Thoughts on Boston...

When it comes to last week, there's just a few things i want to add that haven't been said a million times already.

First off, i'm really creeped out that i know so many people who, upon hearing of the Boston bombing, have the exact same response they did upon hearing of the Sandy Hook massacre.

"It's a setup. The government did it. Why? Umm... control. Government did it."

And you can talk to these people, and tell them all about Occam's Razor, and why, in the absence of any major discrepancies or compelling new evidence, it does appear that it is possible for weirdos just to snap and decide to kill people for no good reason. And more often then not, they'll just say "Yeah, but i saw this video online where this guy said, like, someone saw some other guy. There was a guy on the roof? Yeah. Government did it."

Second... there is this weird tendency people have to worry that, no matter what happens, that the terrorists "won." Specifically, they have this suspicion that no matter what happens to Djarkovich Tsardinicus, he will be sitting in his prison cell, grinning like the Joker, and reveling in what he was able to accomplish with no regrets. He'd do it all over again.

No way, man.

This goofball and his fuckface wife-beating brother clearly thought they were clever enough to get away. They reportedly wanted to go to New York and plant more bombs and eventually end up as big bad men back in Chechnya. Think of how wrong things went for him, so fast. Imagine the panic he felt when after three days of silent gloating, he saw his picture on the news. Imagine how he felt when his brother -- who apparently convinced him that what they were doing was awesome and told him all the reasons why it would totally work out -- was shredded by shrapnel from one of his own bombs, and run over by Djingleberry himself. The dude ran over his own brother. Then he had 12 hours of hellish flight in which he must have thought that there was some sliver of a chance that he might get away. But he ended up cowering in a boat, and tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the mouth, and now... he's locked in a hospital, in incredible pain, with a fucked-up face, a dead brother, his family under uncomfortable spotlights, and all his future plans turned to puddles of shit at his feet.

He probably might still want to kill himself. But they won't let him. His wrists are probably zip-tied to the bed and a nurse is wiping his ass. All he has to look forward to now is sorrow for his brother, months of interrogations at the hands of the Americans he so despises, and a lifetime in prison.  He didn't win. At all. He's trapped in a living hell right now. Whatever infamy or fame he won amongst Chechnyan terrorists will be fleeting, and of no help to him now. And yet, i'll read that he's somehow laughing at us, like the Joker, all his dreams fulfilled.

I disagree. I know very well what it's like to be a stupid young man who thinks they can get away with anything, only to find that the world is smarter and faster than you thought. It's not a good feeling. If i was a goddish sort, i would look at this situation and declare it evidence of some sort of moral law in action. Instant karma's gonna get ya.

Third thing?

Teabaggers are idiots.

All this time, they've been huddling in their nests of filth, trying to use this "new 9-11" to discredit the President, and saying asinine things like...

"Shutting down the entire city of Boston because: one lone hat-backwards teenager was ludicrous. But that exercise did prove to anyone noticing how easily modern Americans are cowed and herded at whim. This ain’t American anymore, folks. ‘Cower’ may be a bit strong a term to describe many Citizens’ compliance with Government Authoriteh after it was ‘suggested’ that they cower in their homes. A better word choice for non-recusants might be ‘complacent’, ‘acquiescent’, ‘controllable’, ‘obedient’, or my favorite, ‘docile’."

Awww. Ain't that cute? This idiot thinks that when the authorities told people to stay off the streets so they could catch the terrorist, the proper American response would be to march around having drunken redneck parades or something. While firing their guns into the air? Maybe, maybe.
Little butthurt, i think. They're a little butthurt because a blue state is successfully battling terrorism while a red state suffered a massive and tragic explosion resulting from capitalist corner-cutting. Also, gold prices collapsed this week, and they've all been buying gold because Glenn Beck and Mark Levin have been repeating for years that, if that Obama gets reelected, a wheelbarrow of paper money won't be able to buy a loaf of bread, while those with stashes of gold will be the new community pillars, you know, after the Collapse.

Butthurt.

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Always wrong

Conservatives are so used to being wrong at this point, they don't even notice anymore.  Let's review the last week, shall we?

In Boston, there was a bombing perpetrated by two lone losers.  The citizens of this blue state, Taxachusetts, responded with strength and resilience.  The criminals were apprehended quickly as a result of both watchful citizens doing their part, and a massive effort by law enforcement.  Boston is still healing, but they've handled the situation in the best way possible.

Meanwhile, in red state Texas, a fertilizer plant exploded, killing more people than the Boston bombers.  The nation goggled in horror and confusion at the fact that the plant hadn't been inspected by OSHA since the '80s, had thousands of tons of unregistered ammonium nitrate, and was too close to nursing homes, schools, and residences.  Oh, and Rick Perry had slashed the firefighting budget.  All in all, it was a huge, visible, embarrassing failure of laissez-faire capitalism.

How do the righties deal with being so wrong?

