Happy New Year . . . and Outta Town

Just fyi.

I’ll be out of town for a week or so. Look for a return of Xcargo around 10 January.

Happy New Year.

President Ford

President Ford is dead. Let us be saddened. Let us praise a good man.

Let us weep that his like is not to be found in the GOP, much less the White House, today.

Merry Xmas #2

And in rather similar terms . . . but on the other side of the fence . . .

I see in the paper that the Christian Right, which has made “keep Christ in Christmas” a major part of its crusade against Liberals, is actually turning a tidy profit from the whole business. It’s selling pins and bumper stickers, as well as raising funds from gullible Church-goers, to defend “Merry Christmas” from “Happy Holidays.” The article I read said that American Family Association alone has taken in $550,000 in “sales of buttons and magnets stamped with the slogan ‘Merry Christmas: It’s Worth Saying.’”

Gosh. Cash and mean-spirited politics.

That’s certainly what I want under my Christmas tree.

Don’t you?





(Source: LA Times, reprinted in Boston Globe, December 24, 2006. P. A13)

Merry Xmas #1

Last time I wished everyone a “Happy Holiday.” That’s PC-speak for “Merry Christmas.”

Actually, I do have mixed feelings about saying “Merry Christmas” this time of year. On the one hand, I do genuinely understand that it is both unpleasant and intolerant to assume that everyone belongs to the same faith tradition as I.

Yet . . .

And yet . . .

Have you noticed that the people who make the biggest fuss about it are really and truly, deep down, at base, secretly saying something along the lines of “Diversity means that if I celebrate it, it’s good. If you celebrate it, then scr*w you, you vicious Nazi b*stard" ?

Happy Holidays

Whatever you celebrate this season . . . HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Separated At Birth?

The scary thing? You know I don’t much care for that Sacha Baron Cohen movie, which I believe is anti-American and bullying to boot.

But, well . . . you know . . . I saw on the web a photo of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressing that conference of Holocaust Deniers . . .

Is it just me, or does he look more like Borat with every passing day?

Seward Collins

Here's my newest adventure in video weirdness. It's a short piece on the chap who is the subject of my most recent book and can be found at Youtube, here:

Youtube Seward Collins

or at the Internet Archive, here:

Internet Archive Collins


cheers

mjt

Alas!

You know the tragic thing? After all the sh*t the neconnies have pulled . . . the slander, the lies, the bullying, the fraudulent impeachment, 9/11, Homeland “Defense,” Iraq, Katrina . . .

The first thing I thought when I heard about poor Senator Tim Johnson’s illness was:

Check his throat for finger prints, ‘cause sure as h*ll they’re gonna be Ch*ney's.

MBAs

Did you see in the news the other day that some study has shown that MBA students cheat more than another kind?

Gee.

So, let me get this straight. We’ve got a culture which says that winning is the only thing that matters, which teaches that “business ethics” are a contradiction in terms, which points with pride to Enron and sweetheart deals for crony capitalists in Iraq, and which chants “increase shareholder value” like a mantra while at the same time encouraging every CEO to act like a blood-sucking, flesh shredding, sewer shark.

And MBAs cheat in school.

Gosh. Who wudda thunk it?

watch for

WATCH FOR GRAND RE-OPENING.

Coming soon . . .

Mo’ Borat

Still, kinda interesting when you think about it.

Borat, a.k.a. Sacha Baron Cohen, makes a film in which he says that all . . . ALL . . . Americans are racist, blood-thirsty, warmongering, anti-Semitic, materialistic, bigoted, brain-dead, Neo-Nazis with big bombs and small wing-wangs . . .

And America . . .

Responds by making his movie number one at the box office.

Whoa.

What’s the line by Yakov Smirnoff? “What a country.”

Borat the Bully

So, am I the only person on the planet who thinks that the movie Borat is a wretched excuse for entertainment and that Sacha Baron Cohen, the alleged comedian who plays the title role, is a bully and a moralizing, anti-American prig who should suffer extreme civil penalties for invasion of privacy?

Uh . . . anyone . . . out there?

Maybe it’s just me.

Sigh.

Election

So we woke up this a.m. to discover that the Democrats had swept the House, made big gains in the Senate, and dominated many local elections. In fact, the word “landslide” comes to mind.

