Friday, December 31, 2010

Word For The New Yr.

Entropy.

Waiting For The Hook

Not the original vocals:

Your Mother Dresses You Funny, & You Talk Funny Too

Proof, on this (much as we despise the word & concept) interactive amp thingie. Do note that Los Angeles is completely normal, dialectically.

A Bore Like All The Rest

As inane, droning, & filled w/ dullness, ennui & general suckitude as any other calendar yr. since we've been fully conscious of how jaded we are.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Death Of Music & Other Crap,
& Not One Damn Moment Too Soon

Between Pimplejuice & bands that sucked X yrs. ago & have not improved w/ aging, good riddance! Even the Wall Street Journal has noticed.
Despite those efforts, the number of tickets sold declined both world-wide and in North America—and even more steeply than the number of shows did, suggesting weak interest among fans.

[...]

Those shifts have hit many acts in the pocket book, and older acts with established fan bases turned increasingly in recent years to concert tours, with regularly rising prices, to steady their finances.

Irving Azoff, Live Nation's executive chairman and the manager of numerous major acts, last year told The Wall Street Journal that recorded music represented as little as 6% of some clients' income—down from 50% a decade ago.
Didn't know Irv still had work/was living. What the hell, is it the '70s again/still?
In fact, the online publication Digital Music News recently calculated that the members of the top 50 grossing touring acts in 2009 had an average age of 46. Had the Rolling Stones or the Who been on the road they would have pushed the figure even higher.
Snap! And in further "ha ha, fuck you" news from the WSJ, the editorial staff's former employer Borders may soon be the former employer of a whole lotta wage-slaves. Don't worry, abused saps, it'll all work out. (Unless it doesn't.)
In an ominous turn of events for the book business, Borders Group Inc. said Thursday it is delaying payments to some publishers, a sign that its financial troubles are worsening.

The nation's second-largest bookstore chain by revenue, behind Barnes & Noble Inc., said the delays were part of its efforts to refinance its debt and that it had notified the publishers with which it is seeking to restructure payments.

The retailer also said "there can be no assurance" that its larger refinancing efforts will be successful. The company reiterated an earlier disclosure that without refinancing, it could violate its existing ...
At that point a subscription is required, which may not be too indicative of good things for the newspaper biz either.The media party's over.

Homelessness Round-Up

A fucking awful person (truly awful, & may well take it up the ass from also-awful humanoid Micheal Medved) has decided that homeless people are ruining her shopping experience as she enjoys a wk. in Hawai'i on her husband's dime. Does that make her a whore, feminists who think (as we do) that marriage is prostitution?

A hypocrite of the first order, to be sure. Get the outro of "About Me."
I'm often touched to tears. I'm intensely involved in Jewish learning, observing and celebrating. I search for bright light not only as a transplant from sunny Southern California to this rainy, overcast clime, but because I seek to illuminate both the significant and mundane, in a stimulating way you'll enjoy.
No tears for the "vagrants" however. (Yes, vagrants. She never quite got to hoboes.)

Many a rabbi must be spinning in a grave after reading Mrs. Medved's horseshit on the homeless & then seeing that she's "intensely involved in Jewish learning, observing and celebrating." Might we suggest a bit less celebrating of her own materialism, & more adherence, less "observing" to/of whatever she's learned?

Here it is, we don't want her actual filth soiling this dump. Strike while comments are still open!

Thanks (One hell of a lot, really! As if we wanted to spend our afternoon/early evening pointing out to Mrs. Butt-Fuck what an insufferable piece of garbage she is!) to Donkey-Dick Chuck-Wagonsome idiot on a staircase, who led us there.

Strong (Fascist) America

Plagiarism?

Robe Weather

No typing in underwear today: 62°F (16.666°C, 289.81666K) on awakening at 1232!

UPDATE (1402PT): Heater on high (usually hits 84°F) staying at 78°F. Brrrr.

We Never Crank It Past Five, Though

"Haven't You Killed Enough People Today?"

We've been working our way through Highway Patrol; this one stands out for the amoral sociopath portrayed by Joe Flynn, who may be remembered as "Captain Binghampton" on McHales's Navy.
"Until then, remember, the clowns at the circus, they're real funny, but on the highway, they're murder."

Kill Your Landlord Before He Kills You

Sound advice no matter which side of the pond you find yourself on.
The landlord of Joanna Yeates was today arrested on suspicion of murdering the landscape architect.
Earlier, the landlord lied:
But police yesterday confirmed they were investigating a report from her landlord, former English teacher Chris Jefferies, that he saw three people leaving the flat at around 9pm on that Friday. It is possible that one of the three was Yeates but Jefferies was not able to say if they were men or women.

