Comments or suggestions: Gerard Van der Leun
Frankly I'm surprised it took this long for this mix to hit the web

Downside: No Peterson sisters, no Susanna Hoffs, no big hair, no miniskirts.



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 31, 2011 7:19 PM | Comments (4)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Sigh... Republicans... BLAM!...

I can see I'm going to be using my sticker a lot in the next two years.

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GOP pushing for ISPs to record user data The House Republicans' first major technology initiative is about to be unveiled: a push to force Internet companies to keep track of what their users are doing. A House panel chaired by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin is scheduled to hold a hearing tomorrow morning to discuss forcing Internet providers, and perhaps Web companies as well, to store records of their users' activities for later review by police.

Would some responsible party member please take Sensenbrenner out behind the barn and return without him?

I suppose I could make a variation that says:

"Doofus Republicani: The only species that endangers itself."



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 31, 2011 8:49 AM | Comments (16)  | QuickLink: Permalink
"Fleetwood MacDaddy": Different but the Same

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First this…

Then this…


Lifted from & Created/Discovered by A Continuous Lean.



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 30, 2011 5:07 PM | Comments (15)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Sunday's Lectionaries: The Book of Billy Joel, The Book of R.E.M., The Book of Ecclesiastes

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"Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez..."

"Egypt was troubled by the horrible asp. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Charles Darwin had the gall to ask. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...."

Egypt? Muslim Brotherhood? Oil at 100 dabloons a barrel? Televised "experts" running the pundit kibble dispensers at 2000 RPM? A slim con-artist babbling in the West Wing with a hand full of gimme and a mouth full of noblesse oblige?

Good luck with all that, and see you all a few more miles down the road.

Millions of Muslims tired of inhaling sewage and having measly mean nothing getting out in the streets, and somehow believing that Islam is going to make it right and deliver the goods and not the gun and the noose?

Good luck with all that, and see all you survivors a few more miles down the road.

For a few days I sort of wanly yearned to make sense of it all since my magpie mind is easily attracted by the hot and shiny objects of today's news from nowhere.

For a few days I thought I might find something to say about the latest, greatest conflagration from one of the world's ancient cesspits.

For a few days I tried my best to care because I've been trained to say "I care" whenever some new fecal festival erupts.

But I'm a bad person and I've hit, yet again, the wall of compassion fatigue.

I guess I've just seen it all too often and seen how it so often turns out -- badly -- to get all that worked up.

"Sometimes it gets so hard to care
It can’t be this way ev’rywhere
And I’m gonna let you pass
Yes, and I’ll go last"

I try to care and then I remember to seek solace in places like The Book of Billy Joel:

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jan 30, 2011 12:38 PM | Comments (9)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Faith of the Fool: "He has faith that the lunatics in the streets everywhere will arrange themselves into the proper queues"

When it comes to Egypt and the O-Admin Cobb gets it more than all the Professional Fluffers on TV News:

"Right now what matters is what the Egyptian Army decides to do. What the Egyption ISPs decide to do. If they were partners with the American Systems Administration Force, they guys in the Pentagon would know the frequencies and codes on their communications systems and recognize their voices on the air. They could be in confident contact right now, and the Commander in Chief would be in the loop. But arrangements would require the presumptions of empire, a presumption that Barack Obama would never hold. He believes in natural law, but not that rights are the gift of the strong. And so he has faith that the lunatics in the streets everywhere will arrange themselves into the proper queues and that peace will establish itself. He's a dreamer that Obama and he and his brain dead hack Secretary of State are sleepwalking through yet another crisis, like spectators of the NFC playoffs who care more about the commercials at the Super Bowl than who wins.

"Violence never solved anything, goes the mantra. Speeches do?

"Speeches only work in the hegemony over The Slice**, and then only when the Slice is being paid with regularity. Obama doesn't have money for Egypt. He doesn't have money for anybody, and people are waking up to that reality. The only question is whether or not he has the audacity to use troops, which he doesn't. So he is essentially out of equation. America sleeps once again. Wake us when you have a new leader, Egypt. He can come to Disney World. Shake hands. Take pictures. Maybe even get a bow out of our lame duck Commander in Chief. You can play whatever song you like on the piano at the White House. We don't care. Really, we don't. -- Collapsing with the Swiftness - Cobb

[** The Slice: There are the powerful, there is the Slice, and there is the peasantry. The Slice is smaller, much smaller than the middle class. I believe it to be smaller than the upper middle class. Indeed it is a small subset of the rich and near rich. They are the people who work because they know how and because they want to, but most importantly, they enable the institutions of power. -- The Peasant Principle - Cobb]



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 29, 2011 12:43 PM | Comments (2)  | QuickLink: Permalink
"A-noose" of the Decade

Pardon my incivility, but I find myself wanting to just slap this Limey gobbler sideways with a sledgehammer. I can't help it. It's the Scot in me.

