Does anyone else want to see Joe Lieberman taken to a back room by Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi and Hilary Clinton and given a little message from the Democratic leadership? And by "message" I mean, a mob-style painful clarification of terms, a situation that ends in Pelosi leaning into his face and saying "Capice?"
Hell, it wouldn't even take all four of them. What is Lieberman, 4'11? Any one of these women could take him on with one stiletto held behind her back.
Because I just can't take the cat-eating-the-canary grin of smugness that Lieberman goes around with now, the "the Republican leadership just took turns fellating me" shit-eating grin, the "I think I've got Joe-mentum" smirk. Every time he turns around (and oh, how he turns and turns) he sends out a press release that says something along the lines of "Things in Iraq are going real good, yessir" and "Trust and submit, minions!" But what they really say is: "Suck it, Democrats. I'm going to sit here on my vibrating cat seat for as long as I can, while you wait to see how I'll jump."
Just rip the band-aid off. Let's kick him out. We already have plenty of waffling shills in our party. Go join the other team, where the competition for Top Bitch for The Adminstration is much more stiff.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Why Religious Tolerance is Dangerous
There is probably a compelling psychological reason why humans universally have believed in deities of one kind or another. It must fill some kind of need, or it would not exist.
As I noted below, I was brought up, as we all were, to respect other people's religious beliefs implicitly. And yes, who is Christian/Muslim/Jewish and how they practice their religion varies widely. What frightens me about tolerance of religion--let me be more specific, tolerance of religion influencing and/or controlling the state--is what is happening in the Middle East right now. Sy Hersch at the New Yorker has written a series of terrifying articles citing sources deep within the military and The Administration. Luckily for The Administration, only liberals read the New Yorker, and the mainstream media seems a little preoccupied to do any actual reporting or investigative research. Go read the article, and feel your head spin as you try to parse what exactly The Administration might possibly think they are doing.
I'm confident that most Americans could not tell you why some Muslims are Sunni and some are Shi'ite. It all comes down to a matter of who inherited the Caliphate (essentially, the seat of power in the Islamic world) after Muhammad died. The Sunni followed Abu Bakr because he was chosen by consensus. The Shi'ites followed one of Muhammad's sons instead. Since this time, certain other differences have developed between Shi'ites and Sunnis, particularly with regard to whether the Koran is open to interpretation.
Nonetheless, a seriously unstable region is made more so because of who should have been chosen as leader after Muhammad over a thousand years ago. In a religious context, this is seen as not only rational, but as a perfectly legitimate reason to kill other people. It's as if Americans were still fighting each other because of who succeeded Washington two hundred years ago.
As I noted below, I was brought up, as we all were, to respect other people's religious beliefs implicitly. And yes, who is Christian/Muslim/Jewish and how they practice their religion varies widely. What frightens me about tolerance of religion--let me be more specific, tolerance of religion influencing and/or controlling the state--is what is happening in the Middle East right now. Sy Hersch at the New Yorker has written a series of terrifying articles citing sources deep within the military and The Administration. Luckily for The Administration, only liberals read the New Yorker, and the mainstream media seems a little preoccupied to do any actual reporting or investigative research. Go read the article, and feel your head spin as you try to parse what exactly The Administration might possibly think they are doing.
I'm confident that most Americans could not tell you why some Muslims are Sunni and some are Shi'ite. It all comes down to a matter of who inherited the Caliphate (essentially, the seat of power in the Islamic world) after Muhammad died. The Sunni followed Abu Bakr because he was chosen by consensus. The Shi'ites followed one of Muhammad's sons instead. Since this time, certain other differences have developed between Shi'ites and Sunnis, particularly with regard to whether the Koran is open to interpretation.
Nonetheless, a seriously unstable region is made more so because of who should have been chosen as leader after Muhammad over a thousand years ago. In a religious context, this is seen as not only rational, but as a perfectly legitimate reason to kill other people. It's as if Americans were still fighting each other because of who succeeded Washington two hundred years ago.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Sincerely Useless Shit
I'm looking at the Williams-Sonoma catalog, and while, let's face it, I do kind of love Williams-Sonoma, there are times when I wonder if the staff of the Onion has taken over their catalog. Consider: 
Yes it is, it is a marshmellow kit! With molds and everything!
