Wonkette
- THE WEEK, IN INDEX FORM: Yeah, it was that bad. [Paul Slansky/TIME]
THE WEEK THAT WAS
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OMG, the biting snark of the passive tense.
Slansky, Paul
• a grammatically abstruse and stultifying boring index is constructed by
TIME, Wonkette for the masses
Jesus says Madonna is “without visible flaw.” That’s less than a 100% endorsement of the whole Immaculate Conception business. Next thing you know, he’ll start dissing her virginity.
Mr. Kim, please aim your nukes at the Slants-key. Komapsumnida.
x111e7thst: Bingo.
Hip hop performed by the two whitest guys on earth, talkin about Ayn Rand, Jesus, and Gay Marriage.
Richard Gozinya: Genius.
I never imagined I’d ever hear a rap which included the phrase “how to run a restaurant.” Those dudes look like a shooting range accident waiting to happen.
Richard Gozinya: Oh and Apple Soundtrack Loops background sample FAIL.
Richard Gozinya: What I learned about conservatives and blood from Wonkette today: Anyone can succeed if soldiers bleed. But menstruating judges will bring peril to us all!
Mr Blifil: I’m keeping my fingers (and legs) crossed.
ForTheTurnstiles: wtf?
Looks like a Paul Slansky has been reading theBeast.com and watching Jeopardy at the same time again…
Hey, Turnstiles, we all could use some ca$h. Why don’t you just sell your trailer?
MGBYG: I can’t even tell what the blog’s about. I assume he’s a fan of Ken Wilber - the man who thinks it takes thirty-six sets of encyclopedia’s (all written by him, of course)for a human to understand the Universe. The man is infatuated with his own intellectual capabilities (which are impressive) and obviously doesn’t understand the perils of OVER-COMPLEXIFYING. I used to read everything he published until I one day had the realization of what an incredible distraction away from real life all of that shit was.
That hurt my head
Mr Blifil: The tall ugly one seems to be saying that he is praying for me despite the manifest error of my ways. This fills me with a sensation I can’t quite describe ..
boredom, nausea and desire to hammer halfpenny nails into his forehead while he screams and screams comes close though.
Custerwolf: I had to look up Wilber on Wikipedia. I don’t no if the article does him justice but if it does - boy that guy is into categories. Kind of a late 20th century Gurdjieff but with more Buddhist influences.
Hey do you want a 2 year old arab filly. It took my cousin a mere two weeks to figure out that this was not a good horse for her horse ignorant children. So she is hoping that I can find it a “good home”.
re=328001]x111e7thst[/re]: I don’t know (why I can’t spell)[
x111e7thst: Promise me that if you and I should ever conspire to go on a killing spree - we start with those two.
Backwards sentences, not read, I will.
x111e7thst: I don’t do fillies any more - 2 cranky broads on the property is too much - and Arabs are too spirited for my old bones. All my horses got loose this morning and were stampeding in a glorious dust storm across the two acres we just leveled - it was BEAUTIFUL! Of course they’re all suckers for grain, so I pied-pipered them right back in after they got a nice little workout.
Wilber is a very brilliant man, but to paraphrase the old parable - he is looking under a lampost for a set of keys lost in a dark field.
Custerwolf: Hey, did I hear someone say killing spree? Can I come? I don’t actually own any killing implements, so maybe I could be the squeamish 3rd party, the audience surrogate, upon whom his mates eventually turn (and murder gruesomely,) sick & tired of the moralizing ruining their fun.
Custerwolf: Or to put it another way:
Accumulated knowledge eventually makes one too heavy to fly.
Custerwolf: I need to get a nap in first, though. Yawn. Sleeping all day makes me sleepy.
hobospacejunkie: I’m planning on using a lethal back molar. One of my 40-year old fillings (average shelf-life is 30 years) broke off, leaving me with a potentially deadly gnawing surface. Of course, being that I haven’t seen a dentist in 32 years, one bite will no doubt leave me entirely toothless and choking on a mish-mash of dislodged incisors.
hobospacejunkie: The law of inertia inaction.
Servo
Stanley Cup Finals, for which he needs to get beer to drink while watching.
Servo: I actually had to google which sport that was.
Custerwolf: Deal - we start with these but no quick kills. I need to hear the screaming.
hobospacejunkie: Can’t speak for the CWolf but as for me sure - c’mon with. I can lend you an implement and coach you on learning to enjoy the agony of neocon assclowns.
Richard Gozinya: White boy hip hop doesn’t HAVE to suck, as long as it’s self-deprecating.
x111e7thst: Oh….you’re gonna hear screaming alright.
http://i389.photobucket.com/albums/oo336/brontie2/tf.jpg
Custerwolf:
Double Grrrr!
Servo: Is it the same Stanley that the park in Vancouver’s named after? Oh - and don’t get me wrong - I LOVE hockey and used to go to games all the time when I lived in Winnipeg, plus we made our own backyard skating rink as kids. There’s just not alot of it happening locally, so I’m out of touch. No teevee and all. Forgiven?
Ha ha, I agree with Ralph Peters that journalists are “killers without guns.” But his statement that “future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media” is a little dubious. Why would a blacked-out, censored press also need to be attacked, by the military? When in history has this actually happened? (Usually even the free press will report anything that the government strongly suggests.) However, I certainly hope it does happen. Lame jerk-offs like Peters might find that we get into fewer wars once the loudest cheerleaders are dead. Because then people would be getting their news from Wonkette!
Custerwolf:
Absolutely. You a homesteader?
I just get annoyed by the networks’ blatant disregard for the NHL playoffs, and how it continuously takes a backseat to the NBA playoffs, MLB regular season, lame-assed sitcoms, and spine-numbing reality television.
Lazy Media: Niiiiiiiice.
Servo: Not a homesteader, I need more property - some day I’d love to have my own private Idaho.
sad tortoise:
Yoda! Kill it!
Custerwolf: You’re not feeling Minnesota?
lizard scum: Oh I’d feel anything with Keanu Reeves in it.
Custerwolf: Why doesn’t that guy have facial expressions, or ability?
Custerwolf: Sorry about your tooth. But hang with hobospacejunkie. You could gum his delicious bread.
Servo: Pens grrl here. Blitzzzz.
lizard scum: I can’t figure that one out, I’m afraid. My gay boyfriend watched The Lakehouse a couple days ago and he really liked it (isn’t he just too goddamned cute, that Joe) and he thinks Keanu is a great actor. Don’t get me wrong -I LOVE Keanu, I’m just not sure I’d call what he does “acting.” Of course, the movie itself was a perfect illustration of what I thoroughly detest in my species - rabid hater of sentimentality that I am. I guess to be a good actor you have to be pretty transparent with your emotions and maybe my beloved Keanu just isn’t the type who can do that very easily.
Jukesgrrl: Yummm……..I’ll be playing with this goddamned tooth until the novelty wears off in 6-8 weeks time.
Custerwolf: Some of my family was watching a horrible Reeves romance about early century winemakers or something. I was in a different room, but Reeves couldn’t pull off even the audio of the one line “I love you” without making me cringe.
Servo: I took this last night out my trailer (yes, trailer) window. Pretty nice, eh?
http://s389.photobucket.com/albums/oo336/brontie2/?action=view¤t=HPIM3911.flv
lizard scum: Ha!!! You know how they say familiarity breeds contempt - UTTER bullshit. Familiar is what we are all dying for.
Jukesgrrl: PenNs grrl. Oh.
You mean that people endure movies like that because they can’t help relating to the hollowness of Reeve’s “I love you” to his mate? So, that explains how these movies get made. And here I was feeling embarrassed for the people in the other room watching it, now I’m just sad.
lizard scum: …..meaning there are no-doubt lots of wonderful no-name actors out there, but you’ll never see them in any major films because what audiences (people) like best is what they are most familiar with.
Custerwolf: Oh, that’s less depressing!
lizard scum: Did you see The Lakehouse? Cringeworthiest movie I’ve seen in awhile. I was laying in bed listening to the mortally wounding dialog coming from the kitchen laptap (where we play our movies) and there sat Joe, thoroughly enjoying it. That tells me the movie was targeted for a more simple-minded folk, perhaps those you might even describe as borderline retarded.
Custerwolf: No, I missed that one. If you notice, I also took pains to note that I wasn’t really watching the other movie, which may have been called A Walk Through the Clouds, either. I don’t want to be thought of like your “gay” and “retarded” boyfriend. But really, I think it takes a low emotional intelligence as well to make some of these movies.
lizard scum: I’m not exactly sure what emotional intelligence is (are you referring to Daniel Goleman?).
Custerwolf: I guess I am, but I had to wikipedia the name.
You mentioned Ken Wilber. I cracked open one of his books of my dad’s girlfriend’s and realized that half of it was his own invented jargon, and put it down. Do his books actually make some sense if you read them from the start?
Growing up I read nothing but animal books and watched nothing but animal movies and my favorite show on Canadian teevee was “The Littlest Hobo.” My two favorite albums were the “Aristocats” soundtrack and “Walt Disney’s Favorite Dog Songs” My 6th grade teacher told my mother I needed to read more “people books.” Fortunately, she didn’t tell me that until I was in my late twenties - still reading animal books. I confess that I had no idea what a “mood” was (animals didn’t really have them in the literature I read) until the age of about 16 - the same time I had my first period. Coincidence? I don’t believe in coincidence.
Custerwolf: Found “Slaughterhouse Five” on Hulu last night. What a beautiful, Buddhist movie:
You see in Tralfamador, where I presently dwell, life has no beginning, no middle, and no end. For example, many years ago a certain man promised to have me killed. He’s an old man now, living not far from here. He’s read all of the publicity associated with my appearance. He’s insane. And tonight he’ll keep his promise.
If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you’ve not understood what I have said.
You see, it’s time for you to go home - to your lives and your children. It’s time for me to be dead for a little while. And then live again. I give you the Tralfamadorian greeting: Hello. Farewell. Hello. Farewell. Eternally connected, eternally embracing. Hello. Farewell.
Of course I loved the book too. But you mentioned disappearing actors, which made me think of this. Michael Sacks played Billy Pilgrim. He was 24 at the time, gave an astonishing performance, and kind of faded away.
Custerwolf: That’s too cute
lizard scum: It’s a rabbit hole. His jargon actually has a basis - it’s his theory that doesn’t. His theory being that if one thinks long and hard enough one will eventually have the Universe figured out. I had the realization (which isn’t the same as coming to a conclusion, it’s a cellular experience - like getting wet) that there is NO FOUNDATION upon which the Universe is built. The Universe is not for us to “understand” - IT IS IN YOUR BODY. We are the Earth in miniature
Earth - solidity, stability, rotation (anything that rotates creates sound, vibration)
Fire - combustion, lust, attraction, ascension
Water - emotions, liquidity, the ability to melt and evaporate
Air - atmosphere, thoughts
Space - ? a tiny drop of ether
Jesus, how’d I get off on that tangent?? Anyway, one book of Wilber’s I did really enjoy is called ‘No Boundary.’
lizard scum: Custerwolf: I remember watching “Dracula” when it came out and thinking that the guy from “Bill and Ted” was beyond wooden. I could not understand why someone would think to put him in a real movie. And I liked the Bill and Ted movies.
V572625694: Nice. Kurt Vonnegut really had something. Did he die?
I got nothin’ against hockey, but for me the only game in town is soccer/football. So long as it ain’t the American variety. The four satellite dishes I have were put there solely for the European (and occasional South American) soccer they bring to my three teevees. Everything else (movies, etc.,) the dishes provide is a bonus. Attending the 2006 World Cup in Deutschland was the most wonderful experience of my life not involving my cats or wife (who also loves to play & watch the game but ain’t much fer travelin’.)
lizard scum: My older brothers were not as kind as you. They frisbeed both albums out into the road after having to listen to them for the millionth time.
mollymcguire: Also ‘Parenthood’ and ‘I Love You to Death.’
