Tengrain Brings All the Folks to My Yard

In addition to posting the picture of the hilarious beef-free spicy beef sandwich on this blog, I posted it on my Twitter feed, and forwarded it to Tengrain for his running bad signs series.  Tengrain, being a magnanimous sort, and an unfailing supporter of moi,  Tengrain retweeted me and started a campaign to nab me over 100 followers by day's end:

Gonna say it again: #ff Follow this man!

He’s smart and funny and sciencey! https://t.co/CPWHrYjRqw

— ✂️ 𝙏𝘦𝘯𝘨𝙧𝘢𝙞𝘯 🇺🇦 Wolverines! (@Tengrain) April 24, 2022

The current count stands at 121.  Thanks, Tengrain!  You've always been the Patron Saint of the Small Bloggers (even us big ones), and you've always shown me nothing but kindness... love ya, man!

A perusal of my followers list will reveal that there are a lot of members of this here bloggerhood, a lot of the Wonkette commentariat, a handful of meatspace friends, and people who have found me via comments on other threads.  My follower growth was organic, incremental, but Tenrain changed all that.  This morning, my count was 84 followers, today's gain was the 'Grain gain.  I promise to use my powers for good, by which I mean snark.

Make Mordor Great Again

One of my bloggy heroes is Tengrain, who I often refer to as the 'Patron Saint of Small Bloggers'. He's been a great supporter of not only myself, but of other denizens of this bloggerhood. I have to note a bit of not-at-all acrimonious disagreement with him regarding this post, a disagreement which stems from my disagreement with the Washington Monthly post to which he links... the author posits that Hillary Clinton's campaign failed to point to a villain, but I think that's bunk... the real problem is that a bunch of bigots decided that fellow victims, people much more marginalized than themselves, were the villains. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance involved in, for example, watching a bunch of Mexican immigrants laboring in a field and characterizing them as lazy moochers (a perennial calumny aimed at African-Americans who toiled without pay to enrich their masters since before this country existed), and there's a lot of cognitive dissonance involved in believing that a serial-prevaricator and kleptomaniac would do anything to stop the immiseration of the working and middle classes.

Tengrain comments on the post:


One of the great archetypes of literature and film is the little guy triumphing over evil. From David and Goliath to Frodo vs. Mordor, the best heroes are the everyday, average people, who find themselves in an extraordinary situation and somehow or other win.


The problem is that the Trump voters believed that Frodo is the villain, sneaking over the border of Mordor in order to commit terrorist acts against Barad-dûr and to put the Ringwraiths out of work by imposing burdensome regulations against Evil Sorcery. They voted for Sauron, and he’s going to Make Mordor Great Again.

Tengrain continues:


We on the left don’t tell stories, we recite facts. We believe (correctly) that the facts matter, but we don’t know how to give them context. So instead of telling a story, we implore our audience to listen to and study our earnest 200-slide Powerpoint presentation, and learn from their betters… and we end up wondering why we lost?


The problem here is that the stories, based on facts, are out there... We have facts about climate change, but the story is written in blood and wreckage in the 'reddest' region of the Heartland. We have facts about Obamacare, but the story is being written about the loss of benefits that accrued to impoverished Trump voters.

The problem with liberals 'telling stories' is that these stories, rooted in facts, cannot penetrate the bubble of epistemic closure (NY Times link, so ration those clicks). The potential audience for these stories has been pre-conditioned in their churches, their firing ranges, their right-wing media cocoon, to characterize any 'leftist' narratives as lies, facts to the contrary be damned. The typical Donald Trump voter could be hit over the head by a wind-borne Ford F-150 and still believe Dear Leader's lie about Anthropogenic Global Warming being a Chinese hoax.

