Author Archives: Raizen

Vegans take twice as many sick days, says UK study

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A study conducted in the UK has found that vegans take twice as many sick days as meat eaters.

Source: Daily Mail

The findings of this study goes against conventional thinking, though I’ve known for some time that veganism is not a healthier lifestyle. The difficulty in obtaining protein and the near-impossibility of finding alternative sources of necessary B vitamins (a deficiency of which can result in irreversible neurological damage) makes veganism a disastrous lifestyle choice.

By the looks of it, science is increasingly backing up the understanding that veganism is terrible for one’s health. This understanding may make it more difficult to conduct studies on the topic, as one can certainly question the ethics of asking someone to undertake a particular diet with the potential of causing neurological damage for science. However, the information we already have access to is sufficient to conclude that a vegan lifestyle should be avoided.

Still, those pushing the vegan lifestyle do succeed in winning impressionable minds to their cause. Among the selling points are treating vague symptoms like “brain fog” or “fatigue”, or appealing to an inordinate sense of guilt. “Brain fog” is a concept that is vague enough that one can easily make the case that just about anything can be blamed for it, and “fatigue” is a natural consequence of doing stuff. After going on a long hike, fatigue is normal. One can even experience fatigue after a few hours of typical activities. It’s not realistic to feel alert and focused all day, every day, no matter what your diet may be.

And the guilt thing a person should easily get over with a simple dose of realism: human beings are biological constructs suited to a predatory lifestyle. We’ve hunted and ate meat over the course of aeons, and our bodies are well-suited to this.

When a person goes against what’s worked well over the course of human history, it shouldn’t be surprising when things don’t go very well for that person. For example, that person may get to be in poorer health and require more sick days for convalescence as a result of their impractical diet.

What’s more, the study showed that vegans took more time off from work to recuperate from the cold or flu, minor ailments that most people just shrug right off. That vegans have a much more difficult time with what most of us consider a mere inconvenience doesn’t really make their diet seem very effective.

While vegans imagine that the rest of us like meat just to be mean, we eat it because it plays a critical role in maintaining good health. It certainly helps that it’s delicious.

New Ghostbusters Film May Indicate that the Film Industry is Coming Out of the Intersectional Muck

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The teaser for the upcoming Ghostbusters sequel doesn’t tell us a lot about the movie, other than the fact that there will be a new one. It’s pretty a much a minute of zooming up on the Hearse:

So, they’re making a new one. We also learned that it will be directed by Jason Reitman, the son of Ivan Reitman, who directed the original two. Here is what he has to say about it:

I’ve always thought of myself as the first Ghostbusters fan, when I was a 6-year-old visiting the set. I wanted to make a movie for all the other fans. This is the next chapter in the original franchise. It is not a reboot. What happened in the ’80s happened in the ’80s, and this is set in the present day.

Fans are thrilled about this, because they’re returning to the story in the continuity of the original two films. They’re also anticipating that this means that the 2016 reboot with the all-female team of Ghostbusters will be rendered non-canon, and strictly ignored.

Not everyone is happy about what’s going on, particularly Leslie Jones, who went on a Twitter rant that somehow brought Trump into this:

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I had no idea that the President of the United States could decide what movies were made or who to cast in them. I’d have imagined that it would have been more difficult for a Republican to have pull over the film industry, considering the institution’s history as a left-wing vehicle. In fact, the entertainment industry in general has picked on Trump at every opportunity, so it’s hard to imagine that they’re being sympathetic towards him only just now.

The film industry is a business. Like any business, they make money by making products that people actually want. As the film industry found out the hard way in 2016, people don’t want a movie where the only joke told over and over again is “girls rule, boys drool”. Generally speaking, an on-the-nose political statement doesn’t go over well, but it’s mush worse when an established franchise that had little if anything to do with feminism gets turned into yet another tool on the intersectional workbench.

The film, comic, and the rest of the entertainment industry would do well to remember that they make products in order to sell them. Ham-fisted political statements don’t usually go over very well. Get woke, go broke.

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The upcoming Ghostbusters film might be a sign that the film industry is starting to come up out of the intersectional muck. As they do so, we shouldn’t be surprised to see the usual shills banging on pots and pans as they seek out every opportunity to be offended. But because we already know what their opinions are, why even ask them? And if their opinions drag movies down, why should they even be considered?

The answers seem obvious to the rest of us, but we’ve been waiting for the film industry to catch up and come to the obvious conclusion.

