Sorry for my lack of clarity, let me rephrase that: Before Bush leaves office on January of next year, he will surely pardon Stevens, so the courts will probably not even reach the stage of sentencing, due the following month.
Old Ted had better be watching his ass, lest his own tubes get clogged.
Ancient Chinese proverb: There is small difference between popping a cherry and unfolding some wrinkles.
But seriously, sentencing is scheduled for February of next year, so Bush will surely pardon Stevens, along with Scooter Libby, in his last great "fuck y'all" of his lame duck days, before he rides off to choke on pretzels and clear brush in his 200,000 acre Paraguay ranch, on top of one of the largest fresh water reservoirs in the world. Always the last laugh, that nutty guy.
And I, for one, welcome our new woman's right to clean overlords.
Seriously, about TFA, I've got opposite results right in my immediate family. My oldest brother is conservative on many issues, particularly the economy, votes for the right (as opposed to left) political party every time, and you should see his so-called "organized mess" in his office and home office, which nobody is allowed to touch, stacks of papers all over the place, some of them collapsed, even. Often, when I need some document, Firewire cable, software CD, you name it, half the time the man cannot find it, so much for his "system". Some times, he even calls me up to ask if I've got his stuff, my answer being invariably "no". Therefore, I call BS on the article.
People "with low IQ" are breeding more than smart people.
That could be a matter of memetics, instead of genetics.
Here's the brunt of it: many children grow up in a family and social environment lacking in intellectual stimulation, where even asking questions and/or searching for answers may be taboo.
I'll keep it apolitical and mention a friend who, when caught at a very early age reading comic books by his mother, was chastised for "reading garbage". Well, guess what, that person has never read for the sheer pleasure of it, his intellectual curiosity was stomped lifeless by his stupid fucking mother, who probably had the TV on all the time, and probably "thought" the proper thing for her offspring was to start reading on their own with The Illiad, The fucking Book Of Acts, Milton's Paradise Lost, or not at all.
This may more common than one thinks, in varying degrees, through different circumstances. In my twenties, in vacation from college, my fundamentalist mother tried to take Hesse's The Steppenwolf from me, but I told her she would have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. Later that summer, I noticed my Philip K Dick paperbacks had disappeared from my bedroom.
So, to reiterate my point: nascent memes in individuals collide with established memes in others, sometimes the "willfully ignorant" memes persevere in the end.
I'd rater have more smart kids being born.
Yeah, that's quite a painful paradox, isn't it? It comes down to "memes of openness" to new ideas, found in the educated segments of the population, embracing contraception, while "memes of closed-mindedness", found in most religious segments, repudiate birth control. Guess which segment's gonna have more babies.
If the religious establishment had accepted contraception when it came out, things would have be a whole different shade today, yet what the educational system currently reflects is exactly the opposite. The viewpoint that contraception begets immorality has resulted in a spike of teen pregnancies as well as venereal diseases like gonorrhea, syphilis and herpes in the Bible Belt and beyond, go figure, like they went straight from the nineteenth century to the twenty first, and the twentieth never happened.
It's starting to look more and more like all those ideals were just a relatively short-lived fluke as we barter away our true freedoms for freedom from responsibility.
Both the bill that was shot down and the bill that passed were disapproved by the majority of the citizenry. The People had no say so in the matter, the whole thing was rammed twice through the House in three days. If the House had shot it down again, the fucking bill with ever increasing pork and tax breaks would probably have been rammed three, four, five times in the course of the next week.
Why did the bill return to the House just after being rejected? And considering that the Fed quietly pumped around $600 billion into the casino known as Wall Street on Tuesday, even as the House was voting "nay" on the bill, are there any doubts that The People have absolutely no say so in the matter?
C'mon, you can do better than that, there's countless possibilities out there.
