Don't be afraid Americans

I really don't get why people are so upset when countries like China start behaving like America/the First World. Get iPods made by underpaid Third World employees who need to have nets outside their windows so they won't jump off their workshops and suicide. Outsource call centers to underpaid foreigners working at obscenely late hours of the night helping answer the dumb questions of dumb Americans. Enslave illegal immigrants who cross the border and make them do carpentry and have them harvest craps. Everyone wants to be America, man. This is why China is doing what its doing. Because it wants to be America. (Because this is what America does to the rest of the world) China wants to be First World.

This is the greatness of America. Contrary to popular opinion, the world doesn't hate America, the world is not repulsed by America. No. The world wants to become America! That is why it is both so beautiful and so horrible.

There can only be NONE!

They saw what America did, and what America did was magnificent. This is why I believe America will never fall, by the way. It cannot fall. It's impossible. Never. Ever. America is America. Defeat is absurd.

The reason why people (Americans) loathe what's happening around the world is because what they're seeing isn't China, it isn't Russia, it isn't the Third World, it isn't anyone. It's America. The reason why these countries do it is because they want to be America. That is why America is God's most beautiful creation. It lies. It says freedom this, democracy that, but as it does so, while its people enjoy all their iPods and consumer electronic shit and branded products, all the hardship and torture and depravities have been basically outsourced to the Third World. It's hypocrisy. But the greatness of America lies not in its hypocrisy, for all nations are by definition hypocrites. What makes America so great is that other nations want to partake in America's hypocrisy out of their own free wills, they want to join America, they want to lie with it. There is no coercion, there is no threat. Because deep down inside all of them is an American waiting to come. America came, and they want to join America in coming.

No other country has ever done something this great. But America did it. No other country has done it and no other country will ever do it again. What America has achieved is something never before seen in history. So what if America falls? So what if China replaces it? In doing so, China will merely become a new America, an America Two. Rejoice in this. For in this, America will never die. This is the truth of America.

God bless America.

China becomes more like the U.S. of A every day.


African Miners Shot By Chinese Managers

A backlash against China's powerful presence in the Zambian economy has been triggered by an incident in which 11 miners were shot by Chinese managers.

 China Embargoes Rare Earth Minerals

China, which has been blocking shipments of crucial minerals to Japan for the last month, has now quietly halted some shipments of those materials to the United States and Europe, three industry officials said this week.

America should be proud of its firstborn son. 

When China no longer oppresses its own people, and instead outsources suffering and death to worthless countries whose people are not as important as Chinamericans, then we can say that it has achieved the lofty standards of Western/First World civilized society. I think China should try its best to do this, so it will no longer have the moral failings people criticize it for. Then it can be a truly free, just and fair society.

It will become America.

Uncivil Disobedience

The environmental desolation sparked a wave of protest across the land. Not merely at the loss of livelihood from the marine catastrophe, but from long-simmering discontentments that had been bottled up for the past six terms of the regime. The dissatisfaction over divisive social issues, the disparities between rich and poor, the continuing persecution of the war against the communistas and the Moros, the curbing of media rights and the disappearances of political opposition, all was coming to head. For decades, the regime had kept a firm lid over these problems, but eventually some of it had to leak out.

People began taking to the streets in protestation. In civil disobedience to the regime and all it stood for.

 

But the regime was careful to quash any hint of dissidence. The Pulisiya had arrived in full force, and in ominous foreboding the military had also sent soldiers to support them, bringing with them armored vehicles and heavily armed troops with Armalites. For now, they stayed back, letting the Pulisiya do their work, cordoning the thousands of protesters with an anemic wall of riot shields, attack dogs and sticks. The thin blue line faced the angry masses of civiians, both sides staring each other down eye-to-eye. Taunting. Provoking. Calling each other out. It was a powder keg ready to exploderize. All it needed was just that one single spark...