I’m smarter than your dog.

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Have you ever been driving down the street and you see one of those cocky bumper stickers that says something like “My dog is smarter than your honor student”, and you thought to yourself, “Man, how arrogant can people possibly be?”

Okay dog owners, if you’re so proud of your inbred abomination and are so sure of its abilities, then how about having a go at it? I actually did graduate with honors, so if you want to compare what your dog can do with an actual honor student, then let’s see you put your dog’s smarts to the test. Not that I expect your dog to compete with even an average kindergarten student in terms of intelligence. If your dog can write compelling essays, interpret data from a scientific study, and perform integral calculus, then we can talk.

What’s that? Are you saying that that’s not reasonable to expect from a dog? That’s just my point. Just about any human student, regardless of education level, is smarter than a dog, and if a dog were to enroll in a public school or community college, the expectations of its owner would be shattered, while the poor animal wouldn’t even be able to comprehend what was happening to it. Though if a college were to offer a course on learning to crap on paper, then perhaps your dog really could rock that GPA.

Dogs aren’t just stupid, they’re annoying. Sometimes, I’d walk down a street in my neighborhood, savoring the sunshine and the gentle breeze, when suddenly it’s ARF ARF ARF Here come some genetically-engineered pile of muscle and teeth! You might be saved by the chain-link fence separating you and the monstrosity, but not if the heart attack it causes gets you first.

Is this what dog owners mean when they say that their dogs are smart? Then, after the dog nearly scares you to death, the owner comes out and yells at it, as though they expected anything different from a degraded wolf that is biologically predisposed to barking at everything that moves. Dogs are even worse in the city, where people are just about everywhere, so dogs almost always have something to bark at.

If you’re considering getting a dog, understand that there will be days that it will annoy people who just walk down the street, who will then entertain fantasies of shooting the thing.

That might even be what the dog wants, too. Dog breeds are various degrees of degradation of the wolf specie, many of which continually tremble, labor to breathe through bunched-up snouts, and in some cases, they even spontaneously die.

poodle.jpgIts entire existence is pain.

Humans have monkeyed with nature, breeding a range of detrimental characteristics on a victimized specie for our own amusement.

And they still aren’t very smart.

The Right Way to Play Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu

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The game has been out for over a month, so the timing seems right for a teambuilding guide for the theoretical few that are struggling to get very far in Pokemon: Use Pikachu and Win.

Let’s not dance around it: Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu is an easy game. It may very well be the easiest game in the series with the exception of Pokemon Let’s Go Eevee, its version counterpart. Yes, they actually are easier than Pokemon X and Y. I don’t know why, but GameFreak seems to be on this stint where they feel like they have to compete with cell phone games. Look, if I’m going to spend $60 on a JRPG, I want it to have more more to it than some vapid cell phone app with all the depth of a puddle of rainwater. Besides, cell phone games are free. It’s hard to compete with that.

This guide is about practical team-building choices for those who want to quickly and efficiently power their way through the game. It’s probably better to take one’s time and savor the experience, but some players are in a rush to get to the post-game so they can build a competitive team, even though the Let’s Go competitive scene is pretty much summed up as beat-Mewtwo-and-win. But hey, it’s the player’s choice how they play through a cutesy game about huggem-squeezems.

Pokemon-pikachu-hd-wallpaper-background.jpgGet ready to see a lot of this guy.

Obviously, Pikachu is going to be on your team. It’s going to be the strongest pokemon available to you for most of the game, and it’s given to you right from the start. Mewtwo isn’t available until the postgame, but Pikachu can get you to that point.

A pointer for those who insist on having their pokemon perfect: The gender of the partner Pikachu is determined right when you start your save file, and is obvious at that point. If it’s the one you want, go with it. Otherwise, just reset. For nature, that’s determined when you enter the grass and encounter it, and you see its nature when you receive it in Oak’s lab. This would be the only partner Pikachu you get in a save file, so if its nature or gender matters to you, take the opportunity to soft reset for it. Its IV will be flawless, so don’t worry about that.

You’ll also have the choice of which trainer to play the game as. If you’re wondering who the girl is this time, here she is:

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Her name would be Elaine (Ayumi, for the elites). I suspect that she’d be the highly-popular choice. But you can also choose to play as the boy if you want to. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The partner Pikachu can pretty much get you through the game. It’s over-the-top busted for most of the playthrough, and because EXP is distributed evenly among all team members, don’t be afraid to lean heavily on Pikachu while catching a few other pokemon for backup.

