Five-Minute Music Reviews

Van Halen - A Different Kind of Truth Van Halen has lived out the VH1 Behind the Music litany -- riding the proverbial gravy train with biscuit wheels into the mid-'90s, the band's increasingly polished output with Sammy Hagar derailed amidst a pool of bad blood and grunge takeover of the airwaves. The misbegotten follow-up with Gary Cherone, VHIII, is I think one of the most completely misunderstood albums of that era. It's not a question of it being "good" or "bad" -- it's actually better than it gets credit for. The problem is that it got so far afield from what fans expected from Van Halen, there was just no walking it back. It was basically their attempt at a Pink Floyd/post-Gabriel Genesis prog album.

Cut to the second decade of the 21st century, to find the inimitable David Lee Roth back in the fold 27 years later, and pedigreed scion Wolfgang Van Halen taking the place of Michael Anthony, who of course is backing Hagar and Joe Satriani in Chickenfoot. Got all that? Great, because despite the soap opera nonsense, despite the fact that almost half the songs on ADKT are comprised from demos from the first two albums back in '79, despite DLR's voice not being nearly what it useta be, it all somehow works. Wolfie throws some nifty bass lines throughout (not that Anthony was ever going to cause Billy Sheehan to lose any sleep), but has his work cut out for him in backing Uncle Dave (for what his bass lines might have lacked in virtuosity, Anthony was easily the best backing vocalist of any metal band of the '80s).

Tracks such as She's the Woman and Blood and Fire instantly evoke classic VH, and Stay Frosty is great fun, a total throwback to Ice Cream Man. Out of the collection, the oddly-titled and -arranged Honeybabysweetiedoll might be the most quintessentially old-school VH track here, a throbbing, menacing groove superimposed with feedback sound effects and nonsensical fuck-chatter from Roth. And Eddie sounds great on every track, weaving trademark lines and patterns all over the place, conjuring up the early '80 fire. There's at least enough here to warrant a follow-up, hopefully with fresher material and more input from the new kid.

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Prong - Carved Into Stone Prong is one of those '80s metal bands that lost out hard in the Metallica craze of the time, and have still not gotten their due. Classic albums like Prove You Wrong and Beg to Differ stand toe-to-toe with Master of Puppets, and have held up at least as well as anything from that era. (Another overlooked gem from the time: Corrosion of Conformity's Blind.)

For fans of straight-up, in-your-face metal with a slight NYC punk edge, Carved Into Stone delivers right from the start. Eternal Heat punches and moshes from start to finish, as strong an opening statement as I've heard in the past several years. On the second track, Keep On Living in Pain, when Tommy Victor scowls, "For what I do this every day, without potential for success," you can't help but wonder about the whims of luck and chance, and remind yourself of the turds that other, bigger bands of the genre (please, no names!) have crapped out over the last 10-15 years.

But what's done is done, and I shit you not, people -- if you're a fan of this kind of music, this is the real deal. I have not had an album grab me by the balls like this in front-to-back, all-killer-no-filler style since Clutch's Blast Tyrant. Great, heavy, catchy songs, incisive lyrics, excellent vocals (no screaming or death growling), tons of energy and anger. It would be unfair to all three bands to compare this with the Ramones or Motorhead at the top of their respective games, but that's about as close as I can get for the uninitiated. Go. Get it now.

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OSI - Fire Make Thunder While OSI is the brainchild of prog-rock alumni, Fates Warning's Jim Matheos and Dream Theater's Kevin Moore, they sound nothing like either of those bands. There must be some sort of boutique name for this kind of music; it's not "post-rock" like Russian Circles or Pelican, and it's not "djent" like Scale the Summit or Animals as Leaders (though all of those are excellent, prodigiously talented bands).

The best descriptor I can come up with for OSI is maybe "post-prog", or "anti-prog". Arrangements are frequently extended, but the sound is completely different. Drums are ridonkulously gated, vocals are filtered and "atmospheric" almost to the point of electronica, melodies are unconventional and certainly not sing-song. Choruses are practically unrecogniable as such.

But it all works, and works well. There are standout tracks throughout, but the closer, Invisible Men, merits particular notice, great melodies, nicely developed, almost poignant in parts. Check it out, and then go get OSI's previous album, Blood.

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Anthrax - Worship Music Of the self-styled "Big Four" thrash bands (which, again, in a rational world, Prong would be a part of), Anthrax has had perhaps the roughest go of it, with their back-and-forthing on lead singers, finally coming back to the guy they got famous with in the '80s, Joey Belladonna.

While John Bush was a more technically accomplished vocalist, Belladonna had always been a fan favorite, and on Worship Music he actually sounds better than ever. From the Z-Rock single The Devil You Know to the Walking Dead homage (Scott Ian had a zombie role in the most recent season) Fight 'em ('til You Can't), Belladonna weaves his tales of modern angst with verve and urgency. Charlie Benante, always an elite metal drummer, pulls off some really nice flourishes on Fight 'em, and throughout. This album, which came out last fall, is a nice return to form for Ian and crew. There should have been at least four radio singles.

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Rush - Clockwork Angels Rush is one of those bands people either love or hate (I happen to reside in the former category, though the fandom has been long diffused by a myriad of influences), and the long-anticipated Clockwork Angels, which dropped today, will change few minds. It is being billed as a "concept album", but forget that -- either the songs work, or they don't.

And for the most part, the songs work well. The first two tracks, Caravan and BU2B, were released late in 2010, while the rest of the album was being composed and produced, and the band played them on the Time Machine tour last year. Both are solid additions to the Rush canon, the latter with many pointed references to Neil Peart's, shall we say, questing atheism.

This has been the band's calling card and its curse, the cerebral nature of their lyrics and arrangements sometimes overshadowing the ability to just connect with a simple, visceral riff, a sonic punch to the gut. Not this time; Clockwork Angels abounds with terrific songwriting and old-school riffing. The most recent single, Headlong Flight, is a nice surprise, as a permuted, updated Bastille Day riff, with little stylized bits and pieces from the band's extensive catalog, yet a nice standalone piece all the same. Introspective pieces such as The Wreckers and Wish Them Well provide color and contrast, and make the entire album seem almost a valedictory, a summation of an imposing body of work.

Rush famously are one of the top-selling rock bands of all time, have the adulation of fans and musicians alike, and have influenced scores of bands, yet still have not been inducted into the increasingly humorous Rock and Roll Hall of Lame. (And at this point, I think I speak for most fans when I say that when the day does come, the boys should have the balls to tell them to go fuck themselves, they shoulda come knocking fifteen or twenty years ago.) And as all three band members are approaching 60 years of age, we're not likely to get many future studio recordings. Clockwork Angels stands up to repeated listenings, and overall is one of the band's strongest outings since the holy grail that was Moving Pictures.

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Fair To Midland - Arrows & Anchors I must have listened to this at least fifty times since its release last July, and I'm not sick of it, not in the least. Melodically inventive, harmonically engaging, rhythmically pummeling, and lyrically weird, this thing hits on all cylinders.

They could have left out a couple of the "palate cleanser" instrumentals, but the actual songs are a lot of fun all the way through. Extra props to the Beatles-meets-Metallica corporate-bashing mashup Rikki Tikki Tavi. The epic closer, The Greener Grass, encapsulates the strengths of the band, capping the festivities with a practically triumphant chorus melody, juxtaposed with the oddness of the lyric, "Hey! Where did you go? I promise I will kill you right now!". Top that, Bieber-ella!

Raising Arizona

You can't help but appreciate when life imitates art. This is precisely whence comes the saying that stupid people shouldn't breed.

In Your Facebook

At some point in the near future, hopefully, I'll be gearing up my own little e-business on the side, since it appears to be the only way to do more than eke one's way through life in our postmodern paradise. And with such a venture will come the requisite social marketing presence, of which Facebook is still currently the primary mode of disseminating marketing piffle.

So it's not that I necessarily wanted the vaunted Facebook IPO to fail so epically, it's just that none of the numbers made any sense. No one seemed able to explain where the $100bn market cap came from (after being estimated at $45bn a little over a year ago), for a company with almost no discernible revenue model.

Someone should put Jamie Dimon on the case; he seems pretty adept at falling into buckets of shit and not splashing a drop.

Sperm Donor

Of course, extreme cases such as this jism-spraying retard should not be seen as being indicative of anything, except maybe to restate the time-honored maxim that stupid people really shouldn't breed -- or at least they should know when to fucking stop.

However, I think it's fair and reasonable to say that no court should strike any deal or cut any breaks whatsoever for this dipshit until he presents a receipt attesting to having gotten a vasectomy, maybe two just to be sure. But really, no deals or breaks should be had at all -- it's a surefire bet that every single one of Desmond Hatchett's thirty kids is receiving some form of government assistance, and that Hatchett's minimum-ass wages need to be garnished until every last cent is repaid. Fuck this gaping asshole.

