Random Thoughts

1.   Just watched Room 237 on Netflix. Now I rally really want to watch the Shining again, but Netflix doesn't have it. Neither does Hulu. Neither does the library. How am I to go on living?

 

If you haven't seen Room 237, I definitely recommend it. It's all about the various theories people have developed about various levels of meaning in Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining. They range from the entirely plausible (Kubrick meant the film as an allegory for the Holocaust and/or the Native American genocide) to the far-out (Kubrick uses The Shining to confess to his part in faking the moon landing). It's totally fascinating, and really makes me want to re-watch the Shining, since I had thought that the film was mainly an experiment in how much scenery Jack Nicholson could chew. (spoiler alert: A LOT!)

 

You can almost see bits of the Overlook Hotel stuck in his teeth!

2.    Endorsements are out of control. I just saw an ad that said Makita is the "official tools of the Mexican National Soccer Team." Why? Why would any tools be the official tools of the Mexican National Soccer team? I could understand if they said "Adidias, the official cleats of the National soccer team," because they use cleats and presumably would have their choice of any brand and if they chose Adidias that would be a pretty strong endorsement. But Makita? Why would you want to be the official tools of a soccer team? Soccer teams don't use hand tools, they don't even used hands! 

Pretty much any time you see that some brand is the "official ____ of _____" it's going to be bullshit. Did you know that McDonalds is the "official restaurant of the Olympics?" That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. First of all, McDonalds is not a restaurant. Restaurants serve food. And secondly, does anyone think that any Olypmic athletes are setting foot in McDonalds? 

 

Think she eats a lot of french fries?

Okay, maybe Sean White, but only when he's really stoned.

3.    Do you think George Zimmerman even knows he's lying anymore?

George Zimmerman: ‘I Certainly Was A Victim’

George Zimmerman still believes that he was a victim the night he shot and killed unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin. ”I certainly was a victim when I was having my head bashed into the concrete and my nose broken and beaten,” Zimmerman told CNN on Monday. ” So I wouldn’t say I was not a victim.”

Does he even know anymore, or has he told the lie so many times he actually has started to believe it?

Oh, and while we're on the subject, please God let this story be true!

George Zimmerman chased by angry mob in Miami

By Adrienne Cutway, Orlando Sentinel

9:08 a.m. EST, February 19, 2014

 4.    Bob 2 died.  He was only 61.

The biggest shame is that most people will only remember Devo as the guys who wore flowerpot hats and sang "Whip It" and the theme from Dr. Detroit. Sure, Devo could create perfect pop songs like "Girl U Want" or "Through Being Cool," but they also produced some of the most innovative, subversive music ever heard. They were amazing enough to impress David Bowie and Iggy Pop, who helped them get a record deal. (on Warner Bros, no less. The Seventies were a crazy time!)

Check out some of their art-damaged early work:

Credit where credit isn't due.

(via Motley Fool)

The NRA Reveals Who's to Blame for Ammo Shortage: You

By Rich Smith | More Articles
February 17, 2014 | Comments (57)

If you own a gun -- and surveys say that somewhere between 24% and 45% of you do -- it will come as no surprise when I say that the price of ammunition is on the rise.

Gee, I wonder why that would be. Could it possibly be because the NRA, Gun Owners of America, and other gun-fellating groups have been scaring the pants off of the paranoid rubes, telling them that Obama is comin' fer their guns?

And this is your first clue to why prices have been shooting up. If prices are sky-high, yet shoppers are still buying -- and not just buying, but sweeping the shelves clean, there's only one logical conclusion:

That gun-nuts are paranoid, stupid and gullible?

Hoarding


To-may-to, to-mah-to!

Hoarding.
Credit is due to the National Rifle Association

Of course it is. . .oh, wait. You weren't done yet, were you?

Credit is due to the National Rifle Association for debunking conspiracy theories about "the government" causing this crisis.

Oh, come on!
The NRA is "debunking" the ridiculous conspiracy theories that they helped foster and promote, and you think they should get "credit?"