By whining, bitching, and moaning.  By making up ludicrous narratives in which two losers with pressure-cooker bombs are equivalent to 9-11, which means that Obama is just as bad as Bush for failing to stop it!   And after amping up the threat to elephantine proportions, they mock and deride the response, and blather that the Boston lockdown was evidence of the people being "cowed, coerced, scared, timid, controlled" by authorities.

Sorry, teatards, you're just jealous 'coz blue states do it better.

Oh, and as a final indignity?  Even the talk radio goons have started admitting that they were totally WRONG about the economy.  For years, they've been predicting the collapse of the currency, and urging their braindead listeners to dump stocks and buy gold.  Gold, gold!  Why, in six months, wheelbarrows of cash won't be enough to buy a loaf of Obamabread, but come the apocalypse, a single gold coin will make you the new neighborhood potentate.

....wrong.  Wrong again.  Always wrong.

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Right where we left them.

Every once in a while, i'll still flip to the conservative station, just to check in on the loonies. Over there, in their alternate reality, three things are certain.

Barack Obama stole the election. He just did, case closed.

Global warming? Disproven. Forever. Everyone knows that.

The economy is a house of cards one minute away from total meltdown, we're on the brink of a catastrophe so horrendous that it will make the collapse of 2008 look like a picnic; start stockpiling rice and ammo, people, these are the end times. That being said, if you can't find a job, you're just a pathetic loser who hates work because you're lazy and dumb.

Just making sure they're where we left them.

Over on some other site,  people have been taking me to task and demanding why i don't complain about liberals the same way as i complain about conservatives, do i not realize that all partisanship is evil? Don't you realize that we must accept all viewpoints? Don't you see that the people for gay marriage and the people against it are totally the same, in a cosmic sense? My response is this -- when conservatives go to far, we get war. When liberals go to far, we get... uhh, expensive healthcare? Too much art funding?
Also... i don't encounter any liberals these days. In Tennessee, they're not in the streets and not on the radio. The last time i remember being annoyed by a liberal was about 12 years ago in college, when i was in an english class with some curly-haired douchebag who was the most pretentious, whiny, entitled sack of crap ever. Since then, nothing.

Conservatives these days don't even know what they believe anymore. All it took was one president with a foreign name to change them all from authoritarians to anarchists. I mean, the jobs report this month was dismal, and they're gloating about it...

See! We told you Obama was going to wreck the economy! He allowed the sequester to happen, and the sudden reduction in government spending cost us jobs! Because what's hurting the economy is too much government spending! The only way to bring back jobs is by radically slashing government spending. Oh, god, the Army base over in Crocketsville just laid off 150 contractors, and now they're unemployed, all because Obama cut government spending! WHY?

I don't even know what to say.

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Screw Politics

It's all happening just as certain prognosticators said.  Conservatives have responded to Romney's loss by saying that he wasn't nearly conservative enough.  The mainstream Republicans realize this is not so, people like Christ Christie and Jeb Bush are giving these speeches where they say things like "no longer can we write off entire chunks of the populace" and "the face of the Republican Party should be the face of every American."  The hardcore right is having none of it.  Heck, they won't even invite gay Republican groups to the CPAC conference.  They are rallying around outsider figures like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, digging in and erecting ideological barriers, and talk more about civil war with their fellow Republicans than with the Democrats.  If a politician shows any tolerance of gay marriage, gun control, or immigration reform, they are branded as traitor to the Teabagger cause.  The Teabaggers are supposed to be all about taxes, but they don't even talk about taxes any more, all they talk about is guns and the unlimited access to them they desire.

2016 -- massive primary slugfest between Jeb Bush and Rand Paul, with the bruised winner going down against Hillary.

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Michael Bay

I just read that Michael Bay is making a new movie version of "Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles" and the Megan Fox is going to play April O'Neil.  I shudder, but then i think... you know what?  Good.  I'm glad that Michael Bay is keeping busy destroying properties that i liked as a kid, but really couldn't give a crap about now.  Some adults retain their affection for the Turtles or the Transformers, but thankfully i'm not one of those sad bastards. 

You know what they should let Bay ruin next?  Voltron.  Come on, that'd be epic.  MORE giant robots and explosions.  And the five young pilots would all be, you know, hip and extreme mad bustas or whatever.  The leader would be a jock with a heart of gold, naturally, and there'd be a hyperactive nerd who can hack everything with his iPad, and a craaaaaazy whack black dude who'd be loud and cowardly and stuff, and the girl pilot would be this total radical awesome slut who wants to fuck the jock, and she'd be played by Megan Fox, and then there'd be a fifth one, i don't know, wasn't there a big fat guy?  Yeah, one of the original pilots was a fat guy.  So he'd just be this fatass who tries to eat everything.  And his Voltron Lion would also be fat.  And at one point the fat Lion would sit on a bad guy and crush him with his gigantic ass.  My god... this would be the ultimate team. 

Jock.  Nerd.  Black Guy.  Slut.  Fat Guy.

Together they would form the ultimate Voltron, and they'd be fighting.  Uh.  Robot aliens.  Who cares.