Extra kudos, btw, to the commenters who use Hatchett's idiocy to complain about blacks, women, Democrats, Obama, and the "welfare state" in general. On that last count at least, there's a small amount of truth, in that more creative ways should be found to either incentivize good behavior, or disincentivize stupid behavior. Either pay this dipshit a couple hundred dollars to do the right thing and get clipped already, or just garnish every goddamned dime he makes until the taxpayers' investment in his progeny is recouped.

Providing a safety net for those genuinely in need should not mean enabling useless bastards like Desmond Hatchett to fuck everything that moves and force everyone else to pay for it.

SEO Tips and Tricks

So it seems that out there on these weird wild intartubez, there is a particularly auspicious asshole in Greenville, SC by name of George Tierney, whose Twitter MO seems to be harassing Sandra Fluke, calling her a "cunt" and asking her "when [she will] shut [her] god damn dick sucker". Fair enough; apparently Ms. Fluke's testimony a few months back pinched a nerve or several, and Tierney feels free to utilize his sacred First Amendment rights to, I dunno, challenge Ted Nugent to a contest to see who can be the biggest fucking jackass.

So. TBogg has duly noted Tierney's attempt to be this generation's Phil Donahue/Alan Alda male-feminist type, and of course Tierney promptly orders Mr. Bogg and his site managers not only to, um, cease and desist reprinting Tierney's own tweets verbatim, but, ah, to stop affecting Teh Google with these mischaracterizations. How someone can claim to be misrepresented by not only quotes, but screen shots, should be an interesting tale.

This is and always has been your garden-variety movementarian conservtard in a nutshell, folks -- smarmy, self-satisfied, quick to lob a nasty epithet, and even quicker to get all butt-hurt and chest-puffy when someone has the nerve to, you know, quote them.

Tierney should see a lawyer, that way someone can at long last explain to him how the fuckin' law works. Jesus, you can't make this crap up, parody has long been a thin substitute for reality.

Semantics

If one wishes to characterize Romney's prep-school hijinks as "bullying", hey, good luck with that. Last time I checked, a couple people holding someone down while another person shears the victim with a pair of scissors, like a trussed-up sheep, is not a "prank", it's called assault and battery.

From shearing queer kids to making a buck off of gutting American companies and putting American workers in the unemployment line, and pocketing the difference for himself. No, no behavioral pattern there at all.

State of Failure

Gosh, it's just too bad California isn't a Wall Street bank. Then we would be considered "too big to fail", and bailed out forthwith, and given a nice fat bonus for our troubles. Instead we're just a state that contains 1 in 8 Americans, and gets 77 cents backs for every federal tax dollar we pay in tribute to the high lords in DC. Ho hum.

Remember, friends 'n' neighbors, AIG alone got $180 billion in the bailouts. Even half of our $16 bn deficit would help out hugely. Apparently it's better to let us die on the vine.

Porn Again

Not only is it hi-larious that America's porniest city is in the shadow of Disney World, but that well over half of the top 20 cities are in deep red states, right through the bible belt.

As always, draw your own conclusions.

Qu'ils Mangent de la Brioche

Is there anyone following the ongoing economic debacle that would seriously contest Taibbi's contention here? Not only is it no secret that any austerity measures will come solely out of the hides of the peons, they scarcely bother to conceal it anymore.

And why should they? They barely bothered to hide the model that ruptured the economy in the first place, the "we fuck it up, you rebuild it and give us all fat bonuses" racket they dumped on us a few years back. As many folks (including, of course, yours truly) wrote at the time, the bailout completely disincentivized them from avoiding the same sort of bad behavior down the road.

It ain't rocket science. If you catch your kid poaching cookies from the jar and lying about it, you don't beat him, but you also don't just whistle a happy tune and bake another few dozen cookies to replace the ones he took. Except in this case, Junior was stealing cookies from every house in the neighborhood, and all you did was just replace the cookies to placate the neighbors, and not even talk to Junior about his bad behavior. So again, why wouldn't he continue to do what he was doing?

I dunno. It is weird and counterintuitive to watch how economic issues don't unfold here, how they seem largely inert, or maybe they're just being ignored, because no one wants to read about how someone gets their job sent to Shenzhen, then loses their house on the subprime ARM adjustment, then either murder-suicides his family or ends up in a tent city scavenging cans for cheap vodka. One would hope that if enough people were exposed to the magnitude of the human damage that a rapacious financial has instigated and perpetuated, they might rise up, get on their hind legs and be men when it counted most.

The main thing to keep in mind is that there is enough to go around, but in a plutonomy, the players at the table never know when -- or even how-- to say "when". It takes a certain type of person to take money that they didn't even earn -- that they inherited, or stole, or coerced, or simply got lucky on -- and presume a sense of entitlement, a mission to simply hoard and push the peasants around.

Keep taking their shit, until you realize you really don't have to.

Pray the Gay Away

I'd like to go on record and wholeheartedly thank the fine voters of Nawth Caraliney for their valiant stand against those awful hommaseckshuls and their pernicious ways. Clearly this whole "marriage" thing is just a sneaky attempt to gull us fine upstanding members of polite society into, I dunno, leaving our virgin butt-cheeks unprotected.

Seriously (and I said the same thing when my own fine progressive state voted the same way), what the fuck is wrong with these people? The nation and the planet are on the verge of truly catastrophic circumstances, on a lot of fronts. It is inexplicable that this is even on the top 100 of any serious person's concerns.

Extra kudos to the Obamanauts for scrambling on this one like Randall Cunningham. To use the standard Lucy with the football analogy does a disservice to poor Lucy; rather than simply yanking the football and cackling with glee, it's more like they substitute a lead-filled pumpkin, but continue to insist that, nope, that there's a god's-honest gin-yew-whine football, I tell yew whut.

You have to love the faithful defenders in the comments there -- if Obama proposed tomorrow that, say, payroll taxes be increased on workers by 20%, and Planned Parenthood be completely defunded of federal dollars, they would rise as one and stomp and huff that Romney would raise the tax by 50% and repeal Roe outright with a single swing of his mighty sword. Let the N8r b8ing begin in 5...4...3...2...

I dunno. Ask Dick Lugar about the value of centrism, of dickless incrementalism, of letting yourself be pushed around, time and again, by some fat, crazy slob, losing the respect of the rest of the playground, when all it would take to win that respect back would to fucking pimp-slap his stupid ass down already.

Then again, maybe not -- NC certainly proved today that dumb 'n' ign'int is alive and well, in generous portions, for no good reason at all. Perhaps this is really the way 'murkins want it, dumb and dysfunctional, drafting foolish and mean and useless initiatives to make closeted god-botherers feel better about who-knows-what, while the rest of it all goes up in smoke.

But this is no way to run a mature democracy, not one that hopes to survive. These are the actions of drowning souls, desperately pulling down whatever is within reach.

Money Talks

Another reminder, as if you needed one, heading into yet another interminable election season, that Saint Barry O is not your friend. The most charitable thing you can say about the man is that he seriously seems to think that punting on first down is a valid negotiation tactic.

Not to insinuate that maybe Obama's energies are better spent elsewhere than on griefing potheads, but sweet Jebus, time and again he insists on letting the animals who already nuked the economic system once prepare to do it all over again. This JOBS Act, with its stupid (even by gubmint standards) recursive acronym, is being billed as a boon to "startups"; what it will more likely do is create more Instagram IPOs. Because it's been a good long time since we had a Pets.com-led tech bubble, n'est-ce pas?

Come June, odds are that the administration's sole domestic "accomplishment", the fatally-flawed-from-inception Affordable Care Act, a pork-laden industry-written boondoggle that should never have gotten as far as it did in the first place, will be flipped by the Supreme Court, thanks to the self-serving antics of Swingin' Tony Kennedy, who apparently never met a fence he couldn't ride until splinters shoot out of his ass. So that leaves killing bin Laden, which is enough reason to give Obama the nod again, but only just.

Again, it is a fine thing to nobly take it upon oneself to "change the system from within", as it were, to accept and even embrace the inherent perfidies of our flawed system, and "vote" accordingly, invoking the usual pronunciamentos of serving as the final bulwark of reason against the barbarian asshole horde.

Of course, this is twaddle, and we all know it, even the folks who truck in such tendentious jabber. It is Chomsky's evil of two lessers, over and over and over again, an endless, perpetual Groundhog Day campaign cycle culminating in a same-as-it-ever-was denouement. Some will tell themselves and each other -- and ankle-bite any doubting Thomases with their bien pensant horseshit -- that once Barry gets his second term, why, that's when the real change will begin, just you watch, pally.

Friends 'n' neighbors, cash in your IRAs and 401(k)s and such like, and bet heavy on this here prognostication: Obama will win (suitably close for popular consumption and media horse-race profiteering), but nothing will change. Not a goddamn thing. The SEC will not suddenly grow teeth, Obama will not have a change of heart and bring Paul Volcker back into the fold. Not one Goldman Sachs swindler will ever be frog-marched off to a cell next to Bernie Madoff. Not one industry or CEO will so much as pay an extra percentage point in taxes for outsourcing hundreds of thousands of American jobs to Asian sweatshops, and pocketing the difference. Not one Democrat will be truly emboldened by an Obama victory. They'll make the requisite mouth noises, they always do. But they won't actually commit to anything. They are already bought and sold to the highest bidder, and they are always thinking of the next election.