I don't have any answers to this dilemma... I just don't know what sort of narratives could convince the typical Red State Trump voter. I am an uber-nerd who attends science lectures in a bar, I live in a neighborhood with a very high immigrant population, two of my dearest friends and mentors are Muslim men, I have friends and co-workers from a wide array of backgrounds, creeds, sexual orientations. There is no narrative I can communicate with a Trump loyalist which wouldn't be seen as suspect. I've spoken to these people, and they tend to reveal their true ugliness to me because I look a lot like the guy in my profile picture, and they tend to see me as simpatico.

Again, I wish to stress that I have nothing but love, respect, and admiration for Tengrain, but I just can't see this strategem working. Tragically, the aggrieved white bigots who supported Trump are going to have to hit rock bottom before they reconsider their support for a guy who is going to further immiserate them. Even more tragically, they are going to take the rest of us down with them, and I didn't sign up for a one-way trip down the caldera of Mt Doom.

I am Reminded: It's Blogroll Amnesty Day

ZRM's latest post reminds me that it is "Blogroll Amnesty Day", which I spaced out on last year, though I did celebrate it back in 2011 and I did put up a "blogroll update" post last March. ZRM gives a shoutout to Tengrain of Mock, Paper, Scissors, who is extraordinarily kind to the proprietors of small blogs- Tengrain linked to this post at Crooks and Liars. When I saw that I had over 500 hits, I immediately thought, "Tengrain was here." Thanks, old chum! I also have to thank the good folks at Rumproast who added me to their masthead.

Anyway, I know it's against the rules to claim that your own blog is small, so I'll keep my mouth shut about that. Now, I have to link to five other blogs that I have been digging:

I recently added Musings from Squirrel Cage to the blogroll so I could still get my regular hilarious "Canadian Domestic Comedy" fix- Squirrel E. Girl's post about the bedroom closet door being open was PURE COMEDY GOLD.

Biodiversity Revolution is headed by the Sadly No semi-regular "Just Alison", who also used the anagram "Snail Joust". I love the topic of Alison's blog and, importantly, it's the first Australian blog on my blogroll. Someday, I'd love to hang out in Ozzystoryalelyya with Ms. Alison, drinking lime spiders while listening to the Lime Spiders.

Vixen Strangely, who also blogs at Rumproast, is proprietress of Vixen Strangely Makes Uncommon Sense. Her byline used to be "A Small and Slackerish Political Blog" until some bastard called her on the "slackerish" part of the byline, which is now "A Small but Otherwise on Fire Political Blog". Now, it's time to work on the "small" part of her byline- seriously, check her blog out, her Climate Sunday posts make for some fine reading.

For No Odd Reason, bbkf's place, is also a sweet blog- a nice mix of domestic tales and political musings. I'd love to hear more takedowns of the editor of the local right-wing rag, as well- she does some hilarious trips to the "woodshed" with that dumbass in Sadly No comment threads.

The fifth entry is actually our old friend Vacuumslayer/Dr Kenneth Noisewater who decided to discontinue her long-form blog while starting the tumblr blogs General Armchair and 60 Percent Success Rate- first, she became a nut, now she became a hip young go-getter with her hot new social media platform. I'll update the blogroll to get her up-to-date material on the front page, I promise.

So... that's my blogroll update. I enjoy all of the blogs I've linked to, and exhort you to visit them regularly. In addition, I also exhort anybody reading this who isn't blogging to start a blog. It's a lot of fun, and the camaraderie is awesome. There's plenty of additional room on the blogroll, folks.

Yet Hannity Remains

Via Tengrain, who was invited by the man to be a contributor to Liberaland, Alan Colmes died at the all-too-young age of sixty-six. I primarily knew Mr Colmes through his role as the liberal foil to Sean Hannity on Fox' 'News' Hannity and Colmes.

Being the sole liberal on a Fox talking heads show, Mr Colmes often came across as a punching bag, especially paired with a shouty blockhead like Hannity. He was a quiet, calm presence, trying to use reason and facts to promulgate his point of view. The problem was that Americans, despite what platitudes they mouth, tend to side with the bullies. Sure, Mr Colmes came across as a punching bag, but that made Hannity, and the other nutjobs the punchers. Mr Colmes' one failing was precisely his virtue- he brought his brain to a fistfight.