For one thing, the partner Pikachu has better stats than other Pikachu you can capture. It’s almost like starting the game with a Raichu. Better yet, you can start to chain Pikachu at Viridian Forest at the game’s outset. You start with piles of Pokeballs, so you can actually get a pretty decent chain going. If you do this, you’ll gain plenty of EXP, and as the chain continues, you’ll get Pikachu Candy. This candy will increase each of the partner Pikachu’s stats by 1, and as you give Pikachu more of them, this can really add up. You can also gain plenty of Quick Candy by chaining Pikachu, which is another perk.

You can increase Pikachu’s advantage by chaining various pokemon, such as Caterpie for Health Candy, and Oddish for Smart Candy, to name some early-game examples. It’s really not necessary to go for lots of these candies to breeze through the game, however. I mostly ignored candies as I played through, and didn’t really have any problems. This game won’t do much to challenge you, and if you exploit the games deeper mechanics, it will be easier still.

Playing with partner Pikachu seems like it’s just for fun, but increasing friendship with Pikachu makes it perform better in battle. For one thing, it can sometimes just shrug off status conditions, healing them on its own. It can also sometimes hang in there with 1 HP remaining when something would have knocked it out, giving you the opportunity to heal it up with a potion. Its critical hit rate increases, too. Not only that, if you play with Pikachu often, it can sometimes use a special move in battle that does more damage if it’s friendship level is higher, or can give a stat boost to a teammate if you (for some reason) have a different pokemon out.

One would think that Pikachu would have problems with Brock, but Pikachu can learn Double Kick at level 9, giving it a super-effective edge against the Rock types he uses. Double Kick remains a useful move for a while, but mind the fact that Rock types usually have high Defense stats which might offset the type advantage somewhat.

At Cerulean City, you’ll find a move tutor in the Pokemon Center that can teach the partner Pikachu Zippy Zap. Pikachu would already likely beat Misty as it is, but Zippy Zap is a useful priority move. What this means is that it goes first unless a faster opponent also uses a priority move. Also, this move has a 100% critical hit rate, so it does double damage, and it ignores defense stat buffs. That’s insane. And with a base speed of 120, Pikachu is likely to outspeed everything you come across (it helps that Electric types can’t be paralyzed).

Once your friendship level with Pikachu is high, you can get a Raichu outfit at the Pokemon Fan Club in Vermilion City. You might not be able to evolve the partner Pikachu into Raichu, but you can at least deck it out in its merchandise. And you get a Raichu outfit to wear, too.

The Celadon City Gym is Grass type, which resists Electric moves. This would normally be a problem for a Pikachu, but the partner Pikachu can learn a strong Flying move in the same town’s Pokemon Center. Floaty Fall is a better move than Fly because you don’t have to wait for the next turn for it to work, and it can make the opponent flinch. Two for flinching.

To get into Celadon Gym, you have to show the woman in front a cute pokemon. I tried it, and yes, Raichu can get you in. Because of course it can.

raichu heart.JPGAdorable.

What’s more, partner Pikachu can also learn a strong Water move, Splishy Splash, so it will have an option to sweep the gyms on Cinnabar Island and Viridian City.

Most of this guide is about how OP the partner Pikachu is, and how most in-game opponents don’t stand a chance against it. But what if the unthinkable happens and Pikachu gets hit with two critical hits from strong Ground moves in a row? When that happens, it helps to have some pokemon as backup. I’ve selected a couple suggestions that can help with some opponents that Pikachu might have to attack more than once to KO.

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While it might seem like a joke, Magikarp can evolve to a Gyarados at level 20. Gyarados can hit hard with strong Water moves, and with its secondary Flying typing, it will be immune to the Ground moves that Pikachu would be weak against. You can obtain a Magikarp early on if you buy one from the Magikarp salesman at the Pokemon Center at the base of Mt. Moon. The guy is supposed to come off as a conman, but obtaining a Magikarp that early on is actually a pretty sweet deal. Because party pokemon gain EXP from captures and from Pikachu’s battles, it wouldn’t take long to get a Gyarados just by having Magikarp hang around in your party.