Yesterday Jefferies refused to give more details to reporters of what he had seen
Also, the guy will be around to fix your leaking/dripping/broken whatever tomorrow.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Pride Goeth Before A Fall

Yes, "The DC," or at least typist Peter Tucci, would appear to be proud of these 20 "most interesting" op-eds. To each their own.

More On War

The economic ugliness behind the item noting William Pfaff's item.From War in Context. What (if anything) would McArdle type if she saw it?

"A Whore Just Like The Rest"

We were somewhat joking (It was 0518 PT & we weren't just getting up, if you know what we mean.) when we nominated this rant for our best item of the yr. (on the basis of reaction thereto, more than anything else, as we couldn't remember any stand-outs from our 2100+ individual yr.-to-date spews) & congrats to local person Batocchio for linking to the first-person plural post here (We could use a hit. Or two.) rather than the Whiskey Fire version, & for figuring out our emailing address. We dug deeper, too!

Still sad to think of Al Weisel/Jon Swift up & dying like that.

In the new yr., remember that the next time you see someone may be the last, so let 'em know what crummy dressers & failures as human beings they are, as well as how you've never liked whatever it is you don't like about 'em! Even if Al/Jon wouldn't have.

How Many Times Have We Told You Stupid Fucking Hippies?

Do not eat this crap!
An outbreak of salmonella that was tied to tainted alfalfa sprouts has grown to at least 94 cases in 16 states.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday said the case count had risen from 89 cases in 15 states in the past week, with California joining the list.

More than half the cases have been in Illinois. There have been no deaths.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration advised the public not to eat alfalfa sprouts produced by the Tiny Greens Organic Farm in Urbana, Ill., because of possible salmonella contamination. The warning issued Monday evening also includes a mix called spicy sprouts, which contains radish and clover sprouts.

(Copyright ©2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reversed.)

Let Us Make This Perfectly Clear

Bob Seger sucks. It is no coincidence that both he & Bruce Springsteen share the initials B.S.

A Brit (we assume) believes otherwise, in the Guardian, yet.
Songs like Back in 72 won't thrill those who demand experimentation from their music. Bob Seger was always a musical conservative – as with Springsteen, the music of the 60s soul revues and the bar bands of America's great cities are his inspiration – but he made music that deserves to be heard. A left turn somewhere in 1968 and he might be remembered alongside those other highpoints of high-energy Detroit rock the MC5 and the Stooges.
Say what you will about Seger (Don't you start us talkin'!) "high-energy," especially when compared to the Stooges & MC5, is not a term you can apply to his medium tempo, tedium-inducing, lame-ass horseshit.

News To Us

Did you know that while the President, as commander-in-chief of the nation's baby-killers (Collateral damage, bitchezz!!) can't declare war w/o the consent of the (essentially rubber-stamp) Congress, but if failed governor Sarah Palin were elected,
as commander of the armed forces she'd have the power to provoke war with Iran or North Korea or whomever.
Is Sully flunky Appel Constitutionally ignorant, does he find it a good idea that any president (And especially a Republican one?) can use drones & whatnot to "provoke" other nations w/o Congress butting in, or (least likely)  is this a tacit admission that the Constitution has already been shredded & pulped, & "our" military is now just a larger version of the Nazi Wehrmacht, sworn only to obey the president?

Speaking Of ...

Houses falling, perhaps not the actual edifices themselves, but their "value" may be circling the drain. (As it will be a cold day in hell — current temp in the bunker, w/ heat on: 76°F — before we wade through all the stats & graphs in the item, realize that we're going by the headline alone.)

Was buying that house for a mortgage deduction worth it, suckers? Megan McArdle weighs in, preëmpting anticipated, "But Megan, how does this affect YOU?" questions from her Megan-obsessed commentariat.
Given that we just bought a house a few months ago, I'm sure this post will inspire a couple of readers to ask whether we regret that decision. The answer is that no, we don't, for several reasons:

1. We always viewed buying a house as a consumption decision, not an investment decision: we wanted to own a house a little bit for the forced savings, but mostly so that we could get the house exactly the way we liked it. We knew that process would be expensive, and would come with a bunch of hassles, an expectation that has already been borne out by our experience trying to get the chimney guy to call us back so that we can give him thousands of dollars to rebuild our chimney and flue. But that decision has been more than vindicated by our ability to fix up the kitchen the way we want it.
As opposed to fixing the kitchen down?

House Surfing Up-Date

After further rain, here at SoCal's Schadenfreude Central we await w/ bated breath the first news of a water-saturated hillside breaking loose & flowing into a hill-dweller's (i.e., wealthy weasel's) house. It may be too much to hope for houses to be pushed from their foundations & plummet into the canyons/streets below, but we can keep our fingers crossed.

