Acme Mindlabs

Winners, Losers and Consequences - A Primer

2005-01-11T01:29:00.000-08:00

I understand why a lot of black people are leery, to say the least, of the Republican Party. The GOP has a tendency to bumble its way through civil rights issues in a very public manner. Trent Lott did nothing but reinforce the notion of stiff old white men who haven’t figured out that their daughters are dating black guys, with the I-had-no-idea-Martin-Luther-King-Jr.-was-important debacle.

It’s just terribly poor form not to take the time to learn exactly how revered Dr. King is, if for no other reason than that King was the one who wasn’t advocating blowing the honkies’ heads off. We’re lucky he was the one that marched on Washington and not Malcolm X, who was still about a year away from not being really pissed at white people as a whole.

So Trent Lott is an ignorant fool, and I understand why the GOP is a whiter shade of pale.

Another topic the GOP usually manages to turn into a back-peddling, quote re-contextualizing, semantic dance, is whether or not the Confederate flag, in any form, has any place flying over government offices of any kind.

For the record…are you f***ing kidding me? That there is even a discussion about this shows the kind of damage that progressives and their feel-good, pansy-assed “there are no such things as losers” psycho-babble, utopian crap have done to this country.

If it sounds like I’m blaming the greasy haired social revolutionaries who keep claiming to be deeply opposed to the Confederate flag, for its continued survival as a symbol of some idiotic ideal…I am. Just follow me here, it’ll all make sense soon.

Fact 1

Dear Confederate Flag Defender:

See, regardless of the States’ Rights argument that inevitably pops up in regard to the Confederate flag issue, regardless of the claims to “honoring our heritage,” there remains one…single…inescapable…incontrovertible…fact: YOU LOST THE WAR YOU JACKASS!

Sincerely,

Civilization

Fact 2

The term “loser” has been deemed offensive, as has the entire concept of competition and the work/reward system that has gotten humanity through the untold thousands of years it has been on the planet.

Thesis

1.1 – This country has been weenified into thinking that losing is OK, something to be proud of and something to be celebrated; the only explanation for the continued flying of the Confederate flag.

1.2 - We should be able to call anyone seen flying a Confederate flag a loser and make them cry, without being lectured by some long-haired hippy type about how “nobody’s really bad, they’re just misunderstood and that doesn’t make their feelings invalid.”

And who exactly decided that flying the colors of a defeated enemy was even tolerable? Let’s go to the instant replay: the Confederacy decides to secede by force of arms and gets its ass kicked. So why is that thing still flying over any government building within the borders of the United States? Why is this even an issue for debate?

Al Capone didn’t sit down and compromise with the guy who betrayed him in the dinner table scene of the Untouchables. There was no “It’s O.K., you can stick around, even keep your name on the Mafia masthead.” He put the guy’s face in his soup with a baseball bat to the back of the head.

If simply questioning, without even condemning, the government is enough to get you labeled a traitor or an enemy of the United States, then what exactly would Sean “The Human Ball f Self Righteous Indignation” Hannity call someone flying the flag of a defeated enemy insurgency?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating banning the thing. The First Amendment, which I hold very dearly, guarantees even the most idiotic amongst us, the right to fly whatever flag they choose, if that’s what they believe in. You just can’t fly it over a United States government building – because again, YOU LOST THE WAR – and, I get to make fun of you for being a half-wit loser.

And I don’t want anyone to think I’m discounting the argument that says Southerners are just honoring their heritage. I’m willing to make a compromise with them on this particular point. We can honor your heritage, but I want to honor all of it. I have no objections to displays of the Stars and Bars so long as the depictions include the silhouette of a three-eared, five-toothed, freckled inbred with a trucker hat, forcibly sodomizing some unlucky tourist who turned his yuppie-mobile down the wrong country road, while his uncle/brother/cousin (one person) strums the banjo.

Paying The Devil His Due

2005-01-10T02:23:00.000-08:00

Among the mundane details of this country's reluctant relationship with the United Nations, is that according to the Global Policy Forum, as of Nov. of '04, the United States has paid around a hundred million of several hundred million it owed in dues to the U.N. Now, I have no idea how accurate those figures are. I'm willing to infer credibility from their impressive url, www.globalpolicy.org.

I haven't mastered the art of googling for "Progressive whiners complain about lack of U.S. funding for utterly incompetent and often bumblinlgy dangerous United Nations" but I would guess that the written arguments exist out there somewhere in cyberspace.

In fact I know they do, because I have hypnotically induced, recovered memories from a very traumatic experience earlier in life. I was being forced to listen to NPR. Now, I don't want your pity. It was horrible, but I am working through it and will be fine eventually.

I remember some woefully indignant, yet godawfully montone NPR commentator (which might be the redundancy of the year) who was ranting, indignantly, about the U.S. refusal to pay their share of the United Nations pie, back around '99 sometime.

I'm a reasonable guy. I mean, if you commit to something, you ought to follow through unless you've got a good, honorable reason not to. And, we kind of got ourselves into this mess when we created the ugly whelp.
But has anybody been paying attention to the U.N.'s record lately?

Their latest accomplishment? Child rape. O.K., I mean, it sounds bad, but in their defense, they were civilized about it. They gave the girls bread and eggs, maybe a little spare change. I don't know, I can't judge. Maybe it's just "their way."

Kofi Annan, a man with the cloying, pungent stench of failure clinging to his carefully manicured goatee, expressed shock at the allegations through a representative. All of which does nothing. The U.N. has no authority to punish soldiers under its command, that falls to the country of origin. Which really is as it should be. Anybody under the impression that the U.N. is capable of making intelligent decisions about the fate of ...well, anyone, ought to consider that the U.N. Commission on Human Rights includes such wonderfully liberal states as China, Cuba, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. A bit like having Cheech and Chong watch the marijuana patch.

The point of all that being, the U.N. ought definitely not have domain over the soldiers of sovereign countries. The countries who's soldiers are guilty ought to be punishing them. The problem is, there is no way to confirm that the nations responsible for this punishment actually do anything, entirely because the U.N. won't name any of them. They don't want to embarrass anyone, "name and shame" as Jean-Marie Guehenno, United Nations undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations, put it. Reporters who tried to get Guehenno to at least come up with a more realistic sounding pile of bulls**t were overwhelmed and crushed by his enormous title.

Let's see, no authority, no transparency, no accountability. These are the people the liberals want to turn your security and well being over to. I'd be more confident in the Left if everytime I had a cold they didn't suggest I go see Kevorkian.

The United States has been accused of acting too much like Globo Cop, which is a fair judgement. It's not like we wanted to. The majority of us, meaning Americans, would much rather be doing something American, like making money, or eating, or enjoying the leisure time we're blessed with in any number of ways, rather than playing the International Iceberg Slim and having to backhand some of these hoes, like Iraq and Afghanistan, when they get out of pocket.

Instead, we're sending our people to die, since the international body we created to take care of things like human rights abuses, genocide and neighbors who show the bad form of invading the lot next door, couldn't solve the puzzle if Vanna White turned every letter except the "a" in "Dumbass."

New Year's Resolutions...

2005-01-10T01:58:00.000-08:00

But first....

Yes, Ozzy Osbourne may be so far into drug induced dottage that understanding him is difficult sometimes, but the old man still has a way with words. In fact he has come up with my new favorite description of L.A. "It's a hip, slick, happening, Paris Hilton-getting-f**ked-up-the-arse kind of town..." I only wish I was that elegant.

