Yeah, yeah, elections last night and the GOP has shown that it's been recovering since last November. I don't feel like addressing that right now. Here's what's on my mind:
Yesterday I started the application process to become a substitute teacher in my local district, and I have the official interview next Tuesday. I did it because H1N1 has created a new demand for them, and their supply has been more or less at a low constant for a while. So, naturally, I wake up this morning feeling sick.
It's just a bad cold, but still. Sometimes I notice that the only proof I have that karma exists is when it's bad karma.
I try to do good by people, and I'm constantly told that the karmic payback will eventually be totally kick-ass. Just the other day, I told a friend over IM that if she went to a friend's place where we all spent Halloween and found my abandoned half-jug of Carlo Rossi that she should feel free to take it and enjoy. In the past, random acts of kindness prompt similar responses that she gave me on the Rossi thing, which for some reason I can't help but imagine being said by Sarah Palin: "Well you're just rackin' up the good karma, don'tcha know?"
But, over the years, gornischt. So I usually didn't think much of karma, because I had little proof. Then I make one calculated career move (not even a career move - since I lack my teaching certificate, it's part-time work) based on a mild pandemic, and within hours I'm knocked on my ass by cosmic forces I cannot comprehend.
I have a theory, though: karma operates much on the same level of the internet. It's a series of tubes. One can send too many internets and plug up the tubes (as they great and powerful Sen. Ted Stevens has made painfully clear), karma works the same way.
Somewhere they must sell karmic plungers, and if I had to hazard a guess I'd say it's somewhere in Tibet. I have a feeling that, like the Three Stooges trying to enter a room, my good karma tubes have been blocked off by the over-saturation of goodness. Or maybe hair and stuff got stuck in there over the years (karma tubes are more personal than the internet).
Or maybe even lime deposits. We have hard water out where I live. What I need is a karma snake to put down the tubes and knock away the blockage.
In conclusion, don't exploit global pandemics for personal gain, or karma will kill you in the face.
04 November, 2009
07 October, 2009
Do we really want another JFK?
I just read commentator Ed Rollins' take on SNL's criticism of Barack Obama - surprisingly, the overall message wasn't "OH HOW COULD THEY?!" (it wasn't written for MSNBC).
It makes a good point: SNL, even now that it sucks, does and always has shaped perceptions of Presidents. Gerald Ford wasn't as clumsy as SNL would have us think, George H.W. Bush wasn't as goofy, and so on. Even Sarah Palin isn't as crazy or incompetent as Tina Fey made her out to be (I still am not a fan, but come on. I don't know if some of Palin's critics can tell the difference).
SNL's treatment of Obama is brutally honest: on a list of things that he said he would get done as quickly as possible, "Not Done" is the answer 8 months in. It suggests that he's not all he's cracked up to be, if not a standard misleading politician. Rollins points out some of the expectations people had for The One:
"Democrats are still hopeful this president will turn out to be the "Camelot II"; the new generational leader for whom they have waited decades and in some cases lifetimes. Many hope President Obama will be the new John Fitzgerald Kennedy..."
Is this really a comparison we want to be making? If I remember my American history correctly, John F. Kennedy was a downright lousy president. He made Bill Clinton look fanatically monogamous and George W. Bush look like a vigorous vetter of job qualifications.
George W. Bush didn't even have the balls to appoint a nuclear family member (or, nuculer if you wish) to cabinet-level high office. Though, at least Robert Kennedy was at least marginally qualified as Attorney General; Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense, wasn't at all qualified. In the documentary tell-all The Fog of War, McNamara recounts that he was first offered the job of Secretary of the Treasury by JFK, and when he insisted that he was in no way qualified for this, JFK's response was to make him Secretary of Defense.
His wandering penis was legendary, as well. To his credit, unlike Bill Clinton, he aimed high. He screwed Marylin Monroe, for chrissakes, while Bill Clinton, as George Carlin put it, "showed his dick to a government clerk."
As for his presidential track record, 1961 the Bay of Pigs fiasco stands out, as always. This was one of the biggest policy fuck-ups until Jimmy Carter's Iranian hostage rescue mission crashed and burned (literally) before it could even get out of the parking lot. And after training Cuban guerrillas on the CIA dole and sending them off in banana boats to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro, and then refusing them the needed air-support and logistical backing for it to actually work, it should have been no surprise when the USSR stationed nuclear fucking missiles in Cuba one year later.
