Archive for the 'The Ill-Literates' Category

Published on November 7, 2007 in ..The Dude, Television and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

TV and movie blurbs from the cyber ghetto.

There’s a writers strike on and it will effect your favorite show soon. The Office will be one of the first hit because the cast is refusing to cross the picket line.

Another reason to love their cast.

Hollywood needs to give them what they want. They deserve a larger cut of all the new media. Good actors and producers are a lot easier to find than good writers. It all starts there unless we’re going to just become a media of reality shows.

And as far as I;m concerned watching a reality show right now is akin to crossing a picket line. So go watch The Amazing Race you scabs.

Strike shouldn’t effect Heroes much because I don’t think the Manatees writing this crap are in the writers guild.

The actors who have to act this stuff should be protesting.

So on to the tv itself and we may as well start there.

I am almost done with Heroes.

Watching this show reminds me of the inertia of a bad relationship. Heroes is like a girl you date because she’s pretty. For a while the shortcomings and superficiality of things are buried under the gloss and novelty. But as time goes on you get bored and realize there is no substance to the relationship. I had hints last year but didn’t want to believe. I was lonely and she was there and looked good in a pair of jeans. But I can’t hide from the fact the relationship is a shallow one and the sex is now empty.

This kind of girl can be very popular. Look at the ratings. But judging from the internet a good deal of the many who have been in her pants are coming to the similar conclusion that there’s not much in there. Not enough to warrant how empty her head is and how little she ever changes.

Pushing Daisies I’d date though. Right here right now. But I’d be scared it was too good to last and probably sabotage things.

It’s the best new show of the season in my humble.

It’s whimsical, silly, heartwarming, sweet, arresting, well played, and visually beautiful. The novelty could wear off and I’m leery that this thing won’t hold up though. ABC recently ordered a full season while at the same time cutting it’s budget. So a dysfunctional relationship metaphor may be developing for me here as well.

But though the show can be overly cute, the way they present it with a fable like quality just really makes it ok for me. It’s kind of like The Princess Bride mixed with Edward Scissorhands without the evil Tim Burton making things too pretentious and mixing in an element of creepy ego and misunderstood genius.

Ned and Chuck have that enforced distance of Depp and Ryder in that movie and the look of things invokes many Burton movies. But no one is pretending that there’s more beneath the surface here. There is but it’s more naturalistic and sweet. Like Princess Bride. It’s a fable for fable’s sake.

The frustration between Chuck and Ned is palpable. And the acting is quite good. Chuck is possessed of that rare combo of hotness, cuteness, adorable-ness and approachability that most of us geeks want in a woman but will probably never have. She really has something going on. She’s the biggest reason I’d sate the show if I could date a show. All the supporting players, mainly 4, all have something very endearing about them. Emerson’s asides in reaction to the cuteness going on around him are usually amusing, Olive, even when singing Hopelessly Devoted To You has that wild card edge but is likable and kind, and Chuck’s Aunts are sympathetic quirky old maids.

There really is no bad guy or overarching story though. And the mystery of the week thing as Ned raises the dead to find out who killed them may get old. They still manage to do it in a fairly fun way and its rather incidental nature works. But in the long run they may have to come with some more substance or Buffyverse type thread to the season.

But the show is just plain old charming so far and even when being sentimental it works and leaves me holding back the eye sprayage.
______

Chuck, the TV show.

Again, no overarching story. Seems like the same story every week. Getting old very quick.
_______

Journeyman is actually the best thing on NBC’s sci fi oriented slate this season. The acting is really good and despite being bogged down by the Quantum leap like story of the week as Dan saves somebody in 70′s, 80′s, and 90′s era S.F., the show is starting to incorporate some ongoing storyline threads and mythology.

But it’s still take it or leave it.
__________

The Office is still awesome. JIm and Pam are together and I like everything about that. For those who need relationship conflict we have the far more strange triangle of Dwight, Angela, and Andy which nevertheless has had some touching moments. This show is just so subtle and untraditional, but it makes with the funny nevertheless. And it is still doing so this season even with the hour long episodes the first month. Good to see the ratings have actually gotten better on this show.

___________

Bionic Woman. Can take it or leave it. Not as bad as some make it out to be. But I wouldn’t embark on a quest to get it back if it disappeared tomorrow. They should have let her use her regular accent. For the episode she used it playing an English transfer student I was so turned on I thought I would have a bionic episode in my pants. And I wasn’t bored every second Katee Sackhoff was not on screen which has sometimes been the case.

Speaking of Katee word is Galactica is being pushed back to April now. And that we might get only 10 of the final 20 episodes with the other 10 sometime in 09.

This is perhaps one of the shittiest things perpetrated on the American public in the past decade that Dick Cheney had nothing to do with.

Or did he?

___________

Friday Night Nights. Still good but not as good as last year. Recent events conspiring to get Taylor back to Dillon felt like a predictable cop out.

THe murder thing with Landry and Tyra isn’t a direction I would have gone in. Although Aaron Pierce may have to cover things up for his son and it’s always good when Aaron Pierce has to get involved. But Landry seems smart enough to have just taken his chance with the police. The guy had stalked her and tried to rape her in the past. Even though he was walking away Landry probably would have gotten off the hook. I know they needed something to weld her to him since, as even his own father Aaron Pierce knew, there was no way a guy like Landry was getting a girl like Tyra. But it still just added a little too much soap opera to a show pleasantly above that genres normal convections.

But her playing that look in the mirror card after Aaron pierce got all “I know what’s going on and you better stay away from my boy who has never lied to me before,” was pretty sad right after Landry had his Football moment.

And Lyla going all born again actually rings pretty true. Especially in a small Texas town. And after her transgressions it’s not a stretch that she’d retreat to some easy salvation giving her that sense of superiority at a time she was feeling her most inferior. And Tim sort of ambivalently following her into it, mostly even if unconsciously, to get back in her pants, isn’t hard to imagine having happened in such circles a million times.

Jesus freak or not lyla remains one of the hottest women on the tv right now.

And Aaron Pierce is doing a tremendous job posing as a small town cop and father while waiting for Jack Bauer to need his help stopping terrorists.

________

The 24 trailer.
despite last season I’m getting a little pumped. Part of that is being ready to say goodbye to Heroes and start a new relationship in that time slot. Like returning to an old girlfriend you had some really good times with but though you’re still friends, you just drifted apart because she got a little weird there for a while last year when her dad became one of the leaders of a terrorist plot to blow up stuff in L.A. and you found out that her brother was behind all the troubles you had with her the prior year.

And then that little hotty showed up on NBC and you went for it. But now that’s almost over and the old girlfriend really was fun and is promising to get her shit worked out. And she’s hanging with your old bud Tony Almeda again and says he’s acting really different and she’s not like into him or anything but as friends we can all hang out again while she and I have all those benefits and all that.

Am i pushing tv-dating metaphors too hard?

Can you tell I haven’t had a date in a while?

Well now due to the strike 24 will not start second week in January as planned.

So I may have to pleasure myself with my own Jack Sack and Magic Hoody for a while longer.

Anyway, started Netflixing Deadwood.

After 3 shows I got to say this is really, really good. Just a few minutes into ep 2 I felt like these characters had been so well established and defined that I’d seen a dozen episodes. And the 2nd ep was just riveting. Really well acted, written, and made. What was HBO thinking? It kind of sucks knowing Swaringen is still alive as of the end of it’s third and final season. I have such a need to watch this guy suffer now. And man does he pour on the evil well. That is one scary son of a bitch.

And in an entirely plausible way which is rare.

There were rumors about wrapping things up with a couple of movies on HBO. But right now that’s going nowhere. Hopefully that will change.

____________

Saw Idiocracy on the cable the other night. Mike Judge made it. It’s live action satire borrowing a bit from Futurama. Luke Wilson is the most average guy in America and gets put into hybernation for a year that turns into 500 years. Due to idiots tendency to breed more than smart people with careers when he wakes up America is really stupid and he’s a genius in comparison.

It was enjoyable. If I had paid to go into a theater and see it would I have liked it as much? Not sure. But if you have the chance to catch it do so. Your host Angry Bob who though he resides in the more upscale part of this cyber neighborhood, is someone who i think would appreciate the movie.

________

Saw American Gangster.

Was it just me or did Ridley Scott try and throw some Godfather references in there? Or were they just blatant ripoffs for a new and cinematically uneducated audience he was going for with this urban gangasta forerunner of much modern hip hop music, attire, and attitude?

