Photo of today

I had an interesting, though ultimately unsuccessful photo day today. I'll try to put together a little slideshow tomorrow, but for now, this provides a clue.

Photo of today

Remember what it's like, being 9 years old and staring out the window on a rainy day?

Chuckling predicts

Although I've known for some time who each party's nominee would be, I've held off making a public prediction because I was unsure who they would choose as their running mates. Well, I've figured it out, so here ya go:

Democratic Presidential Candidate: Hillary Clinton.
Republican Presidential Candidate: John McCain.
Democratic running mate: Joe Lieberman.
Republican running mate: Joe Lieberman.

Yes, chuckling confidently predicts that both candidates will choose Joe Leiberman as their running mate. He will, of course, accept, though he will decline to give up his senate seat, just in case.

Who will ultimately win? I'll tell you that when you tell me why it matters.

Lord's day (brooklyn edition)

Slideshow here.

Breaking News: Hell just froze over

The New York Times Magazine has a long article about one of my literary heroes, Eduard Limonov. Everyone who appreciates Knut Hamsun or Dostoevsky's underground man should read Limonov's masterpiece "It's me Eddie," in which, coincidentally, he regularly savages the Times. And although many of his articles, particularly the ones detailing the nitty gritty politics of political organizing, are hard to get through, check out the Exile archives. A lot of it is precious.

I don't have time go go into this thoroughly now. Maybe later I'll pick through the archives and point out some good stuff. A lot of it is outrageous and Eddie is easily the least politically correct writer on the planet, but his stuff is worthwhile and his life is one of his better literary works. Very much like Mishima.

Pictures of yesterday

Another Saturday hanging out with the kid in the teeming concrete borough of Brooklyn. That's John Bob doing his meditation exercises in the foreground. Will winter never end?



You can't walk ten feet around here without tripping over an agave of some sort. I took this photo in a particularly bad moment of self-loathing. What next? Pretty flowers?



Some days I hate myself.

Picture of today

A brief introduction to chuckling

In what passes for an exciting development for poor chuckling, a new reader emailed me with some questions about chuckling on-line magazine.

...just looking through your blog: here are things I'd love to hear from you...)

First, you must understand that chuckling on-line magazine is not a blog. It is an on-line magazine. And a fictional one at that. Chuckling is a fictional character and anything he writes is, like, totally deniable.

What is the difference? Well, chuckling on-line magazine pays for content. I can’t pay much, but good writers like yourself deserve money for your work and I’ll pay what I can afford, which, alas, is nothing but a token at this point. As part of the fictional premise of the magazine, everyone who has written for chuckling on-line magazine so far has written under the “chuckling” byline. It is a good premise, I think, but ultimately unworkable. If you want to write for chuckling, either as chuckling or under your own name, please feel encouraged to contact me.

Anyway, I kind of assume everyone that drops by knows me from Alicublog. Roy is the patron saint of chuckling on-line magazine, though he is not a patron in the financial sense of the word and probably not a saint in any sense. So it surprises me when someone asks about my political beliefs. I’ve written extensively in Alicublog comments and regular readers no doubt roll their eyes when I start to explain, again, my take on the current situation. I guess that’s why I don’t write so much about politics here. I just assume everyone knows what I think.

Nevertheless, for the uninitiated (regular readers can roll their eyes now and go look at the pretty pictures), here’s an introduction:

McCain: What do you think?

McCain is a fascinating individual. I have a lot of respect for the complexity of his faults. He is so profoundly damaged that I can’t help liking him.

He’s like a dog that’s been severely beaten over and over again for years, yet continues to wag its tail when the master approaches. I guess the Vietnamese softened him up. Then Bush, Rove, and Cheney fist-fucked him until he liked it. The American people would be insane to elect or allow him to be appointed chief executive. But with Hillary on the ropes, we might as well get used to calling him Mr. President.

Where do you fall on the Dem<---->Rep continuum?

I don’t believe in the two party system. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I don’t think it would be a good thing to have multiple parties. I don’t believe in the American two party system in the same way I don’t believe in Santa Claus or Jesus. Because it’s at least 99 percent mythical. The Republican party is the only party. In basketball terms, the Democrats are the Washington Generals to the Republicans’ Harlem Globetrotters. They’ll appear to put up a fight but they always fold in the end. That’s what they’re paid for.

Is Hilary the Devil or just misunderstood?

She’s a Republican. I don't believe in the devil any more than I believe in Jesus or the chupacabra.

Is Hilary the most powerful thing to ever happen?

No.

Would you vote for her?

No, but I rarely vote for anybody. It’s a waste of time and effort and gives the whole "American democracy" charade a patina of legitimacy. That, plus where I live people are sometimes jailed for voting and I can't take that chance. All that, plus she is a Republican and even if I voted, I would never vote for a Republican.

Hope that helps. Tune in next week for the fascinating story of chuckling's birth in an old-fashioned newsgroup and adolescence smacking around proto-winguts before smacking around wingnuts was cool.

Morning, noon and night

Slideshow here.

Photo of today

Housa bout a little change of pace? What? I can do portraits.

Photos of (brooklyn) today

Yesterday's theme was urban, but today we're just doing normal Saturday stuff around Brooklyn. It may surprise you to learn that we have a few hills and trees here in the big city and that kids go sledding.

It may really surprise you to see that they still deliver seltzer in those old fashioned bottles. I've seen them in antique stores for $40 apiece. In my neighborhood, I see cases of empties on front porches waiting to be swapped for full ones.



In many ways, I've found, Brooklyn today has more in common with small midwestern towns in the 60's than small midwestern towns of today do. In addition to sledding and home delivery, we've got mom and pop groceries all over the place, know most of our neighbors, and can't go anywhere without bumping into acquaintances or meeting people who know people we know.



Doesn't gel with Conservative narrative, I know, but such is life.

Photos of today

Slideshow here. Click on first pic. Goes better with your favorite music.

Cleansing the tongue

In a stunning innovation in Newsspeak, I mean lingusitic cleansing, the New York Times redefined blatant corruption as "confidence in one's integrity" to describe their allegation that John McCain has been fucking his lobbyist and doing her political favors for sex and money.

Note that "political favors" is so ingrained as Newsspeak that it has become almost totally disassociated with its meaning. Poor "corruption's" harshly interrogated letter structure as been linguistically cleansed and now resides in a relocation camp somewhere in the Mideast.

But that triumph of the journalism is not enough for the world's greatest newspaper! Today we get a twofer!

Not content to merely use the word integrity in place of corruption, the Times also officially ordained the term "draw sharp contrast" as official Newsspeak for "go negative." In order to not be repetitive, the style manual allows "draw tough contrasts" as an acceptable euphemism for "slime your opponent" as well.

Computational anxiety

Today's Washington Post reports that parents are rising up like peasants with pitchforks against a new approach to math being used in elementary education across the land.

In Prince William and elsewhere in the country, a math textbook series has fomented upheaval among some parents and teachers who say its methods are convoluted and fail to help children master basic math skills and facts. Educators who favor the series say it helps young students learn math in a deeper way as they prepare for the rigors of algebra...

The program de-emphasizes memorization and drills and pushes students to use more creative ways to find answers, such as drawing pictures, playing games and using objects.

Sounds like my kid's math class, only much more structured.

On the positive side, according to the Post, the new math program raises test scores and prepares children to learn algebra later on. On the negative side -- gasp -- children do not always get the correct answer without having to think about it for awhile. The article doesn't say it, but sometimes they won't get the correct answer at all. My kid's teacher mentioned that in passing at the recent parent/teacher conference. The important thing at this stage (3rd grade), she said, is that they think.

The post gives an example: "There are 28 desks in the classroom. The teacher puts them in groups of four. How many groups of desks are in the classroom?"

