Friday, February 13, 2015
Today's Unsociable Media
So I had a brief encounter with a coupla Facebook friends today.
It starts out OK - the guy posting it was trying (I tho't) to call attention to the fact that here in USAmerica Inc, the government (meaning us) shouldn't be trying to dictate what a woman has to wear in order to be in line with some bullshit arbitrary standard according to some bullshit arbitrary theocrat's taste or style sensibilities, or whatever it is he deems appropriate as far as them gals bein' seen in public.
But then it degenerates into this shitty little Mean-Girls-High-School-Fuck-Around-Festival-Of-Shaming, followed closely by a doubling down of rationalizations that seem to indicate an almost total lack of self-awareness (maybe even deliberately so), and I'm left to cogitate over how easy it is to get carried along with doing exactly the opposite of what it seems you were trying to do in the first place(?)
It is a wonderment - even tho' I've been guilty of riding that donkey too. But y'know what? Fuck that. You're supposed to have learned a few things by the time you hit - oh, I dunno - sixty-fucking-years-old!
Here's the thing, kids: Shaming somebody for anything having to do with their condition as a human being is not OK. Do you really hold yourself in such high regard? Or is it that your own self-worth is so lousy you have to go out of your way to shit on somebody else to make yourself feel - what - funny, clever, hip, or just better somehow? Any way you cut it, Skeezix, those are your problems - and while I'm happy to do what I can to help you deal with 'em, don't expect me to carry 'em around for you, while you look for a convenient victim to stomp on.
In the end - you pull that shit - you're just a fuckin' bully.
But then it degenerates into this shitty little Mean-Girls-High-School-Fuck-Around-Festival-Of-Shaming, followed closely by a doubling down of rationalizations that seem to indicate an almost total lack of self-awareness (maybe even deliberately so), and I'm left to cogitate over how easy it is to get carried along with doing exactly the opposite of what it seems you were trying to do in the first place(?)
It is a wonderment - even tho' I've been guilty of riding that donkey too. But y'know what? Fuck that. You're supposed to have learned a few things by the time you hit - oh, I dunno - sixty-fucking-years-old!
Here's the thing, kids: Shaming somebody for anything having to do with their condition as a human being is not OK. Do you really hold yourself in such high regard? Or is it that your own self-worth is so lousy you have to go out of your way to shit on somebody else to make yourself feel - what - funny, clever, hip, or just better somehow? Any way you cut it, Skeezix, those are your problems - and while I'm happy to do what I can to help you deal with 'em, don't expect me to carry 'em around for you, while you look for a convenient victim to stomp on.
In the end - you pull that shit - you're just a fuckin' bully.
Well said, Girl In Yoga Pants. Well said indeed.
Today's Artsy Thingie
Al Farrow
Sculptor Al Farrow has had numerous solo exhibitions since 1970, and is currently represented by Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco. His work has been in group shows at the Oakland Art Gallery, the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Falkirk Cultural Center in Marin, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, among many others. He has over 20 years of bronze casting experience. His work is in many important public and private collections around the world, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the di Rosa Preserve in Napa, and other collections in New York, Germany, Italy, and Hong Kong.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Thursday Tunes
Shine --Donavon Frankenreiter
Two Coins --Dispatch
One / Let It Be (cover mash up) --Boyce Avenue
Let's Stay Together (cover) --Obadiah Parker
12:34 --Calum Graham & Don Ross
Seen It All Before --Amos Lee
Two Coins --Dispatch
Diamonds On The Inside --Ben Harper
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
The Other Awards Season
It's time once again to begin the celebration of all that isn't DumFux News.
Columbia University's DuPont Awards featured PBS and WGBH-Boston and The Seattle Times and several other joints where they look for stuff that matters and try to tell us what's going on. Pretty much what you'd expect, because in spite of people like me who sit here and bitch about Press Poodles most of the day, it appears there may still be some journalisming going on up in here.
Conspicuous among the winners is Netflix - they put out a feature length documentary about Virunga National Park in Congo and the fight to protect a World Heritage Site from the various assholes who want nothing but power and money.
And of course, conspicuously absent (again) is DumFux News - for the 19th year in a row - which means their record remains unblemished at Oh-fer-19. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nuthin'. For their entire existence, starting in 1996, they just haven't been able to get over the hump on that whole journalism thing at all.
Things could change of course. The year is young and filled with possiblities. But really - what're the odds?
And it's not like there aren't opportunities.
