Makin' Green

I finally got around to watching Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth; this was part of my ongoing "Several Years Behind Reality Tour", which has recently included: Inside Man by Spike Lee, Set Yourself On Fire by Stars, and still getting pissed off by George Bush. 

So yeah, I'm a little late to the party on this, but that's fitting:  I just gotta say that Gore won an Oscar and a Nobel Prize for telling people a bunch of shit they already know.  His whole goal was to change people's minds, but the only people who'll listen to him are liberals who already agree.  No self-respecting ignoramus is going to spend $10 to watch a dork they voted against give a depressing lecture about something they don't want to confront; the inconvenient truth is that Gore's whole approach was almost perfectly designed to alienate his target audience.

That actually looks like a cool movie.

Gore's greatest failing has always been his inability to connect with the common dullard, that's why he "lost" in 2000, and why this "great success" of a movie should be considered a failure; the prizes he won for it weren't awarded by the American populous, they were given to him by The Hollywood Elite, and the Norwegian Intelligensia - not exactly swing voters.  Gore needs to take a whole different approach and focus on reaching the climate-change-deniers he so badly wants to convert.

First of all, Gore is persona non grata among the target demo, he might actually be one of the least qualified human beings for the job of speaking to these morons.  Instead you either need someone they identify with, like Adam Carolla, or someone they want to fuck/cuddle/fuck, like Hayden Pannatiere.  I'm going to go with Hayden, when you find something beautiful, you can't help but care.

Damn.

Every time I watch a nature show, there's all this gorgeous scenery, then at some point, the narrator starts talking about how mankind is ruining everything; this is when I quickly change the channel, I simply can't tolerate hearing all the bad things we're doing.  There are probably a lot of people who feel the same way, who'd go out of their way to avoid hearing it.  For that reason, Gore had a terrible business model, of asking ignoramuses to pay to hear depressing facts.  Instead, ignoramuses should be forced to pay to not hear to depressing facts. 

Gore should put together a commercial for Hulu, starring Hayden Pannatiere, standing among a managerie of exotic species, before a backdrop of beautiful rainforest.  But then she starts listing depressing facts about how rapidly we're destroying the planet:

• "According to the World Resources Institute, more than 80 percent of the Earth’s natural forests already have been destroyed." - National Geographic 
• "Global warming may drive a quarter of land animals and plants to the edge of extinction by 2050." - New Scientist
• "When you pollute, it makes the Baby Jesus cry." - Knoxville News

As she's doing this, the adorable animals around her are dropping dead, the forest is blackening to ash, all the while, her face is aging and her voice is changing, and she gradually becomes Hilary Clinton.  Using Web 3.4 technology, the viewers would have the option of donating money in order stop the depressing facts and the hideous aging process:  if they don't pay up, they'll have to see that commercial every time they watch Hulu, if they do pay up, they'll instead be treated to a cute girl playing with funny animals.  The revenues could be used to buy rainforests or to win elections.  We could save the planet, not by trying educate the ineducable, but by allowing people to stick their heads in the sand...for a price.

Brief Note

You know, I've been making a lot of porn references lately, but only because its a titillating subject, I'm not like some pathetic loser or anything.  The truth is, I don't watch more than 3 minutes a day.

Technically one minute, three times.

Q&A

Adam Carolla was cranky yesterday, which means he went on a twenty-three minute tirade about Mexican immigrants.  He says that the problems in the LA educational system aren't due to bad schools or bad teachers, they're due to bad parents - specifically, Mexican parents.  He makes a convincing argument that if the parents don't care how the kid does in school, the kid is probably going to fail, but its a whole other ball of wax, whether Mexicans are more likely to be "bad parents" with regards to schooling; at any rate, I'll tackle Carolla from another angle, just so he can't play the "don't play the race card" card.

 There's the thinking cap, then there's the "anti-immigration cap", which is not so much the hat itself as the angle at which its worn.

The thing about Carolla is that he's a professional complainer;  he's good at finding problems, but bad at finding solutions.  How exactly does he think the government can fix "bad parents"?  Here are a few ideas of my own:

• Post the kids' grades on a societal refridgerator, but replace the names of the kids with the names of the parents.  This will shame the parents into shaming the kids.
• If your kid doesn't get good grades, you can't go out on the weekend. 
• We're taking the car away.

Here are a few of the ideas that Carolla has proposed himself, on this specific podcast and others:

• No more free-lunches for school children.  He thinks giving the poor kids free food encourages the parents to be lazy, if we stopped giving handouts, it would somehow force the parents to care.  This is an idea he proposed on some older podcasts, but not this one.  There's a real hypocrisy:  in the present he says we need to save kids from "bad parents", but in the past he said "bad parents" will magically give a shit if we stop saving their kids.  The only thing consistent about The Aceman is that he doesn't want the government spending his money, not on schools and teachers, and not on free lunches.
• No more fucking in these ghettoes and having too many goddamn kids.  This is something he said on this podcast and also in the past; in the aftermath of the Haiti Earthquake, he said a big part of the problem was that there were too many people down there, and that we need to "thin the herd".  He says no one's allowed to talk about this because then you get accused of being a racist - listen, Aceman the reason you get accused of racism is because you use cattle metaphors while talking about  population control on a specific race, even Hitler would have found that impolitic.  The thing is, there are tons of people who not only talk about overpopulation, they take action to prevent it; these people are called liberals, and they want to provide sex education, condoms, and access to abortion, not just to minorities but to trash of all colors.  Politically correct liberals are not the problem, they're the answer; the people you need to cull from the herd are the conservative wackjobs who try to prevent sex education.  That would be called a "final solution".