Custerwolf: Yeah, we know so little about human nature, how could we know anything about cosmic schemes or trends?
Custerwolf: Kurt Vonnegut is immortal. If all I had to read the rest of my life were his books that would be just fine with me. So it goes.
hobospacejunkie: Vonnegut was a genuine Hoosier, ha ha. Cat’s Cradle goofed on that in ways that were wonderful to me when I was stuck there.
V572625694: I’m from Ft. Wayne, where were you stuck?
lizard scum: At the Agricultural Training Institute in West Lafayette. Failed to study in the politically correct domains of enginerd-ing and agriculture, and was therefore happily miserable.
V572625694: After reading your comment, I was curious about Michael Sacks. According to IMBD, he is now “Head of Global Applications Development for MarketAxess, an online bond trading company.” Slaughterhouse Five (1972) was his first film. He made his last one in 1984. He had a fairly active career for about ten years. Maybe movie-making was too boring for him. Acting might be interesting, but acting in a movie can be beyond dull.
lizard scum: Well - I’m just going to throw this out there.
“Schemes” and “trends” exist only in our mind. They do not exist anywhere else. Our brains recognize patterns and create meanings (which we project outward), that’s how we transmit information through time. But creating order out of chaos does not make the order real. Chaos is always lying just beneath the surface, and we are always trying to keep it at bay because it threatens our survival. The Universe is SO much more than bits of information. And while we are accustomed to knowing or finding things out through trial and error (that’s how we evolved), there are ways of seeing things instantaneously - and completely. No one wants to lose their minds, but the mind won’t take you anywhere it hasn’t already been. And where’s the adventure in that?
Robert Thurman (Uma’s papa) could tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Buddhism - and he hasn’t a clue about what the Buddha knew.
Jukesgrrl: Saw that too: he dashed my hope that he might have been too spiritual for the movie business by becoming abond trader! Ew! And the intervening movies seem to be direct-to-video or colon-in-the-title TV trash.
Custerwolf: You’ve never been Fooled by Randomness, then?
Jukesgrrl: On Orcas island we used to have a little comunity theatre which my girlfriend always particpated in but I was too skeered to do anything except watch and help her learn her lines. I loved the idea of acting though. It’s like pretend play for grown-ups.
V572625694: Never heard of it - interesting. It’s funny, when you sit and listen to the river you begin to hear voices because your brain naturally tries to create patterns out of the sound.
Custerwolf: So, do you use meditation to take the mind where it hasn’t already been, and won’t take you itself? Also, you might be right about evolutionary trends existing in our minds. But there is a human nature, however poorly we understand it, right? (Bill O’Reilly doesn’t think so, because of gay duck marriage.)
Custerwolf: It’s a book about investing, strangely enough, whose author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, says there are no patterns in the stock market, there is no such thing as “technical analysis,” and that those who have such systems always blow up one day. The book is weird and unprofessionally written/edited because Taleb published it himself before he became a celebrity because of it and the crash.
Do animals live (as I once read) in the eternal present? Do they not know the sun is going to set, and come up again tomorrow? Our ability to discern patterns (these fruits won’t make you puke, these grains will grow in the river bottom because it will flood every year) allow us to build civilization — which may or may not have been a good thing.
It took me a couple minutes, but then I realized why putting stuff like this into an “Index” sounded sinister:
Index Liborum Prohibitorum
Catholic banned (or expurgated) book list.
Custerwolf: Beautiful! But will it eat your trailer as it ate your house?
Richard Gozinya: I am Michael Steele and I approve this message.
mollymcguire: Ah, but there is always Point Break. One of the classics!
“Utah! Get me two!”
lizard scum: No. I cheat (I’ll explain another time). I’ve never actually meditated. What we call meditation is actually just a supression, an attempt to quiet our inner dialogs. You don’t reach the Silence through meditation, or through a supression of any kind. Silence is actually ALL the sounds together - no boundaries anywhere. Right now we live inside a boundary, a burning boundary. We are carbon creatures who live in a burning world (that’s why we long for warmth) and everything we see shares one commonality - it can burn, it’s combustable. We can’t see byond that world while we’re inside its boundary. It’s really so elementary and simple that we cannot grasp it, so we go about our preoccupation with the sounds of our mind - our self-consciousness. Until you can break out of that boundary any liberation you might imagine is pure fantasy. Mithyia Samadhi. Making love is the only real time we come close to it. Because the orgasm has no mind in it. Usually sex for us is nothing but mutual masturbation - not that there’s anything wrong with that. Just don’t go calling it Tantra.
Custerwolf: Ha, ha, I’ve never really meditated, either, but it interests me. The way I understand, it’s not so much about suppressing your thoughts as it’s about trying understanding the conditions that lead to them when they arise. I agree that people go about their “preoccupation with the sounds of their minds.”
V572625694: “Do animals live in the eternal present?”
Animals are for the most part unconscious so basically they don’t know shit. Sorry critters. No, actually they are just totally preoccupied with survival - as are most people (unconsciously). Unlike us, they have no thoughts, they are in total action - unconsciously. We, on the other hand, are weighed down by thoughts and self-consciousness and don’t have action, except as kids and hormone-crazed teens, but then we start getting lost in head trips. It’s not our fault. It’s our natural biological design.
“Our ability to discern patterns allow us to build civilization — which may or may not have been a good thing.”
It’s all good. There is no right or wrong, ultimately. If you believe that certain things are bad, then you will suffer their consequences - otherwise karma doesn’t exist. It’s a bitch, I know.
lizard scum: True meditation happens spontaneously. And when it happens you won’t care about anything - not about thoughts or awareness or enlightenment - nothing. You will be too busy laughing to care. Wars would end if people had a taste of that.
Custerwolf: By “cheat,” I assume you mean “take a shitload of drugs, just to get by.” Only kidding.
x111e7thst: Th truck with the trailer hitch is always parked nearby!
My take on Ken Wilber, for what it’s worth:
Everything is part of something else. Perhaps many something elses.
Everything consists of many different parts.
Some things overlap with some other things.
These relationships can change.
The rest is just a lot of big, fancy, made-up words.
lizard scum: Actually I cheated that way too - mushrooms and mescaline - but even adding chemicals to your body will only give you quick glimpses, it won’t break any boundaries. No. I actually met 2 people in my life who showed me different gateways because they actually contained a certain chemistry different from ours (how else could they allow me to see the essence of a stone). But until people can set aside their prejudices, they will run from such people and feel perfectly justified in doing so. It makes sense I guess, since awakening is the greatest threat to self-consciousness.
Oh also - Carlos Castanada’s books can be great reading if they appeal to you.
gurukalehuru: Everything is made of the same stuff. There’s no such thing as two.
Once you realize that, you’ll find the best use for Ken’s books is to prop open doors and start fires in the woodstove.
Custerwolf: That’s a relief. I was afraid for a while you were an adherent of that bearded daddy-o that Oprah’s in love with these days. The Italian Princess tried to get me to read one of his books and I got as far as “I have no use for history.”
gurukalehuru: That reminds me of something Noam Chomsky said about “poststructuralism,” according to his wikipedia page: “What I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count.”
Custerwolf: Form is empty. Emptiness is form.
V572625694: Oprah and I would never have the same teacher, I assure you (not that I have anything against Oprah). That said, I have no use for history either. But please don’t hold that against me.
Custerwolf: “Animals are for the most part unconscious so basically they don’t know shit. Sorry critters.” No, wait! When my kitteh looks at me, I can tell what she’s thinking! And she can tell what I’m thinking! Ha ha!
The pets are as good at faking emotions as parrots are at faking speech. They know we like it, so they learn to do it. It’s kinda wonderful, but you’re right: it isn’t intelligence.
V572625694: “bearded daddy-o”
Who is it?
V572625694: Nope. People cannot even imagine the difference between human beings and animals. Being upright changes everything.
Custerwolf: The stepping in “Fair lady at the shuttle” (part of the Yang Tai Chi form) is hard for me. So my abdomen tenses. I can talk myself thru relaxing my abdomen but then I’m talking to myself. Sux 2 B me. Sometimes. Also.
Okie Republican Congressman John Sullivan enters rehab for alcohol addiction. Surely a preemptive move to elicit sympathy when the requisite gay/hooker/gay hooker sex scandal comes out.
x111e7thst: Our abdomens are always tense, we are always holding. It’s the location of the original invisible wound - the umbilicus - where we were cut off at our birth. It’s interesting how we are upright, yet we still have the unconscious desire to lean, to hold onto something for support - including our thoughts and conditioning. The front of our body is where we hold our armor. And if the right person were to gently touch that spot in such a way, it would instantly dissolve that armor and drop you to your knees in spontaneous unconditional surrender.
Custerwolf: Eckard Tolle is Weird Beard in question.
Custerwolf: Animals do think.
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/03.14/01-thinking.html
ShaqsDong: Oh why couldn’t it have been Boehner? That clown is fueled by booze (allegedly.) Nobody cries in public as much as Boehner. Except maybe for crazy man Glenn Beck, and he’s a recovering alcoholic & voluntary Mormon, so he’s got plenty to cry about.
ShaqsDong: Always scheming and planning. We humans are such clever creatures. In fact, it’s our greatest weakness.
Atypical: No, they do not. And neither do most people.
Atypical: When this gentleman from Harvard understands what real thinking is, he’ll set free those poor monkeys and go have a cold beer.
“And if the right person were to gently touch that spot in such a way, it would instantly dissolve that armor and drop you to your knees in spontaneous unconditional surrender.”
Ahem…uhh…mmm…
Mr Blifil: Oh YOU.
Custerwolf: You’re only half right. And cold beer sounds good.
Animals do not have the ability to come out of their “sleep” (i.e. unconsciousness). We humans do. That’s why when the Buddha said “Life is suffering” he wasn’t saying “Life is a big ol’ sack of festering dicks” he was saying - “Here, this is the doorway.”
So speaking of thinking….what do you suppose would happen if all the great research scientists, philosophers, etc, suddenly realized that there is NO way to understand life, that life can only be misunderstood (just imagine it hypothetically) - what would be their next move?
hobospacejunkie: Is he really a Mormon?
Custerwolf: I think I understand what you mean.
As a purely practical matter I would prefer not to fall on my knees in unconditional surrender every time I do that part of the tai chi form. The degree of relaxation I seek (and usu fail to achieve) is a lesser one.
I do wonder whether I never encountered the right person, or I did and they understood that I would misunderstand and stab them, or whether they were just not interested in touching me. The latter would make me sad.
Custerwolf: I prefer to rely on those that spend time learning what they can about what we don’t know. I always reserve judgment and am not liable to accept things based on authority or any other superficial temptation. As for Buddha there are many like Voltaire, and other philosophes, that I admire and can learn from BUT one can easily get enamored of gibberish that sounds important and intelligent. The expression of a simple idea in a complicated or pseudo-scientific way is all too common.It becomes likely then to have difficulty separating the valuable from baloney. The world is full of those that seek to manipulate and impress.
I prefer Occam’s razor; the simplest explanation is usually the best.
Custerwolf: a society is not real it it is a structure and it would not make one wit of difference, that would just be a shift of structure.
Carlos Castaneda first few books altered this existence as an impressionable youth and allowed me to meet my first teacher.
My second teacher is moving on soon and the few lessons i have learned from her are but a small sample of what she has shown me.
saying animals do not think, like saying we understand, not the truth
Atypical: To nitpick : the simplest explanation that fits all facts.
Entia non multiplicanda sunt praeter necessitatem.
Do not multiply entities beyond what is necessary.