I got that right away by dividing 28 by four so I can see how parents could think that it is more important for children to memorize the multiplication tables than to struggle to find their own methods for solving elementary math problems. But at what stage of development did I learn that I could use the multiplication tables to solve a problem like that?

The point is that once you have the thinking skills, the computational skills are easy. Not the other way around.

And my kid's teacher made another good point, which the Post article neglects to mention, when a parent asked her how kids are supposed to do computation if they're not drilled in it? Just like you or I or any mathematician does computation these days, she said, they'll use a calculator.

Duh.

Update: On the other hand, those of you who wonder how kids who aren't taught computational skills in school still manage to succeed, I noticed my wife drilling poor little John Bob on the multiplication tables last night. Probably a lot of that going around.

Photo of today

Reading lesson

George Orwell had some small amount of respect for Rudyard Kipling, therefore George W. Bush is a hero and the Democrats are unfit to govern. This is so because in 100 years everyone will remember the name “George W. Bush” while Denis Kucinich and his lot will be forgotten. It’s right there in Orwell’s essay. You can read it yourself. Trust me on that. And btw, Orwell says Kipling’s not a Fascist so neither are today's Conservatives. Thus goes the “logic” of William Kristol.

Of course Kristol regularly finds evidence that the Democrats are fools, knaves or traitors in the cooing of pigeons or the honking of taxi’s or the pitter patter of raindrops on the windowsill, and more likely than not pulls some dead white guy out of his ass to agree with his reading of the portents, so neither his conclusions nor his “logic” are remarkable. But Orwell was an interesting writer and it’s usually a hoot when a Conservative pulls poor dead Orwell out of his ass to justify some kind of policy that normal readers would recognize as an “Orwellian Nightmare,” so I looked up the good George’s little essay on Kipling to see what it really said and how it actually relates to our current political climate. It’s yet another example of the “intellectual” somersaults Conservatives will turn in order to pretend that the Fascist looking back it them in the mirror is Winston Churchill. Kristol’s attempt to use Orwell’s “defense” of Kipling gives great insight into the mind this particular Conservative pissant, and Conservative pissants in general.

Let’s start with Orwell’s description of Kipling:

It is no use pretending that Kipling's view of life, as a whole, can be accepted or even forgiven by any civilized person. It is no use claiming, for instance, that when Kipling describes a British soldier beating a 'nigger' with a cleaning rod in order to get money out of him, he is acting merely as a reporter and does not necessarily approve what he describes. There is not the slightest sign anywhere in Kipling's work that he disapproves of that kind of conduct--on the contrary, there is a definite strain of sadism in him, over and above the brutality which a writer of that type has to have. Kipling is a jingo imperialist, he is morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting.

Yes, yes, Kristol seems to be saying, we Conservatives are jingo imperialists, morally rotten, and aesthetically disgusting, but like Kipling according to Orwell, we are not Fascists. And the left, well, Orwell nails them:

But because he (Kipling, read Kristol) identifies himself with the official class, he does possess one thing which 'enlightened' people seldom or never possess, and that is a sense of responsibility. The middle-class Left hate him for this quite as much as for his cruelty and vulgarity. All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are 'enlightened' all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our 'enlightenment', demands that the robbery shall continue. A humanitarian is always a hypocrite, and Kipling's understanding of this is perhaps the central secret of his power to create telling phrases.

So you see. We don't dislike Bush because he is an imbecilic piece of shit and his policies have proven disastrous. We dislike him because he's a paragon of responsibility. That and because we are hypocrits. Both left and right want the same material things and in order to get them we have to exploit the poor folk at home and abroad. The only real difference between left and right is that the right take responsibility for their actions while the left live in a fantasy land. That’s why the right must govern, however incompetently, and the left can only whine in opposition.

Fortunately, Orwell’s argument that freedom for me requires slavery for thee and thou is just so 19th century. With education, democracy and rule of law, we can overcome the master/slave economic relationship that requires the poor of one country to slave eighteen hours a day to make shoes for the poor of another country. The history of the United States offers strong evidence that rule of law and intelligent economic management can balance regional differences. The European Union’s unwieldy march toward freedom and economic justice provides a current example of how that fight can be won. It’s really not that difficult to figure out intellectually. Pulling it off politically is quite another matter.

And here, Orwell nails Kristol and his empire-building buddies. You know, the realists, the responsibility-takers:

Kipling (read Kristol, Conservatives in general) spent the later part of his life in sulking, and no doubt it was political disappointment rather than literary vanity that account for this. Somehow history had not gone according to plan. After the greatest victory she had ever known, Britain was a lesser world power than before, and Kipling was quite acute enough to see this. The virtue had gone out of the classes he idealized, the young were hedonistic or disaffected, the desire to paint the map red had evaporated. He could not understand what was happening, because he had never had any grasp of the economic forces underlying imperial expansion. It is notable that Kipling does not seem to realize, any more than the average soldier or colonial administrator, that an empire is primarily a money-making concern. Imperialism as he sees it is a sort of forcible evangelizing. You turn a Gatling gun on a mob of unarmed 'natives', and then you establish 'the Law', which includes roads, railways and a court-house. He could not foresee, therefore, that the same motives which brought the Empire into existence would end by destroying it.

Yea, I’m sure it’s satisfying for a Conservative like Kristol to pull a dead white guy of Orwell’s stature out of his ass to tell him how superhumanly responsible he and his fucked up warmongering, torturing economy destroying, American hating buddies are, but it requires a lot of skimming or he’s likely to find Orwell’s up his ass in a sense that’s not so pleasant.

Photo of today

More than words

Eric Hirsch Jr. published an informative article on the failure of the No Child Left Behind law in yesterday's Washington Post. He points out that reading scores have shown gains in fourth grade but have not been maintained in higher grades when reading comprehension matters so much more.

I'm sure it won't surprise anyone who follows these education brouhahas that schools are increasingly teaching to the test rather than teaching actual subjects.

...this causes schools, as many complain, to teach to reading tests rather than educate children. But intensive test preparation by schools has resulted in lower reading test scores in later grades. "Teaching to the test" does not effectively teach to the test after all.

But this inability of so many older students to comprehend what they read, despite so many hours studying reading comprehension, is not as mysterious as it may sound.

In light of the relevant science, an analysis of the textbooks and methods used to teach reading and language arts -- for three hours a day in many places -- indicates some of the reasons for the disappointing later results. These test-prep materials are constructed on the mistaken view that reading comprehension is a skill that can be perfected by practice, as typing can be. This how-to conception of reading has caused schools to spend a lot of unproductive time on trivial content and on drills such as "finding the main idea" and less time on history, science and the arts.

Yes, history, science and the arts. Who needs em? Humans, apparently:

Studies of reading comprehension show that knowing something of the topic you're reading about is the most important variable in comprehension. After a child learns to sound out words, comprehension is mostly knowledge. Many technical studies support the assertion that after students can fluently sound out words, relevant knowledge is the crucial difference between students who are good or poor readers.

In other words, a person who knows nothing whatsoever about a subject can understand every word in a paragraph and still have no idea what the pargraph means.

But what can be done? Isn't reading comprehension one of those questions for which there are not answers? Well, no.

Consider the eighth-grade NAEP results from Massachusetts, which are a stunning exception to the nationwide pattern of stagnation and decline. Since 1998, the state has improved significantly in the number of eighth-graders reading at the "proficient" or "advanced" levels: Massachusetts now has the largest percentage of students reading at that higher level, and it is No. 1 in average scores for the eighth grade. That is because Massachusetts decided in 1997 that students (and teachers) should learn certain explicit, substantive things about history, science and literature, and that students should be tested on such knowledge.

Well, duh, you'd think. So how is it that so many experts somehow manage to miss the obvious. You won't be surprised the George W. Bush and the Republicans played their usual role in fucking things up for money. This time in the form of Reid Lyon:

So, again, a tutor of George W. Bush developed a program/policy that imposed a structure on America’s public schools that further complicated the practice of educating children, while funneling federal funds to the profit margins of... friends of George W. Bush.

