No such thing as a common law marriage

For some back story on this rant.  My father was killed and our family is suing the people responsible.  He died without a will.  His live in girlfriend has hired a lawyer claiming they were common law married and therefore his estate (including whatever we win in the lawsuit) belongs to her. The audacity of this lady to even pull a stunt like this when we're all grieving and trying to get justice is mind blowing, but what really sticks in my craw is the sickening idea that in ass backwards Texas, she could very well get away with it.

So I got to thinking about what common law marriage really is.  It's ludacris.  In fact, only 10 states still allow common law marriage (and they're run by stupid people) so I know I'm not the only one who has a problem with this.

How do you get common law married in the ass backwards state of Texas?  You tell someone you live with a person and use his name once.   That's it.  In other words, I am now married to George Clooney because I am telling you that I live with him and my last name is now Clooney.  Does that seem legitimate to you because I doubt it would to George Clooney.  Why is it so easy to claim a marriage?  If that's really all it takes to be married, is there any point to get a license?  What's the point in fighting for marriage equality if all you have to do to be married is pretend you are? Congrats, gay people, you've had the right to be married for years and didn't even know it!

Let's be honest about where the idea for common law marriage came from.  It's an excuse.  It's a desperate attempt by the religious set to morally justify living in sin.  It's a way to scam the government come tax time.  It's a scheme by a criminal to steal property that isn't hers.

If you don't have a ring, you're not entitled to a thing.  I'm sorry, but cohabitation (no matter how long) doesn't make you married.  Having kids together doesn't make you married (my father didn't have any with this woman).  Using someone's name (after they die, as in my case) doesn't make you married.

A legal marriage involves a commitment from both parties put in writing and notarized by the state.  It does NOT involve faking a marriage especially after the person has died and can't contradict you.

Pay attention.  If you didn't ask the state for a legal marriage license, YOU ARE NOT MARRIED.  End of.

Don't mess with Mother Earth

I get really annoyed at people who drive big ass SUVs or pick up trucks with the Hemi that only get like 1 mpg and have the audacity to moan about gas prices.  Shut the hell up.  Dumbasses like you are why Big Oil can get away with price gouging.  They know it doesn't matter what they charge you, you'll pay anything to not have to rely on public transit.  They know how stupid you are.

Humanity is the one disease Mother Earth doesn't have a chance against.  We rape this planet everyday and justify it by saying it's a matter of survival.  It isn't. It's just us being irresponsible and stupid because we CAN survive and still be environmentally friendly.  We just DON'T WANT to be.

We have the technology to draw our energy from the sun.  We'd rather tear holes in the planet and choke her air with toxic fumes.  We can use reusable bags at the grocery store, but plastic is so much easier.  Hell, we throw our trash on the GROUND we're so stupid.

And do you think we can keep doing these things and NOT pay the price for it?  Mother Earth is an abused woman.  She wants REVENGE.

So she gives us drought and famine to kill us.  She gives us superstorms and floods and blizzards to kill us.  Do you really think the increase in violent weather is in no way OUR fault?

When you shit on someone, they're going to shit on you.  It's a natural response.

Mother Earth is angry and our survival depends on HER.  If you piss her off, she will get even.

It doesn't matter if you believe in climate change.  If you want food to eat, water to drink and air to breathe, you WANT to take care of the environment.  If you think your cell phone is more important, you deserve to die out.

But if you want to survive, you know that you don't mess with Mother Earth.

Christmas, a holiday of sin

I get so sick of Christian zealots condemning Halloween as the devil's holiday while they continue to promote Christmas as something sacred.  Christmas is in NO way sacred and if you really look at it, even the most pious would question it.

For starters, it's supposed to be a celebration of Jesus being born.  So what's with the tree?  What does decorating a fir tree have to do with Jesus?  NOTHING.  Decorating trees, holly wreaths on the door, mistletoe, even Christmas lights all began as PAGAN rituals most likely to celebrate nature and protect against winter.  No Jesus involved.  Yet if you don't put up a Christmas tree or question why they do, Christians will blacklist you because you must be against Christmas and Christmas is always unfairly under attack...

And where in the Bible does it say Jesus was born December 25?  No where.  That's just a date someone picked at random because it either made sense financially or it coincided with, you guessed it, a PAGAN ritual.

And Santa Claus?  The whole gift giving thing?  Pagan.  Rudolf and Frosty were created by advertisers to sell you stuff.  Capitalism has nothing to do with Jesus yet Christmas is big business and Christians will fight tooth and nail for their right to spend a bunch of money they aren't supposed to love to put presents under a tree they aren't supposed to have.

Every church ceremony, every carol sung began as paganism that early Christians incorporated into their worship to win converts to their faith.  Like it or not, that's the TRUTH about religion and our holidays reflect that.