Atypical: My favorite Voltaire quote:
“Now I know what love is.”
hpwilliams: I’m not sure what that is in reference to?
“saying animals do not think, like saying we understand, not the truth”
How do suppose animals think - in language? Symbols? They are incapable of manipulating either one. Sign language is not the same as verbalizing words and sentences.
x111e7thst: No. There would be no misunderstanding. And it takes preparation.
Making animals into more than they are blinds us to the incredible grace of what it means to be born as a human being. You are luckier than you may ever realize.
Custerwolf: Yes, exactly: scout bees can do a little dance to tell others back at the hive how to get to the flowers in a distant field. That’s communication, but it isn’t language because they can’t change the symbols.
However, as we move up the food chain and look at chimps doing sign language, the line between humans and animals, language and behavior, becomes less clear. The only reason they can’t vocalize is that their voiceboxes are not built that way. It’s kind of monstrous that they’re kept in captivity.
Atypical: Do you think we will ever grow beyond the drive to make sense of things? There is a greater joy than that.
x111e7thst: Yes, and thanks for the nit. I saute them in olive oil. They’re GREAT!
V572625694: I know I don’t have these powers, but does someone around here have Nobel Prize nomination authority?
Scandalabra: I think Custerwolf is on the committee. There’s nothing she can’t do.
Custerwolf: That comment sounds like those that seek to promote “man’s dominion over the earth and all in it”. Reducing animals to “it” comforts hunters, vivisectionists, religious freaks and others who feel man should be able to do whatever he damn well pleases cause we da kings of the world. Humans are not diminished by the appreciation and respect of “others”. They are ennobled.
Atypical: Have to say I agree. It’s a short hop from saying “animals don’t think” to bullfighting.
According to the Comment count, by this point there are 124 Comments.
Of which, by my count, about 52 are by Custerwolf.
In other words, looks like another typical weekend on Wonkette.com.
It must get really, really lonely in that trailer.
With all those cats . . . .
Jesus Christ, people…get a room!
Custerwolf: if all the great research scientists, philosophers, etc, suddenly realized that there is no way to understand life…… a structure, society would do a paradigm shift and continue
do we think in language and/or symbols?
a quadriplegic can think, the deaf think. it is not a parlor trick when an ape uses sign language at least not all the time.
thinking is a limiting way to understand.
the value of ones existence here is not that different of a bee drone when you can see how much greater all is.
V572625694: the value of ones existence here is not that different of a bee drone when you can see how much greater all is.
Atypical: That’s why I rarely say things like that. Because stupid people will use it to justify their stupidity. If it helps you to better understand where I’m coming from, I have been donating to animal welfare organizations and working on their behalf since the age of 10 - roughly 38 years - and will always continue to do so (whereas I haven’t really done shit for human beings). If people understood their true capacity to come out of their ignorance, they would become humble - not arrogant. This is not a comparison of smarts. It’s about realizing what an incredible opportunity you have in life because you were born human. Most who claim superiority (I don’t - I claim a difference) over animals do so to compensate for their own feelings of unworthiness.
Do you think animals are capable of mercy?
Custerwolf: “Do you think we will ever grow beyond the drive to make sense of things?
No and zeus help us if we ever stop trying to understand. Oh wait, the religious already have; the stupid and lazy already have; conservatives already have; ideologues already have; damn we’re SCREWED!
V572625694: Only an ignorant person would become a bullfighter. It’s not about the bull’s capacity. It’s about the human being’s.
Atypical: What is religion if not the result of an attempt to understand the Universe? It is a static belief, certainly, but the drive is the same (security in understanding) and it would be good for us to see that. We are driven to make sense of things. All of us. Chaos is terrifying. Our attempt to make sense is not usually out of genuine curiosity, but because we want to survive better or control our fears better.
hpwilliams: “the value of ones existence here is not that different of a bee drone when you can see how much greater all is.”
Yes, I agree completely.
No, really.
Atypical: Much as I like to point out to religious people just how retarded I think they are, I don’t think it will enlighten them in the least - and I would REALLY like them to quit being so stupid. Really. My sister is an evangelical and I cannot believe the shit she has managed to swallow - but what I can understand is WHY she has done so. Fear. Period.
We’re not so different
you and me
One out on a limb
the other up a tree.
- Mark Twain
AnglRdr: Fuck. Shit. Piss. Cunt. Twat. Cock. Balls.
The end.
Custerwolf: Yes, you are correct about the reasons for religion. Everyone understands what the religious impulse stems from. Problems arise because it is static, as you say, and that is fatal to all of us. Rigidity/ideology prevents progress and causes wars and its outcome, death and suffering. But this must be overcome somehow. The really insidious fact is that “progress” does not always improve; sometimes things get worse. Frightening that.
Custerwolf: Bullfighting is the most monstrous, egregiously barbaric human-animal activity I know of. The bull suffers, in the original sense of the word, to entertain humans, who are themselves debased by their presence. Which is maybe what you’re saying.
Plus it’s soooooo gay.
Custerwolf: That’s more like it.
Now, if you could use those dirty words in an entertaining, preferably pithy, sentence, that’d be great.
Custerwolf: Sometimes, the religious do change and become aware of their brain-washed existence. We need to continue to work on providing reasons - with respect.
Re Voltaire. Some of my favorite comments are; All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
-Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.
-Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
-Tyrants always have some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.
Discuss.
V572625694: Exactly what I’m saying. However, I have to admit a certain sadistic satisfaction I enjoyed whilst watching the bullfighter get gored on HuffPo.
Atypical: I have to tell you - I am really, really, REALLY interested in separating human beings from religion. That’s why I’ve been trying desperately to understand (not ACCEPT) as much as I judge. I think understanding the phenomenon of projection will be of tremendous help.
I just gotta say - you really have to see the inside of a rock. It. would. fucking. blow. you. away.
Custerwolf: To clarify further: I gave to the International Fund for Animal Welfare for years, until I couldn’t stand to see the horrors in their flyers. When I conk in a few years, everything I have will go to the Humane Society of the US. Animals aren’t people in fur suits, and they certainly don’t have “rights,” because rights are a human construct. I don’t mind hunting or leather shoes but do what I can to stop the abuse of these critters, because it matters to me.
V572625694: Don’t you understand? We must be entertained because it is our “custom”, part of our traditions. Are you an anti-hispanic?
AnglRdr: “Dirty” words?
No such thing.
Custerwolf: I think I have. Does being called a block-head when I was younger qualify?
V572625694: Very nice, my friend, you are most groovacious. Defenders of Wildlife gets all my stuff when I croak.
AnglRdr:
There once was a woman named Jill
Who swallowed an exploding pill
They found her vagina
In North Carolina
And her tits in a tree in Brazil
I’m almost curious why you find it necessary to separate people from religion. Granted, the major religions have been responsible for a whole lot of horrible things. However, they’ve also been responsible for a whole lot of amazing things.
The notion that “the religious” are, as a whole, “brainwashed” and/or “retarded” is simply ridiculous on its face, as are pretty much all blanket statements.
However, this is a site for the funny. This conversation is not funny.
Atypical: ummmm……okay, sure.
AnglRdr: “I’m almost curious”?
You don’t think that’s funny???? Goddamn, I think that’s fucking hilarious. You really shouldn’t sell yourself so short next time. Now take your bible and get the flock outta here.
AnglRdr: As Hitchens says, nothing the religious have done cannot be done by the unreligious.
You apparently don’t think that believing something without evidence is a problem? And that is not a blanket statement.
This site is generally funny but can and should be whatever it becomes, especially on no-news weekends.
Atypical: Ah yes, the “cultural” argument. I love me some Hispanics, including that Maria chick that’s gonna be on SCOTUS. I guess female circumcision is okay too, cuz it’s “traditional”? And honor killings? “Ah, you were alone with my daughter for ten minutes, so I must kill you!” Yeah, it’s all good.
AnglRdr: I know you weren’t asking me, but here’s the problem: I used to “open-minded” about religion, although a de facto atheist myself. But lately it’s getting harder and harder to keep that attitude. They keep wanting to turn every country into a theocracy.
And have we thought about monotheism vs. polytheism? How come those one-gods are all so damn angry and jealous all the time? Whereas the Buddha says, “Here’s what I have. If you like it, it’s yours; if you don’t, that’s cool too.” Jesus never said that.
Custerwolf: How do you have time to post all these comments on such diverse topics? Is there only one Custerwolf: , or are there a whole bunch of you running around saving wildlife, watching movies, reading every news story printed, commenting on said news stories here all while pleasuring your testosterone-challenged boyfriend?
Custerwolf: Yes; it’s the weekend, and I cannot really work up the “give a shit” necessary to be completely curious.
I love the curt dismissal, though. You, madame, are a treasure!
Atypical: Hitchens? Well, to him I say while that is true, that doesn’t undo what religions have done.
I do not have a problem with people believing in things without evidence; if it causes no harm, what’s the problem? Is it really necessary to try to disabuse someone of a harmless notion? People find comfort in their religion, and, so long as they do not use their religion malevolently, who cares?
Live and let live.
V572625694: Jesus has been accused of saying/not saying a whole lot he didn’t say/actually said.
He was pretty much a “love each other” kinda guy. Most of the nefarious shit blamed on Jesus actually came from Paul.
mollymcgwire: She’s a wolf for crissakes…in a pack…and they help each other…and protect each other…and work at night…and howl…and lick…and taste. I’ll stop now.
mollymcgwire: Isn’t she astonishing? I’ve submitted numerous marriage proposals, along with financial statements and medical reports, and am hopeful for a favorable response.
Atypical: The reason I don’t find your views to be polarizing is because I feel you are truly interested in uncovering what is actually there, so to speak, - not what you WANT to be there. That’s what science should be about. I want to be open to the truth - not to my version of it. But there are painful realizations along the way when you have to give up your familiar ways of seeing things. It feels shitty having your way of seeing things challenged or threatened. So for me, the key is to try not to hold onto anything too tightly (the truth will out, regardless, so why bother). I adore science - always have, always will. I haven’t read non-fiction in over a decade because it pales in comparison to scientific literature for me.
AnglRdr: You really musn’t take me personally.
Have you read the Gospel of St.Thomas?
AnglRdr: not a site for the funny, a provocative political site on a slow day. most of what is on this site is a covering of humor with a dagger underneath only funny when you see the dagger.
every religion i have looked at becomes a way to control, that is a wrong way. some religion may have started with a different intent but leadership perverts it.
nothing in religion is as amazing as what is really available if you can even glimpse what your not seeing.
Custerwolf: seeing inside a rock, a common teacher somewhere.
V572625694: When I was shanemacgowan she offered to read George Will to me in bed. Alas, it has not yet come to pass . . .
AnglRdr: “You, madame, are a treasure!”
I get that alot.
Oh - wait, you were being sarcastic?
hpwilliams: really………?
mollymcgwire: That’s YOU!!! Oh honey. Did you bring any Tullamore Dew?
V572625694: you are so goddamned cute.
AnglRdr: You would be right about my comment re evidence if it STOPPED there. But it never does. When you give up your interest in thinking for yourself it carries over into all sorts of places. Pseudo-scientific beliefs, cons of all kinds, quack cures, jesus will protect/fix me, my rabbi, priest, minister said…..and I believe him.
I respectfully suggest you know nothing of human weakness or psychology. Have you ever talked with a person who prayed, did not get what he/she wanted and was devastated. Or believed god spoke to them and then committed some unpleasant business. I could write for hours on the outcome of not requiring evidence for a belief in ANYTHING. I use skepticism in dealing with salespeople. It is necessary in everyday activities.
And you see no reason for it?
Custerwolf: Are you really 48, or 38, or something (tee many martoonis to do the math or find your previous post), years old? Cuz if that’s true I love you more.