Some of the protesters recognized one of the Pulisiya as a thug who had beaten their friend half to death a night ago for having violated the curfew. The Pulis man saw them and chortled, asking them what they wanted when they approached them, if they were looking for that friend of theirs who was now floating in a ditch.

They answered by smashing his skull with a rock, breaking his other bones with sticks and stones. They were done with words. They wanted it to hurt.

The Pulisiya had the excuse they needed. They advanced forward instantly at the sight their member going down, moving like a phalanx of shield and baton, implacable and unstoppable - even to the point of uncaringly stomping on their fallen friend even as he tried to get back up on his broken legs. The Pulisiya slammed their riot shields against the bodies of protesters, sending them to the ground where they would be beaten mercilessly with batons or face-stomped to the pavement.

They came with the ferocity of blue steel. Initially confident troublemakers had themselves taken down a notch when the Pulisiya's well-drilled baton-swings fractured their femurs like twigs, sending them down reeling and clutching their legs, where they felt shards of bone protrude through flesh.

A woman tried to stand defiantly, taking cues from the tank man of Tiananmen Square. She stood alone, raising her hands as if to ward off the riot shields that came to trample on the disenfranchised Philippine citizenry. She was armed with no sticks, no stones, her only possession the knapsack of food and clothes and water she had brought with her on her trip to the city.

For a moment, the Pulisiya paused, not knowing what to do with her. Unarmed, unaggressive, did she deserve the indiscriminate justice they were doling out with such fury?

A brave man joined her stand, but at this interruption prompted the Pulisiya to act. They cracked his head open with batons, and soon he staggered back to the woman and she could see that his eyes were barely opened and rolled back, that blood and brains were leaking from his head and from his ears. The man, now knowing better, reached out to the woman and tried to pull her away from the Pulis.

But before he could stagger away and bring her to safety, the Pulisiya advanced on them and trampled them underfoot, boots stomping on their faces.

The protestations had stopped, the screams had started.

But the people would not go down quietly. Not this time. Not after so much. Not after everything that had happened, after what the regime had done to them. They were sick of the graft and the corruption, sick of the authoritarianism, the lies. They all knew someone who had been taken from them, disappeared to the secret jails, or salvaged and left to die in ditches by the goons. They saw what was happening all around them, everything that had transpired, everything that was going on in their country, and at this they said 'no'.

No.

Those of the protesters clad in blood red bandannas, signifying the color of spilled blood, took out their molotov cocktails - San Miguel beer bottles filled with flammables - lit them up and threw them at the Pulisiya. They burned. The black and blue turned into yellow and orange as they were set aflame. The Pulis tried to put the fires out with water cannons, but the water shortage saw to that and all they could get out of their high-pressure hoses were feeble impotent squirts. Officers screamed as they were slowly cremated on the spot, running all over the place until they finally crumpled over and shriveled like burned leaves.

The few survivors there were ran to the military lines, and there they told the army commander what had transpired.

Communista! Sputtered the Pulis. There were communists there. "Naay mga communista didto!"

"Pila?" How much, the commander asked.

"Sila tanan! Mga communista sila tanan!" All of them, they were all communists.

"Sige," the commander acknowledged. They would deploy the troops. "I-deploy ang mga sundalo!"

The armored vehicles came. The protesters were already waiting for them. Feets clad in slippers and sandals, stomping twenty thousand strong on the gravelly earth. They came in numbers, for so many they were that their footfalls in unison caused the very ground to shake. Now was the winter of their discontent, even if their country never had winters. In the sweltering humidity, they were drenched in their own sweat and reeked of body odours. The protestants came to face the soldiers, themselves armed with nothing but their bare hands while the troops shouldered Armalites and had armored vehicles.

Once more, both sides reckoned each other in the silence before the storm. Sticks and stones and face-smashing rocks, versus assault rifles, Armalites, and tanks. It was not a fair fight. Yet the protesters were not cowed by fear. The soldiers were the ones who seemed to hesitate.

Were they ready to take the lives of those they had sworn to defend?

