The Power of Language

Some people call George Carlin a comedian. I've always called him a philosopher. Most comedians joke about the surface crap that happens to all of us in real life...ie. peanuts on the plane, life cereal, the Burger King drive-thru (Dane Cook sucks by the way, and his comedy is completely indicative of the increasing stupidity of the American public. Good for him for capitalizing on it though...).

Carlin jokes about the real life stuff too but often he digs a few levels deeper than most. He talks about the stuff we don't want to hear. Some say that makes him "shocking" but i just think it makes him honest. He has a platform, and a medium that intends to make people look at things in a humorous way that also makes them agree at the same time, and sometimes he uses that medium to make some very serious points. Even the seven words you can't say on TV, which ended up being a Supreme Court case as vulgar as it is, makes a commentary about what the words are, why some people don't want you to say them, and why language is so powerful that we actual have to ban some of it...

One of my favorite bits ever is when he's talking about the power of language and makes the point that in World War I, when a soldier's nervous system shut down from the strain of fighting, it was called Shell Shock. Tough words...straight to the point...lots of consonants, sounds like something pretty easy to diagnose. Fast forward to Vietnam (and every engagement since) and we're now calling it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We've added a hyphen, made it sound medical, and we've blamed the victim. The soldiers aren't shocked anymore, they now have a disorder. They weren't shocked by something they saw anymore. Something they saw triggered a disorder they already had. Carlin goes on to make the point that if we have kept it at Shell Shock, maybe we wouldn't treat it so lightly and some of these veterans might actually be getting the help that they need. (Let's see Mr. Cook take a break from Employee of the Month and talk about war for a while eh? Then we'll see who's funny...)

It's a pretty genius sentiment and i truly wish i had thought of it myself. But since i've listened to it about a thousand times, i've started noticing little changes in the language that just seem to slip by unnoticed in this PC world of ours (ie. prostitute becoming sex worker...what's she going to be next? an automated pleasure receptacle?) and trying to call them out when i see them.

I found this story on (who's surprised?) FoxNews this morning: At Least 21 Dead in Baghdad Homicide Bombing

And this same story on the Wall Street Journal Online: Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 21 Iraqis

Notice any difference? Think that that difference in language doesn't change the intention of the story? I would love to hear your thoughts.

I've Never Been Less Surprised

Wow...a stripper from Texas stole money to buy a Nascar team? Who would have ever thought?

The only thing less surprising than this would have been if a stripper stole money to build an octagon in her backyard and scheduled UFC fights...

Also, i decided not to post on this earlier this week but i will now.
Is it bad that before i was even done reading this headline that i was saying in my mind, "You liar. You're so completely full of shit." Shouldn't one have at least a tiny iota of belief in the words of the President of the United States of America??? I mean, just a little? There's not a thing this guy could say to me from now until eternity that i would say, "You know what? He's definitely telling the truth, being completely sincere, and i for one, think he has a point..." Not a single damn thing.

This also pisses me off. Bush uses a fucking HURRICANE metaphor to describe the war?!? Is he serious? And, just like the Britney Spears thing (see below), it's not like Bush is writing his own speeches, but i can't help but blame him. At some point, he's gotta say, "Hey listen guys...i know you're trying to be dramatic and all but i was asleep in my bed when America's shores were destroyed by a friggin hurricane and we kinda looked bad... Ix-Nay on the urricane-Hay OKEY DOKE??"

But he doesn't, so it's his fault. I mean, i guess the metaphor is apt, he's fucked up both things simultaneously, so we can compare them together now...

And while we're at it, is this the only thing the CIA has gotten right in the last decade? Methinks yes.

Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

Nothing says spirituality and Godliness more than pasting an inspirational passage thanking people for their prayers OVER YOUR FRIGGIN NIPPLES!!!!

I'm pretty sure Britney isn't in charge of her own photoshop, so she's not responsible for this... although that's pretty funny to imagine:
"Is dis one a dem newfangled 'lectric boxes, like, a TV that i can type on ya'll? Ya'll serious? Shit damn yeah!!! Ya'll get me some pork rinds while i work on this here internets fo a spell..."

But still, i can't help but blame her anyway.

(click on it to read it. I couldn't make it fit. Stupid internets and TVs i can type on.)

(Wow...second one this week. The powers that be are really picking it up lately. )

Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

They're really going to let this happen?

Secondly, i actually posted on my sports blog after last night's terrific Suns-Spurs game. Check it out here.

