Tuesday, December 28, 2010

A half-baked story

Where does my mind come up with this shit.

I present, the Mad Baker of Calgary:

"I’m not much on story-telling but I wasn’t about to let some panty-waist creampuff writer turn mine into some heartfelt loaf of crap.  I am Pillsbry, the Mad Baker of Calgary.  I single-handedly took down an army of Debrite soldiers with a combination of hard-crusted determination, yeasty physical strength and salt to taste.  I’ll spare you the floury prose.  I’m a hero to artisans of baked goods the world over."

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

What's up, dog?

Get it? What's up, dog?

Yoga joke.  Because I'm such a fucking yoga freak now.  Not at all.

But I did yoga today and it prompted me to write a THIRD entry, because my life is boring.

I'll tell you something, this yoga stuff is interesting.  It's spread pretty far pretty fast.  It seems like they're using it for everything.  Learn to cook better through yoga! Dying of stab wounds? Try Yoga! Lost your faith? Yoga it out! Flesh-eating bacteria? You're gonna Yoga that shit up.

And I'm not big on fads, they tend to very quickly outgrow their usefulness.  See: Organic.  But making people step out and do some physical activity, get in touch with their bodies and not be afraid to relax for a few minutes...that I have to give props to.

I had a weird moment in yoga today where I had to cradle my leg close to my chest.  The feeling was not unlike being stuck in a small room with someone you don't know very well.  I was like "Hey, what's up, leg.  Nice...uh...weather here, right? Yeah, any plans for the holidays?"

I realize we don't get a chance to talk to our bodies often.  Just like we don't get the chance to talk to our cars or screwdrivers.  It's kind of a means to an end.  Our bodies are there to satisfy the brain's desires.  Get us from point A to point B, make us feel good about buying an expensive dinner because, hell, at least we got sex out of it.  In fact, some times it seems like we're at odds.  My body wants to sleep, but I really just want to go to this party.  My body is hungry, but, goddammit, you just ate an hour ago.

I think we need the time with our body.
Look at your hands.
See the scar, there
The one you got making a sandwich
But you told that girl last night was from a knife fight.
"Very small knives"
Look, your feet, there.
They're a little big
But mom always said big feet, big heart.
Or something like that.
Your nose, I mean, it's a little big
And it gets all red in the cold sometimes
But, it's nice where it is.  Kind of draws attention away from...you know, all the rest.
And your eyes.
They're a little bleary now
They have more baggage than your last girlfriend, ha ha ha ha
But they face forward mostly.
Never seem to stray far.
Your hair falls in waves, receding now,
The beach of your scalp starting to show.

Look at yourself sometime.
It's kind of surprising how much you miss.

My brain hamster

My brain is a lot like a hamster.  A hamster that really, really, really wants a wheel.


And...
A friend just suggested I come up with a slogan for her friend's business that finds local deals with GPS.  This is a terrible thing to ask me to do because it means for the rest of the day, I will be non-stop thinking of slogan ideas.  I will, at least for the next few hours, be only able to think phrases that could be contained within quotation marks.

"The Satellite that Saves"
"Globally Yours!"
"SAVING the world"
"DEALS FROM SPAAAAACE"
"Our deals are out of this world!"
"Savings from coast to coast"
"A WORLD of savings"

 For the rest of the day it's gonna be like:


Leaving Work: "TGI end of the day"
Yoga class: "Stretch the stress away!"
Eating ramen: "It's not just for college kids anymore!"
Watching porn: "It's only sin if you enjoy it!"

In conclusion, I hate my brain.

AT&T will charge you extra to read this

Mission Accomplished, Obama.  Mission Accomplished.

At least you have to give him credit for consistency.  Integrity, no.  But consistency, you betcha! Obama's FCC has officially given up the fight for net neutrality.  And he's done it in a way that even the REPUBLICANS are kinda surprised at.

For those of you who don't know what net neutrality is, it's kinda like this:

(Source)
In other words, making the internet like cable TV, where you pay for different packages that are arbitrarily (and probably maliciously) chosen by your ISP.  So, for example, say you like to use blogger to write inane articles about your short stories being rejected.  This is a diagram of what will happen to your wallet:


What? Would you prefer a pie chart?


But I'll be honest, this doesn't frighten me too much.  The FCC has been putting out for any corporation with a nice smile and a few suave lobbyists.  They've chased after one piracy entity after another.  Every time one gets knocked down, another pops back up.  If this whole thing goes through and ISPs start charging for access, I give it a week before someone has a work-around.

That's what I love about the internet.  It's gotten to the point that it's not really something that can be controlled.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

The Submiticating

Oh yeah.  Guess which talented motherfucker just submitted yet another brilliant work of art to some unwitting literary magazine.  I'll give you a hint.  He writes blog posts no one reads.

...Not that narrows it down.


"Zilch Fabulous and Death" has officially exploded the offices of Apex Magazine.
(By the way, this is an awesome site for some free sci-fi publishing info: SFWA)

A snippet:

Zilch paced the pit wondering how its dankness would affect the acoustics of his victory speech.  It didn’t occur to him that something was wrong until a small herd of Beebles dropped into the pit.  They were doing their best to look furious, which made them even more adorable.  Zilch inquired as to whether they were going to escort him to the award ceremony.  They responded with the most vicious string of Beeblian curse words ever pronounced, which came out as a series of really endearing little squeaks.

