Tells student audience to follow Islamic way to save the planet. I guess he means like Saddam burning the oil wells or the Saudis having their main oil wells rigged with dirty bombs or the Islamic Republic building war nukes (the list goes on and on). From everything from his hypocritical stance on global warming to his bug-eyed puppy love of multiculturalism. Charlie is a buffoon of the first order (you should read about this bizarre creature in “The Royals”). Well, in honor of the Fool I refer you back to a post from 2008: Please don’t be cruel and laugh. Really, what else is there to do but laugh at him.
Archive for June, 2010
Prince Charles: instead of King, he’s merely the Fool
Posted: June 10, 2010 in Politics, ReligionTags: Prince Charles
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Film critic takes umbrage at the double standard: “… Oddly, though, for a film written by a man [Sex and the City 2], the critics’ insults were reserved for women, in a dazzling display of put-downs. Sukhdev Sandhu in the Telegraph sneered at the women for “all getting older” adding that Sarah Jessica Parker “looks like a cross between Wurzel Gummidge and Bride of Chucky”, while Miranda “looks badly embalmed”. In the Observer, Philip French ridiculed the “bitchy heroines” who enjoy “an orgy of self-pity” and described Carrie as “equine” (horse-like, people)… [quoting again] “These girls are so hung up on looking great they’ve forgotten there are several ways to be ugly.” The women are “greedy, faithless, spoiled, patronising . . . morons”. Samantha is a “blonde slut” with “the desperate mentality of the School Bike”, Miranda is “the ginger one”, Charlotte plumbs “the depths of her own venality” and Carrie is stuck in a “wind-tunnel miasma of selfish needs. Yuck.” The women behave like “materialistic whores”. Read the rest of this article here. The gist of this article is simply that men’s shallow movies (e.g., “Hot Tub Time Machine”), compared to women’s shallow movies, somehow get a pass. Maybe it’s because we assume women are more, at least generally speaking, more mature than men, somehow more intelligent.
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Related: Just a question: Ever wonder why Lindsay Lohan–not my favorite person though I wouldn’t kick her out of my hot tub– is seemingly the subject of more court action and police scrutiny and publicity than say, there would be for Osama bin Laden if he were captured?
Gaza mama Helen Thomas profusely praised by Hamas, but is she too old and feeble to fire rockets into Israel?
Noirguage: hot (or is that cool) language of the thirties and forties
Posted: June 10, 2010 in Books, MoviesTags: Raymond Chandler
No. your average jasper in the street didn’t talk like this. This was the vigorous earthy language of the private detective novel and films of the times. My favorite? The big sleep, i.e., death (Chandler).
Alderman: A man’s pot belly.
Berries: Dollars
Caboose: Jail
Daylight, as in “let the daylight in” or “fill him with daylight”: Put a hole in, by shooting or stabbing
Eel juice: liquor
Flivver: A Ford automobile
Glad rags: Fancy clothes
Have the bees: To be rich
Hop-head: Drug addict, esp. heroin
Iron: A car
Jasper: A man (perhaps a hick)
Knockover: Heist, theft
Lunger: Someone with tuberculosis
Lead poisoning: To be shot
Mush: Face
Read hundreds more from a fantastic online book: Twists, Slug and Roscoes–A Glossary of Hard-Boiled Slang I came across this glossary several years ago and referenced it many times while reading Raymond Chandler’s books and other detective fiction of the time.
Oh, I almost forgot. I’ve been watching the new DVD editions of the Perry Mason series (I got hooked on these when they ran on TBS a few years ago). These shows have some great lines–to wit…”Faces? I don’t know faces. Faces are like cockroaches; they all look alike…”
Ghouls of the firing squad
Posted: June 10, 2010 in Crime, Current events, SocietyTags: Firing squad, Utah firing squad
“It was anti-climactic,” he says. “Another day at the office.” He has brought with him a stack of photos from Taylor’s autopsy, including one of the man’s heart, blown into three pieces. Does he have any lingering effects from his role in the execution? “I’ve shot squirrels I’ve felt worse about,” he says. He volunteered to participate, he said, and would do so again, given the opportunity. “There’s just some people,” he says, “we need to kick off the planet.” Here.
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Note: The cop interviewd in this story, who so enthusiastically volunteered for the firing squad, gives me the creeps. I mean for godsakes who carries around autopsy pictures of exploded hearts. He probably has smaller versions he keeps in his wallet, you know, next to pics of his wife and kids. Fifty bucks says he’s a seriel killer masquerading as a justice monger. I think I saw this type in a movie one time.
State of New York: regressing by way of blue laws (or are they preparing us for sharia?)
