Back in Black (on a White Background)
Warning: Contents are neither safe nor sex
Um…
So, the last time I came on here and remarked with joy about how we’re back in business, I somehow managed to jinx us so hard one of our hard drives melted, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m not exactly heralding the immensely awesome news with it’s deserved amount of pomp and circumstance.
It’s been… kind of a crazy time to be out. We had some members of the Bundy Bunch get so wound up to fulfill their Waco fetish fantasies, that their blue-balled little murder itch manifested in yet another mass shooting slaughterfest (oh hey, how many of those do we have to go through a month before all the suburbanites scared over black people existing go “waitaminute, why do people have the right to hand-carry a howitzer again?”). We had Eric Cantor being deemed not quite evil, suicidal, and willing to destroy the entire country enough for the designated anarchists on the right. And George Will apparently realized that his right-wing base was starting to forget him and so decided to write a surprisingly Bob-awful post on sexual assault. A spree killing was successfully interrupted not by a hail of gunfire, but one hall monitor carrying the same thing that women carry to ward off street harassment. Oh yeah, and the wingnuts exploded over Obama trying to slightly decrease the amount the door is open on the cage the Anthropogenic Climate Change Tiger escaped from over 40 years ago, because apparently even when everywhere in America is having unseasonal weather fuck with crops and water, we’re still supposed to loudly sing in denial in defense of old white oil barons.
Also, holy crap, did you see that Costa Rica game against Uruguay? I mean, talk about upset! Or holy crap that Swiss late winner? And the way John Anthony Brooks finally made good but it may be undone by the comedy of errors that were that series of injuries? And seriously, so many of the games have been so awesome I’ve almost forgotten that FIFA is a rotten pile of shit and football, football, football… er… I mean to say, politics of course. My mind has been entirely dominated by politics and not at all distracted by shiny white and black ball… and er… the unfortunate ending of my relationship with the person who has emotionally been my wife for the last 8 and a half years. Also, scrambling on jobs, while also trying to disconnect our shared lives, and trying not to freak out about where we’re each going to live and whether we’ll find enough work in the short term to not have to move into really shitty situations. And Bob damn, is that beautiful game a nice distraction in the background as I send off a stack of resumes while doing four other jobs and trying not to hyperventilate.
But since, I imagine the kindly Sadly overlords who worked hard for the last two weeks to recover our website would object if I suddenly turned the site into Sadly, GOOOOOOOLLLLLL for the next couple of weeks, I suppose it behooves us to dust off our hazmat suits and once again venture out into the toxic swamps of our favorite wingnuts and see how they’ve been spending the time.
Alex VanNess, American We’ve Literally Run Out of Ways to Attack Obama:
The President Watches Too Much TV
I… wha… really?
Really?!?
This is what you’ve got for me? Not some wink wink nudge nudge about the Bundyite shootings where you blame the victims for not being manly enough to pull out their glock? Or some whiny think piece blubbing and whining that a can of pepper spray has had more of a success rate against shooters than that whole “good guy with a gun” fantasy? Or hell, just some piece angrily trying to make homophobia economically viable in the modern age? No…?
President and TV watching, huh?
All right, let’s see what we got.
Shorter:
- Obama being aware of geek pop culture is proof that he’s doing nothing but monkeying around the White House and oh yeah, you liberals whined and whined about how Bush was hopelessly out of touch with the American people’s reality by calmly doing photo op vacations about how manly he supposedly was while the war waged on and the economy got worse and worse, so nyah, all that is actually on Obama instead. He’s the lazy one, nyeah.
I… uh… no.
Nope, nuh uh, not doing it. There’s got to be something better out there on the horizon… I mean, how about that Netherlands-Spain match? What a landslide, amirite?
No, politics!
Selwyn Duke, Gentrify America:
Why I hate soccer
Football!
Wait… what? (reads headline)
… You’re even more dead to me Selwyn…
Okay, fine what’s your “argument”. Something to do with FIFA corruption or just general American resistance to the notion of there being a sport that Americans do not dominate or just the standard “we hate everything that smacks of globalism” or-
Shorter:
- Soccer is a faggoty limp-wristed stupid thing because it isn’t like the sports I am used to and therefore must be bad. I mean, who uses feet in America, land of the Hoverund Scooter? And besides, it’s beloved by filthy bean-eaters and therefore part of the insidious latin@ menace that we should all hate for totally not transparently racist reasons.
… Or it could just be the sad little rant of a pathetically racist man… I don’t know. I can’t even get mad about it. It’s just kind of sad.
That’s the crux of this entirely taste-oriented matter. It goes without saying that professional soccer players are highly skilled. But to me it’s like seeing those unfortunate double amputees who’ve learned to paint or play the piano with their toes. I say, “Wow, it’s amazing how man’s spirit can overcome.” Then I change the channel and look for something that can fill the hour’s remaining 59 minutes and 35 seconds.
So if soccer were in the Special Olympics, I’d understand it. Or maybe if it were played by birds. But why do human beings, with their particular anatomical configuration, want to use their feet for a task performed infinitely better by the hands?
… And they say the right wing has an empathy problem…
Yeah… no.
K-Lo, National Creepy Fantasies:
Needed: A Cultural Reset
The headline of this one is “Hillary Clinton and Fifty Shades of Gray” as if the prospect of K Lo writing about either one isn’t enough to have one reflexively reaching for the bleach.
On that note, (grab bottle), continue.
Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):
- Allow me to fantasize-
Oh sweet merciful blindness, you are my only hope… well, fuck, it looks like it was a jug of water instead. Sigh, okay, fine, tell me how all of this is connected.
‘If it’s consensual, it’s okay.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s abuse, because it’s consensual.”
Would you give that advice to a 15-year-old girl?
The latest video from the pro-life activist group Live Action, which specializes in investigating what’s going on inside America’s “women’s health clinics,”
Oh yeah, I know that groups. They are pretty much the dishonest hacks who trained O’Keefe in selling complete garbage to a bigoted and gullible audience.
Not that anything quoted so far is anything anyone with a pulse should object to.
Oh no, not consent! Consent is the worst.
highlights a Planned Parenthood educational video and personnel advising teens about BDSM — a catch-all for sexual violence: bondage, discipline and domination, submission and sadism, and masochism.
“Sadists like to inflict pain and masochists like to receive pain,” a teen’s tour guide to sadomasochism explains with great enthusiasm. It’s the darkness of Fifty Shades of Grey — which one Planned Parenthood staffer recommends as a good primer on whips and clamps — and of a culture bored with sex after having so much of it, without holding out much hope for actual love and something more than instant gratification.
Um, okay, I know, I know, I’m a wee bit biased being a giant kinky slut and everything, but… um can we really pretend that kink is some bizarre other-worldly inherently marginalized and unpopular thing in this day and age. I mean, yeah, the kink community itself seems to act like it’s still 1990 and everything is seedy bars and society’s hate, but it’s 2014 now. Kinky relationships in novels have been the center of massively successful novels. And I’m not talking about Twilight’s weird creepy D/S dynamics, but rather the example cited by K-Lo herself. 50 Shades of Grey is a ginormous megahit and nearly every slightly racy sex advice article in major magazines has included rope and fuzzy handcuffs as the go-to method of “spicing up one’s marriage”. While consensual kink culture and play parties may still be slightly underground, the reality of kink in the bedroom is not exactly an uncommon affair at this point.
And seeing as how this fascination about kink with denial of kinkiness is all the rage these days, even among, or rather especially among repressed religious types, I’m not sure this particular version of slut shaming will garner the type of universal support K-Lo seems to think it will.
But yeah, basic conversation about the fact that kink exists and isn’t pure evil aside, how exactly does this connect with Hill- No, wait, I take it back, I take it back.
Or maybe it’s the thought that my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru put in my head in his book Party of Death. He tells of a dream he had about the former first lady and former senator.
Oh holy loving fuck, I still haven’t gotten the stains out of my suit from the last time a wingnut started openly fantasizing.
“She is at the podium, well into a campaign speech.” It’s definitely a friendly crowd for her. Maybe a Democratic assembly — a national convention, perhaps. Or maybe a feminist gathering. In her own book, she recounts her famous speech to a U.N. conference in Beijing, where “women hung over banisters and raced down escalators to shake my hand.” That kind of crowd.