The are thing Denzel did when he was pissed about them shooting at his wife. His walk. There was something Pacino-esque there. The way Michel seemed to develop a primal strut as the first movie went on and he became more of a killer and family man and less the college boy. Denzel seemed to have that walk from the beginning of this movie. I wonder if that was calculated or if I was just imagining things.

But it was good. Not great.

Where was he going with that Crowe speech about Lucas representing progress to the old guard Italian mob? Progress?

Really?

Change yes. Most definitely he represented a change they were not comfortable with for many reasons in addition to his race.

Although Ridley Scott doesn’t shy away from the bloodily ruined lives in Lucas’s wake. He’s glamorized to a point but it’s not quite Superfly. But in the end I’m not sure this story was that interesting to warrant a 2+ hour movie. It was worthwhile. And the authentic little 70′s era NY City touches were enjoyable for me. Even seeing those paper cups with the little wing handles on them that used to be so prevalent was pretty cool. They’re so ugly now. Most of it was. But Scott did a pretty good job capturing that feel even if he may have cut corners on the facts as some have reported but I admittedly haven’t bothered to research.
___
Done with book 2 of Neil Stephenson’s Baroque Trilogy, The Confusion. Completing this series and wrapping a decent portion of my head around it has become my life’s work. I actually read the first book Quicksilver and it’s 900+ pages twice. They were a year or so apart though. I needed a refresher before going into part 2. I’m reading other books around them. Or at least parts of other books. But I will finish this thing.

Mainly because it’s good. It fulfills my geeky need for sci fi escapist trilogies while still not insulting me with implausibility. It’s really dense stuff capturing so much of what was going on in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. There’s really history there mixed with fictional characters and situations that elaborate on and draw meaning from the events that were going on. Those events included a changeover in financial systems from being land based to a more liquid commerce and credit based monetary system. The roots of our own capitalism and free market are there mixed with attendant philosophical dilemmas rooted in the conflict between Isaac Newton and Willfred Leibnitz. Part of that was the argument over calculus and who invented it. But it’s also about determinism vs free will and the mechanistic natural philosophy of the Royal Society and the Alchemy Newton clung to in order to try and continue to incorporate some magic, or hand of god in his science.

And that’s not even mentioning the 3 main characters, Daniel Waterhouse, Jack Shaftoe, and Eliza. All are interesting and smoothly interwoven into this world that includes Louis XIV’s court, the fluctuations in England’s monarchy as Charles becomes William Of Orange and the Dutch takeover after the Restoration, Barbary pirates, Solomon’s gold, and the seeds of the enlightenment being planted by real historical figures such as Huygens, Robert Hooke, and the aforementioned Newton and Leibnitz.

Really amazing stuff. I’m quite impressed with Stephenson now though there are times you really have to battle through and wonder if there could have been some more editing. But dragging things in spots isn’t without some value as it creates atmosphere and really imbibes of the period and made me feel a bit of what it was like to live in that world.

Spoiler Alert:

And the ending setting up an unforseen conflict and battle of wits between our own picaresque vagabond hero Jack vs Isaac Newton now in charge of the Royal Mint, was really pleasing.
_______

Published on March 22, 2007 in ..The Dude, Religion and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

Statistically speaking there are allot of non-believers out there. People who just can not surrender their minds to irrationality. People who want to believe in something because it’s true. Not because it makes them feel good. And yet to not believe, to suggest it in mixed company, is one of the few taboos left. So we walk in silence amongst believers afraid to voice our opinion. Or we walk amongst each other without knowing it because it’s a truth that dare not speak its name.

But there are more of us than come out about it and it’s time we organized and started speaking up.

It’s really crazy how you can challenge people about their political beliefs and affiliations, their stands on economics or abortion, or their favorite Baseball team, but to criticize their religion is considered in poor taste. It’s the one thing we’re still supposed to show the utmost respect for. But why? Why should it be sacrosanct?

When you look at it we live in a world where the figments of peoples imaginations are accorded more respect than not only facts, but more than real people. If you decide the idea of an intelligent corn stalk that is sown and reaped in everlasting cycles with each new kernel representing a new soul is an organizing principle in your life, is indeed the driving motivation and inspiration in your life it then becomes socially unacceptable for me to criticize that aspect of your life. If you decide you want to remove your mother from life support it’s ok for me to open this up for debate. In other words the unspoken rationalizations existing purely in the mind are considered more important and unassailable than real life or death.

The religious can go after anything about the rest of us on national t.v. but if someone were to challenge their religious belief which is often at the core of many of their opinions there would be fucking hell to pay. Can you imagine a politician campaigning who is an admitted atheist or agnostic? Polling indicates that the amount of people who would vote for a qualified woman or black person to have grown up to over 90% in recent years. Even homosexuals who are considered qualified poll at roughly 60% or more which is up considerably from years ago. Those that would vote for a qualified atheist are less than 50% and have had the least growth.

There is not one politician who had admitted to not believing though statistically speaking some of them must be. But they know it’s the one thing they can’t speak of. Even gay politicians have come out. But if you think the religious are full of shit that is a closet you have to keep nailed shut or you’re done. This is even worse than in the days of our founding fathers. They were a mix of deists and atheists. And deists were basically the atheists of today. And even in their cases, personal writings and correspondences reveal that Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison and many other key figures were much closer to being atheists and had a complete and utter disdain for Christianity and its myths and tenets.

But now we have not only the right-wing and their cynical use of religion that depends on the inherent gullibility of its believers but we even have a Jewish Democrat in Senator Joseph Lieberman saying we shouldn’t deceive ourselves into thinking that our constitutional “freedom of religion” means “freedom from religion,” or “indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion,”

Bush Sr, the apparently semi lucid and sane member of the family is reported to have said atheists shouldn’t be considered citizens or patriots because we are one nation under god.

We see all these revelatory e mails these guys write and manage to let sit around and become exculpatory evidence but I dare say not one of these guys would take the chance of admitting to not believing in some version of the American god. It’s too dangerous. Too volatile. And apparently too threatening to people.

Why is it considered fair game to criticize or even make fun of someone’s choices in any area but this one? Even good natured ribbing is mostly off limits. When do you see a stand up comedian take on religious beliefs? This is a topic which has cloaked itself in layers and layers of smoke and mystery for so long, has self applied so much ponderous self importance and hysterical emotion, has won the loyalties of so many practical powers who find motivation to play along, that privacy has become sanctity and fear of being exposed has hidden behind self righteous indignation. This has all combined to give themselves an off limits status.

It reminds me of an abusive family who hordes its secrets and develops rules against sharing with strangers and patterns of behavior that do not and can not ever allow for honest discussion and introspection.

And for those that say this is only what some do with religion and not religions fault I can make the same equation. It’s like saying the abused child who was himself abused should not lay any of the blame on his own father. Or that alcohol has nothing to do with drunk driving.

And any excuses still do not deal with the inherent poverty of anything approaching proof or rational argument than can be offered in the name of whatever version of god people happen to find comfortable. In fact the ever changing and shape shifting the whole concept of god has taken on seems an exercise in psychological self manipulation and coping skills. When you look at the various versions of Jesus, even just the non deity ones it is very apparent you have a chameleon shape shifting to fit the biases of different times and people. Whether its philosopher Jesus, hippie Jesus, political radical Jesus, rebel Jesus, rocks tar Jesus, buff Jesus, shaman Jesus, etc etc, it’s pretty clear he’s a siphon for whatever people want to pour their mix of credulity and comfort into.

And yet even non Christians will defend their version with a religious fervor.

So goes the effects of religion on even those who think they are free from it and its brainwashing.

And even to that secular batch who glomm onto new agey versions of the Christian man-god, attacks on him, and the idea of contradicting some version of godliness sitting atop or within the universe is anathema. If you contradict most people of any persuasion you are liable to get one of two types of reaction. Either contempt or pity. The first is born of their own lack of security and feeling that you are somehow less than trustworthy. They look upon you as a moral leper with no social or ethical grounding as if their ilk have some history of greater conduct than those of us who refuse to submit to the grand illusion.

And when you receive pity it is in part a consequence of their feeling that you must be so sad and pathetic going through life without grounding. Or worse, headed for hell as a consequence.

Meanwhile there is a vast amount of evidence including actual studies that have shown religious people are no more moral or well behaved than atheists. They may actually report being a bit happier. But saying it and feeling it are two different things just as the amount of people who report they go to church has been discredited. And of course ignorance is bliss sometimes. And there again there are actually clinical studies and psychological evidence that happier people tend to be less realistic and more misguided in their judgments than skeptics.

