the IDIOT

wikipedia sucks

2008-07-04T18:52:00.004-04:00

according to the fools who composed and monitor the wikipedia article on bigotry:

A bigot is a person who is intolerant of opinions, lifestyles, or identities differing from his own, and bigotry is the corresponding ideology.

so according to these dumbasses, if i'm intolerant of, for example, benito mussolini's lifestyle — his differing from mine — i'm therefore a bigot.

"bigot" is becoming nearly as overused and little understood as "racist" and "homophobic" — all favored widgets from the toolbox of the passive-aggressive asshole/moron (i.e., average modern human). not by mere coincidence, the normal spewer of "bigot" is a bigot. same with "racist".

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opportunistic stupidity

2008-07-04T16:45:00.007-04:00

longtime LRC poser ass ryan mcmaken today implies that there's significance in "the grammar used when referring to the UAE at the wikipedia site" — specifically the plural part of the phrase "the UAE were known as".

textbook LRC fuckup:

plural for a singular org is classic british; the author is unexamined by poser douchebag ryan mcmaken.

nobody with a brain and relevant experience assigns moment to a wikipedia article, let alone the arbitrary preservation of the plural form chosen by a — wait for it — single, essentially anonymous author of a few-word snippet. oh, what weighty significance, the potentially no-meaning-intended typing by this lone dude.

LRC wanking over the increasingly horrible wikipedia remains nearly as ingrained as calling anything not overtly statist "heroic".

beginning of the wikipedia article's opening paragraph:

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) [...] is a Middle Eastern federation of seven states [...]

the pathetic stephan kinsella

2008-07-01T18:57:00.007-04:00

drivel boy's feeling the pressure. after his public diss by LRC's upstart golden boy robe sniffer — sniffed away hurriedly by a cantsellyaian peripheral wound lick — he's back to do what? not show anyone where in the US constitution is contained language excluding generally the states from the constraints of the "bill of rights". oh no!

steffy cantsellya has more argument by authority for ya, this time with the N word (negro).

c'mon, retards. you can't just admit that the authors of the constitution fucked up when they tacked on that shitcan "bill of rights" with everybody assuming that it would be understood to not bind the states? you can't admit and state openly that any "supreme law" added within the searing context of a supremacy clause binding the states generally was a colossally boneheaded screwup when it didn't place with the "bill of rights" clear language indicating the target(s) had changed, and where? can't admit that?

the "law" is fucked up. it was fucked by an assuming blowhard committee with nobody running the preflight checklist. get off your tortured "hey, this guy said this" embarrassing shtick. what a mystical dickwad, incapable of reading law without inserting his schnoozer up at least 5 robe-clad rectums. read it, fly fucker.

disturbing news for congenital state slurpers: jesus didn't write the US constitution. stop pretending otherwise. stop trying to torture every last ouija board farted pancake out of the flawed emanations of mortals, just because it's a pain in the ass to edit directly and honestly.

my advice for obama the skin whore blockhead

2008-07-01T00:05:00.006-04:00

don't "defend" your "patriotism", rat bitch; circulate more loyalty oaths than all your critics combined. make joseph heller proud while "creating jobs" and increasing "productivity" (none of which is any of your fucking business, but when did that stop you or any other criminal parasite?).

BTW, catch this drivel opener:

INDEPENDENCE, Mo., June 30 -- Dogged by persistent rumors questioning his belief in country, [...]

"belief in country"? WTF.

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jane fonda: barbarellicious

2008-06-27T14:06:00.005-04:00

i'd long heard of Barbarella, but didn't give it a spin until recently (on the heartfelt if somewhat melancholy recommendation of jay mohr's character in the sadly ignored blitzkrieg sitcom Action, with illeana douglas). lord god almighty, what a spankfest. if you'd rather see a beautiful woman's face than porn, this is the porn for you. fonda is indescribably sultry and perfect in this, and even were i some retarded vietnam warmonger brat, i'd be tempted to yell out an orgasmic, "all's forgiven, lass! all's forgiven."

fonda's sex nuke aside, what an artistic blast, from the sets and models to the special effects — very wizard of oz in its sidestepping of tech limitations with pizazz.

and through it all jane fonda presents what may be the ideal feminine form. jesus christ, the girl had an ass and everything else. sure it's funny when after making it with a suave ice-dwelling traveler she answers her ship's computer's "please advise present situation" request with, "you wouldn't understand", but it was her body language that answered that one. find a better post-sex image in history and i'll give you the deed to barbra streisand's house.

i doubt whether many, if any, other actors could've presented this ideally weird mix of innocence and confidence fonda maintains from the start. she was good. if you like wacky free-spirited sci-fi (or just honest art in general), hand yourself over to barbarella for one try. she does it the old fashioned way.

an even better laugh

2008-06-27T12:40:00.004-04:00

how'd i neglect this gem from a supposed expert on the US constitution:

In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."