Before Zilch could saw “Aw”, the ground began to shake.  And before Zilch could discern the cause, it descended on him like an avalanche.  An avalanche of Beebles, which felt much like an avalanche of pillows.  But eventually pillows pile up.  Zilch struggled as the Beebles snuggled him savagely.  Just as he managed to emerge from under them, another layer landed on him.  Zilch grasped and gasped, cried and pried, but it was no use.  The Beebles pushed what air remained from him and the last thing Zilch Fabulous saw was a pair of adorable eyes reveling in his demise.
 What drama! What suspense! What a load of shit!

Why rich people need all their money taken away from them

This:
(Taken from Huffington Post)

This is why all rich people need to have their money taken away from them.  Because they do dumb shit like this with it.  I'm not gonna get started on how ridiculous the Kardashians are as human beings, because that would be like shooting breast implants in a barrel.  But THIS.  THIS is their fucking CHRISTMAS Card.  What about this says holiday cheer? It's like Merry Christmas from the Adams Family.  THEY'RE NOT EVEN SMILING! Is their too much botox in their bloodstream for them to crack a GRIN?!


Whatever.  Of all the rich bastards, the Kardashians are nobodies.  Jamie Dimon, who lives in a weird alternate universe of crazy, after he and his banker cronies led the country into one of the worse financial crises in history: 

"My daughter came home from school one day and said, 'daddy, what's a financial crisis?' And without trying to be funny, I said, 'it's the type of thing that happens every five, ten, seven, years.' And she said: 'why is everybody so surprised?' So we shouldn't be surprised..." (source)

So yeah.  The Kardashians are nobodies.  Big breasted nobodies.  They're not even good at exploiting themselves.  Kim's sex tape is just a boatload of awkward.  It's so bad I think she pretty much redeemed Paris.

Anyway.  The fact is these people are paying so many millions to live their ridiculous, grotesque lives and it needs to stop.  Not their lives.  Just the way they live it.  Cut their annual income to some more normal level and use that money to create jobs and help the homeless/hungry, in other words, the people who aren't able to afford creepy Christmas photos.

I know the argument.  "But Big Poppa, what would drive people to innovate! If we have no chance of making some absurd amount of money and spend it on meaningless shit, why would we ever advance?!"

My answer is if you're innovating just to make more money, you're a fuck-up.  And you should probably step aside, because once the disadvantage people get their advantages, they're probably gonna be moving pretty fast.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

People who should (at least) be locked up for December: John Boehner

I forgot to do this for November, so this better be EXTRA good.

Though, it probably won't be.  I come from humble background, after all, so the chances of me actually advancing to any position of importance is extremely low.

Of course, there's Larry Ellison, sixth richest person in the world who was born to an unwed couple who passed him off to family because they couldn't take care of him.

Or Sidney Weinberg, who started as a janitor's assistant and rose to become the CEO of Goldman-Sachs, where he revolutionized the company.

Now rather than take this to mean that any shmuck who wants to be successful just has to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, I'd like to take it to mean that every person has the potential to be the next CEO.  The next Einstein.  The doctor to cure AIDS, cancer.  The artist that inspires a generation.  All they need is education.

And what would be great is if the people coming from this kind of background appreciated that fact too.  Instead.  We get this guy:





 
  I can't help but cry thinking about how much money I can make.

John Boehner, Republican from this place, who rose from being one of twelve children and a janitor and having only one leg and half a brain to become Speaker of the House.  What a triumph.

People, and by people I mean the media, can't stop talking about the fact that he was a janitor.  Like the fact that he cleaned up shit for a few years makes him really in touch with the American people.

But honestly, I don't care how clean he's going to keep his desk.  I care how clean his record as a politician is.  And when it comes to dirty, this guy's been rolling in it.

In 2006, he went around handing out checks from tobacco companies to his buddies. 

Earlier this year, he complained to Jaime Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, that he wasn't donating enough to the GOP.  And even after they had protected their interests for so long!  And he doesn't just talk shop with JP, no, no, some of his closest friends are lobbyists.  They even make excellent policy directors.

Don't worry, though, because of his humble background, he knows that friendships go both ways, unlike how he believes marriage should.  For his healthcare buddies, he opposed reform and vows to repeal it.  For the bankers, he urges them to stand up to Congress, they've been pushing those poor rich folks around too long! Not to mention he hands a nice little spot off to one of their lobbyists, as if it weren't clear enough he's ready to make the taxpayers bend over as far as they need to.

Speaker Boehner.  The fact that your parents couldn't work a condom doesn't impress me.  And the fact that you come from a poor background does the opposite.  You are crippling families exactly like the one you came from.  And you should be ashamed.

So.  For December.  Mr. John Boehner, I am of the opinion that you should, at the very least, be thrown in jail.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Let the rejecting BEGIN!

Just sent out the first query for my second novel, Xenotone.