Now, onto our show...

It has been brought to my attention that I needed to either blog consistently or not at all. There's no point if I don't do it regularly, since people won't check just on the off chance I've gotten off my tucchus and actually written something. And let's be frank here, I blog because my ego needs the feedback, not because I need somewhere to write. So, having come to that realization, not to mention that there is one of my peers in particular, who I believe has decided not return my emails until I get to this blogging thing on a regular basis, I give you this resolution: I'll post at least four out of the five working days of the week. Satisfied, Ambra? Now where's the column you owe me?

I Spent $100 Billion Dollars and All I Got Was This Lousy Drug War

2004-12-22T02:28:00.000-08:00

Researchers at the University of Michigan have released a study full of optimistic observations on teen smoking and drug use. The rates are for both in almost every category, the exceptions being inhalant use among younger teens and the use of Rush Limbaugh’s favorite lemon wedge substitute, Oxycontin. I haven’t personally read the report, but the AP story was quite informative. What I found most interesting about the report, was that inadvertently the study confirmed what most reasonable people have known for years: the War on Drugs is stupid. Anna Nicole Smith on painkillers stupid.

Yes drug use is down by about a third, while smoking is down by half, give or take a few percentage points. Now, at first glance, the one third drop would seem to indicate that the War on Drugs is a success. After all, fewer kids are doing drugs, well, most drugs. It’s a good thing. Unless you count the kids on prescribed medication. How much would you bet that number is actually higher than the kids on illegal ones? And does it bother you that a lot of anti-depressants, the drugs they feed kids to keep them from acting like, well, kids, now come with suicide warnings in regards to those kids?

But they’ve had significantly more success with reducing smoking, using less viciously stupid methods than the War on Drugs. Not once in the report do they attribute the success of anti-smoking campaigns to tougher enforcement of existing tobacco laws.

They haven’t thrown little Tommy in prison with Mad Dog the crazed horse molester for smoking a Camel, they haven’t tossed the nice Korean couple that runs the corner store in jail for peddling death, and they haven’t questionably confiscated hundreds of millions of dollars of property from tobacco farmers and retailers. Last I checked the government still subsidizes tobacco industry to the tune of tens of millions of dollars a year. I mean, nobody compares the Marlboro Man to Pablo Escobar.

And just in case you’re wondering about how many people the Marlboro Man and is ilk have killed with their product, as opposed to how many Pablo and his product have, a University of Pennsylvania website with data from the Centers for Disease Control puts things in perspective. In America: deaths from illegal drugs – 18,000, deaths from alcohol – 81,000, deaths from tobacco – 430,000. I would guess that you could throw in everybody killed in drug related activity, drive-bys, executions, revenge killings etc., and you still wouldn’t be have ten percent of the tobacco related deaths.

So, the question, like an elephant in the living room that everybody is trying desperately to ignore, is why the federal government spending so much money, so many man-hours, and risking so many lives on repressive, idiotic policies which have among other things, treated the Constitution like a dirty little whore, and ultimately are less effective than the educational solutions they’ve been forced to adopt against smoking?

It’s not just that the Drug War is stupid, it makes as much sense as pissing directly into the wind, it’s that we know, for a fact, that there are safer, cheaper and more effective methods of fighting it. The blame lies in two places. One is the decidedly Puritan streak that still haunts this country, the other is sheer amount of your tax money the bureaucratic funding whores, especially the DEA, need to feed their collective addiction. They are on their proverbial knees every year, servicing Congress with lies to keep the money flowing.

Fish In The Barrel – A Few Quick Notes From The Wire

Maybe there is something to say for that British sense of propriety. Thirty-two men arrested in a child pornography sting in Great Britain have committed suicide. Bloody considerate of them to save society the trouble.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry: a granny went into a bank in Idaho and tried to rob it. She explained that she needed the money, she was so poor she had even pawned her gun…before the robbery.

Good news for those of you scared to death of AIDS, there’s an untapped dating pool for you in North Korea. Han Kyong-Ho, director of Pyongyang's Central Hygienic and Anti-Epizootic Center aid that more than 400,000 people have been tested for AIDS since 1989, and that none other than the 27 foreigners was found to have the disease. "Those 27 foreigners were sent home at their request," Han said.

Now this is drug enforcement the country could live with. Indonesian authorities raided a couple of ecstasy labs after party people who ate the pills complained the pills were bogus.

This is how things work in France: as a law enforcement official, it is perfectly normal to give a speech on ethics then use a colleague’s stolen credit card to buy a hooker.

In other news from the land of snotty concierges, the French have put a spy satellite into orbit. The satellite is expected to give the French military a worldwide spying capability, allowing them to begin surrendering long before a foreign army ever reaches French soil.

The Columnist's Best Friend - Recycling!

2004-12-21T01:55:00.000-08:00

This was written a while ago, years ago actually, but after rereading it, I feel it holds up fairly well. If you're from Washington, you can probably also figure out my alma mater, even if they wish I would stop reminding people that I have a diploma from them.

Failure and Blind Faith – Rethinking D.A.R.E.

Despite what you may have heard, this nation’s failed war on drugs wasn’t lost in the streets. Or in the courtrooms. Or even in Latin America. Where this country and the neo-puritanical twits who hold sway over public policy have failed most miserably, is in the classroom, with our children.

For the past 20 years or so, our nation’s elementary and high school educators have been repeating as gospel the same tired mantra ad nauseam - “D.A.R.E.”

In addition to the billion upon billions of dollars our government has wasted trying to bring a stop to drug trafficking, they have piddled away a truly impressive amount on “educating” kids about drugs.

Not that educating kids about drugs isn’t a good thing, or that it isn’t necessary. Teaching children about drugs is important. Anyone who has watched kids these days try to roll a joint will agree on that.

But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and if the methods of educating our children are flawed, the results have the potential to be as disastrous as anything that came out of the “drugs are groovy” years of flower power in the Sixties. They ended up with Disco and Studio 54; and after two decades of D.A.R.E., we’ve gone back to the future on House music and crack.

D.A.R.E. – Drug Abuse Resistance Education – was started in 1983 by Los Angles Police Chief Darryl Gates. Intended to curb adolescent drug use, the program consists of police officers who use variety of teaching techniques; they go into classrooms and attempt to educate children about the inherent dangers of drugs and how to resist them.

And it has support. Politicians, teachers, cops and parents all love D.A.R.E. It’s high profile, it’s visible, and according to University of Kentucky Professor of Sociology Richard R. Clayton, it is the most popular and supported program “because it makes all important groups (parents, teachers, administrators, police, politicians) ‘feel good.’”

Despite this popularity, an increasing amount of evidence shows D.A.R.E. has, in the words of one Justice Department sponsored study, a “limited to essentially nonexistent effect on drug use.”

A flood of studies in the past years rejected any claims D.A.R.E. has of being effective or successful in its stated aim of curbing teen drug use. In a 1995 study, commissioned and funded by the California Department of Education, researchers found D.A.R.E. and similar programs “lack credibility with the state’s teenagers and fail to reach the students most at risk of using drugs.” The studies concluded these programs are a waste of time and money. This was so disturbing to the California Department of Education, they buried the report. It was later picked up by the highly regarded Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis Review Journal.