At one point, he goes off on a tangent about how, if your kid needs an emergency appendectomy, or if you need your tonsils out, you don't go to Tijuana, you go to San Deigo.  Why he asks?  "Because America is the best."  Actually, the reason is because in America, we have government regulations that prevent bad doctors from opening up shop, Ace doesn't want to admit that fact because he'd look like a hypocrite for complaining about all the "bullshit building codes" that make it a hassle when he's trying to add the Nth addition onto his mansion.

Near the end, Donny asks "What is The Left's ultimate plan?"  Before he can even get the question out, Ace shouts "THEY DON'T HAVE AN ULTIMATE PLAN...Their plan is this....'I don't want to ask any tough questions, and I don't want to point any fingers.'"

Here's a tough question for you, Carolla:  as a libertarian, how do you propose that we control the individual, how do we force these parents to better raise their kids without creating a totalitarian state?  You'll spend half an hour complaining about a parking ticket, what would you do if they wrote you up for talking about farting in your daughter's face or getting a boner while wrestling with your son?

For whatever reason, I always end up forgiving the Aceman; the greater question is, how do I forgive myself?  I point the finger and place the blame squarely on my own sorry ass for continuing to listen to this guy.

Head Fake

You know how basketball players complain after every call?  Do you think the reflexive lying and self-delusion becomes second nature, carrying over into day-to-day life?

 Ben Roethlisberger's got this move down.

You might say "its part of the game", or "all the other players do it", and that might excuse it in ethical terms, but they're still practiced in the act of dishonesty, and at some point it has to become easier.

If Bart were an adult, he wouldn't have that look of fear, instead it would be the holier-than-thou incredulity of the self-entitled American adult.

We assume that the constant sucking and fucking of a porn starlet somehow degrades her, makes her "easier" off-camera.  What she does is just "part of the show", and "all the other porn sluts do it", so we don't condemn her in moral terms, but we still assume she's going to be changed by it.

We also assume that an MMA fighter is changed by the violence he commits in the ring.  The other combatant has agreed to the fight, so its not like the beatings are evil, but we still assume that that guy is going to be a more brutal person in his day-to-day life.

I'm not trying to say basketball players are bad people.  Lying and self-delusion are the only way that most people can make it through the day, so in a way, being a basketball player might make you a better person.

45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"  - Harris Poll, March 2010.

 A knowing wink, or an impression of Dick Cheney.

Never Stop Learning

This is the logo for the National Junior College Athletic Association; notice how they try to make the "NJ" look like an "N".  This might be a reference to their students' childhoods, and how they used to change their report cards from "D"s to "B"s.

Slingin' It

I was trying to find a picture of that new McDonald's rapper, so that I could describe his thought process: "OK, I can pay off my credit cards if I do this commercial, but then I have to give up my dream of becoming an actual artist".

Then I stumbled across this thing on the McDonald's website called "365black".

 "Like the mighty Baobab, McDonald's and I will not be moved."

It's no secret that McDonald's believes black people are easy marks, but the message on that tree seems to be saying "You were raised on McDonald's, you should die from McDonald's".

Cognitive Defect

John Sutcliffe

The ESPN family of networks has a sideline reporter named John Sutcliffe.  The other day, hearing him talk during the Spurs game, I thought he was retarded, then I realized it was Latin Night, that John Sutcliffe is a reporter for ESPN Deportes, and that he's just a white guy with a Mexican Accent.

Coors Light: Better Than Jerking Off

In these Coors Light commercials, they go on and on about the beer being "as cold as the Rockies"; everyone likes a cold beer, but it seems like they're just trying to take credit for work my fridge is doing.  Besides, what does it say about the product if its best attribute is the temperature; that's sort of like a hot dog, a hot pocket, or a warm hole.

The Ultimate In Status

If I ever become wealthy, I'm not going to be one of these rich assholes who rides in the back, with the chauffeur up front next to an empty seat.

I'm going to ride shotgun, and treat my chauffeur with respect; I'm not going to be like these other douchebags, who hire these lepers that they have to keep at a distance.  I'm going to hire someone who's actually cooler than myself, then when I get in the car, I'll ask him where we're going. 

I won't look down on him, if anything, he'll feel sorry for me, but this is a good thing, because it means he'll tell me about parties and try to get me laid.  But I draw the line at being his designated driver.

This is probably one of my more pathetic fantasies.

Might Want To Rethink That One

Socrates said, "the unexamined life is not worth living."

Its not clear how he came to that conclusion, but since he'd based his whole life around it, you'd hope it wasn't an unexamined leap of faith.  Maybe he came to it empirically, but how does one determine the value of an unexamined life without first examining it? 

Maybe he went up to a bunch of random strangers, and asked them to take a long hard look at themselves.  Maybe they all said "Damn, I was pretty happy with my life before, but now that you ask, I realize its shit.  Thanks a lot asshole, now excuse me while I go kill myself."