You have to prove yourself in almost every other area of life but in an area that is essentially dealing with make believe, and area that is responsible for so much decision making and peoples actions, an area that may be the most important, there is no questioning on a personal level. We may not agree but we have to respect that one part of a persons life. The colossal arrogance of this astounds me. This free pass must end. Their beliefs are hoisted on us and effect our lives and yet to contradict them or target the never proven assertions these people cling so closely to is in poor taste?

Atheism is more humble despite the defensive rap of arrogance it and science get. Religion has been cloaking arrogance in humility for ages. But there is nothing humble about it except some of its less hypocritical adherents. There rest make the boldest assertions of all and can not be called on to prove themselves. Instead they must be proven wrong rather than having to prove themselves right. And while proving them wrong has mostly been done to any reasonable expectation as far as any idea of a conventional or intelligent creator god goes, it is of course impossible to prove a negative completely. We may as well call god the Logical Fallacy. This is a very convenient relationship to have with your delusion if part of you knows its not real and does not want to deal with that.

This is not to say some non believers can’t get hysterical too. Or that anyone wants to take away the supports of those that cling to meaning to make it through their lives. While I find this as sad as they must find those that have no supernatural faith to buoy them, I understand it. I sympathize and enact versions of that need myself in my more abstract and science fiction based forays into the search for a reasonable support for the idea of soul and spirit.

Heck i don’t want to die anymore than they do.

And arguing with these people is pointless.

And there are even some it does some good for. Not most but some. I find that sad as well but that’s the reality of this time and place. What I am concerned with are two things. One that that time and place in the future not be as limited. I feel it is in the best interest of humanity to get past all this. We’ve evolved more and more to a secular reality and in large part because of secular, humanistic enlightenment values. I want to see that continue. I don’t want to hurt anyone who needs to believe even if I could. But I’m sick and tired of the less decent among them hurting me and this world.

I don’t think there is any argument as to how much they have in the past and present.

The second thing is that those of us who are not on their wavelength, those who indeed feel theirs is a deluded wavelength, are not alone. And I’m tired of feeling like I am.

We’re supposed to tread lightly on believers beliefs but in some ways we are the ones who need a soft touch. What with being all up close and personal with our probable obsolescence. It’s not easy. And that’s why I call on more of us to commune and communicate. To stand up and be counted and to have someone to talk to who understands.

And there are many of us. Estimates are that we (atheists, agnostics, or that good old polling category,”other”) outnumber Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Unitarians put together. There are of course many organizations and websites out there that do some of this work. I’m just starting to find some of them. If any of you are out there and read this let me know of any you know of. Here’s a few:
godlessgeeks.com
fsgp.org which among things keeps track of discrimination against atheists which does really exist.
atheistalliance.org
secular.org

RichardDawkins.net

Of course there are tons of secular media, movies, television. scientists, websites etc out there who are winkingly non believers. But its not as much of their sole stated purpose as the above. And they are not as admittedly out there about themselves. Or they are the agnostic bordering on new agey types that I’d guess make up most of our entertainment and culture that doesn’t come from strict atheists. Ironic since most of the religious watch the movies and tv shows, listen to the voices, occasionally even vote for, and buy the products made with the technology of people who at the very least don’t take those religious consumers devoutest beliefs seriously.

So if you’re around NY and know where atheists and agnostics can find support and respite from the irrational drop me a line because though we are many not many will admit it even fully to themselves. And despite living in a mostly secular enlightened age, it ain’t easy for a pimp out here and even those without a personal god need somebody to talk to about what it’s going to be like in hell.

Published on March 6, 2007 in ..The Dude, Television and The Ill-Literates. 10 Comments

Have Battlestar Galactica and Lost screwed the pooch? Jumped the shark? Smacked their monkey’s? Of these shows and others I will now speak because I’m not just about writing about important stuff and myself baby.

Lost. Alot were pissed a couple of weeks ago after the whole 3 big secrets will be revealed angle ABC played up. Lots of complaints when as I predicted e got one secret and that wasn’t a particularly big one. I had joked before hand that we’d find out how Hurley manages to not lose weight without a tv around, why Sawyer was so obsessed with Star Wars references despite being a guy who gets laid alot, and why Paolo can’t hold his bowels.

As expected i was kind of closer than the promos. And alot of people are annoyed. But this is more ABC’s fault. Cuse and Lindeloff have apparently said they were a bit bothered by the promos. So you even have them admitting there were no secrets revealed. But unfortunately the show is on this shitty network that put that pro Bush 9-11 mockumentary on the air with Disney’s backing to slander Bill Clinton. And they just keep on misleading people.

Because the only thing we really found out was that Jack’s tattoo says, “he walks amongst us but he is not one of us.” And even that doesn’t explain the whole thing he has going on up on that arm. There are pictures, symbols, numbers, interactive 3-d graphics, I mean it’s like the Rosetta Stone of tattoos on there. I did get a little chill though when Isabella spoke it’s meaning and Jack said its what it says, not what it means.

And it was cool seeing Jack actually say stuff most of would say in these situations. When Tom asked him what kind of people he thought they were and Jack simply and sensibly said the kind of people who steal children, hung Charlie, and abduct people, I nearly bust my jeans. Sawyer got a little in too when he made the stealing kids off raft project comment. This stuff stands out more than it should because usually everyone on this island acts like retarded Survivor contestants.

But overall the flashback was lame and a waste of time and we found out nothing new. Cindy’s alive. Oooh. Who the hell is Cindy? I don’t think alot of people were on about her or Jack’s tattoo ABC. The kids are milling about. That’s something I guess. But we kind of knew they weren’t dead. We really didn’t find out much about what they’re doing there beyond a vague reference to giving them a better life than Gilligan and the Professor could.

And I’m still troubled with the time travel thing with Desmond. Or a whole hour being given over to the results of a bump on the head. And now I have to wait a year to see Penny again.

But though this week once again progressed plot about as much as Dynasty has the past 15 years, it was an enjoyable episode. Stuff like Hurley making the Scooby van into a symbol and all the fun that ensued with him, Sawyer and Jin can be cool. And was in this case. Just need a bit more drama in between these episodes.

They said something big was supposed to happen about halfway through this season. Something huge and paridigm shifting. Tonight is episode 11. Halfway point. Something that makes me go wow or look for circling sharks better happen in the next couple of weeks.
_______________

Britney Spears is the Jack Bauer of rehab.

24 hours at a time baby. She went all G.I. Jane on that mother and gets in and out until the next bad day.

Don’t kick the baby.

-_________

BG. 2 episodes ago was Bloody hands. The union episode. This was a frakking great show. They really got into gear there managing to capture that potential the show has shown to be able to make pertinent modern political and philosophical points in a realistic futuristic setting.

And the stuff with Baltar and his underground pamphlet was genius. This is so the way to get him back. He made alot of valid points that are easy to see connecting with people. There really is an aristocracy of privilage amongst the colonies and their survivors. Some may be unavoidable, or at least understandable but that doesn’t lesson the legitimacy of the fight to uphold a higher standard and like Adama once said, to be worthy of surviving.

And when he did that accent thing for chief i kind of got a chill. And so did Chief. Which is why Baltar is coming back baby!

And then we got the much ballyhoed perspective shifting huge Starbuck episode we knew was coming.

And it kind of sucked.

It was like a poor mans Close Encounters abducted by 2001 with the mandala substituting for the potato mountain and Starbuck going all Dave Bowman into the maelstrom of the cosmos as some kind of sacrifice for the future.

It just didn’t work for me dog, as Randy Jackson might put it.

This might have been her final scene. She should have gone out better than Tasha Yar. And all that whiny ass my mom sucked, i like pain and suffering and its my destiny because some equally whiny ass Cylon who Roslin put out the frakkin airlock to be with his own personal Jesus in the slimey muckpool of the Cylon rebirth chamber, was all, like you know, a bit pitchy for me.

They didn’t bring it dogs and at this point in the competition you have to take it up a notch unless you’re having sex with Paula.

But there’s only 3 eps left and they need to pull something good from this Starbuck mess to redeem what they’ve done. Word is they just might do that. The finale is supposedly a doozy. Hopefully not a silly one.
_____________
I like Heroes but Studio 60 is the most riveting and best written and made show I’ve seen in a while much less new one of the season. And not it’s on hiatus. It will be back for its final 6 eps of season in April probably but it has little chance of renewal. It’s my fault for watching a show I new was doomed. Masochistic part of me that wants a cause to rail against I guess. From the first episode when it’s rating plunged in the second half hour as people had to actually pay attention and deal with allot of stuff as opposed to its lead in Heroes, which as fun as it can be does not exactly demand more than cursory attention to absorb it’s rather superficial veneer, I knew the show was a gonner.

