Sunday, December 28, 2003

 
Oh man oh man.

I saw it again last night. Man. I remembered a number of things incorrectly because, holy cow the first watching is like surviving an assault, especially at the cinerama dome (world's largest, suckers!) where it's so loud it's probably damaging to your ears. I was crippled the first time, this time I had enough energy to notice the bitch behind me saying "Who's that?" every time they'd show someone in shadow or "What's gonna' happen?" every time something was about to happen. What the hell is the matter with people? Ten freaking seconds you're going to find out who it is and what's going to happen, why the hell, why in the name of all that is super-duper would you blurt out-loud "Who's that?"

I mean, what the fuck?

And people talking, through the whole damn thing, that same woman laughing a high pitched giggle at every inappropriate moment, and the freaking popcorn breath... ugh. 3 hours engulfed in nasty, greasy popcorn breath...

And yet somehow it still kicked ass and made me want to weep like a little girl.

posted by Tim 2:21 PM

Monday, December 22, 2003

 
Only cursing can tell the tale...

Here is my review of The Return of the King:

At the beginning we get to Gollum before he heads to the makeup chair. His brother gets his ass handed to him by a trout, for chrissakes, and falls ass backwards into the shizzle of all shiznit, the One Ring. He likes it OK, but Smeagol wants it pretty bad. Considering he just now laid his eyes on it for the first time, he can rightly be called a "ring whore". or a "whore for the ring". The movie should have been titled: The Whores of the Ring. Because basically it's all about folks willing to do anything to get some ring action, am I right?

Anyway, Smeagol wants the ring so bad his throat is already constricting to produce that Gollum voice (which is pretty freaky to see a regular guy do) and he's already referring to himself in the plural, as in "It's our birthday and we wants it." WTF? If I was Deagol I'd be like... WTF? "We"? Maybe Smeagol already had a history of eccentric behaviour, what the old little folk would refer to as "touched", which would make his murdering of poor Deagol all the more poinient because Deagol was the only guy in the village nice enough to hang out with this freak.

So then Smeagol gets kicked out of the club, or whatever, and slowly starts to turn into Gollum by getting wet a lot and never patting himself dry over hundreds of years.

After that I forget what happens for a long time because holy jesus from down the street...

Wait... I do remember something. Frodo and Sam and Gollum are makin' their way up a mountain (ain't that the truth?) and Frodo gets that thing when my girlfriend's cat smells bleach and starts walking right into Minas Morgul, which is this super-cool, Fritz Lang sort of place that's all lit up by an unearthly green glow and it looks so cool you can see why Frodo wanted to visit. Anyway they drag him back and this dude, this MOTHERFUCKER from HELL, this ass-kicking, ass-punching, basha-you-face MOFO comes screaming out of the place on his winged dragon thing.... oh damnit! Wait! No, first the whole Fritzopolis explodes in this ass-krunching FOOM!! as this green light shoots up out of the main tower, rattling you jaw like... some kind of thing that rattles your freaking JAW, man. And then this unholy bastard, looking impossibly cool and badass, but in a bad evil sort of way, not good evil like the Flanders devil, comes flying out on his thingy and perches on the top of the gate to the city as his hordes of minions come marching out.

Man, you think "someone whom, the sight of which, I shit myself" then you're half-way there, dude.

So Frodo and Sam have a falling out but it don't really matter because, for the love of... only mass amounts of profanity will do- shit. For the love of shit... we're building up to the sphincter-twisting moment of the year...

OK, OK... gotta keep it cool. Stuff happens. There's all kinds of cool stuff that happens, and then the orcs come and start catapulting Minis Tirith, and then Minis Tirith starts catapulting them- with entire whole buildings practically- and that's really cool, because we're talking about the, I don't know, some root farmer's shop is conscripted by the army so they can fucking fling it at the orcs and squish 50 of them in one squish- but basically they're getting the crap kicked out of them because the flying things are knocking over the catapults and making all the soldiers run around screaming like sorry bitches... (oh yeah I forgot to mention when Osgiliath was overrun Gandalf fended off the flying things when the dudes were escaping and how the caretaker of Minis Tirith made his kid ride out with his best men to get slaughtered- sorry, my head is clouded with...) but then....

Remember in The Two Towers how the calvery comes down the mountain? That's the spit of a shit compared to what happens next. OK, so we're talking... like 6,000 horsemen. Man, they line up on the horizon and look down at the thousands of orcs and it's like, you are soooooo going to get fucked. We are going to pound your asses so hard you will beg for death before we even do it because you can fucking imagine it, can't you?, and you know you don't want any of that shit, my friend.

They come charging down the hill, they got like a quarter mile to cross, so it gives the orcs time to think. They're acting cool and they fire their arrows and take a few out. They fire a few more and take a few more out. They... They're running out of room, and these assholes keep on coming. They're pounding that ground so fast and so hard the orcs start to look concerned and you're like, "Oh, man." They're moving so fast and the orcs are getting a little bug-eyed and you're like "Oh, fuck." They're charging so damn fast they'd bust through a brick wall and the orcs start feelin' behind them and backing up like the guy behind them isn't shitting his pants too. And then they panic. And then- KRAM!!!! BBUH-FAMMMM!!!!! KRALAMMMSHHH!!!

Wait, wait. I got to get this right. What word would properly describe what it was like when those horses smacked through those orcs like wet shit?

PAD-DAAAAAMMMMMM KRUMBA-KRUMBA-KRUMBA-KRUMBA PLASH!!!!!!!

Except x10.

And you're like "Shize Non Bast Toom Jibes Beeg Fope!" Because you're trying to scream profanities but you're practically in the fetal position from all this.

Oh my god. All your bodily fluids would shoot out of every orifice if you weren't also flexing every muscle you've ever had. They plow through orcs like ants, except orcs are bigger than ants and squish a lot bigger. They fucking MOW them fuckers. Mow them like GI Joe figures you left outside.

Then the elephants come and step on horse heads like popping a sesame seed. It's so goddamn brutal.

At one point that Rohan chick who loves Aragorn (I forget her name) fucking takes out the main badass Nazgul's flying bat thing and, AND!, she also takes out jack-shit himself. Pushes a sword into his face, man! GOD!!! A SWORD STRAIGHT INTO THE FACE!!!!

But those elephants are pounding the crap out of everyone, but then Aragorn shows up with his ghost soldiers- which I forgot to mention- and they play clean up and basically wipe out everyone.

But then there's another 10,000 orcs behind Mordor.

Whew. So, the remaining guys left, a thousand or so, I don't know, they have to draw the army of Mordor out so Sam and Frodo can do their thing (oh yeah, I forgot to mention the spider. whatever), so they get the balls to walk right up to Mordor and knock and out comes 10,000 orcs that surround them. Aragorn shows what a stone-cold sonofabitch he is and just runs right into those bastards and starts hackin'. They're getting their asses kicked because the flying things show up but then the giant eagles show up and start clawing those bats, showin' them who's king of the goddamn giant flying animal skies.

Then the ring goes kerplop in the lava courtesy of a seriously strung-out Gollum/Frodo duo, and the tower with the big eye collapses and FOOM!! a big FOOM goes out across the land and the orcs start getting swallowed up by the ground and/or running their asses off.

Now this is the only part of the movie I didn't like. When all the guys realized they won they all started yelling "Frodo! Frodo!!!" in this exultant yell. It just made me uncomfortable because, well... Here, you stand up and yell "Frodo!" as loud and exultantly as you can. Go ahead. Big smile of joy on your face. "FRODO!".

Yeah. See? You feel like the mayor of ass town.

Anyway, everything ends up OK after thousands upon thousands of people and animals get killed.

Good movie. Still trying to come down.




posted by Tim 8:11 PM

Sunday, December 21, 2003

 
You are so getting played, people.

Guess what? The terror alert has been raised.

The Department of Homeland Security raised the U.S. terror threat level from elevated to high Sunday, warning of possible terrorist strikes more devastating than the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said the move was the result of a "substantial increase" in the volume of intelligence pointing to "near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experienced on September 11."

Ridge urged the public to be patient with stricter security measures "in the coming days and weeks" and to proceed with holiday plans despite the threat.

"America is a country that will not be bent by terror," he said.

A senior administration official familiar with the decision said the volume of threats was "significantly higher" and was coming from known sources but that there was "nothing site-specific."

I don't have the time to look all of them up but all through the Iraq war, up until now, the terror alert remained the same. Within that time were the Rhiyad bombings, a couple of white supremicist plots were taken out including a Texas cyanide bomb plot that hasn't really been touched by the media much. The Rhiyad bombing prompter the terror alert for overseas to be raised, but not hear at home. Nothing happened prior to the take down in Texas, and if I recall the justice department claimed to have thwarted a couple of attacks a few months ago. The terror alert never changed.

That's because it's all bullshit. Its only purpose is to scare you. Remember the government telling you to tape up your house? Did you do that? Really? So, you're a complete moron, hmmm? Think about it. The federal government is telling our entire huge nation to tape up their windows because a dirty bomb is going to go off somewhere- a bomb that could effect a few city blocks! A chemical or bilogical bomb would do even less damage- it's difficult to use that stuff effectively. One stiff wind and your WMD kills 5 people.