Loser Nation

Good stuff from William Pfaff, whom we remember from those long ago days when the Chicago Times/L.A. Tribune wasn't as bad. The '80s, if not the late '70s. But the brain trust at First & Spring would rather have Johan [sic] Goldberg gracing their pages, although Mr. Pfaff is also a Chicago Tribune columnist.

Here's a pull, now read the rest.
[The United Snakes] also possesses by far the largest armed forces on Earth, which demand from a profoundly indebted nation still more sophisticated equipment and better recruits, since the Americans they are now enlisting, by standard U.S. military criteria of IQ and level of education, come from the bottom of the barrel of eligible men and women, so that it has become increasingly necessary to recruit from immigrant and foreign populations.

The paradox that is seldom discussed in politics or the press is that this country, with total military resources equal to those of all the rest of the world combined, wages wars that consistently turn out badly, leaving American enemies in power. I am considered unpatriotic for bringing this up; however, other countries have noticed.

Since the Korean War (a draw, plus a cease-fire that remains dangerously unresolved) and the Vietnam War (away from which the unsuccessful U.S. tiptoed, while continuing to issue empty threats which had no public backing), the U.S. has won wars only against former CIA “asset” Col. Manuel Noriega of Panama, a Cuban airport construction crew on Grenada, and Saddam Hussein, thereby delivering Iraq into the hands of Iran.
An exceptional nation, aren't "we?"

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Great Minds Dep't.

As previously evidenced. Others agree.
Oh, Sweet Blood of Jesus: Tintin's link from above. You will die if you listen to it. Chalk on a blackboard is too kind a description.
Can the two Pomplamooses be stopped? We'll bet she's no "lady," either, because she certainly seems to enjoy prostituting herself. (Need we add, the French spelling of the word is "pamplemousse." Dipshits.)

Plus which, we are despising this musical crap-fest. Even YouTube commenters know better. We may have to befriend this one.
Oh great. This TV spot is just as bad as the Hyundai Holiday ads with that annoying girl singing into that microphone as if she wants to apologize for singing in the first place....ughhh....Please stop with the attempts to be trendy.
We'd advise those w/ even a semblance of musical taste not to listen. Mercifully, it's only the (0:15) cut.
No mercy here, however.
Apparently by Vampire Weekend. Whores, them & Pimplejuice. All of them. Die, horrid, young & stupid people!

And really, who gives cars for Xmas, or goes further into debt during the season just to get a "deal?"

Behind The Quotation

QUOTATION OF THE DAY
"I bought two dresses on sale at Ann Taylor, and I bought four dresses on the clearance rack at Nordstrom. I'm spending more on myself because I'm starting to feel a little more at ease."
GWEN HILSABECK, a manager at a hospice company who was doing some after-Christmas shopping at a mall near Chicago.
Well, sure. As the economy worsens & the population ages, more people will be getting sick & dying, & Gwen will be managing the shit out of that hospice.

Cast Into The Pit, We Wish

Not unlike three, five or whatever-yr. olds howling & screeching "But you said! You said so!" at their parental units, the sort of people who would enjoy standing downwind from a blazing campfire are still on about the phrase "global warming."

Whoever first used the phrase (As an easy introduction to the great big complicated ideas that the like-to-breathe-shit people would have had trouble wrapping their tiny minds around?) is no doubt sorry now, as the appearance of any temperatures much above 50°F results in this kind of drivel from Bow-Tie Daddy Carlson's Daily AP Feed.
Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C., told TheDC that global warming proponents wrongly try to justify numerous weather patterns as being the result of global warming.

“Global warming scientists say it will be warmer, colder, snowier, and less snowy all at the same time, which is impossible. Anyone who follows global warming knows the theory is rife with exaggeration,” Michaels said. “What’s disturbing is to see The New York Times put a really fringe idea on their editorial page. Obviously they’re panicking about people’s distrust of the political nature of global warming science. It struck me as desperation pass, knowing the people are abandoning global warming as a signature issue.”
Yes, someone from the Cato Institute said "political nature of global warming science," yet was not referring to himself. Not that the fair & balanced responder acquitted himself well, even allowing for, shall we say, selective editing on the part of typist Donovan.
“Basically anything that would appear like magic would throw the laws of physics into question,” Brad Johnson, a climate editor at the Center for American Progress, a progressive Washington, D.C. think tank, told The Daily Caller. “The only way to disprove the global warming theory is if magic is real and that our understanding of the universe is completely wrong.”
On & on it goes. Our real purpose is to display this for all to see, which has been at "TheDC" since 1740 Eastern (W/ an update at 1805.) & remains uncorrected as of almost midnight ET.
Cretins.