Then a shot rang out. They echoed through the air like the crack of thunder that came after lightning.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!

"Shit!" screamed the military commander. They had guns! "Naa silay armas!"

"Unsa atong buhaton?!" What do we do, a subordinate asked.

"Pataya sila!" Kill them, the commander shouted.

"Pataya sila tanan!"

Kill them all.

"I-pang massacre sila!"

Massacre them.

  

They raised their rifles and fired. Armalites roared, but the echoes of gunfire could only be heard when the screaming stopped. The sound of a dozen barking guns were simply drowned by the sound of men, women and children dying by scores, they turned and tried to run but in their numerosity the stampede saw just as many of them die from being trampled underfoot, crushed by the sheer mass of humanity until crushed people started bursting like overripe zits. All while the dead piled on top of them, slain by hot lead.

Then it became quiet.

A faint weeping filled the air. A child held his dead mother in one hand, while holding a toy gun in the other.

"Pusil!" Gun, a soldier shouted.

An Armalite barked. The sound of a single shot echoed in the air, and then the rattling of a spent cartridge hitting the ground.

The weeping stopped.

The soldiers left in disgust. The midday sun began baking the strewn piles of bodies, hastening the process of decomposition - just as the entire country decomposed all around them.

Feesh

Sometime, somewhere in the Philippines...

 

Fishermen hauled their boats down the garbage-strewn shores of their seaside lands. They pushed their vessels forward as they themselves waded into the waist-deep waters mixed with refuse and waste, deeper and deeper until the brackish filth was up to their chins. Then they pulled themselves up into their boats and began paddling out into the ocean.

They passed through a mangrove of death, the bloated carcasses of fish floating as the gases of decomposition inside them buoyed them to the surface. The whole place reeked, putrid with the smell of decay, much like the scent of rotten eggs. The filth of human wastes spewed forth by broken sewage systems, the industrial pollution of off-shore corporate mining and drilling drifting to the shore, all were mixed by the tides and provided the perfect growth medium for microorganisms - toxic species of dinoflagelloids - to multiply and expand at a geometric rate. They consumed the oxygen in the waters, suffocating the fishies, while infesterizing them and killing them with toxins, making even their carcasses inedible and unfit for human consumption.

A seagull swooped down to eat one of the floating fishes, and as it swallowed the fishy it too was instantly affected by the poisoning. The seagull spasmed mid air and dropped like a brick, falling into the black lagoon with a plop.

The fishermen shook their heads at this. It wasn't like this, not in the past, in the old days when men respected nature and lived in harmony with the ocean and the trees, the birds and the fishes of the seas. But now...

They were forced to paddle far out further than their traditional fishing grounds. They had begun their journey in the early morning, but only by midday had they reached their destination - the clear blue oceans where the poisonous red tide hadn't affected the waters yet, where all they had to contend with were the heavy metals seeping from off-shore corporate drill-mining.

Their ancestors had told them of a secret oasis of sealife in the middle of the deep blue sea. An underwater mountain protruded from the deep abyss, extending nearly to the surface, and there - so far away from the shoreline - bloomed a hidden reef filled with vibrant life, with colorful sea creatures and magnificent untouched corals.

This was the last hope of the forlorn Filipino fishermen. It would take too long for them to set up their drift nets and wait for hours, not when they had only so much time left until sundown when the curfew would come into effect - when the military helicopter patrols would shoot anyone traveling outside at night, even in the sea. For these fishermen, their livelihood was their only source of income, their only source of food. They had to get enough fish to sell to the markets, they had to get enough fish for their families.

They didn't bring their nets with them. Instead, they had with them glass bottles of Coca-Cola sodas and Pepsis. They filled them with powder, topped them with fuses. They lit them and threw them into the ocean.

The dynamites detonated and the sheer shock instantly killed scores of fishies. They also shattered the precious corals that were the fishies' homes, the one thing that sustained the fragile ecosystem of the secret reef. But the fishermen no longer had any care, for then they jumped into the water, with nothing but pouch-bags and bamboo snorkels, and they began stuffing the dead fishies into their beltbags and the broken corals too - which could be sold to the rich people in Manila as paperweights or as decorations for their aquariums.

