... it's a good idea to listen.
Someone told me something recently that I desperately needed to hear. What they said was kind, generous and humble. It came completely out of the blue, too. I've been in a huge funk lately due to a confluence of bad events and this brightened everything and will have an effect far off into the future.
Thanks, someone. I needed that.
My theology isn't all that good, but as I understand it, when that little voice inside your head suggests you do something Christ-like, something difficult, something unusual, we Catholics attribute that the Holy Spirit.
Thanks, Holy Dude. I needed that.
If you get a chance to say something nice today, to apologize for a past wrong, to take responsibility for something going sideways or to give a compliment to someone, take it.
Tuesday, May 09, 2017
Monday, May 08, 2017
What Is Feminism?
Honestly, I don't get it at all.
My wife is one of the most impressive people I know. In terms of where she started and how far she's made it, if you picked any 100 Americans at random, her story would put her in the top 3, no question about it. When it comes to the tactical and the practical, when she speaks, the wise man listens and takes her suggestions very seriously.
What does she want more than anything else? Grandchildren, done the right way. She would love it if our children found loving spouses, got married in the Church, moved in together after they got married and then made plenty of beautiful babies.
Why aren't things like that the cornerstones of modern feminism?
My wife is one of the most impressive people I know. In terms of where she started and how far she's made it, if you picked any 100 Americans at random, her story would put her in the top 3, no question about it. When it comes to the tactical and the practical, when she speaks, the wise man listens and takes her suggestions very seriously.
What does she want more than anything else? Grandchildren, done the right way. She would love it if our children found loving spouses, got married in the Church, moved in together after they got married and then made plenty of beautiful babies.
Why aren't things like that the cornerstones of modern feminism?
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| Grandchildren? I'm all in, too! |
Sunday, May 07, 2017
Yelling At The Sky
Short post today, but an important one (to me, at least).
Have you ever had those times when someone has betrayed you severely? At work, in your family, or maybe a friend? In the past, I hung on to slights like they were life rafts in the middle of the ocean. There was nothing better than righteous fury. It filled my lizard brain with the delightful energy of anger. There wasn't any payoff in it, of course. Whatever the betrayal might have been, it had passed and the job was now to pick up after it, like recovering after a hurricane. Still, I would cling to my status as a Victim of Evil.
I finally realized that whoever betrayed me had chosen that path for a reason that was good enough for them. I had no more control over it than I did the weather. That weather analogy broke my habit of clinging to rage. I felt silly when I realized I was effectively standing outside, atop the ruins of some aspect of my life, yelling at the sky for a hurricane that had passed long ago.
How stupid is that?
It made me feel so ridiculous that I quit the habit then and there.
Hope that helps you in some way.
Have you ever had those times when someone has betrayed you severely? At work, in your family, or maybe a friend? In the past, I hung on to slights like they were life rafts in the middle of the ocean. There was nothing better than righteous fury. It filled my lizard brain with the delightful energy of anger. There wasn't any payoff in it, of course. Whatever the betrayal might have been, it had passed and the job was now to pick up after it, like recovering after a hurricane. Still, I would cling to my status as a Victim of Evil.
I finally realized that whoever betrayed me had chosen that path for a reason that was good enough for them. I had no more control over it than I did the weather. That weather analogy broke my habit of clinging to rage. I felt silly when I realized I was effectively standing outside, atop the ruins of some aspect of my life, yelling at the sky for a hurricane that had passed long ago.
How stupid is that?
It made me feel so ridiculous that I quit the habit then and there.
Hope that helps you in some way.
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| Don't rebuild, don't plan, don't dream. Just stand outside and yell at the sky for months or even years! |
Saturday, May 06, 2017
Living In A Vacuum
So the Republicans passed a semi-replacement of ObamaCare and the press is full of stories of controversy, inadequacy and people losing their health care. I have to admit that I only read a few of them. When I did, I wasn't reading for details, but for a sense of the narrative. What I found didn't surprise me save for its completeness.
