01jul2008 to This Very Daggone Minute

01dec2008 — One among a multitude of reasons collectivism cannot work

Bueno de Mesquita points to dictatorships to prove his point: "If you liberate people from the constraint of having to satisfy other people in order to advance themselves, people don't do good things."

28nov2008 — From Robert Catlett Cave's The Men In Gray (1911):

The war changed conditions. It established new relations and obligations. It nationalized States that were previously federalized. It changed the union of independent States, held together by mutual consent, into a union of dependent States, held together by national authority. It abolished State sovereignty and changed the federal government, which derived its powers from the States, into the national government, which exercises authority and power over the States. (14)

I am not one of those who, clinging to the old superstition that the will of heaven is revealed in the immediate results of "trial by combat," fancy that right must always be on the side of might, and speak of Appomattox as a judgment of God. I do not forget that a Suvaroff triumphed and a Kosciuszko fell; that a Nero wielded the scepter of empire and a Paul was beheaded; that a Herod was crowned and a Christ was crucified. And, instead of accepting the defeat of the South as a divine verdict against her, I regard it as but another instance of "truth on the scaffold and wrong on the throne." (20)

I cannot here discuss at length the merits of the Southern cause; but, in justice to the memory of those who died in the struggle to maintain it, I wish to protest against the aspersion that they fought to uphold and perpetuate the institution of slavery. Slavery was a heritage handed down to the South from a time when the moral consciousness of mankind regarded it as just and right—a time when even the pious sons of New England were slave owners and deterred by no conscientious scruples from plying the slave trade with proverbial Yankee enterprise. It became a peculiarly Southern institution not because the rights of others were dearer to the Northern than to the Southern heart, but because conditions of soil and climate made negro labor unprofitable in the North and led the Northern slave owner to sell his slaves "down South." (22)

And it behooves us to insist on this, that the memory of those who "wore the gray" may be handed down to posterity freed from the slanderous accusation that they were the enemies of liberty and champions of slavery, who plunged the country into a bloody war that they might the more firmly fasten fetters on human limbs. (24)

27nov2008 — From Joel Salatin's article (.pdf) "Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal":

Everything I want to do is illegal. As if a highly bureaucratic regulatory system was not already in place, 9/11 fueled renewed acceleration to eliminate freedom from the countryside. Every time a letter arrives in the mail from a federal or state agriculture department my heart jumps like I just got sent to the principal's office. And it doesn't stop with agriculture bureaucrats. It includes all sorts of government agencies, from zoning, to taxing, to food inspectors. These agencies are the ultimate extension of a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, frag-mented, linear thought processs.

What about dressing a couple of animals a year in the backyard? How can that be compared to a ConAgra or Tyson facility? In the eyes of the government, the two are one and the same. Every T-bone steak has to be wrapped in a half-million dollar facility so that it can be sold to your neighbor. The fact that I can do it on my own farm more cleanly, more responsibly, more humanely, more efficiently, and in a more environmentally friendly manner doesn't matter to the government agents who walk around with big badges on their jackets and wheelbarrow-sized regulations tucked under their arms.

When I return home to sell these delectable packages, the county zoning ordinance says that this is a manufactured product because it exited the farm and was reimported as a valueadded product, thereby throwing our farm into the Wal-Mart category, another prohibition in agricultural areas. Just so you understand this, remember that an onfarm abattoir was illegal, so I took the animals to a legal abattoir, but now the selling of said products in an on-farm store is illegal.

Because our land is zoned as agricultural, we cannot charge school kids for a tour of the farm because that puts us in the category of "Theme Park."

As soon as our farm offers a single item — just one — that is not produced here, we have become a Wal-Mart. Period. That means a business license, which is basically another layer of taxes on our gross sales. The business license requires a commercial entrance, which on our country road is almost impossible to acquire due to sight-distance requirements and width regulations. Of course, zoning prohibits businesses in our agricultural zones.

Even if we could comply with all of the above requirements, a retail outlet carries with it a host of additional regulations. We must provide designated handicapped parking, government-approved toilet facilities (our four household bathrooms in the two homes located 50 feet away from the retail building do not count) — and it can't be a composting toilet. We must offer x-number of parking spaces. Folks, it just goes on and on, ad nauseum, and all for simply trying to help a neighbor sell her potatoes or extra pumpkins at Thanksgiving. I thought this was the home of the free.

Any power tool — including a cordless screwdriver — cannot be operated by people under the age of 18. We have lots of requests from folks wanting to come as interns, but what do we call them? The government has no category for interns or neighbor young people who just want to learn and help out.
We'd love to employ all the neighboring young people. To our childfawning and worshiping culture, the only appropriate child activity is recreation, sitting in a desk, or watching TV. That's it. That's the extent of what children are good for. Anything else is abusive and risky.

These are all things that would be wonderfully meaningful work experience for the youth of our community, but you can't simply employ people anymore. A host of government regulatory paperwork surrounds every "could you come over and help us . . . ?" By the time an employer complies with every Occupational Safety & Health Administration requirement, posts every government bulletin requirement, withholds taxes, and shoulders Unemployment Compensation burdens and medical and child safety regulations — he or she can't hire anybody legally or profitably.
The government has no pigeonhole for this: "I'm a 17-year-old home-schooler, and I want to learn how to farm. Could I come and have you mentor me for a year?"
What is this relationship? A student? An employee? If I pay a stipend, the government says he's an employee. If I don't pay, the Fair Labor Standards board says it's slavery, which is illegal. Doesn't matter that the young person is here of his own volition and is happy to live in a tee-pee. Housing must be permitted and up to code. Enough already. What happened to the home of the free?

You would think that if I cut the trees, mill the logs into lumber, and build the house on my own farm, I could make it however I wanted to. Think again. It's illegal to build a house less than 900 square feet. Period. Doesn't matter if I'm a hermit or the father of 20. The government agents have decreed, in their egocentric wisdom, that no human can live in anything less than 900 square feet.

Look, if I want to build a yurt of rabbit skins and go to the bathroom in a compost pile, why is it any of the government's business? Bureaucrats bend over backwards to accredit, tax credit, and offer money to people wanting to build pig city-factories or bigger airports. But let a guy go to his woods, cut down some trees, and build himself a home, and a plethora of regulatory tyrants descend on the project to complicate, obfuscate, irritate, frustrate, and virtually terminate. I think it's time to eradicate some of these laws and the piranhas who administer them.*

I don't ask for a dime of government money. I don't ask for government accreditation.

On every side, our paternalistic culture is tightening the noose around those of us who just want to opt out of the system — and it is the freedom to opt out that differentiates tyrannical and free societies. How a culture deals with its misfits reveals its strength. The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers.

Those of us who would aspire to opt out — both consumers and producers — must pray for enough cleverness to circumvent the system until the system cannot sustain itself. Cycles happen. Because things are this way today does not mean they will be this way next year. Hurrah for that.
Often, the greatest escapes occur at the moment the noose becomes tightest. I'm feeling the rope, and it's not very loose. Society seems bound and determined to hang me for everything I want to do. But there's power in truth. And for sure, surprises are in store that may make society shake its collective head and begin to question some seemingly unalterable doctrines. Doctrines like the righteousness of the bureaucrat. The sanctity of government research. The protection of the Food Safety and Inspection Service. The helpfulness of the USDA.
When that day comes, you and I can graciously offer our society honest food, honest ecology, honest stewardship. May the day come quickly.

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal is also available as a full-length book.

*Murder the Government

(Btw, greatest Jewish song ever? Forget "Hava Nagila" (except for Herman the German's version)—it's NOFX's "We're the Brews" (. . . chutzpah-driven / We battle, then we feast / We celebrate / We'll separate / Our milk plates from our meat)

26nov2008 — Google Searches That Inexplicably Yield No Results, Example Set #1

Christa Miller is hereby indicted on the charge of bonercide.

(See also: MakeMeHeal.com)

25nov2008 — The Picket Line presents some documents from the Whiskey Rebellion...

...my favorite deals with shunning—a tactic I would love to see revived on a massive scale against government employees (e.g.): …[W]hereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country, as to accept offices for the collection of the duty: Resolved, therefore, That in future we will consider such persons as unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them; withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby most earnestly recommended to the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them. See also: —a bunch of excerpts from William Hogeland's fine account of the Whiskey Rebellion —a marginally related book with an awesome title: My Thoughts Are Murder to the State —a report from the Third North American Secessionist Convention (via Strike the Root)

25nov2008 — Ow ow wait why'm I wet, again?

A disc jockey on the buttrock station mentioned that his mother used to say, "It's raining and the sun is shining. That means the devil is beating his wife."