By virtue of an incompetent but well-meaning US president and a not-crazy Soviet premier, the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved. And we give JFK most of the credit, probably because we felt bad after he was assassinated rather publicly and didn't have much of of a good presidential legacy to leave behind.
So, do Democrats want another JFK? I sure hope not. Only the most partisan of Republicans would want another presidency that overall lousy.
It makes a good point: SNL, even now that it sucks, does and always has shaped perceptions of Presidents. Gerald Ford wasn't as clumsy as SNL would have us think, George H.W. Bush wasn't as goofy, and so on. Even Sarah Palin isn't as crazy or incompetent as Tina Fey made her out to be (I still am not a fan, but come on. I don't know if some of Palin's critics can tell the difference).
SNL's treatment of Obama is brutally honest: on a list of things that he said he would get done as quickly as possible, "Not Done" is the answer 8 months in. It suggests that he's not all he's cracked up to be, if not a standard misleading politician. Rollins points out some of the expectations people had for The One:
"Democrats are still hopeful this president will turn out to be the "Camelot II"; the new generational leader for whom they have waited decades and in some cases lifetimes. Many hope President Obama will be the new John Fitzgerald Kennedy..."
Is this really a comparison we want to be making? If I remember my American history correctly, John F. Kennedy was a downright lousy president. He made Bill Clinton look fanatically monogamous and George W. Bush look like a vigorous vetter of job qualifications.
George W. Bush didn't even have the balls to appoint a nuclear family member (or, nuculer if you wish) to cabinet-level high office. Though, at least Robert Kennedy was at least marginally qualified as Attorney General; Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense, wasn't at all qualified. In the documentary tell-all The Fog of War, McNamara recounts that he was first offered the job of Secretary of the Treasury by JFK, and when he insisted that he was in no way qualified for this, JFK's response was to make him Secretary of Defense.
His wandering penis was legendary, as well. To his credit, unlike Bill Clinton, he aimed high. He screwed Marylin Monroe, for chrissakes, while Bill Clinton, as George Carlin put it, "showed his dick to a government clerk."
As for his presidential track record, 1961 the Bay of Pigs fiasco stands out, as always. This was one of the biggest policy fuck-ups until Jimmy Carter's Iranian hostage rescue mission crashed and burned (literally) before it could even get out of the parking lot. And after training Cuban guerrillas on the CIA dole and sending them off in banana boats to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro, and then refusing them the needed air-support and logistical backing for it to actually work, it should have been no surprise when the USSR stationed nuclear fucking missiles in Cuba one year later.
By virtue of an incompetent but well-meaning US president and a not-crazy Soviet premier, the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved. And we give JFK most of the credit, probably because we felt bad after he was assassinated rather publicly and didn't have much of of a good presidential legacy to leave behind.
So, do Democrats want another JFK? I sure hope not. Only the most partisan of Republicans would want another presidency that overall lousy.
30 September, 2009
23 September, 2009
Col. Gaddafi's UN Speech
This morning I switched on the television just in time to catch Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi's big speech to the United Nations General Assembly. In case you're unaware, Libya holds this year's Presidency of the General Assembly, the man being Ali Abdussalam Treki. This picture from the Daily Mail in the UK should sum up the day for you:
The man high up on the top o' the rostrum is Treki, and the goofy bastard down there is Gaddafi. I also suggest that you see the rest of the photos in the Mail's report. They really are something.
Things were cleared for insanity when Gaddafi's speech was delayed by some sort of protest on the General Assembly floor, which cameras refused to show or give the details of. When he finally got up to the podium, decorum dictates that heads of state would have 15 minutes for their speech.
1 hour, 36 minutes later I had no fucking clue what had just happened. The man went just about everywhere in his meandering oration. He waxed poetic about jet lag, suggested renaming the UN Security council "the terror council," and shat upon the UN charter (not literally, fortunately. I'd have shot myself if I had to see him lift his spiffy Bedouin robes to do that). He had such little bits of wisdom as "why not fish flu?" when talking about the swine flu (or as the USDA urges us for the sake of the pork industry, only to call it H1N1), then going on to suggest that it was engineered by Capitalists to sell medication. Then, to cap it all off, he gave us the laughable "No, we love the Jews!" line of babble.
*Whew* About half way through, his translators had to tag off because the first guy was exhausted. By the end, the hall was barely half-empty. But the speech wasn't the only source of asininity in the Gaddafi story.