Also, Neil passed this along to me today and everyone should check it out. I honestly don't think that ending the war completely is the right course because it's going to make us look like even bigger assholes than we already are, but we do need to hold the people that made the decisions responsible by voting them out of office in the next election. Check it out:

The Iraq war should never have been started, and it's long past time to end it.

We were one signature away from ending this war, but President Bush defied the majority of Americans and vetoed the legislation. He has shown, again and again, since the invasion began, that he will not listen.

But the will of the American people must be followed. If PresidentBush won't end the war, it's up to Congress -- the representatives of the people -- to end it instead. We need 16 Republican Senators to override a veto -- any 16 of the 49 Republicans can choose the people over their party and decide to end this war.

In 20 states, an incumbent Republican Senator faces re-election in 2008. They will have to make clear very soon whether they will continue to defy the will of the American people.

Now is the time to hold them accountable for their choices on the war.

Barack Obama is doing just that, and you can, too. Make sure they hear your voice too.

Learn how here: http://www.barackobama.com/16votes

Reducing Junk Mail

Not only is it annoying, but it uses up a ton of natural resources. Turns out most of these companies aren't even using recycled paper. They're just cutting down trees and sticking them in your mailbox.

Here's a great link that helped me reduce the crap that stuffed my box every week.

Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

Albert Einstein reportedly said this:
“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

And even if he didn't, the theory makes a hell of a lot of sense.

So imagine my wonder when i wake up to this story on the front page of my RSS reader:
Are Mobile Phones Wiping Out Bees?

A few more clicks and i find this story blaming genetically modified crops; and two (1, 2) more explaining Colony Collapse Disorder.

You know, my idea of the end of the world was always far more exciting than this. Something like a nuclear holocaust in which 9 Victoria Secret models and I are the only survivors and I become their fearless, bare chested leader as we hide in Aruba an begin repopulating the earth...
I never really imagined all of us just starving to death. Presidents and Prime Ministers and peasants all sharing the same immediate fate. And yet, this seems 100% more realistic.

Watching Out for Abnormal Behavior

So Bush is pimping the VaTech massacre as a reason to be ever vigilant against random and unsubstantiated threats. The threats of what you may ask? Terrorism? Goth kids?

Well, as usual, he wasn't specific but one can only imagine that by "abnormal behavior" he meant being gay, black, Mexican, Islamic, an environmentalist or a democrat. Also, we can probably safely assume that by getting an abortion, not being Christian, driving a Hybrid car, not eating meat or living in Oregon (sorry guys but anyone who lives there is a pot smoking, socialist hippie as far as he's concerned...) is also "abnormal."

It's these type of blanket generalizations from the Bush administration that i'm really going to miss when their time is up.

VaTech

We've all been oddly quiet about the happenings at Virginia Tech since it happened...whether it be a statement of sadness, a reflection on the fragility of human life or an angry diatribe about psychotically depressed loners lashing out in the worst of ways, i thought someone would write something. But it looks like i'm first.

I don't really have the time or energy to speak as deeply as i'd like to about this (although i'd sure like to find some of both.) but i will say that knowing people who lived through Columbine and growing up in a world where this type of behavior has become increasingly acceptable, that at no time in my entire college career did i go to sleep in my dorm room, walk through campus or attend class with the slightest inclination that someone might go apeshit and shoot me or my classmates. It never went through my mind. And now that i think about it, it was completely possible that it could have happened. It should have happened. In fact, it still might. All the ingredients are in place.

The two schools i attended, CU and ASU, had such a diverse and completely disconnected student population. There were the rich, out-of-state kids (of which i was arguably one) that walk around like their shit doesn't stink and there were the not-so-rich, in-state kids that could have come from anywhere with any type of background. These two colleges were just as cliquey and segregated and unfair as high school was. Maybe worse. I feel that i am a fairly normal and balanced person but there were times at both of those schools where i felt so alone and so brushed aside by every other person around me and so absolutely forgotten about. I'm a generally happy and decent person and if i felt this way at times, i can only imagine the thousands of other students that must have felt/feel the same way, if not hundreds of times worse. It now occurs to me that it is an absolute miracle that a similar massacre has not happened before and does not happen more frequently.

With that said, this was not my intention in this post. My intention was to call attention to this screen capture of MSNBC that i just saw:




I don't know how well you'll be able to see it (click on it and it'll get bigger) but the image above is from the main page of the Va Tech story on MSNBC.com in which 33 people, including the shooter, died. Now i'm not diminshing the loss of human life at all. A life is a life is a life. They're all equal in my book and one person being killed is one too many as far as i'm concerned but what kills me (sorry, bad term) is the story at the bottom of the column that says "Top MSNBC Stories." If you can't see it, again, i'll tell you what it says... "183 killed in a 4 Baghdad Blasts."