That's not to say you shouldn't at least participate in the collective charade, cast your pebble into the entropic void, if for no other reason than that you have convinced yourself of the simple nobility of that act, that it is the price one must pay if one is to be permitted to complain. Go for it. Just keep in mind that so long as the benchmark remains so low as "just be less of a toxic asshole than Mitt Romney", then the Democrats will do the bare minimum to meet that benchmark and nothing more. They'll work just hard enough to keep from getting fired.

And then they'll turn right back around and do what they've been doing, because to try to force them to do anything even a bit different or better gets characterized as Savonarola-level apostasy. The popular notion in recent years was that the Republicans treated the Democrats the way Lucy treated Charlie Brown when she held (and inevitably pulled) the football. I submit that while the essence of the metaphor is entirely correct, the correct application of it is in how both parties treat any and all Americans who happen to not be lucky enough to reside within the donor class.

But I'm sure that this quadrennial tilt at gutless incrementalism will be much more effective than the last one, or the one before that.

Our Dumb Media

Whether or by accident or by design, because it's impossible to tell anymore, the cheap, disingenuous re-interpretation of Hilary Rosen's poorly-phrased remarks about Ann Romney gained traction where none should have been had, creating the typical unforced error for the usual circular Democrat firing squad. It is ever and always thus, a vested interest for The Party, its largely artifical divisions, and most importantly for the perpetual campaign industry, to keep "the race" "close".

To the extent that a former shill for the dinosaur music mafia ventriloquizes the sentiments of corporatist limo-libs, what Rosen meant should have been clear enough to anyone. But the game is to be drawn into the weeds by a contrived "debate", a hollow controversy to distract from that which is not controversial in the least.

Saying that Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life is obviously not the point -- the point is that Ann Romney has never had to work a day in her life; that is, she (and of course her husband) has never not had the luxury of financial self-determination. She has never had to hold on for dear life to a job she detested, just to pay bills or retain something resembling health insurance. Never known the glory of getting a 5% annual bump at work, like it'll offset the 10-15% increases in food and fuel prices.

She has never had to put something back at the supermarket because she just couldn't afford it. She's never had to live paycheck to paycheck, to know the ineluctable frisson of understanding that you're just a paycheck or two, quite literally, from the street, from utter destitution. How many hard-workin' mommas had hard-workin' husbands who got their fuckin' jobs outsourced by Mittford and his Bain Capital buddies? Nothin' controversial 'bout that, right? Just bidness, son.

None of this makes Ann Romney a bad person, any more than her experience at being a parent and grandparent automatically fast-track her for sainthood. Rosen's point was and is, and will remain, exactly the same as the point used to be about George W. Bush -- that a person who has never had to worry about their financial future is manifestly unqualified even to speculate, much less authoritatively comment, on the realities that the average 'murkin faces every time they try to pay bills and remain solvent.

And no one should expect anything contrary to what they've heard this past week along this line, not from the Romneys and the GOP establishment, nor the Obamas and the Dem establishment, and certainly not from the refs. The first group has no shame nor scruples, the second no guts or backbone, about even the most uncontroversial points. Obama would rather make a career busting pot growers and drone-bombing villages than stand up even for a second against his professional calumniators. I'm not sure what's sadder, that simple fact, or as bad as he is, he's still light-years better than anything on the other "side".

Six more months of this bullshit. It's almost enough to make one miss the comedic stylings of the rest of the Republitards that have been tossed by the wayside. Where's Rick Perry when you could use a good laugh?

Just Asking

You think Santorum's foamy asshole ever gets sore from all the bullshit he pulls straight out of it? Of course, one would expect nothing less from a Joe Pa U alumnus (Go Fightin' ShowerFuckers!). But Jesus H. Christ, this guy doesn't even fucking try to conceal the fact that he invents things to suit his narrative. And he'll never retract or correct himself, because he's never wrong about anything. Which is a pretty neat trick.

On the one hand, it is gratifying to watch Santorum not only twist in the electoral wind, the math dangling ever provocatively just out of his reach, but willing to monkeyfuck his party's already dwindling chances in, ahem, Tampa (apparently Branson had an Andy Williams convention going when the GOP wanted to have its convention). On the other, it is enormously annoying to realize that, due to the limitless supply of butthurt stupidity in this nation, Santorum will no doubt land squarely on his cloven hooves smack dab in the middle of K Street.

In the meantime, if it encourages the louche, hypocritical "fruits 'n' nuts" reflexive California haters out in Real 'murka, I would like to humbly offer this demurral: Yes. You're sooo right. It sucks out here. That's why one in every eight Americans lives here. It's just awful. Whatever you do, don't fucking come out here. Just don't risk it. There's barbecuing in January. Barbecuing in November. Summers without 95% humidity. Winters without eight feet of snow and people frozen inside their homes. The largest, most diverse agricultural breadbasket on the planet, locally grown food of all types within an hour's drive. Stuff to do and see, and people who are actually conversant about books and movies and teevee shows that don't have Kardashians in them.

It's terrible. Run for your lives. Stay in Alabama and marry your cousin. Take Rick Santorum's every word as divinely ordained gospel.

Self-Awareness

You think there's ever a point where fucktards like this realize how much they actually undermine their own "arguments" with their sheer stupidity? I mean, the disingenuous denials of racism are bad enough, but that aside, what the fuck is this coinage "re-nig" supposed to be derived from? Is it a lame play on renege in which case it makes no sense at all, or could remotely be construed to mean the opposite of what this window-licking fool thinks it means?

I've said it before, and I'll say it yet again -- if the South ever tries to secede again, this time let's do the right thing and let them already. I'm goddamned tired of my blue-state tax dollars going down a drain to support cousin-fucking losers whose idea of clever involves coy plays on the N word.

Pain In The Gas

I realize that it's the Kenyan Moooslim's fault, since he refuses to initiate hostilities and bomb oil-futures speculators, that gas prices are the way they are. There is something hinky about the fact that Americans, in the aggregate, are actually driving less, yet the price increases apace.

And I'm sure I said something to the same effect last time prices were this high, but as long as there are Excursions, Suburbans, Expeditions, Tahoes, Denalis, jacked-up F250 King Cabs, and all other number of giant, boxy suburbatard short buses trolling around with one, maybe two people inside (which seems to be roughly 99% of the time in my experience, and frankly, I have never seen one that appeared to actually be at carrying capacity, not even once), I suggest that gas is not priced high enough.

Does it suck to spend 60 bucks to fill up a mid-size family sedan? Hell yeah it does. But how often, if at all, in any conversation about oil prices and the geopolitics thereof, does the notion of conservation, of perhaps driving even a little bit smaller and smarter, even come up? In that instance, in the psychological divination underpinning the dark arts of economics, one assumes that the true price-point equilibrium has not yet been reached.

Or it could just be that the den of thieves that comprises our financial system, and the refs who provide prefabricated commentary on all this, have a vested interest in keeping our ongoing electoral industry ritual "close", whilst one wing of The Party implodes in a spasm of collective insanity.

Dumb All Over

Has anyone else, over the last couple weeks, been having to remind themselves what year it is, that the notion of any debate over contraception seems as inconceivable (cue Inigo Montoya) at this point as any basic civil rights issue from the past six or seven decades? Seriously, a couple months ago most people would have rightly assumed that there was no argument to be had over birth control pills, and yet our Crusaders o' Infinite Regression went and found one.

Thank the Flyin' Spaghetti Monster that Fatboy Limbaugh just could not resist waddling into this, pendulous belly sloshing heedlessly against, you know, a pretty easy majority of the population. Limpballs' hasty apology/retraction indicates that he and his sponsors found out real quick what the pinkwashers at Komen found out last month -- women put up with a lot as it is, but when you start fucking with their ability to manage their own lives, you're just asking for it.

Maybe Darrell Issa could convene another claque of middle-aged men to dictate to the little ladies what's best for them, hilarity would be guaranteed to ensue.

But hey, while they're giving Limpballs et al what for, perhaps the boycotters might also consider going after the bigger institutions that persist in this medieval nonsense. I do not understand how or why a woman who disagrees with this guff could in good conscience continue to vote Republican, or stay Catholic. You want it to stop, take the money out of it, that is really the only way.

But more practically, this cafeteria philosophy only tends to empower the mossbacks in the long run, if said cafeterios won't actually take a stand on any of it. One question is why institutions continue with unconscionably outmoded doctrine, but an equally legitimate question is why members of those institutions who have individually passed them by continue to stay and put up with it.

It's like watching Tina Turner keep on trying to convince herself she can bring Ike around. But that never did happen, did it? So Republican and Catholic women can continue to contribute to organizations that, on a very fundamental level, treat them with contempt and disdain, or they can tell them once and for all to get bent already, that they ain't puttin' up with that shit anymore.