- Houston, We Have Rear Entry - Apollo 69 - The 100 Mile-High Club - Suborbital Gangbang MILFs - In Space, No One Can Hear You Cum - Lagrange Point Latinas
Shit, these things are a dime a dozen, how about some classics:
- Talk Dirty To Me (In A Chuck Yeager Monotone) - Debbie Does Clavius
And even then, there's barely enough time to pull off some quickie gonzo pr0n!
Actually, since you mention the Vomit Comet, with a series of parabolas (which is what the VC does) and a bit of work in the editing room, they can manage quite a long scene. The first parabola would be used to get a feel for zero-g, I imagine it would be next to impossible to concentrate on the business at hand on the first go, completely new and intense external stimuli would be incredibly distracting for the, erm... "actors".
I distinctly remember news back in the mid-eighties about NASA sending a married couple into orbit, as part of a Shuttle crew. Needless to say, speculation ran rampant about sexy experiments in space, newscasters displaying a deadpan nod-nod-wink-wink attitude towards the whole thing. However, NASA being what it is, mentioned nothing about the topic in press releases either before nor after. So all we have to show for anything is the end scene from Moonraker, with Bond and Dr Goodhead (yet another classic name for a Bond girl) floating in the capsule, in the missionary position with a ridiculous sheet draped over their bodies, and conveniently enough, the sheet is the only thing in the capsule that seems to follow the law of gravity. As boring as it could possibly be.
It's possible that gravity can move through dimensions.
One weird offshoot of String Theory, having to do with Branes (short for Membranes), speculates that Gravity is so weak as compared to the other three forces (Strong, Weak and Electromagnetism) because Gravity is leaking from our Universe into other Universes via a higher dimension at quantum levels.
A hypothetical implication of this, is that our Universe formed from the energy released by a surface clash of two Branes, and as far as I know, it's the only plausible mathematical exercise that goes all the way back to the Big Bang... and beyond! Of course, this also implies the ever-popular Multiverse (or Metaverse), where our Universe is but a bubble (Brane) in a vast ocean composed of bubbles.
As I understand it, Aether was described as a medium through which energy, such as light, moved, like ripples in a pond, where water is the medium, and ever since Quantum Theory reared its' abstract head, the Aether has been dismissed - waves/particles move in a vacuum.
Dark Matter, on the other hand, is widely accepted and can be two different phenomena: 1. Brown dwarves, planetoids, flotsam and jetsam of the cosmos, known as MaCHOs (Massive Compact Halo Objects). 2. Particles that do NOT interact through Strong Force (proton bonding with help from neutrons), Weak Force (decay of electron orbits) or Electromagnetism. Known as WIMPs (Weak Interactive Massive Particles), these are subatomic particles that only interact through Gravity, and as they never bond, all they can do is clump into a sort of fog.
WIMPs are impossible to detect directly with current technology, as gravity wave detectors would be needed, and even if we had them, the waves/particles (gravitons, I believe) would be extremely few and far between. To boot, they would be almost identical to a neutrino (according to the blackboard), so even if the sensor lights up, was it a graviton or a neutrino?
The only way we can detect Dark Matter is through their effect on Visible Matter. As an example, considering the "regular" mass of our galaxy and the speed at which it rotates, it should fly apart like beans on a turntable. But it doesn't, and only a mind-bending amount of matter we can't see can account for that.
So you see, Dark Matter a pretty straightforward concept. What I have trouble with is this Dark Energy that pops up occasionally, and from what I remember, the Coast To Coast radio show used to make a lot of noise about zero-point energy or some such weirdness. I stopped listening to that show years ago, as it contaminated my perspective on (ahem) real science. Now I get my science fix from Slashdot!!!
I'd like to call it Cen's Big Fucking Thing theory.
Hip cosmologists who've seen Lewis Black's stand up comedy act aren't concerned about the composition of it, just as long as it's big, and it's a fucking thing.
True. And in the so-called red states, they probably have another, more common term for depression: laziness, as in "you good for nothing bum, why don't you get a job, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, flipping burgers is a privilege, go Nascar, etcetera".