I feel like Malefici (my first novel) has gotten rejected so many times it's like this gruff, crotchety old man and it's like "Oh, you young whippersnapper, you have no idea what you're getting yourself into."

And Xenotone's like "Whatever, old man, I totally know what I'm doing."

I think my rejection scorecard is like at 5.  I wanna go for a high score.  I wonder if there's a prize for having the most unsellable novel ever.  Just send envelopes full of cat shit to agents and ask them what they thought of my manuscript.

Fun times!

UPDATE:
Got my first rejection for Xenotone! It's not so bad if you pretend your work is the cocky kid you hated in high school.  Haha, suck it up, novel!  No one likes you!

Thursday, December 9, 2010

This just in: Who the hell cares?

So apparently the Westboro Baptist Church is picketing Elizabeth Edward's funeral.  For those of you who don't know who Elizabeth Edwards was, she was the woman that a somewhat popular political figure cheated on.  Or, at least, that's all the media ever reported about her.

Now the Westboro...well, let's just call them the Morons...now the morons are protesting the funeral just like they protested at soldiers burials and...

You know what? Who the fuck cares?

The Morons are nobodies.  They're a bunch of inbred hicks who have no idea what they're talking about and just want attention because they've been abused all their lives that they can only quiet the idiot voices in their heads when someone's yelling at them.  And the Media is their best friend.

There's an interview I can't seem to find on a legitimate news channel with Shirley Phelps-Roper, the only person that seems capable of carrying any sort of conversation in that herd of moron, which follows the typical route any interview with a group of mentally challenged racists.

Interviewer: Question

Moron: Stupid response

Interviewer: Rational argument that makes the assumption that these people understand rational thought and therefore legitimizes their argument.

Moron: Stupid response

Interviewer: Scoring points by negating their response and yelling at them for being stupid, therefore looking like the crazy person

Moron: Stupid response

WHY ARE WE TALKING TO THESE PEOPLE?! They don't know what's going on in the world, I'm surprised they can drive cars, let alone WRITE LEGIBLY ON SIGNS.

The media has a bad case of the irrelevancies.  And they don't seem aware of the fact that by giving these people a forum, even if it's a forum that's going to make fun of everything they stand for, they are LEGITIMIZING these people's craziness.

Case in point: Glenn Beck.  He really only came into his stride when he started being a right-wing blathering idiot. (That article is a bit long, it chronicles the trials and travails of a drunken nobody.  But if you skim it, you get the idea that he slowly realized that the only way anyone would pay attention to him was if he acted the idiot he always was.)

Case in point: Westboro Church.  Their whole GOAL is to get attention.  They're not trying to convert anyone.  They just want people to look at them the way their parents never did.  And the media, by giving them any attention at all, only gives them victories, only endows their demented purpose with legitimacy.

The fact is, the media, by playing into this silly game these half-wits are playing, are agreeing with them.  The media is saying "yes, these are views people should know about".  It's not difficult to shoot these people down, they don't have any real knowledge, I'm almost certain they can't even read the signs they're holding up.  They don't NEED to be fought.  They need to be ignored.  Entirely.  Like the irrelevant historical subtext they are.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Fuck politics

It's literary time.

Just finished a really personal short story.  In essence, an attempt to see what the literary market will pay for small pieces of my soul.  Come and get it!

Of course, it's also heavily fictionalized.  Because my life is boring.

Snippet:

            I always remembered Anthony's room wrapped in this kind of dream-like haze so when they opened the door to remove the body, I didn't recognize it.  It used to be that you walked in and this thick kind of gray film stretched itself over your eyes and everything started to look like noir movies.  Blacks and whites in high contrast.  Muted emotions.  Hard-boiled characters.
 
            As they zipped the black-trash-bag over his head, I swear I saw that same smoke coming from him.  I swear I could see it leak out into the ambulance.  I knew that if I went into that bag with him, we would be carried off in that same haze.  Where nothing really mattered.  Where all that existed was our joints and our eyes floating detached from a world that wanted us detached from it.
 
            I met him at the end of high school.  This was during a period I like to call Jennifer.  The reason for this is because of a girl named Jennifer.  Not Jen.  Jennifer.  Idiots called themselves Jen.
 
            She was so bad she came with a warning.
 
            “Don't do it, man.” Bob mumbled between handfuls of curly fries.
 
            I watched her ass swivel itself across the cafeteria.
 
            “You let her in and you're gonna hate yourself.” Munch munch munch.  There was nothing more unconvincing than a fat kid giving you girl advice.
 
            “Whatever.”
 
            So I let her in.  And I hated myself.  Don't misunderstand, though, we never did more than kiss.
 
            She pulled away and with a smile I would have ended myself for said “Oh man, just wait till we start having sex.”
 
            I grinned stupidily and tried not to think what that would cost me.

What a crazy bunch of characters.  What kind hijinx will they get up to, you think?

In other news, I'm writing a lot of love poems.  Because that's cool.  I've thrown out the whole idea of writing stuff no one else has and decided to have a crack of writing the same cliched shit! Hooray!

