Thursday, September 30, 2010

Worth Mention

I'm looking at the... script written for James O'Keefe in his rape video fantasy aborted attempt to "punk" CNN, and I think something interesting is getting overshadowed, rightly so, by the sexual predator angle. Here, look;

Potential 'big lies' as it regards CNN
...
2. Their own internal racism against whites
3. Their potential internal racism against minorities
...
[transcribed from what appears to be a jpg or pdf for some reason]
CNN is racist against whites and minorities. And they hate puppies, too.
These kinds of failures in reasoning pave the way for "it won't be rape, she wants it. And besides, she deserves it."
The sad part is O'Keefe will probably just disappear from public view for a month or two then go right back to manufacturing "Saddam has WMD" quality obvious lies for the MSM to report on the "controversy" over.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Frozen Blogger Tastes Worse Than The Fresh Stuff

I've never felt comfortable with capitalization schemes for titles. How's that for hypocrisy? Hah.

I sometimes feel like California-based foodies have produced some kind of mass hallucination around the subject of fresh vegetables. But if you poke around your local supermarket, you'll find that they have tons and tons of big freezer full of little conveniently portioned bags of vegetables. Just like pizza or egg rolls. But healthier. Is it 100 percent as tasty as farm-fresh locally grown in-season produce? No.
That's her quoting Matt-Y.

I'm glad that both her and Matt – each masters of cuisine in their own right – are the type to imagine hippies as the kind of people who'd sooner see you die of scurvy than drink orange juice from concentrate. I find this compatible with the caricature of a person as the kind that would think it's up to them to educate the masses about the existence of frozen vegetables. (Pro-Tip: They're in the frozen part of the store.)


Bonus Fun: 26 years of professional blogging experience has still not taught Megan the difference between links on the internet and links from her reader...

Bold words: followed by a semi-[Boy, can I be stupid, sometimes. ~ed.]colon and regular words.

Monday, September 27, 2010

They Got Better

Ladies and gentlemen, Ross Douthat:

The antiwar movement, for instance, seemed to effectively take over the Democratic Party in the middle years of the Bush administration.
Ross Douthat, ladies and gentlemen.

A Lil Bit Of Pavement

Pavement's reunion tour passed through last week, and I was at a few of the shows. I really do love me some Malkmus. Here's a few shots.





Friday, September 24, 2010

Clowns to the Left of Me

Wow. So Colbert really IS testifying before congress. I dismissed it when I first heard about it figuring it was some joke I just didn't get.

Good to know.

Now back to your regularly schedule left wing complaints about beauty pageant contestants being treated like serious political theorists.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

A Minor Moment Of Stupid

couldn't sleep, made the mistake of reading Megan. Susan and Roy have already mocked this piece on being unemployed later in life, but there's a little detail I'd like to highlight.
The setup:

The woman highlighted in the article, after all, is not going to be saved by Social Security; she's 57. Without massive changes in spending, she's headed for bankruptcy long before she's eligible to collect benefits. That's not to say that she's a profligate spendthrift who deserves the pain she's suffering; rather, the errors she's made are incredibly common. That's why it's worth running through some of the most common mistakes that land people in these kinds of messes
Lets see if you can spot the stupid that follows. Bear in mind Megan is trying to examine the "mistakes" this woman made that led her to be... unemployed and not able to retire at 57, so that someone Megan's age and younger won't do the same. (Spoiler alert, the real "mistake" was not being born with enough money to make more of it later.)
It's all too easy to put off those retirement contributions. You're getting married. Then you want a house. You're having kids. You need a vacation, a new house, the car broke . . . suddenly you're 60, your peak earnings years are over, and you have to figure out how to survive a 20-year retirement on $100,000. Our parents got by on massive increases in the price of houses and stocks. You can't, so you have to pay yourself first, even when it's painful. [My emphasis]
First, note the narcissism. Everything is about Megan and everyone would be her if they could. And yes, you may shudder at the hint of her and McSuderman reproducing. Then go back to the sentence I highlighted and recall we're talking about the "mistakes" made by a 57 year old woman, who, therefore, is old enough to have been Megan's mother. Yes, she would have been a young mom, which is and was somewhat uncommon among the wealthy elite in modern America, but that's not the point, now is it.
From the NYT piece which Megan is trying to ignore the message of;
Most of [the unemployed 57 year old's] days now are spent in front of a laptop, holed up in a lighthouse garret atop the house that her husband, Denny Mielock, built in the 1990s on a breathtaking piece of property overlooking the sound.
...
With her husband’s home repair business pummeled by the housing downturn, the bills are mounting. Although the couple do not have a mortgage on their 3,000-square-foot house, they pay close to $7,000 a year in property taxes. The roof is leaking. Their utility bills can be $300 a month in the winter, even though they often keep the thermostat turned down to 50 degrees.
They could try to sell their home, but given the depressed housing market, they are reluctant.
I don't even know how to untangle the various mistakes in thinking Megan has made here, I can only point to them. Don't be like a woman who did what Megan thought would have been the appropriate thing for someone that woman's age to do, because we won't get the same benefits from home ownership that this woman apparently should have received but somehow didn't. Also, don't note that Megan is demonstrably not following any of her own advice, this is for non-elites who should be concerned about someday not being employed. Despite her own incomplete history of employment and McSuderman's lack of... an employment history outside wingnut welfare, she's talking down, to us, about concerns she does not share. Granted, it's clear she'll only ever be fired for behind the scenes politics, which she guards against by kissing literally every ass she's ever seen, but The Atlantic may well eventually fold, especially considering her efforts to drive away every member of its once core readership.
I'd deal with the rest of her advice, including get a McJob you stupid peasant, but I'm heading out to see Pavement again, and don't need the agitation.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

