Unwanted Commentary

Redemption Song

he withdrew his support from a candidate whose victory would have meant the continuation of the dynastic politics represented by the family names Bush, Gore, and Clinton. What a favor he did us all by that repudiation! And how fitting that it should have been a Kennedy who did it.

I didn't have much to say about Senator Kennedy passing away, nor did I feel any particular emotion after the event. In large part this is because I know so very little about him, and it is only with his passing, and the revolving news stories about him that I began to learn what he stood for. I found myself thinking that he seemed to have been a pretty good guy that had supported some good legislation for good causes, but as the story points out and I'm sure so many of know that the eulogized stories don't tend to focus on someone's negatives. Still, I thought the above story was interesting in that it points out some of the flaws that most powerful people possess, and indeed I think the Kennedys possessed in spades. I would think most powerful families do.

Both JFK and Bobby have always been presented to me as these holy, tragic figures, and on more than one occasion I've heard wispy recollections as to how the country would have been better if only both of them had lived. Having grown up way after both of their deaths I've always kind of rolled my eyes at those statements, and as I learned a bit more about what their real legacies were I began to wonder why they were remembered so fondly. The Kennedys were, and maybe still are, our royalty, and people tend to love their royals even when they don't really want to. Add to that the early death of those two brothers and you get that 'died before their time' dichotomy that almost always seems to embellish the popular memories of most every one. And, or course, there's always looking back at those tumultuous times, especially the ugly scar of Vietnam, and it's easy to wonder if history could have been better had someone else been at the helm. Hard to say.

Senator Kennedy was always presented to me, by no one in particular, as the lesser brother, and while I never held any opinions about him myself I always saw him in a kind of negative light. I'm glad that now I can look at the man and see him a little more clearly, and perhaps that will be the way most everyone remembers him from now on. He had a lot to live up to, because the fantasy legacies of his brothers, all of the what-if's, only grew their legends without them doing anything, while he was left the much more daunting task of living, making mistakes and carrying out his ideas and thoughts. He seems to have lived well, worked hard, and he met his challenges, learned from his mistakes, and I think when you take all of that into consideration that you can say that he did admirably. He went out with his boots on, and that's all anyone can ask for.

Posted by Jeff at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mystery solved! Evidently the Alabama Leprechaun is Jason Mraz.

Posted by Jeff at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the great things about the lowering of standards is that it allows people like me to do well on Internet science quizzes. I have proof below, and if you feel like you need a quick ego boost then you can go here to do such things. For those of you unwise in the ways of bar graphs I scored in the 100 percentile range, of which only 10 percent of participants have achieved. I'm better than 90% of you according to this data, and that makes me feel better, I'm good with this bar graph.

Still, I worry about getting stopped on the street to be asked a basic random math problem, because I'm not good with fractions and percentages. Also included in this would be basic grammar rules, which should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this, because I really don't have the capacity to grapple with dangling participles and/or dipthongs.

Found via SEB

Posted by Jeff at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't care so much for the soundtrack, though it isn't terrible, but the video I found to be wonderfully wonderful. Oh, and according to dooce.com this is a fan video of the song, not the original. In case that information is important to you.

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

found via dooce.com

Posted by Jeff at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you were having a nice day then this nostalgic story should pretty much put an end to it.

The Story of Big Mary

I guess it is nice to know that "crazy as fuck" isn't a new phenomenon, and that America of yesteryear that so many seem to think was awesome was just as messed up as ours is. Though I guess in odd, different ways. I believe we like to think that our ancestors had good solid moral values that were somehow stronger and more valid than our own, but I think this goes to show you that, no, no they really didn't.

Posted by Jeff at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When police found the remains of former Playboy model Jasmine Fiore on Aug. 15, her body was so mutilated that they had to use the serial numbers on her breast implants to identify her. How much information can be gleaned from a fake breast?

