Geek Empire

how long before...

...somebody brought up Lenny Bruce?

Unfortunately for Kramer, there's a bit of a difference between the calculated use of the n-word to make a point, and freaking out and screaming it at a patron to the point that everyone in the audience expects you to break out the hood and burning crosses.

"a prominent women's rights activist"

An attention starved relic from another age recieves an award with a major celebrity. Also pictured: Terri Hatcher.

I don't get it. I made the rare mistake of watching some of the late show tonight, hoping for some old-fasioned low-brow entertainment, only to find a hyperactive Teri Hatcher praising the virtues of Ol' Gorby. whom she apparently met at a women's rights conference recently. Yes, the former president of the USSR is now, apparently, a champion for women's rights. How anybody that held that position can be a champion for anybody's rights is beyond me, but there it is. I hear OJ Simpson is now in charge of a battered women's shelter.

I don't want this to be a "Lest we forget, doomed to repeat our mistakes" sort of post, but come on already. Go read "A Day In the Life of Ivan Dinesovitch" or, if you have the time, The Gulag Archipelago. They're long, but I'll be here when you get back. Gorbachev presided over the failure of one of the more brutal regimes of the 20th century. It wasn't Stalin's USSR by that point, but being in charge of losing the dictatorship doesn't exactly qualify you for sainthood. To picture Gorbachev as the symbol of any kind of human rights campaign is laughable, much less specifically women's rights.

Unless, of course, women's rights now means a cabbage in every pot and a babushka on every houswife.

one quick note about the election

I can't believe I'm already doing political schtick again, which I am notoriously bad about, but I have at least one interesting note about the recent election.\

In 2004, the motto of Hannityites and their like was, "John Kerry has no stand, he's just the anti-Bush. Nobody ever won on being the anti-anything, nobody ever won on negativity."

A full year before this election, Hannity himself made "Don't let Nancy Pelosi take over" a hallmark of his show. My first thought: Uh-oh. Everybody bashes their opponents, but unless you're running against Rick Santorum, you can't start out every speech with "I'm not so-and-so, vote for me!" That's a speech belonging to someone with nothing worthwhile to say, the speech of a loser.

The Democrats, to their credit, at least took some stands this time around. Mostly unpopular, sure to be backed off of, even flat out nonsensical positions, but they got up there and spouted 'em off (except, again, for the anti-Santorum, who needed only to be a breathing human being). The republicans, after fervently not doing what they swore they would do over six years ago, had nothing useful to say and nothing to offer but lib-bashing, I'm better than the other guy tactics. And so they lost. Hopefully, although doubtfully based on what I'm seeing, they'll learn their lesson before 2008.

hello again

Wow, I've really flaked out on this whole thing, haven't I. Here comes the excuse: Hell. Sheer, living hell, aka a house with no internet.
I think I mentioned sometime over a year ago that I was moving. The move was good: from a two bedroom people-sized filing cabinet to a rickety old house (a whole house!) in the nicer end of a ghetto ex-steel town. The downside is that this area is serviced by a small cable company that apparently broadcasts over Styrofoam cups and cotton string, and getting DSL (which I tried to do the week I moved in) was a trial fitting of Kafka. I won't go in to detail with the three day long phone call to Verizon, or the way they helpfully canceled every order I placed with them the day after I placed it, or the six months that the V-word sent me in to incoherent, insane babbling. Suffice it to say that somehow, some way, I'm finally online during my primary babbling time, and have alot to get done.
This isn't a promise that I"ll actually start up again. In fact, I doubt I will on a regular basis. I work fifty plus hours a week, and I'm still carrying at least a few classes requiring at least a dozen hours a week, and I'm now engaged, which takes up more time than the other two combined (it's fun work, but it's still work).
The funny (sad?) part is, despite how little I've posted anything to this empty space over the past year, I still think like I'm blogging. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think, "that would make an interesting post". God knows I have the talent to turn that interesting idea into a verbose heap of uninteresting garbage, with only an hour's worth of effort.
The bottom line, as usual, is "we'll see how it goes". I've tried not to make promisies on here, because the minute I do I know I'll fail at them. The only consistency with this space is that it lives to serve my amusement, and I'll post here (with Pixy's tolerance) whenever it amuses me. Hopefully, with a return to the ability to blog and drink at the same time, I'll be making an ass of myself publicly again very shortly.

games without frontiers

A common topic: Worst ever music videos. This one came up, and I couldn't remember what it was, but here's what stuck: a dead-serious aging white guy giving salutes and doing spins on his segway.

I don't know which is worse, that this happened at all in the first place, or that the youtube submitter has only one word for description: amazing.