James Beard Foundation (the writer, not the chef)
Anthony Shadid
Polk
Peabody
IWMF (fat chance, Roger)
SPJ
Gannett Foundation
Pulitzer
Pulliam
ASME
Hearst Foundation
(seems like that one oughta be right up Fox's alley seeing as how they share such a rich and proud tradition of war pimping - but anyhoo)
It's a much longer list than that. I only put up the ones I've heard anything about. And when you add in all the regional outfits - eg: Ancil Payne, Keystone Press; plus all the niche subject stuff like Science and Economics and Foreign Policy, etc - it ain't long before you get a list of awards that makes it seem like the pizza party at the end of your kid's 3rd grade soccer season when everybody gets a trophy no matter what.
But there's DumFux News - No trophy. No Certificate of Participation. No Honorable Mention. Just some cardboard franchise pizza that's high on calories and low on actual food. Seems fitting somehow.
I get the feeling they're not really trying.
Columbia University's DuPont Awards featured PBS and WGBH-Boston and The Seattle Times and several other joints where they look for stuff that matters and try to tell us what's going on. Pretty much what you'd expect, because in spite of people like me who sit here and bitch about Press Poodles most of the day, it appears there may still be some journalisming going on up in here.
Conspicuous among the winners is Netflix - they put out a feature length documentary about Virunga National Park in Congo and the fight to protect a World Heritage Site from the various assholes who want nothing but power and money.
And of course, conspicuously absent (again) is DumFux News - for the 19th year in a row - which means their record remains unblemished at Oh-fer-19. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nuthin'. For their entire existence, starting in 1996, they just haven't been able to get over the hump on that whole journalism thing at all.
Things could change of course. The year is young and filled with possiblities. But really - what're the odds?
And it's not like there aren't opportunities.
James Beard Foundation (the writer, not the chef)
Anthony Shadid
Polk
Peabody
IWMF (fat chance, Roger)
SPJ
Gannett Foundation
Pulitzer
Pulliam
ASME
Hearst Foundation
(seems like that one oughta be right up Fox's alley seeing as how they share such a rich and proud tradition of war pimping - but anyhoo)
It's a much longer list than that. I only put up the ones I've heard anything about. And when you add in all the regional outfits - eg: Ancil Payne, Keystone Press; plus all the niche subject stuff like Science and Economics and Foreign Policy, etc - it ain't long before you get a list of awards that makes it seem like the pizza party at the end of your kid's 3rd grade soccer season when everybody gets a trophy no matter what.
But there's DumFux News - No trophy. No Certificate of Participation. No Honorable Mention. Just some cardboard franchise pizza that's high on calories and low on actual food. Seems fitting somehow.
I get the feeling they're not really trying.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Some Tuneroonies
World Of Wonders --Bruce Cockburn
Hills Of Morning --Bruce Cockburn
No Short Cuts --Heather Maloney
Oh Hope My Tired Friend --Heather Maloney
Monday, February 09, 2015
Today In Stoopid
Let's take a quick look at one of the Libertarians' favorite phony notions: "Spontaneous Order".
Here's John Stossel conducting a small group fap with Tucker Carlson (via David Edwards at Raw Story):
Anyway, it'd be nice if the Dumbass Dems could kinda latch onto some of the old GOP-style rhetoric and just once in a while flip the script by refering to things like Spontaneous Order or Supply Side as "the failed policies of a bygone era..."
And also too - can anybody come up with a better example of the Epitome of Central Planning than God's Will? How 'bout "The 4-Year Revenue Plan of [insert name of mega-corp here]"?
And also too too - just in case ya missed it, Stossel and Carlson are preaching more of the bullshit Gospel of Privatization.
Here's John Stossel conducting a small group fap with Tucker Carlson (via David Edwards at Raw Story):
Fox Business host John Stossel on Sunday asserted that most government was unnecessary because companies like Walmart would spontaneously provide assistance to disaster victims “in many more ways” than the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could.
“Ever feel like government makes too many plans that come to naught?” Fox News host Tucker Carlson told Stossel during a segment on Fox & Friends. “It’s kind of a bold idea. You’re saying that not every human activity needs to be planned from above. Some things spontaneously work themselves out pretty well.”
According to Stossel, Americans would be better off with less government and more “spontaneous order,” a term coined by economist Friedrich Hayek which states that order will naturally emerge from chaos.Edwards goes on to point out that "Spontaneous Order" didn't work out so well in Iraq and Libya (and I'll add Afghanistan and Syria and Crimea and Chile and Argentina and Somalia and Chechnya and and and).
