Hbee Inc.

Oy.

I posted the Scott Brown editorial as a Daily Kos diary making sure to tag it as satire because…well…it is. “Satire”, while not necessarily meaning “funny” implies the presence of something called “jokes”. “Jokes” are meant to produce “laughter” or “amusement”.

I’ve had other run-ins with my fellow liberals along these lines. I posted a video of Billy Bob singing “Killin’ Every Arab I See” with the chorus of

Killin’ every Arab I can see, see, see
Only way to set the country, free, free, free
To bring ‘em peace and give ‘em a democracy
Killin’ every Arab I can see, see, see

to the Huffington Post Viral Video contest a while back. I stood on a stage, in The Comedy Studio with the logo “The Comedy Studio” in back of me. During the set, people howled with laughter. At the end of the set, I got a huge round of applause. To the objective eye, it was a video of a guy doing stand up comedy, pretending to be a redneck. But not all eyes are objective and so I received the following email which still holds the rank of best…email…ever.

I hope you know they were laughing AT you and not WITH you!!!

Um. No. They were laughing with me. I was laughing at this guy and his inability to detach himself from his obsessions long enough to see that I was on his side.

As a liberal comic, it pains me to see liberals play into the stereotype of having no sense of humor at all. And, no, I don’t mean that all liberals walk around dissecting jokes until they lay limp and lifeless on the linoleum but, sweet fucking jesus, folks – lighten up!

In response to wondering if Brown might be Cuban, some charming person wrote

What makes you think you have to be born here to learn “proper” english?  Isn’t Palin and others like her proof one can master English from birth better than those who are born and raised here?

What makes you think cosmetic surgery is a must?  Is there A Cuban LOOK that is unique to Cuba and not like the USA where everyone or their ancestors come from somewhere else?  Brown is not your average looking Norwegian (obviously not USA).  What does an USA national look like?  He’s not blonde or so-called white.  The man is olive tone as is millions of people across the world and in Latin America.

People must stop thinking language, especially if it’s Spanish means you can’t have euro heritage.

/facepalms

But it doesn’t end there, of course. Although it’s not in the editorial, I do bring up the facts that looks can deceive, giving as proof Michael Jackson and Christine Jorgenson, the first successful male to female gender reassignment. It’s a good joke, I thought. Fairly obscure and smart. Even though I didn’t include it, some smart kossack brought the point up.

• Grumpy Kossack 1: I don’t find this line of joking funny. So what if he was transgendered? There’s nothing wrong with that.
• Me: You’re right there’s nothing wrong with it. So why would he hide it?
• Grumpy Kossack 2: He would not be hiding anything if He declined to share his medical history. He would be protecting his own privacy, and he would be protecting himself from discrimination and violence. Transphobia is absolutely everywhere in American society, and it kills.
  Remember Duanna Johnson. Tortured by the Memphis PD for being black and trans. Killed by the Memphis PD for speaking up.

Yes, it’s true, of course. But that’s not the point. Nor was there any attempt to ridicule transgendereds. But let’s not let that get in the way of trying to hijack a thread to promote your own cause. Because, when you get down to it, even knock, knock jokes can be hurtful.

Knock Knock
Who’s there
Boo
Boo who
Don’t cry, it’s only a knock knock joke!

This hateful and discriminatory knock knock joke might push a manic-depressive to kill themselves. Shame on me for propagating it.

Since they left it alone, though, I can make as many Canada jokes as I want to.

Go figuh.

Hbee Culture, Daily Kos, Flame, Head Shaking, Kossacks

The axiom goes that comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.  For the most part, it’s true but I’m wondering if I’ve become a little…stodgy lately since I haven’t found the last couple of YouTube hilarities all that hilarious.

The danger (if that’s the right word) in talking about this lies in whether or not to link to what you’re talking about.  In the case of the epic “A woman missed her flight at the boarding gate HKIA”, the Huffington Post linked to it and, in what I assume was supposed to be some attempt at journalism, updated the the post to inform readers that since posting the video the YouTube traffic had tripled.  Gosh!  How did THAT happen?  Are they honestly suggesting that having one of the more popular websites linking to a video has any effect on that amount of people that watch said video?  Well, DAY-AM.  Who knew?

The difficulty lies in whether or not to link to it and increase its popularity.  In this case, my low-traffic, sporadic piece of cyberspace would have little or no effect on its popularity so it’s not much of an issue but I’m not going to link anyway.

