That's why you're still kids, you're stupid.

Okay, i don't normally comment on stuff like this, but this picture caught my eye while i was randomly flitting about the internet on this chilly, cloudy Thanksgiving Eve Eve....

....this is a photo of One Direction, currently the biggest and most profitable boy band on the planet.  I've seen female coworkers swoon over their songs, but i had no idea they looked like that.  What... the... fuck.  They look.... so.... i mean, is it just me?  Or do they just look incredibly weird and lame?  Is this what preteen girls currently fap to?

I mean, jeez.  Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, i could see the appeal of those groups, even if i didn't like their music.  But look at those guys.  They look like... what do they look like, Jimmy?

Dorks.

Yeah, they look like dorks.

I really do not understand anything anymore.

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The Prism of Reality

It's true what they say, it really all is in the eye of the old beholder, ain't it?  Reality is elastic, entirely dependent upon the consciousness observing it.... at least, that's the conclusion i have to make after hearing about this "Knockout Game" bullshit on the news this morning.  You've heard that crap, right?  These random thuggy kids walk up and smack the shit out of random people on the street for kicks and film it?

My reaction is this:

"What a bunch of assholes.  I blame that WorldStarHipHop website.  Kids have always been dumb and violent, but never before have they had the chance to be dumb and violent in front of millions of people who applaud their dumb violence.  Idiots!"

Then i listen to Michael Savage, and his reaction is thus:

"This is happening because of Obama, and Oprah, but mostly Obama!  These black kids are striking out because Obama tells them to, he wants to make them into his Greenshirt Army, quick, play that clip from 2009 where Obama called for a "civilian service corps" which is like the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia who were organized by college-lib-educated Pol Pot socialist communist dictator with red scarves!  Soon no white person will be able to leave the house without being bludgeoned to death by angry strong black kids wearing Obama uniforms and carrying lengths of pipe to beat us all to death, waaaaarrrgh!" [ Paraphrase]

Really.

And i just cock my head to the side like a confused squid.

"Well... I suppose you could go that route with it."

Different realities.  Which is valid?  Who can say.  Who really can say. 

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Puppies and puppies and even more dogs

Ain't he beautiful?

One thing i love is dogs.  Almost all of them.  We have three dogs.  That dog pictured there?  One of my dogs.  He's kinda old and stinky but we love him anyway.

I love dogs so much that it pisses me off when people are bad dog owners.  Nothing that the government can do even comes close.  The main thing that grinds my gears is when people get it in their heads that they want a dog, and make plans to get a dog, and it's just abundantly clear that they probably shouldn't.  The main red flag is when a guy says he wants a pit bull, you know a really big tough one, like those rappers have?  Or when a girl says they want a little teacup chihuahua, you know, a teensy-little-tiny-bitty one.

You already know that this person wants the dog as a fashion accessory, and will pay attention to it about one hour a day, when friends are over, if that.  The dog will spend the other 23 hours a day locked in a garage or shut up in a spare bathroom.  It will rarely interact with other dogs.  It will be lonely and desperate.

I've seen it.  It pisses me off.

People don't realize that dogs need attention.  We have three dogs, and between me, my brother, and his girlfriend, there is almost always someone here to take care of them.  Only rarely do they have to be caged, if the carpets are being cleaned or what have you.  And they get to run around everywhere.  Does this mean having to vacuum up some dog hair every week?   Do things occasionally get chewed on?  Sure.  But those are the breaks.  If you care more about your decorative throw pillows than your dog, then don't get a dog.  If you're not willing to conceal every cord in your house so they aren't within the dog's chewing radius, then don't get a dog.

If you plan on keeping the dog outside in a pen all year, even when its 19 degrees out, you suck.

One time, my Muslim coworker asked me if i had any questions about Islam.  "It's like Ask a Black Guy," he goofed, "except it's Ask a Muslim!"  I knew i was treading on delicate ground because you know i like to be PC within reasonable limits.  The only thing i could think to ask him was -- why are dogs thought of poorly in the Muslim world sometimes?  Why are they not man's best friend?  He said something about how the Koran labels dogs as unclean, and that if a dog licks your hand, you have to wash it seven times.  And then use sanitizer, i would imagine.

And i said, man, that's not how we do things here in America.

Dogs.  I like dogs.

