The Wart On Christmas

When Fuckface Von Clownstick proclaims that no president has done as much as he has in such a short time, he has a point:  in less than a year, Von Clownstick has managed to ruin football, the internet, and Christmas. As always, the liberal media gets credit for an assist:

“It offends me,” [some random dipshit] continued, “to see at the stores, where they just do ‘Happy Holidays’ or ‘Seasons Greetings.’ It should be ‘Merry Christmas.’ Put Christ back into Christmas. That’s what it’s supposed to be. . . . I just wish we would all get on the same page.”

Trump tapped into this sentiment on the campaign trail when he promised that if he was elected president, everyone would say “Merry Christmas” again — never mind that most Americans never stopped.

....

“We can’t say ‘Christmas,’ because there’s too many Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus, and it offends them,” said Naomi DePriest, a property manager in her mid-50s whose husband farms, over a lunch of fried catfish and ribs at Hens and Hogs. “I think they should keep Christ in Christmas, which is what they said originally, and to heck with anybody that don’t like it. Anybody that’s Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist, let them do what they want to do, but don’t criticize those that want to keep Christ in Christmas.”

I've gone fifty circuits now on this overburdened blue-green pear, orbiting our yellow ball of fire, and I read way more (and specifically way more political jabber) than any sane person ought to, and I have never -- like not even once -- heard or read of a non-christian or even an atheist complaining about any distinction or preference between "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" or whatthefuckever people choose to say.

Yes, you occasionally have your ACLU types striving valiantly (and usually in futility) to remove nativity scenes from publicly owned sites, but that's about the extent of it. You want to talk about insufferable fucking snowflakes, these jagoffs are the worst. They are demented in their delusions of persecution. The only time anyone has ever been told what to say during the holiday season has been as a matter of a perhaps more inclusive, if ultimately misguided, corporate policy. Don't like it? Then boycott the company, quit your job, whatever it takes, snowflake. Anything less would make Fentanyl Baby Jebus cry.

It's at least somewhat heartening to know that in the age of modern medical miracles, we have finally achieved the ability to perform brain transplants. Unfortunately, these rubes have chosen to exchange their brains for root vegetables. Ruta-bay-ee-a-ga, ruta-bay-ee-a-ga!

But again, the real problem here is not the angry rubes per se, it's that a national newspaper feels the urge to trudge out to some abandoned shithole where no one lives in the first place, and dutifully stenograph the deep thoughts of these dopey losers. I don't give a fuck what they think about anything, especially not Christmas, and their imagined persecution complex. They can spend the rest of their lives festering bitterly in their broke-ass hick town, wondering why they're being forced at gunpoint to bake cakes for faggots and memorize Family Guy scripts.

I don't care what morons are worried about, and no matter how many times the media-industrial complex humps my naked leg, I will never care. They pollute the world with their idiot nonsense, and the last thing the world needs is more insufferable retards. Unless, of course, their so-called revolution can be monetized.

What a truly liberal media would do is remind them -- remind us all -- that Christmas is really a holiday celebrating an anchor baby whose homeless mama had a bullshit story about her sex life. And they might talk to an actual liberal once in a great while, instead of repeatedly going out of their way to statistically insignificant places, to pretend that the demented ravings of fist-shaking codgers have any truth or utility to them.

Surplus Population

Humans ruin everything. Pray for the meteor.

Judas Factor

Let's cut the shit -- Jason Chaffetz is a gutless turd, a toxic worm whose presence has lessened an already rock-bottom Congress. He's the mystery chum some dumb bastard has to mop up from the floor of a back room of a pet store in Reseda after a gay porn shoot. He's the floater that refuses to fucking flush already. Fucking dirtbag.

There are players in this bloodsport that controls our lives and fortunes, where you can say, "Well, he's an asshole, but he did this and this and that. He's not entirely awful." Chaffetz is not one of those players -- he's entirely awful. He's sold his country down the river, chasing shadows on the Benghazi nonsense, only to cede power to Grampa Poopypants and his Russian investors.

He probably thinks he can toddle off to be a lobbyist or some such, rake in such real money. Knowing the dumb fuckers polluting this country, he's probably right. But if he's thinking about running for another office, hopefully the folks in the Beehive State wake up and reckanize who's their friend and who isn't. Because Chaffetz is just another weasel who knows how to look like he knows what he's doing, while actually doing nothing.

I'm sorry he and his family are receiving death threats, and that's certainly wrong and awful, but it's also useful to recall that "death threats" encompasses a wide variety of statements, such as (for example), "It would be a shame if an asshole such as yourself were to die painfully in a house fire." So we don't know with any specificity or precision what exactly was sent to him or his family. None of this changes the fact that he sucks rhino balls.

Seriously. Fuck Jason Chaffetz. He's a prick who has harmed this nation far more than he's served it, and his family and constituents should be reminded of that at every opportunity. Let him go out into the job market and find honest work. He won't, because he's a useless asshole who deserves to spend the rest of his life on a sidewalk spinning a sign trying to entice people into a Little Caesar's franchise, and because the system rewards incompetence and mendacity better than it does anything else.

