A schediastic hootenanny

Whorin'

2009-07-02T15:23:52Z

Say, what did I write for the A.V. Club this month? That's what the devoted fans who live under my toilet are asking. Here is the answer!

- Why I own a custom-made Catan board.

- I interview Harold Bloom about Blood Meridian. I also gave my own thoughts on the book</a>.

- A primer on the many moods of heavy metal. I also recommended my favorite metal of the month.

- I tried out for Jeopardy!.

- I suggested good places to get started with kung fu movies.

- I interviewed Boots Riley and Tom Morello.

- I reviewed a bunch of comics.

- I contributed to Inventories about weird kids' shows, dumb pop-culture battles, crazy courtroom drama, depressing cinematic swan songs, and Woody Allen's blind spots. I also hipped readers to songs that make me think of summer, my favorite fictional realities, my favorite music of 2009 to date (okay, really I copped out of that one), videos that got me into a band, and my thoughts on Michael Jackson.

Also, keep watching this space, because with the willing cooperation of someone with some design sense and my one ability to shift my lazy ass, this blog will be undergoing a major revamp. Lots of new and regular content is on its way, so keep watching here and on Facebook and Twitter (links over there on the side) to keep being the best slavishly devoted Leonard Pierce geek you can be.

In other news, if it gets any hotter, something is going to die, and that's all there is to it.

Perhaps the most useless post I have ever made

2009-06-30T17:17:14Z

So I’ve been working on this profile of Joan Jett for a client, and as part of my research, I noticed that she was on the VH1 list of the greatest women in rock. As is my wont, I questioned her ranking (she was #32 out of 100) and, since it’s slow at work, I decided to look at not subjective factors, but straight-up record sales of the people above her.

It turns out she’s placed about right in that respect; she’s had nine Top 40 songs and one #1 hit, and her record sales put her about where she should be on the list with the exception of a few people who are highly ranked for reasons other than sales (Patti Smith, to pick an obvious example).

I did find out some things that maybe shouldn’t have surprised me, but did anyway:

- Tina Turner hasn’t sold as many records as I thought. Don’t get me wrong — she’s sold tons of records and had huge commercial success -- but her twenty-three Top 40 songs and one #1 hit is a lot less than I figured she’d have, and is about half of Aretha Franklin’s, who’s #1 on the list to her #2.

- People who had a surprisingly small degree of commercial success: Janis Joplin, Patsy Cline, Emmylou Harris, Joan Baez. In the case of the first two, they died young, and Harris has always been more of a fringe act, but I dunno how Joan Baez makes a living. She’s been recording since the ‘50s and has the “female Dylan” rep, but she’s hardly sold any records at all.

- I have no idea why Bonnie Raitt is so highly ranked. She hasn’t had a long or storied career, she only has five Top 40 hits and no #1s, and to my ears anyway, she’s not remotely innovative or groundbreaking. It it jut because she’s a lesbian?

- This probably speaks more to my age and life experience than anything else, but I assumed the most commercially successful of the female artists would be Madonna by a country mile. And she’s close, but the title actually goes to Diana Ross. She has forty-nine Top 40 hits (!) and 18 #1 hits (!!) to Madonna’s 48 and 12, and in terms of total record sales over a lifetime, she obliterates Our Lady Ciccone. Basically, being Diana Ross for the twenty years between 1964 and 1984, you had a license to print money.

- Barbra Streisand was another one lower on the sales scale than I thought she’d be. Again, like Tina, she’s made a pile of money, and her hit count is very respectable — twenty-one Top 40 hits and five #1 hits — but I figured it’d be twice that. Apparently much of her music income is from touring and big shows rather than record sales.

- Joni Mitchell only had eight Top 40 hits, but all save one of them were Top Ten. Similarly, Debbie Harry only had eight as well, but half of them were #1.