Briefly – it’s three minutes of a Chinese woman freaking out (in Chinese) about missing her plane.  Three minutes.  How is this hilarious?  If somehow you happened to be there when it happened, I doubt you’d be ROTFL.  In fact, no one’s laughing on the audio.  She’s just pissed off.  Not even the person with the camera is laug-

Wait.  Person with the camera?  At the risk of getting too deconstructionist, let’s walkthrough what had to happen to get this to YouTube.

1) Woman freaks out
2) People watch her
3) Someone starts filming
4) Someone take video and transfers it to a computer
5) Edits the video
6) Crunches the video
7) Uploads the video to YouTube
“Hilarity” ensues

Think about it – a probable stranger posted a video of someone’s bad day and three million people watched it.  Maybe it’s just me, but that’s fucked up.  Is distress in a foreign language funnier than distress in your own?  I’m not going to lie – Chinese is really easy to laugh at.  I’m not proud of saying that, but as a white, middle-class America I’m pretty much programmed for it…kinda like Miley Cyrus.

But even that doesn’t explain why a parent would post a video of their kid whacked out of anesthetics for the amusument of strangers.  Or why ten million people, rather than forming a lynch mob and tracking said parent down, chose to foward the video onto their friends and laugh at this poor kid.  What have you got to be thinking to do that?  “Wow!  My kid is SOOO fucked up right now!  I’m gonna have to get this on tape rather than comforting him.  Hey!  This is some funny shit!  Let’s put this on YouTube!”

Thirty years agao, Paddy Chayefsky wrote a movie called Network which envisioned a world where the concepts of news and entertainment ceased to be delineated.  It was all entertainment.  Violent, revloutionary terrorists were given their own prime-time TV show, filming themselves committing terrorist acts.  The nightly news broadcast included an astrology report.  Anchors did not present the news but rather presented their commentary on the news.  Not to spoil the ending if you haven’t seen it, but the closing narration of the movie informs us that Howard Beale was the first anchorman to be killed because of bad ratings.

Much of what Chayefsky predicted has come to pass.  But he could have never dreamed up the odd, cruel entertainments of YouTube.  He would have been laughed out of Hollywood.

Hbee Culture, Grumpy Old Man, Internet, Pessimisim, Racism

Ok.  So we’ve all been in the situation (probably) where even though we’re literally flat broke we blow a couple of quarters on a video game or give it to some homeless person.  After all, it’s fifty cents.  What’s fifty cents when you owe $5,000 on your credit card and $25,000 in student loans.  Granted, that’s fifty cents that might have been put to better use but…c’mon…we’ve all been there.

christcons, though, see the world through shit-colored glasses.  Like Katherine Harris said, “if you’re not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin.”  And when I say, “sin” I don’t mean the sin of not blatantly lying.  God’s ok with that.

It’s not surprising, then, that savecalifornia.com came out with this blistering attack on how sucky California is

At the same time that it can’t pay its bills or mail tax refunds, California’s foolish government is spending time and money on an advertising campaign that invites homosexuals, bisexuals, and transsexuals to adopt children.

To translate – CALIFORNIA LOVES HOMOS SO MUCH THEY’LL BANKRUPT THE STATE.

Or – The billboard contracts got negotiated previous to the crisis and it’s a non-issue, financially.  Billions of dollars in debt compared to, what, $1000 for a billboard?

Why should LGBTs adopt?  My lord, you’re naive!  Because…because…there’s this study that says…um…girls raised by lesbians are more sexuaully adventurous than those raised by the christcon fantasy of homophobic mom and pop operation.  Because gays and lesbians don’t have any morals.  They only adopt children to either turn them gay or eat them.  It’s pretty much spelled out in the press release and confirmed by a study.

In 2001, the University of Southern California conducted a “study of studies” regarding the effect of homosexual parents upon children. “(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?” by sociology professors Judith Stacey and Timothy Blibarz was published in the American Sociological Review. The researchers found significant differences between homo-parented and hetero-parented children. Among them:

* A significantly greater proportion of young adult children raised by lesbian mothers than those raised by heterosexual mothers say they have experienced sexual intimacy with a partner of the same sex. They were not, however, statistically more likely to identify themselves as gay or lesbian.

* Young girls raised by lesbians are more likely to be sexually adventurous and active than their counterparts raised by heterosexual parents. However the sons of lesbians exhibit “an opposite pattern” and are likely to be less adventurous and active than boys raised by heterosexual households.