Snippet:

This is my economy and
(grunt) I’m finished with this recession.
Your money’s no good here
Because I’m done inflating the dime-a-dozen
From now on it’s gold standard
Girls with assets in surplus
And…
Well, I’ll skip the bit about a stimulus package.

Hilarity ensues.

Till next time.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

But does it explode?

Finally.  Here it is.  The war's over.  We've won.  Everyone can come home.

I swear, the military sometimes seems like it's run by a bunch of people who play too much Call of Duty.  There's all these new fangled guns coming out one after another like the only thing that's keeping us from immediate complete domination of the world is our troops' inability to shoot laser beams from their eyes.

COME ON.

Stuff like this.  Robot soldiers.  "They don't get hungry".  Yeah, because if only we had troops without real human needs, we'd be winners already.

And this, too.  Though the 10 year old boy in me still thinks it's kinda cool.  (The company calls itself metalstorm.  Because, you know, their weapons fire...like...storms of...uh...metal?)

Meanwhile we have people coming back home with a whole smorgasbord of metal and physical problems and the VAs are not equipped to handle all that demand.

Let's not even start on the issue that guns developed in the 1940s are still inflicting casualties on an army equipped with all the bells and whistles the DoD R&D can tack on.  I think the problem may not be with how long it takes for the bullets we fire to explode, but with the whole idea of putting people in front of or behind these weapons.

I swear, our soldiers are some gutsy motherfuckers.  They're putting themselves out on the field not knowing what new piece of technology's been sold to the enemy.

My thought? Upend the whole weapons manufacture industry in the US.  Turn it into an industry that researches ways to keep people alive rather than put them in the ground.  What a fucking concept.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

The Case for Chaos

So it's an exciting time.  And by exciting, I mean dangerously unstable.

The French protests which are, contrary to the 24-hour-news-cycle perspective, still going.

British students are occupying universities to get their point across.

Italians are showing that Italians aren't as laid back as their government would like to believe.

And NOW, the whole Wikileaks shabang.  The US has been caught red-handed spying.  Iran has been sending weapons to Hezbollah in ambulances.  Saudi leaders have been pushing for an attack on Iran, while at the same time funding al Qaeda.  The German chancellor is ineffectual.  The Libyan king likes buxom blondes.

And all I can think is that this is absolutely fantastic.

"Every generation needs a new revolution" - Thomas Jefferson

This is a concept I strongly support.  I believe that the only government that will actually work and be representative is one that is again and again being uprooted, rearranged and replaced.  You'd think this might lead to chaos and confusion.  And you'd probably be right a few hundred years ago.  Now, we have facebook, we have email, we have daily updates and twitter posts.  If the technology exists to enable people to keep tabs on their favorite celebrities' bowel movements, I'm pretty damn sure we'd be able to make periodic government adjustments.

The great killer of potential is stagnation.  When you're really comfortable on your couch, it'd take an act of God to move you.  But when you're moving, writing people, meeting papers, you find out how much you're capable of.  And it really is as simple as that.  If people could be infused with the idea that they are active citizens, that their voice matters, we'd have a lot more voices saying a lot more intelligent things.

As it is, people just want to look at pictures of a 14-year-old sister of some dumb hot girl.

But, as I see it, not for long.  The more chaotic the world becomes, the more anything is possible.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Hilarious blog

No, I don't mean mine.  Someone else's.  If you can believe it:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

Check it out.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

A problem I have. Or a problem everyone else has.

So, not to sound egotistical, but I think I'm the least egotistical person in the world.

That may be a lie.  As exemplified by the fact that I have a blog.  It is an intrinsic belief for anyone who has blog that their opinion is more important than most other people's.  Compounded by the fact that I'm a writer trying to get published.  Ego becomes a kind of necessity.  If not a commodity.

But sometimes I can't help but get pissed off at people grasping for some cross to bear.

This is the focus of a poem that I've been trying to put together about how hard it is for a middle-class white male to find the crutch on which they can blame everything.  It's a real issue! I mean, the suicide rate for white men is higher than other ethnicities and "suicide experts" say that it's because whites are socialized to be in control and lack the "coping mechanisms" of other ethnicities.  Of course, they're not sure.  But, what is science if not a collection of hearsay and claims grounded in typical social roles?

They teach that shit in psychology textbooks.  I'll tell you what, I spent 30 minutes researching that and didn't find a single goddamn source.  You'd think they'd interview a few white people before putting that out into the world.  I mean, it wouldn't be hard.  We whites are everywhere.

We're all searching for the reason
The reason we didn't get that job
The reason our girlfriend left us
Our kids hate us
Our government fails us
Our stomach hurts.
Privilege was the worst gift we gave to ourselves
We've never been more miserable
Now we have 24-hour news
And wikipedia
To look up worldwide miseries and be damned if we don't make it our own
Sure, we wear Levi's
But we CARE about Chinese labor.

Or something like that.  It's really convenient to have a crutch, a black guy, a God to blame our troubles on.  And so we'll try and solve the puzzle outside ourselves.  Because we can't reach it inside of us.  We don't know what we'll touch.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Keep your government hands off my crack beer

So.  It's official.  Four Loko and Joose are banned.