- The one that absolutely shocked me the most? Stevie fucking Nicks. I knew she was big (I’ve seen her house), but I had no idea how big. The anal cocaine delivery advocate has had, with her Fleetwood Mac songs, her solo career, and collaborations, an astonishing twenty-seven Top 40 hits and four #1 singles. That’s more than Tina Turner, Gladys Knight, Linda Ronstadt, Barbra Streisand, Karen Carpenter, or Carole King and Joni Mitchell combined! Good grief.

all right ALL FUCKING RIGHT ALREADY

2009-06-30T03:34:01Z

Those who wish to follow non-milk-solids-related Twitters may do so at "leonardpierce" on your Twitter dial. I hate you all so much.

Analogy!

2009-06-29T22:39:00Z

So there is this room. And it's a big room, but it's sealed off. And in this room, there are a billion cars. And there are a trillion electrical motors, billions and billions of which are running 24 hour hours a day. And there are a million airplane engines. And there are a billion other machines, all running either on fuel or on electricity generated from fuel. And every single day, more people enter the room, and many of them bring cars and electrical motors with them. And no one ever cracks a window.

If you think that either (a) the room will never get any hotter, or (b) the room might get hotter, but it has nothing to do with the billions of people running their billions of cars and boats planes and motorcycles and their trillions of electrical motors, then congratulations! You are a global warming "skeptic"! Now go forth and be smug.

Fuck the Machine

2009-06-28T22:17:51Z

I could not possibly have less stake in gay liberation, except in a very general, abstract sense. And I'm not Iranian, nor do I think that if the election had gone the other way, we'd all be singing the praises of what a progressive democratic reformer Mousavi turned out to be.

But here's something that the Stonewall riots and the demonstrations in Iran have in common: once in a great long while, people who are quite used to getting shit all over by the greedy, hypocritical scumbags in charge (and the mean, stupid pigs who do what those scumbags tell them to do) get sick of it. They figure they're going to get their asses kicked one way or another, so for once they might as well do something to make the ass-kicking worth getting. And they get up and they make a lot of noise and they throw shit at people who aren't used to having shit thrown at them, and they say, hey, you motherfuckers, we are goddamn human beings. And if we don't do anything else our whole fucking lives, just once we're going to send you home knowing that the people you've been shitting on all this time are are human beings and there's only so many times you can beat a human being down before they decide to beat you back. And that's a lesson that you can learn easy today, or you can learn it hard tomorrow.

When those things happen, it's always a good thing. I wish it happened more often. And that's what I think about that.

In-for-mation

2009-06-22T14:57:03Z

The Kindle.

Give me your thoughts, your feelings, your hopes, your fears, your experiences, recommendations or warnings.

Thank you.

The power of naming

2009-06-18T17:12:57Z

I have always been terrible at naming things. Even when I have good ideas, which still happens once every blue moon or so, I can never come up with a decent name for them. Conversely, when I do name something, it often gets abandoned or remains uncompleted, which is why, of the five big projects I'm working on right now, only two have names. With the other three, I don't wanna risk it.

Here are some things I named but they never happened:

- "The Journal of Kryptonian Cultural Studies", sketch comedy group
- "Satan Death Fuck Penis Pierce", my illegitimate son
- "The Deconstructionist", my gimmick/name if I had become a professional wrestler
- "Modern Advertising", my latest band that did not actually come together
- "DragonKnow Comics", a comics company I was going to start
- "Hipsville", an abandoned novel, later an abandoned comic strip
- "Underthing's", the bar I was going to run

Yes, I know these are all terrible names. That's the point. This is also the point: what can I name/ruin for YOU?

ALL CAPS

2009-06-18T16:55:12Z

SO BORED

NEAR DEATH

PLS HLP

Perhaps if I put all my unfinished projects in Wikipedia form I will finish them*

2009-06-17T16:01:14Z

The Adventures of Internet Starring Outer Space North Koreans MC Boy and DJ Aak
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Adventures of Internet Starring Outer Space North Koreans MC Boy and DJ Aak
Image: Internet.jpg
Author(s): Leonard Pierce
Website: http://ludickid.livejournal.com
Current status/schedule: biannual
Launch date: August 30, 2007
Genre(s): Comedy, Science Fiction

The Adventures of Internet Starring Outer Space North Koreans MC Boy and DJ Aak is a non-illustrated webcomic created by Leonard Pierce in 2007. It portrays the adventures of a pair of aliens sent to infiltrate and conquer the Earth, disguised as North Korean bootleg software manufacturers. “Internet”, a mysterious figure that researches often-irrelevant information, assists them. It is difficult to discern the exact nature of “Internet” due to the comic’s lack of illustration.

