EM, FF and MJ

Isn’t it remarkable that the recent deaths of an ancient  TV sidekick, a toothy former pin-up girl with a lot of hair,  and a bizarre face-changing pop idle who has been looking like death warmed over for years now , have knocked everything else off the page? Truly America is the most superficial of cultures. Our national literature is contained in “Star” and “People.” Aside from some interesting regional dishes our national serving plate is a Quarter-pounder with cheese. Any day now I expect that the Hubble telescope will be purchased by The Ntional Enquirer and directed to hunt for previously undetected cellulite on the thighs of Megan Fox.

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Related: Now this heavy gravity from the New Yorker of all places: “Michael died today [sickeningly paraphrasing French novelist Albrt Camus' opening in The Stranger: 'Mother died yesterday'] I am here in Los Angeles…but from the moment Michael Jackson died, I’ve been unable to talk or think about anything else. Professionally and environmentally, the world is saying: react, react, react…” Oh I don’t know, it seems these words would be more appropriate, say for the horror going on in Iran (you know, slaughter and torture, the wrenching death video of a young Iranian woman)  than for the albeit sad demise of a disturbed and broken entertainer. BTW, what does this idiot mean by envionmentally? And listen to this: “Twitter, not for the first time, served as the fastest, thickest, and most unruly news feed…once Jackson’s death became a miserable, concrete fact, Twitter became the gates to a palace, and people laid their digital bouquets against the rails…” Give this guy a rose for purple prose, wouldya. I may just have to cancel my digital subscription to that magazine.

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Update: Voices of sanity emerging in a slithering sea of mental carcasses:

Give me a break!

Within minutes of the first reports, it was clear the world was going mad.

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Update: Brainless Michael.

You want fries wit dat infidel?

“The mujahideen should inform their belligerent [infidel] and apostate enemies of this exceptional law so that they can bring it up and study it at their conferences on human rights, counterterrorism, and so on! Then they in turn can proclaim that our soldiers lick their lips [at the thought of] eating the flesh of their hamburger- and Pepsi-eating soldiers! …a group of mujahideen from one of the brigades was in the mountains during the jihad against the Russians. One of them was sent off on a mission; he went and came back, but he couldn’t find any of the brothers. He saw a roasted calf leg that the brothers in the brigade left for him for dinner, and he ate of it until he was full. When he went back to the main camp, the brothers saw him and offered him dinner! He said: praise Allah, I already ate! They said: Where did you find dinner? He said: You left me roasted calf leg! They said: No, no, that wasn’t calf, that was the leg of a Russian infidel! He answered: No matter, it’s all Islamic slaughter!” Story here.

Salon writer blasts “right wing nutcase”

Says Glenn Greenwald “…I wonder what he [Andrew Klaven, the right wing nut guy] thinks of the women who go and fight the wars for which he’s a vocal (shrieking) tough-guy cheerleader but won’t fight himself?  Ultimately, the only cure for this level of insecurity over one’s masculinity is to become a cheerleader for wars, torture, “getting tough” with our current Enemy (today: Iran), and politicians who prance around in fighter pilot costumes on the decks of aircraft carriers.  The vicarious sensations of pulsating strength must be so soothing to someone like this, so desperate to prove their manhood…” Opnion piece here. So what’s the context for this? Well, this is Klaven [the right wing nut guy]: “I’m the old-fashioned King of the Castle type: my wife knew it when she married me, she knows it now, and she knows where the door is if she gets sick of it. And you can curse me or consign me to Feminist Hell or whatever you want to do. But when you’re done, answer me this: why would a man get married under any other circumstances? I’m serious. What’s in it for him? I mean, marriage is a large sacrifice for a man. He gives up his right to sleep with a variety of partners, which is as basic an urge in men as having children is in women. He takes on responsibilities which will probably curtail both his work and his social life. If he doesn’t also acquire authority, gravitas, respect and, yes, mastery over his own home, what does he get? Companionship? Hey, stay single, dude, you’ll have a lot more money, and then you can buy companionship…” Klaven, it seems, would fit well into the Islamic world of grotesque and oppressive patriarchy.