The people had this to say:
<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/sq2R79rpOe4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/sq2R79rpOe4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

And this.

I quote: "I think this whole thing stinks! more bureaucratic bull we do not need! we loose our rights inch by inch unless we stand together! please set up a forum where we can voice our opinion and send it to the state legislators! if a hundred thousand pissed off people were pounding on their doors they would listen!"

Yet another step in Obama's socialist agenda, take away our caffeinated alcoholic sugar syrup.  Then take away our freedoms.

God bless America. 

Fun with slave labor

So, this is a cool site.

And, of course, by cool I mean it makes a mockery of the democratic process.  The site is called YouCut, and it's a site where the public can suggest things to cut from the budget.  Essentially, it's the institutionalization of the GOP's policy of indiscriminate obstructionism.  Hooray!

Let me guess.  50% of the solutions involve removing the "black man" from the white house.  The other 50% probably involve...well...this.

In my browsing and fuming at the site, I looked at some of the Republican stances on the issues.  By stances, of course, I mean weird twisting of the facts and bizarre justification of putting all the blame on workers and all the praise on employers.

Honestly, some of their stances make sense.  Like this one:
"Federal unemployment insurance recipients who are most likely to exhaust benefits should be expected to engage in education, training, or enhanced job search as a condition of eligibility. This proposal would expand on the current successful Reemployment and Eligibility Assessment program operated by some States."

Sure, yes, they should show at least some evidence that they're making an effort.  That makes sense.  Of course, "enhanced job search" is a kind of troubling word, but barring that, it's a reasonable idea.

But then there's this:

"The government should require states to adopt a program like "Georgia Works" as a condition of accessing Unemployment Insurance Modernization funds. Under this successful program unemployment insurance recipients are placed in real part time jobs with real employers, with the employer deciding whether to hire them at the end of a 6-week trial period. Their pay during the period is their unemployment benefit, along with a State-provided stipend for job-related transportation and child care expenses. This has resulted in faster returns to work, less unemployment payments, and thus lower State unemployment taxes."

So, essentially, the Repubs think that providing a free supply of expendable employees to companies, more jobs will be created.  Now that's GOP thinkin'.

It's at best allowing companies to do to white people what they already do to Mexicans, at worst it's straight slave labor.  This article asks who benefits more.  Let's examine that.

Benefits to the employer: Free labor, ability to put the employee to work doing whatever they hell they feel like, no need to pay benefits, no need to worry about pesky unions and the ability to kick the employee out after six-weeks.

Benefits to the employee: They work at whatever they get placed in and desperately try to meet that 50% chance they might actually be offered a real position at a company they may not want to work for.

The question is not who benefits more.  The question is why we allow people to propose these ideas without being deported for treason.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

This is how catastrophes happen

So on the way to work today, I had to take a different way that lead to me standing in the rain waiting for the shuttle.  Which absolutely put me in the proper mindset for what followed.

A police van pulls up across the street, nothing special considering I live in the gentrification frontier.  In fact, if I didn't see at least one heavily armed policeman on the way home, I'd start getting concerned.  But then one officer piles out while the other is screaming at someone in the back of the van.  I can't get a good view (nor did I particularly want to) but it looks like the guy they arrested is trying to fight the cop, yelling and screaming and kicking.

All of a sudden, everyone is slowing down what they're doing, whipping out cell phones and just generally being an audience.

It occurs to me this is how catastrophes happen.

People stop their work-home beeline
Click and flash their way into history
While this guy, this one guy, could grab hold of a cop's gun
And cause headline news havoc.
Run down the street shooting to freedom
Until his struggle is spent
A quick-trigger officer putting him off his flight
And sending him crashing to the ground.

There could have been blood.  There could have been CNN vans, reporters with microphone-backed questions.  The guy with the iPhone saying it shouldn't have happened.  The girl in tears asking how it could happen.  Shells on the ground and police lines do not cross.  Chalk outlines dripping like made-up eyes.


I would say "I was just trying to get to work.  But that's how it is.  Catastrophes never happen when they're supposed to."

But reality has a bias towards the undramatic.  Some obscene number of cop cars pulled up and the guy was subdued before you could say "don't tase me, bro".  It was over in about ten minutes.  A girl walks up to me and asks "What happened?"

I tell her the truth.  But I almost didn't want to.

Blogs, they are a-changin'

For those three of you that read my blog, you might have noticed a change.

That's because I've decided to hijack my own blog to make it into...my own blog.  I've noticed that anyone serious about writing seems to have some spot that they put their inane musings and half-formed mutant zygotes of ideas, so I decided I needed one too.  I'm still probably going to bitch and moan about this that or another political thing, but I just didn't want to make a whole 'nother blog.  I'm being green, you see.

So, from henceforth, I claim this blog in the name of Big Poppa.  Consider yourself warned.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Japan expands its monopoly on weird

I'm, for real, gonna make this one a short entry.

But I just needed to comment on this.

WHAT!?

This is a combination of creepy, hilarious and totally mind-blowing.  Apparently the Japanese, not content to just dance, watch and have sex with cartoons, now have chosen to make one a pop idol.