Or:
A vegetable grip. For when your fingers just won't do.
And, of course: an electric vacuum marinator! "Ideal for last minute cooking, this marinator accelerates saturation..."
But wait, there's more:
An avocado slicer and pitter for only $15.95. When a butter knife just won't do...
There's the large mortar and pestle, made of volcanic rock, of course, in which I can
smash up some perfectly sliced avocados.
Finally, for all the table linens you spend so much time ironing:
the Miele rotary iron.
Yes it is, it is a marshmellow kit! With molds and everything!Or:
A vegetable grip. For when your fingers just won't do.
And, of course: an electric vacuum marinator! "Ideal for last minute cooking, this marinator accelerates saturation..."
But wait, there's more:
An avocado slicer and pitter for only $15.95. When a butter knife just won't do...There's the large mortar and pestle, made of volcanic rock, of course, in which I can
smash up some perfectly sliced avocados.Finally, for all the table linens you spend so much time ironing:
the Miele rotary iron.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Travelling Companions
One of my undergraduate professors used to talk about the necessity of giving students "travelling companions." This professor believed that the readings we gave students could provide them with a sort of guide for life.
What he didn't mention is that sometimes travelling companions are damn irritating. For example: I recently started going to the gym. This requires gym clothes, since the ones I had the last time I went to the gym mysteriously disappeared in the intervening ten years. I'm sure I wore them out. Anyway, trying on gym clothes, my travelling companion Henry David warns me to be wary of any activity that requires the buying of new clothes.
Luckily, I remember that Henry David usually came into Concord every day, to eat with his mother and sister. He would also drop off his laundry, which I suppose spared Walden Pond the status of washing facility. He is summarily dismissed. I will call him back when I would like either a non-conformist travelling companion, or a nature-loving travelling companion. But I am not surviving on beans, and I don't want to live in a shanty.
Wandering around the store in search of work-out clothes that are not spandex, full length, shiny pants, or anything in any way bedazzled (tm), I recall that I am deeply annoyed by someone. In fact, I'm very angry at this person. I enjoy a pleasant fantasy of telling this person exactly what I think of him/her/his/her actions/behavior. Then this person realizes the error of their ways and begs my forgiveness. It's a very satisfactory fantasy, until Buddha intervenes. He points out that anger is generally a way to ignore what currently is, because we prefer the fantasy to the reality. Anger turned toward someone else is almost always anger at oneself, as well. And finally, of course I should keep in mind that all things are always changing and that in life, suffering is inevitable.
Thanks, man. Really, all I want is to remain comfortably in my self-righteous anger and indignation, okay? It's like eating chocolate: toxic in large doses, but comforting in small bites. Go twirl your daisy and I'll get back to you.
Then there's the Writing Shrew. The Writing Shrew always appears just at the time you sit down, full of energy and excitement, to write. She has severe glasses and a pinched mouth that cries out for Botox, a body stiff and stilted that cries out for orgasms. The Writing Shrew kindly keeps you abreast of your mistakes. She quietly asks if English is, after all, your first language. And if, perhaps, you would like to know that what you are writing makes you sound like an idiot. In fact, the Writing Shrew seems to imply, keep going this way and you'll be a speechwriter for Bush.
The Writing Shrew really gets on my nerves, like a relative you don't like that you are forced to give an eight-hour car ride to, so that he can make it to rehab on time. Against my pacifist ideals, I am forced to kill her off in gruesome ways each morning. This is why I am not a Quaker. (And, as should be obvious from this post and the "Fucking Fuckers" post, this is also why I am never going to be a viable candidate for office in this country.)
Various other voices pop in and out, for pep talks. Many of them (Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Frank McCourt, for example) remind me that I really can't complain about any aspect of my privileged little life. Have I had to kill a child to keep her from becoming a slave? No? Well, shut the fuck up about your problems with grad school, then. This is considered peppy by my travelling companions. Then there is the parent voice, the mother voice, the what-would-your-brother-think voice, the cool voice (how cool are you? never cool enough), the everyone-is-watching-you voice, the constant-ongoing-narration-of-events-as-if-removed-from-them voice, the eighty year old version of myself voice. (This last voice generally just tells me I should have had more sex, so I'll keep her around.)
