Blog Thyself
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Musings | Leave a Comment
Evening into morning — and everything is still dark.
Some overriding health issues have caused me to have not a good night, thus, creating less-ability to compose coherent thoughts, and way-harder to transfer to blog lines (was about to write paper, but that’s so 1970s).
There’s plenty out yonder in the big, wide world to write about, but there’s a small imprint in the brain that wants to scream ‘Who Gives A Shit!’ except for those under barrage of that particular shit found in all corners of the globe.
Ugly unrest is on the peppered lips of today — the Occupy protests are getting not pretty, from the mess in Oakland, to a drive-in plunge in London, to more stun-gun episodes in Washington, DC.
People are only going to get even-more pissed.
(Illustration: “Extrangement of Vision — Edgar Allan Poe’s Optics” via M.C. Escher’s ‘Hand with Reflecting Sphere‘ found here).
One item did catch my blurred, Poed eyeball — in one of those Internet video “hangouts” yesterday on Google’s social network, Google+, also streamed live on YouTube, President Obama talked about a rare subject — the drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Via the BBC:
Asked about the use of drone strikes, which have increased in intensity during his presidency, he said “a lot of these strikes have been in the Fata”, or Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
The strikes target “al-Qaeda suspects who are up in very tough terrain along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Mr Obama added.
“For us to be able to get them in another way would involve probably a lot more intrusive military action than the ones we’re already engaging in.”
A shitload of innocent people have been killed and wounded during these strikes, and folks in Pakistan are pretty-much getting pissed about the whole operation.
Obama, though, bypassed some important questions:
In a previous town hall-style event hosted by Facebook, the White House was criticised for ignoring one of most popular questions: Mr Obama’s stance on legalising marijuana.
He did not answer questions on drug policy in Monday’s event.
Dude, what’s the deal?
Poe knew.
A Dream Within A Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Poem found here.
BlackOut — SOPA’s Choice
Filed Under Bullshit, Orwellian, Technology | 1 Comment
(Illustration found here).
Today is a kind of watershed moment when the Internets respond to attempts to censor shit by banging down the back door, but a load of ‘Net peoples have chosen instead to go black.
Daily Kos has an action line to protest the twin online-control orbs SOPA ‘Stop Online Piracy Act,’ (US House) and PIPA ‘Protect Intellectual Property Act” (US Senate), which reportedly are designed to shut down access to overseas websites that traffic in stolen content or counterfeit goods, but like a lot of other surveillance-state-of-affairs, there’s more than just bullshit flying.
Copyright law can be a step away from censorship: “Like many other tech companies, we believe that there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking U.S. companies to censor the Internet,” a Google spokeswoman told Reuters on Monday.
And today (Wednesday) Google has a black band over its name on its search site, and Wikipedia leads to a Gothic-looking spot which proclaims “Imagine A World Without Free Knowledge,” in protest of the upcoming Congressional bills.
Along with Wiki, Reddit and Boing Boing, among others were also going black for awhile to protest.
Even HuffPost had a huge, black box at the top of his home page (where a photo/headline usually appears) early Wednesday, and supplies a factoid page here.
All authority hates freedom — one wonders how the popular uprisings in the Middle East, even the Occupy movement here in the US would fare under these laws, and how would freedom really be effected because as it is now, the real freedom is in the ability to get the truth out there.
Even in the most totalitarian regimes on earth, a little iPhone camera can change the outlook of the whole, entire world — in a real sense, currently there can’t be a total news black out and we need to keep it that way.
An understanding via the LA Times:
Sascha Meinrath, director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative, said the bills set “a horrendous precedent globally” and that much of the content users put online — such as open publishing, crowd-sourced information gathering or comments sections — could all become “incredibly dangerous” if the bills passed.
“We would end up in a situation where we’re trying to do needlepoint with harpoons,” he said.
“You can’t target only pirated information, content or media without getting tons of collateral damage that removes entirely legal content.”
As a screenwriter, East Hollywood resident Steven Darancette, 40, uses Wikipedia often for background information. But he isn’t too concerned about the website going dark Wednesday, saying he supports the protest.
“If I need to get research, I’ll just Google,” he said.
“There are also these things called books.”