State of our domestic bliss…

Flash…Girlfriend stabs boyfriend: tried to urinate in her closet while sleepwalking.

Flash…Why your marriage sucks (need we spell it out?).

Flash…Hot crotch governor tours delights of Argentina Trail.

Flash…TV housewife gets sex tape injunction against ex.

Flash… Divorce Expo–hurry up, tickets going fast.

Little preachers

On the surface this is comical I suppose, but down deeper it’s grotesque. I’ve posted quite a few of these child preacher vids on here.

Time perspective

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo says “calibrate your perspective of time…”

The jobs are out there

“…She’s applied for every strait-laced office gig she can find — regardless of hours, pay or whether her University of California degree makes her absurdly overqualified. She went from being a manager to fighting for personal assistant positions. But last month, after innumerable unanswered cover letters, overdue bills and a delay in her unemployment checks, she entered a world of code words and cash wads. It was baptism by — bodily fluids: She peed on a guy in her own bed for $100. Since then, she’s been paid more times than she can count, or cares to count, for sex…” Read article here.

Another example of how religion poisons everything…

Christopher Hitchens is right, religion poisons everything. This unfortunate woman was shot because she opposed Islamic oppression. (No doubt the men will be arrested because they’re “touching” a woman they are not related to.)

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More poison:

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Update: The real heroes of Iran.

” The women of Iran have jolted me awake from my cable news coma. So many of the protesters are young and female like me but display a courage I have never known — clasping rocks in their fists, kicking at baton-wielding policemen and, in the case of Neda Agha-Soltani, dying on the streets of Tehran. Judging from the flood of “I am Neda” T-shirts and tweets, I’m hardly the only one feeling not just powerful admiration but identification with Iranian women…” Read more in this article about the beautiful and remarkable progressive women of Iran.

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Update: Trouble in TehranThe post Michael Jackson/Farah Fawcett/Billy Mays death media frenzy fiasco.

Our glorious incredible magnificent Homeland Security at work…

“…People on the government’s terrorist watch list tried to buy guns nearly 1,000 times in the last five years, and federal authorities cleared the purchases 9 times out of 10 because they had no legal way to stop them, according to a new government report.In one case, a person on the list was able to buy more than 50 pounds of explosives…” Read article here.

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Incidential intelligence: My fifteen year old nephew, along with some of his school friends, are volunteer cadets with the local EMS (Emergency Medical Service). On their very official membership cards there is this in bold standout: Homeland Security.

Meet our FBI, circa 1972

“…When the FBI investigated the landmark 1972 porno movie “Deep Throat,” the case touched the highest levels of the FBI, even its second-in-command W. Mark Felt, the shadowy Watergate informant whose “Deep Throat” alias was taken from the movie’s title. The FBI documents newly released to The Associated Press reveal the bureau’s sprawling and ultimately vain attempt to stop the spread of a movie some saw as the victory of a cultural and sexual revolution and others saw as simply decadent. Agents seized copies of the movie, had negatives analyzed in labs and interviewed everyone from actors and producers to messengers who delivered reels to theaters…” Read article here about FBI’s bizarre schedule of priorities.

Brave new world

“One of the things people tend to forget when posting pictures and personal information online is that a lot of it is only a short Internet search away from their current or potential employers (not to mention their parents). It has now become standard procedure for many employers to sit down with Google and cyberstalk potential employees, while the more savvy hunt down Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds. The city of Bozeman Montana, however, has decided that all of that is too much work—it’s now requesting that potential employees hand over the login credentials for any social networking sites they frequent…” Read more about this here.