He said such evidence "is nowhere to be found."

just because it's funny to follow that crap with the very words of "the framers":

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

so through who knows what dastardly sleight of dick, "shall not be infringed" becomes the mock incredulous "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons". oh, egads, señor milquetoast.

i wonder... just what the fuck this dumbass thinks the entire constitution is if not precisely an avowed choice by the "the framers" "to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate" fuckall. the guy's an overt psychopath, talking such drivel at sharp odds with the very law document he swore to support. he's a walking demonstration of the veracity of john acton's note on what happens with assholes and power.

sadly, the constitution was a power grab, however subtle, but WTF — let's not have the "supreme" court show us the evil behind the curtain. allow me some delusional dignity! leave me to roll in the grass, comforted by earnest lies.

steffy cantsellya, nearly ineffable retard

2008-06-26T20:03:00.009-04:00

OMG, steffyboy "kevin gutzman's droolcup cleaner" kinsella is back at it, pretending to add clarity (and, of course, an air of smoking jacket collegiality among fellow JD airheads and sellouts — well, not so applicable in the case of butler shaffer) while fucking the boat with a large unpluggable hole. stephan P cantsellya is again trying to sell falsehood, alleging that the "bill of rights" is generally (not specifically, as in the case of the first amendment) inapplicable to the states. well, i'll ask the same old question... again: where in the US constitution, droolcup retard from hell, is that inapplicability expressed statutorily?

of course, it is not. therefore, any claim to general "bill of rights" inapplicability to the states is — wait for it — extraconstitutional. these supposed stalwart bastions of "law" paint themselves virtuous for ignoring the obvious: there is no general exclusion for the states with regard to the law contained in the "bill of rights". they dodge and they run, leaving behind them with false bravado the irrelevant crappings of noting the specific exclusion of the states from the first amendment. huzzah! okay, fuckers, that's one. that's one amendment of the ten in the "bill of rights". can you try for two sequentially? yes, how about aiming for the second amendment?

cantsellya gathers his one ball and launches into the attempt:

Second, as Kevin Gutzman notes, the Bill of Rights provides limits on the power of the federal government--not states, and not DC. So, as with the majority in the Kelo case, the dissent would have had the right result for the wrong reasons. In Heller, the majority is correct in how they construe the meaning of the Second Amendment; the liberals are blatantly, dishonestly wrong. But both sides incorrectly believe that the Bill of Rights applies to DC.

wrong as usual, steffy P. under the supremacy clause,

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

now, if one of you puffy slobbering dickheads wants to show where in that constitution the law of the second amendment is rendered inapplicable to states, congress, the president, the supreme court, or anyone a signatory even by implication to it, please do so. cantsellya points to gutzman apparently giving it his best shot, and what does he offer? the preamble to the "bill of rights" which, funnily enough, isn't law anywhere, let alone in the constitution in any form (law or preamble). if that law didn't match the intent of the bill's authors, well they fucked up and the law must be amended before it carries that weight.

hell, absent a full admission of the obvious, i'd like for one of these lackey LRC "originalist" fuckers to simply admit that the law does not convey the intent they assert. from there they can argue how law not contained in law then becomes law. bear in mind, of course, that when i use the word "law" in this context i'm speaking of the fictional brand of law which is at heart simply threats from arrogant bullies, which when directed at themselves — as the US constitution purports to do above all — are downgraded to empty promises.

c'mon, you retarded godawful preening LRC claptrappers; "show me the law!"

the most disgraceful bit is that the lot of these dipshits would tend toward spending 15 hours in front of a judge (well, until he tells them to once again take up the direct, active robe-sniffing) arguing a single word in some parking ordinance, and the absolute impermeable nature of "written law", yet when confronted repeatedly with the full absence of their asserted position from within the law they purport to consider supreme (for practical purposes anyway), off they go into the vaporous fields of "original intent", "pseudo-state", and "preamble" whacka whacka. whoa there, horsey! back to the law with ya, fucking poser.

it. isn't. there.

seriously, go read the whole of steffy's piece-of-shit post. as always, and inevitably, you'll not find him referring to the US constitution (i.e., law) to support his position (however much he may refer to it as disguise for support). go read it. through every sentence ask yourself, "is this referring to the constitution or something else, and if it refers to the constitution, does it support his assertion that the 'bill of rights' is generally inapplicable to the states?"

[obviously, that test cannot be run on the hypothetical constitution steffy constructs toward the rear of his "argument", since it does not include a "bill of rights" and, however useful intrinsically the technique, is in this case solely a product of his stupidity/dishonesty.]