The way-big problem, though, is once that door is opened, then locked back again by SOPA/PIPA there’s no going back, the freedom of pure communication will be lost in an Orwellian influenced society, and that ain’t good at all.
‘Hot…’ — Not!
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Politics, Technology | Leave a Comment
Jobs has finally topped the news cycle with an overpowering media assault and now maybe more US peoples will have a chance at getting employed…
Whoa, wait a sec!
Not that kind of jobs, dumb ass!
Yes, Steve Jobs is dead.
Two things there — one, life is really, really fleeting, he was only 56, and two, all the money in the world can’t make you live one minute longer.
In the long run, however, the world will not lament the guy’s passing, but all the techno-bullshit his company spewed out the last three decades, which in one way or another helped contribute to the quick-approaching end of an age.
The other side of the coin is always ugly.
Nearly buried by all the Apple-talk-news yesterday was another story which has been knocked about for weeks, and in its coming, brings to an inglorious end one of the most-crazed, unbelievable sagas in US political history.
Sara Palin ain’t running.
(Illustration found here).
Palin reflected an extreme-hideous side of Americana, which only in its loudness within an unhinged, ignorant babble caught the attention of first the easily-swayed news media and then a certain portion of the public.
Anyone with a dab of sense knows she’s never, ever been much more than trailer trash.
From Palin’s last political will and statement:
After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for President of the United States.
As always, my family comes first and obviously Todd and I put great consideration into family life before making this decision.
When we serve, we devote ourselves to God, family and country.
My decision maintains this order.
…
I will continue driving the discussion for freedom and free markets, including in the race for President where our candidates must embrace immediate action toward energy independence through domestic resource developments of conventional energy sources, along with renewables.
We must reduce tax burdens and onerous regulations that kill American industry, and our candidates must always push to minimize government to strengthen the economy and allow the private sector to create jobs.
Such is bullshit.
If one considered it, John McCain should be held greatly accountable for hoisting Palin on an unsuspecting US landscape in 2008 when he snatched the Alaskan governor up to be a partner in the presidential race — once on board, however, the shit really hit the fan.
“Our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of.”
—Sarah Palin, on her foreign policy experience, CBS News interview with Katie Couric, Sept. 25, 2008
Also in that same interview:
Couric: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?
Palin: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —
Couric: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.
Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.
Couric: Can you name any of them?
Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.
You betcha!
And because that Couric talk was such a horrifying disaster, Palin never goes anywhere now except Fox News, which by the way, has made its own news.
In a confirmation of all this crap was made by Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman, who had Palin on the network not for her great brain.
Via Raw Story:
In an interview celebrating the 15th anniversary of Fox News, Ailes told The Associated Press that he hired the former Republican vice presidential candidate “because she was hot and got ratings.”
According to one Republican who is close to the Fox News chairman, Palin certainly wasn’t hired because Ailes respected her intellect.
“He thinks Palin is an idiot,” the insider told New York magazine earlier this year.
“He thinks she’s stupid.
He helped boost her up.
People like Sarah Palin haven’t elevated the conservative movement.”
And Ailes himself is a sexist asshole:
In a 2008 prologue to his planned book, former Fox News executive Dan Cooper recalled that Ailes liked to “talk macho and compare the anatomies of women in the office.”
“I was too scared to make salacious comments about women in the office,” Cooper wrote.
“Like everyone, I had taken classes in workplace behavior.
Not Roger.
‘How about those bazookas on that Indian girl, or whatever the hell she is!’
Squirm squirm.
‘Pussy masala on the menu today?’”
No wonder the US is finished.
The rise of Palin allowed the rise of political lying — and the getting away with it.
I’ve always knew she was a complete phony and ignorant beyond belief, and didn’t give a shit — this is my first post on her. (And the last).
Somebody at The Daily Dish said it best yesterday: It is hard to describe the relief of this awful person finally going away.
You betcha, again.
Aggravating Tuesday
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Musings | Leave a Comment
(Illustration found here).
Early Tuesday here on California’s northern coast and listening to neighbors act like loud assholes at this early hour makes me want to scream, lash out into the dark, pierce the clear, clean air with a shitload of curses.
Although I’ve been awake awhile, and I’m fully awake right now, the disturbance to the quiet upsets the creative juices — hard to be innovative when there’s anger.
