Super Bowl Prediction

From the "better to be lucky than good" department, looks like my prediction from two weeks ago was almost down to the exact points. If only I had put money on it. Good game regardless, and the Niners, who are still young and healthy and rolling, will probably be back much sooner than the Ravens, who will have valuable pieces on defense to try to replace, and who still have to re-sign Joe Flacco, whose rate just went up.

Oh, and....Randy Moss still doesn't get that ring. Haw haw.

Churchin' State

Congrats to the Obama administration for once again finding a way to punt on first down in order to placate the usual gabble of intellectually dishonest poltroons. Funny, the Vatican has also consistently decried the US' wars and military actions, yet Catholic tax dollars still go towards blowing up brown people. Also, too, maybe I missed it somewhere along the line, but I don't recall ever hearing about vasectomies being on the, erm, chopping block as far as mandatory coverage is concerned.

Look, when the church demonstrates half the sense of urgency moral dudgeon over its own institutionalized practice of protecting and enabling serial child rapists, as it does over controlling the reproductive rights of its female employees, then we can all be impressed. Till then, this catering to ancient obsessions over ladyparts needs to stop.

Something to Consider

Comment of the day (from the New Yorker):

You don't want us to have guns because we might make it harder for you to steal the money you use to pay for your muslim-bombing, toker-kidnaping, and bank bailouts.

Posted 1/26/2013, 2:24:14pm by publishedscientist

Perhaps a bit polemic, but he does have a point.

Cat Scratch Fever; Or, You Gotta Be Kitten Me

Few things are more charming than members of the species which has, by far, driven more other species into extinction for no goddamned reason, bitching that another species -- which has proliferated and gotten into the wild entirely because of that first species -- might be adversely affecting the songbird and vole populations.


Tell ya what -- maybe after we TNR all the feral cats, maybe we can do the same thing to the assholes who dump them in the park in the first place.

Priorities

Pick an issue, any issue -- guns, gays, abortion, teh dronz, energy or environmental policy -- they all pale in comparison to (indeed they all spring forth from to some extent) the issue of monetary policy, whether the spoils continue to go only to the (ahem) "job creators" (wherever those jobs are, anyway), or we decide that a banana-republic asset disparity is no longer tenable in a nation of 320 million people.

So count yours truly as among those who couldn't possibly care less that Obama made some apparently strident rhetorical gestures in his inauguration ceremony. Unless and until he decides to hold thieves and bastards accountable for their misdeeds, instead of merely enabling them to do it yet again -- only bigger and badder -- nothing else matters.

This is sort of the flipside of an argument I recently posited re gun nuts:  where they persist in this delusion that they are some doughty bulwark against encroachment of an already thoroughly-entrenched State, so are your token libruls frequently missing the larger point in their chosen points of emphasis. For example, yes it's terrific that women still have the right to choose (even though that right has been chipped away in many states so as to be virtually non-existent), and do not have to consult noted gynecologists Drs. Akin and Mourdock for their options.

However, the abortion argument is itself an economic argument, insofar as women with more economic options and opportunities don't typically find themselves in circumstances that dictate their life choices for them. Even with the gun goofballs -- hey, gee whiz, maybe if these guys had decent job prospects, and hadn't just spent the last generation watching their livelihoods and towns get outsourced so that some asshole could make the big jump from eight figures to nine figures in net worth, they wouldn't have the time to fret over such non-issues.

Perhaps if the "economy", as it currently stands, were not simply an oft-squeezed milch cow for the rentier capitalist class, if people who worked hard and played by the rules were duly rewarded, just as if they were desk-jockeys "creating value by diddling spreadsheets and moving jobs to Bangalore and Shanghai, you might have fewer angry, paranoid assholes wondering where it all went. I could be wrong about that, but I'm willing to speculate a bit.

But hey, as long as we don't make Jamie Dimon or Phil Mickelson feel too overburdened after all the incredibly hard, backbreaking work they've done (because hotel maids and restaurant waitstaff and teachers don't do shit, amirite?), then we have preserved this here structural integrity, Because Capitalism. So, you know, let's keep those foxes on henhouse duty, so that the banksters can continue to be too big to fail -- or even prosecute effectively when you catch them red-handed laundering money for vicious drug cartels.

Anytime you've literally selected Jamie Dimon's "perfect choice" to head the SEC, you know you've royally fucked the proverbial dog. Now Obama can go back to griefing potheads for their high crimes, and the banksters can sleep the sleep of those who know their investments in government have paid off as planned.

You ever hear the old saying about it being morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money? It's one thing to adopt that as one's personal money-making ethos, so long as one stays within the scope of the law. It's quite another to make it the operational philosophy of the wolrd's largest economy. It's still another thing altogether to bamboozle poor people into supporting such a racket so consistently. P.T. Barnum would be proud, but it's still a hard rain that's gonna fall. Again. These fuckers aren't done with you.

Common Taters

Shut up, you talk too much.

Seriously, leave a freakin' comment once in a while, would it kill ya? "How's it hangin', Heywood?" "Oh, ya know, long and hairy and hard to carry," that sort of thing. Or talk to each other, like I hear they do at other places.

Maybe I should just focus on saying deliberately controversial, obtuse, Fixed Noise type opinions, just to piss people off. "Lance Armstrong is just misunderstood!" or "Soledad O'Brien is stealing my soul through the teevee!". Things like that. Then people might start confusing me with Tracy Morgan. That's when shit starts getting interesting.

Or hey, have you downloaded and read my totally free book, Mockalypse? Did you like it, did you hate it, did you print it out just so you could wipe your ass with it? Is it the 51st shade of grey? I've received some interesting comments so far, but you can't have too many.

Inauguration Karaoke

Apparently we're all supposed to be mortified, or have an opinion, over what's-her-face's lip-synching at the inaugural ceremony. I find it difficult to either know or care the answer to this one. Since she yanked her earpiece out mid-song, it seems more likely that she was singing along with a backing "pad" of pre-recorded music, and somehow fell off the rhythm just a hair.

Live music, in any large venue, has become more about the event than the music anyway. Many bands and musicians are not 100% live nowadays. This is sad, but it should also gove pause, provide a small opportunity for people to think about what their expectations are with live performances. If you want satisfactory, predictable wallpaper, then this choreographed, Autotuned, lip-synching guff is right up your alley. If you want spontaneity, unpredictability, interaction with the audience, the give and take of volatile energy, go to a club.

As far as a presidential inauguration ceremony, I have no clue why you would bother in the first place, if the musicians are not actually going to do it live. What's the point? It's a question one could ask of a great many things in American life these days. That's sad; maybe I'm having a bit of an Andy Rooney moment here, but it seems like more things used to have an actual point to them, or at least a reason for being.

The thing is, she'll be doing it all over again next week at the Super Bowl next weekend, and the usual bozos will ponder the exact same imponderables, as if they had not seen the Black Guy Pees' noble effort at last year's big game. When presented with the choice between actual live music and mere choreographed spectacle, most will select the latter. As the saying goes, this is what you wanted, this is what you got.

Frustration Nation

You know that as a lifelong Raiduhs fan, I loves me some Tim Brown like a fat kid loves cake, and that Super Bowl 37 was a dark day for the franchise, one that continues to dog them a full decade later. Brown's accusation of then-coach Bill Callahan "sabotaging" that game -- and Jerry Rice supporting that assertion -- would be weird for any other franchise, but sadly not terribly surprising for Oakland.

Brown has since retracted his comments (which, as they were captured on a sports-talk show, were likely somewhat decontextualized in the first place), claiming that he never said "sabotage" (even though that's exactly the word he used) in reference to Callahan's perplexing play-calling decisions. If Brown's assertion that Callahan changed up the game plan just 36 hours before the game, that is bizarre. So far that hasn't been corroborated -- nor, for that matter, proven that if it was done, that it wasn't at the behest of Al Davis.