Much of the strip’s humor stems from its “fish out of water” narrative, with DJ Aak (who assumes a female human form) attempting to assimilate while MC Boy (who takes on a male role) thwarting her efforts with bizarre or inappropriate behavior. DJ Aak – named for a Korean form of story-song – and MC Boy are also unfamiliar with Earth’s gender roles, as well. The two are obsessed with American hip-hop culture, and many jokes revolve around random internet searches and whatever the author feels like ripping off at the moment.

Critical reaction

Critics have generally ignored The Adventures of Internet Starring Outer Space North Koreans MC Boy and DJ Aak, apart from noting that it is not technically a comic on account of having no illustrations. Pierce’s announcement, in June of 2009, that Internet could be visualized as a huge, malevolent coconut crab, failed to attract new readers, as did the marketing of a DJ Aak gimmie cap. The cap did, however, prove popular with a surprisingly large number of murder victims.

*: Or perhaps not.

Monday Banana Poll: DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU CANNOT BUY CRATES OR BARRELS AT CRATE & BARREL?

2009-06-15T15:05:11Z

A story:

When Oliver Miller was a center for the Phoenix Suns basketball team, he explained his massive weight gain thus: when his team would win, he would reward himself by eating an Ultimate Cheeseburger from Jack in the Box. When his team would lose, he would punish himself by eating two Ultimate Cheeseburgers from Jack in the Box.

And now, a poll.

View Poll: Politics of the Sneaker Pimps

I will turn your face to alabaster

2009-06-11T16:38:19Z

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LITTLE GREEN FOOTBALLS

Pre-The Bad Thing: Tech expert and bicycle enthusiast Charles “Chuckles” Johnson runs a web log, named for an inside reference to nasal mucus, at which can be found helpful computer tips and updates on the Tour de France.

The Bad Thing: Early in the afternoon of September 11th, 2001, Johnson, like many Americans, takes a giant fear shit right in his bike shorts.

Post-The Bad Thing: On September 12th, 2001, Johnson, unlike many Americans, rededicates his weblog to the practice of having screaming hissy fits whenever someone of Arab extraction sneezes in public. So virulent and single-minded is his paranoid terror of the Musselman menace that he attracts many like-minded lunatics, who post impolitic comments on the blog. Some of these unhinged individuals start their own websites, such as Jihad Watch and “Atlas Shrugged”, hosted by the maniacal Pamela Geller.

Later: While it rapidly develops a reputation as one of the most popular political sites on the internet, Johnson begins to notice a few cracks in the façade. For one thing, his commenters are a deraganged lot, inordinately fond of leaping to conclusions and speaking about Muslims in disturbingly genocidal terms. Still, his will remains strong, and he continues heaping abuse on the entire non-Jewish Middle East, despite the presence of detractors who notice a profound similarity between his rhetoric and that of the Nazis.

Still Later: In the face of nearly non-stop mockery from liberal blogs and other political websites for the homicidally insane nature of his fans, Johnson institutes a policy of disallowing said blogs from linking to his pages, so that particularly egregious examples of their ravings cannot be widely disseminated.

Even Later Still: Johnson finds it necessary to take the unusual step of setting up a program that automatically deletes comments by his own devotees that contain certain hot-button words or phrases like “nuke Mecca”, “sand-nigger”, and “subhuman filth”. As perhaps the first major political blog to admit to the need to censor its own crazed fans, Little Green Footballs becomes an even bigger laughingstock, and Johnson begins to suspect things are getting away from him slightly.