What's even more wild about this is that this pop idol, Hatsune Miku, uses a technology called Vocaloid, which essentially allows you to have your lyrics sung by creepily human sounding voices.  So now, not only do you not have to be particularly talented to have your music be famous, you don't even have to be attractive.  It's absolutely wild.  And also weird as hell.

But, then again.  It's Japan: 


Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Bill Maher is an idiot.

Bah.  Two posts about the Rally to Restore Sanity.  Because, you know, that's real politics.  But I'll console myself in that it's also a post ripping into Bill Maher.

Let me give you some background on the profound hatred I have for this pseudo-intellectual pile of meaningless vaguely leftist rhetoric.

Bill Maher is a libertarian.  I should probably write an entry about this, but I think libertarians are one step away from...you know what I don't even know what they're one step away from.  They're so far outside the realm of logic, not to mention the realm of reasonable political discourse, that I don't know what to say about them.  Privatizing libraries? Can you honestly espouse that view without completely annihilating your relevance?

He's also a member of PETA.  You know.  The PETA that equates mistreated chickens with the HOLOCAUST.

He's a-ok with racial profiling at airports.
Interviewer: I want to go ahead to a stand that you take on racial profiling, and in the book, you say that's fine at airports?
Maher: Absolutely.

And more than anything, he acts as a perfect explanation of why the South and religious people don't trust Democrats or liberals.  Not to mention he's kind of a racist.

This is why when I read this "critique" of Jon Stewarts "rally" I got more than a little miffed.

In response to Jon Stewart claiming that the media only pays attention to the radicals and not the reasonable people, Maher explains how reasonable he is.  This, of course, after his previous claims of how most Republicans are racist and that America is, largely, dumber than Obama.

I quote: "I can't name any Democratic leaders who think 9/11's an inside job."

I always love arguments that begin with "I can't name" or "I can't think of" because it shows how much the person bases their opinion in fact.

So maybe there's no Democrats that believe 9/11 is an inside job.  But there are those that will assert factually inaccurate and terrible things about their opposition.  You know, like claiming that people on the other side are religious nutbag racists.  And not educated and reasonable people.

Mr. Maher, you are the last person that should be arguing that the left is reasonable.  It is.  But only because you're not part of it.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Apparently, everyone hates Obama.

So earlier this week, an astonishing thing happened.  The Republicans won the country and the Democrats are miserable failures and everyone hates Obama.

Or so everyone says.

But I don't.  The only winner this mid-term election seems to be public frustration.  The Democrats lost seniors and independents.  They lost blacks and young people.  Half the people who turned out are dissatisfied with their party.  Everyone's pissed about the economy.  And 58% of Americans want a third party.

But no problem! The Democrats are a-ok with all this.

It is a defeat.  For the government.  People are starting to realize the Republians represent the racists, the homophobes and the rich while the Democrats just represent the rich.  I honestly can't blame people for voting Republican, at least their base is diversified.

And let's just make one thing clear.  This isn't a mandate on Obama.  And it isn't a conservative resurgence.  The so-called Blue Dog Democrats (AKA, Republicans who got lost on their way to Congress) lost BIG.  And the Tea Party got Rand Paul (In Kentucky, a typically red state, what a victory) but lost basically everywhere else. (That source, by the way, is from Fox News.  Fox News talking about the Tea Party being Tuesday's biggest loser.  If there's one thing Fox News reports honestly on, it's when its eating its young.)

But honestly, I see it as an opportunity.  Most people are coming to the realization that neither party represents their interests.  The Democrats demurred when handed the popular mandate and the Republicans start two wars when they're in charge.  The truth is we do need a third party.  And I think when people finally find out that the system is not going to give them jobs, the system is not going to fix the economy and the system doesn't give a shit about their health, we're gonna see some change.

So.  Get angry, people.  We're gonna need that anger when we finally take charge.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

The best free concert I've ever been to

(Image from here)

So I'll try and keep this short.

I went to the rally Saturday with no real expectations.  I found myself a combination of disappointed and impressed.  Disappointed because, I realized, I actually did have expectations.  I expected some amount of rally or some degree of march.  Instead I got a concert.  A fantastic concert, to be sure, and free, which was enough to make the calvalcade of misery that was my trip home worth it.  But the political message was confused, if there even was one.

For example:


This sign was being handed out like it was free brownies.  I felt offended, though I'm not exactly sure why.  It seemed they were hijacking the message of the rally.  But the rally didn't really have a message, so they were just tacking their cause onto anything they could find.  Which seems about right for pothead activists.

But honestly, the more I think about it, the more I really did like Jon Stewart's closing remarks.  And the more I liked the idea of just prompting people to show up and show that not everyone's crazy.  It was a move against the media, which aims to paint everything in technicolor.  And I can kind of respect that.
Not to mention, watching a little Jewish man from New Jersey booming his voice over a crowd of 200,000 was kind of a neat sight to see.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

People that should be (at least) locked up for October: Russell Pearce (R-AZ)

So I decided to have a feature.  Because features make for good blogs, right?

Every month, I'm going to give a profile of someone who should be, at the very least, put in prison.  Think of it like Keith Olbermann's Worst Person in the World, except I'm not an pretentious ex-sports reporter.

