| Truism time. |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|09:42 am] |
It's not the "gotcha media" when they ask you questions that a teenager should know.
You can't blame your campaign handlers when you were caught totally unprepared.
You're not a renegade if you only took the name because maverick wasn't available.
Neither a renegade or a maverick uses a more extreme version of the exact same policies as that unelected guy.
If every single stop of one air headed fascist's book tour is covered, it's not a "liberal media."
The empress has no clothes. |
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| The wreckage of the free market system. |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|07:19 pm] |
Many times was the promise made, the delusion peddled, that a market segment could grow without limit.
A house, nearly finished, now lies rotting, its materials and hours of labor wasted.
Unlimited growth, unlimited profit, unlimited consumption. Citizens become consumers. The butcher no longer sells meat, he sells products. An architect doesn't design houses, but products.
 I have seen entire neighborhood developments unfinished and overgrown. The roads are an inch thick and crumbling, recorded to no map. House after house lies incomplete or in ruined neglect.This is the gloaming. |
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| FOX News and the other long-expected hypocrisy. |
[Oct. 28th, 2009|03:33 pm] |
Look at this great poll from FOX News:
Would you support health care reform legislation if it did not contain the government-run insurance option?
*Absolutely. Congress should stick to legislating laws and regulations, and let the free-market system work.
*Probably. I’m still unsure whether reforms will cut my medical bills, but something has to be done.
*No. The current health care system works fine. Leave it alone and let the free-market system work.
*Undecided.
So, the options are, "Free market!," "the democrat party shouldn't be allowed to legislate!." "free market!," and "I dunno!"
Meanwhile, Republicans are considering a fillibuster if a public option is in the healthcare bill. It's been less than five years since a Republican majority was decrying "obstructionist Democrats."
I notice that the website http://www.upordownvote.com is gone. So much for, "bills should be given an up-or-down vote!" |
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| Ghostsong |
[Oct. 26th, 2009|09:34 pm] |
When I come back to life I'll find you. Push my thumbs into your eyes and blind you.
Daniel Knox |
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| A missile defense system would be used to invalidate mutually assured destruction. |
[Oct. 22nd, 2009|01:40 pm] |
I've been saying this for ages, never realizing that Noam Chomsky feels the same way:
If the United States were to build such a system and it worked well, it could decide who wins a small scale nuclear exchange. Examples include Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan. In the case of Israel and Iran, Iran doesn't have any nuclear weapons, but the US would need only to detonate an interceptor missile close to the border as a pretense for a "justified" nuclear strike by Israel. |
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| An error in my perception. |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|12:59 pm] |
I evaluate my actions and way of thinking on a regular basis, but apparently not enough. I recall one example from middle school. One of the future honor students was widely looked-up to and admired, and I did too. I believed it, only later finding MySpace pictures of her prancing around in a bikini. I thought she was so smart, superior even, but that was incorrect.
I have been wrong in my evaluations of many people, overestimating in nearly every case. I have been told a few times that I seem like a pessimist. While I respect the words, I never believed it, and this is another sign that I'm actually made vulnerable by optimism. |
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| Howard Beale monologues. |
[Oct. 10th, 2009|01:40 pm] |
"We deal in illusions, man, none of it is true! ... You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal!"
I rant about how people are slaves to fashion and insincerity, befuddled by and endless maze of petty lies built up like immense plaques over years and years-- and I'm the one who's lost!
Go to 5:27 to see this part:
"Well, the time has come to say, "Is 'de-humanization' such a bad word?" Because good or bad, that's what is so.
The whole world is becoming humanoid -- creatures that look human, but aren't. The whole world, not just us. We're just the most advanced country, so we're getting there first.
The whole world's people are becoming mass-produced, programmed, numbered, insensate things....
What I encountered in Vegas was the final form of this. A shambling, half-aware vessel of misery, whose every flaw is badly camoflagued by overpriced clothes, thick makeup, and a completely fictional autobiography. Not fat, but curvy. Not dishonest, but independent. Not grotesquely gaudy, but fabulous.
A complete lie, from body to words to accoutrement-- perfect: her money frivolously feeding factories whose real product isn't iPhones or gold chains or starbucks but more humanoids.
