I feel like I should be commenting on recent events in the world. There was this big wedding in England that everyone cared about and then forgot once Osama bin Laden got killed and also some kind of election in that country that borders the Nation of Patrick D Ryall on all sides.

On the former, I have to say that PDR is just not a big fan of weddings. I like the idea of marriages, but the whole big wedding to start them generally just annoys me. Now, I’ve had a good time at some wedding receptions, certainly, but the ritual, the ceremony, is usually boring to me. So seeing this blown up to royal levels in England, and then covered with fervor by the local newses (I only get one news channel, people. I need variety or I miss out on everything) made it even worse.

The night before the wedding we put a flyer into the newspaper at which I work that advertised plates with an image of Prince Whichever and his ladyfriend who were getting married. If even one person saw that flyer and thought “Oh, that looks nice, I should get that,” then I apologize for not sabotaging it before it could get to you. That plate was a waste of your money.

Similarly dominating the news, and more likely to have actual effects on the world I think, is the death of the most wanted terrorist. Perhaps my favorite aspect of this whole thing was a small blurb that was in last night’s paper that, if I may paraphrase from memory, went something like “some construction worker who had flown to Afghanistan to find bin Laden himself claims that his presence scared the terrorist leader out of the mountains to the city where he was found. The construction worker now wants millions of dollars for his services.” Possibly there is more legitimacy to the guy’s claim than the small article went into, but I would like to make it clear that my presence in this apartment totally kept Osama from being here. I’d be happy to settle for just a single million.

Haiku!

Rocketship captain.
Please don’t forget your loved ones
as you soar through space.

As for the Canadian election: Pretty much nobody I know was happy with the result so… sucks for pretty much everybody I know. But rest assured, the leadership of the Nation of PDR remains dedicated to maintaining peaceful relations with Canada while simultaneously trying to bring down the current form of society as a whole.

That’s it. Go away.

I just don’t understand crossdressing. More specifically, I can’t understand why certain clothes would be assigned to certain genders. Why are dresses supposed to be just for women? It seems pretty arbitrary to me.

I guess I’m lucky that my preferred outfit, jeans and a t-shirt, is pretty much standard dude fare and that I am a dude. Thus my outfit lines up with my gender. But what if a dude wants to wear a dress? What if that is what he feels better wearing? Why do people think that’s weird? I can think of no logical reason for it. Except for maybe undergarments that actually conform to the shape of the bits they cover, clothes serves its purpose regardless of which gender it is on, right?

It is nice that for most of a century now women in men’s clothes has pretty much become accepted, but the other way around is still generally ridiculed just because of these rules that are ingrained into society for no good reason.

Anyway, since I apparently assume the Internet is some kind of voting device, I am hereby voting for the erasing of any stigmas that are still involved with crossdressing. Of course doing so would probably kind of ruin it for any people out there who get a thrill out of the “naughtiness” of dressing in clothes that aren’t “supposed” to go with their gender, but I’m sure they’ll figure out something to replace it with. My vote is for the people who just want to dress in what they like.

This last weekend I had to go into work for the first aid course they make me take every three years. Usually I’d take it with a bunch of other people, but though my good luck and other people’s illnesses, I was the only one in the course this time. It was much better that way. The instructor catering specifically to me instead of a group made it much easier to actually learn stuff. One specific thing I learned: I get annoyed by having to take breaks.

Back before my work ethic was doused by my distaste for my job I used to work right through all the breaks we would get in a day. The smokers always need to get out there and do their smoking, but PDR would rather keep on working so as to get it all done sooner. I remember back in high school when they took away our lunch breaks to keep us from fighting and we used to finish our school day at like two in the afternoon or something! That was a sweet deal! And this attitude has grown into my work life apparently. I figure that if I can get the work done quickly, I get a longer period of not-work, and that’s way better than a break during work. Granted, that really only works for jobs where you get to go home when the work is done and not jobs where you’re there for a set number of hours… I suppose that breaks improve those kind of jobs…

But anyway, why do we need so many breaks? I propose that all schools do like my school used to do. Get the kids out of there early so that they can have better afternoons. Heck, while we’re at it we could take away their Summer breaks and they’d be finished the whole schooling process years earlier! Surely when I explain it them the kids will be okay with that.

