Sporadic bloggers cause angst, suffering;
UN may be called in
Yea, well, I've got some explaining to do. Ten days is a long time to not find anything to bitch and moan about, but then again, when you work six days a week and you are trying to buy a house, things are weird. Right? Right. So, let's just do a couple of short things based on whatever I find on the front page of CNN this evening (28th).
Wow. Maybe I've got nothing to be sorry for after all. CNN looks pretty lame. You'd think this was an election year or that a war might be going on.
So, screw that. Let's be amused for a second and check out this commercial clip for Six Flags. While it's loading, here's a brief disclaimer: I do not work for Six Flags, nor does anyone that I know - to the best of my knowledge. I have never been there, nor do I encourage anyone else to go there. I hate amusement parks of all colors and stripes. I believe them to be a complete waste of space, material, and money. But, damn if this isn't a funny as hell commercial. So, is it CG? Good old fashioned camera trickery? Or, just a really spooky old man?
Garnett apologizes for war analogies;
football safe to continue mocking bloodshed
Yesterday, Kevin Garnett of the Minnesota Timberwolves was so psyched up about his upcoming playoff game with the Kings that he mumbled something about "going to war," and "rocket launchers" or words to that effect. Somewhere up the ladder, some middleman in the organization must have spewed his latte all over his salmon-colored office walls and made a frantic phone call:
"Who fucking let the press at Kevin? The poor kid. He's not supposed to talk, Jesus! What the fuck? Does he think this is the fucking NFL? No, I don't care who you have to promise what, get his ass in front of the press again later today and have him fucking say something. Goddammit, this is serious!".
And so, poor Kevin goes back in front of the media yesterday afternoon and smooths it all over. All in one day.
Remember when scandal took weeks to develop? When outrage took days to build? Hell, America was so shocked over seeing a black woman's boob on TV that it was the next morning before anyone freaked out.
So, what was it that poor Kevin said? Let me reprint it here, and let me state once that I am not making this up. This is the actual quote, from Kevin Garnett.
"This is it. It's for all the marbles. I'm sitting in the house loading up the pump, I'm loading up the Uzis, I've got a couple of M-16s, couple of nines, couple of joints with some silencers on them, couple of grenades, got a missile launcher. I'm ready for war."
I am telling you again, I did not make this up. Click the Sports Illustrated link. It's all right there. He actually opened his mouth and uttered those words. Offensive, though? Hardly. Worth an apology? Well, in the view of Timberwolves PR goons, yes. To normal people? Maybe? To anyone with enough sense to ignore anything that is "controversial" in the world of sports? Nope. Nada.
After all, football commentators have been getting away with this kind of crap for years. Sure, maybe since Pat Tillman died, they've considered toning it down. But that happened in the off-season, and it's a long way to opening kickoff this fall. So, who knows?
So, why all this sensitivity? Who knows? Let's just hope it ends soon, before we really lose any idea of what's offensive.
After all, we are still bombarded with those ridiculous Marine Corps and Army commercials, which make military service look downright clean and moral - if not wonderful and exciting. And then there was the post-war cheerleading in the media. I'm reminded in particluar of some piece on CNN about new weapons technology that sounded like an infomercial, complete with corporate spokesmodel. Garbage.
Quentin Tarantino
Jimmy Kimmel's a re-run of the episode from a few weeks ago, the one that Quentin Tarantino "directed." Will someone please take Quentin aside and tell him that he is not a genius? That he's a lousy actor and a pretty bad writer as well?
Yea, I know. He's "great," and all that. Fuck you. You can get blood and sex or blood and rhetoric, so they say, and you can have all three - but no sex and rhetoric. Right? Then why, when Quentin does it, do I feel like it's his only schtick?
Oh. Because it is.
Marriage is so gay
So, good ol' Mass came out night before last and started issuing marriage certificates. And, yesterday morning, our friends at USA Today published an editorial complaining that race is different from gender.
First off, thanks chief, for that brilliant observation. I'd like to award you with the Captain Obvious Award for Journalistic Excellence.
Next, let's assume for a minute that I give a toot about marriage (stop smirking, those of you reading who know a little about me), and let's take a little look at Mr. Perkins' logic. Shall we? Let's!
"The definition of marriage is the union of one man and one woman. The definition says nothing about race or religion, but it does require participants to be of the opposite sex. A black man and white woman meet the definition of marriage, and that is why it was indeed discriminatory to not allow interracial couples to marry."
Uh. Huh. That's why it is oh-so-easy for whites to marry non-whites and non-whites to marry other non-whites in this day and age, huh?
Get real and get over it. Does anyone really care who someone else is living with? If you do, then you obviously need to get laid more yourself.
Now, let me talk to the one or two of you out there who might be gay and might be reading this and might be considering getting in on the whole marriage thing.
Are you fucking crazy?
Alright, back to the Pecker. Um, Perkins. He goes on to mumble about "(d)isregarding 5,000 years of anthropological evidence and redrawing the line of marriage to no longer be a man and a woman but simply just two consenting adults result in a line in the blowing sand." First off, can I get a copy editor's gig at USAToday? It's called verb tense, motherfuckers, look it up. Next, so what if marriage changes? So what if anything changes? We've all ready managed to screw up just about everything that ever made any little bit of sense about our society. We've turned television from escapist fantasy to "reality" sensationalism, books from learning tools to pulp garbage, music from dancing fun to soulless corporate crap and on and on.
Hell, even the religious have managed to screw up all their own belief systems.
So why should marriage be any different?