After leaving Fox, Mr Colmes had other media gigs, in which he always came across as a smart, compassionate guy, but I mainly know his oeuvre from his 'Liberaland' site, and a guy who would go out of his way to hire Tengrain is alright with me. Someday, we may value the thinkers over the punchers, but I'm not holding my breath... we put a puncher in the White House. It's just a tragedy that Alan won't be around to participate in the resistance.

Here is a clip of Mr Colmes doing a stand-up routine back in the 1980s:





Back then I bet this stand-up comic didn't know he'd be working with a clown one day.

Yet Another Bastard Favorite Has Exited Stage Left

 I learned of Cloris Leachman's passing, at the age of 94, via Tengrain.  Tengrain noted that Ms Leachman's knack for comedy was flawless.  I mean, who could beat this timing?

My favorite Cloris Leachman role is her amazing performance as Christina in the 1955 noir classic Kiss Me Deadly, which, if pressed, I would claim as my favorite movie.  The movie opens with Cloris, barefoot and clad only in an overcoat, using a desperate gambit to stop a motorist, the movie's protagonist:

 

While her screentime is relatively brief, Cloris Leachman's performance exudes charm and wit, contrasting well with Ralph Meeker's laconic, somewhat brutish Mike Hammer.  The dialogue is fantastic, and her delivery is perfect:

Christina: You're angry with me, aren't you? Sorry I nearly wrecked your pretty little car. I was just thinking how much you can tell about a person from such simple things. Your car, for instance.
Hammer: Now, what kind of a message does it send ya?
Christina: You have only one real lasting love.
Hammer: Now who could that be?
Christina: You. You're one of those self-indulgent males who thinks about nothing but his clothes, his car, himself. Bet you do push-ups every morning just to keep your belly hard.
Hammer: You against good health or somethin'?
Christina: I could tolerate flabby muscles in a man who may be more friendly. You're the kind of a person who never gives in a relationship - who only takes. (Sardonically) Ah, woman, the incomplete sex. And what does she need to complete her? (Mocking) Why, man, of course. A wonderful man.

She steals the scene that she's in, using the same chops which made her such an effective comedic actor.  Her charismatic performance makes her (no spoiler warning needed, this is a noir, after all) Very Bad End at the hands of Very Bad Men all the more upsetting. 

Cloris Leachman's body of work is vast, spanning decades, with diverse roles, so I know how I'm going to pass some of my downtime this weekend.  Her turn in Kiss Me Deadly was her first major role, and while not as iconic as her turn playing Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein or Phyllis Lindstrom in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, it was a harbinger of things to come.  It's a performance that I can watch repeatedly, and I shall.

The Day is Afoot!

 Via Tengrain and By Hook or by Book, I learned that today was international Sherlock Holmes Day, celebrated on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday.  We grew up with the collected Sherlock Holmes on one of the numerous bookshelves in the family home, and what a companion he's been- with his scientific approach to crime, his brilliant analytic mind, and his command of Bartitsu, Holmes never failed to supply a bit of mystery and derring-do, all wrapped up in a relatively quick read.  Also, Watson's constant ejaculations were hilarious to a young me... if only Sir Arthur Conan Doyle could have known how the language would change.

Tengrain's post mentioned that, while the original Holmes stories are in the public domain, the character of Sherlock Holmes is still privately owned, necessitating permission to use.  In the meantime, I've taken great pleasure in stories of the master detective battling cocaine addiction with Freud, matching wits with Dracula, and contending with Lovecraftian horrors.  I've read pastiches in which a Holmes expy (WARNING: TV Tropes link, major time sink) solved crimes in a sorcery-infused alternate reality, and in which Holmes was on the trail of a Jack the Ripper and his dog.  I discovered with great pleasure that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has written Holmes-related novels.