And I watched anyway. As I watched Arrested Development even as I knew it’s life would be short. But at least they got 2 and a half years. 60 does cost allot of money. Something like $3 million per ep. But you can see it on the screen. It had its portentious and self absorbed moments early on but its really started finding a nice balance and flow since then.

I could go on but seeing as no one reading this has ever seen the show I won’t bother. no save the show campaigns or posts like with Arrested are going to happen on this site. I accept 60′s fate. I even blame myself to an extent.

__________

Heroes:

April 23rd?

We have to wait another 6 weeks?

All these shows need to go the 24 route.

The last 2 eps were pretty good. Really like Malcolm McDowell as Linderman. I hope he peronally kills Nikki. And Jessica. Which is the good one? I don’t even know anymore. I don’t care. I just want to use her upper lip as a sling shot for some large object aimed right back at her like in a Loony Tunes cartoon.

And Momma Petrelli is a player. Kind of suspected she might have some involvement but was caught by surprise by her being all over the Claire-Haitian thing. And that morphing chick taking on HRG’s wife’s form made me feel violated.

And that shot with Hiro and Ando in a post apocalyptic NY with cranes starting reconstruction in the background was pretty damn cool. I’m not even going to bother with the timelines involved right now because quite frankly Scarlett I don’t give a damn. I know how Peter got his scar now and why Indian guy was given a degree in something from a reputably respectable university. He finally caught on to something. Maybe was a bit daft for thinking some Indian spices would kibosh all Syler’s powers but he figured something out all on his own.

And for that I’m grateful.

_____________

Oh yeah Scooter Libby was found guilty.

His master still roams the Earth free to conquer and destroy in the name of his small and cowardly penis.

Published on February 27, 2007 in ..The Dude, Politics and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

Cheney was near a terrorist bombing and survived. I can’t overexaggerate how much this disappointed me to hear. About the surviving I mean. That and a Republican memo and W’s stupid wife, now on Ill-literates.com!

First on the Stepford Wife. Laura has already shown us just how vapid and useless her brain is but on Larry King last night she gave us more. Here’s a sampling:

And many parts of Iraq are stable now. But, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everybody.

Isn’t 1 enough? These aren’t multivitamins you prick. And 34 of them have actually gone off this week. Apparently she’s as good at math as her husband is at human speech. And even when just one goes off people die. But we wouldn’t want her to get too negative would we?

When asked how she and W cope with Iraq this ivory tower whore had this exchange with the always insipid and vastly overrated interviewer, King:
We go to church. We exercise together, we watch movies together. We do all the other things that — watch baseball on television, for instance — that we both find relaxing.

KING: Do you — do you talk about it a lot?

BUSH: We talk about it a lot. I mean, we live it.

NO YOU DON”T!

People actually there live it. Their families live it to a large extent. You are living nothing but the closeted life of your mother in law who among other contemptible proofs of her isolation and disregard once said that the New Orleans refugees were living the high life getting out of all those lousy areas they come from.

I guess you have to be a bit daft and clueless to live your life alongside His Impedimence, incurious George, but just shut up. At least Hillary had a clue what was going on while being married to the President. Just be Mrs Stupid, nod and smile at foreign dignitaries at balls and galas, and then go home and masturbate to Michael Moore.
___________

Mitt Romney is running for Pres on the Republican ticket. If you ever had any doubts about how politicians are handled, how phony their campaign spiels and images are, or how conservatives don’t really believe in anything, take a look at these power point presentation slides recently leaked from the Romney campaign. They detail his campaign strategies and pitfalls to avoid that include his hair being too perfect. Quotes are from the Boston Globe

The plan, for instance, indicates that Romney will define himself in part by focusing on and highlighting enemies and adversaries, such common political targets as “jihadism,” the “Washington establishment,” and taxes, but also Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, “European-style socialism,” and, specifically, France. Even Massachusetts, where Romney has lived for almost 40 years, is listed as one of those “bogeymen,” alongside liberalism and Hollywood values.

And Romney has already been out there echoing his handlers suggestions. Even on the France thing. France? Think about that. Using the name France and referencing how screwed up they are is actually a part of his strategy to get elected. You expect Hillary and liberalism. Hack right wing classics of diversionary strategy. BUt let the France thing go already.

The tell him the talking points studies show will give him a chance and he repeats them. He’s already been at echoing some of these.

The blueprint also describes political assets and vulnerabilities of McCain and Giuliani, who lead Romney in the polls.

McCain is described as a war hero and maverick with a compelling narrative and a reputation for wit, authenticity, and straight talk. But he’s also seen as “too Washington,” “too close to [Democratic] Left,” an “uncertain, erratic, unreliable leader in uncertain times.” “Does he fit The Big Chair?” the document asks. The plan calls McCain, 70, a “mature brand” and raises questions about whether he could handle the rigors of leading the free world.

“Brand.” It’s all product and it’s about buying and selling. Not only do they say what they are supposed to say but the people who tell them what to say don’t give a damn about anything but selling product.

Giuliani is called an outside-the-Beltway rock star and truth teller who earned the nation’s trust for his leadership of New York City’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But he is described as a one-dimensional Lone Ranger whose social views — he supports abortion rights and civil unions for gay couples — could destroy the “GOP brand.” “We can’t disqualify Dems like Hillary on social issues ever again” if Giuliani is the nominee, the document states.

The plan also touches on what it calls Giuliani’s ethical issues, including his relationship with Bernard Kerik , former New York police commissioner who withdrew from consideration to become US homeland security secretary amid allegations of improprieties. It raises Giuliani’s “personal political liabilities,” an apparent reference to his three marriages and bitter public divorce from his second wife, Donna Hanover.

There’s that brand word again. And notice how “truth teller,” almost sounds like a curse word coming from these guys?

It is clear that Romney’s campaign operatives plan to make sure that voters are familiar with the perceived weaknesses of McCain and Giuliani and conduct opposition research on the candidates. But the campaign, according to the blueprint, also wants to avoid attacking either man too directly or harshly, in part because Romney wants their supporters to ultimately shift to him. At a campaign stop in New Hampshire last week, he called McCain and Giuliani friends and national heroes.

Even when they’re nice it’s calculated.

Enmity toward France, where Romney did his Mormon mission during college, is a recurring theme of the document. The European Union, it says at one point, wants to “drag America down to Europe’s standards,” adding: “That’s where Hillary and Dems would take us. Hillary = France.” The plan even envisions “First, not France” bumper stickers.

Hillary = France? Did Laura Bush do these calculations?

But this is my favorite part of this Republican’s strategy to succeed Bush:

Like every Republican in the race, Romney faces the delicate task of how to talk about President Bush, whom the country gives low job-approval ratings .

But the plan lists two ways Romney can set himself apart from Bush. The first says, simply, “Intelligence.”

That’s pretty funny right there.

_______________

Huffington Post. Cheney made an unscheduled visit to military base in Afghanistan. And the Taliban tried to blow it up. Reportedly, at least according to the Taliban whom on a Web site used by militants said “a mujahid … carried out a suicide attack in front of the second gate of the Bagram Air Base. … The target was Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney.”

“We knew that Dick Cheney would be staying inside the base.” “The attacker was trying to reach Cheney.”

Makes me kind of want to go all John Walker Lindh.

Say what you want about the Taliban: They’re harsh on women, controlled by a hateful religion, have bad hygiene, whatever. But these guys know how to choose a Vice Presidential target to try and kill. If only they were better at it.

I’m not kidding.

When I heard this I jumped out of my seat waving my arm out of frustration because someone got close but failed. But I should have known. He’s immortal. It’s part of his deal with The Lord Of Lies. But it’s unfair to tease me this way.

DAMN YOU TALIBAN!

How you tease.

Cheney said they tried to blow him up because, “I think they clearly try to find ways to question the authority of the central government.”

I think he’s wrong here. I think they want to find ways to blow Dick Cheney up. They are not alone and I think in this shared common ground perhaps many Americans who would also like to blow Dick Cheney up and the Taliban can come together. We have this bond now. They’ve been humanized just a bit and that’s the first step towards working out your shit with people.

