Everybody's talking like the President is attacking Fox News, when all the White House spokeslady said was that until Fox starts acting like grownup news professionals the Pres is not going to treat them like it just because they own a lot of stations. My nine-year-old nephew is a pro at computer race car driving, but I ain't giving him the keys to the Caddy.
The other networks, they're not really worried about Fox . What the White House said was the plain truth. And that's the problem right there: it was the truth. From the White House no less. What's gonna happen in American politics if your elected officials start telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Reporters won't have anything to do but report. Where's the ratings in that?
To me, honesty is a great moral issue that has guided my life. I don't think you should have to pretend somebody else is what they're not unless you're getting a diamond bracelet or a new car out of it. If there's no incentive, or you do it out of fear, it's creepy. Oh, you're so smart to a boss who's a stupid jerk just so's you won't get fired. Yuck. Oh, you're so considerate to a co-worker who spreads lies about people she don't like. Icky yuck. I don't want my President doing that. I don't mind him flattering a little to get Russia to sell Iran non-bomb nuclear stuff so the ayatollahs got no excuse to keep enriching uranium. Keeping nuclear bombs out of Iran is worth a little ick in the truth department.
But the idea that everybody deserves to be treated like a real newscaster just cuz they say so is how Bush ended up with a male prostitute being a key member of the previous White House Press Corps. Gannon had no press credentials. How do you think he got in? The other news networks are more up in arms about the statements about Fox than they were about a prostitute newsman. Is it because they're too much the same thing?
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
BROADCAST WAKE-UP CALL
Listening to complaints about your Air America Radio and your MSNBC, it sounds like people think it's just embarrassing for cultured, open-minded people to be so ... so direct. Nobody's making nice and your middle-class types want nice, you know, in that middle-of-the road nice way. The fundamentalist right wing, they love their loud talk radio and tv because that means they only hear their songs of right and wrong, and being right is the whole point. It's even safe for them to talk about Jesus while they attack the nicey-nice liberals because everybody knows that nobody is really that nice unless they are Mother Teresa and then they'd be in Calcutta and staying out of the Republicans' way in the first place.
So now you got liberal talk radio that's talking smack about them lyin' cheatin' low-down varmints in Congress and they are putting those loud liberals on the tv and even the President pointing out how some new reporting is not respectable so don't expect the Pres to lie down with the dogs, and what can the poor Republicans do? If liberals stop being namby-pamby, it could change the face of America's politics. It changed the face of America's President.
So now you got liberal talk radio that's talking smack about them lyin' cheatin' low-down varmints in Congress and they are putting those loud liberals on the tv and even the President pointing out how some new reporting is not respectable so don't expect the Pres to lie down with the dogs, and what can the poor Republicans do? If liberals stop being namby-pamby, it could change the face of America's politics. It changed the face of America's President.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
DNA MATTERS
How can it still be news that men are simple? This is why we love them. If I want complex, I go visit my mother.
Studies every day come up that shows men's chromosomal lacks when compared to the female. (here and here ). It's fine that science is proving our superiority, but it's always bad taste to be both better than someone else and to brag about it. Hopefully, though, your average male, will not notice. Only your handful of very verbal males who chose the hotbed of language will notice, though they will be the ones who write about it. The rest, like Lawrence Summers has pointed out, are so crowding the maths and sciences with their linear simplicity and lack of nuance that there is little room for women who have a talent for numbers. Pity Larry for describing it as women's lack. It's like saying a humans are not as good as dogs at seeing things in black and white. Your dog doesn't have the brain for understanding fuschia, much less creating an academic discipline in design that would include it. So they do their lovely line drawings and even sumi-e paintings. And women, who get tired of suggesting that maybe a little green would be make the grass nicer and getting that blank or dismissive look, find a field where the palette is richer.
Studies every day come up that shows men's chromosomal lacks when compared to the female. (here and here ). It's fine that science is proving our superiority, but it's always bad taste to be both better than someone else and to brag about it. Hopefully, though, your average male, will not notice. Only your handful of very verbal males who chose the hotbed of language will notice, though they will be the ones who write about it. The rest, like Lawrence Summers has pointed out, are so crowding the maths and sciences with their linear simplicity and lack of nuance that there is little room for women who have a talent for numbers. Pity Larry for describing it as women's lack. It's like saying a humans are not as good as dogs at seeing things in black and white. Your dog doesn't have the brain for understanding fuschia, much less creating an academic discipline in design that would include it. So they do their lovely line drawings and even sumi-e paintings. And women, who get tired of suggesting that maybe a little green would be make the grass nicer and getting that blank or dismissive look, find a field where the palette is richer.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
JUST SAY NO
Blanche is my dog. She's a puppy and wants all the big grown-up boy dogs to like her. So she goes and wags her tail and licks them and they growl and tell her in so many doggie ways that she's a pest and to get lost. The guy dogs are busy knocking each other around to see who is the top dog, getting ready for the day when a female in season blows by. Now, this is not likely to happen at an LA dog park, where most of the dogs are fixed and the seasons never change. But dogs are the quintessence of faithfulness, and their faith is no more swayed by science than any other true believer's. If you hump it, you will come.
Blanche, in a natural dog universe, would find herself one day the center of that universe, her season having arrived. Suddenly the big boy dogs would be lining up for her attention. And such is Mother Nature's sense of humor, that Blanche would now view her suitors as pests, at least for a while. She would snap and reject them until she was good and ready, and only then go for a dog of her preference, established pecking order notwithstanding. She wouldn't need to earn her status as the Most Important Dog in the Park. Nature would give it to her free, twice a year. Status comes as a part of her sex.
Now, what made us humans not be animals any more is that us females stopped going into heat so we no longer had a biological need to say yes to the males, so if they wanted to get laid they had to actually please us. Give us presents. Build us houses. And pretty soon you got the Taj Mahal and Faberge Eggs. What is civilization but a large plan to decide who gets access to the most beautiful women?