That’s a LOT of votes. And most of ‘em, at least, even got recorded. Hanging chads, “lost” ballots, intimidation of voters by neocon bully-boys, fraudulent recounts . . . all (mostly) missing from the scene.

Gosh. Has anybody checked? I mean, Karl Rove is all right, isn’t he? Not sick or anything?

Mutant Pomeranians

Have you noticed that I have stopped referring to “Republicans” when I talk about the current administration? There is a good reason for that. Near as I can tell, the Bushies aren’t Republicans. They spend where the Republicans would save, interfere when Republicans would leave damn well enough alone, and rush in where Republicans would dash the other way.

In fact, come right down to it, a Republican is to a Bushie what Hello Kitty is a to a three eyed mutant giant Pomeranian with rabies and a side order of halitosis.

And that’s on a good day.

A little history

So, a little history: as the Roman Empire entered its final days, the leadership elite managed to largely exempt itself from any form of taxation while at the same time shifting the ever increasing costs of civil administration and defense to a peasantry (in effect, the middle class) that was already stretched to the breaking point. Then, too, to damper down social unrest, the same elite turned to religion as a means of social control, which is how Christianity eventually emerged as the Roman State religion, though only after the Empire had experimented with several other options, including a cult of the Invincible Sun. And, finally, to deal more with internal threats than external, the elite moved to increasingly militarize that state, so that in the end Emperors paraded about in military attire even when they, themselves, had never gotten closer to a battle than watching gladiators making each other into chopped liver on Sundays.

So, let’s sum up, shall we? A decaying social order in which the poor pay the expenses of the rich, the state is propped up by increasingly intolerant cults, and the commander-in-chief staggers about in helmet and gear that do not fit him.

Hmmm.

Why does that sound familiar?

Lesser of Two . . .

You know, much as I detest the Bushies, I gotta confess. I don’t see anybody else out there that’s has much to offer.

I mean, come on, the Democrats haven’t had a good idea since Truman dropkicked MacArthur’s Pyongyang outta Korea.

Oh me of little faith

Another cheery religious news day today . . . with the papers full of stories of people blowing themselves and other people up in the name of God . . . abusing alter boys in the name of God . . . running TV scams that bilk little old ladies out of Social Security checks in the name of God . . . voting for Right Wing psychopaths in the name of God . . . and so on.

You know, after much thought, here’s my take on faith.

Given a choice between it and good douse of doubt, I’ll take the doubt.

You’re more likely to survive it.

WMDs

So, I see now that there’s some dispute about the North Korean nuclear test. Some specialists are saying that the blast was neither as big nor as destructive as the North Koreans said it was.

Gee . . .lying about weapons of mass destructions (WMDs).

Wonder who they could have learned that from.

More on North K. Nukes

You know the tragic thing? I mean, the REALLY sad thing?

After all the lies and falsehoods the Bushites have shoveled at us . . . after all the things they’ve done that were immoral, illegal, unethical, and just plain wrong . . . after all the swift-boating and corruption and K-streeting . . .

The first thing I thought when I heard about the North Korean nuke was:

“Gee, how conveniently close to November.”

North Korean Fall-Out

North Korea has finally gone ahead and built and detonated a Bomb...

Here’s some history. The Clinton Administration’s patient diplomacy had largely pulled the fangs of the North Korean nuke program. The North Koreans had demilitarized their reactors and allowed inspectors and cameras into their facilities.

But, that was under that wimpy Clinton and his spineless liberals. Along comes the Bush II regime of good, muscular, tough-minded neocons and Real Men, like Condi. And none of that pussy footing around for them. No Sir! With them we get an aggressive, hard nosed, two fisted foreign policy. You betcha!

And so, now, we’ve got fall-out in South East Asia and every nation in the region gearing up for war.

Gosh.

And people say there’s no such thing as progress.

Our Choice

Periodically, nations decide who they wish to be.

In the 1860s, for instance, the United States decided (via force of arms) that it would not be a country of planters in a semi-feudal agricultural economy. Rather, it would be an industrial, bourgeois, classical liberal, free labor society with all the good and ill that entails. By like token, in the 1940s and ‘40s, many European nations struggled with the question of whether they wished to be empires, with potent overtones of fascism, or modern states. With one or two exceptions, they choose to be states, again for good or ill.

