Thursday, June 17, 2010

Van Mural Mural Van Again! Again!

NYPD, in a bid to cut costs, has gone with murals of paddywagons which are 90% cheaper than the real thing but only fool about 10% of observers.




And I like how the windows are painted over so you can't see the kidnapped kid struggling in back, dressed as a dwarf.



Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Dear God

One of my favorite songs of all time. Reminds me to be angry.

Original XTC



Get pissed off - not at the politicians, but the universe. Get angry. Turn up the music, jump around the room, scream at the top of your lungs, and punch the walls if you can afford to fix them. Break something. Shout. Holler.

Throw a fucking plate down on the road in front of your house. And scream again!

Sarah McLachlan



Then do something about it.

I'm worried that the anger us liberals feel is not so much about a president that talked about the stick then showed us a rope, but a need to call bullshit on a higher power.

Republicans don't have the nuts to make the call. We do.

BULLSHIT!

If it's time for change, WE make change! No one else!

Tricky Remix



More Mojo



Cry. Cry every second. Then bring fire. We need fire.

God's Got a Sick Sense of Humor

Depeche Mode for y'all.

I, too, expect to find him laughing...




...and my fav vid from XTC, just for kicks...



...a whole post on covers of that coming...

Monday, June 14, 2010

England: Grow a Dick

Oh, noes! Tea n crumpets! It's British-Bashing!

In the last 24 hours, I've heard that Obama's "echoes" comparison about how 9/11 showed us our vulnerabilities as did the BP disaster. I've heard Americans everywhere fling verbal poo at BP. And I've heard Glenn Beck call soccer a bunch of names to show what a wuss he is.

England's response? All these things are British-bashing. Bullshit.

I'm an unabashed Anglophile, and this is just unfortunate. Have a fucking pint of Bass and go cry in your Figurehead's crown. C'mon! Stiff upper lip and all that. Where'd that go? Stop your damned whining and pretend - for just a second - that at one time the sun never set on your empire. What? Did the US kicking your ass out and liberty for your other colonies and assassinating Princess Di and the Harry Potter fandom and a draw in the World Cup make your testicles ascend? You've still got Monty Python and The Mighty Boosh and Sting and the Beatles and Mick Jagger and Mr. Bean and good damn tea and icy lollies your own monetary system and part of Ireland (bitches!) and Vivien Leigh for fuck's sake.

Stop your whining and grow a dick.

The're Still Doing the Unpatriotic Dance

I recently got into it with some people of a mostly-political list I belong to full of intelligent people (starts with an M) on all sides of the aisle. And despite these folks being card-carrying smart, I still get posts saying Obama refuses to salute the flag. WTF?



So I broke it down. This is what I wrote:

For the record, the quips about Obama based on video presented at http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3759803 should be clarified by Title 36 of the US Code, which states that during the National Anthem, all non-military personnel in attendance, when the flag is displayed, "should face the flag and stand at attention with their right hand over the heart." (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/36/301.html). This confirms that all candidates were wrong in not facing the flag behind them.

However, I think the most interesting aspect of this back-and-forth is the purposeful abuse of language on the right.

According to this email & links, the following has happened once: President Obama did not place his hand over his heart during the National Anthem.

The first intentional manipulation of the language is the change of word choice to the verb "refuse": President Obama refused to place his hand over his heart during the National Anthem.

This turns the inaction to an active defiance of custom or observation. But just as I cannot refuse a cookie if not offered one, Obama cannot refuse to place his hand on his heart unless prompted or reminded. There is no such prerequisite action documented anywhere, any time.

The second intentional manipulation of the language is the generalization via tense of the already-inaccurate statement: This president refuses to place his hand over his heart during the National Anthem.

So now a single inaction has been transformed into a standard of defiant intent against our National Anthem.

The final manipulation is the generalization to all forms of observance: President Obama refuses to place his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance., President Obama refused to salute the flag., etc.

And in what I applaud as impressive propagandic efficiency, the last version of the "playing telephone" messages is what we hear as the peal of the bell from the right wing blog, radio, and Fox news. Unsubstantiated, some outright lies, all in a desperate attempt to turn one physical inaction into a malicious, deviant character trait that pervades his very being: unpatriotic.

And I think that's the most laughable aspect of the whole slime train: They go that far in defamation of character and land the deal with a sad attempt to objectify patriotism - love and dedication to country - something as subjective and personal as religion.

Unfortunately, most people on the right bow down to the AM band and wait for that cry of Unpatriotic to trigger and justify the disgust they feel for our current president without even thinking about it, let alone following the trail of falsehoods backwards to figure out where the declaration originated.

Personally, when I'm confronted with the dumbing down of something as complicated as Patriotism to whether or not you're wearing an American flag pin that was probably made in China and everyone scrambles for that signifier, I put my trust in the guy who says "No pin for me."