Conspiracy theories are absurd.

I was mindlessly surfing the web a couple days ago and I came across a blog that was talking about how the music industry was controlled by the Illuminati. For those of you who don't hate conspiracy theorists, the Illuminati is some secret society of important people that was founded in 1776 and they held meetings in the German state Bavaria where they talked about how to overthrow corrupt European governments. Somehow, according to idiot conspiracy theorists, this society still exists today in 2010 and works to overthrow society as we know it and set in motion a New World Order. Not a cool New World Order with guys like Sting and Hulk Hogan, but an evil one with dictators and complete society control. Now this alleged Illuminati apparently finds music stars like Lady Gaga and Kanye West and pays them to write music about promiscuity and use occult symbolism to brainwash todays generation into becoming mindless slaves of this new world order.

How the nut jobs claim this works I'm not exactly clear on. Something to the effect of if we watch Lady Gaga make hand motions that look like an Egyptian Goddesses eye makeup and then she has an orgy in her music video we're all going to worship Egyptian Deity's, have orgies and mindlessly follow whatever the music says to do and that our generation is the one that is screwed. This, despite the fact that they also claim this same Illuminati is the same society that made the Beatles famous and had them put secret backwards messages in their music, but only when you warped it just right and would variate the speed at certain points so that it sounded like what you were looking for it to sound like and that these messages would ruin a previous generation. This is good science. When something doesn't fit with the point I'm trying to get across I simply change the way I test it until it does fit the results I want it to. No, I'm serious, it was the only way I got through chemistry lab. "Hmm... 16 g/mol? Well I know it's not oxygen that I centrifuged out of this because it would become gas and this is clearly solid so I'll double it and say it's sulfur then do the calculations from there." What? The class was straight regurgitation and I got an A.

So anyway, the people who believe in Illuminati are as good at life as I am at chemistry lab, which isn't very good.

Now when our generation becomes brainwashed by Kanye West and Lada Niva, Lady Gaga, other Illuminati leaders like Barack Obama, George Bush, Yasser Arafat (who in all likelihood would never have any involvement with American political leaders) and Spiderman will proceed to guide us to following a single world government under which we are like the Borg from Star Trek. You know, this single world government thing (despite how ridiculous it sounds) doesn't sound half bad. No wars, no third-world-countries, no trade restrictions. Hell, if we can get a billion Hindu's, a billion Atheists, a billion Muslims half a billion Buddhists and 2 billion Christians to agree on any one thing let these Illuminati people work their magic.

Fortunately I am immune. I listen to alternative and punk rock and they don't follow the standards set by the evil music industry. They sing against mainstream society and therefore the Illuminati don't approach them with vast amounts of money to make them famous which is why it's alternative. In fact, here is my counter-conspiracy-theory. In the early 90's Illuminati saw that Nirvana was becoming popular among young people and singing about sex and drugs yet was not using the Illuminati devil horn sign of "rock on" used by mainstream rock bands. (seriously, google it, you can't find Cobain making devil horn signs) so Courtney Love, known member of the Illuminati took him out. Cobain was a martyr in the fight against the NWO.

You should probably pretend you didn't read that last paragraph as I'm obviously making it all up.

Another one I really like is that the moon landing was in some studio. This is because solar wind, cosmic rays, not enough time delay between replies and because there are no stars in the images. Well right, solar wind and cosmic rays are a problem because the astronauts were up there in shorts and t-shirts with scuba masks for air. Then the stars should have been there because it's always night time in space, because it's space and space is night. These people are morons. They didn't have 80lb space suits on or anything for protection and we didn't land on the LIGHT side of the moon where the sun and Earth radiate vast amounts light and cameras were set for daylight exposure since they were on the moon in broad daylight. Try this, go sit in a super bright room and see if you can see stars outside or try taking a picture at night with the flash on. See if you can see any stars.

Then the time delay, on the edited documentary tapes does not represent the actual real-time which was two seconds, as expected. That time delay one is just stupid too. Let's pretend for a minute that Apollo 11 was faked. They pulled off this amazing million dollar scheme which fooled the entire world, but when it came time to record moon-shots they forgot to delay their responses 2 seconds, yeahhhhh right. That would be like an NBA star preparing nearly his entire life to be a basketball player and then forgetting the goal is to get the orange ball in the hoop you're attacking and keep it out of the hoop you're defending.

Then of course there are the Hubble shots of the moon landing sites, the 400,000 employees of the Apollo programs and the fact that the Soviet's of the 1960's, who hated the American's, acknowledged the Apollo missions and congratulated us on the accomplishments. If your arch-nemesis compliments you on something, what kind of idiot citizen does it take to refute events supported by two competing and unfriendly factions that the same event did in fact take place?

This is becoming a bit wordy, so in short - conspiracy theorists are stupid. If you believe in conspiracies, and you're actually still reading them, you should probably reevaluate your thoughts pretty heavily. Now I'm sure there are certain conspiracies that may hold a little weight, such as the one where diamonds are neither valuable nor precious stones, DeBeers simply controls the market and sets the price at whatever stupid American's will pay for them. But Illuminati controlling the popular media, political figures and putting flouride in your water to make you easier to control? Hahahaha, we do live among some easily impressionable people.

