Pages

Tuesday, January 31

For My Overseas Audience



or ... Как ВЫ делаете? sorry but მე არ კირილიცას.

So what's up with troll-face-ru?



Спасибі, і є день Groovy. Чао 

Loser's Brands

Labels for Loser's Review
backward difference: a work in progress

ajita Maitreya (Sanskrit), Metteyya (Pāli), or Jampa (Tibetan), is foretold as a future Buddha of this world in Buddhist eschatology. In some Buddhist literature, such as the Amitabha Sutra and the Lotus Sutra, he or she is referred to as Ajita Bodhisattva.

Maitreya is a bodhisattva who in the Buddhist tradition is to appear on Earth, achieve complete enlightenment, and teach the pure dharma. According to scriptures, Maitreya will be a successor of the historic Śākyamuni Buddha. The prophecy of the arrival of Maitreya references a time when the Dharma will have been forgotten on Jambudvipa. It is found in the canonical literature of all Buddhist sects (Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Vajrayāna), and is accepted by most Buddhists as a statement about an event that will take place when the Dharma will have been forgotten on Earth.

arresting adj : commanding attention; "an arresting drawing of people turning into animals"; "a sensational concert--one never to be forgotten"; "a stunning performance" [syn: sensational, stunning]

Monday, January 30

Hallucinating The (Haiku) Poetry of Charles P. Pierce

... or what I did today instead of work

Pierce was ultimately responsible the last time this happened.

animatronic double

charisma ... grass seed ...
principles ... a moray eel ...
holy-rolling swamp-

fooled by clumsy
dumbshow ... firmly our elite...
togas ... gibbering

grifters, obvious
charlatans, and transparent
mountebanks. ... ignore

Sunday, January 29

"The Suck" Homecoming Kings

Zero Hedge Davos Post Mortem Why We Are Totally Finished

American Exceptional

philly.com
From the linked article at Will Bunch's Attytood
The [Oakland Police Department] is facing receivership based on actions by police in the past, and they have apparently learned nothing since October. On October 25, Occupiers rushed to the aid of Scott Olsen who was shot in the head by police, and the good Samaritans who rushed to his aid had a grenade thrown at them by police. At 3:30pm this afternoon, OO medics yet again ran to the aid of injured protesters lying on the ground. Other occupiers ran forward and used shields to protect the medic and injured man. The police then repeatedly fired less lethal rounds at these people trying to protect and help an injured man.

Nuremberg. Defense. Anyone?

Who are you gonna believe? Some police department/media flack? Or your own. Lying. Eyes.

Can't Get No Play?

Herd Hear

Sports as Metaphor

Panem et circenses et inscitia voluntario
...The idea that someone –anyone – could have stopped Sandusky and didn’t because they wanted to protect a University brand, is infuriating. The belief that Joe Paterno, an avatar of moral righteousness, did the “bare minimum” in the face of this, is for many a mark on his character so dark, it shades decades of good works. I am personally far more sympathetic than that. But that sympathy starts by understanding that Joe Paterno was a football coach and a tenured professor, not a saint. He was fallible. He was right that he “should have done more.” He also sure as hell isn’t the only person who should say that.

Emphasis is mine. When you invest your identity in activities or organizations over which you have little or no control, you should at least be prepared for the heart breaking disappointment that will eventually follow. It is the rare bodhisattva that maintains fealty to his ideals and unfailingly puts them into practice.

Friday, January 27

Vendredi Noir

filmsite.org
*
Every frame in this movie is brilliant. From the credit's opening moment, overlaid on a misty anonymous riverfront paved with cobblestones, to the brightly lit pastoral finale, the audience is treated to some of the finest cinematography ever recorded. Truly stunning.

The first series of cuts takes you from the low contrast open through increasingly stark portraits of a city's fringes. There is no mistaking the journey being taken to the edges of society's comfort zone; and from a short presentation by the director John Huston, included on the DVD, we learn that this is a story about "human relationships ... told from the inside out." He quickly adds that while "melodramatic in form, it is NOT melodramatic in content."

Thursday, January 26

Open Mic Fight(Club)

This Is What Democracy Looks Like
The established parties, such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and the secular, middle class Wafd Party, were also present in Tahrir Square. (There are typically five or six stages around the square, and orators take turns addressing the crowds, which gravitate to the most interesting speaker).
Mubarak might have survived if Egypt had the same type of mind-blinding prolefeed as America.

Flash Forward 25 Years

[N]ow Gingrich is running for president as the only "Reagan Republican" in the race. But that's a myth -- much like the myth of Reagan himself. The bogus version of Reagan that Gingrich would replicate as 45th president would [be] way more militaristic and way more uncompromising, especially on busting the federal budget, than the real Reagan ever would have been, and those of us in the reality-based world would be left holding the bag.

In Human Dimension

Had not planned on being so wired today.
... unconventional special operations forces; new bombers; new spy tools; new missiles for subs; and a veritable Cylon army of drones.

... (plus $117 billion in war cash) ...

...drones for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert.
Also,  "thuggery knows no gender." Or national boundaries.

Task Force Saber 7

Vigilante Torturer Dies in Mexico ... January 26, 2012 | 12:00 pm | Categories: Bizarro 
He was known to “regularly turn up at the Intercontinental Hotel, where most of the foreign journalists were staying, attempting to sell videos and photographs purporting to show Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists training for assassinations and rehearsing gas attacks using dogs,” according to The Independent newspaper.

Some of these videos he managed to sell for large amounts of money. But his motivation went beyond personal wealth. A former Army sergeant who knew Idema told New York magazine that Idema wanted “to kill every fucking Afghan I see.”