The stories lacked any sense of context. It's as if ObamaCare was just cruising along and sick children were being given lollipops by smiling nurses who cheerfully treated them for scabies, croup or dropsy, whatever their sad case might be. With bouquets of daisies on their bedside tables, the hopelessly charming little moppets were saying, "Mommy, this medicine tastes yucky!" to which their transgendered caregiver would reply, "Now you must take the medicine, dear, it will make you all better. After you take it, I'll tell you a story." "Mommy, make it the one about the kind bureaucrat who brought the orphans milk!"
Or something like that.
Meanwhile, the reality of the situation was quite different. ObamaCare was collapsing in on itself as insurers ditched one market after another. Premiums and deductibles had reached insane levels.
That reality was completely ignored in the stories I read. It was as if the Republicans passed the bill for no reason other than to kill Americans. Which is exactly what many editorials said in so many words. One that I read this morning actually swore vengeance on the Republicans. It was like something out of war propaganda.
This is insane. This isn't a news media, this is a party organ. Which, I guess, we already knew. Thank God fewer and fewer people trust these swine.
The stories lacked any sense of context. It's as if ObamaCare was just cruising along and sick children were being given lollipops by smiling nurses who cheerfully treated them for scabies, croup or dropsy, whatever their sad case might be. With bouquets of daisies on their bedside tables, the hopelessly charming little moppets were saying, "Mommy, this medicine tastes yucky!" to which their transgendered caregiver would reply, "Now you must take the medicine, dear, it will make you all better. After you take it, I'll tell you a story." "Mommy, make it the one about the kind bureaucrat who brought the orphans milk!"
Or something like that.
Meanwhile, the reality of the situation was quite different. ObamaCare was collapsing in on itself as insurers ditched one market after another. Premiums and deductibles had reached insane levels.
Deductibles for individuals enrolled in the lowest-priced Obamacare health plans will average more than $6,000 in 2017, the first time that threshold has been cracked in the three years that Affordable Care Act marketplaces have been in business...A $12,000 deductible isn't a health insurance for anything other than catastrophes. Add that to $4000 or so of annual premiums and you're out a whopping $16,000 a year before the thing starts to pay off in earnest.
Families enrolled in bronze plans will have average deductibles of $12,393, according to the study by the consumer insurance comparison site HealthPocket...
HealthPocket also found that that average premiums, or monthly payments, for bronze plans nationwide will increase 21 percent next year for people who earn too much to qualify for Obamacare subsidies. A 40-year-old unsubsidized bronze plan customer would pay $350.23 each month for their health coverage, compared to $289.88 per month this year.
That reality was completely ignored in the stories I read. It was as if the Republicans passed the bill for no reason other than to kill Americans. Which is exactly what many editorials said in so many words. One that I read this morning actually swore vengeance on the Republicans. It was like something out of war propaganda.
This is insane. This isn't a news media, this is a party organ. Which, I guess, we already knew. Thank God fewer and fewer people trust these swine.
Update: Here's a typical response to the bill.
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| This guy is no pipsqueak. He has 337,000 followers. |
Friday, May 05, 2017
Thursday, May 04, 2017
Why Steven Colbert Isn't Funny
It's not because he's political or even a raging, snarky partisan. Sometimes they can be funny, too, even when you disagree with them.
Steven Colbert isn't funny because his jokes don't make sense.
His recent anti-Trump spasm culminated when he accused the president of having an intimate relationship with Putin. Ha ha ha?
How does that make any sense at all? Why not charge him with being in love with, oh, I don't know, the star of Hamilton? Trump was clearly Putin's worst outcome of the election. Russia gets most of its money from oil and Trump has taken dramatic steps to increase American oil production. This lowers the price of oil and takes billions of dollars out of the pockets of the Russian oligarchy. It's not that complicated.
Meanwhile, if anyone was kneeling to Putin it was Obama and Clinton. They gave away Crimea, part of Eastern Ukraine, did nothing when the airliner was shot down and let the Russian proxy, Syria, run wild.