KAAAAA-BOOOOOOOOOOM.

$893,000,000 domestic, $1,382,000,000 worldwide gross.

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Oscar Grouches

  I don't hate the Oscars. It's too trendy to hate the Oscars. Come on, Jennifer Lawrence is adorable, what's your problem? More importantly, it's hard to hate something that radio conservatives also hate. On the way to work, i listened to a few minutes of Supertalk 99.7, and sure enough, some right-wing goon was screeching about Hollywood's "toxic fog" and "endless sewer pipe of degradation." Which, you know, is hilarious. Conservatives just have it in their minds that Hollywood releases nothing except pornographic movies about drug users who hate America and hard work...

...and i'm still just confused. Where are those movies? I want to see them. That's not what i see coming out of the movie industry. I think i ranted about this like a year ago -- some famous online wingnut released a video claiming that movies about American heroes "no longer exist" on the same weekend when Captain America was number one at the box office and selling twice as many tickets as expected. But here we are again. Okay, let's just look at the critically-lauded movies of the year....

Argo: A movie about how awesome Americans save other awesome Americans from the swarthy Iranian hordes.

Lincoln: I haven't seen it, but i imagine it's rather patriotic.

Life of Pi: Supposedly, it's about the greatness of God? It does have brown people in it, so that's a bit suspect to conservatives.

Beasts of the Southern Wild: Also contains a lot of brown people and is partly about Hurricane Katrina, but is essentially apolitical. All the conflict in the movie comes from Hushpuppy's disturbed father, who is a poor black alcoholic who needs to get a job.

Zero Dark Thirty: A movie about how we totally killed Osama bin Laden, America, fuck yeah?  No, wait, tht happened under Obama, so the killing of Osama is no longer patriotic; it's just awful.

Django Unchained: Seriously, why are conservatives against this movie? It's a western. They love westerns. They love movies where lone bad-asses shoot everybody. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson.... Django. What's the problem here? Is it because of slaves?

Silver Linings Playbook: I have no idea what this is about, it must be the one about the naked hippies on drugs who hate America.

And what about our recent blockbusters?

The Dark Knight Rises: Western millionaire defeats scary foreign terrorist and cures a fallen woman of her wanton ways.

The Avengers: A bunch of white superheroes, including Captain America, defeat a foreign army led by a villain who is, you know, a bit lavender, really.

The Hunger Games: Scrappy girl from rural coal town battles against the decadent, perverted city people.

Skyfall: The ultimate traditional male races to save his stern boss from an evil latino homosexual terrorist.

The Hobbit: A white middle-class guy goes off to find riches.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn II: Okay, they're vampires, but they waited until they were married to have sex.

...does anyone else see this?

Even though Hollywood is full of gays and swarming with liberals like Ben Affleck and George Clooney, the products coming from Hollywood are still fairly conservative in nature. So why the disconnect? Did these conservatives see Natural Born Killers back in 1994 and haven't been the same since? Meh. I guess it's just more of that good old American either/or thinking. Either the movie industry is a bastion of wholesomeness that dishes out nothing but Christian pablum, or it's the polar opposite. Gray areas don't exist in the conservative mind.

 Honestly, i'm not a fan of conservatives and how they think. Did you know that.

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That's a bit suspect.

A few online conservatives like to use the word "raaaaacist!" in an ironic way, to imply that everyone who points out their racism is wrong, just some nattering nabob seeing racism where clearly none exists.  This seems to be one of the questions that haunts the modern wingnut -- why do people keep calling me a racist when i'm clearly not?  The only way i could possibly be a racist is if i actively supported laws or regulations that called for racial segregation, or for people to be treated differently in some way based on race -- no American politician today is proposing such, erego, i cannot be a racist, and neither can anyone else.  The problem of racism is solved forever as far as i am concerned!

That's one way of looking at it.

But if you think racism is over, ask around.  Ask some people who aren't white and conservative.  They might point out a few things that you may have missed...

...like when a conservative radio talk show host rants and raves against Tiger Woods, calling him a "scumbag" and a "lowlife" because the man cheated on his wife.  He cheated on his wife, so the man is scum, a rotter with no hope of redemption.  He shouldn't even be allowed to play a game that involves hitting a ball with a stick, he's clearly disqualified himself through his odious behavior.

...but Newt Gingrich?  Well, you know, the Lord teaches us to forgive.  We're all only human, guys. That's just Newt's personal business and so who are we to pry?  It wouldn't affect his job performance.  Heck, when you really think about it, i mean, Newt's a powerful man, and don't we expect out beloved and powerful men to be, well, powerful?  In that regard?  The fact that Newt's balls put out enough juice to make him want to cheat, gosh, i respect that and you should too.  What, do you want your leaders to be eunuchs or something?

That's a bit suspect.

...or when conservatives post pics of Trayvon Martin wearing a grille and saggy pants, flashing gangsta tattoos, and presenting it as some sort of "smoking gun."  See!  Photographic evidence that this kid was up to no good, he's a gangsta!