One thing that has been taken as fact since the day of the game is that Callahan failed to change any of Gannon's audible language or hand signals from when Gruden had run the team, which allowed the Bucs' D to know what plays the Raiders were calling. This, along with Callahan being run out of town on a rail from Nebraska after he was fired from Oakland, will probably ensure that Callahan never has another HC job in the NFL again, unless it's some 1-15 dump of a team.

I Wept Because I Had No Titanium Drivers, Until I Met a Man Who Had No Top Flight Balls; Or, Going John Golf

In which a man who has made mid-eight figures (including nearly $50M last year) income for hitting a ball around giant lawns across the planet informs us of his most sorrowful plight. Not only might he have to flee the slums of La Jolla, not only will he no longer be able to buy the Padres, he may have to retire, at the ripe old age of 42. Talk about going John Golf. (See what I did there?)

I hope you takers are happy now. Keep poor ol' Phil's fate-worse-than-death in mind next time you're trying to figure out how to pay your utility bill and buy groceries at the same time. That's what you get for going to (snicker) college, instead of learning how to whack a fucking ball real well. Suckaz.

Fire in the Hole

Clearly it does no good to assess the gun-control "debate" in a logical even-handed fashion. The discussion, such as it is, has nothing to do with anything sensible or reasonable. There are, in fact, sensible responses to the plaints of gun-control advocates that this or that measure worked in Britain or Japan or Australia or wherever. Near as I can tell, such responses have not been proffered much; by and large, the ante has been upped way past that.

It is a crystal-clear fact this is not an argument that will be won or advanced with mere reason. Any reasonable gun advocacy that might exist has been drowned in a steaming vat of hurr. And while it is somewhat heartening that a few of these mouth-breathing, window-licking, soul-deadened, nose-picking, dick-grabbing, ass-spelunking, knuckle-dragging irate goobers managed to shoot themselves at their own Mow-ron Super Bowl yesterday, the problem is that they thought it would be good sport to hold said event in the first place on the holiday for the victim of an assassin, the target of a chickenshit cracker with a gun and a grudge.

Coupled with their incredibly brave response to the tragedy of a lunatic slaughtering a classroom full of first-graders -- armed guards at schools, which has graced some hapless students with dipshits and child molesters (and if there is a god or even basic karma, explain the continued existence of Joe Arpaio) -- it seems that we are no longer dealing with two legitimately opposing viewpoints. We have one group of folks who, morally exhausted at the weekly massacres and spree-kills at schools, malls, wherever a deranged asshole with more firepower than sense decides to tune up his shit, timidly propose rather modest regulations and safeguards in the hope that said deranged assholes find even minimal resistance when they decide it's time to listen to the voices in their heads.

On the other side, you have the usual claque of industry lobbyists bolstering the usual clatter of misfits sporting laundry lists of imaginary grievances and paranoid fantasies, refusing to budge even a goddamned inch. Their "right" to immense quantities of firepower trumps everyone else's right to wonder if some shitbird will buy a Glock with a 30-round clip of some fucker's trunk at a gunshow, and give it a workout at the nearest place populated by people who can't fight back.

Cereal Killaz; Or, I Wish I Was Taller, I Wish I Was a Baller

Apropos of nothing, I just enjoy creative trash talk and thought this shit was funny:

Carmelo Anthony lost his cool after Boston Celtics bigmouth Kevin Garnett reportedly said his wife “tastes like Honey Nut Cheerios” — a dig at Anthony, who is estranged from his sweet spouse.

Funny, from the looks of her, and knowing that she's a baller-chasing, reality-show skeeza (and, um, she calls herself "La La", on purpose), I'd have guessed she tastes more along the lines of Juicy Couture and Allen Iverson.

Living in the Past

Terrific article in the NYT Magazine on the continued travails of America's Favorite Prolonged Trainwreck. Where to start? A washed-up child star, used up and turned out by her grasping, scumbag parents, once-promising career now completely ruined, destined to be an escort for minor Saudi princes (assuming she lives long enough). A crowdsourced movie made in borrowed locations by a porn star and a once-shining screenwriter, whose own wife warned him about the dubious merits of this project.

(For much more insight on Schrader and other classic '70s Hollywood characters, I highly recommend Peter Biskind's excellent Easy Riders Raging Bulls. Schrader, among several other high-strung artistes, seemed at times too driven by their inner demons, when they maybe should have trusted at least one other human enough to solicit and accept their opinion.)

It's worth noting that, in an extended piece littered with a variety of memorable people, that the most redeeming one out of all of them appears to be James Deen, the erstwhile porn star. The most consistent message I could glean from this narrative is that, while there may have been a point in time in Hollywood where your work ethic could afford to be inversely proportional to your star value (i.e., if Lohan was still marketable, no one would give a shit if she showed up late, drunk, or not at all), those days are long gone.

Even the days of "they can make you or break you" are done. What percentage of major-release movies per year now are staked on rehashed public-domain stories, CGI-green screen sets and action, half-assed script-doctoring, cardboard characters, indifferent directing? Actors are a commodity now; the era of true superstardom is over.

You know the PLR craze in internets marketing, where you take something that's been done a million times, reword it slightly, slap a new cover on it, and then sucker people into paying fresh money for it? That's what Hollywood does now, but with old public domain stuff. Don't believe me, while you're all moony-eyed over Les Miserables? Ask yourself how much Victor Hugo's estate gets from that, or L. Frank Baum's estate gets from the upcoming Oz movie. You can thank the mouse cult for that there bidness model.

Anyhoo, the sad thing about Lohan is not that her career is shot, it's that she doesn't seem to realize it. Even if she somehow got her shit together, there's no upside for any producer, micro or mainstream, to take the risk on her. And since she literally doesn't know how to do anything else, she can't fathom the notion that if you can't even keep from getting fired from a microbudget NC-17 gig that couldn't have gotten a real release in the first place, you have zero value to them. There's simply too many people there with close-enough talent who would crawl through broken glass to show up sober and on time.

NFL Playoff Predictions (Divisional Round)

Now that the wild-card games are out of the way (and no real surprises with any of them; although I would have liked to see the Bungles and Colts win their respective games, and thought they had decent chances, the odds were with the home teams), here's a feeble attempt to prognosticate this weekend's divisional matchups. Please, as always, no wagering.

Baltimore at Denver:  It would be a nice shake-up to see Ray Lewis and his wrecking-crew defense roll into Denver and give good ol' Peyton Manning (aka Rod Flanders) the what-for. And despite my prediction at the beginning of the season that Flanders would be an injury-prone bust, just one hit from the IR list, he's had a career season, and the Donks appear to be a proverbial team of density. Denver's D has also improved, just as Baltimore's offense has crumbled; even replacing OC Cam Cameron didn't fix the fact that they don't really have a deep-threat receiver to take pressure off mighty-mite RB Ray Rice. As long as Flanders is in the game, it belongs to Denver.
Prediction:  Denver 38, Baltimore 20.

Green Bay at San Francisco:  Credit Jim Harbaugh for taking a crummy team with a powerhouse defense, and giving it an offense that could at least pull its weight. Critical injuries in the Niner D became exposed against Seattle a couple weeks ago, and the Packers have a better QB and better WRs than the Seahawks. The Pack also have a porous o-line; Green Bay gave up the third-most sacks in the league. This may come down to whether all-world sack machine Aldon Smith is actually hurt or not; if not, Aaron Rodgers will be running for his life, since the Packers have no run game. However, the shenanigans Harbaugh has pulled, first with his starting QB and now with his veteran kicker, are going to finally bite him in the ass, especially when the Bidwills hand Alex Smith a fat contract to start in Arizona next season.
Prediction: Green Bay 20, San Francisco 13.