That is not an endorsement per se, tacit or otherwise, of another political party or religious denomination. Indeed, people (not just women in particular, but people in general) may find that extricating themselves from all of that -- from power structures who, in the age of instant contact and social agglomeration, are as outdated as their medieval positions -- could be an actual liberating movement.

Rickrollin'

Li'l Ricky's sweater vest continues to unravel:

Speaking to a tea party group in Michigan on Saturday, former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) accused President Obama of being a “snob” because he wants “everybody in America to go to college.”

The statement is a curious one considering that Santorum — who holds a B.A., M.B.A. and J.D. — holds more advanced degrees than Obama, who has a B.A. and a J.D.

Well, it's not that curious since Ricky speaks for and to the for-me-not-thee claque, who never met a handout they wouldn't take for themselves, but will bellow like a wounded farm animal if anyone else were to partake. It's true that college is not for everyone -- the poor teachers at the state system forced to try to work remedial math and English students who shouldn't have graduated from high school in the first place can attest to that -- but the bottom line is that the lifetime income gap between people with degrees and people without is only going to grow.

And of course Santorum knows this, just as surely as he knows what sort of catchy bullshit stokes the fires of his moron brigades. If this is what he's reduced to spouting, that debate debacle has him circling the drain even faster than it previously appeared.

Hearts 'n' Minds

You know, on the one hand, it almost gives you a headache to think that after ten years in that puckered butthole of a country, anyone could still be stupid enough to antagonize the Afghan populace by burning Qurans. On the other, it would be notable if they got one-tenth this indignant over the ongoing routine enslavement, rape, torture, murder, and daily oppression of their own women and children. That this sort of behavior can even euphemistically be referred to like it's just some cultural quirk or tic, a difference of opinion, is just revolting.

It would be nice if we could airlift their victims and, I don't know, send them to school -- or hell, just not enslave and rape and abuse them, but it ain't gonna happen. It's time to get the fuck out. There's nothing you can do with this contemptible mindset. If this is where we and they are at after a long decade, it's time to go.

Wholly Water

Although I pick on various religions fairly broadly, I tend by and large to go easy on the Mormons. But one thing I find peculiarly annoying is their "baptism" of dead people. The problem with it is not that they're "praying in" Holocaust victims, the problem is when they do anyone outside the faith without permission.

Now, of course as an atheist, it goes without saying that, as far as I'm concerned, it's just an empty, meaningless anodyne ritual. So what's the harm, then? Well, no "harm" in the sense that a mortal offense has been committed, and retribution must be had, or anything like that.

But it is a dick move. It's inconsiderate and presumptuous. It's disrespectful. It goes without saying that if acolytes of another institutionalized superstition were doing the same to LDS ancestors, they'd be annoyed by it.

This is not quite as irritating as their tax-free political meddling in the California referendum process, but it still sucks. You want people to stop calling you a cult, this is one thing you can remedy toward that end.

Ich Bin Ein Douchebag

Fun times at the CPAC.

Maybe it's just me, but at this point, every time I see Sarah Palin on my teevee (and fail to find the remote quickly enough) I think of those little yappy purse dogs. Doesn't even matter what she's saying anymore; she could be saying the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, and it would still come out this fingernails-on-chalkboard white noise. The CPACkers are still lining up for this stale guff, but then, somebody still watches Survivor, right? Chacun à son bloody goût, n'est-ce pas?

Extra kudos to Mike Huckabee for misusing not just one, but two classic phrases, previously invoked on truly serious, momentous scenarios, repurposed for his little clown conference. Surprised he didn't work in some "first they came for the deep-fried butter-stick eaters" schtick while he was at it.

Mitt For Brains (Spreading Santorum)

Ah, the heady thrill of a brief, deep gulp of the air of victory, adrenaline replacing oxygen in the exultation of pulling off a hat-trick upset in low-turnout flyover states with large swaths of ardent morons in the throes of their latest Anyone-But-Mitt mancrush. A series of new mistakes has piled up around these idiots' ears like a flurry of cholo-lettered neck tattoos; politically, the teahadis' panties lie at the foot of the bed of yet another coyote-fuck one-night-stand. Really, it's about to the point where they can't keep the names straight anymore, not that there's a whole lot of difference in the first place.

'Course, the obviousness of the 'baggers' ongoing failure to land a man who understands their special needs flies right past the usual fambly-valyews hacks, bless their pointy little heads:

“I think the reason Santorum didn’t get more votes before was because of the belief that he couldn’t win,” said Richard Disney, an organizer for the Tea Party in Reno, Nev. But, Mr. Disney said, he voted for Mr. Santorum mainly because “he was the only candidate I could stomach,” and he expects other Tea Party members are coming to the same conclusion.

Before the vote in South Carolina in January, a group of religious and conservative leaders met in Texas and decided to rally around Mr. Santorum’s candidacy to try to stop Mr. Romney. But Mr. Gingrich’s decisive victory in South Carolina suggested that evangelical voters were not taking their cues from the leaders.

Gary L. Bauer, president of American Values, who attended that Texas meeting and backs Mr. Santorum, said Wednesday that one reason the leaders’ influence was not felt was that “these voters do not vote in lock step.” He also said many of the leaders were not from South Carolina and they would be more effective in states that vote later as they circulate newsletters, e-mails and video clips of Mr. Santorum’s debate highlights.

“All that has been going on and it will increase after last night,” Mr. Bauer said.

He also pointed to what he saw as the fortunate emergence in recent days on the national scene of several issues of intense social importance — abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage — just as Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado, with their strongholds of conservative voters, were preparing to go to the polls.

“The conventional wisdom is that it’s always the economy, and of course it is for most Americans,” Mr. Bauer said. “But no one is able to call a ‘time out’ on these values issues, and I wouldn’t be surprised if in part that helped stimulate voters to turn out for Senator Santorum.”

I don't know about you, folks, but I'm long tired of having these moronic pseudo-debates with these moronic individuals and groups. This is not the mark of a mature industrialized economy, much less a world leader. These are the dick-thumbing squabbles a bunch of boy-raping tribesmen in Bachabazistan have, when they're not picking bugs off each other's asses.

Sorry, but this is just fucking stupid. The economy has gone through a catastrophic meltdown that will take at least a decade to recover from (if it ever fully does), millions of people have lost their jobs and houses and livelihoods, and these jagoffs are worried about the usual fags-a-gittin-hitched, daughters-on-the-pill bullshit their grandparents fretted over? Are you fuckin' kidding me?

It's too bad the Catholic Church is butt-hurt over their businesses' employee insurance being "forced" to provide coverage for contraceptives. I can't believe this is a discussion, that there are adults in this (or any) country upset about birth control. (Invariably, these are always the same asswipes who are up in arms about the prevalence of abortion, but we'll get to that.)

Then again, I can't believe there are free, independent adults who take marching orders on their reproductive rights from a bunch of pedophile-enabling celibates. I can't think of a group of people on the planet less likely to have a clue about how normal human sexual relations work than a bunch of Catholic clergymen. Put it this way -- ten bucks says the insurance covers boner pills, and the diocese is just fucking jake with all that.

And in fact that seems to be the case -- voters identifying themselves as Catholics have consistently been out in front of the average American overall on this issue, polling regularly in favor of being (again, I can't believe this has to be said) allowed access to birth control and contraceptive options. And of course they're going to be way the hell out in front of their "leaders" on this, men who literally have no idea what they're making pronunciamentos about, except in the most abstract, dogmatic terms. Like Wall Street, the church is another beast that needs to be starved, that will not go away until enough of its constituents/victims get wise and stop feeding it.

Naturally, Ross Douthat, the thinking man's David Brooks, steps to the plate and attempts to articulate the right-wing culture vulture's view on these vital issues, in the guise of attempting to split the difference.

Problem is, there's just no difference to split here anymore, not really. Douthat correctly outlines the three big "social issue" buzzfeeds of the past week: mandated coverage of contraception, the Komen Foundation's botched attempt to roll Planned Parenthood, and the Ninth Circuit Court flipping the egregious Prop. 8 ruling. What he misses is how these issues are already lost for the sanctimonious god-pesterers.

Look, it can't be re-stated often enough or emphatically enough -- anyone worried about contraception or gay marriage is simply nuts. And as we always say, trying to deal rationally with fundamentally irrational people is by definition a waste of time. I wish it weren't so, but it is. It is like trying to argue with someone who doubts the existence of gravity, or thinks the earth is flat.

Abortion, as an issue per se, is trickier, in that intellectually honest brokers can come to different conclusions on it, at least to a degree. In other words, a goofball like Santorum insisting that life begins at conception falls into the aforementioned irrational group, but someone, say, objecting to a late-term abortion that was not due to any particular danger to the fetus or the mother has at least a point worth making.

