Saying, "Fuck you!" to everyone & everything for far too long
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11/19/08
Goats...
They live under the Angels Flight railway – the shortest railway
in the world. I don't know when the goats under the rails moved in.
Wikipedia has no reference to the goats of Angels Flight, but I have
low resolution evidence of this particularly odd goat abode in downtown
Los Angeles.
11/18/08
Last night, on the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert interviewed an indubitable ass-faced sack of crap who has recently published a book, "Outliers: The Story of Success," through Little, Brown and Company. Aside from the issue that this sack of crap appears to unquestionably equate success with wealth and/or popularity as do most Americans, which might explain the success, if any, the sack of crap has had in the publishing world, he uses Bill Gates as a prime example of his theory of success.
The sack of crap says some people are just lucky. They have lucky moments that lead to their success. Yes, I know, a wonderfully courageous theory! Bill Gates had several such lucky moments, said the sack of crap. One major moment of luck for Bill Gates, said the sack of crap, was when Gates was in Junior High. In Junior High, a computer terminal was installed in Gates' school. It was the introduction of this computer to Gates that lead him down the road to where he is today. This is a nice story, but what the sack of crap elided from the story, at least on the Colbert Report, was that Gates had wealthy parents, a mother who was the daughter of a national bank president and a father who was a lawyer. The "Junior High" Gates attended, the one with the lucky computer terminal in 1968, was actually an exclusive preparatory school. It's small bits of information like that that tend to change the overall picture significantly.
Gates was a son of wealth and privilege before he made himself a man of greater wealth and privilege. Thus, the story of Gates' rules for success begins: First off, have rich parents... Sorry, sack of crap, you fail and so would have Bill had he been born lower class and had to attend an under funded public school without the ability to buy computers in 1968 because of douche bags like the alternate reality rich version of himself who is always trying to undermine public education to usher in an age of corporate privatization. It's capitalist hucksters like Gates, who know nothing of public education, that think the free market is what has made America great. Well, it isn't. Public education made this country what it is, and the more we as a nation undermine and sideline its importance, the more we as a nation decline into an unregulated sewage ditch of greed and ignorance. Fuck Bill Gates and the sack of "outlier" crap who idolizes him.
11/17/08
They're going to do it. There can't be doubt. They're going to do it and they're going to use our money – money that could go to schools, parks, disaster relief funds, libraries, improved internet infrastructure, scientific research – to do it. They're going to sing the money song for the automobile industry. An automobile industry that worked in collusion with the oil companies to tear out our cities' public transportation systems. An automobile industry that gave one of their CEOs (G. Richard Wagoner) a $4.6 million per year retirement package only three years ago – by now he's raked in over 12 million sitting on his fat ass in Saipan, popping Viagra and pre-school girls' cherries. This is an automobile industry that has sent thousands of jobs south to Mexico.
These are clearly good and deserving people who run the automobile industry. We can pretend if we want to that this is a problem that affects, what politicians condescendingly call, "Main Street." We can pretend that it's about what's left of the decimated blue collar automotive work force. We can pretend it's about all the auto mechanics and dealerships across the country. We can pretend a lot of crazy shit, but what it's about is NAFTA and CEOs. Go ahead. Bail them out. Let's take on the burden of their mismanagement, but let's make some ground rules. Let's not throw money at the cause of the problem without removing the problem. Pull out of NAFTA now. If we we pulled out of Kyoto, then we can just as callously pull free from NAFTA. Place a cap on CEO's salaries, bonuses and retirement packages. Let's cap their salaries at no more than 5x the wages of the average line worker. I bet we'll see assembly line wages increase, do you think? And lastly, regulate their ass. Regulate it until it bleeds: flex fuel, 100 mpg freeway and no more monster trucks, SUVs or spending millions of dollars advertising during NFL games. We already know Ford is "Built Ford Tough," what other kind of fucking tough would we expect? Yugo, maybe? Get off the TV. Quit spending on advertising and build a god damn car that will sell itself.
If we bailout the automobile industry and these demands are not met then the corporate terrorists will win – will win more than they already have.