"but wait," cries the LRC-slurping moron, "didn't you see the bit about congress having local-style control over DC?"

yeah i did. and congress, just like the states (and everyone else evil or vulgar or stupid or unlucky enough to be signatory to the piece-of-shit US constitution) is forbidden in the clearest language from infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms. doesn't matter who. doesn't matter where. you can talk that "but DC's different" bullshit until your lips fall off and it won't get you around the clear, unconditional prohibition in the second amendment which — OMG — is not anywhere in the US constitution excluded from applicability to the states. so shove that up your ass.

steffy P's argument always and repeatedly returns to the unfounded assertion that this touted inapplicability exists. obviously, he returns to it so frequently in the hope that the reader will be dizzied into accepting blatant argument by assertion and remonstration for argument by cold demonstration. here it is in undisguised form, less the obfuscatory mountains:

The Bill of Rights provides limits on the power of the federal government — not states, and not DC. How do we know this? Because the Bill of Rights only limited what Congress could do, not States.

that is, without adornment nor mistaken omission, steffy's foundation for his assertion — the same assertion. oh, he'll take ya 'round the mountain of this year and that year, this plenary diversion theory and that tenth-amendment squortle, this supreme court faggot and that hallowed JD-toting prick... but it'll always come back — sometimes with amusing plainness — to the repetition of a premise as the conclusion. which begs the question...

[blah blah blahbhiddy blah i wonder how many people got that joke blah blah blah]

best laugh i've had all day

2008-06-26T12:37:00.003-04:00

reuters:

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, "The decision threatens to throw into doubt the constitutionality of gun laws throughout the United States."

this is the "it fucks up our syndicate" "law argument" that lawrence taylor exposes so often and ably that i've almost stopped linking to his blog. if you can find a quicker quote to shine light on the dank emptiness of stare decisis, publish it.

the second amendment to the US constitution was, like all of the "bill of rights" save the tenth amendment, a catastrophic mistake (assuming, probably stupidly, good faith on the part of the writers). its raw power lies in the ease with which lunkheads fall into line behind it. fuck the second amendment. fuck the "supreme" court.

good day to note that amidst the myriad words capitalized in the US constitution, not once is "supreme" so honored. hey, maybe the constitution doesn't suck unequivocally. however, my boy lysander retains the last word, as ever:

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain—that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.
~Lysander Spooner, 1870

poor bashed bird

2008-06-25T08:08:00.008-04:00

about an hour ago i pulled into a grocery store parking lot and noticed, just before i nearly drove over him, a downed bird flapping on the pavement by the store entrance. parked quickly. as i left my car one of the bird's friends landed nearby to check on him. i backed away and waited, but his friend just took off after looking helplessly at his pard, so i went in closer. seeing that it wasn't a chick, i approached and gently scooped him into my hand to at least get him out of the traffic area. he didn't resist at all, which i thought odd, and he even tried to wrap his toes around my fingers for stability. except for my brief initial scoop i didn't restrain his wings, and he didn't protest-flap.

he wasn't freaking out (a bad sign, i thought, considering), so i walked him toward some foliage, trying to find a safe place in the sun (e.g., away from automatic sprinklers) i could leave him if necessary. looked to me like his beak was slightly mashed in, so i was hoping he was just the usual stun victim from flying into misleading window glass. his tail feathers were raggedy and sparse, but it didn't look like recent damage. breathing: surprisingly unhurried, like his minimal movements.

lowered my hand into soft grass, but he didn't move. he seemed comfortable, in his stunned way, so i kept my hand still and talked softly to him while he closed his eyes and rested; he just sorta relaxed against my fingers, but obviously not dying or anything. figured he was ragged out from his struggle on the pavement and whatever'd put him there. every 10 seconds or so he'd open his eyes, a little unsettled. when a car at the nearest intersection honked, his unease increased temporarily. after a few minutes i moved my hand to the sidewalk and asked if he wanted to try to walk a bit. nope. slowly moved my hand back to the grass, but up in the air a couple of feet. suddenly the little guy shifted his landing gear, engaged propellers, and flew away straight and true — my most efficient bird rescue to date.

new world parenting

2008-06-24T11:21:00.015-04:00

understanding better how recent waves of narcissistic hooligans infest the earth. i'm at a starbucks, sitting near a table composed of a mother, her friend, two toddlers, and the older asian nanny.

the toddlers were granted long term access to two commuter mugs they swiped from a shelf across the store. while they mouthed them and fingered them with their snot hands, nobody said a thing. in between disgusting attentions to those tainted mugs, they jogged back to the shelf, scooping up armfulls of other commuter mugs and walking around the store with them doing the mouth/finger two-step. as if swatting a fly, the nanny would wait for them to attack, then arrive twenty seconds later and nudge them pathetically into giving up their booty. minute or two later it began again; they were fucking up anything — bags of coffee beans, signs, whatever. the nanny did nothing but react to these (un)trained pigs.