Humanoid is a more appropriate term than animal, as it must be explained that animal is used not in the zoological sense. Oncoid means "like a tumor," humanoid means "like a human." Pseudo means "false," so many pseudohuman is even more appropriate. |
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| Dennis Kucinich on Iraq |
[Oct. 10th, 2009|12:43 pm] |
Dennis Kucinich reminds us that the lies about Iraq were well-known prior to the invasion with his Analysis of Joint Resolution on Iraq.
UN inspection teams identified and destroyed nearly all such weapons. A lead inspector, Scott Ritter, said that he believes that nearly all other weapons not found were destroyed in the Gulf War. Furthermore, according to a published report in the Washington Post, the Central Intelligence Agency has no up to date accurate report on Iraq's WMD capabilities.
"If only we knew that Iraq didn't have WMD," says the so-called liberal media. If the media is liberal, why do they continue to lie about Bush's invasion, and liquids on a plane?
There is no proof that Iraq represents an imminent or immediate threat to the United States. A "continuing" threat does not constitute a sufficient cause for war. The Administration has refused to provide the Congress with credible intelligence that proves that Iraq is a serious threat to the United States and is continuing to possess and develop chemical and biological and nuclear weapons. Furthermore there is no credible intelligence connecting Iraq to Al Qaida and 9/11.
Why aren't the people responsible for the invasion and those who voted for it swinging by their necks? |
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| Network (1976) |
[Oct. 4th, 2009|01:51 pm] |
"I'm going to kill myself."
"Oh, shit Howard."
"Gonna blow my brains out, right on the air. Right in the middle of the 7 O'Clock News."
"You'll get a hell of a rating, I can tell you that."
Part 1 can be watched here |
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| Surrogates. |
[Oct. 4th, 2009|11:15 am] |
There is very little to say about this film. The direction is worthy of a Saturday evening monster movie, but only for the first half hour of the film. I think an intern was put in charge of the introductory scenes while the rest of the cast and crew ingested mounds of cocaine or took turns piledriving teenagers.
The very first scene is an over-done, over-stylized montage of the events leading to the present day/seven years in the future, complete with music hits and lensflares for everything down to the timeline text. It's the future and "90% of the world population uses surrogates." No justification is given for this, other than the possibility to have an idealized artificial body and the illusion of safety. There is no mention of advancement in cybertronics or dramatic decreases in cost.
The Surrogates are oily skinned, cheesy perfection. The contrast between the Surrogates and their controllers is over-done: every one of them looks like total shit. They are scarred, unshaven, and have liver spots for some reason. People eat and sleep in their apartments, and apparently nothing else.
Very few of the ramifications of Surrogacy are presented. There is, of course, a marginalized "Human Liberation" movement that opposes Surrogacy; they live in a Mad Max dump and preach about nothing interesting.
The few issues or pitfalls of surrogacy that the movie did address were interesting. The sights and sounds of a beauty clinic are power drills and the whine of motors. For the desperate in need of a new Surrogate, there are drugstore outlet shops that sell crude models with poor sensory perception, "It feels numb."
Best of all, when Bruce Willis's character steps out onto the streets for, "I don't know, maybe two years," he is nearly overcome by anxiety. The little dangers of everyday life seem overwhelming to him, from colliding with other pedestrians to feeling the swoosh of a car drive passed him.
If you're looking for hard science fiction this movie is too mainstream and the Ghost in the Shell series is a better alternative. There is one scene where Willis's detective character reaches down to seemingly jack into another surrogate, but rather than pulling a wire from a dummy barrier he instead opens a flap in the back of the skull and pulls out a memory card.
Edit: Surrogates is at its core a metaphore for the Internet. Through the technology of remote-controlled robots, rather than networked computers, people acquire what they need without leaving the home. The plot rejects this lifestyle as a painful false reality, yet doesn't provide any alternative to it. |
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| Justice. |
[Sep. 12th, 2009|05:12 pm] |
A dear friend of mine was sentenced to a $280.00 fine and two days of community service.
Her crime was being assaulted by two officers in the dark. They made no attempt to charge her with any crime. |
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