The sad truth is that most of the world has yet to arise from the Middle Ages, the Enlightment has yet to reach them, even as they enjoy the benefits, such as, erm... televangelists via satellite telling them that science is evil.
In an exquisite paradox, the fact that it's an angry world makes me supremely angry.
Why did Neanderthals become extinct? Bankrupcy. Their caves were foreclosed because every time they hummed a tune at night by the fire, before noon next day Homo Sapiens would sic a fleet of anti-'fair use' lawyers on their Neanderthal asses.
"But, but, we thought that tune was in the public domain by now!" "Hah! We extended copyright by fifty winter solstices just last lunar year."
Not surprisingly, Paleolithic Congress had no Neanderthal representatives, as their district elections were the ones with no inscribed-stone trail for recounts.
I have an even greener idea for China: How about not building the city at all, and greenify an existing city?
Here's another, halfway between the announcement and your post:
If they're going to build a Green City, how about building it in a valley or plateau, like Beijing? On coastal cities, smog propagates into the ocean, therefore air quality remains fairly decent, so what's the point of building said city on an island? Let the Chinese government try it where topographical circumstances allow for no leeway and false proclamations of success, where there's no handicap in their favor. If they do it this way, they'll be more likely to truly push technologies and methods of greenifying existing cities. Otherwise, it sounds like yet another propaganda stunt to me, another white elephant in the name of the Party... I mean People (coughs).
Well, there was Raise The Titanic in 1980, the first Cussler/Pitt cinematic foray. Raise your hands if you remember that one. The book was a hit, the film wasn't. With the notable exception of Hunt For Red October, underwater sagas do not perform well at the box office. Remember The Abyss and Waterworld.
Hey, that sounds like fun, I'll give it a shot! Here's a few others you missed:
* Anton Chigurh, a man who needs no introduction, and you probably wouldn't wanna meet him anyway. * Alex Cox, director of punk/geek cult classic Repo Man, as well as Sid & Nancy. * Al Campanis, GM for the Dodgers, got in hot water for making some very iffy comments about African-Americans. * Anthony (Tony) Curtis, film star and the Tom Cruise of his era (long suspected of being in the closet). * Albert Camus, Nobel Prize-winning French existentialist writer of novels such as The Plague and The Stranger. * Asia Carrera, for a while there, hotness itself, extra points for being Wayne's squeeze in Wayne's World. * Arthur of Camelot, first English king and pals with Merlin, also possessor of the knowledge of the average air speed of an unladen European swallow. * Agri-Culture, putting food in people's mouths for the last several millennia, catalyst for the sedentary lifestyle since prehistoric times. * Ammonium Chloride, sold at fine hardware stores near you. * Arctic Circle and Antarctic Circle, geographic boundaries to the ends of the world.
It took me a long day to figure it out, here it is: Compassion. He ignored the meaning of the concept "What you do to your fellow man, you do to yourself".
He lived without compassion for anybody. His wife acted with compassion, either blind or misguided, compassion nonetheless. He returned the gesture with an ultimate lack of compassion. He had no compassion for himself. Compassion is essential for our hard-wired ideal of Civilization.
How did the term "compassion" suddenly bubble to the surface of my convoluted thoughts? After a rough and tense day (and night), I'm listening to 1930's harmonica blues, some of the most inspired, honest and straightforward music ever recorded. Balm for the psyche. But then again, so's Joy Division.
Hey, in some situations I'm a complete fucking bastard, in others I'm full of gratitude and compassion. When I figure out what makes me angry and why, I'll be a step closer to Henry Miller's ideal (and I paraphrase), which I've made my own: "The day I forgive my parents for bringing me into this fucking world, is the day I'll have it made for life".
She would probably have more trouble accepting that she and the monkey share a common, even more primitive ancestor.
Absolutely right, that's the way I would phrase it.
But not her, she sees it exactly like I quoted. Paleontology is utterly alien to her, and as you know, there are millions upon millions with that same stance.