I think that today, the United States faces a similar choice. The next elections will determine whether we, as a people, wish to be the inhabitants of an America which embodies the best ideals of the Founding Fathers . . . of reason, and humanity, and tolerance . . . or which is, instead, the America of this Administration.

That is to say, a plutocratic theocracy headed by hypocrites, thieves, and bullies.

and still more on $2 billion

And MORE on $2 billion . . .

But, of course, there’s no way around it, really. No matter what hard things I say about the Left, it was the Right (or, Bush-Right) that got us into this mess. Despite all the propaganda and disinformation, the smear jobs and the Swift-Boating, the spin and the distortions and the flag-wrapping . . .it was the Right, the Bushies, who got us into Iraq with a collection of bald face lies about WMDs, who fought the war on the cheap and so put American soldiers into peril, who have been so focused on the oil fields of the Arab world that they are now failing to notice that the real authors of 9-11 are happily re-conquering Afghanistan, and, oh yes, who have not yet managed to find much less kill or capture Ben Laden.

So, about that “mission accomplished” thing . . .

If this is Bushies’ idea of triumph, then Good God save me from ever seeing what they’d call a disaster.

on the other hand . . .

More on the $2 billion dollars a day . . .

By an interesting coincidence, a column in the June 2006 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN noted that the current cost of petrol refinery is about $2 billion. So, in other words, every day that passes that we have an Army hostage in Iraq we spend the cash which might otherwise have gone to the cost of constructing the sort of industrial infrastructure which could save us from price hikes and fuel shortages.

But, just to show I’m detestable to everyone . . . Right, Left, and Center . . .

We COULD have spent that $60 billion a month on 30 new refineries, but according ot the article in the SCI-AM, we wouldn’t have, because good and proper environmentalists, tree huggers, bird h*mpers, and not-in-my-backyarders have managed to make it impossible for refineries to be built in this country since 1970 or there’s about—which, by the way, is one of the reasons why when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast gasoline prices went up like a sky rocket on helium on a day without gravity. A big chunk of our existing refineries, you see, went off line, and we didn’t have anything to take up the slack.

Ah, the joy of it . . .

The Right spends us into to poor house, and the Left locks the door so we can’t get out once we’re there.

$2,000,000,000 A Day

So I saw on the Web the other day that, by some measures, we are now spending $2 billion a day in Iraq.

That’s $2 BILLION . . . or $2,000,000,000 . . . every damn DAY. Or, $14 billion a week. Or $60 billion every month.

You know, I gotta admit, the Bush administration is efficient.

I mean, when I was a boy, we used to say that whenever you got Republicans into the White House, they’d “fiscal responsible” (new verb) us into a Depression. And whenever you got Democrats there, they’d moralize us into a War.

However, with the Bushies . . .

They’ve managed to do both at the same time.

Now THAT’S efficiency.

The aardvark, the wombat, and Dick Cheney.

The aardvark, the wombat, and Dick Cheney.

All proof positive that the Creator finished inventing Cannabis before he got to vertebrates.

JJ from 'ell

J.J. Bittermuch, the world’s angriest man, writes me from the fifth circle (the Wraithful) of Hell:

“The smug woman says, ‘The more I see men, the more I love my dog.’

“I reply, ‘And I thank your poodle for removing you from the gene pool.’”

Definition

Abstraction — definition: a moral absolute like “Virtue,” “Greatness,” “National Security”, “Race,” and so on, which allows us to kill and maim without feeling a twinge of guilt.

See Abscess.

E. Coli

So, people are dropping dead from E. Coli contaminated spinach. Thousands of acres of the crop are being plowed under in a desperate attempt to stop the spread of the disease.

Of course, if we’d adopted a program of sanitizing food by means of low level irradiation, the way we wanted to you a few years back, all of this could have avoided.

But, you see, radiation is “bad.” And Those Who Knew Best protested and jumped up and down and said “Three Mile Island” and claimed that we were all gonna turn into mutant freaks with two eyes and three heads. So, we didn’t do it.

Now, we’ve got dead people and a ruined industry.

Don’t you just love People Who Know Best? Who are On The Side of the Angels? And who will Save Us From Ourselves?

