Monday, March 31, 2014

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS

Should anyone ever forget how bestially stupid & self-deluded Andrew Sullivan is:
felt like a new priest trying to make the Gospels more “relevant”, without realizing their relevance is beyond any age
I wouldn't ordinarily have arsed myself but, having watched the first episode of Cosmos just last night I threw caution to the winds & let curiosity kill me. Considering Suliivan's repugnant history of racism & fascism, it would be more than irresponsible not to speculate if his reaction to host Neil deGrasse Tyson might come from the racial animus he so wallows in. Asshole.

As far as the "relevance" of J.C.'s Big Book of Lies, that made-up & then mistranslated-to-hell-&-back mess was carved in stone & etched in clay so damn long ago it's about as "relevant" as the Code of Hammurabi would be today (How much should an ox driver be paid? Praise Jah there is an authority we may consult!) even if there were an accurate translation of The Good Book (All other books? BAD, obvs.) available.

DO NOT BELIEVE THE HYPE!!

DIDN'T FUCKING HAPPEN, DID IT?
Bullshit Fantasy:
In a capitalist market, governed by the invisible hand of supply and demand, sellers are constantly searching for new technologies to increase productivity, allowing them to reduce the costs of producing their goods and services so they can sell them cheaper than their competitors, win over consumers and secure sufficient profit for their investors. Marx never asked what might happen if intense global competition some time in the future forced entrepreneurs to introduce ever more efficient technologies, accelerating productivity to the point where the marginal cost of production approached zero, making goods and services "priceless" and potentially free, putting an end to profit and rendering the market exchange economy obsolete. But that's now beginning to happen.
You can not possibly believe that your corporate bosses will let anything of the sort happen. Your bosses will work you 'til you're in your graves, & it's due to your bosses' deep-seated psychological problems & personal issues, not actual need for degraded labor. Which is probably why you sheep keep taking it. What a horrid species.

And just in passing, if you don't realize there will be many a campaign to "rid us of this surplus labor problem" (GENOCIDE!!!) well, go ahead & get in that cattle car to a new life in the east.

Visiting

Will not say anything rude (about that dude's pink shirt) as their money is needed. (Then again, are they or other touristsvisitors reading this? And why would I care if they are?)

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Housing Porn Creator Passes

Bad wknd. for former L.A. Times employees: We learn of the passing of Ruth Ryon (Would you give your hideous mutant offspring an alliterative name?) who started housing porn under the Hot Property rubric in the LAT. LA Obsv. pulled this from the Times announcement of her retirement in 2008:
Ryon was one of the first journalists in the country to recognize that readers shared her passion for a glimpse into the homes and lifestyles of Hollywood celebrities, sports figures and captains of industry. It was in reading Parade magazine that she got the idea to write the column as short, pithy items. Her writing style was the voice of the woman behind the pen: She let the facts, in understated prose, speak for themselves.

Although it was then-Real Estate editor Dick Turpin and Times' associate editor Jean Sharley Taylor who gave her the go-ahead for the column in 1984, then-deputy associate editor Shelby Coffey III saw its potent reader interest and moved it to the front page of the section in 1987.
69 is much too early from this reporter's perspective, but when former U.S.C. Trojan & Times sportswriter Lonnie White checked out later in the wknd., he was really too young. He played footsball for U.S.C. from 1982-86 & typed for the Times for 20 yrs., & recently admitted to receiving cash when he was setting records for the Trojans.

Fine By Us If Yoko Did
Break Up The Beatles

Is there any contemporary art style she did not pioneer? At times this feels like a retrospective of Turner Prize winners: here's a film of a fly crawling on a woman's naked thigh that might be misattributed to Douglas Gordon or Damien Hirst; a cinematic celebration of bottoms Martin Creed might be proud of, a chair wrapped in desiccated fabric that is as poetic as any sculpture by Rachel Whiteread – all made by Ono more than 40 years ago.
This one throbs too.
Ringo Starr – Drums; Klaus Voormann – Bass; John Lennon – Guitar

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Fonzi's Feudal Fantasy Flies Off

Fun was had across the iNternetz yesterday in response to glibertarian goofball & leather-jacketed loser Nick Gillespie's dose of dumb concerning the younger nationally known Paultard, Randal, who is Senator from a state whose other elected Senator is a guy who lost his jaw to chaw. (What? Born that way? Man-on-turtle sex then, or turtle-on-woman sex. Or was it a tortoise?) What's in their water? (And what is it w/ "the culture" that Young Adult fiction is the driving force, at least for the fascists & libertarians among us? Not a good omen.)

Anyhoo, Ninny Nicky decided (as he does every few wks., just to get the punters going) that young people are suddenly going to turn into vicious predators, get off their couches & devices & start voting for hapnin' glibertarian kats & kittens like this wk.'s way hip Gary Johnson clone, Randy "Groovy Rug, Aqua Buddha" Paul.

