why i think christians are fucking morons

ooh, a lovely new article at worldNetDaily, home for the brainless, ignorant bigmouths i hate. today's jewel is WorldNetDaily: Why I won't be celebrating Halloween with Barbie, a tireless tirade against the pagan evils of halloween & how it's going to seduce your children in satanism.

in case you were wondering, the only troll around is my grandpa. (I'm one-quarter troll, which explains my difficulty with bridging the gap between me and the Reborglicans & my preference for tofaby instead of tofurkey at thanksgiving.) This is a deadly serious matter for linda harvey.

em harvey - dare I call her ms harvey? i dare not. - has an admirable concern for the proper upbringing of her progeny. i'm direly concerned for the proper upbringing of children; the fact that most american children are spoiled, self-centred fucks in comparison to those of every country in the world i've visited is why i constantly fume and curse about the youngest members of our society. (that and the stifled need to eat them - thanks, gramps.)

However, if I may be so bold, my dear em harvey, you have things all wrong. Why you should not celebrate halloween with barbie is not because, as you state,

God trumped those holidays [Easter & Christmas], and still does in spite of pagan trappings like Christmas trees and Easter eggs. But Halloween, God has let stand alone, perhaps as a test.

In fact, your argument is so specious i'm not sure why i'm trying to refute it except as a general matter of principle. let's just say that despite your understanding that God created those christian holidays to 'trump' the preexisting pagan ones, in fact these holidays were not celebrated until quite late in church history. for some reason, they were not jettisoned along with the remainder of the dreck that the protestants did when they tossed out the priesthood and the other ideas that clearly had no role in the ministry of jesus.

i am, of course, patently assuming em Harvey is not a roman catholic or greek orthodox, mostly because this is Them United States and she's writing on worldNetDaily. forgive me if i'm wrong, but even then the argument remains: the early church did not celebrate the birth of christ nor did they have an established easter separate from passover et al.

my point is just that there is no reason to celebrate those other holidays with easter eggs and a christmas tree except that, apparently, halloween seems more unacceptable to you. whatever.

in any case, i utterly agree with you. well, with your title, anyway. however, the reason is entirely opposite to your own: barbie is a nightmarish evolution of the most horrid images of femininity and womanhood this century all rolled into one image.

screw halloween: it's kids dressing up in costume and eating candy, which isn't going to corrupt their silly little minds. on the other hand, barbie will hurt your children. without a doubt. absolutely.

for those of you wondering whether my tongue is in my cheek, i want to firmly indicate it is not. I loathe barbie. I always loathed barbie. she teaches girls misogyny, self-hatred, body image problems, that the good woman is biologically improbable in appearance and also has long blonde hair and blue eyes and also owns EVERYTHING.

barbie is about acquisition, matching impossible beauty images and hurtful stereotypes about women and their roles in society.

i agree: no barbie halloween. but barbie is the real satan here: don't let the red herring of halloween throw you. after all, the yule log was originally human sacrifices and the goddess of spring, eostre, was also a man-eater.

My Flying Skills are Unstoppable

Smart-Winged Pterosaurs, an article in nature 425 (20 oct 2003), pp 910-911, shows not only a neat reconstrution of a basal (archaic) and a derived (innovative) pterosaur and how they moved on land, it also remarks on the incredible flying abilities they had. The authors conclude,

Equipped with their 'smart' wings, pterosaurs would have had excellent flight control. Despite their antiquity, they could even have outperformed modern birds and bats.

The link is to the 'science-stupid' version of the papers included in nature, a kind of summary for those who don't have any background in science. It is also this month's free offering.

You should read it.

Our minds trick us. They are little glands sitting on a massive mammalian-reptile base, a tiny GUI on a great Darwin kernel whose guts speak a strange tongue that in turn is translated into the machine-speak of electronic pulses that really makes up our beings. We funny wingless primates are like macs: wonderful things with great software, but we don't have the slightest goddamn idea how the programming actually runs to make the interface we call consciousness.

We don't realise how it constrains our minds to think of the world as a giant Friendster or Tribe.net web. We like to think the entirety of our world is the mumble-bumble masses of henrys and emilys and get lost in our social environment - to a large degree, this isn't an inaccurate depiction, because our species has covered every inch of the world, Munchkins and Gillikins crawling over the surface of the planet.

There are worlds of beauty and brilliance beyond that GUI, and there are other GUIs. Some of that is understanding the programming languages, how UNIXy subsurface processes appear as click- and draggable notions and emotions. There is understanding how programming works in the first place, how simple patterns repeat and how other systems are brilliant even though they are unfamiliar and ancient.

Enough computer stories. The world isn't all interpersonal relationships, despite what your furry brain is screaming at you all the time. It is mostly nonhuman, even though we live in giant constructed artificial networks that run by primate social requirements. It is wild and addictive and amazing and there are portals to it that other curious folks have built. We are like chimps in that we are obsessed with other two-legs, but we are also like orang-orang-hutan in that we have a curiosity about things other than two-legs. Here's your time to carpe the diem.

This little gem is flotsam on the beach: pick it up, savour it, take it home with you & put it on your shelf to remind you that you need to turn off the social networks for a while and think about the astounding ways the world functions OUTSIDE of Munchkins & al.

So stop reading me and go read that article already!

Music Hegemony

good article.

Salon Chimes In Too

another great article about the copyright morass in the information age:

Hollywood to the computer industry: We don't need no stinking Napsters!

On its Web site, the Motion Picture Association of America provides a handy FAQ to help people understand the "broadcast flag," the latest copy-protection scheme that Hollywood wants the government to mandate. According to the MPAA, the idea is a near-perfect solution to a pernicious problem -- the threat that the coming age of high-definition TV will be derailed by a few bad apples intent on trading episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer over the Internet.

"What is the broadcast flag?" the MPAA site asks. To which it provides this simple answer:

The broadcast flag is a sequence of digital bits embedded in a television program that signals that the program must be protected from unauthorized redistribution. It does not distort the viewed picture in any way. Implementation of this broadcast flag will permit digital TV stations to obtain high value content and assure consumers a continued source of attractive, free, over-the-air programming without limiting the consumers' ability to make personal copies.

Civil libertarians and computer hardware manufacturers are wary of any kind of government-mandated technology. But put this way, the broadcast flag doesn't sound very evil. If TV companies want to insert an invisible tag into their shows in order to ensure "a continued source of attractive" programming, so what? As long as the broadcast flag will, as the MPAA promises, not hinder our ability to make personal copies of the shows we love, we might well wonder, "How is this scheme going to hurt us?"

more ...

Google Needs Better Advertisement Targeting for Blogspot

i find it particuarly amusing that our current ads are for religious products.

Copyright Madness, Part Two

things just got a lot more interesting. remember the debacle over web-radio and the subsequent ramming through of ridiculous fees for web broadcasters that far exceeded those applied to traditional radio? those crazy kids over at mit are yet again pushing the boundaries.