* Lesbian mothers reported that their children behave in ways that do not conform to “sex-typed cultural norms.” And the sons of lesbians are reportedly less likely to behave in traditionally masculine ways than those raised by heterosexual couples.

BOOM!  Take that you liberal so-and-so’s with your “tolerance” and “acceptance”.

Remember that part I said earlier about God being ok with lying?  That’s where that part comes in.

www.savecalifornia.com provides a link not to the study but to a Fox News story about the study.  That was pretty much the tip off.  I’m aware that the other side of the coin feels the same way about MSBNC and The New York Times.  Why, you ask, did they not link directly to a study that bolsters their position?  Because the Stacey/Blibarz doesn’t say that.  In fact, it doesn’t support their argument at all.

One of the actual opponents of same-sex parenting, Steven Nock, decried that all studies of same-sex parenting were crap because, well, same-sex marriage didn’t actually exist so you couldn’t quantify it.  That’s like saying that we’ve never actually been to Mercury so we can’t say with certianty how much we would weigh on Mercury.

Stacey/Blibarz testified and refuted pretty much all of Nock’s claims of apples and oranges before a Canadian court.  No, I haven’t read all 33 pages but I don’t believe I’m cherry picking (unlike some) when I quote from their opening statement

There is significant, reliable social scientific evidence that lesbian and gay parents are as fit, effective and successful as similar heterosexual parents. The research shows that children fo same-sex coupels are as emotionally healthy and socially adjusted and at least as educationally and socially successful as children raised by heterosexual parents. We conclude that granting same-sex parents the freedom to marry would likely result in positive outcomes for such parents, their children, gay and lesbian people, and society as a whole. We also reject the assertions of Professor Craig Hart. His analysis is intellectually flawed and the studies cited are irrelevant to the issues in this case. [Emphasis added]

Like Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount – “the ends justifieth the means.”

Hbee Bible, Blatant Assholes, Christians, Culture, Religion, Republicana, Wingnuts

Dear sweet fucking jesus – seriously?  A flock of geese bring down the plane you’re on, the pilot pulls of THE most difficult landing in aviation delivering all passengers relatively safe and sound, the airline gives you $5000 for lost luggage and expenses plus a free upgrade to first class on your next flight and that’s not enough?

Folks – you’re looking at what’s wrong with America.  You’re looking about the selfishness that we as a country have bred within ourselves.

“I think if you survive a plane crash, being upgraded permanently is a good gesture too,” said Fred Berretta, 41, of Charlotte, NC, where the Airbus A320 was headed.

Manhattanite Tess Sosa, who escaped the sinking plane with her husband and two small children, thought the airline was too focused on self-congratulations – and “they want to exonerate themselves as much as they can.”

“They are happy they had such amazing results, and they applaud themselves, and then give us a small token?” she said. “That’s how I take it.”

News flash – the airline can’t control the geese and YOU’RE NOT FUCKING DEAD.  You are alive by the skill of the pilot hired by US Airways.  THAT is your reward.  Frankly, it’s probably more than you deserve.

So, Passengers, go ahead and file your goddamn lawsuits about how the flight path had some deep, unseen flaw that put the plane in the flight path of the birds and how the only miracle is that hundreds of thousands of people haven’t died already because of US Airways neglect.  Go ahead and sue because some other passengers baby threw up on your pant/leisure suit.

YOU’RE.

NOT.

DEAD.

Why not thank the pilot, ask what his favorite charity is and dump as much money as you can into it?

Fred Berreta and Tess Sosa – meet me on the docks so I push you back into the Hudson and see if anybody tries to save you.  It’s worth whatever jail time I’d incur.

Hbee Blatant Assholes, Culture, Flame, Vomiting in My Mouth

[Note - I started this before I broke my leg so it's not a topical as it was]

The New York Times had an article about immigrant charter schools that pretty much made my head explode trying to wrap it around the ever deeper shades of what it says about America and the folks clamoring to live here.

Fartun Warsame, a Somali immigrant, thought she was being a good mother when she transferred her five boys to a top elementary school in an affluent Minneapolis suburb. Besides its academic advantages, the school was close to her job as an ultrasound technician, so if the teachers called, she could get there right away.

Her sons informed her that this was the way things were in America. But not in this Somali mother’s house. She soon moved them back to the city, to the International Elementary School, a charter school of about 560 pupils in downtown Minneapolis founded by leaders of the city’s large East African community. The extra commuting time was worth the return to the old order: five well-behaved sons, and one all-powerful mother.