But that point is not the one that Komen was attempting to make by withdrawing its funding, and Douthat knows it. For one, PP obviously provides a broad spectrum of women's health services that have nothing at all to do with abortion. For another, abortion is, well, legal; like it or not, this has been settled law for nearly forty years now. For yet another, the immediate and widespread reaction -- not only the wave of donations to PP but the threat of a boycott against Komen's increasingly tedious pink-washing guff -- should make it clear to one and all that, while individuals may be squeamish about abortion, and not choose it for themselves, they also don't trust a sanctimonious turd like Rick Santorum to sort it out for them.

Now, critics of that will invariably cite some god-awful statistic about how abortion has become this afternoon lark that women just like doing for shits and giggles, that it's like going to a resort or something, that's it's practically a method of birth control unto itself. Two things to say to this: 1) Maybe you should provide -- no, insist on easier access to regular birth control, then; 2) Why in the hell would you want someone who uses abortion as birth control to even become a parent?

Where these pathological idjits should lose just about anyone with a shred of conscience or dignity is where they insist that even in cases of rape or incest, abortion should be illegal? Really? You would rather force a woman to bear a rape-baby, to be confronted with that pain and indignity literally every minute of every day for the rest of her life, than even to let her just take a morning-after pill, much less get an actual D&E procedure? Proves my point about being unable to talk to these people -- not to mention the fact that they're so far beyond butt-fucking stupid, they fall for literally anything.

Now, the problem is not that this Santorum surge (and yes, feel free to upchuck a little in your mouth at that visual) is for real. It's not. He's unelectable; he knows it, and more importantly the party knows it. But it's enough to keep the horse race interesting, and since the refs get paid to keep things interesting, they'll milk it as long as they can -- just long enough, inevitably, to force the Mittster to genuflect in the direction of these weirdos to try to get them on board.

It's just infuriating to see it come to this, to think that a country of 320 million people, instead of being a vibrant, mature democracy that can debate big ideas and big issues with integrity and intellectual honesty, has so many bozos who would much rather live in some repressed, lace-curtain nation of finks and busybodies. You honestly have to wonder whether any of them have wives, daughters, mothers, any sort of female perspective in their lives.

But it's important to keep in mind that there are plenty of women involved in these sideshow antics. When you decry the vicissitudes of the intrusive patriarchy, please remember: we can't do it without your help, ladies. You could try some grand Lysistrata-type of gesture, but then, no one wants to fuck these guys in the first place. That may be part of why they're so hellbent on controlling others' sex lives.

Hoodie and the Blowfish

Line forms to the left, ladies! Photo swiped from Kissing Suzy Kolber.

Aside from the fact that I can hold a grudge like Newt Gingrich clutching a snack cake, and ten years down the road I still hate the fucking Patsies like a case of the clap because of the Tuck Rule, this time around it was just good to know that Saint Brady's Super Bowl loss tonight made the Baby Bundchen cry. In two blessed weeks of unstoppable hype, in which every bit of tedious minutia gets raked over as if it means something, Gisele Bundchen's prayer is probably the most off-putting -- and should be even more off-putting to people who actually believe in god.

Hell, I doubt if even Brady would have the gall to pray for success. He goes in, he does his job, win or lose. He wakes up every morning knowing that he already got a rare deal out of life's lottery, what with an easy first-ballot Hall of Fame NFL career, more money than he can spend, and a billionaire supermodel girlfriend. It's okay to still play to win, and be a true competitor, but to beseech the Big Guy for divine intervention after all that would just be greedy.

At any rate, oddly this might be most frustrating for Peyton Manning, a supremely gifted quarterback who managed to win just one championship, will probably not get to another in what's left of his career, and watched his adequately but lesser talented brother just get out from under his shadow with a second Super Bowl win, first with a wild-card team, now with a lame 9-7 team -- and against Peyton's biggest nemesis both times.

And no, I didn't bother with the halftime show. The Black Guy Pees' effort last year pretty much ruined that for me, until they get an actual rock band again, instead of this canned, choreographed dance crap.

[Update (2/6, 6:45 PST): Looks like Bundchen, unsatisfied with her earlier efforts to be an insufferable dunce, decided to double-down and trash the Patsies' receivers going butterfingers on the final comeback attempt. Too funny. She's partly right, of course, but the fact is that Justin Tuck's sacks and heavy pursuit had Brady rattled, and he wasn't 100% by the end. Some of his throws were money, and should have been caught, but some of them were dead ducks.

But it's not like those guys haven't made countless clutch catches for Brady (who, as much as I abhor the guy and his team, still have to admit that he would never have thrown them under the bus like that) in the past. And she just made it that tiny bit harder on team chemistry in the off-season. Awesome.]

[Update #2 (9:00 PST): Okay, okay, I'll stop with the updates. But Kee-rist, ya gotta see this takedown of what has to the bitchiest, douchiest sportswriter evar. Has to be read to be believed. I mean, I never, and I mean fucking never envisioned myself even remotely defending Tom Brady, but goddamned if this particular assclown didn't make me reconsider. He's only taken his team to the goddamned championship game five times in the last decade, winning three and losing two by a handful of points, and this asshole complains about it like Brady fucked his mom and shaved his dog.

Bear in mind that, of 32 teams in the NFL, in 46 years four teams (Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Jacksonville -- the last two being expansion teams from 2002 and 1995 respectively) have never even made it to the Super Bowl, and ten more have made it at least once but never won. So nearly half the teams (and their fans) have no idea what it's like to win a championship -- and several others, such as the Raiders and 49ers, have been and won multiple times, but not in many years.

Again, Brady has gone five times and won three. In the past decade. And this douchehat has the balls to not only complain, but to single out Brady for his "hideous performance" (27/46, 276 yds, 2 TD, 1 INT). Slash in KSK comments nails it as "weapons-grade douche". I mean, it's been funny to note how Gisele is starting to Yoko Brady's mojo, but this pathetic, personal sort of shit this columnist pulls out of his ass is just nuts.

I hope the guy at least has enough sense to realize that nobody in the Patsies organization will ever talk to his dumb ass again. I sure as fuck wouldn't.]

Slump Buster

If you weren't quite convinced yet that Mitt Romney is a soulless plutocrat douche, maybe this will help. Not that this is any sort of shock; one hectomillionaire endorsing another for political power is our nation's -- every nation's -- lifeblood.

Even if some putative working-class mook manages to Horatio Alger himself into high office, he is always and forever reminded of who really put him there; Obama is never going to rattle any cages, any more than Clinton would have. Life is long, after all, they are young, with young families and children with futures ahead of them. That is not a hint at dark conspiracy, just an understanding that sterling careers are built and mortared on not pissing the wrong people off, lest they get the idea that their pelf is better spent on someone more grateful.

All that said, there is something irredeemably, obscenely vulgar about watching this ancient lounge lizard, orange-y pelt glued to the top of a phrenologist's wet dream, leathered facial hide bronzed with the blood of a thousand Eastern European escorts and the sweat of a thousand Guatemalan maids, throwing his imaginary weight behind perhaps the least popular Republican candidate in recent memory. Romney is so white, he makes me -- whose LA street nickname was "Cracker McCrackerton" -- look like Malcolm X. (Okay, slightly repurposed Paul Mooney smackdown about Wayne Brady. Thanks, Mr. Mooney.)

There is something grimly funny about watching this white, uptight, and outtasite super-Mormon sell his ass to a modern-day Caligula, a man who earned the honorific "short-fingered vulgarian", an unrepentant power tool who flirted with the pretense of entering the race as a publicity stunt last year, and just last week had his minions issue a proclamation that, were he sufficiently genuflected to, he might consider running as a third-party candidate. Of course, that idea fell by the wayside when Trump's natural pick for a running mate had to maintain his day job coercing bodacious retards to drink donkey jism. (Their parents must be so proud. Why not just do gang-bang porn and be done with it, girls?)

Anyway, is there a better sign for the state of the nation and the electorate than this -- a pretend bidnessman who can't even keep from going bankrupt in the casino racket, an industry several layers deep in corruption, a man who communicates routinely in cheap and increasingly desperate publicity stunts, deigning to grant his official imprimatur to a corporate android, a vulture capitalist grown rich from the usury generated by the American jobs he squashed and sent to Asia and pocketed the difference?

And Romney is so widely and deeply loathed, both by his base and the party establishment, that he has to sit there and take the venereal gift of Trump's approval like he wanted it. Just hours after crowing over beating the toxic turd Gingrich in Florida. Bwahahaha. And here I'm picking on the chicks drinking donkey chowder for the amusement of whatever inbred troglodytes watch that reality show. This reality show is becoming much more debasing. Next thing you know, Romney's going to have to let Meat Loaf and Gary Busey feel him up for Trump's amusement, just to try to squeak a bump in the coveted extra-chromosome demo.

You know, America, as long as you keep Trump on the air by watching his dumb-ass show, this is all your fucking fault.

The Bill Is Gone

Gotta admit, it is tons o' fun watching Tons O' Fun circle the drain, hoist mostly on his own fat petard.