But back to the speech in Ramesh’s dream. Mrs. Clinton’s opening words about women and children are all met with applause. She goes on to talk with great sensitivity about prosecuting domestic violence and rape. And she eventually reaches the point where she speaks with love for pregnant women and then proclaims: “We should all be able to agree that 1.3 million abortions a year is way too many, and we should work together to bring that number down. The most important thing we can do is to give women more options.” She talks about the need to support families. She offers: “I think maybe we’ve been so busy fighting the people who want to throw women in jail that we’ve somehow lost sight of the fact that abortion is a terrible act of violence against the young.”
She goes on to explain: “States ought to be able to try different approaches to protect women and children. And I think the Supreme Court ought to let them.” And she adds: “America deserves better than abortion, and America deserves better than this fight we’ve been having for over a generation.”
Ramesh’s point is that we’re not a country comfortable with abortion; we’re a people who want to know women have the help they need when facing an unplanned pregnancy. “The public has some ambivalence about the subject of abortion.” Such a speech could just make Hillary Clinton president.
You know, I’d probably stop joking about how wingnuts can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy if there ever was a time when wingnuts could tell the difference between the fantasies that sexually consume them and the reality around them. And since that’s far more attention than I ever want to give to K-Lo’s sex drive, let’s just move on to anything else. No matter what it is, it has to be better than this.
George Will, Washington is My Host:
Colleges will become the victims of progressivism
Oh yeah… that infamous George Will article that’s been skewered all over the internets.
Well, fuck it. Let’s do it.
Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):
- Snore, er what huh? Why have you awaken me, slave? What? My minions have forgotten about me? This shall not stand, fetch me my telegraph, I must pen a missive on the slatternly behaviors of the youthful whores who have had the unmitigated gall to be young and uninterested in sexist old men while I doze off into my twilight hours and thus should be punished!!! Er, I mean to say, something about math and statistics that’s impressively ignorant in order to try and handwave the real problem of rape. All right, I’ve completed my dictation, go slave and fetch my monetary recompense.
Sure, it’s bad. That’s almost to be expected at this point. The right-wing has definitely listened to their MRA chapters and there are no end to old pompous white conservatives willing to full demonstrate just how poorly they get the notion of consent.
And with K-Lo’s banshee like response to the notion of consent in her piece and so many other recent missives, I fully expect the conservatives to be all in against consent before too long in the same way they poured their support in favor of bullying.
But nonetheless, that special Will touch of pompous gasbaggery just adds its own ordure to the whole affair.
Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges,
This is absolutely true. When I was raped, I was shocked at the huge number of exciting new privileges I immediately received. And not just the standard litany of freebies that rape survivors get such as military grade lingering post-traumatic stress, exciting movie like flashbacks, and at least a year’s supply of internalized guilt and self-blame. Even though such environmental largesse is the reason our great nation is going bankrupt (that and all the poor people stealing proper rich people’s air).
No, I mean, being ushered to the front of lines, free ice cream on tuesdays, and the ability to mentally kill any famous politician at will… or maybe it was just the exciting batch of traumas, but either way, I’m clearly getting something that good people who haven’t yet taken advantage of the “victim racket” do not and that is deeply unfair.
victims proliferate.
Also, completely true. I mean, if rape survivors didn’t exist, would there even be rape? QED liberals. QED.
And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle.
Um… aren’t the vast majority of institutions within “academia”‘s purview um… public universities and public community colleges? Is this like when wingnuts try and argue that government is trying to break the military by forcing evil regulations on it, like not raping servicewomen or trying to reduce the amount of weddings we bomb?
Consider the supposed campus epidemic of rape,
Yes, that is a problem. And it’s not just a campus problem. It’s a general society issue. But seeing as how it only seems to be universities that vaguely almost do the bare minimum of wrist-slapping over the issue (fuck, old white sexists really aren’t subtle) and colleges are full of evil young women with their youth and not sleeping with old white sexists while possessing young bodies of youthful youngness, it’s no surprise you’re obsessed with reducing it to a “campus” problem.
a.k.a. “sexual assault.”
Man, Will is channeling every ounce of his inner creepy guy with a dirty trenchcoat masturbating outside the middle school, isn’t he (ohhooh, Aqualung)?
Herewith, a Philadelphia magazine report about Swarthmore College, where in 2013 a student “was in her room with a guy with whom she’d been hooking up for three months”:
“They’d now decided — mutually, she thought — just to be friends. When he ended up falling asleep on her bed, she changed into pajamas and climbed in next to him. Soon, he was putting his arm around her and taking off her clothes. ‘I basically said, “No, I don’t want to have sex with you.” And then he said, “OK, that’s fine” and stopped. .?.?. And then he started again a few minutes later, taking off my panties, taking off his boxers. I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep.’”
Six weeks later, the woman reported that she had been raped. Now the Obama administration is riding to the rescue of “sexual assault” victims. It vows to excavate equities from the ambiguities of the hookup culture, this cocktail of hormones, alcohol and the faux sophistication of today’s prolonged adolescence of especially privileged young adults.
…
Okay, yes, I’ll get into in a second, but I really have to take a second to highlight what might be rapidly becoming my biggest pet peeve in lazy old white guy ramblings. The fucking shit sandwich that is the notion that this generation of youngsters are in any conceivable way, especially privileged over previous generations.
I mentor a number of college kids and have kept connected with a number of 20-somethings drowning in this wonderful mockery of an economy… Okay, yes, I get it, every generation of old white conservatives thinks the young are a bunch of over-spoiled trouble-makers because the kids these days have access to technology that didn’t exist when they were younger and they have youth and they don’t seem to be interested in keeping the old hatreds alive so a batch of old bigots can feel better about drifting into obscurity, but nonetheless it is kind of hard to swallow in this particular instance of history.
This current 20-something generation is an American version of Japan’s Lost Generation. So many of us have so many more skill sets and competencies than most previous generations had at our ages. So many of us carry high levels of education at great personal expense in the form of predatory loans. And yet, we’ve been so shut out of even getting the chance to participate in the general economy. There are any number of PhDs and Law School Graduates working retail for not even close to enough wages and despite all of us fucked taking it pretty well and trying our best to make do, we’re assumed to be lazy and incapable entirely because we haven’t magically made good jobs appear out of nowhere (oh hey, wasn’t there something about our holiest of job creators back when democrats pretended to try and attempt to slightly increase taxes on the wealthiest 1%?). And that’s before you factor in the debt and the huge cost of living these days relative to the minimum wage.
So yeah, it’s kind of slightly insultingly disgusting when unqualified hacks who were able to walk into full-time massive salary positions with promotion opportunities back when jobs still existed and worked their ass off since making sure that the door was tightly closed behind them start pontificating on how the younger generation just doesn’t have the “moxie”.
But, I’ve delayed long enough. Let’s deal with the elephant in the room. I… do I even need to point out the obvious about how he treats a clear cut example of rape as if it was some self-evident case of a good-ol boy being ensnared by the pussy mafia? Or how that neatly demonstrates how so many conservatives really do not understand consent and identify way too strongly with rapists to be an entirely ideological and theoretical affair?
So no, I want to focus instead on the mass of issues and horrifying world views there are packed into that last paragraph and exactly the attitude that Will is trying to hide in his traditional purple prose. And by that I mean, what Will seems to think turns someone from a victim of a clear cut sexual assault into a lying harlot who deserved everything and how poorly he hides that.
And that is that rape is a justifiable punishment for the heinous crime of having the youth that is the one thing George Will can’t buy in bulk. And it’s not entirely subtle. When called to add his rebuttal to that all too common story of casual betrayal and rape culture, his only response is a bitter full-on hate for the fact that young women exist. And I think it is that, more than anything that makes this standard rape apology stand out from the mass of unmitigated shit.
The administration’s crucial and contradictory statistics are validated the usual way, by official repetition; Joe Biden has been heard from. The statistics are: One in five women is sexually assaulted while in college, and only 12 percent of assaults are reported. Simple arithmetic demonstrates that if the 12 percent reporting rate is correct, the 20 percent assault rate is preposterous. Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute notes, for example, that in the four years 2009 to 2012 there were 98 reported sexual assaults at Ohio State. That would be 12 percent of 817 total out of a female student population of approximately 28,000, for a sexual assault rate of approximately 2.9 percent — too high but nowhere near 20?percent.
Education Department lawyers disregard pesky arithmetic and elementary due process.
You know what makes those rants about the ignorant laziness of the young all the more hard to swallow? When said over-employed ranters demonstrate just how utterly they fail to deserve a position of more intellectual capacity than dog walker.