Seattle at Atlanta:  This has been a great year for prodigy rookie QBs, with Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III, and Russell Wilson. The three have somewhat different strengths and skill sets, but all are going to be potent forces for their teams for years to come. All three made the playoffs, but only Wilson made the first cut. With Seattle's ferocious D, featuring a gang of 6'3" Adderall-popping defensive backs slapping down tall receivers like it ain't no thang, all Wilson has to do is minimize mistakes. The Falcons are loaded with talent, but tend to be one of those one-and-done playoff teams, and this looks to be an extension of that pattern. The main question from here is whether Matt Ryan will be sacked or intercepted more; either way, it won't be pretty.
Prediction:  Seattle 27, Atlanta 21.

Houston at New England:  Given my intense loathing for all things Patsies (mostly loathing at their utterly despicable string of competence, year after blessed year), I would like to like the Texans' chances here. The problem is, they already proved they don't have any, by waltzing into Bawston last month and getting completely dismantled by Tom Brady, who looked absolutely bored by the 4th quarter. Houston lost 3 of its last 4 games to end the season (and barely won that one; rookie phenom Andrew Luck brought the Colts to within 3 points in Houston), and is really the most over-rated 12-4 team in recent memory, despite a talent-laden roster. Arian Foster and Andre Johnson might make it interesting for a quarter or two, but whatever deal Belichick and Brady struck with Mephistopheles on a dark and snowy night seems to still be in effect.
Prediction:  New England 44, Houston 17.

So yay, an AFC championship matchup between Brady and Manning. Never seen that before. I think I have to sort my sock drawer that day. Come Super Bowl Sunday, we'll all be Seahawks fans.

Update [1/13/13 6:00 PM PST]:  1 for 4 over the weekend, jeez, you wouldn't know that I ran 80% for the entire regular season on the ESPN Pick'em. Ah well, Atlanta and Baltimore squeaked by on last-second breaks; the only real surprise was how thoroughly the Niners rolled the hapless Packers, who apparently decided to take run-defense pointers from the Raiders.

A certain number of NFL fans would like to see a Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh coaching matchup in the Super Bowl, should San Francisco and Baltimore win their respective conference games on the road. The Falcons look to be fairly easy meat, as long as last night's Niners show up, and while the Patsies are rolling, it appears that Rob Gronkowski re-broke his forearm in this afternoon's game, so Brady will be without one of his more reliable weapons.

Still, the odds, history, and common sense indicate that at least one of the home teams should win, so right now I would tentatively predict San Francisco and New England in the Super Bowl. This is dismaying not just because Patsies again, but because super-tool Randy Moss, now mostly a deep-threat decoy with the Niners, may finally get that ring. Which is his just reward after his shameless, check-cashing indolence set a reeling mid-aughts Raiders team back a couple more years [rolls eyes]. But Colin Kaepernick looks to be a huge talent for San Francisco and their shredding defense for at least the next several seasons, and the Niners would have a much better shot at beating either remaining AFC team than Atlanta would.

Update [1/20/13 8:45 PST]:  So it's the Brother Bowl (get ready to get sick of that one over the next two weeks of hype) after all. This should be a good matchup, strength against strength and so on. Joe Flacco, whom the Ravens will probably have to franchise-tag since preseason contract negotiations went nowhere, is having a career year, and actually has the highest QB rating out of all the quarterbacks who made the playoffs.

No doubt the Niners will be the early favorite, but the Falcons showed in the first half how San Francisco can be beaten, by containing Colin Kaepernick for the most part, and stifling the running game for most of the first half. In the end, Atlanta distinguished themselves by doing the exact same thing they did against Seattle last week -- jumping out to an early three-possession lead with their big-play offense, only to derp their way through the second half and let an overmatched opponent that had to travel across the country back into the game. The Seahawks were ten seconds and a decent kickoff from beating the Falcons, and exposed them for the weak-ass, can't-finish-anything-off team that they really are. Shit, the Raiders, who couldn't get out of their own way all season, came within 30 seconds of beating the Falcons in Atlanta in week 6, and in fact, the Falcons beat only two teams that made the playoffs all year.

Anyhoo, the point is that while the 49ers are very good, Seattle would have been more likely to beat them today than Atlanta ever was, and the Ravens' improving offense and big-play defense should ride their emotional wave just enough to get past the surging Niners.
Prediction:  Baltimore 37, San Francisco 31.

It's Hard Out Here for a Chimp

Apparently noted performance artist and World's Foremost Authority Ronald McDonaldDonald Trump has seriously decided to sue Bill Maher for making a joke about him. Awesome. This is totally not another publicity stunt, so stop it, you guys! He's a serious bidnisman and shit!

Again, people, if you need any further proof that karma does not exist, I don't know what to tell you, surf the cloaca of the internets, I'm sure it'll become much clearer, if you have the stomach. I know I don't.

By the way, super-genius, where's the proof we were promised a year or two ago about the falsity of Obammy's birf certificate? Yeah, that's what I thought. Fugging chump.

A Modest Proposal

So, uh, what if we tell this goofball that AIG wants to take away his guns, get rid of a couple of useless headaches?

Seriously, though, I don't think guys like James Yeager and Alex Jones quite get how their rather incoherent bluster tends to undermine their own arguments. Most people, regardless of their political bent, tend to feel that some sort of balance can be struck -- on the one hand, the Second Amendment does mean something, and just from a practical standpoint, it would be impossible to disarm everyone even if that were a desirable outcome; on the other, the idea of some these foaming-at-the-mouth "enthusiasts" packing heat makes my balls shrivel up.

I've used plenty of guns over the years, including assault rifles, including high-capacity magazines. They're fun. So are cars, so are drugs -- which, in case they haven't noticed, are regulated and controlled. These are dangerous things, and part of the social compact is that we take at least modest, token steps to ensure that psychopaths should not be able to easily obtain dangerous things. It should be more difficult to get a 30-round clip for a handgun, or hollow-point bullets, than to drive a car or purchase Sudafed.

What this issue begs for is a sense of balance, and so far the loudest pro-gun voices seem to be anything but balanced. They don't seem to understand the concept of profoundly disagreeing with somebody without wanting to murder them.

If gun enthusiasts are serious about protecting their Jebus-given rights to open-carry Stinger missiles to the fucking mall, then maybe finding a spokesperson capable of something beyond "me want toy or me kill! kill! kill!!1!!" would help their cause a bit. Because with guys like Yeager, who seriously seemed to think he could just sanitize his death-threat video (and then presumably claim that the lefty-librul media took his patriotism out of context), they're gonna find themselves shit outta luck before long.

Sometimes your best move, when you've talked yourself into a deeper hole than when you started, is to just cross your fingers, say a few pretend mea culpas, and shut the fuck up.

Also, too. Fuckin' merc. Figures.

Gohmert's Piles

The dumbest thing ever said out loud, until the next time certifiable dipshit Louie Gohmert opens his slop-hole:

“I refuse to play the game of ‘assault weapon.’ That’s any weapon,” said the Texas congressman. “It’s a hammer. It’s the machetes.”

The question is no longer how people like Loiue Gohmert get to be so unapologetically stupid. The real question is to wonder about the halfwits who keep voting for him. I'm sure they're doing wonders for the algae-ridden gene pond in Gohmert's district.

"Thank You, America"

As if the bloodsucking financial industry hadn't plumbed the "no good deed goes unpunished" depths quite far enough, the fine upstanding folks at AIG are considering joining a suit declaring that we didn't bail them and their fucking failure bonuses quite enough. The suit is being led by former AIG head -- and future wormfood -- Hank Greenberg, who seems to be having a contest with Donald Trump to see who can more conclusively disprove the existence of karma. Greenberg will be 88 years old in a few months, which means that as soon as his lawsuit's done, he'll probably run for the US Senate.

Keep in mind that the $182 billion that AIG grifted from you and me is more than the entire total of the combined state deficits at the time of the bailout. (And goddammit, I knew those suck-up commercials had an ulterior motive. Hey, America, thanks for saving our asses -- maybe you won't notice while we're picking your pockets.) Maybe Greenberg can explain that one to the thousands of state workers across the countries who lost their jobs so that Hank and his fellow thieves could keep their Hamptons vacation homes. Because it's hard goddamned work upending the world economy into your own pocket.

