We Asked Presidential Candidates what 6+4 is....Their Answers Will Shock You

We got together a slew of Presidential candidates and asked what 6+4 is, just to see if they really know their stuff.  Let's see what they had to say!

Hillary Clinton: "America and our allies, especially Israel, will be safer if we vigorously enforce the nuclear agreement with Iran and implement a broader strategy to confront Iran’s bad behavior in the region."

Wow!  We never thought about basic math that way before. 

Jeb Bush: "The cornerstone of any effective military, counterterrorism or homeland security effort is ensuring accurate and actionable intelligence."

 

Well, we better ADD that to our agenda!

Bernie Sanders: Scientists warn us if we continue burning fossil fuels, we will experience cataclysmic change, in terms of more disease, more hunger, more drought, more famine, rising sea levels, more floods, more ocean acidification, more extreme weather disturbances and more human suffering. 

YES! Finally someone answers the question what is 6+4 in a way that makes sense. 

Ben Carson: "Keeping Gitmo open is a critical element in our never-ending efforts to keep the American people safe from another cataclysmic terrorist attack."

That's a pretty radical answer to what is 6+4

Bernie Sanders from the Past: 10. I hope I don't ever run for President. 

Just goes to show how policies evolve over time huh?

Donald Trump: Wow, it's 13. Anything else you idiots need me to answer? 

Fuck you 

Guns Rights Activist Loses Foot in Hunting Accident

Darryl Walker is pictured above. "This is from when I posed for stock photos. That was a great Tuesday." - Darryl Walker



On the 15th of December, 55 year old Darryl Walker was out hunting with some old college buddies when tragedy struck.

Darryl, who friends describe as 'legally blind', mistook his own foot for a Quail while hunting and shot himself in the foot.

Darryl, a long time Guns Rights activist, claims that "absolutely nothing could have prevented this accident." When asked whether the ban of firearms within the United States would have possibly saved Darryl his foot he responded with, "while the firearm that took my foot off had a bullet flying out of its barrel at the speed of 2,500 feet per second, allowing it to have the optimal velocity to perfectly bare through every single tendon at the base of my ankle and leaving me without the ability to walk normally ever again, there is no reason a well-thrown knife could not have done the same damage."

Long-time friend David Wallace of Colorado commented that, "we are all very sad for the loss of Darryl's foot, but this is no time for political talk. This is a time for us to grieve, and we (his friends and family) would prefer that no one discuss any sort of preventive measures to protect people in the future because that's irrelevant."

Darryl went on to claim that several people lose their feet in England every year, despite the fact that guns are illegal in that pansy-ass nation of biscuit-dunkers.

Darryl's most inspiring words came as he spoke about his deep passion for the American people.

"The rights and freedoms of the American public far outweigh the importance of one mans foot. Or the lives of 30,000 Americans every year."

Trying to be A Manic Pixie Dreamgirl

A manic pixie dream girl is a film trope. A manic pixie dream girl is an endlessly fascinating object, that exists in the plot of a story only to help aid in the journey of a lonely, sensitive, artistic man. Considering these scripts are generally written by lonely, "sensitive", and artistic young men, they come across as weird fantasy fulfillment. Please, wear the weird leggings, and fucking send me on an adventure. Please, god, I love the weird leggings, I love the scavenger hunts, make me jump in the pool with all of my clothes on. Fuck. Yes. Harder. Faster. Weirder leggings.

What Manic Pixies Do to Women

This trope has been around forever, women have been compared in literature to nature, to goddesses, and generally as an other, through which men can figure out something essential to their ever important journey forward. The truth, you'll be shocked to find, is that women are humans. (No, don't say that, that ruins it.) Gross and imperfect humans. (Fuck you, they can't be.)

The constant glorification of woman as idol and the cripplingly reality of her truth, that of humanity, leaves young girls feeling disgusted by their own bodies and the humanness (sexual desire, hunger, blemishes) of their existence. Women experience twice the rate of depression than men. While some of this can be attributed to men feeling an inability to admit to the societal "weakness" of depression; much of woman's depression could easily be attributed to her position in the world, and the contradiction of what she must present to fill her role as woman.  Also maybe slightly doesn't help that 1 in 6 women are the victim of an attempted, or completed rape in their lifetimes.