Huh. In the southwest we just call it a sunshower. I guess that's what I get for flippping to a buttrock station. And here's what you get from flipping Deuce of Clubs: Knife Juice (by Economy Superstar).

24nov2008 — "A clever move? A foolproof line? A hidden power? For 25 years, the author has wanted to know how his high school classmate, David Spade, became the world's greatest ladies' man"

Lastly, in 2000, the strangest blow: Spade's pal and personal assistant, David "Skippy" Malloy, attacked and beat Spade, stabbing him repeatedly with a stun gun. "It was way more brutal than we let on back then." The walls and floors of his house, Spade said, were spattered with blood.
He saved himself by pulling a loaded shotgun from under his bed.
How did he come to have a loaded shotgun?
"Arizona, dude."

I can't let myself believe David Spade ever lived in Arizona. On his Take the Hit DVD he pronounces "Gila monster" with a hard G. Whaaaaat? Come on, dude. Zonie it up a little, willya?

23nov2008 — Things To Keep In Mind During The Coming Administration's FDR-like "Opportunity"

From Lawrence W. Reed's Great Myths of the Great Depression (available as a free download)

"The terror of the Great Crash has been the failure to explain it," writes economist Alan Reynolds. "People were left with the feeling that massive economic contractions could occur at any moment, without warning, without cause. That fear has been exploited ever since as the major justification for virtually unlimited federal intervention in economic affairs."
Old myths never die; they just keep showing up in economics and political science textbooks. With only an occasional exception, it is there you will find what may be the twentieth century's greatest myth: Capitalism and the free-market economy were responsible for the Great Depression, and only government intervention brought about America's economic recovery.

According to this simplistic perspective, an important pillar of capitalism, the stock market, crashed and dragged America into depression. President Herbert Hoover, an advocate of "hands-off," or laissezfaire, economic policy, refused to use the power of government and conditions worsened as a result. It was up to Hoover's successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to ride in on the white horse of government intervention and steer the nation toward recovery. The apparent lesson to be drawn is that capitalism cannot be trusted; government needs to take an active role in the economy to save us from inevitable decline.
But those who propagate this version of history might just as well top off their remarks by saying, "And Goldilocks found her way out of the forest, Dorothy made it from Oz back to Kansas, and Little Red Riding Hood won the New York State Lottery." The popular account of the Depression as outlined above belongs in a book of fairy tales and not in a serious discussion of economic history.

The calamity that began in 1929 lasted at least three times longer than any of the country's previous depressions because the government compounded its initial errors with a series of additional and harmful interventions.

Though modern myth claims that the free market "self-destructed" in 1929, government policy was the debacle's principal culprit. If this crash had been like previous ones, the hard times would have ended in two or three years at the most, and likely sooner than that. But unprecedented political bungling instead prolonged the misery for over 10 years.

Smoot-Hawley by itself should lay to rest the myth that Hoover was a free market practitioner, but there is even more to the story of his administration's interventionist mistakes.

Commenting decades later on Hoover's administration, Rexford Guy Tugwell, one of the architects of Franklin Roosevelt's policies of the 1930s, explained, "We didn't admit it at the time, but practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started."

Can any serious scholar observe the Hoover administration's massive economic intervention and, with a straight face, pronounce the inevitably deleterious effects as the fault of free markets?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the 1932 presidential election in a landslide, collecting 472 electoral votes to just 59 for the incumbent Herbert Hoover. The platform of the Democratic Party, whose ticket Roosevelt headed, declared, "We believe that a party platform is a covenant with the people to be faithfully kept by the party entrusted with power." It called for a 25-percent reduction in federal spending, a balanced federal budget, a sound gold currency "to be preserved at all hazards," the removal of government from areas that belonged more appropriately to private enterprise, and an end to the "extravagance" of Hoover's farm programs. This is what candidate Roosevelt promised, but it bears no resemblance to what President Roosevelt actually delivered.

Humorist Will Rogers captured the popular feeling toward FDR as he assembled the new administration: "The whole country is with him, just so he does something."

Frustrated and angered that Roosevelt had so quickly and thoroughly abandoned the platform on which he was elected, Director of the Bureau of the Budget Lewis W. Douglas resigned after only one year on the job. At Harvard University in May 1935, Douglas made it plain that America was facing a momentous choice:
"Will we choose to subject ourselves—this great country—to the despotism of bureaucracy, controlling our every act, destroying what equality we have attained, reducing us eventually to the condition of impoverished slaves of the state? Or will we cling to the liberties for which man has struggled for more than a thousand years? It is important to understand the magnitude of the issue before us. ... If we do not elect to have a tyrannical, oppressive bureaucracy controlling our lives, destroying progress, depressing the standard of living ... then should it not be the function of the Federal government under a democracy to limit its activities to those which a democracy may adequately deal, such for example as national defense, maintaining law and order, protecting life and property, preventing dishonesty, and ... guarding the public against ... vested special interests?"

Senator Carter Glass put it well when he warned Roosevelt in early 1933: "It's dishonor, sir. This great government, strong in gold, is breaking its promises to pay gold to widows and orphans to whom it has sold government bonds with a pledge to pay gold coin of the present standard of value. It is breaking its promise to redeem its paper money in gold coin of the present standard of value. It's dishonor, sir."

Though he seized the country's gold, Roosevelt did return booze to America's bars and parlor rooms. On his second Sunday in the White House, he remarked at dinner, "I think this would be a good time for beer." That same night, he drafted a message asking Congress to end Prohibition. The House approved a repeal measure on Tuesday, the Senate passed it on Thursday and before the year was out, enough states had ratified it so that the 21st Amendment became part of the Constitution. One observer, commenting on this remarkable turn of events, noted that of two men walking down the street at the start of 1933—one with a gold coin in his pocket and the other with a bottle of whiskey in his coat—the man with the coin would be an upstanding citizen and the man with the whiskey would be the outlaw. A year later, precisely the reverse was true.

Roosevelt secured passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which levied a new tax on agricultural processors and used the revenue to supervise the wholesale destruction of valuable crops and cattle. Federal agents oversaw the ugly spectacle of perfectly good fields of cotton, wheat, and corn being plowed under (the mules had to be convinced to trample the crops; they had been trained, of course, to walk between the rows). Healthy cattle, sheep, and pigs were slaughtered and buried in mass graves. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace personally gave the order to slaughter six million baby pigs before they grew to full size. The administration also paid farmers for the first time for not working at all. Even if the AAA had helped farmers by curtailing supplies and raising prices, it could have done so only by hurting millions of others who had to pay those prices or make do with less to eat.

Some economists have estimated that the NRA boosted the cost of doing business by an average of 40 percent—not something a depressed economy needed for recovery.

The man Roosevelt picked to direct the NRA effort was General Hugh "Iron Pants" Johnson, a profane, red-faced bully and professed admirer of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

A New Jersey tailor named Jack Magid was arrested and sent to jail for the "crime" of pressing a suit of clothes for 35 cents rather than the NRA-inspired "Tailor's Code" of 40 cents.

Alphabet commissars spent the public's money like it was so much bilge. They were what influential journalist and social critic Albert Jay Nock had in mind when he described the New Deal as "a nationwide, State-managed mobilization of inane buffoonery and aimless commotion."

With good reason, critics often referred to the WPA as "We Piddle Around."

In Tennessee, WPA workers were fired if they refused to donate two percent of their wages to the incumbent governor.

If a thief goes house to house robbing everybody in the neighborhood, then heads off to a nearby shopping mall to spend his ill-gotten loot, it is not assumed that because his spending "stimulated" the stores at the mall he has thereby performed a national service or provided a general economic benefit. Likewise, when the government hires someone to catalog the many ways of cooking spinach, his tax-supported paycheck cannot be counted as a net increase to the economy because the wealth used to pay him was simply diverted, not created. Economists today must still battle this "magical thinking" every time more government spending is proposed—as if money comes not from productive citizens, but rather from the tooth fairy.

Freed from the worst of the New Deal, the economy showed some signs of life. Unemployment dropped to 18 percent in 1935, 14 percent in 1936, and even lower in 1937. But by 1938, it was back up to nearly 20 percent as the economy slumped again. The stock market crashed nearly 50 percent between August 1937 and March 1938. The "economic stimulus" of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal had achieved a real "first": a depression within a depression!

Experience has shown time and again that a rollercoaster monetary policy is enough by itself to produce a roller-coaster economy.

Not until both Roosevelt and the war were gone did investors feel confident enough to "set in motion the postwar investment boom that powered the economy's return to sustained prosperity."

The Truman administration that followed Roosevelt was decidedly less eager to berate and bludgeon private investors and as a result, those investors re-entered the economy and fueled a powerful postwar boom. The Great Depression finally ended, but it should linger in our minds today as one of the most colossal and tragic failures of government and public policy in American history.