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Pikachu can beat Lt. Surge. But if you want to be sure, you can catch a Diglett at Diglett’s Cave. I kinda feel bad for Lt. Surge. A pokemon that can beat his gym with ease can be obtained in mass quantities just outside of town. You might even be able to find and catch the evolved form, Dugtrio, instead. It’ll be able to carry it’s weight through most of the game, so it’s a nice catch. It’s mainly for getting you Lt. Surge’s gym badge with ease. You can also get his autograph, while you’re at it.

I like Surge’s taste in pokemon, by the way.

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The other three pokemon on your team is really a matter of personal preference. There are no HMs in this game to worry about, so you can add some favorites to your team or try a pokemon you might not have considered.

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The main reason to add Aerodactyl to your team is so you’ll have a pokemon to help you fly in the sky in the post-game. Charizard or Dragonite can also do the job, but Aerodactyl is the easiest to come by (just take the fossil from Pewter City to the research facility on Cinnabar Island).

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It’s hard to disagree with having a Raichu following you around, and this game really brings out its cuteness. If you’d like, you can trade a Kantonian Raichu for an Alolan Raichu in Saffron City and give that one a try. It might be hard to trade a Raichu away, but you’d be getting a Raichu in return.

I’m having a hard time thinking of a sixth pokemon for a playthrough of Let’s Go Pikachu. Pikachu can get you through the game. Arcanine looks awesome, and riding it around is fun, so give that one a try if you feel inclined.

One might ask whether there’s a pokemon that can be brought in from Pokemon Go to make the game easier. Mewtwo, maybe? Pokemon Go Park is available late in the game (Fushia City), and the pokemon you get from it aren’t very high leveled and wouldn’t really break the game in the same way that the partner Pikachu has been up until that point.

If you have the Pokeball Plus accessory, you’re in for a really easy game (more so than it was already). If you put a pokemon in it at the start of the game and take it for a long real-life walk, it’s likely to gain piles of levels when the pokemon returns from the stroll (it doesn’t actually leave the game). You can use this to make the partner Pikachu even stronger than it has to be. The partner pokemon is actually the default option. If the event Mew is still available to you and you go for that, you can have a level 1 Mew early on. But it won’t remain level 1 for very long if you return it to the ball and take it for a decent walk.

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Mew has high base stats across the board, and can learn any TM in the game. You’re free to ponder the implications of that.

So there you have it, now you know how to beat one of the easiest games on the market. If you somehow found a way to lose a battle against an in-game opponent, please let me know how you did it in the comments below.

I actually lost my first attempt against Raichu Master Charlotte. The master trainers don’t mess around.

Stop complaining about learning math.

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One of the most annoying things that I hear in an academic setting is someone asking a math teacher “when am I going to use this in life?”

It’s even worse when the math teacher doesn’t seem to have an answer for them, or they don’t seem to want to answer. The teacher has a perfect opportunity to explain their efficacy to society and at the same time smash one of the stupidest and most persistent questions in the history of academia by answering it with a set of well-made observations, but they don’t take it. It’s a tragedy.

The reason people ask this question is because they’re not in the mood for something that doesn’t give them an immediate dopamine rush, and they feel justified in dismissing something abstract, the application of which isn’t immediately evident to them. They’ll happily play complex JRPGs on their phones wherein they manipulate multipliers to give a statistical advantage, but when it comes to learning basic algebra, it suddenly becomes a chore. Then, afterwards, they’ll brag to one another about how bad they are at math because for some reason that’s something that they’re proud of.

You don’t learn math in school because someone is going to make you use it in your theoretical job, you use it to prove that you’re not an ignoramus. As a potential employer sees it, if a person is good at math, they are good at following procedures and solving problems, which is pretty much what math is. As hiring managers see it, if one applicant knows integral calculus and the other is a D student that barely passed high school algebra, and they’re both asking for the same pay, he’ll pick the one that’s not a doofus, even if the job doesn’t require the use of calculus.

The fact is, knowing more advanced math makes you more competitive.

When a person asks when they’re going to use the math that they’re learning, what they’re demonstrating is that they don’t have much insight as to how competitive they’ll have to be in a job market where having a college degree doesn’t guarantee one a well-paying job shortly after graduation.

People who think that math is boring simply don’t know about the history of math. You may have heard about the Pythagorean Theorem, it’s the geometric formula that goes something like this:

a2 + b2 = c2

The Pythagoreans were a gnostic cult, which means that they believed that there was an advantage to be had in keeping certain information secret. If the Pythagoreans had it their way, they’d have kept the formula to themselves. They actually killed someone after one of their members leaked the formula to someone who wasn’t in their sect. Knowing this, it’s kind of hard to want to credit the Pythagoreans with this formula, as they would have left us to try to figure it out on our own.