Because of the release of the Lockerbie bomber earlier this summer by Scottish authorities, US interests have been really, really dickish with his accommodations. Traditionally, visiting dignitaries to the UN are given lodging within 15 minutes of the UN building in NYC. Because of the fuss we've been putting up to this tinpot weirdo, he was more than 40 miles away in a pitched Bedouin tent on some property in Bedford owned by Donald Trump. Town officials in Bedford basically had him evicted because people had complained - if only they had granted him his original request to pitch the tent in Central Park!
This is the same guy who filed a motion for today's session to have Switzerland abolished and divided between France, Germany and Italy, after his son Hannibal was arrested in a Swiss hotel. The abolition motion was just part of an overall vendetta with the Swiss over the matter, including closing Swiss owned businesses and expelling their diplomats.
This man as a single entity rivals Nikita Khrushchev's shoe-pounding incident in 1960 in its absolute hilarity. Regardless of my low opinion of the UN, at least we'll have an entertaining year.
The man high up on the top o' the rostrum is Treki, and the goofy bastard down there is Gaddafi. I also suggest that you see the rest of the photos in the Mail's report. They really are something.
Things were cleared for insanity when Gaddafi's speech was delayed by some sort of protest on the General Assembly floor, which cameras refused to show or give the details of. When he finally got up to the podium, decorum dictates that heads of state would have 15 minutes for their speech.
1 hour, 36 minutes later I had no fucking clue what had just happened. The man went just about everywhere in his meandering oration. He waxed poetic about jet lag, suggested renaming the UN Security council "the terror council," and shat upon the UN charter (not literally, fortunately. I'd have shot myself if I had to see him lift his spiffy Bedouin robes to do that). He had such little bits of wisdom as "why not fish flu?" when talking about the swine flu (or as the USDA urges us for the sake of the pork industry, only to call it H1N1), then going on to suggest that it was engineered by Capitalists to sell medication. Then, to cap it all off, he gave us the laughable "No, we love the Jews!" line of babble.
*Whew* About half way through, his translators had to tag off because the first guy was exhausted. By the end, the hall was barely half-empty. But the speech wasn't the only source of asininity in the Gaddafi story.
Because of the release of the Lockerbie bomber earlier this summer by Scottish authorities, US interests have been really, really dickish with his accommodations. Traditionally, visiting dignitaries to the UN are given lodging within 15 minutes of the UN building in NYC. Because of the fuss we've been putting up to this tinpot weirdo, he was more than 40 miles away in a pitched Bedouin tent on some property in Bedford owned by Donald Trump. Town officials in Bedford basically had him evicted because people had complained - if only they had granted him his original request to pitch the tent in Central Park!
This is the same guy who filed a motion for today's session to have Switzerland abolished and divided between France, Germany and Italy, after his son Hannibal was arrested in a Swiss hotel. The abolition motion was just part of an overall vendetta with the Swiss over the matter, including closing Swiss owned businesses and expelling their diplomats.
This man as a single entity rivals Nikita Khrushchev's shoe-pounding incident in 1960 in its absolute hilarity. Regardless of my low opinion of the UN, at least we'll have an entertaining year.
15 September, 2009
Fading Stars
14 September marks just yet another example of truly great human beings dying, only to be overshadowed by a big name doing the same.
You probably have heard that actor Patrick Swayze lost a fight with cancer earlier today. Because of this, you may not have noticed that a man more important and consequential than a man who held film superstar status during the 1980s also passed on to the great hereafter. In fact, you probably had never heard of him.
Nobel Laureate and scientist, Norman Borlaug, died hours before. The man made massive inroads in genetic engineering, leading to his development of a highly productive strain of wheat. While bloviating opportunists were blowing hot air about starvation around the globe, especially on the continent of Africa, Borlaug was in the laboratory doing something about it. His brilliance and hard work saved easily millions of people from wasting away through long, painful deaths from starvation, and when he was given the Nobel Peace Prize it was thought that the lives he saved were upwards of 1,000,000,000 (for the numerically challenged, that's one billion.)
Even as groups like Greenpeace whipped up the winds of sensationalism to stoke the fire of political opportunism to destroy genetically modified foods in favor of idealistic, utopian and cripplingly inefficient and unreliable organic farming methods, Borlaug soldiered on. No one in my recent memory has done more for the human cause than Norman Borlaug (1914-2009).