Seriously, the next time the economy collapses -- and it will happen; these animals learned absolutely nothing, except that we're dumb enough to reward corruption -- let them fucking die, go find honest work. Have a debt jubilee, circulate some medium-sized lump sums into every household, rich or poor, and set the machine going again. It can't possibly shake out any worse than a greedy, grasping, claque ruining the country with banana-republic levels of income disparity.

In Other News, Water Is Wet

If you aren't already, chances are within the next couple weeks, you'll be going over your Dubya Too forms and such, trying to figure out how much you have to pay The Man for all your potholed roads, half-assed schools, crappy reality teevee, and other such blessings you enjoy as a 'murkin.

Whatever your circumstance, no doubt you'll be gratified to know that the rich got richer, despite what you may have seen in such tragic reversal-of-fortune there-but-for-the-grace-of-sweet-Jebus-go-us-all schlockumentaries such as The Queen of Versailles. I know, shocking, right? The 100 wealthiest individuals gained a collective $241 billion, and are now worth $1.9 trillion.

Read that again. One hundred human beings. One trillion, nine hundred billion dollars in assets.

Remember that the next time you're spending the weekend trolling Monster.com for some bullshit job that might pay you a buck more an hour than you're getting right now (assuming you even have a job right now), if you manage to get past the other 150 applicants and ace the interview. And hey, maybe just maybe if you save every extra dime for the next forty years, and the market keeps landing just right, and you don't get your pension fund hijacked, and you play by the rules, you just might manage not to spend your final years living on cat food and trying to figure out where you went wrong. Good luck, America!

....And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor

Yes, it's another reminder to please take a moment, if you haven't already, and check out my 2012 retrospective Mockalypse. Without your support, my budget for vodka and Cialis would be severely curtailed.

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As always, thanks for your continued support.

Suffering the Insufferable

Bobo has some words of civility for all you kidz out there, and while he certainly has a point, I would submit that there's no percentage in dealing with your Akin/Mourdock breed of chumps politely, not to mention this horse's ass. Is there something in the water in Indiana or what? For every Dave Letterman or Kurt Vonnegut the state produces, there seem to be a half-dozen or so of halfwits like Steve Kruse.

At least California Republicans, bless their pointy little heads, know better than to waste the people's time on this sort of dipshittery. Sometimes I forget how blessed we are out here in Satan's Playground to not have snake-handlers in any positions of even nominal power, maybe a bible-thumping dog-catcher here or there, but that's about the extent of it.

There is a "school" of "thought" out there purporting to claim that illiterate Americans are illiterate because the tricky phonemes and orthographic irregularities of English are too difficult to master. I submit that perhaps it's because there are too many meddlesome morons infesting school boards and governing bodies, proposing to shove one parcel or another of religious claptrap down kids' throats. Instead of, you know, educating them.

Reason #590,785 why we can't have nice things, folks. Regardless, I submit that people who make a point of being jerkoffs do not deserve special -- or even common -- consideration. People like Steve Kruse or Todd Akin know exactly what they're doing, and deserve nothing beyond a swift and stern punch to the groin.

Second Amendment Remedies

It's true, what they say -- when finger guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have finger guns. On the other hand, firm responses such as this will certainly prevent workplace incidents, such as the d-bag from the fiscal department who calls everyone "Sport" or "Chief" while brandishing his semi-automatic cocked-thumb index models. Not sure where he got the infinity-round clip.

Profits of Doom

Not a whole lot to say about current events lately, although I suspect that I may have a meta-post lurking about why that is; in other words, I may have something to say about why I don't have all that much to say.

But as far as the "fiscal cliff" guff goes, well, it is what it appears to be -- mostly a media-fostered landscape of hype, because doom-hype is what sells pharmaceuticals and cars and hemorrhoid cremes. Obama's handling of it thus far has been just fine; one almost wonders if he feels slightly sorry for the disarray and near-mutiny that Boehner has on his hands with an increasingly fractious teahadi caucus mucking things up for him. Whatever the case, yes it sucks that working people lose about twelve bucks a week or so, but it was a payroll tax holiday, by definition a temporary measure.

The bigger picture that neither Obama nor any other pol will ever touch is the exceptional and increasing inequities underpinning the economic picture. It is not just that the money is mostly smoke and mirrors, as Kunstler points out on a weekly basis, it is that it is hoarded to no end, and globalization puts that excess hoarding elsewhere. It's not just your job that went to China, but also the profit that your former boss made by sending your ass home. This has created a stasis mode, for the most part. All else is merely posturing and scrambling for purchase.

One thing is always certain, and that's that there is money to be made prophesying economic cataclysm. Unlike the god-bothering variants of fire and brimstone, there's always a nugget of truth to dismal economic forecasts; when entire industries and fortunes are built on studiously ignoring the obvious, things really are one catalyzing event away from disaster.

That must be what we want, in the aggregate anyway. If we didn't, we would vote accordingly, not just at the ballot box, but with our dollars. Everyone who shops at Wal-Mart, to use just the most glaring example, is complicit in their own economic problems; you get the town you pay for when you support a multinational conglomerate that gutted all your local merchants, and you get the country you pay for when you support six people who are worth as much as the bottom 30% of Americans. It is not a question of "fairness", but an issue of basic math:  a healthy society cannot exist where an elite few own just about everything.

Game Changers

Trying to watch the Bungles-Texans playoff game. I enjoy how NBC had the foresight to stick one of their sideline mikes next to a retard apparently banging a metal spoon and a cooking pot, judging by the rapid fucking clatter after every fucking play. Jesus, where's a drunken bleacher brawl when you could really use one?

Update [1/6/13 2:45 PST]:  Apparently the same bozo(s) made his/their way to FedEx Field to clatter through the Redskins/Seahawks matchup, thus turning what should be an enjoyable showdown between two prodigiously gifted rookie QB phenoms into a headache. Every goddamned play -- clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-TING-TING-TING-TING-TING.

It sounds like a small army of those stupid wind-up toy chimps that clank cymbals together. Only more annoying. This is on a par with Thunderstix and vuvuzelas, two other devices that prove conclusively that if there is in fact a God, He enjoys screwing with us. I'm not kidding when I say I hope this guy's fucking balls fall off unexpectedly (or hell, expectedly). Just yell like a normal person, Holmes, there's no need to spend an entire afternoon acting like an autistic first-grader with a pipe wrench and a ride cymbal.

Keep Stealing

Just a friendly reminder to please check out Mockalypse, leave some feedback, spread the word, etc. It's no Fifty Shades of Grey, but there may be some bondage. Tune in and find out for yourself!

Last Call for 2012

Welp, it's been a wild and woolly year, and I just wanted to take a moment and thank everyone who's dropped by, made a comment, spread the word, or otherwise just taken the time to swing through here. Here's hoping 2013 is a good one for all of us.

Adventures In E-Publishing

So far, this dip of the toe into the proverbial e-publishing waters has gone better than expected. It's the holiday season, I'm learning as I go along, and it is a compilation book, comprised of posts that regular readers will already have seen. So I was not expecting to set the internets on fire in a matter of a few days; this is not warmed-over Twilight slashfic repurposed for horny housewives. (Don't get me wrong -- it certainly can be that, if the market is there. I know what I am, all else is mere haggling.)

Still, it's gratifying to see Mockalypse get any response at all. And I'd like to send a shout-out to the friendly folks at Balloon Juice for coming by and checking it out, in larger numbers than I had anticipated. I don't have a lot of time to check out many blogs these days, pretty much what you see on the sidebar and a few others (who will be on the sidebar as well at some point when I do some housekeeping), are on the regular to-read list. So I read and sometimes lurk at the Juice, but am not a regular (or even irregular) commenter there. I appreciate the fact that they responded to my open-thread spamming by coming through here and hitting the links.

There is a more comprehensive post on the subject of e-publishing in the works, but right now this is just a quick check-in and follow-up from the initial post for the book. Again, any and all comments, favorable or not, are welcome. As the saying goes, as long as the name is spelled right. Just check it out, give me some feedback, and spread the word.