But some women only get the first part where Blanche is now, the puppy stage, where the boys interested in establishing rank are not interested in her, because no matter what she does, she can not confer rank. Some women get all hurt and confused by this, wanting to compete for rank with the men instead of remembering she is the point of rank and to rise above it. And to remind men of why they strive.
This is why women have a duty to civilization to say no to men more often than they say yes. Make him have to work harder to get that yes. When he complains that taxes are killing him and regulations have stripped his profits and couldn't you just love him for himself, just knit your brow and explain you have a headache. Soon, like 3M did after the Clean Air act was passed, he'll find a way to turn a profit from those regulations, and be showing up at your door with a pearl and ruby brooch to swoon over. He just needed a little incentive, and that's you saying no. Don't do it for your own selfish needs. Do it for civilization.
Blanche, in a natural dog universe, would find herself one day the center of that universe, her season having arrived. Suddenly the big boy dogs would be lining up for her attention. And such is Mother Nature's sense of humor, that Blanche would now view her suitors as pests, at least for a while. She would snap and reject them until she was good and ready, and only then go for a dog of her preference, established pecking order notwithstanding. She wouldn't need to earn her status as the Most Important Dog in the Park. Nature would give it to her free, twice a year. Status comes as a part of her sex.
Now, what made us humans not be animals any more is that us females stopped going into heat so we no longer had a biological need to say yes to the males, so if they wanted to get laid they had to actually please us. Give us presents. Build us houses. And pretty soon you got the Taj Mahal and Faberge Eggs. What is civilization but a large plan to decide who gets access to the most beautiful women?
But some women only get the first part where Blanche is now, the puppy stage, where the boys interested in establishing rank are not interested in her, because no matter what she does, she can not confer rank. Some women get all hurt and confused by this, wanting to compete for rank with the men instead of remembering she is the point of rank and to rise above it. And to remind men of why they strive.
This is why women have a duty to civilization to say no to men more often than they say yes. Make him have to work harder to get that yes. When he complains that taxes are killing him and regulations have stripped his profits and couldn't you just love him for himself, just knit your brow and explain you have a headache. Soon, like 3M did after the Clean Air act was passed, he'll find a way to turn a profit from those regulations, and be showing up at your door with a pearl and ruby brooch to swoon over. He just needed a little incentive, and that's you saying no. Don't do it for your own selfish needs. Do it for civilization.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
INTERCONNECTIVITY (strikes)
My dad used to say "everything is interconnected." It's a fun way of going about your day, trying to figure out, say, how the dog playing with the squeaky toy is related to something that's no fun at all like, oh, health care legislation that everybody is screaming about.
The Dog and the Squeaky Toy: Blanche, my dog, pounces ferociously on a stuffed ball with a squeaker inside, then chomps it repeatedly while shaking her head furiously. After a minute or two of shaking and squeaking, she tosses it aside and pounces again. For all that it's cute (or annoying if you are sensitive to noise), the squeak represents what would be in the wild some bunny or mouse she was killing. Ah! the joys of being a predator, even if it's pretend.
Now some prey is helpless, like a mouse. And some, like your wildebeast in Africa, is not helpless so long as it is in a herd. If your lion attacked the whole herd, the alpha male members along with a mother or two protecting her child will kill the lion.
Okay. Now, say the predator is Management and the herd is The Workers and if they can keep things in ecological balance, both of sides thrive. But a little drought or economic downturn, and the imbalance might not stop until there's mass starvation on one side or the other - worldwide depression or massive walkouts and strikes.
So when you got Wall Street and bailouts and bankruptcies everywhere, even I can see it means something is out of whack in the ecological balance of management and worker. The employers are all saying they can't afford the rising cost of health insurance which they, not the workers negotiate, and that workers will have to shoulder a bigger share of the financial burden. But I say look at the balance sheets.
The wealthy in America are getting richer every day, even with all the financial fiascos of the last few years. The wealth of the wealthy is rising and the herd of workers is getting irked that the lions want to come right in the middle and devour the heart of the herd instead of culling the weak. This is not going down so good with the workers, and hence strikes all over the place. All the talk about rising health costs is a blind for the real battle of predator and prey.
The Dog and the Squeaky Toy: Blanche, my dog, pounces ferociously on a stuffed ball with a squeaker inside, then chomps it repeatedly while shaking her head furiously. After a minute or two of shaking and squeaking, she tosses it aside and pounces again. For all that it's cute (or annoying if you are sensitive to noise), the squeak represents what would be in the wild some bunny or mouse she was killing. Ah! the joys of being a predator, even if it's pretend.
Now some prey is helpless, like a mouse. And some, like your wildebeast in Africa, is not helpless so long as it is in a herd. If your lion attacked the whole herd, the alpha male members along with a mother or two protecting her child will kill the lion.
Okay. Now, say the predator is Management and the herd is The Workers and if they can keep things in ecological balance, both of sides thrive. But a little drought or economic downturn, and the imbalance might not stop until there's mass starvation on one side or the other - worldwide depression or massive walkouts and strikes.
So when you got Wall Street and bailouts and bankruptcies everywhere, even I can see it means something is out of whack in the ecological balance of management and worker. The employers are all saying they can't afford the rising cost of health insurance which they, not the workers negotiate, and that workers will have to shoulder a bigger share of the financial burden. But I say look at the balance sheets.