With Cable TV at M.I.T., Who Needs Napster?

Two students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a system for sharing music within their campus community that they say can avoid the copyright battles that have pitted the music industry against many customers.

The students, Keith Winstein and Josh Mandel, drew the idea for their campus-wide network from a blend of libraries and from radio. Their effort, the Libraries Access to Music Project, which is backed by M.I.T. and financed by research money from the Microsoft Corporation, will provide music from some 3500 CDs through a novel source: the university's cable television network.

The students say the system, which they plan to officially announce today, falls within the time-honored licensing and royalty system under which the music industry allows broadcasters and others to play recordings for a public audience. Major music industry groups are reserving comment, while some legal experts say the M.I.T. system mainly demonstrates how unwieldy copyright laws have become. A novel approach to serving up music on demand from one of the nation's leading technical institutions is only fitting, admirers of the project say. The music industry's woes started on college campuses, where fast Internet connections and a population of music lovers with time on their hands sparked a file-sharing revolution.

"It's kind of brilliant," said Mike Godwin, the senior technology counsel at Public Knowledge, a policy group in Washington that focuses on intellectual property issues. If the legal theories hold up, he said, "they've sidestepped the stonewall that the music companies have tried to put up between campus users and music sharing."

more...

and then there's this:

Critics Press Case on TV Privacy Rules

Federal regulators plan as soon as this week to adopt rules meant to keep people from copying digital broadcasts of television shows and movies and distributing them on the Internet, government officials and industry lobbyists say.

The rules, backed by the television networks, movie studios and a group of consumer electronics companies, are meant to encourage a swifter transition to digital broadcasts by television stations.

But the proposed regulations, which the Federal Communications Commission may adopt this week, have been criticized by consumer advocacy groups, and others, who say they would not effectively prevent piracy but could curtail the legitimate copying of television programs and might render current consumer electronics equipment obsolete.

The companies that designed the technical elements of the rules include important equipment makers like Hitachi, Intel, Matushita, Sony and Toshiba. But some other equipment makers, among them Philips Electronics, say the new rules may be anticompetitive by requiring all manufacturers to use the technologies developed by the group - and quite possibly also pay licensing fees.

more ...

geez ... i'm feeling really psychic today:

Amazon Offer Worries Authors

The online retailer Amazon.com has introduced a feature that lets users search for specific words or phrases in a database of the texts of 120,000 books, drawing skepticism from an authors' group.

The feature, called Search Inside the Book, lets anyone see a few pages of each book in which the phrase appears. Registered users can see up to 20 pages of a book at a time.

In a letter on its Web site, Amazon's founder, Jeffrey P. Bezos, said the feature was added to benefit customers. Amazon plans to add more books to the database.

Plans for it were first reported in July. Publishers have said that Amazon promoted it as a better way to sell books, by letting shoppers sample them - as they might in a bookstore. Some book publishers have said that by offering a source of information about a variety of topics, the feature may also help Amazon more than the publishers, because it will attract shoppers to other merchandise like music, electronics or apparel, as well as books.

Amazon said that 190 publishers were taking part, but some publishing executives said they were still watching to be sure that the new service did not hurt book sales by giving away contents.

more ...

well, just damn. here's another relevant article:

Two Companies at Odds Over the Internet's Future

One year ago, almost to the day, Samuel J. Palmisano, the chief executive of I.B.M., delivered a speech in New York that sketched his company's vision of the future of computing, which he called "on-demand computing."

Today in Los Angeles, Bill Gates, the chairman of the Microsoft Corporation, will present his company's notion of where things are headed, which the software maker calls "seamless computing."

Behind the marketing shorthand is a kind of war of ideas over what can be thought of as "the Internet, Act II," a technological evolution that has been gathering speed. The next-generation development of the Internet has been helped by the continuing and remarkable progress in hardware. But probably more important has been the embrace of a set of software standards - rendered in a nerdy alphabet soup of acronyms, like XML, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI and so on - that open the door to widespread machine-to-machine communication across the Internet.

Over the last couple of years, I.B.M. and Microsoft have cooperated closely to reach agreement on the software standards, known as Web services, necessary for this next step. The two companies, however, agree on little else.

The Internet Act I was mainly about e-mail programs and downloading digital information to look at or listen to - Web pages, animations, video and music. Act II should bring all kinds of automated transactions among businesses and individuals. And those transactions will be able to include a hint of computer-aided intelligence.

An example could be arranging an appointment with your dentist. Your calendar information, with stated time preferences and availability, exchanges data with your dentist's calendar to automatically set up an appointment. Similarly, companies should someday be able to conduct computer-automated auctions with suppliers. The next-generation Internet can be thought of as the beginning of what researchers have said might be possible with software agents, or bots, performing as human assistants.

more ...

the new york times is really quite fabulous today:

Want to Be Interviewed on the Radio? Well, Just Pay Up.

The caller to Joanne Doroshow's office last month described himself as working for Sky Radio Network, a company that produces programming for Forbes Radio, one of the audio channels available to passengers on American Airlines.

As the executive director of the Center for Justice and Democracy, a nonprofit organization that casts itself as a champion of consumer rights, Ms. Doroshow was asked if she would be interviewed for a talk show examining the issue of tort reform. When Ms. Doroshow agreed, she said, the caller informed her that it would cost her organization $5,900 to have its point of view heard. When Ms. Doroshow balked, she said, the caller offered to see if it could be reduced to $3500.

"I was furious," Ms. Doroshow said. "I thought this was another way corporations are dominating what people hear, and are getting only their side presented because they're willing to pay for it."

Ms. Doroshow was so angry that she directed lawyers for the center, whose board includes Erin Brockovich and Ralph Nader, to draft a complaint letter to the Federal Trade Commission, which the center intends to submit today. It asks that Sky Radio, which also produces programming for United, Delta, Northwest and several other airlines, be required to disclose prominently that its news-style programs are actually little more than paid advertisements.

more ...