What's the difference between Christmas paganism and Halloween paganism? There isn't one.  Shut up about how evil Halloween is and just enjoy the fact that you have a holiday to break up the monotony of your crappy life.

Islam deserves ISIS

I know this sounds hateful, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.  ISIS is God's judgement against Islam.

That so many in the Middle East continue to live in massive poverty despite the region's wealth is a judgement from God.  That the region has been at war with itself and it's neighbors for centuries and the only ones suffering are those living in the Middle East is God's judgement against jihad.  That Islam has become reviled because of its support of terrorism, is God telling Muslims to knock it off.

When your people use religion to justify murdering children, how can you not expect the world to respond in kind?  How can you blame those you attack when your actions lead your own children to suffer?  God is speaking to you, Islamists, but you're not listening.

If we look closely at what jihad and the groups who support it are saying, the belief is that jihad is the murdering of those who don't follow Islam and is ordained by God.  But what majority of people do groups like the Taliban kill?  MUSLIMS! So jihadists aren't really defending the Muslim faith.  How can they be?

Jihadists and groups like the Taliban, Hamas, Al Qaeda, etc are only after two things: money and power.  And as more Muslims continue to erroneously attribute their selfish actions to God, the more God allows them to suffer massive hardships.  God has spoken and He doesn't approve of Islam.

Maybe it was different a long time ago.  Maybe Islam was once a bastion of knowledge and had a promising future.  Maybe the Arab world was once a mighty one, but as Islam went to the darkside, as it corrupted God's name for evil purposes, God took all that away as punishment.  And ISIS, that army of evil that is currently slaughtering the "chosen" people of God?  Well, that's just one more example of God trying to tell Muslims something they refuse to hear.

Their lives are always going to suck and they will never again be a mighty people as long as they continue doing what they do.  As long as Islam supports jihad, as long as they treat women as slaves, as long as they fly planes into buildings and strap bombs onto children, God is going to keep judging them.

And judging by how rough He's been so far, it's safe to say He DOES NOT APPROVE.

Hard work gets you nowhere

When I was a kid, I was told that the keys to success were hard work and perseverance even in the face of adversity. Maybe that works in the movies or maybe even in the fight for a just causes like equality or freedom.  But in the workplace, it's all bullshit.

Don't ever mistake your employer's desire to use you to make themselves rich for the idea they actually care about you.  They don't and you're disposable to them.  If we weren't disposable, we'd have a living wage by now and there would be no outsourcing.  Hard work, loyalty, these are only words.  They won't get you anywhere in your career.

It's not what you know. It's who you know.  It's being related to the boss or sleeping with the boss.  It's schmoozing and kissing the right person's ass at the right time.  That's why we have LinkedIn.  Nepotism and cronyism gets you career advancement.  Luck, being in the right place at the right time, gets you opportunity.  Hard work mostly just gets you tired.

Oh, I'm not saying hard work won't make you feel good, like you might actually be accomplishing something or that you won't want to play down your good fortune by saying you worked hard to deserve it.  I am acknowledging that hard work alone isn't enough.

It shouldn't be that way.  If you work hard for something, you should be rewarded.  That's not the case.  People work hard their entire lives and barely scrape by.  Those lucky enough to get rich, keep getting rich while those not lucky enough to catch the breaks, don't get anything.  It's not fair.  It's capitalism.

It pisses me off when some rich person says God blessed them by giving them money. So God just said fuck you to rest of us?  God doesn't bless you with monetary wealth. Your greed made you rich and God says not to be greedy.  Greed hurts people.  It shouldn't be rewarded.

It pisses me off when someone feeds me a rags to riches story and says anyone can do it.  Bullshit.  Those are flukes, not reality.  The reality is 9 out of 10 people born into poverty will stay in poverty their entire lives.  No, we don't all have the same opportunities in life and hard work alone won't make opportunities magically appear in the ghetto.

I'm such a Debbie Downer, aren't I?

Tough. That's life.

So what do we do about it?  Can we do anything about it?  As long as the world runs on money, the answer, unfortunately, is no.  Not unless you give up what few luxuries you do have to go live in some hippie style commune.  It doesn't matter if you're a capitalist, socialist or communist.  They are all faulty systems because they all run on money.  People crave power and dominion over others and money is the best way to get that.  As long as society accepts that attitude, the poor are screwed.

I suggest rebelling against the entire money making system.  Stop trying to get rich and save yourself the headache.  Do the work you're paid to do with only the effort necessary to do a decent job, but don't take work too seriously.  It's just a paycheck because you need one.  Accept that your boss will be a dick no matter where you go and don't give them the satisfaction of making you unhappy.

But go even further and hit the rich in the only part of their anatomy they care about, their wallets.  Stop catering to corporations and go local.  Shop local, eat local, bank local.  Make a statement that the rich will understand.  You're a human being and you deserve a comfortable and dignified life regardless of your bank account.

