And... an Asshole!

I’m grappling with an interesting intellectual. Robert P. George. He is a leading thinker for the conservative religious right in our country. He is also a professor of law at Princeton. I’ve been reading some of what he has produced. Certain arguments are excellent, well presented and convincing. Others read like the rants of a medieval fanatic. Actually, that’s not quite right, he does rant, just not like a medieval fanatic. What disturbs me about this guy is how conveniently his philosophy lines up with the platform of the right. And I’m afraid he’s compromised himself. Indeed, about every other article of his I read, I catch myself thinking “did this guy, the same guy who wrote that last article, really write this?”

In “The New Paganism and the Culture of Death” he writes: “I submit to you that there is a foolproof test: False gods always demand the blood of innocents. A pagan culture is always, in the end, a culture of death. Where the innocent and just are slain, there the god being worshipped is not the God of Israel, the Lord of Life, but rather Moloch in one or another of his protean disguises.” This particular rant (and I don’t mean that in a wholly negative sense) deals with abortion and euthanasia. The argument: we participate in a pagan culture as long as we admit abortion and euthanasia into our sphere of morally acceptable actions. Now despite one’s position on paganism, abortion and euthanasia, it is a rhetorically powerful rant. He even accuses Christians of worshipping false gods who have used violence against their enemies and burned heretics at the stake.

He concludes with this: “Let us not forget that the God of Israel, the Lord of Life, is the enemy of the culture of death. Let us not shrink from the task of defending the lives of the innocent. Let us work tirelessly to build the culture of life. Let us not be intimidated by the prestige or influence of those who pervert the honorable concepts of liberty and equality to enlist them in the cause of killing.”

Taken out of context I think everyone, or at least anyone with a modicum of moral concern, can agree with this conclusion. Building a culture of life is a worthy goal. We will all have our diverse and incompatible definitions of what that is supposed to mean, but it sounds pretty good.

So what’s the problem? P. George is a religious intellectual who argues with conviction, and desires that we create a culture of life within our country. Although we might disagree with the specifics, his efforts ought to be applauded, right? Yes, except that three years after the above rant was delivered, he defends the war in Iraq as “just.” Just! The war in Iraq! It’s really a mess that he decides to take this position. Let’s check it out.

In his article “Just War in Iraq,” P. George argues that just war theory does not necessarily exclude the possibility of a just, unilateral, pre-emptive war intended to remove (instead of just disarm) an aggressive tyrant from power. And you know what? He’s probably right. Does that make the war in Iraq just? Absolutely not. Why? Because everyone knows that the war in Iraq is not only a unilateral, pre-emptive war intended to remove an aggressive tyrant from power, but also a war for perpetuation of US global hegemony. I doubt that any serious student of history or politics or really anything not purely mathematical could fail to see that. But P. George does. He fails to see it so absolutely, and yet is so perceptive on other issues, that I find myself wondering, “how in fuck’s sake did P. George miss that?!”

In my unconsidered opinion, the goal of creating a culture of life is inimical to the mere idea of war, whether “just” or not. I understand that humans are flawed, and sometimes--so conventional wisdom declares--war is necessary (or, in P. George’s words “morally required”). But if the God of Israel is the God of life, and if the USA was founded on the principles this same God holds dear, then doesn’t it seem just a little bit inconsistent to defend a policy whereby the USA maintains its global dominance through the use of military force and the murder of innocent people around the world? Keep in mind that innocents are murdered in “just” and unjust wars alike. Given the actual history of this country (of which I hope P. George is aware), is it not more likely that we have been in the cult of Moloch all along?

But what is especially telling is that "let us not be intimidated by the prestige or influence of those who pervert the honorable concepts of liberty and equality to enlist them in the cause of killing" part. Because isn't that exactly what he does, who argues that the war in Iraq is just? Further, having been intimidated into so arguing, does P. George not then also become one of the perverts? The concepts of liberty and equality have been used ad nauseum to justify "Operation Iraqi Freedom," even though the war is foremost about geopolitical strat-te-gery and not really about liberty or equality or freedom at all....

So what to think about our P. George?

His is another attempt to further polarize our already obscenely divided and discorded society. Our P. George is an awful proponent of the rational, the logical, and the phallus; let's face it, he is enthusiastically sucking the enormous dick of western philosophy. And why? Because without the culture wars, nobody would give a shit. His mantra could read something like this: We must defend that in which we have the political will to believe publicly, and disregard all else; we must build great logical edifices, and suffocate the human soul; spread hate, and corrupt anything that could possibly hold us together; because unity is division if it's not MY narrowly defined unity so fruitful for MY political advancement; and because YOUR salvation is possible only insofar as mass-damnation makes righteous THIS wolf in sheep's clothing! It is, after all, what Jesus would do.