So, let's say the threat was credible. Does it makes sense to tell the entire nation to tape up their windows? Well, first of all, you can easily die from suffocation by taping up your house. If you seal your house so tight that nothing can come in, you're going to suffocate, it's that simple.
And if you don't tape it up that well the whatever that's out there can get in. Second, 98% of the country is in no way shape or form going to be attacked. In order for one of these things to work it has to be released in a heavily populated, urban environment. So we're talking obvious places like Seattle to LA to Chicago To New York to Boston, etc., etc. These are the only places that could possibly be at risk.

Imagine you're the president or head of homeland security and you get rumors of a chemical attack that are so vauge you have absolutely no idea of where or when this thing may or may not happen. You know all of the above and you know the only way taping up could work is if the bomb went off right next door to someone and it dissipated before they ran out of oxygen and had to untape everything- of course they'd have to have the presence of mind to untape their house while they're oxygen deprived before they pass out. Are you going to tell the entire nation to tape up their house? The whole 98% that could not possibly be in any danger at all? Of course not! Not unless you want to purposely scare people.

Taping up your house isn't going to work anyway and only 2% of the landmass of the country could possibly be targeted! It's a cynical, fucking sham, people!

It's meant to make people like this idiot bastard vote for the incumbent. That's all.

Jesus Christ. He's in rural Connecticut and he's taping up his entire house. Yaaayyyy! Vote Republican!!

Man, sometimes I think you should have to take an IQ test to justify your existence.

posted by Tim 3:26 PM

Friday, December 19, 2003

 
Things are perfect. Vote Republican

I got into another protracted argument over at Calpundit yesterday. I'm really sick of getting sucked into "discussions" with people completely unwilling to challenge their own assumptions. It's a goddamn waste of time. Yeah, everyone brings baggage when they argue, but an honest person can stick to the terms of debate and defend their ideas with specifics and well articulated thought.

I'm really getting tired of putting myself in those situations. Sometimes I'll take the bait from some troll and regret it immediately, other times I'll try to seriously discuss something only to get that whole range of tactics used to avoid actually engaging the issue. I hate people who do that, it's pathetic and disgusting. So, I get profane and stop bothering to pretend an adult conversation is taking place.

Same old story yesterday- anyone that wants solid public education and a safety net that allows people to live with a modicum of dignity is a whiney loser who just can't make it on their own. Or something....

Apparently because I think being poor and uneducated puts one at a disadvantage I loathe my fellow man. See, I don't trust people to live their own lives, apparently. I'm contemptuous of them because I think having no health insurance, little education, working for shit wages at Walmart and never reading a book that isn't about angels is somehow less than ideal.

Somehow, because I'd like every kid in this country to get the finest education in the world I'm full of hate.

See, your average online Republican seems to be someone who wants lower taxes, an end to SS and medicare, etc., because to them the "system", this country, is just fine as it is and would only be better if they didn't have to pay so much in taxes. It would be better in part because people would stop "relying" on the government and start to... I dunno, open their own donut shops or something... basically people would start being more productive if they weren't hooked on that welfare.

See, absolutely anyone can make it if they try, if someone hasn't made it it's because they didn't work hard enough. Now, they don't mean everyone could make it, they mean everyone would make it. The difference is they seem to think the only reason someone is homeless or in a low paying job or whatever is because they didn't work hard enough because if they worked hard enough they would have made it. Make sense? See, there's no chance. There's no context. It's that simple- if you work hard you will make it.

It's a nice philosophy. It makes anyone who spouts it a winner, a hard worker, and someone with integrity, or balls if you will. It doesn't matter if they lucked out and "made it" because it's a self referencing philosophy- Having made it can only mean you made it through sheer force of will. So, that means anyone who didn't make it failed because they didn't have the will.

I'm repeating myself but I'm trying to make it clear the difference is they don't believe it's possible one can make it, they believe there is no not-making-it unless you fail yourself. Since anyone will make it if they work hard, anyone who has made it worked hard, anyone who didn't make it didn't work hard.

I know. It's insane. Usually these people tell you how they were born poor and how they worked hard an made it so therefore anyone can make it and anyone who doesn't just isn't working hard like me. I was born poor and when I look at my life I usually think it could have gone either way. Did my sheer force of will put me where I am? Not really. I mean, it's not like I lucked out my whole life, I've just been living how I figured I ought to be living at the time. No big trick.

But, I can see clearly how had we lived in, say, an inner-city situation, my siblings, myself, we could have all gotten way off track. I wouldn't be the same person I am now had I grew up poor in a nasty urban environment as opposed to a rural one. I don't understand how some people can think the country works the same for everyone, well, more accurately, how it works the same for everyone as it worked for them. It doesn't. I have friends with similar backgrounds as myself doing better, doing worse, doing about the same, and it's not cut and dried along the lines of how hard each of them worked, either.

Anyway, I really gotta stop wasting my time with those people because... I'm not wrong. Check this out:

Americans are the best-informed people in the history of the world. But we are experts at distancing ourselves from any real unpleasantness. Most of us behave as though we bear no personal responsibility for the deep human suffering all around us, and no obligation to try and alleviate it.

Paris, Jacko, Saddam. The world is like one big media show, a made-for-TV spectacular. We can change the channel if things get too ugly. Or just turn the television off. Genuine social consciousness is for squares.
...
Each night more than 39,000 people- nearly 17,000 of them children- seek refuge in the city's shelters. "It's the greatest number of homeless since the Great Depression," said Patrick Markee, a policy analyst with the Coalition for the Homeless.

The faces of the destitute are changing as more and more families with children - in New York and across the nation -find themselves without the money necessary for food or shelter.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors released a report yesterday showing that over the past year hunger and homelessness continued to rise in major American cities. A survey of 25 cities showed an increase of 17 percent in requests for emergency food assistance and an increase of 13 percent in requests for emergency shelter.

Clearly, people just aren't working hard enough.

update- This is the perfect article to illustrate the point:

The other day I found myself reading a leftist rag that made outrageous claims about America. It said that we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic status of their father than they were a generation ago.

The name of the leftist rag? Business Week, which published an article titled "Waking Up From the American Dream." The article summarizes recent research showing that social mobility in the United States (which was never as high as legend had it) has declined considerably over the past few decades. If you put that research together with other research that shows a drastic increase in income and wealth inequality, you reach an uncomfortable conclusion: America looks more and more like a class-ridden society.

A couple of good books to clue one in are Robin Hanel's Panic Rules! and Democracy at Risk by Jeff Gates.



posted by Tim 9:09 AM

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

 
My Bush commercial is up!

Hey folks! I made a commercial for the Moveon.org "George Bush in 30 seconds" contest and it's up!

Find it here!

And you know, it's all about original, unique, compelling content, not slick production values.

Go there, sign up, and vote big!!!!!

Actually, I've watched a few ads already... I'm actually really proud of what I did. Definitely not your typical political ad.

Update- I'm not sure how it'll work for you folks. I can't vote on my own ad apparently. Hopefully by using the above link once you sign in you'll be taken to my commericial, I don't know. It's titled "George Bush (in a) Nutshell Relay".

posted by Tim 7:00 PM

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

 
Pretty funny.

Check this out.

Pretty funny.

You know "fuck" is the only infix in the English language? [prefix goes before, suffix goes after, infix goes somewhere in the middle]

Me? I'm going for most profane blog.

posted by Tim 7:04 PM

 
Which is it?

Are Iraqis smart and capable, or are they, uh, retarded?

So let me get this straight, Herr Bush, Iraqis, who are an ethnically divided people, who have no real history of political democracy, are a natural fit for democracy and fully capable of becoming the twinkle in your eye.

However, even though they were the most industrialized nation in the middle east, even though they do have experience participating in semi-democratic labor unions, even though there's a lot of highly educated engineers there, and even though it's their country and they've been running it for, well, forever, they can't be trusted to run a fucking cement plant??!!!?? Because they're too retarded to run the same damn industries they've been running forever?!!?? Huh???!!??


Next time you or one of your loved ones expresses doubt toward the whole "democratization of the middle east" plan, and is confronted by some jackanape with something like this:

"So you don't think the Iraqis are capable of democracy? You think they're stupid?" [I get that all the time]

Tell them: Well, I don't know. I know one thing for sure though- they could make their own fucking fertilizer!!!

ASSHOLE!!

posted by Tim 10:36 AM

Monday, December 15, 2003

 
Is this irony or just stupid?

The pres sez:

President Bush (news - web sites) promised a fair, public trial for Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) on Monday....

Asked if Saddam should face the death penalty, Bush said, "I have my personal views. And this is a brutal dictator."

"He's a person who killed a lot of people. But my views, my personal views, aren't important in this matter," the president said.

OK. Obeyin' the rule of law where Saddam was a real fuckwit. Gotcha.

Uhhhh. But what about these guys?