It's my day off right now, and i'll be working my dogs around five times.  The youngest one will want to play tug-of-war when the sun comes up.  Mostly, they will laze around while i draw and work.

It's a good life.

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"In a strictly medical definition"

 Because i have no original thoughts of my own today.

"I think it's important to remember that American life in particular is institutionally predisposed to make people unhealthy. We have few walkable/bikeable living choices, absolute crap for food regulation services, subsidized prices but only for crap food, and a culture that rewards manipulative marketing behavior. The food market doesn't care if it kills you, and the USG doesn't either. Good luck out there.

Now we get to the more important part: the lack of time. If you don't make much money, you have to stay at work for 60+ hours a week to make it. If you make a little bit of money, your boss will make you stay for 60+ hours a week. Then subtract the worlds longest and worst commutes from your day. I didn't get healthy until I moved to a country where 40 hours was a full work week, and working outside of that time is viewed with suspicion and disgust, but the same can probably be achieved with a change of jobs. And who has those kinds of options open to them? I was lucky.


I think many of us living fully western lives are miserable because we are barely valued in our places in the machine. All we have time to do is work, commute, eat, sleep, and die, with nothing but entertainment from a small backlit rectangle to see us through. These financial connections to other people are not nearly as satisfying as regular camaraderie and meatspace interaction, for me at least, but our financial connections are the only connections that are valued. Your job is your life, the source of your financial stability, and probably your health insurance. But in the end we're still just keeping up with what we see on television, and accepting bland 22 minute narratives as a drop-in replacement for living. You can work really hard, miss your kids growing up and dinners with your partner, and your only upgrade is the kind of car you drive, or the cut of your suit.
So of course almost everyone is miserable, no matter what they look like or how much money they have compared to others. Many of us are only alive in a strictly medical definition."

- Tripping Daisy, Metafilter.

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Parasailin'.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin attempted on Monday to explain her alternative proposal for Obamacare on the "Today Show...."

"The plan is to allow those things that had been proposed over many years to reform a health-care system in America that certainly does need more help so that there's more competition, there's less tort reform threat, there's less trajectory of the cost increases, and those plans have been proposed over and over again," Palin said.  "And what thwarts those plans? It's the far left," she said "It's President Obama and his supporters who will not allow the Republicans to usher in free market, patient-centered, doctor-patient relationship links to reform health care."

...

......wow.

...nice.

Peanut gallery?   What say you?

"She has absolutely no idea what the words mean that come out of her mouth. They are opulent iridescent pearls, as beautiful as they are inscrutable. She is as baffled by her bullsh*t as you are. What she does know is whatever it is she is doing is a gold mine with diminishing returns." - Lockers.

"Romney is GooglePolBot 2.0. Palin was 1.0. All of her thought processes end up being run through each language in Google Translate before they're converted into speech. Google admits they still have a long road ahead of them before their robots are ready for public office but believe the speech pattern advancements alone are a good indicator of how much they've progressed in four years. They also have asked the public's help in capturing one of the beta models that escaped the labs and accidentally became governor of Texas." -EngineerAU

"Why do people keep giving this creature air time? She's obviously as dim as five feet up a pig's ass, and yet no one ever seems to call her out for her bullshiat. The only people who seem to make any attempt to hold her accountable for the idiotic things that spill out of her are the Daily Show and Colbert Report writing staff. Sure, she's good for plenty of laughs, but every time they play a clip of her talking, my brain starts to melt." - Wenchmaster

"Okay, let's cut to the chase:  is she retarded or on drugs?  It has to be either/or." -- Guntram Shatterhand

"When I hear Sarah Palin, I hear America.  I hear the sweet cries of an eagle above the purple waves of grain.  I hear the song of freedom that reminds me of a country where the people are free to be freedom, the flag is revered, and mobility scooters can hoveround." -- Uncomfortable Silence

Yes.

Yes.

This is why i love Fark.com.

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I am Souperman

I still haven't seen Man of Steel yet -- except for a few minutes of it on a friend's cel phone -- but i'm already disappointed that the sequel will apparently feature both Superman AND Batman... and did someone say Wonder Woman as well?

Lame.