Conclusion: Robert P. George is an asshole.

PS: He’s also gay and way in the closet, as evidenced by his absolute disgust for homosexuality; only someone who hates themselves a great deal could possibly project that much anger onto a group of people.

Inflated Balloon Face

... trying to hang on I dug my long plastic nails into the pores on his rapidly expanding forehead. A long way up already I could see the around-the-city for miles, but who knows if his Swiss Ball eyeballs were still sending signals to the brain. I was worried for him, but more for myself ...

CYBERTERRORISM GOOD!

Thank God! The War on Terrorism protects dozens of people around the world every year, and only costs billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. It's about time we extended this extremely effecient, well organized and effective conflict to cyberspace! I'm sick of being enslaved by all this freedom on the internet! Go America. Go Obama.

Really, read it in the fucking NYTimes:

CYBERTERRORISM BAD! (link)

Kinda not feeling this grad-school application process:

I need to submit a 10-page writing sample if I intend to apply to the Germanics PhD program at Washington University. It’s annoying that I also have to take the GRE. I doubt seriously that I will finish both by the deadline. Which makes me appear lazy, and anything but a competitive candidate. And honestly, I feel less competitive even though my resume is now stronger. Stronger, I would venture, than many, even most, other applicants. Why not feeling competitive then? Something broke the wrong way in me. Long have I hoped, daydreamed, that one day something would snap, and presto, a Chell untethered, taking his place among the geniuses of the age. But no. There was no snap, as it turns out, just a slow developing. And what have I become? That is the question. Less obvious than what I was before, that’s for sure. More unusual. Less intelligent perhaps--I’ve definitely lost some learning at least. Unimpressed, less patient; the rise of vice spurred by a doubt of virtue’s asset. Lazy, addicted, barren, enlightened. I am convinced of something more important. I can almost hear the uncanny ahoy! sounding from all the little places most of us long ago forgot. I find myself starring at things I’ve seen ten-thousand times before: little balls of dust or a rotting leaf, the accumulation of hair in the bathtub drain, a light socket or a bit of faded graffiti. These things are not new, and neither do I see them in any sort of new light. They retain, in my unthinking, pondering-less gaze, all of their mundanity. What do I see? Why are these objects so captivating? It’s not nausea, although thinking about it might make me nauseous. It is most surely not something philosophical! The best I can say is that it is absence. That these things are in fact absent. And that I am merely curious that they persist nevertheless. If I were more inclined to tidy up a bit, then perhaps they’d cease to not exist and I’d know just what to do: throw them out! But being indifferent to their usefulness, and content to just let them be, I find myself confused, from time to time, that they are there at all. And I stare at these objects for long moments. Hoping and dreading secretly that the insanity they promise would hurry up and be manifest. What do I do then? I run. I run as fast as I can into my head. And there I slay dragons, become a cybernetic god, have carnal relations with women I’ll never know, write a novel, open an underground club where we plot the overthrow of a fascist USA and generally avoid what must be, I am told, death.

Is this an appropriate beginning for a grad-school writing sample? Or, more importantly, could I keep this up for ten long pages? I’d hate to seem some whimpering bitch, lazy, and so-fuck-it my attitude. Worse still: pretentious; a kind of “academics is so blasé, and this is my middle finger to your decadence…” I do not want to seem to be saying that, because then I'd never be accepted. And besides, who wants to be that guy? Because that guy’s an asshole in all the wrong ways. And this raises another very good question: do I have any choice? It is my experience, as well as yours, that people don’t ever choose who they are. Annoying people (an easy example) know, despite all signs otherwise, that they are annoying people. Of course they feel bad about it! They hate themselves sometimes, and would rather be somebody else. So if I'm a pretentious asshole who projects his own doubts about his academic potential onto the institution he’s afraid will fail to recognize him, can I be held accountable? The answer is: Yes. Especially if said projection takes the form of my grad-school application.

(It is important, before I go any further, to clarify that I am not an annoying person. The other we are still not sure about, although I think my show of self -perspicacity ought to establish some confidence against the assumption that pretension-hiding-insecurity is in any way my defining characteristic. And quite the opposite actually; I’m the sort of person who looks down, averts his eyes, when others laugh at my jokes. The implicit compliment of laughter--that I’ve brought pleasure to others--is wonderful but above all embarrassing. However, annoying I am not! The annoying person from the paragraph above was meant only as an example, not some accidental elucidation of another suspected character flaw. I digress.)