Good and Hard

Okay, for the record, I definitely feel bad for the folks who knew the stakes, voted accordingly, are going to lose their health care coverage -- and possibly, you know, their lives or their kids' lives -- because of a smattering of angry rust-belt retards.

But let's not take the bait on worrying about how many Drumpfkins are going to lose their coverage. Seriously. It's barely worth reporting, much less showing concern. Fuck them, every last one of them. Fuck their black lungs and slipped discs and groaning knees. Fuck their congested hearts and rotted colons and the limbs they lost to type-π dia-beet-us.

I don't "like" or "hate" these people, I simply don't care about them. At all. I don't care if their jobs come back. I don't care if they've lived quiet lives of desperation for too long and have just given up out of frustration. I don't care if their unemployed, thirty-year-old, five-kids-by-four-guys-in-six-years daughters are whoring themselves on Craigslist for oxy and fentanyl. They've made themselves clear, they made their choice, are being unbelievably insufferable about it, and deserve everything they're about to get.

They can live on cat food and wipe their worthless asses with their "Fuck Your Feelings" t-shirts for all I care. It has nothing to do with their race or economic status or regional accents or even political beliefs, to the extent that they have any of the latter; it has everything to do with the fact that it was more important to them to fuck over the caricatured fag libruls of their fever dreams, than to pay attention and simply not vote for the most transparent caricature of a con-man carny imaginable.

A Modest Proposal

There are actual human beings out there who spend time spamming honest websites with their illiterate, bullshit promotions for knock-off merchandise. If each and every one of those folks, from Los Angeles to Putian, would kindly take a quick moment, put a gun in their mouths, and splatter their useless brains across the nearest wall, it would add net value to the planet. Obviously most of it is bot-deployed, but someone sets up the bots and the dummy sites. I wish they all had one neck so I could fucking break it for them.

The Dogs of Bore

Jesus H. Christ, this is still a thing? I suppose the fact that "competitive eating" never really took off as a true professional sport (in that a significant number of people could make a decent living solely from that) is somewhat reassuring, as is the rather obvious fact that these bozos are doing substantial damage to their gastrointestinal systems.

The dopier pro-wrestling style antics have been played up in the Nathan's competition in recent years, perhaps to overshadow the possibility that there really isn't enough prize money unless you're some sort of weirdo living in mom's basement rent-free. How'd you like to be the one trying to sell your parents on this particular path to greatness?

Here's the thing about sports:  they generally involve people routinely performing feats of athletic prowess that most people cannot do, because of levels of physical conditioning. But anyone can eat several dozen hot dogs in a short amount of time, if they choose to spend weeks or months beforehand "practicing," dunking them in glasses of water to facilitate sliding down the gullet, and drinking enormous amounts of water before and after (risking water intoxication) in order to artificially distend the stomach and intestines. Not exactly the regimen of dieting, lifting weights, running, and learning playbooks undertaken by actual athletes of pretty much every real sport.

Bottom line:  not only is it disgusting and gluttonous, it's a sport in roughly the same way Groundhog Day is a holiday, or Dr. Dre is a licensed medical professional. But considering that the most play this crap gets is on Memorial Day and Independence Day, supposedly two days to at least pretend to celebrate some level of national greatness and significance, it might be more interesting to televise and report the entire proceedings -- especially the aftermath. What's the over/under on how long Stonie and Chestnut and the rest of these maroons spend squeezing out a 15-pound growler on the can later tonight?

#notallassholes; Or, Shart Week

Taking into account two fresh new stories that might make one consider the merits of capital punishment:

First is the heartwarming tale of one Douglas McAuthur (sic; Jesus H. Christ, do people not own a fucking history book or a liberry card?) McCain. Now, while Doug is not (as far as we know) related to our good friend Poor Ol' Straight Talk, he did make the fateful decision to leave his decadent, meaningless existence in San Diego, and join up with the world's most notorious terrorist group, to bravely slaughter villages of unarmed unbelievers and behead infidel journalists. You can sort of get why a kid in some horrid Middle Eastern despotism might say "the hell with it" and take up arms against whoever and whatever. What possesses a homegrown dipshit to head to one of these god-forsaken places to murder and pillage, who knows? Sounds like he got what he was looking for.

Second is this charming little story from England, where piece-of-shit "gangs" preyed upon children while the authorities turned a blind eye and scorned the victims, some of them as young as 11. Because nothing says "tough guy" like preying on sixth-graders, amirite? Forget all that claptrap of "the state has no right to take life," every one of these gang assholes needs to be lined up against a wall, and the "authorities" that let it go on need to do some serious time. I would seriously suggest that someone who participates or facilitates the gang-rape of children is not a fucking human being, and therefore you're just ridding the world of a rabid animal.

These are the sorts of things that serve as a reminder that the planet won't miss us when we finally push its climate past the point of no return.