(Very) Random Nutpicking

I still can't bring myself to go anywhere near Megan's place, but a friend linked me to this, which is worth a quick laugh.

LOL at dinosaurs being millions of years old. If so they would be buried under miles of dirt and debris. Ancient villages are often uncovered after digging down several feet and they are assigned much younger ages. Usually in the thousands of years, Then someone stumbles on a dinosaur bone on or near the surface of the Earth and quickly proclaims millions of years in age for the beast.

Dinosaurs probably existed with man a few thousand years ago.
It hadn't occurred to me that young Earth proponents also have to deny plate tectonics and erosion on a geological scale, but there you go.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Not a Literal Connection, Dude

A lot of people are all up in arms about some anti-colonialism comment in some article written by D-Souzie. He thinks colonialism isn't something we should be against? I dunno. I've been too busy writing down anti-american names so that – when we finish up in SandNiggerstan – I'll be useful in directing our flying killer robots at home where they are still so desperately needed. Enjoy your wedding party, libtards!

I managed to get far enough into the article to find this beautiful, beautiful peace of logic:

More strange behavior: Obama's June 15, 2010 speech in response to the Gulf oil spill focused not on cleanup strategies but rather on the fact that Americans "consume more than 20% of the world's oil but have less than 2% of the world's resources." Obama railed on about "America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels." What does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Would the calamity have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10% of the world's resources?
I was confused by this at first until I realized that Dinesh meant it was strange that a professionally intellectual would argue that excessive use of oil would never lead to reckless exploitation of oil resources.

I may finish the article, in which case, updates will go below.

Update:

Yup, as predicted.
Obama's foreign [Uh, what country is New York in again? -ed.] policy is no less strange. He supports a $100 million mosque scheduled to be built near the site where terrorists in the name of Islam brought down the World Trade Center. Obama's rationale, that "our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable," seems utterly irrelevant to the issue of why the proposed Cordoba House should be constructed at Ground Zero.
I guess missing blatant connections is just this guy's thing...

Update II:
Remarkably, President Obama, who knows his father's history very well, has never mentioned his father's article. Even more remarkably, there has been virtually no reporting on a document that seems directly relevant to what the junior Obama is doing in the White House.
Uh, Dinesh, if I might... uh.. borrow some idiocy. I don't see any connection there!

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Full Disclosure

 Hiding this sort of thing can only lead to trouble, so I must 'fess up. This is a friend of mine's operation, & she asked me to "like" this.

Unlike pink salt fan McArdle, my friend does this for a living (Produces both a product & a service, that is.) So it's perfectly OK to call for fine food at your next SoCal event.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

About Christine O'Donnell

am I the only one who gets a major bdsm vibe off her? It's obvious she's a massive hypocrite and has been extremely sexually active, but she's uncannily like a girl I went to boarding school with who... let's just say liked it really rough and degrading. (I'm not speaking from personal experience with her, but I did have the misfortune of seeing part of the video.) For the record, my classmate was also a Christian fundie, and really made a show of it in public. Apparently she felt God meant for women to obey men in every way possible, she had so internalized the misogyny underlying her values. Again, I'm reminded of O'Donnell.
I'm not slut-shaming here, to each their own kink, but O'Donnell's past advocacy and remarks put the question in play, at least to me. I'm pretty sure she has done things that would shock Madonna, that's the way it always is with these types. The louder they chirp in public, the harder they like to be slapped behind closed doors.
It's possible she's actually a domme, but she doesn't seem bright enough to succeed at it.
And yes, I know there's no real need to go here, but I can't help but wonder.

Update:

Christine O'Donnell Flashback: 'I Dabbled Into Witchcraft'

No, it's not the same thing, but we're gettin there.