If comedy is going to have any bite at all, it has to at least be based partly in truth. Colbert's rant was utterly unmoored from reality. It was so deranged that I'm not sure a religious fundamentalist analogy would do it justice. It was more like complete cognitive dissonance of the type Scott Adams describes.
Steven Colbert isn't funny because his jokes don't make sense.
His recent anti-Trump spasm culminated when he accused the president of having an intimate relationship with Putin. Ha ha ha?
How does that make any sense at all? Why not charge him with being in love with, oh, I don't know, the star of Hamilton? Trump was clearly Putin's worst outcome of the election. Russia gets most of its money from oil and Trump has taken dramatic steps to increase American oil production. This lowers the price of oil and takes billions of dollars out of the pockets of the Russian oligarchy. It's not that complicated.
Meanwhile, if anyone was kneeling to Putin it was Obama and Clinton. They gave away Crimea, part of Eastern Ukraine, did nothing when the airliner was shot down and let the Russian proxy, Syria, run wild.
If comedy is going to have any bite at all, it has to at least be based partly in truth. Colbert's rant was utterly unmoored from reality. It was so deranged that I'm not sure a religious fundamentalist analogy would do it justice. It was more like complete cognitive dissonance of the type Scott Adams describes.
When your self-image and ego get annihilated ... you can’t simply admit you have been ridiculous all along. Your brain can’t let you do that to yourself. So instead, it concocts weird hallucinations to force-glue your observations into some sort of semi-coherent movie in which you are not totally and thoroughly wrong. That semi-coherent movie will look like a form of insanity to observers.Colbert isn't funny, he's just kind of odd.
Wednesday, May 03, 2017
The Upside To Steven Colbert And Donald Trump
... and ANTIFA and the pussy hat marchers and the DNC chair swearing in public speeches is that we won't have to put up with political ads like this any more.
Now that we've all completely discarded any sense of right and wrong in speech, action and writing, the ammunition is gone for ads where we attack a politician's character. Now that we've elected a liar and the losers are pining for an alternate reality where an even worse liar would have won, there's nothing left at which we can point fingers of shame and not find them pointing right back at us.
Doesn't it feel good to be liberated from judgment?
Now that we've all completely discarded any sense of right and wrong in speech, action and writing, the ammunition is gone for ads where we attack a politician's character. Now that we've elected a liar and the losers are pining for an alternate reality where an even worse liar would have won, there's nothing left at which we can point fingers of shame and not find them pointing right back at us.
Doesn't it feel good to be liberated from judgment?
Tuesday, May 02, 2017
Jean Goldkette Plays At The White House Correspondents' Dinner!
Or was it Watergate superstars Woodward and Bernstein speaking? I get them and Goldkette confused.
Woodward and Bernstein did their best work in 1973. That was roughly 45 years ago.
45 years before Wood and Berny was 1927ish. Who was hotter than a firecracker back then? Why Big Jean Goldkette, of course. Who could forget this toe-tapper?
Man, that record swings!
And here some people are saying the White House Correspondents are irrelevant dinosaurs! Ha! What a hoot!
Woodward and Bernstein did their best work in 1973. That was roughly 45 years ago.
45 years before Wood and Berny was 1927ish. Who was hotter than a firecracker back then? Why Big Jean Goldkette, of course. Who could forget this toe-tapper?
Man, that record swings!
And here some people are saying the White House Correspondents are irrelevant dinosaurs! Ha! What a hoot!
Monday, May 01, 2017
Pushing On A Japanese String
I used to wail and gnash my teeth about Japan's debt problem, and it's still staggering, but somehow, they just keep on keepin' on.
And, of course, there's the demographic issue with more adult diapers being sold than baby diapers.
Having issued my Cassandra Call one more time, I can't say that I've got any clue as to when or how this all comes crashing down. Weird.
TOKYO—The Bank of Japan pushed back against speculation about an early interest rate increase Thursday by mixing an upbeat assessment of the economy with a further lowering of its inflation forecast and a rejection of the need to unwind its ultraeasy policy.0.2% is no inflation at all. That economy isn't going anywhere. Meanwhile, their citizens owe about $71,000 USD apiece on their federal government's debt. Ouch.