What he didn't mention is that sometimes travelling companions are damn irritating. For example: I recently started going to the gym. This requires gym clothes, since the ones I had the last time I went to the gym mysteriously disappeared in the intervening ten years. I'm sure I wore them out. Anyway, trying on gym clothes, my travelling companion Henry David warns me to be wary of any activity that requires the buying of new clothes.
Luckily, I remember that Henry David usually came into Concord every day, to eat with his mother and sister. He would also drop off his laundry, which I suppose spared Walden Pond the status of washing facility. He is summarily dismissed. I will call him back when I would like either a non-conformist travelling companion, or a nature-loving travelling companion. But I am not surviving on beans, and I don't want to live in a shanty.
Wandering around the store in search of work-out clothes that are not spandex, full length, shiny pants, or anything in any way bedazzled (tm), I recall that I am deeply annoyed by someone. In fact, I'm very angry at this person. I enjoy a pleasant fantasy of telling this person exactly what I think of him/her/his/her actions/behavior. Then this person realizes the error of their ways and begs my forgiveness. It's a very satisfactory fantasy, until Buddha intervenes. He points out that anger is generally a way to ignore what currently is, because we prefer the fantasy to the reality. Anger turned toward someone else is almost always anger at oneself, as well. And finally, of course I should keep in mind that all things are always changing and that in life, suffering is inevitable.
Thanks, man. Really, all I want is to remain comfortably in my self-righteous anger and indignation, okay? It's like eating chocolate: toxic in large doses, but comforting in small bites. Go twirl your daisy and I'll get back to you.
Then there's the Writing Shrew. The Writing Shrew always appears just at the time you sit down, full of energy and excitement, to write. She has severe glasses and a pinched mouth that cries out for Botox, a body stiff and stilted that cries out for orgasms. The Writing Shrew kindly keeps you abreast of your mistakes. She quietly asks if English is, after all, your first language. And if, perhaps, you would like to know that what you are writing makes you sound like an idiot. In fact, the Writing Shrew seems to imply, keep going this way and you'll be a speechwriter for Bush.
The Writing Shrew really gets on my nerves, like a relative you don't like that you are forced to give an eight-hour car ride to, so that he can make it to rehab on time. Against my pacifist ideals, I am forced to kill her off in gruesome ways each morning. This is why I am not a Quaker. (And, as should be obvious from this post and the "Fucking Fuckers" post, this is also why I am never going to be a viable candidate for office in this country.)
Various other voices pop in and out, for pep talks. Many of them (Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Frank McCourt, for example) remind me that I really can't complain about any aspect of my privileged little life. Have I had to kill a child to keep her from becoming a slave? No? Well, shut the fuck up about your problems with grad school, then. This is considered peppy by my travelling companions. Then there is the parent voice, the mother voice, the what-would-your-brother-think voice, the cool voice (how cool are you? never cool enough), the everyone-is-watching-you voice, the constant-ongoing-narration-of-events-as-if-removed-from-them voice, the eighty year old version of myself voice. (This last voice generally just tells me I should have had more sex, so I'll keep her around.)
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
The Only Dance
(warning: self-indulgent)
As a child, I definitely believed in God. I believed in God, because I saw God as immanent in the natural world around me. I believed in God because I had a sense of communicating (praying, if you like) with something larger than, other than, myself.
My family did not go to church, which made it easier to believe in God, I think. Whenever I went with friends, church seemed to be less about immanence and beauty and more about people, who and what they were, and who they slept with, and who wasn't living up to the standards of the community. Or, if we were in Sunday school, God was about coloring pictures of Jesus. No one at any church I went to felt compelled to tell me that the Bible was the Literal Word of God, and so I continued to think of it as a collection of kind of cool stories, if a little bloodthirsty, and then this one guy who seemed pretty chill. There was not very much emphasis on the Jesus-as-God-Incarnate thing, and more on the Jesus-as-cool-teacher thing.
Okay, so. In the world of books that I read, the world of Anne and Laura and Little Women, belief was something Good People had. Good People believed in God. God was a handy explanation for all those mysteries we little people couldn't quite understand. When I was in seventh or eighth grade I decided that my family should belong to a church. For one thing, we were Good People. And another thing, everyone else had a church they belonged to, and I felt like we were out of the loop as far as communities of faith went.