The article goes on to talk about how some Muslim immigrants find the lack of morals in America problematic.  Their reaction is to set up their own communities that are more or less insular rather than risk the souls of their children to whatever the Muslim version of Hell is.  Thus, they find public schools breeding grounds of…well…vice and dissension.

In the case of the mother, it’s about control.  Actually, all parenting is about control.  Most parents would rather not raise children who run wild in the streets, break laws, get pregnant too soon or are regarded by the general populace as “bums”.  There are exceptions, of course.  Some parents can’t monetarily afford to monitor such things.  Some can but, in the name of “openness”, choose not to. (I’m thinking here about an upper middle class mother I met whose 15yr old daughter was openly doing drugs and dating well above her age bracket.  She was just fine with it.)

Confusing thing #1: Immigrants want to move here but can’t stand the culture.  I understand this completely.  I’m a card-carrying liberal and American “culture” is broken.  Or perhaps it never actually congealed to begin with.  We are a nation made up overwhelmingly of self-professed “christians” that don’t actually care about the religion.

[I know what that last sentence sounds like and you'd be forgiven for thinking that I've gone over to the dark side but I haven't.  And that's the confusing part.  There is a HUGE difference between morality and religion and they are NOT interchangable.  Religion generally exists as a structure for external rewards for doing the right thing and punishment for doing the wrong things.  conservatives want to paint liberals as immoral or a-moral.  That's simply not the case.  At fifteen and twelve, neither of my daughters haven't done drugs, drank, been arrested or gotten pregnant.  Raised presbyterian, I'd gotten two out of four and I just hadn't gotten caught shoplifting.  And we haven't raised our kids christian nor voted republican.]

Allah requires more from the believer than Jesus does.  Seven times a day v. once a week?  I’d think Allah was watching my every move, too.  Jesus, though, only guilt trips believers on Sundays.  For the rest of the week, they’re free to rob, rape, lie and pillage.  And so they do.  The article speaks of kids doing drugs, committing crimes and doing the whole baggy-pants thing but the author, who makes a lot of connections, misses something important – the mother seemed unable to keep her kids under “well-behaved” within the framework of public school.  Only through NOT integrating with the society they choose to join (ie – charter school) could she retain control of her kids.

That seems a little counter-intuitive.  I realize that we live in a fairly stable community with a low crime rate but this is far from an exclusively white suburban community.  Every year our elementary schools do a census that shows we have kids from 20-40 different countries here.  As one parent said snarkily, “the private schools can only dream of that diversity.”  So I think the charge of “white suburban privileged” can get tossed out.  Sure, we have the usual assortment of punks and ne’er-do-wells.  We know one family whose son got busted for smoking weed.  They weren’t happy about it.  But they didn’t blame the school to the point where they went private or charter.  I’m not going to claim that parents can have 100% control over their kids but school choice won’t solve the problem.

Confusing thing #2

Getting lost in America, Mr. Somo explained, means losing your culture, your language, your identity. It means acting like the teenagers the parents see on the street — wearing baggy jeans, smoking, using drugs, disrespecting elders.

As shown above, it’s just not a national truth that all America is a crackhouse.  But let’s say that it is.  Let’s say that moving your family to American means turning your back on your old way of life and offering your family to Satan in a red, white and blue top hat.  This brings up Bill Hicks four question – “Yeah? And? So? What?”

You make a massive life change and you want everything to stay the same?  That’s nuts.  You want all the benefits of America and none of the theoretical downsides?  That’s nuttier.  AND you want federal financing of charter schools to facilitate your detachment from the country you just moved to?

Again, I know what it sounds like – but I’m really not a wingnut.  The fact that wingnuts support financing charter schools – ALL charter schools including Muslim charter schools – is baffling to me.

This, then, is my liberal dilemma.  To tell you the truth, I tear up sometimes when everybody’s singing the Star Spangled Banner.  Stupid?  Maybe, but this fucked up country is my home.  I don’t say that in a “freedom isn’t free” way.  I mean that in a “I’m allowed to say ‘fuck America’ and not (generally) be carted away by my government” way.  I mean that in a “my country doesn’t censor web content like China or (amazingly) Germany” way.  Everyone is welcome here.  But what winds up happening is NOT the melting pot of old where you started out in your ethinc enclave and the whole point was to move away but to establish a permanent Minnestani or Calimexico.  And why?