Anyway, it'd be nice if the Dumbass Dems could kinda latch onto some of the old GOP-style rhetoric and just once in a while flip the script by refering to things like Spontaneous Order or Supply Side as "the failed policies of a bygone era..."
And also too - can anybody come up with a better example of the Epitome of Central Planning than God's Will? How 'bout "The 4-Year Revenue Plan of [insert name of mega-corp here]"?
And also too too - just in case ya missed it, Stossel and Carlson are preaching more of the bullshit Gospel of Privatization.
Today's Quote
"What stuns me the most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the Bozos do in Washington and our state capitols...Politics is not a picture on the wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for." --Molly Ivins
What She Said
Actually, what she didn't say.
The Rev. Lindsay Hardin Freeman began scouring the Bible three years ago to do something that apparently had never been done: the cataloging of every word uttered by every woman in the more than 2,000-year-old holy book.
Meeting in a church library, Freeman and an unlikely research team systematically pored over every Bible chapter, documenting the words on spreadsheets and inserting context and highlights. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year.
The results give surprise insights into the lives of women ranging from Abigail to Zipporah. Eve, for example, may be the Bible’s most well-known woman, but she utters only 74 words. Yet an unnamed “Shulamite woman” in the Song of Solomon holds forth with 1,425.Here's a brief recap of the scorecard for ya:
Fewer than 100 woman say anything at all in the bible. We get to know the names of fewer than 50 of those women. And while there're about one-million-one-hundred-thousand words total in the bible, those very few women speak fewer than fourteen-thousand of those 1.1 million words.Not to put too fine a point on it, but how is it that roughly 50% of the human beings on the planet account for less than 1.3% of the words in the "most important book in the entire history of the fucking world"?
Please explain to me how the bible isn't mostly horseshit.
Sunday, February 08, 2015
Saturday, February 07, 2015
Following Up
So I went to Mark Warner's website and left a message about how I needed to see him blah blah - going along with my idea to give him an excuse to duck out on Netanyahu next month (see my post from earlier today), and this is what I got back from a guy who made his fortune in the "Communications Technology" bidness:
We are so very fucked.
We are so very fucked.
Lend 'Em A Hand
From National Journal:
Call all three of your Congress Critters and insist that you have an urgent matter requiring their attention; that you don't feel comfortable discussing it with a staffer; and that you can only make time for a visit on the exact date and at the exact time of Netan-fuckin'-yahu's address to the joint session.
Most of them will blow you off - Repubs especially have shown a particular affinity for turning their backs on us if there's a good grandstanding opportunity at hand - but we'll be giving the others some cover if they decide to stay away (ie: constituent service is still supposedly a thing).
And here's the plum - by calling the Repubs and giving them a chance to rebuff your requests, you have some nice advertising fodder for the 2016 election cycle.
Kinda like this:
"I called [insert Congress Critter's name here] regarding [insert urgent thingie here], but I guess hearing Uncle Bibi's sales pitch about sending more American kids to get all fucked up in some desert shithole was more important to him."
You're welcome. Limber up, be creative and let the shit fly.
There will be no "boycott" of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech before Congress next month, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday.
But while she downplayed reports of an organized protest, she suggested some lawmakers might just be too busy to attend. And at least two Democrats have already decided they won't be on hand.
"I don't think anybody should use the word 'boycott,'" Pelosi said in her weekly press conference. "When these heads of state come, people are here doing their work, they're trying to pass legislation, they're meeting with their constituents and the rest. It's not a high-priority item for them."Pelosi's pretty cagey. This is a wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-more proposition, and here's what I think we can do to help out:
Call all three of your Congress Critters and insist that you have an urgent matter requiring their attention; that you don't feel comfortable discussing it with a staffer; and that you can only make time for a visit on the exact date and at the exact time of Netan-fuckin'-yahu's address to the joint session.
Most of them will blow you off - Repubs especially have shown a particular affinity for turning their backs on us if there's a good grandstanding opportunity at hand - but we'll be giving the others some cover if they decide to stay away (ie: constituent service is still supposedly a thing).
And here's the plum - by calling the Repubs and giving them a chance to rebuff your requests, you have some nice advertising fodder for the 2016 election cycle.