But the hell w/ the larger issues. The personal is political as well, & Nicky Gillespie personally is a loser & an idiot. Young people influenced by the latest dystopian YA drivel turning that impulse to idiocy to a libertarian vote? Not so much, Nick, NOT SO FUCKING MUCH:
Gallup: "Young adults -- those between the ages of 18 and 29 -- have typically aligned themselves with the Democratic Party, but they have become substantially more likely to do so since 2006."

"From 1993 to 2003, 47% of 18- to 29-year-olds, on average, identified as Democrats or said they were independents but leaned to the Democratic Party, while 42% were Republicans or Republican leaners. That time span included two years in which young adults tilted Republican, 1994 and 1995, when Republicans won control of Congress. Since 2006, the average gap in favor of the Democratic Party among young adults has been 18 percentage points, 54% to 36%."
Facts: They sho' nuff don't have a libertarian bias, do they? But feel free to hold your breath until the yout' start voting against their interests, glibtard. And if holding your breath isn't working, Fantasy Fonzarelli, just clap harder.

And Now, The Meta

All well & good, but our curiosity was a bit piqued when this appeared as we searched for some of the links above:

Rand Paul’s “youth” snow job: Why he’ll never, ever, ever win over young voters

Republicans and pundits say Rand Paul could appeal to millennials in 2016. Here's why that's totally ridiculous

Published, we should note, last Sat., the 22nd. It's as if Isquith debunked Gillespie's pile of childish fantasy almost a wk. before N.G. typed it. Or maybe Gillespie's extrusion of the 27th was a response. He at least mentions Isquith's piece. Must've ticked him off. His measured & evidence-based response:
Still, Paul is “glib” and his critics “have a point,” one of which is that, according to Salon’s Elias Isquith, “he’ll never, ever, ever win over young voters.”

Well, nanny-nanny-boo-boo to you, too, kiddo.
Wow, no arguing w/ that!!

No arguing here either. It's very very very informative to compare Isquith's interpretation of the Pew "Detached from Institutions" report w/ Nicky G.'s take. Isquith:
Nevertheless, a Pew Research Center report put out earlier this month found that the majority of millennials still want to see their government do more, not less, to even the playing field. Asked to choose between smaller government with fewer services and bigger government with more services, 53 percent of millennials chose the latter while only 38 percent picked the former. And even though 54 percent of them oppose Obamacare, only 44 percent agree with Paul that it’s not the government’s job to ensure health insurance coverage for all. Perhaps the most telling finding of the whole report in this regard concerns Social Security, that longtime bugaboo of Paul and libertarians like him. Despite the fact that a whopping 51 percent of millennials believe they’ll receive no Social Security benefits by the time they’re eligible, and despite the fact that 53 percent of millennials think government should focus spending on helping the young rather than the old, a remarkable 61 percent of young voters oppose cutting Social Security benefits in any way, full stop.
Gillespie:
Millennials are “unmoored from institutions,” gasped Pew Research recently.
So, which side do you trust? The side that read the entire Pew Spew, or the hysteric who read the cover & jumped to a conclusion?

Tangled Web

Layer after layer of nothing but droning from fools. Was all this started by centrist mugwump Joe Gandelman, of The Compromise W/ Evil Voice, typing in The Week, which is so far beyond mere conventional wisdom/both sides do it/fair & balanced/objective bull that it's almost as if it doesn't exist on this plane? Mebbe so. Is this the single most cretinous statement typed (so far) in the mo. of Mar.?
The GOP's potential 2016 field is both deep and broad, but there is no candidate without flaws.
Stop being so subtle, Mr. Obvious!! Someone (it might be me) is going to come to your house & break all your fingers, devil-boxes & devices & then cut out your tongue w/ the same blade they'll use to cut your iNternet connections. The only thing deep & wide in 2016 is piled in front of your keyboard, you fuckhead!!! (What is it w/ these people? Whores? Morons? WHAT?)

Voice Of Reason Tries To Shove It Down My Throat

Relax poopsie. Poopy-head Gandelman types poop for an audience of poop-eaters. The free market solution (as I understand it) would be to eliminate the demand (poop-eating Americans) so poop will become a drug on the (free) market. Don't give yourself an aneurysm*†.

Still, someone should stand up for those few of us w/ I.Q.'s over 100. We're all sick & tired of being held back & down by a nation of nitwits.
*Although it would be interesting to sue one of these cretins, claiming that their sheer stupidity & mendacity caused said aneurysm & that they are legally & morally responsible for being so full of shit. Trolling as tort.
†Well then, may I give an aneurysm to a deserving individual?

It's War!

This aggression shall not stand. I hope the editorial offices do.
They don't eat masonry cement do they?

Yes, the web log that gets down to the essence of existence: Shit & blood.
And not mere mammalian doodie. Insect dung.

Friday, March 28, 2014

Here It Comes Again!!