No wonder the Bible’s been a bestseller

Looking for a good sado-mas sexy murderous hot read? Try one of these Bible themes…

• A woman nails a man’s head to the ground with a tent peg while he sleeps
• A father turns his virgin daughter over to a mob who rapes her to death
• The body of a woman is cut up by her family and pieces are sent to her relatives.
• Numerous scenes of mass murder and rape
• Infanticide on God’s orders
• Sex slaves
• Mass murder of members of other religions
• Murder of nonbelievers
• Judicial killing of people who work on the Sabbath
• Wholesale destruction of cities
• Slavery
• Human sacrifice

–Hey personally I’m waiting for the movie.

Want stones with that tea?

“When Ishtiaq went to pay for his tea, the owner noticed that he was wearing a necklace with a cross and grabbed him, calling for his employees to bring anything available to beat him for violating a sign posted on the stall warning non-Muslims to declare their religion before being served…” Read article here.

Twittering Iran

Twit from Iran…

“jesus christ dude,

I’m [in my 30s] and never thought of it, let alone witnessing it as it unfolds.

I’m going nuts.

HOLY SHIT !!!”

Contextual article here.

“The activity”

You probably remember last year when an Abercrombie and Fitch advertising campaign–showing pseudo quasi somewhat slighly suggestive images– was accused of being obscene. Well now the decency bandwagon is out for a fifty foot tall poster from Calvin Klein featuring “three young men and a young woman entangled half-clothed (a male and female kissing) as a third man lays at their feet, either undressing or putting his pants back on.”  The Christian Family Association is up in arms: “Not only the billboard, but a company — a corporate giant in America — feels it appropriate to put a semi-nude photograph in a major billboard in a high-traffic area where tens of thousands of children see this kind of activity going on…” What can we say? Clearly, in plain view–it’s fifty foot tall!–passersby (mothers, children, tourists, squirrels and chipmunks (not to mention pigeons) will be assaulted by the obvious, i.e., the “activity.” And the activity is clear: this is what mothers and squirrels will think: That this sexual liaison has lasted so far a full day and night (or night and day), that these sweating oiled youths have not eaten nor slept for fear of disrupting the flow of onrushing orgasms, that their stomachs are growling but their libidos are growling louder. Their libidos–they are becoming one–a collective libido. There’s no stopping. This is sex with a capital x. Their sexual engergy has been amplified four times the power of one. Yet, incredibly, they obviously have not got to the real sex yet because their clothes are still mostly on. OMG cries a mother (or squirrel). Yes, OMG: when this foursome-as-one is fully naked all hell’s going to break loose (clearly the sofa will have to be thrown out). It’s clear their massed entangled libido is yet to fullfil its destiny. (This is terrible cries a pigeon. Indecent.)

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By the way Salvadore Dali painted a similar scene back in 1963.

The well-traveled road

Question: “My boyfriend is a roadie and is going on a long tour soon…how do I make the relsationship last?” Answer: Hardyharharhahahahahaha. Sex advice from roadies.

Hey I’m sorry, I just had to post this on Nerve’s Dating Confessions: “When will we realize that dating is merely an ego-enabling mechanism for the unworthy?” Yeah about time someone said that (if I do say so myself–and I don’t even know what it means).

Twitter VS Islamofascism

Twittering the Iranian “elections.” Article here.

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Related: Bruce Bawer, author of the recent “Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom,” responds to a fact-ignoring (call it mindless) Washinton Post review of his book. Here.

Burkha Rage all the rage

“Despite a growing acceptance that multi-culturalism has been deeply damaging to race relations, there are still almost weekly opportunities for a fit of Burkha Rage…”

Diversity by design

Hey this is just a quick ditty………….A few days ago Billy Clinton was giving a speech somewhere about how diverse America is becomming…duh…Billy…what do you think happens when you have forty years of engineered immigration. By engineered I mean designed to achieve that very goal–diversity. It’s not as if the US–and Western society in general–is going through some natural selection process. Add the enforced multicultural context to the multiracial/ethnic design and…well. gee Bill, you’re either totally clueless or just plain stupid. With the right design in place you can achieve any kind of diversity you want, so don’t act so misty-eyed surprised that the US is undergoing demographical changes.

