Monthly Archives: October 2008

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The most despicable thing I’ve ever heard…


In the news right now is a civil rights leader, who made a statement recently—and rightly I believe, about the campaign rhetoric that has developed recently. A man I feel very deeply and profoundly about, and who was just interviewed by a friend of mine, whose years of service, including the metal plate in his head from his time serving this country in a way exactly as profound as McCain’s time in the Hanoi Hilton. 

What completely flummoxed me, and that the media seems rife to jump right on, is that Congressman Lewis did not say McCain was a George Wallace segregationist—as anyone with a brain in their head (and not looking to milk this for some 20 second sound bite in the 24-hour cable newscycle), but it was aimed at the angry rhetoric of the rally attendees.

So you will fucking forgive me if McCain calling these remarks “unacceptable” completely pisses me off. Continue reading →

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Angels Fear


There is a parable which says that when the ecological god looks down and sees the human species sinning against its ecology—by greed or by taking shortcuts or taking steps in the wrong order—he sighs and involuntarily sends the pollution and the radioactive fallout. It is of no avail to tell him that the offense was only a small one, that you are sorry and that you will not do it again. It is no use to make sacrifices and offer bribes. The ecological God is incorruptible and therefor is not mocked.

—Gregory Bateson

From Angels Fear, page 142

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Unequal Charges: When Balanced Is Not Fair


In both cases, the reporters treated these charges as essentially equal and thus self-canceling, stuff to be filed away under “political tactics,” “he said/she said” or the province of mere “strategic gambits.”

 

It is precisely this type of reporting, devoid of context and the ability to discern the relative historical import of a public figure’s actions, that has rendered the American people stupid in a civic sense.

Continue reading →

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Citizen Ruth


Citizen Ruth: What If I Aborted You? (1996) | I’ve never laughed so hard in my life as I did at this line, it was so darkly comic, wrong on every level, and yet for some reason it just works as a climatic scene. The levels of dysfunction all throughout the movie make it a black comedy even dramedy if you will. Remember seeing this in the theater & they almost asked me to leave, because I was out of control. –DAKrólak

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Hangman, Spare That Word: The English Purge Their Language


For feminists examining muliebrity (the condition of being a woman), or soothsayers putting out their latest vaticination (prophecy), the available lexicon may soon get slimmer. The lexicographers behind Britain’s Collins English Dictionary have decided to exuviate (shed) rarely used and archaic words as part of an abstergent (cleansing) process to make room for up to 2,000 new entries. “We want the dictionary to be a reflection of English as it is currently spoken,” says Ian Brookes, managing editor of Collins, “rather than a fossilized version of the language.”

via Hangman, Spare That Word: The English Purge Their Language – TIME