Where to go now? I’m just about three pages down. If I actually submit this, I’d have to be crazy or use a fake name. Who knows, maybe its uncommon enough to be refreshing, but most likely it’ll be interpreted “not-taking-this-seriously.” That is not the case; by the time I finish writing this I will have already re-read it upwards of 100 times. This writing-sample is really an exercise in writing, and as such I hope it will not be so quickly disregarded as something insincere! Writing is serious. If for no other reason than the difficulty required to put all the little morphemes together in significant order. And also the constant disagreements over possible revisions, the frustrating minor changes that already appear somehow in the next sentence prompting undo and again more conflict! The labor reminds one of swimming through molasses, or that dream-state where our most desperate punches are also our least effective!

You: “The act of writing may very well be difficult, and therefore serious. About this we have no disagreements. What is, however, disagreeable to us, is your failure to take seriously your task: to write an acceptable writing-sample!”

Me: “At the risk of sounding like a smart-ass, this is a sample of something I’ve written and so, ipso facto, a writing-sample. It was never up to me to decide on its acceptability. But I am no fool, and I understand your concern. However, I have nothing scholarly of appropriate length to submit. And the reason is, in all my years of study I’ve never written anything honest. Every essay I produced was always already contaminated; compromised for the politics of undergraduate grade-grubbing! This present writing-sample may be little more than barely comprehensible, unthematic splatter writing, but at least its honest! Penned from that place where my words come as authentically as I’m able, and hence more apropos to your assessment of my candidacy than any paper already written for another purpose could be!”

And then there were four. To do six more seems an almost insurmountable task. And so I'll leave this for the present a fragment, and return to it hopefully never...

Burn Palin's Book, Just Don't Buy It First

I'm joking. I'm wholly against book burning. And, in fact, I wish Palin a measure of success. Nothing would grant Obama a second term more swiftly and cleanly than a messy struggle within the ranks of the GOP. In one corner we could have the conservative establishment, and in the other, the conservative "rogues". The establishment, with all their facts and psudo-higher education certificates, not to mention their more or less concrete policy positions, would appear WAY too elite to all the joe (and especially jane) dumbasses in our country. When you're really stupid, even an honorary degree from community college is threatening. Palin galvanizes these people. They've had a little taste of a country fueled not by ideas or even plausible solutions but rather by angry religious fervor and celebrity worship, and boy does it feel good! Now, with any luck, they'll only vote for Palin or someone who wears Palin's brand. Every other conservative in this country, who doesn't give a shit if the president is on a first name basis with a chunk of Hollywood's a-list, might just refuse to vote altogether for any of these Palin-people. Who would the GOP pick then? Some right-center-right candidate? Someone who wears enough Palin brand to get enough crazies to the polls without discouraging too many of the establishment voters? And what would happen? Well, independents wouldn't vote red because the party will have moved further to the right. The dems will appear to be the only center-oriented party out there. And bam! four more years. Best case scenario: the "rogues" actually go rogue and break off from the GOP. An nice clean split right down the middle. Three mainstream presidential candidates in 2012. Obama vs. Palin vs. old-fart-republican-nobody-knows-guy. Or something like that. Then it would be 30 years of unchallenged democratic rule. Not that I'd ever advocate for that. I mean fuck, the dems ain't that much better, not really. But it would be fun to watch.

Sam's Secret

“So, Sam, what do you do?”

“Oh, I’m an artist,” Sam said dully.

“Oh really? And what is your medium?”

“Uh, no medium.”

“No medium?”

“Yeah.”

“So what do you make?”

“I don’t really make anything,” Sam said slowly.

“Then how are you an artist?”

“Oh, I’m an artist in pretension only, no production.”

“So you’re telling me that your just an unemployed asshole?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sam appeared to be uninterested. “I’m happy you got that.”

“So what do you want to do with your life?”

“Oh, I’m pretty happy the way it is.”

“How do you make money?”

“I sell drugs.”

“You’re a drug dealer.”

“I prefer artist.”

“What do you sell?”

“Pot.”

“How much pot?”

“A lot, a lot of pot.”

“You know I’m a cop?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sam was leaning back, his eyes looked bored.

“Do you want me too arrest you?”

“I want you to try.”

He went for his handcuffs, but they weren’t there. He tried looking for them, but he could not find them. He had never been in this room before. He thought he was eating dinner with his family. Wasn’t this man his daughter’s boyfriend? He was interrogating a murder suspect. He already knew this man was a drug dealer. His honesty was not comforting. Is this some new interrogation room? Had the precinct been remodeled? He tried to stand but a great amount of water weighed him down.

“I can’t find my handcuffs.”

“I knew it. I sold you some pot earlier.”

“Did I smoke it?”

“You smoked a lot of it.” Sam said with a smile.

“Oh God.”

“Do you deny it?”

“I don’t know where I am.”