That George Will is considered the stalwart example of the “intellectual right” doesn’t need to be made into a joke, because it’s very existence as a concept is the joke in and of itself.
Threatening to withdraw federal funding, the department mandates adoption of a minimal “preponderance of the evidence” standard when adjudicating sexual assault charges between males and the female “survivors” — note the language of prejudgment. Combine this with capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also nonconsensual touching. Then add the doctrine that the consent of a female who has been drinking might not protect a male from being found guilty of rape.
… Yes, George. Non consent is non consent. Even if you don’t full on stick it in there. Even if you get them so drunk that they can’t give informed consent. And it’s clear that you see this as a great and terrible evil and somehow don’t give a shit that this demands the question of exactly which incident in your past you are thinking about as you try and weasel your way out of the notion that you aren’t allowed to molest people without their informed consent (and these are the monsters who think they are qualified to pass judgement on queer relationships and kinky sex).
Then comes costly litigation against institutions that have denied due process to males they accuse of what society considers serious felonies.
Well, seeing as how colleges have no legal power to enforce any form of jail time or other sentence on offenders and most campus censures are essentially hand-slaps with the most minimum of penalty and colleges have an absolutely terrible track record in responding to rape with anything approaching the gravitas it deserves and the simple fact that you’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you don’t understand what rape even is, I hope you’ll forgive me if I take this statement with a wee bit of salt.
Meanwhile, the newest campus idea for preventing victimizations — an idea certain to multiply claims of them — is “trigger warnings.”
Trigger Warnings. Trigger Warnings?!? This is the height of governmental/academic oppression of poor rapists? The notion that topics containing something that might trigger flashbacks or other echoes of abuse can benefit sometimes from a little forewarning for those likely to be most negatively affected? This is somehow the gravest of crimes in a world full of victims somehow raping themselves without rapists?
There are literally not enough fucks in the world for this shit.
They would be placed on assigned readings or announced before lectures. Otherwise, traumas could be triggered in students whose tender sensibilities would be lacerated by unexpected encounters with racism, sexism, violence (dammit, Hamlet, put down that sword!) or any other facet of reality that might violate a student’s entitlement to serenity.
Oh hey, what’s that blaring screaming sound. Oh, my, it has been too long, I almost forgot what the dulcet tones of IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION sounded like.
I mean, for fuck’s sake. This is coming from the fuckers who demand that all manner of minorities completely stop existing in public so that they can blissfully pretend the world is full of the same sad batch of old white racists that make up their local rotary club.
And even beyond that, it simply doesn’t fucking make sense. Yes, classes are totally failing to explain the reality of racism, sexism, and violence (oh hey, aren’t those the exact things that conservatives want erased from the curriculum and oh hey, there go those sirens again) because of the poor fee-fees of people with traumatic experiences… cause when you give a trigger warning, you immediately trail off into an innocuous comment instead of brutally describing some horrifying litany of abuse.
Fuck, trigger warnings aren’t fluffy pillows, they’re the way oxygen masks drop when a plane starts to crash (trigger warning). A slight bit of forewarning so you can duck and cover and start to scream in a way that in no way prevents that speedy plummet.
This entitlement has already bred campus speech codes that punish unpopular speech. Now the codes are begetting the soft censorship of trigger warnings to swaddle students in a “safe,” “supportive,” “unthreatening” environment, intellectual comfort for the intellectually dormant.
Waaaah! Our proxy faux “student” conservative papers run by long-time graduates are sometimes subjected to the mildest of pushback by actual real students. Waah. Censorship. Waaah.
Also, we need to eliminate the Women’s Studies Department because it’s teaching things we don’t want colleges to teach… I mean, something about wasted money, minorities, blah blah blah.
It is salutary that academia, with its adversarial stance toward limited government and cultural common sense, is making itself ludicrous. Academia is learning that its attempts to create victim-free campuses — by making everyone hypersensitive, even delusional, about victimizations — brings increasing supervision by the regulatory state that progressivism celebrates.
What government is inflicting on colleges and universities, and what they are inflicting on themselves, diminishes their autonomy, resources, prestige and comity. Which serves them right. They have asked for this by asking for progressivism.
And this is really a distillation of modern conservatism. An angry dumb bigot ranting at the concept of knowledge and thinking they are a fucking genius because they thumb through their thesaurus before submitting their overblown trollop.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. True story, my uncle’s response to me telling him of the emotional divorce with my partner of 8 and a half years was to berate me about how this was one more failure in my life and how I need to stop being so gay if I want to magically make a full-time job appear. He then followed these statements by noting how lucky I am to have supportive family members. I somehow failed to appreciate the irony. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
P.S. Have I mentioned how grateful I’ve been for the World Cup playing in the background as I sort things out and try and plan out where I go emotionally and practically from here? Cause I really really am. I mean, fuck, it took Carlos Quiroz’s team to give us our first boring game. This World Cup is shaping to be fucking epic.
First! First I say!
Will full of shit? Sure!
Doesn’t matter – dude’s Warm Grandpa Vibe numbers are off the motherfucking chart.
KA-CHING!
Has to be the Necronomicon for me, I meant the Book of Mormon.
True story, my uncle’s response to me telling him of the emotional divorce with my partner of 8 and a half years was to berate me about how this was one more failure in my life and how I need to stop being so gay if I want to magically make a full-time job appear. He then followed these statements by noting how lucky I am to have supportive family members.
Sweet baby Bob, Cerb, do you have any relatives worth having?
Hey Cerb, I have a compromise on turning this into a soccer blog: a stupid and kinda racist piece about the World Cup from our old friends at NRO. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/380396/soccer-official-sport-terrorism-tim-cavanaugh
Also, your summation of what happened while the lights were out left out my personal favorite: conservatives doing a 180 on whether POWs should be brought home because apparently being against Obama is more important than literally anything else, including Supporting The Troops.
I have a compromise on turning this into a soccer blog
Soccer is like Twilight (and vice versa).
They run around for 2 hours, nobody scores, and its billion fans insist you just don’t understand.
Soccer associations are people, my friend.
Dammit, and I was just about to have an extended Siamese cat conversation!
,
God is a personal friend of mine.
I, for one, welcome a 1-1 tie after 4 hours of kicking a ball up and down a huge field, which somehow manages to incite deadly riots all over the supposedly developed world.
GO FUTBOL.
you liberals whined and whined about how Bush was hopelessly out of touch with the American people’s reality by calmly doing photo op vacations about how manly he supposedly was while the war waged on and the economy got worse and worse, so nyah, all that is actually on Obama instead. He’s the lazy one, nyeah.
Actually we whined about Uncurious George insisting that God told him to invade Iraq because of WMD and 9/11 and TOTALLY NOT OIL.
George Will is a scum sucking ass hound who needs to remove to an island in the Arctic with no means of communications.
And go Mexico! (I only add this last because the Mexico/Cameroon match is the only one I’ve seen. I was at the neighborhood taqueria.)
A slight bit of forewarning so you can duck and cover and start to scream in a way that in no way prevents that speedy plummet.
no, the screaming never works…ya gotta slam on the imaginary brakes…
The IRS has always been very, very good to me.
no, the screaming never works…ya gotta slam on the imaginary brakes…
Fortunately the cockpit is equipped with what I call the “Oh shit! Handle” so I have something to hang on to.
WOOHOO!! Take THAT, Ghana!!!!
OhFYWP
This current 20-something generation is an American version of Japan’s Lost Generation. So many of us have so many more skill sets and competencies than most previous generations had at our ages. So many of us carry high levels of education at great personal expense in the form of predatory loans. And yet, we’ve been so shut out of even getting the chance to participate in the general economy. There are any number of PhDs and Law School Graduates working retail for not even close to enough wages and despite all of us fucked taking it pretty well and trying our best to make do, we’re assumed to be lazy and incapable entirely because we haven’t magically made good jobs appear out of nowhere (oh hey, wasn’t there something about our holiest of job creators back when democrats pretended to try and attempt to slightly increase taxes on the wealthiest 1%?). And that’s before you factor in the debt and the huge cost of living these days relative to the minimum wage.
So yeah, it’s kind of slightly insultingly disgusting when unqualified hacks who were able to walk into full-time massive salary positions with promotion opportunities back when jobs still existed and worked their ass off since making sure that the door was tightly closed behind them start pontificating on how the younger generation just doesn’t have the “moxie”.
