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Krispy Kreme's new slogan?
I wonder if WAGT’s newspot will lift Krispy Kreme from its carbophobia-induced slump …I note a small rebound.
I have long since understood since I was but a little pup that extremism comes in many flavors. Batshit insanity is by no means limited to warmongering hyperconservative evangelicals bombing abortion clinics and cheering Ann Coulter's latest episode of her ongoing experiment to see just how odious one human being can become. No, it's all the way on the other side too. The only thing I find forgivable about the extremism on the left is that it seems well-intentioned by comparison to the exclusionist, violently combative authoritarianism of the right. I can get with environmentalism because I kind of dig nature... I like breathing air and drinking water that doesn't have a yellow tinge to it even if it isn't causing global warming. As much as I'd fit in this brain-damaged world, I prefer my seafood sans mercury. But I mean flounder and crab, roughy and clams. I didn't mean kelp. And that's where it all goes south.
Any time you discuss politics with an extremist, you have to understand that they are so by virtue of their incipient authoritarianism. I mean, think about it. Would they be extremist if they were content and comfortable and accepting of another point of view? So you say, I just won't discuss politics with an extremist. Well, sonny, good try, but to an extremist everything is political. You like seafood? Well meat is murder. Stop it and get with the morally superior since you can't seem to parse right and wrong on your own.
I guess I've always had a problem with authority, probably because most people who try to exert it do so without the consent of... well.. anyone. With as many serious idiots on this planet that I've had the misfortune to meet who claimed the moral or intellectual superiority to entitle them to decide what's best or correct, you'll forgive me if I don't rush to their flags.
But I take solace in the fact that extremists are, by their true nature, a self-regulating breed. They rarely get too far along in number. It takes a unified front to change things in such radical ways, and extremists are really horrible at maintaining that necessary unity. Oh, sure, they can keep it up for a while, so long as they perceive the enemy outside of their ranks, but the second they score a victory or two, they sink their teeth into each other.
Pass the salt.
•Iraq War Veterans To Receive Best Medical Attention Government Can Provide Except For Last 3 1/2 Years Give Or Take
•Wounded Rehab Regimen Consists Of Sitting In Own Shit For Hours, Sitting In Own Piss To Be Tried Next
•VEEP WIPES ASS WITH CONSITUTION, NO COURTESY FLUSH
•What Would Jesus Do? (Probably Stay Dead This Time)
Uh-oh. Don't look now, but word on the street is that the ultimate sacrifice for serving your country these days is the ultimate sacrifice for serving your country. One can only conclude that the best way to be treated like an actual human being by this administration's idea of the inherent dignity of a wounded soldier is to stop getting shot and blown up in the first place.
Brilliant!
In related news:
•VA Hospital Bureaucracy To Be Replaced By Operation™ Game Hooked Up To VCR Playing Brady Bunch Episodes Non-Stop
•Efficiency Cut In Half
•PROBLEM NURSES REASSIGNED TO DMV
•White House: "Where's That Buck Thingie Supposed To Stop Again?"
[I've been listening to Rush Limbaugh lately while I'm driving home at lunch to let the dogs out, mostly because the retards at my local NPR affiliate opted to play some syndicated classical music show bullshit from 9 am to 3 pm with no news updates after lunch. Don't get me started.
I used to listen to Rush fairly regularly in the early 1990s. When I could.
Anyways, in the brief blurb I heard yesterday, he was castigating that faggot John Edwards for using Jesus to criticize American foreign policy. And it got me to thinking (Heads up!!!). I wonder which is more hypocritical: Using The King of the Jews to criticize American foreign policy, or using The King of the Jews to justify American foreign policy.
Seems too close to call at this point.]
The question of Bush taking us to war with Iran had fallen off my radar. Does it deserve to be back on it? That’s the question I ask. Are furious, dire efforts (i.e. blogging about it) to counter Bush’s cynical attempts to sell us another war an imperative? Or is the prospect, at this point, so remote--that blogging the tea leaves of war reveals only the power self-fulfilling prophecy has over those who find in Bush the dictator-in-chief their inner rebel longs to overthrow?
I’m leaning toward the latter. The potential horror of it is simply too inspiring to let real world circumstances outmode the joy of earnest (wild) speculation. Preventing war with Iran has become a cause, and like so many other causes, success is not embraced least the cause’s reason for being ceases to exist. On the contrary, the cause itself becomes the sole perpetuator of the looming threat it rose up to fight in the first place. That’s not to say Bush wouldn’t sell us a war with Iran if we were buying. But we’re not, and neither is Congress, the Military or the Press.