It was not the free market which produced 12 years of agony; rather, it was political bungling on a grand scale. Those who can survey the events of the 1920s and 1930s and blame free-market capitalism for the economic calamity have their eyes, ears, and minds firmly closed to the facts. Changing the wrong-headed thinking that constitutes much of today's conventional wisdom about this sordid historical episode is vital to reviving faith in free markets and preserving our liberties.

(See also FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression.

21nov2008 — Mandible-to-Mandible Message Mandate

What Would Tyler Durden Do? reports:   Jennifer Garner today received a permanent restraining order against Steven Burky, a 36-year-old man from Pennsylvania who has been following Garner obsessively since 2002. He's appeared on her film sets, at her home and at personal appearances, and has written her hundreds of letters and messages professing his love and warnings about her safety. The New York Daily News says... Burky, 36, is a born-again Christian who believes he was the victim of satanic abuse rituals as a child in Pennsylvania, according to his blog. "Almost not a day has gone by when I have not written or talked aloud of my love for you," he wrote in one note. "But I don't know if you were ever allowed to hear it." In a February email to a film crew member, he begged that Garner be warned about a vision. "The vision shows that a persecution may take place in broad daylight against Jennifer Garner for her faith in Jesus Christ," it said. "The vision showed Mrs. Garner surrounded by a mob in public. "It also involves the possible emergence of a dark secret in America. The presence of illicit witchcraft going on in this country, and illicit sacrifices."   Tell you what, that Jennifer Garner's got quite a mandible. I'll bet if a person had a website called Jennifer Garner's Mandible and that person, purely as a courtesy, forwarded scary and threatening emails received by the website from some whacked-out and possibly dangerous born-again, Jennifer Garner would be grateful. Or at least not inclined to resort to legal threats. What I'm suggesting here is that Jennifer Garner clue in Jennifer Cooke (Amy Grant's manager). How about it, Ms. Garner? (If you do, I promise never to have a website called Jennifer Garner's Mandible.)

19nov2008 — Fire Joe Morgan: The Exit Interview

(Related, at IMDB)

18nov2008 — Couch and truck have I none, but such as I have give I thee

From Bureaucrash:

as most of you know, ian freeman (bernard) of free talk live was sentenced to 93 days in jail: 3 days for not forcing his tenants to move a couch off his property, and 90 days for "contempt of court". i ask that you first watch one of the many videos posted around this site, youtube, etc..., to see how the 'contempt of court' charge was an obvious abuse of power by the judge, who simply yelled at ian to sit, and decided the 6 seconds (literally) it took ian to sit down was too long. he was then taken to a secret trial, and handed down another 2 contempt charges (30 days each). and all this over a couch.
so, what i am asking of everyone is a simple but (when done in big enough numbers) effective way to get the point across that we will not be bullied over stupid BS.
here is what you do: step 1: make a poster. "free ian", "live free or die", another phrase of your choosing, or grab the "couch enforcer" image from http://jailedactivist.info/activists/ian-bernard/
step 2: find a couch
step 3: find a friend with a truck (or car big enough to move the couch), and drive to the nearest town hall/court house/government building.
step 4: put the couch in front of the building, sit on it holding your poster, and snap a quick picture. then quickly load up and go.
step 5: send me the photos, along with any messages you'd like to send to ian, or to judge burke (the overreacting judge who demands to be worshiped).
thats it! the more pictures we can get in, the more effective it can be.
remember to use good judgment, be safe, and if you are afraid of getting arrested, and feel you might be, then refrain!!!!! we don't want more people in jail over dumb couch laws ;)

Obviously, it was—you guessed it—forced-perspective time!

Unfortunately, the nearest stooge cage at the time was an SSA building, but when you're traveling with Barbie dolls and toy couches, what can you do? So DoC pal Robb (whose offspring enthusiastically supplied the photo subjects) and I did what we could do:

(Oh, yeah, there was a statue of a dead composer, there, too.)

No thanks to our efforts, Mr. Freeman's sentence was suddenly suspended today.

Which is why you're looking at BARBIE PHOTOS on Deuce of Clubs.

17nov2008 — Snippet from a Kim Fowley appearance on the Bingenheimer show in 1979

Fowley: You know, I have a show business family. My mom, Cherie Curry . . . remember her?
Caller: I love Cherie.
Fowley: Oh, I do, too.
Caller: Whatever happened to her?
Fowley: Well, I wasn't a breast-fed baby, so you know how those things are...
Bingenheimer: He wants to know what happened to Cherie.
Fowley: Oh, Cherie's a film star now. She's starring in The Creature from the Black Lagoon. She plays the role of the rowboat.
[Whole studio breaks up]
Fowley: No, I like Cherie. Cherie's far out, man, and she's a good actress and she always has been, she's the Brigitte Bardot of rock. She's in the Jodie Foster movie called Skateboarder Goes a-Go-Go. Here's the next phone call....

More vintage Bingenheimer tape rips are available at http://mocholand2.blogspot.com/, and there's this from the LA Weekly, quoted on Kim Fowley's website:

June 17, 2008 1:28 AM
Documented in both the Rodney Bingenheimer bio-pic Mayor of the Sunset Strip and former Runaways bassist Vicky Tischler-Blue's rock doc about the seminal LA punkettes called Edgeplay (not to mention countless print interviews over the years) the feud between the band's creator Kim Fowley and front-person Cherie Currie has included accusations of abuse, exploitation and downright evil doings.
So when the two unexpectedly came face to face last Friday at a bash in the Hollywood Hills right before our eyes, we almost ran for cover and waited for the (Cherry) bomb to drop. Shockingly, there was no need, as Currie warmly reached out to the statuesque, face-paint-sporting songwriter/Svengali with a hug "for the first time in decades," and apologized to him for her past rancor, blaming it on her years as "a drunk." Fowley glanced our way as to make sure we recognized the significance of the moment, but there was no need. We've interviewed both over the years and were very much aware of their treacherous relationship.

And speaking of Bingenheimer, I just saw the movie about Darby Crash (What We Do Is Secret) and the guy they got to play Mr. B. kind of overdid it—I think maybe he thought he was playing Andy Warhol. But the guy who plays Don Bolles made up for it by wearing the KDIL t-shirt. (There are a handful of vintage KDIL airchecks at http://www.kdil.com/audio.html.)

15nov2008 — Now available on DVD: The Mojave Phone Booth

Lots to see also at: The Mojave Phone Booth film website.

13nov2008 — Crypto-Obama-Show Low Conx

From David Gerrold's A Matter for Men (p. 12) (Gracias Chtorr! to Carita)

12nov2008 —

Mitzi Kapture

Not Mitzi Kapture

11nov2008 — Viva!

If in the vicinity of a Spaniard you've ever commented on the barbaric nature of bear-baiting—sorry, bull "fighting"—you will likely have been told that you just don't understand the great and heroic nobility of torturing and killing for no reason.

You can get qualitatively the same response in some circles by commenting on the barbaric nature of torturing and killing human beings—clearly, you are likely to be told, you fail to appreciate the heroism involved, as long as those being killed are brown people and the killers are doing so under the aegis of the U.S. government. The speakers will be people living comfortable, unthreatened lives filled with not killing people for vague excuses, but who attribute the relative peace of their lives to the murderers for hire brave military personnel committing killings fighting elsewhere for no good goddamned reason our freedom.

Viva!