Merry Christmas

If there's a better Christmas song than The Pogues' Fairytale of New York, I haven't heard it. Here's Oirish folkster Christy Moore with a great rendition. Have a great Christmas!

Steal This Book!

Okay, folks, here's one (and in fact, by far the smallest) of several projects I've been working on over the last few months. What you see is the cover to an e-book I was hoping to wind up (given its title and cover imagery) yesterday, but as I am not a graphic designer by training, and am still learning how to use GIMP, it's a day late and a dollar short.

(By the way, if you're just starting out with designing graphics for your own stuff, don't know where to turn, and can't afford -- or don't even know how to choose -- commercial software, I can't recommend GIMP highly enough. Such a cool program. There is a learning curve, but a ton of tutorials out there. Did I mention it's free? Awesome. The internets are a wonderful place. Go check it out now, and block out a few hours just to mess with the many cool features it comes loaded with. Disclaimer:  I have had zero contact with anyone from GIMP, nor am I being compensated in any way to talk about it. I just think it's really cool.)

Anyhoo, although Blogger has made the attempt to bump up its features, it still apparently does not allow you to upload PDF files. Weird, right? No worries, friends 'n' neighbors, Uncle Heywood found a workaround. You can go here to download your very own copy of this fine retrospective of the year that just transpired. Wasn't it just terrific? Yes it was, and you can relive it right now, by electronically thumbing through a couple dozen posts handpicked by yours truly as best representative of the year, and of my jabbering about it.

Now, I know you're all chomping at the bit to swipe your Visa cards and punch in some phat numbers, you just want to know what I'm demanding for such a hot commodity. I decided to try out the model used by Radiohead for their In Rainbows album from a few years ago -- I'll let you, Tonstant Weader, determine what this hot mess is worth to you. Go ahead and download it, give it a spin, and it's up to you whether it's worth five bucks or five cents. Or nothing at all. There's a PayPal link at the upper right of this page, as well as at the download page.

There are a couple things I do ask of you, and they are free, and will take only a modest amount of your sweet time:  One is that, whether you love it, hate it, or couldn't give two lonesome shits about it, you drop by and share some feedback in the comments thread. (Or email me your comments or suggestions; I do actually check the GMail account pretty regularly these days, and I will respond.) Love one of the selected posts? Awesome. Hate the cover art? That's fine too.

The second thing is that you tell a few people (I'm hoping at least two or three for each of you) about it. A comment on a site you frequent, where you think like-minded folks might be interested. That sort of thing. Just spread the word here and there in your daily rounds. It's not that I don't want your money, but right now I'd like to see how much interest can be generated. If that E.L. Fudge broad can turn Twilight fanfic into a kajillionty-pound cottage e-income, this should hopefully generate a ripple somewhere.

Just to be clear about what this book is, it's a compendium of posts from this glorious year. There is some new material, in the form of an introduction, as well as introductory material for each post. Collectively, I think (and hope) that it stands as a representative sample of what this blog has attempted to cover, and what hopefully makes it a bit different from other blogs. I dunno, you tell me.

Couple of final points:

• This project is what I would term a "first-final" draft, meaning that there may be a few minor, cosmetic changes forthcoming over the next week or so. Again, due to the self-imposed deadline, and the fact that I am something of a control freak on creative projects, I may revise the cover art a bit, reformat the main text slightly, create a back cover page, screw around with headers or footers, things like that. But the content itself is absolutely final as is right now, set in stone, will not be changed unless I spot a typo (after reviewing the whole thing at least five times in the past two weeks).
• I want to apologize in advance to any of my fellow bloggers, because while I will try to keep it to a bare minimum, I may occasionally barge into their open threads and pimp this thing. Again, my goal here is pure notoriety; I want as many people as possible to check it out -- and if they've never been here before and don't know what to expect, so much the better.

So that's about it for now. Please check it out, grab a copy, give me your feedback, tell at least a few other people about it. I have some more thoughts and concepts about self-publishing, which I plan to discuss in one or several upcoming posts, but this is a start.

In Bloggy News

Hope everyone out there is having a safe and sane Christmas weekend with the people they care about the most. I've been winding up a project that I hope to get posted here tonight or tomorrow. Details to come shortly, please stay tuned.

There Is No Why

Even after giving it a couple days to sink in, words fail when it comes to last Friday's shooting. It's hard (for me, at least) to construct a coherent narrative that doesn't feel incomplete or even a bit opportunistic.

Mass murder and serial killing in particular tend to inspire questions of "why" and "how", and those pursuits always seem inadequate and pointless to me. As always, your mileage may vary. People process these things in their own way, whether with candlelight vigils, makeshift shrines, or attempts to comprehend the actions of incomprehensible people.

A few thoughts, many of them open-ended, keep cropping up throughout this national weekend of grief, take them for what you will:

• When we talk about "gun control" after these tragic events, we should not only be careful, but also precise about what that would and should look like, and what effect it would have had on the event in question. The guns Adam Lanza used were legally owned by his mother, and as she had no criminal history nor issues that would have come up in a background check, no proposed stricture or regulation would have prevented her from anything.
  
  Now, if you're talking a ban on "assault weapons", that too needs to be written with precision and common sense, so we're on the same page as far as weapons that can fire dozens of rounds per minute, and not bickering over bayonet lugs and collapsible stocks, pretending that Something Is Being Done.
  
  Doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done, just with the understanding that there are 320 million people in the US, and probably just as many guns, and punishing the 99% of responsible gun owners for the actions of a deranged, infinitesimal slice is not only unfair, but may not even work.


• Gun-rights advocates, some bordering on the fanatical, have reflexively (as they always do after these events) suggested that if everyone were armed, these events would never occur, or at least be neutralized well before the body counts registered by "soft targets" such as schools. This is utterly ludicrous. Consider just two examples of countries where everyone is armed to the teeth:  Somalia. Afghanistan. How's that been going?


• It is easier in the US to acquire, own, and operate a gun than an automobile. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing, and why or why not?


• You can believe in the Second Amendment, and still believe that we need to find a way to prevent -- or at least reduce -- the ease with which deranged individuals can possess weapons of slaughter, and put them to use.


• The Founding Fathers could not have conceived of handguns with 30-round magazines, or fully automatic assault rifles with 90-round (or more) clips. Had they been able to envision such an enormous technological leap, might they have written the Second Amendment any differently?


• We grieve after every one of these tragedies, even as we lose count of them, they are so commonplace. Is it the cost of doing business? Is it the notion that they can all be prevented by arming (or disarming) everyone? Does anyone else find this cycle of public grief binging, purging, and forgetting even a little bit odd, and a lot useless, if nothing ultimately gets done about it?


• It's interesting, to say the least, that calls for arming teachers in classrooms are now coming from the same corners who routinely demonize any and all facets of said profession. Really, Mister Random Conservative, are you sure you want lazy pothead librul indoctrinators packing heat? Maybe a couple Paul Blart types at each school, patrolling the perimeter with a Segway and a Sig Sauer? At least it'll create some jobs, right?


• Before using Japan, Britain, and Switzerland as arguments for or against gun control, do keep in mind the significant cultural and geographic differences between those countries and America. And I do not mean "they're cultured and we're boors". It's a hell of a lot easier to enact control mechanisms on small island nations under constant surveillance, than a sprawling, teeming landmass. And Switzerland's vaunted mandatory militia, in which each household is required to keep an assault rifle, also has a proviso that ammunition is tightly regulated, registered in fact. Don't be surprised if any gun control proposals here lean in that direction. Or even simpler, mandating a limit on clip capacities. There is absolutely no logical reason you should be able to load a 30-round clip into a Glock handgun.