Time for some good news

The NRA doesn't exactly bring clean hands to this debate, of course. The association's incessant drumbeat of panic-talk about President Barack Obama wanting to "come and take your guns" was arguably the firing pin that ignited the wave of panic-buying in 2007-2008. Still, the NRA deserves some credit for finally explaining the cause.

No! No they don't! You don't get "credit" for finally admitting you've been lying since 2008! You can't get the lunatic fringe all riled up and scared and heavily armed and then say, "hey, guys, you know all that stuff we were saying about how the scary black man is going to take your guns and out you in a FEMA camp? Yeah, that might not be totally true." I mean, sure, you can do that, but you sure as hell shouldn't get any "credit" for doing it.

Despicable People Saying Ridiculous Things

Despicable person number one: Tom "Krystalnacht" Perkins.

 

"The Tom Perkins system is: You don't get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes,"

Perkins said.

"But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?"

How's that? How's this?

 

 

And the horse you rode in on!

 

 

 

Despicable person number two: Nicole Miller CEO Bud Konheim:

"We've got a country that the poverty level is wealth in 99 per cent of the rest of the world," he told CNBC. "So we're talking about woe is me, woe is us, woe is this.
"The guy that's making, oh my God, $35,000 a year...Why don't we try that out in India or some country we can't even name....China, anyplace, that guy is wealthy."


Yeah, great, $35k a year makes you rich in fucking China. That's great. In the US of A, it makes you fucking poor. And by the way, $35k is about double what someone making minimum wage in this country earns with a full-time, 40/hr a week job.

 

Fuck you in every country on Earth!

Despicable person number three: Clarence Thomas

"My sadness is that we are probably today more race- and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school. To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Ga., to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up," Thomas said during a chapel service hosted by the university.

Oh my God. I don't even have a middle finger for that one, because honestly, I don't know how to react to that. Is Thomas serious? Does he just look back at his youth through such thick rose-colored glasses that he actually remembers race being a non issue? In Savannah, Georgia? n the 1960's?
Maybe Clarence Thomas was the only black guy in Georgia in the 60's to be somehow magically unaffected by racism? Or is he just so invested in making himself believe right-wing bullshit talking points that he's actually convinced himself that race was just not problematic in the Jim Crow South? I don't know, I just kind of feel sorry for him.

In general, though, he does absolutely remain a despicable person.


Despicable person number four: Sharon "2nd amendment solutions" Angle.




“I think it (voter fraud) is an element in every election across the United States,” Angle said when asked about voter fraud in the 2010 election. “I’ve been traveling and I have done quite a bit of it and they asked me two questions. One is, ‘What are you doing now?’ And the other is, ‘Did Harry Reid steal the election?’
Steal the election? You handed it to him, genius! When you threatened armed insurrection, you gave the voters all the motivation they needed to vote for your opponent. No one stole the election, you just made the mistake of showing people how despicable a person you really are. So you get nothing. Good day.

How does something like this get published?

I mean, I know the wall Street Journal is owned by Murdoch now, and its op/ed page has always been a den of right-wing hackery, but holy fuck, this is really beyond the pale:

Drunkenness and Double Standards

A balanced look at college sex offenses.

By

James Taranto

February 10, 2014

How. How is there a "balanced look" at sex offenses? Like it's really unfair how the rapist always automatically gets blamed every time there's a rape?

Oh holy shit, that's actually the point this cockhole is going to make, isn't it?

The headline in the New York Times's Education Life section reads "Stepping Up to Stop Sexual Assault." The story, by reporter Michael Winerip, is more balanced than that.

Oh, yeah, hey, don't worry. The headline might seem like it's all anti-sexual-assault, but don't worry, it's totally fair and balanced!

Unlike many journalists writing about this subject, Winerip acknowledges the problem of wrongful accusation

Yes, that horrible problem that accounts for, what, about 0.01% of all rape charges?

He recounts the story of Dez Wells, who was a star basketball player at Ohio's Xavier University. A female student went to the campus police claiming Wells had raped her. He denied the charge, saying that the pair had consensual sex after a game of truth or dare. Investigators concluded no rape had occurred.