I think my favorite part of it is the people I now hear explaining calmly and reasonably to those Crazy Kids, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, that “not everybody can go to college.”
This after Polite Society spent decades destroying everything that made it possible to have a stable, secure career in a working class field. And the same amount of years telling kids to take risks, go to college, get a degree and find a real (e.g. white collar) job. All while driving the price of said degree up, up, and away.
And now, now that they’ve successfully coralled more and more people into one option, not just through slick advertising but by waging open war on all the viable alternatives, and turned that option more and more into a crushing weight for anyone who’s not already rich… now they’re telling us, for all the world as if they had nothing to do with it and they’ve been saying it all along, that we really should never have gone for it in the first place, and that damn it, more of us need to stop having these ridiculous ideas about “college” and learn to flip burgers and wait tables. What? What’s wrong with flipping burgers and waiting tables? It’s an honorable profession, done by honest, hard working salt of the earth – HEY! Get out of that protest line! You will wait tables for two bucks an hour and LIKE it, and you’re lucky the federal government doesn’t let me pay less, you lazy shiftless union thug wannabe!
(Oh, yeah. That last one was me).
Cerb, I am truly sorry about your relationship breakdown. It is bloody hard to find love and commitment but bloody harder to maintain it – that you two did it for 8 years is to be congratulated. I hope the practical aspects of the split are sorted out quickly and satisfactorily so you can begin to rebuild.
The Sadly gang and the soccer gods are all here for you.
It used to be that Europe had to wage world wars, or at least continent wide wars, every few decades to get all the pent-up nationalist rage out of its system. Soccer games and matching riots are the modern way of doing that. Progress!
Good one too, Chris.
(mutter, mumble) Bloody Yanks have to get into other peoples’ sports. Soon it will be rugby and cricket too, no doubt. (mutter, pout)
It’s just because nobody else cares about their stupid padded-up “football” and baseball and basketball (except for a few outliers).
Ah, there you are.
Hey, what happens if I pick up this cute little hamster –
It’s just because nobody else cares about their stupid padded-up “football” and baseball and basketball (except for a few outliers).
I almost never watch sports. I have too short of an attention span to sit through an entire game, match, race or whatever.
Major Kong, I hope you got a chance to sit safely on the ground last night, those thunderstorms were brutal.
Yeah, the only “sport” I really have the patience for (unless I’m playing in it) is pro wrestling, and that’s just because it’s tailored specifically to entertain the audience rather than provide real competition for the athletes.
Soon it will be rugby and cricket too, no doubt.
like any american could sit through an entire match…who has the time?!
Thank dawg America is a place where a principled stand for people instead of corporations or killing people is the fastest way to talk yourself out of an election.
(mutter, mumble) Bloody Yanks have to get into other peoples’ sports
No, no. You can keep them. It’s bad enough that poker tournaments are actually televised. We don’t need a bunch of other things that nobody here likes except weirdos on TV. That’s not to say that Cricket and Rugby aren’t likable in a culture that likes them. I’m sure they’re very entertaining to people who are culturally inclined to like them. We just aren’t.
And watching poker on TV should get you smacked with a rubber hose like 4 or 5 times. Those people are the scummy sleazeballs that make a living gambling and inspire 20 something losers to try it.
Those people are the scummy sleazeballs that make a living gambling and inspire 20 something losers to try it.
My aunt, who with her husband would go to Tahoe or elsewhere to gamble and go on vacation, recommended that the best way to way to learn how to play poker was to take a deck of cards and play pretend poker games, a real life “Monte Carlo” approach to the problem.
I used the poker game on an old Intellivision player that I picked up at a garage sale for 10 bucks to do learn the game. This was back in the mid-80s.
Soccer? Poker? You brought her.
Rugby is getting popular here. Especially in the gay crowd, go figure. But I can guarangoddamntee you cricket will never ever ever take hold in the YOU ESS EH! Its the silliest sportsball game EVAH!!!
In my neighbouring park, it is almost entirely soccer. There’s a kid’s sized baseball diamond that gets used by the RC car guys to kick up clouds of dust. There’s a football field with uprights that gets used once a week through the summer – on Sunday mornings the local cricket league sets their wickets up in the middle of it. But usually it’s soccer.
I dunno, American style footsyball with the padding and the tedium and brain injuries and such as is pretty gawdamn silly. At least the cricket matches last long enough that you can enjoy a nice picnic, drink a bunch, leave, take a nap, come back, leave again and go hang out at the bar, eventually stumble back and still not have missed anything.
Not that I’ve ever seen a match, I just imagine that’s what’d be like.
I have a theory about sports: You really dig the ones you understand. I understand football and love it. I understand baseball and love it. No grasp of strategy in basketball, indifferent to it.
I mean a clear understanding of what the offense and defense are trying to do. What statistics mean to baseball. Why certain teams win and others don’t, etc…
OBS, pretty much on the cricket. Except you can take a nap and grab a beer at the grounds.
My lil bro, when he was at UCLA back in the 70s (?) represented California in the Grand Interstate Rugby Competition. He was proud, of course, being but a High School level player, but said the entire team was made up of expats from SA, NZ and Aus.
OK, I’m completely sold. Why is this not a thing here? C’mon people! BEER AND NAPS!
Chris, I think that was a great addendum/expansion to that part of Cerb’s rant, but I would like to make a small change:
Gotra keep that fantasy going, you know.
And I agree with tsam’s theory:
I understand and have played soccer – it’s one of the very few sports I’ll even try to watch, on the very rare occasions I watch any sports at all. I just don’t. As for American Football, I don’t understand it, and don’t want to try. But I remember asking my Dad why you just didn’t see Soccer on TV, as I would have liked to have watched a game I played and understood. He said there just weren’t that many people in the US who’d even heard of it (this was the early 1970s), and even if it did get popular, the structure of the game did not allow for the easy and frequent insertion of ads.
If “ease of understanding” was the key to liking or not liking a sport, racing of all kinds would have a nearly universal audience. And yet one has to plumb the depths of cable to find moto GP, and plenty of other races will never be broadcast, like any sailboat race that isn’t the America’s cup or any mountain bike race ever.
I don’t know — I understand American handegg perfectly well, I just don’t like to watch it. It’s slow, and tedious, and boring. And have I mentioned slow? And that the rules are kinda stupid in weird ways?
I understand baseball and basketball fine, and used to watch and play them in the neighborhood when I was a kid (football too), I just can’t really bring myself to care. I’ll go to a minor league baseball game, ’cause that can be an enjoyable way to spend a nice summer evening (see also: beer), but other than that, meh.
But I will watch cycling, ’cause I like to actually do that stuff, and have raced myself in days gone by. Also too: Formula 1, ’cause I like technology and car racing (other than the roundy-round-rednecks), and again, have done amateur-level stuff so I can vaguely relate.
But hey, whatever floats your boat.
Speaking of racing, we finally bit the bullet and got an Xbox thang. Still figuring out how to work the remote but we’ll get there eventually. Now I’m on the lookout for a good steering wheel and pedals setup.
As for sportsballs in general, I don’t much go for team sports in favor of those where it’s an individual competitor. So the ones I like to watch and play are tennis (not doubles), racketball, racing (which is VERY much a team effort but there’s only one guy driving and while I digress I’ll say that rallying although involving a navigator and a driver is cool because the two pretty much act as one), golf. That said, I did enjoy watching us stomp on Ghana and the Spurs denying Miami in five games.
And on a side note, I’m beginning to wonder if Marc Marquez is all or even part human.
Major Kong, I hope you got a chance to sit safely on the ground last night, those thunderstorms were brutal.
Mercifully yes. I scare easily.
Mercifully yes. I scare easily.
duh…because you hang around with chickens. you’re welcome…
Another complication on the sportsball study: I’ve played baseball, it’s fun. I’ve watched friends playing baseball, that is fun. I’ve watched an MLB game from the bleachers, that is a lot less fun. I have never managed to sit through an entire televised game, not even when they were half as long as they are now.
I was raised in a household without sports. The only sport I ever learned to play was soccer, so I enjoy the World Cup. Otherwise it’s kind of impenetrable to me.
I do regret not picking up the rules of American football, but only because it would make my business life more pleasant if I could chat competently about the game. I know there are remedies for my situation but holy crap I have fiction to consume. (My family did not have any objection to sports, they are just extremely fucking serious about enjoyed and then talking about fiction.) It should also be noted that I have the attention span of a goldfish.
Glad to see we’re apparently back online, she said, plunging the server into blackness with her very declaration.