10nov2008 — Economic Vocabulary for Beginners! Today's Word:

apocalyptunity

09nov2008 — From Introducing Fractal Geometry:

Acting like an 18th-century naturalist, Mandelbrot scoured through forgotten and obscure journals in his quest for insight.
Mandelbrot had struck a rich seam, and he knew it.
[Mandelbrot:] "I uncovered the work of an eccentric and unremembered mathematician called Lewis F. Richardson."
Richardson delighted in asking questions that no one else even considered worth asking. One of his papers, entitled "Does the wind possess a velocity?", anticipated later work by Edward Lorenz (b. 1917) and the other founders of chaos theory.
One of this mathematician's great insights was a model of turbulence as a collection of ever-smaller eddies. He conveyed the idea poetically in the style of Swift. (32-3)

IBM gave Mandelbrot the funding, the facilities, a research team that included Dr Richard Voss, and the mental space in which to work. The powers-that-be at IBM, it must be said, had vision—unlike the reactionary management of the mainstream academic world. (80)

Complex phenomena do not necessarily require complex explanations. This is the essence of chaos theory, beautifully conveyed in the Lorenz attractor. (94)

The asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter is clear evidence of the chaos implied by Newton's law. Saturn's rings display a fractal structure akin to the Cantor set, with gaps in critical regions which correspond to unstable orbits. (95)

Fractal geometry allows bounded curves of infinite length, and closed surfaces with an infinite area. It even allows curves with positive volume, and arbitrarily large groups of shapes with exactly the same boundary. This is exactly how our lungs manage to maximize their surface area. (108)

Our lungs cram the area of a tennis court into the volume of just a few tennis balls. (109)

Our heart beats are not regular. There is always a tiny variation.
This fine time-scale variation reduces the wear and tear on the heart dramatically. (120)

Spectral analysis of music from classical to nursery rhymes has revealed a remarkable affinity with patterns in nature, in particular a fractal distribution called 1/f noise, which is found in the sound of a waterfall or waves crashing on a beach.
All music from Bach to the Beatles, even birdsong, is characterized by 1/f noise, displaying the same dynamic balance between predictability. and surprise, between dull monotony and random discord. Seen in this light, music is essentially a simulation of the harmony in nature. (161)

08nov2008 — From Robert Paul Wolff's In Defense of Anarchism:

My failure to find any theoretical justification for the authority of the state had convinced me that there was no justification. In short, I had become a philosophical anarchist. (viii)

There are, of course, many reasons why men actually acknowledge claims of authority. The most common, takng the whole of human history, is simply the prescriptive force of tradition. The fact that something has always been done in a certain way strikes most men as a perfectly adequate reason for doing it that way again. Why should we submit to a king? Because we have always submitted to kings. But why should the oldest son of the king become king in turn? Because oldest sons have always heen heirs to the throne. The force of the traditional is engraved so deeply on men's minds that even a study of the violent and haphazard origins of a ruling family will not weaken its authority in the eyes of its subjects. (6-7)

Sometimes we may have clearly in mind the justification for a legalistic claim to authority, as when we comply with a command because its author is an elected official. More often the mere sight of a uniform is enough to make us feel that the man inside it has a right to be obeyed. (7)

Men cannot meaningfully be called free if their representatives vote independently of their wishes, or when laws are passed concerning issues which they are not able to understand. Nor can men be called free who are subject to secret decisions, based on secret data, having unannounced consequences for their well-being and their very lives. (31)

We are so deeply imbued with the ethic of majoritarianism that it possesses for us the deceptive quality of self-evidence. In the United States, little children are taught to let the majority rule almost before they are old enough to count the votes. (42)

07nov2008 — We are currently holding at Ed Norton

The Cardhouse Robot led me to Paul Lukas's excellent sleuthery re: the MLB logo, which led to a photo of:

Don Kessinger,

which led to

Edward Norton.

Where things stood at COB yesterday: Ed Norton.

06nov2008 — Positive Things To Say About Wall-to-Wall Carpeting

1. You don't have to put wall-to-wall carpeting in the clothes washer after a pet pisses or shits on it, or someone spills something on it that will help cause fungus to grow there. Instead you can just blot it and then spray something over it. Some fabric stuff I think I heard about someplace. Simple!

2. In fact, I don't think you could fit wall-to-wall carpeting in a clothes washer, even if you wanted to. So it's that much easier to take care of, as a flooring choice!

3. Wall-to-wall carpeting catches everything—every piece of dirt and lint, every dead bug part, human skin cell, scab, booger, fingernail clipping, every mite and germ—that you would otherwise be forced to mop up and remove from your floors if you cared enough about not living like a pig all the time. Think of the effort you'll save!

4. Everything that manages to work its way through the carpeting is trapped by the rubber carpet padding, and stays there. Just stays there. Waiting. It waits. Is waiting. But you don't have to do a thing. It's just what happens. Meaning: no fuss!

5. Every single step someone takes on wall-to-wall carpeting jettisons little particles of stuff into the air that, believe me, you wouldn't even want to think about with your mind, let alone welcome into your body. All that stuff sort of hovers and floats around right in the air you breathe. Examine your air by the light of a sunbeam through a window sometime, if you don't believe me.

6. Are you breathing right now? Is there wall-to-wall carpeting in the room? Well, then. You're breathing that shit.

7. Jesus God do not ever pull up wall-to-wall carpeting without wearing a full hazmat suit.

Advantage: carpeting!

05nov2008 — Guy Fawkes Day, Aught Eight

Some time ago while watching an anti-war rally on C-SPAN and reflecting upon the state of government in this country my ma said, "It should be like when you're working with dough—if it gets messed up, you just mix it all up again and start over."

Remember?

04nov2008 —

(See also 02nov2004)

Update, 9:05 p.m. MST: The Bloods have lost, the Crips have won = yet another four years of gang rule = . . . hooray?

04nov2008 — Sometimes nothing is not such a Cool Hand

I forgot to snap a photo of the campaign sign for a group trying to become the new Arizona Corporation Commission (as "The Solar Team!"), but the sign is laid out like this:

George, Sam
Kennedy, Sandra
Paul Newman

03nov2008 — Every four years, same old thing. It's like the Olympics of Who Gives A Shit.

This election would have to work impossibly hard to escape being more boringly typical. I chart it about like this:

If you ...

... do => damned

... don't => damned

Put a gun to my head and I'd vote for Obama—but only, for once, to have the face of the U.S. out there in the world not be some out-of-touch white guy. Otherwise, fuck 'em both into the grave, thieving bastards.

And now, a vaudeville sketch entitled At the Polling Place

Poll worker: Thank you, citizen, for exercising your Choice! So—do you choose to be kicked in your right nut, or your left nut?
Me (if this really happened): How about I choose not to be kicked at all?
Poll worker (if poll workers were honest): I'm sorry sir, we don't seem to have a candidate for that.

02nov2008 — "Cheer Up, Smile, Nertz!" (1931)

Sure, business is bunk,
And Wall Street is sunk,
We're all of us broke, and ready to croak.
We've nothing to dunk,
Can't even get drunk,
And all the while, they tell us to smile:

Cheer up, gentle citizens, though you have no shirts,
Happy days are here again. Cheer up, smile, nertz!
All aboard prosperity, giggle 'till it hurts!
No more bread-line charity. Cheer up, smile, nertz!

Cheer up, cheer up, cheer up, cheer up, cheer,
Up, cheer up, cheer up, cheer, better times are here.
Sunny smilers we must be, the optimist asserts,
Let's hang the fat-head to a tree! Cheer up, smile, nertz!

The world's in the red,
We're better off dead,
Depression, they say's in session to stay.
Our judges are queer,
Our banks disappear,
And all the while, they tell us to smile:

Cheer up, gentle citizens, though you have no shirts,
Happy days are here again. Cheer up, smile, nertz!
All aboard prosperity, giggle 'till it hurts,
No more bread-line charity. Cheer up, smile, nertz!

Cheer up, cheer up, cheer up, cheer up, cheer,
Up, cheer up, cheer up, cheer, better times are here.
Sunny smilers we must be, the optimist asserts,
Let's hang the fat-head to a tree! Cheer up, smile, nertz!

Nertz!

01nov2008 — A Special Election Message to All Candidates from Willie Nelson, The Underworld (Disclaimer: not Underworld), Destroy All Monsters, Les Sexareenos, The Plague, The Younger Brothers (Disclaimer: not the Noted Criminal Family), Rocking Roadrunners, and The Morning Dew:

31oct2008 — Take a Break From All This Goddamned Sham Election Theater Bullshit—And Take a Halloween Quiz!

See whether you can guess what each cheerleader is dressed as! Choose from among the following:

warrior princess
formula 1 driver
pastry chef
1930s gun moll
sailor girl
medieval wench
comic book hero
pussycat
cable car conductor

(ANSWERS below)

ANSWERS
I'm sorry, you are incorrect. The cheerleaders are dressed as:
a) stripper; b) stripper; c) unemployed stripper; d) stripper; e) exotic dancer; f) stripper; g) stripper; h) stripper; i) not a costume—this is an actual 1930s gun moll the Witness Protection Program has hidden among cheerleaders.

And Now, For My Next Cease and Desist Order . . .

Cardhouse Robot writes: sexy osama reminds me of julia bin laden or whatever:

30oct2008 — That "Marriage Amendment" Got a Real Purty Mouth, Don't It?

If I were secretly gay but had managed to get hired to create an ad in favor of Arizona's Proposition 102 (an anti-gay marriage measure), I hope this is the ad I would have come up with:

Cowboy A [we'll call him, I don't know . . . Jack]: [Hands Cowboy B a ballot proposition booklet] You see any "confusion" in here?
Cowboy B [we'll call him, hrmm, how 'bout Ennis?]: Huh. "Marriage Amendment." [Reads document] Nope.
Jack: Thought so.
Ennis: One man. One woman.
Jack: And that's it.
Ennis: That's marriage.
Jack: Speaks for itself.
Ennis: Simple.
Jack: Simple is good.