The point is, only the ignoramus can say whether the unexamined life is worth living, but if you ask him to think about it, he won't be ignorant anymore.  Maybe if Socrates had taken a second look at his worldview, he might have changed it to say "the unexamined life is not worth living, once examined". 

Near the end, he was convicted by the state of Athens for corrupting the youth and committing acts of impiety; these charges actually do refer to his habit of forcing people to examine their lives.  Upon sentencing, he was given the opportunity to accept as punishment either exile from Athens or a vow of silence, instead he chose neither, and said "the unexamined life is not worth living".

He tried to base his whole life around that philosophy, never questioning it to the bitter end; but if he'd really been true to it, maybe he would have taken a look at himself and said, "upon further examination, I'm gonna change my stance on that one", and let the ignorant masses enjoy their bliss.  Instead he accepted a sentence of death by poison hemlock. 

He drank the hemlock out of a goblet, and it slowly made his whole body numb until he passed out then died.  Couldn't they have just gotten him drunk instead?  That might have brought him around to the whole pro-oblivion, pro-numbness worldview, it always works for me; then again, I might really be fucking myself with that.

Cereal Filler

Ok, I think I finally came up with a way to monetize this blog:

Pour a little milk into the toe area, then fill the rest of the leg with Chocolate Chex.  Eat from the toe, and the cereal slides down to replenish itself.  Cereal Filler-brand Leg-Shaped Cereal Bowl.  No more soggy cereal.  No more wasted milk.

Gross Insensitivity

I've always been sensitive towards the feelings of the overweight, it just seems cruel and unimaginative to pick on them for having a health problem.

Like, sometimes someone will do something that just really makes me mad, and I feel really bad for the overweight person after yelling, "learn how to drive you fat fuck!"

 Jesus Christ, come on, man.

Dissenting Opinion

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, there's an article about Justice John Paul Stevens, in it they touch on his dissenting support of the banning of flag-burning.  Stevens is a 90-year-old-dude, who was appointed by a Republican but is now considered a liberal, and he seems to have softened his stance on the issue, as evidenced by this amusing observation:

“The funny thing about that case is, the only consequence of it—nobody burns flags anymore,” Stevens told me. “It was an important symbolic form of protest at the time. But nobody does it anymore. As long as it’s legal, it’s not a big deal. You just don’t have flag burning.”

Supposedly Stevens is also known for prefacing his statements by saying "this is probably obvious..."  That phrase applies to the following, but I'm going to go through the motions anyway; as with many opinions, I'm not saying anything new, its more like I'm casting a vote - a civic act that's pointless in practical terms, but meaningful as ritual.  Its like pissing on a George Bush urinal cake, or shooting a hundred bullets into cartoon-Hitler's face, its an act of catharsis through the voicing of a moral stance, something that might seem redundant and gratuitous, but is in many ways totally necessary:

Teddy Fuckin' Ballgame!

The ban on flag burning turned the flag into a symbol of an authoritarian government, one that places itself and it's symbols above the ideals they were meant to represent, thereby losing both its principles and its ability to be self-critical.  By banning free speech to protect a symbol of free speech, they transformed that symbol into an emblem of idiotic tyranny, lacking in the self-awareness to recognize its own hypocrisy.  I mean, really, what did they expect people to do?

This reminds me of when I was a kid, and I would make fun of my dad, and he'd respond by yelling:

"Do NOT...mock me!"

I mean, come on dad, what do you expect me to do?

Drugs: They Make You Feel More Attractive

Not sure what this is about, but they might be going after recreational drug users.

Financial Innovation

If you're like most creative types, you've probably at one point or another, set your mind to the following task: "I've got to find some way to get paid for being broke."

Unemployment can have its benefits, but those only pay out for a couple of months, then you have to look for a more reliable gig; this is about when you come to a sad realization, that being a literal "jerk-off" is not a viable career:  most potheads don't have viable sperm.  You're left with only one real option: becoming an artist.

As an artist, you won't make any actual money, but due to "creative accounting", you'll be able to write-off your do-nothing lifestyle as an investment in your new career.  In order to become an artist, you must first live like an artist; because you already have no job, and no money, by making this career choice, you can magically make assets out of your abundant liabilities.

• By not paying your bills, you've paid your dues.
• By getting drunk with your last $20, you've developed your resume.
• By going deep into debt, you've gained valuable credibility. 
• By failing to groom yourself, you've dressed for success.
• By falling victim to your own ineptitude, you've become a heroic figure, a struggling artist who suffers for his work.

Getting a new job is a difficult task, but as an artist, instead of looking for work, you're finding your voice; this is known as a "process", meaning each failure can be counted as a step on the meandering path to success. That's what's beautiful about the path to success, there's no such thing as a step in the wrong direction, at the same time, its important to remember this:  no one ever got a book deal by going around Mount Everest.

If you want to write a decent memoir, or author a compelling self-mythology, its best to ram into life's obstacles head-on, then somehow, against all odds, climb up and over that insurmountable but otherwise avoidable barrier to success.  This means that, along with your general listlessness and ineptitude, you should choose to make some really big mistakes, perhaps a drug addiction.  Every artist needs an unneeded necessity or two; in this line of work, there's nothing more productive than being utterly frivolous. 

To put it bluntly:  if you're going to be lazy, if you're going to be jobless and irresponsible, do the prudent thing and make it a career decision.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my work.