The wealthy in America are getting richer every day, even with all the financial fiascos of the last few years. The wealth of the wealthy is rising and the herd of workers is getting irked that the lions want to come right in the middle and devour the heart of the herd instead of culling the weak. This is not going down so good with the workers, and hence strikes all over the place. All the talk about rising health costs is a blind for the real battle of predator and prey.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
OSCAR IS A BOY'S NAME
Women keep trying to do a man's job, but they just aren't as good at things like making movies as the boys are. Sometimes, sure, a woman achieves something great by accident, or because her father or husband is Somebody and helps her, or she's beautiful, or preferably all three. But mostly, women can't cut it. Just look at he Oscars. At the end of the show, when they brought all the winners on stage, there was this sea of tuxedos and a puddle of gowns. You can't accuse liberal lefty Hollywood of sexism. No. They would surely embrace with open arms any woman who was as good as a man. The cold truth is women are not men. A man can tell a story or run a set with cojones, but a woman has only her uterus. Acting ballsy is just that - an act. At any moment she could go vaginal, or God forbid, fallopian and the whole project could come crashing down. Millions of dollars are at stake and women are not equipped to guarantee the ejaculatory "Eureka" by themselves. They need support. I myself couldn't write this column without a whole army of men doing all the actual work, you know, taking me out to dinner, buying me jewelry, paying for the apartment, creating civilization. As long as they pay all the bills, why shouldn't they take all the credit? Fair is fair.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
LIFE IMITATES TV
People keep complaining about reality television being a blot on the airwaves like the airwaves was invented for prime time instead of the other way around.
Now I enjoy my fiction as much as the next girl, and so try to catch the news as often as possible. Used to be news was reality, but not any more. Now the entire half-hour or hour is scripted like a sit-com, with just the details changing from episode to episode, but the content is decided by market research. Need a shooting here. A danger to consumers there. Canned. Soporific.
Enter reality programs, which can surprise you when you least expect it. Even on Survivor and American Idol, the final outcome is unknown. We humans is endlessly curious about other humans, what they will do, and how they will react. Reality TV gives us a window on a world of folk beyond our small circle of family, friends, and co-workers.
Plus, a lot of these shows is truly improving to your average human's life. Take Clean Sweep on the Home Channel. I have more than one friend who has started carting off carloads to the thrift store after watching a few episodes. And the Queer Eye show's intstructions to hopeless males gives a backdrop for some girls to point out a few fine points about behavior to the guy sitting on the couch next to her eating sunflower seeds and spitting the shells on the floor.
Actually, these two shows have provided a kind of couple's therapy for one duo I know. This week's hapless swain is so much worse than her guy, my friend can point and they can both laugh. But inside he's learning. And then the sweep people bring their broom to a closet worse than hers and he can pat her hand and promise her they will be happier in the end. And they are.
More importantly, while seeming to deal with externals, my friends actually learn about how to be better to each other. He puts out more effort just to make her happy, and she lets go of baggage that she has been saving just in case. And life imitates television.
Now I enjoy my fiction as much as the next girl, and so try to catch the news as often as possible. Used to be news was reality, but not any more. Now the entire half-hour or hour is scripted like a sit-com, with just the details changing from episode to episode, but the content is decided by market research. Need a shooting here. A danger to consumers there. Canned. Soporific.
Enter reality programs, which can surprise you when you least expect it. Even on Survivor and American Idol, the final outcome is unknown. We humans is endlessly curious about other humans, what they will do, and how they will react. Reality TV gives us a window on a world of folk beyond our small circle of family, friends, and co-workers.
Plus, a lot of these shows is truly improving to your average human's life. Take Clean Sweep on the Home Channel. I have more than one friend who has started carting off carloads to the thrift store after watching a few episodes. And the Queer Eye show's intstructions to hopeless males gives a backdrop for some girls to point out a few fine points about behavior to the guy sitting on the couch next to her eating sunflower seeds and spitting the shells on the floor.
Actually, these two shows have provided a kind of couple's therapy for one duo I know. This week's hapless swain is so much worse than her guy, my friend can point and they can both laugh. But inside he's learning. And then the sweep people bring their broom to a closet worse than hers and he can pat her hand and promise her they will be happier in the end. And they are.
More importantly, while seeming to deal with externals, my friends actually learn about how to be better to each other. He puts out more effort just to make her happy, and she lets go of baggage that she has been saving just in case. And life imitates television.
Monday, February 16, 2009
FASHION SENSE
Your fashion is your life, your religion, your society. Life is just the acquisition of fashion, which proof is that we are born naked and go out decked in our best dress and favorite jewels not to mention a hefty supply of make-up. Right there at the very beginning, before they even feed a baby, they put clothes on her. By the end, clothes has become so important to who a person is that after the spirit departs, we sure don't send it back to nature au naturel.
All of life's deep issues can be understood more clearly if you first understand the resulting fashion crisis. Resolving the fashion crisis does not put money in the bank, or kick the cheating bastard out of the house. Think of a fashion fix as what I like to call a "deep issue massage." It helps you work through the kinks in your psyche so that you can move more freely into a new job or new relationship.
All of life's deep issues can be understood more clearly if you first understand the resulting fashion crisis. Resolving the fashion crisis does not put money in the bank, or kick the cheating bastard out of the house. Think of a fashion fix as what I like to call a "deep issue massage." It helps you work through the kinks in your psyche so that you can move more freely into a new job or new relationship.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
SMELLING GOOD & PLENTY
Looks is not everything. You may be shocked to hear a girl like I say such a thing, but facts is facts. Opposites attract, leastways when it comes to smell. Gals do not all think the same manly scent is attractive. It seems the smell of a man that will send them into a swoon is the smell of a man whose immune system is farthest from her own. A man whose immune system is close to hers smells, well, like her brother.
So what's a person to do to increase his or her chances. Nix on the cologne or perfume. If you want to arouse the opposite sex, you need to increase blood to the sexual organs, and to do this you need to forget your Versace and your Chanel. According to studies, men are turned on most by a combination of smelling lavender and pumpkin pie. Women get more quickly hot and bothered in the presence of the smell of Good and Plenty candy and cucumber.
So gals, forget about baking him gramma's secret recipe chocolate chip cookies. Serve up some pumpkin pie for dessert. And guys, at the next movie date, pass by the popcorn and buy some you-know-what instead. And let me know how it turns out.