They didn’t actually come that close but they did kill a bunch of other people Just how many is under dispute. Afghani officials say 23 people were killed, including 20 Afghan workers at the base. Another 20 people were injured, they said.

NATO’s ISAF said initial reports were that three people were killed, including a U.S. soldier, an American contractor and a South Korean soldier.

AP reporters at the scene saw 12 bodies.

A Major there noted that Cheney’s overnight stay occurred only after a meeting with Karzai was canceled because of bad weather and that the Taliban couldn’t have been targeting Cheney. “The vice president wasn’t even supposed to be here overnight, so this would have been a surprise to everybody.”

If had been worse for Dick do you think he would have pulled a Dante and been all, “I wasn’t even supposed to be here today?”

By the by: When Bush was told the first thing he asked was how Cheney was. This according to Tony Snow. Snow did not say whether or not Bush expressed interest in anyone else dying.

Published on February 26, 2007 in ..The Dude, Politics, Religion and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

J.C. as in James Cameron, and Jesus Christ. Cameron claims to have found Jesus tomb along with those of his family and son. The other J.C.? John Connor, as in can he go back in time to stop Cameron before killing his career or destroying Christianity?

James Cameron is making a documentary reporting to offer evidence that tombs uncovered near Jerusalem in 1980 are indeed those of Jesus and his family. They include a son’s casket supposedly reading “Judah Son of Jesus,” along with the two Mary’s of note, the cuckold Joseph, and more.

Not sure how I feel about this. Cameron is taking alot of heat from both Christians and non-Christians. Alot of people seem to be collectively cringing over this as if Cameron has the C word in front of someone whose awaiting biopsy results.

For me I guess it depends on what his overall point is and what kind of proof he offers. On the surface this would seem to be an attempt at the debunking of Christian myth such as that dealing with the resurrection and Jesus’s lack of fornicating with mere humans. I’m all on board for that kind of thing. Debunking all that crap I mean. Not fornicating with humans. Humans are dirty and squirt fluids. I prefer to fornicate with cherubim.

Anyway alot of people are already getting their cossacks into a bunch because of Cameron’s temerity and hubris but that plays into the whole problem with religion for me. OK not the whole problem. Religion has many problems. But one of them is that they are the ones of great temerity and hubris, not to mention terrible and wanton arrogance. But they’ve been at it so long and have been in a position of power and privilege for so long it is considered hubris to oppose them and they keep getting away with calling those of us who call them on their fantastical ravings arrogant. It is no different than any other entrenched institution lashing back no matter how right or wrong they are. It’s not far off the whole right wing approach to debate. Just call the enemy what you yourself practice so you steal truth and deligitimize the criticism.

No wonder Christianity and this generation of Republicans have been so intertwined and made such perfectly matched bedfellows despite all the pragmatic reasons for them not to be. Neither party is pragmatic. Pragmatism is one of the founding principles this country was built on. Probably more so than on religion. But both neo-cons and the religious are about passions and truthiness. It’s ego gratification to put their passions and loose associations with truth and facts on a higher ground. Build it and they will come. And once they’re there they’ll look up to you and play along because you’re making it easy on them.

Taking on religion has been blasphemous for a long, long time. It is sacrosanct and it does not deserve to be merely because so many people believe it. I’m not of the mind that people deserve respect no matter what. We go around trying so hard to respect people’s beliefs as if their beliefs were cancer. That or some hard won, battled for, spilled blood for, amazing achievement of human intelligence, fortitude, and courage.

It is none of those things. It is the well-worn path. The one most taken. And its tenets and dogma require only slightly more effort to encompass than the automatic respectability and honor it affords. People deserve respect for what they do not for what they believe. It absolutely floors me when I see the media bend over backwards to cater to people for what they believe while nothing else is sacred to them. The priorities are out of whack. If what someone believes can’t stand some scrutiny it should be the least respected thing about that person. Respect their humanity, their rights, their job, even their pets. But what people believe needs to be out there with a big red target and may the beliefs that stand up to scrutiny win.

But I doubt this Cameron Jesus tomb thing is going to accomplish any of that. What DNA testing can really prove something like this? Without DNA from known living relatives to compare it to I’m not sure how Cameron can make a real argument. i know there is more that will be used from other disciplines including archeology but without the forensics this is just going to create alot of anger and nastiness. And there are many noted scientists and archeologists already debunking Cameron’s proofs. The translation of the Jesus tomb has been called into question as has other information. And this is the only kind of thing that should matter in the debate. The only thing that the media should look. But of course it will be mostly about the bible stories as if that and the numerous people who believe it constitute proof unto themselves.

So now due to the limited ability of media and masses to hold to contrary thoughts in their heads at once or recognize that just because A isn’t equal to B or C that doesn’t mean that A isn’t equal to C, once Cameron is blown out of the water (Titanic reference), this will somehow be twisted into furthering the cause and claims of Christianity.

So if that’s waht Cameron wants he’s going to do the opposite.

And if what he wants is to show that Jesus was real (since I don’t believe there are remains they could still claim a resurrection I guess), he’s adding nothing to the discourse.

And odds are he’s going to take alot more heat if this thing gets more publicity. Much of it will be political and cut across the already deep divides separating many of us from each other. And with all the anger and protectiveness religion imbues its followers with Cameron could get himself hurt.

On the other hand if he has something I’m the first to back the truth no matter who it offends or upsets. Some say that it’s not worth trying to take faith from people as if faith is a thing itself. I don’t see it that way. Faith is a word used to cover ones ignorance. It has been a tool used to pry open doors to atrocities and to hide behind. But the early indicators is that Cameron and his team are stretching things to get Jesus and his family out of the evidence at hand. If so then Cameron should just let a sleeping dog lie and not be yet another to give time and energy to an unworthy focus thereby making more of a man than he was and thusly elevating him yet further above the failure he and his followers really were and are.

Where’s John Connor and his Terminator when we need them.

Published on February 22, 2007 in ..The Dude, Irritations, Life and The Ill-Literates. 3 Comments

I finally gave in and purchased a cell phone today. I did it mainly due to work and being an assistant manager (or Ass Man), but I also want to get some fun private usage out of this puppy so that I might continue to feel self important and popular in and out of work. So I’m encouraging all phone handy people to call me at 845 ******* even if they have nothing to say.

Even if you just want to talk dirty to me by all means call.* Even when I’m at work. Preferably when I’m at work. I want to put the ass into Ass Man and together we can do that at 845 *******. If you just want to call to celebrate me I won’t be offended and will celebrate right along with you.

Just want to hear my voice?

I don’t blame you. And I will let you hear it. Especially on weekends and after 9 p.m.

I’ll let you hear my voice m-f before 9 as well but I do have a regular phone at home and at work so lets not overdue it here since I’ve got something like 500 minutes during those weekday hours every month.

This brings me to my vow. I think there should be rules when it comes to cell phone usage. I got into some of my issues with this on a blog of mine that proved so wildly popular people were too entertained and intimidated to comment on it. Except dear Brandon of course who is not allowed to call me to talk dirty unless Lost or Battlestar Gallactica and Grace Park somehow tie into it.

But it touched on my first and most important rule. Which is to not have conversations so that everyone around me can hear me in public places.

Unless we’re talking dirty.

In which case I’ll be putting you on speaker phone you nasty, nasty girl you.

I promise not to become one of those people sitting in Barnes & Noble around others who are reading and sharing every detail of their lives as if there was no phone between them and the person on the other end and they feel they have to really belt it out.

I won’t walk up and down aisles in stores speaking so loudly everyone in the store, or even the aisle knows what I’m up to. They don’t care and I respect that about them.

The second rule that I promise to abide by is to not hold a finger up to anyone trying to talk to me while I’m on the phone. You know. Sticking up the index finger to signal they’ll be with you in a minute. Even though i’m deaf in the ear that will be exposed I won’t do that to people. This I promise.

I’m not making any promises about the middle finger though.

3rd Rule. No talking while on line or dealing with the public like at a counter at the supermarket. I won’t go through being being checked out while ignoring the person ringing up my purchase. This contemptuous crap is appalling and a breakdown of the rules of living in a society. I will not do this. No I will save my contempt for those in the public who have different political and religious views from me like our hominid founding fathers did when they settled this great land and did so without cell phones instead having to rely on witchcraft to communicate with each other.

4th Rule. I will not leave my ringer on when in a movie theater, restaurant, class, brothel, or any other place where people are trying to get a little privacy.