Words With Friends

When it comes to pedantic arguments over "correct" usage of this or that word, I tend to be something of a fence-straddler. I personally know and use the right word in the right manner, because I regard them as tools with specific functions. Just as you wouldn't use a screwdriver where a wrench is called for, why would you use "literally" for an analogy that is clearly figurative, or even fantastical?

However, as a practical matter, correcting someone on their incorrect usage is off-putting, a clear dick move. They are not going to learn from your noble example. Save your time, and your reputation, and move on. I recall seeing some fluff Sunday morning show piece about a couple of guys who would go around to restaurants and "help" them correct their menus, usually over misspelled words or misused apostrophes. Life is just too short.

The "literally" thing actually makes a small bit of sense to me, because there's not really a common-usage adverb -- aside from "figuratively" itself, which might be somewhat unwieldy in a casual conversation -- that conveys the figurative nature of the exaggeration in question. We know that the speaker's head did not literally explode, and yet it's scarcely worth the trouble to point out that that word does not mean what they think it means. They know, that just happens to be the handiest word at their disposal.

Now, I'll admit that I take a breath when I see the aforementioned misspellings, and especially the misused apostrophes, because the rules on those are so simple -- possessives, not plurals. Writing "ect." (or saying "ek cetera") is another peeve, because "et cetera" has a literal meaning, an actual function. "Should of" instead of "should have", that sort of thing. Approached as tools with functions, these things are not at all complicated.

But habits -- especially bad ones -- form through inattention and lack of caring. This is what the corrective pedants, well-meaning as they are in their quest to preserve the care and feeding of our noble, evolving language, may not quite get. People use "ect." and can't get the correct "your" or "there" homophone because they don't give a shit. By definition, correcting someone who clearly couldn't care less will not correct the mistake, but merely annoy that person.

Back in the chat forum days, I had several lively discussions about this subject with professional academic linguists, people charged with the mission of identifying, classifying, and organizing the various phonemic and grammatical constructs of languages. As a kid, I was fascinated by a variety of languages, and gained at least minimal competency in most of the major European languages.

The more you learn about language -- especially one as widespread and multiply sourced as English -- the more you realize that it is never static, it's a river that flows slowly but flows nonetheless. As with political systems, the outcomes of languages are frequently a result of a large enough mass of users who don't know or care to understand the nuances of what they're engaging in. They deploy it to convey their own immediate use, and some of it will accrue habitually. The more they read and/or write, the more competent they will be in hewing to convention, as one might imagine.

And that, ironically, is where preservationist linguists fall short, imho. It's easy to understand the impulse to chronicle and archive one of the thousands of dying languages around the world, spoken only by a dwindling group of elders in a remote village. But that impulse contradicts what we've noted above, that languages evolve with use. A dying language, by definition, is no longer one that is being used. It is intellectual lepidoptery to stipulate that a language that is dying out precisely because of its lack of use and interconnectivity has any utility, beyond capturing the oral history of the remaining few who speak that language.

In the end, the pedantic attention to upholding the simpler and more obvious conventions of language comes down to cash in many instances. I've been on plenty of hiring panels, and thus reviewed hundreds of résumés over the years. And I can tell you right now, when I encounter a misspelled word or a misused apostrophe on a cover letter or résumé, I don't bother correcting jack shit. I don't have the time. It just goes straight into the round file, I won't even bother to finish reading it.

And I'm far from the only one; I have heard and read plenty of hiring managers say the exact same thing. Ultimately what it comes down to is whether or not someone can be bothered to pay attention to what they're (as opposed to their) doing, and if they can't, hiring managers won't waste their time with that stuff.

Primary Colors

It's difficult to decide exactly what is the most tedious aspect of Blind Lemon Clinton's will-she-or-won't-she pas de dunce:

• the sheer inevitability of her candidacy (and really, the "my turn" campaign is usually a Republican thing);
• the shameless crying of poor mouth, at a country still reeling from an economic setback caused in great part by, um, the repeal of Glass-Steagall;
• the promise that Preznit Hillary will sell out the working class almost as quickly as your garden-variety Koch-sucker;
• the predictable scramble by the overpaid talking heads to provide their breathless analyses of loose cocktail party chatter;
• the continued use of "commentary" from proven shitbirds like Newt Gingrich, whose peanut-gallery bullshit will be exactly the sort of thing that nudges nauseated fence-sitters -- who will by then be exploring real estate in Croatia at the prospect of being "given" a "choice" between Clinton and yet another Bush -- over to Clinton, so we can get pretty much what we were going to get in the first place.

Oh, just run already, dear, it'll be a historic moment and all that. Not because of the woman thing -- hell, even a woman-hating country like Pakistan has had a female president already -- but because the bottom is falling out of this country, the foundation is giving way. The transnational merchant princes won, in no small part thanks to Hillary's husband Rubinizing the economy and leaving it the exclusive province of the sociopathic spreadsheet diddlers.

Perhaps the Clintons genuinely thought that the rising tide would lift all boats, that massive productivity gains and ease of financial regulations and securitization would create enough wealth for all. And it did, to a point. But left in the hands of a greedy few, for whom the word "enough" has no definition, even crumbs stopped falling from the table. Obama hasn't had the testicular fortitude or the juice to do anything about any of this, and will most likely be rendered as lame a duck after the midterms as Saint Billy Jeff was.