Whether by design or due to a series of accidents related to the hubris and incompetence of trust fund babies like Bush, vast swathes of our education system no longer teach children in a way that enables them to understand history, social studies, science, or the arts -- essentially the basics necessary for a functional democracy.

As with any great crime, its rarely a bad idea to follow the money and see who profits, in this case by the demise of democracy in the United States and you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to see that it's the politicians of the one dominant party and so many of the corporations that profit most from a widespread lack of reading and reading comprehension. Unfortunately, those who would profit most from a better an educated commonweal don't know what the words mean and if they do can't adequately distinguish between the constitution, the bible, and the words coming at them from the tv.

Photo of today

There she goes, again

Fascist fascism

Did you know that Leo Strauss, the infamous Godfather of Neo-Conservatism, coined the term Reductio ad Hitlerum, which is Latin for “Jonah Goldberg.” Sorry, that’s not entirely fair. To be a bit more precise, Reductio ad Hitlerum describes the logical fallacy which posits that Hitler (or the Nazis) supported X, therefore X must be evil/undesirable/bad. For Goldberg, it should be modified to read ascistsfay oughtthay xay andway iberalslay inkthay xay
ereforethay iberalslay areway ascistsfay, since he is a pig.

We all know that Goldberg is a colossal buffoon and maybe some day he’ll get his own pithy Latin saying to deride his “thought,”, but in the meantime it’s just a bit funny that such a fatuous asshole-buddy of the Neo-Conservative cause is the foremost practitioner of Strauss’s logical fallacy. It makes one kind of hope there’s a hell so that Strauss can contemplate the real world shambles his brain dead followers have made of his thought as he roasts in it. The Nazi’s, you know, picked on stupid fat kids and liberals pick on Jonah Goldberg, so, you know...

But Goldberg notwithstanding, Fascism is typically defined as an extremely nationalistic political philosophy that advocates an autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader and suppression of opposition. Fascist tendencies include a belief in some combination of national, racial, and/or religious exceptionalism, political violence, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, race-based expulsions and brutal invasions and occupations of other countries. Much like the Republican platform.

For the past 65 years or so all we’ve heard about Nazis and Fascists is that those people and their ideology are bad, bad, very very bad. These days one simply cannot describe oneself as a Nazi or a Fascist and run for office or become part of the serious media.

What to do? What to do? This social condemnation of Fascism is a great hindrance to people who otherwise could accurately describe themselves as Fascists. It’s not like Fascist thinking has ever gone away. As you know, extreme nationalism, “executive privilege,” brutal police state tactics, racist roundups and deportations, insane foreign wars and many other trappings of Fascism have become mainstream. Its would-be practitioners simply recognized the need to re-brand.

So what could they call themselves? “Authoritarian” worked okay for our Fascist allies abroad, but wouldn’t play well at home. “Neo-Authoritarian” never had a chance. “Neo-Liberal” didn’t work out for rather obvious reasons. “Neo-Conservative” had a much nicer ring to the Fascist ear, but contained too many syllables for the average Jonah to wrap his little brain around. “Christian Conservative,” even with all those syllables, works for a lot of our Neo-Fascists, but doesn’t include a lot of the more economic focused volk. In the end it seems the best word they could co-opt as the new “Fascist” was just plain old “Conservative.” Extreme nationalism, “executive privilege,” brutal police state tactics, racist roundups and deportations, insane foreign wars, and torture are unquestionably Conservative values these days. Don’t believe me? Just read the Washington Post’s editorial page.

Anyway, I think Strauss recognized the danger that people might call his Fascist crap Fascist crap, and being a very smart man realized that simply not referring to one’s beliefs as Fascist or Nazi-like was not enough, that it would be necessary to take the possibility of calling a Fascist a Fascist off the table entirely. Thus he gives Fascists Reductio ad Hitlerum as a shield which is followed by Godwin’s Law which also keeps the word Fascist at bay, and the linguistic legerdemain eventually degenerates into Goldberg’s fart of a thesis ascistsfay oughtthay xay andway iberalslay inkthay xay
ereforethay iberalslay areway ascistsfay, which essentially says that those who oppose Fascism are Fascists.

So here we are. The stink of Fascism fills the air and it’s considered extremely bad form to call a fart a fart, much less point out who farted.

Part of the problem with calling a Fascist a Fascist is that the Nazis, in addition to being Fascists, were genuinely pathological racist nut cases on a historic scale. Few American Conservatives would advocate, even in the privacy of their empty skulls, killing all the Jews. Many are racists, obviously, but for the most part they’ve learned to keep that shit to themselves and would be happy with separate and unequal rather than gassed and dumped in mass graves.

Still, the success the Conservatives have had taking the word “Fascist” off the table is yet another indication of just how pathetically weak our so called Liberals and Democrats have become. Conservative policies are, by common definition in popular dictionaries and encyclopedias, Fascist. Either intelligent, educated people need to start using the word accurately and educating others to the existence of things such as dictionaries and encyclopedias, or we need to find or create another word with the same meaning. The specific, individual acts of Bush and the Conservatives -- brutal invasions and occupations, war crimes, torture, etc. etc. etc. -- are too numerous to get into a sentence or even a paragraph. That’s why we end up sputtering when we try to list them all. But there is a word that describes Conservative policies accurately. The word is Fascist. It’s in the dictionary. You can look it up.

Ticker tape

After the Giants won the super bowl all of the old photos and newsreel clips I've seen over the years started talking to me saying that I had to go to the ticker tape parade and take some photos. Frankly, I wasn't that enthused, but a New York ticker tape parade is such a hokey over-hyped piece of americana that I couldn't come up with a compelling argument not to go.

Funhouse mirrors

The news tells me that yet another gumman went on a shooting spree, this time at a small college in Illinois. That makes like what, three mass murders in a week? We're becoming like Iraq. Is there some kind of rule that you become what you conquer? Of course our mass murderers are typically white Christian conservatives and their jihads tend to be more personal than their radical Islamic brethren. But still. Blow yourself up in a crowded market or go out in a hail of bullets while shooting as many people as you can. What's the dif? Ain't no dif. Not as much as people think, if they think at all.

Africain american

Photo of today

Writing's becoming difficult. Here's a photo for now. Nothing special, but not without some interest formal elements. Click on it for a larger view.

Bad week at the end of the world

Poor Atrios seems to be having a hard time lately.

He goes to great lengths to inform you that he doesn't give a shit about what you think, cause, you must understand, it's not about you, it's about him.

Kind of humorous coming from someone who makes a living telling other people what he thinks, eh? Of course plenty of people really do care to know his opinion, so perhaps that gives him license to tell other, lesser mortals, to shut up? No, of course it doesn't. That's the kind of info one should keep to oneself. To act otherwise is simply bad manners. And I'd hazard a guess that all but a few of the filthiest, most vile wingnut losers have at least a few people who care about their opinions, or at least care enough to pretend. Who is Atrios to try to burst their bubbles?

But hey, I can sympathize with the feeling. I've been a bad guy. A bubble burster. I'm not proud of it, but shit has happened. And I'm sure it sucks being bombarded with other people's unsolicited opinions on a scale that most people probably can't imagine. Still, I can't condone the behavior. Not by me. Not by anyone. When opinion writers bitch about people writing about their opinions, it appears a bit hypocritical, to put it mildly.

I don't mean to attack. As I've mentioned before, I like the Atrios blog and read it daily. And I've a short fuse myself when it comes to people telling me what I should do. So I'm not angry with Atrios. Just concerned. He seems to be a bit down.

As further evidence, we see him complaining earlier in the week that he doesn't make enough money, then asks those little people he doesn't give a shit about to send him money, and then brags (defensively) about how much money he makes. It's a very weird sequence.