Ummm . . . Ennis kinda gay? (Innit? Get it?) Who can watch that and not be thinking the entire time of Brokeback Mountain? I'll tell you who: the ad's target audience, who I guarantee did not see Brokeback Mountain All that commercial makes them think is What nice, virile, heterosexual marriage-defending men cowboys are! And the banjo music probably isn't calling to mind Deliverance, either.

30oct2008 — Why Despair Does Not Surprise Me

Given the near-religious enthusiasm for Obama—who will do little if anything of substance to change the shape or function of the bureaucratic machine, and certainly not a single thing to restore liberty or even reduce the recent government encroachments one tiny bit—it cracks me up that people got called "Paultards" and the like for supporting someone with an actual proven record of being a counter-friction to the machine in Congress, and who therefore gave ground to hopes that if elected he would do the same in the Oval Office.

What doesn't crack me up at all are the incidents that have forced me to change my estimate of the level of thick-headed racism in this country, blind and bad enough to where people will vote for an avowed warmonger rather than vote for a non-white person (so long as the warmonger plans to widen the scope of killing only among more non-white people). I always thought I was more pessimist than optimist, but I must be more optimist than I thought, to have been so surprised to find out that there is still so much bigotry out there (some of it, distressingly, even among one's own extended kin, making watermelon and fried chicken jokes, FOR FUCK'S SAKE).

29oct2008 — A few people don't like it when I talk about politics in this space. I don't like hearing the endless internecine squabbles between the two factions of a one-party oligarchy. Let us all therefore suffer in non-silence. Viz. . . .

. . . this horseshit, which has been making the rounds:

> David Sedaris on "undecided voters":
>
> I look at these people and can't quite believe that
> they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are
> they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?
>
> To put them in perspective, I think of being on an
> airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her
> food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat.
> "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks.
> "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of
> broken glass in it?"
>
> To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment
> and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

With all due respect to Mr. Sedaris, who rocks (and even if he didn't, would command respect in honor of his superstar all-star sister Amy), it's possible that people who haven't been able to force themselves to choose are coming to realize that both dishes consist entirely of glass-splattered shit and are having a hard time with that realization. Which is a good indication that they are reaching the end stage of political awareness, in which one finally realizes it's better to go hungry than eat shit.

But this is hard for people to grasp, apparently. I was told the other day in all seriousness, no joking, that:
a) "If you don't vote, you can't complain," and
b) If you vote for anyone other than Republicans and Democrats, "You're wasting your vote."

I thanked this person, a middle-aged man, for his mature and penetrating political analysis. Then I asked his level of sophistication who was its home-room teacher next year. Won't sixth grade be exciting?!11!?? OMG

28oct2008 — Okay, I'm going to comment on this election nonsense just once more twice more probably all week

John McCain is dangerous because he is insane. Barack Obama is dangerous because he is not.

Both, however, voted for the recent corporate giveaway and neither has the slightest clue that the giveaway involves more of what fucked up the economy in the first place. Homeopathy is not an economic doctrine (even Palin would oppose it, though only because she thinks that's what went on in "that Sodom, there, back in the Bible times").

If you thought Teddy, Woody, and Franky were twits who fouled things up beyond belief, just wait until . . .
		. . . one of these two ignorant incompetents gets hold of the reins of our newly beefed-up empire and goes to work "fixing things."

27oct2008 — In Grudging Acknowledgement of the Upcoming Big "Choice"

26oct2008 — From Andrew Morton's Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography (Shut up, one dollar cash from Friends of the Bisbee Public Library, don't worry about it, okay?):

During the 1960s and 70s, [L. Ron] Hubbard built up the biggest private intelligence agency in the world, hiding behind the shield of the First Amendment to attack, harass, and defame. Church intelligence agents were taught how to make anonymous death threats, smear perceived critics, forge documents, and plan and execute burglaries. They used all means necessary to "shudder into silence"—Hubbard's charmless phrase—any opposition. Lying by a Scientologist, if it served the cause, was not only a right but a duty, Hubbard insisted in Technique 88: "The only way you can control people is to lie to them. You can write that down in your book in great big letters." (104)

At one point, in the madness that infects this kind of passionate, close-quarters project, [Oliver] Stone convinced Tom to allow himself to be injected with a chemical that would have rendered him paralyzed for two days so that he could more realistically convey the incontinent, impotent torture of a once-virile young man confined to a wheelchair. As there was a chance that he would have suffered permanent incapacitation, the insurance company wisely vetoed the madcap idea. It was reminiscent of the time Dustin Hoffman went without sleep for two days during the filming of Marathon Man so he could better express his exhaustion. His costar, British actor Laurence Olivier, laconically remarked, "Try acting ... it's easier." (121)

During the filming of Days of Thunder [. . . Cruise] was reading the script for the movie Edward Scissorhands, a typically gothic Tim Burton film about a sensitive but misunderstood loner. Unsure about whether to accept the role, he asked Miscavige and others for heir opinion. The Scientology leader felt he should reject the part as 'too effeminate." Tom did say no, arguing that he wanted a happy ending for the movie rather than the bleak one that Burton intended. (147)

As far as the Scientology leadership was concerned, nothing was too much trouble to keep him happy. So when the secrecy surrounding Tom's membership in Scientology was exposed that summer in an artide written by Janet Charlton in the Star tabloid in July 1990, the cult leadership went into overdrive, both to soothe the irritation of their most prized member and to find the source of the story. They used the notorious private investigator Eugene Ingrams, a former Los Angeles cop who was fired for misconduct after allegedly running a brothel, to find the culprit.
During his four-month investigation, journalist Charlton was harassed and people impersonated her, trying to get copies of her phone bill. Eventually, after a series of subterfuges, Nan Herst Bowers—longtime Scientologist, sometime Hollywood publicist, and friend of Janet Charlton—was fingered as the perpetrator. When she faced a Scientology court, she pled not guilty to eight media-related charges, including "engaging in malicious rumor mongering" and "giving antiScientology data to the press." She was found guilty and formally listed as a "Suppressive Person Declare," the equivalent to being excommunicated.
The ruling meant that she was not allowed to have any further contact with anyone inside Scientology, including her husband, her three sons, Brad, Todd, and Ryan, and her grandchild. Her family subsequently sent her letters of "Disconnect," which confirmed their refusal to have any contact with her. Within a week, Nan had gone from being a happily married mother and grandmother to being entirely cut off from her friends and family. Sixteen years have passed since the trial, and she has never seen her husband, sons, or her eight grandchildren since. "I was made a scapegoat for the story after Tom Cruise complained. As far as I am concerned, Scientology broke up my family," she says. (149-50)

The lights went on, he [Cruise] claimed, only in his mid-twenties, after he encountered Scientology techniques and learned to use dictionaries. Looking up words in a dictionary is one of the "technologies" that Scientology offers its members. "No one teaches you about dictionaries," he told writer Dotson Rader. "I didn't know the meanings of lots of words." (245)

The new gospel according to Cruise has not gone without criticism. The International Dyslexia Association has publicly attacked the actor's assertions. As executive director J. Thomas Viall commented, "When an individual of the prominence of Tom Cruise makes statements that are difficult to replicate in terms of what science tells us, the issue becomes what other individuals who are dyslexic do in response to such a quote unquote success story. There is not a lot of science to support the claim that the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard are appropriate to overcoming dyslexia."
Once again, Cruise brushed aside such criticism, utterly convinced of his superior knowledge. As he was to say time and again, he had done the reading. But that reading was invariably works by L. Ron Hubbard; to explore further would have been heresy. In the hermetically sealed universe beginning and ending with LRH, no other worldview or even point of view is tolerated. It is the North Korea of religion. (249-50)

Famously humorless—and litigious—in the face of speculation about his religion and his sexuality, he had little to laugh at later in November 2005 when the cartoon series South Park screened an episode, provocatively entitled "Trapped in the Closet," that poked fun at Scientology and the endlessly mutating rumors about his sexual orientation. It was bad enough that the half·hour show, penned by series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, already had a running joke in which Tom refused to leave a clothes closet, the implication being that he was refusing to acknowledge his homosexuality. But perhaps more damaging was the tongue-in-cheek explanation of Scientology's creationist myth, dealing with how the evil warlord Xenu sent millions of people to Earth to be blown up, their spirits floating in eternal torment. Not only was the exposition of this myth highly accurate—Stone and Parker had used a Scientology expert to write a background paper—there was a caption underneath that read: THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE. It was comedy genius, both funny and informative, eventually earning the show an Emmy nomination. Indeed, Steven Spielberg later told friends that he had learned more about Scientology from South Park than he ever had from Tom Cruise. (291-2)

Psychiatry, like computing, is an evolving science. For Hubbard to make universal rules and edicts about the science of mental health is akin to laying out iron laws about computing based on the cumbersome machines of the postwar period, when it took rooms full of equipment to perform fewer functions than today's microscopic silicon chips. Philosophically, Hubbard's worldview was defined by the state of the planet just after World War II. It is intellectually static, unable to accept or absorb any progress in civilization since then. It is no exaggeration to state that Scientology is the intellectual equivalent to the Flat Earth Society, a group locked in a time warp, inexorably bound by the rules defined by its founder. Even today, for example, high-ranking Scientologists communicate by encrypted telex—rather than more modern methods such as e-mail—because Hubbard decreed it. (321-2)

25oct2008 — This Sunday!!! Battle of the Somethings That Are in Some Respects Like Other Things!!!