HDTV puts “airbrushing” in high gear

“When my husband says, ‘Can you believe how much better this is?’ I say, ‘Yes, honey, it’s amazing,’ ” one woman told me. Yeah, HDTV is fantastic…but with drawbacks: “beauty” may need a whole new perfection makeover. Read article here.

“Surrealistic western”

Damn it, I’m halfway through John Hawkes’s 1951 “surrealistic Western,” The Beelte Leg,” and I’m wondering if instead I should put it down and start reading something easier , like oh say “The Wasteland” backwards (in the dark of course, under the covers with a flashlight illuminated on every other word). At first the novel reads like “No Country for Old Men” (you know, a Western, sparse, a sheriff)–but then promptly digresses (that must be the surralism kicking in). Right now I’m taking heart from an Amazon commenter: “This is a surrealistic western, basically, with language so odd, crisp, and surprising that every page has to be savored. Hawkes is a tremendously perceptive writer, whether he’s dealing with the violent or the mundane. Readers should give this and THE BLOOD ORANGES a chance. His voice is strange, and takes time to grow on you; but once it does, his books begin to seem like a mixture of poetry and noir…”

(Note: Hawkes’s “Travesty” is a much more accesible novel if you don’t feel up to “The Beetle Leg” or “Blood Oranges.”)

Update: Hey I think I have this thing in perspective now: I’m using Mindjet’s Mind Manager, mapping the thing, lassoing the intricacies, ballooning them, tagging the parts, dividing the past and present (or the present and the ghostly)…wish me luck.

Peter Hitchens does Japan

Hmmmm…Brit cellphones are not advanced enough to work in Japan. Article here. Hey you have to read about the enterprising woman who sells fake fingers to gangsters. That is absolutely pure genius. The Japanese really are superior. (BTW Peter is Christopher Hitchenes’s–”God Is Not Great fame”–brother.)

The new S Africa

Well for starters after they murdered her husband and beat the old lady upstairs in a wheelchair to a pulp they came back and tortured the dogs with boiling water and then…

Sonette Selzer, a violinist

Read article here.

Note: one in four S African men admit to rape.

Horse race…

We are here at sunny PageRank Algorithm…and… They are out of the chutes…It’s Little Twitter…Little Twitter gaining speed…Microsoft Bing now coming up fast… coming up…Micrcsoft Bing two lengths behind big  Big Goog now…Twitter in the middle…Hotbot falls by wayside…WolframAlpha in the rear…they’re running…Big Goog in the lead…Microsoft Bing now just one length behind…coming round…running running…….

Update: fear grips Google. Yes, Bing could make the finish line by a nose…Google co-founder Sergey Brin on suicide watch…

When Peter Schiff sits down to play they don’t laugh anymore…

Motorhome diary entry

Good mourning

Why are people mourning the “tragic” death of these two people (David Carradine and Karine Ruby)? I can understand family members getting upset but the general public? Cut me some slack, knaves…

David Carradine: Found in a hotel room with cord around his neck and his genitals; evidently he died practicing a really cool sex move that involved only himself.  Hey his sex life was his own business of course, but don’t mourn for the moron.  Kung Fu bondage boy.

Karine Ruby: Six-time world champion snow boarder (snow boarder? What is that–a joke?) had been training to become a mountain-climbing guide. She fell off a mountain for chrissakes? You’re bothering to mourn for somebody that deliberately and foolishly risked her life for a few hours of excitement and thrill? So she falls, as eventually they all do, and we’re supposed to feel bad?  My suggestion: make her a monument out of snow and mourn her till it melts. Like I said I feel bad for the family but what bullshit…

Great new song (and catchy too)–about spelling

Catchy spelling song, to wit…

“I wake up every morning
And I head to my PC
To read about PS3
But when I check the gaming forum
Your mistakes are all I see
A grammatical catastrophe…”

Hey, audio at the link…Please please submit to illiterate Youtube commenter freakazoids, among others).