Say what you will about the teahadis -- FSM knows I've said my share -- but one important part of their argument that actually resonates is that their country has been taken away from them, and no one in Warshington gives a shit about them. Of course, their country has been taken away from them by the bottomless rackets that run this country, and own the media, so as to convince them that it was gays and illegals that did it, but whatever. The core is true enough.

So it will be a(n) historic moment, no doubt. The next president will get to preside over the continuing implosion of a once-vibrant republic, a society that actually gave a shit whether its children could read or count, communities that understood the nature of community and mutual good, businesses that actually paid their employees enough to survive on, to purchase the things they made or sold.

For a time I thought there might be some catalyzing domestic incident that expressed this discontent on a large scale, not necessarily violent, but something that would be apparent to all. It seemed like the Occupy Wall Street movement might be just the thing, but sure as shit, the corporate toadies rushed to their battlements to marginalize and defame these people, while the NYPD let every scumbag they could out of jail and set them loose in the park.

People are simply too atomized anymore, connected electronically, but not socially enough to translate into any meaningful action. The cops are paramilitarized to the teeth, and get away with pretty much anything anymore, so there's no percentage there either. There's not really anywhere to turn -- either you get lucky and generate enough multiple revenue streams to eke your way through what passes for a life, addled by pills and distracted by sports and reality shows, or get pulled under, quickly or slowly, the result is the same.

So here you go, Hillary, congratulations. How do you like it?

Best of Breed

Usually one encounters magical thinking in a cloak of a conservative stripe, such as Iraq War dead-enders from the Cheney regime. Religious wingnuts who quite literally believe and expect that their invisible buddy, the same guy who lets infinite, routine evil take place every day and everywhere, is looking out for them, if only they believe correctly and sufficiently. Climate-change deniers, birthers, people who are simultaneously convinced that Obama is both singularly dumb and inept, yet cunning and ruthless enough to pull off incredibly baroque conspiracies. You know the type.

There are liberal magical thinkers as well, and one of the more interesting types is the bien pensant reproductive rights absolutist, the pastry-brained doofuses who will write impassioned defenses of the "rights" of people who refuse to take personal responsibility for their lives, yet have nothing to say at all for the rest of society, who are forced to financially support those rights.

This is just awesome:

“When we first had the twins, the only person in my family getting aid was my oldest son,” she said. “We didn’t have money to buy them car seats to get home [from the hospital]. …We didn’t have money to pay for diapers, wipes, shampoos, and toiletries. … I am here to tell you that I am trying my best to be a great mom. I do not need to be punished for deciding to have children.”

Right, so let's punish everyone else by making them foot the bill for your "decisions". Is that how this works? Setting aside the fact that, in California and most other large states, car seats are free through the WIC program, there is this tone, this preening tone of expectation on the part of both subject and writer. They were owed this stuff, see.

Lady, I doubt most people care whether you "decide" to have two or four or ten children. I don't, except to the extent that the planet is already overcrowded with the human virus. But the tacit deal that you accept when you sign up for public assistance is that you're in a bit of a hole, and so maybe it's time you stop digging. Is it too much to ask that you at least put down the shovel?

I get that what families receive on CalWORKs or CalFresh or TANF is a relative pittance, and that compared to what corporations and super-wealthy individuals skip out on tax-wise, it's practically nothing. Still, there is something immensely off-putting about someone complaining about having to wait in line for free shit. I know, if I drop it by your house during my lunch hour from work, would that be easier on you, dear? I mean, come on. Birth control is free. No one is making you have kids you can't afford. There is no excuse for this nonsense.

But what's worse is the insinuation by the writer of the article that the family cap is just eugenics in a different guise. Old wine, new bottles, yada yada. Well, bullshit. I sure as hell couldn't care less about race as it pertains to this issue, and I doubt most people do either. What I care about is working my ass off to just get by, and having 25% taken off the top of my measly paycheck, getting nothing for it, and these people fucking complain about stuff being given to them.

Or the deadbeat douchebag who got incentivized into doing the planet a favor and getting a vasectomy, only after having seven or eight kids by almost as many women. This too apparently is the nose of the eugenics camel poking into the proverbial tent. Why does Melissa Ortiz get to "decide" to have more kids that she can't afford, and the rest of us can't "decide" in turn that we shouldn't have to support them for her? Why does everyone else have to pay for a dipshit like Jesse Lee Herald (who is white, btw) to mindlessly spray his seed into every available orifice? Hell, if anything, this should be standard procedure. If there's one thing the world could use less of, it's freeloading dipshits.

Flying Spaghetti Monster knows I shudder at the prospect of being on the same side of an issue -- any issue -- as the denizens of the feces-throwing Faux News monkey house. I don't want to be on the same side of anything as Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity. But goddammit, I think working-class taxpayers are being squeezed quite enough, thank you. Anyone between 40-50 years of age is already looking at a royal reaming in the decade to come, as retiring boomers hoover up the medical and Social Security dollars. The goalposts will get moved on us, because we should have to retire later and poorer so those motherfuckers can get their hip replacements. And we'll get jack shit in return.