However, the point I was trying to make is that I've learned to let it go - I've stopped having arguments with the closed-minded, usually I will not take the bait anymore. However, if there's an undecided third party involved, I'll fully expound my perspective, directly at them and for their benefit only.
At family Christmas dinners, I'll keep my trap shut or divert the subject to something brisk and light, in front of everybody. I'll get a chance to have private conversations with my nephews later on.
Yeah, I know I'm replying to myself...but shit. How the hell could the bastard take it to this?
First he invades us all with his fucking Vyagra and Xannaxx, then he escapes minimum security prison, then... he commits the unspeakable. What a damaged wimp. What a pathetic excuse of a humanoid.
Any time a travesty like this happens, it diminishes us all. Thanks for nothing, asshole. Thanks for much, much less than nothing. But you did it, asshole, you're gonna make the fucking six o'clock news again. You would have been proud of that, wouldn't you? If anything, may you serve as a cautionary tale, an opposite of what every one of us should strive to be.
To his victims, Rest In Peace. I am most terribly sorry your paths had to cross with this... this pitiful monster. I am most terribly sorry.
Routing them to the FUCK OFF page sounds a lot more fun.
Better yet, for a taste of their own medicine, rout them to a goatse image in a low enough resolution, loading fast enough, that they'll be staring at it before they have time to react, in horror and disbelief.
Or how's this for evil genius: rout them to a blank page with so much bad script that it will crash their browser, maybe even force them to reboot!
It's fucking weird and beyond me, a British friend, after driving me to the point of rage in a face-to-face conversation, abruptly apologized and explained that every time his family gets together for Christmas or Boxing Day or whatever, they have these artificial, screaming arguments with each other, over any topic they come up with, be it India's economic situation or France's space program. Sort of an advanced, free-for-all, last-man-standing-wins version of Python's Argument Clinic. And they fucking enjoy it. Then it hit me: I've never been able to transmit a concept to this guy without him disrupting with some irrelevant and confusing interjection. Anyway, it sounds more like Being Hit In The Head Lessons to me. Or like you say, plain old Flinging Douchebaggery. Mind Games. Making Noise. Pushing Buttons.
Recently, something truly weird and abrasive happened. A friend who manages an upscale bistro with a cool bar, was there having beers with some more friends, when a common acquaintance showed up with bizarre company: A cigar smoking, up-and-coming American arms dealer. This young republican asshole had the nerve to declare that his government is beyond reproach, while every other government is corrupt.
Holy cow, now that's a Flamebait situation if I ever saw one. But the guy was not playing Mind Games, he was being serious. Needless to say, the whole thing turned into a prolonged, very nasty screaming match at point-blank range. Later, my friends said I should have been there that night, to help verbally and logically kick the guy's ass, but I thought "why bother"? I wouldn't have changed his mind, already damaged goods, I don't need to pointlessly overload my nervous system and ruin a perfectly fine evening... again.
Be it cynical Mind Games or willful ignorance, cupping hands over ears while screaming "Mary had a little lamb", some people are simply beyond the reach of rational discourse, a lesson that cost me a lot of pain to understand.
Case in point, my mother "refuses to believe that she comes from a monkey". Ironically, she always brought the subject up, yet to her, I'm the Troll, she suffers because "I'm going to hell", and often attempted to guilt-trip me about it (it's all about her, you see). After learning to let go of that emotional muck, everything else seems like a milk run now.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry for my lack of clarity, let me rephrase that: Before Bush leaves office on January of next year, he will surely pardon Stevens, so the courts will probably not even reach the stage of sentencing, due the following month.
Old Ted had better be watching his ass, lest his own tubes get clogged.
Ancient Chinese proverb: There is small difference between popping a cherry and unfolding some wrinkles.
But seriously, sentencing is scheduled for February of next year, so Bush will surely pardon Stevens, along with Scooter Libby, in his last great "fuck y'all" of his lame duck days, before he rides off to choke on pretzels and clear brush in his 200,000 acre Paraguay ranch, on top of one of the largest fresh water reservoirs in the world. Always the last laugh, that nutty guy.