Well, here's hoping he gets a lot of money for his work and it cheers him up! I won't be sending any, of course, but if I ever run into him in a bar or a green room, I'd happily offer to buy him a drink in appreciation for all the entertainment and information he provides. But here's also hoping the celebrity crap doesn't get to him. I don't wanna see no paparazzi shot out front the Betty Ford clinic. But if he wants to date Jessica Simpson, I guess that would be okay. Anything to take his mind off all those terrible nobodies with their worthless opinions.

Swish swash

Just got my 8-year-old's report card. It's not your typical report card. His school doesn't give grades. It's more like an essay.

The teacher included one of his poems:

Why do Dragons Go To Sea

Dragons soar across the sea thinking
"The ocean is scaly like me when the
Waves go swish swash.
Maybe it's another dragon."

Dragons soar across the sea.
"Perhaps I'm seeing things,
But I'm going to dive in
To eat fish. I roast them
With my sun level fire
Breath."

Dragons soar across the sea.
"I go to my island.
I am marooned on my island.
People come with torches but
I can breathe the sun."

Not bad for a third grader, huh? Don't get me wrong. My purpose is not to brag about my kid, more to lament the state of education in this poor world. I'm sure that he wouldn't be much of a poet if he didn't go to a progressive school where they start teaching serious poetry in kindergarten. He also takes dance, two music classes, and art in addition to the regular academic subjects. It's not like he's the best in the class or anything. They all know how to use anaphora and I'm happy for them. What saddens me is that more kids don't get that kind of education. It's really not that difficult.

Yet the trend is away from quality education. A lot of kids do nothing but reading, writing and rithmatic and that creativity-stifling limited curriculum is pretty much limited to test preparation. Passing the test is the be all and the end all.

There's some push back against quality education even in our school. There was a funny scene with the math teacher at a recent parent/teacher night. She was explaining what the children did in class, which is pretty much all games and puzzles. As she went on about how much fun the kids had and how it was important for them to see the higher beauty of math, many of the parents grew uncomfortable. One of them asked if they did any typical math like multiplication, long division or fractions. The poor teacher misunderstood the nature of the question and went to great lengths to assure us that she didn't waste the kids time with that crap.

I know, I know. Would that kind of thing work in the worst schools? Me? I think yes. Would it take a lot of money? No doubt. But we get what we pay for. Bush's new budget contains 515 billion for "defense" and the interest we'll pay on the resulting deficit is far more than he proposes for education. We pay for war and inequality and that's what we get. We'd be better off well-educated.

Another day at the races

In personal news, the chuckling household recently got cable tv. The last time we had it was about 18 years ago. The signal from the antennae had become so weak that we finally gave in. It was painful to watch the boy try to figure out what was happening to Jackie Chan beneath all of that video noise and horizontal wiggling.

We did without for all those years for a variety of reasons. Mostly it was out of a belief that if watching tv were not so difficult on the eyes we would watch a lot more of it, thus making us fatter and less intelligent. But more specifically, I was afraid that I would watch the news. Particularly cable news. I read a lot, and that's bad enough, but television news tends to make me angry (as well as stupid), not only at the content of the news, but at the terrible incompetence of the news organizations. It's not like the major print media is all that great, but tv is infinitely worse.

I've done pretty well for the most part. Outside of the regular broadcast channels we mostly watch Monk and Comedy Central, as well as the near daily re-runs of Overboard and Ghostbusters. On the negative side, there have been several occasions when we've watched CNN and CNBC to see election news. As predictable as it was, we were still a bit surprised at the staggering incompetence of the tv news creatures and we quickly got angry and turned them off.

The news media's offenses against intelligence and basic competence are many, but what stands out is their sickening obsession with race. The election night coverages we saw were all stupid race shit all the time. Given how much I read and the fact that the print media has the same unhealthy preoccupation, I can't say I was particularly surprised. My wife, however, doesn't read the New York Times and the Washington Post every day, much less any blogs, so the utter depth of the media's racial obsession like totally freaked her out. She was shocked, disgusted and ultimately angry. What is wrong with these people? she asked. After a few minutes, we changed the channel back to Overboard.

Normally, we cluck and nod our heads in agreement. Yep, them media creatures sure are stupid. Yep, they really suck. But do they? All the way up the organization? I don't doubt that the talking hairstyles really are that vapid, but what about their bosses, and their bosses' bosses, and the top executives?

Think about it. As the graphic above from Nielsen Media Research (used under the jurisdiction of the Fair Use doctrine) demonstrates, television news viewership is tanking and has been for the last twenty five years or so.

I'd wager that if it were possible to quantify quality, the quality graph would track the viewership graph pretty much peak for valley. The news department staffing chart is similar:



And anecdotal evidence also supports the point:



So why, given the significant financial stakes involved in news ratings, does quality continue to decline? Why do the talking hairpieces babble on and on about subjects that literally make millions of people change the channel? And more importantly, why do the executives in the boardroom continue to let the talking hair pieces destroy the product? The executives have something more than air beneath the hair. They understand the bottom line.

Therein lies the rub. If the top executives understand the bottom line and they allow both quality and the resulting ratings to decline so precipitously, then they must believe that they profit by having fewer viewers who are significantly less well-educated on the issues.

My guess is that they make a lot more money by controlling the government than they do by selling soap and to control government so thoroughly requires an ignorant and easily manipulatable electorate. So they propagandize the morons that enjoy being whipped up into a frenzy of hate and stupidity and encourage everyone else to watch Entertainment Tonight, or Overboard.

The ground in winter

Just that.



In case you don't get out enough



in the cold.

Fire up the presses, it's printin time!

The Times reports:

WASHINGTON — House leaders and the White House on Thursday announced a tentative agreement on an economic stimulus package of roughly $150 billion that would pay stipends of $300 to $1,200 per household, and more for families with children, plus provide tax incentives for businesses to encourage spending.

Translation: They're gonna print a lotta money and throw it in the air by the fistful. A lot more money, to put it accurately. It won't be long before we're all carrying around suitcases full of Benjamins to buy groceries. That's already the case if you travel. Funny how you don't hear much about the deficit these days.

Or perhaps the plan is to trick the Arabs and the Asians and the Europeans into going to war with each other over who gets to buy up everything of value in this country? Nah, there is no plan. At least nothing beyond getting a blip in tomorrow's polls. Maybe they'll kick tomorrow?

And of course it could just be another ruse. Last time we learned that the supposedly free money was just an advance on our tax cut, you know, money we would have gotten anyway. Is that trick in the works again? The news stories describe it as a "stipend" or a "rebate," but it'javascript:void(0)s an unfortunate, and very real, possibility that our top flight media don't know what those words mean, or just take dictation without bothering to stop and think about it. We'll see. It'll probably end up being some combination of the two.

Guy knows how to dig a hole

When There Will be Blood first came out, I was enthused to see it and my daughter wanted to go as well. But her schedule is full and the weeks went by and my interest began to wane, as is prone to happen as a movie's initial hype wears off. Then I saw that it was up for a lot of Oscars, and always in the same sentence as No Country for Old Men, a film I truly hated, and I decided not to waste my money, or my time on it, that it was bound to suck like all the other movies. But then my daughter had a free night and wanted to go, so here I am.

If you plan on seeing There Will be Blood, I recommend that you don't read past this paragraph. I will not give the details of what happens, but I will discuss what I thought about some of the major plot elements. You would do better to see it without letting me color your judgment, one way or the other. It's an interesting movie and worth seeing. And if you want a more intelligent review, I trust Roy will provide one soon.

