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Author: Mike Maples

Monday, October 21, 2013

Inherent Value

I really love posting, writing, or joking onstage about how much of a bitter dick I am throughout my daily life. This is one such post.

As some of you may know, I am graduating with my Bachelor's degree in one week. If you didn't know that, it is because I suffer from scholastic shame. Without going into detail, let's just say that my school is a very popular online college, represented by a mythical flaming bird.

I have had many gripes over the years, with many-a-shitty-letter written to the muckety-mucks at the university, often to no effect. Now that I approach graduation, the school informs me that one of my student loans is reported as defaulted, to which my financial counselor likens to a "break" from academia that I must have taken. The following post was my retort verbatim (minus the pictures, obviously. What am I, a goddamn rube? Wrong! I am a learned man!). Enjoy.

Friday, October 18, 2013

How To Consume A Child

Recently, the people of Florida were shocked when a 14-year-old girl by the name of Rebecca Sedwick tragically took her own life due to the ravages of cyber-bullying and other difficulties with particular kids at her school. The details surrounding her death are tragic at best and enraging at worst. 

Any child lost is a failure of human beings as a species; either we failed to protect our offspring or we produced offspring that we could never protect in the first place. However, I am personally at an impasse about how I feel regarding this terrible situation. 

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Stranglehold

I'm leading this one off with a quote, because I think it applies to the basic pulse of this post, perhaps this blog in general.  
“Think of a rock polisher, one of those drums, goes round and round, rolls twenty-four/seven, full of water and rocks and gravel. Grinding it all up. Round and round. Polishing those ugly rocks into gemstones. That’s the earth. Why it goes around. We’re the rocks. And what happens to us—the drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and victory and abuse—why, that’s just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted
Let me just point out that nearly all surveys done recently on the subject show that no one likes any of their elected officials anymore. This is ironic, of course, since we voted for our representatives under the assumptions that they would stick to their (see also: OUR) values while remaining flexible enough to negotiate. That's their entire job: negotiation. If they don't negotiate, then they're useless.