5. I will not spend my time when with people I know, like, or am attracted to, playing with my cell phone. This goes on far too much. People can’t keep their hands off these things in public. Stay home and play with your phone if that’s what you want to do. Don’t spend dinner with me or time at work playing with yourself. These things aren’t that fascinating. I kind of am. Get with the program. #

Rule 6. I pledge to not use the photo and video elements of my phone to take unsolicited photos of people, stick them under girls skirts, or ruin the careers of famous people with footage of them going on racists rants, dropping their babies, or any such salacious footage bound to excite the E Network.

This is all for now as far as rules. I believe these should be all be set into law. Perhaps at another time I’ll get into what the punishment should be for violating these rules.

Notice I didn’t put a rule in against talking while driving. This is because I did this on my way home an hour or so after buying it tonight. Otherwise this would have been a rule too. I’m not encouraging it. I’d prefer most of you don’t do it. I on the other hand have exceptional instincts, reflexes, and hand eye coordination and can handle this. I won’t do it in traffic though. Mainly open road. It gets boring driving you know. The cops may be able to ticket me but they can’t make you and me stop talking dirty to each other babies.*

Have a nice day.

* Women only on the dirty, dirty talk please.

#The phone is new to me so bear in mind I may play with it around you a little at first. Do not take offense. IF you are a women you may still talk to dirty to me at these times.

Published on February 22, 2007 in ..The Dude, Politics and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

In another example of the Brits being better than us Prince Harry is going to Iraq. He’s following in the tradition of his father and grandfather who served in similar capacity. This differs from our tradion of chickenhawk pieces of shite like Cheney, one of a long line of warmongers using the military to further their political agendas while they and their families evade service.

Harry probably won’t see major action but he is a Troop Commander and has trained to command 11 soldiers and four Scimitar tanks so I don’t think he’ll be hiding in a bunker either.

This comes on the heels of Britain announcing a drawdown of troops leading to getting out in 2008. Latvia and some of other smaller countries like poland are following suit. Kindasleezy Rice said this was a sign of how good things were going in Iraq.

You know? That they felt they could leave now. Just not enough to do anymore what with the end of civil war and sectarian violence, the lack of ethnic cleansing, the draught between soldiers dying, the autonomous Iraqi police force running so efficiently, and the fully functioning democracy.

Nothing to see here people.

I bet she tells boyfriends she’s never masturbated too.
___________

Click here
to see a compilation of Faux News propaganda attempt to get an early start at undermining and mischaracterizing Obama. They’ve been going on about such things as his middle name being Hussein, his smoking cigerettes, and his time in Muslim school which they exaggerated.

I think maybe they’re a wee bit scared.

But they are laying off Hillary who herself seems more focused on criticizing Obama than the Bush administration or war. Besides this making her more dead to me than she was, and I think ultimately hurting her already doomed campaign, I think this is because Faux feels the same way I do about her chances. They want her clearing the Democratic field because like me, despite her overwhelming lead in the polls, Faux has gotten one thing right. Hillary Clinton has a snowballs chance in Dick Cheney’s office of getting anywhere near the White House ever again.

Unlike me I don’t think they believe she will be decimated in the Primaries. No one believes that. She has a huge lead in the polls I hear. Clear frontrunner. Obama is the only one with a shot and he’s still far behind if gaining.

Forget all that. She will barely get out of Iowa and N Hampshire a year from now. I’m probably going to be wrong about this but I’m sticking to it. Her campaign is an illusion.

And it seems Hollywood is very torn between her and their new wonderboy Barack. All this glitterati attention he’s been getting lately might actually hurt rhim. He’d better cut down on the gala fundraisers and hanging out with Spielberg and Aniston. Or Steviffer. Remember there are alot of loony hypocrits in the South and Midwest who hate Hollywood and all it represents even as they go see its mostly lousy movies and mimic fashions and trends hollywood advertises. So do the rest of us but we don’t then run around giving them the evil eye because they’re cock blocking Jesus.

But accept for the Hollywood stuff all this does kind of make me want to root for the guy. Even CNN pulled that Osama instead of Obama thing. So alot of people are scared of him. Of course that could mean he’ll wind up like MLK or Bobby Kennedy if he does get the nomination and looks like he could win.

But even that could be a nice wake up call for this country that sooner or later will get its reason to do as LBJ once feared they would and jump the fences and lynch their President.

But check out the link above. Amazing and important issues raised there like “would you vote for a smoker?” And Faux News is the self imposed “Home of the 2008 election,” as the disgusting puss brained blonde on the video points out at least twice.

Published on February 15, 2007 in ..The Dude and The Ill-Literates. 1 Comment

Baby it’s cold outside.

It’s friggin February though so why the fuss? Seriously one snowstorm and some freezing weather and everyone starts getting all apocalyptic. Relax. Shoveling is good for your health and Mets training camp has opened. Oh my god is this post turning into Confessions Of A Mets fan XV or whatever Roman numeral I left off at last October? Will I mention Lost, Jack Bauer, Anna Nicile Smith, Idol, Cheney, Van Halen, or other relevant pop cultural topics. To find out you must read on.

It might but right now back to the snow.

So I go into Hannaford Tuesday to pick up a few things as I’m wont to do, whatever wont means in that context. Or is it want to do? Do I want to do it. Or wont I? I don’t understand this.

Anyway.

I get there and the place is just crawling with crazies rushing around hording supplies and making a number of long lines. So I say to myself, “self, there must be a snowstorm coming because this is how people always overreact to snowstorms though most of them have been through countless.” And despite being through countless, none of which presumably secluded them from civilization for weeks on end, they always act like they’re prepping the fallout shelters for the day after tomorrow. I have visions of them running home to Jason Robards or making urgent phone calls to Jake Gyllenhall to get him to come home before dad has to walk 500 miles through New Arctica to get him out of a library.

They kind of also reminded me of the denizens of South Park frantically scrambling to run from Global Warming which chased them down in the streets leaving those it caught in twitching and writhing messes on the streets.

So I’m strolling around the store looking at people with amusement as they scurry to secure their Perfect Storm supplies and run and huddle in their homes with their pets and or loved ones praying that Jesus will come but just not quite yet.

Seriously. Do people hear a storm is coming and then suddenly realize they may get hungry during it? Do people only shop for a day or two at a time and not want to go out until the roads are cleared? I don’t get it. They are not getting trapped in their homes for days on end. Why do they have to go all scrambling for supplies on my semi-regular day to pick up stuff?

David Wright is in camp early and pitchers are long tossing people!

Calm the fuck down!

As far as that semi-regular shopping day thing goes I must pause for comment since my patterns are getting a bit out of whack lately. If you read my Ass Man post you know I’ve taken on a different situation at work. If you’re like most people you don’t care. Why should you? That’s a families job. I’ll get to that point in a moment.

The job has included non steady hours that are fluid and flexible. This is both good and bad. I’ve still been working the occasional 3-11 but with a mix of 7-3 and 1-9′s thrown in on shifting days. It’s kind of cool actually. I have evenings available I’m not used to having available regularly. This work week which started today (Thursday), will have me working no later than 8 on any day. That’s Sunday. The other 4 I’m out at 3 or in tomorrow’s case around 4:30 since I’m going in at 8:30 now that we have a new part timer starting. I’ll get to do more of that 8-9 a.m. check in time more which is nice. My eves are mainly weekend oriented but with that flex to often be out at 7, 8, or 9.

This might not seem interesting or noteworthy to you but after the comparatively rigid steadiness of being at work until 11 or 12 at least 3 nights a week with an overnight thrown in fairly often, for the better part of a decade, it’s interesting to me. It’s a break from routine and the old demands of the job and affords me a break from redundancy and some old job stresses. They’re still there along with some new ones but it’s more mixed now. All this is nice.

So why don’t I feel happier?

Well I’m a sick and twisted man who might be clinically incapable of experiencing happiness. I can’t help dwell on the negatives of all this. At least part of the time. Part of me misses old routine and its steadying effects. I certainly miss Granite IRA where I transferred from in order to take this promotion. I fit in better there as far as sharing a wavelength with staff, residents, and management. We got each other as much as can be expected in this job and area. None of those groups are all that bad where I am now at Neighborhood IRA but that easy humor, loose insouciance, casual asides, and laid back atmosphere at the last place is missed. I even volunteered to work there this past Monday when a staff of mine had to go to cover them in their temp abode in Rhinebeck. As an Ass Man I don’t have to do that. This woman didn’t want to go. But I didn’t do it to be nice to her. She’s a pathological liar. I don’t do nice things for liars unless it’s professionally fair. I wanted to relax a bit in a safer environment. I don’t have alot of family so I guess it’s nice feeling a measure of it at work even if it’s a very disjointed family that only gets together for 8 hour shifts for the most part. At least we had each others back with no agenda.