Friday, September 17, 2010

So

who else is going to the Daily Show's Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Colbert's march to Keep Fear Alive?
No link cuz it looks like they haven't set up a website for it yet.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

I'd Say Fire Suderman, Too, But First He Needs A Job

first, via the comments over at Susan's, Peter Suderman is a fucking hipster. (I know it's stale, and knowing hipsters it might be an inside joke, but fuck'em.)

second, this;



I'm pretty much healed up, except for a little scarring to be dealt with. I'd call myself lucky, but thanks to Megan I know I chose not to be seriously injured by being hit by a cab. Go me.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Skinny Jeans Are The New Leggings

I was into Democracy back before it went all corporate.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Own Goal

More Mattie. I suppose there is enough of him to go around:

All these countries are actually full of stupid policies—in Sweden a privately owned store can’t sell Tylenol and the United States invaded Iraq to eliminate a nonexistent nuclear weapons program—but we succeed nonetheless.
The lead in?
Karl Smith is fascinated “by the fact that Democracy seems to be a highly effective form of government despite an almost necessary implication that policy will be determined, or at least largely influenced, by the least knowledgeable..."
Kind of refreshing to hear someone call themselves a moron. I wish he'd take it to its next logical step and disengage from politics. Then we could get EVEN BETTER Democracy with 100% less irony.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

I'm Moving Forward Like a Receding Hairline

Memory lane time, I guess, as I wandered over to Fatty Y's for the first time in ages:

It’s great that the violence is way down from its high ebb
No one ever says ebb except as in "ebb and flow" and this fucker STILL can't figure out its meaning.

Oh, and shit-face, the concept you're looking for is called "reversion to the mean." That and six more words would have replaced your entire post.

Ladies and gentlemen, the intellectual driving force of the modern left.

Megan Has Died of Dysentary

Megan's super important QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"When the people who built this country got bitten by bedbugs, they didn't go whining the the nanny state for a chemical fix. They scratched." ~ Mark Kleiman
Tell it to your inhaler, you idiot.

UPDATE:

Oh I had forgotten how many nuggets a quick perusal of her blog yields. On computer instability:
I've done all the obvious things--not only tried new browsers, but uninstalled all my add-ons, cleared my cache, even switched computers (which didn't help). I just lost a post that I spent two hours writing, and this isn't the first time it happened--yet it's something that virtually never used to happen to me.
Hmmm, did you try holding down the control key while pressing the "S" key? The one in the lower left and right labelled "Ctrl." "S" is in the middle on the left hand side...

Saturday, September 4, 2010

McArdle: We Are Not Bonobos!

I'm pretty much at the point where it's easier to find commentary about Megan than it is to visit her & deal. Probably not a good sign for my mental health, but the increase in "How can this person be so ob-fugging-tuse?" items recently is an indication that our mission here has not been completely in vain.

I'm not familiar with Ms. McArdle's work, but if she's got a gig at The Atlantic, which is one of the most respected magazines in the country, presumably this is far below her usual intellectual standard.
Benefit of the doubt. Those scientists/academics do live in one hell of an ivory tower, don't they?
Wonderful as it would be if Ms. McArdle's opinion of our book were to change when/if she gets around to actually reading it, I'm not holding my breath because I don't think she's responding to the substance of the book at all; she's responding to what it makes her feel, which is something entirely different.
SNAP!

Friday, September 3, 2010

Ouch

so yeah, I was hit by a cab on my bike late Tues nite. I'm actually remarkably ok, a few deep cuts (they could see the tendon in my knee), many, many stitches, but nothing broken, no concussion, and all primary functions work as intended. But my face is a bit of a mess, and even after the stitches are out and the scabs fallen off I'll probably need a bit of plastic surgery to reduce the scarring. Meh. (Hopefully the cab company will be picking up all the bills but I'm not gonna get ahead of myself.)
The result is I'm basically going to be a shut-in for the next month or so, and I need ideas on how to keep sane. I'll probably end up posting here more than I have been, but reading Megan is not exactly a sanity aid. Good non-fiction book recs that I can get via the Apple iBook store in particular are most welcome.
Thanks for your well wishes. In truth, I'm incredibly lucky. I wasn't wearing a helmet (I know, I KNOW), and aside from a stiff knee that gets exponentially better every day and a jammed thumb I'm pretty much physically fine.

Update:



That's a composite steel frame, gives some idea of how hard the fucking cab hit. Should be good evidence for the lawsuit.

Update II:

I'm made of tough stuff. Every day has featured significant improvement. I might even be in shape to go outside soon, tho I'll have to keep my forehead covered. Takes more than a cab to get rid of me.