By the end of the day, they had collected hundreds of fishies after dynamiting more secret oasis-reefs, thus denuding the life-filled peaks of those undersea mountains. As the sun sank into the horizon, the fishermen returned to dry land, paddling as quickly as their tired bodies could - not wanting to be late for the curfew and catching the government's unwanted attention. They arrived at friendly shores, where they were greeted by their worried families.

Children laughed and smiled and played with the carefree innocence of the young. They ran around the beach, one of them being pushed on a wheelchair that had belonged to an elder family member who had passed away recently when they couldn't afford her treatment and medicines. There was a puffer fish on the sand, gasping for water as its ballooned form slowly died. A laughing child came across it and began kicking it, playing kickball, sipa.

Before the child's parents could shout a warning, the puffer fish's spines stung the child's foot and soon she became ill from the poisonous fish's venom. They could not afford any medicine, so they merely tied the child's leg with rope and tried to suck the poison out of it.

****

Days later, after the fishermen finally had enough and protested to the government - and were subsequently beaten with sticks for their defiance - two children came across a beautiful blonde lady, a foreigner, a tourista. Instead of going on pre-arranged tour bus trips around the country's hand-sanitized tourist sights, she chose to walk around by herself, wishing to see the country's true face.

"Ask the American Woman, she will know," the first child said.

The second child nodded and hopped over to the foreigner lady.

"Ms. American Woman, will my foot grow back?" the child asked her innocently.




 Welcome to the Philippines

ONE HUNDRED WHAT?!

While my father was browsing Yahoo! Philippines, I saw a news article titled 'PNoy's First 100 Days' or something. Whatever. Though I didn't bother reading that article, seeing the title made me think - and some have said that it is a dangerous thing, my thinking. 

See, the election of our illustrious leader, our great helmsman, El Presidente Benigno S. Aquino v3.0, son of national hero-martyr Benigno S. Aquino v2.0 and first ever Seniorita Presidenta Corazon Aquino, was a momentous political event for our country. For me. It was my first time participating in our fair country's political processes, the first time that I - as an adult - had my say in glourious democracy and such and such. Except I didn't.

Because like a dumb fuck, I only filled out the front side of the voting paper thing and I didn't realize that there was something to fill up in the back. Then I passed the paper, and the voting machine ate it like a binging bulimic and belched loudly, oh well. Whatever.

ANYWAY. At first I was going to vote for the man who'd win, Binignit Aquino. I was like many of those who did vote for him, uneducated and easily caught by the hype(rthyroids?). I supported, and still support, the Reproductive Health bill for what it stood for, and liked to see the state break free from the shackles of the Vatican. But. And it's a big butt. Someone directed me to the Luisita Massacre and when I found out that Aquino, or at least his family, was complicit in the goddamn murder of a whole bunch of protestating farmers, well, I promptly added some blue to my yellow and went green. (A metaphor saying that I voted for Generalissimo Gibo instead)

Looking back at it, turns out my choice was a sound one. Let someone else champion the RH bill, because after one hundred days, our illustrious Presidente Peenoy (PNoy?) has turned out to be an utterly underwhelming ugh. And, man, I mean UGH. 

So now, 100 days have passed. One hundred days. Some would say that it's still too early to make any judgments or assessments or biopsies or whatevers on the President, and others would say that all things considered he did good with the economy and is showing some promise. And there are those who say that the whole August hostage taking thing, and those videos of police officers torturing suspects by tying their penises to strings and giving them a good yank, and goddamn students blowing each other up with fucking bombs in the fucking bar exam over some stupid fraternity shit in law school (objection your honor!), have had the effect of taking a shit in Aquino's swimming pool. Now there's a huge turd floating in the chlorinated water, and everyone's screaming and getting out of the pool faster than you can scream "SHARK!", and though everyone loathes to admit it, there IS a huge piece of crap floating there even if nobody wants to look at it. 