The standard-issue BBC bullshit reads: "Sculptor and artistic luminary Antony Gormley shares his wisdom on matters ecological. “Dispense with your socks,” says he. “This is a time of global warming. Through our feet we can begin to feel it.” This is no doubt because “our feet connect with our brains” and “engage with time.” And what’s more, “through our feet we can begin to be one people, standing through gravity on one Earth.” Yes, standing through gravity, united in our socklessness. Go barefoot for Gaia, people. It’s “an act of solidarity.” -- Via davidthompson: Go Barefoot for Gaia



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 29, 2011 11:50 AM | Comments (5)  | QuickLink: Permalink
First hand at NeoNeoCon: "I left Cairo this morning at 4 am, ..."

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I left Cairo this morning at 4 am, and having been in the air all day, I'm just catching up with events. My impression on the ground was that the security forces are alert but still supportive of order (or afraid of disorder) and the government.... More in an extended comment by Oblio at neo-neocon サ Blog Archive サ Egypt in turmoil

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Posted by Vanderleun Jan 28, 2011 2:48 PM | Comments (10)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Not So Wonderful: Do you allow Dolf Lundgren to manhandle your unicorn?

Well, do you? Punk?



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 26, 2011 8:12 PM | Comments (5)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: I thought that this picture and this video just went together

but hey, I'm just strangely sentimental that way:

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Posted by Vanderleun Jan 26, 2011 8:06 PM | Comments (1)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Religion of "Chew Everything to Pieces" Making Converts on Planet Moonbat

Yes, now that children are out and dogs are in, it was only a question of time before Doga - Dog Yoga

"The NY Times [of course] defines Doga as “massage and meditation with gentle stretching for dogs and their human partners.” Yes, it’s yoga with your dog. From Seattle to Chicago to Manhattan, doga instructors run classes where you can do:

* chaturanga – our canine friends sit with their paws in the air
* upward-paw pose – doggies are lifted onto their hind legs
* resting pose – “person reclines, with legs slightly bent over the dog’s torso, to relieve pressure on the spine”

I've had four dogs in my life, King, Potemkin, Storm, and Peri. They were good dogs and I loved them all. But they were dogs. And they knew they were. They were not, as we see these days in so many people young and old, replacement children, or extensions and pretensions of the secular self.

There's nothing wrong with the dogs and what they give to their masters as companions. I know that and I respect that. At the same time, it is faintly and persistently troubling to me to see the proliferation of gourmet dog shops, the downbreeding of dogs into purse-sized accessories, and the extreme life-saving measures taken by so many to keep their dogs with them long after the natural course of events would have the dogs moving on.

Raising dogs is much simpler, and in many ways so much easier, than dealing with humans, and in a society that has cheapened the child and abandoned the child -- in so many ways both before and after birth -- it's easy to see how dogs are some sort of weird changeling.

Like so many things, love for a dog is a question of degree. And, like so many things, the degree of love for dogs of late has become extreme and beyond neurotic for many. I can't condemn it on a case by case basis. I like dogs too much for that. But the extremity of it in many cases makes me uneasy. I think that comes when I see or find a situation in which loneliness and yearning has overcome sense and sensibility.

I would like all good dogs to either live longer than their masters or be able to join with them in heaven. But I don't think the former would be good for dogs and I'm not sure about the latter.

It's a testament to the infinite patience of dogs with human insanity and sheer moonbattery, that they would put up with something like "doga." It's sad that people can be brought to the point that they would put dogs through it. Like many other things visited upon these good and patient companions, it shouldn't happen to a dog.

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Posted by Vanderleun Jan 25, 2011 8:03 AM | Comments (18)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Religion of "Blow Everyone to Pieces" making converts in Moscow

YouTube - Moscow Airport Domodedovo Terrorist Attack Video - Suicide Bombers Explosion Video - 11/01/24

It's official. The most dangerous place at the airport is now the line while you are waiting to go through "security screening." Look for this to be overcome by the creation of "pre-security security screening." Which will make for a line which will then become the most dangerous place at the airport.