Kinda like this:
"I called [insert Congress Critter's name here] regarding [insert urgent thingie here], but I guess hearing Uncle Bibi's sales pitch about sending more American kids to get all fucked up in some desert shithole was more important to him."
You're welcome. Limber up, be creative and let the shit fly.
"One" More Time
I can almost say that some of this Anti-Vax bullshit is getting to be kinda fun.
As it turns out, in a "free society", we've made it pretty hard to mandate certain health-related issues. There're loopholes in some of the laws (I know - surprising, ain't it?) and creative ways of using other laws that make it all but impossible to enforce any kind of Anti-Dumb-Fuck Policy like "get your stoopid ass vaccinated because I don't need a smug and disease-carrying-fart-smellin'-over-confident-and-under-thinkin' twat waffle like you fuckin' up my little part of the world".
So, anyway - we have to go on trying to talk sense to these jag-offs, but we should also take a shot at moving them by way of social pressure. Simply put, we take some of the bullying tactics that so many overprivileged yahoos get away with, and turn it around on them.
hat tip = Democratic Underground
As it turns out, in a "free society", we've made it pretty hard to mandate certain health-related issues. There're loopholes in some of the laws (I know - surprising, ain't it?) and creative ways of using other laws that make it all but impossible to enforce any kind of Anti-Dumb-Fuck Policy like "get your stoopid ass vaccinated because I don't need a smug and disease-carrying-fart-smellin'-over-confident-and-under-thinkin' twat waffle like you fuckin' up my little part of the world".
So, anyway - we have to go on trying to talk sense to these jag-offs, but we should also take a shot at moving them by way of social pressure. Simply put, we take some of the bullying tactics that so many overprivileged yahoos get away with, and turn it around on them.
hat tip = Democratic Underground
Un-Vaccinated = Unclean
Keep your uwashed filth away from my kids
You see yourself as a Libertarian Hero -
the rest of us see you as that Pigpen kid in the Charlie Brown cartoons.
Your right to refuse vaccination gives me the right to chain you down in the basement, feed you chicken scraps, and throw shit at your head for fun.
Friday, February 06, 2015
New Mr Deity
Be sure to stick around for the "ad" at the end.
And check out the full set of Mr Deity videos at mrdeity.com
Friday Tunage
Inner City Blues --Marvin Gaye
On The Border --Eagles
Come Together (studio) --Beatles
The End Is Not In Sight --Amazing Rhythm Aces
Send Me Dead Flowers --Rolling Stones
On The Border --Eagles
Come Together (studio) --Beatles
The End Is Not In Sight --Amazing Rhythm Aces
Send Me Dead Flowers --Rolling Stones
Darker Side --Johnny Lang
You're Only Lonely (cover) --JD Souther
Thursday, February 05, 2015
Other People's Immunity
...sounds a lot like 'other people's money', don't it?
As long as I can count on all those rubes to follow along blindly and get their shots like the sheeple they are, then I can skip it and still be cool because I'm special and I don't have to do what you say because you're not the boss of me.
The whole point is to grab all the benefits for myself (in this case Herd Immunity), and get everybody else to take the "risks" (which are ridiculously tiny, but pumped up by useful idiots in order to distract the rubes from the fact that I'm fuckin' 'em with their pants on in a thousand other ways that have not-one-fucking-thing to do with vaccinations).
That's how we do it here in USAmerica Inc.
I'm hard-pressed to come up with anything that could be a better example of Over-Privileged Ass-Hatted Self-Serving Fuckery.
yeah, yeah, I said I wanted to stop with the Anti-Vax thing. But sometimes I think of something I shoulda thunk up before and I have to circle back. Besides - this shit's free, remember?
As long as I can count on all those rubes to follow along blindly and get their shots like the sheeple they are, then I can skip it and still be cool because I'm special and I don't have to do what you say because you're not the boss of me.
The whole point is to grab all the benefits for myself (in this case Herd Immunity), and get everybody else to take the "risks" (which are ridiculously tiny, but pumped up by useful idiots in order to distract the rubes from the fact that I'm fuckin' 'em with their pants on in a thousand other ways that have not-one-fucking-thing to do with vaccinations).
That's how we do it here in USAmerica Inc.
I'm hard-pressed to come up with anything that could be a better example of Over-Privileged Ass-Hatted Self-Serving Fuckery.
yeah, yeah, I said I wanted to stop with the Anti-Vax thing. But sometimes I think of something I shoulda thunk up before and I have to circle back. Besides - this shit's free, remember?
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