Something for which to live: LA Observed tells us (we have no independent confirmation, just fervent desire it be true)
USGS semismologist Lucy Jones, briefing the media tonight, says it appears the 20-year quiet period since the damaging Northridge quake on Jan. 17, 1994 is ending. There has been more local seismic activity of late.
Now Lucy J. has advised there hasn't been any activity in tonight's location since 1929.
Strap yourselves in, we're hoping for a a bumpy ride.

QUAKE!! [UPDATED]

Scully on the telly felt it at Dodger Stadium. Precursor? Crap, we'd get on our knees & pray for the proverbial big one.

UPDATE: 5.1, 2 klicks east of La Habra.

Yep, A Hawk

Closer examination of the evidence confirms the hawk theory.
Aesthetic version:
And here are some nice ravens siting in a tree & relaxing.
Concentrate on the image, think nice thoughts & resist the urge to think about what you'd like to do to Jersey Gov. Christie's kneecaps w/ a woodchipper votes a baseball bat.

It's Futile It's Sad ...

A prank thread made me look for this April Fool "classic" from two yrs. ago. Maybe spring inspires it (SHUT UP YOU FUCKING BIRDS!!) but we were on about less spewing & more imaging then as well:
Lame Joke Editor:
Praise Jah that at least one among you is in touch w/ the world of Real Americans (i.e., fools).

Actually, changes are going to be made. Nothing but pix of fluffy white clouds from now on!
Same shit, different interminable period of never-ending time that won't stop or change. We really should surrender; it's pointless, but not likely to become so pointless it's again pointed.

Jesus & His Friends Are
All Irritating Assholes

Hey wretched old bat who knocked on the bunker door & awakened me just post-1100 to give me some piece of paper about GEE-ZUS, did you enjoy it when I asked you for your address so I could go to your shit-hole & wake your lame ass up before you were ready? NO SOLICITING!!! No idea which specific lie she was trying to shove down my throat, as I crumpled up the piece of paper she gave me & returned it to her via air mail, advising her it's a load of bullshit & to pick it up on her way out, as there is NO SOLICITING!!! And she did pick it up. On her way out. Irksome tedious witch!!

Now I'll grant that I originally took her fucking piece of paper, said umm hmmm, & closed the door, but when she began knocking on the door across the hall my patience wore thin quickly (Less than a second!) so I opened the door again & let her have her piece of paper back. Should've taken a picture of her running in fear down the hall, but having been awakened before its time my beautiful mind wasn't firing on all four cylinders. Does "Stand Your Ground" apply to people interrupting one's sleep? Because that woman may be lucky I may not be armed. But I could be armed. BEAR THAT IN MIND WHEN YOU COME TRYING TO SHOVE JESUS DOWN MY THROAT!!

Now that I've stewed over this for half an hr., I'm sorry I didn't beat her gawd-damned head in; we need to send a clear message to these people that decent normal Americans (& I) have the right to be left the fuck-tuck-tucking hell alone.

Literally.

Big Insurance Banking Box

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Rainy Night In F-L-A + Frightwig

Straight outta the Bay Area (We believe. We could look it up, & so could you.) & hot off the YouTube posting,
a visualization of a Granite Countertops tune:
Also from Ear Candle Prods., a Frightwig playlist!

Throwback Thursday

Is this Throwback Thurs. thing a thing? Maybe the question is more like is it still a thing; I've recently (last Thurs.?) noted maybe two occurrences thereof, one on Facebook so let's say 1.5 actual occurrences. (Wait a sec. 2014? Yes. Don't admit you may not know; find out!)

Thought we'd heard of it before. Nothing new (What is?) & no reason beyond alliteration. So why not Tues.? There's also the alliteration of Flashback Friday. Whuh-fuckin-evs. (Suck. On. This. Sunday?)

The alliteration for these throwbacks should probably be Turkey Thursday.
This reporter, a hanger-on &, you know, that guy who was in ... no ... mmm ... what was the ... oh ...
at the Scary Movie 2 post-premiere party, Century City, late June or early July 2001.

Me & A Flamethrower Are Real Close Friends

Highway Dragnet (1954)

Released 60 yrs (& two mos.) ago, 27 January 1954, per IMDb.

Same Dull, Different Recording

Couple days ago in this space we presented a studio version of this magnificent testimony.
Now it's more proof than ever: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, l'ennui.
TURN IT UP!! (Not the greatest recording & you're old & can barely hear.)

No wait something. Not much, but something, damnit. We really are trying.
The news that Facebook has splurged $2bn (£1.2bn) on buying Oculus Rift, the world's first really viable virtual reality headset, has set off waves of plaintive snark in the world of videogames. Virtual reality headsets were supposed to be about totally immersive space battles or sword fighting simulations, not about peer-through simulacra of distant relatives' new kitchen windows. I mean, it's bad enough when Facebook friends have children and instantly change their profile picture to a baby photo, as though having regressed to mewling and puking infancy themselves. Imagine seeing that appalling phenomenon in the future Faceworld.

