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)
"The candidate does not speak for the campaign."
Tucker Bounds, adviser to John McCain. Unfortunately, this quote is not directly sourced but he supposedly said this on Fox News. Go figure.
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...
This space reserved for future misuse:
This sentence is in Spanish when you are not looking. Esta oracin esta en ingles cuando usted no esta mirando.
Democrats: One Confused Bunch of Folks
There are a number of things in this world that I cannot bring myself to fully comprehend, such as; why people can't use merge lanes, why the History Channel has a show called MonsterQuest and why it seems large chunks of the Democratic Party still have a sentimental hard-on for President Bill Clinton.
Last night, Clinton took the stage at the DNC to thunderous applause. Thunderous and continuous, lasting nearly four minutes and during which Clinton asked the delegates twice to sit down. One shot from the floor showed a female delegate with an almost post-orgasmic look on her face. All for the Best Republican President this country has seen in the last half-century.
Let's face it. Bill Clinton was a pro-business centrist who essentially got lucky by facing off against an unpopular Republican (who was largely unpopular for two things: a tanking economy and for failing to remove Saddam Hussein from power following the First Persian Gulf Extended National Guard Weekend - the former was probably not his fault and the latter was, as we all now know, probably a good idea). He was also lucky enough to be in a race with the first serious third party candidate in years to suck some of the votes from the Elder Bush and, no, this does not mean I think Nader sucked votes from Gore - that was a completely different effect on the election.
Once in office, Bill (and Hillary) made a great show of being Progressive Democrats: by "working" on a National Health Care plan and getting the military to not ask about gayness and, in turn, gays in the military to not tell. Neither of those plans worked, though (although, in fairness they did get the FMLA passed, which gives Americans a nice 12-week unpaid leave from work for family care - especially childbirth. This unpaid leave still leaves Americans pretty much dead last in the civilized world for decent maternity leave; cf: the UK - 52 weeks, 39 with pay plus an additional 13 weeks unpaid each year until the child is 5, 18 if the child is disabled; Canada - 15 weeks paid; France - 16 weeks paid; even nations such as the Congo, Burundi, Ethiopia, Chile and Afghanistan offer paid maternity leaves). Now that's Progressive!
But that is also about as close as it got. For the remainder of his term, sandwiched in amongst the scandals and the trials and the investigations, Clinton's White House seemed content to pass whatever nonsense the Republican legislature sent over. Some of these wonderful items included NAFTA, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 - which more or less completely deregulated the media and communications industry, which has led to the greatest concentration of media and communications ownership in history and which also included the CDA - the provision that not only made typing "fuck" on a webpage a violation of federal law, it also - by definition - made posting the text of the Supreme Court's decision in FCC V. Pacifica (George Carlin's "seven words you cannot say on television" case) illegal, the DMCA, and, over a period of time, the more or less wholesale dismantling of whatever pathetic social welfare system this country had in place after Reagan and Bush started tearing at it in the 80's.
On the bright side, we got a bogus economic bubble (the tech boom).
So, why, after all this are the Democrats still in love with Bill and Hillary? We may never know the answer.
Jon Stewart continues to complain about media; shocked they don't listen
First off, let me just say that I like Jon Stewart. He's a funny guy and he has some really good ideas about culture and politics and even about the role of the media in our society. However, I think it's time he either puts up or shuts up about the media.
Stewart spoke to reporters in Denver yesterday morning and, in the spirit of his almost four year old appearance on CNN's Crossfire, berated the media for their lame ass political coverage.
Please pardon me while I yawn and stretch.
Yes, I complain about the media. Yes, I think much of the problem with the American political process stems from the media's coverage of said process. I also think, though, that I am not in a position to affect any sort of change in how the media operates or behaves. Jon Stewart, though, is in a position to do just that. After all, he is widely credited with having been behind CNN's decision to cancel Crossfire (although Tucker Carlson claims the show had been pretty much dead for six months before Stewart's appearance). Jon Stewart, you are a successful media entity and so, as I said before, the time has come to put up or shut up.
