A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME

….with a shoestring budget, every man’s got a field to plow (I know that now)." *

Since I haven’t touched this shit in a month, might as well just cut and paste other people’s creativity to fill the void.  But hey - parasitic mooching is what made the internets what they are today, right? 

Those of you on MySpace (shudder) have already seen this, but it warrants further dissemination:
The Shining trailer recut as a romantic dramedy.

Creepy, but damn fine FX of "altered" plants:
Cool as shit.  More of their amazing, photo-realistic stuff here.

And finally, one just for the NCSA grads.  I can’t take credit for finding this, but oh my god am I glad someone did. 
"How do you solve a problem like Marie?"

As for the moral quandry of the above I’ve spoken to several professional ethicists, including Dale Pollock and Deepak Chopra, and they’ve assured me I’m in the clear.  Apparently, once you throw them titties online, you’re fair game.  Besides, this shit is gonna spread like wildfire with or without me. 

* First one to identify that quote wins tickets to Supertramp.**

** And the first one to name that reference wins tickets to Dashboard Confessional. Jesus, can I think in anything but pop-culture references?   Damn this post-Tarantino, postmodern hall of mirrors! 

A tubby, bubbly Hispanic girl that looked to be about 12 or 13, walking along with her equally vivacious companions. She was wearing a tight, white shirt, mercilessly stretched to fabric’s capacity, which made her look not unlike a walking tube of cookie dough. But I digress. On the front of said shirt in black Sharpie, as poorly written as it was conceived:

R.I.P.
Daddy
9/11/01

Now I’m hesitant to judge,* having never lost a loved one to tragedy, but I probably would have erred on the side of never, ever doing that. And I thought I had seen New York’s T-Shirt of the Week when I saw an almost comically endowed black woman in the subway walking by with a shirt that said in bright pink letters: I FAKE ORGASMS.

*Not at all true.

Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren, that you do unto Me.
- Matthew 25:40

First off, if you haven’t already, watch this clip of Kayne West going off-script while doing a plea for hurricane relief with Mike Myers. 

NBC cut that portion from the West Coast portion of the broadcast, and a commentator from Fox actually suggested that they should have had their fingers on the bleep button, him being a rapper and all, you know?  Seeing as how he didn’t curse or even come close to vulgarity, one must conclude that criticizing the president is now considered an obscenity. 

This is America in 2005.

I’m with George Carlin – I believe words in and of themselves are neutral, so I don’t believe that in and of themselves they can be obscene.  But actions can be.  And certainly the actions, or rather, inaction of the government this week would certainly qualify as an obscenity - a criminally negligent, transparently racist obscenity that showed very clearly what happens when you combine high levels of incompetence and indifference.  Is it possible to be hyperbolic about last week?  Can one possibly be too shrill in denouncing the government’s response?  Can you blame black America if they think it was intentional, or when they toss around words like genocide?  I don’t think it was a coordinated plan anymore than I think Bush planned 9/11, but goddamn it - how many people have to die on your watch before people start wondering if you’re running up the score?

This is happening in your country in 2005.

Pick an outrage.  Betcha can’t pick just one.  Was it that Mike Brown’s previous job before being made head of FEMA was being commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association for nine years, a job he was sued out of?  I mean, he was the college roommate of the previous head of FEMA, but I’m sure it was the horsy thing that bowled them over. Wait, could your central outrage be reports that FEMA actually refused aid in more than a dozen different instances, and inexplicably kept the citizens stuck in the Superdome from walking into another city by armed guards? That Halliburton got a rebuilding New Orleans contract?  That Bush was pickin’ and grinnin’ during the emerging emergency, Condi Rice was shoe shopping until Wednesday, and Cheney was mansion shopping pretty much the entire time? Or that when Bush finally did arrive to help, he diverted helicopters and brought in firemen from Atlanta to serve as a backdrop to his staged “briefing” and prevented even more from flying miles around the site due to restricted airspace around Air Force One?  Since blacks have served as little more than props to this regime, is it any surprise he would let them die for stagecraft? 

And yes, this is all going down in the United States of America in the 21st century, not in a third world banana republic at the turn of the last century.  Little more than five years ago, this country, despite its many problems, was very strong and (comparatively) pretty good for a superpower.  Now we’re very bad and very weak, which seems like a inexplicably shitty tradeoff to me. 