Well, You Know What They Say About Slugs

"... they always leave slime in their tracks."
This this  this this.* And we have a WINNER! (And then there's this.)

Wednesday, January 25

Smoking The Pentagon's Crack

It’s unclear whether E-Meme will succeed where other programs have floundered. But McCormack and co. certainly have high hopes for the software’s abilities. Eventually, they’d like to analyze “sentiments” and “the perceptions of groups” to determine “what the online discussion will actually turn into.” Egypt’s relative peace, for example, compared to Libya’s rampant violence. Of course, McCormack notes, that kind of analysis remains “incredibly difficult to do.”

Maybe NATO had a little somethin'-somethin' to do with the difference. It's how we make "omletes."

Tuesday, January 24

Charles Pierce is "Fckng" Brilliant

...and I'd love to see what's on his “DMD
From Esquire's “The Politics Blog”
Opinions that are on the fringe everywhere else are in the mainstream here. Issues long since settled are reopened regularly with the prybars of ancient prejudices. (Ron Paul, of all people, comes down here and blames Roe vs. Wade on the 1960's, and quotes John Adams on why the Beatles sent the country to hell in a bucket. Willard Romney, that old smoothie, yells at a heckler while appearing to be channelling Joe McCarthy.) There is no scar tissue down here, only scabs that open, over and over again.
Emphasis is mine.

Monday, January 23

SOPA PIPA NDAA ... OWS PATRIOT ... LBJ IRT ... LSD

     



If (19)6(1) Was (1)9(61) it would be all like multi-media and stuff *ℜ

"(…pulls up a chair) I'd like to share a revelation that I've had, during my time here."  Bursts of human genius are frequently proximal to a crushing insanity that seems ever lurking in our minds, but these extremes of intellect's issue are not flip sides off the same coin. Great perspicacity and enlightened invention are not prerequisites to mental disease.

I was born here

I have always been a builder. Actually, I've almost always been employed by builders since my first days out of high school. Most of my adult life I have gainfully earned wages through minor, supporting roles in greater efforts dedicated to constructing monuments -- whether for domestic habitation or larger commercial enterprises. I've been out of work since the beginning of the financial crisis in aughtie-o-eight. Credit markets seized and projects, plans, and potential were all stymied by the reckless greed and malfeasance of this country's "Maters of The Universe." The smartest guys in the room brought the majority of human endeavor in the industrialized West to a sputtering, disconsolate and disconcerting halt. But life goes on ... such as it is.

Most of the city photos I've taken in the last year have been in admiration of the stunning variety and beauty of New York's ever evolving architectural legacy. Civilization means cities, and how well the world's endless variety of metropolitan agglomerations and scattered hamlets function reflect the current development of human experience and integrity. Cities have been cultural magnets and larcenous sinkholes for more than 10,000 years.

Saturday, January 21

Extremely Loud and Completely Full Of Shit

xIf my youTube channel flips a "digital bird" at the country, and the now dormant first incarnation of the channel's companion blog represents a karmic Internet rebound, then this current instance serves to remediate, ameliorate or otherwise mitigate that failure to communicate.

In spite of the effort, I'm way past the point of giving a fuck.

Since our way of life here is somehow dependent upon murdering brown people all over the planet, we seem as a nation and a culture beyond redemption. Whether we're waging our global drone war as a military industrial trade show, or to secure gasoline priced in our vertiginous money supply, or for "cool points," it's still murder. Sorry.

It ain't the cats choking the trigger that piss me off; it's the hacks in the back sending other people's children off to kill and die. It's the media whores and mealy mouthed shit-brains that make shallow excuses and reprehensible rationalizations for the evil that we commit daily. I'd be supporting Ron Paul's bid for CEO of the U.S.A. if his anti-war rhetoric wasn't rooted in Libertarian isolationism overlaying a nasty Nativist xenophobia. You might think that I'd find some solace in the recent, unprecedented upsurge of social consciousness percolating through the Occupy movement, but you'd be wrong.

Friday, January 20

Crickey! That's gonna leave a mark

Just lost about a thousand words and two hours of work.

No, working in "the cloud" is definitely NOT painless. Ethereal, subject to the whims of TCP/IP and digital chaos ... yes.

Worry free and painless? No.

Thursday, January 19

What's all this then

MIA: Somewhere in Mexico ...
Ambrose Bierce at Wikipedia
Just in time for the end of the world, or the end of "western" civilization, or the end of the internet, or what ever parochial interest you find yourself breaking into cold sweats over in the middle of your isolated and lonely existence -- we all experience life as unitary actors and each of us dies alone -- here is one more in an (apparently) infinite series of digital confessionals for future anthropologists and psycho-historians to ponder and synthesize into some vague understanding of just how insane this current iteration of the human race happened to be.

I have never been a fan of the term "blog" as it obtains both the inherent collapsing laziness of modern (English) speech and  the rampant narcissistic idiocy of what passes for social engagement. We live in a culture so enthralled to its own presupposed magnificence and probity that navel-gazing and self-regard now approaches a new, readily accepted form of art, as matter and light might be drawn towards an event horizon and extreme tidal spaghettification into nothingness. Conceit has been promoted so far beyond the cloistered board-rooms of self dealing corporate hacks and the ratified marble halls of government largess and larceny that it dominates every aspect of our economy. Conceit is now a higher calling, an industry of monumentally nauseating proportions, deceit: the coin of the realm, and denial the packaging, marketing, and public relations of our vanishing imperial wardrobe.