Cerb, if you’re reorganizing your household, that means you have to pimp the Paypal link. Pimp it with George Will’s sense of shame and decency!
Well, you have to be predisposed to liking those sort of things. Caring about a team (like my Seahawks and Mariners, f.e.) makes a HUGE difference. Having friends who are into it so it becomes a social thing makes a huge difference (back to my cultural predisposition reference), parents, siblings, personal experience with the game…all that stuff matters as much as knowledge of the game.
I love football, and I do understand the rules very well and acknowledge that some of them are pretty silly, especially when they overcompensate when trying to address a perceived problem.
The bigger point, however, is that there is nothing wrong with liking or disliking any or all sports. No reason to be mad at someone for liking something, but I do reserve the right to make fun of people for whatever reason I deem adequate.
U R LIKING IT RONG!
Like the beer they drink? [ba-dum-bum-tssh!]
[/kidding,obviosly,duh]
Like the beer they drink? [ba-dum-bum-tssh!]
[/kidding,obviosly,duh]
Anything a person can control. Go ahead, man. If I dish it out, I have to be able to take it too.
I have been
draggedgoing to breweries lately and expanding my tastes in craft beers. I’ve discovered a local porter at a place called Hopped Up here in Spokane that I’m really liking. A couple of crème ales have been good…As long as it’s not an IPA, which is something that shouldn’t exist. Like snake oil or any Kardashian.
I have been dragged going to breweries lately and expanding my tastes in craft beers. I’ve discovered a local porter at a place called Hopped Up here in Spokane that I’m really liking. A couple of crème ales have been good…
oh, our tsam is growing up…sniff…
of course wingnuts hate football (never soccer). its origins are truly working class, and unlike american football you don’t have to attend college to become a professional.
Our northwest IPA’s are definitely an acquired taste. Try an English one sometime, if you feel like it — way different, much more mellow, balanced, and drinkable. We get a bit crazy with our hops around here — you build up a tolerance. Stuff I thought was almost unfathomably bitter 5+ years ago isn’t a big deal anymore.
I had a No-Li something-or-other from Spokane not long ago. It was decent.
I do regret not picking up the rules of American football, but only because it would make my business life more pleasant if I could chat competently about the game
perhaps something like this would be helpful…
of course wingnuts hate football (never soccer)
Brown people worldwide play soccer all the time. Images of that make it back here and trigger wingnut insecurities and prejudices.
Also, they just like to hate stuff because BAWWWWWHHHH! Back in my day….
Pull up your pants!
Get off my lawn!
Turn down that rap music!
I had a No-Li something-or-other from Spokane not long ago. It was decent.
No-Li (Northern Lights) is a great brewery. That’s where the crème ale came from. They also have a magnificent outdoor grassy area on the bank of the river with small tables that are actually gas fire pits. Great food, too. There’s a mac and cheese with spicy Andouille sausage in it that is making me hungry as fuck right now.
The same place is Dry Fly Distillery, who makes some outstanding vodka and whiskey.
I’m sure IPAs are an acquired taste. I’m working on the dark stuff right now (porters), and will eventually work my way into IPAs. Maybe. I don’t know, they make me angry when I taste them.
The view from your outdoor seat at No-Li, overlooking the Spokane River.
The view from your outdoor seat at No-Li, overlooking the Spokane River.
i have got to get hubbkf out to the pacific northwest…he would take some kickass pics…also, is it spoKAN or spoKANE?
It’s pronounced “Throatwarbler Mangrove.”
This one:
spoKAN
There is much to see in the surrounding area, and on the West side of the state, down the WA and Oregon coasts, visit Portland…
It would be a fantastic trip that I think you would both love.
It would be a fantastic trip that I think you would both love.
my dream vacation is to retrace the lewis and clark expedition…last week i got to see where sgt. floyd is monumentized in sioux city, ia…so i guess i kinda started the trip already?
It’s pronounced “Throatwarbler Mangrove.”
and it’s spelled “Raymond Luxury-Ya-ch-t.”
Nice! Unfortunately, only one of my many local places has a decent view, and their beer isn’t that great: Sky High Brewing. They’re getting better though.
Nice! Unfortunately, only one of my many local places has a decent view, and their beer isn’t that great
There is a ton of upstart breweries here in town. Most of them don’t have very good beer.
my dream vacation is to retrace the lewis and clark expedition
That would take you right through the only tolerable parts of Idaho, and some of the best parts of Washington. You’ll need to allow time for diversions, though.
I found indoor soccer somewhat more interesting to watch than standard soccer; the smaller field makes it livelier.
That said, I’m the sort of person who invites friends over for Puppy Bowl on the first Sunday in February, so…
Last week we went to Cannon Beach where Sacagawea went with L and C to see a whale washed up on the beach. Note the following picture was not taken by anyone I know nor does it show any member of my family. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dlW7vpIK8Ek/UeejOR2z5zI/AAAAAAAAOvQ/o49doFamlkc/s1600/IMG_5678.JPG
You’d think wingnuts would enjoy a game that keeps people from using their hands, since they’re so opposed to evolution. And to evolving themselves.
I did assume that taunting bigots is not a sport for present purposes.
No balls involved.
No balls were harmed in this episode of “Taunting Bigots”. We now resume our regularly scheduled program already in progress.
Mercifully yes. I scare easily.
Always want you to stay safe, Major. What do OSHA regs say about your work conditions? If there’s lightning on day I’m doing my job, I have to wait 30 mins. from the last visible strike before I can touch a backflow!
.
“Life is a scream in the face of a bright madness, then! Life is a silly sound like a death rattle from an insane clown dying in the night, then.”–Richard Shaver
His civilian name, Ray Palmer, was an homage to science-fiction magazine editor Raymond A. Palmer.
Read the whole thing, folks.
What do OSHA regs say about your work conditions?
If there’s lightning nearby we shut down the ramp. I’m not sure how many miles away it has to be.
I have taken off and landed with cells near the airport and had to pick my way between them.
Lightning actually isn’t the worst thing a thunderstorm can do to an airplane. It’s a windshear or a microburst that we really worry about.
My Thunderstorm Diary
I don’t know — I understand American handegg perfectly well, I just don’t like to watch it. It’s slow, and tedious, and boring. And have I mentioned slow? And that the rules are kinda stupid in weird ways?
“Slow” is the part that I can’t get over in American football. Namely, the fact that the game stops every few seconds. I feel like I’m trying to watch a really, really, really scratched up DVD.
Pennis (or whoever), with all the respect that you and your “argument” are actually due, did your parents have any children that actually lived?
Hagfish are vertebrates, my friends.
As you can see, Austin, engage the shitbird, get a lot of shit in return. Just ignore it.
The fact is, soccer is for terrorists and gays. Obama probably likes it.
The fact is, we need to stop getting in the way of hte job creators, or they will take all the jobs away. Also, there should be no colleges or jobs if they are not practical, because arts are for the elite, we need practical courses like fiance and enginereering.
The fact is, liberals need to shut up, because nobody is listening to there discredited viewings of a biased imaginary world. Here in the Heartland, we support guns, free speech, free markets and no Obama or Obamacare or special rights for minorites, just hard work and the consitutiuon.
The fact is, liberals need to shut up
Wow. Gary actually managed to summarize the entire conservative movement in one sentence. Bravo!
Who doesn’t like to start the morning with a sock puppet slap fight?
Will wonders never cease? Glenn Beck admits liberals were right about Iraq!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/18/1307783/-Glenn-Beck-Admits-Liberals-You-Were-Right-On-Iraq
And: “It is a great booty, our surface life, fed upon by crawling hideosities … there are holes in every once-intelligent head.”
Oh, look at Beck trying to jump on the right-bus after 10 years of defending Bush and his minions.
I’ve been saying since this whole thing started that we’d stay there just long enough to set up a government that is wholly incapable of governing–made up of the same assholes that insist that this is a “Christian nation”, and shit would get consistently worse, people would keep dying, then another strong armed, bloodthirsty tyrant will eventually take over, murder another 100,000 people, and we’ll be right back where we started, with about half a million dead people.
So no, Beck, you get NO DAMN CREDIT for accepting a reality after all these people are fucking dead. Gone forever. Children, mothers, fathers–people who didn’t have a damn thing to do with your geopolitical wet dreams of American imperial dominion over all the things everywhere. Just people trying to get by in life, caught in the crossfire of your ignorance and malice and silly fucking ideals about how the world “should” be.