• Opportunism comes in many forms after these things. It can be anything from sanctimonious assholes suggesting that we're just not godly enough, to intrepid journamalists pulling up their grief-pimping slacks and pestering second-graders outside the school where their playmates just got mowed down. Honestly, I don't know how either of those two very real examples of humans can look at themselves in the mirror when they get home at night. Probably through the bottom of a vodka bottle.

It would be nice if there were easy proposals or solutions. There aren't. Having a more comprehensive mental health care system would be a great place to start, but committing people against their will who haven't actually done anything presents another set of challenges. I dunno what to do, and I'm not going to pretend I do know. The easy answer is to point out that, again, there are 320 million people, and by the law of averages, some of them are crazy to some degree.

Hopefully the rest of us can figure out a way to prevent those folks from accessing weapons of a level of destruction that would have been unimaginable a hundred or even fifty years ago.

Also, too.

Royal Flush

Okay, this is another one of those things you can just go ahead and file under "I don't get the outrage". A person taking their own life is always tragic, don't get me wrong. Permanent solution to a temporary problem, as they say.

But does anyone seriously believe that anyone would hurt or kill themselves over being pranked by a morning zoo radio show, or even that the DJs should have taken such an outcome into consideration before making the call? Really? Because honestly, it's barely conceivable to me that Jacintha Saldanhas would have even been fired from her job, unless she had willfully committed a huge violation of well-known hospital policy. Something else was clearly going on with her; this was at most a last-straw kind of thing.

Maybe this affords the media an opportunity to step back for a second, take a deep breath, and ponder the logical outcomes -- none of them possibly good, at best merely neutral and inert -- to spending the next six months swamping morons with meaningless "preggers" nonsense, acting like one of the most routine human activities is somehow special and unique this time around.

Seriously, from of the weirdos the mediots have whipped up on this, you'd think no one had ever fucking gotten pregnant before, like evar.

The Fiscal Cliff Scam

Check this out, not really anything to add to it. Every element in the discussion of this "fiscal cliff" is explicitly designed to preserve and perpetuate wealth inequality, period.

Smite the Hand That Feeds You

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it -- Voltaire

Continuing his uphill struggle against sanity and encroaching irrelevance, legacy evangetollah Franklin Graham has a message for all you disobedient kids out there:

Graham equated the Obama years with a national rejection of God. "In the last four years, we have begun to turn our backs on God," he said. "We have taken God out of our education system. We have taken him out of government. You have lawyers that sue you every time you mention the name of Jesus Christ in any kind of a public forum." Oddly, Graham ignored the fact that he and other shepherds of the Christian right have griped about such matters for much longer than four years. It didn't start with Obama.

As Graham denounced the Obama years, Newsmax's Kathleen Walter asked, "So we've become too secular a nation? How do we bring God back into government?" Graham replied:

Maybe God will have to bring our nation down to our knees—to where you just have a complete economic collapse. And maybe at that point, maybe people will again begin to call upon the name of almighty God.

Economic calamity was the one option Graham mentioned—as if only such a disaster could move the United States in the right direction.

It's almost sad to watch; first Graham's old man removed Mormonism from his website's list of cults just a couple weeks before the election -- at best a cynical, opportunistic, nakedly political move by an organization undoubtedly taking advantage of its non-profit status to advocate politically; at worst a revealing look at the transparent intellectual dishonesty of these people.

So it goes. As the mossbacks continue to die off, and more and more sentient beings grow up to realize that they don't need hucksters like the Grahams for much of anything, the televangelist breed will continue to fade into irrelevance. Which is great for the ideal of intellectual probity, but the world of comedy and satire will sorely miss that breed, until the next incarnation of P.T. Barnums come along.

Raiders Fading

After a decade of utter futility, the Raiders seem to be determined to continue down that hole. Despite having a top-10 offense last season, even with Darren McFadden out the last ten games, the new management/coaching regime decide to overhaul the offense by installing a zone-blocking scheme (ZBS), even though key players on the o-line are better suited for power blocking. The defense, especially the secondary, was completely blown up, thanks to outgoing DC Chuck Bresnahan's inability to finish a game.

To say the least, this has made watching this team a frustrating opportunity at best. The defensive secondary is woeful, the running game non-existent, and even special teams are largely inept; the season-ending injury to kickoff returner Jacoby Ford, at the beginning of the season, has left them unable even to get decent field position, in the instances when the defense is actually able to force opponents to punt.

The Raiders have been beset by a multitude of woes for quite some time, as any football fan knows, and one of the biggest problems has been a lack of continuity. Since their Super Bowl fiasco after the 2002 season, they have gone through 6 head coaches and 9 starting quarterbacks (including Dennis Allen and Carson Palmer, respectively). By way of comparison, in the 32 seasons (1963-94) between the tenures of Al Davis and Art Shell, the team had six head coaches and eight starting QBs, including short-timers such as Mike Shanahan and Cotton Davidson.

Twinkie Defense

Here's another fine example of media misfocus (in the aggregate; as we'll see, some of 'em got it right), in the coverage of Hostess shutting its doors. From the morning chat shows to the local "news" tonight, all the coverage I've seen has focused with a childlike obsessiveness on how not having Twinkies and Wonder "Bread" will leave a gaping hole in America's fat-encased heart. (In fact, the local news here actually went down to the nearest Hostess outlet and interviewed several customers -- not a one of 'em under three bills, and most looking like they might have a side job as Hoarders extras -- waddling around and grabbing whatever they could from the shelf. Because the impending scarcity of Ding Dongs is apparently a harbinger of Zombie Apocalypse or something.)

Sure enough, our vaunted entrepreneurial class have already taken it upon themselves to try to wrangle bizarrely, hysterically extortionate prices out of morons. Folks, I don't think I've had a Twinkie or Ding Dong since I was, like, 17 or so, and I'm not exactly a health-food fanatic. But I don't remember them being anything special, and if I'm paying ten grand for something, I better be able to either drive it, stick my cock in it, or go on a nice vacation.

Anyhoo, obviously what really truly sucks here is that 18,500 people are going to lose their jobs. And as the NY Times mentions, after the brief obligatory intro on the wonders of sponge cake filled with sugared lard, there were multiple factors in play here:

As the national appetite for junk food waned, the company fell on hard times, struggling against rising labor and commodity costs. In 2004, it filed for bankruptcy for the first time.

Five years later, the company emerged from Chapter 11 as Hostess Brands, so named after its most prominent division. With America’s new health-conscious attitude, it sought to reshape the business to changing times, introducing new products like 100-calorie Twinkie Bites.

But the new private equity backers loaded the company with debt, making it difficult to invest in new equipment. Earlier this year, Hostess had more than $860 million of debt.

The labor costs, too, proved insurmountable, a situation that has been complicated by years of deal-making. The bulk of the work force belongs to 12 unions, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union.
The combination of debt and labor costs has hurt profits. The company posted revenue of $2.5 billion in the fiscal year 2011, the last available data. But it reported a net loss of $341 million.

With profits eroding, the company filed for Chapter 11 in January. It originally hoped to reorganize its finances, seeking lower labor costs, including an immediate 8 percent pay cut.

....

While highly critical of management missteps, the Teamsters agreed in September to major concessions, including cuts in wages and company contributions to health care. As part of the deal, the union was to receive a 25 percent share of the company’s stock and a $100 million claim in bankruptcy.

Hunh. So private equity weasels and health-care costs (and yes, unions factor into this as well; while I'm pro-union, anyone should be able to see that negotiating with 12 unions is going to be an extremely cumbersome process at best, but more likely to be hopeless in most circumstances) are major factors here. Imagine that. Well, maybe we'll just have our Twinkies made in Mexico or Canada, like our American automobiles.

The plaintive paeans to lost childhood "icons" aren't annoying, just meaningless. It's a fuckin' snack cake ai'aight? People should be up in arms at the way the facacta health-care racket doesn't just screw them out of money and sanity, but jobs as well. They should be wondering why and how a company with $2.5bn in revenue still finds iself face-down and ass-up, while you know goddamned well that the private equity boyz that stuck them with all that debt made out just fine.