Posted: June 9, 2010 in ReligionTags: Adultery, Blue laws
Woman accused of adultery facing jail–in Liberal New York City. In the United States. In the 21st Century. Pleae don’t stone her to death. Here.
“…Hitchens recalls being approached by Amis who claimed that he needed to visit a brothel in order to write his now seminal novel Money. After taking a moment to compose himself, Amis starts again saying: “And you,” he pauses for a moment and continues “are fucking well coming with me.” As surprised as Hitchens was, it was only the tip of the iceberg. He later learned that Amis had “cleared” this most sordid affair with his then-wife Antonia telling her: “I’m going to a handjob parlor with Hitch.” After their visit to the brothel, the two partners in crime went to a Japanese restaurant to drink sake in an effort to cure their hangovers from the night before…” Read more of this and several other quotes here; they’re from Hitchens memoir, Hitch 22. Antoher new book of memoirs I can’t wait to read is Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Nomad.
The most recent book of Hitchens’ that I’ve read is God Is Not Great, probably one of the top three or four books on the absurdity of religion.
The strange case of Hoops and Yoyo–and the…ahem, black “holes” of outer space
Posted: June 8, 2010 in Current eventsYes, of course, you just knew it would come down to this sooner or later…well, the trouble starts with a three-year old Hallmark talking-card–you now the kind, open it and a voice chip is activated– featuring a pink kitty and a green bunny named Hoops and Yoyo (yeah, cute names). Well, I will certainly vouch for their characters as good tolerant (i.e., non-racist) cartoonish citizens, but lo and behold they are headed for controversy. I’m afraid that on one of the cards one of them mentions, within the pure context of our cute little universe, “black holes.” Evidently the NAACP considers this an insult to black women. They say–and evidently you have to listen real close as only NAACP members can–”black holes” sounds like “black whores” or “hoes”. Here.
By the way, the very name itself, “black hole”, is considered racist by some, such as TV personality Joy Baher.
Like in the Sade song, Hollywood is nothing more than a smooth operator
Posted: June 7, 2010 in MoviesTags: Hollywood
“…It seems increasingly evident that Hollywood has been taken over by people who know and care very little about the movies themselves, but who live to target and promote formulaic, forgettable pap to an audience their studies say will pay for the privilege of consuming it…” Here.
In their brute simple deadpan cynical nature these are lines you can use over and over again.
–Sure is a mess, ain’t it, sheriff?
–If it ain’t it’ll do till a mess gets here.
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Related:
”…women could give their milk to men to establish a degree of maternal relations and get around a strict religious ban on mixing between unrelated men and women. [Because] a man who often entered a house and came in contact with the womenfolk there should be made symbolically related to the women by drinking milk from one of the women. Under the fatwa, the act would preclude any sexual relations between the man and the donor woman and her relatives…” Here. Let’s have three cheers for Sheikh Abdul Mohsin al-Abaican!
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Related: Incredible islamic fatwas
It’s something more and more people in the world are doing to prepare for the future. They are learning Chinese. “Years ago we didn’t study English,” a Mexican teacher says, “but eventually we realized we had to. Now it’s Chinese.” Store here.
I’ve come across so many false rape stories like this one over the past few years. I know it’s an unpleasant topic but, while by all means investigating an alleged crime, you should, at least initially in many cases, doubt a woman’s claim of rape.
Transexual fillm-maker arrested for keeping her* children in cages and posting clips on the internet of them eating dog food.
*Her of course is a debatable term.
“…But the morning after he died I found a list of instructions on his desk. No. 5: “My body is to be placed in a plain pine box. I would like my children to make the box.”… Rest of article here. You don’t have to go to the link; all it’s about is writer William Manchester’s willed request to his family that when he dies he wants them to build his pine casket with their own hands. Just a bunch of hubris really. This loosely reminds me though of what Bill Gates said about his will: his children aren’t in it; the billions won’t go to them. What bullshit. Let me tell you something, if I had a father worth tens of billions and he announced he wasn’t leaving it to me when he kicked rest assured the police would never find his body.
Turkey becomes a turkey
Posted: June 5, 2010 in Culture, Current events, Politics, ReligionTags: Turkey
“… [Turkey's] population has increased from 14 million to over 70 million. But that five-fold increase is not evenly distributed. The short version of Turkish demographics in the 20th century is that Rumelian Turkey — i.e., western, European, secular, Kemalist Turkey — has been outbred by Anatolian Turkey — i.e., eastern, rural, traditionalist, Islamic Turkey. Ataturk and most of his supporters were from Rumelia, and they imposed the modern Turkish republic on a reluctant Anatolia, where Ataturk’s distinction between the state and Islam was never accepted. Now they don’t have to accept it. The swelling population has spilled out of its rural hinterland and into the once solidly Kemalist cities…” Read rest of article by Mark Steyn here.