Okay, you were warned. I thought the ending really sucked and it practically ruined the entire movie for me. It felt like one of those tacked-on studio endings where the big shots snatch the film maker's dream at right before release and turn it into crap. Of course it's also possible that the screenwriter just had no idea how to end it and took the easy way out, but I don't think so. The film was intricately plotted and all the pieces were in place for a satisfying ending that was true to the story, but for whatever reason, that just did not happen.

And it's unfortunate because There Will be Blood had the potential to be a truly great movie. The first two thirds of the story arc provided a nearly immaculate example of visual story telling at its finest. The movie began unraveling a bit as it approached the end, but there were still many good moments and the film was entirely salvageable until the next to last scene.

I know that sounds a bit too much like a lot of the complaints about No Country for Old Men. A lot of people thought that was a potentially great movie until the unsatisfying ending. I, however, was not one of them. Although the movies are similar on one level -- interesting leading man, black humor, unsatisfying ending -- the stories are not comparable. No Country is lame-assed kitsch. There Will be Blood came damn close to nailing it.

Beyond commenting on the story, I'd say the cinematography had its moments. There are some interesting images of warm light in late afternoon and during fire scenes and some interesting use of depth of field and a couple incredibly well-framed close-ups, but overall it was not what you'd call spectacular. The acting was good, particularly Tom Selleck, or some guy that looked like him, in the lead role. If that was old Tom, his acting skills have sure improved since Three Men and a Baby.

My name is Glahn

I almost skipped the "Celebrity book club" article in Sunday's Daily News that asked and odd assortment of talent to talk about the book they are currently reading.

You know, anyone could predict that Cassandra Wilson was reading "technical books filled with dense language only Bill Gates could love" or that Shia Labeouf was into "The Definitive Book of Body Language," but I was nicely surprised to learn that Jason Lee was reading Knut Hamsun's "Hunger," one of chuckling's favorite books by one of chuckling's favorite authors.

Lee, who stars in "My Name is Earl" a show I've never seen, had this to say about one of the greatest books of all time:

"It's about how to cross your legs when you're lying. How to scratch your face when you're scared. I want to be a better actor."

Ooops that was Labeouf. What he really said was:

I talk about this book a lot. It makes it seem like the only book I ever read. It's 'Hunger'; I'm on my second pass. I've never been so riveted by something that has nothing going on. It's just absolutely so well-written. Unbelievable. You find yourself going, 'What's going to happen? What's going to happen? What's going to happen?' Oh, my God. And you really feel the pain of the guy. It absolutely makes me look at [homeless] people I see in downtown L.A. in a different light."

Sometimes, karma needs you to show a little humility in order to do its work.

The chuckling character, you may be surprised to learn is loosely based on the narrator of "Hunger" and the main characters in Hamsun's next two books. One of the site's running jokes, the 13 part philosophical treatise on the films of Studio Ghibli, is my little homage to "Hunger."

Wikipedia describes the novel:

It recounts the adventures of a starving young man, whose sense of reality is giving way to a delusionary existence on the darker side of a modern metropolis. While he vainly tries to maintain an outer shell of respectability, his mental and physical decay are recounted in detail. His ordeal, enhanced by his inability or unwillingness to pursue a professional career, which he deems unfit for someone of his abilities, is pictured in a series of encounters, which Hamsun himself has described as 'a series of analyses'.

Yep, that's poor chuckling in a nutshell, though the starving part was a long time ago on the darker side of a modern metropolis far, far away.

But plenty of books by famous authors describe poor chuckling. Hamsun's writing is extraordinary and that's why you should read him. Reading "Hunger," "Mysteries" and "Pan" is an incredible literary experience. "Pan" comes about as close as possible to being a perfect novel.

Changing toons

Frank Rich's column about Hillary Clinton and "change" is particularly inane this morning. I don't know what it is about Clinton that makes the big time journalists start chugging the stupid pills.

It's been a hoot watching all the bigwigs in both politics and media engage in a pissing contest to see who can invoke the word "change" the most. Rich's point, to the extent he has one, seems to be that Clinton is not the candidate of change, and that that's a bad thing. A very bad thing. Change, you see, is good. Clinton, you see, is bad.

But what does he mean by "change?" Probably not the same thing most people mean. To take one example:

This presentation of the liberal catechism reached its apotheosis in a Clinton campaign ad in December. Mrs. Clinton was shown doling out Christmas presents labeled “Universal Health Care” and “Alternative Energy” before delivering the punch line, “Where did I put universal pre-K?”

For Rich, universal health care, alternative energy, and universal pre-K are just the same old, same old. Hillary has been using those terms for years. He's heard it all before. No change there.

Yet for people on the ground, to have a government that ensured decent health care, intelligent energy policy and a better education system, would represent a radical change. And perhaps regular folk have a deeper definition of "change" than "what a person's been saying" as well.

The overall message uniting the small-bore promises, such as it was, remains unchanged today: competence, experience, wonky proficiency.

Hillary's message, you see, is unchanged. She is unchanged. And people want what? People want change!

Rich seems unable to comprehend the fact that competence, experience and wonky proficiency are attributes that represent the greatest possible change from Bush. When he first ran for President, Bush's inexperience and lack of in-depth knowledge about any and all subjects outside of baseball were presented as good things. And although he was presented as competent, he had a long history of failure going in and he's the all-time American champion of miserable failure going out.

So while Rich and the other media nabobs ponder the possibility that "change" means "someone other than Bush," they don't seem to realize that it might have something to do with his staggering incompetence. They seem more inclined to believe that people have grown tired of him because he's been around for eight or nine years and keeps saying the same things.

While it's true, they concede, that Hillary Clinton is not the exact same person as Bush, she is, they insist, part of the Bush/Clinton dynasty. Hillary Clinton, gasp, has been around even longer than Bush! She and Bush have been around forever! They are practically the same person! And they keep saying the same things!

The fact that the things Hillary Clinton keeps saying represent true and significant change doesn't enter into the conversation.

Obama, on the other hand, represents change. He is a uniter, not a divider. Ummmm. No wonky spiels. Ummmm. At least he has a history of competence, not that that counts. Maybe it's because he looks different? That's the kind of "change" we're talking about! Let's give him a few months before he has to change what he says.


The way Rich and the media-politico in crowd keep changing the definition of "change," it's difficult to know what a presidential candidate should do to "change" in a way that suits them. Mitt Romney changes what he says all the time and he doesn't get any love. And as shallow as they are, you'd think that a different hairstyle or wardrobe would represent acceptable change, but a poor politician has to be careful how much he or she pays for that coif. And what to wear? All we know is that you're not allowed to save the earth if you all of a sudden start wearing earth tones.

Wipe out

Just minutes after I declare for Bill Richardson, he quits the race. Now I've got to fight off despondency and cynicism about the direction of this great country of ours. New Mexico is an incredibly beautiful state. I think Richardson could have made the whole country just as beautiful. Too much of the east is flat and boring. More beautiful mountains and fantastic sunsets would have done us good. Oh well. Que sera sera. Insha'Allah baby.

Arizona is even better, so you'd think I'd be for John McCain, but he is much more a creature of Phoenix than a real Arizonan. Phoenix is a crime against the planet. If there were a just God, it wouldn't exist. And that's what McCain offers the rest of the country. He's probably never even seen a mountain or a sunset even though he's surrounded by them at least once or twice a year. All he sees is enemies. It's not that enemies don't exist, but he sees them in all the wrong places.

Which candidate should I support now that Bill has packed it in? McCain, aside from not really representing Arizona, is too submissive. Ever since Bush beat him like a dog in South Carolina he's acted like one. So I'm kinda leaning towards Giuliani. Not, as you might imagine, because of the New York skyline or ecosystem. Sure, it would be nice if more places were like New York -- Indianapolis, St. Louis, Nashville -- all those hellholes in the midwest could use a little New York style, and that's a good reason to vote for Rudolph, but I'm more drawn to the rotten reindeer because he's such a bizarre fucking psychopath. And in so many ways. If he were elected, much hilarity would ensue, at least until he starts fucking up the lives of his critics, say for a year or so. Still, better to have a few laughs in the meantime.