I, for one, support a woman's right to clean.
And I, for one, welcome our new woman's right to clean overlords.
Seriously, about TFA, I've got opposite results right in my immediate family. My oldest brother is conservative on many issues, particularly the economy, votes for the right (as opposed to left) political party every time, and you should see his so-called "organized mess" in his office and home office, which nobody is allowed to touch, stacks of papers all over the place, some of them collapsed, even.
Often, when I need some document, Firewire cable, software CD, you name it, half the time the man cannot find it, so much for his "system". Some times, he even calls me up to ask if I've got his stuff, my answer being invariably "no".
Therefore, I call BS on the article.
People "with low IQ" are breeding more than smart people.
That could be a matter of memetics, instead of genetics.
Here's the brunt of it: many children grow up in a family and social environment lacking in intellectual stimulation, where even asking questions and/or searching for answers may be taboo.
I'll keep it apolitical and mention a friend who, when caught at a very early age reading comic books by his mother, was chastised for "reading garbage". Well, guess what, that person has never read for the sheer pleasure of it, his intellectual curiosity was stomped lifeless by his stupid fucking mother, who probably had the TV on all the time, and probably "thought" the proper thing for her offspring was to start reading on their own with The Illiad, The fucking Book Of Acts, Milton's Paradise Lost, or not at all.
This may more common than one thinks, in varying degrees, through different circumstances. In my twenties, in vacation from college, my fundamentalist mother tried to take Hesse's The Steppenwolf from me, but I told her she would have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. Later that summer, I noticed my Philip K Dick paperbacks had disappeared from my bedroom.
So, to reiterate my point: nascent memes in individuals collide with established memes in others, sometimes the "willfully ignorant" memes persevere in the end.
I'd rater have more smart kids being born.
Yeah, that's quite a painful paradox, isn't it? It comes down to "memes of openness" to new ideas, found in the educated segments of the population, embracing contraception, while "memes of closed-mindedness", found in most religious segments, repudiate birth control. Guess which segment's gonna have more babies.
If the religious establishment had accepted contraception when it came out, things would have be a whole different shade today, yet what the educational system currently reflects is exactly the opposite. The viewpoint that contraception begets immorality has resulted in a spike of teen pregnancies as well as venereal diseases like gonorrhea, syphilis and herpes in the Bible Belt and beyond, go figure, like they went straight from the nineteenth century to the twenty first, and the twentieth never happened.
Brain slug? Is that a reference to the indigenous creatures of Seti Alpha V?
There's another ocean forming in the Gulf of California.
There's also Lake Baikal in Siberia, the deepest fresh water body on Earth, also in the process of becoming an ocean.
Conversely, the Black, Caspian and Mediterranean Seas are all remnants of the ancient Tethys Ocean.
The Earth's crust is a fascinating, incredibly dynamic thing.
It's starting to look more and more like all those ideals were just a relatively short-lived fluke as we barter away our true freedoms for freedom from responsibility.
Both the bill that was shot down and the bill that passed were disapproved by the majority of the citizenry. The People had no say so in the matter, the whole thing was rammed twice through the House in three days. If the House had shot it down again, the fucking bill with ever increasing pork and tax breaks would probably have been rammed three, four, five times in the course of the next week.
Why did the bill return to the House just after being rejected? And considering that the Fed quietly pumped around $600 billion into the casino known as Wall Street on Tuesday, even as the House was voting "nay" on the bill, are there any doubts that The People have absolutely no say so in the matter?
Even our allies like britain have gone to a surveliance society and now ponder 2 days detenciton with charges.
For the record, Britain is pondering 22 days detention without charges.
C'mon, you can do better than that, there's countless possibilities out there.