Say, I got an idea. Most of ‘em are Vegetarians. Many of ‘em are Vegans. So, they wouldn’t object to eating nothing but spinach for a few decades.

It would save the spinach industry. Take care of all these rotting vegetables. And best of all, provide nice snug homes for all those poor, dispossessed E. Coli.

How could anyone in league with Angels possibly object?

Pre-Texting

So, as I read in the papers, it seems that HP has been accused of “pre-texting” – i.e., gathering private information on its critics and the press.

Gosh.

So let me get this straight. We have an enormous, multinational corporation in a Bushite-Reaganoid age when “share holder value” is a religious mantra while “regulation” is a swear word, and its crewed by MBAs who’ve been trained from birth to win at ANY cost, and who believe as God is their witness that “business ethics” means disembowel the other guy before he can get you first . . .

And then it spies on its enemies . . .

And we’re gonna pretend that we’re surprised?

ABD?

By the way, since I’ve passed my oral exam, I’m now known as “All But Dissertation.”

That’s ABD for short.

Hmmm.

Sounds a bit like a personality disorder, doesn’t it?

foul mouthed

Hard to discuss my education in polite conversation. How do you say “I’ve passed my orals” without sounding like out of a South Park episode?

I passed.

Well, you ask yourself, where the ‘ell is ole Michael Jay?

Answer: I’ve been getting ready for my Ph.D. oral exam. You see, after about 20 years in the trade press, I woke up and realized that if I wrote one more article about disk drives, I was gonna kill somebody. So, I went back to school to get a degree or two in history.

The oral exam was in some ways the capstone of the whole effort. The dissertation is still out there to be written, of course, but, still, the exam was the real biggie. It was the thing which could have reduced all my efforts to naught in an afternoon.

The exam was last week.

To my surprise, I passed. The committee even said my answers almost made sense. Tragic, really. Clearly, the whole bunch must have been drinking heavily since breakfast. Remind me to send them those flyers from AA, won’t you?

Quacks like a rhino

Republican pundits are making a great deal over the Dem’s use of the term “culture of corruption” to describe the Bushite Administration. They say it’s propaganda and unjust. But, then, after the all the proonhockey the GOP sleeze-meisters spewed out during the Clinton years, they aren’t exactly in the tossing stones category.

But, more to the point . . . a culture of corruption? Well, now, let’s see . . . DeLay, no-bid contracts in Iraq, a more or less overt attempt to turn New Orleans into a whites-only theme park, the K-street project . . .

Hmm.

You know the old saying about quacking like and walking like and its probably not a rhinoceros?

The perfect soluton

Say, just fyi, I’ve come up with the perfect solution for the current crisis in the Middle East (and everywhere else).

We take the whole state of Israel and move it to an island in the Pacific. Then we build a 300 meter tall concrete wall around the Arab world plus Iran and Afghanistan (think the Hoover dam on steroids). Then we collect up the Neocons, the Religious Right, the Bush Administration, radio talk show hosts, Islamic Fundamentalists, North Korean Communists, Latin American Drug Kingpins, serial killers, and people who talk loudly on cell phones in restaurants, and send them to someplace far, far away. Pluto, maybe.

They’ll be so happy together. Among their own kind.

The more things change

Hmm. Let’s see. Since last I posted we’ve had war, death, destruction, chaos, corruption, the more or less open Fascistization of the White House, a killer heat wave, threats of a bird flu pandemic, missiles and nukes in the hands of unstable nations, gas at four bucks a gallon, and, oh, yes, American Idol is top of the charts.

Gee.

Glad to know that things are the same ‘round here. Hate to think I’d missed something important.

Sorry, Sorry, So sorry . . .

Sorry . . . SO sorry . . . I've not posted in like, forever. Slight case of too many things hitting the fan when the fan was rotating at warp speed. Think splatter. Big league.

But, I promise, I'll soon be back and running. Or posting, anyway.

Really.

mjt

Damned if we Do and Da . . . oh, hell, you know the rest

So, now that the Bushits have got into this war in Iraq, what are our options?

Well, number one, we could Hang Tough, Stay The Course, and remain in the country till Mission Accomplished . . . which means that lots of Americans and lots and lots of Iraqis will keep getting killed while we’re in the middle of a covert civil war and every crackpot terrorist in the known universe targets America, and, oh, yes, there’s no oil coming out of Iraq to fuel our nice shiny new hummers.

