A shortened post this week, the blizzard 2010 is wreaking havoc on my internet. Currently wreaking havoc on my heart- Zooey Deschanel. Her character from season 2 of Weeds where she plays a crazy girl really stirred my pot if you know what I mean. It got me aroused. I was not sure if you were getting it.
From New York Magazine an interview with Nick Offerman (of Parks & Recreation) and Megan Mullally. Parks & Rec is one of the few reasons I turn the channel to NBC anymore. [New York Magazine]
Dan Le Betard of the Miami Herald wrote an interesting piece recently about tagging along with Bryant McKinnie for a night. He was the NFL Pro-Bowler from the Vikings who got kicked off of the team this year. [Miami Herald]
7 Obama quotes. And people made fun of President Bush. [Campaign for Liberty]
I am pumped about this new Sage Francis album coming out in May and that is a big deal because I am old enough now where I am no longer keeping up with "hot new bands" and discovering new music. The last "new music" I discovered was Unknown Hinson, and I only found him because of Squidbillies. No, I am at the age where I am content mostly to listen to music I already know. That is how I know I am freaking old. Every once in a while there will be some new hipster band on Saturday Night Live or what used to be Conan O'Brien's show, and none of it appeals to me. I am just crotchety, I guess. I will just roll with the music I have now.
Sage Francis represents a rare thing, a rare thing I can not really do a good job explaining except he is a great artist. He has been rapping since an early age, won the freestyle battle at Scribble Jam, made one of the most hauntingly personal albums I have heard in my life in Personal Journals, changes and grows while still being true to hip hop each album, and now he is doing a concept album with indie rockers. I left a lot out in that description, but you can start to see how awesome he is. Here are a few youtube clips to help out my lacking description. The audio is not going to be high quality in all of them, but I dare you to watch these videos and then say you are not a Sage fan.
You may have heard the quote, "I would never invade the United States. There would be a gun behind every blade of grass" from the Japanese Admiral Yamamoto before, but what you may not know is Switzerland has a leg up on even us gun-happy Americans. I got this link to "Why No One Invades Switzerland" from a helpful reader tip. Here's the video embedded at that page from brasscheckv.com.
From that video we learn that the Swiss are required to serve in the military for a time like South Koreans and several other countries, and it got me thinking. Why do we not do that in America? I wanted to go into the military after high school before going to college, and if it was mandatory my mom could not have stopped me. It would help sagging recruitment numbers in our armed forces which have been buoyed some recently by the current recession. A year or two of mandatory military service would help our country by instilling some discipline in and giving a skill set to our young adults. And it would make our country even more unfeasible to invade.
I have had a morbid fascination with 9/11 since the events of that day in 2001 so I have a compulsion to record anything I see on my dvr relating to it kind of like Mel Gibson had to buy every copy of Catcher in the Rye in that movie. I watched one such recording recently on the National Geographic Channel titled "9/11: Science and Conspiracy." I realize that saying you believe anything other than the verbatim story of the 9/11 Commission Report makes you a fringe member of society who might as well eat paint chips and dress like Lady Gaga because you are effin crazy. I realize that so let me say this; I think the 9/11 commission answered questions, but only the questions that were asked of them or they asked themselves. Is that vague enough to keep any shred of credibility? No? Well, it does not matter because we will never know the whole truth about 9/11 and nothing more of any relevance will be revealed in our lifetimes. There is ample information available on the internet for either side of the argument you want to believe. And really, I think it comes down to what you want to or are able to believe and keep your sanity. And the show on National Geographic did a good job of driving that home. They gave both sides equal time in my opinion and allowed for rebuttal even though Nat Geo obviously could not allow anything resembling the validating of 9/11 conspiracy theories on their channel because they would lose all credibility. Some of the things in the show made me ponder my own views, but the experiments were not really that scientific. You really have to watch it to understand, but there were a lot of leaps and gaps in the various experiments they did to disprove 9/11 conspiracy theories. I try to look at things from both sides, especially something as important as this topic, but something the narrator on the show said revealed their bias and their disregard for being scientific. The narrator said, "The truthers are determined to belive that the official story is wrong." Well what does prove? The non-truthers are determined to believe the official story is right. Saying that does not prove anything. I am rambling now. Sorry, I am distracted. I just saw the commercial for some show on National Geographic called "Taboo: Strange Love" where this guy is pretending he is married to a life-like doll and saying that finding love with an organic woman is just too hard. Now I have seen it all. This is the kind of thing that terrorists see and then want to kill the "great Satan." Toward the end of the show is where the producers made a fatal flaw. They come up with their own conspiracy theory that is easy to disprove and somehow that makes all other conspiracy theories wrong. This really was not worth my time. This was just a silly exercise.