- Houston, We Have Rear Entry
- Apollo 69
- The 100 Mile-High Club
- Suborbital Gangbang MILFs
- In Space, No One Can Hear You Cum
- Lagrange Point Latinas
Shit, these things are a dime a dozen, how about some classics:
- Talk Dirty To Me (In A Chuck Yeager Monotone)
- Debbie Does Clavius
What else but pr0n in that time?
And even then, there's barely enough time to pull off some quickie gonzo pr0n!
Actually, since you mention the Vomit Comet, with a series of parabolas (which is what the VC does) and a bit of work in the editing room, they can manage quite a long scene.
The first parabola would be used to get a feel for zero-g, I imagine it would be next to impossible to concentrate on the business at hand on the first go, completely new and intense external stimuli would be incredibly distracting for the, erm... "actors".
I distinctly remember news back in the mid-eighties about NASA sending a married couple into orbit, as part of a Shuttle crew. Needless to say, speculation ran rampant about sexy experiments in space, newscasters displaying a deadpan nod-nod-wink-wink attitude towards the whole thing. However, NASA being what it is, mentioned nothing about the topic in press releases either before nor after.
So all we have to show for anything is the end scene from Moonraker, with Bond and Dr Goodhead (yet another classic name for a Bond girl) floating in the capsule, in the missionary position with a ridiculous sheet draped over their bodies, and conveniently enough, the sheet is the only thing in the capsule that seems to follow the law of gravity. As boring as it could possibly be.
It's possible that gravity can move through dimensions.
One weird offshoot of String Theory, having to do with Branes (short for Membranes), speculates that Gravity is so weak as compared to the other three forces (Strong, Weak and Electromagnetism) because Gravity is leaking from our Universe into other Universes via a higher dimension at quantum levels.
A hypothetical implication of this, is that our Universe formed from the energy released by a surface clash of two Branes, and as far as I know, it's the only plausible mathematical exercise that goes all the way back to the Big Bang... and beyond! Of course, this also implies the ever-popular Multiverse (or Metaverse), where our Universe is but a bubble (Brane) in a vast ocean composed of bubbles.
As I understand it, Aether was described as a medium through which energy, such as light, moved, like ripples in a pond, where water is the medium, and ever since Quantum Theory reared its' abstract head, the Aether has been dismissed - waves/particles move in a vacuum.
Dark Matter, on the other hand, is widely accepted and can be two different phenomena:
1. Brown dwarves, planetoids, flotsam and jetsam of the cosmos, known as MaCHOs (Massive Compact Halo Objects).
2. Particles that do NOT interact through Strong Force (proton bonding with help from neutrons), Weak Force (decay of electron orbits) or Electromagnetism. Known as WIMPs (Weak Interactive Massive Particles), these are subatomic particles that only interact through Gravity, and as they never bond, all they can do is clump into a sort of fog.
WIMPs are impossible to detect directly with current technology, as gravity wave detectors would be needed, and even if we had them, the waves/particles (gravitons, I believe) would be extremely few and far between. To boot, they would be almost identical to a neutrino (according to the blackboard), so even if the sensor lights up, was it a graviton or a neutrino?
The only way we can detect Dark Matter is through their effect on Visible Matter. As an example, considering the "regular" mass of our galaxy and the speed at which it rotates, it should fly apart like beans on a turntable. But it doesn't, and only a mind-bending amount of matter we can't see can account for that.
So you see, Dark Matter a pretty straightforward concept. What I have trouble with is this Dark Energy that pops up occasionally, and from what I remember, the Coast To Coast radio show used to make a lot of noise about zero-point energy or some such weirdness. I stopped listening to that show years ago, as it contaminated my perspective on (ahem) real science. Now I get my science fix from Slashdot!!!
I'd like to call it Cen's Big Fucking Thing theory.
Hip cosmologists who've seen Lewis Black's stand up comedy act aren't concerned about the composition of it, just as long as it's big, and it's a fucking thing.
True. And in the so-called red states, they probably have another, more common term for depression: laziness, as in "you good for nothing bum, why don't you get a job, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, flipping burgers is a privilege, go Nascar, etcetera".