This nonsense will go on until the Department of Homeland Security expands to a point where they will send individual "Security Screening Vans" that resemble bomb-disposal trucks to your home or hotel for pickup. You'll be strip-searched before being allowed to get in the van, of course.

After all, you can't be too careful, can you?

The real solution is to starting draining the Religion of Blow Everyone to Pieces' gene pool, but to even get started with that project will cost America at least one city. And even then it's unlikely the current president will have the stones for it.

In the meantime, just get in the lines to the slaughter.



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 24, 2011 11:19 AM | Comments (6)  | QuickLink: Permalink
"His numbers are UP!" Two Straws in Desperate Grasps

Two meme dreams emerged over the last week in conversations and on the web. I'm sure you've noticed both even though neither means anything.

On the left the straw being grasped and held as if it was a baseball bat about to knock something somewhere out of the park is, "His numbers are UP!" -- which comes and goes in the comments to this item as it does in many other places along the muddy banks of Denial:
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Wow!… Even the Dye Jobs Are Staged on KA-CHING!

The meaning of "His numbers are UP!" is evidently that with one successful "Together we mourn" speech tucked under his belt, and the bowl of warm "Jobs" drool about to be served to the nation and congress this week, there is nothing, but nothing, in the next two years that will deny him The Resurrection.

Yes, roll away the stone, brothers and sisters! Neither insidious unemployment, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, Arab atomics, crashing global economies, warmal colding, nor an alienated tea-drinking multitude of independent voters with "Won't Get Fooled Again" looping on their iPods, can stop this enfant terrible from another bite at the apple. After all, "His numbers are UP!" and what goes up never comes down. That's their plaintive hope.

As somebody's pappy once said, "Hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first."

But not all straws are in the desperate grasp of the left. On the right we hear -- when it comes to the magic Mitt man -- the same refrain, "His numbers are UP!" The breathlessly repeated news kibble that Romney Wins New Hampshire Republican Straw Poll is supposed to be an indicator that... well.... "His numbers are UP!" As above the subtext is "what goes up can never come down so all you other contenders who don't have the support of some republicans in New Hampshire might just as well sit down and wait for his inauguration, for, LO AND BEHOLD!, the Mitt is the O-slayer for whom we have waited all these loooooong years." That's their plaintive hope.

As somebody's pappy once said, "Hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first."

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More hair-care for men but with a subtler dye job.... just a touch of gray. Most "presidential."

"His numbers are UP!" only says to me that our long national nightmare of hearing about who is certain to win in 2012 has only just begun. Between now and that distant November, the world will have its way with both these pretenders. It won't be pretty, but it will be, as always, instructive.



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 23, 2011 10:50 AM | Comments (12)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Someone Wonderful: Just the Very Best Thing You Will See All Week on the Internets

Now THIS is how you tell a story. I found it at Sippican's who sums it the narrative here with; Cute As All Get-Out Right Out Of The Gate, Transitions Smoothly Into Das Kapital, Morphs Into A Tarantino Flick, Runs Roughshod Over Alighieri, Pivots Smartly Into Stephen King, Touches Briefly On Tolkein, Leaves The Grimms In The Dust. Ta da! Fin




Posted by Vanderleun Jan 22, 2011 1:25 PM | Comments (11)  | QuickLink: Permalink
RPDS: The New Right Wing Mental Disease

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"It's a confusing day when the best man in the country
is a lipstick wearing, cookie baking hockey mom hottie
from Nowhere, Alaska, but so it goes."
-- RCJ

I’m seeing a lot of “Woe is us” kvetching and whining cropping up around the sphere in the last few days. Powerline’s got a dose of this social media disease (SMD). Pajamas has a dose. Rove and Krauthammer are probably close to Patient Zero when it comes to the origin of the dose. Innumerable others have a dose. And now they all seek to “give a dose to the ones they love most” -- fellow Republicans and the American people.

The SMD in question is the sudden onset of the “Oh, God, we’ve got nothing but losers to run for President in 2012” syndrome as they wander about the echoing warehouse of their traditional and perennial candidates and see... well, they see losers. And these clear and present losers constitute a collection of schmos that cannot be seen to be able to beat the New and Improved Obama that has emerged in the last week or so, phoenix-life, from the ashes of Tucson.

Wasn't it only yesterday that many of these same doughnuts were dropping their pundit kibble around the idea that "Hey, Hillary could beat this guy!" Why yes, I do believe it was just about only yesterday. Today we're back to the "This bozo is unbeatable."

