Another Day, Another Boycott

If someone told me they could organize make a party consisting of the functionally ignorant, the psychotic, the hypocritical bible thumpers, the deep in the closet types, the diaper wearing and tie them in with the ultra rich/powerful and then make it self destruct in the most embarrassing way possible, I would have said bullshit.

Yet here we are.

Good God, am I the first to comment? I’m overwhelmed.

Is this the place to lodge a complaint about the choices in the Vox Stinque poll? We will never be there yet, because we’re always here and it’s always now, said the joker to the thief. “There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.”

Seriously though, folks, thanks for coming here and writing words of wisdom. As long as you all are on the job, commenting constantly on the Emperor’s lack of wardrobe, I know I am not alone, and that means a lot.

@ManchuCandidate: Please God you’re right, and they are going to self-destruct.

I religiously read Paul Krugman and have done since he first began writing a column for the NYT, even paying for the privilege when they were exacting payment, and what terrifies me when I let it is that his middle name should be Cassandra. He’s always right, and no one seems to pay the blind bit of notice to him. This country has two, count ’em, two, winners of the Nobel prize in economics (Stiglitz and Krugman), and you’d think, to judge from the policies promoted in D.C., that the Nobel prize meant no more than a diploma from Liberty University or the Regent Law School or whatever the hell it’s called.

Our country has teh CRAZEE, bad, and noone wants to comment on the elephant in the living room yet, or crazy aunt alice, or whatever this thing is, but its just symptoms, you gotta remember that, this birther, Obama is a fascist communist, this Beck, these are all just symptoms of just CRAZEE, when you see a schizophrenic homeless person babbling on the streetcorner, you don’t analyze the babble and try to understand or make sense of it, its just teh CRAZEE. These things are just the babblings, crazy cat lady is throwing cats, there’s the commmie cat, there’s the death panel cat, there’s the birth certificate cat, but they are all just cats launched into the public discourse by a babbling CRAZEE cat lady.

We all said, 20, 30% of the public, a black president, a democrat even, would make their heads asplode. Thats what happened, and these are the noises emanating from the windpipes of people whose brains are gone, totally asploded, nothing left of brain function, just CRAZEE babbling.

@Promnight:
I suspect that the crazee has a lot to do with environmental, physiological and cultural factors.

1) Lead (thanks to paint and gasoline) – you guys were the last developed nation on earth to ban leaded gas
2) Too Fat – studies are showing that too much fat in the body can lead to serious mental degradation
3) Mercury/Arsenic – courtesy of coal fired plants in the midwest
4) Toxic reinforcement thanks to Toxic, er Talk radio (worst possible mental feedback loop)
5) A strong under culture of rigid fundamentalism that often leads to hypocrisy and sophism.
6) A subculture that hates knowledge
7) A failure to deal with racism

I think the fact that 80% of your populace hasn’t gone off the deep end says you guys aren’t a lost cause. Of course, I’m a mere furriner who probably should know better and shut the fuck up.

@lynnlightfoot:
The problem with Krugey and Stiglitz is that they’re pissing against the Masters of the Universe who ought to know better but don’t.

As I mentioned LAST year, the NEXT bombs are credit cards and commercial real estate (info from Krugey and Stiglitz). There are rumblings that GLOBAL commercial real estate is about to shit the bed. This is exceptionally bad because China (holder of much US debt) and its banks are up to their eyeballs (4-5 TRILLION USD worth) in questionable real estate loans in CHINA. I have read that only 50% of Beijing’s wundrous office space for the Olympics is occupied. This is one reason why China’s been vewy vewy quwiet on the fizkall front.

If Wall St thinks they’re free and clear, just wait. Barry’s friend Tim might have protected them now, but even he won’t save them from this possible shock.

@lynnlightfoot: “As long as you all are on the job, commenting constantly on the Emperor’s lack of wardrobe, I know I am not alone, and that means a lot.”

Hey doll, I spent an hour today with my shrink talking about how I think that all of existence is a big game, and I’m among the few people in the world who have taken off the blinders, said “What the FUCK?” and pointed out that the proverbial Emperor that has all of us sitting on the subway nodding along to our iPod to go to our meaningless jobs, that global Emperor has no clothes. And that it’s not a bad thing that I say to myself “I have to do this for another 40 years? For what?” She didn’t have much to say in response. Which is kind of troubling.

American Thinker and WND … the stupid squared … incredible.

@SanFranLefty: Years ago, a friend inadvertently riffed on Woody Allen, asking me if we’re all just specks in the universe, what’s the point?