 "Get paid to do what you love, and your work won't feel like a job." - High School Guidance Counselor

Fakin' It

If you're a porn actress, its different from being a normal actress: it means the acting was good, when the viewers say "I didn't make it all the way through that one."

In some ways though, its similar: it means the acting was good, when the viewers say "I went through a whole box of kleenex on that one."

 Actual Movie

Dig Deep

Remember when you were a kid, and you'd dream of finding dinosaur bones, and you'd dig for them in the sandbox?

What the hell were you thinking, that there would be bones in there just because its the easiest, most convenient place to dig?

That's exactly why there won't be any bones, because every kid in the neighborhood had already taken the 15 minutes to dig down to clay-level.  If any dinosaurs died in that sandbox, they would have been found a long time ago.

Maybe you have to go under the clay to find this stuff.

Corporate Citizenship

In January, the Supreme Court decided to allow unlimited campaign spending by corporations.  This was viewed as a radical shift:  previously, corporate citizenship referred to a company's responsibility to contribute to society; it now refers to their right to contribute to society's downfall.

There used to be the belief that the government was created for the good of its people, not for its corporations; if the people who owned those corporations wanted to advance their companies interests, perhaps by making political donations, they were free to do so as private citizens, on their own dollar.  That freedom more than satisfied the requirements of the First Amendment - but it fell far short of satisfying the need for power of these greedy corporations.  That's because, despite what conservatives might like to admit, sometimes the only way for a group to advance its goals is by forcing each individual to cooperate... 

Before the new law, in theory, a corporation could have just paid out a dividend to its shareholders, then requested that each individual donate those funds to Palin 2012, or some other candidate that would improve their bottom line.  In practice, that would never work, because most of the individual shareholders would refuse to volunteer their money, either because they don't like Palin, or more likely, because they'd rather spend those dollars on themselves than invest in the collective good.

Under the new law, corporations can withhold potential dividends and channel them instead to candidates, essentially forcing their shareholders to contribute money to a cause they might not support.  This is the same thing that government does:  the government withholds part of your income and uses it to build a road, whether or not you support that specific road. 

These conservatives love to rail against big-government and high taxes, about the insidious evil of the "common good", and how it oppresses the individual freedoms of the common man.  Yet they're perfectly trusting of corporations exercising a big-government-like control over the funds and political speech of their shareholders. 

If conservatives really believe that the private sector has their interests at heart (while the government seeks only to exploit them), I can't really force them to change their minds - every individual should have a right to decide who they put their trust in.  But I've never heard of a corporation with a mission statement like this, to "form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

There's no way I'm selling out, unless they offer me more money.

The Case of The Missing Black Man

The sports media had one of its fake-outrage displays after Torii Hunter, centerfielder for the Angels, said, "People see dark faces (on the field), and the perception is that they're African-American.  They're not us. They're imposters."

The media milked his impolitic choice of words for one news cycle, then realized they could get another story out of it by actually taking his quote seriously.  What Hunter was referring to is the fact that today, only about 9% of MLB players are African-American, while 28% are foreign-born.  In the context of other sports, this seems outrageously low, because 80% of NBA players and 70% of NFL players are black, and many media outlets are portraying this disparity as some sort of injustice.

But in the context of society as a whole, the numbers are justifiable:  of American-born MLB players 12.5% are black;  in America as a whole, among people aged 20-39, about 13.5%  are black.

 Data from 2000 Census

That's a pretty minor discrepancy, so why is the sports media complaining?  Probably because they're making the racist assumption that blacks are superior at sports, and should be overrepresented in all sports.  I won't impugn that assumption because I sort of share it myself, but lets play pretend and assume they merely want to have a proportional representation, to bring that 12.5% in line with the expected 13.5%.

The thing is, that 13.5% represents both genders, if you narrow it down to just males aged 20-39, only 12.8% are black - this number is lower because so many black men die young. You can see in this chart that for all races, males in their 20s and 30s tend to die off quicker than females, but in blacks, the effect is very pronounced.  In their late teens, black males outnumber black females roughly 50.5-49.5, but by their late 30s, so many men have died that its 47.0-53.0.

Data from 2000 Census

According to the following chart, black men have about a 3.1% chance of dying between the age of 15 and 29, whereas white men have about a 1.6% chance.

From the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Much of this discrepancy is attributable to homicide, according to the Heritage Foundation, during the 1990s, "the probability of being murdered by age 45 is 2.21 percent nationally for all U.S. black males and 0.29 percent for all white males."

Then, when you consider the disproportionate incarceration rates of young black men, the potential pool of black MLB players gets even smaller, with only 12.0% of unincarcerated males aged 20-39 being black, and that only removes those in prison, not jail.

Incarceration statistics for state and federal prisons in 2001, doesn't include jail. - jrank.org

In fact, 12.6% of young black men (age 25-29) are in prison or jail, making them 7.5 times more likely than whites to be incarcerated.

Statistics for prison and jail inmates, mid-2004 - prisonpolicy.org

Of what should be a potential talent pool of about 5,675,000 African-American men, roughly 414,000 have died prematurely as a symptom of being black, about 328,000 are in prison, and roughly another 300,000 are in jail.  These figures more than account for the shortage of blacks in baseball, but that's not a sports story, so instead the media flies into a fake-outrage about the lack of baseball camps for urban youth.   Its a good thing the national past-time is such a great diversion:  imagine how outraged these writers would be if they were covering a real story.