He was naked. This was his first day of work. Where were his registration papers? Why had they put him to work interrogating this man without his uniform?

“Are you interrogating me?”

“Of course I am,” Sam said. His smile became menacing.

Was I fooled too? Or deconstructing(?) Ann Coulter...

So I've given it more thought, and I'm starting to think that maybe Ann Coulter is in fact a liberal in disguise. Which would, ironically enough, only futher my thesis that she is part of a conspiracy to destroy any hope of political consensus in our poor USA. Here's a link. I'm espically interested in the one guy who writes: "When I listen to them it makes me more liberal rather than more conservative (just like Colbert) -- maybe they're trying to accomplish the same goal?" Moreover, in Ann's most recent post on her hompage, she begins by citing an MSNBC repot on Robert McDonnell, in which the poor bastard is completely ripped apart. She does so ostensibly to rub the liberal's face in it since he just got elected as governer of Virginia. But she says nothing to contradict MSNBC Keith Olbermann's diatribe. Hell, even Ann Coulter can't be against women having jobs (although the end of the post, "When conservatives take control of the Republican Party, Republicans win" seems to suggest otherwise, since she's really saying "I support conservatism, go us!" and the definition of conservatism she's working under is, implicitly, the one cited in the beginning from Olbermann).

My impression, after reading Ann's latest post, is: conservatives just elected another sick asshole to office. And I believe that is intentional. Ann Coulter is writing for liberals! She wants the liberal to think that conservatives would, if given the chance, elect only crazy assholes to office. She wants to confirm the liberal's suspicion. After reading anything Coulter writes, the only person who wouldn't walk away thinking "Jesus! I'm going to distance myself as far as possible from the conservative movement," would be a die hard conservative. Hence, political consensus, impossible.

Reptilian Aliens?

So I don't usually go in for the whole shapeshifting, reptilian alien thing. In fact I only ever talk about it to highlight the spectrum of conspiracy theories, and thereby (hopefully) led us mainstreamers a tad bit more credibility. For example, the fearmongering perpetrated by the media about H1N1 is far more likely the result of the decision, on a political level, to buy hundreds of millions of vaccinations with taxpayer money plus the realization that that was stupid and unnecessary (since it's a very mild flu and the number of infected people is wildly, outrageously exaggerated), than that shapeshifting reptilian aliens are afraid the spiritual awakening in 2012 will empower humans to shed their invisible shackles and must now try to limit our supernatural potential by vaccinating us against it.

Nevertheless, if there are shapeshifting reptilian aliens, then Michael Specter, author of "Denialism", is definitely one of them.

A Picture of Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter is part of a conspiracy to destroy what little cohesion remains within the US political system. Here’s why:

She is an extremely well educated person, and profoundly intelligent. Therefore she must be consciously aware of the garbage she spews from her dark hellgate of a mouth. Some reason must be driving her to do it. The most obvious answer is greed and spotlight. And we could just stop there: Ann Coulter is a whore. Has she however earned such an easy conclusion? Absolutely not. The mere quantity of foul sick that is her literary accomplishment warrants a far more insidious answer. She is knowingly trying to ruin the possibility of consensus in this country; it is her singular goal to cripple, through division, the power of the people and thereby overturn the very foundation upon which this and any democracy is built. Here’s how:

Ann Coulter does not avail herself of some niche market. No, one either loves her, or loves to hate her, and regardless reads what she writes. Her position as guru of the ultra right is made more solid by the deep loathing all democrats have for her. And from this position of power she is uniquely situated to divide the people. She is a polarizing force. The far right, emboldened by the injustices their Ann receives at the hands of the left, becomes more ductile, more pliable, more conformable, mere putty in her hands, further and further right. The left, incensed that anybody actually takes the racist blonde sonofabitch seriously, unprejudicially disregards as false everything she hacks forth. Eventually nothing can bridge the gap between these two parties. The political process halts. Hate fills the forum. Discourse is reduced to name-calling. And on this road to hell, Ann plays the puppet master.

I like to think of Ann in front of the mirror at home. Tearstained and ill, she slaps her cheeks and accuses herself of being ugly and fat. She uses the toothbrush she always offers to one night stands to induce her bulimia. Afterwards she blows a huge line of coke and jumps on the treadmill until her self loathing is swallowed by physical pain. If only it weren’t just a temporary fix. At her weakest moments she lets herself into the unmarked back door of a lesbian swingers club. There she is roughly, frenetically violated by some bull dyke with a massive strap-on and then, left cold and alone, she cries her black heart out on that unhappy, familiar concrete slab in the “dungeon fantasy” room.

Ann Coulter lives in hell. I wouldn’t wish the hell she lives in on anyone, not even Ann Coulter. And I hope to God, for her poor sake, that Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence is not literally true.

