In this episode of Drunk Ex-Pastors we revisit the issue of whether we ought to be as skeptical about scientific claims as we are, after which we finally put the “better to have loved and lost” issue to bed. Jason shares some thoughts on the issue of irony and how it didn’t exist until his own generation got all cynical and jaded. We then take a call about depression and how ineffective slogans are to help with it (plus, slogans are a dime a dozen anyway). After our break, we discuss the issue of what continually discovering new music has to say about the state of a person’s soul (as in, is one’s media consumption a microcosm that reveals how open- or closed-minded he is?). Christian is biebered by everyday pleasantries, while Jason’s bieber has to do with not caring how disappointed people are with things.
Also, a T-shirt that says “G’Day, Mate”? Seriously?
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• I see you guys more going out together like one of you finds out that you’re terminal and then you go on a road trip that ends in a Thelma and Louise moment of driving off a cliff running from the police.
• Or given the name of the show, maybe you’ll both head to Vegas and pull a Nick Cage from Leaving Las Vegas.
• You guys remember the 80’s, right? Yeah, the whole sarcasm thing did not really come into fashion until the 90’s.
• The internet has made it worse though.
• People kill the people they know or the people who live near them.
• I don’t know anything about arguing with people on Facebook.
• http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-do-astronomers-actually-find-exoplanets-180950105/?no-ist
• But like caller said, be skeptical about media reports. They generally don’t understand what the fuck they’re talking about and like to hype up things.
• Plus, we really want to find another Earth because at the rate we’re fucking this one up, it’ll be uninhabitable in 100 years.
• Science is based on the evidence that we currently have and is revised as new facts come in. While it is certainly possible that aliens from the planet Zarquon B will show up one day and say, they’ve been visiting Earth and seeding it with animals every few million years and evolution didn’t actually happen, based on the evidence we have now, that didn’t happen. Evolution did.
• It’s the willingness to adapt our theories to new evidence that separates scientists from fundamentalists.
• But I think we’ve entered a cultural phase with the internet where we’ve codified agnosticism and it has ironically reinforced fundamentalism. My theory is that facts and evidence no longer matter, only opinions do, therefore my opinion is just as valid and true as the opinion of a subject matter expert.
• Depression feels like you are drowning in the ocean, and despite the odds and everything in your body telling you to give up and die, you manage to make it back to the shore, crawling and gasping as you drag yourself on to the sand and feel the warmth of the sunlight on your skin, and then a fucking tsunami hits you and drags you back into the water.
• I’m grateful that medication helps me enough that I have more good days and average days than bad ones, but it’s still a daily struggle.
• I still have the Baptist in me, so I expect that things will get worse and worse and then I’ll die and go to hell. But it’ll only be for a trillion years.
• When God closes a door, he’s probably locked it and is about to knock the house over and kill your kids.
• I listen to what I like, whether it’s 1930’s big band, Sinatra, Elvis, the Stones, Hendrix, 80’s and 90’s stuff or modern rock-alt music.
• Just be yourself and don’t give a shit about what anyone thinks of your clothes or music. We’re too old to be vain, gentlemen.
• Christian, how are you?
• Jason, just smile and imagine the eventual revolution, Comrade, when we’re lining her up against the wall.
• Plus, if you rent your yacht, you might get to sail with Captain Ron.
I always thought of David Hume and Jonathan Swift as being pretty hardcore into the irony, but it’s true they didn’t have Junk Food t-shirts, so…..
And I thought the vintage looking shirts came in because some of us were shopping at the thrift store back when the thrift store wasn’t cool, but when the faded clingy tee look came in all the shirts at the thrift store got bought up so then Target and American Apparel started making vintage tee knock-offs. For the record, I was at the thrift store looking for flannel shirts and doc martens, since the flannel shirts at the thrift store are the softest and the docs are already broken in. But that’s probably the difference between growing up in Seattle vs the OC. And at least flannel shirts are cozy when you live somewhere that’s damp 80% of the time, so maybe that’s a “third variable” reason why grunge took off.