Picture Of The Day, If Not The Season

Via the no longer local Mick Farren, quite a shot.
We'll assume the photo was taken somewhere in Great Britain, as the cars are on the wrong side of the road. (Do the poms read from right to left, too?) Next time, Doc, some info/detail, please.

Predicting The Future

Man faces prison sentence for reading his unfaithful wife’s emails

Can we be blamed for reading it as: "Man faces prison sentence for reading his unfaithful wife’s entrails?"

Monday, December 27, 2010

Flora, Fauna & Signage

We had a cigarette, & some hot cocoa, or chocolate, or a Safeway® imitation thereof, in hopes we'd calm down rather than start oiling certain moving parts on certain mechanical devices. Hasn't made much difference.

Take Two

After some time wasted dicking about, a successful cropping.
We are going to save some money, make it to the next Lakeside School reunion, hoping that Bill Gates is there, & then we are going to kidnap his ass & hold him prisoner until he explains why every program they make is completely counter-intuitive, as well as why, when they do have something easy & functional, the next version invariably sucks to high heaven. If they're so fucking worried about reverse compatibility every time they change operating systems, why do they not give a flying fuck about maintaining easy use for the user? We'd also be interested to see if he could actually make any of his shit work w/o wasting time w/ the (NOT)help. And naturally, now that he & his drones have decided that it's all in "the cloud," if you want to use the (NON)help, you need to be connected to the damn Internet.

Should have beaten the fucking shit out of the little twerp in June '69, right before we fled the country anyway, for different reasons. One more atrocity wouldn't have mattered.

Local Flora, Polluted Clouds

Postcards From Obviousville

Moonlight on Western. (It's near Vermont.)

Photo Frenzy

Getting our US$5.00 worth from Google.
Griffith Observatory
Subway station that serves the Observatory.
Ditto
One still must take a bus from the train to the Observatory .
Getting a bit irked here, as we rec'd. some shit called Nero PhotoSnap® w/ the devil-box improvements, & it's a pain to use, unlike the made for morons (IM1, RU12?) but not much bullshit Windows program that used to open our pix, & allowed us to rotate & crop w/ little effort, & would save the changes w/o extra clicking right when we clicked to the next picture.

Nobody knows the trouble we've seen. Or how much better these would have looked if we had the patience to perfect them.

Katzen Krizzmess

Hostess wondering who the hell invited this loaf.

Murder, They Typed

Or merely flapped from their gums on the tube, as documented at People OK W/ Murdering Assange.

Xmas Shots

Dinner
Another guest, sleeping it off.
Rain Clouds Under the Radar, A.
And B.

We Gave It Our Best Shot

Sometimes it just isn't enough, though.
For the first time in more than four decades, Los Angeles is on track to end the year with fewer than 300 killings, a milestone in a steady decline of homicides that has changed the quality of life in many neighborhoods and defied predictions that a bad economy would inexorably lead to higher crime.

As of mid-afternoon on Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department had tallied 291 homicides in 2010. The city is likely to record the fewest number of killings since 1967, when its population was almost 30% smaller.
Still a few days to go. Do not give up hope.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Uhmm, What Else ...?

  • Worcestershire 
  • Oil (40-weight or better)
  • 10# bag o' taters
  • Sour cream (w/ chives?)
  • Baked good(s) (if bagels, cream cheese)
  • Cocoa (check weather for hot chocolate necessity)
  • Moloko
  • Meat(?)/bacon

Pomplamoose: "Pas Encore?"
Jamais Encore Is More Like It

Granted, these two hipster-stains on the underwear of humanity are not wearing those RECTangular hipster glasses, but everything else about them (including/especially) the fact that they are WHORES of the lowest nature is repugnant. We present these recordings (Which have been shoved down our ears w/o pause for wks. now, resulting not in a desire to purchase a Hyundai, but in a statistically significant increase in our average mute button response time.) only as evidence. You are advised not to click, & we will not be responsible for nausea, vomiting, or the inability to obtain erection/lubrication for the rest of your natural lives.
And upon taking the trouble to find this effluvia, we are at least led to believe that this is some established recording/performing duo, by the name of "Pomplamoose."

Absolute proof that they is hoors: They will do it for any foreign auto manufacturers.We announce herewith a death panel fatwa on both their houses. Seriously. If these two awful creeps are w/in the sound of our voice, they'd better move somewhere those damn scarves & knit caps will be of use. Soon.

More inane research: This is part of a horseshit
new medium known as the “VideoSong”. VideoSongs follow two simple rules:

What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice), and if you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).

Pomplamoose’s VideoSongs can be found on YouTube along with other traditional music videos, but there’s something so amazing and endearing about watching musicians create an organic sound without the heavy hand of a producer or record label. At first glance, Pamplemoose is just a couple of musicians from San Francisco making unique VideoSongs for a generation of YouTubers; but their music is actually quite brilliant.
Huh, what? No lip-synching? But what is "multi-tracked and mixed for your listening pleasure," if not the moral equivalent of Milli Vanilli? Or the Village People? Or shit?