And to add insult to injury, we're supposed to just sit by and subsidize people who refuse to get out of their own way. Well, forgive me if I politely decline. I'm absolutely in favor of helping people who have had a run of bad luck, are doing what they can to get rolling again. I'm glad there is a safety net for those folks, and it should stay there, and in fact be increased to some extent (increased funding, better job training). And I've talked to them personally, listened to them while they break down over losing their jobs, having a spouse fighting cancer, any number of things. It breaks your heart. They want to get back to what they've earned, and I hope we continue to help them as much as possible. But that's not who we're talking about here.

So in the meantime, perhaps the folks that can control the major aspects of their lives -- such as whether or not to have four kids while on the dole -- should start taking a little responsibility for themselves. I have very little patience for that "tough love" shit, the Dr. Phil sort of hectoring at hapless bumpkins who never got the memo about impulse control and decision making. But this is one of those times when it's true. No one's proposing to bring back Buck v. Bell, but there is an expectation that people make an honest effort to pull their own weight.

This is one of those externalities of the vaunted "post-scarcity" society we have apparently sought as a by-product of globalizing outputs through Third World despotisms. But the thing is, when you have more people than you have things for them to do, you have to be careful about the activities you continue to incentivize. I mean, if someone's willing to pay me to sit around and fuck all day, I'll take their money. But as misanthropic as I am, I'd like to think that even the average 'murkin is at least smarter than that.

A Good Use for Drones

Kill all poachers. Fucking end them already. It would be nice to get the scumbags who buy the products as well. I have no sympathy for any of them. I hope they all die, the sooner the better. Find a commercial or ornamental use for their body parts.

On the Origin of Feces

They tell us that we lost our tails, evolving up from little snails. I say it's all just wind in sails. Are we not men? -- Bob Casale, RIP

There are days where you just have to wonder and/or conclude that there are simply too many dipshits cluttering the planet, wasting precious resources, polluting the gene pool, and that a bloodbath (volcano, megatsunami, deadly flu pandemic, airplane fuselages dropping from the sky, etc.) might really be a cleansing.

I don't what to make of fucktards like this animal, except to pray to a non-existent god that it doesn't reproduce, ever. I feel immense waves of pity for whatever unfortunate creature (probably roadkill or a slow-moving farm animal) that it chooses to stick its tiny, nasty junk into. Its parents must be proud, so proud. Read the rest of its Twitter, this is a card-carrying moron that barely shows up to what sounds like an entry-level shelf-monkey job it's barely qualified for.

This is the sort of halfwit that exemplifies what David Simon famously said about there now being more people than there are productive things for them all to do. Which is all well and good; at some point in this blessed "post-scarcity" society, we have to start thinking about big-picture things like this, what to do with inbred belligerents -- people who simply do not and will never add any value to the planet, their communities, or even their own families -- besides doping them up with Ow My Balls! video soma and such like.

But this guy, I'd pay good money to watch him head into Compton or Oakland or South Side Chicago or some such, try that "nigga" shit out there. In the meantime, maybe we start thinking about ways to pay these ass-smoking dipshits not to breed. There are more than enough of them already.

Menace II Society

It's no surprise at all that a halfwit state like Florida should find itself in a quandary over the case of Michael Dunn. Dunn, you may recall, is the mouth-breathing dipshit who shot up an SUV full of black teenagers for the high crime of playing their music loud, killing one those teenagers, 17-year-old Jordan Davis. The idea that you can shoot up a car full of kids, head for your bed-and-breakfast, and order a pizza like nothing happened, is the essence of what Michael Dunn was thinking on that fateful day.

So of course we have to revisit what happened -- or what we think happened -- between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, in that same state, not so long ago. Zimmerman got away with what, from a truly objective observer, was an egregious, violent over-reaction to what was most likely a provocation of Zimmerman's own making.

Similarly, Dunn is, via the reliable conduit of what is apparently an easily gulled Florida jury pool, about to get away with plugging ten (10) bullets into a vehicle in a convenience store parking lot. This is unacceptable, or is it? Common sense would dictate that this sort of thing could not go unaddressed, yet we seem as a society to have long since passed, on so many levels, the idea of "common sense."

Look. What kind of a piece of shit do you have to be to do something like this, to perforate a bunch of teenagers on the false threat of brandishing a shotgun, a relatively difficult weapon to mistake for anything else? What does it take for a jury of one's peers to determine that maybe not everyone is intellectually, morally, or reflexively equipped to have a concealed-carry permit, that maybe while the Second Amendment has value, incidents like this are worth reconsidering where the boundaries are?

Animals With Human Faces

So this happened within the last 24 hours. I think most of us would like to think that zoos are artifices of nature, sort of a cocooned Edenic environment where exotic fauna are gathered and stewarded with love and care.