It’s certainly not sensational to conclude that the prospect of war with Iran is vanishing. Coming to terms with that also happens to undercut the very mantra that the system itself is corrupt beyond redemption. In fact, the only real looming threat that the freewheeling alarmists appear to be faced with at this point is the prospect that these interesting times are quickly coming to an end, and with it their veil of credibility.
Regarding Keifus's post below, I'm of two minds -- the temptation to regard our own times and challenges as unique must be resisted, but there still must be adaptations to modern innovations.
To deal with the first problem, whenever there were rules, there are those who think their situation merits breaking them. Sure a red light means stop, but I'm late, and there's no other traffic, and surely those putting the rules together didn't anticipate this situation.
A lot of people have used 9/11 to succumb to this temptation. Yeah, victim's rights and habeus corpus and not torturing and due process things like that are nice concepts, but we're at war, damnit!! We have an enemy that actually want to kill us (as opposed to all those past enemies like the Nazis and Stalinists who I guess just wanted to give us a good scare). So we do things against our principles. And we end up not standing for anything other than our own safety and security.
I think a lot of the laws on the books regarding sex offenders is another example. I think the day will come when we will look back on our current treatment of sex offenders with shame.
On the other hand, it is true that times change, and laws may need to change with them. I think a lot of the Patriot Act was of this spirit, rather than that exceptional times call for exceptional tactics.
In that sense, I'm not sure the proposed law is a departure from principals. It is a fact that a small group of people can create a large amount of damage. And it is also true that creating a public panic is a good way to generate free publicity. So the balance of incentives needs to change. I'm not sure requiring licenses is the best remedy, but it doesn't strike me as particular departure from settled principals.
I don't, for the record, support legislation by anecdote. The title refers to the unfortunate American habit of naming laws, as though conjuring the image of some precious youngster tragically departed could add enough gravity to justify circumventing the usual legal process. It's a symptom of the same disease that causes us to try minors as adults, or to establish murky legal categories to indefinitely detain suspicious Arabs. It's the false belief that our current times are significant enough to abandon those pesky legal protections.
On the off chance that the local follies haven't reached a national audience, the city of Boston has fallen victim to two "guerrilla marketing" campaigns in 2007. One, advertising for the terrorists at the Cartoon Network, confused local authorities into thinking Lite BriteTM displays were bombs. (I mean, they didn't even have red ticking numbers. Those terrorists are nothing if not crafty.) Another recent campaign by Dr. Pepper led scavenger hunters into protected historic monuments. The first brought out the full pressure of the authorities: bomb squads and sirens and guys in uniforms getting their faces blotted with powder for the cameras. The second merely induced some carefully directed public outrage.
Rather than admit that the reaction was overheated, expensive, and retarded, the city of Boston called a hearing yesterday to best prevent these perpetrators from terrorizing [sic] us again. Quoth the Globe:In the aftermath of two recent guerrilla marketing stunts that ran afoul of local authorities, members of the City Council said today they would consider forcing all corporate marketers to obtain city licenses before they can push products.
The proposal’s authors, Maureen E. Feeney and Stephen J. Murphy, said new measures are needed because fines and regulations on the books do little to deter massive corporations seeking publicity through unconventional marketing campaigns.
Because, you know, existing laws just weren't good enough, and it's assumed in all cases that if the guys in uniforms are excited, then someone else is responsible.
•Conservative Pundit Fists Self With Foot In Mouth
•Liberals Belie Hypocrisy And Play Fag Card
•NEWSFLASH: ANNA NICOLE STILL DEAD
•And Jesus Busted A Gut
Sorry. Are we banning the "c-word" as well now?
I don't mean that pejoratively. Well, I suppose I do. But she really is one. She's a veritable poster child for cunthood. And she's proud of it; she owns it. That's one of the things that make her so compelling to so many people. Never underestimate the power of The Almighty Cunt.
"Faggot" may indeed be the new "nigger", but it definitely is not the new f-word". No way.
The left really blew a golden opportunity to get some pre-election footing. But what did they do? They whined. It seems to be their default position, which would go a long way in explaining why they always seem to start any race (baiting) 3 lengths behind the pack. They may as well have issued a party-wide press release that said nothing more thanTo: whom it may concern
If (that faggot) Edwards (and all liberals in general) had just kept his mouth (and their mouths) shut and let poor Ann and the other apologizing right wingers throw themselves on the mercy of the court of public opinion, there's a pretty good chance she would have gone the way of Michael Richards and Mel Gibson. At least for a little while. (Though it seems no matter what he says, Mel doesn't appear to be going anywhere.) She'll never go entirely away because, well, behold the power of The Almighty Cunt.