I have to admit they’ve got a point when your cardboard candidate warehouse is only stocked with the worn and below average offerings of Huckabee, Romney, Gingrich, Paul, Pawlenty, et. al. This is indeed a shabby set of known political hacks, sad sacks, and knobjobs. None of them is going to light up the sky with fireworks.

But you have to remember that this view only comes about because they can’t really face the fact that the only winner they’ve got is a woman who lives in Alaska. Even if they could, they've been told not to.

Instead, all the “kool konservative Katzenjammer kids” seem to have climbed into Karl Rove’s jockstrap for a few wheezing jogs around the post-partum electoral blues circuit. And as they take their laps it seems to me there’s a lot of warning flatulance being emitted that smells out, “Don’t do it, Sarah! Think of the children!”

Why this should be so is beyond me until I recall that the primary force of conservative politics in the last few decades has been to lose no matter what the cost. It’s a comfortable place for these guys; a pose they’re cozy in. After all, why take a shot at winning when you can lose your way into whining?

So, instead of telling their leftoid bosom buddies in the media to pound sand when it comes to Palin, they’re taking the high and civil road of willful failure -- as usual. Not a grain of true grit in the carload. In fact, when it comes right down to it these folks are just paper conservative tigers who have yet to learn that politics ain’t beanbag because they like to slouch in their beanbag chairs and watch the Obamamachine roll over the squashable bodies of Huckabee, Romney, Gingrich et al.

After all, why back a potential winner, a person that people get excited about, a person with clear and unadulterated values, views and opinions, when the losers are so much more huggable? These colonized minds of the never-radical right would run the Geico Gecko before Palin -- if only because their wives would make their lives hell if they didn't.

I call this whining what it is -- the new right wing mental disease, RPDS (Republican Palin Derangement Syndrome.) It’s highly infectious, debilitates the host on contact, weakens the party structure, and is fatal to winning in 2012. People with a fatal dose of RPDS are easy to spot. They're the ones who'd actually consider drafting John McCain.

Fortunately, between now and November, 2012, the people will have something to say about this. I hope they'll at least have a choice, not a Gecko.



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 21, 2011 11:59 PM | Comments (28)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Vas iz der meaning ub der Olbermann shooting execution at MSNBC? Let me consult my corporate-speak decoder ring.

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Illo by Moonbattery via Diogenes' Middle Finger.

Originally written and published on November 5th, 2010 and more right now than it was then.

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Maddow and MSNBC President Phil Griffin: "He's Making a List and Checking It Off"

Now nonoperative: Keith Olbermann suspended over political donations - Politics - Decision 2010 - msnbc.com

Msnbc TV host Keith Olbermann was suspended indefinitely on Friday for making campaign donations to three Democratic congressional candidates, apparently in violation of NBC News ethics policy.

Now operative: Keith Olbermann FIRED for being too much of an asshole for even MSNBC to stomach a second longer than it had to.

Msnbc TV host Keith Olbermann was finally fired definitely on Friday for making a ratings-sucking violation of NBC News / Comcast profits policy.

The announcement came in a one-sentence statement from msnbc TV President Phil Griffin: “I became aware of revolted and disgusted by Keith's lower standards of mental and physical hygiene political contributions late last night. , and his inability to keep his ratings higher than a gnat's scrotum. Mindful of what will be the new Comcast/NBC News policy and standards regarding profitability, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay fired his ass permanently.”

State of play today [November 2010]: GE owns MSNBC.... but not for long. It's unload[ed] this black hole of ratings on Comcast around year end.

Comcast is a profits-driven enterprise that does not easily tolerate the loss of a dollar. (Don't think so? Subscribe and watch your sweet cheap new customer deal slowly inflate upward over a year or so.)

Axes have been honed and held ready at Comcast for some time: Communications Chief to Depart NBC Universal - NYTimes.com

NBC Universal [and universally loathed] Jeff Zucker announced he was departing as chief executive, Allison Gollust, the executive vice president of corporate communications, has told her staff she too will be leaving the company when the takeover by Comcast is completed.

When Comcast takes control there will be blood for the sake of profits and ideology won't matter a hoot.

What does matter [as was shown today, January 21, 2011] is who exactly gets to keep their jobs at MSNBC, Will it be a loss leader like Olbermann [NOPE] or a conscientious executive like current President Phil Griffin [YES] who is "aware", acts quickly, and is "mindful"? "Without pay" is good corporate-speak too. It show's that Griffin is ready and able and willing to make the cuts where it counts. Olbermann makes somewhere around $4,000,000 a year. Even if he's just suspended for a month that sends $308,000 straight to the bottom line. [Bottom line now improved by around $4,000,000 a month which, especially in this day and age, buys A LOT of television news resources in people and reportage.]