The most damaging conclusions are found in a study completed by the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Illinios-Chicago. The head of UIC’s Crim J department and former D.A.R.E. proponent, Professor Dennis Rosenbaum concluded children who are exposed to D.A.R.E. used just as many drugs as those not in the program. Furthermore, he found D.A.R.E. may be responsible for an increase in drug use among children and teenagers in suburban areas. His study showed in suburban areas, those who had been exposed to and participated in the program actually had significantly higher usage rates than those who had not been in the program. In the words of James A. Holstein, a sociology professor at Marquette University, the UIC program found “suburban students…appear to exhibit a ‘boomerang’ effect.” Holstein’s own research supports this notion.

Problems with the program run the gamut, from the way it undermines the credibility of its authority figures, to its hefty price tag – annually around $750 million nationwide according to its own figures, to its lack of effectiveness.

Some critics point out one of D.A.R.E.’s biggest flaws is the unrealistic approach it takes in grouping certain soft drugs, such as marijuana, in the same category as hard drugs like heroin and cocaine.

Children and teens hate being lied to by the people they are supposed to trust. When these kids look around and see their peers using pot without any serious negative side effects – despite what was drilled into them by authority figures like the police who serve as D.A.R.E. counselors – they are likely to believe they were lied to. Shortly thereafter, they are going to start wondering what else they were lied to about, like cocaine or heroin or speed. Next thing you know, the tooter is out of Pandora’s stash box, and little Johnny is wearing candy bracelets and playing with glowsticks.

There are also problems with D.A.R.E.’s curriculum, which critics point out offers no flexibility to address specific community issues. A kid in public housing from Seattle’s Central District is going to have different issues than someone growing up on Mercer Island. Those educators deviating from the prescribed program are in danger of losing federal funds, something few local governments are willing to risk.

Instead of pushing for more effective anti-drug programming, many communities continue to teach D.A.R.E. simply because there is no alternative. They are left with the choice of an ineffective program, a program seriously inadequate due to lack of funds or no program at all.

One of the standard responses to these criticisms can be boiled down to “even if we are reaching only one kid, it’s worth it.” Repeated over and over again by cops and counselors alike, this statements begs the question, would we be so accepting of educational failure if our high school English classes were only able to teach one student in thirty to write a coherent sentence? Of course, considering our public school system, that may not be the best comparison.

Point being, why is it that despite 20 years of government sponsored propaganda and education, we have a growing amount of reliable evidence D.A.R.E. is a failure and may even have negative effects on some teen drug use.

How could it be, despite 20 years of the D.A.R.E. program, all we have in support of its effectiveness is anecdotal evidence given to us by the folks who have the most to gain from D.A.R.E.’s continued existence, and a minuscule – to the point of being almost nonexistent - number of studies that are contradicted by every other credible bit of research done on the subject?

Why is it that after 20 years and who knows how many billions of dollars spent on “educating” the youth, the only discernible result is the sucking sound of $750 million of our tax dollars being inhaled by inertia bound cops and out of touch politicians?

Of course, all of this may seem a little abstract. Everything referred to here was culled from sources outside of Pullman. So, what is the attitude of local law enforcement to D.A.R.E.? Officer Bill Gardener is the Pullman Police Department’s D.A.R.E. program coordinator. Unfortunately for this community, his attitudes towards the program seem to mirror those of D.A.R.E. proponents nationwide.

When asked how realistic D.A.R.E.’s stated mission is, Officer Gardener responded, “I don’t put a lot of thought into how realistic D.A.R.E.’s goals are.” Furthermore, when asked about its effectiveness, Gardener replied, “One of the unspoken goals of D.A.R.E. is to delay experimentation.” That’s certainly encouraging.

It seems even some of those who support the program have begun to admit privately that it may be a failure. Failure is a subjective concept though. I suppose if you lower your standards, even unofficially, you can convince yourself you are achieving your goals.

The refusal to accept the truth is tantamount to telling America that despite the rhetoric, despite the government’s promise of a better future for the youth, despite all the posturing and lip service, it isn’t the children that are important, so much as putting on a willfully ignorant smile and preserving some public official’s ego, pride and job security.

Call it pessimistic, but it looks as if the folks who took the oath to protect and defend us would rather continue down the road to Hell at full speed, grinning merrily, than apply the brakes, admit they’re just as high as they keep accusing our kids of being, and look for a better solution.

Actually, Yes, They Do Hate Us For Our Freedoms

2004-12-20T02:16:00.000-08:00

The next time you happen to get in an argument with some halfwit who claims that “they” don’t hate us for our freedoms, I want you to take a deep breath, shake off that desire to smack them about the head like a child and ask them if they’ve ever heard of Mohammed bin Ali Bohan al-Salami, Faisal bin Karim bin Alwan al-Shablawi, Leyla M., or Hajieh Esmailvand. When they say “no,” and I can almost certainly guarantee you they will say no, please relate the following stories to them.

Al-Salami and al-Shablawi are a couple of Iraqi nationals. For whatever reason, although if you guess “It’s the money, stupid,” you’ll probably be right, these poor bastards thought smuggling hashish into the Saudi kingdom was the life for them. It now turns out it will also be the death of them. The Saudis are going to decapitate them both for their crimes. Behead them. Off with their noggins. A real close haircut. Call it what you like, but unless you’re a Republican or some kind of Puritan, or John Ashcroft, beheading seems a little extreme.

Hajieh Esmailvand is an Iranian woman who pulled a Clinton and got it on outside the sanctity of her own marriage. The Iranians are going to bury her up to her chest and kill her by throwing rocks at her – specifically the rocks should “not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes, nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones.” I would imagine it is a very long, painful, drawn out experience.

Leyla M., the rest of whose name was not given by Amnesty International, is going to be put to death. Her crime? Prostitution. Granted she’s been arrested three times for it, so she’s clearly a repeat offender. Only there’s more, see, Leyla M. has the mental capacity of an eight year old. The poor little girl is retarded and she was forced into her career path as a hooker by her family. Now, they’re going to kill her for it. Just to add a little penance to the process, she’ll be flogged first.

Now, these aren’t isolated incidents. This is how these insane, brutal, vacant eyed weasels live. They are dedicated to spreading the strict adherence to Sharia any way they can. And if their revolution comes, and they are trying, most of the progressive crowd, who from what I can gather do love their dope and sex, regardless of what the laws, morals and standards of the community they live in happen to be, would be among the first to go.

To be fair, this certainly isn't an endorsement of the Jesus First crowd. You don't have to go that far back in history to find examples of When Christians Attack. I've actually come to the conclusion that every religion goes through some kind of violent, philosophical menopause. Christianity had the Crusades and the Inquisition, which were by all accounts, as brutal as anything old Sheik One Eye and his bearded benefactor ever came up with in Afghanistan. I haven't found anything relating to Judaism yet, most likely because I have yet to look.

It's just a theory, but it would seem that every philosophy goes through a fanatic stage, much worse and much more brutal than it's other, occasional lapses in etiquette. It's just Islam's turn to play the crazy, out of control asshole at the family get together.

Acme Mindlabs Cooking 101

2004-12-17T05:21:00.000-08:00

Occasionally the muse hits at unexpected and awkward times. Mine carries a good, solid pine bat, and her large four-finger gold ring that spells out "MUSE" in a flawless setting also doubles as a set of brass knuckles, so I generally listen.