Also: San Francisco. It figures. And, more unintentional irony: "watching musicians create an organic sound without the heavy hand of a producer or record label." Nope, just the iron fist of some twenty-nothing schmucks at the advertising agency trimming your drivel to 30 secs. for the commercial.

No jury of our actual peers would convict us.

The Sheep Look Up

Just over a wk. ago, we noted some aspects of the New Feudalism, as offered here.
Age makes a difference, workplace experts say. Baby boomers longed for a corner office and expected to separate their work lives from their home lives.

"Younger workers' lives are all integrated, not segregated," Rivard said. "They have learned to work anywhere — at a kitchen table or wherever." Many don't feel a need to spend time in company quarters.
It raises its ugly head again at The Daily Dish.
Rob Horning explores the thinning line separating business and our personal lives as production and consumption merge. Money quote:
What makes this potentially worse is that such work (being online and contributing or organizing information, sharing), so much closer subjectively to consumption or self-actualization, will register as meaningful and will feel like progress. Perhaps this sort of work (sometimes called immaterial labor), combined with welfare payments, could be the foundation of a less exploitative social order in which what people do “for a living” actually seems to constitute the meaning of their life, and no one is left “unemployed” and rendered socially worthless. But under our current conditions, immaterial labor mainly makes life more precarious, and taints the things we ordinarily would enjoy doing with an urgent anxiety. We can’t just be ourselves; we have to make ourselves a personal brand that we desperately need our friends, i.e. networked nodes, to buy into.
Fucking robo-sheep.

Relieve The Pressure!

Apparently interest in other members of our (Alleged: Show us the DNA, 'cause we will not believe we are the same as most of you.) species is a direct result of some sort of swelling at the base of what passes for a brain in most of you. Figures.

More Confusion

This day off on a wknd. has us completely lost. Is it Tuesday?

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Wha'?

Any other aging, wretched, hearing-challenged, not paying that much attention telebision viewers out there who, as we do, keep hearing ads for an "Orgy Network?" (Turns out it's "4G," some wireless mess that is microwaving your brains into an even mushier state.)

Jesus Death Toll Up-Date

Currently standing at 43 in Pakistan & 38 in the Philippines & Nigeria. Can we get 100 before the end of the day?

38 must be the magic number this yr., as Jesus/gawd allowed this to happen as well. No malice here, just greed.
QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuadorean officials say the death toll is now 38 from the crash of an overcrowded bus that plunged into a 1,100-foot (350-meter) ravine.

A government statement says the number of injured has also risen, to 46.

Some of the injuries are grave, and the number of dead could increase further.
Oh lordy, why have you forsaken us?

Xmas Sad

This made us quite sad, our being an emotional & mental wreck & all, as our Hallowe'en-deceased friend & former sexual associate was named Doris, & she too was a friend of cats. (And rum.)
Hope our weeping uncontrollably doesn't short out the keyboard.

Hipster Santa May Be Late This Yr.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Orb Up-Date

Everywhere!

Civic Duty

To advise y'all that our (& probably your) cyber-friends at World O'Crap have been compromised & have temporarily relocated.

A Most Filthy Time Of Year

The Internet being filthy w/ Xmas, here's some Xmas smut & a bad pun.
Steal something for yourself at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

A Sincere Yuletide Wish,
From Us To You:

That every one of you Jesus freaks who think getting shit-faced & making noise on your stolen, does not even appear in your book of lies holiday is the best way to celebrate the non-historical birthday of your Jewish "savior" either die of alcohol poisoning/cirrohsis, or is paralyzed for the remainder of your Jesus-filled (yet still completely empty & meaningless) life by another God Squadder who's driving drunk.

And knock it the hell off w/ the original sin bullshit.
We've already had what little apology we are going to get (none in most cases) for the raped children, the AIDS-sufferers in Africa, the centuries spent attacking Jews, science, women and "heretics", the indulgences and more modern (and tax-deductible) methods of fleecing the gullible to build the Vatican's vast fortune. So, no surprise that these weren't mentioned. But there's something else for which the pope should go to confession, and it's arguably the nastiest of all. I refer to the main doctrine of Christian theology itself, which was the centrepiece of what Ratzinger actually did say in his Thought for the Day.