It's not about Olbermann's job. It's about Griffin's.

Well played, Phil.

Update: Don Surber has this most tersely as "Fool. Money. Parted."

Update: Van der leun to Olbermann 1/21, "Door. Ass. Bang."

Update: Spend six minutes here with Jon Stewart as he chain-saws and parts out Olberman last year on the Daily Show:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Special Comment - Keith Olbermann's Name-Calling
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political HumorHealth Care Crisis


Posted by Vanderleun Jan 21, 2011 11:57 PM | Comments (27)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Progressive America Haters and Death-Thirsting Republicans Agree: She Can Never Be President!

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The people's genius of The People's Cube, Maksim, made this cover for Prog Fantasy Magazine: The Palin Issue adding:

Inside This Issue: Location of her underground lair. Evil Sarah's Deadly Arsenal: Ray Gun, Mind-Numb Robot Army, Mind Controlling Dog Whistle, Insanity Inducing Target Map, Hypnotizing Sex Appeal. 10 Things You Should Know About Sarah: Dumb yet brilliantly evil. Thinks the planet is only 47 years old. Shoots kittens and puppies for sport. Violates the Prime Directive just for fun. Our Friends Are Stealing From Us: the New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN are selling our ideas as hard news. Brain Exercises: How to trick your mind into believing facts are fiction and vice versa. New Study: All conservative speech is vitriol and leads to violence. Progressive speech will align your chakras. Next Issue: The Tea Party's plan to summon Cthulhu and control the world.

The theme of the week/month/year that the autofellationists of both left and right are sharing deeply today seems to be ye olde "Palin not qualified" canard. From Powerline to Daily Kos they seem united in their Stop Palin circle jerk.

Well, it's early innings for 2012 as yet, and the people, not the pundits and pudpullers of the right and left, will have something to say about it after all.

In the meantime it only goes to confirm my old adage:

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Posted by Vanderleun Jan 19, 2011 2:55 PM | Comments (25)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Salvia and the Naked Schizophrenic

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Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straight-forward pathway had been lost.

-- Dante, Inferno, Canto 1

Once upon a time, in a different life but not so long ago, I found myself bereft, bewildered and bored in a house by the sea. How I found myself in that place in the middle way is a long story for another time. As the divine poet says:

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
So full was I of slumber at the moment
In which I had abandoned the true way.

There I was, “bewitched, bothered and bewildered,” but most of all bored. Bored with life and where it had led me, but most of all, as the singer says, “tired and bored with myself.” So I sought, as so many do, surcease from boredom. And, as usual among the bewildered boredom relief spelled, “self-medication.” And, because the alcohol consumption of another had led to this place “within a forest dark,” drinking was out. As a child of the sixties and a native Californian, I’d had a long off-again / on-again relationship with marijuana for decades, but it didn’t appeal and I hadn’t any ready to hand.

Somehow, “I cannot well repeat how,” I came across a link to something called “Salvia.” The proper name for it is “Salvia divinorum,” or ‘diviner’s sage.’ It was a hallucinogenic, but -- so I was led to believe -- a mild one that promised visions and “insight.” That was a lie, of course, but the bewildered are inclined to believe lies that promise relief from bewilderment and instant wisdom. I was sold. And so I bought.

Because salvia is not, in most states, a proscribed drug or hallucinogen, it is possible to order it off the internet. There it comes in leaf packs for chewing (traditional) or a tincture for dosing tobacco or other smokable substances, or simply for ingesting as a liquid. I chose the tincture sold with the alluring bit of stoner bull, "SAGE GODDESS EMERALD ESSENCE is an extraordinary potion of enchantment."

In time the delivery arrived and, by that time, I’d already read a number of web sites devoted to the “experience” and shovel deep in the kind of quasi-mystical garble common to afficiandos of these sorts of mind-altering herbs. I’d even bought and read the core text of the salviationists, Pharmako/poeia. I was ready for the appearance of “The Ally” and a number of other shades that were supposed to inhabit this nether world of the mind.

