Christmas Pics

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Today's Facebook Looney

You're afraid of that world?

Isn't 'participation' kind of an important concept in a little thing we like to call 'democratic self-government'?

And not to get too Capt Obvious on y'all, but ain't nobody don't know about the Law Of Unintended Consequences - the first lesson (sometimes the only lesson) a spanking teaches a kid is that violence is an appropriate reaction when you're mad or disappointed or frustrated or whatever.

So, you're telling me you're afraid of what happens when we teach kids to participate in the world they live in, and you're afraid they won't react violently when people don't behave the way they want them to behave. Is that about it? Is that really it?

Dontcha hafta wonder why it seems like somebody may be setting you up for something?

Today's National Shame

USAmerica Inc came into the world with some pretty serious baggage - the most prominent of which we've started to address in pretty good shape. We've fixed the mechanical parts of the astounding shittiness of slavery, and of not letting women vote. So two-outa-three ain't bad, but we gotta get right with the guns or we're headed back to the bad old days - and I'm talking about the bad old days before 1790.

Quartz:

America’s gun problem can’t be distilled down to one single issue, of course, but it’s clear that on top of crime and fears of terrorism and insufficient mental health resources and the Second Amendment, America’s gun problem has something to do with America’s masculinity problem.

--and--

As Alankaar Sharma, a social worker and researcher, tells Quartz, “Possessing a gun is considered by many men, if not most, as a straightforward way of subscribing to dominant masculinity.” In his view, the patriarchal system, which privileges a certain set of masculine behaviors, values, and practices, provides men with “a clear and justifiable reason to own guns.” It cements their identity as masculine men.

And for many men today, it’s an identity in particular need of cementing. In this May 2015 op-ed for The Los Angeles Times, sociologist Jennifer Carlson argues that men are clinging to guns as a way to address a broad range of social insecurities. Author of a book on the social practice of gun-carrying in America, Carlson found that gun owners often characterized their fathers’ generation as an era when men had important roles to play as providers and breadwinners.

But men’s participation in the labor force has been declining since the 1970s. As The Economist’s cover story, “The Weaker Sex,” explained earlier in 2015, poorly educated men in rich societies aren’t coping well in the 21st century. Changes in the home and the labor force, especially the loss of manufacturing jobs, have created a class of disgruntled, financially insecure men. Meanwhile, women, who now earn more university degrees than men, are surging into the workforce.

So it isn't simple; it doesn't fit neatly on a bumper sticker; it takes guts and honesty and some real intellectual horsepower to figure out what we can do, but we'll hafta start by insisting the drama pimps like Wayne LaPierre just shut the fuck up long enough to give the adults a chance to think this through.

In the meantime, we can brainstorm on that bumpersticker.

USAmerica Inc

It's about dicks and chicks, dummy

And here's an encore from Jim Jeffries:

Part 1

Part 2

Saturday Pix

Today's Podcast Winner

Been jonesin' on this all day.

driftglass and Blue Gal

"You're isolating yourself from the whole "Spelunking In A Port-a-Potty Experience".



The Brewing of the Soma --John Greenleaf Whittier

The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke
Up through the green wood curled;
'Bring honey from the hollow oak,
Bring milky sap,' the brewers spoke,
In the childhood of the world.

And brewed they well or brewed they ill,
The priests thrust in their rods,
First tasted, and then drank their fill,
And shouted, with one voice and will,
'Behold the drink of gods!'

They drank, and to! in heart and brain
A new, glad life began;
The gray of hair grew young again,
The sick man laughed away his pain,
The cripple leaped and ran.

'Drink, mortals, what the gods have sent,
Forget your long annoy.'
So sang the priests. From tent to tent
The Soma's sacred madness went,
A storm of drunken joy.

Then knew each rapt inebriate
A winged and glorious birth,
Soared upward, with strange joy elate,
Beat, with dazed head, Varuna's gate,
And, sobered, sank to earth.

The land with Soma's praises rang;
On Gihon's banks of shade
Its hymns the dusky maidens sang;
In joy of life or mortal pang
All men to Soma prayed.

The morning twilight of the race
Sends down these matin psalms;
And still with wondering eyes we trace
The simple prayers to Soma's grace,
That Vedic verse embalms.

As in that child-world's early year,
Each after age has striven
By music, incense, vigils drear,
And trance, to bring the skies more near,
Or lift men up to heaven!

Some fever of the blood and brain,
Some self-exalting spell,
The scourger's keen delight of pain,
The Dervish dance, the Orphic strain,
The wild-haired Bacchant's yell,--

The desert's hair-grown hermit sunk
The saner brute below;
The naked Santon, hashish-drunk,
The cloister madness of the monk,
The fakir's torture-show!

And yet the past comes round again,
And new doth old fulfil;
In sensual transports wild as vain
We brew in many a Christian fane
The heathen Soma still!

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard
Beside the Syrian sea
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow Thee.

O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love!

With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown
The tender whisper of Thy call,
As noiseless let Thy blessing fall
As fell Thy manna down.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm! 

Fucking brilliant is all that is.

While There's Still Time

I heard Lil Donny say "bullshit" on the air today, and I just needed to get this up before the polls and the Rube-On-The-Street feedback floated to the top of the cess pool.

How much will this increase Trump's lead over those other malignant puffballs?

Just wondering.

And Now We Go A-Caroling

The Price of Things

Way back when Star Wars first became the biggest thing ever, we wondered how it blew up so big so fast.  I mean, how do you make half a billion dollars in a coupla months in 1977 selling movie tickets at $2.75 a piece, and action figures and masks and posters and bed sheets and various other low-end shit like that?

Wanna make the large dollars?  Develop the cross marketing tie-ins with the guys with the really deep pockets - the health insurance companies, the docs, and their buddies in the medical supplies industry.

Just kidding, ya weenies (it had me goin' for a while tho).  These are from a master joker extraordinaire named Richard Littler who blogs deliciously viciously at scarfolk.blogspot.com

The Internal Conflict

I grew up in a family that just never had enough money for the cool shit.  We never went hungry; and we were never in any danger (that I can recall) of losing the house or even the crappy little cars that my dad could afford.  I had the stuff I needed, but there was always something I wanted that was just a little out of reach - usually clothes.

I felt a little deprived I guess, but every now and then, something floats by on the inter-toobz to remind me that missing some things - especially missing out on certain fashionably fashionable fashion trends - is going to turn out to be a really good thing later on.

Like this:

I knew guys who wore that kinda shit - to work; not just to those abysmal disco joints on the weekends.  And while I can say honestly I laughed my ass off back then, I also have to be honest enough now to say that I'm really glad I didn't have the bucks to look and act just like them, cuz I can't be sure I wouldn't have done exactly that.

Peer pressure works in mysterious ways.  

And it's gonna get you too, little hipster dudes.  Just you wait and see.

Hey, Facebookers

Remember when we weren't all so fuckin' stoopid we couldn't recognize a hoax when we saw one?

Click like if you remember. 

Oops.  So, OK - we've been falling for this shit for a long time.  But hey - click Share if you agree we could be just a tad more diligent about keeping our heads out of our asses.