I’m fairly certain ‘YOLO’ is just ‘carpe diem’ for stupid people.
“
| — | Jack Black |
Do you know what it is? Your relationship with the state? What you are, as a voter, is you are inheriting a 300-year abusive relationship. It’s like you’ve had a 300-year marriage to a guy who beats the shit out of you every day. Now, yeah, in the beginning, yeah, he was weaker, he was smaller, he didn’t beat you up. But he’s been working out! He’s now about 10 times your size and he beats the shit out of you every day. And after 300 years of this marriage, you’re running around saying, ‘Oh, no, you see this time he’s going to change, he’s going to be better, he’s going to be nice to me, he’s going to give me what I want, he’s going to bring me flowers, there’s going to be romance and ponies!’ It’s crap! It’s bullshit! They take, with guns, and throw millions in jail. This is an abusive relationship and, after 300 fucking years, wake up to the reality to what it is! It is brutality with rhetoric. It is a fist in the glove of kindly speeches. And what do you do after a 300 year abusive relationship where you get beaten up more and more every day? You get a divorce! You walk away, you take your pride and leave! You don’t legitimize a violent, coercive, brutal, hierarchical, hegemonic system by pretending that you have a say; by pretending that the brutality of war and empire and violence and enslavement and coercion and jailing. The rape rooms of prisons have millions of people in them. The vast majority of whom ended up there because they carried the wrong type of vegetation in their pockets. This is a fascist, brutal dictatorship and if you participate you are saying it is voluntary. You are trying to work with the illusion that, if you vote, the gun will be pointed at some one else than you. But it won’t; Obama, McCain, doesn’t matter. No matter who you vote for, the government still stays in power.
“
| — | Stefan Molyneux, “The Truth About Voting” |
If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floor if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.
“
| — | Anthony Bourdain |
Perhaps all romance is like that; not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different colour.
“
| — | Jeanette Winterson |
I’ve seen a ton on the Facebooks about ‘thanking veterans for their service’. As a veteran, let me just be very straightforward and honest with you: We didn’t ‘serve our country’; we don’t actually serve our brothers/sisters or our neighbors. We serve the interests of capital. We never risked our lives or spent months on deployment away from our family and friends so they can have this abstract concept called ‘freedom’. We served big oil, big coal, Coca-Cola, Kellogg, Brown and Root, and all the other big Capital interests who don’t know a fucking thing about sacrifice. These people will never have to deal with the loss of a loved one or the physical and/or psychological scars that those who ‘serve’ and their families have to deal with for the rest of their lives. The most patriotic thing someone can do is to tell truth to power and dedicate yourself to building power to overthrow these sociopathic assholes. I served with some of the most real and genuine people I’ve ever met. You’ll never see solidarity like the kind of solidarity you experience when your life depends on the person next to you. But most of us didn’t join for that; we joined because we were fucking poor and didn’t have many other options.
“
| — | An anti-capitalist veteran |
It’s a strange thing, how you can love somebody, how you can be all eaten up inside with needing them—and they simply don’t need you. That’s all there is to it, and neither of you can do anything about it. And they’ll be the same way with someone else, and someone else will be the same way about you and it goes on and on—this desperate need—and only once in a rare million do the same two people need each other.
“
| — | Madeleine L’Engle |
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft, brown earth with the grasses waving above one’s head and listen to silence; to have no yesterday and no tomorrow; to forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
“
| — | Oscar Wilde |
I’m not different for the sake of being different, only for the desperate sake of being myself.
“
| — | Vivian Stanshall |
There are many animals that society has labeled as “stupid” or “pests” when they are anything but. Rats, pigeons, squirrels, and crows are four of the top ten smartest animals. So why are they known as disease agents rather than little geniuses?
1⃣ Rats have very developed senses of hearing, smell, touch—through their long whiskers—and taste. Although they have a reputation of carrying diseases, they’re less likely than dogs or cats to transmit parasites and viruses. They’re actually quite clean, spending several hours every day grooming themselves and each other. They are very social and affectionate animals, and love being in the company of their own species or humans. They take care of the injured and sick rats in their group. Because they’re so smart—they can find shortcuts, loopholes and escape routes in laboratory experiments—rats are widely used—and abused—in research.
2⃣ Pigeons can identify themselves in a mirror, be taught to perform a sequence of movements and discriminate subtle differences between two objects can recognize hundreds of images even after several years have passed— not bad for a “pest”
3⃣ Most squirrels display an impressive array of tricks and strategies that help them survive. They’ve adapted to living alongside humans, eating out of bird-feeders, flower gardens and whatever food might be lying around. They are also able to store food for leaner times, and then find their hidden morsels many months later. They may also pretend to hide food in order to confuse potential thieves, which researchers believe shows an advanced level of cunning and intellect.
4⃣ Crows living in urban areas are known to gather nuts from trees and then place them in the street for passing cars to crack open the shells. Then, after waiting patiently for the light to change, they return to the street to retrieve their nutty snack. Crows also communicate in elaborate population-specific dialects and play games and tricks on one another.
Smart little guys aren’t they? Speciesism sucks #vegansofig
We should never feel like we’re going too far in breaking the law, because whatever laws you break to liberate animals or to protect the environment are very insignificant compared to the laws that are broken by that parliament of whores in Washington. They are the biggest lawbreakers, the biggest destroyers, the biggest mass-murderers on this planet right now.
“
| — | Paul Watson |