VS.!!!

24oct2008 — From P. J. Nebergall's Hard Core: Marginalized By Choice

Nobody is born hard core. We are all converts; we all began, like Los Angelenos, somewhere else. There is a tendency to poke fun at the ''wanna-be,'' the individual who stands indecisively on the brink—but as hard core is a choice, ''wanna-be'' is a stage, like boot camp, through which all must pass. Today's ''wanna-be'' might be tomorrow's Punk. The world is full of kids considering society's contradictions. Those with a better education and a stronger moral compass are more likely to question their elders' roadmap of the future. Some will decide the financial security outweighs the moral pain, others will find a niche in which they can live balanced and productive lives without surrender of their principles. Some, taking shelter in conformity and obedience, will surrender their individuality, yield up the SELF, to their church, their service, their political party, or some other entity. Others, as already discussed, will back away. (17)

Those who are pondering "the road less traveled" often experiment with the paraphenelia of the traveller; the styles/accoutrements of the Punk. Committed hard core types, not understanding, or choosing to forget their own beginnings, often scorn these folks, driving some of them back into the herd. In the same way the frat boy terrorizes the pledges and the upperclassman hazes the plebe. Some things, unfortunately, are not left behind. (18)

Punks and Skinheads are certainly NOT the only "alternative" folks out there. We increasingly encounter reality's answer to A Clockwork Orange. These fellows run in packs, and, rather than courageously distance themselves from a system they despise, they practice opportunistic trashing. Far removed from the Punk, almost as far from the Skin, the Yob is a terrifying new breed, or perhaps not so new—Ernst Roehm led a pack of them in the 1930s ... (59)

23oct2008 — One Among Many Possible Logos That May Be Not Quite Appropriate For A Retirement RV Park, Even A Retirement RV Park That Is Relatively Near Tombstone, Arizona:

22oct2008 —

The other day I watched a guy pound a metal post into his yard and affix a VOTE YES ON PROP. 102 sign to it.

Text of Proposed Amendment
Be it resolved by the Senate of the State of Arizona, the House of Representatives concurring:
1. Article XXX, Constitution of Arizona, is proposed to be added as follows if approved by the voters and on proclamation of the Governor: ARTICLE XXX. MARRIAGE
1. Marriage
SECTION 1. ONLY A UNION OF ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN SHALL BE VALID OR RECOGNIZED AS A MARRIAGE IN THIS STATE.

I tried to imagine a reason that would make me go out into my front yard, if I had one, and put up a sign in favor of continuing to go along with letting governments pretend to define things into or out of existence. I can tell you I wouldn't be convinced by any of the "proposition analysis" from the government-provided website, written by people in favor of continuing to go along with letting governments pretend to define things into or out of existence:

"When the Pilgrims stepped off the Mayflower they were in family unites [sic]."

"Even the Native Americans formed their society around a father, mother and children."

[Wow. Even, huh?]

"We are expecting our first child in November. It is something we have dreamed about our whole lives. Since we're expecting, we thought it would be fun to watch the movie Father of the Bride Part II. The movie is based on the perspective of a man expecting his first grandchild and another of his own. In the movie there are images of family gathered around the dinner table, supporting one another at the hospital and encouraging one another through difficult times. The movie filled our hearts with warmth and appreciation for the simple joys in life as it promotes traditional family values."

[Your Honor, Exhibit One: A shitty movie. Hold on. Make that: A shitty sequel.]

"Such traditions develop over time from the tried and true finest ways to experience the best of life."

[. . . of which there can be no valid conception but OURS.]

F.
T.
S.

21oct2008 —

The technique used for separating the [organ pipe cactus] seeds from the fruit was unusual. According to a description written in 1740 by Father Consag, the Indians would spend several weeks in one locality collecting and consuming organ pipe fruits. They made it a point to defecate in selected spots so they could return and collect their dry feces. The feces were ground by hand to winnow out the undigested organ pipe seeds. The seeds were then toasted, ground on metates and eaten. This "second harvest," as it was called, was totally objectionable to the early missionaries but was efficient in tapping a source of food that would not otherwise be utilized. (31) An important ceremonial ritual took place after the saguaro harvest with dancing, singing and consumption of the intoxicating wine. The final preparation of the wine involved pouring water and the saguaro syrup into watertight baskets. The water and syrup were mixed and then poured into ollas. The mixture was allowed to ferment for approximately four days before being consumed at the harvest celebration. The wine would spoil within twenty-four hours, so there was some attempt by the men to consume all of it. This often led to the men becoming intoxicated and the women caring for them afterward. (35) — James W. Cornett, Indian Uses of Desert Plants

20oct2008 — Every Friday in the Sierra Vista Herald / Bisbee Daily Review: Better Know a Band Geek

This week: THEFIGHTINYELLOWJACKETSOFTOMBSTONE!

Anyway, speaking of all things teen, when did Britney Spears's voice box start trying to turn into Rihanna's (right down to the "Umbrella"-ish vocal tics)? I thought Britney only knew how to use an umbrella to hit photographers and here she's gone and discovered a second use for the darned things. Now she's got me wondering is there something else umbrellas are good for?

Yep, need to stop wondering about things altogether. [Looks at stop watch] Annnnnnnd . . . done.

19oct2008 — Flurry of alcohol-generated text messages and one voice mail emanating from the New Orleans wedding of Dr. Cliff while I was rendered incommunicado by unreachable desert expanses

Dr. Cliff, Evil Dentist: Sure wish u were here, bitch.
Kerry (aka Tex): Why are you not here you effing bitch?
Cardhouse Robot: You should something something bitch.
Joshua, attorney at law: I don't care what everyone else is saying. I still admire and respect you.
Dr. Brody Culpepper, man about jungle: It's Brody. I'm in New Orleans. I got Tex and Cardhouse and Cliff and Joshua all around and I'm thinkin' where the hell are YOU? The term I hear around the table here is "bitch." And I wanna try to tampen down those attitudes. I'm sure there's some "reason" why you're not here. I SURE WOULD LIKE TO HEAR IT.

16oct2008 — Mary Woronov's Swimming Underground

One of the best novels I've read in ages, though I don't read a lot of novels, and it's not even a novel.

The fact that Ronnie lay in the other room crucified to a green couch added to the tension, and then there was the disturbing number of secret messages being passed by ear and paper, one of which was delivered in a black box that no one could open, all concerning whether Jimmy Smith should be electrocuted.
As far as I could figure out, everyone liked Jimmy Smith, who was a nice guy, until his addiction forced him into cat burglary. Still a nice guy, he only robbed his friends, politely warning them beforehand. Once forewarned, there was nothing you could do to stop him, so dedicated was he at his trade. Actually, it wasn't that bad, he only took bizarre things, and sometimes left more valuable things in return, but Oscar, whose home I was told we were in, couldn't stand it. Nobody could stand Oscar either, he kept his stash in a bank vault so he wouldn't do too much, and conveniently never had enough for anybody else. So while we waited for "the man" like tortured lovers, Oscar waited for Chase Manhattan to open. Much to our satisfaction, Jimmy started robbing Oscar regularly and leaving us alone. It drove Oscar wild. Nothing stopped Jimmy—cops, locks, bars, none of it helped. Jimmy triumphed every time, but tonight success seemed impossible; Oscar had warned us that he had electrified the gates on the windows. He even found Jimmy and begged him not to do it, but Jimmy only handed him a note saying tonight was the night. (66-7)

Rotten Rita was known to have the worst speed in New York City. It could kill you. Rita himself was in the process of killing his own father. Every week they had coffee together, which Rita laced with megadoses of speed that often left the old man mumbling ninety miles an hour to a light bulb for the rest of the day. Of course, Rita insisted he only did it to test each new batch of stuff. He was pleased to announce that this week his dad had tossed himself out the second-story window and broken both his legs, and this was the stuff that did it—all of which called for much tasting and sampling on our parts, and another magnanimous promise from Rita that the score that finally put his old man in Bellevue would be free. (102)

15oct2008 —

Last week's episode of The Sarah Silverman Show made fun of Laura Silverman's appearance, which is weird because I'll kiss Sarah Silverman right on the lips if Laura Silverman isn't just a sort of slightly fucked-up Gisele Bundchen.

