If I told you that one of the major candidates in the 2008 Presidential elections has a fiery, insensitive, politically unstable miscreant preacher in his closet, would you think of John Hagee?
No, Reverend Wright hasn't changed his name any time recently. I'm talking about John McCain's pastor, who's disturbingly almost a mirror image of Wright - where Wright says inflammatory, silly things about America, Hagee says inflammatory and silly things about Catholicism and Islam.
Don't ask me why the press has almost completely forgotten to mention this schmuck. I'm sure it has nothing to do with any kind of wrongdoing or unethical journalism, and has everything to do with Obama just being more newsworthy.
Speaking of John McCain, watch the poor old bastard in this video. Listen to that nervous laughter! This guy just isn't cut out to be a filthy liar, and it's depressing to watch him try.
12 May 2008
06 May 2008
What Will We Do for Food?
I'm always shooting in the dark, but I'd have just as much luck in broad daylight.
Maybe this will be it: "We always take the good things for granted."
Generally, after a shot like that, I take for granted that the target's been hit. I had a hard time learning the difference between "You'll know when" and "You'll decide when," and so now I don't know anything. Maybe.
Maybe we'd have the warmth we only read about if we told each other the nastiest bits from the bottoms of our hearts. "We love the winter, it brings us closer together," said the Manic Street Preachers...but honestly, passion is just weird.
Not sarcasm. It is weird, and I'm creeping myself out.
All that aside, there's always something to do. Take some Jedi wisdom and don't trust your feelings, if you feel otherwise. In Watchmen, Rorschach was heroic. He may have been an inhumane foaming-at-the-mouth reactionary pig, but he would have noticed the neglected cat I failed to, and started helping it.
All the time I spend feeling bad about the world, I could have been cutting matted fur on a cat.
Sometimes, you just have to...
You just have to...
You have to not include the parenthetical dig at Nike, or some pun on the slogan. You really have to just do it.
Maybe this will be it: "We always take the good things for granted."
Generally, after a shot like that, I take for granted that the target's been hit. I had a hard time learning the difference between "You'll know when" and "You'll decide when," and so now I don't know anything. Maybe.
Maybe we'd have the warmth we only read about if we told each other the nastiest bits from the bottoms of our hearts. "We love the winter, it brings us closer together," said the Manic Street Preachers...but honestly, passion is just weird.
Not sarcasm. It is weird, and I'm creeping myself out.
All that aside, there's always something to do. Take some Jedi wisdom and don't trust your feelings, if you feel otherwise. In Watchmen, Rorschach was heroic. He may have been an inhumane foaming-at-the-mouth reactionary pig, but he would have noticed the neglected cat I failed to, and started helping it.
All the time I spend feeling bad about the world, I could have been cutting matted fur on a cat.
Sometimes, you just have to...
You just have to...
You have to not include the parenthetical dig at Nike, or some pun on the slogan. You really have to just do it.
04 May 2008
Purposeful Assumptions
To age is to see magical barriers disintegrate before your very eyes. The unending genius and mystery of the world's artists become revealed, surprisingly finding limits and becoming flat.
The mystery I'm not so sure about.
I'M EMBARRASSED
What's the difference between a creator and a critic?
Maybe it's just me, and wouldn't that be embarrassing, but I wonder if every creator isn't just someone who pulls things out of their ass, criticizes it, and publishes the stuff that (by happy coincidence) could be mistaken for meaningful art.
Or meaningful whatever-it-is, since not everything created is art. And before I start walking down the severely abused highway of ambiguity, I'm going to change the subject to pointlessness, which frankly I just don't talk about enough.
AS PROMISED: POINTLESSNESS
I'm pretty sure I spent this entire morning reading the vaunted tome of everything that's good in comic books, and all it said was "Life sucks, life sucks, life sucks!" I'm being unfair; Watchmen is everything it was cracked up to be, but I can't shake the notion that Alan Moore is just abusing nihilism as a cheap trick to be "deep." I mean, he pretty much admits it. One of the characters in Watchmen recalls this advice about writing: "Start off with the saddest thing you can think of and get the audience's sympathies on your side. After that, believe me, it's a walk."
BACK ON TRACK
So I guess some people are philosophically opposed to covers. I'm not so sure they've got it right. Nothing opens your eyes like a cover - even outside of music, penning quoted words forces you to "write" with a different rhythm and diction and all of that. It's not the same as seeing the world through someone else's eyes (which might be impossible, depending on how you spin it), but it's close enough to be artistically valuable. The act of stepping into someone else's artistic shoes doesn't have to be anti-creative, detrimental to culture, or unoriginal.
Yes, new music is good, but covers really are new music. If we can't find value in anything that's old, we're seriously up shit's creek. Life's too short, but it's also too long to be rushing around desperately trying to find new experiences - or, to highlight the oxymoron in this thinking, trying to find the same new experience that you enjoyed before. The euphoria of the fresh sound just isn't going to be around 24/7, no matter what you do.
STUPID WORDS
I don't get it when people complain about academic writing being too hifalutin, long-winded, or involving too many big words. Big words allow the writer to be more precise, which takes up less space, not more. I genuinely think this just the same as other anti-intellectual sentiment: a transparent rationalization by people who think they're somehow going to be lesser human beings if they say so much as "I don't get it." Not that I'm innocent of that kind of thing, mind you. Sometimes we're all like the boys from Southpark, pretending to know what "queef" means for the cool kids from New York.
The mystery I'm not so sure about.