This is what happens when you let Republicans govern.  Simple as that.  It can’t be much of surprise, though.  When a party’s central tenets all revolve around the impassioned rejection of the social contract, and most of the other basic tenets of the Enlightenment, it’s a little disingenuous to get the vapors when life gets a little medieval under their thumb.  They preach anarchy**, of course they’re going to try to practice it.  Safely in their SUVS and gated communities, mind you – while they leave our federal government stuck together with chicken wire and wishes.  Life is beginning to look more and more like a Paul Verhoven movie, but way less entertaining.  I myself like a little distance from dysotopia.   

Enough of my ranting.  Check out the pros.   

Keith Olbermann – the Jon Stewart of non-fake newcasting, gives his incendiary take, and a Parish president gets emotional over being abandoned. 

This is my personal favorite clip of the week – the Fox News reporters on the ground find their conscience swimming among the dead babies and raw sewage, and argue with their overlords about “perspective.”  Actually, that’s a good metaphor for America nowadays: dead babies floating in a river of shit.

Shithead racists come out of the woodwork and would rather play blame the ‘savages’ than conclude Jr. did anything wrong, ever.

**The pretentious altered quote in the title (after me, the flood) is
from Louis XV, who knew things would go to shit after his reign.  Bush
didn’t want to wait that long, I guess.

**and yes, little Randians - libertarianism breeds anarchy – ask any one of the countries who have tried “free market reforms” how long it took their country to devolve into lawlessness. 

    I was born and raised in Taylorsville, NC, and that’s currently where I’m staying until I move to NY.  Unfortunately,  Taylorsville is not a town.  Taylorsville is a Super Wal-Mart with a few Chinese restaurants in its orbit.  And kudzu, lots of kudzu.  So, if you want to do anything you have to go to Hickory.  Which is almost unbearably sad if you’ve ever set foot in Hickory.  Anyway, so I always go to this one Subway in Hickory while I’m there to get my requisite Tuna Wrap and eat it there so I don’t have to eat at the mall and witness the things that are at malls. Now, I like to read while I eat, but inexplicably, this Subway only has this gay-ass weekly called Sophie:For Ladies of All Ages as far as free reading materials go.  But despite the embarrassment of reading about teething tips in public, I soldier on because otherwise you might have to talk to or look at someone.

  So, there’s this article - TIPS for Talking to Your Kids about Alcohol.  I can’t really really represent the title accurately here b/c they used 10 different fonts for some reason.  And TIPS in all caps suggests an awful acronym that they (sadly) never deliver.  But I digress.  In one section, they talk about tailoring your message to the age of your child. Fair enough.  Here’s the quote though:
Your conversation shouldn’t be too old or too young for your child’s age.  Use words your child will understand.  For a 6 or 7 year old, talk to her while she is brushing her teeth.  You can say, "We do things like brushing our teeth to stay healthy.  But there are things we shouldn’t do that us like drinking alcohol." 
    What fucking retard wrote that?  You might as well say "Hey, Junior, check out this shiny, delicious, forbidden apple that just for adults.  Ok, now don’t ever touch it.  Mommy’s going to go set it on this shelf that’s just out of your reach.  Unless you like get a chair or something." 
    Then, to compound their crime, they offer this gem immediately after:
Repeat. Don’t give them the "alcohol chat" just once.  Repeating it over and over again is the best way to help your kids make good decisions about alcohol.
    So, not only do you blindside your child with this ham-handed segue about drinking while they’re  trying to brush their teeth - you do it again and again and again.  So, from an early age, you’re repeatedly making the connection that drinking alcohol is like the opposite of brushing your teeth.  And we know how much kids love brushing their teeth.   Follow that advice, and I guarantee that poor little fucker will be doing keg stands by the time he’s 10 years old.   
    If you really want to keep your kids from drinking, just let them have a drink.  There is nothing in the world more disgusting than alcohol to someone who’s never had it.  Liquor tastes like gasoline, and beer tastes like chilled piss.  It’s a testament to our innate desire to get fucked up that we keep drinking the stuff until it becomes palatable.  Exhibit Me:  When I was about 5, my parents were having a few friends over, and little Joseph had already been tucked into bed.  But being the curious rapscallion (and glutton for adult attention) that I was, there was nothing they could do to get me to sleep.  So, inevitably, I see a plastic cup and take a swig.  "Ewww, this Pepsi’s gone bad" I say, and proceed to wash my mouth out for 10 minutes while the adults laugh and laugh and laugh.  Later, they tell me it was Budweiser, and so now alcohol is linked in my little head to 1) almost incomprehensibly bad taste and 2) public humiliation.  Because of that, I didn’t start drinking until way too late at 16.  I still blame my parents for those unbearably dull and sober years of junior high. 