Holmes and Watson are enduring characters, starring in stories which can be read as a light diversion in a single sitting, stories in which the readers are constantly amazed by the means in which the great detective deduces the solution to the crime.  I think it's the relative brevity of the stories which has led to their longevity and ubiquity- they are a perfect intellectual snack, and once started, the entire anthology is read, in the same fashion that nobody intends to eat an entire bag of potato chips.  I think I may have to revisit a Holmes original or two in the quiet watches of the night... with any luck, there will be some fog rolling in off the Hudson to provide the proper mood.

It's Always Been a MAGA Plague

Via Tengrain, we have a recap of Donald Trump's career as a COVID superspreader, including the shocking, but not surprising, revelation that Trump tested positive for the 'rona just days before his first debate with Joe Biden.  If you can't beat your opponent in the debate, or the campaign, use a biological weapon against him...

Tengrain's post details the superspreader events from September on, which infected members of Trump's inner circle as well as the rubes.  In one particularly pathetic case, Chris Christie probably contracted COVID from Trump while helping him with debate prep.

The real issue is that COVID-19 was always a MAGA plague.  The first COVID superspreader event was the 2020 CPAC conference, which resulted in the containment-and-quarantine of my beloved city of New Rochelle, NY.  It's still a MAGA plague, and MAGA politicians are determined to keep it that way.

Not a Christmas Present Anybody Would Want

 Via Tengrain, we have the disconcerting tale of Christmas travel during this plague year.  It's possible that the recent spike in COVID-19 cases resulted from Thanksgiving travel, so an uptick in travel mere weeks before a major vaccine rollout seems ill-advised.  In speaking with my mother, I put it this way, "Hold out for Easter."  Giving the 'rona as a Christmas present just when there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel seems ghoulish, a wicked twist out of a 'Twilight Zone' episode, albeit a stupid one.

 Tengrain, being a snarky fellow, put it in snarky terms, the only appropriate terms for this tragifarcical age we live in: Gonna make “Grandma Got Run-Over By A Reindeer” look like a matinee as the nation’s MeMaws all keel over dead by new years eve.

 The appropriate response is, you got it, snarky:

 

Grandma got infected by the 'rona,

At the family dinner Christmas Eve

Cousin Rudy don't believe in masking,

And wipes his goddamn boogers on his sleeve.

 

These people really deserve to get coal in their stockings.   Can't they defer their gratification by a mere three or four months?

Steyn on Western Civilization

Tengrain is a national treasure, one of those guys who reads the right-wing's bloviations so you don't have to subject yourself to them. Recently, he covered statements by Canada's most toxic export (Alberta bitumen is a distant second), Mark Steyn, made in response to the Paris terrorist attacks. Please read all of Tengrain's excerpt of Steyn... I'm just going to touch on one paragraph:


“…But that’s not true, is it? He’s right that it’s an attack not just on Paris or France. What it is is an attack on the west, on the civilization that built the modern world – an attack on one portion of “humanity” by those who claim to speak for another portion of “humanity”. And these are not “universal values” but values that spring from a relatively narrow segment of humanity. They were kinda sorta “universal” when the great powers were willing to enforce them around the world and the colonial subjects of ramshackle backwaters such as Aden, Sudan and the North-West Frontier Province were at least obliged to pay lip service to them. But the European empires retreated from the world, and those “universal values” are utterly alien to large parts of the map today."