My own opinion leans towards the latter. I love poop jokes. If human civilization began with the invention of toilets, where man civilized himself by taking a dump in a glourious porcelain throne instead of holes in the ground, then toilet humor must be one of the main facets of civilized society. Am i rite? Da, comrades.

So, therefore, I conclude with my esteemed approximation, that in light of our glourious El Presidente's inconsistent performance so far - wavering between acceptable and as expected of a head of state, and the abysmal with all the screwups we've seen thus yet - I have uncovered that the fairest and most consistent and dependable thing he's accomplished, the most reliable act he performs day to day, the only single thing we can count on him to fulfill, the thing he has achieved in every single one of the ONE HUNDRED DAYS is... wait for it... 

SHIT

Oh man. Oh man. Some of you might say that I'm being unfair. Mean-spirited. Harsh. Rude. Crude. Freud. Dude. You prudes. But think about it! 

Think about it.

Shit. Generously assuming that the El Presidente is a normal sample of a human being, then it is a fair approximation to make that he shits at least once a day. For me, a person who shits only once every two days or so, this is a noteworthy fact. So, in short, you can depend on the Presidente to shit every day. 


Shit, as in the act of voiding one's bowels of excrements and craps, fecal matter - that great and most joyful, relieving, biological process of depositing the wastes we have accumulated in our body-temples dedicated to whatever beings we may or may not worship, that sacrament of sphincters, the consecration of clenching, there on that sacred throne of immaculate(ly conceived) white porcelain as we take dumps as though we ourselves are giving birth on a manger. Shit.

The President takes a shit everyday. You can trust him to do that. You can bet your life on it. And even if he doesn't excrete excrement, doesn't deposit his leavings on a toilet bowl, doesn't wipe his ass with the silk the bourgeois are so accustomed to caressing their behinds, he still shits.

He is so full of shit that even when he speaks, he is shitting. Look at him speak, look at him answer to reporters during the fallout of the hostage crisis, look at his mouth and the crap that comes out of it. Verbal diarrhea. How so, you ask? Well, look at how he converses with the journos - he can't even say anything straight, whenever he talks he ends up digressing and wandering into all sorts of topics only tangentially related to the matter at hand, he ends up answering none of the questions asked. He just wanders on, like a lost person shambling around without a clue as to where he's headed. Ambling around.

This is why when he was running for Presidente he shied out of that public debate. This is why when he was running for Presidente, they never aired footage of him talking or conversing over a period of time. Because if people saw him speak like how he talks now, they probably would've had second thoughts. Just look at him ramble on and on and on! 

It's a bit like how I ramble on and on. It's shit. And speaking of shit...

His face is shit. 

You heard me right. During the night of the hostage taking, after a whole bunch of people died and stuff, some journalist asked him in that press conference if he should apologize to China. Our glourious Presidente said that there was no need to apologize to China, because nothing wrong was done.

Then the next day, the Presidente visited the scene of the crime, went around the blood-stained bullet-riddled bus, and knowing that cameras were present and that he was being watched, he then cracked a smile. Whoops. Then that caused some poo-poo, and the President ended up apologizing for his inappropriate expressions. Get this. He had to apologize for his face. 

Oh man, what a guy, he had to say sorry because his face was wrong. Man. See, more shit. It didn't even have to come from his ass. Woah. How do you shit with your face? That's like magic. Eat your heart out David Beckham. Or was it Blaine. Who cares, fuck'em.

So after this fiasco, now we have a Justice threatening to step down over 'differences of policies' with the Presidente's policies - namely because he had his dudes alter the findings of the IIRC report, modifying it and absolving the DILG chief and PNP director and Manila Veep Mayor.

Puno is the President's long-time buddy and fellow shooting aficionado.