183?!?!?! One Hundred and Eighty Fucking Three! Our nation goes into mourning and the President drops everything to go to the college and speak when 33 people are killed, yet every single day a headline like the Baghdad one slides right by on the ticker and we barley even fucking blink. This is so typical and indicative of everything that is wrong with this country, our society and humanity as a whole.

1,200 people died in Hurricane Katrina and we're still talking about it. And we'll still be talking about it during this entire summer's hurricane season and during next year's Super Bowl in New Orleans. When's the last time you heard about, or even thought about, the 250,000 people killed in the Indonesian Tsunami? That's a quarter of a million people just wiped off the face of the earth and we declare a national day of mourning for 33?

3,000 people died on 9-11 and we've killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 times (and counting) that many, just to get even for it. That would be like us bombing South Korea because of what this kid did. Seems stupid right? Well, we're doing it every day. (And don't put it past ol Georgie to think about attacking Seoul. Honestly, would it surprise you?)

Mothers die by the thousands from AIDS in Africa. Millions of people are killed in Ugandan genocide. Hundreds of thousands of children die every day from starvation. And the U.S. is getting letters of condolence from every leader in the free world for 33?!?

I'm not taking anything away from those 32 (i'm not counting the murderer, fuck him) people who were killed this week. Don't get me wrong. Their lives were stolen from them selfishly by a sad and ignorant person who needed attention and that is an absolutely tragedy if and whenever it happens.

All i'm saying is that something isn't right with this picture. Something is Majorly. Fucked. Up.

Today's Sign That The Apocalypse is Upon Us.

German Technology VS Arab Technology

Now i know this isn't really a VW commercial but someone still took the time to make this...

Not sure how i feel about it. I guess i could be mad if i want to be all PC but some part of me wants to think its hilarious and well-placed satire.

Any thoughts?

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

One of my (our) favorite writers has died. He was 84.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

Update: Check out this story about Vonnegut working at Sports Illustrated. Too funny.

Good News of The Week

Because we do so much negative stuff here. This is something i can smile about: Hank Aaron tells Barry Bonds to Fuck Himself.

Holy F-ing Shit

This can't be real can it? Are we really going to attack Iran? Aren't we in deep enough shit as it is? Who's running this place? (Although the site isn't the most reputable, it's still kind of insane if there is even a fraction of truth here.)

I often joke here about the world ending and i don't want to be overly dramatic, but this could really be it right? I mean, we're talking about attacking a huge country with a big army and developed weapons systems who is run by a batshit crazy leader who outwardly hates jews, western culture and has given speeches about the Holocaust being a myth. This can't end well.

If the shit hits the fan, i'm getting out of the big cities and heading to Bend, Oregon. Think you guys can get a room ready for me? ha.

Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

This one actually makes me really hope that the world is ending. If you make it to the end of this, you might want to schedule an appointment with a therapist.

Amazing Finish

This doesn't really belong here but i post on my sports blog like once every 3 months and it's pretty much what i'd call "defunct" so i'll just put it here so people can see it.

This is the ending to the NCAA Division II finals and it's pretty unbelievable. This kid scores 10 points in the last 45 seconds including two Reggie Miller-like steals for the win. I can't believe this isn't a bigger story, actually. If you like sports even an iota, you'll enjoy this:

The WTF Award of the Week

Alright, the computer is stumbling along well enough to post a small entry. I'm still trying to get this week's Shuffle posted on Championship Vinyl but i think i may just push it to next week. This week's kind of a lost caust anyway.

So this is just batshit crazy. Enjoy.

Today's Sign that the Apocalypse is Upon Us

Harry Potter Fan Stalks Actress, Apparently Her Magical Powers Could Not Prevent It

Listen, i think she's cute too, but she's a fucking character in a children's fantasy book for fuck's sake!!!!!!!!!

The Case Against Ethanol

My Dad buys me a subscription to Fly Rod and Reel every year. I like the magazine and i flip through the pictures of big fish, but even though i am a huge fan of fly fishing, i just can't bring myself to read through most of it. I get about 5 other magazines, I am constantly reading one book or another, and usually at the end of the day i like to do something passive like watch one of my DVRed shows instead of reading about fishing a small stream in northern Pennsylvania that i'll never, ever see.