Not Makin' Any Friends

They say that "no man is an island".  Maybe this is because when you fail to actively ingratiate yourself to those around you, you're no longer considered a man, instead they'll call you a loser then actively isolate you (but only if you're unsuccessful).  If you're successful, they'll just call you an asshole behind your back, while smiling to your face.

The definition of aloof is "removed or distant either physically or emotionally", but the word is often used as a synonym for arrogant, which is an odd presumption.  Why is asocial assumed to be antisocial, shouldn't there be room for neutrality?

Just because I don't want to fake-laugh at your non-jokes doesn't mean I think I'm better than you; I know that you know that those jokes are not funny, and if you don't, then maybe you are a moron.  So maybe I am an arrogant asshole, but if so, it's only because you're an idiot.  Now leave me the fuck alone.

True Lies

On the latest WTF, Marc Maron interviews Ron Shock, a salty old dog who claims to have been, at various turns:

• an "All-American boy"
• a "stone-cold criminal"
• a "corporate hotshot"
• a "well-known comic"

 The lawn chair/cigarette combo never helps your credibility.

The way he tells it, when he was a teenager he became involved with the New Orleans Mob.  Later, while in the Army, he learned to work with explosives, and eventually, the mob employed him in a crime ring, using his explosives training to crack safes.  Unfortunately he got caught during the heist of a jewelry store, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison, which he served in solitary confinement.

After getting out of prison, he vowed to go straight, and he went straight to the top, becoming Vice-President of MacMillan Publishing (a Fortune 500 company) before the age of 40.  All of this sounds like a tall tale, but he says one thing that makes me buy it as true:  "I was really good at sales."

Only a liar would make his outrageous claims, and only a dishonest person could make them come true.  As Shock says of his corporate career, "I was just lying, I was just stealing with a pencil."  Eventually, he got sick of it, and once again he vowed to change, "I just couldn't lie for a living anymore, I couldn't...ya, know, if I hated the game, why am I playing in it?"  That's when he decided to become a comic, a professional straight-talker; as Marc Maron puts it, "Comics tell the truth, even when they're lying." 

"Only in America." - Don King, ex-con, con-man, legitimate success story.

Gotta Have Faith

A lot of atheists believe they're intellectually superior to the religious.  They feel that a belief in God, unfounded in fact, based solely on faith, is inherently stupid.  Of course, their active disbelief in god, also unfounded in fact, also based solely on faith, would also be stupid, with the added irrationality of being hypocritical. 

Knowing this, some people identify as agnostics just to avoid the leap, thinking this makes them smarter than both the illogical religious and the hypocritical atheists.  But these people are the dumbest hypocrites of all, because they too base their lives around an article of faith:  a faith in humanity, a belief that a human life is worth something. 

Apparently this guy's source of faith was some sort of beverage.

There's no evidence to suggest that human beings are worth anything, and logical arguments in support of mankind tend to be circular: "The other day, I saw one person help another person with its groceries.  This is proof of the goodness of mankind." 

But if you replace the word "person" with the word "demon", and the word "groceries" with "baby carcass meat", you're left with this:  "The other day, I saw one demon help another demon with its baby carcass meat.  This is proof of the goodness of demonkind."   

A practical argument on behalf of man is that if we didn't have faith in humanity, life wouldn't be worth living.  This is virtually identical to many Christians' feelings toward God.  In fact, when Christians do this with God, they get accused of cherry-picking beliefs to suit their own practical self-interest - of being both illogical and selfish.

An emotional argument on behalf of man is that a faith in humanity is something that just feels true, in your heart, and in your bones.  Again, this is no different than the way Christians feel about God.

A biological argument on behalf of man is that we evolved to hold a faith in humanity - the early humans who didn't were either killed or killed themselves, leaving a gene pool predominated by people who value each other.  This argument is similar to Christians who say they believe in God simply because their parents believed in God.  Inheriting a predisposition to hold a belief doesn't make that belief true. 

Because a belief in humanity and a belief in god are both leaps of faith, you'd think agnostics and atheists would be able to understand the mind-frame of the religious, yet typically they don't, typically they're not smart enough to recognize themselves as condescending, illogical hypocrites.  It would be safest to have a faith that, unless you're an all-knowing god, there's always gonna be someone smarter than you.

With a possible exception if you're Billy Madison:

 

"I am the smartest man alive!"

Fugazi Shirt

Is there anything more ridiculous than a faux-vintage t-shirt, bought from a department store?

Yes, a hipster wearing a real-vintage shirt, calling the faux-vintage guy a poseur.  Man, hipster:  if you walk around wearing someone else's clothes, you shouldn't be calling anyone an imposter.  But the hipster might argue that they're co-opting the clothes ironically; by wearing something that's obviously not theirs, it makes them the opposite of a phony - if you tell the world your goal is to be a fraud, and you are a fraud, that makes you the real deal:  an authentic fake.  This is their only way of rebelling against their suburban, sales-culture parents, who are instead fake authentic; its also the closest they can come to being "real".

If faux-vintage is fake-authentic-fake, and real vintage is authentic-fake, does that make me authentic, or simply fake?  If I were truly above it all, I wouldn't give a shit, so by asking that question, I've admitted I'm a fraud.  Does that make me authentic-fake?  Maybe if I think about this long enough, I'll stop caring, and finally become authentic, but if I don't care, I'll have nothing to gain, so it won't even matter.  Maybe that's the point.