Puno is Tagalog for tree. Puno is also the name of some DILG guy who got fingered by the original IIRC thing. Puno is also the guy who the Presidente spared in his modifications to the IIRC thing. Puno is also the Presidente's superbestfriend forever. Uh-oh.

Another thing that ticked me off was when ABS CBN's Maria Ressa resigned. Shit, man. I hardly knew her at all, but I saw her on ANC when she was being grilled by Enrile and, man, when I saw her in action and saw her fence with all those politicos and Senaturds, man. She was eloquent, she was intelligent, she was quick-thinking, she wasn't tubby like Jessica Soho, she looked alright. Man, I want to have her babies. Is she single?

But more seriously. She sparred with those Senaturds and with words like "crystallize" and with clear and articulate explanations, reasoned replies, and her riposting the seemingly relentless and unstoppable Enrile (complete with his sunglasses), man. She was brilliant. She was fantastic. She should be the President! At least she knows how to talk like a human being, not like the guy we've got now. Man.

I mean, dig this. 

Senaturd: "Why did you not turn the camera away when the hostage taker's brother was being arrested?"

Goddamn Maria "Ruin Your Shit" Ressa: "We had a dilemma because on one hand, we didn't want to whatever the situation by filming the hostage taker's bro being captured. But on the other hand, the brother was begging for his life and we were concerned, because last week the very same police department was implicated in torturing suspects by trying to yank their dicks off with rope."

Translation: Fuck the po-lice.

Alternative translation: There are legitimate problems with the police, stop trying to pass the blame to the media (who was doing their jobs), go and blame the police instead (who are not doing their jobs, unless their job description involved 'mechanical castrationists').

What badassery. What a woman.

If only people like her were our Presidente, we wouldn't have any worries (well, we'd still HAVE worries, but we'd have less to worry about since we wouldn't have to worry about our Presidente being a fucking moron). Someone who's intelligent, someone who's got that rare and mysterious thing called common sense, someone who can talk properly and understandably like a humanoid being without straying off-topic and wandering into happy-land or wherever Pee-Noy wanders to when he's trying to answer questions (and failing).

Goddamn Pee-Noy. It's like when you pee while taking a crap. Man. Oh man.

One of the bad things about the Philippines, aside from its President, is the weather. I wish we had winter. Did you know that you can write your name in the snow with your Pee-Noy? Haha, bad joke. Awesome joke. Horrible joke. Tee-hee! lulz

God, where do I come up with these puns? I should be a stand-up comedian. Except if I say this stuff here, I'll probably get killed or arrested by some government goon squad. Hah.

Man, I'm glad I voted for Gibo. But I'm still kind of sad, when it comes down to it, because I told my friends that I wanted to vote for Aquino because of his support of the RH bill. I like the RH bill, family planning and natural/artificial contraceptives can help people. I'm also Pro-Choice. But, ugh, the worst thing is that this thing I support ends up getting championed by one of the persons I end up least liking. Gah. He says he'll make the country better, he says he'll do this and that, but so far what we've seen is a goddamn disappointment. Maybe it's not entirely his fault, because this country is full of goddamn disappointments and you'd have to be blind with nationalistic pride to not-see that. But still. The face of the RH bill, the face of change, the face of the supposed future of the Philippines, is now the guy who ends up having to apologize to China for his face?

What a bummer.

There are other, far worthier, people who could do this instead of a wannabe Senator who can't even get a single bill passed, who ends up becoming a wannabe President who only got there because of Brand Name recognition (patented copyright Aquino trademark logo brand). Ugh. A man who belongs to a family that's taken land from poor farmers, and has them shot by government goon-squads when they go and protest and try to get their land back. That's fucking obscene. Everything wrong in this country is embodied in this whole sordid affair. Political dynasties. The disparity between rich and poor. The power wielded by the haves, contrasted with the have-nots - even though the haves are the ones who don't have brains. A country ruled by absolute power turned absolute corruption, where those who rule maintain their high place through force and farce.  

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. It was funny, wasn't it? Maybe. Maybe not. Who gives a shit. Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Shroomedian is the only thing that makes sense.

