You can learn more about American life from this brief interview than you can from reading David Brooks for a lifetime. This is a priceless sociological document.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Tweet Me Not
Don’t follow me on Twitter. I won’t be there. Call me retro if you want, but the last thing we need is a communication medium that restricts your thoughts to 140 characters or less. Between tweeting and texting, we’ll all be using a form of Newspeak within a generation, and the worst thing about it is that we will have voluntarily chosen it. We will have been the willing agents of our own linguistic devolution. Just give everyone an iPhone and a satellite dish and American culture will take care of the rest. We’ll be reduced to having two-hundred word vocabularies in no time.
Soon, our entire political discourse will consist of a few simple phrases that leave no room for unacceptable thoughts: Job creators good. Entitlements bad. WMD scary. All options must be on the table.
The Democrats, as always, will counter with a bold alternative: Job creators good. Responsible entitlement cuts good. WMD scary. All options must be on the table.
It will be tax cuts good, tax cuts for job creators doubleplusgood, freedom.
That’s what politics will sound like in some dystopian future America, when everyone speaks in … Oh, wait … never mind.
Soon, our entire political discourse will consist of a few simple phrases that leave no room for unacceptable thoughts: Job creators good. Entitlements bad. WMD scary. All options must be on the table.
The Democrats, as always, will counter with a bold alternative: Job creators good. Responsible entitlement cuts good. WMD scary. All options must be on the table.
It will be tax cuts good, tax cuts for job creators doubleplusgood, freedom.
That’s what politics will sound like in some dystopian future America, when everyone speaks in … Oh, wait … never mind.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Things Could Be Worse
You could live in Luning, Nevada, population 42.
This town is the definition of bum-fucked nowhere. It’s on Interstate-95 between Reno and Las Vegas. I know, just shoot me now, right? The entire state looks like this. There is a suffocating pall of deadness to the place that puts me in a deep lethargic funk. I don’t gamble or go the whorehouses, so that leaves alcohol as the only palliative for my Nevada angst. It works. Booze always works.
Luning, I think, saw its best days during the Hayes Administration (Who didn’t?). It’s being reclaimed by the desert and will probably be a ghost town soon. There won’t be anything there but lizards, snakes, and vinegaroons. Wait, what the hell is a vinegaroon?
This is a vinegaroon:
If you step on one with your bare feet, you will shit your pants, guaranteed, but they are actually harmless. The most they do is pinch you and squirt a vinegar-like substance from their tail. I found the image on Google. No way would I hold one of those nasty muthers!
The nearest real town to Luning is Hawthorne, which is home to a large military base where, I think, geeky Army guys operate predator drones.
That’s right, I called them geeky, so sue me. I don’t reflexively kow-tow to soldiers. I don’t call them heroes and thank them for their service every third word. I find the whole “booyah” “get some” hyper-masculine culture of the military repulsive to the extreme. It is arrogant and violent and anti-democratic. It takes one of the more unpleasant groups in our society — teenage boys, usually poor and ill-educated teenage boys — and cultivates their cruelest and most obnoxious tendencies. I find it personally embarrassing that so many foreigners only know us through the military. I saw an Iraqi on television describe our soldiers as “cowboys with no culture.” Was he wrong?
Ask an Okinawan how noble the U.S. military is, or the ex-inhabitants of Diego Garcia.
Yeah, yeah, I’m generalizing. There are lots of nice people in the military too. Every combat veteran I’ve ever met was really cool, and I usually do spot them drinks. They are also uncomfortable being called heroes.
Incidentally, World War II is the only justifiable war this country has ever fought. Until the advent of George W. Bush, who empowered the morons of America more than ever before, I would have said the Civil War too, but I’ve since changed my mind. Life would be a lot simpler if we just let the South go. Maybe throw in Nevada as a bonus, ha, ha. Perhaps the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska could also be tossed in as an added sweetener. Let them teach their kids that the world is flat and Adam and Eve rode on dinosaurs. Let them issue liberal hunting permits and watch NASCAR all they want. Let them atrophy their brains with Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Let them listen to shitty country music and vote for Republicans who joyfully fuck them over. I just don’t care anymore. Like Pontius Pilate, I wash my hands of them.