I haven't read the full article at slate yet, and probably won't, but this made me take a mental step back. I had to roll this around in my head for minute, because in that one blurb I learned a lot of stuff that I didn't know before. It also brings up some questions I had never considered, not the least of which is: Is it ironic that the murderer went to so much trouble to remove identifiable parts from the body, her fingertips and teeth, only to be foiled by the serial numbers on her breast implants, or is it something else? The real bitch of it is, the guy took whatever mental leaps are necessary to allow for the murder of someone else, then he went really went wheels off by mutilating the body and tossing it in the bin. Now I don't know from experience, but I have to think that the logistics of pulling, what 36 teeth? from a cadaver is no small undertaking. I have to imagine that's something you have to really commit to, because I can imagine a lazy man pulling about four out and then being all, "fuck this, into the wood chipper". So to be foiled in your plot by not realizing they could identify the remains from the breast implants would just make you want to hang yourself in a cheap Canadian hotel room.

That's another thing, they showed pictures of that room on the news this morning. The hotel looks really cheap, yet this guy hung himself from the luggage rack/clothes hanging thing? Maybe he was a small dude, because I know my fat ass would have been out of luck. There's no way that thing would have supported me. I would have been arrested when the cops were alerted to my presence after a phone call from the guy next door reporting hearing a large crash and a tyrannic stream of cursing at volume. And then there I'd be on camera being escorted out of a seedy hotel room by cops, and dragging the ground behind me, tethered by a bungee is a luggage rack/clothes hanging thing. So sad.

Posted by Jeff at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Something else to think over here, from the Rude Pundit.

I'm assuming that a lot of people have as short an attention span as I do, and that's how most of this stuff continues to go on. I'd completely forgotten about the "don't tase me bro" story, not that I had ever really paid much attention to it at the time.

Another thought, didn't Hitler utilize and prey upon the fear and frustration of Germans in order to build popular support for his plans? I've not studied the time period comprehensively, but it stands to reason that the German people were a tinder box of emotion in the decades following World War I. So, stirring up the fears of lower classes to build support for your own policies, makes me wonder who is really invoking Hitler's methodologies.

And can we please stop dragging the Nazis and Hitler into every fucking argument? It was absurd when they were doing it to Bush, but now it has reached a sort of surreal, raving madhattery that has to make any thinking person roll their eyes. I mean, come on, read a book or something, and stop using those types of images in your arguments, because it really just destroys any credibility you might have. Plus, it begins to desensitize people to what really went on, and that shouldn't happen. It cheapens the memories of all those people who suffered so much, and those that risked and lost their lives fighting in that conflict.

Posted by Jeff at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEB posted this on his thing, and for the sake of brevity you can just go there and check it out. Great little film

Moments

Sometimes I wish I could live forever, just so I could see what's going to happen next. A guy asked me if I understood the concept of wanting to kill yourself because your relationship was falling apart, that you'd rather die than not be with that one person. And I thought it was such an absurd idea, and when he asked me why I told him to look around and see how marvelous the world is, how wonderful it is. Especially at this time in history, we live in an age of constant marvels. I have in my pocket a device that allows me to tap into the largest source of information ever devised in human history, and in most cases I can access this from anywhere in a matter of moments. Even without that, every second we're here is a miraculous wonder. Every emotion, every breath, smile and tear. Love and heartbreak, exultation and depression is a significant point of amazing wonderment. Whether we're here by the all powerful will of a god, or here by the most unfathomable random chance, the fact that we are here is just really the culmination of an amazing journey, and that's a lot of fucking awesome.

Posted by Jeff at 08:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I found this article via Siege, and considered it thought provoking. There was a time when I read quite a bit about slavery in the United States, especially as it related to the Civil War. Thinking back on it now, in all of the stuff I read I don't recall there being much information about poorer white people during that period. It isn't difficult to think of poor white farmer's having more in common with newly freed slaves than the wealthy white upper classes. Today if you drive through poor white areas, you really don't see a lot of differences with poor black areas, and I think you certainly can argue that both groups should have very similar views about what they need from government.