Even if Red Dawn was a great action-propaganda film, Borlaug trumps Swayze. However, I bid them both requiescat in pace.
You probably have heard that actor Patrick Swayze lost a fight with cancer earlier today. Because of this, you may not have noticed that a man more important and consequential than a man who held film superstar status during the 1980s also passed on to the great hereafter. In fact, you probably had never heard of him.
Nobel Laureate and scientist, Norman Borlaug, died hours before. The man made massive inroads in genetic engineering, leading to his development of a highly productive strain of wheat. While bloviating opportunists were blowing hot air about starvation around the globe, especially on the continent of Africa, Borlaug was in the laboratory doing something about it. His brilliance and hard work saved easily millions of people from wasting away through long, painful deaths from starvation, and when he was given the Nobel Peace Prize it was thought that the lives he saved were upwards of 1,000,000,000 (for the numerically challenged, that's one billion.)
Even as groups like Greenpeace whipped up the winds of sensationalism to stoke the fire of political opportunism to destroy genetically modified foods in favor of idealistic, utopian and cripplingly inefficient and unreliable organic farming methods, Borlaug soldiered on. No one in my recent memory has done more for the human cause than Norman Borlaug (1914-2009).
Even if Red Dawn was a great action-propaganda film, Borlaug trumps Swayze. However, I bid them both requiescat in pace.
28 August, 2009
Ah, The Politicization of Death
The petition to honor Ted Kennedy's suggestion to the MA legislature to change state law to allow the governor to appoint a provisional Senator should a seat become vacant is gaining momentum.
This makes me chuckle, since the drive is being led by, naturally, liberal groups who don't want the Democratic super-majority in the US Senate to be broken up. These would be the same blokes who had the law changed a few years ago to keep Gov. Romney from appointing a Republican to the seat if John Kerry won the Presidency in 2004. Way to exploit a Senator's death for political purposes, guys.
And of course it doesn't stop there. Partisan groups are doing their best to exploit the Kennedy name one more time before it finally sinks in how much Ted was a punchline in most actual American minds. For example, the fact that mass e-mails are already going out bearing the message "In Lieu of Flowers, Pass Healthcare Reform". I haven't caught, have they decided that they'll name the bill after him? If not, just wait for it; it'll come.
I'm quite keen to hear the TOTUS (having just picked up the term from other blogs, "Teleprompter of the US") eulogize Ted tomorrow in Boston, based mostly on the curiosity over whether or not it will turn into a campaign speech for health care. If it happens, I may just vomit with rage. I am not at all a fan of Ted Kennedy, and have been quite curious how a man could leave a woman in his car at the bottom of a river to suffocate long enough to find his consigliere and establish an alibi could actually make it that far in American politics, let alone avoid jail. Wait a minute, I forgot: JFK's brother. Right, of course.
But if it turns out that our leaders are so glib as to latch on to a prominent man's death to sell an unpopular incarnation of reform, then I'll have totally lost faith in them. That would be downright heartless of them. I'd expect that shit from Karl Rove, but seriously. I hope they're not that ruthless. Please let them have a little ruth among them.
Though, we are protected somewhat by their sheer incompetence. Who do they think they are, the US government from 2001-2006? The Republicans could have only dreamed of having the Majority that the Democrats have now, and they got a hell of a lot more things - and more unpopular in general than what's on the table right now - rammed through with fake bi-partisan support. The Democrats have it all at their fingertips and they're barely squeaking by.
In fact, I have a feeling that Ted Kennedy's absence will have a detrimental effect on the health care situation for the Democrats. Kennedy was at least willing to compromise; that mindset might be gone. If the Democrats let themselves go down the "my way or the highway" path it could be it.
Anyway, enough of this. Don't use "Ted Kennedy would have wanted it this way" to make political points. That sort of logic is only valid for the flower arrangements and the general level or rowdiness at the wake, and that's it. With that said, I'm sure his wake was kick ass.
This makes me chuckle, since the drive is being led by, naturally, liberal groups who don't want the Democratic super-majority in the US Senate to be broken up. These would be the same blokes who had the law changed a few years ago to keep Gov. Romney from appointing a Republican to the seat if John Kerry won the Presidency in 2004. Way to exploit a Senator's death for political purposes, guys.
And of course it doesn't stop there. Partisan groups are doing their best to exploit the Kennedy name one more time before it finally sinks in how much Ted was a punchline in most actual American minds. For example, the fact that mass e-mails are already going out bearing the message "In Lieu of Flowers, Pass Healthcare Reform". I haven't caught, have they decided that they'll name the bill after him? If not, just wait for it; it'll come.
