs money! He’s all powerful, but he can’t handle money!

I don’t like words that hide the truth. I don’t like words that conceal reality. I don’t like euphemisms, or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason, it just keeps getting worse. I’ll give you an example of that. There’s a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It’s when a fighting person’s nervous system has been stressed to it’s absolute peak and maximum. Can’t take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap.

In the first world war, that condition was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves. That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the second world war came along and very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn’t seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell shock! Battle fatigue. Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called operational exhaustion. Hey, were up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It’s totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car.

Then of course, came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it’s no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we’ve added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I’ll bet you if we’d of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time.

Of course that isn’t only true for America…. But he was an American….

This I find utterly sad

Yeah, it’s the wild wild west here.