I. It was great to see the Colts lose last night. I personally dislike Peyton Manning intensely. The story of the night was told in facial expression, his rigid, determined game face upon entering the stadium, the frustration and irritation of Manning on the sideline after the missed field goal of Matt Stover (he is no Vinatieri after all), and then the above picture snapped during Peyton's postgame interview. Poor guy, as much as I do not like him or his football team he is still the best quarterback of all time. You can not really fault a guy for trying to cement his legacy.
II. The Tim Tebow Super Bowl commercial was much ado about nothing. The outcry I heard from the world of outcriers led me to believe they were going to show aborted fetuses being vacuumed out of unwed mother's birth canals and then show a shot of an abortion clinic being blown up in real time. It was just a sweet little ad where Tebow's mom expressed how glad she was to have her son. Focus on the Family is obviously the shock jock of the Christian community and should be raided by the BATF, IRS, and the Department of Agriculture and indicted for their crimes against humanity. For an instance of despicable inhumanity view the ad below.
III. People who believe in a karmic ebb and flow of good and bad in the universe are simultaneously pointing at the Saints win as bandwagon jumpers pile on a vehicle that does not have the suspension to hold their collective weight and declare "New Orleans is back!" New Orleans did not rise above sea level after the clock hit 0:00. It was an awesome win, and hopefully it brightens some people's lives after their hangovers subside. Everyone's heart goes out to New Orleans in the wake of the devastation that will require decades to come back from, but Drew Brees crying and basking in the victory with his son did not make the levees in the city impenetrable. After the party, people who live in New Orleans still have a mostly fractured city to live in and fight for. I wish, wish, wish everything would be ok now, but it was just a football game. The Saints played an awesome game and should relish their victory. They are the best team in football right now, but there is real life to be lived in their city.
The Internet Meme Hall of Fame: Venn diagrams. This is hilarious. What is a meme, you ask? What do I look like, Wikipedia? [Nerve.com]
Timothy Geitner is the Secretary of the Treasury for the United States. In his confirmation hearings it was uncovered that he did not pay his taxes correctly. He said oops, everything was ok. Do you think that would work for you and me? lololololololololoolooololoooll. He is in charge of the IRS for goodness' sake! This article is by Les Leopold and Dylan Ratigan. [Alternet]
State Rules by Colin Perkins. Another bit of funny from McSweeney's Internet Tendency. [McSweeney's]
China Blames Dalai Lama for Lack of Progress in Talks. Article by Stephanie Ho. China is starting to think they can tell us what to do. *scrambles to learn Mandarin*
This does not sound good. The title, Top Intel Officer: U.S. May Kill Americans Abroad, just kind of rubs me the wrong way. The article by John Byrneis downright scary. [Alternet]
I know what you are thinking. "What in the hell is a posse comitatus? That sounds like a posse of Bolsheviks or a weird sex position." After reading that wikipedia article you should know how important this may be in coming years. Posse Comitatus is a latin phrase meaning explicitly "Power of the county." What is means in American law is very important to you and I in regards to the ever-tightening police state noose around our necks. Before I start trying to pass myself off as intelligent I must admit that I first became aware of the idea of posse comitatus from the television show 24,which I love, but after that I have done my research, so there! To sum it up very simply the law states that the American military cannot be used for domestic law enforcement. I found an article on the subject and what it may mean in America's not too distant future by Jacob Hornberger on the Campaign for Liberty Website. It is an important read. Hornberger hypothesizes a scenario in which the ever-evolving war on terror evolves to where the same American military that has had to endure on-the-fly training to be police in Iraq and Afghanistan may become police here in America in the name of a "war" on drugs or terror within our borders. And I doubt the issue of posse comitatus will be broached with the same deference, much less trepidation, in which it was dealt in the hit Fox television show. The lines have already been blurred with the use of the National Guard overseas. The vice-versa of that would not be a good thing.
