etscape Gray, circa 1996, in Full
Effect, yo.
etscape Gray, circa 1996, in Full
Effect, yo.
What is this nonsense?Nihilism for Dummies is a "weblog" that looks at, in rough and compressed fashion, current events from a decidely pseudo-nihilistic point of view. This is not meant to be "high-minded" or "insightful" - it's mostly just an online journal of thoughts and notes. I don't really pretend to be one of those "bloggers," who are busy pretending to change the online media world. I'm just a guy who writes for the amusement of the occassional visitor. If you came here looking for good, old-fashioned information on nihilism, you are just plain out of luck. But, you can read this amusing Primer on Nihilism over at blogspot. Quote of the Day:(or longer, if I don't change it)"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies." British MP George Galloway to Senator Norm Coleman, R-Minnesota Obligatory Stupid Tracker!Going back to this tracker, temporarily. Still, though, please actually take a minute to mail me if you wander in here and tell me what you think. It can't get better if I do this in a vacuum. Unless, you know, it's one of those Dyson vacs - cause those are sweet. We've got one, you know...
Most persistent referral link!
Jennifer Wilbanks tits
Places I hang:Asheville Rock Messageboard: be warned, most posters not from Asheville, most discussion not serious. Quiet Zine's Messageboard, for the Sylvawheeans out further west. Good group, odd metal/indie split. This City Can Burn: They will tell you they are not emo. |
June 2005: Original Hampton Natives want a piece of the peace -- Mississippi Burning Trial -- Turn in your neighbor or do time yourself! -- The President on Fox, FCC ignores this blowjob -- GM to open employee discount to everyone, now that it can afford to after sacking 25,000 -- Deep Throatwarbler Mangrove Another slow week Yea, that's about all you can say about this week. Still no resolution to the missing girl in Aruba, and you have to wonder what the media is skipping to keep this story all-up-in-our-collective-grill for a month. Could it be, perhaps, that we are not supposed to get any in-depth coverage of the Downing Street Memos? Notice there are (today) eleven hits on CNN's search for that phrase. How many for Natalee? Thirty. Well, there's your "liberal media," acting as a watchdog on the power of the Executive Branch to lie to people and go to war for spurious reasons. Every passing day, this effort to "liberate" and "democratize" Iraq smells more and more like Vietnam. Billy Graham and The Last Crusade In other news, evangelist Billy Graham is going off to his last crusade this weekend in New York. Some time later this year, Graham will also publish his final book. Why is this so interesting? Well, it's because of what Graham has been saying in the last few years. In March of 2002, following the release of a Nixon White House tape that contained Nixon slurring Jewish people and Graham offering some tacit agreement to the slur, Graham released a press release asking for forgiveness and apologizing for this incident. Included in that release was this puzzling comment: "I have come to see in deeper ways some of the implications of my faith and message, not the least of which is in the area of human rights and racial and ethnic understanding." In recent weeks, Graham has also backed away from President Bush. Bush has said for years that Graham was instrumental in his being "born again," but now Graham is trying to minimize his influence on the President's spirtual life. It makes you wonder what is going to be in Graham's last book. After all, this is the man who also once said, "I believe in Christ, not in Christianity." We Welcome Our New Development Overlords So much for a slow week! While I was babbling about that, CNN.com broke the story that the Supreme Court ruled that local governments may sieze private property for use in private business developments on the notion that local governments know best what is good for local communities. In this case, that apparently means that what is best for a community is to level a few homes and build a hotel and resort for the nearby business community. Yay for America! Weekend Kablooey! It seems like only yesterday that I posted a tiny little bit about a retired Air Force officer "possibly" locating a missing nuclear bomb off the coast of Georgia. The Air Force decided to follow up on this claim and check out the area where the private search team claimed to detect "high radiation." The result of all this searching, nine months later? The Air Force has found no evidence the nuke is there. Despite this negative finding, the report issued said in part "The best course of action in this matter is to not continue to search for it and to leave the property in place." So, there you have it and it only cost about $180 million dollars. Weekend shorts! It's called blind carbon copy, dumbass. Is it time to invest in