Copyright Madness

this thread at slashdot touches on an issue near and dear to me. i know it is human nature to hold on methods and institutions that have served one well in the past. nevertheless, our notions of copyright and intellectual property are going to have to go. before we had this nifty global communications network and big cheap hard drives, the concept of intellectual property made sense. the only reason it made sense, however, was the fact that mass production and distribution of intellectual property required an enormous investment. these considerations went hand in hand with our willingness to maintain the fiction that the products of thought and creativity were 'property' of any kind.

how many of us are given to the belief that publishers of music, books, and software were selling us things when in fact they were only selling us access to them? in the past, this was only fair because of the investment of time, money, and labor that went into production and delivery of the means of access. the howls of fury from the music industry, the software industry, and the early mutters of discontent from book publishers and movie industry are laughable in light of the technological revolution we've witnessed over the last ten years. protest they may, but the tide is on its way in and nothing is going to stop it, short of blowing the moon out of the sky. don't think they won't try.

but the times they are a'changin'. it's funny how human beings hold fierce to their pet pieces of the status quo, full of spit and vinegar over their illusory entitlements despite a mountain of evidence that the world is completely indifferent to them. i'm sure that the executives of mass entertainment around the world are salivating at the prospect of finding a secure means of electronic delivery for their goods. the aformentioned enormous investment in the production and delivery of such goods via concrete routes represent a heavy weight on their bottom lines. wouldn't they just love to continue selling you the same things for the same prices despite the significant savings that accrue from doing away with those annoying physical products. they could also dispense with those pesky retailers who want their own piece of the profit pie.

the problem is that they can't wrap their minds around the nature of the internet. they cling too fiercely to their out-dated realities, always seeking some means to impose those old rules on a medium that fundamentally defies them by its very nature. the internet was never about centralized control. it inhabits a foreign world where these pompous salary men are lost strangers. they are terrified of it, fascinated by it, and hostile to it, but all the same, its promise inspires a hot rush of greed in their bellies.

they need to read some literary theory because then they'd realize the pitfalls of a closed system that is defined in terms of itself. all attempts to secure the means of electronic production begin and end with the electronic world. this is why music publishers have been unable to prevent the duplication of their products. bits of software can almost always be undone with bits of software. there are no perfect locksmiths to prevent the chattering masses from entering the factory and taking over.

of course, i doubt they will simply blink out of existence. they'll adapt like good capitalists, but only when forced to do so like bad capitalists. the market is not a passive audience, and it's pushing back to the tune of tens of millions of empowered human beings. they can't count on their customers' lack of expertise and access to information anymore. the internet has opened the doors to the wealth of the human hive mind. any enterprising and curious teenager can track down a crack or a hack for his entertainment of choice in the blink of an eye. the more adventurous college students are taking advantage of globalization now that they know how little their textbooks cost in other countries just as employers have discovered how little human sweat and toil cost abroad.

the freer and more readily available information becomes, the more desperate some people are to control access to it. the silliest things are patented these days. i shudder to think what the world of programming would be like today if these people were in charge a few decades ago. what idiocy it would be to patent something like the binary search or quicksort algorithms for programming. however, some people would love to advance this idea of hyper-ownership because they truly fail to see the consequences if it were taken to its logical conclusion. ideas have little value unless they can be shared and applied to a variety of circumstances. ideas have long given birth to other ideas, but there are some who would love to turn them into so much mummified red tape.

amidst the screams for protection of the investment in research and discovery we need to remember that every freely available idea or discovery reduces the cost of that investment. what would our world be like if newton had patented calculus? in essence this is the situation some people want to create. they want to erect toll booths all across the information highway because they are inveterate control freaks determined to cut themselves and others off at the knees.

a leaked memo from micosoft detailed that behemoth's concern over the threat that open source programming posed to it and outlined possible strategies to attack this process. they never stop to think about the enormous benefits of a million astute programmers poring over lines of code, seeking out weaknesses and inefficiencies. there will always be a few who harbor malice, but again, there will always be a greater number who will fix these problems in return for the right to use and modify that software for their own purposes. even the mischief-makers are useful because they highlight weaknesses that need to be addressed. that's why some software security companies make it a point to hire crackers who cause so many of their headaches. it's really no different from law enforcement's practice of making use of criminals to fight other criminals.

when the office-holders of capitalism start droning on and on about the perils of restricting the free market, it is important to note how often they call for restricting the market for their own purposes. for decades, they've have the upper hand on avenues of information. that has changed, and a lot of them are acting like crybabies in the nursery. we need a new balance for protecting the investment that intellectual production requires, but we need to be careful not to strangle the source of creation and inspiration - intellectual property itself.

My City is Burning to the Ground Around Me

San Diego is burning, and the largest of its fires is out of control. The sky is glowing red in two directions from my house. From outside the city reports show an impenetrable wall of smoke. When I got up this morning, the sun was blotted out to a red cherry and ash was raining down from the sky - it looked like Pompeii. The air stinks of smoke, even in the house. Sometimes it's hard to breathe without coughing because of all the junk in the air. I have covered the electronics in the house because the ash filters in the cracks and settles on and in everything.

Five fires are burning; the only open highway runs along the coast and large numbers of the outlying areas had to be evacuated. Because of the Sta. Ana winds that blow off the deserts, the humidity had a grand high today of like 13% and gusts of wind drove the flames along as fast as the pumper trucks could drive away from them, about 45 MPH. Some people have been found dead in their cars because they were unable to outrace the flames.

This area is full of eucalyptus trees, which are essentially giant oil tanks and explode like bombs, raining burning liquid all around them. Already the largest fire has burned a sixth of San Diego City, the part enclosed by the city limits proper. Damage to the county is unmeasurable in a literal sense: we cannot guess at the disaster they have caused.

The city is cut off from evacuation to the south, east and north; only northwest on the 5 is still open and it is bumper-to-bumper. Even the Mexican side of the border is impassable: a wall of flame has devoured the road from Ensenada to Tecate and the US parallel highway was already gone this morning. So we are sitting in a ring of fire with our backs to the ocean and thick, oily smoke choking us.

In the chaos today, a Cessna crashed on the 163 highway about a mile West of my house while trying to land only thirty feet from the most densely-populated region of the city. It crashed about a two-minute walk from where my mother and sister stayed when they visited me, in fact.

I live in North Park, which is the middle of the city. Right now, the fires are about three miles from my house along the main highways; they have evacuated a community that is about a five-minute drive from my front door, Tierrasanta. Hopefully the fact that I live here means the fire will not burn here; there are almost a thousand fire fighters fighting the largest fire, which is out of control and directly north of me. They will do anything to keep the heavy areas of the city, the backbone of San Diego, from burning up.

If I'm evacuated I might not be back online for a bit. Don't panic, I'll be around.

Mother Dearest

Mommie Dearest: The Pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist & a fraud. (Christopher Hitchens)

Insh'Allâhah someone else will pick up on this. I've been lecturing everyone I can duct-tape down about what an awful person, what a self-indulgent, twisted, crazy Christianazi "mother" Teresa was & how outrageous it is that the Church is looking to canonise her twisted ass.

"Mother"? Closer to "mater", as in the psychotic, sexually-twisted, manipulative Honoured Matres from Dune. I'd bring up the Bene Gesserit but they are self-aware, whereas deranged Matres like Teresa don't even know how upfucked they are. Like JP's other recent beatification of the founder of that monstrous perversion of religion, Opus Dei, the beatification of Honoured Mater Teresa is an insult to religion.

It's no surprise, in one sense. Good old Papa JP has systemically set back the Church's policies to a new kind of fundamentalism not seen since the office of Inquisition was enabled. Think I'm kidding? Then you need to pick up a book, sweetheart, & read a little fucking history. Read a theologian's view of the Pope's insane vision of the Virgin, a vision that just underlines his nasty, repressed gynophobia.