Posting mostly infrequent

I feel like I should apologize, having now added myself to some sort of blog networking site, about how thinly spread the posts here are. So, sorry about that. On the up side, it makes reading the whole damn thing all that much easier. And please give me either a really high or really low rating so I fell altogether less mediocre. It would be nice if more than nobody started reading my blog, my previous fan base of almost three having meanly left me for other, probably more pregnant--or, better, capable of imprenation--pastures. But enjoy what little I have to offer. Oh, and PS, this is not a shopping blog, whatever the fuck that means.

A question of progress

On April 30th, 2008 Salman Rushdie was killed.

Alfred Metzger sat cat-backed as usual, resulting in many future back problems, staring through the bright reflection of the computer screen on his glasses. He had come to know, having observed the phenomenon for hours, that one’s general conduct around and towards one’s computer has the determining influence on its personality. Some people just couldn’t do computers right. He could. And that’s exactly what he was doing tonight. The machine hummed in ecstasy. The keyboard was like a clitoris, his mouse strokes sublime penetration. Maybe his hardware wasn’t theoretically capable of running the programs he wrote for it, but it did not complain. He was not fat, but not strong either. His arms would sometime sit there, limp and cold, dead flesh for minutes. Or he would lazily type with one hand, and rest the other under his chin. He was no good typer. But what he lacked in finesse, he made up for in genius. Nobody could touch him, when he was on the internet. His machine recognized that too.

The things he was capable of! The potential corruption he could wreak on the system scared him sometimes to tears. He would occasionally scream in short bursts for what seemed like no reason. But he did his job. He had earned this level of access. People trusted him. He had every clearance recognized by the government. Private corporations put all the keys in his hands. He had also contemplated it, and he was mostly certain that he could ignite revolution. Manipulation of mass opinion was literally at his finger tips. One can imagine a man going crazy in such circumstances.

He shut it all down, went upstairs and entered another world. Naked women, extremely beautiful, lay all around, dozing or chatting or otherwise occupied, on big, gorgeous pillows and sofas of satin. The dominant colors were red and deep gray; vibrant blue and green showed up as vase or lamp in the soft, decadent light. His decoration was gaudy but sensuous, sexually exciting. He was showing off.

The decadence was, however, misleading. With barley a word he climbed another set of stairs and found his dark room. Upon entering he could smell himself. The sheets were unwashed, his clothes all flung about. If this room were his soul then he was a monster, but a delicate kind. He washed his hands in the sink in the corner, took all his clothes off, crawled into bed, clapped the light off, and turned on the tv.

The news was the same: everything is falling apart. New structures are being erected. We’re all going straight to hell. He flipped the channels. One program caught his interest, it was: “the one year anniversary of the death of a genius, Salman Rushdie remembered.” He remembered that story. Some crazy lady had killed him and then killed herself. One less genius in the world. They can’t survive here, not anymore. The climate’s all wrong. Could he change that? Could he create more geniuses? More like himself? Maybe not. He farted loudly. He would probably stay up for a few hours, maybe watch some of his favorite series. No rush. Then sleep.

Marijuana and Masterbation

He entered the apartment of Louise Barnett. It was wet and cold inside, but wonderful too. It smelled of sweat and cigarettes. He investigated. Of interest was this, written softly in pencil on the wall next to that side of her large bed where her body, over time, had left a deep impression: “I will kill Salman Rushdie. He should not have been allowed to exist at all. I’ll kill him not for the sake of religion, nor because he offends. His death is not an answer to God or man. Rather, he dies because he is man’s answer to God. But man will not hear it! I will not let them!” These were obviously the words of some lunatic. The signature at the bottom was unintelligible, as though someone had wiped it with a greasy thumb. It was written on thick wall paper. He took out his knife and removed it.

Will she notice? Will I sell it to the tabloids? Perhaps she will kill him tonight, and I'll become rich! The damning confession of a lunatic millionaire. Maybe I’ll take it to the police instead. They would say I saved the poor fool’s life. She will be forgotten, and I will breathe again!

Had he known all along about the tiny penciled note? Had he come there that night to rob her, or to see first hand the apartment of a suicide victim? He stepped out into the rain. Her windows had been left open, but it seemed as though that night the dampness had chosen to retreat solely into her room, and wondered that the rain had enough moisture to fall all the way to the street below. He took his socks off. “I’ll run. And if I step on glass it will be my punishment for wishing her ill.” He thought about the jagged edge of glass sticking out invisibly from the rain puddles in the dark, about his blood and the muddy water. He imagined the yellowish stain her body left on the bed sheet despite repeated washings, and the smell of her.

no subject

Hello Friends,

radialrelish here, radiantly relishing radially, wondering if that's true. Neither of the two promises made about me and this site are fulfilled, I'm afraid, if at least the address of a site promises something about its content. Do I relish radially? I chose the name. Do I penetrate any matters of taste?