Mr. Kuroda reiterated that the time isn’t ripe to start talking about a policy reversal. He pointed to the distance of the current inflation rate, 0.2% in February, to his 2% target.
And, of course, there's the demographic issue with more adult diapers being sold than baby diapers.
Having issued my Cassandra Call one more time, I can't say that I've got any clue as to when or how this all comes crashing down. Weird.
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| Bumblebees aren't supposed to fly, either, but they do. |
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Who's The Worst?
Nathan Bedford Forrest or Margaret Sanger?
Wandering around the Catican Compound yesterday, preparing for a party, I had my headphones on and was listening to Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography. To recap, Forrest was a brilliant, if unorthodox, Confederate cavalry general. He was also a slave trader before the war and after the war, became the first Grand Wizard of the KKK.
As I enjoyed war anecdotes where he won improbable victories - one with mostly unarmed recruits and another by moving his only two cannon around the field to make it seem like he had many, it dawned on me that, unlike campus Social Justice Warriors, I was capable of appreciating the genius of an utter moral reprobate despite his deep flaws. Generalizing it further, I could appreciate all kinds of historical figures, whatever their shortcomings. I wasn't applying modern moral purity tests on them to detect heretical beliefs and my life was richer because of it.
Note to Confederate apologists: The book has completely convinced me that war was over slavery and everything else was incidental. Further, I'm at the point in the story where Forrest ordered the massacre of surrendered Union troops, many of them new black volunteers. He was a total scumbag.
Anyway, it then occurred to me that many of the same people agitating for the removal of Confederate war memorials support Planned Parenthood which was started by Margaret Sanger, a genocidal racist. Why the double standard? Probably because, as Peggy Noonan recently noted, they're ignorant.
Wandering around the Catican Compound yesterday, preparing for a party, I had my headphones on and was listening to Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography. To recap, Forrest was a brilliant, if unorthodox, Confederate cavalry general. He was also a slave trader before the war and after the war, became the first Grand Wizard of the KKK.
As I enjoyed war anecdotes where he won improbable victories - one with mostly unarmed recruits and another by moving his only two cannon around the field to make it seem like he had many, it dawned on me that, unlike campus Social Justice Warriors, I was capable of appreciating the genius of an utter moral reprobate despite his deep flaws. Generalizing it further, I could appreciate all kinds of historical figures, whatever their shortcomings. I wasn't applying modern moral purity tests on them to detect heretical beliefs and my life was richer because of it.
Note to Confederate apologists: The book has completely convinced me that war was over slavery and everything else was incidental. Further, I'm at the point in the story where Forrest ordered the massacre of surrendered Union troops, many of them new black volunteers. He was a total scumbag.
Anyway, it then occurred to me that many of the same people agitating for the removal of Confederate war memorials support Planned Parenthood which was started by Margaret Sanger, a genocidal racist. Why the double standard? Probably because, as Peggy Noonan recently noted, they're ignorant.
When I see tapes of the protests and riots at schools like Berkeley, Middlebury, Claremont McKenna and Yale, it doesn’t have the feel of something that happens in politics. It has the special brew of malice and personal instability seen in the Salem witch trials. It sent me back to rereading Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” Heather Mac Donald danced with the devil! Charles Murray put the needle in the poppet! As in 17th-century Salem, the accusers have no proof of anything because they don’t know, read or comprehend anything.This then led me to wonder, who was worse, Forrest or Sanger? Forrest saw blacks as livestock, to be sold at $30,000 (2017 USD) apiece. Sanger, from her article, A Plan for Peace, had this point of view.
Minorities crammed into impoverished areas in inner cities should not be having so many babies. And, of course, these minorities (including most of America’s immigrants) are inferior in the human race, as are the physically and mentally handicapped. We should require mandatory sterilizations of those less desirable and promote easy access to abortion. And since sex should be a free-for-all, we must provide birth control and abortions to teenagers too. It’s all for the greater good and for a more intelligent, liberated, healthier population.There's more. Lots more. Whereas Forrest exists only now in statues and namesakes, Sanger's work continues apace.