The administration says that the "battlefield" in the war on terrorism spans the globe and that suspected terrorists can be held indefinitely without being charged or having access to a lawyer. U.S. officials say that U.S. citizens, no matter where they are captured, also can be held as enemy combatants to protect national security if they are associated with groups fighting the United States.

So Saddam who, according to Bush, posed a "direct" threat to the US; the man who, again, according to Bush and others, actually had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Quaeda, that guy, the butcher of Bagdad, he's going to get a fair and public trial while some two-bit punk ex gang member is held indefinitely with no access to a lawyer??

I don't understand.

So I guess the lesson is if you want justice in this country, meaning the due process of law, then you better make sure to actually harm and/or kill some people? Because if you just get caught maybe planning to do something, somehow that's more horrible and more dangerous and therefore too important to allow to go to trail than, I don't know, killing tens of thousands of people as a dictator?

Yeah, yeah. Not quite the same situations. I know. The point is Bush is trying to show what big man and how moral and law-abiding compared to Saddam he is. Meanwhile American citizens have been completely stripped of their rights with no due process.

Bush is nothing but an opportunist and a coward. The rule of law means nothing to him unless it scores political points.

posted by Tim 9:18 PM

 
Did you know it meant that?

Tim Robbins sez:

Outspoken actor Tim Robbins has publicly apologized for using the terms "chicken hawks" when describing the administration of George W Bush earlier this year. The politically active star - who alongside partner Susan Sarandon was a fierce opponent of the war in Iraq - spoke of his regret about picking that particular phrase - as it has a double meaning. He tells website Pagesix, "I regret using that term. I meant to refer to their militarism without actual war service, but I was also aware that chicken hawk refers to older gay men who go after young boys. I just used the wrong words."

What the hell??

So what, we can't accurately describe them any more?

[btw- I don't know if the link will work, it's from imdb celebrity news, December 15th 2003]


posted by Tim 9:15 PM

 
Max is always almost 100% right.

From Maxspeak:

To reinforce the notion that anti-war means pro-Saddam, we get anonymous quotes dredged up from Democratic Underground, or otherwise out-of-context phrases lifted from a smattering of liberal blogs. Lies and the lying bloggers who tell them. This is what used to be called scoundrel time.

The purpose is obvious: to win an argument about the wisdom of the war without recourse to the merits of the case. The main theme is the demonization of those who disagree. The secondary line is deference to the implied march of history. It must have been a good idea because we have won. But Saddam's capture does not create weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. It does not generate some collaboration with Al Queda that has yet to be demonstrated. Most important, it does not support the claim that Iraq was a threat to the U.S. The inescapable fact remains that the war was prosecuted under false and hypocritical pretenses.
...
There are respectable arguments for the war, and reasonable people advancing them. That's not what this post is about. After all, the capture has no bearing on the merits of the whole enterprise, one way or the other. U.S. military victory was never in doubt.

Jingoist chicken-hawks are having their day. But it is a certainty that this week, another American will die in this war of choice. Some may see that as an acceptable price for Saddam's date with the executioner. I don't. You see, when you buy the capture, you buy the whole package. You buy the ongoing toll in American lives. You buy the kids in Walter Reed missing assorted limbs. You buy the war profiteering. You buy the Federal budget mess. It's not like a cafeteria where you can skip the broccoli and head straight to the dessert tray. It all goes with the territory.

He's so right. But then he says "bring the troops home" and I can't quite agree with him on that point. Otherwise he's exactly right.




posted by Tim 9:10 PM

Sunday, December 14, 2003

 
OK.

This is the one definitely positive thing to come out of this ill-conceived war:

Across the Tigris River from his opulent palaces, Saddam Hussein shuttered himself at the bottom of a narrow, dark hole beneath a two-room mud shack on a sheep farm, a U.S. military official said Sunday.

I can't imagine this changing things that much, really. Sure, in a couple weeks Bush is going to describe how he rappelled out of a Black Hawk, oiled himself up, and wrestled Saddam to he ground himself, and our nation of sycophants will all swear up and down that's how it happened (just as they now argue this was always a war sold as a humanitarian effort and not one to address a "direct threat" to the US)...

But who are we fighting over there? Islamists and nationalists, basically. Why would either give up now? I dunno, it might change some perceptions of the average Iraqi; time will tell.

It is genuinely positive though. Saddam was a real bastard.

We still shouldn't be there though. There were other options, one that didn't cost hundreds of billions of dollars nor cost thousands of more lives. This wasn't like WW2, people. This wasn't a good war which, at best, is still a necessary evil. We were not facing an enemy that quite literally was a threat to the peaceful order of the world. We weren't even facing an enemy that was a threat to their direct neighbors anymore.

It's really fucking easy to sit back in your recliner and make moral pronouncements on who should live or who should die and for what reasons or excuses, it's another thing to powerlessly live the death that's brought upon you by old men in suits.

You know what I'd like to do? I'd like for decisions on whether or not to go to dubious wars settled in a boxing ring. Each city has it's own ring and, say, 5 people selected from the anti and pro sides meet to duke it out and if the pro people can beat up the anti people then we go to war. See, what I'd like to see is an armchair warrior punch an old woman in the face so that he can go home and masturbate to CNN. Let's see how far the armchair fucks at Little Green Footballs or FreeRepublic are willing to go, and let's see how long Ma & Pa Middle America are willing to go along with it. If quite literally the question of whether or not we went to an unjust war rested upon a fight in a ring, I'd like to think if I had to go in there I'd fight to the death. I wonder how easily someone who wanted to see innocents die half a world away would step up.

There's this sick fuck who posts in Calpundit who, whenever North Korea comes up, makes a point to let everyone know he'd be willing to lose a major west coast city in a nuclear blast if that meant everyone would get "serious" about North Korea. Yeah. He thinks it's a sign of his bravery or integrity that he himself, plus a wife and kids, live in LA and so therefore he is living in a potential target area.

Very brave of him, huh?! Willing to accept the "sacrifice" of millions, possibly himself, for the greater good of everyone agreeing with him on the issue of North Korea?!!?

Come on!! He's a true fucking patriot!

Soooooooooooo steadfast!

I'd like to see people like him have to make a real sacrifice in order to get what they want. I'd like to see Bush feel it. I'd like to see some sort of sacrifice, administered by law, every time someone wants to go to war when we're not threatened by the target, like lose a finger, or a toe, or a son.

God knows people are going to be sacrificing a lot, whether they want to or not.

Like war?

Fuck you.

posted by Tim 4:38 PM

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

 
Many things to be the new big hotness

Awright. Finally got rid of the donation boxes. Been meaning to do that cuz I didn't want people thinking I thought I should get paid for this lousy blog. No, it was for movie I shot in September, in case you didn't know. I have scanned the old dude's WW2 photos and now am going to start copying and capturing the actual footage, which I have been avoiding because I'm afraid it might be a disaster. Anyway...

Via Tbogg...

Comes this mind-scarring assault on all that is sane.

Hey, Habu...

How many gods do you have?

"I don't know... I lost count" (says the Hindu elephant)

Wouldn't you rather have just one God who loves you a bunch than a bunch of gods that don't love you at all?

Jesus loves everybody, even the unsaved like Habu! Remember to pray for Habu and others like him that they may find Jesus and accept Him into their hearts!

There's a goat that teaches you about science- The Jesus Way!- and the answer to "Aren't dinosaurs extinct?" is answered by this page:

Propagandists of Evolutionism, in their attempts to discredit research into the true Biblical foundations of Origins, have often accused Creation Science of being a non-experimental endeavor. This couldn't be further from the truth....
...
This Summer (2002), I was blessed to be able to take part in some very important fieldwork which I would like to share with my readers. In order to further support the theory of man/dinosaur contemporaneity, I and a group of fellow creation scientists mounted an expedition to the jungles of Africa to track down and bring back photographic evidence of a living dinosaur, thus proving that these Behemoths had indeed survived the Flood as scriptural analysis clearly indicates.

And the caption under a photo of a muddy road reads:

These are the sort of conditions our Land Rovers had to face during our trek. It was times like this that I longed for the Christian-built highway systems of home.

Out of their fucking minds, right?

Tbogg says some people wrote in a told him it is a parody site, or something. I didn't believe it, then I read this:

Some have criticized my stance on triclavianism as being counterproductive, arguing that making a point of doctrinal contention over not making a point of doctrinal contention over adiaphora is itself non-salvific. However, my critics are overlooking the dangers of triclavianistic doctrines: allowing adiaphora to creep into our credenda -- while possibly pushing the theologoumenic envelope and providing exciting new opportunities for supererogative works -- will most often serve to muddy the soteriological foundation of Faith, leading in general to ultramontane excesses and, in extreme cases, ebaptization (which is unacceptable pastoral malpractice, however rare it may be.) Doctrinal integrity, and hence salvific effectiveness, is best served by working to end triclavianism and similar erroneous, or simply adiaphoric, doctrines.

Which has to be a joke, otherwise this guy should not be on the streets.

And then this.

Awright, it's a joke. But good gravy... to what end? If you look around the site a bunch it seems like standard, insane, fundamentalist crap. Fossils are the remains of creatures that perished in the flood, America is a Christian nation... all that crap. I wouldn't be surprised if a visiting fundamentalist wouldn't realize it was a joke for a long, long time.