“Snaking around the outer wall of the courthouse in Mbaiki, Central African Republic, is a long line of citizens, all in human form and waiting to face judgment. It’s easy to imagine them as the usual mix of drunks, reckless drivers, and check-bouncers in the dock of a small American town. But here most are witches, and they are facing criminal punishment for hexing their enemies or assuming the shape of animals…” Here. Don’t think that a belief in witchcraft is limited to Africa. It is big in Mexico and Haiti (including Haitians in Miami), for example.
From a 2009 UN report:
- Reports from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) suggest that most of the 25,000 – 50,000 children living on the streets of the capital, Kinshasa are there because they have been accused of witchcraft and rejected by their families. In 2009 The Committee on the Rights of the Child noted that in the DRC “violence against children accused of witchcraft is increasing, and that children are being kept as prisoners in religious buildings where they are exposed to torture and ill-treatment or even killed under the pretext of exorcism.”
- The Special Rapporteur on violence against women has highlighted the problem of witch hunts in India, Nepal and South Africa.
- In Ghana it is thought as many as 2,000 accused witches and their dependents are confined in five different camps. Most of the camp inmates are destitute, elderly women and some have been forced to live there for decades.
- The murder and persecution of people accused of witchcraft in Tanzania is better documented than in most countries. The figures vary widely but it is estimated as many as a thousand, mostly elderly Tanzanian women are targeted and killed annually.
- In Angola, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has called for “immediate action to eliminate the mistreatment of children accused of witchcraft”.
- In Papua New Guinea, provincial police commanders reportedly said there were more than 50 sorcery-related killings in 2008. Other sources have suggested much higher figures.
- In Nigeria, the Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network reports an increasing number of children abandoned or persecuted on the grounds they are witches or wizards.
- In Nepal, elderly women and widows are often singled out and abused in exorcism ceremonies.
The historical role of the social/political cartoonist
Posted: June 3, 2010 in HistoryTags: Corruption, Ken Burns
From Ken Burns’ 1999 documentary.
“People who wouldn’t think of going through a morning without a cup of coffee usually think it helps perk them up. But surprising new research suggests that it only helps bring them back to the normal state they’d be in if they didn’t drink any coffee at all…” Read rest of this shocking story here.
Note: I have the sense that certain hidden emails will eventually be “discovered” by a whitleblower from this group of researchers that will cast doubt on the group’s conclusion.
Accidents, sirens, and ghouls
Posted: June 3, 2010 in Psychology, SocietyTags: Car accidents, Police
A pickup truck lay in the northbound lanes, its windshield shattered. A short distance away was 50-year-old Ferdinand Ramirez Villaneuva, whose head had landed about a dozen feet from his body. Even for veteran police officers, seeing a dismemberment up close is unusual – so unusual that one officer snapped a grisly photo of the mutilated body with his camera phone and sent it to someone. It’s unclear how many others saw the photo, but eventually it traveled to people who have no connection to the accident, or to the man who died. I think it’s pretty sick to take pictures of crime scenes when it’s not part of your job,” Ramsey said. “It’s ghoulish. And I can’t figure out why you would want to remember some of that stuff. It’s bad enough that you have to see it in the first place.” Read rest of this article here.
Heny Ford’s failed human engineering project in the jungle. Now this book looks interesting. My wholly presumptive opinion is that this, at least in a very loose sense (grotesque idealism), was Jonestown on the assembly line.
“…So he set off for the Amazon, armed with hubris, spite, madness, vision, utopianism and contempt for expertise. He resolved not merely to establish a rubber plantation in the heart of the jungle, but rather to establish a small, perfect midwestern town in the middle of the Amazon, a place where Fordism and its model villages, squeaky-clean abstinence, freedom from trade unionism, and emphasis of turning industrial workers into avid consumers of industrial goods would reign supreme….” Here.
Death VS meaningless factory work: death wins
Posted: June 2, 2010 in Current events, Psychology, SocietyTags: China, Fosconn
The Foxconn suicides: “Life is meaningless,” said Ah Wei, his fingernails stained black with the dust from the hundreds of mobile phones he has burnished over the course of a 12-hour overnight shift. “Everyday, I repeat the same thing I did yesterday. We get yelled at all the time. It’s very tough around here.” Conversation on the production line is forbidden, bathroom breaks are kept to 10 minutes every two hours and constant noise from the factory washes past his ear plugs, damaging his hearing, Ah Wei said. The company has rejected three requests for a transfer and his monthly salary of 900 yuan ($132) is too meager to send money home to his family, said the 21-year-old, who asked that his real name not be used because he is afraid of his managers. Read more of this article here.
State of the human condition (cont’)
Posted: June 2, 2010 in Culture, Current events, Human Nature, Religion