“Slow” is the part that I can’t get over in American football. Namely, the fact that the game stops every few seconds. I feel like I’m trying to watch a really, really, really scratched up DVD.
You must really hate baseball then.
An NFL game has an average of 133.6 plays and 10.5 kickoffs meaning fewer than 150 stoppages in action in the average game.
An MLB game has an average of 291 pitches. Play stops twice as frequently in a baseball game. And that’s not counting the five million gazillionty billionish times a pitcher aborts a pitch.
If we consider only long stoppages – there’s an average of 8.9 penalties in an NFL game, plus 3 breaks for the quarters. An MLB game has a minimum of 16 times the sides switch.
Even golf. A 3-par PGA round is an average of 72 strokes. Watching a foursome complete 18 holes has fewer stoppages in action than the average MLB game. IOW, based on stoppages, baseball is slower than golf.
Curling – 8 rocks per side per end. Maximum of 160 rocks without going to extra ends. Meaning curling is nearly twice as fast as baseball.
You should not follow a paragraph on kinks with “my friend had a dream about a politican”. I was so afraid of what would come next.
Their ideas of how the world should be were formed by reruns of “Leave it to Beaver” and “Happy Days”. They deliberately shut out the Korean war, CIA backed coups and the draft. They pretend that civil rights and women’s rights are a step backward. They think the HUAC and McCarthyism were just peachy. They ignore the things that actually made the US prosperous and powerful like high rates of union membership, taxes and public infrastructure spending.
They deliberately shut out the Korean war, CIA backed coups and the draft.
Maybe less shut out than rationalizing the way Reagan did. “If you saw what I saw, you’d be so terrified you’d nuke everyone”
American credibility died at the Truman Doctrine, and every president has been humping the bloody corpse since then. Our belated experiment in command and control on parts of the globe we don’t own has been an abject failure at every turn. What sucks is how conservatives just never learn. Most of the global threats we face today are a direct result of actions by the US and Soviet Union from 1950 to 1990.
They deliberately shut out the Korean war
The Korean War was actually very unpopular and spawned protests almost the size of those associated with Vietnam. That’s never been very well publicized.
The Korean War was actually very unpopular and spawned protests almost the size of those associated with Vietnam
I’ll just bet that rather sizable portion of the protestors were WWII veterans who knew all too well that war should be an absolute last resort, rather than a check on the perceived expansion of communism.
I will happily watch curling instead of baseball or handegg. ‘Specially if the Swedish women’s team is playing.
Hard to understand K-Lo’s issue here. From my own non-kinky perspective it seems like S&M and Catholicism go together like peanut butter and jelly.
“Let’s face it! You can’t Torquemada anything!”
Lotsa S&M, men wearing dresses and funny haircuts. Catholics had that shit ROLLIN’
“Let’s face it! You can’t Torquemada anything!”
I wanna believe that History of the World part 2 is a real movie, not a few quick gags at the end of part 1. C’mon Mel. A hungry world beseeches you.
K Lo wants to save the Church from the competition. Why go to church early Sunday morning when you can get your punishment and submission in your own bedroom?
SadistsNuns like to inflict pain.At least according to my Dad based on his Catholic school experiences. They were like “biker nuns” where he went to school.
According people around the age of my parents and up (I’m 44), regular public school teachers were sadistic assholes that beat kids mercilessly with very little provocation. They’re still around today, whining about how much better society was when you could just smack the ungodliness right out of those rotten little bastards.
JESUS F. Come on, man
The Korean War was actually very unpopular and spawned protests almost the size of those associated with Vietnam.
and a movie…and a teevee series that ran waaaaaaay too long…
Will wonders never cease? Glenn Beck admits liberals were right about Iraq!
It’s a startling admission, because it might get his viewers to wonder what else liberals were/are right about… which is everything
Fifty shades of Jesus.
According people around the age of my parents and up (I’m 44), regular public school teachers were sadistic assholes that beat kids mercilessly with very little provocation. They’re still around today, whining about how much better society was when you could just smack the ungodliness right out of those rotten little bastards.
Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools.
Trigger happy Republicans against trigger warnings. It all makes sense now.
I’m a bit older than you, and can’t ask my parents about beatings any more, but I do know neither of my parents were terribly fond of the schooling they got, to put it mildly. Mom, for instance, said she used to pray every summer that the school would burn down. She had reason – she was dyslexic (so was labeled “retarded”) and had the nasty habit of asking her teachers questions they didn’t know the answers to.
Also, a propos of nothing in particular, this post at LGM tickled my funny bone – even before some of the commenters pointed toward some of the references I hadn’t gotten.
As you can see, Austin, engage the shitbird
That wasn’t engaging, at least on my part; that was venting, after which I skived off and left the clean-up crew to do with its shit what one does with shit not in a safe container. I had no compunction about missing whatever it might have to say in reply, because I had and still have no reason to worry that it might accidentally say something worth listening to. As sai drifty said a few years back:
(Cited under Simon’s Law: “There is no point in saying less than your predecessors have said.”)
I recall when capital punishment in schools went away. It was, I think, when I was in HS but I’m thinking that because I don’t recall anyone getting the paddle after 8th grade. I do recall the zeal with which some middle school teachers took to paddling. A couple had a goddamn collection of them, of which they were quite proud. I’m 55, FWIW.
As for boring ass baseball, the simple fact that George Will thinks it’s the bestest sportsball game since EVAH is enough to shun it utterly. Also it’s boring as all fuck.
What bothers and amuses me is that in all the discussion of the Iraq shit no one has been aired saying that it was inevitable that Iraq would implode sooner or later after we broke it. The only way there could be a unified Iraq would be to have a strong man, a ruthless tyrant to run the place. IYKWIMAITYD
So why the fuck does what anyone who predicted an easy, short, cheap, war say fucking matter? You fucked it up, don’t fucking tell us how to fix what you fucking broke.
Indeed.
Since I became interested in politics in the sixties, I honestly can’t think of one single issue where the cons were proven right and the libs were proven wrong.
Not one.
So why the fuck does what anyone who predicted an easy, short, cheap, war say fucking matter?
The media does. They don’t like having people on that aren’t going to feed into the “OMFG SHIT YOUR PANTS AND RUN FOR THE HILLS NOW” narrative that keeps the drooling masses glued to their puppet show, brought to you by boner pills, GM and GE.
Ammosexual accidentally shoots off his own penis
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/06/yet-another-responsible-gun-owner-shoots
Ammosexual accidentally shoots off his own penis
Take THAT Heston, you old poop. Ted Kennedy’s car never killed any PENIS.
Capital punishment in schools? You had quite a tough upbringing, Mr. Pup.
Another beautiful GOP talking point killed by an ugly little fact…
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/06/benghazi-suspect-says-yes-it-was-video
1) Benghazi!
2) ??????
3) Profit!
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/05/benghazi-right-wing-profit-center
World champion Spain is OUT!
Yeah, and on the same day as the king abdicates…
It’s gotta be a tough day for my in-laws in Madrid.
The incentive to learn dropped dramatically after we stopped executing the ringleaders and the underperformers.
I do recall the zeal with which some middle school teachers took to paddling. A couple had a goddamn collection of them, of which they were quite proud. I’m 55, FWIW.
My wood shop teacher had made himself a paddle. The first day of class he yammered incoherently about how brilliant he was for drilling holes in it reduce the wind resistance and what sorts of infractions my earn you the paddle.
This guy still had his “duck’s ass” greased hairstyle from the 50s. Ugly shirt tucked over a belly that would make Buddha snicker at the fatness, and bitchin’ cop-stache straight out of a Starsky and Hutch re-run.
What fuckers like this didn’t understand was that when you challenge high school boys, the challenge is ALWAYS ACCEPTED. Dudes (not me, tho, I was a good kid) would get in trouble just to get the hack and walk it off like it was nothing. It wasn’t nothing, it hurt like fucking hell, but we never showed that toolbag any sign of pain. So he had one of the more unruly classes. The teachers that were respectful and funny and nice to us fared much better than these authoritarian types.
Er, corporal punishment, corporal. Freudian slip?
CORPORAL
Corpsical
So why the fuck does what anyone who predicted an easy, short, cheap, war say fucking matter? You fucked it up, don’t fucking tell us how to fix what you fucking broke.
I think the people who are booking some of these folks, publishing them, etc. are trolling. If they could get W., they would. But no, so they get Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, and we all say “you gotta be fucking kidding me” and discuss it.