The sad truth is that most of the world has yet to arise from the Middle Ages, the Enlightment has yet to reach them, even as they enjoy the benefits, such as, erm... televangelists via satellite telling them that science is evil.
In an exquisite paradox, the fact that it's an angry world makes me supremely angry.
Why did Neanderthals become extinct? Bankrupcy. Their caves were foreclosed because every time they hummed a tune at night by the fire, before noon next day Homo Sapiens would sic a fleet of anti-'fair use' lawyers on their Neanderthal asses.
"But, but, we thought that tune was in the public domain by now!"
"Hah! We extended copyright by fifty winter solstices just last lunar year."
Not surprisingly, Paleolithic Congress had no Neanderthal representatives, as their district elections were the ones with no inscribed-stone trail for recounts.
I have an even greener idea for China: How about not building the city at all, and greenify an existing city?
Here's another, halfway between the announcement and your post:
If they're going to build a Green City, how about building it in a valley or plateau, like Beijing? On coastal cities, smog propagates into the ocean, therefore air quality remains fairly decent, so what's the point of building said city on an island?
Let the Chinese government try it where topographical circumstances allow for no leeway and false proclamations of success, where there's no handicap in their favor. If they do it this way, they'll be more likely to truly push technologies and methods of greenifying existing cities. Otherwise, it sounds like yet another propaganda stunt to me, another white elephant in the name of the Party... I mean People (coughs).
Well, there was Raise The Titanic in 1980, the first Cussler/Pitt cinematic foray. Raise your hands if you remember that one. The book was a hit, the film wasn't.
With the notable exception of Hunt For Red October, underwater sagas do not perform well at the box office. Remember The Abyss and Waterworld.
Hey, that sounds like fun, I'll give it a shot! Here's a few others you missed:
* Anton Chigurh, a man who needs no introduction, and you probably wouldn't wanna meet him anyway.
* Alex Cox, director of punk/geek cult classic Repo Man, as well as Sid & Nancy.
* Al Campanis, GM for the Dodgers, got in hot water for making some very iffy comments about African-Americans.
* Anthony (Tony) Curtis, film star and the Tom Cruise of his era (long suspected of being in the closet).
* Albert Camus, Nobel Prize-winning French existentialist writer of novels such as The Plague and The Stranger.
* Asia Carrera, for a while there, hotness itself, extra points for being Wayne's squeeze in Wayne's World.
* Arthur of Camelot, first English king and pals with Merlin, also possessor of the knowledge of the average air speed of an unladen European swallow.
* Agri-Culture, putting food in people's mouths for the last several millennia, catalyst for the sedentary lifestyle since prehistoric times.
* Ammonium Chloride, sold at fine hardware stores near you.
* Arctic Circle and Antarctic Circle, geographic boundaries to the ends of the world.
That's about as far as I can take it.
It took me a long day to figure it out, here it is: Compassion.
He ignored the meaning of the concept "What you do to your fellow man, you do to yourself".
He lived without compassion for anybody.
His wife acted with compassion, either blind or misguided, compassion nonetheless.
He returned the gesture with an ultimate lack of compassion.
He had no compassion for himself.
Compassion is essential for our hard-wired ideal of Civilization.
How did the term "compassion" suddenly bubble to the surface of my convoluted thoughts? After a rough and tense day (and night), I'm listening to 1930's harmonica blues, some of the most inspired, honest and straightforward music ever recorded. Balm for the psyche. But then again, so's Joy Division.
Hey, in some situations I'm a complete fucking bastard, in others I'm full of gratitude and compassion. When I figure out what makes me angry and why, I'll be a step closer to Henry Miller's ideal (and I paraphrase), which I've made my own: "The day I forgive my parents for bringing me into this fucking world, is the day I'll have it made for life".
She would probably have more trouble accepting that she and the monkey share a common, even more primitive ancestor.