Yes, great argument. Trace amounts of fluoride in water should be banned because healthy teeth are just a way for the Illuminati to control you and make you die younger. Then we have NASA faking the Apollo missions to gain a moral victory over the Soviet's and crashing our own planes into our own towers so we could start a war. If you believe any of these you need to quit watching Fox News and reading tabloid smut magazines. Yes, I just lumped Fox News and tabloid smut together. Fox News is bestowed this honor for their claims that Mr. Rogers is evil, therefore it should be regarded as highly (or lowly) as Weekly World News and Globe. The source for all your trashy made-up entertainment news. Seriously, if we're going to consider Mr. Rogers evil, then let's consider Bat Boy and Bigfoot to be real!

Oh and my friend informed me that she had to be mentioned in my blog, so Data > Spock & Picard > Kirk. Happy nerd pride day everyone.

Ah summer..

The end of the semester wasn't exactly my finest hour. I had to skip dead week so I could come home and learn how to harass people at their homes so the census can pay me, which is real brain busting work, let me tell you. Then I had a final in each of my classes. Finals which I didn't exactly do well on, besides the one in my Earth History class. I was afraid that I'd get pretty average grades after what I felt to be an impressive semester on my part. As my grades were posted they started about how I expected. First a B+ in Structural Geology, not as good as I would have hoped but I can't really frown at a B+ I suppose. Then Abnormal Psych (my easy gen ed class) was posted as an A-. This pissed me off, how did I get an A- in a bonehead psychology class? Well I suppose a 71/100 on the final may have helped. Then my Earth History grade was posted, an A. I was sitting at a 3.64 with one grade left, Geophysics. The hardest class I've taken in college and likely the class I've put the most effort into. I scored a 34/100 on the midterm and my average lab grade was right around the 50-60% range. I had no idea how the professor would be curving the grades, but talking to other people in the class my grades sounded about typical. Finally, the last day to post grades, still nothing. I looked again at about 6PM. I had an A. What.. the hell? I checked my email and had a message from the professor saying "Good job, you got a 96/200 on the final. Sorry the class and our field area was so difficult, I hope you got something out of it, you put a lot of work into it. Your final grade is an A." My final GPA was a 3.75. Best grades I've ever gotten in a full time semester and I was taking all 3000 and 5000 level classes. Quite proud of that actually :)

I wanted to celebrate by buying myself something nice and getting dinner. I went shopping and ended up realizing the same thing I always realize when I go shopping. I already have everything I need and I don't want to needlessly spend money. I ended up with a new rock hammer and ate a microwavable meal for dinner. I really live a sad life sometimes, but it's completely my fault. Oh well.

It's summer! Yay, summer. The weather is warm, the sun is out, I don't have class and I can more or less just do whatever I want. I moved home and I've been having a pretty fun time so far. I've eaten some gourmet tofu, gone car shopping for someone else, beat my friends at a board game that involves cows and corn, been a census robot and hiked halfway up what looked to be a really pretty hike. Not off to a bad start other than the fact that I've been sick for most of it.

So I think I went on a date today, okay yeah it was a date. I just tell myself that it wasn't so I feel better about it. I don't know what it is about dating that terrifies me. A girl from high school randomly wrote me on facebook and was like "Hi you're cool!" and it pretty much made my day so I had to befriend her and I realized she was pretty cool and that I had to meet her.. again.. so not meet her, but .. eh whatever.

So here's what sucks about dating:

First dates. The whole time you're wondering what's an acceptable way to act. Do I act my annoying self and be loud because I'm with people I'm comfortable with or do I act calm with an effort to not make her uncomfortable? Do I say the raunchy sexual remark that just came to my mind even though it will certainly not impress her or do I hide it and act on my best manners because that's what's appropriate? Do I ask her lame get-to-know-you questions when there is a pause in conversation or is some silence acceptable? Is it cool if I sit on the same oversized chair as her at the ice cream place? Do I walk her to her door or will either of these actions make her uncomfortable? Is it even remotely okay to talk this much about rocks?

Dating can be so awkward, but it's unfortunately one of the best ways to learn if you like someone or not. Today I did something rare - I was my normal self on a first date. I guess not ALL first dates suck. I need to learn to be that way on all first dates.

I just realized if I post this on facebook like I do the rest of my blogs and she reads this I'll feel pretty stupid - so maybe I'll wait a day or two on that. How arrogant of me to think people actually read these incoherent loosely related cluster of sentences. I should just post it anyway.

I hate the Lakers.

While I'm on the subject of girls, I think I want to fall in love (Don't worry, I'm not going to sell out for someone who is anything short of incredible for the sake of being in love, like so many people do). I've been doing the whole dating around thing for about... well basically since Shelly. Sure I've had a few relationships and almost-serious flings mixed in, but really my longest relationship since Shelly was a crazy girl from Los Angeles who I saw a total of maybe 15 days, and other that that basically dated via Skype. A girl who also liked video games more than she did me, which is cool, video games have their perks, but they've got nothing on me! At least she was considerate enough to have us be a Sims 3 family and put my computer outside because it made me happy to be outside. I'm quite certain Shelly screwed with my head more than I let myself believe. I think I subconsciously let that effect my relations with girls I'm interested in more than I know.