Facebook will probably not have reassured many observers with the despair-inducing management jargon of its announcement, wherein we learn excitedly that "Facebook plans to extend Oculus' existing advantage in gaming to new verticals including communications, media and entertainment, education and other areas." Pretty sure one of those other "verticals" is going to be advertising that is literally in your face.
If every last iNternetting sheep out there would use AdBlock it might bring down commercial civilization, at least the iNternet ads-in-their-face part. What are they waiting for?

You Don't Know Me!!

Yesterday's Person of the Day:

Clarifying

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Feudalism On The March

Americans hate Australians because they are so much like us (filthy criminals, every one of us & them); I express the hate because their kangaroo-infested hell in the middle of where the 'planes disappear is too far away for them to get to me. Now the recently new Prime Minister (staunchly monarchist) of Dingoville has decided his nation of inbred sheep-fuckmolesters doesn't have enough class. As he's in office, they obviously don't, but the class this ass wants is more class division, not an increase in sophistication.

Mr. Monarchy decided that Oz should return to the discarded practice of calling not merely eminent but "pre-eminent" descendants of low lifes & remittance men* knights & dames of the Order of Australia, all of which has something to w/ that Elizabeth II woman who lives on the other side of the world entirely from koala country yet exercises an almost mystical power over the Bruces & Sheilas. Does she own half the fucking continent or something?
And Abbott – who didn’t talk to either his cabinet or his party room about this big idea and who has long been a warrior for the monarchy – was clearly thoroughly enjoying this wielding of executive power. During Tuesday’s news conference he could barely disguise his grin. On Sky News, shortly afterwards, his attorney general, George Brandis, didn’t even try to.
Smarmy smirking assholes/glibertarian buffoons, but who the fuck else would fantasize about being a "knight?"

And so no one thinks I spout only the party line:
I’ve no issue with either of the first two recipients – outgoing governor general Quentin Bryce and her successor, Peter Cosgrove, are worthy gongees both – or with the kinds of people the prime minister said he intended to honour in the future, chief justices and chiefs of the defence force and the like.
Sheer crap. Stupid Aussies should be honoured enough to have served (& no doubt to have enriched themselves at the public trough in their yrs. of service) in such high positions, they needn't give each other awards as if this were show biznis. Indeed, such defenders of the status quo should not be considered for any honours beyond tarring & feathering.
*Note to the New World & places like Australia: Your ancestors left the old country & the Old World for many reasons. That they were wonderful to be around & that absolutely everybody liked them are not among the reasons. Bear that in mind, exceptionalists.

†Geeze, is it 1957 in my head?

Time On His Hands

Weird Dave looks deeper into the local Holocaust Museum:
A Google User
2 years ago
♦ weird and ugly sewer system in disguise
Might be a little harsh. Never been in myself; here's a top view I got w/ my new drone:
The path around the two triangles of sod is a good spot for shots:
West.
North.
North north east.

You Know It's Good When ...

... the № is five digits.

Glen Brown - No More Slavery Extended with South East Rock - Dwyer Records

Efficiency Not Always A Good Thing

Heartbreaking news: Resurging, but probably won't reach where it's really needed for a while.
Ebola and its related group of devastating infections will never become a threat to the US. The disease simply sickens and kills too quickly, plus anyone in the US with an odd febrile illness and rapid progression to prostration is placed into gown and glove isolation at just about every hospital in the country.
So far, fingers crossed, the virus's efficiency & the health establishment's efficiency have kept these United Snakes & the Euro-trashpean community from what they deserve.

So chill, E. (If I may.) No rush. Aircraft will take you anywhere you want to go as long as you don't act up while you're on board.

(And when Obamacare has hollowed out America's greatest-in-the-world for-profit health care system there won't be gloves or gowns to protect real Americans. Or hospitals. Just witch doctors.)

Need more coffee: Two cups & all the outrage I can muster is apoca-porn? Yup, that's all.

Here we go then:
[UNENTHUSIASTICALLY, SHAKING FIST AT DWINDLING AUDIENCE]
Die humans die!
[WANDERS OFF STAGE RIGHT MUMBLING]
Ed.'s Note: Brought to our attention days ago (we had the tab wide open for some time before surrendering to inertia) but it wasn't until we spotted the above excerpt explaining why EBOV wasn't yet in these United Snakes that we were saddened/angered/disappointed/miserable enough to type.

(Sorry to go "meta," but our flailing about here is the only subject that doesn't make us totally numb. Except, uh, besides ... mmm, other than ... nope, that's it.)

Hmmm ...

They're all thinking, "Better not let Silicon Valley booster/lifer mikey see this
or Mike Judge will have hell to pay/never hear the end of it."

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Today's Sunset Tonight

Nuthin', Y'Hear, Nuthin'!

Good thing I scheduled the item below, as I have Sweet Fanny Adams as far as hate & condemnation,
& I've been functional/ing for close to two hrs.