Is that the point? To hook freaks and then piss them off a little.

Man, awful lot of work...


posted by Tim 7:47 PM

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

 
You've got to read this.

I wasn't aware this was making the blog rounds (cuz I haven't been making the blog rounds) so you might have already seen it. If not, skooch on over to Orcinus and read this:

I decided then that, for the foreseeable future, I could not cast my vote for any Republican on any ballot. The GOP, after its performance in 2000 -- and especially considering its performance in the intervening years -- will not have my vote. They have proven themselves utterly untrustworthy, and thereby unworthy of the responsibilities and honor of public office. And I know that I am not alone in this: The GOP no longer will have the votes of many other middle-of-the-road Americans, including my friends' parents.

That's just a snippet from the beginning, but it's the crux of the piece. I feel exactly the same way, but my political life is much younger than David so it's a more truncated awakening.

I've tried to get the same message accross many times in this blog: it's an entirely reasonable and rational position to believe the Republican party is wholly bankrupt of any legitimacy (John McCain only gets them so far), but not being the best writer I don't think I've ever done that very well.

David's post resonates with me so much because I know, I know I'm generally a reasonable, thoughtful guy and I know my political views are not radical nor naive by any means (yes, I like to rant here sometimes, but that's just blowing off steam). However, I seem to be living in a country that that has accepted as mainstream a totally radical, extreme agenda, which makes my mainly centrist views "far-left". The media, the government, my friends- I had a friend tell me not too long ago that I needed to listen to Dennis Miller because he speaks "the truth". It's... it's a really, really bizarre time to be alive and thinking and having a full meta-cognitive capacity.

It's heartening to read folks like Calpundit or Orcinus or Eric Alterman or Paul Krugman because it reminds me that there are still people out there that haven't drunk the kool-aid, but it gets really, really hard to keep that in mind when someone you were having a casual conversation with turns into a rabid Bush-apologist and "liberal" hater.

It's sad because it's nearly impossible to even have a political discussion with anyone anymore. If they like Bush, even if they're not a partisan, when you try to discuss his many failures and terrible policies people simply don't believe you. What you describe to them sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theories, "No really! He appointed 4 guys from the Iran Contra scandal! You know, arms were sold to a nation known for terrorist acts against the US to fund death squads killing peasants in Central America... Yeah, one of them represents us at the UN!". I try to talk with conservatives about politics and they simply don't believe anything I tell them because everything seems so incredible- they simply can't believe people are capable of abusing power so thoroughly.

It's not just me. I'm not the only one who thinks it's clear, abundantly clear, that there is something substantially wrong with the modern Republican party and recognizing that is not an act of irrational emotion, but an act of accurate assessment.

It's a good piece. Go read.


posted by Tim 8:56 PM

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

 
Dead bird carcass day

Going to San Fran to eat some turkey.

My girlfriend's family all wait about 3 hours from when they sit down to open a menu when at a restaurant; when it's thanksgiving it's 4 hours from the time they decide to think about maybe eating that evening. So if you're going to eat with these people you have to eat before the allotted eating time because the actual first bite won't reach your mouth till an average of 4 1/2 hours from the time you sit down with them.

The last time we ate with them was at a restaurant and I was starving but everyone very conspicuously didn't even touch their menus for the first hour or so. In fact, when the waiter would come by and ask "ready to order" or whatever, the point was made that "we haven't even looked at the menu yet". Meanwhile my blood sugar is dropping and though I'm not diabetic, I'm maybe 15 minutes away from becoming one.

Anyway, it'll be a good trip. And while you're eating your Butterball keep in mind:

We have a terrible, terrible president and my god the very country may be turning into a theocratic plutocracy and why the hell does anyone like Creed?

I don't know why you should. Just do.
posted by Tim 9:08 PM

 
Movie News

The George Bush commercial is done. At 45 seconds it's cool, at 30 seconds it's clever but... just OK I guess. I dunno, I'm actually pretty proud of it but looking at the Bush in 30 Seconds website's forum area it's clear some people are, like, spending money to make their ads. There's also a lot of lame-ass ideas over there though, so maybe my chances are pretty good.

I don't get it. The whole point of the contest is to make political ads like none ye have ever seen, but all these people are scrambling to get photos of the prez and footage from the SOTU speech, they want to contrast his words with quotes from other great Americans... Man, let the DNC do that shit! Make something no ad exec would ever think of, fer chissakes.

When it goes live I'll direct you to it so you can go give it high honors.

Now onto the freakin' doc I've been avoiding.

posted by Tim 4:59 PM

Friday, November 21, 2003

 
This is so sad.

Python Swallows Woman's Body Up to Waist

RANGAMATI, Bangladesh (AP) - Villagers searching for a missing woman found her body swallowed headfirst up to the waist by a 10-foot-long python, police said Friday.

Basanti Tripura, 38, was collecting wood in a forest when the python attacked her Tuesday in Rangamati district, police said.

The snake crushed the woman in its coils and had swallowed half her body before villagers discovered her. They retrieved the body after killing the snake with iron rods and sticks, the police official said.

Was is really necessary to kill him?

Let him eat in peace.

Come on... He won.


posted by Tim 8:16 PM

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

 
Prez Turd

Not only is Bush possibly the worst president in our history, he's got to be the worst national leader of first-world nations in the world today. Some days I simply can't believe I'm not a disembodied brain in a jar being fucked with by grad students.

George Bush? President? That C average getting, coke sniffing, AWOLeaving, failed business having, blind drunk, death sentence giving former figure-head governor born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a brain that cares not for intellectual stimulation?

Him?

You got to be kidding me. Americans are stupid, fat and lazy, but we're not that stupid, fat and lazy.

Today's evidence is here, here and here.

Bush acknowledged differing views about U.S.-led involvement in postwar Iraq, but said, "Whatever has come before, we now have only two options: To keep our word or to break our word."

"Failure of democracy in Iraq would throw its people back into misery and turn that country over to terrorists who wish to destroy us," Bush told about 400 foreign policy experts and invited guests.

He was warmly received with applause.

Bush asserted that there are times, as with Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) in Iraq, when "the violent restraint of violent men" is justified.

"In some cases, the measured use of force is all that protects us from a chaotic world ruled by force," he said.

...

[Bush is] far worse [regarding environmental record] than No. 2, who's Warren Harding. Based upon the fact that we have 30 major environmental laws that are now being eviscerated. All of the investment we have made in our environmental infrastructure since Earth Day 1970 is now being undermined in a three-year period of astonishing activity.

The NRDC Web site lists over 200 environmental rollbacks by the White House in the last two years. If even a fraction of those are actually implemented, we will effectively have no significant federal environmental law left in our country by this time next year. That's not exaggeration, it's not hyperbole, it is a fact.

As I say in the Rolling Stone article, many of our laws will remain on the books in one form or another. But we'll be Mexico, which has these wonderful, even poetic, environmental laws, but nobody knows about them and nobody complies with them because they can't be enforced.

...

"Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and woman," he said. "Today's decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court violates this important principle. I will work with congressional leaders to do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage."

Please, please, I beg of you, oh pimply graduate researchers who live vicariously through my imposed virtual world, please don't let the Bush program continue to play President.

Please, please, please, delete that string, I'm begging you. It sucks in here.
posted by Tim 7:25 PM

Monday, November 17, 2003

 
Assholes, assholes everywhere, and not a boot with which to kick.

I sent an email out to people I've known who are interested in the entertainment biz, etc., seeing if anyone wanted to help out with my Bush commercial. I mention it all has to be non-SAG, meaning I can't use any actors that are in the SAG union, and I get this from one of the people:

Well that's just perfect.  This administration is exceptionally hostile to unions and labor in general, so it's just perfect that you'd be making an anti-W. spec commercial with non-union talent.  Wonderful.

He replied to everyone on the list with that, which I thought was very rude. I wrote back to everyone apologizing and explaining to use a SAG actor you must have a SAG contract which means you must get a permit which means you must get insurance and you must hire an off-duty cop to watch over everything. All of that adds up to $1000-$1500, all for a contest anyone with a camera can enter.

Also, the SAG contract, though the actor can work for free, requires that if distribution is obtained, regardless of the amount of $$ anyone is getting, at that point you must negotiate pay with the actor prior to owning the rights to sell your work. In other words if you use SAG actors for free you have to pay them SAG wages prior to any distribution- and I think the pay is at least scale regardless of whether or not the producers make any money.

Anyway... he writes this back:

As an actor, and, as I'm sure you can tell, someone who's very active in my unions and is a real Union Man, I don't concern myself with the costs producers (in this case, you) incur.  My concern is for the actors.
 
Everything you've said about needing insurance for a union shoot proves my point.  What if one of the actors running the obstacle course falls and breaks his leg?  The guy's in a cast for 6 weeks and can't book any acting work, and if he's shooting a spec spot for free he's probably working a day job, and if that day job is something like waiting tables he won't be able to make any money.  Who's going to care for him?  He got hurt on a non-union shoot with no insurance and so the guy is screwed; no workman's comp, no union rep to stand up for his rights, to explain his options to him, nothing.  I think that's wrong.  I hope no one, actor or otherwise, gets hurt on your shoot.  But if they do... what then?
 