V572625694: The former, unfortunately.
Atypical: Who are some of your favorite writers?
mollymcgwire: Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished!
Custerwolf: Are you kidding? 48 is the new 19, for me, at 59. Oh the hottitude of it, by which I mean vous.
Custerwolf: Same guy. I figured that since I switched continents I should also switch names. I kept the avitar (the Replacements circa 1983), but those things are so small it is sometimes hard to tell them apart.
Have yet to find the Dew on this island. But I will. With God as my witness, I will never go thirsty again.
Custerwolf: likely, yes probably not here.
a later teacher was tickled by this it was not something she had done. where she has shown me is not able to describe with words.
oneness is a place that showed that i know little, that bit of “knowledge” is greater than anything else
time has been the bastard for me. it is hard for me to stay away from it.
V572625694: Now wait just a minute! This site (before 10 o’clock)is PG-13. Now stop it!
Custerwolf: I only read non-fiction. I could provide some suggestions of books I found (as a skeptic) provided absolutely scary details of the way the world REALLY works. Let me know.
V572625694: Phew! I’m thankful that my boobs (wee though they are) have graciously refrained from sagging (even after going braless my entire life)and my hair has yet to grey. The only noticeable signs of age I feel is a bit of stiffness in the morning - and half the time that’s just Joe.
Atypical: Custerwolf and I are deep in a long-term relationship based on snark, respect, Buddhism, and mutual disdain for the tawdry constraints of bourgeois hypocrisy. Regard with awe, but do not judge.
Plus she has the same relationship without about 50 other members of the Wonkette commentariat.
But I’m special, I just know it.
Atypical: Maybe we’ve read similar books. Titles please?
V572625694: Goddman right you are.
mollymcgwire: CBGB’s? I can’t even make out my own avatar so I’m pretty hopeless. Where do you reside now, if I may be so bold?
Atypical: It is 11:54AM Sunday morning where I am. Does that mean I shouldn’t be drunk?
Custerwolf: See - I even called you a goddman. You’ve earned the title.
imissopus:
I be Michael Steele and I be slammin and jammim this message, also.
Custerwolf: You didn’t ask, but it’s area code 619.
V572625694: oops
V572625694: I’m sorry. I just didn’t understand, did not comprehend the depth of feeling that you obviously have for the toothy, furry (I hope) wolfess. The fact that others like NEILIST have designs on her should not slow you down. I have been assessing your competition over the last few weeks and I believe (and I’m always skeptical, a hard sell) that you are going to WIN.
Now I’m really happy.
Atypical: Ha ha! Thanks!
Custerwolf: “Phew! I’m thankful that my boobs (wee though they are) have graciously refrained from sagging (even after going braless my entire life)and my hair has yet to grey. The only noticeable signs of age I feel is a bit of stiffness in the morning - and half the time that’s just Joe.”
Once I thought that looking boyish was a kind of curse. Now it’s just fine.
And thanks for the well-regarded incidental porn, as always. Ready for the exchange?
It appears that I have stumbled in to Jezebel II. Can’t wait for latest on stretch cream and the sale on Manolo Blahnik seconds.
mollymcgwire: Australia? Papua NG? No wait I know,the Kamchatka peninsula.
V572625694: Can I reach that with two dixie cups and a string?
Custerwolf: Is that what you’re wearing tonight?
Aw, just Google it. You get a neat little map of America’s Finest.
Custerwolf: Okay. Ready. This shit has made me even more misanthropic than I was before. All respected, responsible writers who provide support for their points. I have read them all - every word.
Conservatives Without Conscience, John Dean
Family of Secrets, Russ Baker
The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein
The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, Jeff Sharlet
The Tyranny of Oil, Antonia Juhasz
With God on Their Side, Esther Kaplan
Blackwater, Jeremy Scahill
Bad Moon Rising: How Rev Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built an American Kingdom, John Gorenfeld
V572625694: Can you believe I would actually feel self-conscious going into a store and buying liquor? Part of me still feels twelve years old. Even back when I smoked, I didn’t want people to see me smoking. I remember once in New york, I was smoking my hand-rolled Drum when one of my dog-sitting clients walked past and she said, “Wow, I didn’t know you smoked,” and I felt like I’d just gotten busted by the school principle. I was 32 fucking years old. What a freak.
V572625694: What “exchange”? I want pictures and audio. You owe us.
V572625694: “Is that what you’re wearing tonight?”
gold star
Atypical: Plus, “Sabado Gigante” is the greatest thing that has ever been on the teevee.
Atypical: Whoa. No shit. That’s enough to make you want to strap on some C-4.
Custerwolf: In my heart I’m a very cool guy for 1953, up in Central City with Neil Cassidy and Jack Kerouac. Time is as malleable as everything else.
Atypical: Back in the day, as you youngsters like to say, the phone company (and there was only one, and they didn’t suck!) had things called “exchanges,” which were the numbers after the area code and before the last four. “Overlay area codes” are a monstrous affront to anyone who loves English.
Atypical: I’m glad you asked first.
V572625694: Latin women are…are…so damn hot. Course I say that about Asians and every other nationality too. BY THE BY, have you watched Spain, On The Road Again with Mario Batali. The Spanish women, Claudia, is an incredibly beautiful women. And sweet appearing too. I know, she’s probably a bitch. Check her out and let me know.
Atypical: With God on Their Side - I’ve either read or read excerpts. Very good read.
So let me ask you. Are you open to other ways of knowing, besides the “usual” routes (for lack of a better word). Meaning, if you were to personally experience something - but no one had ever written about it or experienced anything similar in your body of knowledge - would you automatically dismiss it?
Custerwolf: Why do you think I’m up this late. And where do you think I go when I stop posting?
V572625694: Are you by any chance from that CA city named after a whale’s vagina?
V572625694:
Let’s consult the Journal of Foreign Affairs.
http://www.fashion.net/shopping/
V572625694: Oh, THAT exchange. Hey Felix, hang up on United. We’re not leaving tonight.
Custerwolf: Atypical: Not sure how this “photobucket” thing Wolfie likes to use works, exactly, but try this:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww140/V572625694/
I hate to smile for pictures, and it shows.
Custerwolf: Whale’s vagina? You got me there.
Custerwolf: I was digging thru some pix I took in Iraq. I thought this was kind of cool and wanted to share it w/someone who might think the same thing.
(sorry to interrupt)
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bHJsS0yY2Hk/SiHs2EJjFLI/AAAAAAAAAv4/VNtoXtaSQBw/s1600-h/irqhorse.jpg
V572625694: You are ADORABLE!!! Awwww….
V572625694: I got that info from a certain newsman named Ron Burgundy.
x111e7thst: Wow. That’s almost too much for me to bear, hits me on so many levels. And YOU took that picture? Fuck. Beautiful. What can I say….thanks.
x111e7thst: Goddamn…was Iraq such a desolate shit-hole before we “liberated” it? I truly hope not.
Custerwolf: Awwww…234
Custerwolf: Blush. I took lots of pix and threw most away.
one more - not beautiful but definitely “we are not in Kansas any more”
this one I think I took in Jordan
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bHJsS0yY2Hk/SiHsJpc9OtI/AAAAAAAAAvg/xaeIpBjUIik/s1600-h/41+sheep+2.jpg
and now I return you to your regularly scheduled Saturday night
Atypical: Got an IMDB link for the movie?
x111e7thst: Beautiful. Were you an 11B?
Custerwolf: Saipan. I would never ask you not to be bold. Your boldness is a big part of your charm.
V572625694: see Ron Burgundy, Anchorman
x111e7thst: Oh, I just love those before and after shots.
I want all your “throw-aways” please.
Custerwolf: I need evidence to buy into anything important regardless of its type. Proper and accurate evaluation of facts (there are various degrees, of course) is necessary. The best way to put this is that to understand something complicated you have to be able to utilize critical thinking, avoid emotions and understand (yours and others) human psychology. Understanding how to weigh conflicting information is vital and knowing how to fully and accurately analyze is mandatory.
To your point, something “new” would be run through this process and wherever the facts led would be it. Obviously, there are times when no conclusive answer is available. I just wait for more and withhold a decision until I’m satisfied.
Finally, there is a myth used against skeptical people. It says, how do you know UFOs don’t exist. You are rejecting the idea out of hand. Not true. There is no evidence that they exist so until there is, there is nothing to reject. This argument is used to try to prove that skeptical people are close-minded. It’s a phony ploy. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
V572625694: I was in Iraq in 2004. Made it about halfway to Baghdad, and realized I was getting in over my head. Turned back. I’m not an 11B I don’t think. (What is an 11B?) Just an adrenaline junkie.
x111e7thst: 11B = infantryman, in the Army.
x111e7thst: Wow.
Wonkette, you can’t even walk away for an hour. You miss too much.
mollymcgwire: Wow. So you’re near Guam? My brother’s a boat captain who sub-contracts with NOAA, putting out tsunami buoys or so doing salvage work, and he was in Guam not too long ago. I will have to learn more about these islands from whence you hail.
mollymcgwire: This is reality. Jobs, spouses, bills: illusory. Do not attempt to adjust your set. We are controlling transmission.
Custerwolf: From what I can tell (and I’m still new here), for thousands of years, the only things that happened here were WWII and the Jack Abrahamoff/ Tom Delay golf trip that started their problems. The island’s recent history is pretty well described here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9rvFHFxeg . It is a breathtakingly beautiful place, but there is some real poverty here.
V572625694: It’s a TV program, I think a 6 or 7 part one. Here’s the site. Check your local PBS listings. The food, the scenery, locations in Spain and especially Claudia are worth it.
http://www.spainontheroadagain.com/vv_galicia.shtml
Atypical: I agree, but in your way of knowing, you can only know something by comparing it to something else - something already known, something once before encountered. So does that mean you do not believe there can be anything NEW? After all - how would you re-cognize something if you had never seen anything like it before? If it is TOTALLY new - TOTALLY unfamiliar - you have nothing to compare it to. It’s a singularity. So does that make it less real to you?
V572625694: So Wonkette discussion goes full circle back to Keanu Reeves. I’ve never seen those fucking movies, but I know about the red pill.
mollymcgwire: I will definitely watch that - but tomorrow, since it runs almost a half hour, and I have to keep running outside right now.
Custerwolf:
While not pure girl-talk, there is an interesting essay about this: “Transforming the Cold War: The United States and China, 1969-1980, from Post-Marxist Isolationism to Pre-Capitalist Economic Engagement“
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/64142.htm
mollymcgwire: I was so hoping Kamchatka. I’ve always wanted to go there. You could have been my excuse. Now I haz sad.
mollymcgwire: Uh, you lost me there, friend. Everybody’s got so many threads going it’s hard to track ‘em back. Action movies = bread’n'circuses! Keanu Reeves = stunt double doing the acting.
S.Luggo: Was that the right link? I just had the advertisement for the conference in 2006.
V572625694: We were talking about Keanu Reeves in The Lakehouse way back when. Then you said something that sounded like dialog from the Matrix.
Am I helping or hurting?
mollymcgwire: first you follow the white rabbit.
Custerwolf: I don’t know of anything that can’t be evaluated in this way. Because the “new” might be compared to something already in existence would not lessen it in any way. The process would respect the uniqueness of it but you have to begin the analysis somewhere. Science finds “new” regularly and the rigorous process then begins. Nothing is harmed but a lot of bullshit is exposed.
SHUT. UP!!!!!!
Don’t you idiots know that Obama flew his babymomma up to NEW YORK CITY on THE TAXPAYER’S DOLLAR to see some RACIALLY SOCIALIST PLAY last night? And this, while he’s forcing all the GM people to gay marry beneath his RADICAL MUSLIN BANNER?