The problem with Steyn's characterization of Western Civilization is that it distorts the West's interaction with the developing world. To put it mildly, the Great Powers of Europe did not export the benefits of Western Civilization to Africa, Asia, and the Americas, they looted their colonies and used divide-and-conquer to keep their subjects under their heels. To the colonizers and the mercantilists, the colonies were a source of natural resources and cheap labor. Rather than trading with the natives as equals, the 'men of the West' used force of arms to subjugate and enslave populations, propping up and arming local strongmen who would facilitate wholesale theft. Put succinctly, Western Civilization failed to live up to its noblest ideals. Even those philosopher-heroes who espoused the loftiest sentiments tended not to live by them. The "universal values" Steyn mentions only applied to white males of the gentry. The implementation of the freedoms birthed by the Enlightenment really only took place in the early 20th Century, when women's suffrage was granted, and their benefits didn't accrue to various minorities until the 1960s. The real relationship between Western Civilization and the colonies is perhaps best summed up by a cartoon by William H. Walker in the March 1899 edition of Life magazine

Western Civilization's interaction with the developing world in the 20th century continued in the same old oppressive fashion- the inhabitants of the Third World were largely seen as inconvenient squatters on natural resources, or convenient cannon fodder in proxy wars. Even post-World War 2, the 'West' preferred to topple nascent democracies and to install dictators in order to steal petroleum, to undermine left-leaning governments, to crush independence movements in former colonies. Our current problems with Islamic fundamentalist terrorists stem from the use of Islamist radicals as proxies in the Cold War and the U.S. government's continued support for an autocratic regime that has been exporting fundamentalist Sunni Islam, combined with an early 20th century divide-and-conquer policy in the Middle East. An even more grievous lapse was the failure of the U.S. to give economic aid to the Afghans after they expelled the Russian army... we once treated our enemies better than we now treat our allies.

The benefits of Western Civilization simply did not accrue in "ramshackle backwaters such as Aden, Sudan and the North-West Frontier Province". The 'West' could have engaged with the world in a generous fashion, establishing democratic societies instead of kleptocracies. Instead, centuries of colonialism have resulted in decades of blowback. Even more perniciously, the colonizer's mentality has come back to haunt the citizens of Western countries, with declining wages, higher mortality rates, and substandard infrastructure. Perhaps the most glaring example of the contempt that our elites hold for democracy was the naked dictatorial yearning by the guy who acted as ISIS' midwife:





There's a Steyn stain on Western Civilization, and that stain is hypocrisy- a yawning gulf between noble ideals and base policies, a sustained, systemic failure of Western Civilization to act in civilized fashion. At its best, Western Civilization, with its pluralism, secularism, and concern for minority rights, holds the greatest promise of a happy, healthy society... we of the West should try it sometime. Maybe that would result in a world in which terrorist movements gain no traction.

Tonio K. summed up the thesis of this post in 4:11:





To return to a serious note, interrobang has a couple of great posts

It's About Time, America!

As Joe Biden would put it, today's ruling by the Supreme Court is a Big Deal... namely, same-sex marriage is legal in all fifty states. Finally, our gay friends can get married without fearing legal problems if they relocate or travel. Congratulations, folks, you won a shot at equal treatment under the law, bigots get stuffed.

Predictably, the right-wing has had conniption fits over the ruling, as Roy and Tengrain have documented. Sorry, people, but cessation of your ability to impose your dogma on others is not oppression, so stop playing martyrs. It's comical to see the hyperbole and hyperventilation with which they have greeted this decision, Linda Harvey having one of the funniest lines:


“We need an Emancipation Proclamation now to free America from the tyranny of sodomy.”

In this case, I think she means an Eman-on-mancipation Proclamation, but I'd venture to say that, given the definition of sodomy, the average person is perfectly okay with the "tyranny of sodomy".

Of course, the craziest reaction to this ruling comes from the insane Bryan Fischer... once again, Tengrain is on the case. Here's Fischer himself, being completely insane and offensive:





Yeah, Bryan, keep on fantasizing about towers, ya perv, real people were killed that day, some of whom I knew, so you can get bent. Nobody's oppressing you, it's just your warped moral sense that's torturing you.