Armed with this inspiration, I also decided that we should be Catholic. My mother's family were Irish Catholic since forever, and in fact, my mother had wanted to become a nun. So just because we didn't go to Church doesn't mean I wasn't raised Catholic, y'all. Anyway I felt like Catholicism was the way to go, an expression of our heritage anyway, plus the Catholic churches were definitely the nicest in town. Into the fold we went. My brother and I were baptized, had our first Confession, First Communion, and I was confirmed at the end of eigth grade. My dad went to classes and was baptized, First Communion'ed, etc., so that my parents could have their marriage sanctified in the Church. And my poor brother was dragged through another couple of years of classes before he was confirmed at 14, at which point he said that since he was in charge of his soul, he was not going to church anymore and would henceforth sleep in on Sundays.
It amazes me that everyone went along with my sort of impulse-buy religiosity. Looking back, I'm sure my parents wanted to belong to a community, too. So we went to Church almost every Sunday for four years, all throughout my high school years. Luckily for me, some of the kids in my AP class also went to St. Patrick's, so it was kind of hip in some way (by "kind of hip" I mean "morally superior." Also, I've come to the conclusion that this time would have been much better spent getting laid. All those hormones, wasted). I even won a Catholic scholarship for college. Off I blithely went into the heathen world, and when I came back two months later and we went to Church, I gazed around at the congregation and thought, "These people are just not, actually, good people. There's the guy who hates Jews and won't let his wife have a job, there's the priest who slept with my confirmation teacher, there are all the people who believe that the poor deserve to be that way..." In a sort of anti-ecstatic experience, I felt a wave of darkness wash over me and I felt sick, claustrophobic and nauseated: a deep sense of wrongness choked me.
I never went back.
I probably would have continued along in a sort of automated respect and tolerance of religion. This is, after all, one of our primary national tropes: that freedom of religion was the primary reason our country was founded and the solution to the religious wars that tore Europe apart. We're all brought up to exempt belief in God from the scrutiny given to other beliefs.
When Bush II came along, I started feeling a little uneasy about the shameless use of religion to provide both moral cover and a wedge issue to divide Americans. And then, from my point of view, the evangelical community in the U.S. went just crazy. All of a sudden it was deeply invested in everyone else's life, particularly their sex lives, and even more particularly, what women did or didn't do with their wombs. I felt betrayed, really. I kind of thought the deal was that I tolerate your beliefs which may range from doubtful to ridiculous (reading golden tablets with stones that you put into your hat? Thetans? for that matter, birth without sex or insemination?) but that the evangelicals would be content with merely repressing their own people. But now the cows had broken down the fence and all hell was breaking loose.
So I actually started to think about the evidence for God, and I started to wonder about the phenomenon of religion. The more they wanted me to believe things handed down from on high, the more I liked the scientific method and the more closely I held my skepticism. Relgion is such a strange artifact, really. Imagine if we based medicine today on what people believed at the time of Christ. Imagine if people were out on the streets with nametags and bicycles, trying to get us to believe in Athena?
What finally got me, though, and why I jumped the fence to agnosticism bordering on atheism, is that I think that a belief in God, rather than adding to the wonder of the world, detracts from it. I don't believe that there is a life to come; I don't believe that the self I carry around in my head will survive after the last synapse stops firing. This is it: this is the only dance we dance.
As a child, I definitely believed in God. I believed in God, because I saw God as immanent in the natural world around me. I believed in God because I had a sense of communicating (praying, if you like) with something larger than, other than, myself.
My family did not go to church, which made it easier to believe in God, I think. Whenever I went with friends, church seemed to be less about immanence and beauty and more about people, who and what they were, and who they slept with, and who wasn't living up to the standards of the community. Or, if we were in Sunday school, God was about coloring pictures of Jesus. No one at any church I went to felt compelled to tell me that the Bible was the Literal Word of God, and so I continued to think of it as a collection of kind of cool stories, if a little bloodthirsty, and then this one guy who seemed pretty chill. There was not very much emphasis on the Jesus-as-God-Incarnate thing, and more on the Jesus-as-cool-teacher thing.