Yeah, yeah, I’m generalizing again. Everyone I’ve ever met from the South was extremely friendly and hospitable. Far friendlier than we Californians, who have a tendency to think our poop don’t stink, when in fact it is quite smelly indeed. I lived in the Bay Area for seven years and never exchanged more than ten words with my neighbors on either side. And don’t even get me started on LA, which is the rudest and most arrogant hellhole on God’s gray earth. It is the exact opposite of everything I value and the concentrated essence of all I despise. Mencken called it Los Angeles the Damned and that was in the 1920s when it was a nice place!
Okay, there. Nobody yell at me for overgeneralizing. We are all unpleasant in our own unique ways.
By the way, I tried to join the military when I was 18, but I was rejected because I have two thumbs on my left hand, just like Anne Boleyn. There is a fancy word that describes people like us, polydactyl. Isn’t that special? So I missed Operation Just Cause, the heroic capture of evil transvestite super villain Manuel Noriega, by a nose. I had to sit out my generation’s great crusade! While my peers were storming the beaches of Panama, I was flunking algebra in college. Yeah, you could say I’m bitter, uh-huh …
But I was talking about Nevada, which is morbidly interesting to me, like a car crash or a natural disaster, or a polydactyl with a deformed thumb, ha, ha. And what is so interesting about Nevada? Well, in a way, it is such a cartoonishly wretched place that it’s almost kind of cool.
Question: Why can’t they ever solve a murder in Dayton, Nevada?
Answer: Because there aren’t any dental records and everybody has the same DNA.
Nevada statehood was jammed through in 1864 as a way to ensure Lincoln’s reelection. So I guess you could say Nevada was Lincoln’s greatest error.
When most people think Nevada, they think Vegas, gambling, hookers, crystal meth, and other such debased entertainments, but Nevada is actually a big mining state, and back in the nineteenth century people weren’t too fastidious about where they dumped the slag. Consequently, the waters in northern Nevada are heavily polluted with mercury. But those were the bad old days. Things are better now. The Nevada Department of Wildlife has a helpful guide that tells you what types of fish can be safely eaten, what water sources you can eat them from, and what quantities are non-toxic. For example, you can’t eat carp or smallmouth bass from the Carson River. You may, however, have exactly one 8 ounce serving of carp per month from the Chimney Reservoir, but don’t touch the walleye. Absolutely no carp, Sacramento perch, or white bass from Big Washoe Lake, and no carp, Sacramento perch, or white bass from the Little Washoe Lake either. Got that? You may safely consume one rainbow trout per month from Bodie Creek, four brown trout from the Walker River, four yellow perch from Duffurena Pond, and 16 bluegill sunfish from Virginia Lake. Bon Apetite! And remember, 8 ounce portions only.
Do you want to go to Nevada yet?
You are now leaving Luning:
This town is the definition of bum-fucked nowhere. It’s on Interstate-95 between Reno and Las Vegas. I know, just shoot me now, right? The entire state looks like this. There is a suffocating pall of deadness to the place that puts me in a deep lethargic funk. I don’t gamble or go the whorehouses, so that leaves alcohol as the only palliative for my Nevada angst. It works. Booze always works.
Luning, I think, saw its best days during the Hayes Administration (Who didn’t?). It’s being reclaimed by the desert and will probably be a ghost town soon. There won’t be anything there but lizards, snakes, and vinegaroons. Wait, what the hell is a vinegaroon?
This is a vinegaroon:
If you step on one with your bare feet, you will shit your pants, guaranteed, but they are actually harmless. The most they do is pinch you and squirt a vinegar-like substance from their tail. I found the image on Google. No way would I hold one of those nasty muthers!
The nearest real town to Luning is Hawthorne, which is home to a large military base where, I think, geeky Army guys operate predator drones.