That bitch is so afraid of the sweet wetness; emilys are not real to those come-drenched Attises; they are fucking statues on a pedastal. Like serial killers, they see filth in real women and pure white fleshless spirit in Mary.

You think Mary never had a yeast infection? You think she ascended into Heaven? You think she didn't masturbate, menstruate & fart - or perhaps that giving birth to a sacred baby made her stop being the same kind of human being as everyone else?

Purity and impurity are an illusion. Male and female are conditions and creations. Jesus had to wash his dick and wipe his ass, god or not. Henrys jerk off, holy or not. It's no different than eating or drinking, which they all do as well. And when we die, we rot. Our host bacteria devour us from within.

Maybe Christ rose from the dead; I won't quibble that level of theological discussion because I think it's a fair assumption of faith to accept Christianity. To paraphrase Heinlein, I have to respect your religion, but that doesn't mean I can't think it's stupid. But to reject the very basic tenets of that faith and make Mary Coredemptrix: are you fucking kidding?

And that's exactly what the Pap is doing. He's reducing thousands of years of religion to the fundamentalist notions of a crazy idiot predecessor of his who lived in the late 1800s. He beatifies those who spit on the poor and those who praise suffering and poverty as just.

Fuck that, fuck you & fuck the pope. And you can quote that. Fucking bloody well die already, you stupid wanker.

Reaching That Age

the other day, i was surfing the internet and came across an article about courtney love's recent drug-related arrest. i went trawling for photos of her and kurt cobain just for kicks because i suddenly realized that it has been nine years since his suicide. i haven't listened to nevermind or in utero for ages. oddly, i became a fan of nirvana after cobain's untimely suicide. the music appealed to me because of my prolonged stage of adolescent angst. not to mention the fact that the girl i had a crush on loved nirvana.

i found a website with a blurry photo of courtney love holding her infant daughter, francis bean, on her hip. looking at that grainy image, a sense of vertigo opened up inside at the sense of the chasm of years between now and then. it was stronger than the bottom falling out feeling i had a few months ago when i encountered the uncannily blue eyes of francis bean, now grown into a lithe and graceful preteen, staring out of a magazine. as lived, time has a jagged and sudden quality, but in photographs, it's experienced like your remembered favorite autumn -- soft, surprising, and irretrievably lost.

Technicolor Code

i like my c programming class. although i am quite young, i still feel like i hail from an earlier era. when my parents bought the family's first computer, i was in the third grade. if my memory serves, it was a tandy 1000. it had no hard drive, but it boasted a whole 256 kilobytes of ram and a state of the art four color monitor.

we really had no idea what to do with it. my parents purchased a text adventure game and a graphical mickey mouse game, both of which frustrasted me to no end. i gave up on them after a week and returned to the more satisfying entertainment provided by our atari video game console. i went back to the mickey mouse game years later and actually beat it.

it was stupendously easy, and i'm embarassed to admit i couldn't win it immediately. because i didn't open a cabinet in mickey mouse's garage, i didn't find the all important crowbar. the object of the game was to collect a crystal from every planet in the solar system.

i tried my hand at the basic programming language, but didn't get very far with it. no one in my family knew the slightest thing about programming. actually, people who knew anything about computers were few and far between in eastern kentucky in the early eighties. therefore, the computer ultimately became a big paperweight. nevertheless, when i read the owner's manual that came with it, one thing captured my imagination -- the fact that computers could 'talk' to one another through this thing called a 'modem.' but modems were prohibitively expensive back then, and i had no idea that the internet existed.

flash forward to 1990. i pestered my mom into buying a computer, and for $2000, we became the proud owners of a system with 640 kilobytes of ram, the latest dos operating system, and a massive 20 megabyte hard disk. it was also blessed with a 16 color monitor, but even better, it came with a 300 baud modem. some months later, the local newspaper published a tiny article located deep inside its pages about local BBSes. i wrote the author to ask for some numbers.

thus began my obsession with online life. at some point, i got an internet account on someone's unix system, but i didn't really begin to appreciate the internet until i got to college. by the time the web explosion began, my idea of the 'net had coalesced around the stark and elegant text console unix environment.

i should have learned c programming over ten years ago. i don't know why i didn't. i'm making up for lost time now. going to my c programming class is akin to time traveling back to the late seventies and early eighties. the professor is very much an old school programmer who cut his teeth on c and unix. he also loves teaching this stuff. you can sense his excitement whenever he introduces a new subject, whether it be pointers or character arrays.

learning c is like an archeological expedition into the philosophical and technical underpinnings of programming itself. it makes me want to learn fortran and assembly language. the more primitive the language, the closer you are to the hardware. they force you to learn how a computer processes information. languages like java hide most of this from you by design.

now that i am taking this class, i have a newfound respect for the pioneers of computer science. there is no way that anyone could truly be a great programmer (in my opinion) without learning c (and assembly language). the higher level programming langauges simply do too much work for the programmer.

of course, these features speed up the development of software. you can accomplish things with a few lines of code in java that would require more work with c. although, i love java for its modularity, i have a special affection for c because of its simplicity. it's a much smaller and more compact language. to use it implies a faith in your technical know how and creativity. to use java implies a faith in the technical know how and creativity of the developers of java. c appeals to my arrogant faith in my own intelligence as well as the part of me that likes to take things apart and examine the gears inside.

Blow Me

dear temp agency:

i have been sending my time cards out weekly. i don't know why they don't show up on time. this entire fiasco wouldn't have happened if you'd explicitly stated from the beginning you wanted me to do it weekly. your representative said it was fine to do it bi-weekly.

then i get a snotty message this summer instructing me to send my cards on a weekly basis. i then comply with this request and suddenly i do not get paid for three weeks out of the last six. i sent the fucking hours every week as requested! what is the big fucking deal?

other temp agencies have joined the rest of us in the 21st century and allow people to fax their hours. no need to wait around for the one piddly card you dole out each week in the paycheck envelope. i was right diddly on the clock every week since the beginning of september. so, the moment i stick to your dumbass plan, i start noticing that i'm not getting paid regularly for my miserly eight hours a week job.

this is not my goddamned fault. then when that one piddly card doesn't arrive at the beginning of the week, i have to twiddle my thumbs waiting for you to send some more, along with a snotty note chiding me for my irresponsible ways. if i'd had the damned thing, i'd have sent it. what pisses me off is that you automatically blame me when cards arrive in your office two weeks after i dropped them in the mail.

snail mail is unreliable, and it's difficult to estimate how long good ole uncle sam will get around to delivering our shit. this is why other agencies are using this new-fangled invention, the fax machine. what's great about it is that you can photocopy your fricking time form, so you never run out!