If you've got a pig that likes jumping fences, you have to make its fence a lot higher all at once. If you do it by increments, all you're doing is training a jumping pig.
~Henry Spencer (unconfirmed)

through it all, the "mother" completely ignored their abuse of the property of starbucks and the eventual buyers. not a blink. that alone wouldn't be a disaster if the nanny'd been instructed and handed authority to inculcate into the lives of the toddlers respect for others. nah, she was a professional fly swatter / jumping pig trainer, and the "mother" couldn't give a fuck less — oblivious, focused only on her friend while the nanny helped her kids suck.

years later we meet and interact with the products of these wasted pieces of shit, and their further corrupted offspring. one remedy.

my spinach

2008-06-24T10:43:00.007-04:00

anyone can go to the gym. for most people, going there and slacking is better than nothing. years ago i overheard good advice from a stranger. he'd just arrived at the gym, looking stalled. greeted by a friend, he replied that he probably wasn't going to work out that evening. he explained that his practice was that he must at least show up with his gear. most of the time it was enough to get him going, but that night he was turning straight back around. he was right; getting in the door is most of the battle, and if you confine your struggle to simply arriving, you'll usually slide into the workout comfortably when that's done. then come the sliding scales of form and intensity.

form i can usually straighten out enough simply by remembering to. for intensity i have a cheap cheat drug — one that apparently works for adam carolla as well.

music, bitch. went through my whole collection last year and made a playlist just for boxing — songs guaranteed to wake my lazy ass up. nearly any tempo song can be used to kick rope jumping, and some encourage big breakthroughs. engaging shuffle on my iPod nano boxing playlist, i'm sometimes transported into goo-goo gah-gah land. the other night i was on another planet jumping to a jam surprise arrival: "Dam That River" by alice in chains. closed my eyes and spun the fuck. weird part is that it not only raises intensity, but lowers perceived exertion.

strap on that MP3 playah and get busy. easy once you show up. even five minutes of semi-vigorous exercise daily can make a radical difference.

experiment for adam carolla and The Hammer

2008-06-23T00:07:00.004-04:00

i dig adam carolla, but he's damned annoying in that his logic seems to be stuck at a few notches above standard dipshit. he regularly rants against "government", accurately using the word communism to describe PBS, for example. he correctly screams that public libraries are pieces of shit that should be abolished, but what does he recommend doing with the empty buildings? convert to state building inspection and DMV offices. he's stuck, a born statist.

his logic fails as well when it concerns his projects. listeners to his radio show heard for weeks that his movie The Hammer got phenomenal ratings at rottentomatoes.com. when others point out to him that one cannot compare even semi-accurately the ratings of a mainstream movie against his basically unreleased movie seen primarily by fans, he counters with the assurance that hey, his fans never hesitate to set him straight; they're the first to downgrade his work when deserved.

in context, that's full bullshit. his fans were pissed that his movie didn't get a broad theater release, and their allegiance against "the man" (or whatever) generally comes before criticism of the movie, which though strong in parts is hardly the epic i've heard wanked over for many months. some of it's painfully cheesy. many of his fans are decrepit drones who don't even come close to adam's non-stellar perspicacity, however much they may admire it, and it's obvious from the reviews at amazon that the dummkopf troops are gathering to support the DVD release (adam has asked them specifically to leave positive reviews at amazon).

as much as adam bitches about the conditional positive reviews from critics (e.g., "surprisingly, it's not that bad" sorta stuff), the ratings from his fans are obviously conditional, handing out 5-star reviews as if in awe that a monkey was able to sign a coherent sentence — twenty-nine 5-star reviews and two 4-star — nothing else. no fucking way does that represent the usual public slice evaluating this movie.

rather than argue completely against the illogic behind his trumpeting of the rottentomatoes numbers, i'll sit back and watch them beyond tomorrow's DVD release. the "RT Community" rating is 96%:

Reviews Counted: 183
Fresh: 177 Rotten:6
Average Rating: 9.1/10

at IMDb, 873 votes give a composite rating of 7.4 — pretty high for IMDb, and i contend well influenced by the disparate fan proportion via the stealth theater release.

if adam's correct, those ratings should remain high long after the DVD release. assuming sales are above tepid, we'll see.

[080624: morning of the DVD release (IMDb votes tabulated from day before — probably mostly early-arriving mail preorders), IMDb is up to 7.5, 894 votes.]

good sweet nostalgia

2008-06-22T18:05:00.003-04:00

iTunes has this very short movie (16 min) for free right now (iTunes link). Cutlass is written and directed by kate hudson, starring my longtime honey virginia madsen (you may remember from the opening to david lynch's Dune), dakota fanning (emerging from her somewhat achingly/overly cute kid period), kristen stewart (looks good blond), and the writer/director's stepdad kurt russell.

if you, like i, are fascinated by market negotiation, this is the short film for you. some have called it painfully sweet, but i dig on the whole memories deal. lordy lordy, how could i not when my first real guitar purchase was a 25th anniversary fender stratocaster, aided by my parents (short loan) when i'd only been playing guitar for about 6 months (1981). you make the case and you stick to it. as dakota fanning's character implies, the drive for material things is often little removed from the drive for life.

tools, baby.

absence of scrutiny

2008-06-21T12:17:00.004-04:00

this morning i was driving behind a vehicle sporting a bumper sticker:

GROWING THE ECONOMY
IS SHRINKING THE ECOSYSTEM

the sticker clung to the back of a new toyota prius, manifestation of one of the more rapidly growing segments of "the economy".

and again i shudder.

