From The Daily Mail: North London in Flames after Mark Duggan Shooting
Don't really need to say too much more about that, now do I?
Burn it down.
Burn it all to the ground.
Burn it down.
Burn it all to the ground.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Scaring the Children
Morning, freaks and freak-ettes!
Today, I bring your attention to a lovely little article that spells out the methods the ruling elite have used to ensure the stability of their fascist regime by taking the salt out of the youth.
From Alternet: 8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance
While I highly recommend you take the time to read the lengthy article (I know, I'm asking a lot with a whopping four pages), I have cut and pasted the bullets of the list here for you.
However, the one item on this list that gives me an honest hope for shattering the trend in the near future is "The Normalization of Surveillance." As we step deeper into the 21st Century we are being forced as a nation to stare at the glaring hypocrisy of subjecting ourselves to deeper and more invasive forms of surveillance in public forums. From the knowledge that your vehicle is being recorded at nearly every major intersection by a bevvy of cameras, to the recently approved Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act, which has less to do with protecting children as it does with providing the government with a way to throw out the old "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" maxim and keep tabs on all your internet traffic regardless of what you're doing on your computer, Americans have quickly and depressingly come to terms with the fact that Big Brother really is watching you. And despite all this, the police are getting away in the courts with passing new laws and regulations preventing the public from filming them on the job because they "have not provided consent to being filmed." No matter how dumbed-down the education system gets, you can not deny our youths the simple logical revelation that that just does not make a whit of sense. People just aren't that stupid.
I hope.
Here is The Great White Stanhope's closing to his special Deadbeat Hero, giving his thoughts on liberty and freedom in our nation today. The clip is broken into two pieces, and I have linked both of them here for your convenience.
Enjoy the weekend. And if there are any kids out there reading this on their summer break, well first off, there's a content warning on this page and you've already said you were 18 or older, so I don't want your parents coming after me for filling your little malleable heads with all this subversive rhetoric. But beyond that, come September when you trudge back into that splintered desk in that dilapidated classroom, don't just sit there and let the establishment bash you into submission with all the techniques mentioned above. Wake up. Participate. Take your lives back.
And in closing, I leave you with this quote from Ernest Hemingway's The Gambler, The Nun, and The Radio
Today, I bring your attention to a lovely little article that spells out the methods the ruling elite have used to ensure the stability of their fascist regime by taking the salt out of the youth.
From Alternet: 8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance
While I highly recommend you take the time to read the lengthy article (I know, I'm asking a lot with a whopping four pages), I have cut and pasted the bullets of the list here for you.
1. Student-Loan Debt.Understandably so, half the list deals directly with the education system in this country, from saddling students with unmanageable mountains of debt, to the prevailing theme in public education of instructing children in passive acquiescence of authority rather than the pursuit of wisdom. Other line items of the list will come as no surprise to many, such as Television and the increasing trend of American youths being prescribed heavy mood altering pharmaceutical drugs.
2. Psychopathologizing and Medicating Noncompliance.
3. Schools That Educate for Compliance and Not for Democracy.
4. “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top.”
5. Shaming Young People Who Take Education—But Not Their Schooling—Seriously.
6. The Normalization of Surveillance.
7. Television.
8. Fundamentalist Religion and Fundamentalist Consumerism.
However, the one item on this list that gives me an honest hope for shattering the trend in the near future is "The Normalization of Surveillance." As we step deeper into the 21st Century we are being forced as a nation to stare at the glaring hypocrisy of subjecting ourselves to deeper and more invasive forms of surveillance in public forums. From the knowledge that your vehicle is being recorded at nearly every major intersection by a bevvy of cameras, to the recently approved Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act, which has less to do with protecting children as it does with providing the government with a way to throw out the old "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" maxim and keep tabs on all your internet traffic regardless of what you're doing on your computer, Americans have quickly and depressingly come to terms with the fact that Big Brother really is watching you. And despite all this, the police are getting away in the courts with passing new laws and regulations preventing the public from filming them on the job because they "have not provided consent to being filmed." No matter how dumbed-down the education system gets, you can not deny our youths the simple logical revelation that that just does not make a whit of sense. People just aren't that stupid.