So what's a person to do to increase his or her chances. Nix on the cologne or perfume. If you want to arouse the opposite sex, you need to increase blood to the sexual organs, and to do this you need to forget your Versace and your Chanel. According to studies, men are turned on most by a combination of smelling lavender and pumpkin pie. Women get more quickly hot and bothered in the presence of the smell of Good and Plenty candy and cucumber.
So gals, forget about baking him gramma's secret recipe chocolate chip cookies. Serve up some pumpkin pie for dessert. And guys, at the next movie date, pass by the popcorn and buy some you-know-what instead. And let me know how it turns out.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
NEO-MODERNISM
My friend Jenny is in college studying writing. Or not-writing. It's hard to tell with Post-Modernism. She tries to explain how first the Moderns said that God does not exist and so it was up to humans to make a better world and that someday, with the perfect education, the perfect government and the perfect merchandise, we humans will be, well, if not perfect, happy.
Now your Post-Moderns say that the Moderns got the God part right and the rest is hooey. Ideas like "perfection" require an objective judge. Objectivity crashed and burned when Heisenberg and the boys started fooling around with atoms and cats. Humanity racing to a brighter future is like a hamster with a vivid imagination on a wheel in a cage. And meaning is meaningless so don't delude yourself.
Having said that, PMs (not to be confused with PMS) go on to inform the rest of us what makes good art and politics as if they was objective authority, apply for tenure at universities and then hire like-minded colleagues so's to influence the future of thought for the better, and come up with a whole science of signs to show how to skillfully undermine meaning's meaningfulness.
It's no wonder my friend who went to school wanting to be a good writer is confused. The only way she can be a good writer is to first give up the idea of good writing, and then she can win awards writing carefully crafted but untimately meaningless stories.
It's depressing. This tells me how deep-down unhappy all these PMs are. They're foisting their depressed and meaninglessness vision of the world on others with the filter that has polarized theirs. Me, I'm a rose-colored glasses person. I'm looking in the mirror and meditating on perfection - seeing is believing after all - and understand how the PMs' vision of futility will be fulfilled. Soon, a school of thought will emerge, and it will replace the Post-Moderns as quick as you can say 8-track tapes.
I'd like to suggest one - Neo-Modernism. Neo-Modernism says the PMs got the Heisenberg part right in that you can't ever try to know something without influencing the result, but Neos applies it to God and meaninglessness and perfection - wherever it suits them. Maybe there's a God and maybe there isn't. I can't know that. Maybe life is meaningless and maybe it isn't. I can't know that.
Me, I will continue to experiment with my own life, trying to make happy 'meaning' out of either the random or the designed universe. I don't care which. I can't know that. But I can be happy, give comfort and joy to those I touch, and not sweat what don't work out.
Now your Post-Moderns say that the Moderns got the God part right and the rest is hooey. Ideas like "perfection" require an objective judge. Objectivity crashed and burned when Heisenberg and the boys started fooling around with atoms and cats. Humanity racing to a brighter future is like a hamster with a vivid imagination on a wheel in a cage. And meaning is meaningless so don't delude yourself.
Having said that, PMs (not to be confused with PMS) go on to inform the rest of us what makes good art and politics as if they was objective authority, apply for tenure at universities and then hire like-minded colleagues so's to influence the future of thought for the better, and come up with a whole science of signs to show how to skillfully undermine meaning's meaningfulness.
It's no wonder my friend who went to school wanting to be a good writer is confused. The only way she can be a good writer is to first give up the idea of good writing, and then she can win awards writing carefully crafted but untimately meaningless stories.
It's depressing. This tells me how deep-down unhappy all these PMs are. They're foisting their depressed and meaninglessness vision of the world on others with the filter that has polarized theirs. Me, I'm a rose-colored glasses person. I'm looking in the mirror and meditating on perfection - seeing is believing after all - and understand how the PMs' vision of futility will be fulfilled. Soon, a school of thought will emerge, and it will replace the Post-Moderns as quick as you can say 8-track tapes.
I'd like to suggest one - Neo-Modernism. Neo-Modernism says the PMs got the Heisenberg part right in that you can't ever try to know something without influencing the result, but Neos applies it to God and meaninglessness and perfection - wherever it suits them. Maybe there's a God and maybe there isn't. I can't know that. Maybe life is meaningless and maybe it isn't. I can't know that.
Me, I will continue to experiment with my own life, trying to make happy 'meaning' out of either the random or the designed universe. I don't care which. I can't know that. But I can be happy, give comfort and joy to those I touch, and not sweat what don't work out.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
RHINESTONE 'RITING
Has anybody seen where all the good stories went? I go to the bookstore, I can't find any new ones in the Literature section. I'm reading a lot of prize-winning books, and I'm stopping fifteen, fifty, sometimes a hundred pages in. I don't care what happens to anybody, not that much of anything does happen in what passes for a story these days. I get up to fix a cup of coffee and suddenly I can't remember a thing I was reading. This is not early Alzheimer's. This is modern fiction.
Read the dust jacket of your latest literary wonder and it will practically sing how the author's prose is a)luminous b)incandescent c)sparkling d)all of the above. But I am not buying Christmas Tree lights. I want to sit down and find myself someplace else. And I got to prefer that someplace else to my own life, and my own life is pretty interesting.
Maybe that's it. Maybe your book critics don't like their life so much and so anything with pretty words, clever and obscure cross-references, and distracting odd events all strung together with what I call the New Sentimental Cynicism gives them the feeling that things ain't so bad when they look up and see their own reflection in the window by the chair. Boredom is relative.
But me, if you ain't gonna give me a great story with stuff that propels a character I love or love-to-hate through a world to some kind of resolution, I got better things to do. Things with a beginning, middle, and end, like a manicure. Or a walk with the dog. Or a trip to the laundromat. No time for this Fiction with a capital "F."