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could tell ya; have to kill ya

2008-06-19T13:38:00.004-04:00

there's a special class of dipshit in the goonited states rapidly rising toward normal class of dipshit — the "i can't disclose that" guy.

apparently, these poser doofi aren't aware that tom cruise was speaking ironically in Top Gun. only five minutes ago a starbucks employee (!) said "i can't disclose that" when i asked about a gang of khaki'd gun-toting fedgoon rats who regularly set up station at his store in the afternoon. they wear embroidered insignia, for fuck's sake; i'd just never cared enough to get up and walk close enough to read them. when i openly scoffed at his dipshit face, he regrouped a minute later to walk by and give me the "secret". un-fucking-believable.

i'm wondering what specific psychosis is responsible for this childish "i know something you don't, and your very survival depends upon you not knowing" brand of asshole — who of course forgets that he tells everyone he's "fighting" for the very thing that supposedly prohibits such secrecy. post-9/11, such behavior is rampant. why? because opportunity has blessed these truly insignificant swabs of walking trash-DNA who aim always to deny the obvious: they are parasites accomplishing nothing positive... on the dime they stole from you.

my most fervent wish is to not be "protected" by these violent pieces of parading fantastic shit.

tim russert the noble

2008-06-19T11:42:00.008-04:00

yesterday afternoon i was in a parking lot watching an approaching storm. great conversation starter, i found, as is standing nearly anywhere looking elsewhere intently. the second person who talked to me had a couple of lines about the storm and then shifted to henry thoreau, whose picture he saw on my t-shirt (strike-the-root). he was a fan, but noted that thoreau had a negative aspect that was largely ignored. i asked if he knew of anyone who wasn't substantially disagreeable upon full exposure. he said — wait for it —

yep... tim russert. (for his alleged charitable giving.)

i said that russert had been a professional apologist for the official crime syndicate — a term parking lot guy accepted readily and understood — aiding their destructive action. i asked him to name one time in russert's softball-lobbing career that he got in the face of the criminals he sold to the ignorant — except for ron paul, of course, the career criminal syndicalist whose cock russert decidedly did not suck (i put it nicer than that). he laughed and told me i should visit his home state (taxachusetts); they'd like me up there.

another semi-populist driving myth

2008-06-17T17:44:00.006-04:00

now and then some supposedly stellar piece of driving practice makes the lunkhead rounds with near religious intensity. adam carolla recently touted the generally wrong but supposedly smart tactic when waiting in a left turn lane (or similar) of always creeping into the intersection. this inane universal was also encouraged at LRC years ago. here's the correct method:

when waiting for incoming traffic before turning left, one should creep into the intersection only near the likely end of the green cycle, for if the creep's avoided and isn't needed to nip the green, you can use that same length of pavement to accelerate. you still cross the oncoming lane at the same point and time, but in this case with far more speed. why? because you opted to traverse the same length of pavement in one step instead of two, also saving your brakes the extra hassle. yes, holding back in this instance normally puts you farther down the road in the long run.

a few years ago some redneck moron pulled around me at a U-turn cutout on a highway simply because i wasn't sticking my nose out the extra 25-ft that communicates to the dumbass class "i'm really on the ball". then what did he do? he sat there watching the same gapless oncoming traffic, probably cursing me for "not driving aggressively". idiot. then he entered the opposite lane at the same time and place i would've, but from a crawl, not a running start.

you can watch these knee-jerk fools at nearly every red light as they work their cars throughly countless iterations of creep 3 inches, stop, repeat (usually because of similar dumb motherfuckers in front of them). oh, they're intense shit! that red light isn't keeping them from whacking off!

two things to bear in mind if you switch to the true superior left/U turn method: don't hold back so long that you miss a chance to nip the red if it comes to that, and don't scare the living fuck out of the last oncoming guy by looking more like you're aiming for his windshield instead of the space he's in the act of vacating.

starbucks iced tea

2008-06-17T15:49:00.007-04:00

starbucks has plenty of problems, and it's trendy to piss on the trendy green giant, but since they threw that economics-ignorant "fair trade" coffee on the back burner, i don't have overriding complaints. starbucks management has also backed me in my endless fight with cops over late night WiFi'ng, telling one complaining cop (who called them the next day pursuing a "loitering" charge or whatever his dumb ass could concoct) that as a paying WiFi customer i was welcome to use their parking lot anytime; the signal's always on.

anyway... i write this post to praise something starbucks gets right when many others fail: iced tea.