I hope.
Here is The Great White Stanhope's closing to his special Deadbeat Hero, giving his thoughts on liberty and freedom in our nation today. The clip is broken into two pieces, and I have linked both of them here for your convenience.
Enjoy the weekend. And if there are any kids out there reading this on their summer break, well first off, there's a content warning on this page and you've already said you were 18 or older, so I don't want your parents coming after me for filling your little malleable heads with all this subversive rhetoric. But beyond that, come September when you trudge back into that splintered desk in that dilapidated classroom, don't just sit there and let the establishment bash you into submission with all the techniques mentioned above. Wake up. Participate. Take your lives back.
And in closing, I leave you with this quote from Ernest Hemingway's The Gambler, The Nun, and The Radio
-'Why are not all the opiums of the people good? What do you want to do with the people?'
-'They should be rescued from ignorance.'
-'Don't talk nonsense. Education is an opium of the people. You ought to know that. You've had a little'
-'You do not believe in education?'
-'No. In knowledge, yes.'
Friday, August 5, 2011
Spooookyyyyy
Don't have much to say today, but I didn't want to leave you without a post, either.
So here you go.
Sleep tight, boys and girls. Don't let the bedbugs bite.
So here you go.
Sleep tight, boys and girls. Don't let the bedbugs bite.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Behold a Pale Horse
From CBSNews: Armageddon alert after Texas lake turns blood-red
How's that for an attention grabbing headline??
So here's the skinny, folks. Apparently a lake in San Angelo State Park in West Texas, once a popular fishing destination, is now blood red and full of dead fish.
State Officials are saying that the discoloration is a result of Texas' unusually severe drought this year, explaining that as the lake dried up and water levels dropped, the lake suffered a rise in Chromatiaceae bacteria, which thrives in low-oxygen environments. The high level of bacteria is responsible for the lake's bloody appearance, and in combination with the drastically low water levels, to blame for the thousands of fish that have died.
Religious leaders have already jumped on the story, claiming these to be the days foretold in the book of Revelations. And who knows, maybe they're right. Who's to say that when Paul was granted the vision of seeing the waters run red with blood, that was simply the only way for a man of his time and culture to explain a phenomenon as simple as a strange bacteria, something easily understood in our frame of reference today. Maybe it's time I look up the number for some of those bomb shelter companies I brought up a little while back...
...and Hell followed with him
How's that for an attention grabbing headline??
So here's the skinny, folks. Apparently a lake in San Angelo State Park in West Texas, once a popular fishing destination, is now blood red and full of dead fish.
State Officials are saying that the discoloration is a result of Texas' unusually severe drought this year, explaining that as the lake dried up and water levels dropped, the lake suffered a rise in Chromatiaceae bacteria, which thrives in low-oxygen environments. The high level of bacteria is responsible for the lake's bloody appearance, and in combination with the drastically low water levels, to blame for the thousands of fish that have died.
Religious leaders have already jumped on the story, claiming these to be the days foretold in the book of Revelations. And who knows, maybe they're right. Who's to say that when Paul was granted the vision of seeing the waters run red with blood, that was simply the only way for a man of his time and culture to explain a phenomenon as simple as a strange bacteria, something easily understood in our frame of reference today. Maybe it's time I look up the number for some of those bomb shelter companies I brought up a little while back...
...and Hell followed with him
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Damn you, Rocko!!
Filthy wallabies.
From The Huffington Post: Crop Circles Created By Wallabies 'Stoned' On Opium, Australian Officials Say
Filthy wallabies, indeed.