I'M EMBARRASSED
What's the difference between a creator and a critic?
Maybe it's just me, and wouldn't that be embarrassing, but I wonder if every creator isn't just someone who pulls things out of their ass, criticizes it, and publishes the stuff that (by happy coincidence) could be mistaken for meaningful art.
Or meaningful whatever-it-is, since not everything created is art. And before I start walking down the severely abused highway of ambiguity, I'm going to change the subject to pointlessness, which frankly I just don't talk about enough.
AS PROMISED: POINTLESSNESS
I'm pretty sure I spent this entire morning reading the vaunted tome of everything that's good in comic books, and all it said was "Life sucks, life sucks, life sucks!" I'm being unfair; Watchmen is everything it was cracked up to be, but I can't shake the notion that Alan Moore is just abusing nihilism as a cheap trick to be "deep." I mean, he pretty much admits it. One of the characters in Watchmen recalls this advice about writing: "Start off with the saddest thing you can think of and get the audience's sympathies on your side. After that, believe me, it's a walk."
BACK ON TRACK
So I guess some people are philosophically opposed to covers. I'm not so sure they've got it right. Nothing opens your eyes like a cover - even outside of music, penning quoted words forces you to "write" with a different rhythm and diction and all of that. It's not the same as seeing the world through someone else's eyes (which might be impossible, depending on how you spin it), but it's close enough to be artistically valuable. The act of stepping into someone else's artistic shoes doesn't have to be anti-creative, detrimental to culture, or unoriginal.
Yes, new music is good, but covers really are new music. If we can't find value in anything that's old, we're seriously up shit's creek. Life's too short, but it's also too long to be rushing around desperately trying to find new experiences - or, to highlight the oxymoron in this thinking, trying to find the same new experience that you enjoyed before. The euphoria of the fresh sound just isn't going to be around 24/7, no matter what you do.
STUPID WORDS
I don't get it when people complain about academic writing being too hifalutin, long-winded, or involving too many big words. Big words allow the writer to be more precise, which takes up less space, not more. I genuinely think this just the same as other anti-intellectual sentiment: a transparent rationalization by people who think they're somehow going to be lesser human beings if they say so much as "I don't get it." Not that I'm innocent of that kind of thing, mind you. Sometimes we're all like the boys from Southpark, pretending to know what "queef" means for the cool kids from New York.
03 May 2008
Patience
Now Serving More Vitriol
If you think philosophy is bunk, you're crazy.
A strong worldview is as unique as a fingerprint, unfortunately. That's why tolerance isn't just a buzzword - it's a human social skill that we've depended upon for centuries to avoid tearing apart the fabric of civilization.
And tolerance is fucking hard. Here's an example.
That story might not be specifically about tolerance, but my point is that I would have a hard time tolerating the company of anyone who thinks that woman deserves jail. "Disagreement" sounds like such a civil word, but we disagree about ethical questions. Ethics are about good and evil. I can't stand to be around people who express, for lack of a better word, evil opinions.
Well, doesn't that just ring our free-speech alarms! But yes, there are evil opinions. If you don't like it, you can go respectfully disagree with me.
If you believe that homosexuals shouldn't marry, for example, you harbor an evil opinion. (I'm talking about objective truth, here: "evil" is a characteristic of that opinion, just as plain as an apple is red and an hour has sixty minutes.) And I don't want to hear any bullshit about subjectivity. I'm about as willing to believe that "gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry" as I'm willing to believe "the sun won't rise tomorrow." If someone tells you otherwise, they're not "expressing an opinion," they're fucking lying.
The same isn't true of every political dispute, but it is for many. Susan Lefevre, subject of the story I linked above, has become one such dispute. If I were so much as polite to the douchebags who think she should go to jail, I would be dishonest - but I'm usually polite anyway (in person, at least). And that's tolerance at work, ultimately in some ways a benevolent dishonesty, allowing me to function in society without getting myself into fisticuffs and probably jail.
If you think philosophy is bunk, you're crazy.
A strong worldview is as unique as a fingerprint, unfortunately. That's why tolerance isn't just a buzzword - it's a human social skill that we've depended upon for centuries to avoid tearing apart the fabric of civilization.
And tolerance is fucking hard. Here's an example.
That story might not be specifically about tolerance, but my point is that I would have a hard time tolerating the company of anyone who thinks that woman deserves jail. "Disagreement" sounds like such a civil word, but we disagree about ethical questions. Ethics are about good and evil. I can't stand to be around people who express, for lack of a better word, evil opinions.
Well, doesn't that just ring our free-speech alarms! But yes, there are evil opinions. If you don't like it, you can go respectfully disagree with me.
If you believe that homosexuals shouldn't marry, for example, you harbor an evil opinion. (I'm talking about objective truth, here: "evil" is a characteristic of that opinion, just as plain as an apple is red and an hour has sixty minutes.) And I don't want to hear any bullshit about subjectivity. I'm about as willing to believe that "gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry" as I'm willing to believe "the sun won't rise tomorrow." If someone tells you otherwise, they're not "expressing an opinion," they're fucking lying.
The same isn't true of every political dispute, but it is for many. Susan Lefevre, subject of the story I linked above, has become one such dispute. If I were so much as polite to the douchebags who think she should go to jail, I would be dishonest - but I'm usually polite anyway (in person, at least). And that's tolerance at work, ultimately in some ways a benevolent dishonesty, allowing me to function in society without getting myself into fisticuffs and probably jail.
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