A lot of people are going to suffer and die for oil and misplaced notions of honor no matter who gets elected.

Catching the wave

Took my son up to New Hampshire today to photograph an Obama rally but the line was too long and his flacks too Bush-like, so we ended up at a Richardson rally in a park (see above photo). Now I'm leaning towards Bill. New Mexico is a beautiful state. Maybe he can make the whole country that beautiful.

Sunday funnies

I caught the end of the Democrat's debate last night. They all seemed like decent enough people and any one of them would be a world of improvement over any of the Republican psychopaths.

Only Obama or Richardson would have the remotest chance of being an effective president. Edwards is too direct in his challenge to corporate hegemony and there are just too many idiots out there with an irrational hatred of Hillary. Either Clinton or Edwards would provoke massive opposition that would be as well-funded as it would be vitriolic. We'd get at least four more years of ugliness, no doubt. With Obama or Richardson, at least there'd be a minute possibility that the tenor of the attacks would mellow.

I say minute chance. Does anyone doubt that if Obama is the nominee, the Republicans will go all southern strategy all the time and the news media will support them?

Already we see that our top journalists in both broadcast and print, perceive "race" as central to all Obama stories. Over and over again they note that in Obama's case "race" is not an issue and that Obama himself never mentions it. Yet for these poor stunted souls, our journalistic elite, it is all they can talk about. If Obama continues to do well, you can count on increasingly idiotic histrionics from the beltway pundits. They will be more than happy to amplify the Republican machine's southern strategy, with a tut tut and a wink of course. Today's topic: should Americans hide the white women if Osama, I mean Obama, becomes President? Fashion industry sees potential cash cow in veils. Meanwhile, latest bloodbath in mideast helps Republicans.

Well, if anyone with African heritage can withstand what's coming, he is Barak Obama. Our prejudices are much more related to culture than color and culturally Obama is white. Here's hoping the coming ugliness backfires on the racist Republican shit heads. Beggarman, get on your horse and ride.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post's Sunday editorial page is always good for a few sad laughs.

David Broder, who is the dean of Washington Punditry as long as you consider "dean" a synonym for "senile" writes:

That search becomes more urgent as the major-party politicians come to understand that Obama could be the most electable candidate the Democrats have fielded in many years.

What planet does this guy live on? Of the last four elections, Democrats won the popular vote in three of them and came close in the fourth. I think Broder and most of his beltway brethren have their heads so far up their beltway asses that they really cannot differentiate between their consensus opinions and the actual results of elections. It's truly amazing.

And finally, old sharp-stick-up-the-ass George Will claims that the middle class is only shrinking because the ranks of the rich are expanding.

Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 -- because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled, from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. "So," Rose says, "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder."

Well, you know what they say about lies, damned lies, and statistics.

I have neither the time nor wherewithal to go deep into those particular statistics, but using the $30,000 to $100,000 income range to define middle class strikes me as silly. For one thing, those numbers obviously don't mean what they meant in 1979. And even if they are adjusted for inflation, $40,000 in New York is not the same as $40,000 in Bumfuck.

But the open sore that Will tries to band-aid with income statistics isn't poverty or any decline in the percentage of middle class folk. It's the income disparity between the truly wealthy and the other 95 or so percent of us and what that disparity means for our children. It means that if something isn't done to rein in those greedy fucks, most people's character and abilities, their merit, will have nothing whatsoever to do with their chance of success in this life. The semi-retarded scions of the wealthy who could never make it on their own, the George W. Bush's, Hank Steinbrenners, James Dolans, and so many more faceless others, will have it all wrapped up in tax free trust funds and off-shore accounts. If we don't tax these losers back to competitive reality, your grandchildren better hone their ass kissing skills cause that's where just about the only opportunity for advancement that will be left.

Photo of the day

I found about a thousand old photos on a hard drive I was about to throw away. A couple are kind of interesting. This one seems to have some resonance.

Another death knell for democracy

According to the New York Times:

Emily Rocheleau, 22, an independent, said she was weighing her choices between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that all of their positions are really moderate, but their rhetoric and their approach to politics is more about unifying the country,” said Ms. Rocheleau, who added that she had not yet chosen her candidate.

Honestly. Do these people really exist or do reporters just make them up? If she were five, I could sympathize with her reasoning. But I know a lot of eight year olds that have significantly more intellectual depth. Really, I do.

But at least she's open minded, I guess. Too many oldsters will vote for the party they vote for because that's their party, doesn't matter who the candidate is. For them it's like rooting for the home team. Once a Stealer's fan, always as Stealer's fan.

Just imagine. In this day and age, with all the monumentally important shit going on in the world, we could very well have an election which is decided by simple folk like Ms. Rocheleau, 22, an independent, who will choose between Obama and McCain based on whether she'd prefer the cute guy or the old guy as President, her boyfriend or her grandpa.

Conspiracy theories

You may note that I have made a few changes to the blog roll on the right. I've been meaning to for some time. I've always felt bad that I link to so few, but have always taken the position that I should only link to writers that I actually read regularly. I have a rather full life and just don't have the time to spend all my time on the internets, so those are only a few.

But there are so many others I like and read occasionally, so I added a second category to include those. As yet, the list is incomplete but I will try to grow it as I go along.

And sadly, I've added a third category. Favorite writers who somehow allowed their sites to become unreadable.

Putting TBogg in that category especially pains me. He is one of the few writers on the web who I would actually pay good money to read, but it is not worth the effort to navigate his new site. It is apparently designed to make visitors click as many times as possible. My guess is that he somehow gets paid based on the number of clicks. If that's true, fine, I wish him well. People who write that well should make money off it. But if not, if the new site is just a horrible design choice, someone please ask him to fix the goddammed thing. Then let me know and I'll move his link back up to the first team. Until then, I'm afraid he will just be another small hole in my life.

Tom Tomorrow is the other writer I put in the used to be great but became unreadable category. His site was taken over by some guy shilling a book called "The Prisoner of Trebekistan." Every third sentence on the blog was an advertisement for the stinking book. I understand that writers want to sell their work and am not opposed to marketing in general, but at some point it becomes too crass. Unfortunately, poor Tom's site turned into a cross between an infomercial and a RonCo advertisement. I had to stop reading.

You know what's odd? The guy who ruined Tom Tomorrow's site with the endless shilling of his book, Bob Harris, was mentioned in a TBogg post shortly before TBogg's blog disappeared. Hmmmmmm. Could he have them locked in a basement somewhere? Maybe someone should investigate.

On a positive note, I just scanned Tom's site for the first time in ages and didn't see any infomercials. Perhaps I'll get back in the habit of going there and move him back up the blog roll. I hope so. Can't have too many good writers out there.

All about eve

Conservative Christian viral email isn't always about politics. Sometimes they make funny:

A woman and a man are involved in a car accident on a
snowy, cold Monday morning; it's a bad one. Both of
their cars are totally demolished but amazingly
neither of them are hurt. God works in mysterious
ways. After they crawl out of their cars, the man is
yelling about women drivers.

The woman says, "So, you're a man. That's interesting.
I am a woman. Wow, just look at our cars! There's
nothing left, but we're unhurt. This must be a sign
from God that we should be friends and live in peace
for the rest of our days."

Flattered, the man replies, "Oh yes, I agree
completely, this must be a sign from God! But you're
still at fault ... women shouldn't be allowed to
drive."

The woman continues, "And look at this, here's another
miracle. My car is completely demolished but this
bottle of wine didn't break. Surely God wants us to
drink this wine and celebrate our good fortune."

She hands the bottle to the man. The man nods his head
in agreement, opens it, and drinks half the bottle and
then hands it back to the woman. The woman takes the
bottle, puts the cap back on and hands it back to the
man.