But i was flipping through it this morning over breakfast and this story caught my eye. It's a story, as you'll hopefully read, that talks about how the increase in Ethanol usage will actually be worse for local enviroments than continuing to use fossil fuels, and due to the powerful agricultural lobby, is just as dirty and underhanded in its politics as any of the big oil lobbies. Long term, Ethanol might seem better for our air, and for global warming, but is ruining our topsoils and streams (and in turn ruin our forests, streams, lakes, oceans, underground watertables and killing fish, crustaceans, all the animals that prey on them, and eventually us, etc.) really worth it?

Some good excerpts:
"It all started in 1990 with amendments to the Clean Air Act, revolutionary in that they regulated not just how we burn gasoline but how we make it. In areas out of compliance with air-pollution standards, gasoline had to include at least two percent oxygen-containing chemicals (oxygenates), the better to combust carbon monoxide, toxic hydrocarbons, and smog-producing volatile organic compounds. There were only two choices--ethanol and the petroleum-based methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE). This was precisely what the cornbelt had fantasized about and lobbied for. Suddenly the moribund ethanol industry had a future. City air would become breathable. We'd have plenty of fuel. It was going to be a win-win-win.

But instead of cleaning up America, ethanol has added to the mess we're making out of our water and air. Now the Bush Administration has decreed that ethanol replace the far more efficient MTBE as an oxygenate. But with current refining technologies and anti-pollution paraphernalia on motor vehicles there's no need for any oxygenate, a fact the powerful agribusiness lobby doesn't want you to know. Under its withering pressure, Congress and the executive branch have committed the nation to ethanol as both oxygenate and fuel."

and also this one:

"First, no crop grown in the United States consumes and pollutes more water than corn. No method of agriculture uses more insecticides, more herbicides, more nitrogen fertilizer. Needed for the production of one gallon of ethanol are 1,700 gallons of water, mostly in the form of irrigation taken from streams either directly or by snatching the water table out from underneath them. And each gallon of ethanol produces 12 gallons of sewage-like effluent.

Ethanol plants are gross polluters of air and water, and because of the exorbitant price of natural gas some of the new ones will be coal-fired, adding to the already dangerous mercury content of fish. The response of the Bush administration has been a proposal to relax pollution standards for ethanol production. Under the conservation programs of the 1985 Farm Bill and its successors, some farmers are bootstrapping their way toward sustainable agriculture, but corn production still erodes topsoil about 10 times faster than it can accrete.

The toxic, oxygen-swilling stew of nitrates, chemical poisons and dirt excreted from the corn monocultures of our Midwest pollutes the Mississippi River and its tributaries, limiting fish all the way to the Gulf where it creates a bacteria-infested, algae-clogged, anaerobic "Dead Zone" lethal to fish, crustaceans, mollusks and virtually all gill breathers. In some years, depending on seasonal heat and water conditions, the Dead Zone can cover 8,000 square miles. And it's expanding."

It's an intersting read and i'm curious to see what you all think. I know we've all been fed this huge sunny picture about Ethanol, but it's important to realize just how many dollars are being thrown at our politicians and into marketing messages and propaganda campaigns to make us think that it's the magic bullet, when it's anything but.

Hypocrisy Know No Bounds

Newt Gingrich admits to cheating on both of his wives. One instance which occured while he was going after Bill Clinton about Monica Lewinsky.

Anyone surprised?

Today's Sign that The Apocalypse has Been Coming for a While

This is probably the record for most posts in a week but i had to mention this.

So i'm walking through the parking lot towards my office today and i see a bumper sticker that reads, "I (heart) my Wife" buried in amongst the other obligatory bumper stickers about loving jesus and being Christian, etc.

And i know this isn't new but shouldn't i be more interested in a bumper sticker that says, "I Don't (heart) My Wife"? I mean, isn't that the point to getting married, loving your wife? I know it's probably more common to not love her and call me an old fashioned romantic but come on. Do you really need to put in on your bumper? Is that the appropriate place to declare love for one's wife? Are we in such rare and desperate times that a bumper sticker is necessary to set you apart from the divorced and unloving masses? It goes without saying that it's a sad, sad state of affairs.

An Inconvient Truth about Gore's Living Situation

I've never really liked this guy and i've never seen his movie but everyone's jumping on his bandwagon about global warming and how much he's doing for the enviroment without realizing that he's still an asshole politician and will always lie, cheat, steal and bend the truth to further his own career and bank account.

I'm glad global warming and enviromental issues are getting a huge chunk of publicity but it's one thing to talk about and an entirely different thing to actually act on it. Let's make sure we're doing the right one. (By the way, my community doesn't even have recycling...a point that i'll be bringing up at the next HOA meeting.)