As a young man, I’d had a number of positive experiences with LSD both before and shortly after it became a federally proscribed drug. Like most, and unlike a few, I’d never had a “bad trip.” Not only that I seemed to cope well under it’s influence, becoming known as someone who could actually drive; the “designated tripper” of that era. I’d even done, with a group of close friends, a “trip” for a CBS or NBC or ABC documentary on acid at which the news organization had thoughtfully supplied us with pharmaceutical grade LSD from Sandoz. In short, I had no little experience with hallucinogenics but, wisely, had not gone near them in decades.

Now in middle age, I remembered my basic hippy mantra of “set and setting” and prepared for my “trip” accordingly. Clean house, lots of orange juice and fruit, music selection, and car-keys sent down the hill with a friend to be returned the next day.

Then I drank my potion and settled in to “explore” the “brave new world” of “diviner’s sage.”

What followed was the single worst experience with legal or illegal drugs I have ever had. Weight, oppression, slowness, and a mood like being enveloped in a foul stench from which there was no escape even in the fresh sea breeze. Heaviness. Heavy, heavy heaviness. Persistent, unremitting heaviness. Like some shrunken mummy had been glued to my chest and was jabbering in low tones in a language I didn’t understand. The dull back-beat of low-level nausea mixed with the feeling a live frog must have when its brain is pithed by a long thin needle. In short, I was in a universe whose center was repulsion. It was the Full Lovecraft.

The single redeeming element of the entire experience was that it was brief, no more than half an hour from onset of the high to the fading of the state of mind. The stoner literature on the drug noted that one might have to have “more than one” experience to get to the real core of the drug. I’m here to tell you that once was one too many times.

My first act upon regaining my senses was to flush all the remaining drug down the toilet and throw all the literature into the garbage. Then I went about forgetting my “experience” as quickly as possible. And I did.

Until reports of the last few days that Salvia was part of the drug-cocktail used by the Tucson maniac to prime him lunacy. Then the whole wretched experience came back and I saw, clearly, how drugs played a major role in stimulating and exacerbating his mental state. The reports have him as using salvia as well as marijuana, mushrooms, and other exotics.

Several of Jared’s friends said he used marijuana, mushrooms and, especially, the hallucinogenic herb called Salvia divinorum. When smoked or chewed, the plant can cause brief but intense highs.”

They seem to have it that he abused these over time and in sequence, but I thought, “What if he was combining them? What if he was soaking marijuana with salvia tincture and smoking that?” It would go a long way to explaining the very odd YouTube video that the killer made a favorite and, from my impression at least, actually made himself.

[The video is @ YouTube - America: Your Last Memory In A Terrorist Country! but I would counsel against watching all of it.]

I remember seeing it and thinking what a weird bit of garbage it was with the hulking shape wrapped in a hoody with garbage bags covering his lower torso and legs as he hunched through the Saguro desert to burn an American flag. Now I think that if you were to combine mushrooms, salvia, and marijuana in one demented cocktail you’d probably get the state of mind seen in that video.

But why would you want to do that?

Only one reason I can think of: Your mind is a hybrid of insane and evil. To paraphrase Dire Straits, “If you want to run cruel, you’ve got to run on heavy, heavy fuel.”



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 18, 2011 1:22 PM | Comments (16)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Civil Myass: How About We DON’T Tone It Down for a Change?

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"Go ahead. Take my pay."

I like Michael Medved well enough-- even if I do wonder “Just exactly what is the ‘second’ most popular show on politics and culture?” Alas, like many of the long running rightpundits of late he’s begun to grate on me with his too often tossed off chunks of pundit kibble.

The bowl of kibble served lukewarm today was his predictable, almost Talmudic, examination of why the Right (in Medved speak “everyone -- my angry listeners especially”) needs to tone it down. He was especially vociferous when repeating his often stated belief that Barack Obama is not actually out to harm America. Again and again he rebuffed callers with this assertion; an assertion that I fail to see reflected in almost every act, if not every word, uttered by the president. But evidently Medved does and whenever he goes to this assertion, as he goes to several Medved-branded mental tape loops, I always think, “Well, maybe in your happy world.”

Like other pundits dispensing his daily kibble, Medved has his schtick and his “reasonable thoughtful man on the right now brings you angry and/or whacko guests and phone-ins” for your continued listening pleasure. It’s a branding mechanism and Medved certainly can’t default to the Full Savage. That slot is already taken, thank you very much. Instead, Medved chooses to become the very model of the rigorously rational rightist who seeks to “engage on the issues and leave the passions out of it.” He’s uniquely equipped to do so and it works for him as far as it goes.