That’s right, I called them geeky, so sue me. I don’t reflexively kow-tow to soldiers. I don’t call them heroes and thank them for their service every third word. I find the whole “booyah” “get some” hyper-masculine culture of the military repulsive to the extreme. It is arrogant and violent and anti-democratic. It takes one of the more unpleasant groups in our society — teenage boys, usually poor and ill-educated teenage boys — and cultivates their cruelest and most obnoxious tendencies. I find it personally embarrassing that so many foreigners only know us through the military. I saw an Iraqi on television describe our soldiers as “cowboys with no culture.” Was he wrong?
Ask an Okinawan how noble the U.S. military is, or the ex-inhabitants of Diego Garcia.
Yeah, yeah, I’m generalizing. There are lots of nice people in the military too. Every combat veteran I’ve ever met was really cool, and I usually do spot them drinks. They are also uncomfortable being called heroes.
Incidentally, World War II is the only justifiable war this country has ever fought. Until the advent of George W. Bush, who empowered the morons of America more than ever before, I would have said the Civil War too, but I’ve since changed my mind. Life would be a lot simpler if we just let the South go. Maybe throw in Nevada as a bonus, ha, ha. Perhaps the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska could also be tossed in as an added sweetener. Let them teach their kids that the world is flat and Adam and Eve rode on dinosaurs. Let them issue liberal hunting permits and watch NASCAR all they want. Let them atrophy their brains with Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Let them listen to shitty country music and vote for Republicans who joyfully fuck them over. I just don’t care anymore. Like Pontius Pilate, I wash my hands of them.
Yeah, yeah, I’m generalizing again. Everyone I’ve ever met from the South was extremely friendly and hospitable. Far friendlier than we Californians, who have a tendency to think our poop don’t stink, when in fact it is quite smelly indeed. I lived in the Bay Area for seven years and never exchanged more than ten words with my neighbors on either side. And don’t even get me started on LA, which is the rudest and most arrogant hellhole on God’s gray earth. It is the exact opposite of everything I value and the concentrated essence of all I despise. Mencken called it Los Angeles the Damned and that was in the 1920s when it was a nice place!
Okay, there. Nobody yell at me for overgeneralizing. We are all unpleasant in our own unique ways.
By the way, I tried to join the military when I was 18, but I was rejected because I have two thumbs on my left hand, just like Anne Boleyn. There is a fancy word that describes people like us, polydactyl. Isn’t that special? So I missed Operation Just Cause, the heroic capture of evil transvestite super villain Manuel Noriega, by a nose. I had to sit out my generation’s great crusade! While my peers were storming the beaches of Panama, I was flunking algebra in college. Yeah, you could say I’m bitter, uh-huh …
But I was talking about Nevada, which is morbidly interesting to me, like a car crash or a natural disaster, or a polydactyl with a deformed thumb, ha, ha. And what is so interesting about Nevada? Well, in a way, it is such a cartoonishly wretched place that it’s almost kind of cool.
Pick almost any index of social well-being, and Nevada ranks at or near the very bottom of the 50 states, though it ranks near the top in personal wealth. Besides having the highest suicide rate (almost twice the national average), Nevada has the highest adult smoking rate and the highest death rate from smoking, the highest percentage of teenagers who are high-school dropouts, the highest teenage pregnancy rate and the highest rate of firearm deaths.
Nevada ranked 45th among the states for overall health last year, just above states like West Virginia and Arkansas, according to rankings compiled by United Health Group, a Minnesota-based health care company.And if it wasn’t for Clark County, which is where Las Vegas is located, the state would be blood red politically.
Question: Why can’t they ever solve a murder in Dayton, Nevada?
Answer: Because there aren’t any dental records and everybody has the same DNA.
Nevada statehood was jammed through in 1864 as a way to ensure Lincoln’s reelection. So I guess you could say Nevada was Lincoln’s greatest error.
When most people think Nevada, they think Vegas, gambling, hookers, crystal meth, and other such debased entertainments, but Nevada is actually a big mining state, and back in the nineteenth century people weren’t too fastidious about where they dumped the slag. Consequently, the waters in northern Nevada are heavily polluted with mercury. But those were the bad old days. Things are better now. The Nevada Department of Wildlife has a helpful guide that tells you what types of fish can be safely eaten, what water sources you can eat them from, and what quantities are non-toxic. For example, you can’t eat carp or smallmouth bass from the Carson River. You may, however, have exactly one 8 ounce serving of carp per month from the Chimney Reservoir, but don’t touch the walleye. Absolutely no carp, Sacramento perch, or white bass from Big Washoe Lake, and no carp, Sacramento perch, or white bass from the Little Washoe Lake either. Got that? You may safely consume one rainbow trout per month from Bodie Creek, four brown trout from the Walker River, four yellow perch from Duffurena Pond, and 16 bluegill sunfish from Virginia Lake. Bon Apetite! And remember, 8 ounce portions only.