Read the dust jacket of your latest literary wonder and it will practically sing how the author's prose is a)luminous b)incandescent c)sparkling d)all of the above. But I am not buying Christmas Tree lights. I want to sit down and find myself someplace else. And I got to prefer that someplace else to my own life, and my own life is pretty interesting.
Maybe that's it. Maybe your book critics don't like their life so much and so anything with pretty words, clever and obscure cross-references, and distracting odd events all strung together with what I call the New Sentimental Cynicism gives them the feeling that things ain't so bad when they look up and see their own reflection in the window by the chair. Boredom is relative.
But me, if you ain't gonna give me a great story with stuff that propels a character I love or love-to-hate through a world to some kind of resolution, I got better things to do. Things with a beginning, middle, and end, like a manicure. Or a walk with the dog. Or a trip to the laundromat. No time for this Fiction with a capital "F."
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
THANKSGIVING DAY FAST
Modern America means never having to say you're hungry. Most people gain weight during this here holiday season. And most of them are overweight already. And here we are, getting ready to head in on Thursday for an officially sanctioned day of gluttony.
Now, I think the Pilgrim's feast was just swell. At the November harvest, nobody could predict if the food would last to spring, and how many would still be alive after a winter of no central heating, electric blankets or flu shots got through with their little communtiy. Starvation was possible, and so one day a year given over to stuffing your face till you couldn't eat another bite was a luxury.
Not so in the world of Costco. Folks eat their fill to bursting 365 days a year. Given the history of the human race, that is something to be truly thankful for. But not by stuffing your face yet again. No, a day of being hungry, even by choice, is a perfect way to appreciate the plentiful 364. Not to mention a slimming rather than a fattening way to start off the holiday party season.
Now, I think the Pilgrim's feast was just swell. At the November harvest, nobody could predict if the food would last to spring, and how many would still be alive after a winter of no central heating, electric blankets or flu shots got through with their little communtiy. Starvation was possible, and so one day a year given over to stuffing your face till you couldn't eat another bite was a luxury.
Not so in the world of Costco. Folks eat their fill to bursting 365 days a year. Given the history of the human race, that is something to be truly thankful for. But not by stuffing your face yet again. No, a day of being hungry, even by choice, is a perfect way to appreciate the plentiful 364. Not to mention a slimming rather than a fattening way to start off the holiday party season.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
LEARNING POLITICS FROM THE BIRDS AND BEES
All this talk of politics without attendant pieces of jewelry bores a girl after a while. This is why I am hoping a Republican wins. Your Republicans give fabulous gifts, while your Democrats think you should love them for themselves.
Before you tsk-tsk at the idea of giving presents to a girl, let me point out the universality of the gift rule in the Animal Kindgom. What does your bird do if he likes a lady? He puts a berry down in front of her, and if she eats it, he is filled with hope. His testosterone soars and he starts in with the head-bobbing. And we all know where the head-bobbing leads.
A girl like I who will accept a berry in the form of dinner and a bracelet from a hopelessly unattractive male is performing an act of altruism, giving the poor guy a much needed shot of testosterone before sending him home. Such an angel of mercy is more than mercenary. She brings hope that he may one day bob heads with the best of the birds and the bees.
Before you tsk-tsk at the idea of giving presents to a girl, let me point out the universality of the gift rule in the Animal Kindgom. What does your bird do if he likes a lady? He puts a berry down in front of her, and if she eats it, he is filled with hope. His testosterone soars and he starts in with the head-bobbing. And we all know where the head-bobbing leads.
A girl like I who will accept a berry in the form of dinner and a bracelet from a hopelessly unattractive male is performing an act of altruism, giving the poor guy a much needed shot of testosterone before sending him home. Such an angel of mercy is more than mercenary. She brings hope that he may one day bob heads with the best of the birds and the bees.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
COSMIC JERK
I just read how scientists say a Cosmic 'Jerk' changed the cosmos from a contracting to an expanding universe about 5 billion years ago, or about the time of the formation of our solar system. It can't be just a coincidence. Makes you think the creationists - excuse me - the 'intelligent design' folks may turn out to be right after all. All you have to do is accept that one man's god is another man's jerk, and we have ample proof of that in our choice of leaders.
I personally feel much better knowing the universe will keep on expanding outward, kind of like the stock market forever posting record profits, rather than the Big Crunch idea that it would reach a maximum and then fall back in on itself, which if you take the stock market model again would mean that the profits gained from automation and lower wages in globalization would someday, what with manufacturing being so efficient that there's nobody getting paid enough to buy the stuff, reach a limit and reverse until the whole system collapsed into apocalypse and it'd be the bugs turn to get intelligence and build a civilization.
I personally feel much better knowing the universe will keep on expanding outward, kind of like the stock market forever posting record profits, rather than the Big Crunch idea that it would reach a maximum and then fall back in on itself, which if you take the stock market model again would mean that the profits gained from automation and lower wages in globalization would someday, what with manufacturing being so efficient that there's nobody getting paid enough to buy the stuff, reach a limit and reverse until the whole system collapsed into apocalypse and it'd be the bugs turn to get intelligence and build a civilization.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
A SPAM OF LIES
You gotta love this President. I mean, he knows that words don't really mean anything. They are just squiggles and sounds. So if you don't care what you say, you can be both the villain and pose for photos as the white knight in shining flight-suit who's protecting everybody from evil. It's kind of a reverse Zorro or Robin Hood.
You know the old story. Rich and powerful villain in charge of governingment thinks he can do anything to the poor ordinary peons and get away with it. And he can, so long as he controls the army/police and can label his victims in such a way as to make them seem less-than-you-and-me. Criminals. Enemy Combatants. Unpatriotic Obstructionist Alarmist Racist Liberal Democrats.
In the stories, the label-ees are outcasts until someone of pure heart champions them. Then we are reminded of our duty to our fellow humans, our love of justice blossoms and we turn on the evildoers. Only today, it's the Compassionate Conserver himself who's robbing and pillaging and blaming the peons, not the Sheriff of Nottingham. The rhetoric is so dizzyingly doubled that ordinary people get lost in the shell game and pick the empty lie every time.