Just something to keep in mind next time this story crosses your radar -- are they talking about the jobs, and how they were lost in all this scavenging and negotiating, or are they fixating on Ding Dongs?

Legacy Pledge

It's easy (and fun) to pick on budding media legacy Luke Russert and his frequently inelegant ways of approaching the important issues of the day, or even getting the wrong end of the stick on some things. But he did try his artless "when you gonna retire already, Grandma?" schtick on Hoyer and Clybourn as well, so not completely sexist.

A better tack to take, perhaps, might have been to find a way to point out the more generally obvious -- that Congress, especially the Senate but certainly many House reps as well, has more than its share of fogies, that with virtually guaranteed incumbency in most districts and states, one can very easily grow old and die in office, and get used to the prospect of doing so as time goes on.

But that's what the media does best -- fixating on the superficial, ignoring the deeper and more important story right in front of them. Instead of correctly noting that the average age in the House is 58, and in the Senate is 63, that there are legitimate questions about what in many cases turns into a more-or-less lifetime incumbency, and a working age decades beyond that of average 'murkins, they turn it into a sexist, ageist blurt. Instead of pointing out that everyone in the Petraeus "scandal" is a Republican, and thus has no interest in covering anything up for the Obama administration, it's allowed to linger and become an insinuated factoid in cahoots with the Great Benghazi/Reichstag Coverup.

Incidentally, how many folks who are outraged, just apoplectic over this manifest American tragedy, how many of them are bent that Condi Rice, the National Security Advisor on the day that 3,000 Americans were murdered on their home soil, not only was promoted to Secretary of State, but still appears regularly to shill for her party, is considered a "serious" Republican, and was even considered a possible veep contender for Money Boo Boo's ticket? None, that's how many, because these sorts of "serious" questions always and only apply in one direction.

And it starts, of course, with a media that is complaisant to power, which of course is what Tim Russert specialized in. Just the nature of the niche he was in; the Sunday chat shows are meant to smooth the rough edges of actual discourse, to give shithouse-rat goofy people a seat at the adults' table and confer the sheen of legitimacy.

Moocher Petitions

So the red-state butthurt parade is flaring up in the fine art of petitions for secession. I completely agree with Digby on this:  let them go. The chart at the link says it all -- Texas is the only "red" state that pulls its own weight; 17 of the 18 states that contribute more than they receive are "blue"; 21 of the other 32 states -- including 9 of the bottom 11 -- take more than they make.

So go already, you goddamned crybabies, please. The rest of us would like to keep our money, the way Jesus and Ayn Rand intended it. I'm sure Texas won't mind supporting you. Buh-bye.

Insanity Workout

Ed ably defenestrates yet another deserving moron, but to really appreciate the full measure of crazy, read the original post, and then, for an extra side order of crazy with extra crazy sauce and crazy bread, read the comments, as well as this profile, bearing in mind that this guy used to work for Ron Paul.

Of course, even the most Paultarded things I've seen since Gandalf the Cracker cast his weird isolationist spell over our nation's befuddled masses never quite approached this intellectual loogie:

Seccession of [sic; obviously he means "Secession or"] leave. I say we've got two to three years left before they start rounding up dissenters and sending us off to Nazi-style concentration camps. I've got a little more time, cause I live in Texas.

Arizona is a good place to be for now. But New York, Iowa, Michigan, Massachusetts, PA beware. You're vastly on the road to complete authoritarianism and statism. Grab your guns, protect what few things you have left. You're living in Nazi Germany circa 1933-34.

It goes on like that; Dondero later talks about "disowning" his brother and one of his sisters, "....the fucked up brother in Delaware, piece of shit, scumbag mother fucker who is a Democrat, and another sister in Philly who won't tell me, but I'm almost certain voted for Obama....They are dead to me now. And I will not under any circumstances attend their funerals in 30 or 40 years."

One can only assume that those hapless siblings are well relieved to be rid of this thing, instead of having to help change his poopy diaper every time an election doesn't go his way. Seriously, I think we can all recall the vicious, hyperbolic nature of the 2004 "election", culminating in election fraud normally observed by Jimmy Carter in, say, Guatemala.

Plenty of butthurt liberals were threatening to move to Canada (perhaps until they realized that it's harder than you think; there's more to it than packing a U-Haul and professing loyalty to William Shatner and Geddy Lee when you hit the border). Maybe a few got weird with their friends and family, exploiting rifts along pre-existing fault lines that all families have. Hell, maybe even a few of the more vituperative may have seriously prophesied that the Cheney regime would round them up and stick them in "Nazi-style concentration camps".

But I don't think any of those extreme butthurters were former staffers for a presidential primary candidate. Nor did they go into the extensive laundry list of "activist" ideas that Dondero claims, such as loudly berating EBT card users at the Wal-Mart check stand, just in case any are within earshot and are suitably shamed by his dissatisfaction.

There's No "U" In "Team", Either

You know, the extended scholarship Tim Tebow has gotten in the NFL rankles me as a football fan, rather than as a non-believer. But this sort of grousing to the media by his "teammates" is pretty cheap shit. Sure, every time the guy cocks back to throw for more than fifteen yards, he looks like he's heaving a canned ham over a brick wall. And his occasionally impressive rushing stats fail to account for the ten times as many east-west yards he scrambled like a doomed chicken.

But the Jets, true to their East Coast Raiders M.O., are in full free-fall at this point. And it's actually not Tebow's fault, at least not on the field, since he's hardly played, and the team in the largest media market should know how to handle distractions -- we are, after all, referring to the same team who, when signing jism-spraying asshole Antonio Cromartie, had to front him his signing bonus so he could catch up on child support payments. (To give you a clearer idea of what a turd Cromartie is, all twelve of his kids are seven-years-old or younger. Four of them, by four different women, are five-years-old. And that's not even taking into account that at least one other was "taken care of".)

Even in NYC, when a team airs its dirty laundry this much, it's imploding. Forget Tebow, either Sanchez or Ryan will be gone next season, probably Mike Tannenbaum as well. Just like with the Raiders, too many injuries, not enough playmakers, half-assed coaching. All those things add up, long before the Wildcat package guy sets foot on the field.

Not that I feel sorry for any of the characters in this play, really; as shitty as it is of Tebow's fellow Jets to hang him out like this, at least he knows where he stands with them. And when he washes out of the league in another year or two, maybe after a stint with the hapless Jaguars (so long as they remain in Jacksonville and Shahid Khan doesn't move them to LA), there'll be a nice House seat somewhere in the Florida panhandle waiting for him, just like there would have been in Colorado Springs if he'd remained with the Donkeys.

The Groupie Routine

I guess since there aren't any princess boobies or self-immolating celebritards this week to gawk, we have to contrive an opinion on the sudden surge (in my pants) of milfhunting generals and their power groupies. Obviously it's all about someone at State or CIA fucking the dog on that Benghazi thing, and the ensuing coverup, or something. The beauty of a really good conspiracy theory is that you can make things up as you go along.

Of course, it doesn't help things that apparently classified information has been found on Paula Broadwell's computer. D'oh! Or, as another theory has it, this is a way (however inelegant) of pushing off one of the last remaining neocon foreign policy holdovers.

Either way, when Kissinger stated the obvious by identifying power as the ultimate aphrodisiac, he was wildly understating the case.

Five-Minute Music Reviews

Couple of newer releases, and a few from earlier in the year:

Aerosmith - Music From Another Dimension!  Aerosmith is one of the truly great American hard rock bands. Whatever else they've done over their extensive history, the early trifecta of Get Your Wings / Toys in the Attic / Rocks took the Stones' energy and angst and brought it home in spades. Of course, since that time, their track record has varied some. Most notably, since their resurgence in the late '80s with Permanent Vacation and Pump, the band has shamelessly incorporated a level of song-doctoring and outside songwriting that would put a slew of hacky pop bands to shame. The saving grace is that they still have Joe Perry, and really the entire band is effective at putting their own stamp on pretty much anything (as anyone who's ever heard the old Live Bootleg version of James Brown's Mother Popcorn can attest).