Is Barack Obama Rosemary’s baby?

You know, I like Obama. I do. He’s cool, collected and, unlike the former prez, can talk in complete sentences and do so in a pleasant eloquent voice. Yet I have this sneaking suspicion (well in the back of my mind of course)  concerning his agenda.  After four years will it be as if we had been living under Britain’s Orwellian Labour gov for all that time? Yes, the questions…Will Muslims get to control their communities with the horror of sharia law? Will the government own every business? Will corporate banks be allowed to collect overdrafts using their own SWAT teams? Will the words In “Multiculturalism We Trust” appear on our money (it’s bad enough we have “God” on there). But of course these are just a few questions of a masochistic ranting mind. After four (or eight) years we’ll probably be in the same condition as if that other Rosemary baby had been kept in office–Baby Dubya.

Don’t snicker: this could be USA in ten years

“…When the time came, the condemned man was displayed in the streets before being led to the place of execution, where he was made to sit on the ground, head bowed, so everyone could get a good look at him. He was dressed in a garment designed by army scientists for public executions, a greyish one-piece suit made of very thick, fleece-lined cotton. That way, when the bullets are fired, the blood doesn’t spurt out but is absorbed by this fabric, which turns red. The body is thrown on a cart and then abandoned in the mountains for the dogs to eat…” Read article here.

Life in the outer world

“It cost how much you pay?” he repeated while applying the first dabs of polish to the scuffed leather.

“I will give you two lira (£1). But no more.”

“American women very beautiful. You very lucky,” he said as he got to work with a rag.

“I only have two lira. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes, my friend … I am Kurdish … five children … my wife very ugly.”

“OK, four lira. But if you have so many children she cannot be that ugly.”

“Yes, my friend. Very good. Twelve lira, please.”

I had no change in my wallet, just a five lira note.

“Thank you, my American friend. You pay five lira …

Read more here.

Out Celining Celine

A few days ago I finished Celine’s “Journey to the End of the Night,” my second reading of this French novel (translated). Only this edition has a new afterward by novelist William Vollmann. He outdoes Celine. I thought Celine was a pretty pessimistic cynical hemorrhoided writer but Vollmann outdoes him right out of the gate:  “Reader, fuck you!…You think I give a shit whether or not you’ve read this book…”

Good god man, you’re my new Afterward idol. Lt me try a couple of openers like that:

Reader! You little pigshit scum… [wow, I love saying that].

Reader!…You sleazy MFer…

Reader! You dirty slimeball….

I’m sorry, Reader, I gotta stop; I’m getting carried away with invective…

How to stuff a wild burka

I love the gloves, but I think I still see some skin near the elbow. See it? See it?

Last suvivor of Titanic dies (finally!)

97 tear old Millvina Dean dies; she was the last surviving soul from the Titanic disaster. Thank God she’s dead; thank god the last survivor is dead now so we won’t have to hear about these people anymore. Every time one died over the years it would make front pages, TV news screens, internet headlines. You’d think they were the only ones who ever survived a terrible accident. Look around, the world’s full of survivors who never get mentioned when they finally kick off.  Millvina, you were probably a nice person and all, and no hard feelings, but thank god you’re gone.

(NOTE: I  especially  I hate the name Titanic; it’s because that mishap was the basis for so many shit movies, especially that god-awful piece of sickening romantic diarrhea version with Leonard DiCaprio.)

Old Mencken, new Mencken

The venerated Mencken of yesteryear. According to the Youtube poster this is an excerpt from the  only extant audio of HL (the rest of the recording is available on this channel).

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An example of Christopher Hitchens’ acerbic wit; he is, after all, the new Mencken (and according to what I’ve read he could drink old H. L. under the table).