Thank Sweet Jesus that the RNC is on this, churning out talking points that have already shamed the LIBERAL NEW YORK TIMES into giving them splash page coverage: WHY ISN’T OBAMA HOLDING A CANDLELIGHT VIGIL WITH THE ENTIRE GOP SIDE OF CONGRESS, PRAYING FOR DIVINE INTERVENTION FOR GM??
You don’t care. Not a one of you.
S.Luggo: India is the next power to rise, their government allows dissent far greater than China. China uses too much energy stopping dissension and this will always be an anchor slowing the power. When all have the bomb it is no longer important, yea deadly, but not the big stick.
The power will be in the ability to take in all ideas and build.
The US has a few decades left without a serious challenge. Just not forever.
Custerwolf: Helping. Thanks for explaining my attempt at humor, Ms. Wolf. Now I am going to enjoy a South Pacific Sunday afternoon. Vaya con Dios.
x111e7thst: Kosarae is near by. Equally cool name. Damn, I really gotta go, but you people are too damn interesting.
Custerwolf: Ah, no, I was quoting from “Slaughterhouse Five,” maybe. It’s all good. Nothing as helped me in a long time as much as what you said at 10:40, Wonkette Standard Time. I’m so shallow.
hpwilliams: Mr. Wizard. Get me the hell out of here.
V572625694: You’re gonna make me walk all the way back up there? I’m too tired.
mollymcgwire:
Come
again
soon
Blender: That was like a tall frothy glass of beer. Fucking thanks, man.
Custerwolf: Oh all right: You said I was adorable. Life is good.
Atypical: But how would you know that something was already in existence - unless you’d seen it before?
V572625694: Yes.
mollymcgwire: I really, really wish I could be saying that about my afternoon.
Custerwolf: Trizzle Trizzle Trazzle Trone Time for this one to come home.
hpwilliams: There are serious tensions in Indian society that may start to get in the way. Caste system, Rich/poor divide. Religeous tensions. Agriculture is teetering on the verge of collapse. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102893816. Plus India looks to get hit especially hard by global climate change. I agree w/you that the US does not have all that much longer to go as the unchallanged whatever - I doubt India will be the challanger.
BTW China has most of India’s problems - and they are (as you noted) repressive I’m looking for China to implode within 15 years at the outside.
Custerwolf:
I’m watching “House.” It’s so good. I don’t understand a word of medical-porn-talk. But the atheism, the truth-telling: so sweet.
I strongly recommend that everyone abandon cable teevee. It is evil. You get three or four channels for free, and now they’re hi-def. If there’s nothing good on, read a book, screw your partner, crack a good bottle of wine and regard the humble majesty of the Buddha.
Custerwolf: By its characteristics. Everything can be explained even if it’s an incomplete explanation. There are no great mysteries, just moderate ones which will be explained sometime. I’m content to wait. By the way, there is no need for anyone to posit some “supernatural” occurrence just because a ready explanation is not yet available. That is entirely too common. Occams razor as previously noted is the necessary answer.
x111e7thst: The caste system is going to be as our racial issue was \ is, slowly going away. Yes agriculture is a big one and they made the mistake of believing in our agribusiness model.
Hungry people are very unhappy people.
Not India alone but as part of the aggregate with China, Brazil, Mexico, maybe someone will rise in Africa and unite a section of the continent large enough to be a power.
At any rate it will be the world for my grandchildren to deal with. I hope that they can do better then us boomers did.
V572625694: Shhh. Has the troll gone away? I have never seen that serious a case of terminal syphilitic brain lesions EVER. Only has days to go before an agonizing cranial explosion.
Atypical: Ha ha!
Atypical:”designs on her [Custerwolf]“?
Well, if “designs” encompasses “targeting”: Well, maybe.
But as G. Gordon Liddy once said, “With 9mm ammo up to 23 cents around, some people aren’t worth blowing away.”
And that was back in the 1970s. Nowadays, everyone has upgraded to .40 S&W, and that stuff is even more expensive than the now-more-expensive 9mm ammo.
But I have nothing against Custerwolf. Although, given this thread, and the equivalent threads from other weekends, I propose a name change.
From “Wonkette.com” to “The Custerwolf Chronicles.”
At least on the weekends. When she’s all alone in that trailer. With the cats.
Atypical: As stated earlier, this comparing to what you know, when you experience something that has none of your experience context to use do you learn anything?
Pragmatic is one of the better ways to move through this reality, it just can be limiting way to see.
As said by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth
Neilist: Is it you, is it really you? Nice to have you back.
Now we’ll get a conversation going that will, that will…be different!
hpwilliams: I think we may be in for a longer or shorter period where there is no pre-eminent power, no superpowers either. Maybe the new “great powers” will co-operate/compete/co-operate like the states of 19th century europe but on a more worldwide scale.
(Brazil definitely)
I would like to live long enough to see such a world. But if I just make it to the point where everyone understands that US ‘Murrican exceptionalism is dead and gone and over that too would be cool.
hpwilliams: It’s important to go one step at a time when studying anything new. The tendency among many is to jump from I don’t know to “god did it”. (as an example)
As you say, eliminate the impossible. That’s a good way to proceed. Never exceed the evidence.
As I said earlier, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Neilist: Ya miss me, Nells?
Guess you’ll know better next time to sight in that scope before pulling the trigger.
Atypical: My transmission just seized up. I may not be able to answer that one for a bit.
Neilist: quoting Liddy? he still thinks Nixon didn’t do anything wrong.
Custerwolf just exposes your weaknesses and it hurts, awww.
But I have run out of brain lubricant, a fine midwestern micro brew, so now off to chase someone around the bed for some exercise and then rest.
Atypical: This is tough. Okay. I think what I’m trying to expand on has more to do with a perceptual shift. In other words - you SEE things differently. Your whole way of knowing SHIFTS - what makes that new way of knowing any less valid than the old way of knowing. is it based on what’s best for our survival as a species?
Quick question: Do any of you out there actually know how to type, I mean without looking at the keys or hand placement? Fuckers. I wish I’d learned. My brother says I’m the fasted hunt-and-peck typer he’s ever seen. And he’s a computer geek with HP.
Custerwolf: “Do any of you out there actually know how to type, I mean without looking at the keys or hand placement? Fuckers.”
Best summer school ever. Actually it blew: hot and sweaty in a Chicago classroom without A/C, the weird typing teacher chanting “Fingers on the home keys, ready, begin!” But it paid off again and again.
Shit, Joe’s going to snag the computer now so he can watch a movie. He wants to know which one we should start off with - “Kill Shot” or “Enchantment.” He’s so retardedly diverse.
I may be back later.
Hahahahahahahahahaha!
Oh yeah, the YoungCons are REAL alright. REAL HAAAARD.
They could have at least not rap like Vanilla Ice.
Atypical: Actually, if one was going to quote The Master (rather than that quack hack doctor, Doyle) in regards to this thread, one would do better to paraphrase Holmes’s famous lines from “The Silver Blaze”:
“Is there anything to which you wish to draw my attention?”
“Yes. To the curious incident of the Custerwolf in the night time.”
“But Custerwolf did nothing in the nighttime.”
“That is the curious incident,” replied Sherlock Holmes. “That, and the trailer. Full of cats.”
[Card-carrying member, Molly Mcguires, Baker Street Irregulars, S.F. Branch]
Custerwolf: There is only one way of knowing ultimately. It’s what has worked before and it will work again. Perhaps with an accent in a different place if necessary. No reason to replace it.
You have used a word that is very important but is dangerous as well. Perception. What pisses me off more than most things is how people perceive important things. Their view is frequently not connected to reality. Three people see something and have three different interpretations. Not minor but major ones. Thinking Palin was bright, well-spoken, professional and capable of running the country comes to mind. UGH. Perception is the operative emotion to most people. They are just too lazy and it challenges their beliefs too much to rely on logic and unemotional analysis.
And I’m just like you. Quick hunt n peck at best.
Neilist: Now why are you so mean? And you don’t like cats either?
You know without her it would just be us boring blokes. What fun would that be?
El Pinche: They can at least not rap, that is. Oh and they are soooooooooo gay. Maybe that’s why these perfectly healthy white christian boys are not in Iraq killing ragheads in the name of Jesus.
Goddammit, who let in the hippies with their non-quantifiable BS? Numbers are more real than your ability to read the phrase “Numbers are real”.
Did you know that anal sex kills? A young gay couple was going at it on the sofa at the parents’ house when the father came home. Pulling out in haste, some scat stained the couch. The family dog was blamed, and the dad took it out back and shot it. (Sorry, I just thought the conversation had strayed too far from the Wonkette standard.)
Atypical:
I HATE cats. Particularly a certain BLACK-faced, FOUL tempered, SPOILED ROTTEN feline who did NOTHING all day long but LOLL, like Cleopatra on her barge, atop the desk, on the hand-woven, IRISH linen blankie that cost me a cool 50 quid in Dublin, waiting only for the opportunity to LACERATE my hand again in penalty for not opening up ANOTHER can of tuna sufficiently quickly for HER ROYAL BITCHYNESS . . . .
. . . who died as she lived. At 2:00 in the morning, on my birthday, after running up a $1800 vet bill.
Fuckin’ Siamese. Like women, they are.
Perhaps I’ll move into that trailer with Custerwolf.
hpwilliams:
<> Irrelevant.
Nazi Germany was the greatest power on the European continent in 1939.
Apologies to Custerwolf for this diversion from the discussion of nail polish shades.
Animals don’t think.
Custerwolf: 2006, yes. So? Like fashion, geo-political analysis goes stale after three years?
You are still trying to think.
Stop.
shortsshortsshorts:
But they can lust.
http://wonkette.com/408848/pennsylvania-legislative-furry-arrested-for-trying-to-sex-young-boy#more-408848
El Pinche:
The liberals are shit , thats how i feel
I listen to Savage, that’s how im real
Abortion and homos, thats what I dont deal,
But in the public restroom, i’ll make your ass squeal.
…..
AAAHH COMEON F*CKIN GUY
x111e7thst: I should have followed up on that comment earlier. I wish I was in Manhattan. One of the places I grew up is right across the river. I became a Yankee fan (to the chagrin of the rest of my family) because that is where we happened to be living when I was eight years old. It is one of two spots on the mainland that I can really call home. I certainly would not have come all the way out here if I could have made a living at home.
Buttsects. Trucknutz. Widestance. also.
V572625694: That’s you? Blonde hair? Wow. Lovely. You & Michelle Obama rockin’ the sleeveless. Nice arms.
x111e7thst: I was so hoping Kamchatka. I’ve always wanted to go there.
Random related information: a friend of mine named Yura is from Kamchatka. Now he lives in Austin & plays on two different soccer teams with me.
Custerwolf: Is he really a Mormon?
Not only is Glenn Beck really a Mormon, he converted to it as an adult. I must say I disapprove.
mollymcguire: If you ever come visit let me know. I’ll buy you (all) dinner or lunch or a bunch of drinks.
hobospacejunkie: Does Yura ever go back? How many soccer teams are you on?
I like soccer , played in highschool and college, still play pickup games in a park in Queens after work sometimes.
bago: In an indivisible Universe, numbers we our first creation of fiction.
Neilist: Doors always open.
S.Luggo: You have never scratched the surface of nail polish, have you?
hobospacejunkie: Ugh. God that man is beyond repellant.
Blender: Joke’s on the Obamas, cause that production was directed by a white dude which means the entire cast are just cold puttin on a minstrel variety hour with allusions to Stepin Fetchit.
S.Luggo: You said something about an essay (which sounded interesting) - all I saw was an advertisement for a 2006 conference??
“she has ruled that race not trumps competence in civil service promotions. The future of bigotry seems to be in safe hands and Senator Hruska, unbeknownst to himself or anyone else at the time, has been revealed as a prophet.”