The Schism: Johnson is invited to a European “anti-jihadist” conference. Noticing that the conference is also being attended by a number of extreme far right political figures, many of whom have backgrounds in anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi nationalist movements, he declines to attend, and warns his people that they should not be associating with the sort of people who committed an actual genocide campaign against the Jews. Many of his most devoted followers absolutely flip out and accuse Johnson, perhaps America’s most vociferous anti-Muslim activist, of being soft on jihad.

Recently: Johnson, figuring that if he’s in for a penny he may as well be in for a pound, suddenly notices that many in his movement are not only cozying up to anti-Semitic fascists, but are treating the relatively harmless new President, Barack Obama, as if he is Satan crawled up to befoul God’s green Earth. His followers flip out even more, calling him a traitor to the cause and abandoning him en masse. Johnson, only months removed from his position as the King of the Know-Nothings, now finds himself a right-wing public enemy on the level of an Emmanuel Goldstein.

Today: A dissident faction of “splitters” breaks off from the LGF website and forms “Little Green Footballs 2.0”, a so-called “democratic” revamp of the site in which democracy means, in practice, being able to call for genocidal warfare without being scolded. A rotating quote of the day feature, a storied tradition on the LGF site, is replaced with one featuring embittered ex-followers complaining about Johnson’s treachery to the cause. The lead posts today include one claiming that Muslims are ultimately responsible for a white neo-Nazi’s murderous attack on the Holocaust Museum, and another “open thread” dedicated to establishing that Hitler was a leftist.

Glass Glass Glass Glass

2009-06-11T15:13:40Z

Man. Today, my iPod couughed up "Pruit Igoe" for the commute, and it's really put the zap on my head.

EVIL! IN LEAGUE WITH RABIN!

2009-06-10T16:00:39Z

The A.V. Club actually let me write a metal column. Do check it out.

The Mighty Cola: Poll Edition

2009-06-08T16:54:14Z

We've done a variant on this before, but I need the answers set in the kind of stone only online polling can provide. Answer honesty, and from the depths of your corn-syrup-clogged heart. (Take it as read that the questions refer to diet versions of the listed products as well, so, if you drink Diet Coke, just mark "Coca-Cola".

Onward! FOR SCIENCE

View Poll: Foamy!

So let's talk about George Tiller.

2009-06-04T02:00:26Z

I've always had a bit of a philosophical problem condemning anti-abortion violence in the kind of terms that most people do. Not that I have the least bit of sympathy with their views; for whatever it's worth as an atheist male with no children -- that is, as a person who could not possibly have less stake in the issues at hand -- I am completely in favor of safe, legal abortions for anyone, anywhere who wants to have them for any reason, and I think the people committing these crimes are repulsive, horrible, and hypocritical religious fanatics who would be beneath my contempt if they weren't so dangerous.

But unlike a lot of people, I don't automatically condemn political violence. I think that, if a cause is just and legal opposition to it is of limited effectiveness, there is nothing wrong with using violence against those who are normal, law-abiding citizens of a country in order to push a political agenda. To cite two obvious examples, American rebels fought a terribly violent war against their legally appointed British rulers, and the French Resistance frequently used terrorist methods to disrupt and murder the legal Nazi and Vichy governments. Few people today outside of pro-Confederacy extremists think that the U.S. government was not justified in using violence to force the South to end the practice of legal slavery. There are more extreme examples, all of which I support to a greater or lesser degree: the anti-slavery violence of John Brown and other abolitionists; the violent anarchist armies of Russia and Spain in the early 20th century; terrorism against Israel by Palestinians and against South Africa by blacks; violence against the police and military in many countries, and revolutionary violence almost everywhere; and the long history of violent attacks against capital by labor in this country and elsewhere.

Some of you probably would condemn my later examples; most of you would probably support my earlier ones. But few of you probably are complete pacifist; few of you would doubt the notion that there is a greater morality than that of the law, and that there are circumstances under which, if your notion of morality or propriety is pushed beyond what can be borne, you would support direct action against those you perceived as committing egregious offense against those notions. So really, the only difference between the French resister who murders a Nazi officer and the pro-life activist who murders an abortion doctor is that you happen to agree that the Nazi officer deserves killing because he is doing such a bad thing, while you don't happen to agree that the abortion doctor deserves killing because he is doing such a bad thing.

