Category: Current Events

I don't think I'm alone when I say I think we were all a lot happier in the pre-internet world. That's because most of us went through life, blissfully unaware of the majority of atrocities and the outright stupidity occurring in the world. I know that knowledge is power, and yes, while we have now have the collective wisdom of humanity at our fingertips,  at the same time we are also exposed to things that no one in their right mind needs to see. (Two Girls, One Cup will forever be burned into my consciousness as prime example of this.)

Just this morning, while going through my Twitter feed, I came across these items. Perhaps ignorance is bliss, because I would've been a lot happier never having learned of any of it:

She was jailed because apparently stoning her to death would be bad for international relations.

Maybe—like most toddlers think—if he stomps his feet and threatens to hold his breath until he turns blue he'll get what he wants.

At least he didn't use the N-word.

Stalin would be proud.

Don't worry, it's all okay because at least he's not gay!

And on that subject, here's another one for whom I'm sure it's just a matter of time until he's caught tap, tap, tapping his way into scandal in an airport mens' room.

There are dozens—if not hundreds—of more examples, but just posting these was exhausting enough. There are times I truly regret that the Mayans were wrong about the end of the world, because this planet really needs an enema.

I would like to believe in magical things. I think it's hard-wired into human DNA that we're predisposed to believe in things we can't see. I also think that's why humanity has the need to create gods, goddesses, nymphs, fairies, trolls (not of the internet variety), ogres, monsters, and aliens who travel light years to insert probes into our rectums. It's why 6000 year old myths from the Middle East continue to hold sway over a huge portion of the people who live on this spinning rock in the middle of fucking nowhere.  "Christianity is the one TRUE religion!" "Islam is the one TRUE religion!" Um, okay. Travel back in time to Dynastic Egypt and tell the average man on the street that in 4000 years Osiris, Anubis, and Isis will be historical footnotes. The same thing will happen with the Abrahamic god. That's why science has been fighting an uphill battle from the very moment some of us started saying, "Wait a minute! What you're telling me doesn't explain what I'm seeing. Let's see if it can be explained rationally."

I would like to believe that anally probing aliens intentionally committed suicide and crashed their ship in the New Mexico desert sixty-five years ago because they knew the clever apes who found it would reverse engineer the integrated circuits contained therein and years later make their society so completely dependent upon that tech—and their people so completely enslaved to it—that their eventual invasion will simply be a matter of switching it all off and walking in. Or that our governments have already been thoroughly and completely infiltrated by shape-shifting reptilians from Zeta Reticulii who are now monitoring and cataloging each and every one of us with a computer or cell phone under the guise of national security to—once again—facilitate an easy invasion and the takeover of our precious resources and bodily fluids. (It's amazing what you read on some of the walls in the dark alleys of the internet.) That would be so much more fun than accepting the mundane, real-world reasons we're being "monitored."

While there are probably some nefarious elements (We are human, after all, and history has repeatedly shown that we can be truly vile toward our fellow beings.) behind the NSA and alphabet soup of governmental agencies that have been spying on us, I think for the most part it is because since 9/11, the people who run this country (and let's be clear: it's not just the US who have been involved in this) have been terrified of being caught with their pants down and allowing another terrorist attack to happen. Over-reacting? Probably. But I can understand—if not necessarily agree with—their desire to err on the side of caution and be safe rather than sorry. Another major attack on the United States in particular would crash the entire world economy—on  shaky legs as it is—giving the Koch Brothers a very big sadz. (Sorry, I went down another dark alley there.)

I gave up all pretense of believing in internet privacy shortly after I first started blogging and put my thoughts online for all to see. A few months later I received a rotting box of meat in the mail  with a return address in the abandoned Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls. (Yes, that Love Canal.) Apparently some right wing loon took offense at something I'd written back in the day about his precious smirking chimp and decided to send me some kind of message. Um, yeah… (I'm still trying to figure out the symbolism.)

So the NSA revelation comes of no surprise. If the powers that be want to know how often I overdraft my checking account, the balances on my credit cards, my medical history, what I buy at Target, or my taste in porn or music, I say "Knock yourselves out." Index and cross-refence to your heart's content and sell it all to the marketers. I'm still not gonna buy the crap they try to sell me unless it's something I want to buy. Yeah, at some point something in all that data may prevent me from getting something I want, but I'm not going to live my life in a state of fear because of it. As a whole, nothing about me is that much different any other internet-connected American. I think if anything, it's going to show the watchers how much more alike we are than anything else.

And one thing to keep in mind even if all the paranoid right-wing ranting about data collection is so the US—or more likely, their favorite bugaboo, the shadowy One World Gub'mint—can weed out "undesirables" does actually turn out to be true and we wake up one morning to discover jack-booted thugs breaking down doors and making people "disappear" because they watched a video of a girl shooting ping pong balls out her cooter, bought a big purple double-headed dildo online, or called a sitting President, "Mr. Poopy Pants" on Twitter instead of actually apprehending people who mean to do this country harm…it won't last. It never does. Repressive regimes are always so blinded by their own egos they think they'll last forever and yet history has shown again and again—as we celebrate ourselves on this July 4th—that they never do. Every tyrannical government has its breaking point where the people refuse to bow any further and they rise up, sweeping those governments into the dustbin of history.

I'd never even heard—much less knew the definitions—of more than half of these (in red)…

Oxford Word Additions for February 2013

appletini
Baggy Green
biosimilar
blootered
braggadocious
burrata
cane corso
cruft
dumbphone
feature-complete
flexitarian
FOSS
friend zone
hump day
metabolic syndrome
omnium
range anxiety
schlumpy
sillage
social sharing
SSD
touchless
tray bake
tweetable
upcharge
voluntourism

(Source)

Now Pakistan now has their panties in a pinch.

I'm sure this is going to spark more howls of outrage from my regular readers, but fuck it.  Until we address the underlying causes of gun violence in America (i.e. the lack of mental health care and the ridiculously easy availability of firearmss), it's true.

From John Aravosis at AMERICAblog:

Americans do a great job of proclaiming our collective shock and outrage when some nut for the gazillionth time opens fire on a crowd of innocent bystanders at a movie theater, a college, a high school, a museum, or a post office, but at some point, if we aren't going to do anything about it, maybe it's time we stopped the charade of pretending we actually care.

How many times does someone have to drown in front of us, while we do nothing (and, instead, actually enable the death), before it's time to conclude that perhaps we are part of the problem?

From EJ Dionne at the Moderate Voice:

For all the dysfunction in our political system, a healthy pattern usually takes hold when a terrible tragedy seizes the nation's attention.

Anyone who dares to say that an event such as the massacre at a Colorado movie theater early Friday morning demands that we rethink our approach to the regulation of firearms is accused of "exploiting" the deaths of innocent people.

This is part of the gun lobby's rote response, and the rest of us allow it to work every time. Their goal is to block any conversation about how our nation's gun laws, the most permissive in the industrialized world, increase the likelihood of mass killings of this sort.

So let's ask ourselves: Aren't we all in danger of being complicit in throwing up our hands and allowing the gun lobby to write our gun laws? Awful things happen, we mourn them, and then we shrug. And that's why they keep happening.

The Boomtown Rats wrote "I don't like Mondays" in 1979, thirty-three years ago. Violence in America isn't a recent problem. It's been going on for a while now. And nothing serious is ever done about it because the gun lobby is ruthless, owns the Republican party, and preys on the Democrats usual fear of doing anything that isn't agreeable to 100% of the American people.

So the next time some nut goes on a shooting spree with weapons the gun lobby made it easier for him to get – and he will – let's stop pretending like we care, because as a nation we really don't.

Amen,  John.