And this is one of those morning when I can’t come up with any decent, well-meaning subject in which to post, despite a ton of weird, frightening, sad, and more than just a little bat-shit crazy news out there, from that simple seamstress mutilated in Syria, to the dangers of selling booze in Iraq, to Michele Bachmann knowing for an absolute certainty President Obama is a one-termer.
Plenty of news, but nothing overwhelming as unique or even beyond the ‘new normal.’
And apparently if there wasn’t bad news, there’d be no news at all.
US peoples are glum, too, feeling bad about everything — in a new Harris Poll:
Looking at the President’s ratings, just one in five Americans (21 percent) give him positive ratings on his handling of the economy while 79 percent give him negative ratings.
In July, 26 percent of U.S. adults gave the President positive ratings while 74 percent gave him negative marks.
When it comes to his handling of the economy, even large majorities of Democrats (58 percent) and Liberals (64 percent) give President Obama negative ratings.
…
In July, one-quarter of Americans (23 percent) expected the overall economy to improve in the coming year, two in five (41 percent) thought it would stay the same and a little over one-third (37 percent) thought it would get worse.
This month, 45 percent think the economy will stay the same, 34 percent believe it will get worse and 21 percent think it will get better in the coming year.
…
Two-thirds of Americans (67 percentage) rate the current job market in their region of the country as bad, one in ten (11 percent) rate it as good and 22 percent say it is neither good nor bad.
In July, 64 percent of U.S. adults said the job market was bad, 12 percent said it was good and 24 percent said it was neither good nor bad.
Misery and no end in sight.
In all this woe, the economic situation for the non-rich is making more and more US peoples to ‘double up:’ This spring, there were 21.8 million “doubled-up” households across the nation, a 10.7 percent increase from the 19.7 million households in the spring of 2007, the Census Bureau said. That means 18.3 percent of all households were combined households.
And maybe there’s no loud, obnoxious neighbors because more and more US peoples live on the street: “The economic downturn and the government’s deep cuts to welfare will drive up homelessness over the next few years, raising the spectre of middle class people living on the streets, a major study warns. The report by the homelessness charity Crisis says there is a direct link between the downturn and rising homelessness as cuts to services and draconian changes to benefits shred the traditional welfare safety net.”
And man-folk can’t find work, the worse male jobs situation since WWII: “Employers are increasingly giving up on the American man. Men who do have jobs are getting paid less. After accounting for inflation, median wages for men between 30 and 50 dropped 27 percent—to $33,000 a year— from 1969 to 2009, according to an analysis by Michael Greenstone, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor who was chief economist for Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. “That takes men and puts them back at their earnings capacity of the 1950s,” Greenstone says. “That has staggering implications.”
(h/t AlterNet)
People much wiser than I am said,
“I’d rather have my son watch a film with 2 people making love
than 2 people trying to kill one another.
I, of course, can agree.
It is a great sentence.
I wish I knew who said it first.
I agree with that but I like to take it a step further.
I’d like to substitute the word Fuck for the word Kill in all of those movie cliches we grew up with.
“Okay, Sherrif, we’re gonna Fuck you now, but we’re gonna Fuck you slow.”
– George Carlin
(Illustration found here).
Have a most-tantalizing Tuesday.
Goin’ on Holiday
Filed Under Cloud gazing | Leave a Comment
Today starts the first official vacation I’ve had in years — the last a near-decade ago while working for a newspaper — and the feeling is already weird.
I’ll not be posting again until most-likely next weekend as this ‘vacation‘ is the first time I’ve been disconnected from the online world for any length of time for nearly four years.
And how will I feed my news and info addiction — smoking more cigarettes, how else?
(Illustration found here).
In the reckoning of things, this is a massive news cycle I’m leaving for awhile as everything is hitting the fan, from the US and world economies, to weather, to war, and even a well-received revival of the ‘Ape’ movies.
The news will just have to cease for at least five days.
I’m traveling via AmTrak to central California to visit with three of my daughters — one coming from Tennessee — and hopefully it should be a good time had by all.
And to the scant handful of peoples who visit this site on any kind of regular basis — please don’t forget me.
Have an awesome week!