In the shit-to-despise, but mildly dep't., TimeWarnerCable now offers pay-even-fucking-more-for-it cable channel ePiX; it's available w/o charge for three mos. to suck customers in. I've now watched three flicks I'm sho' nuff glad I didn't pay U.S.$15.00 each to see while surrounded by apes & sheep in a cinema.

To wit: Thor
Marvel's The Avengers
World War Z Had I spent $15.00 on that I probably would've asked for a refund.

Never Again

In which we (Automatically/unconsciously assume first person plural the moment we do something not so nice. Hmmmm ...) exploit tragedy & the Museum of the Holocaust.

We are not all Ukrainians (or Hungarians).

Number of undesirables offed by you-know-who during the Holocaust, per nation.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Silicon Valley: Time To Pop The Tech Bubble!

Fucking morons. When I was young we all hated the old, & deservedly so. Now the young deserve my unending contempt. (Maybe if young & old would stop fucking w/ me, no matter my age or theirs.) But just look at how idiotic these stupid idiots are.
And then there is the question of what purpose our economic growth actually serves. The most common advice V.C.s give entrepreneurs is to solve a problem they encounter in their daily lives. Unfortunately, the problems the average 22-year-old male programmer has experienced are all about being an affluent single guy in Northern California. That’s how we’ve ended up with so many games (Angry Birds, Flappy Bird, Crappy Bird) and all those apps for what one start-up founder described to me as cooler ways to hang out with friends on a Saturday night.

Or take a company called Outbox, which cooked up the idea of charging customers $4.99 a month to collect, scan, and deliver snail mail to their e-mail account, a proposition for which it raised $5 million in venture capital. “This company sends out humans in Priuses three days a week,” one fortysomething programmer groused to me last year. “It only works for people who come home at nine and go to work at ten and have everything else in life taken care of.” Which is to say, the most dynamic portion of the most dynamic sector of the U.S. economy has taken it upon itself to replicate a service the U.S. government already performs quite ably. At least up until Outbox folded in January.
Jesus fuckingawddamn christ. How idiotically lazy can people be? I take the sloth/inertia cake & eat it too, but come on! Can we put some or all of these people to sleep?
When taken to its logical extreme, a tech sector that discriminates in favor of the young might produce an economy with some revolutionary ways of keeping ourselves entertained and in touch at all hours of the day and night. But it would be an economy that shortchanged other essential sectors, like, say, biotech or health care.

Before his thirtieth birthday, Mark Goldenson had already founded two tech start-ups, including an online game-show-playing company, for which he collectively raised more than $20 million. Both promptly failed. Finally, at age 30, he founded a company that helps people locate and receive psychiatric counseling online. It was an idea with potentially enormous social value in a country where millions have unaddressed psychiatric needs, but he never had more trouble raising money. “Sometimes investors ... paint with a broad brush,” he told me. “You’re more likely to make a hundred million dollars in another social network than taking a look at a weird tele-health thing.”
Priorities, people.

Oh, here's the motivation of one of the older losers portrayed:
He works all the time and is consumed by his company every second he’s away from it. For as long as he can remember, all he ever wanted to do was to build a start-up that would go public and send the stock tickers into tilt—the way Netscape did when he caught on to the start-up phenomenon back in 1995.
Still trying to "show mommy something," you shallow money-grubbing PIG? Jesus, use the above-mentioned start-up that helps fucked-up pieces of subhuman mongrel shit find mental health help, you sick fuck.

At last, an actual example of all sides on some inane issue or another "doing it," where "doing it" means existing as colossal assholes who need to be excised from the world, & probably the planet as well. Get the bulldozers going & push it all into the S.F. Bay.

They're Drinkin', I'm Eatin'. Hmmm ...

A stab from The Past:
L to r: TX Terri, Texacala Jones, M.B. Late 1980s, probably.
(Photograph through the courtesy of the Paula Thurber Collection, via Facebook.)

Spring Training

Sunday, March 23, 2014

World Report: Enough Already

Sunday afternoon before the sheep look up & return to work cheer: There is not a leader, would-be leader or middle manager in any human activity in this hopeless world of shit, pain & terminal boredom that I would not gladly strangle w/ my bare hands & run through a wood chipperslap silly w/ a sapa few times, given the opportunity.

C'mon, hand one of 'em over!

No? Fine. Stay bent over, spread wide & shut up, just as the boss wants you. After all, you'll be dead soon enough & it (& you) won't matter any more. Not that it did when most of you were alive, far as I can tell.

Note to self: Expressions of ennui-induced anger & aggro just as prevalent when typing in the first person singular as plural. Whaddaya know ...

Wise Use

Saturday, March 22, 2014

O.K., Bugger Google, But This Is Convenient

Just type it in & ...

White Power: Honkies & Hipsters
Fuck Up Nice Neighborhood

If not "nice" Highland Park was once somewhat more affordable than much of the rest of this circle of the iNferno. Or not, what am I a damn real estate pimp who would know or remember?