Maria "No Bullshit" Ressa should run for Presiente. I'd vote her in a heartbeat. Then she'd crystallize a stalagmite, lubricate it, and shove it like a suppository up all their... 


What the fuck was up with that "wang-wang" bullshit anyway?

Inflammable Means Flammable? What is this country?

Firefighters watch as home burns to the ground

OBION COUNTY, Tenn. - Imagine your home catches fire but the local fire department won't respond, then watches it burn. That's exactly what happened to a local family tonight.
A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.

The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late.  They wouldn't do anything to stop his house from burning.
Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton.  But the Cranicks did not pay.

The mayor said if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck.

This reminds me of how in the Philippines, when there is a fire the Fire Department will send trucks and stuff, but they arrive to the scene the firemen will say that they are out of water. This is why whenever there is a fire, the first thing people will do is to get wads of money to give to the firemen, since if the firemen have money then they'll decide that they're not out of water.

The Chinese Volunteer Firemen try to beat the Fire Department to the scene and try to get there first, but when the Fire Department guys are on the scene first they block the way of the Chinese Volunteers. The Chinese Volunteers can't do anything when this happens, because if they do the right thing and try put the fire out, they're afraid that the firemen from the Fire Department will come after them and do reprisals by beating them up (or killing them) or something.

This is what my mom tells me though. I don't want to find out first hand.


I am glad the Philippines follows the American model. :)

Democracy's Drip Dick

Lots of people tend to view the First World very positively. Especially if you're one of those from the Third World, like me. When your dinky little country is broken down, rife with corruption and poverty, you tend to look up to countries like America and regard them with high esteem. They're rich, they're bathed in luxuries that your fellow countrymen can only dream of, they're powerful and their people are prosperous and well taken cared. You see them as shining beacons of good things, like freedom and democracy, and warm apple pie fresh from the oven.

However, as I grew up, this image was slowly tarnished. Like how there's a shining statue in the middle of a courtyard, and gradually over a period of time bird droppings start accumulating on it, at first just a tiny stain of bird poop, but then eventually the whole damn thing gets covered in crap! Except, when you remove these outside stains, when you stick your fingers into what's truly inside these shining beacons of the First World - turns out they're not just covered in crap, they're filled with it. Like a Bavarian-filled donut with bat guano fillings. Like a septic tank wrapped in dough.

Last week, we got another shining example of Western wonderment, when it was revealed that the United States secretly infected Guatemalans with sexually transmitted diseases.

The discovery of the long-ago experiments stems from another, far better known episode of federal tampering with test subjects to study sexually transmitted diseases: the long-running "Tuskegee experiment," studying 399 poor black men from Macon County, Ala., who had been diagnosed with syphilis but never informed of their condition. Federal scientists simply told the men they had "bad blood" and researchers compiled a four-decades-long study monitoring "untreated syphilis in the male Negro." Researchers never treated the illness over its usually fatal course, even after the simple remedy of penicillin was shown to be an effective syphilis treatment; participants received only free meals and medical exams, together with federal funding of their funeral expenses after they died. The study began in 1932, continuing right through to 1972, when it was exposed in media reports.

One of the better-known experts on the Tuskegee scandal is Susan Reverby, a professor of women's and gender studies at Wellesley College who has published two books on the subject. As she was researching her most recent book, Reverby learned of the Guatemalan project, in which researchers from the U.S. Public Health Service conducted experiments on 696 male and female patients housed at Guatemala's National Mental Health Hospital. The scientists injected the patients with gonorrhea and syphilis -- and even encouraged many of them to pass the disease on to others.

"It was done in conjunction with the Guatemalan government," Reverby told The Upshot in a phone interview Friday morning. "They had permission from the Guatemalan government."