I really am anti-crossover.  Crossovers are useless.  I don't want Batman to meet Superman, i don't want the Predator to fight Aliens, i don't want Harry Potter to team up with Robocop.  Has a crossover ever been anything but forgettable and gimmicky?  It reminds me of the type of random scenarios that we'd come up while drawing at our desks in 4th grade -- hey, Scottie, what if the Mario Brothers met the Ninja Turtles, who'd win in a fight?  Shredder would totally beat Bowser!  That sort of thinking should vanish when you become an adult and learn how not to be stupid.

I just don't like the idea that Bats and Supes live on the same earth.  It doesn't fit.  If Superman existed, the people of Gotham would be talking about him all the time, because he'd be the biggest news story in the world.  Batman's crusades against local gangsters would be bumped to page six because the headline of the Gotham Times would be something like RUSSIANS DEMAND TALKS WITH SUPERMAN or NASA HOPES SUPERMAN WILL HELP DETECT NEAR-EARTH ASTEROIDS or maybe just NO ONE HAS SEEN SUPERMAN IN WEEKS, WHERE IS THE MAN OF STEEL?

Superman is too overwhelming and he blocks out everything else like the freakin' sun.  Bruce Wayne's whole life quest only makes sense in a world where there are no costumed heroes, where he's one man engaged in some impossible ongoing struggle against corruption and violence.  When he puts on his suit in Batman Begins, it's something that no one has ever done before.  If Superman was flying around out there, Alfred would just cock his head to the side and ask "who do you think you are, Master Bruce?  Superman with ears?"

It's all just... messy and pointless.  Look, it's entirely possible that at some point, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis could have sat down, and said, "hey, what if we write a book where Frodo and Gandalf travel to Narnia, meet the Pevensie kids, and have some kind of adventure where they stop, i dunno, some random villain?  The wouldn't get along at first, of course, but then they'd overcome their differences and come together for the common good..."

That would be horrible.

Wouldn't it?

But don't get me wrong, it's not that i'm going to automatically hate the next Superman movie just because Batman is in it, and that he's going to be an Affleck Batman at that.  Might be fun?  The tragedy is that this goofy-ass movie is going to take the place of something much cooler -- a superior sequel where Lex Luthor is finally made into a real, convincing villain, and engages Superman in a battle of wits for the soul of humanity using his incredible intellect -- a Superman film that has the same power as, say, The Dark Knight.

Whatever Superman/Batman is, it won't be that.

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You want the Thing you Claim to Fear

Really, you do.

One argument i see Teabaggers make all the time is this -- "look, all our apparent madness is totally justified because we see, quite clearly, the incredible and imminent doom that the DEBT will bring to America.  And that only OUR solutions to the debt problem will work."

It's that simple, they're the farsighted Cassandras wailing in the square.  They're just like a person who sees a leak in the levee, or a forest fire spreading and heading to the town -- they are FORCED into action and have to warn the rest of us.  And that's why they sound like doomsayers who "root for ruin" and cheer on any sign of government shutdown or debt default.

But the massive economic realities that face us are not simple.

Here's a more apt analogy -- they're like the people screaming about the end of the world before Y2K.  Way back in 1999, people were saying many things about the dreaded Millennium Bug.  If you were a rational person who liked technology and the modern world in general, then your response was probably something like "this sounds serious,  i don't want it to happen, we'd better fix it, let's get to work."  But if you were a nutter who didn't like the way things were and secretly yearned for some sort of apocalyptic collapse because you thought it would allow some new, pure, redneck society to spring forth from the ruin, then you sounded like the Teabaggers do today.  "It's too late!  Collapse is inevitable!  You liberals and city-dwellers will get what's coming to you, while us real blue-collar Christian men will become the new natural aristocracy.  Bill Gates will be a pauper, begging for a place in the new order from Big Jim the Drygoods King!"

They thought that was going to happen because they wanted it to happen.

It's the same thing with religious fanatics.  They demand that everyone live according to their holy book, because the alternative is fire and damnation.  "Look, i don't want anyone to go to Hell and burn forever in endless agony, but that's what's gonna happen if you don't listen to me."

See the common thread?  Fundamentalists, Y2K alarmists, doomsday preppers, teabaggers... they all see doom on the horizon because it justifies their own personal worldviews.   Do what we say or the Universe will punish you.  It's not a coincidence that these people all sort of overlap on the Right in a churning, eddying ocean of fear and hatred.

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