Meanwhile, on planet Earth, real people will have real protection. When same-sex marriage was legalized in New Jersey, a friend of mine, one of the nicest and most generous individuals I know, was able to marry his partner of thirty-four years. He and his husband are not getting any younger, and now they are protected under the law if they have to make hard decisions regarding healthcare. This is what the same-sex marriage debate is really about, it's not about baking stupid cakes, or as Roy reported NRO's David French writing, licentiousness:

This is the era of sexual liberty — the marriage of hedonism to meaning — and the establishment of a new civic religion. The black-robed priesthood has spoken. Will the church bow before their new masters?

The righties are the ones couching this in terms of hedonism and sodomy. The people whose marriages are now legal nationwide are thinking in terms of commitment and responsibility.

As Tengrain Would Put It, a Palate Cleanser

It's been a pretty heavy news cycle for the last... uh... two years or so. I figure that it's time for, as Tengrain would put it, a palate cleanser. It's a grey, rainy day here in the NYC metro area, so I figured I'd post something fun, with a bit of a faux-tropical vibe. I make no bones about being a big Kraftwerk fan, so I was tickled pink by a comment at Roy's place which embedded a cumbia take on Trans Europe Express by German composer/arranger Uwe Schmidt recording as Señor Coconut:





There is a whole album's worth of Kraftwerk covers by Señor Coconut, and Homecomputer seems particularly well suited to afro-latino percussion:





It also has a nice Juan García Esquivel-esque space age bachelor pad vibe to it (which I am not the first to notice)... now I am pining for a Krafwerk/Esquivel collaboration that never was, further proof that we are living in the wrong timeline. Oh, dear, looks like I muffed the palate cleanser.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Over at Tengrain's place, the Patron Saint of Small Bloggers posed a hilarious challenge- come up with a suitably Shakespearean spoof to describe the current shitshow. The results in his comments were pure comedy gold. While I am on record stating that Shakespeare's Macbeth was an egregious hit piece, I will grudgingly admit that it is one damn fine play. Therefore, here is an expanded take on Tengrain's joke challenge, spoofing the infamous dagger scene in Macbeth Act 2, Scene 1:


Is this a smartphone which I see before me,
The keypad toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A smartphone of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on thy screen and buttons tweets of bile,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Vladimir's offerings, and wither'd treason,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.
With Twitter's ravening screeds, towards his design
Haunts like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set bowl,
Hear not my tweets, which way they wend, for fear
Thy very tiles prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I tweet, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Mueller; for it is a tweet
That summons thee to vict'ry or defeat.


Now hurry up Mueller and bring Birnam Wood to Pennsylvania Avenue!

Failing Upward

Via Tengrain, we find that former North Carolina governor Pat McCrory, the architect of the odious Show Us Your Poopers Law is to be summoned to Trump Tower, perhaps to audition for a position in the Trump Kleptadministration. Tengrain asks what position McCrory might fill in Trump's regime...

I think he's going to head the Office of Inspector Genital.

A Horror Show for the Ages

Watching the footage of Irma hitting Florida is riveting- it's not every day when you get to see an entire state disappear from the map:

The videos of downtown Miami are chilling:





How much of a future does Miami really have, this low-lying coastal city in a storm-prone region? I am reminded of J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World. Tengrain is exhorting Florida's Rick Scott to seek high ground, but I know he lives on a mountain. Tengrain also mentions Donald Trump's weird assertion that the Coast Guard is improving its 'brand'... I never knew that this branch of our military has a 'brand'. We'll see how FEMA's brand fares in the aftermath of the storm when the cameras are elsewhere.

Speaking of cameras, Irma's got to be good for the television ratings... on the heels of Harvey, this is bound to be the best television season EVER. Stay tuned, you never know how things is going to turn out.