From: Democrats
Subject: Sticks and Stones
Republicans are really mean name-callers. And they should stop it. Right now! Shut up! We as Democrats are indescribably sick and tired of being portrayed as the pussies we actually are. We're fed up. Y'all are meanie dumbo heads!
The ultimate punch line here is, of course, that the "faggot" bit she performed was simply an R-rated version of something you'd hear in a David Letterman monologue. It's just not as funny. Or subtle. Or smart.
And how does the Edwards camp respond? "No I'm not. You are!"
Yeah. Well done. Faggot.
So, because I'm feeling so generous this week, as a public service to John Edwards, this is what he should've said at a press conference almost immediately after Ann blurted out "the sexual slur that dare not speak its name":
You know, I've seen a lot of things over the course of the last four years, and I've met a lot of people. But the only thing keeping Ann Coulter from being a complete and total cunt is the simple fact that she may or may not be a man. I mean, really. I wouldn't fuck her with your trouser snake.
Me, a faggot?! Man! You suck one cock on the campaign trail and all of a sudden you're queerer than Andy Dick in Brazilian tango shoes at a Cher concert.
I don't blame Ann. I just don't understand as a liberal why I hate America so much. Maybe it's not so much that I hate America as that I hate Americans. Especially the darker-skinned ones. But when you're pandering to an audience of poor, Southern, disenfranchised blacks, you can't always nail all of the high notes, especially if it's a call-and-response hymn. At least my accent was authentic. You gotta give me that.
She's just jealous because I have better highlights than she does. And mine are au naturelle. If peroxide were a fossil fuel, you could power Southern California with her bangs alone.
Hey Ann: Is that an Adam's Apple in your throat or are you just happy to have a dick in your pocket? Pick a side and quit living a lie! Cross-dressers are people too, you know. It's only a matter of time till guys stop buying the "Oh, that's not a penis; I just have a really large clitoris" routine. For shame! But you were great inTransamerica.
Whatever. As you know, you go to the bedroom with the genitals you have. They're not the genitals you might want or wish to have at a later time. That's just "Human Nature 101". But once you get to the "graduate-level courses", the "teaching assistants" may not be nearly as "forgiving" when it comes to "grammatical errors", if you know what I mean. And I think you do.
You know, I like Ann. I really do. She makes Hillary look more effeminate than Orlando Bloom. You try doing that in high heels and a tool belt. She's one step away from going on tour with Melissa Etheridge.
Oh, and Karen Carpenter called; she wants her amphetamines back. ASAP.
I suppose I could be offended at having been called a faggot. But I think I'd rather be called a faggot than have tits that look like fried eggs. They give a whole new meaning to the phrase "over easy". Yuck. I'll have mine scrambled, thank you very much.
Buck up, Ann. Lipstick lesbians, or whatever you are, may have a tough row to hoe. But consider this: You'll have the cleanest carpet in town. Literally.
&c., and so on and so forth, with things of that nature.
So, Democrats? The longer all y'all keep acting like a doormat, the more people will be inclined to call you, well, a doormat. Self-fulfilling prophecies are prophetic for a reason, and demanding to be treated with dignity and respect isn't just for wounded Iraq veterans anymore. You've got a lot of catching up to do. No ditching.
I'm going to use this post over at Gene Expression as a convenient foil for something that irritates me about the debate over the evolution of religion. Namely, you could just as easily describe the substance of the debate as the evolution of philosophy, of science, or of abstract thinking. Until the very recent past, there hasn't been a difference, and whatever your side is on the culture war, there's little need for this muddle.
The question, for Gene Expression and others, is "Why do people cling to ideas that are manifestly implausible?" It's an odd definition for two reasons, first because most religious people make all sorts of claims that are not merely plausible, but based on observation (think of the various ancient astronomical sights, or nineteenth-century naturalists documenting every variety of flora and fauna in part because they were testimony of God's greatness), and also because "plausibility" is necessarily judged after the fact. Plenty of good ideas at first seemed wholly implausible, and the Newtons of the world frequently interlaced their most lasting discoveries with ideas that now seem totally insane.
The point is, cognitive activity does not easily separate into modern categories of "religion," "economics," and so forth. While I find the debate fascinating, casting it in such terms leads to bad science, to explanations based on social darwinism rather than Darwinism, and to political claims with little connection to the issues at hand.