For someone who spent the '90s so obsessed with Clinton's pee-pee, Newt shore don't wanna talk about it now. Just take his word for it, his marital indiscretions were totally different from Clinton's. Even his own kool-aid chuggers can't be thumbing their tiny dicks to that tune; in a base best characterized by ridiculousness at every angle, that one's too preposterous even for them.

Although the lunar colony shit is pretty fuckin' hilarious as well. Tell ya what, Fatboy, we'll start building it tomorrow if you'll serve as its governor for life.

Strange Brew

There is apparently no small amount of hoo-ha over Arizona "governor" Jan Brewer's finger-wagging guff in Obama's face, like he was the butler who dropped her favorite purse dog.

Let me suggest that, aside from the fact that teabagger politicians have long felt empowered to act like assholes to this president, to jam their finger in his face or heckle him at the State of the Union speech, there is no controversy, especially considering the source.

Jan Brewer is a clown, a schmuck, a puller of stunts, a shameless fabulist who squats out lies about her own father's history, who concocts lurid fables about deranged Meskins loppin' off heads in the Sonoran desert, leaving them for innocent Yuma children to stumble across on their way to Sunday school, no doubt. Anything and everything she says about any subject whatsoever should be viewed through the prism that she will say pretty much whatever is most expedient for her at the given moment.

Arizona has very deep-seated streak of stone yahooism in its politics, one that well predates our current conservatard lunacies. They've been barking at the moon since Evan Mecham was a pup. Brewer is exactly the sort of ass-grabbing fool Arizona wants -- and more importantly, deserves.

Maybe Brewer will use this as a stepping-stone to a run for Jon Kyl's Senate seat. One can only hope; with the demise of other clown-car devotees such as Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell, the GOP needs to upgrade its batshit quotient.

Dixie Key Party

So Fatboy and his big ideas, tiny cock, and swingin' heart won the day down in the original Treason in Defense of Slavery state. Awesome. That weird sound you just heard was every comedian, and every member of Obama's campaign team, simultaneously creaming their jeans. America's Wang should be even more hilarious; maybe they'll go for Santorumentum, or perhaps a stray dog wearing a sandwich board (or one of Rick's cool sweater vests).

No one in the corporate media has the balls to say it on the record, since this perpetual reality teevee show is their bread and butter in a dying market, but the Goopers' primary has long since degenerated into an ass-kicking contest consisting entirely of one-legged people. Only more hilarious. It's only a matter of time before they start using Yakety Sax for theme music at the remaining debates.

Priorities

Cases of this sort are fascinating, primarily for the unusual gymnastics of reasoning undertaken in resolving them.

Whenever someone proposes to sterilize someone else, for whatever reason, obviously there should be some voice of skepticism raised, just to make sure the idea is being thought through, and either accepted or rejected for rational, hopefully at least somewhat utilitarian reasons. This does not seem to be the case here, the ruling does not appear to have a practical basis.

Consider the discordant rationales being deployed here. You have a 32-year-old woman whose mental illness is severe enough that her parents have to care for her. She is legally incompetent to take care of herself, to support herself, to make rational decisions for herself. This is not in dispute by any of the litigating parties, nor by the appellate court which overturned the first ruling.

So ostensibly this woman -- who, again, cannot care for herself, and therefore cannot support herself -- would suffer a tremendous civil wrong were she compelled to either abort the fetus she is currently carrying, or even to be temporarily or permanently sterilized afterward. Fair enough. This is not an unreasonable argument on its face.

But one still has to wonder at what expense comes avoiding this great wrong. Maybe the 'rents are independently wealthy, so they can just kick down for an daughter who can't take care of herself or any number of children she "chooses" -- to the extent that a person declared legally incompetent can be said to have made a rational choice in the first place.

But what if they aren't wealthy? What about the kid she already has, that the parents are taking care of? Or the fetus, that may be damaged from the drugs she has to take, or damaged by her if she has to go off those drugs during the pregnancy? Do any of the other people in this scenario have any rights, including the right not to be saddled with the poor decision-making capacity of a legally incompetent, mentally ill person? It's like their concerns don't matter at all, they are just there to accept responsibility.

I don't necessarily assume offhand that there is a political agenda underpinning any of this, though I do recall a privately-funded movement in Southern California in the '90s that set out to essentially pay crackheads with at least four kids to get their tubes tied. The movement got shouted down by self-styled women's rights groups, who bizarrely (imho) felt that a crackhead's "right" to reproduce infinitely trumped, say, the right of her children to not enter teh world addicted to hard drugs, or the right of society to not be compelled to infinitely underwrite this foolishness.

I suggest that this is one of those issues, like abortion, where the biological function of reproduction has been granted some mystical, exalted, practically untouchable status. It is a polite fiction people seem to have tacitly agreed on, this one inviolability of the right to irresponsibly reproduce with impunity.

Of course there are any number of reprehensible historical examples. Fortunately we live in a society whose very modernity enables judges to establish proper mechanisms to prevent such instances. We're not talking about sterilizing every retard and criminal here. (Although really, people, aren't there enough Juggalos in the world already, must we clutter up a dying planet with more, to accelerate the impending doom?)

You can propose legislation that allows for wiretapping, pulling suspects off the street and throwing them into Gitmo for torture, or just lobbing a missile at them halfway around the world, without trial or even charge, and no one will bat an eyelash. But Flying Spaghetti Monster forfend that anyone intervene in a legally incompetent person's "right" to compel everyone else in their life to bear the consequences of their decisions. It seems like the parents and the children should have some rights as well.

Still Alive

I've probably mentioned this before, but I had sort of an assumption that finishing up grad school would somehow grant me more leisure time. And at least initially, I felt like I had my nights and weekends "back".

But it didn't take long at all to realize that not only was there not going to suddenly be this abundance of screw-off time, but that I didn't even want there to be. I'll watch the teevee, but I can't just sit and watch; I have to either have a book or a guitar or the laptop going as well. And the late nights continue apace, as the projects grow and expand far beyond their initial parameters.

The past six months or so have also seen me ingesting huge amounts of music, a little bit of everything -- thrash/power/prog metal, some pop, and even some classical (torrented all 104 Haydn symphonies, and while I'm familiar with the last 20 or so, it's been interesting getting acquainted with the earlier ones a few at time). After turning 40 a few years back, I was initially perplexed that my musical tastes seemed to be getting heavier in general, but as my daughter starts figuring out what she likes, I quit wondering about it and just going for whatever's there.

And there's a lot, and a lot of really cool stuff, in quite a few genres (more in an upcoming post). Anyone who whines about how today's music sucks just needs to turn the radio off, leave it off, and go on walkabout in the internets. There's tons of places to find great music that will never get on the radio. I hear people complain about radio pap, and I don't know what to tell them. There is no excuse for being stuck with mainstream crap, unless you're a 15-year-old mallrat and just don't know any better.

Some of these projects I'm working on will be put on the internets at some point, hopefully to turn at least a modest buck, but at least to get some decent chops at building a real thing, not just the creation of a product but building the requisite 21st-century marketing presence around it. Naturally, I will keep you all apprised as things develop. Right now we're balls-deep in a pure content-building phase, probably into March or April.

In the meantime, the blog, such as it is these days, tends to suffer quantitatively, and I suppose I'm becoming more okay with that. Seven years has kind of snuck up on me in some ways. Obviously the first five years were fairly prolific, and once school cut into that, I found myself missing the catharsis of these little 'sodes less and less.

Actually, the writing is still a great deal of fun, it is the subjects that are less so. How many ways can you call Mitt Romney an empty suit, Obama a feckless dupe who has betrayed his putative constituency and abdicated what at least plausibly appeared to be his deeper convictons? How many times can the industries underpinning our economic systems be portrayed as the money-grubbing rackets they most certainly are, and still sound relatively fresh? How many different ways are there to point out what a useless toad, what self-aggrandizing, leg-humping sack of shit Newt Gingrich really is, not to mention the hypocritical dipshits he represents?

And on and on. The names change here and there, but the bullshit remains mostly the same. They keep lying, too many of us keep buying. So it goes.

But politics and power are the things that capture my interest, and I suppose we'll have some things to mull and discuss this fine campaign season. So for now I certainly plan to keep the Hammer banging at least through the end of this year, while I continue working on the projects, get the products finalized and formatted and ready to roll, and get a website (possibly two or even three) up and running.

Like I said, I still enjoy writing, and while the hit counter doesn't trsvel fast here and there aren't many comments, I do strongly feel -- and there are practically infinite corroborating examples anywhere you look -- that the folks that do check in here are thoughtful and reasoned in the commentary they share. I'd much rather have five or six literate, intelligent comments than the six million lumps of monkey shit you see in, say, just about any YouTube comment section for starters, not to mention any given corporate media site, who really should be able to attract a better class of riff-raff.

It is a weird phenomenon that I'm still digesting much of the time, this compulsion to be constantly working on something. I've always liked to work, to learn, to keep busy, but we're talking about staying up to 3:00 or 4:00 AM three or four nights a week working on a project, or reading about ideas to make the project just a little bit better. And then going to work at 7:30. If I didn't enjoy it so much, I'd be burnt by now.