As Tengrain Would Put It, a Palate Cleanser

After a week of really bad news, I figured I needed to post what Tengrain would call a palate cleanser. I listen to a lot of college and public radio, and even the local commercial station I listen to has a nice 'indie' vibe. One band that's been getting quite a bit of buzz is Sydney's Middle Kids. These... uh... kids from the drouthy Antipodes are really amazing- their rhythm section is muscular and frontwoman Hannah Joy deploys jangly guitar and gorgeous, rich vocals in a killer combination. I am totally enamored of the band's second single, Your Love:





I've been a big fan of Australia's independent musical scene since my days of listening to Midnight Oil, the Hoodoo Gurus, and the Celibate Rifles. That being said, the Middle Kids are keeping up a grand tradition, and I look forward to hearing much, much more from them in the future.

When things are terrible, we need good art more than ever.

Blogroll Amnesty Day 2016

Tengrain, the patron saint of small bloggers, reminds us that today is Blogroll Amnesty Day, the day for promoting other blogs according to three rules:


1. You are not allowed to complain or mention your blog’s low traffic until you have been posting daily for a year.

2.If you’re little, link other blogs that are new or still growing their audience, and encourage them to practice their craft daily.

3. Then, show them how.


Regarding the first rule, I have to wonder if one can complain if one has put up 24 posts in 24 hours... I can't complain about low traffic at any rate, I passed the one million hit mark last November, thanks to your readership and your linkage. I can't express my gratitude enough, you've always been the best.

As far as the blogs I'm going to link to, here goes nothing...

Buddy McCue's place showcases the man's art, which deserves a good look. The man is a true gentleman with a keen wit, please check him out.

Paleotectonics mixes righteous rage and side-splitting humor, with copious doses of nerdery and traditional Midwestern values. He's exactly what the Heartland should be- a take no shit attitude, walleye fishing, and Dr Who references aplenty.

Also in the Heartland, zombie rotten mcdonald is another righteously angry Wisconsinite whose eclectic musical tastes take a backseat to no one's... ZRM and Paleo represent the original Heartland values, not the 'I got mine, screw you' values promulgated by the Scott Walkers and Rick Snyders dicking up 'flyover country' and making it into a place that people really want to fly over, or flee from.

Aunt Snow's blog is the perfect cure for Beauty Deficit Disorder- she was a great chronicler of the sheer gorgeousness of the greater L.A. area, now she's doing the same for the NO LA area. Aunt Snow lives beautifully, and she shares the beauty of her existence with her lucky readers.

Nasreen Iqbal's blog is the newest blog on my blogroll, a wonderful mix of the personal and the political. Nasreen is another individual whose musical taste I find interesting. One of these days, I'm going to hang out with Nasreen and ZRM and we're going to geek out for hours on music.

I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Tengrain for his unfailing support throughout my blogging endeavor. Also, I don't know if I would have gotten this thing off the ground if it hadn't of been for the early support from Thunder, mikey, Kiwi and Smut, Johnny Pez, and M. Bouffant. If there's such a thing as 'Blog Amnesty', these are the bloggers who showed it to me when I was just beginning.

As I Wrote Before, As Tengrain Would Put It, a Palate Cleanser

Last year, during a bad news week, I put up what Tengrain would call a 'palate cleanser', a video by a great Australian band called Middle Kids. Joyfully, the band finally released their eagerly awaited first full-length album, and the first single is fantastic:





Like I always say, good art makes bad times bearable.

Fabulous Job, Jersey!

New Jersey decided to join the 21st Century today, although Baron Harkonnen in Trenton threatens to veto the bill, thereby putting the "big" in bigotry.

If Chris Christie goes ahead and vetoes the marriage equality act, then I say all bets are off, we should send a Takei/Tengrain tagteam (note to readers... no Takei/Tengrain slashfic, now!) to snark Christie's ass back to the goddamn Stone Age, from which he derives his bigoted "morality".

Congratulations, New Jerseyites! You did the right thing.

CORRECTION: The New Jersey senate passed the marriage equality bill- as of the writing, the bill had yet to go through the assembly. It's not awaiting Chris Christie's veto pen yet. Sorry about the screw-up... pay no attention to the man behind the cretin.