Speaking of female horror stories, I went out with this girl a couple times last semester and I kept it at a distance because I knew she had a guy who she was semi-serious towards or at least was, but she insisted they weren't together. Then we sort of ended up making out recently and a week later she tells me she's not coming back to Logan because her boyfriend asked her to marry him and move wherever the army takes him. Was I seriously just the other guy? Wow, that.. is horrible of me. I honestly feel bad about it despite having been told by a couple people that I really shouldn't blame myself. I think the worst part is that I was just like "Oh yeah, that's cool. Good luck." and this boy is likely head over heels for her and would have his week ruined if he knew she cheated on him. I really am angry at myself for that. He'll probably never know, but the fact that it happened kinda bothers me.

I hate Kobe. (What the.. Why is Kobe in my spellchecker, but Angeles is not?)

Makes me curious.. Lebron, Carmello, Shaquille, Deron, Rondo... oh c'mon... Rondo? Firefox is weird. It depresses me to have to re-accept every year that the Jazz will never with the NBA championship under Jerry Sloan and that without Jerry Sloan the Jazz would likely suffer a few years of not making the playoffs.

I watched this movie called Pandorum. It was kind of like Titan AE meets Event Horizon. A ship was traveling across the galaxy to colonize a new planet because we screwed up Earth too badly and then some evil force invaded the ship and a few people woke up out of stasis to it all freaked out. I was a fan.

Oh yeah, back to how I want to be in love or something. I don't really think I even know what love is, but I imagine it's pretty cool. The times I've pretended to be in love have been fun, so if I was really head over heels for a girl I think that would just make my day.. or possibly quite a few days.. I suppose to do that though, I actually have to commit to someone and put my heart into something without holding back or hiding at all. That could be hard for me. It takes me 2 minutes to choose which orange juice concentrate I want to commit to drinking for the next week and sometimes I end up with grape juice because it's on sale. I should sleep, it's almost 2 and I have important door to door census sales.. I mean.. government work to do tomorrow. You know, this job is serving some purpose - next year any time I consider quitting school or not working as hard I'll just have to think back to a crazy old lady with 3 psychotic Pomeranian's screaming at me that she already has a security system and slamming the door in my face or the interesting man who kept interrupting me to tell me jokes like, "How can you tell an Irishman has had too much to drink? - He's Dublin over." and I'll remember how important this college education is.

Satan is necessary.

This blog post will probably be nothing short of blasphemous to most people, but I think it's a fun thought.

So assuming you believe in Christianity (specifically Mormonism) the kind of general story is that Satan has to tempt us so we can prove our worthiness. The Mormon story goes that Satan had a plan to force us to all be perfect so we could return to heaven and worship him for saving us then Jesus was like no, you all can go make your own choices and if you decide to accept me I'll be punished for you and you can come back and worship God. Meanwhile Satan gets kicked out and decides he wants to screw with our heads and tempt us to do wrong things to get as many people to come live with him in "hell" instead of with God in "heaven."

Satan sounds like a pretty bad dude at this point. What has to be considered though is that for Christ's plan to even exist, Satan must exist. Satan is what creates evil, the required antagonistic force in Christ's plan. He's what tempts us to do wrong and sin as to not go back to Christ and God, but he is completely necessary.

So did Christ and God banish him for the sake of having an element of evil? It almost sounds like had we just gone with "Satan's plan" there would have never been evil, he wouldn't have been "forcing" us to be good, there just wouldn't have been any evil to participate in. However when God denied him permission because of his arrogance in wanting the glory of a people who he didn't create evil was created at this point. This became part of Christ's plan. Satan was needed in it. Without Satan, Christ wouldn't need to be our savior.

Why does Satan get such a bad reputation then? He's just a misunderstood and incredibly arrogant individual (assuming he even exists) who made a bad choice. We should feel sorry for the guy and help him if we want to be "Christ-like," right? Also what would life be without temptation? Some of the greatest feelings in the world come from either overcoming temptation or temptation itself and without it we would never be able to prove ourselves to God to be rewarded with whatever he deems us worthy for.

This has further implications though. Satan isn't the cause of all evil is he? If a hurricane happens and kills some people is that Satan's doing or is that just natural evil? If you answer that it's Satan's doing then you have to accept that Satan helped create the universe which means he has powers similar to what we know of God. If you say that this was not Satan's doing then you have to accept that God created a universe with built in evil. If God is capable of creating evil, then would this not mean he has to have an understanding and desire for it? Furthermore, God created Satan, according to LDS beliefs. God created Satan, who is the father of all evil, so God did create evil, or maybe he just messed up a little in the whole creation of beings and some of them (a third according to Mormonism) came out wrong.

My mind just went spiraling off on a new tangent. I have to study for finals, I'm done thinking about this.