It has been four years since that appearance on Crossfire and it seems as though you don't think anything has changed in the media. So, as a successful guy with some pull and maybe even some money behind you, why not do the smart thing? Why not produce a show that lives up to your expectations? I'm looking for a new job, so I'd love to help (especially if it means I get to spend time in New York, although Mrs. C refuses to move up there). Otherwise, you are just going to continue tilting at windmills.
The media isits own sort of monolithic system, with its own inertia. The pack mentality has been long known and well documented by media critics. There is no real reason to think that standing in front of these guys while they munch on muffins and sip coffee and telling them how much they suck at their job will ever help. After all, Jon, they all still have their jobs, don't they? Hell, even Paul Begala still appears on TV once in awhile and Tucker Carlson was recently a regular for Dan Abrams.
Now, maybe I should have stuck with my notes on this topic and/or maybe I should not have tried to write this at 3 am, because I am just not sure if I have made my point clearly enough: I want Jon Stewart to start his own damn news show (and hire me). He doesn't have to stop doing The Daily Show, but he does need to stop just bitching about how the media operates and give them a show to elevate themselves toward. That is the only way to change an entrenched structure; by giving it something new.
The return of the Prodigal Nihilist?
In the past days and weeks, I have been seriously considering devoting some of my precious, and rare, free time to rebooting this pathetic excuse of a web journal. Er, weblog. Um, blog. Whatever it's called.
Sadly, most of the fun things I could write about are almost over and done with. I've missed the primaries. The Olympics. The 2008 summer movie season. All these things were full of amazingly horrible crap that would have fed the masses, those who are starved for some insight into our insightless existence.
Plus, as my spellchecker just informed me, many of you are looking for new ways to mangle the English language and our precious words.
So, if you have just wandered in here from a google search or a check of some forum profile or just somehow managed, like one of those fabled monkeys sitting at one of those fabled typewriters, to bang your fat fingers down and get here, just be patient...
Something may really piss me off soon.
In fact, something just did.
OK, long story short. In order to create this Epic Example of Web 0.8 design, I used to ssh into my shell account here at freeshell, open up pico and go to town typing all my code in. It was time consuming, but satisfying in sort of a smarmy "look at me, I'm old school and you use some fucking Fisher Price My First Dreamweaver bullshit that you got off the fucking "Cool Shit" section of facebook or something like that."
It was also a major pain in the ass.
So, this time around, I figured, "hey, I've got this mac and I've got text editors and I've an FTP app. No problem. I'll just snag an old page, copy it into textedit, write some new shit in the body and upload it back up to the server and go to sleep.
That was over an hour ago. Before my eyes rolled completely around in their sockets after noticing that my CSS was failing to load I decided to check the actual file on the server, via ssh. What I saw in this file was an indescribable bunch of monkey shit masquerading as text. I could almost make out "DOCTYPE" in all the crap and shit like this:
#$@#*)@(#&%#)*(#*$)(*## @() )(*# #)($* ()#*# )(* #$*#@)(#_#*)#($@#@)#(@ E *#&$$&#*$&(# #(* $*(# J #$(*&#($*&# )@(#()@ #*@()#* @# @)(#*@# L\\
So, I suppose I'm stuck with the old way. Again. I mean, hell, it even screwed up my clever sidebar down below and to the left. Sigh.
Because it really just boils down to this:
Useless Info:
This site, despite a paltry 800 hits since May 2005 is still the number one search result on google for the phrase "Nihilism for Dummies." Go figure.
Contact info:
Write to me and tell me that I am cynical, depressing and a pessimist and I will write back agreeing with every word!
Coming soon!
Convention coverage! Campaign coverage! Full collision coverage with the oddly-attractive girl in the Progressive commercials! A sea change in my attitude! Just kidding! More of the same bitching and moaning!
etscape Gray, circa 1996, in Full
Effect, yo.