Here is the simple truth. The intent of Sanger’s Negro Project is firmly intact. Nearly 40% of all African-American pregnancies end in induced abortion. This is by design. Abortion kills more black people than the seven leading causes of death combined (heart disease, cancer, strokes, accidents, diabetes, homicide, and chronic lower respiratory diseases) according to CDC data. The African-American abortion rate is 3x that of the white population and over 2x that of all other races combined.Personally, I find them both despicable, but Sanger seems to have fewer redeeming qualities and her downside is much, much lower than Forrest's.
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| Winner, winner, chicken dinner. |
Saturday, April 29, 2017
Deep South Dish
I recently added this blog to my sidebar and it's given me one success after another in the kitchen. I think I've tried four of her recipes and each one has been a real winner. Last night I made Cast Iron Skillet Roasted Cut Up Chicken. Absolutely fabulous.
When people go to her blog, they end up happy and full. I suspect that when people come here, they edge towards the door, mumble something about having left their glasses in the car and then bolt, wondering as they drive away what the laws are regarding involuntary institutionalization.
Oh well. I stand by my choices.
:-)
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| Thyme, tarragon, rosemary, garlic, lemon ... Yum! |
Oh well. I stand by my choices.
:-)
Friday, April 28, 2017
How To Reconcile Feelings And Logic
A follow on to yesterday's post.
Logic: The perimeter is the distance around the outside of a shape. Since a triangle has 3 sides, this is simple. The perimeter is the sum of lengths of the three sides.
Feelings:
How to resolve this: If you stand your ground and insist that the perimeter is equal to the sum of the lengths, you will be accused of hate speech, lagomorphophobia, a denial of bunny's reality, be excoriated on social media, have panelists on CNN and MSNBC drag your name through the mud and, in all likelihood, will be assaulted by members of ANTIFA and have your car set on fire. Since it's not often that you need to do anything with the perimeters of triangles, it's not like holding the line will bring you much benefit. Certainly nothing equivalent to all the costs.
In the end, your best bet is to issue a statement about the validity of bunny's sad and demand changes to our vocabulary as well as more funding for the study of sorrow in rabbits.
If that really bothers you, when you go home, you can always get drunk.
(F)inding a balance between feelz and logic ... it's all hogwash in the end as feelz must win out, otherwise what's the point?Let us take as an example, finding the perimeter of a triangle.
Logic: The perimeter is the distance around the outside of a shape. Since a triangle has 3 sides, this is simple. The perimeter is the sum of lengths of the three sides.
Feelings:
How to resolve this: If you stand your ground and insist that the perimeter is equal to the sum of the lengths, you will be accused of hate speech, lagomorphophobia, a denial of bunny's reality, be excoriated on social media, have panelists on CNN and MSNBC drag your name through the mud and, in all likelihood, will be assaulted by members of ANTIFA and have your car set on fire. Since it's not often that you need to do anything with the perimeters of triangles, it's not like holding the line will bring you much benefit. Certainly nothing equivalent to all the costs.
In the end, your best bet is to issue a statement about the validity of bunny's sad and demand changes to our vocabulary as well as more funding for the study of sorrow in rabbits.
If that really bothers you, when you go home, you can always get drunk.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Learning Is Overrated
This is a follow-on to yesterday's sewer dive color commentary.
Giving traumatic experience the power to trump logic devalues knowledge, That's the beauty of our obsession with race and gender whether you're a black, lesbian Social Justice Warrior or some shaven, white ape longing for the Reich. You win the day when your side can muster more decibels of complaining than the other. At no point in time do you need to read, discuss or think. Meanwhile, Professor Puffed Wheat nods his head and talks about new directions in philosophical thought valuing "traumatic experience" more than ever before.
If that's the way things are going to go, it might be a good time to ditch the books and stock up on self-defense tools. Victory through yelling is just a hop, skip and a jump away from victory through gang fights.