Organized Religion Sucks. Here's Why.

There's nothing wrong with believing in whatever mumbo jumbo makes you feel better.  This isn't to bash your beliefs per se.  Just the way you go about them.

I grew up reading the Christian Bible and was taught to believe every word in it and then I saw the light.  I stretched my mind if you will.  I dared to do the one thing the religious set forbids themselves from doing.  I talked to people who believed in something different and boy did I learn.

The big three, Christianity, Judaism and Islam all seem to have the same roots. I've covered that in a previous post so I won't go over it all again here, but I will say this.  The similarities are SO similar that it's OBVIOUS that all three probably had the same original source.  Does that mean God's real? Who knows.  But it does prove my point.  RELIGION didn't come from God.  It's an INTERPRETATION of God created by MAN and since everyone interprets things differently, THAT IS WHY WE HAVE DIFFERENT RELIGIONS.

So, to reiterate, organized religion and all the crap that goes with it was invented by man.  Like it or not, it's the truth and it will stay the truth whether God is real or not.

I tried to read the Quran once.  I couldn't finish it because as good a reader as I thought I was, it didn't make sense.  The passages felt disjointed and jumped around too much.  I didn't feel inspired or even like I was reading a holy text.  It felt like the ramblings of a mad man.  I tried a different copy thinking maybe it was in the translation but no, it really is a rambling manifesto written by a guy who may have been on some serious drugs.  To believe in the sanctity of the Quran is like sanctifying Hitler's biography or Ayn Rand.  Sorry, Islam, you guys got it wrong.

But the Christian Bible is no better. Let's be honest. The "sainted" Bible is a collection of randomly selected stories that someone (we don't really know who) put together and said were holy.  I mean, come on.  After Adam and Eve, Genesis is really just a census record.  So and so beget so and so.  Why is that holy?  And we know for a FACT that King James, centuries after the first unamed person collected these stories, completely REWROTE the Bible to better suit HIM so how do we know the Bible is all that accurate?  We don't.

And Jews have a persecution complex. That's right. I said it.

But if the only objection to religion was the crazy things it gets people to believe, we could be ok with it.  The problem is it doesn't STOP there.  Oh no.  Because every religion teaches that it's the one true religion and all others are false and we can't allow false religions to corrupt the world.  No, they must be destroyed.  Even atheists believe that.  Did you know atheism is considered a religion?  What does THAT tell you?

And then there's conflict, holy wars, jihads, bull shit.  Why?  What's the point in trying to whipe out everyone who doesn't practice the same ideology as you?

Power and wealth.  Religion has never been about God.  Religion was created for the purpose of getting power and wealth.  The so called holy men made themselves kings.  Don't believe me?  Why are there mega churches?  Why does the pope have his own city? Why do the imams live in luxury while their faithful live in horrible war torn poverty?  Why are parishioners encouraged to pay tithes?  God doesn't need our money.  Organized religion is a money scheme.  It's a corporation selling God's love when God's love is free.

But worse than that, it's a power trip.  If you're Catholic, the pope outrules all other world leaders.  Why?  Because he claims God gave him that right.  Why would anyone claim God gave them dominion over others if they didn't desire power?  Humans have long justified our reckless slaughtering of animals and pillaging of natural resources by claiming God gave us the right to do so.  Islam allows men to buy and sell women because they claim God made women inferior and it is man's right to do with them as they please.  Why do people start cults? Power trip.

If there is a God, no human on the face of the earth can speak for Him or know what He truly wants from us.  Anyone who claims they do, is a liar.

Kick the nonsense of organized religion to the curb.  Put all the lies and made up ceremonies, all the hate and all the ego behind you.  You and you alone can create a relationship with whatever devine spirit you choose to believe in.

Don't waste your money paying some fraud to do it for you.

Islam may be what's wrong with the Middle East

Sometimes I beg the world to prove me wrong, but this time it refused.  I said before that without American support, without our troops and our money, without our interest, the Middle East would fall apart.  We are not even fully out and that prediction has come true.

And it was inevitable.  Let's be honest, Islam has been taken over by jihadists and war mongerers.  Whatever it started out as, it is now the religion of war.  They don't need the West to be their enemy.  They crave war so much that they are perfectly content to kill each other.  ISIS is the perfect example of this.

They are also the perfect example of why forcing a theocracy on people is a BAD idea, but that's only part of what's wrong with Islam.  Muslims don't need Christians or Jews to destroy them.  Muslims destroy THEMSELVES.  Sectarian violence is the biggest killer in the Middle East.  Jihadists kill more Muslims than Jews or Christians and Islamists are too blinded by hate to acknowledge it.  They refuse to blame themselves for their crappy situation instead using the west as a scapegoat.

Islam is the religion of war.  Until that changes, they will get what they give.