Absolutely right, that's the way I would phrase it.
But not her, she sees it exactly like I quoted. Paleontology is utterly alien to her, and as you know, there are millions upon millions with that same stance.
However, the point I was trying to make is that I've learned to let it go - I've stopped having arguments with the closed-minded, usually I will not take the bait anymore. However, if there's an undecided third party involved, I'll fully expound my perspective, directly at them and for their benefit only.
At family Christmas dinners, I'll keep my trap shut or divert the subject to something brisk and light, in front of everybody. I'll get a chance to have private conversations with my nephews later on.
Yeah, I know I'm replying to myself...but shit.
How the hell could the bastard take it to this?
First he invades us all with his fucking Vyagra and Xannaxx, then he escapes minimum security prison, then... he commits the unspeakable.
What a damaged wimp. What a pathetic excuse of a humanoid.
Any time a travesty like this happens, it diminishes us all. Thanks for nothing, asshole. Thanks for much, much less than nothing.
But you did it, asshole, you're gonna make the fucking six o'clock news again. You would have been proud of that, wouldn't you?
If anything, may you serve as a cautionary tale, an opposite of what every one of us should strive to be.
To his victims, Rest In Peace.
I am most terribly sorry your paths had to cross with this... this pitiful monster.
I am most terribly sorry.
Take their comments, and edit them, to make them say exactly the opposite.
Hey, what about this:
Make any and every goatse post/link automatically turn into an idle.slashdot post/link. That'll really piss off more than a few A/Cs.
The frist post thingy has a benign charm, I petition that it's allowed to go on. Ditto for "That's no moon!", etc.
Routing them to the FUCK OFF page sounds a lot more fun.
Better yet, for a taste of their own medicine, rout them to a goatse image in a low enough resolution, loading fast enough, that they'll be staring at it before they have time to react, in horror and disbelief.
Or how's this for evil genius: rout them to a blank page with so much bad script that it will crash their browser, maybe even force them to reboot!
It's fucking weird and beyond me, a British friend, after driving me to the point of rage in a face-to-face conversation, abruptly apologized and explained that every time his family gets together for Christmas or Boxing Day or whatever, they have these artificial, screaming arguments with each other, over any topic they come up with, be it India's economic situation or France's space program. Sort of an advanced, free-for-all, last-man-standing-wins version of Python's Argument Clinic. And they fucking enjoy it. Then it hit me: I've never been able to transmit a concept to this guy without him disrupting with some irrelevant and confusing interjection.
Anyway, it sounds more like Being Hit In The Head Lessons to me. Or like you say, plain old Flinging Douchebaggery. Mind Games. Making Noise. Pushing Buttons.
Recently, something truly weird and abrasive happened. A friend who manages an upscale bistro with a cool bar, was there having beers with some more friends, when a common acquaintance showed up with bizarre company: A cigar smoking, up-and-coming American arms dealer. This young republican asshole had the nerve to declare that his government is beyond reproach, while every other government is corrupt.
Holy cow, now that's a Flamebait situation if I ever saw one. But the guy was not playing Mind Games, he was being serious. Needless to say, the whole thing turned into a prolonged, very nasty screaming match at point-blank range.
Later, my friends said I should have been there that night, to help verbally and logically kick the guy's ass, but I thought "why bother"? I wouldn't have changed his mind, already damaged goods, I don't need to pointlessly overload my nervous system and ruin a perfectly fine evening... again.
Be it cynical Mind Games or willful ignorance, cupping hands over ears while screaming "Mary had a little lamb", some people are simply beyond the reach of rational discourse, a lesson that cost me a lot of pain to understand.
Case in point, my mother "refuses to believe that she comes from a monkey". Ironically, she always brought the subject up, yet to her, I'm the Troll, she suffers because "I'm going to hell", and often attempted to guilt-trip me about it (it's all about her, you see). After learning to let go of that emotional muck, everything else seems like a milk run now.
Wow, that was a long rant, sorry.