Now, if it was a white kid with long hair and a Slipknot t-shirt, that would be different.  The kid's just going through a phase, harmless teenage rebellion and all that, nothing to worry about.  Being a metal fan is nothing to be scared of, not like being a fan of rap music.  Liking noisy metal is a phase, but liking rap is a lifelong choice to embrace criminality!

That's a bit suspect.

...or when conservatives scream, over and over, that any hint of impropriety by organizations such as ACORN is proof positive that Democrats are rigging elections.  If some random poll worker tries to turn in phony registrations for Mickey Mouse and Bart Simpson that are tossed in the trash, the simple fact that they tried to defraud the system is all the proof you need to say that Obama "stole" the election.

...but when a high-ranking Republican official admits, candidly, that yes, they were specifically trying to limit the number of black people voting in Florida, because they're afraid that they weren't going to be voting for Mitt Romney... nah, that's meaningless.  That's just one bad apple and you can't let him spoil the bunch.

That's a bit suspect.

...or when libertarians of the Rand Paul variety must philosophically that the Civil Rights Act ought to be repealed because it's a stain on the American ideal of pure freedom.  Freedom, freedom is what we want in every case regardless of outcome.  Sure, we'd think it was awful if a business owner decided that he wanted to ban black people from his restaurant, or make them wait longer than white folk, but that minor hassle is just the price we'd pay for freedom, beautiful sexy freedom.

...but then they'll show some strange hesitation when it comes to pot smokers, women who want abortions, people who want to sleep around, and those who want to marry someone of the same sex.  Wait!  You're not free to do everything.  Then out comes the fire-and-brimstone preacher, and we hear that humans are naturally fallen and sinful, vicious animals given to vice and violence, in need of some central authority to lift them out of the muck and force them upright.   And thus we need rules, and standards, and the eyes of the community watching us all, to force us to act in the interests of that community.  Freedom?  Why, that's just another word for anarchy if you ask me.

So yes, when it comes to racial discrimination, just let the chips fall where they may.  We're willing to live with the consequences.

But nah, when it comes to everything else?  We can't just let people do whatever they want, the consequences are just too severe to risk.

That's a bit suspect.  Just a bit.

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Radio.

Who the hell are Munford and Sons?

There's a reason i don't know this. Even though the Nashville area is one of the "fastest-growing metropolitan areas in America," there's still a few things we don't have that other places take for granted. We have no Trader Joe's. Starbucks are few and far between. I've never seen a Chipotle. And there isn't a radio station that plays hipster music...

...there are a few big country stations, of course. A few classic rock stations (Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, AC/DC.) There's an easy-listening pop station for office people (Celine Dion, Madonna, Matchbox 20.) There's a really crappy alternative station that plays nothing but sludgy nu-metal (Sevendust, Hinder, Papa Roach.) There's an automatic DJ station that plays fairly decent random stuff (Green Day, Elton John, REM.) There's a station that keeps crooning alive (Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Perry Como.) There's an R&B station (Frank Ocean, John Legend, Rafael Saddiq), and then there's 101.1 Tha Beat Jamz, which plays nothing but the newest, loudest, and worst rap music imaginable (Chris Brown, Nikki Minaj, Rick Ross.)
...but there isn't a white hipster station. So i've never heard Munford and Sons, just like i never heard of Gotye until my brother asked me to download his album. Remember back in 2005 when everyone was complaining they they couldn't go anywhere without hearing Deathcab for Cutie's "Soul Meets Body?" I never heard it until my brother came back from his 3-month stint working in Seattle. The Arcade Fire. The White Stripes. Wilco. Interpol. The Kings of Leon. The Black Keys. Those bands just don't get played around these parts. I read that Jack White has a house right down the road in Franklin where he lives near Nicole Kidman and Billy Ray Cyrus... i can see why he would want to live here, because almost nobody would recognize him.

The station that should be filling this void is 107.5 FM. Those call numbers still sound slightly magical to me. Back in the late '80s, it was pretty much our link to the wider music world -- since almost no one had MTV, it was the only outlet that played new music for people under the age of forty. Genesis. MC Hammer. Vanilla Ice. Whitesnake. Def Leppard. Whitney Houston. All spun by a Hawaiin-shirt-wearing cokehead DJ named "Coyote" McCloud and the Zoo Crew. Sounds pretty retro now, but back then, it was the future. The nightly Top Ten Countdown was required listening for nearly every kid in middle and high school. At 7:00 every night, we'd turn off TV's and Ataris and turn on the radio, because goddamnit, at some point they're going to play "The Humpty Dance" and i'm not going to miss that.

Good memories.

Sadly, 107.5 FM is now "The River" and all they play is Katy Perry. Seriously, all they play is Katy fucking Perry. And that chick that sounds like Katy Perry.
I know, i need to come into the future and get satellite radio or Pandora or whatever. But i haven't yet, because i'm still up to my neck in CD's. The next time i buy a new car, i might have to make that leap.

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Popes and Mopery

Wow, so there's gonna be a new Pope.  Another one? 