My ex-father-in-law, while I considered him certifiably insane, he was also pretty intelligent and was prone to moments of insight. He once commented that the United States was founded by rich white men specifically to support and sustain rich land owning white men. I think there's some truth to that, maybe a lot, and it's a system that has been preserved by hook and by crook up until this point in time. Perhaps the United States has avoided an uprising of the lower classes simply by turning them against one another. If a poor white man hates a poor black man, then he really doesn't have the emotional energy to hate the rich white men, and should he ever learn of or encounter a rich black man then his hate is redirected in that direction automatically. Additionally, poor white man is encourage by the rich white men that, if he works hard enough, he could some day join them at the country club. So in one moment the rich white man, whose riches come from exploitation of poor white man, totally side-steps the spotlight of villainy by showing poor white man that the golden door is open for him, so when he fails to make it to that door he can only logically take out his anger on someone else.

Posted by Jeff at 08:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Conservatives didn't want Social Security in the 30s. They didn't want Civil Rights or Medicare in the 60s. Why listen to them now?

Saw this and it made me reconsider my previous comments about needing a conservative voice in any debate.

Also, I give Tweetdeck a solid recommendation if, like me, tweeting makes you throw up a little in your mouth (is that still a relevant turn of phrase?), but you can't stay away.

Posted by Jeff at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I forget now how I got hooked into this comic, but I can proclaim without hesitancy or hyperbole that is very well done. This is a fine example of comics as truly sequential art:

Bayou

I think time spent reading this will well worth the effort.

Posted by Jeff at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's a wonderfully stormy morning with low clouds seething and broiling about, soft bursts light of illuminating the clouds from within, and every so often a wickedly jagged bolt of lightning will course across the sky. I didn't appreciate it so much this morning when it awoke me with loud claps of thunder, but I kind of dug it when the heavy drone of rain on the rooftop soothed me back to sleep. The drive into work was great, I love the dark brooding feel of the world, as if nature is looking down on us and trying to decide if today is the day it finally obliterates our pathetic little civilization.

Okay, enough of that, breakfast burrito time.

Posted by Jeff at 08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“So I’m predicting that we’ll wind up with a horriffic Frankenstein healthcare that acts as corporate welfare for insurance companies.”

- Twitter / Clayton Cubitt (I’m gonna go ahead and call this one now)

found via Constant Siege

This is, sadly, probably very true.

Is it bad that I've been listening to Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" over and over?

Posted by Jeff at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been on a sort of holding pattern as far as reading goes, and it's been a long time since I've ready anything particularly invigorating or challenging. I just finished re-reading the Dragon Lance saga, the original stories by Weis and Hickman, and kind of funny - one of those authors is a dude. I had always thought it was two chicks that wrote those books. Obviously these are not deep books, but merely an entertaining read and a nostalgic pleasure as they were the first fantasy novels I ever read, and it was fun to romp down memory lane again. After finishing the last one though, I was a little lost as where I should turn to next and while I was contemplating trips to the library I turned to look at my bookshelf. A bookshelf with not an insubstantial number of books I've never read, but always intended to, so for the sake of simplicity I decided I should select something from its shelves.

I think there's probably a reason I haven't read a lot of the books in my bookshelf, and I think it's because, while there are a lot of books on there that I want to read, the ones that remain unread have failed to sink hooks in once I started them. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein is one of those books. Oddly, my ex-wife bought it and read it for a reason that escapes me now, but she wasn't particularly a sci-fi fan, nor a fan of Heinlein. Both of which I claim to be, but never-the-less when I tried to read this book, one that is touted as one of the greatest sci-fi books of all time, I just could not get into it. In fact I only made it in a few pages. But due to the above mentioned circumstances, and feeling compelled to justify my proclamation of sci-fi fandom I came to the conclusion that I need to give it another try. Now that I write that out it almost seems that I approach the task as some sort of school assignment.

I'm happy to report that I've made it about six chapters in at this point, and while I can kind of see why I didn't get into this book before I think it has hooked me this time. This book is amazingly sedate, almost boring, and all of the sci-fi aspects of it - at least thus far - are very understated, as if they happen every day. I'm finding this very intriguing, since I haven't read any sci-fi in a long time, I've quite possibly forgotten how it's done, but if it is then there is something about this book that just comes across differently than others I've read. Another aspect that I'm enjoying is the retro groove of it, as if this ambiguous future -I've yet to figure out what year it is, and Heinlein doesn't say- sprung right out of the 60's, and in that regard the atmosphere is wonderfully swanky. Also, evidently women haven't really made much progress as far as equality in the workplace in Heinlein's future, but not being female I find this more humorous than offensive.