"Christ destroyed death forever and restored life by means of his shameful death on the Cross."
More shameful than the death itself is the Christian theory that it was necessary. It was necessary because all humans are born in sin. Every tiny baby, too young to have a deed or a thought, is riddled with sin: original sin. Here's Thomas Aquinas:
". . . the original sin of all men was in Adam indeed, as in its principal cause, according to the words of the Apostle(Romans 5:12): "In whom all have sinned": whereas it is in the bodily semen, as in its instrumental cause, since it is by the active power of the semen that original sin together with human nature is transmitted to the child."
Adam (who never existed) bequeathed his "sin" in his bodily semen (charming notion) to all of humanity. That sin, with which every newborn baby is hideously stained (another charming notion), was so terrible that it could be forgiven only through the blood sacrifice of a scapegoat. But no ordinary scapegoat would do. The sin of humanity was so great that the only adequate sacrificial victim was God himself.
That's right. The creator of the universe, sublime inventor of mathematics, of relativistic space-time, of quarks and quanta, of life itself, Almighty God, who reads our every thought and hears our every prayer, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God couldn't think of a better way to forgive us than to have himself tortured and executed. For heaven's sake, if he wanted to forgive us, why didn't he just forgive us? Who, after all, needed to be impressed by the blood and the agony? Nobody but himself.
Ratzinger has much to confess in his own conduct, as cardinal and pope. But he is also guilty of promoting one of the most repugnant ideas ever to occur to a human mind: "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (Hebrews 9:22).

House Of Cards Teeters On Brink

Imbalance Up-Date: Not just income inequity.

The growing imbalance between real wealth creation and worthless paper pushing is bad news

Progressive Flo & the GEICO Gecko illustrate that the economy & financial system are a complete fucking joke.
But these two represent something different, something apocalyptic -- and I say that not merely because their maddening ubiquity has driven me to the brink of insanity. I say it because they are peddling the kind of commodity that offers little tangible worth, waging a fight that promises no valuable innovation, and representing a larger insurance and finance sector that's hollowing out our economy.

[...]

In the global economy's increasingly fierce fight for genuine value and better living standards, this might not be so problematic if America's wealth-creating sectors (i.e., making things or providing valuable services) remained substantially larger than wealth-cannibalizing sectors like insurance and finance. But since the 1980s’ decline of manufacturing, the insurance and finance sector has doubled its share of gross domestic product, hitting 8 percent last year. That's twice as large as both the construction and information sectors -- and ongoing taxpayer bailouts promise to exacerbate the asymmetry even more.

This is certainly great for insurance companies -- for example, it provides them excess billions to buy an absurd amount of ads. For the rest of us, though, the growing imbalance between real wealth creation and worthless paper pushing is bad news -- and that’s why the gecko and Flo are so deeply disturbing. More than just the moment's most annoying shills, they are the cheeky visages of our nation's long-term economic decline.
And you, our "fellow" Americans, are the punchline.

Here You Go, Food Nazi
Michelle Obama

Sorry to admit we haven't tried any of these, other than a McRib®, & of course we've had a burrito or two at Taco Smell. (Identified as a taco in the slideshow. Fucking gawd damn shit, if you're going to type & bitch about food, learn the difference! And the McRib® & $2.00 Meal Deal in the "Worst of 2010" are old stuff on a comeback or merely the same shit at a newly reduced "price point.")

Our recent McRib was crummy. No recollection of whether they were any good the first go-round, even though we remember having had several in that halcyon/Golden Arches age.

This item does look like fun. (Not healthy, you bourgeois sheep, but fun. Like, kicks, man.) Except for that green stuff. That crap rots, do not eat it!
Friendly's® Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt.
One of the many advantages of living in the very bowel of the beast (i.e., most Zone Improvement Postal codes that start w/ 900) is that few of the nation-wide shit-for-suburban-scumbags chains locate in 900XX. (No shit. Closest Friendly's® appears to be in 43512, a mere 1,910 miles from our ZIP. No wonder we don't see any national adverts for them on the telly.)

Ah, we see that Friendly's® is "Where ice cream makes the meal®." We did not know that, do not believe it, & could not possibly care any less, one way or the other. Read the history.
We are a company founded on ice cream but built around families. We opened our first Friendly's Ice Cream Shop in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1935. Friendly's is a place where hungry people can sit together, eat together, joke together and debate about who has the best way to eat an ice cream sundae, where sons can find out why lefty pitchers are harder to hit and where families can meet up to get an extra fifteen minutes of talk time over our famous ice cream.
Is this whole Mormon/Manson family dinner together horseshit an admission that America's children hate their parents so damn much that if they weren't held hostage by threat of food deprivation they would tell their parents just how stupid & boring they are, if not kill them in their sleep?

If any place deserves to burn to the ground in a suspicious but possibly grease-caused fire (As if, once one applies the mind to the concept, there's any place that doesn't deserve that.) it would be one of these dumps. Lucky the closest one is almost 2,000 miles from us.