And that's fine! I'm a relativist, after all; while I don't believe that any universal authority can be appealed to that will support my belief in the use of violence against an occupying army but not against an abortion provider, I still think that belief is correct. I won't call anyone a hypocrite for thinking the killing of a pro-apartheid judge is justifiable while the killing of a clinic nurse is offensive, because like everyone else, I hold to a set of moral tenets that I think are correct. I just happen to recognize that those people are thinking the same thing I am, and that they're no more or less right than I am. I think our value systems are locked in a serious struggle, and while I hope mine wins, that's just because I'm rooting for a different outcome than they are; if I give them the benefit of the doubt, if I extend them the courtesy of believing they are acting in good faith, I can condemn their actions without necessarily impugning their motivations. (They wouldn't extend me the same courtesy, of course, but there's not much I can do about that.)

So why do I have such a visceral reaction against things like the killing of George Tiller? I suppose it's because they enjoy a sort of double standard that is not granted to other practitioners of political violence. When the government declares al-Q'aeda and other practitioners of anti-American Islamist violence a terrorist group, we seize their assets; we shut down their charities and media outlets; we arrest as many of them as we can and charge them with whatever we think will stick. But when the advocates of anti-abortion violence -- whose actions cannot be regarded as anything but terroristic -- do the same thing, the government treats it like a string of barely-related events, no matter how organized, no matter how connected. Domestic Islamic terrorism barely exists in this country, and yet it is the subject of intense scrutiny, tight monitoring, and severe proactive law enforcement. Anti-abortion violence, on the other hand, which has cost many more lives, is barely even talked about in law enforcement and government policy. Whenever one of these incidents take place, spokesmen from anti-abortion groups are allowed to go on national television and tut-tut that while they don't necessarily condone the killing, they can certainly understand it, what with the victim being a mass murderer and all. Can you imagine, after a suicide bombing in Times Square, a spokesman for an American Islamist group being allowed on prime time to bitch about how America had it coming? Anti-abortionists are allowed to communicate their messages, finance their groups, and praise their killers without any legal ramifications, something that, say, Islamist, eco-terrorist, or radical leftists groups cannot do. Anti-abortion activists count among their number some of the richest and most influential broadcasters in the country; many have TV shows, radio shows, nationally syndicated columns, and audiences with senators and congressmen. Where are the Islamic fundamentalists in America who are thus indulged? There is much talk of this or that political action or inaction "emboldening" the Mahometan terrorist, but I can guarantee you that nothing emboldens the domestic white anti-abortion terrorist like the utter lack of seriousness with which his crimes are treated.

The French Resistance, the Molly Maguires, the men of Hezbollah -- they may be no more heroic, or even substantially less, than these murdering Christian zealots. But they at least had the good taste to act as if they were doing a dangerous, horrible, and distasteful thing that no one else was willing to do. Their leaders did not go before the public the next day, dressed in their finest TV clothes, and demand to be recognized for the moral beauty and ethical perfection of their actions. They did not behave as if laws meant to prevent their activities were an unfair imposition foisted upon them by muddle-headed bureaucrats. They did not stand around waiting for someone to congratulate them, nor did they act shocked when the forces they opposed instead stood as one to condemn them. If the anti-abortionist killers share with my own favored practitioners of the bloody arts a courageous conviction that their foul deeds were justified by the far greater evils committed by their victims, they diverge by daring to take offense at the very idea anyone might deign to object.

Chicago: What It Was

2009-06-03T17:43:15Z

Saturday afternoon, I boarded a plane back to my beloved Chicago . After utterly failing to take advantage of my cheap first class upgrade, I landed in the Big Town and picked up my rental car, an absurdly gaudy 2010 Mustang convertible, and headed to the fashionable north side home of zulkey and her husband Steve. After a lovely dinner at Charlie’s with kphipps3000 and editrix26, we retired back there to view The Room, a stupendously awful movie made a few years ago by some sort of low-rent Eastern European bass player/coke dealer named Tommy Wiseau. I highly recommend it; those of you who think they just don’t make utterly incompetent, delightfully awful movies like they used to are highly encouraged to give it a whirl.