I'm curious to see where the book goes, and maybe it's a symptom of rereading too many books, but I'm excited by the prospect of not being able to see where the story is going, or what to expect.

Posted by Jeff at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You should just jump into this willy nilly and let the experience kind of hit you full force without expectations. I think you will not be disappointed.

This was a six page story arc that the Penny Arcade boys did just recently. I was impressed by the story, but I didn't really "grasp" it sufficiently. Some fellow took it upon himself presumably to put the comic to a soundtrack and I found the results to be 12 years of hard labor close to the North Korean border of emotionally moving. Indeed, seeing the story played out this way made me realize just how much I had not fully grasped the story.

Hope you enjoyed it. : )

Posted by Jeff at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Sometimes they are referred to as the 'radical Right.' But the fact is that there is nothing radical about them. They offer no novel solutions to the problems that plague them; indeed, they offer no solutions at all. They are immensely discontented with things as they are and furiously impatient with almost everyone in public office who can in any way be held responsible for their frustrations. But it cannot be said that they hold any clearly stated objectives or have any specific program either in common or individuals. They are fundamentally and temperamentally 'aginners.' And perhaps the commonest characteristic among them is anger. They can fairly be called, if nothing else, the Rampageous Right."

I'm not sure whether to be relieved that we've dealt with these types of problems in our past, or if I should be terrified that we haven't solved it yet. I'm saddled with the thought that I should be frightened that we have no real conservative voice in this debate, we only have bark-raving mad, and it's to the point where there is so much insanity and non-productive gerrymandering that I feel now as if I will never be able to take anything they say seriously again. And I don't like that, because we need to have conservative views in any debate, along with liberal progressive ideas. It is important to move forward and find effective, creative solutions to the betterment of our country, but we need balancing and reasoned debate. You can't move forward at full speed all of the time, you have to have all voices engaged, but it seems that right now one of our key voices has gone wonky. Depressingly, it seems it may have always been wonky?

Maybe the whole systems is out of whack, maybe that's how it was setup to begin with. The country was setup by a bunch of rich, white, land owners, it stands to reason that they set the system up to benefit themselves the most. Maybe the rest of us are just starting to catch on, and maybe soon we'll find a way to force our government to really be about the people, all the people and only the people.

Posted by Jeff at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm in a subway station watching a tranny do her makeup. This is like watching a unicorn giving birth.

Posted by Jeff at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is just so unfathomably awesome. And it goes to show you that no matter how bad ass you think you are there are always some crazy ass motherfuckers who will do whatever it takes to kick you in the teeth.

I recommend hitting the links at the bottom of the story to get a few more details on just how amazing these women, and what they did, were.

Posted by Jeff at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think that somehow you could tie this into Obama's death panels and health reform too:

Sex & Violence by Overcompensating

Think about it, as a society we've been desensitizing at least the last two or three generations with extreme graphic violence. What that means is you have a lot of young people who really aren't all that phased by Death Panels, especially once they find out that once a Death Panel decides someone is ready to die they dress them up as zombies, and everyone gets to hunt them down with shotguns! Plus, less sexy time means more folks out hunting elderly zombies, therefore less children are born and less people will need healthcare over a lifetime. The whole dichotomy balances out and civilization is saved! Saved! Oh, Obama, he really is a visionary.

Posted by Jeff at 08:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Whilst I blanch at the frothy mouthed right-wing mobs and pot-stirrers, I for some reason find solace and reason in the perverse, foul mouthed rantings of the rude pundit. Who, by the way, I think has had some really good articles the last few days:

...there's large swaths of the United States that are filled with lost people, people who have been broken down by wondering whether they're gonna lose or have lost their jobs (and health insurance) as jobs go overseas and employment ranks shrink, people who feel an anger out there that is, yes, yes, soothed by guns and religion, the former that promises them instant power, the latter that promises them happiness everlasting if they do what they're told God wants.