Do you want to go to Nevada yet?
You are now leaving Luning:
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Prom Night In D.C.
A congressional committee held hearings on unemployment last week and only four members showed up. The wimps and wonks of the D.C. press corps would snootily inform us that other hearings were going on, and that this accounts for such poor attendance. Maybe, but it just might be that the people who pay Congress profit quite handsomely when unemployment is high. For an individual congressperson to interfere with the gravy train would not only be professionally dangerous, but bad manners as well. It could be that unemployment quite simply isn’t a priority.
But pundits get paid to miss the big picture. It’s their job to carefully eliminate all viable explanations for an event and settle on the one that is most likely wrong, hence their fat salaries, hence the Iraq invasion, the normalization of torture, the economic collapse, the bailout, the intentional grinding down of those ordinary watchamacalits … p-p-p- pee, uh, p-peop, uh, puh, pee something.
But there’s another possible explanation for why so few representatives bothered to show up and pretend to care about the nation’s unemployed. They had more important matters to attend to. They had to get coiffed and fitted for the prom!
I’ve been so busy doing things that matter I forgot that tonight was the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Where’s my head? Everything that is wrong with Washington will form and concentrate in one place, like some enervating toxic cloud that mysteriously puts the country to sleep. All of the inflated twits, nincompoops, eunuchs and castrati who enable our nation’s decay will gather under one roof, laugh at jokes about predator drones, and scramble to get their pictures taken with Barbra Streisand and Scarlett Johansson. The President of the United States, to his eternal shame, will gleefully participate. It is obscene.
This is the natural aristocracy of a country whose highest artistic achievement is the television commercial.
It’s so bad that even Tom Brokaw has come out against it. Tom Brokaw, who’s become the anointed elder statesman of TV news by sheer default: All of the other plausible candidates are dead. He always looks like he has a hard object lodged deep in his rectum, and his stoic determination to utter trite conventional wisdom in the face of such discomfort gives him an air of gravitas. No one else on the TV news could match it, so he go the job. But credit where credit is due. Maybe it will take criticism from one of their own to make some of these adolescent popinjays wake up to what an abomination this event truly is.
But pundits get paid to miss the big picture. It’s their job to carefully eliminate all viable explanations for an event and settle on the one that is most likely wrong, hence their fat salaries, hence the Iraq invasion, the normalization of torture, the economic collapse, the bailout, the intentional grinding down of those ordinary watchamacalits … p-p-p- pee, uh, p-peop, uh, puh, pee something.
But there’s another possible explanation for why so few representatives bothered to show up and pretend to care about the nation’s unemployed. They had more important matters to attend to. They had to get coiffed and fitted for the prom!
I’ve been so busy doing things that matter I forgot that tonight was the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Where’s my head? Everything that is wrong with Washington will form and concentrate in one place, like some enervating toxic cloud that mysteriously puts the country to sleep. All of the inflated twits, nincompoops, eunuchs and castrati who enable our nation’s decay will gather under one roof, laugh at jokes about predator drones, and scramble to get their pictures taken with Barbra Streisand and Scarlett Johansson. The President of the United States, to his eternal shame, will gleefully participate. It is obscene.
This is the natural aristocracy of a country whose highest artistic achievement is the television commercial.