Most of Sunday was spent at the abode of my next hosts, picodulce and doraphilia, who are always extremely kind and welcoming. They had a barbeque to commemorate my visit and the birthday of dammittim, and to my great delight, rum_holiday and her husband Doug were also there! The only thing that makes a visit to Chicago better is the presence of my old pals, so this one was awesome indeed. (Also, Norman and Dora’s dog Otis is a champeen.) Dora claims that I got polluted and macked on one of her friends, but I only remember the getting polluted part of that. That night, we did something else, but I was too drunk to remember that either.

Monday, I headed downtown to pay a call on the A.V. Club office, and a bunch of us went to Hot Doug’s, arguably the finest dining establishment in the history of food, for lunch. (I also subjected Keith and Scott to my ridiculous car, for which I am deeply sorry.) Then, it was back to Norman and Dora’s to get some freelance work done, and generally take it easy before the Jeopardy! audition.

I wrote about the big day here, so I won’t repeat myself; I’ll just say it was a pretty good time, and I’m glad I did it regardless of whether they ultimately pick me to stand tall before the Man Named Trebek. My flight home was uneventful, unless you consider four gate changes and a nearly four-hour delay eventful. All of you who I saw when I was there, you’re the salt of the earth and I miss you; anyone I didn’t see, well, hit a brother up one of these sometimes.

And ESPECIALLY not Adam fucking Lambert

2009-05-20T16:07:56Z

Dear American Idol,

You know I got mad love for you. But here's the thing: no white person should ever, ever sing "A Change is Gonna Come". Ever.

Civilly,
Leonard

Oh, yes, it is decidedly THAT TIME AGAIN.

2009-05-19T15:07:35Z

Come on, MCs! We’re off to the races
Grab ya mics, let’s get down to cases
I don’t know ya names, I ain’t seen ya faces
Step to me, I’m fat like laces
Y’all better stay in my good graces
I’ma put you through your paces
I’ma put you all in stasis
With escape-proof snares and need-to-know basses
My rep grew while yours done shrunk
Your DJ name is LP’s Punk
While you’re in club all tryin’ to get crunk
All the girls at my crib all waitin’ to get drunk
Ya never get phat ‘cept in ya girlfriend’s junk
So I took her back home and popped that trunk
And when she asked about the history of this howlin’ monk
I said “’69, white boy born with funk”
Old-school reminsicin’ from a distant era
Targeted for rhymin’ in the war on terror
Rockin’ ya belles like my name was Clara
And eatin’ out ya honey like I’m Yogi Berra
Strokin’ like George Michael played by Michael Cera
Knockin’ niggas nightly like my name was Kiera
Ya know ya mirror’s answer when you ask who’s fairer
You come into my full house when you only hold a pair a’
Aces in ya hand, you know it’s time to fold
You can’t keep up with me, if I might be so bold
I’m makin’ crazy hookups while ya stuck on hold
Ya just a dirty copper while I’m shippin’ gold
I doubled up the tempo while you got Rickrolled
They told you to STFU while I just LOL’d
I wish I’d seen ya mama’s face when her ass got told
That you got sonned by someone thirty-fuckin’-nine years old.

Finally, a new place to sleep off a bender

2009-05-18T11:12:01Z

I bought a new couch, love seat, and dining room set! Finally, I'm an adult!

Wait, not "adult". I meant "in debt".

In a way, this totally justifies my horrible misanthropy

2009-05-14T11:41:06Z

A guy I work with is friends with a bunch of people who work at our local Half Price Books stores, and they gave him this astonishing statistic from the ABA:

The most frequently stolen book from booksellers is the Holy Bible.