Okay, I am serious when I say I prefer not taking breaks during a workday, but if I could get Summer breaks again like in school? I would be a happy person.

So, going back as far as the old Geocities site, I have been linking to this one site where clicking on these icons they’ve got is supposed to help raise some money for some worthy causes. Apparently a bit of money actually does go to those causes, so I keep clicking. I think there was only three or four causes back when I started, but just the other day I noticed a new one, for helping homeless veterans. It seems like with this new edition it is as good a time as any to comment on something which has been bothering me for a while.

When you click on a cause’s icon it, as with any website in this day and age, shows how many people have “liked” it on Facebook. Each cause apparently having its own Facebook page, they each have their own numbers of “likers” and the numbers for each cause goes as follows:

Hunger: 67,871
Breast Cancer: 409,396
Animals: 368,019
Veterans: 4,765
Child Health: 24,292
Literacy: 24,626
Rainforest: 36,122

Okay, Breast Cancer is winning. I am not really surprised by that. For some reason breast cancer “awareness” has been a thing people have been concerned with for forever. Obviously I’m not pro-breast cancer or even cancer in general, but I’m going to complain about raising “awareness” for things that probably nobody is unaware of at this point. But here’s the thing: Apparently it worked. Almost half a million Facebookers bothered to like that page on the site (which actually sends money toward mammograms rather than just raising awareness, for the record). I mean, excepting the Animals one, the other causes don’t add up that high combines. People are aware.

Veterans comes in last place, but hey, it’s only a few days old. Next to last? Child Health and Literacy. I really would have thought that a lot of the people who would bother “liking” the page for Animals would also “like” the Children one. They’re both cute, aren’t they? And, just from my point of view, I would think that improving the health and literacy of our children would go a long way towards not only fighting breast cancer, but a lot of other problems by raising a generation well equipped to deal with them. I say we get some “Raise Better Kids Awareness” campaigns going maybe and try our hands at making a difference at it.

Of course, in reality it is entirely likely that people who “liked” the pages on Facebook just “liked” one as a means of “liking” the group, or even just “liked” one because somebody sent them a link and they’ve never even bothered going to the page. Basically, it isn’t a highly scientific way of me getting my informations, but hey, I’m just brainstorming here. Lemme alone.

In my office at work there is a radio that used to play Alice Cooper’s show at night, but for the last year has instead played a radio show by some other musicman who I don’t even really know or care to know. I could probably get a whole post out of just complaining about how I perceive this new guy to pale in comparison to the Alice Cooper show, but instead I have a much more specific complaint that isn’t localized to that show which makes the bulk of this opening paragraph a complete waste of space.

So anyway, I was listening to this show one of the nights this week and the topic of breast feeding babies in public came up. From what I heard everyone on the show came down on the “it should be allowed” side, which is where I land too, so I agree with them. But then, as always seems to occur when the topic comes up, some guy on the show started joking about how sexy breasts being out in public would be. This, I feel, is hurting the cause and yet it seems like it comes up every time the topic does.

Okay, I fully admit that my status as a heterosexual male is “amateur” at best, but even though I mostly try to keep out of that whole scene, I also reluctantly have to admit that I am sexually attracted to women. I do genuinely think breasts are pretty great. But when they’re stripped of an erotic context, they’re just body parts. I mean I can enjoy a woman’s lips or eyes just as much and they’re on display pretty much at all times, but not in an erotic context. I’m certain plenty of people are attracted to the chests of men, right, but those can be displayed just fine in most places. Why isn’t this the same?

A big part of the argument against breastfeeding in public seems to lie in the idea that breasts are somehow purely sexual things, which is pretty stupid considering their actual primary purpose is, you know, breastfeeding. Bare breasts have no special power that will corrupt society. If anything has that power it is the mystique that is built up around nudity the bare breasts that has apparently turned men into such slavering idiots that even the sight of a breastfeeding woman seems sexual to them. We should do something about that instead.

Anyway, I figure I should cut my rant short here because I know from experience that anything more and I will just be repeating the same points in different words. And anyway, nobody will ever let the mystique of nudity fade away. Keeping everyone horny is too useful as an advertising tool.