And then there is the fact that the extra evening time reminds me of all that that is missing to complete this picture of comparative normalcy. Maybe if it was spring or I lived closer to the city it wouldn’t be as bad. But up here, at this time of year, it just magnifies that whole “you’re pathetically alone during primetime hours people are huddling together during to escape overhyped storms you always wanted more of!” thing. That and the lacking family to whine about your day to or get sympathy from. rR applause or pat on the back when appropriate. So part of me wishes I were getting more sleep and working later if there’s nothing to do anyway. Might as well get full rest which I’m not getting now. I’m seriously thinking of moving down closer to the city at some point down the road. It’s not that I want to anymore but that I might need to. It’s like that Chilli Peppers song “the city she loves me, lonely as I am, together we cry.” Kiedis is talking about L.A. But Manhattan too is an entitity, a companion, an invigorating and comforting distraction.

And I do have a couple of cousins in Yonkers still. Having people is nice. And as I said family has to care. Or at least act like they do. Argue together or die alone. I’m seriously not looking for sympathy here. I’m not big on sympathy. I don’t handle it well just as I don’t handle compliments well. But then I get pissed when I don’t get them. This is all part of an illness relating to an inability to be satisfied.

Which brings me to Lost.

What the bloody hell was that last night?

Time travel? Is that really where we’re going here? Or was Desmond just having an episode? A life before his eyes moment after the hatch imploded? If so I could have done without an hour of it. I like Desmond. I love Penelope and appreciate any chance to see her. Sweet loyal Penny who doesn’t care that Desmond isn’t good enough for her. He wants to be worthwhile and so believes he’s been saving the world by pushing a button. Guy with no esteem or self-worth is put into enclosed space and becomes convinced the world is in his hands. Part of the experiment? If so it makes more sense with what we are learning about Desmond. He’s not even worth a bottle of scotch. That was some cold ass shite by the way. That scene with Widmore. I need Desmond going all Sawyer on chain gang guy on Penny’s father. But something about the flashback that wasn’t left me a little hollow.

As for Sawyer he is the man. Old Wookie prisoner trick indeed.

But if Charlie dies now this show might die to me with him. Not because I love Charlie that much. Actually he’s become quite dispensable the past year. But now that his fate is tied into all this clairvoyant free will vs determinism shit I’m pulling for the old boy. I hate all that universe balancing itself by killing guys no matter how many times you save them according to some Oracle ring seller. I hate that kind of defeatist bullshit. If this show is going in that direction and all this was destined with no free will I might be bailing.

I can even deal with some sort of time travel as silly as it is. If Desmond telling his friend all that island stuff at that pub led to him telling Penny after he disappeared, thusly leading to her Arctic base and search for the electromagnetic anomaly, I can sort of get a kick out of that in a Donnie Darko it’s been done but at least not on a network show kind of way.

Now ABC is plugging next week as answering 3 of Lost’s biggest questions. Like they billed this as the best season. And episode 6 as the best episode. Biggest secrets? So we’re going to find out about the 4 toed statue? What the Dharma Initiative is? Why all the coincidences? The numbers? The electromagnetisms meaning? Is or was the island cloaked? Was the button really saving the world? Did the Others know?

I doubt it. I’m guessing we find out why Paolo can’t hold his bowels, why Hurley doesn’t lose weight on an island without a tv (only a minute has passed on the island), and why a rogue like Sawyer who obviously gets laid is still so obsessed with Star Wars.

And something about the kidnapped passengers. That we know we’re getting. Like that’s really been one of the biggest questions. Seems like bait and switch to me.

Quickly on 24. The Bauer’s are one weird ass creepy family. Da da da dum, snap, snap, da da da dum, snap, snap. They’re creepy and they’re cooky. I still haven’t watched hour 2 of last Monday’s 2 eps. I’m just tired and part of me wants Wayne Palmer to be take out. This is conflicting me in very personal ways.

But Jack on brother action is some serious shit. Jack was bad cop and good cop all by himself while torturing that sissy-ass neo-con brother.

Heroes. Bit slow lately. Doing some predictable padding of their own. Please let Nikki/Jessica die. I can’t take much more of her lip. I’m afraid of it. I want to use her face as a garden hoe.

Nathan is Claire’s father. Who could have seen that coming?

Oh yeah, everybody.

But hey it is more credible than pulling something really surprising out just for surprises sake. Sort of like 24 does even though 24 is alot more exciting.

Van Halen reunion. Roth is back. I will admit to you right now that I think Diamond Dave is one of the greatest frontmen in musical history. I am biased. I can’t wait to see how they handle the Hall Of Fame induction next month. sammy may be there. Dave will be there. Michael Anthony may be there after he just got fired in favor of Eddie’s kid Wolfgang, the product of one of the early hybrid relationships that today would be known as Valeddie Vanhanelli.

I loves me the VH but I want an album. A good one. i don’t care if they tour this summer. I’m not going to be a roadie.

All those meaninglesly optimistic stories about baseball teams, locally Mets and Yanks have begun, Everyday we’ll get bullshit about the vet fighting for a roster spot, the rookie trying to show he belongs, the rehabbing comeback attempt, etc etc. Such hack crap. Thank you Jeebus.

Idol. Take out that one dark haired girl who’s a bit different but still sexy and Chris the funny guy who looks like Ozzy’s kid, and this is a very bland and indistinguishable field. The best part may be over after being done with the fake bad auditions. At least some of them are fake. Unbelievably so. As for those who are not it’s very hard to fathom. Well not that hard in this country. Kids are stupid and full of themselves. They really think they are due their tv exposure. Things come too easy to us and too many kids now feel they simply must be handed fame no matter how little talent they have. Growing up in this oversaturated media culture has really turned out an army of psycho children with no conception of reality or normalcy.

Another side effect of the boosting esteem positive feedback upbringing from parents afraid to deal with the truth. Drop these kids in Darfur for a year and they’d come out wanting to star in a movie about a kid from Darfur and feel it was their due. The least society could do. It’s that Terrel Owens mentality we see in the NFL so much now. And NBA.

Everyone is worshipping at the cult of me and if they aren’t given their proper religious respectful reverence they go all holy shit my rights of free worship are being violated by you not respecting me. When Simon or Randy say they suck they’re doing the equivalent of walking into a church and screaming “Jesus sucks cock!”

I don’t want to go off on a rant here.

But I just did.

Because it’s my due too.

My due too.

Due too.

Doo doo.

Heh.

Heh-heh.

Oh yeah guess who I didn’t mention in this post?

Published on February 8, 2007 in ..The Dude, Life and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

You’ve heard about the astronaut who stalked and kidnapped a rival for the affections of a man in mission control. Lisa Nowak got a bit nuts, donned a diaper, and drove from Houston to Florida making her the second looniest woman that I know of to ever drive a long distance to Florida with a tender innocent victim in her car. But this begs certain questions about the female makeup be asked.

Astronauts go through intensive training and testing. To make it to space as Nowak did you have to be the best, to have “the right stuff.” The women who make it are the most psychologically vetted women in our country. This means this woman should be one of the most balanced and stable women America has to offer. She’s a career woman with every reason to feel self worth and not engage in the dramas of the less successful, occupied, and talented.

And yet she stalks.

In a diaper.

And she plots murder.

I’m guessing still in the diaper since stopping to change at that point wouldn’t make sense once you passed up on numerous rest stop opportunities.

So despite all the testing, despite the career path most would envy, when it came down to dealing with seperating from her hubby and her slide off relationship in jeopardy, she couldn’t deal with it. Even on the NASA level people are plotting their exit strategies and consumed by ancient DNA operating on the mammalian and primal parts of the brain it seems. They are making sure they have a fall back option, and telling themselves it’s all perfectly justified. This goes for most men too. The whole slide off thing. Slide off is what a coworker of mine once called it. I thought it crude. But it’s what almost everyone does. But I wanted to believe a woman with a real sense of identity as a space shuttle astronaut should have, would be above this need and be able to function without her man to ground and control her.

So in this case with the loss of her husband and her slide off more into controlling missions and maybe the kidnapped woman, Nowak became unhinged. The prospect of having no man to moor her for a little while, no nest to drop her eggs in, got her primal, completely obscured a successful career, and she got all chimpanzee about things with her perceived rival.

This is some scary shit.