When I was 16 years old I (like many 16 year old fucks) was desperate to fall in some sort of love. What scares me about looking back at my mindset, is how rooted my idea of love was, in the loss of my own autonomy. My picture of love went something like this:

Boy is mesmerized by unmatched beauty and charm of Girl (ha!)

Girl is mesmerized by unmatched intelligence and emotional depth of Boy (ha ha!)

Girl fixes broken elements of Boy (while denying all broken elements of self, by the by)

 Boy adores Girl for literally only extrinsic value (my look, quirky and nonthreatening talents I possess, that's love right?)

"It is not easy to play the idol, the fairy, the faraway princess, when one feels a bloody cloth between one's legs; and, more generally, when one is conscious of the primitive misery of being a body (Simone de Beauvoir, the second sex, 357). "

In the 8th grade, I took gym class and made friends with a group of about, 3 or 4 girls. Everyday after class, we would walk to the locker room, and passively change, while appraising our changing bodies against each other. Many of us, would cover different parts of ourselves (stomach, thighs, breasts) and look down at the floor while we stripped ourselves of sweaty and over-large white t shirts and basketball shorts. I'll never forget, everyday, we weighed each other on a clunky metal scale that sat in the locker room, as we happily discussed the benefits of certain numbers. 

Dear 8th Grade,

I fucking hate you and so does everybody else. Why are you the worst?

 Love, Alena

One salty summer me and  a close friend were walking on the beach. Wet sand was crunching and congealing in between our toes, we giggled at a stupid joke, and then her blue eyes stared straight into mine, and slowly filled with tears.

"I gained 20 pounds this year. How did that happen?"

"We're going through puberty. You just like, have thighs now. It's okay."

What I have Done to Myself

 42% of 1st-3rd grade girls want to be thinner. We are scared, and we're told the answer is to look thin, to be beautiful, to satisfy the wants and desires of men. Even the reasons we give ourselves to not be worried about thinness, have to do with saying that what men actually like, is curvy women. This kind of reasoning, doesn't solve any sort of issue, it just highlights the problem. We can't be the perfect object, because we do gain 20 pounds in a year, because wrinkles mark our feelings on our faces, because skin will always learn to sag. We can't confuse our identity with what we look like. And I have to stop objectifying myself.

"Above all, the lie to which the adolescent girl is condemned is that she must pretend to be an object, and a fascinating one, when she senses herself as an uncertain, dissociated being, well aware of her blemishes (Simone de Beauvoir, the second sex, 358). "

I still look in the mirror, and trace the patterns of my face. I still dress in ways I know will be appealing to men. I want for want for want for want for beauty. I have for so many years painted an image of myself in my head as a muse; with dark lips, cool clothes, bright hair, interesting things to say at the right time, and a coy smile in my back pocket to use at my discretion. Only now am I realizing that I'm no muse, I'm the sad boy writing in the corner. No woman can be happy as long as she identifies as the other, as the object. To be object is impossible, subject is the only truth we can ever attain.

Women now outnumber men in college enrollment. We don't have to be a slave to male desire. We can create our own lives now, in ways that even our mothers weren't able to.

But I can still see a shared sadness in all women I have met. A quiet lonely look, even (if especially) in those that look at other women as competition, even in those that live their lives differently than I do. We are considered the other still, from that which conquers and creates. so fuck that. Let's make some shit, and do some shit, and keep getting better. Because we don't have to turn ourselves into a boring object of desire. We live in an age and a country where we can be whatever the fuck we want to, and that's horrifying, and freeing. That's what freedom is.

Learning, The Internet, and Lone Shooters

How do you think that we learn things? There is a lot of varied debate about how human beings acquire knowledge. Are we hard-wired, like machines, with a set of instructions? Or, is everything we learn a result of our environment?

The truth of the matter lies in a joining of theory.

We have innate behavior, the purpose of these behaviors lie in genetic and evolutionary survival. Our innate behavior must be nurtured through our environments, in order for it to be maintained. In situations where innate behavior is not reinforced in a given environment, the behavior stops being exhibited. BUT (this is the important part that's why it's capitalized) all behavior that a specific organism has the physical capabilities of learning, can be re-learned. That fact is important because it brings hope, and hope is fun.

Empathy 

Cool. We got it. Lots of potential and shit that makes us feel good about maybe solving problems. Now let's talk about empathy. I mentioned this in my last blog post, but I want to talk about it more in depth here, the Millenial generation is less empathetic than those before.