Hastert the Unspeakable

Tengrain has been working the Hastert scandal beat, which has morphed from an indictment for lying to the FBI about suspicious cash withdrawals to a full-blown sexual scandal involving at least one schoolboy. Tengrain notes a particular irony about Hastert's indictment:


Essentially it sounds like Hastert was being blackmailed by Person A (and the indictment uses the masculine pronoun) and was paying him off in multiple payments to avoid detection (“structuring,” which ironically is a War on Drugs requirement to track large cash withdrawals and deposits enacted during the Bush Years when he was Speaker of the House) and of course, lying to the Feds about it, too.


Looks like Hastert was hoist on his own pedotard.

It's been a crazy week for Conservative sex scandals, from the Josh Duggar diddling scandal to this current hastertion. Is it any wonder that teens are fleeing religion like alert Duggar girls flee Josh? In the face of this embarrassing implosion, certain righties are trying to build an unconvincing "both sides are equally bad narrative by dredging up an article that Sanders wrote for a Vermont publication in 1972. The shocking statement from Bernie back in the post hippie-era hangover?


A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.

A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously.

The man and woman get dressed up on Sunday — and go to Church, or maybe to their "revolutionary" political meeting.

Have you ever looked at Stag, Man, Hero, Tough magazines on the shelf at your local bookstore? Do you know why newspapers with the articles like "Girl 12 raped by 14 men" sell so well? To what in us are they appealing?

A simple Google search should be enough to demonstrate that Bernie was exactly right about the sexual fantasies of some people, and as long as it's all done in a consensual fashion, with respect for limits and personal safety, it's all good. Hell, the kinks Bernie described were pretty pedestrian compared to stuff like vore and furry sexuality. Besides, Bernie was not approving of this kink:


Women, for their own preservation, are trying to pull themselves together. And it's necessary for all of humanity that they do so. Slavishness on one hand breeds pigness on the other hand. Pigness on one hand breeds slavishness on the other. Men and women — both are losers. Women adapt themselves to fill the needs of men, and men adapt themselves to fill the needs of women. In the beginning there were strong men who killed the animals and brought home the food — and the dependent women who cooked it. No More! Only the roles remain — waiting to be shaken off. There are no "human" oppressors. Oppressors have lost their humanity. On one hand "slavishness," on the other hand "pigness." Six of one, half dozen of the other. Who wins?


This reads like something which wouldn't be out of place in the Meese Report, so what's the fuss? At any rate, trying to kickstart a false scandal involving something Bernie wrote shortly before the future Speaker did something unspeakable is insincere and unconvincing. Simply put, Bernie was a bit of an alarmist, but Hastert was a monster.

Post title references this. For some extra Erol Otus-y goodness, there's always this lovely rendition- which happens to be a lot less creepy than Denny.

Hmmmm... This Seems a Little Weird...

So... yesterday I put up a fairly perfunctory post, then decide to check my stats, and I find that Thursday's post had more than one thousand hits:


The Beauty Industrial Complex and the War on Women...
Dec 6, 2012, 18 comments
1223

WHA??!?!?!!?!? I knew something was up! Previously, I've only had two posts that broke the 1000 hits mark: my Frank Frazetta memorial seen mainly by horndogs who want to see dynamically-executed paintings of women with huge badonkadonks, and my overview of the female titans of SF&F and "gaming" culture (first person who claims Margaret St Clair was a "novelty girl" gets a men's 12 EEEE up their patootie). Something was going on, something catapulted Thursday's post to the number two spot...

I have to take this opportunity to thank all-around responsible netizen and GOOD GUY Tengrain for including me in this week's Crooks and Liars blog roundup. Wow, I feel like a little kid who received a pat on the head and an accolade from a friendly giant. Thanks to Tengrain and to the Crooks and Liars team for deigning to notice my little corner of the t00bz. I'm really grateful.