It’s so bad that even Tom Brokaw has come out against it. Tom Brokaw, who’s become the anointed elder statesman of TV news by sheer default: All of the other plausible candidates are dead. He always looks like he has a hard object lodged deep in his rectum, and his stoic determination to utter trite conventional wisdom in the face of such discomfort gives him an air of gravitas. No one else on the TV news could match it, so he go the job. But credit where credit is due. Maybe it will take criticism from one of their own to make some of these adolescent popinjays wake up to what an abomination this event truly is.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Two Hundred Bangladeshis Die, But It’s Okay. A Media Star Explains
A sweatshop has collapsed in Bangladesh killing over two-hundred people. Survivors are still being pulled out the rubble. Right now, as I write this, human beings just like us are dying unspeakably horrible deaths, a fact made more awful when you consider how bad their lives were. They made clothes for Wal-Mart and other such humanitarian outlets. Even though “deep cracks” were visible in the building and the police had ordered it closed, the slaves workers were ordered to keep sewing.
But it’s okay. Privileged rich fat kid Matthew Yglesias puts it all in perspective. Bangladesh doesn’t need tougher workplace safety rules, Boy Wonder explains, because the wogs are different from us:
Yeah, it’s working out just dandy for the people who are bleeding and suffocating under piles of rubble, their bones shattered to bits. But that’s a chance the poor darkies take for being less risk-averse than the better sort of people. They made their calculus, whether individual or collective, and now they have to lay in it.
I wonder where Master Yglesias learned so much about the psychology of the working poor? Was it from his rich family? Attending an elite private school in Manhattan? Harvard? Brunching with Ezra Klein and Megan Mcardle, where they also discussed the stress of being professional bloggers and having rich daddies? He must have divined it from those fleeting glimpses into the kitchen when the doors swung open.
Or maybe he learned about it while moonlighting as a film critic who specialized in comic book adaptations:
No doubt. It’s far more horrible than spending your life in a sweatshop until the roof caves in and kills you; and all this while a self-described “comic book adaptation completist” who’s never lifted anything heavier than a double cheeseburger sits on his ass at Slate and lectures that slack safety regulations are working out well for you. They are a part of your collective calculus.
But it’s okay. Privileged rich fat kid Matthew Yglesias puts it all in perspective. Bangladesh doesn’t need tougher workplace safety rules, Boy Wonder explains, because the wogs are different from us:
Bangladesh is a lot poorer than the United States, and there are very good reasons for Bangladeshi people to make different choices in this regard than Americans. That’s true whether you’re talking about an individual calculus or a collective calculus. Safety rules that are appropriate for the United States would be unnecessarily immiserating in much poorer Bangladesh. Rules that are appropriate in Bangladesh would be far too flimsy for the richer and more risk-averse United States. Split the difference and you’ll get rules that are appropriate for nobody. The current system of letting different countries have different rules is working fine.
Yeah, it’s working out just dandy for the people who are bleeding and suffocating under piles of rubble, their bones shattered to bits. But that’s a chance the poor darkies take for being less risk-averse than the better sort of people. They made their calculus, whether individual or collective, and now they have to lay in it.
I wonder where Master Yglesias learned so much about the psychology of the working poor? Was it from his rich family? Attending an elite private school in Manhattan? Harvard? Brunching with Ezra Klein and Megan Mcardle, where they also discussed the stress of being professional bloggers and having rich daddies? He must have divined it from those fleeting glimpses into the kitchen when the doors swung open.
Or maybe he learned about it while moonlighting as a film critic who specialized in comic book adaptations:
I spent the decade as a real comic book adaptation completist, so I can tell you with some confidence that Daredevil and Elektra are the two worst of the decade. Considerably worse than the awful Fantastic Four 2. But which is the very worst? I think that to give a fair answer I would need to rewatch them but that’s a fate too horrible to contemplate.
No doubt. It’s far more horrible than spending your life in a sweatshop until the roof caves in and kills you; and all this while a self-described “comic book adaptation completist” who’s never lifted anything heavier than a double cheeseburger sits on his ass at Slate and lectures that slack safety regulations are working out well for you. They are a part of your collective calculus.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Adam Savader Has A Future In The Republican Party
The GOP can’t afford to let a promising young man like this get away:
The Party can always find a use for young men like Adam Savader and James O’Keefe. Oh, yes. Sadaver just needs a little education. Condition him to apply his dark talents to the right targets, liberals, journalists, etc, maybe teach him to handle his sexual proclivities more discreetly, and he’ll be golden.