Arizona Bay Real Estate? After all, they say there is now a 1 in 20 chance that this is leading up to "The Big One." Yet another breach of credit card info. And these assholes preach about a coming "cashless society?" Mmmmmmmk. Two PETA workers arrested, charged with animal cruelty and illegal dumping. Seriously, does anyone else get the feeling that PETA is the most clever right-wing ploy to discredit well-meaning liberal animal lovers? Local conservatives will probably shit themselves when they figure out what the cable company has added to Video OnDemand around here. Go ahead and jump, might as well jump Really, what else can I say about this story? "Performance artist" Kerry Skarbakka jumped off a building several times in order to "find an artistic response" to people jumping out of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001. As many of you might have guessed, I really do have a low tolerance for what passes as "art," but I think performance art is really a special kind of irritating. Especially when the "artist" tries to sound like he has read French philosophers and is oh-so-fucking-deep-and-meaningful himself. That's when you get mindless quotes like, "Mentally, physically and emotionally, from day to day, we fall. Even walking is falling: You take a step, fall and catch yourself." OK, Mr. Skarbakka, did you get that shit from The Hitchhiker's Guide chapter on learning to fly? Or, to paraphrase many a smart person in the past, "Are you that fucking stupid?" Ok, maybe he isn't stupid. After all, if you track this story back to its source in the Chicago Sun-Times, you will find that this is but one of several little "falls" that Skarbakka has staged and that his little quote about falling being a part of life covers all of that. Still, dude, are you that fucking stupid? More reason to find distaste in Florida Some hurricane shelters in Florida are not open to sex offenders, although similar restrictions are not placed on other violent offenders. This is the sort of thing that illustrates my distaste for "registry lists" and other post-incarceration forms of discrimination against sex offenders. Yes, yes, I know. They committed the most heinous or crimes. Sex crimes. Law & Order: SVU and all that. Still, these people have done their time in prison. Why are they subjected to further harassment when thieves, murderers and others are not? And denying them access to shelter during hurricanes? It just seems a little bit draconian, to me. Jennifer Wilbanks's Tits! Fooled you again, didn't I? For the last time, there are no naked pictures of the Batshit Bride here. None. But, we do have yet another update (and since I am not CNN, I do not have to pretend to be offended when people question the newsworthiness of posts like these). Miss Batshit has reportedly said "I Do" to ReganMedia. For the sum of $500,000 she has sold the rights to her story. Needless to say, some people are pissed. Well, at least we can count on some people to have higher moral standards. After all, you don't see the Man who helped bring down the Nixon Administration selling his story to the highest bidder, do you? Oh, wait. Like I told my friend Wayne today, "In America of the twenty-first century, credibility don't mean shit." A suit has been filed in New York State by the former residents of the area now known as the Hamptons (or, in my polite terminology, Yuppie Wasteland). These former residents are members of the (don't laugh) Shinnecock Tribe, who inhabited the area for 12,000 years until their ancestors were swindled out of the land in 1859. They want something in the neighborhood of $1.7 billion dollars. What they don't want, sadly, is the forced removal of the white folk (and the occassional "sort of white folks," like Russell Simmons). Oh well, we can dream, can't we? The trial of Edgar Ray Killen (must be guilty, hell, he's got three names!) is getting underway in Mississippi. It's being called the "Mississippi Burning" trial, since the case deals with the killings of three civil-rights workers in 1964 and inspired the movie Mississippi Burning. In the film, we see the valiant efforts of two FBI men as they call down dozens of other FBI men to investigate these murders and do justice in the midst of America's racial upheaval. Too bad the film is fiction. The FBI, in fact, couldn't have been bothered to look into this case in 1964. As Howard Zinn will tell you, the FBI in 1964 was "no friend of the civil rights movement." Ah, American History. If only it were taught to children in school. Too bad we have a picture of America to portray that has no room for the truth. Much has been made recently over the military's seeming inability to reach recruitment goals so far this year. To the chagrin of right-wing pundits, the media is reporting this story and some are even reporting the news of abuses of recruiters and the recent "stand down" of recruitment stations nationwide. What isn't getting to