So thanks for checking in, thanks for still reading, please continue to do so (and leave some comments!), and we'll try to get the posts at least a little more regular, see how this year shakes out.

Only one thing is certain -- Newt will still suck. Just a beastly little man, on so many levels. In a truly civilized country, this is someone who would have been tarred and feathered already, not treated like a serious person.

Great Moments In Journamalism

Since apparently that War On Christmas thing finally, blessedly petered out, the persecution ninnies need to create another quasi-Christian tempest in a teapot. Enter Bill Maher:

"Wow, Jesus just f**ked #TimTebow bad! And on Xmas Eve! Somewhere....Satan is tebowing, saying to Hitler "Hey, Buffalo’s killing them."

Tebow had thrown four interceptions in his team's Christmas Eve loss to the Bills, which prompted Maher's remark.

Okay, Maher is being deliberately obnoxious and confrontational, but that's what a political comedian is supposed to do. And the argument can -- and has -- been reasonably made that Tebow's squeaky-clean, overly-publicized evangelism has changed the outcome of Tebow's job profile, in that while Tebow has demonstrated his toughness and resilience, he still insufficiently displays competence in the basic mechanics of his job.

In other words, it's not unreasonable to ask out loud exactly how Tebow has managed to avoid being converted to a fullback or H-back, considering how poorly and inconsistently he throws a football. Which is ordinarily a deal-breaker for someone who plays the position of quarterback in the National Football League.

Part of it may be that, in a climate where some folks never get tired of braying the tedious "role model" trope, Tebow gives that particular crowd something to hang their hats on. He's not a grotesquely-overpaid doorstop who, in a hyper-competitive profession, somehow managed to be completely unmotivated by a $60 million contract. Nor is Tebow a jism-spraying fool who never got the memo on how babies are created. God-bothering aside, when you watch enough soulless jerkoffs dick around through their careers with an obscene sense of over-entitlement, Mister Clean is going to pull in a lot of people who are repelled by that sort of behavior.

But I digress, this is actually not about all that nonsense. What this is about is the ludicrous notion of what online Faux News considers worthy of reportage.

And while Tebow did not respond to Maher, some of his fans are calling for a boycott of HBO, urging customers who find Maher's tweet offensive to cancel their subscriptions to the pay cable channel, Yahoo! Sports reports.

Wow, that's fascinating, Faux News! How many "fans" is this mysterious "some" comprised of, six, ten, fifty, a kajillionty? Is there a link to the Yahoo Sports story? Is there any organizing entity behind these "some fans", say James Dobson, that sort of thing, some door-knocking claque with the word "Family" in their name? Or is this someone's random "ya know whut we shud do" Facebook page? You literally cannot any of those obvious questions by reading this "article", yet it the whole thing is presented as if it were actual news.

Tebow himself is less bothersome than the rabble roused by his schtick, people who would almost certainly come unglued if Tebow were Mooooslim, and felt compelled to preface every interview by thanking Allah and the One True Prophet (PBUH). And that's really what the people picking on Tebow are on about -- football fans want football; if we wanted a sermon, we'd go to church. Faith is supposed to be, and used to be, a personal thing for most people, rather than a tribal or political declaration.

[Update: Wonder why "some fans" didn't get all publicly butt-hurt over Big Daddy Drew's blasphemous takedown a couple months ago.]

The Walking Dead

Seems that the folks at The Atlantic have been analyzing Ron Paul's disingenuous responses to racist sentiments being disseminated in his own newsletter, much to the chagrin of the usual claque of exasperated Paultards, who are still agog that the rest of us can be so blind to the great man's innate brilliance.

Now, hilarious as this is, every bit as hilarious as the schtick of someone who's been in politics for 35 years still pretending to be an outsider, it is the audience of mouth-breathing, window-licking, arm-dragging troglodytes clamoring for this racist guff which really bears some scrutiny:

At the time I was Lefty Morris' campaign manager, who was the Democrat running against Ron Paul in the general election. Our campaign released the "Ron Paul Political Report" to reporters and later focus grouped some of his writings and affiliations at a restaurant in La Grange, Texas.

At the time, the "Ron Paul Political Report" was listed in an online Neo-Nazi Directory that also included publications by the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Brothers (or something like that).

Of course, we thought we could use this to our advantage. So, in the focus group, we let participants look at the newsletters and told them that Ron Paul's Political Report was listed in the Neo Nazi directory with the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups.

The focus group got really quiet. Then one man pops off, "There's nothing wrong with the Ku Klux Klan."

Another man in the group says, "The Ku Klux Klan has done a lot of good things. For example, if a man wasn't taking care of his family, the Ku Klux Klan would take him down to the town square and tar a feather him."

Next a woman says, "It's the media. They never report the good things that the Ku Klux Klan does."

We had a runaway focus group on our hands. About 10 of the 12 participants were chirping their enthusiasm for the KKK.

Wow. Just....Jesus H. Christ, keep in mind that this took place in 1996. Truly old times there are not forgotten. Then there's the excerpt in the Coates link about George Wallace being the forward-thinking liberal in his area -- until, of course, he got "outniggered" by an opponent and vowed never to fall for that again. Charming.

Maybe we should be reassured that the '96 focus group was "only" 12, that maybe these are isolated idiots. Some days it's hard to be sure of that, though. Regardless, as Coates notes, Paul's evasiveness pretty much tells you where he and his fans are at, not as racists per se, but intellectually dishonest nonetheless. It should be easy meat to repudiate this detestable shit right out of the gate, and yet for some reason it isn't.

I suppose people are charmed by Paul's irascible, insouciant insistence that the American garrison state pull out of its 700-plus bases around the world. Hey, that's a super idea, as long as we're all willing to conserve a bit. And since we're clearly not, not even a little bit, except as some boutique bien pensant notion, you need your hegemon, you need your octopus. They don't seem to have an answer for that one.

Paul at least is the most interesting and sincere of all of the people running for the office, and that includes Obama. However, that is exactly why he has no chance in hell.

Character

A valiant attempt on the part of the NY Times to rehabilitate Gingrich's, um, character. Megalulz:

Mr. Gingrich has repeatedly said that he is not perfect and that there are episodes he regrets. “There are periods of my life I’ve had to seek forgiveness and reconcile with God for,” he said last month in an interview in New Hampshire. “But if you look at who I am today, I think I can withstand scrutiny as well as anyone else in the field.”

His candor seems to be working even with social conservatives, who seem more interested in choosing a hard-edged opponent to face President Obama. Recent polls of Iowa voters showed Mr. Gingrich with the largest share of support from Christian evangelicals.

Look, not to rehash yet again the long-dead Clinton impeachment saga, but it's relevant here. Count me among the folks who were repulsed and annoyed at the idea of the president not only getting his cock sucked by an intern while discussing Balkan troop deployments, but by his own admission ejaculating into a fucking bathroom sink. Because blowing a wad in this girl's mouth would have been wrong, you know? I don't expect pols to lead perfectly moral lives, but really, the whole thing was weird as all hell, in addition to being completely inappropriate. (Yeah, I'm a little square about bosses banging subordinates as a general principle, sorry.)

And just as a practical matter, you don't have to be a Rhodes Scholar to know that that sort of thing will completely derail your term in office, and that by nature of your immensely powerful position, there's a good chance that your good-time girl will get so excited, she'll have to tell somebody. So it's also an unforgivably irresponsible squandering of political capital. No doubt Clinton assumed that the usual gentleman's agreement was in place; shoulda known better that he wasn't dealing with gentlemen.

Aaaaanyhoo, despite the above-listed, far-too-often-discussed reasons to be pissed at Clinton for his exploits, I reserve far more contempt for someone who persecutes a man for such picayune things as if they were high crimes, while he himself is enjoying the exact same services. And, setting aside hoary sentiments about hypocrisy being the tribute vice pays to virtue, it's particularly puzzling that a claque of doofuses who reflexively leap their high horses to lecture us godless heathens on their regard for high moral character, can align themselves with this slug.

And that's not even getting into the other various episodes of hypocrisy (taking $1.8 million from the much-maligned Freddie Mac) and revolting stances (such as using poor children as school janitors). Not that he has a chance to actually take the nomination; Newt is just the final "anyone but Romney" pig at the dance before the goobers buckle in and settle for either the real thing or Huntsman, who is apparently going all out to try to capture the NH primary and build momentum from there.

Jesus, the man is just awful, and the people supporting him are just as pathetic. Nice of them to demonstrate so convincingly for us that their sanctiomonious nonsense was just that after all. (As if their jumping from serial harasser Herman Cain to serial adulterer Newt Gingrich wasn't enough of a clue.) Turns out we really did know what they were all along, we were just haggling over the price.