The man asks, "Aren't you having any?"

The woman replies, "No, I think I'll just wait for
the police...."

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Women are clever, evil bitches.

That little fable brought to you by our moral guardian wannabees. Forward it to all your friends.

Holiday in america

Where's Santa?

Gotta wear shades

According to Peter W. Galbraith writing in the Washington Post, we may be doomed, doomed, when it comes to Pakistan, a failed state which possesses over 70 nuclear weapons and hates us.

But there is hope, he writes. The United States can do two things:

First, we can demand an international investigation into Bhutto's death.

The international investigation, I agree, is a bold move. But that, by itself, is not enough to ensure Pakistan's peaceful and prosperous future as a staunch American ally.

It's also crucial that:

President Bush should choose his words more carefully.

Insha'Allah baby. Any plan dependent on Bush choosing his words carefully is obviously doomed to miserable failure.

I'm not saying that he is incapable of carefully choosing his words, although I grant it's not his forté. No, he has proven over and over again that he will carefully choose incredibly stupid words backed up by incredibly stupid actions that will make any situation much worse.

So if an international investigation and Bush's loquacity are not enough to save Pakistan, what can we do?

How about a bold, bi-partisan congressional investigation to lay the groundwork for a sensible solution that would depend on multiple unlikely scenarios coalescing in a timely manner on which all sides, or at least Democratic presidential candidates, could agree?

Or we could go conservative and ask what Jesus would do. He would bomb them, of course, fo instant gratification if nothing else. When you're the Jesus blessed greatest country in the history of the universe, violence is always a good answer. It's more than that. its duh'vine.

A better idea

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee wants to build a fence to keep potential Pakistani terrorists out of our great and God blessed country. He doesn't specify where to build this fence, Mexico presumably, though to be realistic we'd need to build a fence around Canada too. And let's not forget Hawaii and Alaska. Those Pakis can be sly devils.

But I have a better idea, more realistic and in line with the general Republican world view. Instead of a fence, let's dig a giant hole in the ground. Then we can collectively stick our heads in it. The "hole" solution would work every bit as well as a crazy assed fence for keeping the terrorists and their hand-held ballistic missiles, or little vests of dynamite, at bay in Brownsville. And it would be much more cost effective. Much more.

The only drawback is that so many Republicans, the presidential candidates first and foremost, would mistake a hole in the ground for their ass. Then they would stick their heads up their ass to keep the terrorists out.

Nasty stuff, I know, but still, a hole in the ground is a better solution than a fence. And it's not like most Republicans don't have their head up their ass without the existence of a big hole in the ground to confuse them.

Me? I'm lyin here

nothin in my ears

lyin on my bed

nothin in my head

Didn't get around to finishing my annual Xmas essay on It's a Wonderful Life. Sorry. Next year. I promise.

News from the front

Interesting developments in the war on Christmas. More to come tomorrow...

A new low

Sorry, haven't been posting much lately. Sick of writing. Haven't had the gumption to take new photos. Most of my time has been spent working on videos, which is not good for providing content for an oft-publishing on-line magazine. The damn things are fucking slow to produce.

As an offshoot of that, I needed to learn a bit about creating 3D graphics in Illustrator, so instead of the usual form of masturbation, I worked on the chuckling logo instead. Kinda fun, but ultimately useless.

But on the positive side, you can look forward to my annual X-mas eve essay on It's a Wonderful Life. Serously, I'll have it on-line X-mas eve morn. Y'all come back now. No, I mean come back then.

Why we are doomed, part MXXXVI

Perhaps the headline is overstating it a bit? I don't know. You never can tell with these things. When it comes to identifying all of the little contributing factors to the end of the world as we know it, it's easy to overstate the importance of this one or that. But as a pundit in an on-line magazine, I persist. You can be sure that when the catastrophe is upon us, the deciding factor for its cause will be something that no one considered important at the time.

Yesterday, for example, I was researching point and shoot cameras for a colleague. She wanted one those sleek little jobs, the kind that you can carry around your neck on a lanyard. A camera functional yet fashionable, something akin to those giant medallions the rappers wear, only more for the Disney World, camera-totin tour bus type. Beyond size, the requirements were short recovery time between shots and and image quality. In that order.

Did you know that those tiny cameras now come in 12 mega pixel models? That means that each photograph will have 12 million pixels. A pixel is a small square dot. To get 12 million of them on a 1.25" chip is amazing. Those are small little buggers. It's very fucking impressive. Wowsa.

Of course I knew that was just a marketing gimmick, that stuffing that many pixels on a tiny chip would more likely fuck up the quality, and would definitely fuck up the speed. So I concentrated my research in the seven or eight megapixel range.

What I found was that they no longer make the camera that virtually all the professionals agreed was far and away the best in terms of image quality. And realistically, isn't image quality what it's all about? The newest 12 MP model with a veritable plethora of useless features sells for around $300. The discontinued 6 MP model whose only bell or whistle was incredible image quality now sells for a minimum of $399 on line.

So you can take away two things from that. One is that companies will produce what their marketers can sell, not necessarily the best quality thing they can produce. The second lesson is that a lot of people have their priorities all screwed up. We are easily suckered by superficialities. Educated people will almost always choose quality. The poorly educated are drawn to the bright ans shiny. Then we wonder why our purchase sucks.

In this case we just get crappy photos. And truth be told, even the best fully automatic ultra-slim camera will not produce good pictures in much of anything less than perfect lighting, but the same dynamic is at work all across the cultural spectrum.

That's why George W. Bush is president. That's why the most spectacular failures in our political and corporate society are so lavishly rewarded. That's why the rich eat 1.7 pounds of meat every week while the poor eat 2.2. It's why we shop at WalMart and eat at McDonalds. It tells us everything we need to know about the presidential candidates.

Substance is not much of a factor in our purchasing decisions. But once the sale is made, substance is all we've got.

A very good piece of writing

It's this kind of thing, along with MapQuest, that makes the internets worthwhile.

I couldn’t understand why the police were wearing brown, that’s all I could think when we entered the house. Two policemen wearing brown taking Ricky away, because he shot a very sweet neighbor who plays golf everyday. You look for clues to explain what’s happening, something to tell you it’s all a big mistake, something askew sticks out and that was it, police dressed wrong isn’t right, policemen wear blue uniforms, these police are dressed in brown, this must be a dream.

Great stuff. On so many levels.

It's a tough job...

In this morning's edition, the New York Times reports that the "Democrats" are pathetically weak and helpless. But it's not their fault. The Republicans are just way tooo strong.

Mr. McConnell and his fellow Republicans are playing such tight defense, blocking nearly every bill proposed by the slim Democratic majority that they are increasingly able to dictate what they want, much to the dismay of the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, and frustrated Democrats in the House.

In fact, the Senate Republicans are so accustomed to blocking measures that when the Democrats finally agreed last week to their demands on a bill to repair the alternative minimum tax, the Republicans still objected, briefly blocking the version of the bill that they wanted before scrambling to approve it later.

The Democrats send out daily tallies of the number of Republican filibusters, which the Democrats say will set a record.

You may recall that it was not so long ago that the "Democrats" were the minority party and they were unable to block much of anything at all. When they had the temerity to threaten to use the filibuster, the Republicans just laughed and threatened to abolish it altogether, arguing that it was unconstitutional. The "Democrats," as is befitting their job description, promptly caved and gave the Republicans everything they demanded.

You may also note that the "Democrats" fail to use the same awesome power of the filibuster even now when they are the majority party and could easily defeat Republican diktats. But that's not gonna happen, now is it? Defeating Republican diktats is not their job. Quite the contrary.

It's actually much more difficult for the "Democrats" being in the majority. How can they constantly lose when they control both houses of Congress? Especially whey the Republicans just spent so many years getting every single thing they wanted when they were in the majority.

