Friday, May 9, 2008

Tradition and progress

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If, as part of a fraternity in college, you got drunk silly and participated in, say, the TP’ing or egging of someone’s house, or smashing mailboxes, or some other immature act, people would likely pass it off as a stupid youthful indiscretion. While it won’t be the best thing on your record, it wouldn’t look outright ludicrous either. If, however, you did the same thing when you were 50 years old, you would look pretty ridiculous and it would be safe to say that something was not quite alright in your head.

The same act is viewed differently depending on when it was committed. Things that are excused in infancy or adolescence are not accorded the same indulgence in adulthood. And correctly so, as one is expected to mature with the passage of time and one is expected to exercise better judgment with maturity.

The same should be true of the human race and the human experience as a collective, but this is, sadly, often not the case.


Last Saturday at the Kentucky Derby, a filly named Eight Belles made a strong charge, finished second, unfortunately snapped both her ankles immediately after, and had to be killed right there on the track (Does “put down” or “put to sleep” or “euthanized” make you feel better? Then by all means use those terms; but the fact is, they had to kill the horse to put it out of the misery they had put it in). Expectedly, this raised a bunch of discussion and debate, much of it over the public airwaves. Many people criticized horse-racing as barbaric. And many other people defended it as a ‘noble sport’, ‘grand tradition’ etc, and with the “They love these horses and treat them like royalty” argument----all I’ll say about this latter argument is that the folks at the FLDS church loved their children too, but nevertheless adhered to the practice of having them ‘married’ and raped as soon as they hit the teen years. People routinely exploit the ones they love, often in the name of tradition; in the immortal words of Tina Turner, “What’s love got to do with it?”

So anyway, whenever someone mentions ‘tradition’ my bullshit-meter starts working overtime because ‘tradition’ has been, far too many times over our history, a prime excuse to exploit and discriminate against women, colored people, poor people, disabled people and, really, all kinds of life forms. I know there are some traditions that are good but, for the most part, when I hear “Hey, we’ve been doing it this way for X-hundred years!!” my reflexive reaction is “That’s reason alone to stop it or change it”.

We live in great times. The variety in entertainment/recreation options is incredible and the access to them is easy. We now have video/simulation games that can get your mind racing and heart beating faster than many actual physical activities. Technology has made the world small enough that it is easier than ever to network with people and set up groups/clubs etc for all kinds of regular activity--- outdoor, indoor, you name it. Basically, between the virtual and the real worlds as they are today, one should have no problem finding entertainment and recreation options that don’t involve harming, exploiting or destroying other life-forms. But, as a species, we still love to hang on to our ‘traditions’.

Horse racing is just one example of people unwilling to let technological progress relieve them of their penchant for exploitative or destructive pursuits. Boxing is another good one. A couple of centuries ago (while it was still barbaric) I can see how it became popular---there was little else to do, and beating people--your wife, your children etc--- was not only accepted, it was encouraged!

---Hey, let’s get a couple of guys to get into this ring and beat the living shit out of each other!

---Seriously? Why? What’s the point?

---THAT’S the point, stupid! The object of the whole thing is for them to inflict physical harm upon each other till one of them literally beats the other into submission or senselessness!

---Cool. Although I’m sure that that guy will easily beat that other guy.

---Hey, wait a minute! That gives me another degenerate fucking idea…..how sure are you? How about a little wager?

So anyway, with all that we have at our disposal today, particularly the accumulated knowledge of all this time, it is freaking inexcusable to still have a ‘sport’ where the sole point and the whole point is to inflict physical harm on the participants.

And don’t even get me started on hunting. It is sad that someone should find relaxation and recreation in shooting, say, a bunch of flightless birds raised in captivity expressly for the purpose of being shot by impotent old farts that get off on killing things. It is downright pathetic when old farts who are fabulously wealthy and powerful, and have access to virtually anything this world has to offer, find relaxation in watching living things die by their actions. It is totally fucking tragic when such old farts, who are so fundamentally fucked-up in their heads, are allowed to make policy, start wars and send your children to fight them. Your ‘patriotism’ is their R&R, get it?

But I digress---the point is that even if one is not rich and powerful, today one should be able to find good entertainment options that don’t involve killing other things; one should get past deriving pleasure from seeing something die, especially by one’s hands.