In terms of paying the actors, I believe under a SAG Experimental Film contract you don't have to pay actors anything, even at time of distribution, especially since "distribution" in this case isn't a money-generating project with ticket sales or air time, etc. but rather distribution means a contest without payment or compensation for anyone.  I'm pretty sure of this, but not absolutely positive, so you could check with a SAG rep to be sure.
 
And I don't think pointing out the irony of using non-union, non-paid, no-benefits-of-any-kind workers in an anti-W. spot is "asinine" at all.  This administration is so anti-union and anti-labor that W. himself, barring the subject matter of your shoot, would be proud that "management" (you) is getting labor to work for free without any kind of benefits or protection.  The entire republican party would be proud of you!
 
Again, I don't want to bicker with you.  I'm a member of Moveon.org, and I have a feeling that you and I agree on a lot more than we disagree.  But I don't like to see actors working with no protection, and a union shoot, even under the non-paying Experimental Contract does provide some protection for the talent.  Of course that costs money, and I understand you're not a movie studio or network that can easily afford it.  But listen, in all seriousness, if you call SAG and explain the situation, they might be able to give you contract options and provide alternatives that would make it possible for your shoot to be SAG and give your actors some protection, but still keep the shoot affordable for you.  Might be worth a try...

It's shit like this that makes trying to make movies all on your own so fucking tedious and annoying.

I went off on the guy. It's so fucking stupid what he's suggesting. There's union actors and non-union actors. In order to become union you've got to obtain points, or credits or whatever they call them, toward becoming union by working in union gigs. Actors want to become union because it makes them eligible for union roles which means eligible for TV and real movies, not just independent flicks and arthouse theater. However, something like 95% of all union actors are not working actors and make little if any money from acting, but being in the union keeps them from working on jobs they could get in, yes, independent productions that either pay less than scale or nothing at all.

So it's a catch-22, if you're union you're eligible for the big bucks and the big time, but chances are you're not working at all and if you want to act in that cool indie flick that can't afford to be SAG, you can't do it, unless you want to risk being kicked out of SAG.

They're not flexible at all, they're absolutely rigid because, duh, they're a union and that's the nature of the beast. Once contracts become individually negotiatable the union ceases to exist, but this asshole, who's a big "union man", seems to think they're open and flexible to negotiation.

Whenever I do a project there's always at least one asshole that goes out of their way to anger me or insult me or otherwise try to ruin my day and it just drives me fucking nuts. I mean, this guy went out of his way to first insult me in front of about 12 other people, and then to equate my entry into a fucking contest with the Bush administration's assault upon unions.

The fucking nerve.

Just thinking about it makes me want to find this guy and knock his block off. Why the hell would anyone be so stupid and aggressively confrontational?

Ah, man...

It was a fucking entry into an online contest! There's no money involved! No one gets paid if I win! There's no commercial potential for the thing at all! If I was looking for people in Bumwad, Kentucky no one would railing on about how every image committed to video has to have a SAG contract attached to it. What a fucking tool.

And the sad thing is, this is thhe sort of person wingnuts think of when they think "liberal". I mean, here's an asshole who is so inflexibly devoted to a bizarre absolute he makes Tom Delay look nuanced.

Sigh. Alright, enough bitching.

The shoot went well, though I didn't have as many people as I wanted for the crowd (there's a crowd and two runners, you'll see). Now I got to edit the fucker and get back to the doc I'm working on.



posted by Tim 6:40 PM

Friday, November 07, 2003

 
Bush Commercial

I mentioned a few days ago the MoveOn.org "Bush in 30 seconds" contest (I'm too lazy right now to link to it- that and I have tickets to Alien on the fucking world's largest cinerama dome!).

Well, I've got my script and now I'm looking for actors.

If you happen to be in the LA area and would like to be in my commercial send me an email or leave a comment.

NOTE- You don't have to be an actor. There's only two speaking parts and then I need a crowd of 6-8 people. It would take a couple hours one Saturday.

G'wan... be a star!

posted by Tim 6:45 PM

Saturday, November 01, 2003

 
It's happening again

I'm losing it. My sense of humor, that is.

I've got to stop going to Calpundit and arguing with the fuckwads who always, without fail, take everything you write and turn it into an indefensible absolute:

It seems like many conservatives aren't willing to acknowledge the power and position theocrats enjoy in the GOP.

That's ridiculous. We do not want to install a God-Emperor King into a ruling throne of power! The fact that you think we do shows just what a radical leftist communist you are!

I really can't stand it any more. People who do that make me physically ill because it's such a deliberate, malicious act. They're simply incapable of representing their opponents' areguments in an accurate manner. In fact, they never argue ideas or data or anything, they just twist your words around so you spend the whole time restating your argument.

I can't fucking stand it, and just thinking about it is making me angry.

I know I should just let it go but... see here's the thing. Someone who does that constantly is not someone who has any integrity or intellectual honesty. I don't care where on the political spectrum they are, if they do that they're a fuck and anything and everything they say, think or believe is a sham and a mockery. How could someone with a scruples' compass so messed up that they can't debate honestly be believed or counted on for anything, even opinion?

What I mean is someone like that is not going to assess anything in any sort of even-handed manner- they're simply going to be unable to do so. Everything they come in contact with is going to be filtered through a wretched, guile-filled filter and come out completely fucked up on the other end. This is essentially what people like Ann Coulter do (uh-oh. A puppy somewhere has died for mentioning the name of the beast).

The woman twists everything and lies constantly and yet still offers herself as a honest broker of ideas- she's just right, is all. A lot of people wonder if it's all an act. I don't think it is because I meet people online all the time who argue in the exact same manner. They're articulate, sometimes civil, but incapable of debating honestly.

There's something off with them.

See, I think most people, especially liberals, give people too much credit.

People suck.

Most people seem to think wwe're all pretty much the same, just some people have different opinions. Personally I think it's a person's makeup, general personality if you will, that (sometimes) determines a person's opinions. By sometimes I mean only if it does. Some people are capable of looking at the world, processing the information accurately, and basing their opinions upon that information. some extreme examples would be Pat Buchanan and Paul Krugman. They both use reality as the basis for their ideas. Yes, their ideas are waaaaaay far apart, but they both use the same information.

Someone without this capacity is not going to view the information the world gives them in a accurate manner; it's going to be tainted and misinterpreted. It's sort of a fuzzy line to draw, where does the processing of info end and opinion forming begin, but what I'm talking about is the first act of acquiring information. That first look, smell, rough, reading, sound, etc. Many people can take it in, see it for what it is for the most part, and then incorporate it into their intellectual process. Some people... everything comes in tainted.

An example- There's a tribe in Africa for whom there is only two colors; black and red. Every color is either black or red. Now, if you think about the word "color" as you normally would this isn't going to make any sense, you have to think of color as "category". Now it makes sense; they divide all colors into two categories: black and red.

So for these guys if they see something that's brown it's "black". If they see something that's yellow it's "red" (I guess). That's obviously going to effect how they interpret the world somehow. How exactly, I'm not sure.

Now imagine Ann Coulter (Eeeeesh!). She sees a puppy she doesn't see a young dog, she sees an animal some liberal do-gooder is going to try to mold into some wussy, no-bark wimp when it should have a collar with spikes and a bad temper and bite anyone it doesn't know because that's its true nature so it can protect you and your family's wealth.

That's what I mean. So for instance, someone like this catches a liberal saying "I think we need to fund public education more", they're not going to hear the opinion that public education should receive more funding, they're going to hear:

We shouldn't allow anyone to be rich so we can indoctrinate children into a godless, commmunist system to control their lives.

Or something equally as stupid.

So, I got to lay off for a while, cuz I just can't stands it no mo'.

posted by Tim 9:21 AM

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

 
Reagan isn't a saint, people.

He was a doddering old man with a much too active imagination (you recall how he used to recite movie plots as real events, right?).

The angry buzz over "The Reagans" has grown louder and more pointed. "Advertisers will bail on CBS' anti-Reagan movie," commentator Pat Buchanan predicted on "The McLaughlin Group" Sunday. Two days later, a conservative media watchdog group announced a boycott call-to-arms.
...

'"The Reagans' appears to be a blatantly unfair assault on the legacy of one of America's greatest leaders," center President L. Brent Bozell III wrote in a letter Tuesday to potential sponsors.

"Reagan is being portrayed as a hateful, half-nut homophobe," he said in an interview. "It's not that the historical record is being distorted. It's that the makers of the movie are deliberately defaming him and lying about him."

Has there ever been any presidential legacy more distorted than Reagans?

Especially troublesome, critics say, is how the script portrays Reagan's handling of the dawning AIDS (news - web sites) crisis in the 1980s. He is depicted as uncaring and judgmental toward those with the disease, according to the Times.