To protect themselves from the influence of America.

It’s not a right/left issue.  It’s so much deeper than that.  The problems immigrants want to protect themselves from are not political.  People don’t come here for the politics.  They come here because for some odd fucking reason they STILL believe the streets are paved with gold.  You might frame immigration to the US in terms of “greed” or simply “wanting a better life”.  Take away the morality, though, and it’s about money.

And, to wrap this up, it’s about risk free money.  It’s about getting the benefit while keeping yourself and your loved ones as far away from the risk as possible.  Muslim charter schools, christian charter schools – both want their agendas of separateness publicly funded.  Neither want to join the wicked, wicked world but are willing to benefit from it.

And what’s more American than that.

Hbee Culture, General Chittering, Immigrants, Navel (Gazing At) Culture, General Chittering, Immigrants, Navel (Gazing At)

Take look at this title -

Canada – Evil Empire Or Third World Country

Notice anything odd about it.  Is Canada evil?  Is it part of the Third World?

If you have not spent the better part of a decade or four in a vat of lysergic acid you’ll probably answer “no” to both of these questions in which case you’re left with two viable options.

1) The person that came up with the title could well win the “Most Fucked Up Person On Earth” title

2) It’s a joke.

A piece of advice – when faced with that kind of choice – go for the joke.

When you watch a video criticizing Canada for having a corn and maple syup based economy and how there are corn fields 1/2 a mile outside of major metropolitan cities – it’s a joke.

When you read something along the lines of “Calling people a buncha names isn’t a substitute for a debate, you stupid retard loser,” it’s a joke.

When you…well, I could go on for days and days.  The moral of the story is that censorship is completely random.  I’ve been part of campaigns to get videos taken down from YouTube and NOTHING has been done despite so-called “community standards” rules.  I guess baseless accusations are only allowed on YouTube if you’re serious about them.  If you’re joking, they’ll get trashed.

How many complaints does it take to get a video removed?  Beast me.  They won’t say.  It could be one complaint, it could thousands.  What’s almost funny is what they tell you when, after fifteen minutes of digging, you find the complaint form.  This is it:

We are unable to provide specific detail regarding your account suspension or your video’s removal. For more information on our what we consider inappropriate content or conduct while using YouTube, please visit our Community Guidelines and Tips at http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines and our Help Center article at http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=92486.

Translation – Why did we take it down?  You’ll have to guess because, frankly, we’ve got better things to do than bother with customers.

I’m both pissed and pleased, though.  Pissed because out of the 73 BBN videos on YouTube, one of the LEAST offensive got pulled.  And pleased because out of the 73 BBN videos on YouTube, one of the LEAST offensive got pulled.

I don’t get it, sometimes

Check out the original video on Facebook.

Hbee Blatant Assholes, Culture, Grumpy Old Man, Navel (Gazing At), Poor Stupid White People, Ridicule Blatant Assholes, Culture, Grumpy Old Man, Navel (Gazing At), Poor Stupid White People, Ridicule

Why, when it obviously sucked, did disco become such a national craze?  One word: Cocaine.

Yes, it had a good beat but, please – Disco Duck?  When not on cocaine, Jack and Jill Wallstreet generally pooh-poohed this shit.  However, once they stepped on the 8-ball Express they danced wildly and vigorously until Brett Easton Ellis breezed through and got blow jobs from both of them.

Turns out, bees react the same way!  How much cocaine do you, as a human, have to do before you turn to your lab partner and say – “what would happen if bees did cocaine?”  I used to get our dog stoned and it was hilarious!  Turns out when dogs get stoned they get lethargic, hungry and sleepy.  WHO’DVE THOUGHT?

So, it’s not that surprising that coked-up bees act just like coked-up humans.

The researchers looked at honeybees whose job is finding food — flying to flowers, discovering nectar, and if their discovery is important enough, doing a waggle dance on a special “dance floor” to help hive mates learn the location.

“Many times they don’t dance,” Professor Robinson said. “They only dance if the food is of sufficient quality and if they assess the colony needs the food.”

On cocaine the bees “danced more frequently and more vigorously for the same quality food,” Dr. Barron said. “They were about twice as likely to dance” as undrugged bees, and they circled “about 25 percent faster.”