The urges to exploit, harm, dominate or destroy, the primal urges of bloodlust, are all the equivalents of teenage hormonal surges of the human race when viewed within the frame of reference of time; they were never honorable pursuits, but could be rationalized in the context of an earlier, immature time. We now need to get past these infantile and adolescent ‘traditions’, to adopt progressive thinking and to mature into the responsible-adult phase of our species’ existence.

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Thursday, May 8, 2008

The Atomic Nerds Rock!

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I'm working, slowly, on a rant of my own about something or the other---hey, I've been busy for a change---but in the meanwhile, check out 'So where's my $500?', a great piece by the Atomic Nerds. Yet another great site that I don't read often enough....

Anyway the post starts with

"All right, I was going to work up a whole thing explaining how luddites were the bane of all reality, that people who cry “The sky is falling” simply because they can’t follow the math required to show why the sky is staying exactly where it has been for the last few decades are just so precious and wonderful that they should be sterilized and prevented from voting, but fuck it. I’m too tired for that shit, so I’m just going to cut to the chase.

As the folks at Gizmodo helpfuly pointed out: Hey Morons! CERN is not going to destroy the earth, morons!

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up*. I know a lot of folks have heard how size doesn’t matter. I would like to show otherwise"


And it only gets funnier and kicks more ass from there.... enjoy!

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Saturday, May 3, 2008

The music meme cop-out

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I was tagged by Dr.J recently with the song shuffle meme---trouble is, I don't have an iPod/digital music repository, my knowledge of music is spotty at best and my ability to catch lyrics is abyssmal. So I can't participate in any meaningful sense. Thankfully, in response to my plaintive bleating/whining, Dr. J was kind enough to let me off the hook. Nevertheless, since I do love music, I feel a bit guilty about not contributing anything.....so here are some links to songs that popped into my head this Saturday evening.....hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

First off, I love to hear them sing, BluesBoy, Tracy Chapman and Lucille.....esp when Lucille goes solo...




Then, an all-time classic---I was tempted to link the one with Stevie Ray Vaughn (and Salt n Pepa etc), but the recording is poor and too many cooks spoilt the soup in that one eventually, I thought---so let's stick with the original....




But we can't not listen to Stevie Ray either, so here goes a beautiful interlude with Stevie and his singing, crying, guitar....(Bonus: you'll catch some of his 'Superstition' in this clip)........


And for some reason, Satchmo popped into my head....so I'll leave you with the gravelly yet soothing pipes of Louis Armstrong....



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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

There’s a Docket on the Rocket

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I'm in a weird mood, so here's a little something from Dr. Sigmund Schadenfreude(TM)
(With profound apologies to Dr. Seuss....)
__________

Did you ever have a feeling

that the medjock was a RedSock?

or the peejay was a Blue Jay?

or the wankee was a Yankee?

or the nastro was an Astro?

But you wouldn’t be a codger

to think that Roger is a dodger.


It was easy to dominate

the inside of the plate

when he didn’t have to face

the opposition’s pace.

Would he be so ready

an opposing batter to plunk,

if he ever had to ward off

a fastball to his junk?

Could he throw inside heat

and the chin-high splitter

if he couldn’t pass his at-bat

to his designated hitter?


Is the Rocket a guy

who’s really really cool

or is Roger just a big,

colossal, fucking tool?

Is the so-called shoo-in

to the baseball Hall of Fame

just another brick

in the cheaters’ Wall of Shame?


Would his heater still smile,

could his slider still have funk,

if he didn’t once a while

jab a syringe in his trunk?

Would his curve still have verve,

could he throw the frozen rope,

would he still have the nerve

if he didn’t have his dope?


So a Brian takes a fryin’

And an Andy takes a bandy

From a Congress that’s a-pryin’

about tailor-made candy,

But when friend doesn’t bend

and comes clean and just ‘fesses

you know that Heater the Cheater

just multiplied his messes.

The family man, Oh who

would he throw under the bus?

To save his name, to save his fame,

the family man, would he throw us?


Would he, could he, throw his wife?

Could he, should he, for his life?

Would he, did he, throw his mother?

His lawyer, doctor, and any other?

Would he, could he, throw his nanny?

Would he even throw his granny?


But if Roger thought he was in trouble

for sticking some zass in his ass,

Boy is he going to see that trouble bubble double

if the ‘family man’ was bedding a 15-year-old lass.

