In any case, those patdowns in airports are training whacks on your snout to sit the fuck down and STFU when told to sit the fuck down and STFU. Our overlords are busy renegotiating the terms of our complicity too. Blogwise though, everything's excellent. Thanks again to everyone who moved here with me, and thanks and welcome to any and all who've found here since.
- Principle of governance: Although military officials are apologetic in public, they maintain privately that the tactic has a benefit beyond the elimination of insurgent bombs. By making people travel to the district governor's office to submit a claim for damaged property, "in effect, you're connecting the government to the people," the senior officer said.
- I was going to write more about that paragraph, but Silber already has.
- Guilty until proven guilty: Is it too much to suggest that the federal government is putting all the tools in place that could one day lead to a totalitarian regime? Patriot Acts, Military Commissions, NSA domestic spying, state secrets privilege, national security letters, and now a bill moving through the Senate that will permit censorship of the internet. The constitution backed up by the judiciary should be protecting us from the invasive policies of the legislature and executive but has manifestly failed to do so.
- Any questions?
- This, of course, is provocation and unacceptable.
- Viktor Bout, Barack Obama.
- Insubstantial queries.
- Delusion points: In the midst of the "Mission Accomplished" euphoria that followed the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, a worried Iran sent a Swiss intermediary to Washington with a far-reaching offer for a "grand bargain," including an end to Iranian support for groups such as Hezbollah and a deal on Iran's nuclear energy program. The offer was reportedly approved by Iran's top leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Bush administration turned the Iranians down flat -- why negotiate with the next candidate for regime change? -- and Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reportedly reprimanded the Swiss ambassador for even delivering the message in the first place.
- Democracy in action.
- Winston Smith's Nu-America.
- Kill faith.
- What was she doing behind a video game?
- Apathy is self-congratulatory? Not what I was told.
- An image to ruin your weekend.
- David Gergen's world.
- Rocket scientist at AU.
- Metro awesomeness.
- Metro awesomeness.
- Fear of metaphor, part three.
- The room of my life.
- On getting poetry.
- The poem, the poet.
- The case for books.
- 80s synth-pop, hot again.
- I wanna know girls.
- Remember when Ryan Adams was going to be a superstar?
- Age class.
- Starfucker.
- Surf City.
- Meredith Monk is 68 today.
THE THEORY OF ABSOLUTE FORMS
Albert Goldbarth
It isn't easy to picture an infinite universe,
a star that's traveling through an infinite universe,
but think of how far pain can go in your bone,
in it's marrow. - Forever, I think. When Plato
clutched his side and moaned, he knew how this world's
hurt is only the light from its star Generic Hurt.
Say I have a wound like a flamenco beauty's horrible
red camillia set in my flesh. I think the doctor's
whole career has been for this minute. The wound,
my wound, it's only been with me an hour.
His hands are exact. They life it and dance.
He's been intimate with this wound for years.
"Are humans fundamentally shittier than ever or just as shitty with enhanced surveillance capability?"
ReplyDeleteI'd say they aren't any shittier than ever, but there is more shit due to the larger population of shitters. Teddy Roosevelt declared mission accomplished for the Philippines on the Fourth of July in 1902, and the fighting continued for another decade or so.
'...doesn't every generation think their time the clusterfuckest ever?'
ReplyDeleteIndeed, although it could be said that at least those (relatively recent) generations past had many of their cherished fictions maintained externally as a mutual benefit between them and society, and thus could in theory cope with processing shared objective reality with a minimum of subjective cognitive dissonance.
The defense mechanisms observed (and flaunted openly) today go beyond such tinkertoy delusional disorders and are bordering on sociopathic behavior, IMO.
;>)
Holy shit that cat's huge. Too bad it's not a real live huge ferocity of a furball to devour you because I clicked on that link you know which one weekend ruined try month you bastard.
ReplyDeleteRe: epoch shittiness. It's far easier/quicker to disseminate one's views on OMFG in concert with absorbing those of everyone else, so in a ironically ironic twist, we might have less shittiness with our shittiness because we get to experience ever more tales of shittinesses than past eras could ever (not) hope to.