Race is comparatively trivial. A few cherry-picked stats showing your race is being mistreated and voila!, you've got an argument that can't be beat, so long as race is your differentiating factor. Depart from that and you might need to learn something.In an NYT opinion piece, written by some professor whose head is filled with puffed rice cereal, lurks these tidbits.
During the 1980s and ’90s, a shift occurred in American culture; personal experience and testimony, especially of suffering and oppression, began to challenge the primacy of argument...Widespread caricatures of students as overly sensitive, vulnerable and entitled “snowflakes” fail to acknowledge the philosophical work that was carried out, especially in the 1980s and ’90s, to legitimate experience — especially traumatic experience — which had been dismissed for decades as unreliable, untrustworthy and inaccessible to understanding...The philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, best known for his prescient analysis in “The Postmodern Condition” of how public discourse discards the categories of true/false and just/unjust in favor of valuing the mere fact that something is being communicated, examined the tension between experience and argument in a different way.There's a fig leaf of mumbling about finding a balance between feelz and logic, but it's all hogwash in the end as feelz must win out, otherwise what's the point? If you're going to listen to someone kvetch and then go with logic and knowledge, then the kvetching will have been dismissed as, well, "overly sensitive, vulnerable and entitled."
Giving traumatic experience the power to trump logic devalues knowledge, That's the beauty of our obsession with race and gender whether you're a black, lesbian Social Justice Warrior or some shaven, white ape longing for the Reich. You win the day when your side can muster more decibels of complaining than the other. At no point in time do you need to read, discuss or think. Meanwhile, Professor Puffed Wheat nods his head and talks about new directions in philosophical thought valuing "traumatic experience" more than ever before.
If that's the way things are going to go, it might be a good time to ditch the books and stock up on self-defense tools. Victory through yelling is just a hop, skip and a jump away from victory through gang fights.
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| On the plus side, less reading will give us more time for enjoying video games, weed and porn after we, err, resolve our differences. |
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Left, Right, It's All The Same
I hadn't planned on blogging about this today, but I spent about 20 minutes over coffee this morning sewer diving into a sequence of neo-Nazi timelines on Twitter. I clicked on one, just to get a flavor of it and then after scoping out his, scanned a few more for a while. It's no different from the racialist progressives I've been yelling about, living in Mein Kampf.
These guys were literally trying to live in Mein Kampf, each having at least one tweet wishing der Führer a happy birthday on that benighted anniversary.
I tried to step back and see what they had in common with their dance partners on the left and this was the best I could come up with: Arguing about race is easier than understanding ideas.
Islam is an idea. Judaism is an idea. Skin color isn't an idea. Debating ideas, even superficially, requires some amount of comprehension and opens you up to attack by people who know more than you about the subject. Race is comparatively trivial. A few cherry-picked stats showing your race is being mistreated and voila!, you've got an argument that can't be beat, so long as race is your differentiating factor. Depart from that and you might need to learn something. The horror.
And so it went in this particular sewer. Data taken from the census bureau or law enforcement sites was repeated over and over again along with ghastly images. Yep, the white race was oppressed or superior or something. It was hard to tell just what the point was. The only plus side was that these cretins had under 1000 followers each. The race-crazed dervishes on the left typically have at least an order of magnitude more reach on Twitter, due to their brain-dead narrative being repeated in the media and arts ad nauseam.
In any case, no one on either side has any need to think or learn so long as they stick with the melanin.
These guys were literally trying to live in Mein Kampf, each having at least one tweet wishing der Führer a happy birthday on that benighted anniversary.
I tried to step back and see what they had in common with their dance partners on the left and this was the best I could come up with: Arguing about race is easier than understanding ideas.
Islam is an idea. Judaism is an idea. Skin color isn't an idea. Debating ideas, even superficially, requires some amount of comprehension and opens you up to attack by people who know more than you about the subject. Race is comparatively trivial. A few cherry-picked stats showing your race is being mistreated and voila!, you've got an argument that can't be beat, so long as race is your differentiating factor. Depart from that and you might need to learn something. The horror.