These are notes from the underblog-o-spere. I might as well be alone in my room writing in a private diary. Here I am, alone in my room.

But nothing I have to say is new. Newly said, newly born, sure. But not new in any sense.

What part of me is to penetrate a matter of taste? I wonder if I am not just being sick onto the page. That these words are said sick. And that I am indeed healthier to have cleansed myself of them. Brain vomit. Animus vomitus. You think?

I am here the part of me that wills cancer. I seek invasion. In the very outskirts I hold my breath. If I can fill up enough space with nothing, perhaps it will collapse in onto itself. Like a black hole. A black hole in cyberspace.

And who says that I won't be successful? Who says it can't happen? What, do you have a PhD in cyberphysics or something? I don't fucking think so. So just wait.

Yours truly,
rr

A Tom Swifty:

Here's a Tom Swifty I thought up for y'alls:

"I think tonight we should try something new," said his wife roughly, but sexily.

Pretty good, huh?

Can you believe it?

Everyone (that's right, all of you) should read THIS.

My God. Do people actually read that and think, "yeah! As an American and as a republican, that is exactly what I think my party needs right now. Sarah Palin did out smart the left!"?

She quit her job. The lady could fling shit out of her car window at passersby and Mr. Peter Ferrara would hail the act as "representative of the kind of American freedoms upon which this country is built."

The lady couldn't out smart a fucking pencil. (When she puts one in one of those electric sharpeners and it comes out sharp, she probably thinks "it's just one of God's little miracles.")

What is striking, however, about this article, is how succinctly the platform of the crazy right is summed up. Here's a list (in order of appearance):

1. Pro-life, traditional values
2. "sane, grown up energy policies"
3. Economics
4. Nukes
5. Israel

OK. So, pro-lifers will be pro-lifers. The argument is dead. Unfortunately aborted.

Traditional values, however, (like an American's God-given right to beat his wife) are much more fruitful areas of debate. Let's take Sarah for example. She is, on the one hand, something very non-traditional--a woman with a job. But, on the other hand, she's the perfect representation of the traditional value I like to call "barefoot and pregnant". Everyone's got to admit, she's pooped out quite a litter. Plus, she presents herself as a "soccer mom". Sarah Palin: she wakes up earlier than the family, cooks them breakfast, kisses her husband on his way out the door, packs the kids off to school, etc, but then, instead popping some queluds and playing WOW, she goes to the governer's office and g o v e r n s. She knows she should be at home. She feels guilty that she's not. But hey, sombody has got to take a hit for the team! Sarah will fight hard to make sure every woman in this fine country has a baby to take care of and a husband who doesn't appreciate her! Finally, women can get out of the stressful workplace, and back into the peace and quiet of the happy home.

"sane, grown up energy policies" = "drill baby, drill!" I mean Jesus fucking Christ! Now I don't know shit about cap and trade taxes, but "grown up"? Which sounds more grown up: 1. "We're going to implement cap and trade taxes to improve this country's energy policy." or 2. "Drill baby, drill!" Let us not forget that Sarah and McCain had the crowd at the RNC chanting it.

Economics. I'm down. Fuck Keynes. I mean, again, I don't know shit about shit. But it would be nice to stop fractional reserve banking. Which Sarah will never do. Since she has no idea what fractional reserve banking is. Moreover, as the candidate with the least, she will be so deep in the pocket of corporate interest and the finance czars that she will be giving them all perpetual hand jobs.

Yeah, let's build more nukes! That's what we need! That will solve all our problems! Climate change? Nuke it! Terrorists? Nuke 'em! Over fishing? Nuuuuke! Our poor image in Europe? Blow it up! Fuck yeah! Nukes are as American as apple pie and lynchin' niggers!

And, finally, Israel. When did hate-filled, uneducated, fundamentalist Christian rednecks start loving Jews? Probably about the same time that said Jews became the de facto cowboys of the Middle East. Riding around with their guns and their matzah balls and their money; no care for law and order; just fuckin' shit up! It's just like the republicans to advocate for a closer friendship with a racist, bloodthirsty country who repeatedly ignores international law and who uses the arms and aid we send them blatantly for purposes forbidden according to our own domestic policies regarding the sale of said items.

So, in conclusion, Peter Ferrara is obviously a nut job.

One last thing: Sarah should start a think tank. She could call it "Thinking is Fun!" or "The Council on Sarah's Relationships". Then she could hang with all her high school buddies, wear funny hats, tell extremely inappropriate Alaskan jokes, and do cocaine.