You know, the whole phenomenon of Catholic priest-pedophilia thing still intrigues and horrifies me.  The seeming prevalance of it.  It's like if it came to light that Methodists are huge in the meth trade.  I mean, what is the reason?  I know priests aren't allowed to smash so they have all this pent-up male jelly, but why wasn't it a scandal of priests sleeping with hookers or seducing teenage girls?  Why all the little boys?  This is disturbing.

See, i always figured that attraction is a mix of genetics and psychological imprinting.  If it were only genetics, then we'd all likely be attracted to healthy members of the same race.  But that doesn't happen.  You might be an American male who really likes slender asian girls.  Or a slender asian guy who likes tall, blonde American women.  Or a black guy who really likes white chicks and doesn't mess with black chicks.  Or a girl who's turned on by old gray Sean Connery-type guys.  Or a white girl who likes black guys.  Or a gay dude who only likes superfit guys.  Or a gay dude who likes fat hairy guys.  Or the guy who wants the 500-pound girlfriend, or some real weirdo who only wants to bang handicapped midgets.  It's all a game of chance, depending on what you're exposed to early in life, what makes an imprint on your psychosexual self...

...so, what sort of weird imprints to lifelong Catholics get?  I keep thinking that as kids, they never saw a Playboy magazine without being beaten or shamed for it.  And they spend their formative years... like.... surrounded by old, hideous, screeching nuns with wrinkly faces, and told to worship some naked dude on a Cross, surrounded by rosy-cheeked nude cherub Renaissance angels?

Is that it?  Does that rewire their impulses for pedophilia?

I demand an experiment.  I demand that an isolated Catholic school remove all their typical imagery, and replace it with material where all angels are depicted as hot, curvaceous young girls, and Jesus wears a robe and looks like Radagast, and all nuns must be of a minimum attractiveness level, and wear habits that are, if not revealing, then certainly more form-fitting and flattering than what they have now.

We must create a new overclass of heterosexual superpriests.  The modern age demands it. 

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Not yours.

Holy crap, the teabaggers.  Do they ever realize how full of shit they are?  For even a second?

Already, they're making the dubious claim that the LA cop killer is a "leftist," and that the internet pranksters putting up farcical "support Christopher Dorner" Facebook pages are also Obama-loving leftists -- as opposed to the apolitical trolls they likely are.  And then they haul out their fainting couches and smelling salts, and shriek "just when i thought the left couldn't sink any deeper, they surprise me again!" and "well, not me, Norma, i'm not surprised at all."
What a bunch of transparently-vile clown-steppers. 

I suppose it's just another symptom of their simplistic black-and-white worldview where complexity is not allowed; they tend to lump everything they dislike together, while greedily claiming anything that appeals to them.  Like when the Epic Beard Man bus beatdown video hit the net, they immediately labeled him a "conservative hero" and the ornery black guy a "liberal."  Like how they try to classify The Dark Knight as a conservative film, because... the Joker's an anarchist?  Bane's a socialist?
Like how they cherrypick random statements that John Lennon made in order to turn the Beatles into a bunch of conservatives that they don't mind loving.  How they daydream that the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" is a cry against liberalism. 
Greedy.  Babies. 

I've actually seen them try to claim my new literary crush, Robert Anton Wilson, as one of their own because his books are so awesome and full of freedom-loving rogues.  Sure, guys.  The writer who states over and over again that religion is a primate delusion, the free-sex loving drug user, the guy who portrays a fictional scenario where the idiotic right wingers of America band together in Texas to form a national movement called "God's Lightning," in which every member is a drooling, racist, Christ-loving redneck who goes around preaching succession and beating Jews and gays to death with their wooden-cross weapons.... yeah, this guy totally likes you.  I guess that's why one of his final public statements specifically called out the Bush adminstration as being evil.  Because he's such a conservative... in your tiny, shriveled, jealous minds.
Sorry, Teabaggers, but Hagbard Celine is not yours.  You can't have him.

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Enter Videodrome

Superbowl commercials.  They suck.  People who pay attention to them suck.  For the last 5 years, every Superbowl has been the same for me.  I wake up at 8:00pm, right at the start of the third quarter.  I ask my brother how the halftime show was, and he says it sucked because he's not impressed by anything.  I make a cup of coffee and watch the game for ten minutes before drifting off to my computer.  Then one of the teams win, and i don't care.

Then i go to work and am thankful that no one is talking about the game or the commercials.  Bless my coworkers.

I also can't stand talk of reality TV.  I know a few people who watch reality TV ironically, knowing that it is bad and glorying in the badness of it.  I can't judge them, really, because i like bad movies.  I can be very amused by horrible, old sci-fi and action films (fuck, why is Eliminators not on netflix?  I need to see it again before i die!)  But that's one type of badness, it's an artful badness, more palatable to me than the badness of reality TV.