See the grim reality of working people being priced out so douchewads can sell each other shit & crap, much of it food & drink. I can't wait to see landlords & their ilk reduced to food pills, soy paste or some gruel that may provide alleged MDRs for nutrition & maybe half a litre of water a day.

A specific case.
Dusty's Bar has a change of ownership. GIA has met with the new owners and is looking forward to their remodel during March/April/May. So the owners actually bought the building and will be upgrading the interior as well as the patrons.
Note how the property-owning types of the Garvanza White Peoples PartyImprovement Association are very excited that the new owners (Mmmm, "owner." What a delicious, masterful word. It just oozes POWER doesn't it?) of the dump will not just be "upgrading" the interior but the "patrons" as well, as if they are light fixtures or door handles, easily tossed on a train to the east & replaced w/ whatever's hapnin' this wk. You know who the hell else liked "upgrading" entire populations? Yup. Wake up to yourselves before it's too late, Nazis.

P.S.: Being innocently unaware of iNternet traditions, are these two comments trolling, righteous anger expressed w/ a bit of hyperbole, or righteous anger expressed w/o hyperbole?
Whatever your opinion [dismissive sniff] I'm proud of myself.

Of All Places

Golden State G.O.P. Gubernatorial Dragnet

Not even surprising any more. A creepy low-life finds religion after getting caught & doing time over & over & becomes a drooling Republican idiot. For whom I intend to vote several times in our open primary.
One of four gubernatorial candidates introduced to California Republicans recently is a registered sex offender who spent more than a decade in state prison, convicted of crimes including voluntary manslaughter and assault with intent to commit rape.

Glenn Champ, 48, addressed hundreds of GOP delegates and supporters Sunday at the site of the state party's semi-annual convention. Introduced by party chairman Jim Brulte and allotted 10 minutes, Champ spoke in between the main GOP candidates, former U.S. Treasury official Neel Kashkari and state Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of San Bernardino County. Another candidate, Laguna Hills Mayor Andrew Blount, also spoke.

Champ, a little-known political neophyte from the Fresno County community of Tollhouse, did not directly mention his criminal past during his speech but said, "In my life, I've been held accountable because of my stupidity. I do not want anyone else to be enslaved because of their lack of knowledge."

Champ's rap sheet is lengthy. Court records show that in 1992, he pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed firearm. In 1993, he was convicted of two counts of assault with intent to commit rape and as a result was placed on the state's sex-offender registry.

In March 1998, he accepted a plea deal on a charge of loitering to solicit a prostitute; later that year, he pleaded no contest to a voluntary manslaughter charge after hitting a man with his vehicle, for which he was sentenced to 12 years in state prison, according to court records.

In an interview Friday, Champ acknowledged his criminal record, which was reported by KMJ radio in Fresno.

Champ said the assault case "was just for picking up some underage prostitutes" and resulted in a 90-day jail sentence. He said he turned his life around after the incident.

"I found the Lord when I got arrested for picking up the prostitutes," Champ said. "I was like most people, ignorant in the darkness, in the very dark. I had no peace, had no love, had no joy. And now I do. Praise God for that…. I've grown considerably since I met Christ."

He called the voluntary manslaughter case a "tragic accident."

"There was a situation where the gentleman, he was a little bit drunk and was trying to get violent and I left the area as quick as I could and apparently he got in the way. I didn't see him or even know I hit him until about four hours later, till it came on the news," Champ said.

Champ said his life experience could help him deal with politicians in Sacramento. He calls them criminals, saying, for example, that they routinely infringe upon constitutionally protected gun rights.

"I know what the criminal mind thinks, and I know how it works and I know how to stop it, and that's something [other politicians] don't get," Champ said.

A spokesman for Brulte, who introduced the candidates after the close of official convention business Sunday, declined to say whether the chairman was aware of Champ's past. In a written statement, Brulte said five of the six GOP gubernatorial candidates who have qualified for the ballot participated in the party's convention, and four of them were available to address attendees Sunday morning.

"We're not in the business of vetting candidates, and we don't pick winners and losers," Brulte said. "Republican voters should get to decide who runs against Jerry Brown."
From the L.A. Times, not The Onion, if there's a fucking difference.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-glenn-champ-20140322,0,1243785.story#ixzz2wfX0yL5l

Friday, March 21, 2014

Spring? So What?

Doesn't matter, because

By The Time Natural Gas Has A Net Climate Benefit You’ll Likely Be Dead And The Climate Ruined

Shorter: GO FUCK YOURSELVES IN THE ASS W/ A SPLINTERED BROOMSTICK, HUMANOIDS! NO WAIT, YOU ALREADY ARE.

Au reste, après nous, le Déluge!

Wise Birds Follow Spring

And counting: 12 hrs. until baseball opens the 2014 campaign. (Yep. 0100PDT tomorrow.) This season Yank hegemony is at the Sydney Cricket Ground attempting to impose itself on Aussies by showing them L.A.'s Former Bums of Brooklyn playing the Washington GeneralsArizona Diamondbacks.