So yeah, someone actually died over this. And now a bunch of disinterested kids are doing what they can to get out of learning it because they think it’s boring and they don’t comprehend how being better at math can make them more money in just a few years.

People say that they like science and technology because they want people to think that they’re smart, but when it comes to learning the math that scientists, engineers, coders and technicians must learn, they’re suddenly reduced to being mere hapless witnesses staring at the dry-erase board in the front of the classroom with glazed-over expressions.

If you think you’re so smart, prove it, and learn some math.

The Agony of Paper Towel Dispensers

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This might seem at first blush to be yet another E/N post about something that doesn’t really make a difference. But when you’re in a public restroom, when the stakes are high over sanitary conditions, it matters more that paper towel dispensers work properly.

For some reason, it seems like I’m the only one for whom these dispensers will work. The ones I’m talking about look something like this:

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You see it, right? It says right on these machines that you’re supposed to pull down on the paper towel with both hands. When done right, the next one loads, and that’s one less surface in an unsanitary restroom that we have to come into contact with. But hold on, the one in the picture uses an illustration instead of words. So, there’s even less of an excuse to mess this up.

Yet, people still do. Oftentimes, some meathead will go in, do his business, then after washing his hands he’ll yank down on the towel with one wet hand, tearing away at the towel, and leaving the next guy with the onus to turning the knob to get the next towel to dispense.

We don’t want to turn the knob. It’s usually a moist germ farm which, upon contact with it, would necessitate washing one’s hands again.

Why even install mechanical paper towel dispensers in the first place? Why is so much mechanical complexity even necessary for something as simple as providing paper towels? You know what would be a lot more efficient? Just leaving a stack of paper towels on a shelf. It would be a snap to just take one, and it would be much easier for the janitorial staff to replace them. Sometimes, the best solution to a problem is the easiest one.

And no, I don’t want to dry my hands with those blow driers. You know which ones I mean, they’re the ones where you hit the button with your elbow to get it to run for a few seconds. They also have the motion activated driers, but you’d have to nearly touch your hand to the machine to get them to work. Then you’d have to rub your hands beneath them for about a minute-and-a-half, then maybe they’ll get dry, but not likely from the air supplied from the machine itself, but from the friction of rubbing your hands together.

The makers of those blow driers must know that they’re junk, because they went an made an “improved” version: the jet drier. Those ones blast your hands so hard that you can see an indentation from the air blowing from the machine as you put your hand under it. Is all that force really necessary? I don’t want to get stretch marks just from drying my hands.

If it’s really worth getting your hands dry, then sometimes it’s worth sacrificing a few trees. I know that the pretext is saving the environment, but when I’m in a public restroom and my hands are wet, it’s paper towels that get the job done right.

I know I’ve been doing a lot of complaining lately, so I think it’s about time I present a solution: to spread those paper towels around. It goes like this: If you see a public restroom that uses garbage mechanical dispensers or those smug air driers, make note of it. Then, next time you visit the establishment, take some paper towels with you and set them out. It might be somewhat inconvenient, but you’d be making public restrooms slightly more bearable for the rest of us.

“Good morning” is your opinion of the morning.

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When it comes to greetings, “good morning” is among the worst. To understand why, you’d have to do as I often do: analyze things more than necessary.

For one thing, it doesn’t wish well to the recipient. It hardly even acknowledges their existence outside of the very fact that the statement was directed towards them. What it does acknowledge is the time of day, and the speaker’s opinion of it.

What makes it potentially insensitive is that “good morning” doesn’t even consider the opinion of the hearer. How would you know that that person’s morning was good? What if it wasn’t? What if that person had to rush their daughter to the emergency room in the middle of the night, and after a couple suspenseful hours, discovered that she had cancer? Is it a very “good morning” for him?

Sometimes, mornings suck. Not every morning is great for everyone. I know what someone might say in response: “But I wanted them to feel appreciated, like someone is happy to see them. Is it wrong to make someone know that someone really cares about them?” If that’s what you mean to say, then say that. The main deterrent to doing so would be that it would take more words than a banal acknowledgement of the time of day. Sometimes, something that’s worth doing takes effort. Do you actually care?

Stop abusing communication with ritualistic blurbs. If you have an intent, learn to properly express it.