Reality TV... it's like.... okay, a huge, rambling metaphor for you.... it's like there's one restaurant in town.  You've been going to this restaurant your entire life because it's just tradition, everyone in town eats at this place.  But over the years, the food gets worse and worse, the place gets noisier and more annoying.  Once, polite middle-aged people dined here with their children.  They told long-winded stories and corny jokes.  It was kinda square, but decent.  But over the years it devolves into a Hooters-type establishment, filled with guffawing frat boys and random skanks, and the menu ceases to feature salads and sandwiches and now only has deep-fried unhealthy garbage.  And one day, you enter the restaurant, and a waiter empties a pail of festering pig slop into a table that resembles a trough.  He sneers at you and says, "eat that, you goddamned swine!  Suuu-iiieeee!"  You look around and see that the other customers are shirtless and unkempt and happily lapping up the filthy slop.  The waiters chuckle and say to themselves, "look at them, they'll eat anything.  Stupid fucking pigs."  The customers grunt in agreement. 

At that point, i stand up and leave the restaurant.  I shall go to the grocery store and cook for myself from now on.

That's how i feel about television these days.  I can't stomach it.  I never thought i'd be a hipster who claims not to watch TV, but.... well, here we are.

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The Illuminati ( A secret society do exist.)

Yay, Americaball outcome! 

You know, after reading loads of Robert Anton Wilson and thinking about it, i think i finally know exactly who and what the Illuminati really were.  Bear with me here, this gets speculative...

"The Illuminati" was a title used by several interrelated groups in Europe that formed within Masonic lodges at various points in European history.  It was an intellectual fad that seemed to have two main ideas; the abolition of hereditary monarchy, and the elimination of church authority in favor of a Deist conception of god or no god at all.  The Illuminated Ones, as they called themselves, never achieved visible power, but greatly influenced intellectuals and leaders in France and the American Colonies.  It was a special club that only certain smart people could join.

When i stop and think about it, hereditary monarchy that was held in place by religious authority must have been the most galling idea imaginable to people with functioning brains for thousands of years.  Imagine if we, today, lived in a world where George W. Bush was ruler-for-life, and not through an electoral process -- however shady -- but because his father simply installed him, and he was issuing edicts and starting more pointless wars, all while trying to produce a male heir so that the throne wouldn't go to the husband of Jenna or Barbara.  Dude, we'd be angry all day.  We'd seek out fellow non-zombies and gather in our homes, or certain isolated taverns, and say over and over again...
"It doesn't make sense, it's a ludicrous system.  If a god exists, and i have my doubts, i hardly think he'd want the imbecile heirs of a conqueror to have absolute authority over us for an indefinite time!  Crap, there has to be a better way, a more logical way to organize society.  Look at all these fools around us, why don't they understand this?
"I totally agree, but should we really be discussing this here?  Hey, let's go to the lodge and talk about it with my buddies who feel the same way.... except Gunter, he's a real dumb asshole who thinks King Charles I is awesome.  We should kick him out."
"We should kick out anyone who isn't on the level, man."
"Totally, man!"

And that's why they developed code words, and secret handshakes, and an air of mystery.  They were afraid of being jailed or having their reputations destroyed by the 85% of people who thought that the king was the king because God wanted it that way, and if you don't agree you're unpatriotic and you WANT France to win.  And i guess many of our Founding Fathers, the really brilliant ones like Franklin and Jefferson, were big fans, and considered themselves "illuminated."  Hence the eye in the pyramid on our currency.  Hence the office of the President.  They had stumbled on to a secret that most people didn't accept -- that God wasn't in control here, and that authority was conceived wholly by Man and thus could take any form we wished it to.

(And judging by Franklin's activities, they also discovered another secret -- casual sex was fun and great, and the whole marriage-God thing was just more superstition.  Venereal disease is a possibility, yes, but that's purely a medical problem best solved through science. )

And basically, they won.  Gradually.  Monarchs faded and were replaced by democracies.  If there's an equivalent of the Illuminati today, it's in China.  Or it exists in the form of every non-persecuted Western intellectual who spends their time writing about how capitalism is an insane way to organize society, and there's gotta be a better way.  I bet if you could meet a real Illuminati member from 1750 and spin a wild tale about them "controlling everything" throughout history, he'd stammer and say, "what?  No, man, we were the underdogs.  We were just some smart people hiding in the shadows and trying to change the world, and in my lifetime, it seemed that almost no progress was made.  Did you guys ever get rid of those damned kings, i hate them so much, they control everything!"

I mean, this makes sense, right?

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Midgets of Steel

I'm mildly curious about that Man of Steel movie coming out this year.  I mean, i don't really like Superman that much, but i do hope it's better than the previous Superman film.  What i really want to know is, since it's directed by Zach Snyder, will it have one really needlessly graphic sex scene?  Where Superman just DRILLS Lois Lane within an inch of her life?  I like 300 and i love Watchmen, but the needless sex scenes in those movies really stand out.  They're just.... funny.  INSERT PORN INTERLUDE.  I forget if Snyder included a really needless sex scene in Sucker Punch, because that movie seems like a blur now.  If he did, it was probably a really icky rape.  Anyway, maybe Christopher Nolan will take Snyder aside and say, "man, this scene?  I want you to tone it down.  Yes, we all suspect that Superman is a virile guy, but the five minutes of him just nakedly banging away at Lois like crazy, it somewhat disrupts the flow of the film.  Sometimes, less is more, Zach.  Less is more."