This article explains how the critters of the outback, namely the cute and cuddly wallaby, are ingesting the crops of local legal opium fields, getting "high as a kite" (this is put in quotes in the article, too, apparently a direct quote from Australian officials), and stumbling around the fields creating crop circles. Responsible for 50% of the legal opium production world wide, Australian poppy fields produce the primary ingredient in pharmaceutical drugs like morphine. Not to be confused with all the illegal poppy fields which are used to produce the world's supply of heroin and opium, over 90% of which are guarded and maintained by American troops in Afghanistan. Luckily there are no wallabies in Afghanistan, or they'd likely be riddled with machine-gun fire for tampering with the harvest.
Of course, this conclusion does little to explain many instances of crop circles world-wide where wallabies are not native to the area. The article also fails to provide any pictures of the critters' work. I for one would be quite interested to see how precise a stoned wallabies' crop circle would be. Reminds me of the experiment in which scientists fed various substances to spiders to observe how the intoxicants would effect the spider's prowess at building webs.
Either way, sounds like the wallabies know how to live it up in The Outback.
From The Huffington Post: Crop Circles Created By Wallabies 'Stoned' On Opium, Australian Officials Say
Filthy wallabies, indeed.
This article explains how the critters of the outback, namely the cute and cuddly wallaby, are ingesting the crops of local legal opium fields, getting "high as a kite" (this is put in quotes in the article, too, apparently a direct quote from Australian officials), and stumbling around the fields creating crop circles. Responsible for 50% of the legal opium production world wide, Australian poppy fields produce the primary ingredient in pharmaceutical drugs like morphine. Not to be confused with all the illegal poppy fields which are used to produce the world's supply of heroin and opium, over 90% of which are guarded and maintained by American troops in Afghanistan. Luckily there are no wallabies in Afghanistan, or they'd likely be riddled with machine-gun fire for tampering with the harvest.
Of course, this conclusion does little to explain many instances of crop circles world-wide where wallabies are not native to the area. The article also fails to provide any pictures of the critters' work. I for one would be quite interested to see how precise a stoned wallabies' crop circle would be. Reminds me of the experiment in which scientists fed various substances to spiders to observe how the intoxicants would effect the spider's prowess at building webs.
Either way, sounds like the wallabies know how to live it up in The Outback.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
This Must Be The Place
You mean to tell me there's a place in this country where an entire neighborhood has agreed to not bombard you with their theology by plastering it all over their front lawns?
Where do I sign up?
From First Coast News: Homeowners Association Rules 'Jesus' Sign Violates Rules
As the story goes, Sarah Phillips, a resident of the Sutton Lakes community for four years, received a notification in the mail demanding she take down the sign in her front yard reading "Jesus". The Homeowner's Association for the neighborhood has given her three days to take down the sign, and has promised a fine of $100 per day for every day after that she refuses to comply.
Now, the problem is not that the sign carries religious weight, but rather that it's a sign at all. Apparently, according to the contract Phillips signed, all residents agreed that the only signs allowed to be posted on their property are For Sale or For Rent signs. So political campaigns and religious signs are out. But the statuettes of the Virgin Mary and other Christian symbols that one of her neighbors have in her yard are perfectly OK.
While Phillips admits to signing the agreement, she claims that she "did not give away [her] freedom of speech, religion, [her] rights as an American citizen." Guess what, honey. You signed a contract. And you certainly did not give up your First Amendment rights. You have every freedom that enables you to pack up your shit and move, if that little sign is really that important to you.
Alas, I feel I hear the growing sound of war drums over the horizon. I'm sure these Christian's aren't going to let this one go without a fight. Luckily, even the ACLU has said that while they can't comment on this specific case, odds are this woman doesn't have a leg to stand on in court. So while Phillips plans to leave her sign on her property and suffer the wrath, hopefully her fines can go towards something useful. Perhaps a neighborhood pool for the children, or a playground.
Either way, sounds like a nice neighborhood to me. An entire community that agrees not to cover their property with religious and political propaganda...brings a tear to my eye.