***
The lies inside this story is too complicated and too petty to be interesting to your average citizen. Too much thinking for too little result. So is the lies in the case of the prisoners at Guantanamo. And the rollbacks of clean air and water regulations. And the zero funding for enforcement of many federal protections of your common citizen. They have nice names like Homeland Security, the Healthy Forests law, the Corporate Responsibility bill, but the devil is in the details.
Words is not nothing. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can destroy your freedom and leave you naked on the heath when you are too old to fight any more. All it takes is for good people to trust the cover instead of reading the book and do nothing.
You know the old story. Rich and powerful villain in charge of governingment thinks he can do anything to the poor ordinary peons and get away with it. And he can, so long as he controls the army/police and can label his victims in such a way as to make them seem less-than-you-and-me. Criminals. Enemy Combatants. Unpatriotic Obstructionist Alarmist Racist Liberal Democrats.
In the stories, the label-ees are outcasts until someone of pure heart champions them. Then we are reminded of our duty to our fellow humans, our love of justice blossoms and we turn on the evildoers. Only today, it's the Compassionate Conserver himself who's robbing and pillaging and blaming the peons, not the Sheriff of Nottingham. The rhetoric is so dizzyingly doubled that ordinary people get lost in the shell game and pick the empty lie every time.
***
The lies inside this story is too complicated and too petty to be interesting to your average citizen. Too much thinking for too little result. So is the lies in the case of the prisoners at Guantanamo. And the rollbacks of clean air and water regulations. And the zero funding for enforcement of many federal protections of your common citizen. They have nice names like Homeland Security, the Healthy Forests law, the Corporate Responsibility bill, but the devil is in the details.
Words is not nothing. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can destroy your freedom and leave you naked on the heath when you are too old to fight any more. All it takes is for good people to trust the cover instead of reading the book and do nothing.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
BLACK AND WHITE
Your liberals, they accuse the conservatives of doing this terrible thing they call 'distorting the truth' just because folks like the President describe the world in black and white. Right or wrong. Freedom loving or terrorist. With us or against us. Tough or soft. Screwer or screwee. Okay, so some of those soldiers in Iraq, they took it maybe too much to heart. But you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. And the souflee in the oven of history right now is all about hot air and oil rising to new heights of wealth for all Americans who are real Americans, namely your Financial Aristocrats Teamed with Haliburton, Enron, and Arabia Dividing the Spoils. (FATHEADS)
Black and white is not a distortion, it's just a way of eliminating the gray matter from day to day life. Self-examination reveals too many personal flaws. Seeing your mistakes is depressing. Shame is embarassing. This is why studies show that when a person does something bad to another, the mind quickly explains to the Self that since the Self is basically good, the Other must have done something terrible to cause Saint Self to treat Mr. Other so bad. Then a little imagination and you have weapons of mass distruction just lying all over the place and the blame along with the shame falls neatly and happily onto the victim. Saint and Demon. Black and white.
But you say it's still a distortion to make what isn't black and white into what is. Try telling that to my dog. Blanche ain't got no cones in her eyes, only rods. She sees the same tennis ball I see, only I gotta live with the sick yellow-green color while she happily gets to have it in gray. All of you who want the President to put himself in your shoes; how about a little compassion for a guy who don't have the cones in his head to see shades of color or nuance. It's like a handicap. You shouldn't make fun of him for that.
Black and white is not a distortion, it's just a way of eliminating the gray matter from day to day life. Self-examination reveals too many personal flaws. Seeing your mistakes is depressing. Shame is embarassing. This is why studies show that when a person does something bad to another, the mind quickly explains to the Self that since the Self is basically good, the Other must have done something terrible to cause Saint Self to treat Mr. Other so bad. Then a little imagination and you have weapons of mass distruction just lying all over the place and the blame along with the shame falls neatly and happily onto the victim. Saint and Demon. Black and white.
But you say it's still a distortion to make what isn't black and white into what is. Try telling that to my dog. Blanche ain't got no cones in her eyes, only rods. She sees the same tennis ball I see, only I gotta live with the sick yellow-green color while she happily gets to have it in gray. All of you who want the President to put himself in your shoes; how about a little compassion for a guy who don't have the cones in his head to see shades of color or nuance. It's like a handicap. You shouldn't make fun of him for that.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
PRESIDENTIAL MEMORY LOSS
The President gave a masterful speech last night. He didn't waste no words on stuff that didn't turn out like he expected because he has the kind of mind that don't waste memory space on disagreeable details. He keeps his eye on the big picture.
Science has now proved that the brains of great men are special and this is why they rise to leadership. See, a brain is lots of nerves that have dendrites to connect them to other nerves and carry their thoughts around inside their heads. In the brains of your Captains of Industry and State, the dendrites are thick like a wrestler's neck and slick like a skating rink. Thoughts go from point 'A' to point 'B' lickety-split. In fact, point 'A' ALWAYS leads to point 'B,' and does it faster than you can say 'complexity.' This is how they get so rich - they are not sidetracked by conflicts between self-interest and morality. They just speed down the slalom trying to win, and if conflict is ignored and doubt devalued, fortunes are made, elections are won, and America is the envy of the world.
Your intellectuals and Democraniacs, they have what you call fuzzy dendrites. Their nerves branch this way and that and connect to different parts of the brain depending on how they put the thoughts together. Their brains can go from point 'A' to any other point in the alphabet, and do it from a variety of points of view. Very flexible but very slow and never quite as sure that 'B' is the only possible answer to question 'A.'
So, for mainstream Republican conservatives, when facts don't fit, their brains, which are going so fast down the same icy road to the bottom of things, run right over any uncomfortable facts and squash them flat. And We the People are happy, because we get to go on a real fast ride that ends up at the same place as always, where the staffers serve the same artificially-flavored and -colored food just the way we like it, never mind the salt and fat content setting a person up for obesity, diabetes, and a coronary. Talking about that just ruins the meal, and makes you the sourpuss who don't want anybody else to have no fun.