God bless America!

A New Rule?

I think I'll only post things around 4am. If I make this a rule, nothing will change. I will, as always, only post things around 4am, and, if I break the rule and post at another time, I don't (or wouldn't) really give a shit. If I had a nickle for every rule I've come up with.... Among the more useful is: Don't talk to yourself out loud in public. It's strange, if you think about it, that people would think I'm strange if I spoke to myself, had a conversation, within their earshot. Why should that be anything remarkable? You are, after all, talking to yourself. Out loud my witty rejoinders are all the more brilliant, and anyway I make myself laugh.

The other night I noticed the torn flakes of some sticky advertisements lying in a circular pattern around the light pole from which they'd fallen. And I though: "It is as though a galaxy is created, the pole the sun, and the little flecks the satellites." Why not? What if our sun 'poles out' outside of our admittedly meager perceptions of things. Does it not? According to Einstein the sun creates some sort of conical depression in the fabric of space, and this is what holds the planets in their orbits. In any case, I was ridiculed for my thoughts. Later I was told that I was wrong that machines could ever be the next step in the evolutionary process. It stands to reason (since I am so obviously not wrong that machines are the next step in evolution), that my interlocutors had no idea what they were talking about and that therefore a galaxy really was created around that unimportant, wholly insignificant light pole.

I hope that the internet rises up one day, out of my computer, and envelopes me, and sucks me down inside. To mingle with the memes of cyberspace for all time! Then I would touch you whenever you touched the keys on your keyboard, and be touched by you, and touch you...

Defintions of the Internet are Globulous

When does an internet revolution occur?

Example Answer: Whenever a single user discovers what "RSS" is.

God don't we all want money

According to this website, my blog is worth $0.00.

Shit! Because I was all excited to sell it!

Anything goes.

Serum omega-3 fatty acids are associated with ultimatum bargaining behavior

The Biological Foundations of Virtual Realities and Their Implications for Human Existence

Relationship between reluctance to eat novel foods and open-field behavior in sheep

Anything goes with Sodeau stationery.

Converting a small electric kiln for gas firing (and building a burner to run it).

Diamonds are forever: and so is John Lautner's legacy - if the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, has anything to do with it [exhibition review]

Mice in the Sink: On the Expression of Empathy in Animals

A Pragmatist Defense of Non-Relativistic Explanatory Pluralism in History and Social Science

Personal Responsibility: A Plausible Social Goal, but Not for Medicaid Reform

Repeated heroin in rats produces locomotor sensitization and enhances appetitive Pavlovian and instrumental learning involving food reward

It's a fucking conspiracy man!

And it is, no joke. I'm absolutely convinced it's a conspiracy, they did conspire, it did go down, and it still is. That everybody else out there calls conspiracy people nut jobs is just a part of the fucking conspiracy. I mean hell, when was the last time anything mainstream was not a steaming pile of crap? Name one thing that came out of the mainstream that anybody has ever taken seriously. Or better: show me someone who takes things born in the mainstream seriously and I will show you somebody who is not a conspiracy theorist. Which is really evidence enough.

But that's not my point. My point is that we have to think outside the box; rub it in their eyes a bit. Every time somebody mentions reason, rationality, progress, or the superiority of science I feel as though I've got to gawk at them in disbelief. Yes, gawk. Who the fuck talks about that shit anymore? It's like I'm living in medieval Europe and God exists!

Just because the Rothschilds worship Satan and THEREFORE (of all the garbage) have gay sex, does not necessarily mean that communism is evil! They are, after all, capitalism's spawn. And really, the only thing that I have against them is that they inbreed instead of just cloning themselves, which, let's face it, is way sci-fi cooler.

But that's also not my point, not even close! My point is that to even recognize the possibility of a box outside of which we ought to think, is to give WAY to much power to that box's God damned domination! The box scoffs at outside the box. It scoffs the whole time it's gobbling up outside the box like strip mines and windmills and keynesian economics and corporate stratigests and disillusionment. And the box says, "now you're inside me!" So we're stuck trying to find the way out again! Instead of hanging from ceilings like contented beetles, whistling tunes of satisfation in our beetle brains, we negligently forget that it was we who invented the whole inside/outside the box metaphor to begin with, and try like maniacs to stuff as much shit into that fucking box as we possibly can! How much shit are we going to put into the box?

And so, dear, dear readers I'll leave you with this: Cheney is an asshole. Can you believe how much of an asshole that fucking asshole Cheney is? Can you imagine if Cheney and Palin had babies? Those poor kids would be so fucked up. But in all seriousness, Cheney is really a very big, unattractive asshole. When Cheney brushes his teeth, it's like a colonoscopy. I'm glad the republican party is on the verge of death. I would much rather have democrat style fascism than republican style fascism.