And really, I don’t have a satisfactory answer. But I will say that leading a creative life brings you closest to Creation itself. And all of us here are very adept at making something from nothing.

@SanFranLefty:

I was having something of an existential crisis a few weeks ago when I started to realize that there really is a chance that I’m gonna be a middle-management paper-pusher for the next 30 years, enjoy an inadequately funded/somewhat desperate retirement, then follow my beloved Granny Sue into an Alzheimer’s-induced oblivion for the last few years of life.

The only acceptable solution that I came up with is that you have to keep growing as a person, keep setting a goal for yourself, explore things you’re interested in, travel when you can afford it, and always try to meet new people and learn about new places. More than anything, it’s the small things that make life worth living: a day at the dog park with the fur-babies; a trip; a fun conversation; a well-prepared meal; a delicious bottle of wine and so forth.

BTW, I also largely stopped reading the news almost two weeks ago, and my outlook on life has improved significantly. I still read a few blogs, but I avoid most news if possible. It’s overwhelmingly destructive to your psychology, and there’s nothing you can do about 99% of it. It was hard to let go because it felt paradoxically like I was giving up control somehow, but I’m better off for it.

@SanFranLefty: Shorter version:

Surf the Void.

@SanFranLefty: I love you, my dear, and no matter what the cretins get up to, the “holiness of the heart’s affections” will see us through. . . .

From your comments over all these many months we’ve been a community, I know you’re one of the best of the best, a gentle and true-hearted person. In some sutra or other the Buddha is supposed to have said that “your actions are your only true belongings.” You pass any test with flying colors.

@Original Andrew: Back when I was seriously experimenting with this shit, I stopped reading newspapers. (Being a Lapsed Reporter had something to do with that…) I quickly discovered that any news I really needed to know had a way of reaching me. Those also happened to be years I was happily without television.

Got a shitload of reading done.

A lot of that has crept back into my life over the years, but each a matter of choice instead of ingrained habit. If I hadn’t taken the trouble (and given myself the time) to reorder my world, I’d be feeling really stuck right about now.

But that’s what happens when you listen to “Once in a Lifetime” at an impressionable age.

By the way, for all you Scrabble players, John Hodgman’s Twitter feed often features running commentary of his games. Which sounds just like you would expect John Hodgman playing Scrabble to sound:

Thought I had a triple word bingo. Turns out, I just had two martinis.

You’ll notice that cats don’t have existential dilemmas. Which is why they bear close study.

@Original Andrew: I endorse every word of wisdom you just committed.

The small things mean everything. The other thing is that every person I or you ever met is hugely more important than any job description ever slapped on that person by anybody ever.

@Original Andrew: I’ve been more or less news-free since an emotional crisis a few months ago left me not wanting to deal with any extra bullshit. I still wake up to NPR on the radio, but I switch from oblivion to consciousness fast enough that I only catch 5 minutes or so of what they’re saying before I’m up and ignoring the radio again.

During and after my little crisis, I stopped listening to the radio as I biked into work, stopped using it so much in the background as I worked in the garage, etc.

Crisis passed, and I’m feeling a lot better about life in general. I’m having a hard time imagining going back to a habit of radio listening (which is where I got almost all my news other than Stinque or what friends posted on FB, or mentioned in person). I never thought it was depressing at the time, but obviously it was putting some pressure on me, of which I was only indirectly aware.

Now if only there were a radio station in town that played music I enjoyed more often than one in every 20-30 songs…

@IanJ: Consider building a sturdy J-pole antenna and picking up a good tuner. The Sony people have a HD tuner which is a powerful DXer and sounds very very good. I got one for the HD channels and to compare it to my mighty Nikko tuner. The Nikko’s sonics are bigger but a guy in Detroit it now turning out audiophile upgrades to the new Sony that are freaking out the snobbiest ears.

@IanJ: As I was scanning stations in my rental car 2 weeks ago in Seattle, I was briefly able to tune in an independant community station that was playing folk and bluegrass. I really liked it; it reminded me of the thing I miss most about living in Grand Rapids, MI: an amazing independant station called WYCE. Luckily, I can stream them online, which I often do on my home computer.

@IanJ: Several options for you: (1) Pandora; (2) online streaming of great radio stations like KGSR in Austin, KFOG in San Francisco, or WBGO from Newark if you’re feeling like some jazz; (3) iPod.

I’m pretty much on new blackout, too. I first did this after 9/11, Katrina and now with these town hall crazies, I need a break.

@SanFranLefty: If you’re feeling like (online streaming) jazz, Sandy Eggo’s own KSDS has kept me sane for seven years running.

@nojo: Pandora.com is also good for this.