You really can't fault those common citizens out there who are so terribly angry and afraid. There are a lot of people in America right now who have every right and reason to be terrified of what's going to happen next. All of us have lived through a six - seven year period where we were told constantly by our government that an attack was imminent. That we must be on guard, that in a sense we shouldn't even trust our neighbor, because it could be us who dies in the next terrorist attack. That seems kind of dumb now, but I can remember a time after September 11, 2001 where I had a few bouts of real anxiety over anthrax attack, or poisoned water supplies. Now the reasonable part of my mind fortunately prevailed in those cases, but I can see how a lot of people could or didn't recover from that. What about those poor families, so terrified of chemical attack, went out and spent their life savings on gas masks for their loved ones, where they were gouged by unscrupulous merchants selling fake crap to desperate people. So for the last six or seven years we've lived with a constant fear of attack.

Then, just as our fear of instant death began to fade, the very real fear of economic collapse hit us like a broadside. We saw our largest financial institutions failing, and I think there was a real sense of panic for a lot people when that started. Then people start losing their jobs, mortgages become unsustainable, and a large swath of middle and lower class America started loosing their homes. Now there's a bunch of families and individuals out there that really don't know what they are going to do to make it to tomorrow. There's a real fear, and a real chance out there that the American dream that so many grew up believing in, and a lot of people were close to attaining, is collapsing around their ears.

It's no surprise that so many normal people are going ballistic over the health care reform issue, that there are so many people that are so easily stirred up by the pot-stirrers, like limbaugh, hannity and beck. The Bush administration instilled so much fear in the American populace at large that people are overdosing on the stuff, and now Republicans and their imps are stirring that fear with reckless abandon. People who have really suffered enough, and will probably suffer more before it gets better, are being used. Their real fear, their real problems are being used to make sure that no solution to their fears can be found, and that's the real tragedy of the situation.

Posted by Jeff at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have to wonder if the Republicans, and the right-wing conservatives haven't finally painted themselves into a corner on this health care reform debate. They've gone to such an extreme of blatantly lying and misinforming that it has ultimately forced everyone to take notice, and so outlandish have their lies been that it has forced everyone to report otherwise. Hopefully it will get to a point where even the most ardent supporters of all of these lies and misinformation will have to stop and see that what they are doing is just flat out wrong. I hope so anyway.

The saddest part of all of this is that the people who most desperately need this reform are the ones that are being manipulated by the Insurance Companies and their lobbiest to stop it. Indeed it seems that those who need it most are the ones shouting loudest that they don't want it. Such is their fear and fervor that they don't realize that the health care system they fear getting is the one they've already got, only it isn't the Federal government holding death panels, it is the Insurance Companies.

Perhaps the Republicans and their ilk have to fabricate such absurd falsehoods, such as death panels, because the atrocities that Insurance Companies daily inflict on people who actually have insurance are so terrible that nothing else would seem daunting. What's worse than denying coverage to a terminally ill patient because the Insurance Company decides arbitrarily that the illness was a preexisting condition? Death Panels! Swastikas, Nazis and boogey men deciding that grandma needs to die!

Stop being stupid America, those people are the ones in charge right now, the ones in their white ivory corporate towers rolling naked in their bins of money, pressing the decline button, because little Timmy doesn't really need chemo therapy.

Posted by Jeff at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You come across these stories every now and then, and at least for me they are always very moving.

The “Ye Olde Pub”

Posted by Jeff at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I remember in grade school that the teacher would give us these things called "Story Starters" with which we were supposed to use to write our own creative story. They would be one sentence nuggets of awesome, such as, "My brother and I ran through the forest...", or something to that effect. I don't recall any of my literary output generated by these gems, but I stumbled across two websites that kind of put story starters in mind. If I ever get up the gumption I might give it a try, but as of yet I haven't felt the spark of creativity, or maybe more importantly the spark of 'not being a lazy git'.

Here are the earl's links that you may manifest these sites for your own perusal:

Texts From Last Night
and
FMyLife

Posted by Jeff at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A lot of questions can buzz through one's mind after viewing something like this. Such as, is this real?, or is this is some sort of douche bag boot camp? Sadly I think both answers are yes.

Posted by Jeff at 02:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)