Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Just had a friend over this afternoon and he was talking to Sam because they have a common interest, which is sports.  Sam has always taken great pride in knowing the names of all the teams, and all the players, and their colors, and the name of their stadium,   since he was about 4.  I can’t exactly see the appeal in that.

My friend is a big Cleveland Cavaliers fan, being from Cleveland.

Anyway, while we were chatting away I came to a sudden realization, a Satori, a burst of insight, a revelation if you wish, and it has to do with the role of sports in society.

I agree that they are important.  I don’t like sports much myself, but other people seem to enjoy them a lot.  Why?

It’s not because they build character and teach teamwork, and sacrifice, and ethical behavior.  Because, obviously, they don’t.  The higher a level of athlete, the more likely they are to be indulging in some kind of shenanigans, either the illegal or the should damned well be illegal variety.  They drink, they gamble, they beat their wives.

It’s not  because they contribute to the economy.  Especially since the NFL is operated tax free, like  a church.

It’s not because they are such a great benefit to the local community.  The world only needs so many little league coaches.

It’s not because of tradition.  That’s nonsense.

The main reason that sports are important in our society is because if all these people were not in the stadiums, they would be hanging out somewhere else, beating the shit out of each other , bothering passers by, and littering.

Give them the sports, I say.

It’s a shame that the mainstream media is not paying more attention to the massive numbers that turned out to protest inaction on climate change, but, what can you say?  Lots of people  turned out.   I salute all the people who were there, and I’m a bit encouraged that there are so many people paying attention to that very important issue.

Jasmine Tridevil

But today was a great day for News of the Bizarre, so I’m going to talk about a few of those stories tonight.

1st, Charlo Greene is my new hero!  Or heroine, I’m not sure which is the preferred feminist nomenclature.  She was a news anchor in Anchorage (wasn’t there a Tracy Chapman song with a title like that?) who quit her job to go full time heading up a medical marijuana club and fighting for full legalization.  She finished up her segment and then said “As for this job – fuck it” and walked off the set.  Now, walking out on your job halfway through is not an unusual thing to do in Alaska – there is precedent.   But I love her motive and I wish her all the luck in the world.

2nd, in Pakistan, a  Sufi Guru told his followers he could resurrect the dead, and then asked for a volunteer to have his throat cut.  Well, magicians pull stunts like that all the time but this guy wasn’t a magician.  He was a religious nutcase who apparently believed he could resurrect the dead.  The volunteer, a 40 something father of 6, remained very dead.  The Gurus followers haven’t all abandoned him, but he will do time for murder – there were thousands of witnesses.

The really weird story is (no surprise) from the great, crazy state of Florida.  A woman named Jasmine Tridevil (no, that’s not her real name.  Tri-devil?) has had plastic surgery to get a third breast.  She says it’s to make herself less attractive (she looks a little bit like Snooky, IMO) because she’s tired of dating men.

I don’t think it  will work.  Sure, a lot of guys will find it freakish and repulsive.  I don’t know how I’d react, I’d have to see it live to judge.  But, she will have the lock on  every  man  in the world with a three tit obsession.  Because, for now, she’s still the only one.

Seeing as how today is a day ending in Y, I got into an internet argument about who was responsible for 9/11.  9/11/01 that is.  Even the CIA now admits it was responsible for 9/11/73, which gives you some idea just how blatantly evil they are.

I understand that a lot of people, even the majority, accept the official bullshit version of what happened on that day.  It’s what’s been reported in all the papers.  I don’t agree with their position, but I can understand how they came to believe what they do.  But there are some arguments frequently used by the anti-truthers which strike me as completely invalid,  and we could have a more constructive discussion if they could be stricken from the  record, so to speak.

1.  You’re nuts.  Sometimes they just preface their statement with that, sometimes that is their whole statement.  It’s an ad hominem attack, it doesn’t  in any way refute what we are saying and it is undoubtedly, at least in some cases, untrue.  Sure, we’ve got Alex Jones on our side and he’s nuttier than a fruitcake, but so?  There are crazy people who like pizza and chocolate, that doesn’t  mean that it’s crazy to like pizza and chocolate.

2.  I’m from New York!  I saw the towers fall!  I have friends who died!  Sorry for your loss.  It doesn’t mean you know what you’re talking about.  There’s another point I’d like to raise here, and I’m not accusing any individual specifically.  But, here goes:  3,000 people died that day.  Let’s assume that they had 100 friends each, on average.  If we’re talking about real friends and not facebook friends,  that’s a fairly high number.  So, assuming that number, there are approximately 300,000 people who can claim they lost friends on that day, or slightly less than 1 out of 1,000 Americans.  As often as you hear the statement, you know some people are lying.