Jam Band/Riddim Of The Wknd.

Kids today (& their music, which appears to be on my lawn)!
And we quote:
Version reggae de la composition de Rafael Hernández ("El Cumbanchero" aka "Rock Fort Rock") par Vin Gordon lors de sa master-class à l'Université de Paris 8 à Saint-Denis le 26 mai 2011. Avec les élèves du Jazz Workshop de Paris 8 et les étudiants du CRR. d'Aubervilliers-La Courneuve. Et la participation de Bruno Blum (guitare).

Thursday, March 20, 2014

The Birds

Wondering if the apparently larger, less-flappy one is a hawk the ravens are trying to bum rush.
Missed a good raven fight, talon to talon in mid-air; just not fast enough.

DANGER!

Had not previously suspected this was an answer song.

Drunken Buffoon, Paranoid Old Bat,
Idiot Mayor: Another Appeal To Nihilism

Son-of-a-bitch (Yes it's all about me.) it's as if people are trying to make me explode, aided & abetted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©.

Houston, like most other localities touched in any way by humanity, is a shit-hole. (Not mere uninformed half-cocked Bouffant opinion: Wasted several mos. of my existence there in 1970 & '71. I know.)

The mayor seems to be an idiot, but is of course merely pandering to the stupid & fearful among her constituents (That is, the majority.) by failing to call anyone on their actions:
Houston Mayor Annise Parker told KHOU that Keen took a cab home after a night of drinking to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

He was asked to leave the bar so his friends put him in a cab, the station said.

"No one did anything wrong. It was just a confluence of events that provoked a tragedy," Parker said. "My understanding is that the firefighter, off-duty, had been out. He did what he was supposed to do: He took a cab ride home, got dropped off in the wrong place and wasn't aware of it. [He] tried to get into what he thought was his house and was tragically shot."
No, he got so fucking drunk he was "asked to leave the bar." (And let's absolutely blame the bar for serving him so much he was asked to leave. Figure that shit out. Greedy pigs.) Not "what he was supposed to do," whether or not he taxied home (Cabbie complicit in this? Was Drunkie O'Hoser dropped off in the wrong place? A field day for att'ys.) not "No one did anything wrong." No one did anything right. Is there no psychological testing for firefighters in that blighted burg?

(40+ yrs. ago it was a shit-hole about to get drunk on energy money, & as virtually nothing anywhere has improved in the interim, I'm going to assume energy money only made it worse.)
The woman told deputies the man kept trying to get into her home so she fired two shots through the door and then called 911.
Priorities, lady.

Also maybe if the sheep didn't buy/rent cookie cutter housing that a drunk can't differentiate. Crowded into your pens, lambs to the slaughter-stylee. Baaaaa!
So out of touch I'd no idea it's now known to the world as the Weeds theme song. (In all the horror & stupidity of these events we are encouraged that songstress Malvina Reynolds must've been almost as old as I am now when she wrote it. We can never protest enough.)

Flying Through The Seasons

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Home Sweet Home

We get letters to the effect of "C'mon, you don't really live in a bunker, do you?" Wouldn't live anywhere else. Have you no conception of the outside world, & those in it?
Convenient parking for tracked vehicles.
Pleasant neighbors will respect your rights, IF YOU RESPECT THEIRS!!!
Can park a medium tank & a self-propelled howitzer.

Today's Assholes Of The Day Round-Up

I don't hate any of the below-linked fuckheads enough to kill them, but I despise them enough to support a good thrashing for each & every one. Certainly I'd feel better. (The rod, or military aggression, seem to be the chickenhawk/reactonary solutions to any & all of the problems they identify. Good enough for me.)

Thanks, some drone who is paid to research this crap. (My time is much too valuable to waste on this sort of trivia, even if my mind could conceive it.)
As he does every year, President Obama unveiled his picks for the NCAA March Madness tournament on Wednesday. And as he does every year, the president decided to play it safe, mostly choosing top-seeded teams and predicting a final matchup between four perennial contenders. It’s a bit boring, really, even if Obama’s correct prediction in 2009 of a North Carolina championship makes it harder to knock his system.

Just as you can expect an Obama prediction on the NCAA every year, you can also expect conservatives to respond with fake outrage over the president taking time from his busy schedule to weigh in on college basketball. The right-wing Obama NCAA bracket freakout is more intense some years than others, but you can always bet that at some point, somewhere, some bored conservative or desperate Republican politician will complain about having a basketball fan as the Commander-in-Chief.

Here are a few of the silliest right-wing freakouts over Obama’s bracket:

* Most recently, a Breitbart writeup of Obama’s 2014 picks ends with a textbook example of the kind of disingenuous scolding that’s defined conservatives’ jabs at the Obama brackets. “Pieces of Ukraine are falling apart and the health care plan’s a mess,” Breitbart’s Daniel Flynn writes. “But we finally have a president who really knows basketball, and for the next three weeks that’s all that matters. Thank goodness for distractions.”