So, for October, I present Senator Russell Pearce, a man whose continued existence is proof that God doesn't strike down evil.

Senator Pearce, 63, assumed office last year.  He served for some time as Chief Deputy Sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona.  He was appointed by Republican officials as Director of Highway Safety, but was later discharged after tampering with state driving records.  A real stand-up guy.

He became the Representative of District 18 in Arizona in 2001 and served there until his campaign for Senate in 2008.  But he was by no means idle! In April of 2006, he endorsed J.T. Ready in his campaign for city council in Mesa, AZ.  The same J.T. Ready seen here posing with his Neo-Nazi buddies.  Of course, then-Representative Pearce had absolutely no idea that the buddy he held hands with in his anti-immigration rally was a NEO-Nazi! Why would he associate with white supremacists?

Well, I mean, aside from the fact that he is one.  But he's sorry.  So it's okay.

Pearce has always stood by a hard position on immigration.  In that he don't like it much.  He recently cited a statistic that "Twenty percent [of immigrants] coming across the border already have a criminal history." (source).  He says that there's a lot of violence coming out of these illegals! His stance on violence, of course, being made perfectly clear by the repeated beatings he delivers to his wife.

No surprise that he had a pretty strong hand in the drafting of the Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, AKA, the legalization and institutionalization of racial profiling in Arizona.  But how strong a hand? Well, apparently not a very strong hand, it's mostly drafted by the prison industry.

That's right.  The prison industry.

I strongly recommend reading that article.  It will make you very, very upset.  And that's something you want to be, if you're reading this blog.

Senator Pearce presented before a hotel conference rooms of prison executives (yes, those exist) and legislators a plan to not only build a bunch of new prisons, but also churn out prisoners to fill them! What a concept.  Of course, there was little debate to be had, but a lot of profit.
And so, the bill was drafted there and transmitted, almost word-for-word, to the statehouse.  36 co-sponsors jumped up out of no where.  Well, not no where, they were in the hotel room with the prison execs.  The bill found its way to the desk of Governor Jan Brewer.  It was then signed into law.  30 of the 36 co-sponsors receive campaign contributions and everyone's happy.

Except, of course, the people of Arizona.  And anyone not as racially pure as Senator Pearce and his white supremacist ilk.

So there you have it.  Senator Pearce.  October's person who should be thrown in prison.  At least.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Feeling good about the world? Let me fix that.

This is a really fascinating article.

It explains, albeit very briefly, the cycle of poverty-to-prison.  That people who are poor tend to be more likely to spend more time in prison and, due to their experience, have a harder time holding down a job.  Thus, they stay poor and remain likely to go back to prison.  This chart is really interesting:


The rate of High School dropouts going to prison has increased.  Especially among African Americans.  It's pretty interesting, also, to see that White High School dropouts are more likely to be imprisoned than Latino dropouts.  The article explains that "...if current incarceration trends hold, fully 68 percent of African-American male high school dropouts born from 1975 to 1979...will spend time living in prison at some point in their lives".  Mind-boggling.

Depressed yet? No? 

How about this

The article explains how from "...rural America to the urban cores of deindustrialized cities, a military caste system is slowly taking shape".  It describes the two major markets for recruiters: Poor people and military children.

"According to a 2007 Associated Press analysis, 'nearly three-fourths of [U.S. troops] killed in Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national average. More than half came from towns where the percentage of people living in poverty topped the national average.'"

Add to this the fact that a large number of soldiers returning from combat service are affected by Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Traumatic Brain Injury and Anxiety/Depression, all issues that affect being able to get and maintain a job.

So this is what faces the poor in the US:

 

Excuse the terrible mspaint graph, but there you go.  Left off, of course, is the race element as well as servicemen and women tending to have children who also go off to serve.

So, there you have it.  There is a machinery at work in our society that aims to grind the poor into a pulpy mash to fuel our prison and military economy.

Have a nice day.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

The Tea Party doesn't exist

Needless to say, I've gotten in a few fights for saying the above.  Which is fair.  It's hard to say a thing that you see on TV isn't real.  And, in truth, it's not EXACTLY true.  But it's true in a lot of ways.

For example, this way.  That's an article from a blog that makes a very good point that Tea Party rallies, or Tea Party-related rallies, or...let's just call them Ballsinthemouth rallies, these Ballsinthemouth rallies are only big when a major network like Fox reports on them.

And that's not all.  This article (whose title I'm apparently stealing) gives several more examples of the Tea Party failing to galvanize anything that would constitute a movement.  Their rally in Las Vegas was cancelled. Their 2010 9/12 rally was a disaster.  Meanwhile, the article explains, a "study done by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting...the February 2010 Nashville Tea Party Convention received far more attention than the U.S. Social Forum, (a convention leftist and socialist activists) which drew 15,000 to 20,000 attendees (compared to the 600 at the Tea Party convention), but received just 1.5 percent of the coverage of the Tea Party convention in a sample of ten national news outlets."