3.  I just can’t believe that people in our own government would do such a thing.  That is your problem.  Your inability to believe it is no indicator that it didn’t  happen.

4.  All of your arguments have been debunked!  No, they haven’t.  They have barely been addressed.  There is a difference between debunked and shouted down.  Rebuffed is not refuted.

5.  Why would they have done it?  Cheney’s company, Halliburton, made $39 billion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Larry Silverstein got $10 billion in insurance money.  George W. Bush and his minions got total power to do whatever they wanted.

6.  A conspiracy of that size is impossible!  Says who?  There are lots of jokey statements about how impossible it is to keep a secret but I don’t think any scientific studies have ever been done on that subject.  Of course, maybe they’ve been done secretly.  I wouldn’t know.

7.  Our government isn’t competent enough to pull that off.  And  yet you think Al Qaeda is?  If Al Qaeda were actually capable of pulling off something like this, why have they done nothing comparable since?  (the London bombings were not comparable.  No airplanes were involved.  No buildings were destroyed.)

Those will do for now.  If you accept the official version, and can avoid using these 7 completely ridiculous arguments, I’d  be happy to debate the issue with you.

Sarah Palin has taken to social media to defend her family’s egregious and embarrassing behavior at that party a week or so ago.  “Bristol is a real straight shooter,” she tweeted.  Sarah, she punched a man in the face.  Several times.  While you watched.

Vlad “The Bad” Putin

I’m guessing the punches were fairly ineffectual, since the man, who was hosting the party, simply continued to ask her, politely, to leave.  Nonetheless, it’s not a sign of a ‘straight shooter’ as much as a sign of an out-of-control young hooligan.

This incident, of course, will fade from memory.  Nobody got any video, so it will be less remembered than the famous turkey grinding episode, or Sarah’s brilliantly moronic answer when Katie Couric asked her which newspapers she read, or even the “I can see Russia from my house” statement, which wasn’t even her, it was Tina Fey.

It will fade from memory more than Sarah’s  statement about Putin rearing his ugly head and flying over Alaska like some weird, disembodied, Russian cloud monster.    She was actually sort of proved right on that one this week.

Curse you, Putin!

Russian jets have, within the past couple of days, flown much closer than is friendly (unless you actually are a friendly nation) to both the U.S. and Canada.  It’s not actually an invasion.  It’s more like Francis Gary Powers, 50 years on and in reverse.

I don’t really know what can be done.  What I do know is that I’m tremendously relieved that Barack Obama is president.  He will respond to this situation with both intelligence and caution.  Can you imagine John McCain in this situation.  He’d be coming up with one crazy response after another, and shitting in his pants the whole time.  He does not have JFK’s coolness and negotiating skills, nor even  Reagan’s luck.  He’d probably have us involved in WW  III by now.  And his shrieky, ignorant Vice President wouldn’t be helping at all.

There is a conflict simmering between facebook and several of its customers, those who are male but like to dress as female.  Probably most men who do that actually just do it at home, when nobody’s looking, but some do it on stage, for a show.  It is their profession.

They want the right to use their stage names on facebook.  Facebook is saying no, we have a real name policy.  Bullshit.  My name is Willie Watson, but facebook wouldn’t have ever known that if I hadn’t told them in the first place.  For a while, I did have a sock puppet account under another name, but I got bored with the game fairly quickly and it was getting to be work checking two different accounts each day, and although I received lots of flattering comments from myself,  it just wasn’t worth it.  I suppose that account still exists, I just haven’t checked it in months.

But beyond facebook’s inability to actually enforce their rules, the point I’m trying to make here is that facebook’s objections are stupid, anal retentive and counter-productive.  Zuckerberg could just concede defeat on this point and facebook would be a happier, less conflicted space.

They say it’s to stop ‘on-line misbehavior.’  Bullshit.  The way to stop ‘on-line misbehavior’ is to monitor on-line behavior and stop people who are behaving badly.  The definition of badly, of course, varies from person to person and I am quite unlikely to agree 100% with Mr. Z’s definition, but it’s better than targeting a group of people at  random, some of whom might not be misbehaving.

I’m not anti-Zuckerberg.  He has provided the world with a great site.  So, this is more of a suggestion than a complaint.  Let facebook be itself, Mr. Z.  Your baby is growing up.   Don’t be a helicopter Dad.  Let it grow, let it evolve, let it become itself.

You’ll probably make more money that way, too.