We need education. We do not need people to continue to be lazy and roll their eyes every time history or constitutional law are mentioned. Look at you, sitting and wallowing in your ignorance. 24.
I am excited about the new book, Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs Americans Won't Do. I caught an interview by Bill Berkowitz with the author of the book, Gabriel Thompson, on one of my favorites websites, Alternet.org, in which the author gives a good run-down of the book's subject matter. Thompson went undercover for a year doing the work that mostly immigrants do in America, or the dirty work as I like to call it. The work he details most in the interview is working for a chicken slaughterhouse in rural Alabama, and it was not a pretty picture. He also cut lettuce in Arizona and worked as a delivery person for a restaurant and at a florist shop in Manhattan. As a rule, I like absorbing anything that is going to give me a different perspective and challenge my thinking, and this book appears that it will do that to a tee. I plan to pick it up. It is going on my list right after the 87 other books I have been meaning to read.
This lovely piece of legislation first introduced in the state of Montana, God love 'em, "declares that any firearms made and retained in-state are beyond the authority of Congress under its constitutional power to regulate commerce among the states." Why am I just now hearing about this? This is a beautiful thing. Let me go ahead and expound this to the furthest degree for you so you can see how cool this is. One could, in effect, manufacture and sell one's own automatic weapons or weapons that are currently illegal in America as long as they are not transported outside of the state lines in which they are made and purchased. Tenth amendment to the extreme! Of course there will be a lot of legal wrangling regarding the validity of this law even as a similar has already been passed in Tennessee and introduced in a number of other states. I think it is a wonderful idea. It is refreshing to see a change from the defense of a constant onslaught of gun control measures that restrict our freedoms to an expansion of those freedoms instead.
Award shows seem to strive nowadays to have the least relevancy in their respective industries, save the Tony Awards. I have no idea about the Tonies. What am I, a fruit? The list of nominees for this year's Academy Awards was released today, and a brief perusal yields no emotions. You should see my face after reading this list of this year's nominees via Roger Ebert's Chicago Sun-Times' website. I would destroy you in a stone face contest right now. If I need to win any stone face contests in the future I will reference my lack of feeling at this moment. Some of these movies are good, but there have been enough rumors over the years of people buying votes and enough actors and pictures winning awards that did not deserve it to help my mental addition total up the winners of The Academy Awards are rigged. Evidence: Sean Penn won for Mystic River. Kevin Bacon was better in Stir of Echoes, the Sixth Sense ripoff than Sean Penn was in crappy Mystic River. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King won best picture. Chicago won best picture. That was just a few examples. I did not even go into people who should have won instead. Which brings me to another point. Why did I post on this? Sandra Bullock was hot as a blonde in The Blind Side at least.
People who go to Super Bowl parties or watch the Super Bowl just for the commercials are infuriating enough, but the fact that people discuss commercials before or after the game... *pow, right to the moon.* Domestic abuse references aside, I hate commercials regardless of race, creed, color, political preference, or religion. The nauseating stir surrounding the Super Bowl ad space (which I will use to get food, beer, and relieve myself) this year is CBS is planning to air a pro-life ad featuring Tim Tebow while, at the same time, balking at showing an ad for a gay dating website. BFD! Is their money not green too? It is not as if the singular viewing of this commercial will turn all of our children into homosexuals thus ensuring the extinction of the human race. GLAAD is now calling CBS homophobic for their hesitation at running the ad. That makes me laugh. Have you ever thought about how homophobe and racist are two indefensible accusatory names? If someone calls you one of those two names, how would you defend it? "I have a gay friend" or "I have a friend of a different race than myself" are too cliched to work. CBS is in a precarious position, but not from me, I do not care what commercials you run because I will not be watching them.