Okay, so. In the world of books that I read, the world of Anne and Laura and Little Women, belief was something Good People had. Good People believed in God. God was a handy explanation for all those mysteries we little people couldn't quite understand. When I was in seventh or eighth grade I decided that my family should belong to a church. For one thing, we were Good People. And another thing, everyone else had a church they belonged to, and I felt like we were out of the loop as far as communities of faith went.
Armed with this inspiration, I also decided that we should be Catholic. My mother's family were Irish Catholic since forever, and in fact, my mother had wanted to become a nun. So just because we didn't go to Church doesn't mean I wasn't raised Catholic, y'all. Anyway I felt like Catholicism was the way to go, an expression of our heritage anyway, plus the Catholic churches were definitely the nicest in town. Into the fold we went. My brother and I were baptized, had our first Confession, First Communion, and I was confirmed at the end of eigth grade. My dad went to classes and was baptized, First Communion'ed, etc., so that my parents could have their marriage sanctified in the Church. And my poor brother was dragged through another couple of years of classes before he was confirmed at 14, at which point he said that since he was in charge of his soul, he was not going to church anymore and would henceforth sleep in on Sundays.
It amazes me that everyone went along with my sort of impulse-buy religiosity. Looking back, I'm sure my parents wanted to belong to a community, too. So we went to Church almost every Sunday for four years, all throughout my high school years. Luckily for me, some of the kids in my AP class also went to St. Patrick's, so it was kind of hip in some way (by "kind of hip" I mean "morally superior." Also, I've come to the conclusion that this time would have been much better spent getting laid. All those hormones, wasted). I even won a Catholic scholarship for college. Off I blithely went into the heathen world, and when I came back two months later and we went to Church, I gazed around at the congregation and thought, "These people are just not, actually, good people. There's the guy who hates Jews and won't let his wife have a job, there's the priest who slept with my confirmation teacher, there are all the people who believe that the poor deserve to be that way..." In a sort of anti-ecstatic experience, I felt a wave of darkness wash over me and I felt sick, claustrophobic and nauseated: a deep sense of wrongness choked me.
I never went back.
I probably would have continued along in a sort of automated respect and tolerance of religion. This is, after all, one of our primary national tropes: that freedom of religion was the primary reason our country was founded and the solution to the religious wars that tore Europe apart. We're all brought up to exempt belief in God from the scrutiny given to other beliefs.
When Bush II came along, I started feeling a little uneasy about the shameless use of religion to provide both moral cover and a wedge issue to divide Americans. And then, from my point of view, the evangelical community in the U.S. went just crazy. All of a sudden it was deeply invested in everyone else's life, particularly their sex lives, and even more particularly, what women did or didn't do with their wombs. I felt betrayed, really. I kind of thought the deal was that I tolerate your beliefs which may range from doubtful to ridiculous (reading golden tablets with stones that you put into your hat? Thetans? for that matter, birth without sex or insemination?) but that the evangelicals would be content with merely repressing their own people. But now the cows had broken down the fence and all hell was breaking loose.
So I actually started to think about the evidence for God, and I started to wonder about the phenomenon of religion. The more they wanted me to believe things handed down from on high, the more I liked the scientific method and the more closely I held my skepticism. Relgion is such a strange artifact, really. Imagine if we based medicine today on what people believed at the time of Christ. Imagine if people were out on the streets with nametags and bicycles, trying to get us to believe in Athena?
What finally got me, though, and why I jumped the fence to agnosticism bordering on atheism, is that I think that a belief in God, rather than adding to the wonder of the world, detracts from it. I don't believe that there is a life to come; I don't believe that the self I carry around in my head will survive after the last synapse stops firing. This is it: this is the only dance we dance.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
You Fucking Fuckers
I can't believe that my political choices have come down to: batshit fucking insane bastards or spineless snivelling losers. I'm essentially voting for "not crazy" and "I'd like to live, please."
The reason I bring this up is the latest scufuffle over Pandagon and Shakespeare's Sister, who were forced to resign from the Edwards campaign because some fat white bastard looked up their old posts while waiting for his porn to load. And he was offended! Their stances on contraception were in direct contradiction to the church's repeatedly issued statements! They seemed to believe that women should choose when and how to have children, and if that's not offensive to fat white bastards, what is?