But as we continue to be the only animal that deliberately fouls its own nest -- and indeed accelerate that hideous dynamic -- the truth is that zoos are museums, storage sheds for species that are murdered and poached into extinction, because small penis or some other lame excuse. (And yes, I sincerely hope that anyone involved on either end of the poaching game gets eyeball cancer and dies in agony.) We overbreed and overcrowd without a care for a damned thing, destroying habitats with the mindless vigor of a swarm of army ants, but it's other species that need to be "managed." Right.

I honestly have no clue why we search for "earthlike" planets out in the celestial firmament. So we have more things to butcher and despoil, so we can exploit and destroy ever more inconvenient creatures? Maybe the reason so many of us are drawn to post-apocalyptic fiction is that, despite the chaos and turmoil that drive such narratives, there is also a restoration of balance, which we no longer have any sense of.

Nature bats last, always, and it will be a hard rain that falls.

Irregulation

"Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard." -- H.L. Mencken

"Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid." -- John Wayne, Sands of Iwo Jima

As they say, timing is everything:

As West Virginians were learning Thursday of a devastating chemical spill in the Elk River that has rendered water undrinkable for 300,000 people, the US House of Representatives was busy gutting federal hazardous-waste cleanup law.

The House passed the Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act that would ultimately eliminate requirements for the Environmental Protection Agency to review and update hazardous-waste disposal regulations in a timely manner, and make it more difficult for the government to compel companies that deal with toxic substances to carry proper insurance for cleanups, pushing the cost on to taxpayers.

In addition, the bill would result in slower response time in the case of a disaster, requiring increased consultation with states before the federal government calls for cleanup of Superfund sites - where hazardous waste could affect people and the environment.


....


The legislation was passed by a vote of 225 to 188, mostly along party lines, with all but four Republicans supporting the bill and all but five Democrats opposing it. One of those Democrats crossing party lines to support the changes to environmental law was Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia.

Well then, what say we just leave them to their own devices. Sounds like they got it all under control, and they don't need no gubmint goons tellin' 'em how to run things.

Friends 'n' neighbors, I don't know about you, but I'm tired of the discredited notion that there is any merit in trying to convince people with facts and ideas that they might not want to keep voting against themselves. Maybe the best way is to let them do it -- and deal with the inevitable consequences.

You don't like regulations? Fine, enjoy your poisoned rivers and your collapsing mineshafts. You hate paying taxes? Cool, good luck cleaning up your mess, since you don't believe in the evil gubmint forcing those nice bidnessmen who did it to clean it up and make your families and homes and communities whole again. You think the minimum wage is wrong on sacred principle? Fine, get on out there and see how much the world values your back and your high-school diploma. There are plenty of people working their asses off in a variety of menial, physically exhausting jobs, barely getting by. Feel free to join them.

Maybe after reading and writing about this nonsense for so long, I've just hit a wall, and no longer have any empathy for people who refuse to read a book or think about things for a hot second. It's like having a dumb kid who insists on sticking his fingers in doorjambs, even though household pets can see how doors work. But it's rare for kids to smash their fingers in a door a second time, right?

So maybe it's time to settle this once and for all with a referendum, not a media noise meter -- do the majority of people want to have a basic safety net for when shit happens and life goes south, or do they want a Randian Wild West show, let the devil take the hindmost? The recent sci-fi novel The Beam has an interesting take on this electoral and cultural divergence, but I've only read the first few chapters so far. The basic premise is that, every six years, citizens get to vote on whether to be freelance entrepreneurs, living with the outcomes of the risks they take, or wards of the state, surviving on a measly but secure stipend.

I just don't have any patience for this Deer Hunting With Jesus shit anymore. The political climate is as toxic as the river these coal fucks just trashed, and the majority of people in that state have consistently voted to poison their environments and wreck their communities, for jobs that will kill them long before they're old enough to collect Social Security.

Cut bait. Let 'em reap their whirlwind already.

Principles and Empathy

I think it's swell that Rob Portman has boldly come out in support of his son -- though, it should be noted, he probably felt that way back when he was in serious contention to be Mitt Romney's veep candidate, yet did not see fit to step forward at that time. This is in keeping with a longstanding tradition of pols from both parties, to wait until there is no political risk whatsoever in embracing what sensible people can barely regard as a issue of any importance whatsoever, especially in a world where decent jobs are about as common as unicorns.

Doesn't make Portman a terrible person, and in fact, considering the CPAC clown show is in full swing this weekend, it may push him away from the mossback factions of the GOP. It may also, one hopes, force the party to finally push said mossbacks back out on the margins, where they belonged in the first place. Better late than never, they are finally getting the message that maybe their in-house weirdos, with their tragic obsessions and oddball diagnoses of buttfucking and ladyparts, are doing the brand way more harm than good.

The 'pubs are going through the usual post-electoral "why we lost" kabuki, figuring that if they present a less bloody maw to the minority voters they desperately need to retain any relevance (assuming they at some point decide to stop disenfranchising them, that is), they have a chance in 2016. They are only slightly behind the Democrats in that regard, though Obama does deserve credit for at least announcing his "evolution" on his position months before the election, plenty of time for the obsessives to turn to the usual mortifications of the flesh.