"They that live in sin shall die in sin," he tells his wife in the script as she begs him to help AIDS victims. The author of the screenplay's final version, Elizabeth Egloff, told the Times there was no evidence such a conversation took place.

But "we know he ducked the issue over and over again, and we know she was the one who got him to deal with that," she said, a contention denied by Reagan White House insiders.

"I never saw an ounce of intolerance," said Ken Khachigian, a senior adviser in the Reagan administration.

That should read:

Especially troublesome is how the reality of Reagan ignorning the AIDS crisis and being quite exceptionally judgemental toward gays, is dramatized.

He did ignore the AIDS crisis, and thanks to him being loathe to regulate anything, for about two years the government was well aware that the nation's blood and plasma supplies could and probably were infected but nothing was done about it so some 10,000 or so hemophiliacs contracted AIDS.

People don't realize that plasma was big, big business back in the 70s and 80s. The plasma that hemophilliacs receive today is refined to provide large amounts of the clotting factor. The technology behind it wasn't developed until the late 1960s. Plasma is still a big business but in the 70s and 80s it was dominated by a few, large global players. Their business model was essentially open up plasma centers in skid-rows, pay the drunks and whores and junkies a few bucks, reap millions in profits.

By 1983 the AIDS virus had been isolated (by the French, btw), though we knew it was blood-borne in 1982. It wasn't until 1985 that any method for screening blood or plasma for AIDS was implemented.

But, plasma being such a new, fast-growing, and extremely lucrative business, the Reagan administration really didn't bother to enforce anything, or to pay any attention, or to devote any resources to AIDS for the first 5 years or so.

Reagan didn't even refer to AIDS in public until 1987! This is 5 years after a congressional hearing was called on AIDS in 1982! This is after 19,000 people had already died!

Reagan refused to order or fund preventive education programs and never spoke out against the rampant fear and discrimination many HIV/AIDs patients faced on the job, with insurance companies or at school. Marilyn Moon, a long-time policy analyst at the Urban Institute, told me last month that there was a "great deal of fear that people with AIDS would try and qualify for Medicare or other health programs and a lot of discussion by the administration on how to keep them from bankrupting the medical system."

AIDS activists say Reagan's one concrete proposal was for widespread testing and mandatory identification of people with HIV, with the idea of enforcing a public health quarantine.

In fact, rather than providing for the public welfare, Reagan and his closest advisors effectively muzzled then-Surgeon Gen. C. Everett Koop to stop him from discussing AIDS publicly until midway through Reagan's second term. It took the death of movie star Rock Hudson in 1985 and the Oct. 22, 1986, release of the surgeon general's report on acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which advocated massive public education and a condom distribution program, for Reagan to change his personal views. Even then, his response was at best "halting and ineffective," according to presidential biographer and veteran Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon.

Reagan fucked up. He fucked up a national health crisis like no one has ever fucked one up before or since, there's really no two ways about it.

People worship this guy like he's some sort of saint. They can't even honestly assess his legacy.

He. Fucked. Up.

Even if you agree with everything else he did, like deregulate the savings & loans industry (boy, that worked out swell), create massive budget deficits that only a beady-eyed igit from Texas could surpass, overzealous tax-cutting leading to massive wealth redistrubution, or all the other things that amounted to a big tear in the social contract, you can't honestly say he handled AIDS well.

He fucked up big time. A honest portrayal would illustrate that.

[I forgot to add how much he loved right-wing death squads in Central America. Reagan's responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of people in Central America. The old fool got on TV and told us troops in Nicaragua were a 4 days march from Texas. Or how about selling arms to a terrorist-sponsoring nation to secretly fund the thugs who killed thousands of those people? See, when I don't think about Reagan I think "yeah, he basically sucked, but not hugely so", but then I remember and, goddamn, no wonder Reaganites like Bush. Reagan was a shit of a president. If an accurate portrayal were put on TV it would show him to be a nice man who didn't really concern himself with good governance, who was obsessed with right-wing death squads in Central America, who spoke out of his ass constantly, who didn't know shit about fiscal responsibility, who thought fags should suffer.]

posted by Tim 9:15 PM

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

 
Attention Loyal Readers!

All both of you.

Moveon.org has a 30 second commercial about Bush contest going on. Make a commercial about Bush, send it in, yadda yadda.

I'm going to submit something, but having just learned of this I don't have any brilliant ideas yet.

If anyone who visits has a good idea for a 30 second commercial that:

will engage and enlighten viewers and help them understand the truth about George Bush.

and you want to share it, send me an email.

Or, enter the contest yourself.

I want to make clear though that any idea you might pass along to me (I expect to get a total of zero, to be honest)- if it's precious to you please don't send it. If it is precious to you then you should enter the contest yourself because (disclaimer) if you send me something and I use part of it or all of it or the spirit of it it's not going to be yours anymore. I'm a nice guy so I'm going to be very thankful and, if appropriate, let people know someone helped, but that's it.

So... gosh I'm re-thinking this whole post... I always over-think stuff like this.

Anyway, I'm going to submit something. If you think you have a great idea that you'd like to give me, feel free. I'd appreciate it.

Or you ought to submit one yourself- no filmmaking skills are required.

And no, one 30 second shot of my ass while I scream "Fuck You Bush" won't make it on TV.


posted by Tim 9:02 PM

Monday, October 27, 2003

 
Get. Out. Of. My. Head!

This guy speaks like he's in my head sorting out all of my brilliant, nascent theories for me:

Well, the progressive worldview is modeled on a nurturant parent family. Briefly, it assumes that the world is basically good and can be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves empathy, and the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government regulation, universal education (to ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived from trust), public service (from responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the promotion of an economy that benefits all and functions to promote these values, which are traditional progressive values in American politics.

The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline — physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further discipline or be cut free with no support to face the discipline of the outside world.

So, project this onto the nation and you see that to the right wing, the good citizens are the disciplined ones — those who have already become wealthy or at least self-reliant — and those who are on the way. Social programs, meanwhile, "spoil" people by giving them things they haven't earned and keeping them dependent. The government is there only to protect the nation, maintain order, administer justice (punishment), and to provide for the promotion and orderly conduct of business. In this way, disciplined people become self-reliant. Wealth is a measure of discipline. Taxes beyond the minimum needed for such government take away from the good, disciplined people rewards that they have earned and spend it on those who have not earned it.

Man, how many times have I tried to say just that? Well if I bothered to look through my archives I'd say at least 5 or 6 times here, countless times in other people's comments sections.

The phrase "Tax relief" began coming out of the White House starting on the very day of Bush's inauguration. It got picked up by the newspapers as if it were a neutral term, which it is not. First, you have the frame for "relief." For there to be relief, there has to be an affliction, an afflicted party, somebody who administers the relief, and an act in which you are relieved of the affliction. The reliever is the hero, and anybody who tries to stop them is the bad guy intent on keeping the affliction going. So, add "tax" to "relief" and you get a metaphor that taxation is an affliction, and anybody against relieving this affliction is a villain.

Testify brother!

There's actually a whole other way to think about it. Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a civilized society that is democratic and offers opportunity, and where there's an infrastructure that has been paid for by previous taxpayers. This is a huge infrastructure. The highway system, the Internet, the TV system, the public education system, the power grid, the system for training scientists — vast amounts of infrastructure that we all use, which has to be maintained and paid for. Taxes are your dues — you pay your dues to be an American. In addition, the wealthiest Americans use that infrastructure more than anyone else, and they use parts of it that other people don't. The federal justice system, for example, is nine-tenths devoted to corporate law. The Securities and Exchange Commission and all the apparatus of the Commerce Department are mainly used by the wealthy. And we're all paying for it.

I've said that exact same thing (well, exact same idea) so many times over at Calpundit. A lot of people hang out there that think taxes are akin to theft and I always say the same thing- you got everything you have, this whole country owes everything it has to generations of taxpayers. Taxes are what have made this country great because it's taxes that built this country.

Hell, I said it just a few days ago. Sure I was cursing a lot... anyway

[A]re you paying your dues, or are you trying to get something for free at the expense of your country? It's about being a member. People pay a membership fee to join a country club, for which they get to use the swimming pool and the golf course. But they didn't pay for them in their membership. They were built and paid for by other people and by this collectivity. It's the same thing with our country — the country as country club, being a member of a remarkable nation.

Damn straight, brothah! I really, truly have no patience anymore for anyone who takes that "taxes are evil" line. Fuck them and the horse they road in on, is what I say.

What about the phrase "free market"? Is that an example of framing?

Yes, but one that's so deeply embedded that it's difficult at first to see how. You have to start with the metaphor that the market is a force of nature, which comes from [the economist] Adam Smith, who says that if everybody pursues their own profit, then the profit of all will be maximized by the "invisible hand" — by which he means nature. There is also a metaphor that well-being is wealth. If I do you a favor, therefore making things better for you, then you say, "How can I ever repay you? I'm in your debt." It's as if I'd given you money. We understand our well-being as wealth.