Sometimes, you’ll see someone at work that makes a point of saying “good morning” to whoever they deign to. There’s someone like that where I work, and he said “good morning” to me. Out of legitimate concern? No, to fish for reciprocation, because when he didn’t hear me say “good morning” right back, he started mumbling something while trudging off. To give you an idea of the kind of self-centeredness that would take, there have been god-emperors that have not felt entitled to an obligatory salutation.

By the way, when someone says “good morning” to me, I usually say “good morning” right back. Sometimes, when you respond in kind, that’s just what it takes for someone else to realize how silly they sound, and they know to feel embarrassed.

I know I sound like I’m making a big deal out of something that really isn’t one, but there was something that happened recently that got my gears grinding. One time, when it was early in the morning, I was approaching a gas station to use their restroom. As I did so, someone sitting outside spoke a loud “GOOD MORNING” at me. I suspected that she worked for the gas station, so I didn’t pay it much mind. After entering, the man behind the counter also directed a loud “GOOD MORNING” at me.

At that point, I suspected that it was made a company policy to direct insincere greetings at random strangers, and for a moment, I pondered just how glad I was that my job didn’t have me work with the general public.

But then, I tried opening the restroom door, but it was locked. There was a sign on the door saying that it was locked early in the morning for some reason.

What gives? They wish me a “good morning” with all the false enthusiasm that they can fake, but they don’t care enough about my health and well being to leave the restroom open for me? If you won’t extend to me the courtesy of using your facilities to relieve a sore bladder, then why should I care what your opinion of the morning is?

At that point, I actually considered going out back to take a leak there, but that idea was quickly decided against when I discovered a police car stationed in a nearby vacant lot, in line of sight of the back of the gas station. So, they keep the restroom locked, and an officer is ready to swoop down on anyone who would go out back? Seems like entrapment to me.

I really don’t know why so many people like telling me that the morning is to their liking. But they are welcome to their opinions, even if an opinion that is overly general and not even grammatically proper. The correct way to express the opinion would be “It is a good morning.” Upon saying this, the listener would be put in a position to ponder just what informs the speakers opinion as to what makes a morning good. Perhaps they think it’s a good morning because they don’t like rain, and it’s not raining. But, agriculturally speaking, rain is necessary and therefore good to have. A farmer might have preferred to have more rain, so their land would be more profitable. Not everyone has the same opinion.

One could say the same thing about “good afternoon” and “good evening”. It’s the same half-hearted ritualistic greeting, just different times of day. For some reason, mornings are easier to pick on. I suspect that that’s because there’s a caffeine deficit to tend to.

Just for kicks, here is a list of things that can make my morning better:

  • Having my coffee, eggs, and toast prepared. Especially coffee.
  • My second mug of coffee.
  • Video games.
  • More coffee.
  • (redacted)
  • Another cup of coffee.
  • Catching something rare in Pokemon Go.
  • Another cup of coffee at around noon.

These would improve my view of a particular morning. Not that I’d feel obligated to share an unsolicited opinion of it. I certainly wouldn’t expect random people walking down the street to care what that opinion would be.

An image to describe 2018

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The year 2018 wasn’t all bad. It’s too bad that the misinformation media is stuck on Stormy Daniels, long after she issued a confession back in January saying that the affair with Trump never happened. But hey, why would the progressive news outlets let something like facts stand in the way of their ratings trips?

If you’re one of the few people who still bother with the corporate information media, then this image describes 2018 for you pretty well:

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If you’re in the corporate media, you probably don’t read this blog, or anything that doesn’t conform to your worldview. But to the media outlet people reading this, please understand: The American public doesn’t really care about Stormy Daniels. The culture of yes-men and occupy-whatever demonstrators that you’ve surrounded yourselves with might tell you otherwise, but the American public at large, those of us who live on the surface, go to work, and live paycheck-to-paycheck, don’t care about Stormy Daniels. We don’t. It’s time to move on. It has been, for a very long time.

We’ll see what 2019 brings, but I suspect that it will be the “current year” yet again.

Why Raichu?

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Raichu has long been my favorite pokemon. People who have known me long enough usually figure it out. I’ve even been asked the question, “Why Raichu?” I think it’s about time I answer that question.

I’ve also had it asked of me whether Raichu would still have become my favorite pokemon if Pikachu weren’t the Pokemon series’ mascot. Would I have noticed a pokemon like Raichu if it didn’t receive so much reflected attention from Pikachu? I don’t know, it’s hard to say. But we don’t live in that timeline, so we really don’t have to give it much thought.