Hollywood Pundit - A Recipe

Take one celebrity full of righteous indignation,
with a bit of socialism and a hint of professional frustration,
For detachement from reality, 2 pints of Ollie Stone,
A sprinkle of Martin Sheen for whine and bitch and moan,
For hypocrisy and ignorance, one 1/3 cup of minced Sean Penn,
A dollop of Bellefonte to set the cause back a year, or ten,
To obscure the facts and twist the truth, a pound of Michael Moore,
Then a touch of Barbra Streisand for arrogance and stupid quotes galore,
For pretentious condescension, a liberal dash of Robbins and Sarandon,
Although if none's available, Robert Altman's an OK stand-in,
A dash of Alec Baldwin for general stupidity,
And perhaps some Woody Harrelson for lack of credibility,
Carefully mix half-truths and a pinch of outright lies,
Put it on TV and let it bake to rise,
Remove it from the spotlight, to vent carefully prick the surface,
When prepared as indicated will serve: no particular purpose.

Of Poodles and Politicians

2004-12-16T13:26:00.000-08:00

My friend in LA had a retarded poodle. She named her Petal and she loved this poor little, water-head doggy. She used to tell me stories about Petal trying to do ordinary dog things and fail horribly and keep trying. There was laughter born of admiration, pity, and the fact she was trying so hard, but there are some things Petal just wasn’t going to get right...

I mention this only to assure you, I do have a frame of reference when I say that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D) reminds me of a retarded poodle.

To be fair, I don’t actually believe the Governor would lose a game of checkers to Petal. But I do chuckle in exasperation when I think about his current attempts to legislate the video game industry. It reminds of the kind of thing a retarded poodle might do, metaphorically at least.

Author’s Note To PETA – I do not in any way mean this as a insult to the differently-abled canine community, who I realize continue to make valuable contributions benefiting us all. Please don’t firebomb me.

The argument goes something like this: Video games are making our youth more callous, violent and desensitized. It’s a very popular argument. In fact, you can insert “Hip Hop,” “Rock n Roll,” “comic books,” “television,” or any other number of cultural phenomenon in front of that sentence and you would only be resurrecting the favorite battle call of what I used to call “stupid, old people.”

Unfortunately, there will always be stupid, old people, and because we have been damned by the gods and afflicted with a plague of politicians who listen to stupid, old people, there will always be those who through well-meaning but misguided motives or shameless pandering, will continue to walk face first into walls like a…well, you know.

The general response to these outcries of public indignation has been to try and impose ratings systems, age limits on use, etc., etc. And I understand the impulse to run in that direction. After all, it’s been so effective keeping teenagers from getting their hands on alcohol.

So, we won’t even argue that these measures are, to be polite, tremendous failures. That’d be beating a dead horse. Then again, I have played a lot of video games, and that horse is looking at me funny, so I’ll just get a few kicks in on the ribs. Nobody in their right mind could possibly believe that parental advisory stickers, or “R” ratings have prevented kids as a whole from getting their hands on videogames, movies or music that they are meant to stop them from getting. It might work for infinitesimally short periods, but teenagers are smarter than you and they will find a way to get what they want.

Which ultimately makes it the parents’ responsibility to make sure their kids aren’t mentally disturbed malcontents. I know, I know, this goes against everything you’ve been taught. Personal responsibility, parents acting like parents, it’s Greek to most people these days.

Can you imagine your local politician’s response? “Good Lord, where did you hear that crazy talk? I’d be out of a job if I wasn’t telling you what’s good for you. Who told you to say these hurtful, dangerous things?”

Another kind laughable element of the argument is that it underestimates, by a fairly significant margin, the imaginations and mental capacity for depraved oddity of teenage boys. Sorry, you are all way behind the curve. Having been one for an extended period, I can tell you that we were coming up with depraved, twisted, insensitive, violent thoughts long before Pac Man started munching the Ritalin pills the nice doctor left laying around. There are some immutable laws of being a teenager. Video games are just the latest vehicle.

It isn't that I believe kids should be able to get thier hands on this stuff. Lord knows if kids are going to be exposed to violence, I'd rather it was on the evening news, at least then I could hope against hope that they were actually picking up something useful while they were rotting on the couch in front of the idiot box.

The underlying problems aren’t video games and violent brats, those are symptoms of two things that have been slowly creeping up on us. There has been a breakdown of the fundamental idea that families need to actually be families. This doesn’t mean that a single mom can’t ably raise a child. Like Chris Rock noted, you can steer a car with your knees, it just isn’t a very good idea. What it does mean is that there are some traditions that might, just maybe, have some benefits to them. Just because you want to rearrange marriage, doesn’t mean you have to throw out the basic tenets that govern human relations.

As a result of this breakdown we have a government determined to take the place of the family, and just like rich parents who have no idea how to be parents, the government is convinced if they just make enough superficial rules and throw enough money at things, little Jeremy won’t shoot up his school, deal drugs and beat his crack whore.

At least Petal had an excuse.

This Is The Best They've Got?

2004-11-23T01:47:00.000-08:00

One of the amusing side-effects of the Bush re-election on the Left, aside from their need for therapy, has been the braying from the asses on The Left’s moral values. You would think they had discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls.

“Holy s**t Bob! Despite some segments of our support base being more than willing to bend over at the drop of pair of men’s Capri pants, and our whole-hearted support of their right to do so, if we ever plan on being anything more than the G.O.P.’s bitch, we need to articulate that we can stand for something too!”

To that end, the blue state herd is trying, furiously, to articulate some kind of coherent moral philosophy. And so far, much like a retarded monkey composing Shakespeare, they’re failing miserably.

No surprise there. This is a crowd that wants to articulate Right and Wrong as concrete definitions after spending the last 40 years telling everybody that Right and Wrong, were only Right and Wrong if it that was, like, cool with you, man, and if it was, like, totally not cool with you, then it must be, like, oppression, man.

Take Seattle Weekly columnist Geov Parrish, whose attempt to tackle the issue of a progressive moral code is endearing for its earnestness of effort, if nothing else. I now have some inkling of how my mom felt when a much younger version of me tried to make her breakfast in bed and instead coated the house in a thin layer of bacon soot.

After the usual progressive rhetorical list, pointing out plenty of things without actually making any suggestions, he finally makes his way to the climax, where in an attempt to actually offer an alternative to what he was railing against, Parrish pulls out his big guns, and promptly blows his whole foot off:

“It's time that progressives laid out our moral vision: a country that values its freedoms but also values the sanctity of every life — not just at the fetus stage. We need to embrace the notion that every life has dignity and value and deserves respect and a fair opportunity.”

I’ll try and translate for those of you who don’t speak this particular dialect of Incoherent Twit: The conservatives don’t love anybody, only fetuses, and once you’re not a fetus they’re going to screw you. Progressives care about everybody’s intrinsic human value, who all deserve a “fair opportunity,” although if you’re a fetus, they might abort you.

The morals they seem to be preaching are that the consequences of even your most insanely stupid choices can be mitigated. Which explains how they can abort a kid, but object to the death penalty.

Looking Down The Barrel of a Really Big Gun

2004-08-20T00:11:00.000-07:00

May you live in interesting times.

There are days I understand why the Chinese intended this particular phrase as a curse.

As if the mess in Iraq wasn’t already ugly, mean and stupid enough, the Iranians are threatening to adopt G.W.’s pre-emptive strike policy and take on the U.S. military. How much of this is posturing and how much of it is serious is matter for debate.

Before this goes any further, let That Guy state for the record that he believes WMD or no, going into Iraq was the right thing for a number of reasons.