/


Friday, April 25, 2008

Cult fiction meme

BikeMonkey tagged me with the cult fiction meme; apparently there is this list of 50 'cult fiction' books compiled by The Telegraph, and one has to list the ones one has read in bold and list those that one started but never finished in italics.

Before I get to that, something that caught my eye on the link BikeMonkey provided... I have a screencap.....click to enlarge if ya want...






"Some is classic. Some is catastrophic." WTF? Is our children learning? The Telegraph can has editurz?
Did Dubi-ya write this article? Maybe there is such a thing as cult grammar and I'm just not hip, man.

Anyways, here the list...bold, I have read; italics, I started and never finished.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969) Belongs on an all time classic list, not this one.

The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (1957-60)

A Rebours by JK Huysmans (1884)

Baby and Child Care by Dr Benjamin Spock (1946) Haven't read this one, but cult fiction? WTF? Seems illogical, captain. I am detecting large quantities of bullshit in this sector.

The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (1991)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)

The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (1993)

The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart (1971)

Chariots of the Gods: Was God An Astronaut? by Erich Von Däniken (196 8)

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)

Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824)

Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health by L Ron Hubbard (1950)

The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley (1954)

Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979) Belongs on an all time classic list, not this one.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (196 8)

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973)

The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970)

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter (1979)

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (1982)

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (194 8)

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (1979)

Iron John: a Book About Men by Robert Bly (1990)

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and Russell Munson (1970)

The Magus by John Fowles (1966)

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (1962)

The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (1958)

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)

No Logo by Naomi Klein (2000)

On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson (1971)

The Outsider by Colin Wilson (1956)

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (1923) Belongs on an all time classic list, not this one.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (1914)

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám tr by Edward FitzGerald (1859)

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (1937)

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1922) Belongs on an all time classic list, not this one.

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774) Beautiful Book.

Story of O by Pauline Réage (1954)

The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)

The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda (1968)

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1883-85) I didn’t get it…

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960) How does this even approach being a cult fiction book? Belongs on an all time classic list, not this one.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig(1974)


This list did remind me that I need to get to it and read some books that I have been meaning to for a while.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Hillary's new inevitability---The Guardian

Dylan Loewe of The Guardian nails it---People have been saying all of this in bits here and pieces there, but this is the best summary, in plain words, of the Dem primary situation that I have read so far.....

Some excerpts (emphasis mine):

...........After tonight, despite an apparent 10-point victory in Pennsylvania, Clinton is no longer electable in a general election. According to NBC political director Chuck Todd, Obama cannot lose the pledged delegate count.......Clinton's net gain of the popular vote was also woefully insufficient for her to have a reasonable chance of reclaiming the popular vote lead.....

Without the ability to win any metric that measures the preferences of the electorate, she has left superdelegates with an impossibly narrow choice. There is now no longer a rationale from which the superdelegates could possibly hand her the nomination. She will, no doubt, spend the remainder of her campaign continuing to insist that she is more electable than Obama and that electability, more than democratic preferences, should be the standard on which decisions are made.

But Clinton's electability argument has also been completely upended. There is no argument, no matter how persuasive and cogent, that can be made to the superdelegates about Clinton's electability that won't be obliterated by Clinton winning the nomination unearned....

......Since Franklin Roosevelt, no Democrat has won the White House without the loyal support of the African-American community. But having watched the potential first black president denied his rightful chance to compete by party insiders may sever that loyalty permanently. The activist base of the Democratic party, which has been at the core of the remaking of the political landscape, will likely also be rocked by a Clinton coup. If the superdelegates nominate her, it will rip the base of the party in half and destroy the extraordinary progress that the Obama movement - and the Dean movement before it - has produced. Even if she is more electable before their decision, she will be unelectable after.

Anyway, absent of a >20 point win in PA for Hillary Clinton it has been fairly obvious that Loewe's aforementioned scenario was the only logical one remaining. Her ten-point win from last night will be spun into some serious yarn, but nothing has really changed. The margin, in delegates and in popular votes, was not nearly enough. Now, will someone high up in the party have the guts to sit her down and lay it out as it is? Will anyone be able to get her to see it from the perspective of the good of the party and indeed the country?

Or, well, it won't be the first time the Party has blown a slam-dunk election.

Monday, April 21, 2008

More "breaking" news

Of all the angles in the horrific FLDS church polygamist slave camp... er...ranch story, the Associated Press decided to work up this one, and MSNBC thought it was front-page worthy.
















In other news, the news is still broken.