So this particular FWB gets up from his rubber masturbo-mat and squelches his way over to the television studio, where for some reason they actually let him talk while the camera is rolling. And the Edwards campaign backs down. They don't fire Amanda and Melissa, no, but they release a pansy little statement about how they disagree with what they wrote and how they used un-ladylike words.
But FWB, like Jaba the Hut, doesn't give up that easily. After much hypocritical shrillness, Amanda and Melissa resign.
Here's what I wish Edwards would have said: "Some fat white bastard of a catholic claims to be offended by something two women wrote before they even worked for this campaign and which has nothing to do with this campaign. Well, I tell you what, I'm good and goddamned offended by the catholic church. I'm offended that their policy on birth control has doomed children in Latin America to grow up hungry, picking their way through garbage dumps for mere subsistence. I'm offended that the church won't allow women to be priests but will allow male priests to fuck little boys, and then move them to a new parish, where they get all new little boys to fuck. I'm offended that these actions make it clear that the church prefers pedophiles to women. Let's go over that again: the catholic church would rather have known pedophiles standing in front of the church preaching than allow women to be priests. I'm really, really offended by the church's stance on the use of condoms in Africa, which guarantees that more children will be orphaned, more mothers will die, and that dark continent will suffer even more, all because the church prefers to believe that every sperm is sacred. They prefer sperm to living children. And that's damn offensive. Finally, I'm offended that these woman-hating lying hypocritical bastards wear dresses. What the fuck is that about? Soutane my ass."
This could go on for a while, but you get the gist.
The reason I bring this up is the latest scufuffle over Pandagon and Shakespeare's Sister, who were forced to resign from the Edwards campaign because some fat white bastard looked up their old posts while waiting for his porn to load. And he was offended! Their stances on contraception were in direct contradiction to the church's repeatedly issued statements! They seemed to believe that women should choose when and how to have children, and if that's not offensive to fat white bastards, what is?
So this particular FWB gets up from his rubber masturbo-mat and squelches his way over to the television studio, where for some reason they actually let him talk while the camera is rolling. And the Edwards campaign backs down. They don't fire Amanda and Melissa, no, but they release a pansy little statement about how they disagree with what they wrote and how they used un-ladylike words.
But FWB, like Jaba the Hut, doesn't give up that easily. After much hypocritical shrillness, Amanda and Melissa resign.
Here's what I wish Edwards would have said: "Some fat white bastard of a catholic claims to be offended by something two women wrote before they even worked for this campaign and which has nothing to do with this campaign. Well, I tell you what, I'm good and goddamned offended by the catholic church. I'm offended that their policy on birth control has doomed children in Latin America to grow up hungry, picking their way through garbage dumps for mere subsistence. I'm offended that the church won't allow women to be priests but will allow male priests to fuck little boys, and then move them to a new parish, where they get all new little boys to fuck. I'm offended that these actions make it clear that the church prefers pedophiles to women. Let's go over that again: the catholic church would rather have known pedophiles standing in front of the church preaching than allow women to be priests. I'm really, really offended by the church's stance on the use of condoms in Africa, which guarantees that more children will be orphaned, more mothers will die, and that dark continent will suffer even more, all because the church prefers to believe that every sperm is sacred. They prefer sperm to living children. And that's damn offensive. Finally, I'm offended that these woman-hating lying hypocritical bastards wear dresses. What the fuck is that about? Soutane my ass."
This could go on for a while, but you get the gist.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Seriously?
Could we throw the brakes on here for a little bit? Are they really offering what look like old Folgers coffee cans as "evidence" of Iranian involvement in Iraq? And how do we know they're from Iran? Do they say "to amerika wiv luv" on them, or what? How do we know these guys didn't just go rootle around in the sand around one of the many, many arms dumps we left unguarded after the invasion of Iraq?
As usual, the Rude Pundit takes it to another level, a level of rudeness most of us can only dream of attaining:
"No, no, not good enough for any goddamned thing. If they wanna bomb Iran (a notion that's soooo 1980), then here's the evidence the Rude Pundit wants to see: he wants to see the Mullahs dry-humping nuclear warheads that read, "Hey, infidels, suck on this"; he wants to see a video of motherfuckin' Ahmadinejad actually shoving an IED into a drugged, tied down Dick Cheney's asshole, saying, "We're gonna blow up Dick Cheney's ass, America, if you don't back the fuck up on our nukes," with the President of Iran ordering his guards to fuck Condoleezza Rice's disembodied head. And even then, there should be a referendum in this country on whether or not we actually care if Dick Cheney's ass gets exploded."