1) Saddam was partly our responsibility. Regardless of the reasons behind backing Hussein – which I agree with also - at one time we supported this brutal scumbag, and leaves us with a tab to pay. I’m disappointed we didn’t deal with him the first time. Actually I’m pretty pissed off. Whoever it was that ultimately convinced Bush not to push on and occupy Baghdad the first time probably feels pretty sheepish now.
2) Saddam was a dangerous toad. You know why Iran and North Korea are such huge pains in the ass? Because they were smart enough to actually get the goddamn weapons before they started bitching like power mad freaks. Saddam wasn’t there yet, and frankly the pursuit of WMD alone made him a clear and present danger. If you see Charlie Manson reaching for a steak knife, do you let him pick it up before trying to thump him in the head with a baseball bat?
3) For those condescending pricks who wonder why we don’t go after all the other brutal, asshole dictators, believe you me, I’m still wondering myself. There are more than a couple of places that would benefit from Destructive Eye for the Dictator Guy. Let’s start with Robert Mugabe, Castro and those twats in Sudan.

The short version of all that being that going into Iraq was a good idea, and nothing short of a miracle would have prevented the Iranians from making a play, and their play changes nothing I've outlined above.

What makes the Iranians dangerous is that they were smart enough, like North Korea, to wait until they had WMD before they started getting snotty. They also realize that their entrance into the conflict is as likely to divide the U.S. even further, as it is to galvanize the nation. Throw in an over stretched and under funded military, and you have an ugly situation that could get really ugly. Naked Ted Kennedy after a few vodkas ugly.

Now, a lot of folks will point to Iran as another unintended consequence of heading into Iraq. They are foolish and wrong and hopefully won’t suffer the world their offspring. As much as I believe Iran is making positive political steps internally to move a little further out of the distant past into the present, ultimately, the government is full of religious fanatics with nuclear weapons. Imagine Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell with even less conscience and Weapons of Mass Destruction. Creepy ain’t it.

Point being, there is a war on between radical Islam and the West. This goes far beyond the Israel/Palestine issue, beyond our support of questionable and oftentimes brutal dictatorships. What it comes down to is their vision of civilization and ours. If you want to see what theirs is like, read up on Afghanistan while the Taliban were still in power. Or imagine what Germany would be like if someone stole their sense of humor and the breweries dried up.

The problem that the West faces is a very simple one, morally retarded monkeys like Osama have realized that in a battle of ideologies and cultures, the West is going to win. Therefore, he realizes that his, and his defect brethren’s, only chance is to ensure by force what they can’t take any other way – namely the survival and propagation of their insanely stupid branch of Islam.

Because let’s face it, even as imperfect as the freedoms of capitalism and democracy are in this country, they are still a damn stretch better than anywhere else, and so far it has managed to defeat communism, radical Puritanism, and well, everything else they have come up against. The truth stands indelibly that you cannot stop an idea or a philosophy from spreading in the modern world. Eventually what works in the real world will always win out. Eventually. And that’s why if you’re going to stop the West, you’re going to have to destroy it.

American lifestyles and cultural idiosyncrasies spread and multiply until you have Japanese B-Boys, Starbucks (metaphorically) bludgeoning tea-lovers to death in England, and the Communist Chinese realizing how valuable Hong Kong, the epitome of Capitalist accomplishment and bourgeois excess, really would be if they just didn’t mess around too much.

As difficult as it may be to see, what Bush et al., have done to some degree is start the fight on their own terms. And I would rather have us fighting the war is some far away place than right here. Given that the only choices we have are when and where, not whether, what is happening out there is not the worst possible scenario. It is in fact, one of the more palatable ones.

Thank God, The Vatican Is Getting Involved

2004-08-18T00:36:00.001-07:00

The Pope is offering to mediate between Muktada al Sadr’s insurgents and the Iraqi government to end the standoff in the holy city of Najaf. One can only assume that given the Pope’s health and difficulty in speaking clearly or at anything more than a syllable or two per minute, his plan must be to keep the two in the same room for so long, they forget what it was they were fighting about. If nothing else, it’s a very civilized strategy. Stupid, but civilized.

Has it crossed the minds of the folks in the Vatican, that al Sadr’s folks are religious fanatics who a) hate everything they stand for and b) don’t have any problems killing non-believers? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, and because I desperately want to, I’ll suspend my disbelief that al Sadr is just making a play.

But the conspiracy theorist in me, the one that just finished Tom Clancy’s latest, thinks this whole thing just stinks like a set up. Lure some of God’s appointed representatives on earth to one of the holiest cities in Islam and whack them as a symbolic gesture.

It could, likely would, elicit some overwhelmingly excessive response that would seriously piss off the religious fanatic in otherwise normal people, and push the whole mess even further into the Oh Shit Zone.

Thank God, The Vatican Is Getting Involved

2004-08-18T00:36:00.000-07:00

Hope Springs Eternal

2004-08-17T02:59:00.000-07:00

There are confirmed reports that bits and pieces of Common Sense have been spotted in the Middle East. Common Sense and longtime co-conspirators Rational Thought are targeting the Middle East after centuries of miserable failures to gain even a tiny foothold in the region.

“Up to this point, the closest either of the, uh, two groups had come to any kind of, uh, success in that part of world, is when Akbar Ali Fa’ad and Melvin Weintraub ended a decade long feud, and agreed to disagree on whether Andy Warhol was a genius too far ahead of his time, or a drug crazed hack who sold his soul in exchange for utterly inexplicable success,” said CNN analyst U.R. Soles, whose credentials consist of once dating a girl who claimed to have been felt up under the bleachers by Lee Harvey Oswald in high school. “Other than that, it’s been like watching Ozzy Osbourne try to have a coherent conversation with Anna Nicole Smith.”

An attorney speaking on behalf of the two groups acknowledged the difficult job his clients were taking on.

“Sure, they realize trying to talk sense to either one of those folks is poking yourself repeatedly in the eye with a sharp stick. Everybody’s told them not to do this. But they're dead set on it. I've advised them to stop watching those goddamn Tony Robbins tapes so much, but they won't listen. Oh well, at least they’re paying me up front.”

Lady Liberty Keeps Getting Her Ass Pinched

2004-08-16T00:38:00.000-07:00

As creepy as I find Grand Inquisitor Ashcroft, I think it is more what I believe he wants to do, more so than anything he has done; although he has done a few things that really ought to be questioned. Can we really trust the fate of the nation to a presumptively heterosexual man who is so afraid of a bare breast, he would spend $8,000 to cover the Spirit of Justice Majesty of Law statues’ naughty bits? Instead of maybe…moving the podium…or growing up a little bit? I would think someone would have pointed out the brutally hilarious irony inherent in that symbolic little gesture; which of course assumes that the Attorney General even has a sense of irony. Not a bet I’d take.

And speaking breasts that make the Attorney General quake in his sensible shoes, can anybody tell me there is a reason to fine CBS over the Janet Jackson Superbowl thing? It was tamer than the commercials that ran in between stretches of violence by committee. For that matter it was tamer than the neo-burlesque performance leading up to it. And her tit was what tipped the scales from entertainment to obscenity? That’s like watching two crackheads get high and screw on your lawn, then getting offended when one of them tries to bum a smoke.

While this is all old news, it is useful in providing some context for where the Justice Department has its priorities, doesn’t it.

“Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” - H. L. Mencken

That’s really what scares me, and just about everybody else who’s skeptical of Ashcroft’s motives. He just has the grim, unsmiling certainty and gravity of a fanatic. It kind of makes you nostalgic for Janet Reno.