* Yet 2011 was clearly the peak year when it comes to right-wing bracket whining. During 2011′s March Madness, conservatives made a big deal out of Obama taking the time to make picks while there was chaos in Japan over the tsunami, strife in Libya over the fall of Gaddafi, and stasis in Congress over producing a new budget. Rush Limbaugh cheekily blamed a dip in the stock market on Obama’s bracket, while Newt Gingrich declared Obama was ”hiding from his job behind NCAA picks.” RNC head Reince Priebus tweeted, “How can @BarackObama say he is leading when he puts his NCAA bracket over the budget & other pressing issues?”

* That same year, Fox News had a story by Andrea Tantaros on Obama’s picks with the following title: “March Madness — Obama Fills Out NCAA Bracket But Is Missing In Action on Japan, Libya and the Budget”.

* Again in 2011, Hot Air’s Allahpundit had a post complaining about Obama’s brackets. He claimed a GOP president would be excoriated by the press if he did the same thing during 2011′s ongoing crises. “As for my own picks,” Allahpundit snarked, “I’ve got Qaddafi in the Libyan regional, radioactive steam over the containment vessels out east, and China over Duke in the final. At the buzzer.”

* In 2013, the right-wing news site Townhall had a piece by Guy Benson chastising Obama for having the wrong “priorities.” Benson said Obama’s filling out brackets every year was politically brilliant but no excuse for “neglecting core governing responsibilities” by failing to present a budget on time.

* A 2013 Politico story featured a handful of Republicans complaining about Obama’s brackets and implying the president was doing them in order to distract attention from his failures. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said, ““So why he’s doing this? It’s a good soft news story. His budget is going to be met with absolutely no support from Democrats and Republicans.” Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani also hit Obama, saying, “[Obama's] having fun. He’s entitled to have some fun, but usually the way I look at it is you have fun after you do your work. And the president hasn’t done his work.”

* And way, way back in 2009, before it was cool to slam Obama for liking basketball, celebrated Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski (a.k.a. Coach K) slightly tweaked the president for his bracket, saying, “[A]s much as I respect what he’s doing, really, the economy is something that he should focus on, probably more than the brackets.” Coach K is a Republican.
Can't quite remember; did Yale song-leader/sissy boy George W(orst). Bush fill out a bracket for the Nat'l. Cheerleading Championships?

Bee Ess Country

NB: The sky is the same exact fucking size planet-wide, state tourism agencies.

Green & Purple Line To Hell

You could barely force your way onto the train; finding a seat was not going to happen
in the rush of green-clad drunks celebrating St. Patrick's Day.
Birthday Girl & (if it isn't redundant) weird theater people* friends. The only one whose name I remember
is "Heather," obscured by the spectacled one. (How to remain a friend for 25+ yrs.? B.G. not actually shown.)
*Like, totally kidding. All very nice, a little square even.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Old Chair New Chair

In case you too are uh idjit, or are blind, note the missing cross bar (cheap Chinese welds) & blown-out back,
which liked to entrap shirts.
Should've spent the money yrs. & yrs. ago, but, idiot ascetic that I am it took the eventual decrepitude of two U.S.$9.99 chairs over five yrs. of squatting on them an average of 16 hrs./day (& one of them more or less collapsing under me) & an extension of credit by Target, Inc. (They'll be sorry.) before I spent (well, charged) the money.

It's much more comfortable, it rolls & I can rotate on it! Now, 20, 25 hrs. at a time on the iNternet! Stand back from the spew.

Burning 4 U

Speaking of burning cars, plastic:

Today's Worst State In The Union

Outside The Beltway:
Do I even need to tell you this happened in Florida?
T.P. Memo:
This story has it all: a politician, a Ponzi schemer and loads of cash for the politician's alleged mistress. And of course, it's happening in Florida.
Our original intention was fake whining "Leave poor Florida alone," but it wasn't long before sentiment changed to real whining along the lines of "Look at this stupid/awful crap, fuck those humidity-plagued assholes."

Moments later: Reinforced by.

Monday, March 17, 2014

[☛No. 11,000!☚] Today In Nature Studies

HEY LOOKY!! (1157PDT 18 March 2014): For what little it's worth, we just discovered (or noticed) this is the 11,000th item to appear in this space. We're sure we typed "See, quantity is quality," when we made something of 10,000 postings; further proof.

Up Your Irish!!

How did my fellow Irish-Americans get so disgusting?

Stupid tattoos and New Age music on one hand, snarling TV right-wingers on the other. It didn't have to be this way

What the fucking hell is the matter w/ those people, anyway?  New Age music. "Riverdance." Is all their taste in their mouths?

Not to mention:
When you think of the face of white rage in America, it belongs to a red-faced Irish dude on Fox News.
See? "Eire" & "EGB," right there w/ the Gadsden flag.
"Patriotic" Christmas? WtF? "Patriotic" flags? I see neither stars nor stripes.
Sexist too.
Stop staring, bog-monkeys!!