Here’s my prediction, for what it’s worth. The kid lays low for a few years, maybe does a little time, finds Jesus, and then, a few years hence, we’ll all be hearing about some born again Republican operative named Adam Savader. Our political landscape will be graced with yet another unscrupulous Christian toad who makes a living carrying out high crimes and misdemeanors for the Republican party. (In the meantime, World Net Daily and Rush Limbaugh, should they decide to touch the story at all, will say the girls — a coven of liberal Democrats, no doubt — framed him because he was a Republican.)
Check out his digital portfolio:
The thought occurs to me: sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.
A former intern for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was arrested Tuesday over an alleged sexual extortion scheme.This is a minor setback. He’ll come out on top in the end. You watch. A young Republican who doesn’t engage in deviant behavior isn’t a serious player. This kid is signaling to his future bosses that he’s ready for primetime. Karl Rove no doubt admires the his pluck. Blackmailing girls to get nude photos from them. Why didn’t he, Karl Rove, ever think of doing that? High school could have been so much more fun …
In a press release, the FBI said 21-year-old Adam Savader allegedly stalked 15 different women from three states between May 2012 and this past February.
Savader claimed to have nude photos of the women, and threatened to release the photos unless they sent him more. He demanded that one woman answer “a series of personal questions, relating to sexual preferences, positions, etc.,” according to a FBI complaint. He also informed at least two women that he was masturbating to their stolen pictures.
“I swear on all that is holy. If you fuck with me again I will send these to your parents. I have no problem sending them to ur [sic] parents, friends and sorority sisters unless you cooperate by answering me,” he allegedly told one woman.
The Party can always find a use for young men like Adam Savader and James O’Keefe. Oh, yes. Sadaver just needs a little education. Condition him to apply his dark talents to the right targets, liberals, journalists, etc, maybe teach him to handle his sexual proclivities more discreetly, and he’ll be golden.
Here’s my prediction, for what it’s worth. The kid lays low for a few years, maybe does a little time, finds Jesus, and then, a few years hence, we’ll all be hearing about some born again Republican operative named Adam Savader. Our political landscape will be graced with yet another unscrupulous Christian toad who makes a living carrying out high crimes and misdemeanors for the Republican party. (In the meantime, World Net Daily and Rush Limbaugh, should they decide to touch the story at all, will say the girls — a coven of liberal Democrats, no doubt — framed him because he was a Republican.)
Check out his digital portfolio:
The thought occurs to me: sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
The Real Joe The Plumber
I bumped into a plumber I used to work with back in my laboring days. We used to pal around the job site a little. One day we were working in the same unit and he got to talking about his travels in the Navy. He had spent some time in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. “What was Saudi Arabia like?’ I asked.
“It’s like a funeral home that’s an entire country.”
I asked about Turkey. “Picture a retarded Mexican family who doesn’t wash their hands before cooking” I apologize to any Turks or Saudi Arabians. His words, not mine. What can I say? That’s the way people talked out there.
“It’s like a funeral home that’s an entire country.”
I asked about Turkey. “Picture a retarded Mexican family who doesn’t wash their hands before cooking” I apologize to any Turks or Saudi Arabians. His words, not mine. What can I say? That’s the way people talked out there.
I'm Not On The A-List
Things are feeling a little slow around here lately. It looks like my goal of becoming an A list blogger ain't going to happen. Shucks. I'll never get to hang out with Andrew Sullivan. Bummer. I guess I'll have to find a new dream. I use to be somebody, dammit!
The Link TV People are Getting On My Nerves
I love Link TV, I really do. It's basically the only station I watch, but sheesh those people on the pledge drives are annoying.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Words Of Wisdom
The Roman Emperor Diocletian abdicated the throne after ruling twenty years. He absconded to Croatia and grew a garden. His co-ruler, Maximian, sent an ambassador to beg him to return to power. Diocletian refused. “If you could show the cabbage that I planted with my own hands to your emperor, he definitely wouldn’t dare suggest that I replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed.” I think those are among the wisest words ever spoken.
Grow cabbage. Don’t try and rule the world.
Grow cabbage. Don’t try and rule the world.
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