But Portman deserves no credit for his metamorphosis -- he "changed" because it became an issue that mattered to someone he cares about, which is as chickenshit as it gets. The ability to empathize with people, in the abstract sense, as opposed to specific persons whose situations we care about as friends or family members, is generally considered to be a primary difference between adults and children.

The Democrats, with their grueling, stolid incrementalism, are not a huge amount better in this regard, nor in terms of empathizing with the plight of the economically disaffected, at least in a way that actually makes a difference in their lives. Remember when Bill Clinton swore up and down that American workers "displaced" by NAFTA and GATT would be retrained, so that the American workforce could remain competitive and innovative and all that? Right. The economy got Rubinized, before it got Grammed, and the "retraining" was turned over to usurers and profiteers, dangling the sweet promise of credentialism in exchange for a decade or two of debt peonage.

That would be the same Bill Clinton who voted for the "Defense of Marriage Act" an Orwellian name for a legislative turd if ever there were one, because Compromise Is Necessary and he needed to Get Things Done. Since enabling the banksters with the repeal of Glass-Steagall, Clinton has gone on to make millions on the rubber-chicken circuit, and if his hagiographers have any say about it, will probably end up on the dime or Mount Rushmore at some point.

Whenever a politician claims to be doing something or adopting a position on grounds of moral principle, you can be certain that if that entered into the equation at any point, it was only after virtually all risk was eliminated. That's not brave or principled, nor does it require much in the way of empathy. It's simply an ethical convenience.

Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Part 78,345

I know I've probably done a few too many "stupid culcha" posts as of late, and I'm teasing it out a bit more and more each time (hopefully), but these things are occasionally just fascinating (to me, anyway). The latest bit is this here; it is not that I have any supposition pro or con as to the qualitative merits of miniseries of bible stories produced by the guy who became a kajillionaire helping America watch people eat bugs for money, it's that so many of the commenters there seem to be so morally vested in its verisimilitude and theological probity. And they will brook no disagreement.

I humbly posit, as a generic logical viewpoint, that people who can get so butthurt one way or another about such a mundane basic cable artyfact, cannot possibly be of much use in just about anything. Maybe they can cook Hamburger Helper in a microwave, maybe they even remember not to leave in the foil and the fork when they cook it. But surely not much else; there's no one here that's going to we working at CERN in the near future.

Mediocrity is a continuum; it is possible but highly unlikely that, say, Neil deGrasse Tyson or Michio Kaku spend any time watching Honey Boo Boo or Duck Dynasty. The success and proliferation of these preposterous modes of "entertainment", like the mainstreaming of poorly-written fanfic, are due primarily to being impossibly cheap to produce in comparison to something that requires people of skill in writing or acting to produce.

But it is also that lowest common denominator crap is no longer rejected as such; the idea of "guilty pleasures" has been ironically embraced, something along that line. It's too easy and too lucrative to just take a huge dump and sell it as chocolate. I think I need to work on some fanfic, or rewrite an old fairy tale as a spec script for Disney. It's just easier to give up and go with the Ganges flow.

News of the Weird

This is not exactly burning front-page material, but it is passing strange at least that scientists would expend any real lengths of time, effort, and research dollars to limn the plight of chicken-fucking hillbillies. I mean, I don't quite get the "they deserve to burn in hell" vitriol of some of the commenters, but I would say that if you're the sort of person for whom buggering livestock is a habit, a way of life, the trajectory of your existence on this here earth is already pretty well charted.

This is just all kinds of charming:

The researchers found no association between penile cancer and the number of animals the men used over time, the species (which included mares, cows, pigs and chickens, among other animals) or the number of other men who also participated. However, the higher rate of reported sexually transmitted diseases in men who had sex with animals could be a result of group sex, said lead author Stênio de Cássio Zequi, a urologist inSão Paulo. More than 30 percent of subjects practiced SWA in groups.

Ahahahaha, there's a lovely visual, no, a bunch of inbred goobers gang-raping a cow. Well, there are 7,000,000,000 lost souls on our fair slab of rock, the law of averages dictates that at least some of them are going to be disgusting wastes of oxygen. Nothing new under the sun, but never a dull moment either.

Decade of Decadence

Xan had always known the importance of giving people a choice in matters where choice was unimportant. -- P.D. James, The Children of Men

All the commemorations, benedictions, genuflections, invocations, pronunciamentos, and various ceremonial prostrations are fine and/or dandy, and entirely in keeping with the usual expectations. No surprises there; really, there are very few surprises to be had anymore, when it comes to the political realm.

And this is nothing if not a chiefly political issue, tribal identifiers binding with solemn rituals. The key rule for any political issue is that it is infinitely more important to be seen and perceived as Doing Something, than it is to actually do something. It has always been thus, bizarrely symbols frequently become far more important and protected than the actual ideals and values they symbolize.