As usual, the Rude Pundit takes it to another level, a level of rudeness most of us can only dream of attaining:
"No, no, not good enough for any goddamned thing. If they wanna bomb Iran (a notion that's soooo 1980), then here's the evidence the Rude Pundit wants to see: he wants to see the Mullahs dry-humping nuclear warheads that read, "Hey, infidels, suck on this"; he wants to see a video of motherfuckin' Ahmadinejad actually shoving an IED into a drugged, tied down Dick Cheney's asshole, saying, "We're gonna blow up Dick Cheney's ass, America, if you don't back the fuck up on our nukes," with the President of Iran ordering his guards to fuck Condoleezza Rice's disembodied head. And even then, there should be a referendum in this country on whether or not we actually care if Dick Cheney's ass gets exploded."
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Sweet Christ-in-whom-I-do-not-believe
The good times are a-rollin' on.
But let's not talk about this unpleasant news reported by those unreliable Brits. Was Anna Nicole killed by an overdose? Did one of her silicone implants implode under the weight of the crazy? And didn't we all love her so, so much because she "didn't give up"? (Actual headline on Yahoo News yesterday).
And then, of course, there are the space diapers worn by deranged former astronauts. We've got our hands full here.
Update: This is a well-written, thoughtful, and terrifying essay. Read it at your own peril.
There are so many times when I think (as I did listening to the "evidence" given to reporters that Iran is supplying Iraqi "insurgents" with weapons) "We are all going to die." The Buddhist-in-my-Head twirls his daisy and says, "This is true." He means it in a cosmic, all-things-are-change-and-death-is-inevitable kind of way, whereas I mean it in a holy-shit-I-can't-believe-these-fuckers-are-willing-to-annihilate-us kind of way, a what-the-fuck-can-they-possibly-be-thinking kind of way, a don't-they-realize-Jesus-isn't-coming-back kind of way.
But let's not talk about this unpleasant news reported by those unreliable Brits. Was Anna Nicole killed by an overdose? Did one of her silicone implants implode under the weight of the crazy? And didn't we all love her so, so much because she "didn't give up"? (Actual headline on Yahoo News yesterday).
And then, of course, there are the space diapers worn by deranged former astronauts. We've got our hands full here.
Update: This is a well-written, thoughtful, and terrifying essay. Read it at your own peril.
There are so many times when I think (as I did listening to the "evidence" given to reporters that Iran is supplying Iraqi "insurgents" with weapons) "We are all going to die." The Buddhist-in-my-Head twirls his daisy and says, "This is true." He means it in a cosmic, all-things-are-change-and-death-is-inevitable kind of way, whereas I mean it in a holy-shit-I-can't-believe-these-fuckers-are-willing-to-annihilate-us kind of way, a what-the-fuck-can-they-possibly-be-thinking kind of way, a don't-they-realize-Jesus-isn't-coming-back kind of way.
California in Charge
In this op-ed from the Times today, the author suggests that California is (as ever) leading the way toward an increasing regionalization. Rather than relying on a centralized government which is increasingly unable to meet the diverse demands of a growing population (here's a nightmare statistic: the population of the U.S. is projected to reach 1.2 billion in 2100. 1.2 billion Americans. It doesn't bear thinking about, especially considering how many of them are going to be fundamentalist Christians and/or Mormons) regions will find it more efficient--and more responsive to their populace--to work together.
Environmentally, this is a very sound idea. One national environmental policy makes little sense given the diversity of ecosystems in the United States. The West, for example, could together decide on a water usage system that takes into account the aridity of the region. Western water policy at the moment remains stuck in the "rain follows crops" model of settlers from the East 150 years ago. This is no longer sustainable. People in Phoenix and Las Vegas--two of the fastest growing cities in the country--should not have lawns unless they want to embark on some serious water reclamation projects. Even then, both towns are sinking as they deplete groundwater that took millions of years to accrue. New England, on the other hand, is not lacking in water resources, but has its own environmental issues.