The bees did not dance at the wrong time or place. Cocaine only made them more excited about the food they found. That’s like “when a human takes cocaine at a low dose,” Dr. Barron said. “They find many stimuli, but particularly, rewarding stimuli, to be more rewarding than they actually are.” ”

“Twice as likely to dance as undrugged bees.”  I rest my case.

I only hope that this does not end up in a bees-on-coke pandemic with a new class of unemployed junkie-bees living in crack-combs walking around in circles muttering, “I gotta make more money to buy more coke so I can work harder to make more honey to buy more coke so I can work harder…”  Let’s not even start talking about bee-on-bee violence.

It’s too depressing.

Hbee Bees, Coke, Culture, Digital Crack, Navel (Gazing At) Bees, Coke, Culture, Digital Crack, Navel (Gazing At)

I get blast emails from someone that starts them off “Dear Family”.  It makes me cringe because if I walked into the middle of that “family” I’m a part of, they’d look at me and say “what the fuck is he doing here?”

Have you ever watched a group of people dancing to We Are Family?  They don’t frequently make eye contact with their other family members.  Once the song is over they go back to being strangers.

The latest social media wrinkle comes in the form of someone simply trying to do a good deed in the online community.  She set in motion a chain that ended with the cops showing up on the doorstep of  another twitter she didn’t know…because she thought the woman was serious about “smothering” her child.

(I’m going to leave out the links because both of them are probably getting hammered…hit-wise, that is.)

Let me quote from the woman’s defense

I hope you will eventually cool off and realize that a lot of people you don’t know were very concerned for your welfare and the welfare of your children, and be glad that people out there care about you. I am truly glad that you’re all okay, and I hope you continue to be so.

Just on a practical level, if you don’t know me what basis do you have to make a call on what constitutes my “welfare”?  You don’t know my house.  You don’t know my living situation.  Maybe I’ve got an au pair in the next room.  Maybe I’m a crack addict.  Maybe I’m a crack addict with an au pair.

Paraphrasing her statement – “We’re all one great big family looking out for one another and someday you’ll stop being stupid and realize that.”

The whole statement reeks of condescension and self importance, as do many of the comments about “I don’t think it’s funny to talk about killing children”.  B-but I thought we were family and we agreed on everything.  Oh.  I get it.  We’re supposed to agree on your idea of family because it’s a much better vision of the way that you think the world should work.

Another great statement -

While it is certainly a shitty way to end the night, better to report any possible issues than to remain apathetic and risk a child being abused.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess he’s never lived in a poor section of town.  I’ve nearly gotten my ass kicked several times trying to stop a child from getting hurt.  And those were live people that I could physically see harming their kids, not some cyber-mom blowing off steam.  How many instances of reporting would it take for this to fall to the bottom of a cop’s priority list?

This woman claims she tried to contact the mother before setting the wheels in motion…but she didn’t write back. (!)  I guess that makes this whole thing the mother’s fault because she wasn’t sitting in front of her computer monitoring Twitter. [/sarcasm]

The fact is that “online comminities” are too fluid to be called that.  They are hotels.  They are clubs.  Sure, some folks stick around for the long haul, but many just stop in for a drink and some light conversation on the way to somewhere else.  The trouble comes when they honestly believe they have a crystal clear vision of surroundings they’re unfamiliar with.

A final point before I shuffle off this mortal…headache that I have: Parkinson’s disease makes you shake to the point where you can appear drunk.  This woman would have called the police on someone with Parkinson’s and then patted herself on the back as they hauled him away.  And thanked Jesus for the wisdom he instilled in her at birth.

Hbee Blatant Assholes, Culture, Internet, Navel (Gazing At), Social Media, Tweets

Parent-wise, I now kind of get the “do as I say, not as I do” thing.  It’s not ideal, I admint.  We, as parents, should model the behavior we expect from our kids but there’s an element of nature/nuture in the calculus.  Thusly, I’d rather teach my kids things that I didn’t learn and give them good habits that left me behind.  Some of it’s simple stuff like flossing. Some of it’s community stuff like opening door for people and not parking like an asshole.

With one child, though, I’d like to teach her that if you wait until the last minute then you get what you get so don’t whine about it.  My parents both grew up in the mid-west so nature/nuture-wise I got the stoicism gene and nature/nuture-wise I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  While it didn’t help me NOT be a last minute person, I’d like to think that when I screw up because of it I take responsibility for it.