Raichu is appealing on so many levels. It’s both cute and tough at the same time, which is something that’s very difficult to pull off. It’s a very aesthetically-pleasing pokemon.

When I first saw Raichu, it was in the episode of the Pokemon anime, “Thunder Shock Showdown”. That episode introduced Raichu as the prime pokemon of the gym leader, Lt. Surge. Being Pikachu’s evolved form, Raichu had a clear statistical advantage that would make it a challenge. Eventually, Ash’s Pikachu did defeat Raichu, providing an explanation for the victory that was satisfying and at the same time had some truth to it from a game mechanics perspective. It was the first gym badge that Ash truly earned, without question.

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The episode made Raichu out to be a formidable opponent, a challenge that would be difficult to overcome. Which is why it was a change of pace when we saw another Raichu in a future episode which was friendly with Pikachu. It was an early example of how different pokemon of the same species can have a different personality.

What Raichu represents is a kind of realization of one’s potential, a coming-of-age where a person becomes what they would develop into. While some get romantic about the world we live in, the fact is, we have to develop strength in order to soldier on. Those who choose to flounder about, content with what they’ve achieved so far, tend to be left behind. A desire to realize their potential is one of the reasons why children look forward to the day that they’ve grown up.

Having said that, there is a metaphor for a careful upbringing in that a Pikachu can learn some speed-based moves by level that a Raichu that was evolved too soon would not have access to.

It’s the tendency of people to look at the past through rose-colored glasses. We tend to remember our own childhoods as idyllic, even if they might have been every bit the struggle for survival that our adulthoods may be. We remember clean environments and being under the care of our parents, and we felt loved. But the fact is, we live in a world that acquiesces to decay, and when we move outside of the shelter of our parent’s care, we take up the battles that they’ve been fighting, and we must continue to develop strength, as time will continue to move forward, whether or not we make the effort to keep up.

The Pokemon anime shows us how some of Ash’s pokemon prefer not to evolve, which was an apparent decision by the show’s writers to maintain the appeal of those pokemon at their lowest stage of growth. In the show, this is acceptable, because it’s only intended for entertainment, and in entertainment, it’s okay for the characters to maintain consistency in such a manner. But, in reality, stagnation is often rewarded with failure.

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Having attended the Pokemon TCG League a while back, I’ve made a few friends. They were some great people, and they were a blast to play with. But I do remember that one of them in particular continued to live with his parents into his late twenties. While he had a responsibility to make a better attempt to live up to his potential, his parents were enablers who were more interested in seeing him remain so that they may continue to have a child at home. Though I encouraged him to come out of his comfort zone, he wasn’t interested in living up to his potential, and his parents preferred that he didn’t. He preferred to remain a Meowth long past the point that it would have been far more practical to become a Persian.

Some might see evolving a Pikachu into a Raichu with a connotation of corruption, seeing it as an induction of change into something that loses its popular appeal and may even be more brutish and inelegant. I disagree. In a sense, it’s like the realization of maturity. Part of what it means to be a trainer is to bring out your pokemon’s potential.

While there is more to like about Raichu, I think that’s sufficient to share for now. Strength, coolness, cuteness, and a connotation of realized potential are what makes Raichu a standout pokemon to me.

By the way, in case anyone is thinking of asking, yes, Alolan Raichu also counts as a Raichu. Because it is one!

raichu pancakes.GIFPancakes!

Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu! and Pokemon Let’s Go Eevee! might already be available in your part of the world by the time you read this. Is there a generation one pokemon with meaning to you?

Smoking is stupid.

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There are a lot of smells that I hate. One of them is cheap laundry detergent. They add abrasive smells to them to make people think they are making their clothes cleaner, to the point that they’re so strong that they slap people in the face. Then people start wondering why they start breaking out, and there’s suddenly this epidemic of chemical sensitivity that leads to the purchase of “free and clear” products without the eye-watering smells.

476416.jpgThe kind of thing you should have gotten to begin with.

You might not actually have “sensitive skin”, it might be that your body has had enough with the cheap-o laundry detergents, and it’s trying to tell you to stop.

Another smell that I detest is most perfumes. I don’t know where women got the idea that wearing perfume made them more attractive. They didn’t get that idea from me. The problem is marketing, which is behind a lot of stupid purchases. To make matters worse, people get used to the smell and think they need to use more for the same effect, while the rest of us are overwhelmed by their eye-watering stink.