With liberals, the answer is always in doubt rather than the facts, and so you have to be willing to take the trip not knowing your route or even where you'll end up in the end. How many families do you know would survive a vacation like that?
Then there's the moral indignation quotient. Reagan was the perfect President because he had Alzheimer's all the time he was President. He continued to talk about trickle-down and tax cuts helping your ordinary folk with such earnest moral force because he lived in a mind didn't remember disagreeable facts.
Bush don't have the Alzheimer's advantage, but his brain was softened with so much alcohol and cocaine in his youth, it probably leads to the same result - true moral indignation without a hint of self-doubt or apology for errors of judgement because as far as he can remember, he never made any. Anyone who says otherwise is just willfully playing politics with the facts as he knows them.
Science has now proved that the brains of great men are special and this is why they rise to leadership. See, a brain is lots of nerves that have dendrites to connect them to other nerves and carry their thoughts around inside their heads. In the brains of your Captains of Industry and State, the dendrites are thick like a wrestler's neck and slick like a skating rink. Thoughts go from point 'A' to point 'B' lickety-split. In fact, point 'A' ALWAYS leads to point 'B,' and does it faster than you can say 'complexity.' This is how they get so rich - they are not sidetracked by conflicts between self-interest and morality. They just speed down the slalom trying to win, and if conflict is ignored and doubt devalued, fortunes are made, elections are won, and America is the envy of the world.
Your intellectuals and Democraniacs, they have what you call fuzzy dendrites. Their nerves branch this way and that and connect to different parts of the brain depending on how they put the thoughts together. Their brains can go from point 'A' to any other point in the alphabet, and do it from a variety of points of view. Very flexible but very slow and never quite as sure that 'B' is the only possible answer to question 'A.'
So, for mainstream Republican conservatives, when facts don't fit, their brains, which are going so fast down the same icy road to the bottom of things, run right over any uncomfortable facts and squash them flat. And We the People are happy, because we get to go on a real fast ride that ends up at the same place as always, where the staffers serve the same artificially-flavored and -colored food just the way we like it, never mind the salt and fat content setting a person up for obesity, diabetes, and a coronary. Talking about that just ruins the meal, and makes you the sourpuss who don't want anybody else to have no fun.
With liberals, the answer is always in doubt rather than the facts, and so you have to be willing to take the trip not knowing your route or even where you'll end up in the end. How many families do you know would survive a vacation like that?
Then there's the moral indignation quotient. Reagan was the perfect President because he had Alzheimer's all the time he was President. He continued to talk about trickle-down and tax cuts helping your ordinary folk with such earnest moral force because he lived in a mind didn't remember disagreeable facts.
Bush don't have the Alzheimer's advantage, but his brain was softened with so much alcohol and cocaine in his youth, it probably leads to the same result - true moral indignation without a hint of self-doubt or apology for errors of judgement because as far as he can remember, he never made any. Anyone who says otherwise is just willfully playing politics with the facts as he knows them.
Friday, March 25, 2005
THE BREAST MAN
The courts in England have cleared the way for a reporter there to sue Arnold for for fondling her breasts without permission or interest and then defaming her when she complained.
This answers the question why Arnold, with all his fame and success and wealth, wanted to be governor. The capitol dome. What does the shape remind you of? A breast. And he wants to be the # 1 male in possession of the largest breast-surrogate in the state so's he can pinch it (read tighten the budget) as hard as he wants and laugh when it's over and nobody can say, "Boo!"
I previously spoke last October about the advent of civilization coming as it did when the human female stopped going into heat and so she needed to be wooed before she would say 'yes' to sex with a male. Your male working for status is dreaming of a woman's breasts, building temples to ostensibly male gods but showing his true worship with those size DD cupolas, and generally wanting to be able to reach out and touch a fertile field for his seed. And your female's JOB is to say, 'no' until he's shaved, showered and put down the toilet seat.
This is a test for seed-worthiness that even your lemurs understand. The lemur males fight for status, and some are particularly bloodthirsty and cruel. They rise to the top of the male pecking order to be first in line when the females are feeling peckish. But wait! A female comes into heat, and she does not pick the Terminator to father her children even though he is first in line. She has watched his berserker ways and is not interested in having him practice on her or her kids on those cold winter nights in the trailer park. No way. It don't matter to her how many guys at the gym he's humiliated and bullied but who still say, "What a great guy!" She picks a male with a combination of muscle and compassion, maybe number four or five.
Unlike with humans, a female mammal in heat also knows that Mother Nature herself protects her by pumping the male's brain full of slavish devotion hormones for the duration. He can ask, but he can't force. She can walk right by Mr. Universe to go home with Mr. Nice Guy, and if he tries to tweak her teat, she can rip his eyes out, and he won't be able to defend himself. I love Mother Nature. But I suppose the legal system will do in a pinch.
This answers the question why Arnold, with all his fame and success and wealth, wanted to be governor. The capitol dome. What does the shape remind you of? A breast. And he wants to be the # 1 male in possession of the largest breast-surrogate in the state so's he can pinch it (read tighten the budget) as hard as he wants and laugh when it's over and nobody can say, "Boo!"
I previously spoke last October about the advent of civilization coming as it did when the human female stopped going into heat and so she needed to be wooed before she would say 'yes' to sex with a male. Your male working for status is dreaming of a woman's breasts, building temples to ostensibly male gods but showing his true worship with those size DD cupolas, and generally wanting to be able to reach out and touch a fertile field for his seed. And your female's JOB is to say, 'no' until he's shaved, showered and put down the toilet seat.