I'm quite keen to hear the TOTUS (having just picked up the term from other blogs, "Teleprompter of the US") eulogize Ted tomorrow in Boston, based mostly on the curiosity over whether or not it will turn into a campaign speech for health care. If it happens, I may just vomit with rage. I am not at all a fan of Ted Kennedy, and have been quite curious how a man could leave a woman in his car at the bottom of a river to suffocate long enough to find his consigliere and establish an alibi could actually make it that far in American politics, let alone avoid jail. Wait a minute, I forgot: JFK's brother. Right, of course.
But if it turns out that our leaders are so glib as to latch on to a prominent man's death to sell an unpopular incarnation of reform, then I'll have totally lost faith in them. That would be downright heartless of them. I'd expect that shit from Karl Rove, but seriously. I hope they're not that ruthless. Please let them have a little ruth among them.
Though, we are protected somewhat by their sheer incompetence. Who do they think they are, the US government from 2001-2006? The Republicans could have only dreamed of having the Majority that the Democrats have now, and they got a hell of a lot more things - and more unpopular in general than what's on the table right now - rammed through with fake bi-partisan support. The Democrats have it all at their fingertips and they're barely squeaking by.
In fact, I have a feeling that Ted Kennedy's absence will have a detrimental effect on the health care situation for the Democrats. Kennedy was at least willing to compromise; that mindset might be gone. If the Democrats let themselves go down the "my way or the highway" path it could be it.
Anyway, enough of this. Don't use "Ted Kennedy would have wanted it this way" to make political points. That sort of logic is only valid for the flower arrangements and the general level or rowdiness at the wake, and that's it. With that said, I'm sure his wake was kick ass.
27 August, 2009
Chimps are f#$%ing terrifying
I wrote and edited this together at the end of this past March, but I thought that I'd share it here.
One of the communities of chimpanzees that Jane Goodall made famous was the Kasakela community in Tanzania. It was there that she met this particular chimp...
One of the communities of chimpanzees that Jane Goodall made famous was the Kasakela community in Tanzania. It was there that she met this particular chimp...
Dawwwwwww.
Meet Frodo. He looks unassuming enough, right? There with his leaves and his fur and his, OH don't you just want to put him in people clothes and make him do people things? He's just like any of us, but so graceful and gentle.
Well fucking wrong you are, he's worse than most of us. Frodo was famous for asserting himself as the alpha male over the rest of the community. He did this through raw aggression and intimidation. He famously thrashed Jane Goodall, almost breaking her neck, and beat up cartoonist Gary Larson. He was the Sulla of chimpdom. So why is he worse than us? This is shit that humans do every day, but even Sulla, one of the chief butcher dictators of the late Roman republic, didn't do what Frodo is most infamous for...
It's common for chimps to wrest newborns from other chimps and kill them for fresh meat as a display of dominance, but a Tanzanian park worker had no idea how bad that can get. Frodo was eating some leaves near a footpath that the woman was walking, on her way to the research camp. She had her 14 month old child with her, and she was scared shitless when she crossed paths with Frodo.
Obey.
He was aggressive, she understood that, but she didn't expect what Frodo did next: he went up to her, wrenched the baby from her arms, disappeared into the forest and proceeded to eat the baby.
Holy shit. Not even Hitler ate babies. This reaches a low that not even the the man considered to be the most evil thing in human history can claim, "Ja. Been there, done that." So maybe we should be thankful that the chimpanzee is a lower life form, although if apes come any further on the technological scale...they are starting to figure out spears and how to kill things with them.
Holy shit. Not even Hitler ate babies. This reaches a low that not even the the man considered to be the most evil thing in human history can claim, "Ja. Been there, done that." So maybe we should be thankful that the chimpanzee is a lower life form, although if apes come any further on the technological scale...they are starting to figure out spears and how to kill things with them.
With my spear and magic helmet!
I was also surprised while I was researching this to read about the surprisingly complex politics that went on in Kasakela. In 2002 Frodo fell ill, and a coalition of several other male chimps in the community deposed him. After recovering from his infection, he was unable to reassert his alpha male status.
The cheese stands alone.
So the next time you start to feel superior to other life forms, keep running with it! If you start to sympathize with the chimps and bring them up to our level, they might just eat your newborn baby.
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