Too old to give a shit.

Sharing Your Thoughts, Hogging The Floor

I tried to listen to an older episode of Comedy and Everything Else, with David Spade as the guest, and I couldn't get through it because he kept monopolizing the conch.  He would talk for 5 minutes at a stretch, uninterrupted and un-encouraged, totally ruining the concept of podcast as conversation; as in normal life, when someone turns dialogue into monologue, your mind automatically tunes out.  My old roommate Bolles clued me in on that, perhaps after one of my 15 minute rants about how much I hate my job.

Spade doing the "Hollywood Minute", remember when he kept it brief?

But you know the tune-out is a real issue when even a stand-up comedian can induce it; these guys are trained professionals at monopolizing microphones, but even for them, it takes a lot of work to justify an uninterrupted speech.  These comics say it takes a year to perfect a 20-minute set, and even then, that set isn't always all that funny;  you can take that same comedian, put them in a conversation on a podcast, and they'll be just as interesting off the cuff, as long as they're trading and interacting with the other people.  On this Spade podcast, I could only pay attention to him immediately after Todd or Jimmy had said something, otherwise he became the adult voices on peanuts, and my mind wandered to thoughts of whether I had to fart or actually shit.

Why do newscasts have two anchors - at any given time, only one person can talk, so why not pool those salaries and hire a single chick who's more fuckable?  The TV wizards have probably figured out that a viewer's mind snaps back to attention as soon as one voice shifts to another; the change in speaker is like a change in tone, without it, even the most engaging voices become a monotonous drone.  If the media has figured this out, how come other communicators haven't done the same?

Of all the unappealing things about religion - the ban on casual sex, the negative attitude towards drugs, being totally full of shit - the one that might turn people off the most is having to go to church; you can tell us not to fuck, you can tell us not to do drugs, but just don't do it in a 20 minute speech.  The only churches that are respectable as entertainment are Black Churches, and their sermons incorporate elements of conversation; with applause breaks for amens and hossanahs, the audience can renew each others attention by interacting with the orator.

Jeremiah Wright gets plenty of amens, still, even he couldn't get the country to listen to the whole "God Damn America" speech, if they had, there wouldn't have been a controversy.

Like anyone else, during my school years, I must've listened to tens of thousands of hours of lectures, retaining about 1% of what was said; most of the learning was done on the homework assignments, where there was an interaction between myself and the material.  When I listen to Fresh Air, the NPR interview show, I retain way more information, even though there's no incentive, such as the threat of a looming test - it just happens naturally because of the conversational nature of the interaction.  The attention-span hourglass gets reset each time the other person starts talking.

The educational establishment should switch modes from monologue to dialogue. They try to do this in college with discussion sections, but those offer only one lesson: that there is such a thing as a stupid question.  The dialogue needs to be between two smart people, perhaps one knowledgeable and the other playing the part of an intelligent ignoramus.

The Greek philosophers were pretty smart guys, they used to create texts called Socratic Dialogues, which were imaginary conversations between two philosophers; for example in The Republic, Socrates and his colleagues discuss how to set up an ideal society that avoids the pitfalls of human weakness.  I haven't checked that one out, I'm too engrossed in listening to Bill Simmons and Adam Carolla, discussing how to set up your home office so you don't get caught masturbating.  Still, if I were to learn about Plato, I would want it to be in the format of two jerk-offs, trading riffs on the nature of society.

The modern thinker, also wondering if its a fart or a shit.

I should probably wrap this thing up, I don't want to drone on interminably, but with the written word, its not as bad because the reader can easily backtrack, catching up when they realize they've spaced out.  With that in mind, I'll end with an object lesson for people like David Spade: there comes a point where you've rambled on for so long, that there's only one thing that would get people's attention - if you actually stopped talking.

Heroes Welcome

If a man's caught in public, having sex with himself, he's a disgrace.
If a man's caught in public, having sex with a woman, he's a hero.

If a woman's caught in public, having sex with a man, she's a disgrace.
If a woman's caught in public, having sex with herself, that'd be a first, like Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow.

Heroes Welcome.

Winning Scheme

On this week's Hang Up And Listen, the fellas discuss the NBA's age minimum, and raise the question of whether the policy corrupts college teams, tempting them to lure elite "one-and-done" recruits, either with illegal bribes or compromised academics. Some might point out that the NCAA has harsh penalties to discourage this type of corruption, but those penalties haven't prevented scandals with some of the highest profile one-year recruits of recent history. 

The way the penalties are set up, the system falls victim to the classic David Simon scenario, in which the incentives of those in power are at odds with the institutions they serve.  In this case, the men in power are the basketball coaches, and the institutions are the basketball programs;  the coaches can get a big boost to their careers by cheating, meanwhile, the penalties fall mostly on the programs, and when the axe comes down, the coaches are quick to skip town, just like their mercenary recruits.

Tim Floyd and OJ Mayo, Floyd pictured imitating a turtle.