The problem here is twofold:   one is that rock has been pretty much pushed out of the mainstream of what passes for pop culture these days, making any album an uphill struggle even for well-established acts; and two, while Steven Tyler may have parlayed his American Idol stint into a prime pop presence, with that comes the burden of maintaining that profile for that particular audience, most of whom probably had to consult Wikipedia to figure out who Tyler was in the first place.

It's not that Dimension! is terrible; it does serve as a document of the band's evolution, and there are plenty of catchy tunes in a variety of styles. But aside from Perry's reliably raunchy lead work, it's mostly polished, pretty, and predictable. There are some nice old-school moments in Out Go the Lights, Freedom Fighter, and Street Jesus,. And hell, it's Aerosmith. But by the time you get to the obligatory duet with, um, Carrie Underwood (she's 29, Tyler is 64, just sayin'), you almost expect a cameo from J-Lo.

Like their heroes the Stones, Aerosmith have by and large joined up with the establishment they avoided in their misspent youth. That's okay; probably the only person on the planet in their mid-sixties who can convincingly flip off The Man without looking like a schmuck is Lemmy. But one is reminded of Wayne Campbell's poetic admonition to Garth Elgar:  "Led Zeppelin didn't write songs that everyone liked. They left that to the Bee Gees."

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Black Country Communion - Afterglow  For those not familiar, Black Country Communion (BCC) are one o' them dreaded "supergroups", the term generally associated with those plodding entities from the '70s, that seemed to begin with Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and end with, well, Asia, which boasted Palmer as a member.

But BCC, comprised of Deep Purple Mark 3 bassist/singer Glenn Hughes, hard-blues shredder Joe Bonamassa, keyboard virtuoso Derek Sherinian, and drum legacy Jason Bonham, won't be mistaken for ELP or Asia anytime soon. Sixties and Seventies style "retro rock" is bouncing back big, mostly with bands like the Black Keys, but also with lesser-known bands such as Rival Sons and The Answer, both of whom feature classic Robert Plant/Stevie Marriott-type blues belters.

BCC are very much in that mold, pushing their Purple/Zeppelin roots for all they're worth, cranking out riffs by the truckload. Hughes, at age 61, sings balls-out like someone half his age, as if still doing tracks for Burn. Sherinian is in full Jon Lord mode, in the best sense of the word -- he combines the late great Lord's impeccable Hammond B3 chops with a sense of restraint, as much or more of an accompanist than a pure soloist. Bonham lives up to the family name and does his old man proud.

Bonamassa may have the toughest line to tread here, to not come off sounding too much like either Jimmy Page or Ritchie Blackmore, and in this he succeeds admirably, by finding the English guitar icon that fits both sensibilities perfectly -- Jeff Beck. The mercurial Beck was always far and away the most imaginative and technically accomplished of any of the British guitarists of that era, and even his more recent work sounds fresh and current. Bonamassa shows that kind of fire and spirit in his playing, with some sweet cascading runs in the romping Confessor, some great Beck-type whammy-bar fluttering in the title track, and ripping blues bursts throughout. The Zeppelin-esque stomp Crawl is nice closer to a solid, tight, old-school effort.

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22 - Flux/The Pool Sessions  This one came out during the summer, and it's too bad it didn't get more attention. The easy genre description would be something along the lines of "pop-mathcore", but those sorts of hybrid generalizations tend to shortchange the parts they attempt to cobble together. 22, hailing from Norway, have recognizable elements, but combine them well in their own way. Certainly the busy mathcore/djent components are there throughout, especially on tracks such as Gotodo and Disconnected from the Grid, and there's even some (almost) metallic atonal rhythmic chugging kicking off Oxygen.

But what separates these guys from the trap of easy categorization is how melodic and catchy the choruses are, no matter how busy the verses tend to be. It's as if Animals as Leaders or Scale the Summit borrowed Matthew Bellamy for vocal work, with Muse's more Queen-style melodies anchoring the songs, with a little Mars Volta thrown in for good measure. Indeed, songs such as Kneel Estate and Susurrus sound straight out of the Muse hymnal, more Absolution or Black Holes and Revelations than their last two more orchestrated efforts.

This is one of the coolest things I've heard all year -- weird, catchy, dense, virtuosic, interesting, unabashedly both poppy and nerdy. One of those albums that gets better with each listen.

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Internet Business Questions

Couple questions for any of you kids out there who may have an interest or experience in these things:  the site I'm working on is going to be about guitar and guitar technique, theory, that sort of thing. Lot of "shred"-type stuff, but not exclusively; in fact it will probably cover more technique and theory.
So basically what I'm wondering is if any of you folks have any particular knowledge or experience to share in building and promoting an internet business of any sort, or in writing and promoting e-books (site-based PDF, Amazon, Smashwords, etc.). I've spent a great deal of time over the past year, familiarizing myself with the usual internet marketing ideas, Warrior Forum, etc., and found that while there are definitely some things in that area to try, I'm more interested in a content-based business model than in relentlessly marketing, trying to cast an insanely wide net on a fairly modest niche. But I'm interested in any experiences any of you may have had in those areas as well, good, bad, or indifferent.
Again, any observations or thoughts, however large or small, are most welcome. If you'd rather not post in the comments thread, feel free to drop me a line at heywoodj.dan@gmail.com, I actually do check it pretty frequently these days. Thanks.

Sore Loserman

Speaking of pedophiles, noted draft-dodging scumbag and all-around gaping asshole Ted Nugent has a love poem fer all you Obamatons out there:

"Pimps whores & welfare brats & their soulless supporters hav a president to destroy America," Nugent wrote in the first of a storm tweets. "So Obama still demands the hardest workers provide for the nonwotkers. Shared opportunities my ass," he followed, before tweeting, "What subhuman varmint believes others must pay for their obesity booze cellphones birthcontrol abortions & lives."

Indeed. If Tom Paine were alive in our age of modern wonders, I'm sure he would have tweeted much the same missive, and then banged a 17-year-old groupie. Hey, the heart wants what it wants, amirite? Christ, it's like Nugent has some kind of weird bet going with Donald Trump, to see who can be the biggest fucking bozo on the planet.

Then there's this guy, who expends several thousand more words, couched in apocrypha, class-envy tropes, and allusions to classical Greek philosophers so's you know he reads something besides Fifty Shades of Grey, saying much the same thing. The takers voted to hold down the poor misbegotten makers and cornhole 'em, as portrayed in Atlas Smugged. Why, it's a miracle the producers haven't gone ahead and gone Galt on us thieving parasites already. And sweet jebus, but the comments make you long for the poetry of the article itself. Every commenter a bigger producer than the one before him, one must assume, none of them ever having taken so much as a sweet dime from the eeevil gubmint, even when hard times came a-knockin'.

Really, it's a right fuckin' miracle they've suffered those indignities for so long. It's as if Wall Street never lawn-darted the economy, and forced us not only to pay for the rebuild, but to give them bonuses for all their hard work. It's as if a wave of foreclosures and concomitant family murder-suicides all across the land never occurred. It's like the "job creators" didn't take their tax cuts and either sit on them in the Caymans, or invest them in Asia, and not create a damned thing in the good ol' U.S.A.

Penn State Wants You

You know, as creepy as it is that this jerkoff was messing with a teenager (whether or not the kid was actually underage), I really just want to take the opportunity to point out that, as the father of an 11-year-old, and as someone who has seen a great deal of children's teevee over those eleven years, and not minded most of it, Elmo was the one who far and away drove me up the fucking wall every goddamned time. And I like the Muppets, but could not stand to be in the same room as that minion-of-Satan, rusty-nail-on-a chalkboard, roomful-of-screeching-babies-and-yammering-Palins voice. And yes, Elmo fans should feel free to wonder if Clash used that voice in more, um, private moments. At least he's not Jerry Sandusky, but jeez, not by much.