When Perkins says, "Marriage is not simply a private institution," what he really means is, "I support the state being all up in yr shit." Marriage should be private. The church and the state do not have any real need to sanction these things. Sure, marriage helps solidify the "family structure," now doesn't it? After all, it makes the job of the courts really easy when these "holy and sanctioned marriages between one man and one woman" become "one nasty fucking divorce with three children in the middle, not to mention the summer home."
Once again, come on now. For humanity to grow and survive much past where we are now, it really comes down to one thing: we need to get out of the past.
What is so hard to comprehend about this?
Truth, lies and video editing
So, the execution of Nick/Nic Berg (not only can the media not come up with a decent picture of the guy, they can't come up with a spelling for his name) was faked. According to the Net's fringe media types, at least. And, of course, the media's silence on some of the sticky inconsistencies is clear proof that there is a conspiracy.
But, who's involved? Is it mercenary Russians? The CIA and/or Mossad? Maybe even the same Military Intel folks who were large and in charge of Abu Ghraib? Need more proof?
Conspiracy theories may indeed be the new religion of the stupid, but I suppose there's something to be said for all of this. After all, if you think enough of your government to believe that none of this business in Iraq is on the up and up, then I suppose you believe just about anything. After all, how much worse would beheading one American be than sacrificing hundreds in the name of freedom?
More fun in the twenty-first century!
Proving that, once again, most people do not have a decent sense of an appropriate scale of retribution a group of terrorists (at least, we guess that's who they are, you cannot see their faces) grabbed Nic Berg last week and videotaped themselves beheading him. This was done in revenge, according to the five masked killers, for the abuses at Abu Grahib (which I will continue to spell differently each time I use it, until someone clues me in to a proper spelling). Anyways, like I said, that's kind of over the top, isn't it?
So, if that wasn't bad enough that we have to get this kind of crap on the news, here comes the fallout.
Proving that, once again, Americans are by and large not a bright group of people, stories are popping up about this video and what people are doing with it. First off, there's Marconi and Tiny. This is genius, too. Marconi and Tiny were the morning show at some radio station up in the Pacific NW. I say "were," because these two decided it would be a laugh riot to play the audio portion of the execution on their morning show, accompanied by funny music and themselves giggling.
This is neither the way to ratings nor job security. They were promptly sacked.
Also on the "I don't like my job, what can I do to fuck up?" list are the teachers who've been showing the video to their students. Once again, smart damn move. Maybe all these smart teachers and Tiny can hook it up and do a porn site. After all, don't you want to see a 400-pound guy named "Tiny" getting it on? I know I do.
Anyways, damnation. Where is the common sense in this world? I mean, I'm a cold, evil bastard - but I'm not stupid enough to do this kind of shit. I'm not even posting a link to the decapitation video.
You wonder why the rest of the world hates us? It's because we hate ourselves.
Tangentially....
You know that saying, "It's a small world, after all"? Of course you do, it's one of the most annoying songs ever written. How about, "this cannot be a coincidence"? You be the judge. In other Berg news, the family blames the Bush administration, not terrorists - no one seesms to want know how we got kidnapped or whose custody he was it - and no one wants to say the words "cover up" in connection with this.
Yep. The end of Friends. Ok, I'm over it. Now, all we have to do is kill Frasier and, maybe, we can cross over into this century.
Maybe.
I highly doubt it. After all, all we've got now is crappy reality shows (The Bachelor) and crappier shows about those shows (no shit, tonight on E! I saw, "True E! Story: The Bachelor"). This is unacceptable. Indeed.
Sharif don't like it!
Do you know anyone who is surprised at the recent
revelations that our men and women over in Iraq have been, gasp,
abusing prisoners? I don't. Most people are disgusted, yes, but few
are surprised.
What is surprising is what the overseas media are saying about Lynndie England, shown here proving her mastery of human anatomy on some Iraqis at Abu Gharib. For instance, we have a story from Australia that paints her and her entire town as monstrous, backwards and otherwise anomolous to the rest of the world (**Story no longer on the site, fuck you Australia**) and one from the BBC that has the town wondering how she could have done these things.
Proving once again there is no such thing as "truth."
Friends! Over!
Finally!
Good riddance.
May Day!
Yea, first things first. Happy May Day. Seriously.
Just let them die...
What is wrong with American Culture? Or Society? Or, just People In General? Why are we so seemingly fascinated with the demise of television shows, more so perhaps than fascinated with the demise of people in foreign lands?
After ten years of being little more than a huge success, NBC's Friends is going off the air. And, with only a couple of episodes left, the coverage is getting obscene. CNN is airing a special even as I write this entry. The entertainment networks are ga-ga over it. Clips. Interviews. Commentary. Including this gem, from some goober whose name I cannot remember:
"...in 3003 or 3004 we'll be watching Friends re-runs in our colonies on Neptune."
I don't even know how to assess such an absolutely ridiculous statement, much less assail it. All I know is that if humans really are on Neptune and really are watching Friends in 3004, then hopefully the aliens will just wipe us out in 3005. That would be merciful.
After all, even now in 2004 it is my feeling that we're just so culturally exhausted that we are pretty well forced into creating all this meta-garbage around our entertainment. What else is left? Since there's nothing left to stir up, we're watching Reality TV (although I still maintain there's very little reality and and a whole lot of TV involved in those shows) and retrospectives on dead shows. Just let the show die. And let's find something else to do, already.
Obligatory Nonsense
Who the hell is mat catastrophe?
About this "blog"
What is nihilism, for real?
Is there an FAQ?
Are you really this much of a prick in real
life?
Obligatory Links Area
Below are some links to some people's stuff that I think you should check out after/during your stay here. Money back guarantee.
OK, it's just two links for now. Eat me. You want a link here, email me.