On the podcast, Josh Levin mentions former USC coach Tim Floyd, who'd landed future number-three draft pick OJ Mayo on behalf of the Trojans.  Shortly after Mayo's only year on the team, Floyd was accused of having helped to bribe him to come to USC; Floyd responded by quitting his job, citing a loss of "enthousiasm".  As a result of the corruption, the Trojans vacated all of their victories from Mayo's season, withdrew their postseason eligibility for the following year, and forfeited a scholarship for each of the next two seasons.  Floyd quickly moved on to take an assistant coaching job with the New Orleans Hornets.

John Calipari and Derrick Rose; Rose would later disavow affiliation with the Gangster Disciples, calling into question his devotion to the team concept.

While at Memphis, John Calipari landed future number-one draft pick Derrick Rose, who helped propel them to a 38-win season and a Final Four appearance.  Later it was revealed that Rose had cheated on his SATs, and Memphis had to forfeit its wins from that season, but by that time, Calipari had already moved on, using his success at Memphis as a springboard to an 8-year, $31.65 million contract to coach the prestigious Kentucky Wildcats.  Calipari may not have known that Rose had cheated, but this SI article points to a pattern in Calipari's behavior, suggesting that his whole career strategy is based around compromising a program's integrity, then fleeing the scene before its time to face the consequences.

Kelvin Sampson and Eric Gordon, Sampson pictured as guy smiling like he's getting away with something.

While at Indiana, Kelvin Sampson pulled in Eric Gordon, a future number-seven pick, who'd previously committed to Illinois.  This recruitment of a committed player was widely considered to be unethical, one of his ploys was hiring a family friend of Gordon as an assistant coach, but Sampson wasn't punished for the Gordon affair.  Instead he got caught making illegal phone calls to other recruits; this was shocking (but perhaps unsurprising) because he'd been caught committing the exact same crime while coaching at Oklahoma just a few years prior.  Sampson's actions at Oklahoma had landed them under a 3-year NCAA investigation, and as atonement they'd offered up a voluntary sacrifice, but Sampson skipped town midway through the penance:

"Sampson did escape some punishment with his move to Indiana after 12 seasons with the Sooners.  Oklahoma's self-imposed sanctions included cutting two scholarships last season and one next -- but those penalties will not transfer to Indiana."  - ESPN.com

After getting caught at Indiana, Sampson ended up resigning in the middle of the season, but only after receiving a $750,000 buyout from the Hoosiers, and he left the team in disarray: they'd started the season 22-4, but lost four of their last seven after he stepped down.  Ultimately the NCAA imposed 3 years of probation on the Hoosiers, and banned Sampson from coaching in the NCAA for five years; this seems like a victory for justice until you realize that within one month of resigning, he got a job consulting for the San Antonio Spurs, and two months after that he was hired as an assistant coach for the Milwaukee Bucks.

In the aftermath at Indiana, people wondered why they hired a guy who'd had a record of deliberate corruption.  Indiana trustee Phillip Eskew Jr said, "In retrospect, I think there should have been greater considerations.  But you talk to the man and he says, 'I'm not going to do that,' and I believe in giving guys second chances."

This David Simon scenario is not confined to college basketball and Baltimore; its the same type of institutional perversity that led to the Wall Street collapse of 2008.  Corporate CEOs had a financial incentive to take huge risks on bogus securities, but the penalties for failure fell mostly on the banks they served, so the CEOs made off with hundreds of million dollars before causing a disaster for the shareholders.  Somehow, their reputations are intact while the banks are in ruin, and they've not only escaped punishment, they continue to find employment and receive huge paydays.

Society loves to give second chances to these coaches and CEOs; they get the benefit of the doubt despite being proven guilty time and time again.  Its almost as though they're granted magical auras of protection by virtue of wearing power suits.  If you look at suits in general, they seem to be worn specifically for the purpose of warding off danger:  you have the bomb suit, the hazmat suit, and the suit of armor.

Suit! Suit! Suit!

 

The major exception is the prison jumpsuit: while awaiting trial and during pretrial hearings, a prisoner is forced to wear the telltale orange suit, so that everyone views the inmate as dangerous.  But during the trial, the prisoner is presumed innocent, meaning the court must allow him to dress like a CEO or basketball coach, the members of society who are always given the benefit of the doubt.  Only the dumbest of the dumb would show up to court wearing a basketball jersey, if you have half a brain, you don the magical power suit of protection.

The NBA and NCAA should form an agreement where the NBA respects any coaching bans handed down by the NCAA.  They should also agree that any coach who lands a program on probation should be held under suspicion during that duration, and wherever he may be coaching, he should be forced to wear a prison jumpsuit so we all know to keep an eye on him.

 Orange Shirt:  when prison guards go hunting, do they get the impulse to shoot other hunters?

Socially Acceptable Behavior

There's something perverse about the way sadomasochism has been accepted by society; within a sexual context, you can tie someone up, whip the hell out of them, and still be considered psychologically healthy, but only because you're doing it to get your rocks off.

 Yarrrgh.

Meanwhile, if you do the same thing in day-to-day life, if you throw someone to the ground, beat the shit out of them, and say its totally nonsexual and platonic, people will look at it suspiciously, like "there's gotta be something going on between those two..."

Boyish Good Looks

Not Brokeback Mountain, its Janine Turner and Sly Stallone, in Cliffhanger (1993).

They say fashion is cyclical, but this look might never come back in, since so many closeted gays have now come out.