Wow. How can Redstate expect its cerebrally-challenged followers to make any sense of this post from yesterday? I guess the secret of writing for that blog is to just select a group of trigger words at random, toss them into a blender, and let them spill out onto the page. Not a bad idea since, regardless of the word order, nothing written over there will ever actually make any sense.
Well, off to go riding into the wild blue yonder. Keep it rude and crude.
Custerwolf: My friend C. being hauled around the desert near Petra in a pony trap. Cause pushing her wheelchair was not going to work.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_bHJsS0yY2Hk/SiIGn-dWpwI/AAAAAAAAAwI/JC3Zr6YXnqQ/s1600-h/buggy.JPG
that’s a 6 year old stallion pulling
no one had ever tried taking a trap down that hill before (steeper than the pic makes it look)
I took this from the back of my camel from the back of my camel
Custerwolf:
Sorry, CW - since I quit drinking, I seem to have developed a form of political Tourette’s. Can’t wait for Monday’s presser when Gibbs is going to get at LEAST one demand for a response to yet another lameass RNC talking point.
fucking fucking fuck. Oh well, off to the Maker’s Faire.
x111e7thst: So did you take photography classes (you obviously have a natural eye for beauty and rhythm and color)? Is it an expensive camera - the detail shows very nicely. You are really inspiring me to want to travel again - although I could be temporarily satisfied just looking through your gorgeous photos.
Blender: Fuck - I’m jealous. Are you a partcipant or visitor?
Custerwolf: No classes. I just keep taking pictures till I get a good one.
It’s a lot like shooting at a target for me. I shoot - change something, shoot again etc till I’m hitting the target. I think it was a $400 camera. You could buy the equivalent today fo less than $200 probs.
(thanks for the kind words)
hobospacejunkie: Nah, that’s the Italian Princess. Amazing what playing tennis three times a week and model’s metabolism will do for a lady. I’m the old coot next to her.
Well, it looks like you poor cocksuckers are stuck with me for another day. Damned horse tossed a shoe (she’s so trendy).
Custerwolf: Is her foot ok?
Custerwolf: I just assumed you shoed (shod?) your own. Glad you’re hear though.
V572625694: here, though. Haven’t even started drinking yet, jeebus.
RIP Dr. George Tiller, murdered by homegrown rightwing terrorists this morning…
http://www.kansas.com/topstories/story/833730.html
trucknutz.
x111e7thst: Yeah, she has thin walls, so it happens occasionally that a nail will crumble the wall. I just nip pulled the other shoe to even her up. Farrier will be here next week. This is the same mare that put a fucking dent in my upper thigh when she kicked me with a steel-toed shoe last year. Good thing I didn’t have any plans to become a swimsuit model.
V572625694: Too hard on the back. I wish I could though.
Blender: Holy fuck.
Custerwolf: YAAAY!
Blender: And some defend ideologues and those that support “eternal truths” and are “principled to the end”. Pro-life - what vicious bullshit.
Atypical: Here, I wrote you a short treatise…
“There is only one way of knowing ultimately. “
Not to sound flip – but how do you “know” that?
“It’s what has worked before and it will work again. “
But what if there is something that works better – we’ll never know unless we try it. Maybe we should be open to new possibilities – without abandoning a healthy skepticism of course.
“No reason to replace it.”
It wouldn’t need to be replaced, just enlarged upon.
“What pisses me off more than most things is how people perceive important things.”
Again, not to sound flip, but it’s your own perception which determines whether or not something is important. You are claiming the inherent importance of something – in other words, aside from the projection of your own perception, who or what says this is important? Is it a matter of species survival? Very well. But that means it’s important only to us humans. It is not important to a polar bear if we humans should all die off.
“Their view is frequently not connected to reality.”
How do we know what is real?
“Three people see something and have three different interpretations.”
200,000,000 people will have 200,000,000 different interpretations – the differences may not be large – that’s the function of society, to streamline perceptions - but everyone is unique in the way they see things.
“Thinking Palin was bright, well-spoken, professional and capable of running the country comes to mind. “
Only an idiot could have thought that Palin was qualified for anything other than a beauty contest or church priestess . However, if a person who happens to be an idiot suddenly sees that another idiot can become vice president or president (thanks for the favor, George), it confirms what they’ve believed all along. That smart people are just a bunch of stuck up fuckers and only stupid people know what’s truly going on. They congratulate themselves for their lack of book smarts and fancy wordsmithery, so that ignorance becomes “folksy,” and paranoia becomes “patriotism.”
“Perception is the operative emotion to most people. “
Perception is not an emotion, it’s an intellectual construct – intimately tied with language - which colors our emotions. It is built up through conditioning and reinforcement and hinders at least as much as it helps in our ability to see what is in front of our eyes.
“They are just too lazy”
Absolutely, which is why few people actually think – we just arrange or rearrange our established thought patterns (an integral part of our conditioning.) True thinking always discovers something new. We are first and foremost feeling creatures (I’m not talking here about superficial emotionality). If we were not, we would lack the necessary drive to get out of bed in the morning, let alone fly a man to the moon.
Custerwolf: All of this conversation can be reduced, properly, to what tools people use to decide or perceive anything. If the tools are suspect than the conclusion is.
As for your, “How do we know what is real?” I don’t go there. It’s a philosophical minefield with which I have little patience. I leave it to experts in brain science to tell us what causes our “minds” to do or perceive. I read philosophy occasionally but mostly prefer to deal with as much concrete information as I can get. But as I previously stated, I am ALWAYS open to the new. It just should be based on non-fuzzy foundations.
Custerwolf: Perception’s a fascinating subject. Have you read Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley? That was where I first learned about the “reducing valve” theory of perception: That our brains receive a torrent of information, babies are high all the time, and that “growing up” consists of narrowing that stream down to something you can manage. So drugs like LSD (which Huxley took when he knew he was going to die!) open up that valve again.
Wm Blake: “If all the doors to perception were cleansed, man would see things as they are: infinite.” A Navy captain’s son thought that was pretty cool and named his rock group after it. You may have heard of them.
Or for that matter, The Varieties of Religious Experience, by Wm James, Henry’s brother, which compares the religious/messiah experience among many cultures and finds astonishing similarities: the miraculous birth, the time alone in the wilderness, the assembly of a small group disciples who learn to starve or drug or flagellate themselves to have the same experience the messiah did. The world they see is covered in jewels, always unimaginably or indescribably beautiful, and is characterized as oneness with god.
But most people have jobs, houses, kids, horses, and can’t devote themselves to the spiritual life that completely. So temples or churches are built, and the stained glass and incense and chanting and singing try to replicate the holymens’ (almost always men, right?) experience.
Maybe you all know all this.
Atypical: ” I leave it to experts in brain science to tell us what causes our “minds” to do or perceive. I read philosophy occasionally but mostly prefer to deal with as much concrete information as I can get.”
My question regarding reality was not at all hypothetical. I don’t touch philosophy. I used to find it interesting, but not any longer. I’m with you in believing that the study of how we perceive things should be left to the neurosciences. They are not looking for meaning, just connections.
Blender: Thanks to Jihadist leader Michelle Bachmann !
Custerwolf: Atypical is someone that needs to have the experience to recognize the reality.
Without the experience of something outside of what is known and accepting it as such one is only in a repetitive mode.
What is experienced is based on what one has experienced. Atypical needs to step off the cliff and not fall down before experience will let that be real.
Blender: I hold onto the hope that this (and similar) reich wing terrorism will finally be accorded the law enforcement resorces and priority it has been denied under the CheyneyBush regime.
Blender: Damn shame the terrorists call themselves pro life.
Condolences to the family and friends.
So a woman goes in for a job interview as a secretary and the boss asks her “So, do you know how to type or are you just a huntin’ pecker?”
gurukalehuru: BA BOOM.
x111e7thst: Yura’s parents are reaearch scientists now based in Seattle. He’s 25, lives in Austin, and so far as I can tell is happy to be away from the cold.
I play on a co-ed & a mens soccer team, both indoor & out. So 4 teams total. I also run both the mens teams I play on (goalkeeper.)
Are you from Queens? I’m from normal parents myself (Desperately Seeking Susan reference.)
V572625694: Well forgive my eyes for naturally gravitating toward the princess. I don’t feel so bad, though. Until Friday DustBowlBlues thought I was a woman. Either way, you two are lookin’ finer than probably 98% of Smartass-Americans in whatever age demographic you be representin’.
V572625694: Never read Heaven and Hell, but I liked Huxley very much:
“Lightly, my darling, lightly.
Even when it comes to dying.
So throw away all your baggage
and go forward.”
Our entire nervous system acts like a transducer (I hope that’s the right term). It takes in a cacophony of sound and light and turns it into something our brains can comprehend - patterns, which are stored in memory tracts. One experience I had with psychedelics happened when I was doing what my teacher refers to as a “mirror practice.” You simply look into a mirror. Into your eyes. That’s it. Of course, when you’ve eaten a handful of mushrooms, it opens doors a bit more quickly (they always close later, that’s the problem with drugs). As I was looking into the mirror, suddenly it became a portal and instantly the “order” of everything was lost and all became swirling color, traveling at an incredible speed - perhaps the speed of the Earth’s rotation? I realized later that the only reason we see trees and buildings and oceans, is because our brains have organized reflected color and light into recognizable patterns, allowing us to interact with our world. By the way - all those colors are not the reason people like drugs. People like drugs because they destroy one’s self-reference. Losing yourself is utter bliss. I’m only telling you these things because I’ve experienced them without drugs as well.
Also the idea of a “spiritual life” is erroneous. Anything you are looking for is already at your fingertips. You could awaken in the middle of folding laundry. There is not some group of spiritual people somewhere who will become awakened. We made up the whole idea of spirituality in the first place - because we want things to be better than they are. Ironically, they are, we just can’t see that.
hobospacejunkie: I figured you goalkept because you smoke like a chimney. I was born uptown manhattan. Now I split my time between Manhattan and Rosendale (bout 100 miles upstate)
I work in Queens because I did many bad things and now I must suffer.
Custerwolf:
Transducer is a perfectly applicable term.
When I did acid back in my younger years, I concluded that what it did was lift you out of the chaos, allowing you a spectator’s view of our insane lives. Unfortunately, since acid cranked my senses to 11, the show was in deafening THX surround sound and blinding color.
My new drug is hiking. The harder and more determined you are, the greater the reward of isolation from man’s self-destruction world. People go about their selfish ways as I sit and watch from a crag high above. It is dead silent, except the wind blowing through the krummholz…and the hot French-Canadien girl coming up the trail.
hobospacejunkie: Thanks, friend. Even an old ego appreciates the occasional stroke.
Custerwolf: I could look in your eyes for a long, long time.
TASER OF WISDOM— brought to you by some “santori” person, WHO IS NOW WRITING FOR YOUR NEW FAVORITE WEBSITE:
http://www.shortsshortsshorts.com/?p=3499
IT IS THE TASER OF WISDOM PEOPLE. YOU DON’T FUCK WITH A TASER.
Custerwolf: You could awaken in the middle of folding laundry. There is not some group of spiritual people somewhere who will become awakened. We made up the whole idea of spirituality in the first place - because we want things to be better than they are. Ironically, they are, we just can’t see that.
I hope you have a student. You can put into words large ideas in an understandable way.
To find this on wonkette is to have hope for all of us poor ignorant people here.
It is a beautiful day and I shall be out enjoying it
peace to all
Self-destruction world? self-destructive world, Servo. Fuckin’ gin!
Found the inevitable comment on the Tiller murder at Free Republic:
God bless them man who stood up against the murder of the unborn.