This is a test for seed-worthiness that even your lemurs understand. The lemur males fight for status, and some are particularly bloodthirsty and cruel. They rise to the top of the male pecking order to be first in line when the females are feeling peckish. But wait! A female comes into heat, and she does not pick the Terminator to father her children even though he is first in line. She has watched his berserker ways and is not interested in having him practice on her or her kids on those cold winter nights in the trailer park. No way. It don't matter to her how many guys at the gym he's humiliated and bullied but who still say, "What a great guy!" She picks a male with a combination of muscle and compassion, maybe number four or five.
Unlike with humans, a female mammal in heat also knows that Mother Nature herself protects her by pumping the male's brain full of slavish devotion hormones for the duration. He can ask, but he can't force. She can walk right by Mr. Universe to go home with Mr. Nice Guy, and if he tries to tweak her teat, she can rip his eyes out, and he won't be able to defend himself. I love Mother Nature. But I suppose the legal system will do in a pinch.
Monday, January 17, 2005
THE ART BEFORE THE HORSE
I went to an art opening with a friend. My friend is an artist, so she don't have no money, and I guess she wanted to fill up on the free drinks and mixed nuts. She also thinks I need more cultural activities, fashion being shallow and art where you stand around looking at things you don't understand with people wearing intentionally bad haircuts being deep.
The gallery was called RAID and right inside the door was the first installation. It was a wall of pictures cut out of magazines of that girl from Sex in the City. Years worth ot fashion magazine and celebrity magazine pictures. Apparently this artist buys celebrity picture collections on Ebay and then instead of pasting them on the wall of her bedroom like the girl selling them prob'ly did, she put them on the wall of a gallery and made it art.
Next to it were several wall size portraits of beautiful women. Like a fashion magazine cover. Next to that was a series of men in drag, aiming for that look that comes naturally to a girl like I. I turned to my friend and pointed out her art was imitating me.
So we had a few dry roasted nuts on our way into an installation room painted all pink and gold and baby blue and saw the cutest unicorn except that it had Owen Wilson's face. Its intestines were filled with doll funiture and it was surrounded by cuddly-looking space aliens doing Munch's scream. My guess is the artist's mother never let her play with Barbie dolls, Barbie and her clothing being shallow. Still, being an artist is as good a way to deal with such childhood trauma as psychotherapy, and if you don't make money at it, at least it don't cost $250 an hour.
The unicorn, by the way, the one with Owen Wilson's face, it costs $5000, if you're interested. You probably can't take it home till the show's over, though.
The gallery was called RAID and right inside the door was the first installation. It was a wall of pictures cut out of magazines of that girl from Sex in the City. Years worth ot fashion magazine and celebrity magazine pictures. Apparently this artist buys celebrity picture collections on Ebay and then instead of pasting them on the wall of her bedroom like the girl selling them prob'ly did, she put them on the wall of a gallery and made it art.
Next to it were several wall size portraits of beautiful women. Like a fashion magazine cover. Next to that was a series of men in drag, aiming for that look that comes naturally to a girl like I. I turned to my friend and pointed out her art was imitating me.
So we had a few dry roasted nuts on our way into an installation room painted all pink and gold and baby blue and saw the cutest unicorn except that it had Owen Wilson's face. Its intestines were filled with doll funiture and it was surrounded by cuddly-looking space aliens doing Munch's scream. My guess is the artist's mother never let her play with Barbie dolls, Barbie and her clothing being shallow. Still, being an artist is as good a way to deal with such childhood trauma as psychotherapy, and if you don't make money at it, at least it don't cost $250 an hour.
The unicorn, by the way, the one with Owen Wilson's face, it costs $5000, if you're interested. You probably can't take it home till the show's over, though.
Saturday, November 13, 2004
CAVEAT TEMPTER
So imagine you're a Japanese teenager going to college in the US. It's Veterans' Day and you spend your holiday spending on Melrose Avenue. Melrose is famous, so when you go intoThe Melrose Gift Collection and see a Chrome Hearts silver necklace just like the Japanese pop stars wear for a price you can actually afford (in the hundreds, not the thousands), you get excited. It's in a shop on Melrose for Pete's sake, so it must be real. You and your friends buy 4 of the exclusive stash of 8 the saleslady says she has. She shows you a picture of herself and the pop star, Hamasaki Ayumi. You are in Nihon heaven.
Later, over latte, you notice you a mistake on one of the totals. You go back, and see more than twenty Chrome Hearts necklaces now on display. Having gotten your education in Japan, you are good with addition and subtraction, and so you are pretty confident that eight minus four does not equal twenty. Either math is different in the US or those Chrome Hearts pendants are knock-offs and you and your pals have just been had for over a thousand dollars.
An American friend tries to get you a refund, but small shops are exempt from the refund laws. She checks with Chrome Hearts itself, just to make sure, and the director of sales confirms the sad facts - you bought phony jewelry.
Now, I'm a sweet-tempered girl, but this has me mad. Lying and cheating about oil and taxes and cronyism is one thing. Lying about jewelry strikes at the heart of civilization.
This is where you, the real you, comes in. I'm the beauty; you're the brains. Give me some ideas at how to strike a blow for Truth, Justice and the American Way of the Consumer.
Later, over latte, you notice you a mistake on one of the totals. You go back, and see more than twenty Chrome Hearts necklaces now on display. Having gotten your education in Japan, you are good with addition and subtraction, and so you are pretty confident that eight minus four does not equal twenty. Either math is different in the US or those Chrome Hearts pendants are knock-offs and you and your pals have just been had for over a thousand dollars.
An American friend tries to get you a refund, but small shops are exempt from the refund laws. She checks with Chrome Hearts itself, just to make sure, and the director of sales confirms the sad facts - you bought phony jewelry.
Now, I'm a sweet-tempered girl, but this has me mad. Lying and cheating about oil and taxes and cronyism is one thing. Lying about jewelry strikes at the heart of civilization.
This is where you, the real you, comes in. I'm the beauty; you're the brains. Give me some ideas at how to strike a blow for Truth, Justice and the American Way of the Consumer.
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