But as creepy as all of that is, what is happing to our more civilized cousins on other side of the Pond in Britannia, gives makes Ashcroft positively cuddly. Or at least not apathetically homicidal.

The Brits, in their zeal to solve society’s problems with government bumbling a.k.a socialism, are busily instituting programs that don’t even bother with giving people the chance to be the biggest and best screw ups they can, before they are subjected to the whims of elected officials and the insidiously vile bureaucracy that politicians and their good intentions deposit like a bag of flaming dog poop on the front porch. It’s the kind of dilemma you can’t win. Do you let it destroy everything you care about, or do you step in, knowing that you’ll have to spend a good chunk of the night scraping bureaucrat off your shoes.

Now I can follow the logic path that leads to developing vaccines against drug addiction. It makes sense. But administering that to someone based on the theory that they may be at risk, rather than after they’ve developed the problem is almost as dangerous as it is stupid.

Dangerous because, you’re screwing some fairly fundamental brain chemistry on the possibility that someone may choose to do it on their own later. It also neatly dodges most of the outrage that would come with forcibly injecting people with drugs for their own good, by targeting the only segment of the population that doesn’t have any right to object, and whose possible – not inevitable - victimization can be used to justify damn near anything, in the name of saving the children.

And it’s stupid, because, the problem is addiction and abuse, not coke or heroin or ciggies. The only reason more designer drugs don’t cross over is that there are already substances that can pretty much do anything out there, in wide use. The other reason, that these can be administered after the problem develops, make forcing it on people dumber than Anna Nicole Smith on whippets. Is it back asswards to apply this solution after a problem develops? Only if your idea of liberty is being able to choose what color cup you have to pee into.

But if you eliminate something like cocaine, do you really think that some ambitious chemist isn’t going to try and take a piece of that multi-billion dollar market? If you’re under the impression you’ve seen it all, lemme tell ya, there are chem lab geeks out there with nothing but time, money and free chemicals to play with. Drugs aren’t the problem. People are the problem, and unless you can fix them, well, you aren’t going to fix anything.

The other program those jolly fine chumps are looking at involves throwing more money and government attention at the children of convicted felons, “targeting” and “tracking” them. Well thank God the presumption of innocent until proven guilty is being preserved. And we're certainly glad that guilt by association hasn't taken root over there. They aren’t even making a pretense of going after some arbitrarily defined “at risk youth.”

No, why bother when you can just saddle them with government policy based on what these kids might do, because of who their parents are. Maybe it means they'll arrest the remaining Kennedys next time they visit.

The really, truly, capital “D” Dangerous consequences of these types of programs is that they indoctrinate a generation into the cult of bureaucracy, government supervision, and the atrophy of liberty by lack of use.

The last thing anybody wants is a government we trust. And that's not sarcasm. If we trust our government without reservation, and start handing over our liberties based on conjecture, even reasonably plausible conjecture, we're abdicating the responsiblity we have to occasionally take them by the scruff of the neck and rug their faces in that horrible pile they left on the Persian carpet.

Weekender

2004-08-14T01:28:00.000-07:00

Olympic Notes - Part One

O.K., I just have to point this out. The olympic torch in the olympic stadium looks like a perfectly rolled doobie. When the guy lit it up, I could hear giggles from 'round the globe, and after the fireworks left a haze of smoke in the stadium, well, I could imagine the bloodshot eyes of thousands of stoners, weeping tears of hilarity at the largest joint ever rolled. The Greeks are either blind or incredibly mellow.

If God Exists, He Has a Wicked Sense of Humor

Militant Buddhists? Are you f*****g kidding me? That's better than Pro-Lifers murdering doctors. Drive-by meditations, anti-tank prayer beads, surface to air chakras...these cats aren't playing around.

Olympic Notes - Part Two

Worst Misuse of Slang by a Professional Broadcaster: Bob Costas, who was doing his usual, capable, if somewhat monotous, spiel during the opening ceremonies at the Olympics, explained that Jaques Rogges made his speech in several different languages to "make sure props were paid" to all the different nations in the stadium.

For those of you scratching your heads, wondering, "What props? Were they doing an impromptu rendition of Hamlet?" let me explain. "Props" are slang for respect, recognition. Props are the shorter version of "Propers" which is in turn the the shorter version of "Proper Respect." What this says about my generation's attention span, I don't know. Probably something mono-syllabic and difficult to decipher.

It is, paradoxically enough, both the evolution and devolution of the language. Which view you take, is I suppose, a matter of perspective.

Emmm, Well Ya See...

2004-08-13T01:55:00.000-07:00

I have an interview tomorrow, and considering what they could potentially be paying me, I am going to have to decline the beckoning outrages that dot the cultural landscape, in favor of a good night's sleep.

Keep coming, if for no other reason than I said so.

What? The Jedi mind trick doesn't work over the web? Oh.

Well, it's still good advice. So don't say I never gave you anything.

Better Late Than Never

2004-08-12T00:58:00.000-07:00

Note from the Labs: Server trouble prevented this from being posted last night. Thankfully, sometime around the third cup of coffee this morning, a healthy sense of outrage returned.

One of the dangers, or difficulties of being possessed by sadomasochistic compulsion – writing in general and writing about the vast reservoirs of political/cultural stupidity specifically – is that it is easy, if not inevitable that you hit the wall. That point, where trying to summon an appropriate level of outrage in response to some despicably vile incident, results in a horribly jaded “ehhh….”

For instance, the New York Post is reporting that while on a visit to the concentration camps in Auschwitz, a group of Jewish students were verbally and physically assaulted by a number of French imbeciles (Editor’s Note: Despite the apparent redundancy of the phrase “French imbeciles,” That Guy recognizes that France did indeed prove useful in our fight for Independence, and does not feel right characterizing the entire population of France as mentally or socially retarded, regardless of their seemingly intentional efforts to prove otherwise).

Right now, the only response that comes to mind is…what? You’re shocked that there is such a virulent strain of terminal stupidity running through the Gallic countryside? Get out and read a paper, the gusto with which some Frenchmen have started exercising their anti-Semitism led to Ariel Sharon to call for Jews in France to leave.

And after a WWII British cemetery was defaced, I’m not exactly shocked that the sanctity of Auschwitz was violated. Apparently they’re so unhappy with the whole “saved from the Nazis” episode, some of them have decided to act like the Fuhrer won.

If R. Kelly Ever Needs a Day Job

2004-08-12T00:24:00.000-07:00

DIRECTOR OF DISCIPLINE
The Academy of the Holy Cross, an all girl's Catholic HS, is looking for an indiv. to monitor student's compliance with school policies, procedures, regulations & enforce standards of conduct. Exper. w/HS students desired. Position requires counseling/teaching exper., & the ability to communicate effectively with students, parents & faculty. Fax cover letter & resume to HR, 301-929-6440 or email to dbrown@
academyoftheholycross.org 080921

Skipping Merrily Through the Minefield

2004-08-10T00:03:00.000-07:00

Argument for the Death Penalty Part Deux

So, if you're even minimally aware of The Outside World, you've heard about the homicidal, gene pool reject in Florida who decided to recruit some muscle to help beat 6 people to death over an X-Box, among other things. Although from reading the headlines, you’d think it was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in a game geek turf war. Aside from the brutality of the crime, any idiot who would do this kind of thing over a game system ought to be put in the express check out lane.

There are serious flaws in how the death penalty is applied in this country. Questions of race, adequate representation and the number of men who have been exonerated by modern science, all make a reasonable person question the application of the death penalty in this country.