When the man who killed Jeffery Daimer was asked why he killed him his reply was God told him to do it.
Sometimes violence is the right course of action.
“A people unwilling to use extreme violent force to preserve their liberty deserves the tyrant that rules them.”
To be fair, the vast majority of Freepers are condemning the murder, with a vocal minority arguing that it could have been motivated by something other than Tiller’s being an abortion provider. One post speculated that the killer may have been the “father of one of Tiller’s victims,” and several others are anticipating that the mean old leftwing media is going to use this event to suggest that pro-lifers are somehow inclined to violence.
hpwilliams: Here’s the real tragedy. Tiller was shot and killed during a CHURCH service at his Lutheran Church. The pro-life crowd really isn’t. They are more about death. For many of them, they aren’t even aware what they are fighting for (or about). They don’t contribute one thin dime to raising children who are born to mothers who do not want them, they do not support contraception or sex education in the schools so that abortion may one day become unnecessary. No. They want to wave signs with disgusting pictures on them. They want to paint blood on a children’s doll to wave at the cameras. They are an awful, viral force for not just hatred, but mindless terror. Who else might have died at that church service? Some kid going to the bathroom? Another worshipper who was praying for their dad dying of cancer? Today’s gunman, urged on by a sect committed to violence and death, didn’t care.
RIP George Tiller and rise in glory…
Servo: Nice.
hpwilliams: and you!
DoktorZoom: Damn the lack of a blockquote tag…the last paragraph is me, not the freepies. I also see that a few are suggesting that this was a false-flag attack: Evil pro-death leftists murdered Tiller to smear the pro-life movement.
These people are fascinating.
DoktorZoom: I’m surprised their trailer park has internet service.
DoktorZoom: Here is a thought. How about grabbing a couple of people who look like they might have something to do with this act of terrorism (White, bad teeth, Jeebus or Johnnie McC. bumper stickers etc.) Drag them off to a black site and waterboard them until they confess to this act - several others and also to the fact that Limpaugh, Malkin and Bachman were instrumental in arranging their financing. Haul off Limpy etc and waterboard them until they give up their terrorist co-sponsors and fellow facilitators. And repeat. I have it on the best authority (Big Dick C’s), that this is the way for a real Murrican to fight the War on Terrerizms.
smellyal8r: The freepers have already discussed the location of the killing: since it’s a leftish church that supports gay marriage and allowed Tiller to attend, it’s not really a Christian church anyway.
x111e7thst: Great idea.
DoktorZoom: “These people are fascinating”.
Wrong word in my opinion. They are the vilest, most sub-human pus-filled, reeking, brain-diseased, depraved religio-fanatic assholes that can be compreheded by those who are rational.
I posted a list of books earlier (10:16). Pick one re religion. This shit will never stop. There are too many that like and prefer it this way. Including those that appear “normal”. It is a permanent part of the world - yes, forever.
Atypical: “‘Pro-life’ - what vicious bullshit.”
We have to find some way to create a mirror in which they can see their hypocrisy. Ideas???
DoktorZoom: The freepers are onto you, Doktor. They will teabag the shit out of you, for freedom.
Wonder when will Neilist show up here and tell us how all his guns are what keep political murders from happening?
Atypical: “It is a permanent part of the world - yes, forever.”
That’s a paradox for me because I believe you are ultimately right - that’s part of the imperfection of this world - but still one feels a desire to help. Perhaps you just can’t be so attached to the fruits of your labor.
Custerwolf: The only thing that works sometimes is for those that hate from afar to have to deal with what they hate in their own lives.
I’m reminded of a story told by a female representative in the Georgia state legislature. She related that some of those strongly against abortion confided to her that if their daughter was pregnant and wanted one they would arrange/support it. This is what runs this country. Religion has gotten a free pass far too long. Most think it’s a good presence wherever it exists and that it “helps” people.
As I said to someone earlier, religion has never done anything that could be done by the non-relgious. (Hitchens)
Custerwolf: I fear that no mirror will show them anything but what they already “see”.
smellyal8r: Amen & well-said. Let us also remember that in addition to not caring about the baby once born, to not being interested in practical ways to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, these same people see no problem, no rank hypocrisy, in supporting the death penalty. Usually through selective quoting from that Guidebook to 21st Century Living, the bible. Nothing but violence porn fetishists.
Atypical: I know this whole goddamned thing must be driving you to distraction - as it is me. Fucking stupid people hurting other people. Fuck.
Atypical: I’m not sure religeon is a root cause. More a convenient excuse. If they had not their Christianism they would find some other excuse. National White Liberations, Falangist Fascism, or whatever ism it was that drove the Hutu Interahamwe to kill a million people in 7 months with bushknives and hoes.
Atypical: My sister has a - “Aren’t you glad your mother didn’t believe in abortion” bumper sticker in her kitchen drawer, which her husband must have ordered from some right-wing org. Since she had two abortions before she was married, she probably feels too guilty to actually put the thing on her SUV. The one time in my life when I became pregnant (some 25 years ago), I don’t think I would have chosen to have an abortion, but I solved the problem by wishing it away (yeah, right) and miscarried. It was best since I was a complete slut at the time and I would have had no idea who the father was. How much of a slut was I, you ask? I know the precise night I got pregnant - I just don’t know by whom. Church folk probably won’t forgive me my trespasses, and Gob made me barren to punish me for my sins. At least that’s what some people would have you believe, and as J.Krishnamurti points out - THAT is form of violence in and of itself.
x111e7thst: Absolutely.
Blender: Now let’s sit back & wait for statements from Bachmann, Keyes, Bush, et.al., condemning this violence they so obviously stoked. And for the Justice Dept to treat this as the action of a home-grown terrorist cell, and incorporate it into the War on Terror or whatever they’re calling it these days.
Let’s sit back and wait, and wait, and wait…
*crickets*
Atypical: “As I said to someone earlier, religion has never done anything that could be done …
Couldn’t be done. Fixed.
Custerwolf: What’s making me mad, as in crazy, is that many will justify it and not be afraid that they will be strongly condemned, ridiculed or if they are threatening, to be arrested. It just doesn’t happen. We tolerate religious hatred and viciousness. WE TOLERATE IT AND DISCUSS IT DISPASSIONATELY in somber intellectual tones. But we can do nothing more because relgion is UNTOUCHABLE. Only if it is necessary to appear responsible after a huge outcry does anything minimal get done.
x111e7thst: It is ideology that causes the problems and others you refer to. And religion is the greatest ideology of them all. How do you fight “but this is what god wants. It’s what I believe and my church tells me it is right. The bible tells me it is right”. We actually RESPECT that.
Custerwolf: Where were the girls like you when I was a younger (not yet happily married) man? I obviously did not hang out with the cool kids.
Atypical: This bizarre respect for religion no matter how nutty and sociopathic their words & actions is a point driven home in illuminating fashion by that popinjay Hitchens in his recent treatise on the subject.
Atypical: “The bible tells me it is right”. We actually RESPECT that.”
I know. Pretty ridiculous. But we’re still pretty new to the game of critical thinking, so there is hope that those brains who are not immune to it will eventually catch on. I used to feel bad admitting to religious people that I did not believe in god because they just seemed so weak and vulnerable and cute in their faith. When I met my teacher he told me I was completely full of shit and I just wanted them to like me. The truth hurt.
hobospacejunkie: Didn’t you see me waving my undies at you from across the room???
The longer the island of knowledge, the larger the shoreline of wonder.
- Ralph Stockman
Custerwolf: Speaking of underwear, I’m packing to go over to that “Europe” place for a month. Would you come down here and fold my stuff? No charge for the epiphanies.
Atypical: Custerwolf:
I was talking to my father about this earlier. He was born in Germany in ‘15. So he got to watch the rise of the Hitler. He fled to the USSR (not the greatest choice you say?) and got to watch Stalin. He says that what all these people (and the Murrican Talibangelicals) have in common is an addiction to powerful emotion and a fear and dislike of the critical faculty.
I guess he is expanding on Marx’s insight that religeon is the opium of the masses.
Aside from god, people also talk about speaking to their higher self or to some kind of essence in their head or whatever. If your essence or higher self is telling you these things right now - why didn’t it talk to you those last twenty years when you were REALLY suffering?! Because the truth is, the greatest attacks arising in our inner dialogs come disguised as our heart or higher Intelligence or God talking to us. It’s actually our inner sense of UNWORTHINESS that is telling us something. Compensating for an ever-present sense that we are not quite right.
Custerwolf: How much of a slut was I, you ask? I know the precise night I got pregnant - I just don’t know by whom.
Oh girl, I hear ya loud & clear. So what I’d like to know is, was it a “gang bang” orgy kind of thing, or the “just finished getting laid, and wow! it’s only 11:30 — NEXT!” kind of deal? I’ve enjoyed each during my life. Only, slut is such a strong word. I prefer ‘good time’ boy.
V572625694: Lucky you. Better food and less insanity. (Patriotism, religiosity, militarism etc all insanity to me)
V572625694: I don’t fold that easily.
x111e7thst: Opiate, actually (opium is an opiate). Aren’t I just a snobbish cunt at times?
RoscoePColtraine: ““just finished getting laid, and wow! it’s only 11:30 — NEXT!” kind of deal?”
God, you so fucking know me.
Custerwolf: Oh! That was you? Well, to quote that filthy & obscene Saturday Night Live YouTube video, I jizzed in my pants. A common problem among older boys/younger men not accustomed to attention from the fairer sex. Makes it difficult to advance much beyond the cracked voice salutation. “Were you waving those at me? Ah, oh, oh, damn. Uh, I really need to be going…bye.”
Custerwolf: Sweetheart, we both know that at 11:30 there’s still time for at least two more. (people, not repeats with the same guy)
Custerwolf: Ha ha, you always delight.
x111e7thst: The itinerary:
Italy: great food; patriotism of the good kind and a dash of xenophobia; lots of glorious religious artifacts but no adherence; their military, it is to laugh.
Germany: decent food if you like Fleisch und Kartoffeln, which I do; Germans made patriotism unacceptable for all; you have to give 10 percent of your income to the Lutherans or Catholics; reliable NATO partner and long-standing forward base for us, the Brits, the Soviets, so military bases are woven into the fabric of every city, but in a nice way.
Spain: Never been there, so will have to develop stereotypes and prejudices as I go. Travel is hard work!
RoscoePColtraine: What I said to v572 now goes to you too.
A recent post did not get published. Anyone know the “rules”?
V572625694: In Spain I highly recomend a few days spent in the Extremadura.
Also Alhambra and Generalife but you dont need me to tell you about the latter two.
hobospacejunkie: Goddmmit I love that video.
RoscoePColtraine: Amen. I worked and lived in communal situations for many years (Yellowstone and Denali Parks, Forest Service in Kalispell, Fish and Wildlife in Soldotna, AK) so that gave me a nice pool of candidates to choose from. But I only fucked guys who I felt a certain connection with - it just so happened that was a LOT of guys. But if that feeling wasn’t there - neither was I. Although I actually let one guy fuck me just to keep him from breaking the windows in my place. He figured I should fuck him since I was fucking everyone else, so I figured what the fuck. Who needs broken windows. Another guy, a vice president of one of the concession companies at Yellowstone almost killed me when I refused to fuck him. I’d sucked him off while we were driving to his place, but by the time we got there I’d lost interest in being with him any longer. Yeah, I probably should have been run over with a truck a time or two.
Atypical: No rules except if you have too many links (more than 3?)
Atypical: There are “rules”? First I’ve heard of it. Our Wonkette Overlords take the weekend off, as a rule. Okay, there’s a rule.
Atypical: Jesus fucking Christ, what could you have said???
But the rules, as I understand, include:
NO blasphemy or sacrilege or disrespect of people’s religious belief systems,
NO disparaging remarks directed at any politician of either party,
and
NO foul language of any kind.