Horse Latitudes

OK, we're pretty well sick of the whole "zombi" thing. We're feeling about as we did when the Irish & their gawd-awful squeaky music became ubiquitous, around the time that Titanic was a big pile of shit nation-wide. Enough, already. (We gotcher "Celtic Christmas" right here, Paddy!)

But we'll give this a few points & "share" it w/ all, mostly because it's monochromatic, & because (barring the huge War On Christmas "terror" attack we're hoping for) there probably won't be much news, info or other idiocy to relieve our never-ending jadedness over the next few days, wk., or whatever, until the mindless dead awake from their hang-overs & get back to ruining everything.

From The Mail-Box

Received some spam from some whores (directly below, w/ the aging never-was bikini "model") in Oz. (Why?)

Sent them a little note:
If you'd like to help us express our anger, the corporate tools in question are Filmview Services.

Merry Christmas To Our Baby-Killers

And a Happy Hanukkah to you, Mrs. Geller.

Protip: Get a microphone you can attach to your top, rather than one on the camera & four ft. of windy air away from your yap.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Do Let's Have A War.
On Raves & Night Clubs!

From across the pond:
Of course, rights for man, woman & child may vary a bit, depending on whether one is a man, woman, or child.

Washing Away The Scum

Disappointed it's stopped raining. More disappointed no more precip. expected until Boxing Day. Nevertheless, lookit this!
Photo: Joel Bellman
Seventh & Alvarado, four blks. south of the (no longer there) Pioneer Chicken at Third & Alvarado referenced in this sad number.UPDATE (not much later): Further research (the bane of today's modern typist) indicates the Pioneer Chicken in the tune may be a different one than the Third & Alvaradowherever the hell location we were thinking of. That one was right near the the Royal Viking Motel, & there was plenty action there too. Or not. It's been a while.

More research brings us: [I recently heard this song for the first time on a Zevon anthology purchased at the Virgin Megastore for half-off. In the notes, Zevon says nitpickers always tell him there wasn't a Pioneer Chicken stand on Alvarado. -- DA]

Huh, a nitpicker makes an error. Do not pick on us.

W/o Further Comment

From PJM.

What Do the 'Holiday Terror Warning' Targets Have in Common?

by Bob Owens
All are places where some states have outlawed concealed carry, which has saved plenty of lives in Israel and elsewhere.
READbulletFile under: Pindick Compensators, Chinless.

Working-Class Scum:
Not Proud Of America?

A goldbricking parasite on the investing class repeats Michelle Obama's anti-American screed just after (3:50). How many reactionary mouthpieces will be screeching about this? We're waiting.

Holiday Fun

Just so the picture will be up (To nauseate others.) we present the first of several photos from a tree-trimming fest we attended last Friday.

Closet Case? It Would Be
Irresponsible ...

As noted two items down, a Virginia delegate doesn't want sodomites in his precious Virginia Nat'l. Guard.
"It's a distraction when I'm on the battlefield and have to concentrate on the enemy 600 yards away and I'm worried about this guy whose [sic] got eyes on me," the lawmaker, Delegate Bob Marshall (R), told WUSA9. "If I needed a blood transfusion and the guy next to me had committed sodomy 14 times in the last month I'd be worried."
Really, "Delegate Bob?" You're under fire & you think the guy next to you may be more interested in making goo-goo eyes than in keeping himself (& maybe even you) from being killed? A round from the enemy does not threaten you as much as some big handsome stud right next to you blowing kisses? We can only assume that Bob's been so distracted himself, perhaps when he was lifting weights.
He has a personal library of 2000+ books, is an avid reader of history, philosophy, constitutional issues, and medical, social and political issues of importance. His hobbies (when he has time) include weight lifting, gardening and photography.
2000+ books? A veritable  Sarah ("I read 'em all!") Palin.

The Washington Post has another telling quote.
"This policy will weaken military recruitment and retention, and will increase pressure for a military draft,'' Marshall said. "After 232 years of prohibiting active, open homosexuals from enlisting in our military, President Obama and a majority in Congress are conducting a social experiment with our troops and our national security...In countries where religions and cultures find homosexual acts immoral, the Obama administration's repeal policy will work to the detriment of all American troops in securing local cooperation with our nation's foreign policy goals."
Afghanis may have been just fine w/ being bombed by robots while their country is under occupation (A recent survey indicated few Afghans even knew that all the mess inflicted on them was a result of the 11 September, 2001 acts of armed self-defense by people protecting their religion & culture. How will they know there may be sodomites in the ISAF ranks? If we aren't mistaken, the Royal Army & the cock-crazy Canadian Forces already have serving sodomites.) but once the dirty Mooslims (Nonetheless morally admirable for their stance against perversion!) discover that open, active poofters are in the ranks, they'll really be pissed!