you assholes are earning a shitload of money off my fucking back, and you don't even offer halfway decent health insurance or other benefits to full-time employees. you should be kissing *my* goddamned ass for paying *your* rent, buying *your* groceries, and paying *your* salary. in essence, you are taking a cut out of *my* paycheck for doing nothing more than telling me somebody was hiring for a no benefits contract job and getting me an interview. this is not a charitable exchange assholes. i'm paying *you*.

sincerely,
emily1

Political Fuckupery

pontificator linked this article on this thread at calpundit's blog.

choice quote from the article (also noted by pontificator):

Security agencies all over the world are now quietly running Plame's name through their data banks, immigration records and computer hard drives as the White House leak scandal continues to percolate. Officials with two foreign governments told TIME that their spy catchers are quietly checking on whether Plame had worked on their soil and, if so, what she had done there. Which means if one theme of the Administration leak scandal concerns political vengeance — did the White House reveal Plame's identity in order to punish Wilson for his public criticism of the case for war with Iraq?--another theme is about damage. What has been lost, and who has been compromised because of the leak of one spy's name? And who, if anyone, will pay for that disclosure?

makes you wonder how many of valarie plame's former contacts are shitting their pants in terror right now.

Defence of Marriage Week

Yes, it's Defence of Marriage Week this week, as declared by our own Puppet-Unelect as directed by the Occupation Government. The Shrub didn't acknowledge LGBT History Month and now he's openly dancing to the tune of "homosexuals are a threat".

I'm not a very clever commentator. I haven't the political savvy to say smart, understanding things about the Occupation Government. They are looking to alienate every queer emily & henry and every reasonable-minded citizen.

Defence of Marriage Week? Is that a joke? Seriously, is it a joke? Let's declare a week to protect heterosexuality? What kind of political grandstanding is this? I mean, come on! Who in the United States gives a rat's ass about hetero marriage? Really, now: you don't think that this is honestly what it is about, do you? "I know," says Occupation Loyalist, "I've got the perfect thing here: the idea what will make the people think really hard, will hit them right where it matters most. Let's talk about the importance of heterosexual marriage!"

Yeah, right. Who cares about heterosexual marriage? Only lunatics & the apocalyptic-minded think about the wider social implications of breeder legal pairings. What exactly is being defended? From whom should it be defended?

This declaration is about one thing, and it's pretty baldly obvious to whom this message is addresed:

DIE QUEERS DIE YOU PERVERTS.

See, we should get your vote because we also wish to cruci... I mean stone queahz.

It's a fucking lowbrow move. It's worthy of an administration that seized power, that rebuts the notion of rule from below in the face of Godly ordination, that covers up a classical statue of Justice because her teat is bared, that committed treason in an act of political vengeance, that approved of Israeli military assaults on Syria & that demonstrably preplanned the invasion of Iraq long before 9/11.

This country is officially going down like the Titanic. Catastrophism? Ha! Talk to me in a month. Every day seems to bring forth another dire insult to the people and to the rights of the people from the many mouths of the Occupation.

Idiots In America

according to zizka, a frequent commenter on calpundit's posts, there are a shitload of brownshirt moronic fucks in this country:

[...] a couple years back 40% of Alabamans voted to keep interracial marriage illegal. (That's a pretty hard figure based on an actual election ; the national number is 20% in favor of making interracial marriage illegal, based on polling).

If those 40% are not racists, the word has no meaning. Are they Republicans, Democrats, or a mix?

Well, there's some evidence that they're Republicans. When the Civil Rights Act passed in the 60's, gradually the white South became solidly Republican. I don't think it's because they developed an admiration for Abraham Lincoln; as it happens, even today Southern Republicans hate Lincoln. (Evidence from the CCC, and also from Richmond Virginia, where many mainstream Republicans strongly resisted an attempt to erect a statue of Lincoln -- for those of you just arrived from Mars, Lincoln was the founder of the Republican Party, more or less).

[...]

A healthy chunk of the core Republican constituency is racist. Deal with it.

Now Sharpton. He's made race-baiting anti-Semitic statements, one of which led to riots in which people were killed. On the other hand, he holds no political office and high office in the party. (Sharpton is black and anti-Semitic, but most blacks are not anti-Semitic; they vote for Democrats for other reasons - for example, because of the CCC Republicans. And as for Farrakhan, he's a Republican as often as not)

OK, how about the elder Gore and WV Sen Byrd. Weren't they racists once? Yeah, but they changed. That's how they could stay Democrats. Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond became Republicans.

The "Democrats are the real racists" or "Democrats are just as racist as Republicans" arguments are too phony to take seriously, though of course, like many dishonest arguments, they can "work".

this relates to one of my earlier posts about the rhetorical strategies of the hard right. zizka's comment highlights one of their favorite tactics: misdirection. they have been enormously successful on capitalizing on the latent racism that permeates our culture while simultaneously covering their tracks. notice how a lot of wingers respond when you point out the specific and clear associations between hard right republican politicians and moronic brownshirt fucks who unfortunately have a lot of influence and money. they rarely respond with a denial of the association. the typical responce is usually, "Look! Over there!" 'over there' is usually a democrat demagogue who holds little power, no elected office, and frankly, is usually of little relevance to the democratic party at large.

al sharpton is one example. i denounce sharpton's anti-semitism. i acknowledge his racism. i do not agree with him, as is with most liberals who have half a brain. as Zizka points out, "[...] the Democratic strategy does not depend on courting the anti-Semitic vote. On the contrary, it depends on courting the Jewish vote as well as the black vote." the republicans, on the other hand, do specifically court the votes of bigots. the fact that the CCC counts among their members and supporters a number of holocaust deniars is also important to note because you will find no small number of links between this group of odious twats and prominent elected republican officials. you will find such illustrious scholarly works as "In Defense Of Racism" on their website.

the thing is that elected officials can't openly voice these views (unless they hold office in the deep south) without quickly losing their elected status. however, they can court the votes of bigots through association with groups like the CCC. you will not find anything on their official webpages about their connections to these groups, but they are indeed working with them and through them. in the future, i will post a list of republican office-holders who work with this and other organized groups of bigots.

footnote: zizka's comment came from the thread for this post at calpundit's blog.

When It Hurts to Stay True To Your Liberal Values

this article (link from calpundit) better articulates my position on limbaugh's drug addiction. i am against the drug war because of erosion of civil liberties that has accompanied it. i am against it because it doesn't work, and for a lot of other reasons. as sorely tempted as i am to call for punishing him to the full extent of the law, i just can't do it. as much as i loathe that man, i disagree with the fundamental basis for those laws.

if you are anti-drug war and if you who believe in treating addicts with compassion, but are willing to make an exception by calling for the harshest punishment under the law for limbaugh, then you are a hypocrite. not only that, you are missing out on the opportunity to confront his right wing fans with their own hypocrisy. this post (link from calpundit) from mark r. kleiman raises this very point:

Atrios provides a clip in which Limbaugh makes fun of the "disease" theory of addiction, which, I agree, makes his actual behavior a legitimate subject of comment. And I think it's fair to ask supporters of harsh punishments for drug users in general whether that ought to apply in Limbaugh's case, and, if not, why not.