Atypical: I’ve heard rumors that more than two links/URLs in a post may cause this.
Custerwolf: God I laugh when you go off like that. My standards for fucking are much simpler: if I think the guy looks hot I’ll fuck him.
x111e7thst: Thanks!
I had to register just express my bewilderment that I actually read this whole damn thing. I feel alternatively stupider and more entertained for having done so. Kudos to the Sex/Philosophy/Old People posse.
Custerwolf: No links were used in the commission of this comment.
V572625694: Seems like someone is watching.
RoscoePColtraine: I did all of those but not in this post, THEY were published!
hobospacejunkie: Didn’t do it.
I’ll try one more time but if it get’s published and seems to be out of order or context, please excuuusse me.
Does anybody here know of any work that’s been done on the essentially POLYtheistic nature of Christianity? Evangelicals will claim they worship only one God, but with a large cast of supernatural characters, all with their own special ‘powers.’ (Angels, demons, the devil, etc.) So it kind of reminds me of the mythology of Greece with one supreme god at the top, and lesser gods with agendas, responsibilities and weaknesses. There must be a book out there with the same outlook. Anyone know??
Octopiii: Stupider? We’ve apparently failed.
V572625694:
Spain - if you’re staying in Barcelona, make the hour-long train trip south to Tarragona and stay for the night. Probably a bit more built up than when I went ten years ago, but lots of Roman ruins and warm Mediterranean water to swim in. Make sure to speak horrible American Gringo Spanish and the stereotypes will take care of themselves. And demand to see “authentic” flamenco dancing wherever you go. They LOVE that.
Now I must go to work - boo-hoo.
I leave you with some lovely poetry.
Now is the time,
To give me roses, not to keep them
For my grave to come,
Give them to me while my hear beats,
Give them today
While my heart yearns for jubilee.
- Mzwakhe Mbuli
Octopiii: What does “kudos” mean - oh, one of fresh youth?
Blender: Ask em if they have any bulls you can run from.
Blender: Thanks for that too. See-Sen-yore! There’s actually a rental car involved.
Custerwolf: Buenas noches, mi amiga.
V572625694: Are you going to Milan? I’ve been there many times (my brother used to live there),it was only on my last trip that I discovered that they let you play on the roof of the Duomo.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_bHJsS0yY2Hk/SEbTzALJBtI/AAAAAAAAAWg/0oizx-Dzhhk/s1600-h/IMG_2045.JPG
And my hero Leonard Cohen’s thoughts on religion and its place in society:
Story of Isaac
The door it opened slowly,
My father he came in;
I was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me
His blue eyes they were shining
And his voice was very cold.
He said, “I’ve had a vision
And you know I’m strong and holy
I must do what I’ve been told.”
So we started up the mountain
I was running, he was walking
And his axe was made of gold
Well, the trees they got much smaller
The lake was like a lady’s mirror
We stopped to drink some wine
Then he threw the bottle over
Broke a minute later
And he put his hand on mine
Thought I saw an eagle
But it might have been a vulture
I never could decide
Then my father built an altar
He looked once behind his shoulder
He knew I would not hide
You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children
You must not do it anymore
A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a god
You who stand above them now
Your hatchets blunt and bloody
You were not there before
When I lay upon a mountain
And my father’s hand was trembling
With the beauty of the word
And if you call me brother now
Forgive me if I inquire
“Just according to whose plan?”
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must
I will help you if I can
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must
I will kill you if I can
And mercy on our uniform
Man of peace or man of war
The peacock spreads his fan
RoscoePColtraine: Got this from Wikipedia:
The veneration of saints in folk Christianity, in particular the concept of patron saints responsible for a certain aspect of life or society, may in some cases appear indistinguishable from polytheism, and indeed in many cases seamlessly continues pre-Christian traditions.[1]. Such traditions, however, tend to develop outside the sanctioned teachings of Christian establishments. Some denominations, such as Roman Catholicism, hold to a doctrine of intercession, in which a believer offers prayers to one or more saints in the hope that they will petition God on the believer’s behalf. This doctrine does not attribute divine power to the saint; however intercession is sometimes criticised by other denominations on the grounds that they treat the saints as lesser gods and are therefore polytheistic.
There is a list of references there connected to the polytheistic religion section. Might be a start.
V572625694:
Oh, and DEFINITELY try to hit Valencia - it’s hot and miserable, the streets are clogged with junkies and violently-drunken Aussie expats, and at night the sky is filled with more fucking bats than you’ve ever seen in your weirdest, drug-induced nightmares.
hobospacejunkie: Except for all their other bizarre BS, I gotta hand it to the Catholic church. They are pro-life all the way. Anti-abortion and anti-death penalty. Now, as a homo, the Papists and I have a number of differences (and I think they were about a hunnert years late on the whole altar boy thing) but on this one sliver of their theology, we agree.
The right wing death squads of Kansas must be called out, must be broken and must be eradicated. I think Attorney General Holder would be well within his rights to list Operation Rescue as a terrorist organization.
x111e7thst: Did Milan a coupla years ago, and in fact am going to venture a bus ride to the Stazione Centrale, and the IC to Brescia, where the Italian Princess will pick me up — the Duomo is incredible. I love the church in Siena too, with its wedding-cake alternating layers of dark and light marble. Italy is full of the these treasures, everywhere you go. The Catholic boogity-boo doesn’t work for me, but the architecture, craftsmanship, urban design….oh!
smellyal8r:
“I think Attorney General Holder would be well within his rights to list Operation Rescue as a terrorist organization.”
Never happen. The criminal institution, the catholic church, is too powerful. See my 5:05 comment.
No way man, I ain’t reading 395 comments, Andy Rooney will be on soon.
“George Tiller was a Mass-Murderer, says Randall Terry — We Grieve That he Did Not Have Time to Properly Prepare his Soul to Face God
WASHINGTON, May 31 /Christian Newswire/ — Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, led protests against George Tiller’s late-term abortion clinic in Wichita in 1991.
Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue states, “George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller’s killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.
“Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.”
Randall Terry is available for comment at 904-687-9804
And PLEASE leave him a comment!
V572625694: I am starting to really heart you.
rocktonsammy: I don’t blame you. But because of Andy Rooney?
I know what you should do. Just read mine. I’ll help.
rocktonsammy: Ha ha! Every single comment was brilliant, so do your duty.
Scandalabra: Which one did it? I kinda spent the weekend here. Of course you know I’m pledged forever to Custerwolf, as soon as her dental work is complete.
V572625694: Still around? I was just skimming the comments and see you mentioned Humane Society of the US. Please check to make sure it’s what you think it is and will do what you want. See, for instance, where I just saw it mentioned,
http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2009/05/hsus_money_machine.php
Now back to waiting for my fake BBQ ribs to fake BBQ.
Uncle Glenny: Thanks, I’ll check it out. Used to be the Nature Conservancy until I learned more about them. Ever heard anything negative about IFAW?
Uncle Glenny: Oh, and the link’s dead. Maybe HSUS sued ‘em.
chascates: Terry has more support in our government than you realize. He calls the shots. That’s why he says what he says - he knows how connected he is and that he won’t be touched. Religion trumps everything. Don’t you know how “beneficial” it is to individuals and society. How dare you criticize religion and the religious, the lifeblood of civilization.
Uncle Glenny: p.s. ERV’s dog looks a fair bit like my pit bull who died 10 years ago. I’m getting mushy because my current dog started, 2 weeks ago, to look like she’s on her last legs, and this weekend I had to start feeding her human food to get her to eat.
V572625694: aw, fuck. Well, I suppose you could google
“humane society” site:scienceblogs.com
look at whatever is under /erv/ and see what you can infer from what was written. I’ll do something similar.
chascates: We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God
So Terry is basically saying…“we shoulda killed him slower…”?
Uncle Glenny: Sometimes you can bring their appetite back (for a while) by feeding them some prednisone every second or third day. Have you tried that?
Atypical: That’s why I’d like to live in Northern Europe–the least religious countries there are.
dijetlo: I once had a book printed in the late 1880s titled True Men As We Need Them. It was about Catholic professional men and mentions why, to serve a higher good, the doctor should withhold treatment from a dying agnostic.
Atypical: I think there is a chance Terry goes down this time around. Not a really good chance, and probs not all the way down (accessory to murder lock him up throw away the key is what I’d like to see) but still.
chascates: I agree your book: if the hypothetical agnostic doesn’t have the balls to call himself an atheist, he deserves to die.
chascates: That’s pretty damn arrogant of Randy Terry. How does he know whether or not George Tiller was ready to meet his maker? After the other attempts on his life, I suspect he told his family that this could happen “any time, any where”. Being as he was at church and all when he was shot and killed by a right wing terrorist in Kansas, I suspect he’d developed what he believed to be a pretty good relationship with Almighty God. Good for him.
rocktonsammy: Rooney was poorly done, as usual. Tonight’s 60 Minutes was more memorable for replaying Anderson Cooper’s “date” with Michael Phelps (and I’m pretty sure Phelps didn’t realize what was up until too late). You can tell Anderson was all too ready to get out of that men’s small t-shirt from Abercrombie and Fitch to get in the pool. Plus, when they are at breakfast together, I’m thinking “Jeez Anderson…hit a cold shower”.
x111e7thst: I’d probably not want to use that if I didn’t have to, just yet, but I’ll ask the vet when we go in for blood work pretty soon. She was already on thyroid med for hypothyroid, and there was a question at the time (i.e. 1.5 weeks ago at the vet) as to whether the dose was too high, but I’ve disproven that in the meantime, so I need to get her back on regular dosing then get the blood work done.
It sucks not being able to just rush off to some fancy vet and have them diagnose things like I did with the pit bull because I can’t afford it. He’d lived half his life on pain killers for arthritis (he became a fear biter because of pain - too many idiots great dogs by slapping them soundly on the back) and about a quarter of his life after having nearly died of heart failure. His heart was a mess, valves barely working. He eventually died of bone cancer.
I’m also going to ask about trying the same medication on this dog, as she has a heart murmur, which I don’t think had been noted before. On vasotec, the pit bull had shown improvement in just 2 or 3 days.
I wonder if Las Vegas will run extra tourism ads around Kansas for any wingnuts who may want to celebrate the doctor’s murder. They can join the drunk Texan rednecks from their last ad campaign. Vegas seems pretty desperate lately.
Uncle Glenny: “too many idiots GREET dogs” - I’m a better speller when I’m not sleep deprived; that’s at least my second homophonic error in the past half hour
Good Morning, Wonketterati - I got up early on this snowy fall day, looked in on the news-feeds and saw that some criminally-insane religionist has desecrated a “House of [his] god” by murdering a doctor during a church service… and as one might expect, the freeping Freepers are freeping freeping themselves over this, as you’ll see if you search their site for phrases like “bigbux4killingbabies” or “sentbabykiller2hell”… read on, if you can stomach it…
x111e7thst: Thanks for the good thoughts but I will not expect this to happen.
smellyal8r: ” How does he know whether or not George Tiller was ready to meet his maker”? What evidence is there for that concept?
“I suspect he’d developed what he believed to be a pretty good relationship with Almighty God. Good for him.” So god allowed him to be killed after that by a berserk asshole? god said, I like this guy. Time to die now. WHAT? Almighty god allows a doctor to be killed in HIS house? Who is this god? Obviously a jagoff!
Daily Kos has an insightful take on this criminal/religious insanity…
Bearbloke: Maybe secession of some states isn’t such a bad idea. The only hard part would be making sure all of the Jesus Goblins and nutcases made it to their ‘promised land/REAL American/United States of Hatred’ and left the rest of us. But they’re not happy until everyone is isn’t happy.