Uh oh. You know how America likes to outsource or export dirty jobs, like carpentry, to illegal Mexicans? Or how the unpleasant job of wiping old people's butts in retirement homes are passed on to Filipino nurses? Or call center jobs going to Indians? It's a bit like that. First Worlders like to compare themselves with countries like Iran or China or Quebec and feel all high and mighty because their butts are so clean, because they've wiped their cheeks with silk. 

First World countries don't have human rights violations, they don't have mass starvation or disease or war. Why? Because like carpenters, nurses and call center employees, they've exported these things to the outside world as well - to the Third World. Their people are too good for that, First Worlders in America and the West are better than Third World people in Asia, Latin America, Africa or the Middle East. 

So the inglourious job of becoming guinea pigs for STD research, the miserable task of getting invaded and bombed out, and the honor of manufacturing shiny new iPods and iPads and iPhones and iCraps in miserable Chinese sweatshop factories, goes to those of us in the Third World - those of us who looked up to the First World and saw them as beacons of hope and enlightenment in all the crap around us. 

With this sobering realization, which is itself as superficial as it is depressing, I leave you with the following statement. Of course the Western First World bourgeois will rush to defend their actions, saying that apologies are not necessary for past atrocities, that the First World nations deserves their slot and the rest of the world should just know their place and keep their mouths shut in humble subservience to them. In order to preempt these shits, I'll just do my best George Bush/Fox News/United States of SPARTAFREEDOMERICA impersonation with tongue firmly in cheek, and the taste of irony lingering in mein tastebuds:

The Guatemalans sacrificed much for the United States of America's war on microorganism terror, thus showing themselves to be truly with America rather than against it. There is no need to apologize for this, as casualties are an acceptable loss for any war, and like the vans full of Iraqi children torn to pieces by helicopter fire for the terroristic act of being in proximity to a bunch of Iraqis on the ground with Reuters camera crews, this is merely an unfortunate case of collateral damage - not an atrocity, despite what these limp-dicked liberals and anti-American communists would say. No lives are ever lost in vain in the war against terror, be it in the Middle East, the Middle Earth, or in the infections of the middle ear. These Guatemalans gave their lives, and had their precious bodily fluids sapped and impurified, in the name of something far greater than themselves and their country. American foreign interests are God's most beautiful creation. 

So for their values, their loyalties, and in knowing what is most important in the free world - namely the United States of America - these Guatemalan patriots have done their solemn duties in refreshing the tree of liberty from time to time with their infected blood and urethral discharges. God bless Guatemala, but not as much as He blesses America. Thank you, all of you.

ROBOT RIVERS!

This is actress Summer Glau. Isn't she adorable? In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles she plays a killer robot. In Firefly she plays a mentally-traumatized waifish girl named River Tam. Both these characters are Hello Kitty Murder Machines (awww!) And if you combine it, it comes out as ROBOT RIVER! ROBOT RIVERS! Yay! Isn't she cute? Hai! Kawaii desu fishsticks-sama weeabo-chan! Hai! Hai! Hai! =^___________________________^=

:3

All that aside, this blog really isn't just about Robot Rivers. The blog is named Robot Rivers because its one of my catchphrases, and its catchy with the alliterations. So I asked some friendses and one of them suggesteds that I uses its, and I was like 'why nots?'. So here it is. I named the blog Robot Rivers.

But this blog isn't about robots, or rivers. After wandering the internet for some time, I decided to give blogging a shot because I found out that my incessant internet ramblings amused people. Well, some people. Other people probably gnash their teeth and stamp their feet, or think I'm being a fatty nerd - and fatty nerds are lame, am i rite? Etcetera. So I thought, hey, why not? Let's try blogging and see what people think about my deranged ramblings when presented to a hopefully wider audience. I hope it works out, and hopefully people will find my stuff amusing, if not worthwhile, and even if they don't, if I just make them gnash their teeth and stamp their feet in objection, I'll still be happy. Because, man, I love doing that. Amusing people. And/or making them gnash their teeth and stamp their feet in outrage. Or both!

So, without further ado, ROBOT RIVERS is go! Look out, internet, here I come! And as they say, Geronimoes!