11/07/08
My clothes are in the washing machine at the corner laundromat. The price on the standard top loaders has been raised by a quarter. The wash time has been slashed by seven minutes. They raise the price and cut back on the service. I'm guessing what they cut off the former 29 minute wash time is the spin dry cycle, which means the clothes will come out soaking, which in turn will require more drying time, costing more money.
I blame Obama for this. Change, they have made to their washing machines. Change, they can believe in. Change, they can rob from me. Change, I can ill afford. The wealth is being spread around 25¢ at a time.
During the campaign, McCain supporters had a problem with Obama's name. McCain's people would yell out "Ohhhh-Baya-Muh!" adding as much foreign emphasis to his name as their clockwork brains could twist out, but if you only add an El to the end of Obama's name, making it "Obamal" or "O'Bamal," then it isn't really anymore exotic sounding to western ears than "Mee-ick-Kai-yun!"
"Oi, O'bamal, lad, what's say we traipse pub-ward for a wee sip o' the devil."
11/06/08
Proposition 8 passed, and I was right. The African American vote approved prop. 8 with an overwhelming 70% yes.
They're rounded up from Africa, stripped of their homeland and their freedom. They are set in chains, families broken up, forced into labor and whipped for disobedience. They have Christianity thrust upon them. Eventually, they are freed. They endure years of abuse, segregation, racial profiling, lynching, bans on interracial marriage, unjust incarceration rates and grandfather clauses restricting their rights to vote. Today, many of them are fervent followers of their former oppressors religion and that religion has infected their brains to such an extent that they want to strip another minority group of their freedoms. Totally and unequivocally shameful. What more evidence is needed of the mental poisoning that is religion?
A big thumbs up to the 30% of black voters who voted NO on 8. You're the ones who have come a long way. You've earned a Virginia Slim.
11/04/08
Who's to be our new leader? I cast my vote. I caught a boot and a tire and a tin can but no fish. I was too torn to make a good decision. I wanted to bear witness to the first female president of the United States. I wanted to bear witness to the first black president (okay, half black) of the United States. I wanted both so I cast my vote to the one who gave me two hits in one. You can figure out who she is.
I do like I do every four years; I threw my vote away, but at least I got to take a wild stab at shooting down some supremely fascist ballot initiatives. Currently, and maybe only to the end of today, same sex couples have the legal right to be married in California, but if a bunch of Mormon assholes get their way, then same sex couples will be stripped of their right to marriage.
For me, this is the only slippery-slope argument I'll allow: one right stripped away will lead to more stripped away until Jews aren't allowed to own land, farm or work in government. Oh, geez, don't compare the denial of gays to marry to the plight of the Jews in medieval Europe, Rick – you go too far. Yes, I might, but there are connections.
An "Anti-Miscegenation Amendment" to the United States Constitution was proposed in 1871, 1912–13, and 1928. This constitutional amendment would have banned interracial marriages. Various states had laws banning interracial marriages until the SCOTUS struck them all down as unconstitutional in 1967, however, if the "Anti-Miscegenation Amendment" had passed in any of those years, then the laws banning interracial would not have been unconstitutional and the SCOTUS would not have struck the laws down and Barack Obama's parents would not have been allowed to marry (although Barack would still very likely have been born, just out of wedlock, which probably would have been the deal breaker in any major political party run for national office). There are consequences to marital bans, and here, in California, proposition 8 seeks to strip gays and lesbians of their marriage rights. I voted against this treacherous relic of our hateful past, but, unfortunately, it will pass.
Why will it pass?
Ironically, because large numbers of black voters will vote for it, as will large numbers of Latino voters. This is a ballot initiative that has had 20 million dollars in Mormon donations thrown at it; the Mormon church has been the single strongest driving force behind the Yes on 8 campaign – the Mormon Church that for 150 years believed all blacks were cursed (luckily for the Mormon Church most blacks are cursed... with homophobia).
White liberals call these black and Latino voters "conservative on issues involving homosexuality," but that's liberal circumlocution. The black and Latino voters who will vote to change the California state constitution to ban same sex marriage are shrieking shit-eating bigots who deserve Brigham Young to personally rise from the grave and take a big polygamous shit right in their fag-bashing mouths.