^__^

In other news, i got a truly nasty taste of winter this morning.  We got about 1" of snow that didn't seem that bad, but the temperature was at that perfect point where it immediately turned to ice as soon as the tires of cars melted it, turning the roads into skating rinks.  It took me nearly 3 hours to get home, and i felt lucky because i wasn't one of the unlucky few who slid into a ditch or against a guardrail.

One of those unlucky ones was a midget, which is interesting because i was remarking to my coworker just a few hours earlier -- i haven't  seen a midget in years.  If you were to judge by watching television, you'd think that midgets compose 20% of the US population.  But i guess they don't, because it's rare to see one just walking around.

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Global something-or-other

So.... last night, it was 70 degrees at midnight with summer-like thunderstorms rolling in. 

Tonight, some light snow.  Yeah, the weather is broken.  We never should have invented hairspray.  Or something. 

At least i haven't hears any of the local yokels giggle and sneer at the idea of climate change.  Even Cletus and Bubba are beginning to realize that something is up.

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Nerd Rage

So JJ Abrams is going to direct Star Wars?  I don't really care, because i'm so over Star Wars, but it seems like a bad idea.  I've kind of come to detest JJ Abrams.  Lost and Super 8 are the work of a carnival barker who teases you with a web of mysteries and then forgets you after you're inside the tent.  Super 8, especially.  I saw the movie and thought it was okay, but then later i saw the infamous preview that didn't say a peep about aliens -- it was a scintillating montage of mystery, nostalgia, childhood, magic, spiritual awakening, my god, what unfathomable secrets are buried in this film?  It's so tremendous it would burn our faces like the Ark of the Covenant if we dared release it!  That!  What was that?!

...and then it turned out to be an alien.  Kind of a cousin of Cloverfield.  Blah.  It made me mad.  It was a scam.

As for his Star Trek movie, it was slick and fun, but now i don't ever think about it and don't really feel like watching it again.  Disposable.  So now he gets to recreate Star Wars too?  Both?  That's too much power for one competent but visionless huckster.  I don't like it.  Oh, god, i can see him now, in interviews, rattling on about how "we wanted to streamline the Star Wars universe, kind of get away from all the mythology and tragedy, and create a new paradigm, something sleeker and hipper, more in tune with today's zeitgeist, with really sharp and penetrating dialogue... i looked at the lightsaber and asked myself, what really is it?  Who made it?  Probably some 11-year old supergenius from the suburbs of Coruscant, sort of a proto-Steve Jobs, a kid with a lot of spirit and snark, and that was the genesis of the Joe'h Baumer character..."

Maybe i'm wrong.  I don't know.  I just wish they'd given control of Star Wars to an older, more ponderous director.  Ridley Scott or someone.  Anyone.  There had to be anyone else.

Grrrrrr.

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Sarah Palin goes parasailin'.

Huh, Sarah Palin has officially left FOX News.  I guess she's going even rogue-ier.  The teabaggers like to claim that our political overclass drove her away somehow, because they are hereditary lords who won't allow a "common citizen" to grab the reins of power.  Nah.  I think it's just a case of a common citizen being overwhelmed by sudden money.  I'm no different.  If i had some kind of whirlwind year where i ended up with 5 or 10 million in the bank, i would intend to work hard and further my artistic career... but then if you tried to find me in six months, i'd be in Tokyo, or London, or Whistler, British Columbia... just eatin' expensive sushi and trying to score with foreign chicks.  And learning to ski.  And going to a lot of concerts.  Dude, you've got to come to BC and try this sushi, it's amaaaazing!  Let's go skiing!


I'm sure i'd return to the world of arting at some point, but i'd have to get really bored with sushi.  And skiing.  And chicks.  Because i'd have never had that kind of money before, and the possibilities would be too much to handle.

As for the teabaggers, it's funny to see them try to twist the fabric of reality to make a universe in which Sarah Palin is an average citizen, but Barack Obama was born to be a hereditery lord.  In this universe, they were born about equal, regular people from non-privileged families, and both coincidentally born in one of our rare noncontiguous states.  They ran a race and one lost and the other won.  No!  they scream, Obama was born to obscene privilege and raised by George Soros and Bill Ayers and and secret cabal of lefty powermongers and groomed since birth and given the Presidency!  He's utter royalty somehow!  This has to be true or my worldview is suddenly for shit!

Come back to reality, my pretties.  Come back.

Or not.

In fact, go wherever Sarah Palin is going.

Away.  Away from here.

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Evolve or die.

Dear Republican Party, some words from a 34-year old hardworking white male -- someone whose vote you should have a chance of getting...