These sorts of things, candlelight vigils and solemn public liturgies, rote speechifying, have never done anything for me, regardless of the occasion. It's not that I don't think or care about what happened ten years ago -- I did and do care very deeply, and scarcely a week goes by that I don't think about it, the event, its repercussions, still unfolding, still metastasizing.

It's incomprehensible to me that anyone needs to be reminded of it, or feels the urge to display and share their grief. Unless it's completely spontaneous, an extemporaneous situation, frankly I don't trust people who grieve with complete strangers. And I sure as hell don't trust individuals who get weird and insistent about, say, the supposed divine meaning of intersecting I-beams, in the wreckage of a building that had countless such pairings. I don't discount the value of such anodyne objects in the wake of tragedy, it's just that people seem to think it absolves them from anything and everything else. It doesn't; after any tragedy, large or small, we move on, or we wallow and die a little more inside every day.

And there need to be concrete sentiments bolstering the sacred rites. Without actual commitment -- to finding a better way to do things and resolve problems, to planning for an increasingly dismal future for the seething majority of 'murkins -- and acknowledgement -- of using grief and rage to inadvertently carve a lost decade into history, blood for blood a hundred times over (and the wrong blood at that), of chucking every principle we once stood for right out the window because of some psychopathic asshole in a cave halfway around the world -- nothing will change, at least not for the better. The question is whether that has been a flaw or a feature in the first place.

So we should definitely take a moment and reflect on that awful day, and spare something for all the awful days since then, what we might have done or not done if we knew then what we know now. The resilience of a country lies in its ability to come away from catastrophes with ideas about things, lessons learned, ideals to strive for. There is more to be done, and more that we're capable of, than lighting candles, wearing ribbons, and chanting "USA! USA!" at the Jets game, until same time next year.

A Beautiful Mind

One of Saint Sarah's less-than-gruntled former toadies has scrawled a "tell-all", adding to the publishing industry's largest segment, which is books no one in their right mind would read.

Naturally, the attention Frank Bailey has garnered so far, focuses around Sharia Plan's rather Leona Helmsley-like demeanor with people who can't directly help her political career, and her well-documented vindictive streak. But for me this little quote tells you everything you need to know about Palin's utter lack of even marginal intellect:

In his fervor, Bailey at first didn’t care that Palin lacked expertise — she had common sense. As she once e-mailed him, “Remember: amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.” But Bailey came to doubt his devotion, particularly after the presidential election defeat when Palin seemed to care little for governing Alaska and far more about cashing in on her celebrity.

[emphasis mine]
Set aside for moment that Frank Bailey is a fucking chucklehead who got taken for a ride, and now is trying to cash in on his time in the belly of the beast. Let's deconstruct Saint Sarah's attempt at profundity, not just for the complete lack of evidence and plausibility in the first part, not just because the Titanic sank not because it was poorly built, but because it hit a fucking iceberg.

Those nine words neatly encapsulate the mentality of Sarah Palin, and her addled flock. The smirking disdain -- delusional in its scope -- completely derides the notion of competence, of becoming better at what you do by learning as much as you can about it.

This was what I always despised about George W. Bush -- he exhibited the smugness of someone who seriously believes that he has long known everything he needs to know, that there is nothing more to learn. Palin is obviously cut from the same ragged cloth, no shock there. And no shock that she prefers the simple affirmations of fairy tales over empirical data.

But at some point, it needs to register with a critical mass of people -- voters and the skeevy corporate media monkeys they rely on for their daily dose of bullshit -- that beyond the breathless infotainment coverage of cock-teasing idiots like Palin or Trump, people who add to their fortunes by dangling months of guessing games to legions of dumbfounded dipshits, someone needs to be an adult.

A big reason America is in a period of epic fail right now, aside from its willingness to let Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon continue to skull-fuck the country with absolute impunity, is its inability to recognize unserious and marginal people for what they are. A serious, intellectually honest person does not let cartoon characters like Palin and Trump waste their time with this nonsense, and a nation serious about getting its shit together most certainly doesn't let these bozos jerk them off for months on end.

Their ability to stay in the conversation long past their sell-by dates feels to me like the sign of a nation that's given up on itself, has lost the capacity to identify entities that should never have been in the discussion in the first place, and are indeed simply using the process and its concomitant permanent campaign industry to enrich themselves. Maybe it's the natural by-product of a decade of hyper-cultural immersion in the mindless excesses of reality teevee, with it's deliberate vapidity and meanness. Maybe we were always mean and stupid, and are just not bothering to conceal it anymore. I don't know.

What I do know is that we are heading into a period that, for starters, will be characterized by more and more scarce energy supplies, and we are barely making token efforts to do anything about it, apparently assuming that some great Energy Fairy will providentially come along and fix it all. Shit, 'murkins cannot even be bothered to use environmentally friendly packaging for its snacking products, such is the affront to their dignity.

So it makes pathetic sense that a society that has lost its collective mind, preferring the comforts of magickal thinking, would put up with the notion of putting Sarah Palin or Donald Trump in charge of anything. Americans have had their heads lodged up their asses for so long, they have given up trying to extricate themselves.

Enjoy the view. It's only going to get worse.