Of course, regionalization makes especially good sense for New England and the West, powered by the economic engines of California and New York. Schwarzenegger can pursue policies virtually independent from the federal government, since California has the sixth largest economy in the world, by itself.
The one concern I have about regionalization is about rights rather than benefits. How independent from the centralized government would regions be? For example, could entire regions outlaw abortion? Would the South attempt to resurrect the plantation system? What about minimum wage laws? And so forth.
Environmentally, this is a very sound idea. One national environmental policy makes little sense given the diversity of ecosystems in the United States. The West, for example, could together decide on a water usage system that takes into account the aridity of the region. Western water policy at the moment remains stuck in the "rain follows crops" model of settlers from the East 150 years ago. This is no longer sustainable. People in Phoenix and Las Vegas--two of the fastest growing cities in the country--should not have lawns unless they want to embark on some serious water reclamation projects. Even then, both towns are sinking as they deplete groundwater that took millions of years to accrue. New England, on the other hand, is not lacking in water resources, but has its own environmental issues.
Of course, regionalization makes especially good sense for New England and the West, powered by the economic engines of California and New York. Schwarzenegger can pursue policies virtually independent from the federal government, since California has the sixth largest economy in the world, by itself.
The one concern I have about regionalization is about rights rather than benefits. How independent from the centralized government would regions be? For example, could entire regions outlaw abortion? Would the South attempt to resurrect the plantation system? What about minimum wage laws? And so forth.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Rene Descartes, What a Fucker
One can have arguments about Cartesian thinking, but all I really needed to know about Descartes is that in order to "prove" that animals were only machines which could not feel and only responded in instinctive, machinistic ways, he first nailed his wife's living dog to a board and then dissected it--while it was still alive, and then repeated this little experiment by nailing other dogs to barn walls and eviscerating them. Over their screams of pain, he assured his audience that the dogs felt nothing.
Which brings me to a great article in the times about a part of the brain known as the insula. The insula was, for some time, thought to be either a) useless or b) part of the primal brain or c) both. One of the reasons why Cartesian thinking fails us on so many levels on so many different occasions is that it leads us to believe that if we cannot see a function for something, it must not have a function. Even if we are highly trained neuroscientists who presumably believe in evolution and should know better.
About a decade ago, a neuropsychologist (Antonio Damasio, now at USC and, coincidentally, my brother's supervisor) proposed the somatic marker hypothesis, in which he postulated that reason and emotion could not, in fact, be separated. Emotions and feelings are intertwined with rational thinking. The development of fMRIs (functional magnetic resonance imaging) has supported this hypothesis.
What other scholars have also found is that while we commonly believe that we first have a rational/mental response to a stimulus which then triggers a bodily response, in fact it is often the other way around. Our bodies respond, and then our mind makes up a story for our bodily responses. Our thoughts then are colored by our physicality. If we pay enough attention, perhaps we can see how our thoughts are colored by our emotions--and always will be. The idea that we can have a rational thought free of emotion or body, that we can be no more than walking brains, is an illusion.
P.S. The picture that accompanies this post doesn't have much (if anything) to do with this post. I just like it.
Monday, February 05, 2007
my (head)Space
So. I actually have a mySpace page. It's all a bit mysterious, how this happened--however, one of my friends assures me that everyone is going to Facebook now, so I'm late to the party, as a person of my advanced age should be. The point being, I found a couple of my favorite people from Santa Cruz, people I had lost touch with, and missed. So that made it worthwhile in itself. And this is a long-ago post from my friend Mo's blog: Desperately Seeking Something that is definitely worth a read. It reminds me how I felt, after the 2004 election. Not that any of us want to revisit that, no. But still, the aftertaste lingers, like absinthe, if that weren't illegal in this country. People have been coming into the store where I work to buy Bush Countdown Keychains, which show how much time he has left in office. You know how much: TOO FUCKING MUCH. The countdown clock just depresses the shit out of me, actually. That's one year, eleven months, and six days for Bush to fuck it all up even more. Anyway, on a better note: anything Mo has to say is generally intelligent, sharp, funny, and bitter: all the things I like in a woman.
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