And so it went in this particular sewer. Data taken from the census bureau or law enforcement sites was repeated over and over again along with ghastly images. Yep, the white race was oppressed or superior or something. It was hard to tell just what the point was. The only plus side was that these cretins had under 1000 followers each. The race-crazed dervishes on the left typically have at least an order of magnitude more reach on Twitter, due to their brain-dead narrative being repeated in the media and arts ad nauseam.
In any case, no one on either side has any need to think or learn so long as they stick with the melanin.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Why Han Solo Wasn't In Corporate Life
... because he solved his problems as they arose vice planning for them.
In the movies
(Millenium Falcon dodging asteroids and TIE fighters while Han tries to repair the hyperdrive)
Han: I don't know how we're going to get out of this one.
In a large corporation
(Han standing in the office of his manager)
Manager: SOLO! I want a presentation on how you're going to get out of this one on my desk for review by tomorrow at 9! It needs to cover schedule, budget, quality assurance, risks and process improvement iterations!
Han: (Sigh)
Monday, April 24, 2017
This One's A Real Drag
My cold is still dragging me down. The best I have to offer today is a Maddi lolcat. Enjoy!
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| Maddi may be on the job and eager to work, but I'm just hanging on today. Blargh. |
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Sphinx Moths Sipping
Thanks to our unusually wet winter, we've had an abnormally large springtime insect bloom. In addition to the Crane Flies I've photographed recently, there are Sphinx Moths a-plenty. I caught some of them sipping on flowers in our back yard last night. I shot it in 1080p and then edited it down to 720p to focus on the moths. It might be worth watching in full-screen mode. Enjoy!
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Bill O'Reilly And Celebrity Psychosis
I'm listening to Mike Nesmith's autobiography, Infinite Tuesday, these days. Mike was one of the Monkees, in case you didn't know. The book is painfully honest and that gives it tremendous charm. More on that in another blog post, perhaps.
Mike coins the term, "Celebrity Psychosis," to describe what happens to you when you become a big star. You turn into something of a psychotic and it comes to dominate your life if you don't fight it tooth and nail, which most people can't. It's what causes celebrities to park their cars in fire lanes and be deeply offended when the car gets towed. It makes then scream at paparazzi and then pose for photographers to make sure their face is seen in all the right places. You take advantage of those around you because you feel entitled, entitled to everything.
Bill O'Reilly seems to have succumbed to CP. I have to admit that I never watched him, save for catching some Dennis Miller clips on YouTube. I loved his book, Killing Jesus, but I thought his rants and his show to be insufferable. As the stories come out about his behavior, which I must admit I'm watching only tangentially, they're echoes of stories Mike tells in his book about his own horrible actions. Bill O'Reilly never stopped himself because, well, "Don't you know who I am?"
One wonders who Mike or Bill or Bill Cosby, for that matter, might have become in the absence of celebrity. Decent people, probably. Mike Nesmith finds redemption and one hopes both of the Bills will as well.
In Infinite Tuesday, I've just reached the point where MTV was created. Interestingly enough, the genesis of it was this music video that Mike put together to play on European channels as a promo for one of his albums. Up to that point, pop clips, as they were called, were just the artist lip-synching to the song and had no action or plot at all. By comparison, Rio is positively inspired. Enjoy.
Mike coins the term, "Celebrity Psychosis," to describe what happens to you when you become a big star. You turn into something of a psychotic and it comes to dominate your life if you don't fight it tooth and nail, which most people can't. It's what causes celebrities to park their cars in fire lanes and be deeply offended when the car gets towed. It makes then scream at paparazzi and then pose for photographers to make sure their face is seen in all the right places. You take advantage of those around you because you feel entitled, entitled to everything.
Bill O'Reilly seems to have succumbed to CP. I have to admit that I never watched him, save for catching some Dennis Miller clips on YouTube. I loved his book, Killing Jesus, but I thought his rants and his show to be insufferable. As the stories come out about his behavior, which I must admit I'm watching only tangentially, they're echoes of stories Mike tells in his book about his own horrible actions. Bill O'Reilly never stopped himself because, well, "Don't you know who I am?"