UPDATE:

tristero has a very compelling proposal.

To those of us who have been among the most victimized by Limbaugh - liberals - I suggest a rather unusual tactic in dealing with Limbaugh's drug addiction. I suppose some of my fellow libs might misundertstand this as "going easy" on Limbaugh. It is not. I propose torturing him with kindness. The type of kindness that liberals, better than anyone, know how to practice. The kindness that results from truly understanding a problem, truly understanding the suffering of a real sufferer, and the understanding that solutions may be difficult and tragically less than perfect.

snip ...

(Conservatives, please note: To recognize and discuss the value of using compassion and kindness as a tactic on an enemy in order to ruin that enemy's effectiveness is not, as you may decide to charge, hypocrisy. It is simply one more application of non-violence, a civil rights tactic that you wrongly confuse with appeasement or liberal wuss-osity. Non-violence eschews physical violence for tactical reasons only: violence rarely provides desired results. However, non-violence is VERY aggressive, as it needs to be when dealing with social forces as ugly as the ones currently at play in the US.)

Despite Limbaugh and his army of dittoheads, with their vicious putdowns of our values, our self-perception is accurate. Our minds are indeed open to studying a difficult problem, understanding it, and coming up with effective ways to grapple with it. Unlike Limbaugh, liberals are usually quite reluctant to inveigh against someone's alleged "weak moral fibre". Rather, we tend to set our own personal moral judgements to one side so that we can examine an issue - say, oxycontin addiction - and suggest solutions based on their utility, not upon their conformity to an arbitrary, and usually irrelevant, code of behavior.

from another post:

I have no opinion as to whether Limbaugh should be arrested. Only in some alternate universe will such a thing ever happen so it's rather a moot point. I do have an opinion, however, about using the law to wreak vengeance on one's opponents. I think that is not what the law is designed to do, or it should not do so. The purpose of the law is to protect society, period. It is not to dole out revenge. The use of the law for such purposes may be common but that does not make it right. If UggaBugga can wish for a world where Limbaugh has the same chance of going to prison as a poor black kid, I can wish for a world where the law is applied dispassionately.

But "liberal principles" don't stop with the law. Limbaugh is an odious character, as I've said many times, and he's truly harmed this country. However, a Limbaugh without a microphone to rant into is just a pathetic (formerly) fat oaf. It is my goal to see him acquire such status as quickly, and as permanently, as possible.

This does not require wishing ill on him physically. Indeed, to do so merely plays into the cynical hands of the Hannity types who can use it to point out inconsistencies in our position. It is more consistent to hope that Limbaugh manages his addiction somehow (he is likely to relapse for the rest of his life, however) and, without skipping a beat, point to his hypocrisy as a terrible moral failing. (Atrios has been quite excellent on linking to examples of Limbaugh's hypocrisy.)

the links were provided by tristero in a comment thread at calpundit's blog.

Admiration for the Eschaton's Readers

a quote from marty on The Quiet American:

Haven't read the book. In the movie, the Americans look less well-intentioned than they do Machievellian and somewhat sinister. This is as it should be in light of our history. America is an empire and behaves accordingly. It kills people and takes stuff. The idea of blundering philanthropy is truly idiotic but it's something that citizens of empires seemingly need to believe. The English were spreading civilization. The Spanish were saving souls. You'd think by this time we'd be wise to it.

indeed.

and here is a link from another reader, arkenor, to an article about the tactics being used in our name over in iraq. i'm sure it's winning as many hearts and minds as the tactics used by the israeli army against the palestinians.

choice quote:

US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.

The stumps of palm trees, some 70 years old, protrude from the brown earth scoured by the bulldozers beside the road at Dhuluaya, a small town 50 miles north of Baghdad. Local women were yesterday busily bundling together the branches of the uprooted orange and lemon trees and carrying then back to their homes for firewood.

Logorrhea

Today I am pouring words in every direction. I haven't said a word out loud, though. It's purely a textual experience. My kitten accompanies me from room to room as my brain pan gurgles with logorrhea-induced verbal hurl. I run to the computer, click on a site where I can comment and barely make it to the text-box.

I've been this way all morning. It's funny, too, because I had nothing mentally stimulating last night; it's not an issue of being intellectually overhung. Maybe I have a nasty meme. The Asian Blog Flu. Whatever. It's all coming out undigesting, in revolting and revelatory chunks that show right where they came from. Some Sedaris, some Cho, some David "Myths of the Dogmen" White, some ancient Tibetan, some blogophile rants and a huge heaping bag of emotional signals emoted by my magical pussy. (Don't be lewd.)

I'm still high from whatever my brain sucked up. It's maybe some Direct Transmission, the bodhicitta-oil percolating down through my addled brains and, stimulated by tweaky trip-hop drum-n-bass Tricky twists, pushes up and out the watery, frothy prose. I'm high, floating on a gliding sensation of forebrain overpoking. My lizard brain is rolling, my midbrain is drooling, my grey grits are all microwaved with milk and honey. Soma must have felt like this: bull pizzle shoots golden trails of drug-laden piss into a container that the old priests stirred with bhang (sweetened liquid marijuana) and drank, still hot. Your horse filters your water for you so you don't get sick in Central Asia; in ancient times your cattle filtered your soma in the same way so you didn't die from the toxins in the mushrooms. Don't eat the liver of a polar bear or any other carnivore, you'll die from the vitamin A.

Oh I can't stop. Call the hospital. I'll be dead from sentience-dehydration, from sentence-dehydration, from sheer exhaustion. RSI in the wrists is matched with a cramp in my head. Logorrhea. Logorrhea. Logorrhea. Logorrhea. Logorrhea. Logorrhea.

Quick, get me some Radiohead.