75% of college students in 2010 are less empathetic than the students of the 1980's, and this lowering of empathy is accompanied with higher reports of narcissism.

Empathy is important for retaining properly running social structures. Being able to empathize keeps us from totally destroying the people around us. Empathy means understanding (or at least trying to understand) why someone else (other than me, I, the great almighty) does, or feels something. If it were hard for me to understand that hurting another person effects them in the same way it would me  it would be difficult to stop me, from say, killing them, because of a perceived slight. (I'm not going to murder anyone).

That's the evolutionary reason for empathy, we must continue the human race at all costs, by being nice to each other. All babies (save for those suffering from disorders) are born with the ability to empathize. This means, that we are unlearning empathy. Our environments are not reinforcing or nurturing empathetic behavior, particularly in the last decade.

What the fuck is up environment? Why don't you want me to like people? Why don't you want people to like me?! For one thing, in order to learn empathy we have to be in social situations, and we're not as much anymore. 27% of Americans live alone, and many Millenials have a difficult time navigating even just making friends. We just don't want to hang out, or do things, okay?! It's not a big deal, okay?! God.

The Internet
 
Ahh, my big old buddy the internet. That big nuanced mass of information. While we can get closer through the internet (I'm writing this post on the internet obvi) we can also start to believe our opinions hold some great magnitude and the world owes it to us to respond to our every want and need (I'm writing this post on the internet obvi).

That inflated sense of self-importance is combined with a constant influx of horrific images, statistics, and violent pornography. All of this is brought to us, through a screen that acts like a safe third party; constantly detaching us from any concept of physical reality. This internet cocktail, when properly mixed, leaves people feeling dejected, angry, bitter, and generally shitty. Sort of just what a regular cocktail does to most members of my family. The things that we see online don't seem real, but they are, very real. 

Maybe you had nurturing parents, who taught you the reasons behind scarred faces, and weather worn boots, and suitcases open on the streets with cardboard signs. Or maybe you had friends, that held out steady hands to you while tears wet your face and lap. But maybe, all you ever had was 4chan. 

I'm not going to demonize a website. 4chan is a very interesting place. It is one of the only websites functioning that promotes complete anonymity. It disregards and even shits on, upholding an image. People can post on 4chan without worrying about social convention, and the jokes that are birthed from 4chan range from hilarious to existentialist in nature. The users are varied, and I think many of them are intelligent, funny, and important members of their communities.

It is also a place that people go to, because they have to be anonymous to voice their opinions. Their opinions are dangerous, are selfish, and are revolting. 4chan users see so much graphic content on the daily, they have a hard time being shocked by anything. It's not a thing that's happening to them, it's a joke. And it's weird that anyone would be upset by anything, when all of human existence becomes twiddled down into a meme. Who cares that the person in that video was actually killed? What does it matter that you want commit a mass murder? My life is the one life that matters. And these nameless people (with lovers, and parents, and broken homes now), are the reason that I'm having a bad time.

Guns

1 in 3 Americans own a gun. 3/4 of guns used in mass shootings between 1982-2012 were obtained legally. This means that these shooters managed to get a gun, despite the system in place that is supposed to ensure that doesn't happen. Guns don't just kill people in mass shootings however, 33,636 people died from gun violence in the United States in 2013.

18.5% of the American population is diagnosed with a mental illness, making us one of the most mentally ill countries in the world. We are also, one of the most heavily armed countries in the world. 21,175 people committed suicide by firearm in the year 2013. More successful suicides are committed by firearm than any other method employed.

No argument against gun control, justifies the loss of human life, at such staggering rates.

I live in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago has some of the strictest laws on gun usage in the country, and also some of the highest murder rates by firearm. This is because of gun trafficking, this happens very frequently in the city, from other parts of Illinois, and even from bordering states. Chicago has these laws in place, because of the incredible issue of violent crime in the city. Because there aren't federal gun control laws in place, these laws have done little to mitigate the situation. Federal laws are the only way to ensure that we no longer have to suffer violence from the barrel of a gun. 

This is not a simple conversation. Guns are not the reason people kill others, or themselves, but they are the easiest and most efficient means to end life. We have to stop that in whatever way we can, that process starts with getting rid of guns.

Today, 31 people in this country, stood still. Metal flashed silver, in their gaping eyes. And now they won't ever stand again.



What did you think? Yes? No? Maybe next time? Comment and we can talk!