Of course the plus side on all this is that if women who have been to space and thusly seem out our league (I’ve never beeeen), are nutty and not worth the effort I guess those of us who have to deal with less successful ones can either gather hope that if the good and bad come in all shapes, sizes, and spectrums of society we could still get lucky. That or we shouldn’t blame ourselves for not being able to get women with greater identities and success because they’re all just nuts anyway and we never had a chance.

Published on January 31, 2007 in ..The Dude, Politics and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

Hillary’s running. Obama’s running. McCain’s losing ground. As far as we know Jeb Bush isn’t running. Ladies and gentlemen the race to lead us into the post Bush years, or OPeration Cleanup as they will surely come to be known, is on.

My choice remains Al Gore.

I cast my signature for Gore using the link in Angry Bob’s post somewhere down below this one. Do I think it will matter?

I doubt it.

Do I think he will run?

Probably not.

Would he win if hhe does?

I think so.

But I hold out hope he will go for it. There is this upswelling of support for the Goremeister. If he has the slightest inclination to run perhaps stuff like that which I signed will be part of the impetus. Gore has alot going for him. For one thing he’s already proven he can win a national election for President.

Maybe he didn’t do so well at defending it once the wolves tore the electoral process to shreds and conducted a coup de tat. But he won, if barely. And now we’ve got 8 years proving he was right about pretty much everything.

Unlike Hillary and Obama, Gore was outspoken against going into Iraq from the beginning. He predicted the chaos, quagmire and ciivil war that would follow. Clinton is going to have a hard time playing her equivocating games when it comes to this issue just as the retarded idiot John Kerry did.

Hillary is too polarizing and I think we’re tired of polarization. We’ve gone from a Bush to a Clinton and back to a Bush in the White House. Do we really want to keep swinging back and forth between these two families of our aristocratic divide?

I don’t think so. I’ll say it right here, right now. Hillary Clinton will never be President of the United States.

Never.

She has been posted as the frontrunner. All this does is confirm to me how little those pundits who cover this stuff really know. I’ll say this too: Not only will Hillary never be President, not only does she have no chance, but she has little to no chance of even getting the Democratic nomination. That’s right. The pundits frontrunner is a gimp and as we’ll see in a year or so, never had a chance. I neither like nor dislike Hillary even after declaring her dead to me a year or so ago as she started currying more favor with the kind of people i don’t respect and whom I suspect strongly she doesn’t respect either. But I suspect that lack of respect and phoniness will come through. It already has. Her at home internet announcement of her candidacy was so ridiculously artificial in its attempt to be warm and inviting as opposed to the cold and calculating Hillary image many have, it was like watching that T.V. hearth fire they used to play around Christmas. A whole lot of fire giving off no real warmth.

She’s a smart woman and I think a mostly well intentiioned one despite her sellouts. But I think this purported frontrunner is going belly up big time and rather quickly once the primary season begins. It sounds like an outlandish prediction at the moment but I’m sticking to it.

As for Obama I think the lack of experience will deter alot of people. But I do think he has a chance to be President someday. I doubt it will be 2008 though. Right now I’d give Bill Richardson more of a shot. Joe Biden, Tom Vilsack, John Edwards and a couple of others are in also. At this point I’d actually make Edwards my front runner if not my choice. I suppose if Gore doesn’t get in I could see throwing the much anticipated ill-literates endorsement Edwards way (at least my third of it).

Wesley Clark has a chance with me if not the rest of America as well. I’m not sure if he’s in yet or not. I do like Richardson though and right now would have to pull for him over Edwards though again I think Edwards has the edge and should be the favorite.

As for the Republicans Chuck Hagel is emerging due to his continued criticism of the war despite being very conservative and in lockstep with the administration on most other issues. McCain did horribly in recent polling in Iowa and New Hamp which are the two first and usually formative primary states a year from now. It seems I’m not the only one put off by his recent courting of the same fundamentalist base he used to make fun of as well as his pro Iraq stance and particularly a leading position in the escalation strategy. Plus he’s lying about it now. He had said he was calling for 20,000 more troops. Alot of people believed he did so because he didn’t think it would happen and he could be in a position to say i told you so or champion the road not taken as things continue to inevitably fail and still not contradict his original pro war vote. Then when Bush called for 20,000 more troops McCain started claiming we really need more like 50,000.

I used to respect McCain but included him in that same dead to me sentence I handed out for Hillary. For many of the same reasons.

But i still think he’d trounce Hillary if she got that far, which as I said, I don’t think she can. But I remain hopeful the Gorester will get back into things. He’s probably the only Democrat out there who could draw more funding for a campaign than Hillary. He was the only guy of note with the foresight to support Howard Dean from the getgo and he’d likely draw on Dean’s grassroots support and fundraising methods to go along with the built in support he’d already have.

He is nominated for an Oscar. I’m unsure of whether that will hurt him or not. I would like to see a Gore acceptance speech though my guess is that would be done by the Director and that Gore may not even be there. But with global warming becoming more and more of an issue and becoming more accepted to the point where even Bush has had no choice but to start copping to it, Gore stands as the perfect guy to represent on this growing issue. He’s been at the forefront of it for a long time and no one can question his expertise or committment to the issue. Damn it I’ll say it! He invented global warming. Yeah I wish he would have done more for the issue while serving as V.P. Yeah I’m not crazy about alot that he and Clinton did including their pro Nafta-corporate America positions. But the guy has the ability to bend to the facts and I think he’d see where some past policies have hurt us and need alteration.

And as far as the global warming thing goes the fight on this and other regulatory issues may come even more to the forefront positioning Gore as even more of a stalwart figure of defense. Bush just issued an executive order or directive naming political appointees to oversee regulatory agencies. This is seen as an attempt to gain more control of agencies like the EPA and OSHA and keep them from doing anything to hurt corporations who of course were publically jubilant after Bush’s announcement. This is combined with a House investigation right now led by Henry Waxman that has stated that there is evidence the administration has falsified and deliberately confused the debate on global warming and other science issues. They’re also withholding documented evidence on this topic though many scientists are on record saying their reports were altered to change the message or that they were forced to delete incriminating text.

And if we can get Gore in he can add the way-back machine to his list of inventions. Many of us want to erase the past few years and live the history we should have had. Of course what’s done is done. But installing the guy who should have won in 2000 and sent W into obscurity as he deserved sends a message to the world that we screwed up, we’re sorry, we’ll make things right again, our bad; but we we’re mislead by bad apples who are gone now. Forgive us.

And Gore really is a bright guy. Perhaps as smart as Bill Clinton. And man wouldn’t it be nice to have a President who can carry on a conversation and doesn’t speak with his mouth full when in a room full of foreign dignitaries and world leaders?

And by the way though I joke about it Gore never said he invented the internet or fiber optic cables. This is another case of right-wingers exploiting and twisting what he really said to make him seem like an idiot and the media willingly going along with it because it was easier than fact checking and more interesting to talk about than the truth.

I do question whether Gore could remain as cool and interesting outside of political office and campaigning as he has. I think he’s learned his lesson not to let himself be controlled and spun so much the real Gore doesn’t come through. But odds are he won’t have the temerity to run without handlers of some sort. And can he be the guy we know and love when the pressure to get votes is on or will he go all stiff and wooden again despite himself?

If he doesn’t run I could get into an Obama campaign. i have some issues with him I won’t get into here, but I like the guy and I’d like to have a black President. It could be as close to David Palmer as I’ll ever get. And I think we will have a black President before a female.

I’d like a female President too. I just don’t think there are any viable candidates out there for the role anytime soon. America may also be waiting for breakthrough hormonal medications before committing the country to a woman. This may be a gross and unfair prejudice but let’s face it very few men trust in most women’s emotional stability or toughness to lead the world. Women are still are our mothers and girlfriends and most men don’t want to be led by their mom’s anymore or trusting of their girlfriends. While I could see southern whites voting for a black man under certain circumstances I don’t think they or many black men would vote for a woman. Every black man in the south would vote for an Obama so even if the whites still a bit racist wouldn’t you’d have a horse race. Neither gets behind a woman in my opinion.

And no one outside of Hollywood and N.Y. will vote for Hillary in particular .I do think Hillary could do an ok job at this. She’s old enough and less sexual enough that those issues may have waned for her. She’s an intellectual who seems pragmatic and fact based. She’s got a set.

But there is no way she gets the chance.

Archive for the 'The Ill-Literates' Category

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Categories

Archives

Meta

February 2012
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
« Mar
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29