they call it shaken iced tea, and it usually is shaken (nice and bubbly on the top), but the great part from my experience is that it's never rotten. they pour dangerously hot water over tea bags at concentrated strength, keep it at room temperature (no more than 12 hours), and dilute it at delivery time. as i've written before (linked above), it's the brewing temperature that drives the nasties chain. some claim immediate refrigeration and crazy clean sanitation's the thing, but i disagree. IMO, and starbucks's record appears to bear it out, zapping with heat the inevitable bacteria and fungi in tea takes care of it well enough, especially if you're brewing in the storage container. according to the starbucks lady i interviewed (also a tea freak), the official crime syndicate limits restaurant room temp tea storage to 12 hours, but i've routinely done two days and more when brewing properly.

so if you, like me, are sick of rotten restaurant tea, drop by starbucks and see what sort of large iced tea you get for just over two bucks. as i recall, standard sweetener (simple syrup) for a large ("venti") is 6 pumps, so i usually order none or a 1-pump. if you want to try mine say, "venti black iced tea, 1-pump". refills are cheap or free, depending on if you register a starbucks card.

BTW, starbucks has quietly — in some locations noisily — become the largest ambassador of real jazz in the goonited states. they play some damned good, off the wall, stuff. decades ago i said that my ideal radio station would go from one crazy extreme to another, all over the place, with some room for pop music and whatever. starbucks routinely does this, albeit in block form. little too much repetition now and then (e.g., they were pushing sinatra last month), but mostly they are playing things i'm shocked the "partners" tolerate — hours and hours of chunky, sometimes outside, acoustic combo jazz from the old school heavies.

jaco my love!

2008-06-05T17:19:00.007-04:00

ha! i'm watching a vintage weather report vid from the golden era of jaco pastorius (late 70s), and it just hit me seeing one shot of the man (during a stellar transmission of "A Remark You Made") that — gulp — i had a girlfriend not too long ago who sorta looked like him (in a brief portion from this vid anyway, not the photo here, obviously).

she didn't play bass though, so i guess i'm... only half creepy. yikes.

anyway, jaco and joe, i miss you motherfuckers. hope we keep for a long time wayne the force and every other dude from the triumph period (anything pre-'82 or so).

WTF, here's (.MP3 5.3MB) a fuckly-recorded/mixed song from '88 i wrote about jaco when i heard he died. (didn't write the beginning "In a Silent Way" quote, of course.) the bullshit circumstances and glitches underlying it needn't be explained; it's, um, sub par — technically and otherwise.

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ostrowski the dishonorable clod

2008-06-04T14:28:00.004-04:00

captain dorkus partakes of lew rockwell's emergency stealth disavowal/blame strategy:

Democrats shoot self in foot
Posted by James Ostrowski at June 4, 2008 09:23 AM
By (apparently) nominating the clearly weaker and less "popular" candidate. Less popular by 48,464 votes.
The beneficiaries of this hunting accident are Obama (for now anyway), McCain, and Bob Barr.
Those obedient to the First Commandment should not watch MSNBC for a while.

never mind your "bold" prediction, ass flutter; announce that your prediction of the mass action direction of the worthless public, in this system you two-faced scoundrels at LHRC (horse race central) can't get enough of, was thwarted by — gosh almighty — them not acting properly (i.e., as you foretold). how "austrian".

fucking hypocrites. stupid hypocrites. stupid creepy creeping hypocrites.

blow it out your ass, ostrowski

2008-06-03T23:58:00.006-04:00

take a brief, tentative memory lane stroll with captain predicto. from the unknowingly aptly titled "The Great Unknown":

[...] Here’s my point. I warned those leaning to Bush over Kerry in 2004 that a Bush win could put Hillary in the White House for two terms. I’m sure many laughed at that line also. Now, Hillary has to be considered the clear favorite to win the Presidency. She leads the Democratic candidates in the polls and number two is Barack Obama whose entire résumé says: "very good public speaker." That’s a very good place to be.

(By the way, I’m sure many also laughed when I predicted on December 3, 2003, that John Kerry would be the Democratic nominee.) [...]

oh, you smooth rat bastard, capitan predicto. but it gets better:

Ron Paul is Hillary Clinton’s worst nightmare. Forget about the establishment describing his campaign as "quixotic." Ten or twenty years ago, maybe so. Not now.

Hillary will be the Democratic nominee once the Obama fantasy subsides. Bet the ranch on that one. [...]

somebody else was predicting while the captain let loose with his hubristic trollop patrol:

but don't worry, captain predicto says it's gonna be the hill-bot and the paul-schnot. he's rolling the dice. if that's the result, get set for at least three self-congratulatory primps from the cappy. if it's not the result, who cares? very few. that's the cheapness of the angle cappy and lew figure you'll not notice. all the predictions? throw away the bullshit, and tout the good. usual story — same that hatched psychics and general superstition. sweep away the wrong blabber. write it off to those damned kristo-fascists who appeared out of nowhere yesterday.

the intelligent know that it's impossible to predict with any reliable brilliance the particular jaunty whim of the enslaved. just sit back and watch them do their sneezing. here's a prediction that will not go wrong: the next president of the goonited states will be a lying shitbird with a long career of robbing the poor, middle-class, and rich. i am genius. hear me snore.

