I sure do like these internets.

A long time ago I decided to start a blog. I like to think I’m funny and entertaining and my IQ at least breaks 85 so it seemed like a natural extension. I was just a young fool with a limited attention span so it was short lived. Why am i bringing this up? Well, I’m starting a new blog, duh.

One thing I wrote on that blog relates to what this one is all about. I was watching Cspan, because I’m a nerd, and because I love their call in shows. They are pretty brilliant, and i use the word brilliant all the time so you know it’s meaning is heavy. There is a chain of events that happen with most callers that happen like clockwork, almost as if it’s scripted. It goes like this:

1. The host reads a headline from the morning newspapers and instructs callers to call in on the proper line to share their views. There are three lines, one for Democrats, one for Republicans and one for Independents.

2. A crazy, crazy, crazy old person decides to call in and tell the world how they feel.

3. The host picks up and asks the caller to speak.

4. The caller starts soiling himself because he/she is on national TV.

5. The host repeats the request.

6. The caller mumbles, very quickly mind you, through their insane point of view on any given subject.

Now there are a few other type of callers… but none of them are entertaining. There are the know it all usually liberal types. There are the idealist kids. There are a few just regular people type people.

But anyway, my handy list sets the stage for one of the best callers I’ve ever heard. The subject was from some small headline from I don’t even know what paper. Hell at this point i don’t even remember the headline. But I know it had to do with the concept of rounding up all the Islamic people in our country and putting them in a camp. I’m guessing it was gonna be a summer camp or a fat camp, but my memory fails me so who knows, right?

So this caller who called in on the Independent line had a very short but sweet opinion on the subject. He offered in a nervous mumble “I think we should round up all the Islamic people in the world and put them on a boat and then we should nuke the boat.”

It’s hard to detect irony in a speedy mumble but I’m pretty sure this guy was dead serious. I cracked up as I always do but it sorta stuck with me. I mean why nuke the boat? Conventional weapons aren’t enough? This guy, obviously pissed off about 9/11 wasn’t satisfied with the mere death of his new arch nemeses… they had to feel the POWER of his hate. Damn the nuclear fallout on whatever ocean this boat is in, damn the costs – I mean conventional missiles have to be cheaper, right? Also, do they make boats that big?

Disturbing? Um, yeah. Hysterical? I thought so.

The greatest part of humanity, in my eyes, is our disagreements. No matter your race or religion or where in the world you were born we are all of the same prototype. We have heads with brains in them, we have the same number of fingers and toes, we walk with legs, we digest food with stomachs. Now, of course, there are exceptions to the rule, beautiful little differences like the shape of things and the varying degrees in which how well our parts work. And then there is the kid with 8 toes or the soldier whose life was dramatically altered by an IED. But that’s getting way ahead of myself, my point is that we are all born of the same mold and then everything become insanely different.

For years I thought a good use of my evening through early morning hours was to intake alcohol in rather large amounts, flirt with girls, talk music with friends, play video games, have drunken freakouts about crap out of my control. There were other people at that time that thought it was a good idea to write poetry, clean up the world’s messes, volunteer to help the needy, other liberal guilt type things. Now what happened to make me into one person and another person into something completely different? Well, we all know and would still probably argue. Nature vs Nurture, environment vs brain chemicals, etc etc. There are trillions of reasons why we are different. It’s an exceptionally easy question to answer, but impossible to answer completely.

It’s these reasons that I love arguments. They are mostly futile, I’m not gonna convince George Bush Jr that Iraq was a bad idea and he isn’t gonna convince me that it was a good one. And at the same time I’m not gonna convince someone on the far left that we can’t just pull out now because we have created too big of a mess. All of this stuff has so many layers and we argue until we are blue in the teeth about them. It’s wonderful.

Every once in a while though something breaks through. Someone brings up a point so compelling that it makes you stop and reevaluate how you feel. So even though I’m some white guy in Connecticut it’s possible for some teenager in China to give me a perspective that I never thought about. Again, it’s wonderful.

And then there is the absurd. The crazy old bastard that wants to nuke boats. The person who doesn’t understand the first thing about the subject that is talking about items completely unrelated. T3H PPL TH4T TRI 2 MAIK POINTZ TYP1NG LIEK TH1S. This is far beyond wonderful.

So that’s where the Internet comes in. I mean whats a better use of it than to verbally smash someone into the ground because of their opinion on what brand of peanut butter is better (clearly Jif).

This is also where HeyMonkeyBrain.com comes in. It’s amazingly simple and totally brilliant all at once. And I don’t use the word brilliant lightly! Neither do i use exclamations lightly? Nor do I know where to put question marks and where to put periods.

Man, I keep digressing, sorry i do that. Anywho, HeyMonkeyBrain.com is simple web application where you use a very easy to use template to create an argument and then it does all this Internet magic and it makes this very clean and brilliantly laid out page that gives your argument more weight because we all know presentation is half the battle. The problem is that some dude who goes by the name of FlipFlap has the opportunity to respond to the argument, on your page no less, and it also looks all clean and awesome. Before you know it 30 people have chimed in about your simple and poetic hypothesis and each are split up into columns either supporting or RAGING AGAINST your argument. And these people… these people… they can post links to sites supporting their views, they can link videos right into the page for those who like the moving pictures.

It captures everything that is great about us. Namely, our differences. And it includes everything i listed way up above like 9000 words ago. People will be bullish, people will be poignant, people will make you change your mind and then someone will change it back. And some people, my favorite people, will want to nuke your jar of Jif because Skippy is the king of all peanut butters.

So that’s what this whole blog is all about. My undying love of the arguments that make us who we are and the unparalleled level of awesomeness that HeyMonkeyBrain.com brings to the table.

Also, I would like to add that I just used the spellcheck built into this blog and it didn’t know what the word blog was. Classic.