What the fuck?

I saw this bumper sticker on the way back from Hickory yesterday.  I love being back home.   

Walking by my brother Jordan’s bedroom today,  I hear my little sister Julie exclaim "Joseph still doesn’t like eggs!" and then uproarious laughter from the both of them.  What the crap?  I walk in, demanding an answer to this confusing mockery.  She shows me a "Baby’s First Seven Years" book that my parents kept of me.  Besides room for banal preferences like the above, it also contains gross memorabilia like my baby hair and one of the most predictive early utterances I’ve ever heard.  If you could look inside my brain now, and catalogue the single most uttered sentence to my inner self, this would have to be it. 

Baby’s First Sentence: "I Hate That."

Actually, I’m not sure if he could add anything to this.  It’s a near perfect circle of self-parodying genius.  If you have not seen the new R Kelly "urban opera" that is "Trapped in the Closet", you’re living only one third of the life you could be living.  With a press release comparing him to Beethoven (no joke), R has some pretty big shoes to fill.  And like the naughty wayward puppy he is, he fills those shoes with shit.  Five speak-singing, completely artless songs of shit.  Yes, for his first single, R releases a five-part melodramatic opus that tediously recounts one silly, sinful night in the life of the urine-obsessed superstar.  But if I can’t admire his craft, I have to admire his craftiness.  He has concocted a vaccine against satire by plugging every hole and filling every crack* with confusing mediocrity.  It really sounds like he dictated what actually happened to him the night before (with a couple cheesy embellishments) into his Sidekick on the way to the studio.  I mean, the improv songs on Whose Line Is It Anyway have more melody than this. 

But what could you expect from an album whose title (TP3 Reloaded) makes an oddly dated reference to both the Terminator and Matrix franchises for no good reason?  Why didn’t he just call it Yeah, Baby!, and be done with it?  While this artistic misstep isn’t as funny as Garth Brook’s Chris Gaines stunt, or as disappointing as Eminem’s last MJ-taunting album, it will still be surprising if Kelly can bounce back from this.  But then again, he did get away with urinating on the chest of a 14 year old girl on tape, so what the fuck do I know?

*Certainly, puns intended. 

Odd timing coming off both the Roe v. Wade and religion posts, but here’s a choice cut from a obscure Christian artist named Lil’ Markie off his self-titled debut/finale.  Utilizing a voice that is equal parts Grover, Alvin the Chipmunk, and Homesar, Diary of An Unborn Child will take you places you never knew you didn’t want to go.  The real fun begins around around 3:06 in.  Edifying/terrifying.
via showandtellmusic.com

I was thinking…..

Scientology and its beliefs are the new one stop shop for easy, lazy laughs.  I, of course, count myself in the party of the guilty.  And surely it deserves every moment of harsh ridicule it receives – and maybe even some serious legal and financial investigation by the government. So no, if you know me, you know I’m not going to ask for less derision – just a widening and redirection of the net. 

A cult, as it has often been pointed out, is sometimes just a church with insufficient financial holdings.* Case in point: could someone please tell me any way in which the beliefs of a devout Catholic are less laughable than those of a Scientologist?  Sure, dead aliens inhabiting our souls is a riot, but is the concept of transubstantiation** any less comically morbid?  “Shh….don’t tell anyone, but Jesus is hiding in this biscuit! Let’s hurry up and eat em b/f he gets away.  Also, say this gobbledygook while we do it.” Does anyone – seriously ANYONE – believe that crap when they’re in Communion? True, Scientology is more modern in its weirdness – hence the imagery of men in white lab coats that the name conjures up.  It’s innovatively idiotic, yes, but I don’t think objectively more stupid.  It’s just less dusty. 