Hmm. That’s pretty ugly. So . . .

Option two, we End The War, Pull Out, and Bring Our Boys (and Girls) Home . . . and, that means there’s an overt civil war, lots and lots and lots of Iraqis get slaughtered, every crackpot terrorist in the known universe learns that if you just kill enough Americans then the country caves, which means a bunch of us get killed, too, and, oh, yes, there’s no oil coming out of Iraq to fuel our nice shiny new Hummers.

Uh . . .

Say, would someone please stand up and let me know which one of these is the lesser of two evils? I’m having a hard time figuring it out.

What they've done to Chirstianity

I go to church regularly. One of my better friends is a minister. And yet . . .

Today I heard that among the witnesses at the Enron Trial was a professor from Texas Christian University. He seemed reasonable and learned. But, you know what?

After Bush, after Tom Delay, after Pat Robertson, after the Religious Right, after the invasion of Iraq, after the pedophile scandal in the Church, after the bombings of abortion clinics, after attempts to impose Creationism on public schools, after . . . well, after everything . . .

The very first thing I thought was: How could anyone take seriously a witness from an institution with “Christian” and “Texas” in its name?

new blog

For those who might be interested, I've set up a new blog devoted to my video experiments. It is:

http://michaeljayvideo.blogspot.com/

cheers

mjt

Starr System

Speaking of Ken Starr (remember him?) there was another piece in the paper this morning that interested me. It seems that state prosecutors are notoriously underpaid. Thus, many of them have to take second jobs (the paper mentioned one who was a dance instructor, another who worked for a funeral home) just to make ends meet.

Now, this is significant, for you will recall that state prosecutors are the people responsible for convicting murderers and rapists. But, them, we don’t pay.

Meanwhile, how many million dollars was it that Ken Starr blew through in an attempt to prove there was a stain on a blue dress . . .?

So, I guess . . . when the GOP talks about “law and order” . . . it means defending Dacron everywhere.

Moral Authority

The paper this morning was a cheery thing. Just chock-o-block full of stories of pedophiles protected and sheltered by the Church, a Priest accused of being a member of sex ring which exploited women and children and who later murdered a nun in a particularly horrible way, and the Vatican continuing to oppose condom use even in the face of AIDS.

And these are the people who think they have the moral authority to tell us how to live our lives.

Come again?

That’s like Ken Starr lecturing on judicial ethics.

a video experiment

Something different today. I've been experimenting with video. Pretty creepy stuff. I like it.

Go Here to see.

once more, uncalled for

The thing to remember about the people who put Bush into office, and keep him there, is that a big chunk of them really and truly, as God is their witness, believe that Jesus was blonde, Jews worship Satan, and anyone who can read a whole comic strip in a single sitting without moving their lips is most likely a Communist.

ah, sh*t

Jeez, but the Left irritates me. I’m supposed to be a Leftie . . . or at least that’s what hyperventilating libertarians tell me when I suggest that just maybe we could use public schools and state roads . . . but, you know, sometimes . . . all the same . . .

Like for instance:

I see in the paper that the plumbers’ union in Philadelphia has come down with a Diktat against waterless urinals because it means fewer bribes for organized crim- . . .er, I mean, less work for the guild. And the union leadership’s gotten pretty darn fierce about it.

Which means, of course, the union has handed a nearly perfect weapon to its own enemies, and at this very moment the Greens who ought to be the plumbers’ natural allies are staring in aghast horror and thinking about all those millions of gallons of clean water that COULD have been saved but won’t be . . . and Right-wing Pundits are jumping up and down and saying “See? See? We told you they were a threat to everything pure and beautiful.”

So, note to the union:

Gee, Guys, why don’t you just to shoot yourself in the head? Be a lot quicker.

Delay Departs

So Tom “The Hammer” Delay is gone. That’s a good thing.

But, come on, let’s face it. Not much is going to change.

At least, not until somebody on the side of the angels learns to be even meaner ‘n he was.

seduced necons

You may have noticed that I haven’t been saying as many nasty things about Neoconservatives lately. There is a good reason for this. Lately, some of the better sort of Neocon intellectuals have been bailing out of the Bush camp. You see, they noticed this little fact that they were being used by the W. Bushies to provide intellectual cover for some d*mn dumbest decisions yet made by human beings in elective office and now they’re basically being hung out to dry. They were, in other words, seduced and abandoned.