Glug Glug Glug

We don't claim to be Mr. Weather History, but in the 37 yrs. we've spent in Southern California's iteration of Hell, we don't remember it raining consistently for this long. Hell, we shouldn't claim to be a which day of the wk. it is-ologist, but hasn't it been raining for a wk. straight?

Watch Your Throat, America

A loon at The Daily Caller foresees "social conservatives" up in arms about, yes, the jamming of
Democrats’ left-wing, radical social agenda down the throats of the American people. This is a wake-up call for social conservatives that we are in a culture war that the left will not give up on despite suffering historic losses in the November midterms.
Wake up, indeed. There was no cultural hysteria until Darin Selnick sounded the alarm, but now they'll really be angry. (As for historic losses, they didn't get the Senate. A real tsunami of righteousness.)
Going forward, DADT will be the rallying cry for social conservatives, and the issue will not fade away. Social conservatives know that the military is the last line of defense in the culture war and if it falls, so does the rest of the country.
Last line of defense in the culture war? Are we going to have a real, shooting war?
Social conservatives are already fighting back. Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall is in the process of drafting a bill for Virginia’s 2011 legislative session that would ban gays from serving in the Virginia National Guard. It is only a matter of time before social conservatives begin to fight back against DADT’s repeal at the federal level as well. Just as abortion has not gone away, DADT will not go away and will be a rallying cry as social conservatives draw the line in the sand and finally say enough is enough and fight to bring back DADT.
Selnick doesn't even get the implications of his own run-on typing. Is the best the "independent consultant and former director of Center for Faith Based and Community Initiatives within the Department of Veterans Affairs" can hope for the reanimation of the DADT corpse? No calls for bringing back sodomy laws & actively enforcing them, no calls to keep gays (Not people, adjectives.) out of the service entirely, merely hope that DADT can be re-inflicted? And as all actual Americans know, DADT was an awful, discriminatory law shoved down America's throat by Bill Clinton, yet Darin wants it back.

They've lost the war, & now they want to reënact the battle. A hint: To protect their precious, virgin throats from left-wing San Francisco values, duct tape over the mouth.

And as it's from Tucker Carlson's The DC: "Man in a suit with a bow-tie neck/Wanna buy a grunt with a third-party check?" although Tuck gave up on the bow-tie a while ago.Note: Will be available sooner or later at Whiskey Fire, but we can't compete w/ Thers, who seems to be on the same typing/posting schedule we are. Odd for a guy who's employed & three hrs. ahead of us.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Steve M. Sums It All Up For You

The manipulators & the manipulated:
... Is that really so hard to grasp?

Well, it is for people who desperately want to feel aggrieved. And the folks who run Fox Nation know that's their audience. So they're pushing this story on the front page, knowing full well that it isn't really something that should outrage right-wingers, but it seems like a right-wing outrage if you misread the story.

And that's what part of the most influential news organization in America wants its audience to do: it wants people to misread this story. The story is on the Fox Nation front page in the hope that people will read it wrong.

This is the labor that fills some people's lives. I don't know how they live with themselves.

AP Theft: Duck & Cover

The weather service said rainfall accumulation could reach 20 inches in some isolated locations by Wednesday, when the first phase of the storm is expected to pass. After a brief respite, it is forecast to return late Christmas Day.
We like rain, but are not such fans of cold. So, we are, naturally, screwed.
Snow levels in Southern California were around 7,000 feet because the storm was so warm, but Tuesday night’s anticipated storm will be much colder, meteorologists said, and that should allow snow at elevations as low as 5,500 feet.
Now starting to think we should've lengthened today's excursion to the outside world & acquired some reasonably priced toilet paper, rather than the corn cobs they charge exorbitant prices for at the corner.

UPDATE (2207 PT): Now it is really starting to come down, Travis Bickle scum washing-stylee!

Wrong & Wronger

Bryan Fischer, whose parent organization already has an ass-covering & permanent disclaimer (Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.) for his posts, is making a concerted effort to be twice as crazy, three times as stupid & five times as ignorant as any others of his ilk.
In other words, President Obama wants to give the entire land mass of the United States of America back to the Indians. He wants Indian tribes to be our new overlords

The Bush administration rejected this proposal in 2007, on the common sense grounds that it would give a sub-national group veto power over the laws enacted by a democratic legislature.

I see no reason why the president, after he leaves office, can’t submit himself to the authority of any Indian tribe he wants to. Perhaps he figures that, as an adopted Crow Indian, he will be the new chief over this revived Indian empire.

But for the other 312 million of us, I think we’ll settle for our constitutional “We the people” form of government, thank you very much.
How many? 312 million? Mr. Fischer isn't exactly in touch w/ the real America, is he?
Indonesia for the Indonesians!