Dreams

last night, i dreamed that my parents were getting divorced. as usual, i didn't write about about my dreams as soon as i woke up. i regret the oversight. in the dream, i was shocked and depressed to the point of tears about the news. my mother had a flippant response when i asked why they had chosen to split instead of trying to work out their differences. after all, my parents have been married for nearly forty years. all i remember about her response is that they had arguments while reading the newspaper.

my first response when i woke up was to try and forget about it. my parents divorcing would be a most singular psychic trauma, and i would be devastated if it ever happened in real life. but as with most of my dreams, the content is not a literal representation of a literal fear. now that a number of hours have passed, and my emotions are settled, i'm trying to figure out what anxiety my sleeping brain was attempting to represent.

recently, i had a chat with a republican friend with whom i have had many heated discussions over the past year. both of us have been under-going a certain amount of soul-searching where our politics are concerned, and this was one of the subjects of our discussion. at one point, i mentioned that my parents are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. as with most successful marriages, they've managed to reach a workable compromise on differences of opinion. they simply do not discuss politics, and mostly, they seem to get along quite well.

i mentioned my fear that political dialogue in the united states has reached a point where it is mostly hysterical hyperbole. republicans increasingly refer to democrats as wanna be socialist stalinists who want to tell everybody what's good for them. the democrats increasingly refer to the republicans as a wanna be theocratic, fascist, christian taliban who want to tell everyone what's good for them. this used to be the kind of conversation one encountered between representatives of the extremes of the political spectrum.

the sheer hysteria in our national political dialogue makes it practically impossible to have a civil, shared national debate about our social and economic goals. this very problem has made me increasingly worried and depressed about the state of our union. aren't we all americans despite our differences? why is it that every discussion not dominated by one camp or the other resembles a brawl with teeth bared and knives unsheathed?

i fear that our country is headed for a train wreck politically, socially, and economically. i fear that the often contentious marriage between both ends of our political spectrum is headed for an acrimonious divorce. i fear that the nature of the always on-going political debate is no longer about hammering out policy compromise, but rather about trying to determine who is going to win and who is going to lose -- a power struggle, if you will.

as someone who has been to therapy, i learned all about the damaging and debilitating nature of power struggles. no one ever really wins them. they are often catastrophic for relationships because compromise becomes impossible. it is my opinion that compromise is really the only way to get along. compromise means that both sides respect that their needs and wants are in conflict with those of other people. when this conflict devolves into a power struggle, neither participant acknowledges the legitimacy of the other's desires and needs.

the 'winner' of a power struggle enjoys a pyrrhic victory. not only have they alienated their opponent, a fellow human being, but they have set themselves on a ill-chosen path where self-centered psychic preservation trumps all other needs. short translation -- it becomes increasingly difficult for them to acknowledge that they can ever be mistaken. this close-mindedness will haunt them in that they will chose to surround themselves only with those people who will not challenge them. when this becomes a primary driving force for anyone's way of living, they will be unable to achieve meaningful intimacy with another human being.

they will always be scrutinizing those with whom they associate for signs of opposition. disagreement becomes a hair trigger for an all out war of wills. the power struggle strategy for human relationships is self-reinforcing and the person who refuses to abandon it condemns themselves to a pattern of dysfunctional behaviors.

the 'loser' suffers humiliation and resentment at having their needs and desires dismissed handily as if they were of no consequence. some of them can walk away from the conflict with minimal damage, but others take it to heart and set out on the same dysfunctional path. they also think that winning is more important than anything else, mostly to avoid the humiliation they associate with 'losing'. they adopt the same damaging strategy in moments of conflict that originally led to their humiliation in the first place. this is why most 'winners' of power struggles were once 'losers.'

any experienced therapist can tell you that power struggles destroy marriages. each half of the equation feels as if they are in a mortal struggle to defend and preserve their sense of self. all conflicts, all disagreement are received as a personal, humiliating attack. i fear that this dyfunctional style is over-taking our national political dialogue. pettiness and exaggeration is everywhere. the opposition is no longer worthy of the status of 'human', and, therefore, is merely an obstacle to be defeated.

the reason this situation keeps me up at night and fills my stomach with a cold and unrelenting sense of dread is that these kinds of circumstances lead to societies with elements of fascism and a highly militant response to debate. the paranoia of conflicts laced with the elements of a power struggle within personal relationships has only a limited circle of damage. when it comes to characterize the relationship between political parties, entire societies are damaged. ideology becomes more important than effective policy.

labels become paramount. i can't count the number of times i have read discussions dominated by republicans and democrats alike where participants are reviled for not sticking to the party line. "you not a real republican!" and "you're not a real democrat" ring across the internet like five year old voices at a playground fist fight. the sad part is that the actual subject of the debate falls by the wayside.

the Henrys Behind the Curtain

gather round ye emilys and henrys for a tale of woe and worry. stay close to the campfire where the wolves can't get you.

i have a subscription to the well where i came across a post that finally gave me the impetus to begin writing about the ruminations that have been rattling around inside my skull since november 2000. during my stint as an undergraduate student in the ministry of literature, they taught me to pay very close attention to language. i learned to cut my teeth on the soft pulp of the words of others, to rend them asunder, to turn them in on themselves. i suppose this is why i am so sensitive to vocabulary because it betrays certain things about a given statement or argument.

i think i can safely state that most english students and professors are liberals. it saddens me however to note that it is the hard right that has best learned the art of understanding and capitalizing on the nuance of words. in that direction lies the path to a successful argument. they learned twenty years ago the lesson that our liberal readership has most unfortunately failed to grasp -- a successful argument is not an argument that is factually correct. a successful argument is one that sticks. a successful argument is one that people believe. and belief, emilys and henrys, has absolutely nothing to do with truth. therefore, a successful argument makes a successful claim to truth.

demagogues of all stripes have long known that a successful argument can often be constructed by advantageous use of existing beliefs, regardless of whether those beliefs are based on empirical evidence or not. if one can manage to make one's argument appear to derive from a heritage of accepted truths, then one's ideas are more likely to replicate themselves in the public discourse. the most successful arguments gain a place in the collective unconscious because those beliefs have the added advantage of appearing to have always been true, and, thus, they occupy a seemingly unimpeachable status.

the hard right has been far more successful in the battle to define the meanings of words than the left. they eschew the need for any transparent weighing of meaning and reference when arguing their viewpoints. they make arguments without announcing they are making arguments, which would signal that their assertions are open to argument rather than simply a statement of what is true. they understand the importance of framing the discourse without being obvious about it. they understand the importance of the choice of words, and, my friends, they have been very very successful at the art of verbal sleight of hand.

i do not refer to the bumbling bush administration. their lies could hardly lay claim to any such skill. their lies are not successful because they are told well. their lies are successful because of the twenty years of rhetorical groundwork that came before them. we have much work to do if we hope to expose the lies of even this band of fumble-tongued charlatans.

let us begin with a vocabulary lesson.

the post from the well that is the genesis for today's rhetorical excavation:

Chad Makaio Zichterman (makaio) Fri 19 Sep 2003 (11:59 AM)

term: for when a few words serve as shorthand for reference to an implicitly longer description, as in:

fascism: a system or movement, based upon appeal to authority and demonization of a chosen "other," characterized by the attempt to secure and exercise vast centralized control

trade fascism: a fascist movement in which consolidation of private profit is held presumptively as the only rational motive for human behavior, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes sponsoring such an agenda are projected as the only legitimate avenues of influencing policy, and all those with other top priorities (i.e. those who give primacy to substantive democracy, environmental or political sustainability, cultural integrity, human rights, etc.) are dismissed out of hand as irrational and/or subdued through coercion and direct force

apologist: one who apologizes for or makes light of the substantial negative impacts of a given idea or practice (i.e. "apologists for chattel slavery attempt to argue that the descendants of enslaved Africans in the Americas are better off than many modern free Africans)

stay tuned for further developments.