You can get Cheney, with the chutzpah factor, total lack of self-doubt and all that, or hypothetically you can get some credible person with nuanced views. The wingnuts don’t want the latter, and you can’t effectively troll the “left” with the latter, so no.
You know how you know you’re reading or hearing something from a crazyass crazypants?
They use the phrase “God-given” for anything ever. It’s easiest way to tell that anything this person says is insane. I’ll bet they even find an insane way to poop.
Ammosexual accidentally shoots off his own penis
So he went off half cocked?
I’ll bet they even find an insane way to poop.
In their hat, just before clapping it on their head…
Perish the thought. Catholics using safewords?
Cerb, I am truly sorry about your relationship. I was selfishly angry that you hadn’t posted in a while, even after the site can back online. I admire you so much, I’ve read everything you have posted for years and you opened my eyes about so much that I never saw or thought about. As your dreaded white cis-male I want to tell you that some of us are good and back you 100 percent!
They use the phrase “God-given” for anything ever.
I especially dislike the phrase “God-given rights,” and not just because I’m a nonbeliever. We assert rights, honor them, violate them, and all that. The only value in crediting them to God is the appeal to authority, the supposed perfection and fixity.
Let’s say I do believe a particular human right is perfectly conceived, such that I think it should be fixed in all cultures or codified into law. Why drag God into it, then? To spook the believers into complying with sound logic that they don’t understand. In which case they are unprepared to teach it, to live it, recognize it in others, etc. Such a social arrangement can never be anything but elitist and pernicious — a path to moral degeneracy, however sound the principles fixed into dogma or grokked by the illuminated few.
And another thing. To believe in “god-given” things encourages apathy, fatalism, irresponsible quietism and what have you. If god is handling human rights, why should I exert myself mentally, or take risks to secure others’ rights? Much easier to rationalize that an iniquitous state of affairs is God’s inscrutable will, and look out for yourself.
I regret that the shadow of so-called law and the notion of a creator’s endowments played any part in this country’s shaping. I would have people take responsibility for codifying, understanding, and defending universal rights as man-made ideas, all-too-fragile but indispensable if we really care.
last paragraph: “so-called *natural* law …”
To demonstrate serious concern, then, one must do more than obey; one must strive to understand and live out this vision of a world of universal rights, like a demigod in the throes of creation. Superstitious self-seeking and slack-minded obedience are not close enough for this jazz — errors compounded in this calculus of justice can bring down the whole edifice. Just look around at these mockeries of utopias. “God-given” indeed.
re:Swedish women’s curling team
Third hit on that search is Jennifer Jones.
If you like your political news and satire NSFW, then you don’t want to miss Assclowns of the Week #99: Dr. Strangehate edition. On the spit this week: Rick Perry, Dick & Liz Cheney, the MSM, Pat Robertson, and much, much more.
Oh, yeah, and George Will made the grade, too.
Perish the thought. Catholics using safewords?
Special care is required with safeword for consensual cross-play. I imagine Jesus up at Calvary shouting out “Albatross!… no, that’s not it… Chrysanthemum!… dammit…”
I’ll bet they even find an insane way to poop.
Don’t you start me talking about how bad for you pooping on a toilet Western-style is!
Speaking of consensual cross-play, I find myself wondering how often one needs to engage in wrist-piercing before it becomes worth investing in a permanent gauge.
What are you, some kind or protestant?
Note that while George Will is lubricated and features a special reservoir tip, he is NOT ribbed for her pleasure.
cross-play
triggered something i read yesterday…i was reading comments about the controversy surrounding the dude who goes by ‘storm invictus’ and his fb post about getting shut out on some storm chasing and hoping for some serious destruction to make it ‘rain financially’ for him…well, he ends up taking a picture of the little girl who died in the tornado in pilger ne. anyway, he sells the pic and there’s a huge uproar. so, he takes to teh internets to defend himself and his comment is all blah,blah, blah me, me, me…which really whizzed off the commentariat. one of the commenters took him to task for making this all about himself and ended with, ‘so get off your cross…somebody needs the wood to rebuild their freaking life.’
That’s goddamn ghoulish, to make money off of the dead like that.
Burke and Hare were just entrepreneurs taking advantage of an unregulated free market in his universe.
And Glenn Beck isn’t much better.
Harry Reid isn’t a pederast, for Petes’ sakes!
http://wonkette.com/516587/rnc-spokeswoman-admits-harry-reid-was-right-about-romneys-taxes-all-along-whoops#bgzdvVuwkptH60XE.99
Speaking of consensual cross-play, I find myself wondering how often one needs to engage in wrist-piercing before it becomes worth investing in a permanent gauge.
Smut, Skafish was kidding! Damn, seems that the version of “Sign of the Cross” from Urgh! A Music War has been scrubbed from Youtube.
Even Mitt Romney knows when a troll is spewing a load of bollocks.
At least one paper has dropped George Will (as well they should) … It’ll be interesting to see if more follow. The rape column is indefensible, there’s no free speech angle*… I doubt that Will could bring himself to apologize, an apology being about the only fig-leaf a civilized publisher could use to justify keeping Will.
*If Will drops out of syndication and what have you, the right will trot out their usual schtick, but we’ve been over all that.
But this is the U.S., so who knows, and I bet he’d always have Fox.
Oh, hee hee hee! Hee hee! Oh, hee hee hee!
So Atlas 3 will be stuntcasted by some of the very goons who could serve their country best by going Galt. Perfect.
Kaslow says that several small parts in the movie were written with well-known political figures in mind, but also with the assumption that he’d allow them to ad-lib
I guess that means that that l-o-n-g speech is going to be in the film after all.
BRING OUT YA DEAD! [*bong*] BRING OUT YA DEAD! [*bong*]
.
Oi, I’m not dead yet!
Blogs are corporations, my friends.
Hey custodians, can you see IP addresses for posters, or is it worth noting if the troll has morphed into my nym?
They can see the IP from their end. It seems the troll is expressing his true beliefs under your nym, Seize.
We can see the IP as well as the email address. I deleted the nymjack.
Cool beans, good to know.
Seize, he’ll protest to the contrary, but our resident troll is utterly obsessed with this site- when it was down, he probably wept tears of rage for days.
He obsessively collects details about the posters here, and will refer to casually tossed-off comments months later. I think he has a wall covered with sheets of butcher paper where he scrawls an elaborate timeline with cut-and-pasted comments he believes he can use against regulars.
Again, he’d whine that he wasn’t obsessed with this place, but he’s full of shit.
The film also will feature several other prominent conservative personalities with little or no acting experience, including Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.
oh, they’ve got *acting* experience, buddy…
also, too…worthy comment:
Atlas 3: The Gathering of the Shruggalos
Hey BBBB –
I won the scheduling lottery and have two 4-day weekend layovers in NYC in July/August.
Actually I bid a line that works July 4th to “punch above my weight class” seniority wise.
B^4, thanks, I’ve noticed that. Phone thuggin’ don’t scare me, thankfully.
To turn the topic toward something worth discussing, has anyone ever had those hard rocks of cold water in a glass of soda at a restaurant? Real food nerds will be excited to know that I have found a recipe for them online! Protip: read the comments.
Did anyone hatewatch the first Atlas movie? I feel like sneaking into the theater for the third one because seeing the raw id of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity aping Rand is somehow appealing, but I need to know how much liquor to bring in.
Atlas 3: The Gathering of the Shruggalos
Heh, indeed! I checked out the wikipedia page on the films- the first cost 20 million and earned just over 4 million. The second cost 10 million and brought in just over 3 million. I wonder if the third will cost 5 million and bring in just over 2 million.
The funniest thing about the third one is that it will be released a month before the midterm elections, in the hope that it will help the GOP with its electoral prospects.
Regarding those electoral prospects, SNERK.
has anyone ever had those hard rocks of cold water in a glass of soda at a restaurant?
Thanks for the recipe. Do you have one on how to boil water?
I think he has a wall covered with sheets of butcher paper where he scrawls an elaborate timeline with cut-and-pasted comments he believes he can use against regulars.
i’m thinking more color coordinated post it notes…lots and lots of post it notes…
Did anyone hatewatch the first Atlas movie?
i totes want to, but i don’t have anyone who would watch it with the proper derision it deserves and is able to comment in a mst3k-like commentary…if any of y’all are in the area, i do have it in my netflix queue…
Real food nerds will be excited to know that I have found a recipe for them online! Protip: read the comments.
i am still lol’ng…
We’re going to see this continual assault of advertisements from these Super PAC’s and other independent expenditure groups.”
well, this should make a nice change from the near continual assault of rain we’ve been experiencing?