now if the skin whore gets whacked and hillary takes his throne, ostrowski'll be howling, prancing about what a goddamned horse race genius mastermind strategy whore he is.

hey, james: go fuck yourself, twat boy hayseed ape of dishonor.

wrong

2008-06-03T16:53:00.006-04:00

months ago on another site i bitched out people clamoring for starbucks to switch from incandescent to florescent lighting. "horrible! don't do it!" i yelled.

hadn't noticed that while underneath what i thought were earthy conventional bulbs, i was writing about the unique, indispensable virtue of incandescent lights in a room devoid of them. couple of weeks later i happened to scope out the bright center of the fixtures, and each was that telltale curly look of the roundly (in liberty circles) denounced compact fluorescent lamp (CFL).

yeah, there are good reasons to avoid CFLs, and naturally it isn't any rightful business of official crime syndicates (AKA "government"), but apparently i have to send my "it'll look like mcdonald's" rant to the graveyard. sitting under CFLs right now, i'd be hard pressed to tell the difference without a rigid A/B comparison. gonna be cool when LEDs reach this point (assuming they haven't).

why i abandoned 'free' audiobooks

2008-06-03T15:06:00.011-04:00

when i first found podiobooks (and similar products) i thought i'd found greatness. but after a few months of rising entitlement chatter from the bubbling ooze of "contributors", i found it wasn't worth the price, which went beyond the financial. these books generally are not free as claimed (notable exceptions exist), but piled on with guilt and quackish expectations that one is to pay more, simply because it's done in a format where the buyer supposedly chooses the price. from many authors and listeners (not management), here's the general formula, though never presented honestly:

you have been given something for free. appreciate it!

because of the unearthly generosity of these authors, giving you things for free, you should, if you're not a stinking freeloader asshole, pay above standard market rates for the product, even though much of our catalog is overtly shoddily manufactured.

now that you've been prodded into paying more for less, you will still be pummeled with the lie that you were given something, generously, for free.

after overdosing via one last straw of "c'mon, let's open up those tightly welded purse strings you cheap unappreciative bastards" speechery (sometimes from whiny bitch authors regarding unfinished, and therefore undelivered, works — and in one case from a douchebag who walked and never delivered), i bid an inspired "fuck off" to podiobooks and went immediately to audible.com, happily laying down hundreds in advance, old school.

audible.com is hardly a perfect site, but never did some rat bastard socialist hanger-on bitch at me in self-righteously wrong assumption about how i wasn't pulling my weight. further, while audible sells plenty of stinkers, the available, previewable quality is far superior to the average self-produced fare at podiobooks and similar sites, where the tendency is to go long on breathless "artistic" pretense and short on even minimalist audio quality. horrendously produced audiobooks were routinely touted as earth shaking and whatever else bee's knees bullshit. why? because some earnest fuckwit flung a shingle onto his living room PC, crapping out sub-par drivel with his underwear-clad self. oh, the temerity! somewhere there should be an award for "putting yourself out there".

::puke::

know what it takes to "put yourself out there"? nothing more than the, it turns out, reliable expectation that the jerry's kids crowd will slap your ass on the back for gargling out a pedestrian story into a headset mic, compressed into ratty digital distortion because you're half deaf and technically inconsiderate. so proud of you, retard, as i am when i see a man with no legs dragging himself across the street, tin cup welded to his erect dick. what's being traded is not excellence, but the weight of flesh. i object to the usual brick wall criticism of the labor theory of value, but in the case of this "free" audiobook shtick, most of what's offered is the worst labor theory of value — somebody working without a contract, then presenting a bill because it took him "so much time", [wah wah wah]

many (not all) podiobooks sucked ass. my accurate criticisms and frank disgust were met with "go away you ungrateful sad man" fallacious baloney from deaf morons. this didn't include management, but it was the vocal majority of the fans of the supposedly spotless "free" product phenomenon. oh, what a gorgeous turd you released from your anus. you must "publish"! (at nearly zero marginal cost)

shitty part about the overwhelming noise at podiobooks is that there are at least five one-man (or nearly) operations there doing it as well as or better than the upper echelon of the conventional pro circuit. as with all socialism-tainted environments, they are dragged down by the slackers who presume that the quality of associates somehow elevates their shoddy product. newsflash, assholes: it only makes you look worse, while staining your superiors.

i'm a longtime DIY fanatic, and fervid supporter of bypassing conventional "pro" methods — just as my hero charles lindbergh demonstrated, perhaps better and with more balls than anyone. but rising above the conventional producers takes more than going it alone, and attitude unaccompanied by excellence is worse than nothing.

according to the vocal majority of "community" type assholes (not the management) on the message boards at podiobooks, "trying" is the primary ingredient of worthiness when judging products. far as that goes, the product shouldn't really be judged at all, for this "i'm trying" brings with it, in the mind of the idiot, a unique and strong immunity from criticism.