Moved to Inaction

If you're a truly lazy man, the only thing that'll get you out of bed is the lure of something even less productive than just laying there.  For that reason, the lazy man's alarm clock is either morning wood and the urge to masturbate, or marijuana withdrawal and the urge to wake and bake; in extreme cases, you might need two alarm clocks, in other words, the "toke and stroke".

You could argue that the ultimate lazy man would never have to leave his bed, because the night before, he'd set it up so he had both weed and pornography within arms reach; that would require both foresight and initiative, which disqualify you from the laziness discussion.  It's like saying "if you were truly lazy, you'd pick up some extra shifts and start squirreling away for an early retirement".  This type of thinking is absurd on its face, and it reeks of inauthenticity.

 The mythical recliner/toilet/(minifridge not pictured), this is not the mindframe of a true lazy man, this is a poseur's attempt, like someone's dad trying to be cool by rapping.

Pet Peeves

I'm gonna soften my stance towards people who dress their dogs in sweaters: at least they're being honest with themselves.  As we all know, unless you're a shepherd or a member of a K-9 unit, the only reason to own a dog is because you need a surrogate for human interaction.  If you let your dog live in your house and sleep in your bed, if you give it hugs and buy it presents, you might as well put it in a sweater, because if you do all those things but pretend you're above clothing it, you're just dressing up the relationship as something its not.

 How adorable, he's too inbred to survive on his own...

Some people will say, "I don't treat my dog like a human, I treat my dog like a dog".  Well maybe you have an otherwise un-sublimated need to treat humans like shit.

The Best Friend Experience

Proper Perspective

In the poem If, Rudyard Kipling lays out the rules to becoming a man, one of which is the following:

"If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same."

Every time I succeed, I feel like a fraud; every time I fail, it seems like I must have somehow been cheated.  I guess that means I've passed the test; wow, this is such a humbling experience.

In related news, Tragedy equals Comedy, except happening to you.

A Young Woman's Journey

In the UW Alumni magazine, famous Oprah Book Club Winner Jackie Mitchard describes A Gate at the Stairs, the latest novel by UW Prof. Lorrie Moore:

"It tells the story of one year in the life of twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjien, a potato farmer's daughter attending college in a fictional Madison immediately post-9/11, who is a nanny for the mixed-race toddler adopted by her beleaguered and eccentric employer, Sarah Brink.  Besides being a coming-of-age story, the book is heartbreaking, rum, tragic, witty, and trenchant social commentary:  the protagonist loses her virginity to a feckless lad who may or may not be a jihadist and then loses her brother to the war in Afghanistan."

Damn, I didn't realize you could lose at Mad Libs.

 

The stairs represent the process of reading this book; the landscape, the lives of those reading it.  Sadly, in the end, there is no gate.

Feeling Dirrrty, Coming Clean

There's an article in Slate, under the feminist Double X imprint, about "the new backlash against casual sex"; its about a supposed trend of modern women, who are supposed to feel sexually liberated, being overcome by shame and guilt after hooking up.  Writer Jessica Grose has a theory that there's some sort of sine-curve "shame cycle", with care-free promiscuity climaxing in the "early aughts" (with Sex and The City and Xtina Aguilera's video for Dirrrty), then depressing into a present-day trough of guilt and remorse (brought on by "conservative cultural messages about the importance of marriage").

The fluffer for this video shoot was Pink.

Here's a counter-theory:  despite what you may have seen on Sex and The City, maybe women have always felt guilty after casual sex, and maybe they were evolved to do so.  During our evolutionary past, it would have been maladaptive for a woman to sleep around; if she got pregnant by some lunk-head who'd turn around and skip town, she and the baby would starve to death.  Nowadays we have birth-control and child-support, but the vestigial feeling of shame persists; its not logical for a woman to feel guilty, but it is natural. 

Some other examples of irrational, vestigial, evolutionary emotions might be:

• a fear of heights, even when you know you can't fall.
• a fear of the dark, even though you know there aren't predators.
• a fear of snakes, even though you know they aren't cocks.

One way to overcome these vestigial emotions is exposure therapy, in which you subject yourself to progressively stronger versions of the stimuli, eventually habituating yourself and eliminating the reaction.  I'm willing to offer myself up for the sake of womankind.

Girl, a "loose woman" is one who's been freed from the shackles of evolutionary history.

Love, True Love

The internet says that "love is a drug"; if that's the case, is a relationship started by eHarmony just a placebo?  In this Wired article, they say that "a patient's hope of getting better and (the) expectation of expert care—the primary placebo triggers in the brain—are particularly acute in societies where volunteers are clamoring to gain access to the most basic forms of medicine."

In other words, to create the greatest placebo effect, you'd want a group of patients who are both desperate for help and trusting of the providers.  eHarmony's clientele is a self-selected group that has entrusted their love lives to a pay website; I don't even trust my masturbation to a pay website - I am not that desperate or gullible.

Would a typical eHarmony couple have fallen in love if they'd met in another context?  If the same couple had met at some shitty dive bar, no matter how well they got to know each other, they might each always be thinking "I need to break up with this trash". 

Ultimately it shouldn't matter where they met, as long as their psychosomatic delusions make them feel better.  But whether or not the love is real, can we at least agree that guys who sign up for eHarmony are just a bunch of dildos?

 

What if you married this chick after a few eDates, then realized the only thing making your dick hard was her boots.