I Can't Even Believe This is Happening.

What? You expected maybe commentary?

Fuck, man. Read the headline.

Wake me when the brownshirts come for me.

the rhetorical jesus

how can satan drive out satan?

If a government is divided against itself
that government cannot endure.
If a household is divided against itself
that household cannot survive.

if satan rebels against himself
& is divided,
he cannot endure
but is done for.

- Gospel of Mark 3, excerpted from Funk Rob't W. 1996: Honest to Jesus, Polebridge Press SF

the Governor's Mansion of a tiny New English State

Where did California get its name?

Strangely enough, it came from an Iberian pulp-fiction novel of the 1500s named The Exploits of Esplandián that purported to be the follow-up for Cervantes' famous novel about Don Quijote. In the story, the main character encounter an island of warlike emilys off Africa that was, naturally enough for an Amazon nation, ruled by a mighty queen named either Califa or Califia.

When the Spaniards first hit Baja California Back in the Day, they somehow made a connexion between this very popular story and what they believed was an island off of the mainland of Nueva España. It was quite some time before anyone realised that this "island" was in fact a giant peninsula, but by then it was too late.

What might have influenced the Spaniards was a complex of stories indigenous to the Southwest and the peninsula. Local peoples spoke of an island in the Pacific somewhere off of the Californias (its precise location varied by region) that a elder dorothy ruled, sometimes with the assistance of a younger twin. Some stories claim this dorothy, whose name is frequently only "Old Em in the West", brought the peoples knowledge and taught them valuable skills of medicine, warfare & religous rites before leaving for the West.

Now to the point. If we have a patron dorothy, she is obviously Elphaba. After all, Frank L. Baum lived on Coronado Island off of San Diego. Of course, there are other versions of her life that paint a radically different vision of the so-called "Wicked Witch" and recommend her resemblence to the Great Maker.

That's not my point. If we have an elphaba, well, so do we have a glinda. Schwartzenegger is that glinda: no true dorothy but pretender to the same, floating in a bubble that keeps the real world from reaching his ears. After all, he is from Austria, the Southland.

Even better still is our Wicked Witch of the East. Another pretender, Bush strides around in his shiny red shoes and stripey socks, trying to ignore problems that he can't face. So far he has survived by sheer luck. But it can't stick. I hear the political weather reports & unpredictable tornado weather is expected.

Totos

my toto is an imperious little twat. he has become accustomed to a prompt feeding no later than 9:00am in the morning. no sleeping in for his food person ever without plaintive meows aimed directly at my unprotected ears. this morning, it pissed him off when i got up not just once but *twice* (gasp!) to go to the bathroom without attending to his breakfast.

at 10:00am, i got my orders -- "Meow!" (food person language -- "Where my breakfast, bitch!") i decided to have a little fun with him, and rolled over to ignore him, which prompted him to pat my face and head, extending his claws just so. i giggled and pulled the sheets over my head, which, of course, encouraged more nagging from my toto. finally, i decided to stop fucking with him and fed him. he did his happy toto dance, and i went to work.

Weirdness

i nearly shit my pants from laughing when i took a stroll through cat town.

Powerlessness

Daily I fight over acceptance of certain things. These include, but are not limited, to the following:

- that I have little control over my body
- that I have little control over my health
- that I have little control over my level of attractiveness
- that I have little control over my mind
- that I have little control over my emotions
- that I have little control over my financial situation
- that I have little control over my romantic & sexual life
- that I have little control over my ability to obtain proper healthcare
- that I have little control over my government

The funny thing about this situation is that it makes me really, really, really angry.

It should make you angry, too. I don't care who you are: some part of that checklist applies to you. If you live in the United States, as I do, your environment might be more helpful to your comparative level of control over these things, but I can guarantee you don't actually *have* control over many of them.

As a human being, I have been experiencing these limitations as anger, frustration, panic, fear, depression & a host of other unpleasant emotions. I have also been forced to reach out to others for comfort & aid.

As a Buddhist, I have been working on my anger & frustration over these issues through training and learning. Buddhism's goal is understanding that suffering is part of the human condition & that it is not something that needs to cripple us.

As an American, I have been working on these issues through therapy, drugs & application of force. I file paperwork to assist; I try to better the situation through free healthcare programs & clinics & by expressing my opinions & voting.

There is no underlying message to this post other than to lay out what I am experiencing in my life. I hope it didn't depress or bore you to read about it; I'm not trying to sound pitiful or worse off than you. The truth of the matter is that every person is suffering & has to come to terms with their suffering in their own way. Make sure you recognise in a conscious way what causes your suffering.

Schadenfreude

this week has to be one of the worst for entire apparatus of the republican hate machine. rush limbaugh has resigned from espn in the wake of the outrage at his racist remark that eagles quarterback donovan mcnabb is overrated by the media because he's black. not only that, apparently rush abuses drugs.

Wishing We Could Upload Images

shit. go now to cnn and get a gander at the latest photo of chimpy. it's even bigger on the front page of cnn.com. over the months, i have been getting the distinct feeling that the photographers in the mainstream media are a wee bit more liberal than the journalists. there have been far too many pictures that *ahem* didn't really need to say a thousand words - just 'asshole!' or 'drunk!' or 'idiot!'.

the best one was a photo of a tight-lipped bush (think 'pouty three-year-old') with the headline, 'Undeterred', at msnbc.com not long before The Invasion. someone at atrios said he looked like their cat when refused a bit of tuna. for even better, more outrageously mocking photos of members of the Occupation Government, visit this site. they managed to piss off someone in the Inner Circle of Hell because they got a real live 'cease and desist' letter regarding their parody of lynne cheney.

as for trying to get valarie plame killed - i doubt that was their intent. exposing her did have the unfortunate effect of ruining her entire career, which would certainly be enough to intimidate anyone else considering an act of public criticism of the Occupation Cabal. but, then you never know. in any case, how many of her contacts and sources were endangered, killed, or ruined by this? how badly did this act of petty political revenge set back the investigation into the proliferation of Very Bad Things?

plame's identity wasn't leaked to the washington post. it was systematically leaked to six different journalists (5 of them are as yet unnamed), but robert novak was the only one who took the bait. someone leaked to the washington post that two people from the Inner Circle of Hell were guilty of blowing plame's cover. then all hell broke loose on the blogosphere. bush and rove have both denied that rove had anything to do with the leak. wouldn't it be delicious if it comes out they were telling bald-faced lies, especially given all the republican braying about the evil of lying during the lewinsky scandal? i would shit a brick of joy if one or both of them were forced to eat their words ala repeat playbacks of the "I did not have sexual relations with that woman!" denial.

since the mainstream media is such a cesspool of self-masturbatory, fawning wankers, go these these sites for better reporting:

Calpundit
Atrios
Taking Points Memo
Open Source Politics

Informing Bush that Treason Carries the Death Penalty

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