Time, tradition, and popularity can give the most laughably lunatic ideas the sheen of respectability.  But longevity and popularity don’t automatically equal objective truth, and just as often as not, there is an inverse relationship.   Even more unnerving, the weight of convention gives them imperviousness to (deserved) criticism that results in a de-facto discrimination against the secular.  I have long said that we will have a black quadriplegic transvestite as president before we’ll ever see an avowed atheist take the oath.  Ignoring the retarded ramblings of conservative pundits who claim persecution of Christians in a country in which they hold a crushing majority, open secularism is the quickest way to obscurity in American life.  The new McCarthyism transcends politics, to the heart of your personal beliefs and genetics (I can’t figure out if liberals, atheists, or gays are the new Jews.  But the Nazis did have labels for them all). “Have you now or ever been an unbeliever?” will be the new litmus test of public life. 

Of course, I don’t believe we should have a free-for-all on believers.  Nor do I even pretend to have all the answers.  I stopped being an evangelic atheist a long time ago, and frankly, I’m a little offended sometimes at the smug dismissals of any kind of religious devotion I hear a lot in the artsy-fartsy circles I run in.  My girlfriend, soon to be wife, is going into seminary this year, and I think it’s a fantastic, admirable decision.*** But her type of faith is radically different from mainstream Christianity, and would probably be considered another heresy of its own if she freely expressed her tenets to most so-called Christians.  Her faith isn’t about exclusion, phony piety, or delusional supernaturalism.  It’s about using the revolutionarily altruistic teachings of Christ to combat the strong’s never-ending war on the weak.****

However……

I don’t see the use in maintaining embarrassingly antiquated notions of creation or godhood in a modern institution, unless they’re explicitly labeled as instructive myths or fables or what have you.  I think it’s dangerous, honestly.  I think when you allow primitive notions of magic and mysticism to rest alongside valuable and time-tested moral teachings, you’re asking for trouble.  Not to mention diluting the message of the institution.  Weakening the brand, in the popular consumerist vernacular.  When you allow those (really) secondary points in, the tendency is for them to dominate because they’re more viscerally appealing.  It becomes about escapism, back-patting, and getting your Puritan exclusionist jollies on – instead of the much more challenging morality of compassion and devotion that should be the bible’s primary message.  And then the disturbingly anachronistic aspects like burkas and the creationist war on the Enlightenment and gay people.  Etcetera, etcetera. 

Institutions have to grow or they die. Government has had to do it.  I’m sure most Republican congressmen would love to bring back the concept of the divine right of kings, but it ain’t coming back (yet).  We’ve evolved.  And if people who care about the church want to it become something other than the spiritual arm of the government, a serious dialogue is in order.  I think going to church, supposedly literally drinking the blood of Jesus, listening to the Sermon on the Mount, and then going to work the next day at a high-tech computer facility creates a dangerous cognitive dissonance.  Not to mention a false equivalence and unnecessary competition between truths that aren’t even trying to answer the same questions.  Time to evolve, people, as Hicks put it.  I’m not religious, but I know we might be fucked without it.  Every single major progressive movement grew out of the church, and liberalism has been hurting without it.  America and the church are both kind of a sad joke right now, but maybe saving one will help us save the other.  (I’d like to hear a Christian’s perspective on this, btw).   

*I know, there are real cults, like Jim Jones, Heaven’s Gate, et al.  But I was taught in Southern Baptist Sunday School that Jehovah’s Witness and the Mormon church were dangerous cults, too.  The word is used indiscriminately.  And yeah, Scientologists have been accused of kidnapping, brainwashing,etc.  But the head of their church never presided over a massive, decades long cover up of the rape of hundreds of little boys, did he?

**David Hume:  “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.”   In other words, everything humans ever witnessed with their senses is the evidence against miracles.  Damn.

*** That’s two instances in one week in which I’ve praised my girlfriend in my blog.  You are allowed to gag now.

****There are of course, some thinkers, Freud, Marx and Nietzsche chief among them, who say that religion is more of a tool of corrupt power than a antidote to it.  And given the history of the church, it’s hard to disagree.  But this is obviously an inevitable perversion of Jesus’s clear intent.  The latter two, in the manifestation of Stalinism and Nazism, got an ironic, posthumous taste of what it feels like to have your words perverted for horrific ends. 

Hope you ladies did everything you were going to do with your vaginas because the government will own them soon enough.  It’s going to get ugly.