Some stores don't even keep copies on the shelf, because it's guaranteed they'll be stolen; they keep it locked up in an office or behind a counter or something.

This totally fucking blows my mind (albeit while confirming a lot of the worst things I think about people), and here's why:

1. It means that people are stealing a book which explicitly states that it's a sin to steal. In a greater sense, it means that people who presumably think that the Bible is the unerring word of God (I mean, it can't be atheists or Satanists who are stealing Bibles, right?) are getting their copies by expressly disobeying its precepts.

2. It's not like it's hard to get a Bible, that people have to steal them. You can get a free one by checking into any hotel room in the English-speaking world from an organization that exists specifically to give out free Bibles. I don't know if this is still the case, but when I was a kid, there were tons of charities and religious organizations who would give you a free New Testament just for the asking. And anywhere in the Western world, any city or town anywhere, you can go into a church, and they will probably give you a free Bible, or at least let you stay there and study the Bible as long as you want. They'll even read the Bible to you and explain it. For nothing.

3. If the reading habits of most religious people I've met is any indication, this means that the only book these people own is stolen.

Man, I honestly can't articulate why, but this statistic just makes me think "Aw, fuck everybody" more than anything else I've heard lately.

Whorin'

2009-05-14T11:29:28Z

For those of you who don't know, the A.V. Club has started a new online book club, with the first selection being Katherine Dunn's 1989 novel Geek Love. It's been pretty enjoyable so far (you can read it here), and we're wrapping up the coverage with a special live-blog/chat! Join us this afternoon at 4PM CST for brainy lit talk and punchy one-liners.

Dangerous companions for writers

2009-05-07T02:48:37Z

Cats!

Doc!

Vera!

They're shelter cats, so mostly they just hide a lot, but they're starting to open up already. I hereby judge them to be awesome.

Fun With Bad Design, Part 297

2009-05-06T15:30:17Z

Okay, I’m sure that the “Do It For Your Baby” campaign has unimpeachable goals, and it may even help save lives. That’s not the issue here. The issue is that because of the poor design and font choices, it looks like their URL is “Dolt For Your Baby”. Which I’m sure many people are, but you don’t get them into your cause by reminding them of that fact.

It really doesn't help that the stock-photo baby looks sort of like a dolt as well.

I ain't no nice guy

2009-04-30T03:50:13Z

The odd thing isn't that I was at the grocery store the other day and bought a hammer, some rope, a roll of duct tape, sulfuric acid, and razor blades. Sometimes you just gotta roll the potato, as a great man once said.

The odd thing is that nobody gave me a second look.

Real Capitalists Don't Die

2009-04-28T16:26:44Z

Patri Friedman, Milton “Whoops” Friedman’s grandson, has published a manifesto over at the Cato Institute about how good Libertarians should fuck off from a society that I’m sure will be sad to see them go and form capitalist paradises on private islands. PayPal founder/libertarian nutjob Peter Thiel wrote a companion piece agreeing with the so-called “Seasteading Initiative”.

It’s pretty goofy, but nothing we haven’t heard before: the pouty individualism of Ayn Rand with a hefty dose of the economic hoodoo of Grandpa Milt, all splashed with the sci-fi wankery of Glenn “Professor Poopypants” Reynolds and the loathing of democracy and the He-Man Girl Haters Club misogyny of every conservative ever. If, like me, you routinely follow the gibberings of these right-wing howler monkeys, nothing here comes as a surprise...

...except one thing.

Thiel’s column begins by listing all the reasons he’s been a Libertarian since he was, ahem, a teenager, and one of them is this (emphasis mine):

I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual...

I...

But...

So, according to this dude’s interpretation of libertarianism, the mortality of man is not an ineluctable fact of life borne out by the death of every human that has ever lived. It’s an ideology! Probably dreamed up by those stinking liberals, for that matter. And everyone in history only died, I guess, because they lacked the sheer force of will, possessed by only the purest of Objectivists (why, even Rand succumbed to this alien ideology), to not buy into it.

It’s like they say: you learn something new every day, even if the thing you learn is totally fucking idiotic.