Or, rather more precisely, they got scr*wed.

And they didn’t even get dinner first.

Altar Boys: take two

So, a certain large Church, which shall remain nameless, has launched an effort to drive gay people from its ranks. This Church has said they are “immoral.”

This, you understand, is after the same Church played “hide the pedophile” for several decades.

It is for this reason that I’ve begun experimenting with the art of collage. One of my little works is pasted here.

Seems fitting, don’t you think?

a completely uncalled for remark

The Feminist says “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” She is, of course, quite wrong.

Now, if altar boys could knock-up bishops . . .that would be another story entirely.

how it works

Okay, let me get this straight. Clinton didn’t nuke Beijing, so the Bushites said he was a traitor and a wimp and probably had a six Chinese trans-gendered hookers chained to the wall in the Lincoln bedroom.

Now, W. Bush is asleep at the switch when Islam-o-Nazis fly airplanes into New York and DC, then lets Bennie Laydown escape, then invades the wrong country with too few people . . . and then he wanted to sell at least three ports to Arab nations which might happen to have close connections to the very same chaps who’d like to ship WMDs in container ships into the country.

And people say he’s a Patriot.

Okay. Fine.

Just trying to figure out how it works around here.

sorry to be quiet for so long

Sorry I’ve quiet for so long. It’s just that . . . well . . .you know . . . it’s hard to write anything that’ll get a chuckle about current politics. I mean, really, compared to master comedians like Bush and his analogs in the DNC, I’m just not even in the same league.

On Noble Ideals

Ideal — definition, an ennobling and enlightening concept which exists in the ephemeral to thus justify our doing terrible things to people in the material. See Liberation, Peace & Justice, etc.

The Slime

You know, I haven’t written much about Dickie (“Quick-Draw”) Cheney and his fun little gun. Mostly that’s because, at first, I thought it was just an accident and a personal tragedy.

Yet, with the passing of time, that’s gotten harder to believe. We have discovered that there were so many lies and evasions . . .

And, you know, I can’t help thinking, you remember back when President Clinton’s secretary of commerce, Ron Brown, was killed in a plane crash — which was, gawdamit, an accident — and almost instantly all the Neocon GOP slime spreaders came out from under their rocks to tell the world that he’d been assassinated?

Well, imagine, just imagine what would have happened . . . the stories, the falsehoods, the dis-information, the smear job up the wazoo . . . that we’d be living with now if Cheney had been a Democrat.

Search Engine Boogie

So the Feds want all the search engines, like Google, to provide the details of anyone who looks for illegal stuff. But, not to worry — the Feds tell us — we’re only looking for perverts, child pornographers, and terrorists.

Well . . . them . . . plus ACLU members, people who voted for Gore, New Orleans residents who aren’t thrilled with FEMA, Blue State citizens, critics of the war in Iraq, and anyone who has ever vaguely suspected that Karl Rove looks lot like a warthog with a glandular problem.

But, hey! Six of one, half a dozen . . .

Those Cartoons

So, like most of us, I’ve been watching the riots in Islamic countries about those rather vile cartoons published in Denmark.

And, like most of us, I get all huffy about freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, and, besides, maybe we in the West would be a little less eager to print pictures of the Prophet with a bomb on his head if maybe his followers had declined, at least once in a while, not to blow us and each other up at regular intervals for about the last half century.

But, that said . . . given the realities of modern international strife . . . and all those hyperventilating mobs in places like Teheran . . . and everything . . . well . . .

Note to the Danish Press: If you really wanted to commit hari kari, couldn’t you have stayed at home and shot yourself in the head? Would have been a lot quicker.

Knight Mare

J.J. Bittermuch writes me from the fifth circle (the Wraithful) of Hell:

In Boston there’s a local publication that covers the night-life and café scene. In a recent issue, the publication printed the results of an informal survey of women asking if chivalry was dead. The general opinion was that it was not only dead but dang near starting to draw flies.

One typical comment from an interviewee was “Although [we are] independent, equal, and fabulous, we still deserve to be treated like ladies. Pay for my meal, open my door, pull out my chair, damn it.”