However, while questioning it is necessary, and ultimately betters the process, I fail to see how anyone can argue that in some cases, there is any other appropriate response. Some call it vengeance, but they’re wrong. Vengeance would be leaving this guy in a locked room with the victims’ families. This is more along the lines of letting your Virus software do its job.

Vince the Bookie, who baby-sits my inner child while I’m out carousing, and has told me that as horrible as the crime is, the less moral elements in Vegas are giving even odds that at some point in the coverage of this here massacre, one of two things, if not both, will happen.

One, he figures that with the eerie similarities between this crime and crime portrayed in the film Wonderland – A rips off B; B and associates beat A and everyone in the house with A to death with blunt objects – at some point the Moral Majority will try and sue someone in Hollywood; if this psychotic toad’s defense team doesn’t think of it first.

Two, there will be some outraged, myopic jagoff who will try and tie the fault for these crimes to the video game industry. Why? Because the headlines are not so subtly inferring the X-Box to be the reason our alleged killer, killed those poor, dumb kids.

Aside from the fantastic leaps of logic you have to take in order to lay the blame for stupid, effed up people at the feet of the entertainment industry, my guess is that having his things stolen, regardless of what it was, would have resulted in the same outcome. We will see what comes out at trial.

Thank God The Man Knows How To Hold His Ground

So, despite voting for the use of force in Iraq, then voting against the funding for the war, John Kerry has now stated that even knowing then what we know now, he would have gone to war.

Why did John Kerry cross the road?

It doesn’t matter, he’s already back on the other side. Again.

To Protect and Serve Your Ass Up On a Silver Platter

I have had what you might call…an adversarial relationship with law enforcement. Not so much now, as in the past. And while I was brought up to believe that the cops were there to help you, I have found some serious holes in that argument and generally don’t trust them any further than I can toss the collected hosts of The View. Unless of course I were standing on the edge of a tall building and only had to toss them the half inch or so it would take for gravity to do us all one very big favor.

But I want to trust the cops. I really do, I want to believe that all the cops out there are like the heroic cops on TV. How much better would we be if every cop was Andy Sipowicz?

Then I read things like this. The U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino has stated that the city of Las Vegas didn’t publicize recent terror threats because of economic concerns: "The reason that he (the FBI agent) was given for the low turnout was because of liability. That if they heard this information they would have to act on it.” The city – surprise - denies it.

Given the general ambivalence, if not outright disdain, most non-pundits feel towards the terror warnings at this point, I’m not entirely sure what the outrage is. The unfortunate truth is, given this country’s lack of preparation, we won’t be able to prevent every attack, and the odds of one happening when the threat level is low are just as good, if not better, than it happening while we’re expecting it.

Like You Didn’t See It Coming…

I don’t even know where to begin. There’s a new reality show making its debut soon in Los Angeles, called Gana la Verde (Win the Green):

“Contestants have to perform stunts that include swallowing tequila worms, trying to catch a pig smeared in butter, and jumping between two trucks. The winner receives a year's legal help - but a green card is not guaranteed.”

No Talent? No Problem!

2004-08-09T00:12:00.000-07:00

I went to what passes for an art show this weekend. I say "passes" because, well, it was, for the most part the inspired by that rebellious idea that you don’t have to be good, you just have to try. And the delusion that you can in fact be trite, overdone, follow the herd and still be considered cutting edge and (in their own minds I’m sure) dangerous. Which is to say, I’ve made pizza with more thought to the actual aesthetics of what I was doing than most these self-involved twats put into their art. Then again, I respect pizza.

Now, the fact the show was your standard bash Bush fest, hosted by and contributed to by, what I can only assume, are the cream of the avant-garde, hipster Seattle art scene crop, might be part of the problem. Most of my friends have explained to me what in depth, what a self-hating, in-the-closet hipster I really am, yet I still despise Them for being the over-exaggerated, pretentious, assclowns they are.

So there’s that. But contrary to what some might think, I could care less about the Bush bashing part of it. If I spend too much time mulling the ignorance and mediocrity of the progressive (bowel) movement, I get indigestion and end up with the kind of angry, constipated look on my face you so often see on Hillary’s face.

So I’m pretty sure it’s the pure pedestrianism of their efforts that have me feeling cheap and used. For example, included in the exhibit is a giant pretzel. I would love to talk to the genius who came up with that. And while I’m at it, the idiot savants who decided that it belonged anywhere other than at a ballpark over a pretzel stand.

At what point did making something really big turn it into art? Does it mean that if a Great Dane and a Pug take a shit side by side, that the Great Dane’s pile is eligible for NEA funding?

I mean, I get what the “artist” was trying to do. The president choked on a pretzel. Let’s remind everybody of it. Whoo hoo, how funny. Maybe they wanted to scare Bush by blowing his nemesis up to super size and unleashing it on him while he was jogging one day. I’d have gone with the Oxford English Dictionary, or worse yet, the threat of two sets of twin daughters.

There was one piece showing the different combinations of states Kerry would need to carry to win the presidency, colored red and blue, with electoral vote totals to the side. As we speak, curators in New York are already scouring the graphics department at CNN, looking for the next Van Gogh.

In the middle of the floor a 50 gallon oil drum, filled with faux blood stood, a small tree dangling over it by its roots. On the other end of the rope was weight that was supposed set the pulleys in motion, dipping the tree in and out of the blood, as a continual reminder of…something. It wasn’t working. I suppose I would be more confident in the progressives’ ability to run the country if they had even a basic understanding of elementary physics.

My personal favorite was the stack of bibles, each with its own dynamite fuse hanging from it. It was an impressively large stack of bibles too. What impressed me most about was the decision to exclude Korans from the piece. This artist was smart enough to see through popularly held misconceptions that Muslims have bombed things in the name of God. What a brave soul this man is to have the courage to make this statement. It’s so profound. I’m peeing myself in admiration.

The other exhibits ranged from the unbearably dull and stupid (video of two guys whose sole activity was playing an air raid siren through a bullhorn in public) to the tasteless and stupid (a painting of Bush bound and gagged on the White House lawn as a woman poops on his head and a guy pees on him). I don’t remember seeing more than a couple pieces that had anything more going for them other than their shared hatred of Bush.

And that kiddo, is the problem. The message obliterated the medium and the whole mess went from being art to being half-assed propaganda. For instance, if you’re into photography, you know there is a fine line between artistic nudes and pornography. One is art that incorporates the subtle intoxication of physical attraction and the other is just two people screwing on camera.

The difference between art and propaganda is the difference between the message finding expression through the art, and art being nothing more than a medium to make your point in.

They’ve completely lost the art in the message and it turned into political pornography and the kind of narcissistic, mental masturbation that leads to impressionable first year art students sleeping with talentless hacks they’ve mistaken for visionaries.

A Note From Your Cosmic Landlord

2004-08-08T01:59:00.000-07:00

To the person, or persons, who have been pissing in the gene pool:

Please stop immediately.

Not only is it rude, disgusting and inconsiderate, but Management has noticed some rather repulsive side effects that we would all rather avoid.

With Friends Like These...

2004-08-06T04:14:00.000-07:00

United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in an interview published by the Austrian Salzburger Nachrichten: “The war in Iraq was useless, it caused more problems than it solved, and it brought in terrorism.”

Does anyone even question that the U.N. is almost mythically inept when it comes to armed conflict? And considering that, how much credibility do we give them when they grumble and whine like they couldn’t make the basketball team until their dad called the school to complain?