Of course, he’s being co-opted nicely by the uncivil civilians of the left who started and have sustained the whole silly civility discussion for a week. Since he’s an intelligent man Medved may even know it but, locked in his radio persona, he can only go with it. He’s got some company in that with pundit after pundit checking in to say, in essence, “You know, they have a point. We should be more civil.” Which is, of course, a fatal step since they all and sundry have just violated a cardinal debating principle of William F. Buckley: To paraphrase, “Never, ever accept an opponent,s premise. Get you opponent to accept yours.”

Aficionados of Buckley’s classic “Firing Line” shows will recall the master’s method of reducing “infallible arguments to fallacious premises.” What Medved and the other consolers of the left are doing these days in their engagement with this strawest of dogs is elevating the left’s fallacious premise that the right is most uncivil to an infallible argument. That argument is that the Right really has been (without really knowing it) most uncivil and needs to clean up its act if “our politics” are to return to a level and “civil” playing field.

O timor! O mortis! O would that Buckley wouldst be living at this hour to set Medved and the fellow travelers at National Review back on the Right path. Instead, Medved and others are in danger of becoming the poster children for the spoonerism, “I used to be Snow Right, but I drifted.”

Does this work? Why yes it does. Time after time, the nice Right falls over themselves in falling for it. Already we see that chinless, lying gobschmucked putz E.J. Dionne Jr.calling for a "GOP test: A civil and honest health-care discussion." Oh really? Like the oh-so-civil and oh-so-honest health-care discussion that went on for most of 2009 in the congress? I. Don't. Think. So. Dionne, you cretinous, chancrous tool. My "discussion" with you and your ilk starts with "ST" and runs to "FU."

I'm against the trend of the last few days as the “Rational right pundits” slowly and steadily buy into the Big Lie that the Right is being uncivil. The fact of the matter is that it hasn’t been, it has only been perceived to be by the left now that they losing their grip on the absolute power they thought they would hold onto forever since 2008.

In historic terms, in America and elsewhere in the world, the Left always becomes increasingly uncivil in direct proportion to its loss of power. When they gain power the pleasures of being uncivil on the left do not, of course, stop with talk. Ever. And after they achieve absolute power in other societies, it always and everywhere goes directly to guns and purges. That’s their method and their madness, over and over again, and we ignore it at our peril. With the left in power, you don't get a lot of lonely lunatics shooting random people in the head, you get organized death squads shooting people on lists in the head.

Conversely, when power begins to slip away from the left in America it invariably calls out for more civility from its opponents and will riot to get it. This is what is happening now and the left, should it be successful in this -- look for it to be harped on at the forthcoming state of the union address -- it will be the first to whip out the long knives, declare a Kristallnacht, a cultural revolution, and lock and load.

The left not only expects the “nice guys” of the “rational right” to come around to their way of thinking, they depend upon it. And they should since that’s been the pattern of these things for as long as I can remember.

I’ve even tried this a couple of times but, alas, no longer. My nice, reasonable right guy is all used up these days. I've got compassion fatigue. I see the left dealing, once again, from the bottom of their media marked card deck (when do they do otherwise?), and I’m not feeling too civil about them and their plans these days. I've seen enough of their "handful of 'gimme' and mouth full of 'gimme more'."

Speaking for myself -- in a calm and rational tone as I reach to upset their crooked card table and draw my metaphoric popcult pistol -- I have to say, “I know what you're thinking. ‘Did he fire six insults or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as we're playing for the future of the Republic, and being as this is a 2010 iMac, the most powerful personal computer in the world, and would blow your premise clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? ”

Or, to quote the much more pithy Don Surber, "The left wants us to be civil -- after being so uncivil for a decade. Bite me."



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 17, 2011 3:05 PM | Comments (30)  | QuickLink: Permalink
TOGETHER WE JIVE: In Honor of Obama's Number One Creditor

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It's steak state dinner time at the International House of Ocakes (I'HO) tonight. Uncle Jefe sent this one in so we'll never forget it.



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 16, 2011 6:14 PM | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: Picture of the Winter

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"Still here, dammit."

[Aside: Sippican was telling me a story like this just this morning. Ask him and maybe he'll tell everyone.]

HT:Rob in email



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 16, 2011 4:04 PM | Comments (8)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Woman of the Year "Reviews" The Black Swan (NSF[ANYTHING])

NeoNeonCon [Once a ballerina] had her way with this film in The bleak, baroque, berserk "Black Swan"

Dance is not what this movie is about -- it's "Rosemary's Baby" crossed with "Repulsion "sur le pointes. If that seems like a mixed metaphor -- well, it is.