A Thousand Cuts

"If America goes, it will surely be an inside job." -- Mort Sahl

OK, so Alec Baldwin getting booted from a plane (and getting put on American Airlines' internal no-fly list) for being an asshole and not shutting down his iPad right when he was told to isn't really a sign, in and of itself, of an impending totalitarianism. But it's a symptom, an indicator of how much we're conditioned to put up with, what we've come to expect.

Isn't it interesting that, after ten full years since 9/11, of not getting attacked on US soil, either internally or from abroad, that now it becomes suddenly of vital national interest to declare the "homeland" (or, if you prefer, Heimat) a battlefield, necessitating the complete suspension of habeas corpus, of charging a suspect with a crime, of fair trial by jury. Yes, only now is it vital to officially decide and declare who is a vetted journamalist allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights, and who is but a mere blogger, not allowed to slander critical cogs such as foreclosure attorneys and pepper-spray-happy cops down at the be-in.

Maybe press passes should be required for people to discuss the daily news at the water cooler as well, lest the ruling class feel slandered by the scourge of unvetted public opinion. Officially approved discussion topics will consist of Tebows, Kardashians, and speculating as to whom will be the next set of neverweres on that dancing show.

Gin and Tacos commenter J. Dryden makes a brilliant point, summed up nicely in this sentence:

our country and culture is fertile ground for totalitarianism.

Flight of Dickarus

Judging from the media coverage of the non-event, I guess I'm supposed to be outraged at Alec Baldwin's uppity behavior. I mean, really -- how dare not just shut his cakehole like a good German, and happily submit to what has long been nothing more than an abusive process, from the time you set foot in the departure terminal to whenever you eventually disembark.

Seriously, Baldwin should have thanked American Airlines for their "just shut the fuck up and sit quiet while we wait on the runway for a fucking week to take off" attitude that they stockpile in reserve for every airline passenger. Instead, he had the nerve, the absolute gall, to USE HIS I-PAD WHICH COULD TOTALLY BRING DOWN THE ENTIRE FRAGILE AIR TRANSIT INFRASTRUCTURE!!!elevenZOMG!!!

No. It's much easier for us to tell ourselves that some mouthy actor is being an asshole, than to wonder for a hot second just how we continue to let ourselves be treated like animals in a routine consumer transaction. Some folks will continue to do so right up to the moment the wage slave on the kill floor parks the metaphorical bolt gun between their eyes and pulls that trigger.

Just another little cut, a common indignity which most have been conditioned to placidly accept, one of a thousand. Go back to sleep.

Mother of Invention

Historian-in-chief makes specious claim. Really, I'm surprised he didn't invoke the dog in a manger argument.

Also, too is the fact that -- again, brace yourself -- Newter's talking out of his capacious bunghole yet again: the name Palestine was derived from the Biblical "Philistine" by the Romans, fell into semi-official use by the Ottomans, and was revived by the British (along with other administrative designations) when they parceled out the area after WW1.

Gingrich's parsimonious averral that the usage only became common after 1977, after decalring the term an "invention", is too clever by half, but perfectly in keeping with the necessity of courting evangelical votes by waving the Israeli flag, as all Republican candidates are now required to do. Good luck with that, son -- either it's the economy, stupid, or it's not. Anyone with the luxury of obsessing over gay marriage or abortion or "holy" lands instantly reveals the true level of their concern for addressing the economic situation.

Projection

Remember when one of the primary -- and most hilarious -- rationales given for invading Iraq was the idea that Saddam might have a squadron of nucular-tipped drones that would only take 45 minutes to get London or Washington? Somewhat ironic, considering how much we've depended on drones in the Afghan campaign (and the amount of diplomatic grief some of their more "erroneous" misfires have caused.

The commentary over Iran's pursuit for nuclear capability has been uniformly paranoid. Not that the mullahs are nice guys, and they very well could cause some trouble with the capacity for nuclear weapons, most notably by dissemination through surrogate independent terrorist cells.

But the simpler and more prevalent explanation is that Iran simply needs to keep up with its neighbors at this point. If you live in a really dangerous neighborhood to begin with, and all your neighbors have AR-15 assault rifles, and all you've got is a 12" Buck knife, are you gonna want a gun or what, just in case?

Anyway, this whole snafu plays right into China's hands, at least as much as Iran's. Between the Osama copter and now this, their reverse-engineering crews have just gotten a huge upsurge in projects to work on. And the tech monkeys can downplay this all they want, talk about how the Sentinel's tech is already been surpassed, but the fact is the plane has only been declassified for four years, and therefore is almost certainly less than ten. For a country that's still playing catchup on 70-year-old nuke tech, they'd settle for being just ten years (or less) behind on surveillance drone tech, since that is a huge future branch of warfare.

It might be useful if, just once in a while, our insect overlords considered their projected anxieties about certain weapons and tech, and see if that helps them empathize a bit more with other countries that are nervous over our capabilities with those weapons. Rational-actor theory aside, a scary weapon is still just that.

What a Friend We Have In Tebow

Klosterman on Tebow. Worth a read.

I'm not sure of all the consternation surrounding the kid. As an atheist, I am non-plussed by his zealous professions of faith, it's how he was raised, it's how he's always going to be. Whatever works.

As a man, I have to wonder about someone who becomes a marquee Heisman-winning QB at a notorious SEC party school, and still manages to emerge as a virgin. This is a feat unbeknownst to modern science, friends 'n' neighbors. I mean, dude, you don't have to bang every cheerleader, but you can at least have a girlfriend, someone you actually care about and have fun with. People who store up sex for special occasions are inevitably disappointed.

But as a football fan, Tebow is simultaneously frustrating and exhilarating to observe. He runs like a deer and takes some serious hits. There's no denying his toughness. But he throws like old people fuck; every time he cocks back for more then fifteen yards, I get a visual of someone attempting to heave a frozen turkey over a ten-foot wall.

So as a lifelong Raiders fan, I find it immensely frustrating that Tebow continues to find ways to win, regardless of the inherent superiorities of the opposition. The Jets and Vikings, with their run-stopping front fours, should have shut his ass down; the Raiders, with a 17-point halftime lead last month, should have stood on his goddamned neck and pushed that lead to 30. But no, all the guy does is ride a storming D into single-possession fourth-quarter deficits to be overcome by moxie and/or gumption. To abuse the cliché, he just finds ways to win.

I still don't see the Donks making playoffs, it's statistically improbable at best. Then again, I still can't believe George W. Bush made it into the White House -- even by hook and/or crook -- not once, but twice. Truth really is stranger than fiction.

Ho Ho Holy Crap

This little number is far less interesting for the actual topic -- second-grade teacher drops a dime on "Santa"; parents get butt-hurt -- than for how quickly some of the commenters mount their librulnatsi hobby-horses:

Jeff Nickels · Top Commenter
"Teachers wont lie to them"? You cant be serious. Students get lied to by leftist "teachers" every single day in colleges and grade/middle schools around the country. It is not the job of a so-called educator to inform my child of anything other than the lessons at hand, and that includes whether or not there's a santa claus.

Jennifer Wagner
What are these lies that are being told "every single day in colleges and grade/middle schools..."?

Jeff Nickels · Top Commenter
Well on a local forum I frequent, an anonymous teacher bragged that she was "indoctrinating (my) kids with all of the liberal "information" she could so that kids wouldnt be "hateful conservatives". I guess we can live in fairy-tale land and pretend that mine was the only case of something like this happening, if you want to. We can also pretend that teacers are infallible arbiters of pure truth if you'd like; the national test scores and illiteracy rate would say otherwise,

Jeff Nickels · Top Commenter
(cont)..but we can also ignore that as well, if you'd like.

Jeff Nickels · Top Commenter
I'm willing to bet that if I teach my child a biblical view about homosexuality, you feel it would be alright for said teacher to "correct" my child, dont you? I can assure you that were that to happen, I would not only have the teacher's job. I would have the school board, school, principle, and anyone else involved in civil court post-haste. I am fed up to the gills with agents of government thinking they know best how to raise my own children.

And so forth. Look, it's bad enough that some offshoot of the War on Christmas guff will be ignited over the teacher's tragic revelation. (And not to break the hearts of some of the more addled codgers further down the comment board, claiming to be well into their fifties and sixties, yet "still believing", but I had the Santa thing dialed in when I was maybe six or seven. It seemed important to my mother, who grew up in a Jehovah Witness household and therefore got cheated out of childhood Christmases, so I went along with it until I was about ten. I have a feeling that many, maybe even most kids, are just going along with it at some point.)

Some folks are clinging on a bit too tight. You want to preserve the power of imagination for your precious rinpoche? Help them imagine what it's going to be like finding a fucking job in about ten years, one that doesn't make them want to self-medicate or ram their pedicab into a bridge abutment.

But it's the ones that immediately make the hyperintuitive leap to librul malfeeance that truly fascinate me. They're the ones for whom the very existence of, say, Glee is prima facie evidence that something untoward is being rammed directly down their throats, thus forcing them to confront the horrific notion that they might secretly like it. The axiom that anyone who obsesses that much -- or, you know, at all -- over gay people is very likely themselves gay holds true as always.