The truth of the matter is, the Tea Party is largely a fabrication.  The people who make up the "movement" are a small cadre of racists, sexists and idiots who, for the most part, subsist on the very welfare they protest.  The rest are the Fox news followers who should never be counted on for their understanding of the issues.  Not at all because they're stupid people, but because the network they trust has been peddling nonsense since 1996.

Fox News operates as the media wing of the Republican Party.  And, with the party in decline, the Republicans needed a group that not only attracted the public eye, but kept the crazies in their camp.  And it worked.  The Tea Party's loud voices and unclear motives make it sexy.  Even to the point that it attracts the attention of leftist groups.

But the fact is, it's a distraction.  It's another sleight of hand like the Swift Boat Veterans and the Willie Horton ad from the party that long ago realized that dirtying the political process was a lot easier than having an actual agenda.  The Tea Party gets the attention while all the groups proposing actual alternatives are pushed aside.  And at the same time, those groups assert they have to fight the tea and lose track of the real issues.

I know this is a weird thing to put at the end of a post talking about the Tea Party, but the best thing to do with these people is ignore them.  Don't give them the time of day.  Let the media spend its time on their every word, but let us progress beyond that. 

So, in that spirit, I hereby resolve I will never mention the Tea Party again.  Probably.

PS: Interesting poll about the ballsinthemouth party.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

I like cartoons

So, enough stupid politics soapbox crap.  Let's go for something different.

I was randomly reminded today of Johnny Bravo.  For those of you who don't remember him, I pity you.  But because I'm generous, I'll remind you who he is:



He had a show on Cartoon Network that basically involved him not getting with women.  It was pretty funny, if for no other reason than that it was a funny concept.  Anything done with an Elvis voice is always funny.

So, for those of you who remember Johnny Bravo, you might remember the Cartoon Cartoon Show that Johnny was a part of.  It included a bunch of boring, ugly and stupid cartoons, along with some gems.  Among the gems was this show:



I only vaguely remember this, but I remember it being pretty hilarious and wondering why no show was ever made out of it, since there seemed to be pretty low standards for what was played on Cartoon Network.  Since then, I have always chalked it up to major media being unable to tell the difference between real entertainment and Reality TV.  This disdain would form a major part of the development of my caustic personality.

But, here's a shocker.  Guess who created Larry and Steve? This guy:
A man with black hair and a black shirt, leans forward slightly to speak into a microphone.
Seth McFarlane.

That's right, Larry and Steve became Peter and Brian from Family Guy.  I guess I was wrong.  I guess the media really does know what's entertaining.  Maybe all this time I've been criticizing the entertainment industry, I've really just been misunderstanding them.  Maybe, just maybe, they really just want to entertain us.

Oh wait.  Nevermind.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Getting it for free

Some fun quotes:
"Television won't be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." Daryl F. Zanuck, movie producer, 1946.

"The problem with television is that the people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn't time for it." -The New York Times, after a prototype demonstration at the 1939 World's Fair. (source)

There's a ton of these types of predictions made.  For every device that became a sensation, there were a brace of scholars who insisted it was a fad.  And vice versa.  Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point was essentially a treatise on this, that tiny, unexpected factors can make a Tamagochi interesting and a mutant Pepsi disgusting.

One would think people would stop making blanket predictions, or at least mediate their claims with some acknowledgement that they could be entirely wrong.  But what fun would it be for me if people did what made sense.

The article linked to above seems to ignore the fact that there are thousands upon thousands of pictures of cats with corrupted english out there.  It seems to ignore the fact that there are people with government jobs who find enough time to download BOXES OF PORN.  Or start blogs.

The fact is, you cannot underestimate people's capacity to waste their time.  Sometimes $1.99 is worth two hours of digging through torrents.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

How the media hijacked 175,000 people

Wow.  Just wow.

"DC Rally shows support of struggling Democrats".

A bit of a delayed reaction this one, but that's because the headline made me so angry I kept throwing computers out the window.

Let me start off by saying the One Nation rally was by NO MEANS A RALLY IN SUPPORT OF THE DEMOCRATS.  You couldn't swing a protest sign without hitting someone from some socialist/communist/gay rights/etc group.  A lot of them were holding signs asking Obama for the change he promised.  Others handed out literature saying how both parties were flawed.

Hell, even the Associated Press had to give them something:

"Organizers insist the rally is not partisan. They say the message is about job creation, quality education and justice. However, the largest organizations, such as the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, tend to back Democratic candidates."

This is a cool journalism tactic.  Rather than report on what what the people actually responsible say, make up your own story that follows your paper's narrative.  For example, if you happen to be a reporter with a hard-on for the president working at a paper with a hard-on for any government it's reporting on, you might be inclined to interpret pretty much everything as a rousing cry of support to the sources of your hard-ons.

But maybe not.  The author, Phillip Wilson, found it necessary to put "struggling" in front of the name of the party that is anything but.  From my obsessive checking of the mid-term election polls on wikipedia, it really doesn't seem like the Dems are up to lose that many spots.  The media seems to be under the impression that just because the Democrats aren't going to have their super-majority, they are somehow in decline.  I wonder what they'd have to gain from misinforming the public.

Either way.  The rally was amazing, regardless of what the associated shills say.