Now WOTY glowpinkstah kicks it up many notches with Black Swan Makeup Tutorial: Natlie Portman is extremely beautiful and an amazing actress. She inspired meeeeeeeeeee to make this video.



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 15, 2011 12:44 PM | Comments (12)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: Miss Arkansas' Got Talent!

Continuing with our video weekend here at American Digest: I join with BigFurHat @ iOwnTheWorld.com -- She Got Robbed "How did Miss Arkansas NOT win last night's Miss America Pageant?"

I mean, just suppose, you actually -- somehow -- managed to marry this woman without knowing her "special talent...." Then, on your wedding night, she opens those two cases that were carried to the honeymoon suite with the rest of her baggage.... and it begins....



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 15, 2011 8:32 AM | Comments (7)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Lunatic

I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.

-- Wallace Stevens

I can't look at the face with the shaved head and insect eyes, but I see it everywhere. I won't eat the pellets of pundit kibble but they are strewn at my feet everywhere and need to be scraped off the shoes of my soul. I can't read the he-said/she-said bicker that flickers on the tube and screen, but it is repeated and repeated until the drivel flows higher than my knees.

It's always like this in media memeland where the news travels faster than thought and the usual perpetrators of the lie spew their usual lies. The "narrative" is set out in templates as rigid as rebar laced through concrete: Nothing to hear here, move along. Nothing to see here, move along. Nothing new to be here, move along.... Oh, by the way, see those people over there? Yes, the ones who had nothing to do with it. They did it. What? You don't believe me. Come over here and let me shout it in your ear over and over until you can't hear yourself think. Repeat after me: "Even though they had nothing to do with it, they did it." Got that? Good. Now go and vote likewise.

The reduction of tragedy to political commentary in this age is a banality. To point to it is only to extend it. To use insanity to count coup on political opponents is not insanity, it is evil.

Lunatics have always been with us and always will be. Insanity is an "occupational hazard" of being "the smart monkey." In the sixties our keepers decided that it would be a "good idea" to deinstitutionalize the insane among us. Like all "humane" ideas it started small and over the decades grew to a flood until the insane walk among us on our streets with little hindrance. We lump them with addicts and alcoholics and bums and kindly call them all "homeless." As such, they hide in plain site until they choose to make their madness manifest. And then we wonder how all the "signals" could have been "missed," why "something" was not done to protect the insane from themselves and others from their manias.

But "something" was done. It was the "humane" thing to do to free our lunatics and to make it, slowly, as difficult as possible to re-institutionalize them and keep them there. It wasn't chance that killed in Tuscon. It was policy.

And now, among many others, a little child is shot dead.

Across the street, it's morning recess. Hundreds of children run back and forth on the playground shouting and laughing, their last cares of childhood forgotten in the next moment. The coming cares hidden far beyond the present moment. Some will be heroes, most will be decent people with the standard measure of joy and sorrow in their lives to come. One or two will come to a bad end. Some will find life unfair. One, here or there or elsewhere, will sink into the pit of madness from which there is no return.

And that one, then, will become a face with insect eyes that cannot be looked at but is much commented on by pundits who, in the end, have nothing to say to anyone at all -- and speak only to the single glass eye and directly to the mute button.

Long ago a friend who knew many in our permanent pundit class of "clever sillies" had nothing but scorn for them. She described their "professional" pretensions as "intellectual insanity." She was right and if you would see the proof, scan the web or channel surf the news nexi. In Arizona one lunatic is in a cell. In media memeland the others simply spew their vitriol, smear their feces on the nation's walls, collect a check, and go to dinner.



When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown,
The dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jan 11, 2011 11:01 AM | Comments (11)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: Your Moment of Hoveround Zen

Getting down in the breakdown lane. If they ever get me in this chair, I hope I have this guys balls.



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 10, 2011 2:39 PM | Comments (4)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Hideous: Low Israel IQ is rampant at UCLA

Why Our Country is in the Mess it is in, Here is Why!

Products of the prog-educational-complex, these kids are dumber than the doorknobs they were conceived on.

Or, as Blastineau puts it, "Proof that diversity does not cure stupidity."



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 5, 2011 11:44 AM | Comments (15)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Welcome Back!

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Posted by Vanderleun Jan 3, 2011 9:52 AM | Comments (7)  | QuickLink: Permalink
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