Combine them, and you get the conservatives' version that says if everybody pursues their own well-being, the well-being of all will be maximized by nature. They have the metaphorical notion of a free market even in their child-rearing system. It's not just an economic theory; it's a moral theory. When you discipline your children, they get internal discipline to become self-reliant, which means they can pursue their self-interest and get along in a difficult world. Conservatives even have a word for people who are not pursuing their self interest. They're called "do-gooders," and they get in the way of people who are pursuing their self-interest.

OK, but how is that a frame, rather than a guiding ideology?

Because the "free market" doesn't exist. There is no such thing. All markets are constructed. Think of the stock exchange. It has rules. The WTO [World Trade Organization] has 900 pages of regulations. The bond market has all kinds of regulations and commissions to make sure those regulations carried out. Every market has rules. For example, corporations have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder profit. That's a construction of the market. Now, it doesn't have to be that way. You could make that rule, "Corporations must maximize stakeholder value." Stakeholders — as opposed to shareholders, the institutions who own the largest portions of stock — would include employees, local communities, and the environment. That changes the whole notion of what a "market" is.

OK. This guy is a genius, and not just because he articulates perfectly everything I hold to be true and therefore reinforces my beliefs.

The article (read both parts) is about how the Democrats don't know how to frame issues correctly, and his attempts to rectify that.

It's great. Go read it and it'll remind you that we live in a great country despite all the so-called conservatives, not because of them.

posted by Tim 7:10 PM

 
What does this have to do with the bible?

A team at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said they had shown materials in clay were key to some of the initial processes in forming life.

Specifically, a clay mixture called montmorillonite not only helps form little bags of fat and liquid but helps cells use genetic material called RNA. That, in turn, is one of the key processes of life.

OK. Neat. But why...

Science backed up religion this week in a study that suggests life may have indeed sprung from clay -- just as many faiths teach.

and...

Among religious texts that refer to life being formed from the soil is the Bible's Book of Genesis where God tells Adam, (King James translation), "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Why when the scientists are clear to point out:

"We are not claiming that this is how life started," Szostak stressed.

"We are saying that we have demonstrated growth and division without any biochemical machinery. Ultimately, if we can demonstrate more natural ways this might have happened, it may begin to give us clues about how life could have actually gotten started on the primitive Earth."

Really, what the fuck?

This is a simple scientific discovery, why on earth would the authors of the article frame it in a religious context?

First of all, it's not surprising that a religion would say man sprang from earth. After-all, things grow out of the earth, you know, they're called plants? And it wouldn't be insane for some dudes way back when, when they're making their myths up, to say people came from the earth like a plant. I mean, the earth is from which all things grow so...

Weren't men fashioned from mud in Greek mythology? Didn't plenty of native american creation myths deal with springing out of the ground?

Why the hell would this observation of science be cast in theological terms?

I don't like it. It's not right. This discovery has nothing to do with religion (science never has anything to do with religion, they're two completely different, unrelated things) and we should not be measuring science against religion as a society.

This is fucked up. It's as if they're specifically trying to explain the world via the bible. Folks- the world works according to the bible only for people who have faith in the bible's text. Faith is belief in things that cannot be proven or observed. It is so fucking utterly wrong to subject those who do not share your faith to your vision of the world- because that vision is completely arbitrary.

You may believe it, but it's for you and you alone, it's meaningless to anyone and everyone else (unless of course they decide to agree with you).

Article here.



posted by Tim 5:26 PM

Thursday, October 23, 2003

 
Hands up whoever can't wait for this guy to die.

Justice Scalia, defender of all things base and repugnant:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ridiculed his court's recent ruling legalizing gay sex, telling an audience of conservative activists Thursday that the ruling ignores the Constitution in favor of a modern, liberal sensibility.

The ruling, Scalia said, "held to be a constitutional right what had been a criminal offense at the time of the founding and for nearly 200 years thereafter."

Scalia adopted a mocking tone to read from the court's June ruling that struck down state antisodomy laws in Texas and elsewhere.

Where in the constitution does it say fags are criminals? Someone want to point out the part that specifically and clearly addresses queers?

On Thursday, Scalia said judges, including his colleagues on the Supreme Court, throw over the original meaning of the Constitution when it suits them.

"Most of today's experts on the Constitution think the document written in Philadelphia in 1787 was simply an early attempt at the construction of what is called a liberal political order," Scalia told a gathering of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

"All that the person interpreting or applying that document has to do is to read up on the latest academic understanding of liberal political theory and interpolate these constitutional understandings into the constitutional text."

You know, because there's no such thing as progress.

He's a lying shit. Every fuckhead in the country who hides behind the "I want strict adherance to the constitution" shield is a mendacious twit who ought to be flogged (you know, because it's old school.) It's all a big goddamned excuse to oppress groups they want to oppress. When the constitution was written the only people who had any true freedom were land-owning whites. The document was crafted with the idea that the ideal society would have no second-class citizens under the law. The founders recognized they weren't there and weren't going to be for a while so they made it open-ended and idealistic. The constitutionalist defense gives an aire of respectability, legitimacy, and historical authority to a hideously perverse agenda based upon haves and have-nots.

Fags are criminals, minorities need no protection, women are not individuals but rather wards of society.

Fuck Scalia!

You with me?!

Say it loud-

Fuck Scalia!!

Yeah!

posted by Tim 7:44 PM

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

 
Two things you gotta' read

First is this one from Seymour Hersh, which is being broadcast widely but I just wanted to chime in as well in case you haven't read it. Read it or die!!!!

There was also a change in procedure at the Pentagon under Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-Secretary for Policy. In the early summer of 2001, a career official assigned to a Pentagon planning office undertook a routine evaluation of the assumption, adopted by Wolfowitz and Feith, that the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi, could play a major role in a coup d’état to oust Saddam Hussein. They also assumed that Chalabi, after the coup, would be welcomed by Iraqis as a hero.

An official familiar with the evaluation described how it subjected that scenario to the principle of what planners call “branches and sequels”—that is, “plan for what you expect not to happen.” The official said, “It was a ‘what could go wrong’ study. What if it turns out that Ahmad Chalabi is not so popular? What’s Plan B if you discover that Chalabi and his boys don’t have it in them to accomplish the overthrow?”

The people in the policy offices didn’t seem to care. When the official asked about the analysis, he was told by a colleague that the new Pentagon leadership wanted to focus not on what could go wrong but on what would go right. He was told that the study’s exploration of options amounted to planning for failure.

When I was working at Amazon I took their open door policy seriously for the first few weeks. There were a lot of things wrong with the place and I had drawn up a list of them along with possible solutions. While discussing the problems with the manager, Jane "ice-queen-lying-bitch" (last name), she stopped me and said "I don't want to hear what's wrong with the company, I want to hear what we can do to make it better." I tried to say something akin to "for the love of god how can one improve something if one does not first find its faults" but she cut me off again and stated flatly that she was going to refuse to hear any complaints because they weren't constructive.

[BTW- it's very mean, rude and unfair of me to name her and then label her as I did, but I don't mind doing so because her job was basically to stand in front of 150-300 people or so and lie her fucking ass off, and then later it was to not even bother lying, or caring, or addressing anything besides employee discipline. I don't care what someone's job is or who they work for, spouting absolute bullshit every day is not necessary, there are better ways to do a job that makes you disappoint people. {update- I realized she may still work there, somehow see this, and get my account cancelled or something so I removed her last name}]

What Bush and Co. did was standard corporate business practice. The people at the top have a goal. They don't care how they reach that goal. They tell people below them to "make it happen". The people below know they can't complain and can't be an advocate for anyone or anything standing in the way of the goal without risking their jobs. It doesn't matter, the people at top don't want to hear and won't entertain anything not related to the attainment of the goal.

That's how shitty corporations work (excluding the ones in a thousand not-shitty corporations- Amazon.com is not one of them BTW), and that's how shitty ex-executives would be expected to run the country.

Anyone who says government ought to be run like a business is a fucking idiot, I don't care who they are. Government is not a business. Only business is business.

Second item!

This article from Salon about a same-sex couple in a hick town.

The main reason you need to read it is because of this old freak:

"Besides, there was a time when Father Marcia wouldn't be here," Gausewitz says. "Somehow that's worked." The room erupts in laughter and the tension eases -- for all except one older woman, who is visibly shaking with anger as she stands up. "There's no comparison," she says, "between the ordaining of a moral woman and a twice-divorced man who's been living with another man. We've got to protest. I remember Germany in the '30s and nobody protested and you know what we got from that."
...

Before leaving, I stop the older woman. "What do I think about gay marriage?" she asks. "I don't agree with it, but we're a strong parish. We'll get through this somehow." Though I don't realize it at the time, she thinks I'm stalking her by asking this. Four days later, she has a minor heart attack -- and blames it on the stress of talking to a stranger about such a volatile subject. Such are the tensions that come with this issue in Auburn.

The stress of talking to a stranger about gay marriage? The rise of Nazism is somehow similar to gay marriage?

Lady, you're living proof that old people aren't wise and worth paying attention to by definition. If you spend your whole life being a small-minded bigot living a closed life when you get old you're just going to be a small-minded, frail and scared bigot who still don't know shit.

That is all.


posted by Tim 6:20 PM

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

 
Killer "Sea Farts" sinking ships!