...it's not your "message" or your "tone" that's the problem.  It's your policies and your philosophies, the things you claim are just fine and don't need to be changed.  They are the problem.  Let's review...

-- Needless wars of aggression.

-- Tax cuts for the rich, tax increases for the poor.

-- Bigoted opposition to gay marriage.

-- Xenophobic immigration policies.

-- No viable deficit reduction plans.

-- Endless obstruction in Congress.

-- Weird cavemanish views on abortion.

-- Not that good on civil liberties.

-- Asinine drug policies.

-- Vile standard bearers like Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, George Bush.

....yeah.  Presenting these in a different "tone" isn't going to sway me.  Evolve or die.

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Race for the Prize

Right-wingers are funny when it comes to race.   For instance, why do they all seem angry at Django Unchained?  Typically they enjoy westerns and other movies where people shoot each other with guns.  I've heard them namecheck Dirty Harry, John Wayne, and Charles Bronson as the kind of men we need in America.  But something about this Django movie seems to rub them the wrong way.

But never mind movies.  In the real world, people are making a big deal about Obama being inaugurated on the anniversary of MLK day and noting the historical poeticness or whatever about it.  This makes right-wingers MAD.  They don't like it at all.  In the past few days, i've read the following from our teabaggy friends...

• Race doesn't exist, it's a social construct, not a scientific one.  No true conservative EVER has cared about race or discriminated against anyone in history on the basis of race.  If they did, they're not true conservatives.  Democrats are the only people who differentiate on race, which is a false thing that doesn't even exist, and they use it solely to get tax dollars that aren't theirs and also to make US look like racists.  Which we cannot possibly ever be, scientifically.
• Obama doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Martin Luther King!  MLK was a conservative in his heart, and Obama is not.  Obama hasn't had to STRUGGLE like Martin Luther King.  Why, by all accounts, he had a pretty normal childhood that didn't involve starvation or beatings.  He didn't suffer enough!  He doesn't deserve anything!  The only way he could deserve this honor was if he grew up in some horrible segregated nation, and he lived in the poisoned forest eating worms and bugs until he could raise some kind of Gullah Jack Army and take Washington DC by force.  Conquer the white man and seize the presidency.  Only then could i respect him.
• I'm not black but if i was i'd be mad as hell at this "fucking fraud" and would let everyone know that he doesn't speak for me and my proud black family who rejects welfare.  He's not even really black, he's half-black.  And he hasn't struggled enough.  My god, did you hear what they were eating at the Obama "coronation?"  Lobster and bison!  That's expensive.  Not deserved.  How dare they steal my tax money to pay for that.  Spam on crackers, that's all these liberals deserve!  They're not better than me!

^__^

Paraphrases, of course, but that's what i'm reading between the lines.

Please, conservatives.  Continue.

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Inauguration

Ah, a good day. 

Well, there were many crappy things that happened.  You ever had a toilet overflow on you, and realize that the plunger your workplace provides is not a real plunger?  It's a cheap piece of inflexible plastic about 1/2" deep, so it looks like a plunger but doesn't actually, you know, plunge.

But i can overlook these things, because i got to watch Barack Obama be inaugurated today.  And i imagined how i'd feel if i was watching a smirking Mitt Romney take that oath.  I would be in a mood so foul that no overflowing toilet could match it.

Four more years.

Meanwhile, on Supertalk 99.7, Bill Cunningham is bellowing that we need to bring back starvation, so that lazy poor people will get some initiative.  Seriously, if they and their kids were starving on the streets while everyone else avoided them, things would be better.  Away with ye, ragged starveling!  Are there no prisons?  No poor houses?

And Republicans wonder why people won't vote for them.

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There's no bottom

So the latest word from the wingnut ranks is this -- 1776 is about to recommence!  We are at the tipping point where people of America must arm themselves and prepare to shoot at incoming invaders!  Hey, there, Cletus, did you know that state Sheriffs can instantly deputize any patriotic man who own a firearm? This is the endgame, my friends -- when Obama unleashes his forces to seize your guns, your Sheriff will sound the alarm and you will be called to serve the people. And don't worry, you won't be defending your homes from American Joes -- we all know that they'll refuse to follow his orders, so you'll be facing UN troops, or possibly Chinese troops. They're coming, make no mistake. But they will face hundreds of thousands of homegrown patriots ready to rumble.

This is not an exaggeration. There is no bottom with these people. No bottom ever.

I wish someone would explain it to them. Look, there are two plausible outcomes here. The most likely being that nothing at all will happen. Slightly less likely is that certain weapons and high-capacity magazines and clips will be banned, and that background checks will be required at gun shows. No big deal. Gun stores will not be shuttered. Anyone who wants a pistol, rifle, or shotgun will still be able to get them easily. The only people whose lives will change will be the serious gun hobbyists who try to impress one another down at the range with the latest and most powerful guns they can afford. They will join the same club as kiddie porn enthusiasts and hoarders of dangerous and exotic animals. They'll scream about how their freedom has been curtailed in this, the land of the free, and no one else will care.

Relax, rednecks.

Relax.

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