Fascinating. A total crock of hairy quadruped excrement, but fascinating.

Look, Lady, and I use the term loosely, most men of the last few generations grew up listening to Feminists define all men as pigs and all sex as rape. We listened while women announced that the Y-chromosome was a sexually transmitted disease. We were there while female academics proclaimed us the children of Cain. We watched while women announced that every male was, at best, an impotent sit-com daddy, and at worst, an animal.

And now you have the brass-plated chutzpah to demand that we treat you like a fairy tale princess?

Whoa.

Listen, redefine me . . . at least a little, at least once in a while . . . as Saint George rather than the Dragon, and then maybe we can talk about the shining armor.

Until then . . . well . . .

Galahad has left the building.

Rolling Stones of the Union

So I watched the State of the Union thing the other night. In it, our fearless leader said we were addicted to oil and needed to mend our ways.

Truth enough, but, you know . . .

This is an administration which is so wired into the oil industry that you can’t figure out where the pipeline leaves off and Cheney’s pacemaker picks up.

And these guys are telling us to consume less?

Come on, that’s like Keith Richards passing out DARE stickers.

Notes from the Academy

I am amazed at the number of historians whose writing is basically, bottom-line, awful. Sentences go wandering around, passive voice rules, jargon fills every nook and cranny, impenetrable academic-speak and obscurities are the order of the day.

In fact, I’m convinced that most of them secretly want to by Toynbee …who secretly wanted to be Oswald Spengler … who secretly wanted to be one of the German Metaphysicals . . . who secretly wanted to write so badly that no one would notice they didn’t have a single freaking idea in their pointed little heads and were just spouting gibberish for the hell of it.

shoes

I write this (in my head) as I watch a young woman in backless high-heel shoes teeter across a brick courtyard in downtown Boston. She comes within a hair’s breadth of falling at least twice, and then totters unsteadily off along the sidewalk.

I am convinced, now, that the women’s shoe industry is dominated by a sinister conspiracy of orthopedic surgeons drumming up future business, or else of geeky hetero white guys who nobody would date in high school and this is their way of getting revenge on women everywhere.

feathers

J.J. Bittermuch writes me from Hell:

Read in an old Scientific American a while back that some researchers have figured out how to make plastic out of the otherwise useless chicken feathers from poultry-processing plants.

Wonder if we couldn’t do the same thing with left over liberals.

~

And, in almost precisely the same terms.

Sewage treatment and Neoconservatives . . .

But maybe that would come under the heading of hazmat.

There is a species of bully . . .

There is a species of bully . . . most recently manifested as Republicans and Feminists, but found in every age and every movement. . . which starts off with taking a swing at your head with an ice-ax and then, inevitably, dissolves into bewildered fury and cries of “oppression” when you have the audacity to duck.

Blog Whacking

I see in the paper that corporations are beginning to crack down on employees’ private blogs (even when they’re hosted by some other company) because of the possible “legal ramifications” of what the employees might make public.

Oh goody gum drops.

Yet another justification for our masters to muzzle us.

Sort of makes you long for Fascism, doesn’t it? At least it was up front about being a bastard.

I'm back

like it says

Stay Tuned

I'm off to visit my family in New Mexico for a ten days or so. But stay tuned. I'll be back with more drivel soon.

Definitions

Ideology — definition, the learned study of idiots; a field of research whose major question is how can people strive for liberty and well being, and then go out and shoot somebody and giggle. See Fascism, Feminism, Capitalism, Radicalism, Democracy, Vegetarianism, etc.

Female empowerment

J.J. Bittermuch reports from hell:

The woman MBA says proudly: “They’ve found something that will do the work of three men . . . one woman.”

And her corporate master responds with a smile: “And if the silly cow is willing to let us exploit her like that, who are we to object?”

Subalterns

Notes from the academy:

Subaltern historians: in theory, these are (mostly third world) scholars who look at effects on vulnerable cultures of Western colonialism and economic exploitation.

That’s in theory.

In practice it means that the people who were powerful and bloody rich before the British got there, and then got richer and more powerful while the British were there, and own the whole damn country now that the British are gone … announce that they’re victims and you should damn well hurry up with the foreign aid. And while you’re at it, apologize.

In a word . . .

Happy New Year . . .

Let's hope we survive it.