So I get a little cranky when I read about how it technology’s fault that some kids had trouble submitting their college applications an hour before the deadline.  And I get even crankier when their parents say shit like

“This is completely unacceptable,” said Stephen Dear, a North Carolina father whose son was unable to submit his applications for more than an hour. “You have these wonderful kids who’ve been working so hard on their applications and they’re completely at the mercy of the Common Application.”

Sir – Your “wonderful kids” had more than a year to work “so hard” on his/her application as did all the other “wonderful kids” who overloaded the system with their hard work.  It’s not technology’s fault.  It may not even be your fault.  It’s your child’s fault.  That doesn’t necessarily make that kid a “bad” kid but rather than bitch to the New York Times about the failures of a system not built for the load placed on it why not sit your child down and talk to them about the virtues of time-management and planning?

And while I’m being judgmental about the NYT and luxury problems – OMG!  You’re saying you can’t get divorced because there wouldn’t be enough assets to divvy up for you to both buy comfortable houses?!  You poor, poor people!  Holy shit!  Let me start a telethon to raise the missing $300,000 out of the $2m the housing crisis sucked out of your home!  OMFG!  You’d rather live with someone you despise than rent an affordable apartment in a less-desireable section of town and shop at Johnny Foodmaster rather than Whole Foods (nee Bread and Wallet)?

Wow.  Wonder how your kids will turn out?

Hbee Culture, Flame, Grumpy Old Man, Navel (Gazing At), News Culture, Flame, Grumpy Old Man, Navel (Gazing At), News

Oh, OneNewsNow.com!  Not only does your URL sound stupid but you’re quickly approaching WorldNetDaily as my favorite christo-fascist “news” site.  Really “One News Now”?  What does that even mean?  As opposed to multiple news whenever you want?  “One” is in “jesus is the One” or as in the Orleans song “Still the One”?  Or like the anagram of Neo from The Matrix?  Back to the drawing board for a new name, fellas.  You can always write a re-direct.

I thought I’d written about this but I guess maybe not.  On 12/18/08, the wonderfully moral truthtellers over there put out a story called “Obama planning billion-dollar ‘bailout’ for abortion industry” that contained the follow suspect paragraph

Last week, the Obama-Biden Transition Project posted a report on its website that calls for dramatic policy reversals on abortion, including $1 billion in taxpayer money for international abortion groups like Planned Parenthood. The report, titled “Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration,” also calls for a 133-percent increase in funding for the Title X program, which funds Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.

Really?  A $1b bailout just like they did for the banks and the auto industry?  Shocking!  Obama probably posted it himself, right?  He just loves dead pre-borns.

Naturally, it’s got almost nothing to do with Obama.  It’s a third-part position paper advocating for reproductive rights.  You’ll also notice that the bit talking about “on  its website” links to change.gov and not the actual report itself.  Mostly, because if they linked to the report itself John And Mary Godliness would know right off the bat it’s far less ominous done-deal than it sounds.  Imagine if someone had posted a position paper called “Foreign And Domestic Terrorism: Peace Through Free Ice Cream” on bush’s pre-inaugural website and claiming that’s what he’d do.

In one of those acts of futility I engage in occasionally, I wrote to the “editor” (which you may or may not call “god”) to point out that, as christians, jesus wouldn’t much care for misdirection/ends justify the means kinda thing.  Oddly, I didn’t hear back from them and the article remains on the web.

So, imagine my surprise when my daily digest came in with the following title, “Abortion industry asks Obama for billions in funding“.  Even more surprising was the following paragraph

Over 50 pro-abortion groups have submitted a 55-page wish list called “Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration” to the incoming Obama administration. Jim Sedlak of American Life League’s (ALL) Stop Planned Parenthood, or Stopp International, has tallied the cost.

Huh?  Wow.  I don’t mean to take credit but they actually reported the story correctly and characterized the report as a “wish list”.  Even the title reeks of…um…lack of hyperbole.  So it seems somewhat uncharitable to carp about repeating the story (albeit, correctly).  However, they still, for some [sarcasm] unknown reason [/sarcasm] won’t link directly to the report and declining to even link to change.gov.

Still, good for them.  Baby steps.  Perhaps one day they’ll get to the part where god gives us free will to make our own decisions and that only he can sit in judgment of them.

Maybe.

Hbee Abortion, Blatant Assholes, Christians, Culture, Navel (Gazing At), News, Republicana, Wingnuts Abortion, Blatant Assholes, Christians, Culture, Navel (Gazing At), News, Republicana, Wingnuts