As for Mr. Brahimi, well, I suppose if you look at it from the U.N.’s point of view, we have created some problems that weren’t there before. For years, all the U.N. had to do was sit back and make the occasional, indignant speech to Saddam, send in weapons inspectors for Saddam to baby-sit and obstruct, and commission the odd fact finding mission to relay back to them exactly how miserably their efforts were failing.

Now they may actually have to get off the sidelines and jury-rig things back together in a please-don’t-shoot kind of way, like they’re doing everywhere else they begged the U.S. to do the dirty work.

The former Yugoslavia, for example. “Hey Bill, it’s Kofi Annan. Um, listen, Slobodan Milosevic pantsed my commanding officer this morning, then him and a bunch of his friends gave the guy a wedgie and threw him into the girls locker room. They say they won’t let him out unless he promises to do the football team’s algebra homework. Do you think you could have a talk with those guys?”

People ask why the United States has to be the so scary and mean, and it’s because the Global Hall Monitors we picked are getting slapped around and robbed for their lunch money, and we end up having to do our best Jim Belushi as Rick Latimer in The Principal impression.

Brahimi’s remarks are even more confusing, since, as a representative of the U.N. you would think he wouldn’t want start badmouthing the folks his boss Kofi Annan, is sheepishly pleading with for 5,000 troops to keep them safe from the Iraqis. It seems as though "we haven't had much success attracting governments to sign up.”

Which isn’t all that surprising. If I was an Iraqi, I’d probably be shooting at the U.N. too. Up until the U.S. actually resolved the issue of what to do about Saddam, the U.N.’s plan to liberate the Iraqis and alleviate their suffering consisted of the following:

1) Enforcing sanctions (with U.S. support) that starved the people and allowed Saddam pursue correspondence courses with the Liberace School of Palace Design, while his boys continued the rape/torture/mass murdering hi-jinks that all the cool, homicidally-insane dictators’ kids get to do. The rationale being that if you’re dead from malnutrition, Saddam won’t be able to do anything else to you.

2) Trying to “fix” the starvation problem by instituting an ambitiously corrupt oil-for-food program that consisted of kickbacks, and contracts with, guess who? The French and Russians, whose opposition to the war seems awfully pedestrian compared to the passionately scripted diatribes about diplomacy they trotted down the runway, that now seem like the hideously overpriced political couture they are.

3) Showing Neville Chamberlain-like resolve in their stern rebukes of Saddam for his murder, rape, torture, genocide and ecological sins, and passing all kinds of resolutions condemning those types of things and threatening that if they didn’t behave, “your dad’s going to hear about this when he comes home. You might not be scared now, but you just wait young man!”

4) Desperately hoping Sean Penn would make a trip to promote understanding.

Must Sleep...

2004-08-05T02:52:00.000-07:00

There comes a point where the brain refuses to think up anything else. I am going to bow before the gods of sleep and concede them this night's efforts.

Legendary Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko managed to put out 800 quality, thought out words, five days a week for the better part of four decades. It doesn't sound hard until you try it, even for a few weeks.

But hey, take a look through the archives, find something you haven't read. You can play catch up. Because if you don't read them all, your friends will laugh at you and make you feel horribly out of touch and unhip.

Not wanting you to leave today without anything new, the following wisdom:
"Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance."

Notes on Bush and Oil

2004-08-04T03:12:00.000-07:00

Progressives screw the pooch – and I do mean metaphorically, given some of the causes Progressives support, I don’t want any confusion – when they try to categorize every one of Bush’s actions as driven by oil profits.

There is a tendency amongst the progressive Left to characterize, well, anything, that the United States does as somehow being linked to the oil industry’s Official Cabal In Charge of Taking Over the World, Texas Division.

If you Google for “oil” “United States” and any country we’ve sent troops to in the last ten years, somewhere in the first ten results will be a critique explaining that the OCCTOW, Texas Division, is manipulating something, somehow, to get more of that sweet crude goodness. I tried Liberia and the Balkans on a whim and hit paydirt.

Some theories are thought out, reasonable and deserve discussion. The majority I can only explain as drug induced, mostly on the basis that the only time they would have made sense is my freshman year in college, when a group of friends and I regularly explained and resolved the world’s problems by 5 a.m. over copious amounts of pot.

As the crisis in Sudan has developed - murder, rape, genocide, religious persecution, racism et al., - pressure has been applied to our government to do something to stop it. Predictably, painfully predictably, someone has already uncovered the OCCTOW, Texas Division plot.

If Bush sends troops anywhere else before the election, I hope it’s the Seychelles Islands. I could use a good laugh, and how the Left figures oil into that place would be worth ten bucks a word.

Heaven forbid we allow the possibility that the United States has any humanitarian interest Sudan. That might mean GW isn’t completely evil. In fact, the refusal of the progressive Left to even consider that possibility eloquently illustrates exactly what’s wrong with the progressive Left.

Really, it ignores the fact that, before oil, or any other consideration critics want to attribute to him, Bush believes he has God guiding his actions. Bush is what folks call a “True Believer.”

And regardless of how you feel about that, it pretty much gives you blueprint of how he gets from Point A to Point B. It also gives you a fairly accurate idea of what he’s likely to do next. Which is one reason for his continued popularity, a lot of people will take the devil they know, GW, over the devil they don’t, Kerry.

This Is Censorship...

2004-08-03T04:35:00.000-07:00

Having argued with people much smarter than myself about the Patriot Act and Grand Inquisitor Ashcroft’s inexorable creep towards the police state, I find debating legal technicalities is difficult because, I’m no lawyer, and consequently I operate…mostly on the basis of common sense and fairly well-grounded notions of wrong and right.

The American judicial system, on the other hand, operates to a large extent on the Bigger Shovel theory of applied legal practice. Two lawyers square off, shovels in hand, and when the judge bangs that gavel down, they furiously pile on the horses**t until you end up with things like the Twinkie Defense, multi-million dollar settlements for people too stupid to use cup holders for steaming hot coffee, and the notion that drug offenses merit stiffer penalties than rape, murder or defrauding people out of everything they own. You cannot argue law in America on logic or common sense.

So it’s a good thing Ashcroft leaves the door open while he’s writing his name in pee on the Constitution:

“…the Department of Justice asked the Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents to instruct depository libraries to destroy five publications the Department has deemed not "appropriate for external use." The Department of Justice has called for these five public documents, two of which are texts of federal statutes, to be removed from depository libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to those with access to a law office or law library.
The topics addressed in the named documents include information on how citizens can retrieve items that may have been confiscated by the government during an investigation.”

What possible motive could the government have for not wanting ordinary people to have access to and understand their rights under law? Could it be…they’re trying to screw you? I wouldn’t bet against it. Government by its nature collects and expands its own power, inevitably at the people’s expense. This is why the First and Second Amendments are first and second on the list. We have the right to criticize, demonize, praise and question our government, and if they try to stop us, ultimately, we have the recourse of revolution.

Short of armed revolt, the biggest safeguard we have between the people who know what’s best for us, and us, it that our system is based on the transparency of govt. action. The people can, if they want to, put the bong down, turn off Survivor XXI: In Line At The DMV, and find out everything they ever wanted to know about how the government can screw them on a million tiny technicalities, by simply reading.

When the government starts to limit the availability of materials essential to your rights to due process, they’re pretty much telling you to grab your ankles and smile, not for the cameras, because they won’t be allowed in the courtroom, but smile because the system is working (you).