I won the scheduling lottery and have two 4-day weekend layovers in NYC in July/August.
Actually I bid a line that works July 4th to “punch above my weight class” seniority wise.
Cool! Let me know when and I will get you tickets for one of the main attractions at work- YKWIMAITYD. Weekends are the worst time for me- my Saturdays involve me working until 4AM and returning to work at 5PM. Sundays aren’t so bad, though.
has anyone ever had those hard rocks of cold water in a glass of soda at a restaurant?
Artisinal ice… what hath hipsters wrought?
i totes want to, but i don’t have anyone who would watch it with the proper derision it deserves and is able to comment in a mst3k-like commentary…if any of y’all are in the area, i do have it in my netflix queue…
See if you could get it at the Public Library, just to give Ayn a sad. Even better, from an ironic standpoint, get a pirated version of the film (if anyone’s bothered to put the crap in a torrent). Ayn was a moocher, taking social security, it’s only fit that you commit this piracy.
bbfk, I would watch it with you in a heartbeat! I might also just download it (because fuck paying those people anything, it’s a free market baby) and would love to riff on it in long form. Methinks it could do with the fisking every Ayn Rand book deserves.
You want glacial ice for a good experience with cold water.
Evil Hillary Clinton
spherical ice
the son got hubbkf some spherical ice molds and some scotch for xmas…the ice spheres are pretty cool, but they are a bitch to get out of the mold…
and really? ‘favourite ice’? oooh, fahncy!
bbfk, I would watch it with you in a heartbeat! I might also just download it (because fuck paying those people anything, it’s a free market baby) and would love to riff on it in long form. Methinks it could do with the fisking every Ayn Rand book deserves.
how big is your teevee?
how big is your teevee?
Big enough to see from Minnesota?
Something embarrassingly small and unAmerican I think, and I don’t even have a stereo system.
I think we should rent our own theater and see it in 3D.
Cleanup in aisle boor.
Something embarrassingly small and unAmerican I think, and I don’t even have a stereo system.
I think we should rent our own theater and see it in 3D.
i think ours is a 42″ but i dunno…hubbkf says it needs to be bigger, but he says that about a lot of things…we do have a stereo system…do you mind watching movies with cute dogs?
Big enough to see from Minnesota?
also, i have special eyes…
This appeared between a couple of emanations with your name on them. For a wild second or two, I thought D was speaking about himself,* then realized what had happened, and continued mopping. But I will now have a giggle when I think of this.
*His spirit! What did you think I was talking about?
i think ours is a 42? but i dunno…hubbkf says it needs to be bigger, but he says that about a lot of things…we do have a stereo system…do you mind watching movies with cute dogs?
I believe that cute dogs enhance any movie viewing experience.
I believe that cute dogs enhance any movie viewing experience.
maeve was not so cute last night…she ate an entire pack of gum…then had stomach upset all night…did not make for a pleasant sleeping experience…
Nooo Maeve. Gum is not for you.
…What flavor?
Re : bbkf’s rain.
A very good thing about our climate. It’s not continuous. In winter, horrendous winter stormfronts blow in from the Atlantic, feeling like the End Of The World. But today, I sat on the stoep, basking in the sun. Another cold front expected Thursday – fine until then.
That was what I hated so much about UK weather – it never totally cleared up – rain or drizzle or heavy cloud ALL the time. Hated.
Suezboo, are you from SA originally, or the UK? I didn’t know you’d ever lived in right-side-up-land.
Hated the weather in the UK every time I’ve been. Was in London during one of the only true heatwaves of the last decade and yikes: no air conditioning! Grew up in Los Angeles so I can’t sleep anywhere that isn’t refrigerated. That was a very muggy weekend.
There was some very strange weather here the other night. Heat lightning is pretty normal here in the summer time but the other night we had huge thunderheads hanging in the sky over DC, with lightning arcing from one to another and back. There was no sound from it. Everyone’s been remarking on it the past few days.
it never totally cleared up – rain or drizzle or heavy cloud ALL the time. Hated.
i know, right? both times i’ve been it was like that…except of course, for our last day there…
…What flavor?
you know, i’m not sure…it was in hubbkf’s camera bag, so it was prolly older than the hills too…perhaps she needed a little freshening after eating my glucose monitor and test strips…she has been on a freaking tear lately…
My mom lives in Prince William County- her neighborhood was hit by a microburst that split a massive oak tree and there was torrential rain and peach-pit sized hail.
Seize, I was born in UK and my parents emigrated when I was but a tot. Every time my mom left my dad, she would go home to Mother in London. Oh, those trips on the old ocean liners – sheer bliss ! And, of course, now that the folks have died and my only brother lives in California and I never married, I am wholly without family here in SA. But I could not live anywhere else, I don’t think. This is the place I know and sometimes love.
Sorry – a bit longwinded there.
Up here, near my corner of Soviet Canuckistan, our windy day was Tueday. Well, not really near – Barrie’s about an hour’s drive north. Still it was very rainy and windy where I was. An unsecured barbecue could easily have been blown over!
After last summer’s crazy flooding followed by the Christmas Ice Storm and psycho freeze-thaw craziness throughout the winter, we’re getting some rough treatment from the weather folks.
All forgiven though, if we can just get a few nice summer week-ends.
bats”>Bats! Brilliant. I wish I’d thought of this.
The aforementioned bats.
bats”>Bats! Brilliant. I wish I’d thought of this.
sassy dancers indeed! it’s creepy and hilarious all at once! true story: one morning when i was on the air, we played a unheard before ad from a new sponsor…they had some ecologically friendly name so we didn’t really know what they did…the ad was cut by one of the old-timers who continually talks in obnoxious radio dj voice ALL THE TIME, but anyhoo, clear out of the blue we hear: ‘are bats driving you crazy and scaring your pets?!?’ just about peed my pants on the air…
Oh my god the bats. The bats! Look at their fuzzy bellies.
re: Bats!
Oh, gimme a break you’re being too kind
These bats have got a one-track mind
The orchard is not their restaurant,
But do they ever think of what others may want?
…
No. They don’t. And that is just a fact.
These bats they simply don’t know how to act.
Ugh. Just got home and this asshole landowner in my building has evicted an old lady.
This lady is like, 80 years old. She’s skinny as a rake and she’s just standing in front of our building with all of her stuff.
One of the neighborhood guys is helping her by using his hand-truck to put her stuff into his back yard for the time being. I don’t own anything so I couldn’t do anything to help except bring out glasses of water for her and the guy helping her.
I know that people are supposed to pay rent but how can someone turn a person out of their home? She’s lived here for 15 years easy.
I grew up in a suburb. That…didn’t prepare me for this.
bbkf: Just an FYI, if the gum was sugar-free, the stuff they use in some gum (Xylitol) is actually pretty toxic to dogs. Keep an eye on her.
Trolls in the news…
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/06/az-education-chief-caught-trolling-blog
Breaking! AROO! I found previously unknown footage of Cheney’s replacement heart being grown in a lab.
New one up, consider it open…Now if Switzerland can only score 4 goals in the next 6-8 minutes they might be able to draw even with France.
…
obs…thanks…good to know…she seems to be okay but I will ask hubbkf if he recalls. thank goodness he usually steers clear of any thing labeled sugar free…
I found previously unknown footage of Cheney’s replacement heart being grown in a lab.
Mercuric sulphocyanate?
No! Cheney’s replacement heart being grown in a lab. Sheesh.
NOT A THING = That oopsie-doodles where BENGHAAAAAAAAAZI mastermind brah Ahmed Abu Khattalah got busted & promptly went “yeah, Susan Rice nailed it, we totes set that Zerg Rush shit up because of that skeezebag asshole’s video lol”
SO A THING = The incoming dish from Hillary’s new book, what color her stool was this morning, her 2016 prospects, her fave boy band, her stand on Net Neutrailty, her choice of conditioner, her amazing menopause tips for harried Grandmas
Volunteering at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival for the 5-6 time (how do I not remember?) and we had General Orientation. When we were asked to say our name and what we do I said “My name is [NAME] and I do nothing.” Being unemployed is so awkward.
ZOMG THE HERETIX ARE RULING THE
DUNGHEAPTEMPLE!!!