It's simply impossible for a political party to be that weak and strategically inept. The only rational explanation is that it is the "Democrats" job to be defeated. I think we can safely count on much hilarity to ensue if they win the White House and large majorities in the House and Senate. How will they manage to cave in to every single Republican demand then? Oh, I trust they'll manage. They have proven extremely resilient in their relentless pursuit of weakness. If it weren't for the comedic value, I'd have stopped paying attention long ago.

Nothing to see here, move along (enhanced edition)

Via the New York Times, some blogger asks a question:

Jay Rockefeller is constantly learning of legally dubious (at best) C.I.A. intelligence activities, and then saying nothing about them publicly until they are leaked to the press, at which point he expresses outrage and incredulity — but reveals nothing. Really, isn’t it about time the Democrats select an effective Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, one who will treat this scandal with the seriousness it deserves, and who will shed much-needed light on the C.I.A. program of torture, cruel treatment and obstruction of evidence?

What the naifs who populate the top echelons of our press and punditry fail to realize is -- as usual -- the obvious. Jay Rockefeller is an effective Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee precisely because he covers up these things. When you are a prominent member of a fake opposition party, the willingness to cover up for the bad guys is one of the most important qualifications for the job.

Look at any issue and you’ll find “democrats” following the same script. They use their positions in government to cover up the inner party’s high crimes and lesser misdeeds then blather fake outrage and do nothing when anything illegal or embarrassing comes to light.

And everyday the same old becomes new again:

For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised.

Objections were not raised? However could that be?

The press, which fulfills its function as a guardian of truth only slightly better than the “democrats fulfill their role as real political party, still has trouble calling torture torture. Beating, breaking bones, wiring genitals, drowning people; none of that is torture. Those interrogations may be harsh. They may be severe. But they are not torture. They are nothing more than techniques, methods and tactics. Good things all. And sometimes these techniques, methods, and tactics are enhanced! The goodness never stops!

But occasionally some truth slips past the gatekeepers.

Waterboarding as an interrogation technique has its roots in some of history's worst totalitarian nations, from Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition to North Korea and Iraq. In the United States, the technique was first used five decades ago as a training tool to give U.S. troops a realistic sense of what they could expect if captured by the Soviet Union or the armies of Southeast Asia. The U.S. military has officially regarded the tactic as torture since the Spanish-American War.

Of course the fact that the US is aping the worst totalitarian nations in the history of humankind comes near the end of the article and the fact that it’s blatantly illegal comes far past the point in the piece where 95 percent of the readers will have stopped reading. Hmmmm, top government officials in both parties collude to commit horrible crimes against humanity in the worst tradition of Hitler, Stalin, and Torquemada. Big news, you'd think.

In journalism-speak that’s what's known as burying the lede. I suspect that pretty soon the powers that be will figure out that they’re in for a dime, might as well be in for a dollar and figure uncle Joe knows best. They’ll put an end to the journalists' practice of burying uncomfortable facts deep in the article and start burying the journalists who publish facts instead.

Another day in the life

I noticed that there was another mass murder event out in conservative christian paradise. A recent high school dropout got kicked out of his house, lost his job at McDonald's and took the only all-American path to fame open to him. The old murder spree at the mall. How prescient was Dawn of the Dead? Pretty prescient, huh?

On an entirely different note, I'll share another Brooklyn story. Yesterday my eight year old son and I were mildly surprised when a shirtless youth ran by us, torso covered with blood and yelling a challenge at another kid to take that knife out and stab him again (motherfucker). That was different, said John Bob. Yep. I said. That was different.

Although we'd never seen anything exactly like that before, Brooklyn being Brooklyn, it didn't seem that out of the ordinary. Still, I was going to tell the next cop I saw, but strangely enough, I didn't see any cops. No matter. The street was very crowded. I'm sure there were at least three cops in that block. John Bob and I got on the train and didn't comment on it again, not even at the dinner table.

You know, others have noted that violent ghetto youth don't walk into shopping malls or schools and gun down as many people as they can. That kind of mass murder is a conservative christian thing. The ghetto kids just kill each other.

Why? Who knows? Not me, but I'll speculate anyway and suggest part of the phenomenon is related to role models. The ghetto kids look around the city and see people who lead lifestyles they want to emulate. Their role models may be rappers, actors, sports stars, comedians, music executives, firemen, cops, pimps or drug dealers, but they all make good money, have nice rides, get laid whenever they want to and party in style. I'm not saying these aspirations are necessarily good, but city kids see them as attainable. They have a realistic hope of achieving some sort of fame without gunning down mall folk.

The poor christians in the sticks, however, look out over the suburban lawns and see a bunch of constipated hypocrites telling them to do as they say, not as they do, while feeling terrible guilt about what they do, and doing it anyway, and with a distinct lack of style. The only people these kids want to emulate are on the tv. They'd rather die than turn out like their dad, the insurance salesman next door, or the preacher down the block. The people they see living stylish lives on tv are far away. The red state kids see no hope of getting there. Not in this life anyway. Not without murder. Mass murder.

If only both groups could realize that they can have it all. Sex, drugs, rock & roll, a modicum of fame and a happy, life free from violence. It's really not that difficult, is it? All you need is a little education and understanding. Unfortunately, Republican talking points, the wisdom of the ganstas, and Jesus talking through the mouths of hucksters, hypocrites, and madmen have the opposite effect.

More burning man video

Here's the continuation of Dan Webster/Gratis Productions Burning Man video. Enjoy.

Chuckling translation services

The New York Times reports that Iraq is the third most corrupt nation on the planet:

the extent of the theft is staggering. Some American officials estimate that as much as a third of what they spend on Iraqi contracts and grants ends up unaccounted for or stolen, with a portion going to Shiite or Sunni militias.

Please, allow me to translate.

American officials estimate that as much as a third of the billions of dollars of American taxpayer's money they flush down the toilet on Iraqi contracts and grants ends up unaccounted for or stolen, with a portion going to Shiite or Sunni militias.

It's unfortunate that we live in a one party state. If we had an opposition party they'd make a lot of noise about that type of grand larceny and things would change.

Atrios gets the first half of the equation when he questions why people like Hilary and Obama don't use their leadership positions in the senate to actually lead rather than just fly around the country and talk about what great leaders they will be someday?

What he misses is the obvious answer. They are not going to lead because they are not members of a real opposition party. If elected, they will change nothing, unless told to by the Republicans.

As everyone must

David Broder issues a fiat in today's Washington Post:

Both now acknowledge -- as everyone must -- that the failure of the federal government to secure the southern border has produced broad public outrage.

Must we? Must we believe, much less acknowledge, that it is the government's failure that has produced broad public outrage? For that matter, must we believe that the public's outrage is broad?

No, no, and no. We are free to form our own opinions and we can base them on facts if we are intellectually able. The outrage, such as it exists, is not created by the government's enforcement efforts, but by the government/Republican party whipping up hate because they think it benefits them politically. Is this outrage broad? No, it is as narrow as the minds that so easily fall for that kind of racist xenophobic hate crap.

The best evidence that the Republicans care about it only as a hate arousing tool is their efforts to derail any kind of sensible plan to deal with the issues. There are millions of illegal aliens in the country and more clamoring at the border. Employers need many of these people. Yet without background checks or any kind of formal immigration status, criminals can and do get in. It's obvious that some kind of guest worker program could alleviate the problems all around and allow law enforcement to focus more on violent crime and drug trafficking. But that's not going to happen because the Republicans benefit from violent crime and drug trafficking. It's long past time to stop rewarding Republicans for engendering violent crime and hatred, but unfortunately, the clock is ticking backwards these days. And with the permanent Republican lock on power, it's ticking straight for the middle ages.

I now acknowledge -- as everyone must -- that David Broder is a tool. And a useless one at that.