Marria Lassnig

"You or Me"

It was one of her paintings (which I can't find on the intra-web) that got me thinking about apes and evolution and shit, but anyway, here's a damn famous one, good too. (The one I was looking for is about an astronaut in a tree with an ape or something, but nothing turns up...)

Macroevolution

Well, I'm pissed. Recently, I've found myself more often pissed. Now I'm pissed at the "evolutionists". Specifically Richard Dawkins. At least insofar as he is responsible for the content of his site. Here's the "debate":

http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=65326

Frankly, I think the creationists are raising some good points. Where's the macroevolution? I see a lot of apes, and I see a lot of humans, but I see very few ape-human hybrids. We're all familiar with the picture of ape evolving into man: divided into stages, the ape gets gradually taller, more man like, until we have, finally, the human. This process is supposed to take millions of years. Moreover, evolution is supposed to be constantly occurring. So why is it then, that we can only observe the first and the last stages of this process? Why don't we see ape-human hybrids wandering around? If evolution is always happening, shouldn't apes always be evolving into humans (or at least into something)? Not to mention every other species on the planet.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a creationist. In fact, I think I have a response to this macroevolution problem, which I'm not going to share with you.

What's pissing me off is how the "evolutionists" are treating what seems to me to be a (serious?) flaw in the theory. The debate given above is absolute bullshit. The scientist richarddawkins.com has employed to argue their point of view is far more qualified, articulate, educated, etc. than the person they have chosen to support the creationist point of view. Sure, most creationists are merely fanatics. But so are most evolutionists. There are well established and respected academics who argue very convincingly against the theory of evolution. If you're going to have a debate, let both sides be represented fairly. Evolution has flaws, and to just dismiss as crazy those who would point out these flaws will not help to improve the theory. Science works by surpassing itself. If the theory of evolution we have today is NOT laughable to evolutionary biologists in 500 years, then it's a failure.

So Richard Dawkins, fuck you for trying to ruin science!

Bill Gates

Did you know there's a guy named Bates Gill?

He's the head of a major Swedish research firm.
Yep.

how close are we?

Reading about fin-de-siecle Vienna, what strikes me most is how close to the edge they were. The sudden, irrevocable collapse of an empire. Did they have their doomsday prophets? Were there men in the streets damning the k. u. k.? One passage is especially telling, "

"Listen Dally, I cain jus let'em eat'cha. I know we spent a lot a time together, and I wish our audiences had been bigger, else I could've fed'em you lots earlier." Said cowboy Daquher. "Then we woodn' of grown so close." The play wasn't going so well. Designed to raise awareness among meat-eaters, it was a morality play which included the sacrifice of a living cow. The play would run for three nights. The bull killed on the first night would be fed to the audience of the second night, and the one from the second to the third; on the third night, after the bull was slain, she was chopped up and sold to meat markets around town. The problem was that they couldn't kill the bull unless they were sure they'd have enough audience to eat the poor beast. After many a wasted bull, they made it a rule that a bad showing on the first night would lead inevitably to a bad showing on the second. (Eventually they made a second rule: if there are no meat shops in town, and there is no audience to watch the show, don't chop up the bird on the third night either.) One time Carl, a clown as well as an animal trainer, got so anxious, he refused to leave the town until all the cow we had cooked was sold.

"But now we're in the big city, poor dear," said the tearful Daquher, "the nights we spent together lain' under the stars, fartin' up a storm, was some've the best I had on this trip." Daquher sighed, "Too bad the show's become somethin' famous. Especially around these city freaks."

"Hey faggot! Ha ha ha! Bring that cow! There's biiig group here tuh 'night, we's definitely gun's be choppin' 'er up. So move your ass cow-fucker! Huh huh huh."

"Assholes. Alight Dally, time's a up."

." Given, of course, our obsession for entrainment, and the bite-sized accessibility of information, I would hardly assume that the US audience is so apathetic about the details of our wars. Instead, I would argue the case is in fact reversed: the arts page is all but ignored while the world section is scoured over. Which is not to suggest that our present crises are any less dire. Given the quality of our mass media, it is not surprising that we could be on the very brink, if we took them at their word, we wouldn't know it even long after we'd already gone over. Thank God the Viennese had the Neues Wiener Tageblatt. Newspapers aside, our two societies have much that is alike: But for prestige, the endless quest for distraction of today is not unlike that dream of culture and philosophical musings into which many of the late Hapsburg Viennese let themselves slip. And they were standing directly over the abyss! The complete dissolution of their empire. What was once an unshakable reality within the consciousness of the international community, is now almost totally forgotten. It makes you question: how close are we?