10oct2008 — People like this really exist

(via Boing Boing)

09oct2008 — Awesome narration from Werner Herzog in Encounters at the End of the World:

Who VERR da peepull I vuss goingk to meet in EntARKteeka, et da ent uv duh VURRLT? Vutt verr dare DREEMPS?
[...]
I vass surprist det I vass even on tiss plane. Da National Scients Fountation hed invitet me to Entarkteeka even zo I left NO doubt det I vould NOT come up vit anutta feelm about PENGUINTS.

08oct2008 —

Everybody wants to call Lincoln "The Great Emancipator." He didn't think that this fight had anything to do with blacks. This was a different culture from theirs and they had no place in it. "This is not your country and it's not your fight." — Morgan Freeman, DVD commentary to Glory

"SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS," declares Jessica.

07oct2008 — A Timelesse Filmic Trutheth

Apparently Beverly Hills Chihuahua was a big winner over last weekend. I didn't see it (DUH) but I can save you the trouble anyway with a Filmic Truth:

A film (or TV show) will suck if its title contains the words Beverly Hills. Doubly so if Beverly Hills are the first words in the title.

Don't go saying Beverly Hills Cop to me. Because if you think that, we're not friends anymore. But even though we're enemies now, I'll help you out with the the first fifty (+/-) from IMDB:

(That's Buntz, btw.)

06oct2008 —

A father has to be a provider, a teacher, a role model, but most importantly, a distant authority figure who can never be pleased. Otherwise, how will children ever understand the concept of God? —Stephen Colbert, I Am America (And So Can You!)

05oct2008 — How is that right, Red Sox? HOW?

By paying Manny Ramirez to play for the Dodgers, the formerly forlorn Red Sox financed the downfall of the currently forlorn Cubs.

04oct2008 — SHAME

03oct2008 — All is not lost, Cubbies

This was the dream I woke up to this morning, no lie:

I was in a bathroom and someone asked me what in hell it was I was holding and I said it was Manny Ramirez's dreadlocks. And it was, babushka and all. So maybe it was his entire scalp. It wasn't bloody, though. But I was still asked how I was going to clean it. What? You don't clean it and you don't answer stupid questions like that. Point is, if I'm a Pharaoh and ManRam's Samson, look out Los Angeles.

02oct2008 — From "How Can Anyone Think Voting Matters? (It does. Just not in the way you think.)" by by Wilton D. Alston:

Question: Will the incredibly large worldwide U.S. military presence, including over 750 bases, be curtailed dependent upon who wins any election for president?
Answer: No.

[...]

Question: Will the Federal Reserve be abolished dependent upon who wins any election for president?
Answer: No.

[...]

Question: Will the IRS be abolished dependent upon who wins any election for president of the United States?
Answer: No.

[...]

Question: Will marijuana (or any other supposedly "controlled" substance) be legalized dependent upon who wins any election for president?
Answer: No.

[...]

Voting illustrates both support and consent. Withdraw them, please.

01oct2008 — "He never had a chance!" "Not at all. Never did. Never would have."

To hell with a world where a man like that doesn't live to be at least 200 years old.

29sep2008 — H.R. 3997 — Financial Markets Bill: FAIL

I just had the pleasure of watching the fraudulent "bailout" bill fail (sometimes C-SPAN can be a real cool hand). A simple majority was all that was needed (and when aren't the majority of politicians simple?). The final vote was 227-206.

Trusting government to fix a giant mess created by government, though still the traditional method, is D-U-M-B.

Here's Peter Schiff back in 2006 predicting the crash, while the establishment hyenas all laugh at him (think the laughers—among whom is Art Laffer—will now publicly acknowledge they were wrong?):

LOLRON

26sep2008 —

25sep2008 — OMG you FUCKS

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

(Forbes.com, via Coyote)

Update: A half hour later I can't stop thinking about the sheer fuckedupedness of that statement. Imagine I went into a bank—any bank on the planet—to ask for a loan:

Loan officer: So, how much do you need?
Me: Let's make it five million dollars, please.
Loan officer: And why that amount, exactly?
Me: Oh, no reason. I just wanted to choose a really large number.

25sep2008 — Speaking of no official sense of humor: Pass gas, go to jail (in West Virginia)

One of the few times I ever witnessed decent human behavior on the part of a cop was right after I saw an extremely violent dickhead fart loudly and yell, "THAT'S FOR YOU, PIGS!"

Me: What a moron.
Cop: Nah, man—that's beautiful.
Me: Tell me what's beautiful about that.
Cop: That's just a man expressing how he feels inside.

That's evidently too down-to-earth an attitude for West Virginia's delicate little princesses law enforcers: Man charged with battery for farting near cop (via Boing Boing)

By Friday C.O.B. I expect the mottos on that department's car doors to have been changed from "To Protect and To Serve" to Not Quite As Tough As Your Average First-Grader.

24sep2008 —

It's a federal offense to make licentious remarks on a network television broadcast. The penalty for this disgusting, un-American behavior is one year in prison or a ten thousand dollar fine or both. Anyone making a sick, subversive remark tonight will be arrested immediately. I will then personally escort the offender to federal prison for booking under edict number 364 of the Broadcast Act of 1963. And it's a long drive to that prison. Just you and me. No other witnesses. —Instructor Jenks (Robert Burke), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

When have you ever known the FBI to joke? —FBI Agent Pierce Taylor (Robert Burke), OZ (S04E05, "Gray Matter")

We at the F.B.I. do not have a sense of humor we're aware of. —Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), Men in Black

23sep2008 — Make THIS

MTV should attempt an episode of MADE about someone who wants to be MADE into a writer. They wouldn't be able to show the now-obligatory physical training sequences, capped by a triumphant performance. There'd just be a lot of discussions about writing, and sequences showing the person writing, then maybe crying a little and almost quitting, and then the person almost wins a writing contest, and then people at the end talk about how, wow, the person really had been MADE into a writer.

22sep2008 — What a party it all must have been

(See also)

21sep2008 — Un-navigably abundant depths

I don't know how this failed to become an official Deuce of Clubs motto back in—wait, 2002? Surely someone is to blame who is not me.

Linking, not thinking — Some random scraps seen around the Net: Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat is still pretty funny after 113 years. The letters in the anthology No One May Ever Have the Same Knowledge Again--a book of insane missives sent to the Mt. Wilson Observatory from 1915-35--are appearing online a few at a time. (Link via Wiley Wiggins, one of very few webloggers who was in the cast of Dazed and Confused.) The Deuce of Clubs website has a thing about the Mt. Wilson letters somewhere in its un-navigably abundant depths; let me know if you can find it. Exploring DoC at random is encouraged, but fun features include a guide to preventing bandwidth theft, the Herb Alpert Whipped Cream art car, and the Mojave Phone Booth. (ColbyCosh.com)

20sep2008 — Today in pants-shitting news . . .

. . . George Brett shit his pants (via With Leather) I'm good twice a year, for that. When's the last time you shit your pants? Been a while? [Tells rambling pants-shitting story and finishes with:] Got up in the morning, took the most perfect double-tapered shit I've ever had in my life. True story. [Beat] Who's the pitchers in this game? (Cheap local tie-in: I Shit My Pants) (And by the way, anyone who wants to work George Brett into their "I Shit My Pants" remixes is cordially and earnestly invited to send those right along to Deuce of Clubs)

19sep2008 — From Irreligion, by John Allen Paulos:

A representative of the Enlightenment, which, unfortunately, sometimes seems to be in the process of being repealed, Voltaire presciently observed, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." This dire forecast is all the more likely to come to pass when politicians and a substantial portion of a large political party are among the most effective purveyors of beliefs such as the "Rapture." (xiii)

The argument doesn't even come close: One gaping hole in it is Assumption 1, which might be better formulated as: Either everything has a cause or there's something that doesn't. The first-cause argument collapses into this hole whichever tack we take. If everything has a cause, then God does, too, and there is no first cause. And if something doesn't have a cause, it may as well be the physical world as God or a. tortoise. (4)

Creationists explain what they regard as the absurdly unlikely complexity of life-forms by postulating a creator. That this creator would have to be of vastly greater complexity and vastly more unlikely than the life-forms it created does not seem to bother them. Nonetheless, it's only natural to ask the same question of the creator as one does of the alleged creations. (12-13)