I know I said “most” perfumes, because some aren’t that bad. But that’s not intended as an escape clause so you can still wear your perfume on the chance that you’re not wearing the kind of trash that men actually have a problem with. If you want to smell clean, take a shower and stop covering up whatever smell you’re trying to hide.

What was it I was going to write about? Oh yeah, smoking.

Smoking is stupid, and people need to stop doing it. Even people who smoke say that they want to stop doing it, but they find it hard because they have an addiction. The fact is, nearly everyone recognizes smoking as addictive to begin with, with labels on the packaging itself serving as warning. If the packaging on the product that you consume contains a warning from the Surgeon General telling you that it can kill you dead, then maybe you shouldn’t have consumed it to begin with. But people are so short-sighted that something so obvious didn’t serve as enough of a deterrent.

People talk of addiction as a disease, now. Except that it isn’t, and those with addiction can stop using this victimhood platitude. Real diseases don’t require constant purchases in order to be maintained. If anything, they usually lead to the purchase of products in attempts to cure them, or at least alleviate their symptoms.

If you want to stop smoking cigarettes, just stop buying them.

I know how addiction goes, it makes you really want to do something. I know that some might be thinking, “That’s easy for you, because you’re not addicted to cigarettes.” The reason why I can put it into practice is because I have self control. Here’s the thing: you can decide not to do something, even if you really want to do it, and it’s better for your character if you realize that your self-control benefits you or society as a whole.

There are so many deterrents when it comes to smoking, but there are also many incentives to not smoking, like having more money. The median price of a pack of a certain brand of cigarettes including tax by state is around $7 (source), which was a lot more than I expected. If a person smokes a pack a day, they are flushing $49 a week down the toilet, or $210 a month.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind taking home $49 more a week in pay. With that kind of money, a person could buy a brand new video game every ten days. It would also help if you want something to eat besides macaroni and cheese.

I wouldn’t care so much about whether other people smoke if it weren’t for the smell that came from them when they did it. But their problems become everyone else’s, and complaining about it on some web page is a more pro-active solution than just “dealing with it”.

Speaking of, it’s ironic that when someone says “deal with it”, what they mean is just the opposite, which is more like “just shut up and take it”. I’m not going to just take it, because when I recognize a problem, I do something about it. And when that problem is you, you’re close to wishing you were someone else.

Smokers “deal with it” by going outside to smoke, because they know that no one else likes the way they smell, and they are being considerate of other people. Just kidding, they go outside because it’s a rule, and they don’t want to be punished for breaking it. Most restaurants don’t have smoking sections anymore, because they weren’t enough of a solution for the rest of us. So, outside with them. But when they go outside, they position themselves right by the door, so the wind blows their smell inside. Where there’s a way to defeat the intent of the rules that are in place, people can be counted on to find a way to do so.

Worse yet, the smell clings to just about everything that smokers go near, ruining the smell of clothing and even the upholstery of your car. It would be nice to go home to get away from it, but that’s hardly likely if you live in an apartment building, because when you open the windows to let in some fresh air (actual fresh air, not just spraying canned smells), there’s a chance that someone is smoking just outside, and it blows right in.

Because natural selection isn’t acting quickly enough on smokers, tobacco companies add various deadly chemicals to their products, because apparently tobacco companies don’t like smokers, either. Here are a list of a few common additives:

  • Acetone – An industrial cleaning agent
  • Ammonia – a household cleaning agent
  • Arsenic – a poison found in pest control products
  • Carbon Monoxide – an odorless toxic chemical
  • Lead – a toxic metal that causes neurological damage
  • Naphthalene – a toxin used in pest control products
  • Nicotine – an addictive additive conductive to growth of tumors
  • Tar – used to pave roads

This is the point where you realize that trying to get someone to quit smoking is like trying to convince them that huffing arsenic is a bad idea. It’s obvious to most of us why it’s a terrible idea with no benefits to speak of, but you’ll occasionally come across someone who will hear it and, taking another puff, would say “Yeah, so?”

In that case, what you’re up against is the sheer force of stupid. I encounter it frequently. Stupid drives with less care in the rain instead of more, views lottery tickets as an investment, thinks RAM is something you can download, makes financial decisions based on daily horoscopes, and pays to use YouTube. And stupid smokes.

Smoking is stupid.