Well that proves it! If the star basketball player was involved, obviously investigators were going to be totally objective in examining the case. And since they were unable to show that the sex was other than consensual, obviously the charges were false!

Also completely exonerated!

 

The article then relates a case about a "legitimate rape" that took place in Amherst, Mass. Then goes on to say this:

Winerip makes clear that the unambiguous brutality of the alleged Amherst attack is atypical. "These aren't people jumping out of the bushes," Sgt. Richard Cournoyer, a Connecticut state trooper who's investigated a dozen assault allegations against University of Connecticut students, tells the reporter. "For the most part, they're boys who had too much to drink and have done something stupid. When we show up to question them, you can see the terror in their eyes."

Holy Fuck! This guy is a cop, and he refers to rapists as "boys who have done something stupid?" This is the guy who investigates sexual assault charges against U.Conn students? And the reporter thinks that this is an indication not of the sorry state of law enforcement on Connecticut, but of the, what, bias against accused sexual predators?

Winerip notes that between 2005 and 2010, "more than 60 percent of claims involving sexual violence handled by United Educators"--an insurance company owned by member schools--"involved young women who were so drunk they had no clear memory of the assault." We know from Sgt. Cournoyer that the accused young men typically are drinking to excess, too. What is called the problem of "sexual assault" on campus is in large part a problem of reckless alcohol consumption, by men and women alike. (Based on our reporting, the same is true in the military, at least in the enlisted and company-grade officer ranks.)

And what more unimpeachable source could there be than Sgt. Cournoyer, the man who thinks rapists are innocent based on the fact that when questioned by police they seem frightened?
Also, if you want to have credibility when discussing any type of violent crime, it helps to put the name of the crime in quotation marks, you know, just to kind of subtly raise the question of whether this crime really exists at all. Like Ted Bundy was convicted of several counts of what prosecutors called "murder."

But wait. Taranto hasn't actually gone as far off the rails as he is capable of going. here's where it gets really outrageous:

Which points to a limitation of the drunk-driving analogy. If two drunk drivers are in a collision, one doesn't determine fault on the basis of demographic details such as each driver's sex. But when two drunken college students "collide," the male one is almost always presumed to be at fault. His diminished capacity owing to alcohol is not a mitigating factor, but her diminished capacity is an aggravating factor for him.

Wow. Wow, I'm just trying to wrap my head around that analogy. Sexual assault is like two drunk drivers colliding? This is your analogy? How does that even make sense? In the drunk-driving scenario, both drivers are at fault and each driver causes equal harm to the other. Does that sound like what happens in a sexual assault? And sexual assault is merely a matter of two students "colliding?' Like this guy just wasn't watching where he was going and he tripped and fell penis-first into an equally unsuspecting woman?

here's a better drunk-driving analogy. A woman is walking along the sidewalk. She is injured when a drunk driver jumps the curb and strikes her with his car. But, hey, the pedestrian was also drunk, so really who can say who is to blame, right?
Although to make the analogy more apt, the drunk driver would have to intentionally have steered his car onto the sidewalk with the express purpose of striking the pedestrian.

So, to sum up. Rapists are just young fellas who drink too much and do something foolish, rape is like a collision between two drunk drivers, and  star athletes are often falsely accused. Hmm. I'll bet if I do a Google search for "James Taranto + War on Men" I'd get a lot of results, wouldn't I?

Yep!

Bad Ads -- Subaru

I don't understand the point of Subaru's new campaign





What is the point supposed to be? What message are they trying to get across? Their cars can be driven by dogs? That can't be the point, because obviously their cars can not be driven by dogs. Is the point that it's cute when dogs do people things? Sure, it is cute, but what does that have to do with Subaru? They don't say a damn thing about the car in the whole ad except the ridiculous nonsense about "dog tested, dog approved." And what is the point of that slogan? Obviously, dogs did not test nor approve of these cars. And if they had, that wouldn't really be much of an endorsement. Dogs love everything. They're idiots. They eat their own feces.

The Missus is convinced that this ad, like most ads we hate, is aimed at Millenials, who, as she says, ruin everything. Seems as good an explanation as any.