We have a deck of cards before us. There are almost 10⁶⁸—a 1 with 68 zeros after it—orderings of the fifty-two cards in the deck. Any of the fifty-two cards might be first, any of the remaining fifty-one second, any of the remaining fifty third, and so on. This is a humongous number, but it's not hard to devise even everyday situations that give rise to much larger numbers. Now, if we shuffle this deck of cards for a long time and then examine the particular ordering of the cards that happens to result, we would be justified in concluding that the probability of this particular ordering of the cards having occurred is approximately one chance in 10⁶⁸. This probability certainly qualifies as minuscule.
Still, we would not be justified in concluding that the shuffles could not have possibly resulted in this particular ordering because its a priori probability is so very tiny. Some ordering had to result from the shuffling, and this one did. (17)

For the record, natural selection is a highly nonrandom process that acts on the genetic variation produced by random mutation and genetic drift and results in those organisms with more adaptive traits differentially surviving and reproducing. It's not a case of monkeys simply randomly pecking Shakespeare on a conventional typewriter. It's more akin to monkeys randomly pecking on a special typewriter that marginally more often than not retains correct letters and deletes incorrect ones. (Oddly, the fact that we and all life have evolved from simpler forms by natural selection disturbs fundamentalists who are completely unfazed by the biblical claim that we come from dirt.) (19)

Why is the notion of a fundamentalist comedian funny, or at least quite odd? Why does the idea of God as a comedian seem more appealing (at least to me) than the traditional view of God? Why does solemnity tend to infect almost all discussions of religion? Certainly an inability or reluctance to stand outside one's preferred framework is part of the answer. So is an intolerance for tentativeness and whimsy. The incongruity necessary for appreciating humor is only recognizable with an open mind and fresh perspective. (25)

A perhaps snarky response to the emptiness argument is fhe following. To the question "What will any of my concerns matter in one thousand years?" we might, of course, react with stoic resignation. Instead, however, we might turn the situation around. Maybe nothing we do now will matter in a thousand years, but if so, then it also would seem that nothing that will matter in a thousand years makes a difference now, either. In particular, it doesn't make a difference now that in a thousand years, what we do now won't matter. (76)

Powerful family and group dynamics, including the aforementioned confirmation bias, ensure that most families share the same religion. Children of Baptists, Episcopalians, and Catholics usually remain so or at most switch Christian denominations. Likewise with Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Jews, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and other religions' denominations; there is movement perhaps between denominations, but little drift to other religions. (110)

The connections among morality, prudence, and religion are complicated and beyond my concerns here. I would like to counter, however, the claim regularly made by religious people that atheists and agnostics are somehow less moral or law-abiding than they. There is absolutely no evidence for this, and I suspect whatever average difference there is along the nebulous dimension of morality has the opposite algebraic sign.
Pascal's wager notwithstanding, studies on crime rates (and other measures of social dysfunction) showing that nonbelievers in the United States are extremely underrepresented in prison suggest as much. So does Japan, one of the world's least crime-ridden countries, only a minority of whose citizens reportedly believe in God. And so, too, do those aforementioned monomaniacal true believers whose smiling surety often harbors a toxic intolerance. (Recall the physicist Steven Weinberg's happy quip "With or without religion, good people will do good, and evil people will do evil, but for good people to do evil, that takes religion.) (139)

A classic experiment on the so-called overjustification effect by the psychologists David Greene, Betty Sternberg, and Mark Lepper is relevant. They exposed fourth- and fifth-grade students to a variety of intriguing mathematical games and measured the time the children played them. They found that the children seemed to possess a good deal of intrinsic interest in the games. The games were fun. After a few days, however, the psychologists began to reward the children for playing; those playing them more had a better chance of winning the prizes offered. The prizes did increase the time the children played the games, but when the prizes were stopped, the children lost almost all interest in the games and rarely played them. The extrinsic rewards had undercut the children's intrinsic interest. Likewise, religious injunctions and rewards promised to children for being good might, if repudiated in later life, drastically reduce the time people spend playing the "being good" game. This is another reason not to base ethics on religious teachings. (140-1)

18sep2008 — Laws

Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Deuce of Clubs's Law: Digital content expands so as to fill the drive(s) available for its storage.

17sep2008 — Welcome to What's Under the Hood? with Megan Fox

"Look, I'm not a lesbian," said Fox. "I just think that all humans are born with the ability to be attracted to both sexes. I mean, I could see myself in a relationship with a girl—Olivia Wilde is so sexy she makes me want to strangle a mountain ox with my bare hands. She's mesmerizing. And lately I've been obsessed with Jenna Jameson, but ... oh boy."

16sep2008 — Google yields two hits for "Hou-Tex Motel":

The second is a link to the description of my single worst hospitality experience ever.

The first is a 2003 appellate court opinion. Of which, some excerpts:

On August 16, 2001, Officers Epsfanio Garza and Mainash S. Patel of the Houston Police Department (HPD), responded to a possible shooting at the Hou-Tex Motel, room number 114.

The rocks and the pipe were field tested by Garza at the Hou-Tex Motel, the field test result was positive for cocaine.

At trial, Garza and Patel testified that they found 17 rocks of crack cocaine and a crack pipe on a table within arms length of the appellant in room 114 at the Hou-Tex motel.

My expert opinion is that the testimony herewith entered into the record is entirely consistent with my experience of the Hou-Tex Motel.

15sep2008 — WAYYYYYYYYYURRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNNGMMMMMMBZZZZZZZZZ

Right before waking Saturday morning I dreamed I was at an avant-garde performance consisting of some sort of horrible droning.

Dialogue A: What an awful bunch of noise!
Dialogue B: Well, at least no ships will run aground tonight.

Eventually the avant-garde annoyed me enough to where I woke up . . . to the sound of two—TWO—leaf blowers.

Recapping: Saturday morning. Leaf blowers. 7:30 a.m. Goddamn.

14sep2008 —

Recently I almost posted something snide I wrote about David Foster Wallace. Glad I didn't. FOOL ME ONCE, MICKEY MANTLE!

13sep2008 — Um, doesn't that pretty much describe U.S. military recruiting, too?

U.S. Military guy in Afghanistan, speaking about the Taliban: "They . . . go to these young kids who don't have a job, who have no positive outlook in life. They sell them with a lot of propaganda. Tell them they're going to give their family money. And they bring them here."

(From the mostly middling Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?)

12sep2008 — The Decade of the Dude (via Strike the Root)

In the film's opening scene, the Dude buys cream to fuel his White Russians. John Goodman reveals a scene that was cut out of the film. "Originally the Dude had somebody carry the milk out for him. They asked him if he needed help out with it, and he did."

Early in Lebowski, the narrator (a cowboy named the Stranger, played by Sam Elliott) intones, "Sometimes there's a man, who, well, he's the man for his time 'n place." The odd truth is this man — the Dude — may have been a decade ahead of his time. Today, as technology increasingly handcuffs us to schedules and appointments — in the time it takes you to read this, you've missed three e-mails — there's something comforting about a fortysomething character who will blow an evening lying in the bathtub, getting high and listening to an audiotape of whale songs. He's not a 21st-century man. Nor is he Iron Man — and he's certainly not Batman. The Dude doesn't care about a job, a salary, a 401(k), and definitely not an iPhone. The Dude just is, and he's happy.
"There's a freedom to The Big Lebowski," theorizes Philip Seymour Hoffman, who played Brandt, the wealthy Lebowski's obsequious personal assistant. "The Dude abides, and I think that's something people really yearn for, to be able to live their life like that.

11sep2008 — Never Forget

When Protest Is Terrorism:
RNC 8 Charged as Terrorists Under State Patriot Act

Caption from The Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

"The rules for protest demonstrations have been revised, sir. If you don't move, I get to beat the shit out of you with my nightstick and charge you with resisting arrest."

(See also)

10sep2008 —

Has anyone done one of those 180-degree Matrix-style pans in the style of a 1940s movie? Because = cool.

09sep2008 — YouTube: If Japanese, then Amazing

Amazing Japanese Fake Pool

Amazing Japanese free kick!!!

Amazing Japanese Ice-Cream

Amazing Japanese Refrigerator

Amazing Japanese Magician

AMAZING JAPANESE PITCH

Amazing Japanese People

Amazing Japanese

Amazing Japanese

07sep2008 — Angelina says

"The greatest gift anyone could make me would be some program where I could input shit like this and over the course of time, map out my soul. It would be like a video game when the whole thing was completed, telling my future based on some complex system of probabilities assembled by sifting through every little detail