i still monitor the message boards for some books at podiobooks, and the 100% orgasmic comments for laughable product are nearly unbelievable. one ~~prolific~~ voluminous author there's lauded wholesale for horrible novels, one after the other. his genre, when read by even the mildly cognizant, demands fluency and accuracy he'll never glimpse; it's just not in him. the consensus reaction if lambasting this hack? "hey, he's a saint! the guy's a fucking saint for giving this stuff away. oh, and BTW, send him five times as much as you would on the straight market for this dreck, since he's 'giving it away'."

nah, i'll stick to paying up front. never did an author at audible.com presume that he was doing me a favor by existing. i paid, i listened, and we were clear of this perpetual indebtedness infecting to the marrow far too many assholes in the new "free" church of nearly zero-cost marginal distribution. fuck you; fuck you very much. if it's free, it's free; otherwise, stop lying, hack turd polishers.

here's truth: most of you hack authors like what you're doing. you get pleasure from it. it's not work, anymore than me doing this blog is work. as explained years ago to similarly stupid assholes, what you would be paid "if you were being paid" doesn't mean dick. shut up. stop writing if it's such unremunerated drudgery for which others owe you more than regular pros. you and your precious anus are one of billions. taking a picture of your anus and putting it on a web site doesn't create indebtedness if i wonder by your train wreck and accept out of curiosity your supposedly free invitation to download it. maybe it's just a regular anus. maybe there's nothing worth paying for. maybe me downloading it's more than you deserve.

cowardice and untruth: the heart of a mob

2008-05-30T20:06:00.007-04:00

i confess to being a conditional huge fan of the carpenters from way back (early 70s), despite the moderate density of sickening sugar OD and... whatever. so i like the carpenters. karen carpenter was an early hero of mine — visually, and for her singing and drumming. richard carpenter's arranging/production was in some ways the twin brother of queen, as gag-inducing as that assertion may be to some.

but since i don't have any carpenters in my collection (they were my dad's albums i grew up with), i've been checking out what's available in MP3 at amazon, and reviewing some stuff at YouTube. that led me to this pinnacle of abomination:

Dear Carpenters Fan: I am writing to you about the impending demolition of the famous Downey, CA Newville Avenue residence of the Carpenters, made famous on the cover of their multi-platinum 1973 LP "Now & Then." For those who don’t know me,
[...]
Tourists still visit Downey today to see the house. Part of the house ("the addition") has already been razed. According to a reliable source, the main house is next. Please help me get the word out, but please be respectful of the current owners. This is THEIR house, purchased from Richard Carpenter. It is theirs to do with as they wish. Our goal is to draw attention to this awesome musical duo and the late Karen Carpenter (who left us 25 years ago), to educate the public to cultural/historic preservation, and to push the Downey City Council to enact a preservation ordinance. For complete Downey City Council addresses, go to http://www.downeyca.org/city_contact_email.php. Thank you, Jon Konjoyan

got that? it's the owners' house "to do with as they wish", and they must be respected... unless we can gang up to convince somebody else to threaten to kick their asses if they don't do what we demand.

what sort of world is this when such contradictory drivel's considered the height of "working together" and all that blah blah bullshit? the "Save CARPENTERS house" coalition is a mob of freeloading thugs too chickenshit to put a gun to the heads of the owners of the house sold them by richard carpenter. somebody please explain to me how this pending threat of mob violence is not properly met with preemption — not the bush style of preemption, but toward a gathering horde threatening and building real violent action against you at this moment?

there was a supremely practical method for preserving the carpenters' house, and that was for richard carpenter to not sell the fucker. now that he decided to not preserve the location, there's only one moral and acceptable method of preservation, and that's to make a peaceful offer to the owners which is voluntarily accepted.

that's it, assholes. you attempting to cover your violent action with "preservation" (i.e., rights devastation) "ordinance" building bullshit fools only assholes such as you. enjoy the company, though i hope the owners take truly lawful action against you, blowing your fucking worthless, violent, threatening brains out and onto "your" "public" pavement you treasure so.

nah, you'll get by being chickenshits, same as most of the chickenshits of yore. the onus of "criminality" would be applied to any man defending himself rightfully from your growing storm of sanctimonious thievery.

peanut-brained wastes of DNA

2008-05-24T14:23:00.005-04:00

who's the bigger cunt — hillscare clinton or keith olbermann? you gotta watch this nanny-anal bullshit:

i listened to the hillbitch's robert kennedy assassination comment. it was obviously nothing but a benign date reference, adding to her slick willy june '92 "point", however worthless. the average american's a scarily stupid motherfucker, and the supposed uproar and outrage over this nonsensical crap's simply the passive-aggressive version of "she needs to drop out". instead of saying that, they create a phony storm — for the same result, but with no balls or honesty required. OMG, telling her to drop out would be anti-"democratic"!

if there were a ship leaving this zoo, simply headed into space, i'd be on it tomorrow. the stupidity/dishonor meter's off the pins on this piece of shit planet. moving away would at least offer hope — through removal distance if nothing else.