light is another one of those odd little facts that might make you go "hmmm." In this case, it is a small provision in the so-called "No Child Left Behind" law of 2002. Section 9528 of "No Child" is the "Armed Forces Recruiter Access to Students and Student Recruiting Information," provision, requiring high schools to give student contact info to the military. In addition to that, JROTC programs are in middle schools and getting children as young as 10 or 11 to march in line and carry a weapon. So, is this part of the "Culture of Life" that Dubya is so goddamn on about? At any rate, you can opt out of the "sharing" of contact information but odds are really, really good that they all ready have the names of your children, your friends, and probably even you. Don't be fooled, ok? The military is not a "job," it's a group of people who are trained to kill other people. Period. Now if, and only if, this were being carried out in clear defense of the nation (you know, like it says in that old piece of paper they call the Constitution) it might be defensible. However, two of the things that Bush and his fellow Project for the New American Century chums are teaching us are: 1) they don't give a damn for the Constitution, and 2) they can and will use the military as the means to enforce their will worldwide. Number two, by the way, also nicely fits a common definition of terrorism. Of course, I can still hear a lot of gnashing of teeth out there from good-intentioned Democrats, mumbling "if only we had won this time, we could have changed all that." No, you couldn't. Kerry authorized this war and he voted for No Child Left Behind which means he implicitly supported Section 9528. That man was a hawk in disguise and a poor disguise it was. Oh well, like I said in 2004, "after four more years of Bush, this country might actally be ready for a real change..." But that was a rare drop of optimism in a sea of realism. Stop it, already. This is ridiculous. Thirteen of the last twenty search engine referrals to this page are for the breasts of the batshit bride. If you came here looking for that, please seek help, you need it. Also disturbing, the "keywords" section of this page of results. House Bill 1528 to make us all criminals H.R. 1528 is currently going through the House of Representatives these days, having recently sailed out of the Judiciary Committee. Its title is a seemingly Good Thing, "Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005." Now, who doesn't want to defend America's Most Vulnerable? After all, what about the children? What, indeed, about the children? But this bill goes pretty far down the road to "protecting children" in the War on Drugs. In fact, it goes so far that not even Fox reporter John Kasich was thrilled about the idea in a recent piece on the bill. So, what does the bill say? Well, among other things it mandates a two-year minimum sentence for anyone who fails to report a drug dealer to the authorities under certain circumstances. Welcome to America in the Twenty-First Century. And while they have us consuming the manfactured consent of another celebrity trial, lost teenager or action against Iraqi insurgents they are going to try to pass this bill of into law. Hopefully the Senate will do what the Senate does best and kill it. GM fires 25000, offers the rest of us deals on cars Unable to sell any more vehicles that require as much gas as a M-1 tank, automaker GM recently announced the closing of several plants and the loss of 25,000 more jobs over the next three years (GM has eliminated 22,000 positions over the last five years). As if that weren't enough, some other set of geniuses decided that this was the proper time to also launch a sales campaign called GM Employee Discount for Everyone. Now that, boys and girls, is Public Fucking Relations. Take notes. Fox News Massages President's Balls On TV! Fox News guy Neil Cavuto was granted a long interview with President Bush recently and I happened to catch the last bit of it. Now, I don't know that Cavuto really massaged the Commander in Chief's nads but I am willing to bet that he didn't grill him too hard on anything important. Here's a pretty long quote from Bush in reference to a few questions about the housing market and the economy in general:
Now, you know what? That all sounds pretty reasonable. I am actually OK with most of this. So, my question to the President would be, "Why the fuck don't you increase the minimum wage or take other measures to actually improve the standard of living for ALL Americans instead of just paying lip service to your stupid-assed tax cuts and hocus-pocus privatized health services and Social Security plans?" Fuck Bush. America The Beautiful The Freedom of Speech is a wonderful thing. It lets people express themselves openly and that is a Good Thing, even if what they are saying is some of the most backwards, hateful and ignorant pigshit ever spewed from between human lips. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you The American Taliban. Hump Day! Fuck your boss! Before we go any further today, let me just make this one last attempt at reaching a certain segment of the online population. Stop trying to find naked pictures of Jennifer Wilbanks! First off, that shit is old fucking news. Second, not every batshit bitch that hits CNN for 24 hours is hot. OK? Good. Let's move on. OK, to be honest, that's really the only point I wanted to make today. Screw it, it's a slow week. Weekend Warriors! First off, welcome to June. For those of you keeping score, NFD is heading towards its third birthday in September. I mention that because it occurred to me just now and also because it's true. Hey, it's a weekend, what do you want? Secondly, what in the name of all that crawls on this planet is going on with you people? According to my referral tracker (see sidebar), there are an inordinate number of people looking for sites that have pictures of Jennifer Wilbanks's tits. This is strongly disturbing to me. Mainly, why do you people want to see the bare chest of Miss Batshit and secondly why the fuck makes you come here looking for them? Fuck's sake, get an account on a porn site, download as much as you can and then get offline, permanently. Deep Thoughts on Deep Throat... Thirty years of speculation ended this week when Vanity Fair announced that it would be running a story this month called "I'm The Guy They Used To Call Deep Throat." Written by a California attorney and purporting to be the confession of W. Mark Felt, former Number Two at the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover and, according to the story, the most famous and most closely guarded confidential source in history. Until confirmed later in the day by the Washington Post itself, this story consumed most of the daytime chatter on the cable news channels. And then, things got truly strange. Following an election year that proved that thirty years is not long enough to forget about Vietnam, the revelation that Deep Throat was not only a real person and not only "someone inside Justice" but a high-ranking member of the FBI seems to have caught many people completely off guard. The pundits began a full-court press to redefine the age of Watergate for an audience that cannot really concieve of a time when the government was anything less than trustworthy even as the remnants of that time began to exhume themselves from whatever parts of the world they were in to begin speculating on motives and causes and, worse, the status of Deep Throat in American journalism and politics. Felt's family hails him as a hero, former Nixon people have opined that he should be charged with various crimes for "leaking" to the press. The press itself is hoping that the story shows a wary public the need for confidential sources when reporting on the (mis)workings of the government. Some say he was a traitor, some are reminding us that Felt himself was later charged with the same sort of illegal activity that he found unsavory in the Nixon crowd. Still others still mutter and murmur that the whole thing was a hoax concocted by Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and their publishers in order to make their original book All The President's Men seem a little less sterile - that maybe this was one of several sources that all add up to a character like "Deep Throat". All of this is worth talking about, and at great length, but we are likely to be held to at most a couple more days of interest in this story before national attention gets thrown to either a verdict in the Jackson trial or some other similar piece of trite nonsense. In the meantime, we have been treated to some wonderful bits and pieces of punditry and idiocy in the past few days. Witness none other than G. Gordon Liddy on Anderson Cooper's show, saying "a law enforcement officer who gains information and evidence that a crime has been committed is ethically bound to go to the grand jury and seek an indictment." Keep in mind that this is the G. Gordon Liddy who actually planned the break-in at the Watergate. Fine for him to lecture about what law enforcement should do, especially when he has also made comments on the best away to take out Federal agents in the past. If Liddy's comments seem a bit odd to you, perhaps Bob Novak's comment that Felt was "the worst of J. Edgar Hoover's toadies" on the (still not quite dead) Crossfire on Tuesday seemed strange. Novak continued, "Felt was one of the -- was one of the Hoover mafia. He cleaned out all the good guys from the -- from the FBI. And he made life miserable for the Nixon appointees over there." And this is just the first week of this story. Undoubtedly there is plenty of leftover damage to America from Watergate, despite the fact that "our long national nightmare" was supposedly put to rest three decades ago. |
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