Is what the title of this story should have been.

Or:

Ocean "farts" big, deadly, scientists say.


posted by Tim 9:41 PM

 
Reel quick like

Just a note to say the film, to which I devoted so much virtual hot air here at Lemme 'Splain Industrial Concern, is coming along extremely slowly.

For some reason I'm having a very hard time capturing everything to my computer so that I only have 1 tape done so far. Something to do with not being able to get updates for my NLE because it's, uh... you know, borrowed. The footage looks good so far though.

Also, The subject had a big photo album he loaned me full of photos he took during the war but I haven't been able to scan them because my scanner won't work with OS X, so I have to buy a new scanner. Of course I'm broke though, so it's gonna be another week.

Right now I'm just sort of avoiding it and working on a few less slowly-killing-me type of things, including a Some Guy Productions store!

That's right! My "production company" under whose banner I make "films", is getting a website redesign courtesy of my girlfriend whenever she gets on the stick and makes it (I want to use Movable Type to update news on the site and she has no experience with perl and cgi so it's taking awhile).

Along with this redesign the accompanying store, surely to exist for no other reason than my own amusement, will also be launched.

Here's a very-special-just-for-you sneak peak (note, some items may change and more will be added. I know you don't care because you'll never, ever want to own any of this crap, but nevertheless there it is).

So I've been doing that. Soon, very soon, as soon as I clean off my desk in fact, I will get back on that movie horse (his name's "Stymie") and start capturing the movie I just went broke over.

posted by Tim 7:27 PM

Monday, October 20, 2003

 
D'ya like Fox News? Do you? Really? Then I've got a bridge to sell you, you slobbering idiot.

I just saw about 45 seconds or so of Fox News (my maximum monthly intake) and some pinhead was talking about the O'Really interview on NPR's Fresh Air. You know, the one where he was being picked on and so walked out?

The pinhead (actually it was a large head, the "pin" refers to gray-matter size) was saying something like 'she was mean and unfair to O'Reilly, but what made it worse was when she interviewed Al Franken she was very, very nice'. It was nearly the exact equivalent as that. [Does anyone else ever think the conservative movement is just everyone who never matured emotionally beyond the 6th grade?]

Anyway, they had a quote from NPR's ombudsman and they presented it as directly supporting their position. This is what they (Fox) quoted:

[to be read with smug self-satisfaction] But by coming across as a pro-Franken partisan rather than a neutral and curious journalist,.… the interview only served to confirm the belief, held by some, in NPR's liberal media bias.

Huh?, I thought. Sounds pretty convenient and stupid. Kind of like Fox News and modern conservatives.

So I check out NPR and this is part of what I find:

...I agree with the listeners who complained about the tone of the interview: Her questions were pointed from the beginning. She went after O'Reilly using critical quotes from the Franken book and a New York Times book review. That put O'Reilly at his most prickly and defensive mode, and Gross was never able to get him back into the interview in an effective way. This was surprising because Terry Gross is, in my opinion, one of the best interviewers anywhere in American journalism.

Although O'Reilly frequently resorts to bluster and bullying on his own show, he seemed unable to take her tough questions. He became angrier as the interview went along. But by coming across as a pro-Franken partisan rather than a neutral and curious journalist, Gross did almost nothing that might have allowed the interview to develop.

By the time the interview was about halfway through, it felt as though Terry Gross was indeed "carrying Al Franken's water," as some listeners say. It was not about O'Reilly's ideas, or his attitudes or even about his book. It was about O'Reilly as political media phenomenon. That's a legitimate subject for discussion, but in this case, it was an interview that was, in the end, unfair to O'Reilly.

Much more nuanced, of course, but he goes on to say:

I believe the listeners were not well served by this interview. It may have illustrated the "cultural wars" that seem to be flaring in the country. Unfortunately, the interview only served to confirm the belief, held by some, in NPR's liberal media bias.

It left the impression that there was something not quite right about the reasons behind this program: Bill O'Reilly often loves to use NPR as his own personal political pinata; and NPR keeps helping him by inviting him to appear.

A letter to Terry Gross from Prof. Rosa Maria Pegueros summed it up well:

I have been enjoying and learning from your show for more years than I can count, but I have to make one small criticism. Please consider it a word from a friend.

I was astonished that you had Fox's Bill O'Reilly on. I have never been able to tolerate more than a few moments of his programs. Having had a few students who came in quoting him and putting his opinions in their papers, I do know his opinions, but all his on-air shouting is unsupportable. That being said, I really think you were baiting him. Not that what you were saying was wrong or inaccurate but I had to wonder what possessed you to choose him? I guess one could say that he walked into enemy territory but I think it couldn't end any other way. Either you were going to corner him and make him admit the things that have been written about him or he was going to walk out once he realized what you were doing. I heard you do something similar with Gene Simmons. I can't believe that you didn't know how he'd react to your questions.

These louts and loudmouths deserve being embarrassed in public, I guess. But to hear you do it is somewhat unsettling. I would expect that if YOU ever went on his program, he'd do something similar to you. I guess what I'm saying is that I expect them to be that way and am generally glad that you aren't.

Which, taken all together sounds a bit like the ombudsman is saying, "Bill O'Reilly is obviously an idiot and a baby. We're better than him and if we just do our jobs as well as we can, which is tons better than Bill O'Reilly does his, he's still going to come across as an idiot and a baby; we don't need to bait this asshole."

Which goes swoosh! over the heads of any conservative who would read it, and is exactly right.


posted by Tim 10:54 AM

Sunday, October 19, 2003

 
It was hot

Real hot. Burning.

Desert was good. Had ice-cream in Amboy, CA- population 20, founded in 1858. Dug up some fossils and found about 15 well-made handaxes that, according to the Calico Early Man site info, were left by homo erectus or neandertals.

WTF?

Acording to the BLM the site suggests the earliest evidence of human occupation.

The alluvial fan deposits in this area are uniquely deep stratum layers that may represent the oldest evidence of human occupation in the Americas. In 1980, Drs. James Bischoff, Richard Ku, and Roy Shellman estimated that the soils at this site may date back to over 200,000 years, using a uranium-thorium dating process on the surrounding strata.

But, the little brochure they give you says that they're not suggesting indians or paleo-indians left the artifacts, but rather a pre-sapiens humanoid.

This is fucked up. I've never heard of this before. If you know anything about new-world archeology you know it's nuts to suggest homo-erectus was in America. Homo everyone-but-us was Africa, Asia and Europe, but not the Americas. We got people crossing over the Bering strait either in one wave or 2 or 3 waves, either around 15,000 or 30,000 years ago (when and how many waves is a big issue. some mitochondrial DNA evidence suggests the whole of the Americas were populated in just 15,000 years. Other people think they started coming over 30,000 years ago).

I've been looking around the 'net and I've found a few things that indicate the 200,000 year date is widely regarded as bullshit among anthropologists even though there's been good dating done. Sounds about right, but then one could hope that everyone is just being provincial.

Loius Leakey, you know, of Lucy embedded in rock with diamonds fame?, he worked at the Calico site and he really wanted to find something like this. He sort of pushed this one site in South America, I think, as being over 30,000 years old on scanty evidence- he really wanted to find this sort of stuff so... 200,000 would make him very happy.

Anyway, if indeed all of this were most likely true it would be a huge deal and it would be taught to everyone who ever had an anthro 101 class.

I found about 15 classic hand-axe/choppers at this site (not the Calico site, which is protected, but my own secret site a ways away) and if I'm going to believe Leakey they're like 135,000 years old. I'm not going to believe him unless some data starts rolling in, which it never will, so...

Thing is although everything I found, if you showed it to any archeologist (am I spelling that right?) would definitely be considered man-made, pretty much every rock at this site looks like it's been knocked around by someone at some point. It's mind-boggling how much stuff is there. There was an ancient lake nearby and I've found good, finely worked artifacts there; stuff obviously man-made from maybe a few hundred to a few thousand years ago or so. They got their material from this area I was at this weekend because pretty much every single rock is good material. So, with so much stuff looking like it's been worked a little, you start to doubt that any of it actually has been. Natural falling and tumbling can produce flaking that can look man-made, and since every rock there is fine-grained (of tool-making quality), it's easy to imagine how most of the chipping was done naturally.

But the stuff I got, if it wasn't man-made then it was super-intelligent lizard made, or something, because they're obviously tools. But how old? They're pretty crude and mainly large hand-axes, which suggests just subsistance root-banging, bone-cracking, wood cutting sort of stuff. They're the equivalent of a cheap hachet you'd pick up at K-Mart for a camping trip. You know, one use and it's gone.

It's the same sort of stuff they say is 135,000 to 200,000 years old at Calico. How could they fuck up a dating so badly? Anyway, they could definitely be up to 10,000 years old, but more likely 5,000 or less, which is cool.

Jealous?

Probably not, huh?

I dunno, I'm rambling. Anyway, pretty good trip, I found some stuff, I'm really tired, and it was in the mid 90s the whole time.

Maybe I'll finally figure out how to put up photos later.

posted by Tim 8:05 PM