One wonders who Mike or Bill or Bill Cosby, for that matter, might have become in the absence of celebrity. Decent people, probably. Mike Nesmith finds redemption and one hopes both of the Bills will as well.
In Infinite Tuesday, I've just reached the point where MTV was created. Interestingly enough, the genesis of it was this music video that Mike put together to play on European channels as a promo for one of his albums. Up to that point, pop clips, as they were called, were just the artist lip-synching to the song and had no action or plot at all. By comparison, Rio is positively inspired. Enjoy.
Friday, April 21, 2017
Spanish Flu
My cold is really dragging me down right now. One of my coworkers is starting to get it, too. Sometimes when this happens, I wonder if it's the start of an epidemic and we'll be patient zero in something like the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918. We won't, of course, but it makes you wonder what it was like as it started. You've got to figure that the first people who came down with it blew it off as just another flu or cold.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Living In Mein Kampf
From an article by Republican political operative Ed Rogers on the recent special Congressional election in Georgia wherein the Democrats, funded lavishly by outside money, fell just short of taking the seat, comes this sentence, the 4th one into the piece.
I feel like we're in that world right now, one of unedited, histrionic, race-crazed rubbish. When Ed Rogers, a guy who probably thinks oatmeal is too spicy, feels the need to whip out the white male card four sentences into an utterly forgettable piece, you know we've entered Spandau Prison and are all pacing back and forth in front of our secretaries, waving our arms and ranting wildly about der Volk.
All of us.
I have the beginnings of a cold today. Praise Jesus for Nyquil because that wonder drug helped me sleep last night and I might avoid the worst of the sickness. I just bought a spring suit (short-limbed wetsuit) and am looking forward to getting back into boogie boarding. At work, I'm thoroughly enjoying being more technical again and have found that I enjoy server configuration and programming. Newcastle United is threatening a late-season collapse that could keep them out of the English Premier League next year, which would be tragic for me.
There is nothing, nothing at all in my life that has anything even remotely to do with der Volk, be they schwarz, weiß oder braun.
What kind of strange, surreal world do we inhabit these days? It's like every story, every opinion piece has to trot out racial facts in the first few lines. Meanwhile, our daily lives are almost completely unaffected by it.
It's enough to make you stop reading and watching the stuff. Which I have done, save for some guilty pleasure time wherein I consume it like I would candy.
It seems strange, but today’s liberals invested a huge amount of money, media attention, and hopes and dreams in a 30-year-old straight, white Southern male.Mein Kampf is a horrible book, and not just for the meat of its content. It's ignorant, bombastic and badly written, accurately reflecting the lousy mind from which it sprung. It also shows that no one felt comfortable editing der future-Führer's work. Had a decent editor taken a whack at it, they might have asked him to do more research, add counter-arguments and debate them and, for the love of God, delete whole sections of utter bollocks.
I feel like we're in that world right now, one of unedited, histrionic, race-crazed rubbish. When Ed Rogers, a guy who probably thinks oatmeal is too spicy, feels the need to whip out the white male card four sentences into an utterly forgettable piece, you know we've entered Spandau Prison and are all pacing back and forth in front of our secretaries, waving our arms and ranting wildly about der Volk.
All of us.
I have the beginnings of a cold today. Praise Jesus for Nyquil because that wonder drug helped me sleep last night and I might avoid the worst of the sickness. I just bought a spring suit (short-limbed wetsuit) and am looking forward to getting back into boogie boarding. At work, I'm thoroughly enjoying being more technical again and have found that I enjoy server configuration and programming. Newcastle United is threatening a late-season collapse that could keep them out of the English Premier League next year, which would be tragic for me.
There is nothing, nothing at all in my life that has anything even remotely to do with der Volk, be they schwarz, weiß oder braun.
What kind of strange, surreal world do we inhabit these days? It's like every story, every opinion piece has to trot out racial facts in the first few lines. Meanwhile, our daily lives are almost completely unaffected by it.
It's enough to make you stop reading and watching the stuff. Which I have done, save for some guilty pleasure time wherein I consume it like I would candy.
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