Wouldn't it just make more sense for Phillips to take the cue from her neighbor, remove the tacky Jesus sign, and replace it with some Jesus themed lawn gnomes? Hell, I bet you could put up a lawn decoration that's bigger than the tiny sign that's causing all this turmoil and just paint "Jesus" on the front of the little bugger. It's amazing how all logical and critical thinking skills just flies out the window the minute religion gets involved.
Where do I sign up?
From First Coast News: Homeowners Association Rules 'Jesus' Sign Violates Rules
As the story goes, Sarah Phillips, a resident of the Sutton Lakes community for four years, received a notification in the mail demanding she take down the sign in her front yard reading "Jesus". The Homeowner's Association for the neighborhood has given her three days to take down the sign, and has promised a fine of $100 per day for every day after that she refuses to comply.
Now, the problem is not that the sign carries religious weight, but rather that it's a sign at all. Apparently, according to the contract Phillips signed, all residents agreed that the only signs allowed to be posted on their property are For Sale or For Rent signs. So political campaigns and religious signs are out. But the statuettes of the Virgin Mary and other Christian symbols that one of her neighbors have in her yard are perfectly OK.
While Phillips admits to signing the agreement, she claims that she "did not give away [her] freedom of speech, religion, [her] rights as an American citizen." Guess what, honey. You signed a contract. And you certainly did not give up your First Amendment rights. You have every freedom that enables you to pack up your shit and move, if that little sign is really that important to you.
Alas, I feel I hear the growing sound of war drums over the horizon. I'm sure these Christian's aren't going to let this one go without a fight. Luckily, even the ACLU has said that while they can't comment on this specific case, odds are this woman doesn't have a leg to stand on in court. So while Phillips plans to leave her sign on her property and suffer the wrath, hopefully her fines can go towards something useful. Perhaps a neighborhood pool for the children, or a playground.
Either way, sounds like a nice neighborhood to me. An entire community that agrees not to cover their property with religious and political propaganda...brings a tear to my eye.
Wouldn't it just make more sense for Phillips to take the cue from her neighbor, remove the tacky Jesus sign, and replace it with some Jesus themed lawn gnomes? Hell, I bet you could put up a lawn decoration that's bigger than the tiny sign that's causing all this turmoil and just paint "Jesus" on the front of the little bugger. It's amazing how all logical and critical thinking skills just flies out the window the minute religion gets involved.
Monday, August 1, 2011
"I'd Rather Be Old and in the Way...
...Than this year's New Kids runnin' for my life"
A happiest of birthdays to Jerome John Garcia, or Jerry as he's more commonly known.
A happiest of birthdays to Jerome John Garcia, or Jerry as he's more commonly known.
An Elegy for Jerry (by Robert Hunter)
Jerry, my friend,
you've done it again,
even in your silence
the familiar pressure
comes to bear, demanding
I pull words from the air
with only this morning
and part of the afternoon
to compose an ode worthy
of one so particular
about every turn of phrase,
demanding it hit home
in a thousand ways
before making it his own,
and this I can't do alone.
Now that the singer is gone,
where shall I go for the song?
Without your melody and tase
to lend an attitude of grace
a lyric is an orphan thing,
a hive with neither honey's taste
nor power to truly sting.
What choice have I but to dare and
call your muse who thought to rest
out of the thin blue air
that out of the field of shared time,
a line or two might chance to shine --
As ever when we called,
in hope if not in words,
the muse descends.
How should she desert us now?
Scars of battle on her brow,
bedraggled feathers on her wings,
and yet she sings, she sings!
May she bear thee to thy rest,
the ancient bower of flowers
beyond the solitude of days,
the tyranny of hours--
the wreath of shining laurel lie
upon your shaggy head
bestowing power to play the lyre
to legions of the dead
If some part of that music
is heard in deepest dream,
or on some breeze of Summer
a snatch of golden theme,
we'll know you live inside us
with love that never parts
our good old Jack O'Diamonds
become the King of Hearts.
I feel your silent laughter
at sentiments so bold
that dare to step across the line
to tell what must be told,
so I'll just say I love you,
which I never said before
and let it go at that old friend
the rest you may ignore.
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