Day: April 15, 2013

Palladium '81 - MTV Intro

Imagine -- MTV didn't just used to play music, they actually did live shows by esoteric acts.

And let him talk about The Illinois Enema Bandit.

This show's out on DVD, and you can find recordings all over YouTube. (I've embedded one or two on my own over the past year or so, though I generally try not to post stuff that's available commercially.) But this is the first time I've seen this bit and I'm guessing it's not on the DVD. (Not sure; haven't seen it in its entirety -- maybe I'll buy it and find out. Nice having a disposable income again.)

Fuck Terrorism

Welp, today was a bad day.

There were explosions at the Boston Marathon; last I heard there were two confirmed fatalities and over a hundred injuries.

We don't know for sure if it's terrorism or if it's just another random act of violence. Guess we'll find out soon enough.

But hey, to whatever dumb bastards are out there contemplating acts of terrorism -- think about bin Laden, McVeigh, Kaczynski. How'd those assholes turn out? And they killed a lot more people than whatever little shit did this.

Justice will come. Of that I've no doubt.

But I reserve some disdain for the government officials who've spent billions claiming to make us safer. Hey, maybe this was a lone wolf with a couple of pipe bombs -- maybe no one could have caught him before he struck. Maybe that's true; I guess we'll find out.

But in the meantime it throws the last dozen years of security theater into pretty sharp relief.

Janet Napolitano, whose signature achievement as Director of Homeland Security was allowing Jan Brewer to become governor and sign SB1070. I am shocked that this tragedy was not averted by TSA agents groping my grandmother in the airport!

Thomas Menino, who sure acted like a tough guy when faced with the terrorist threat of a couple Adult Swim advertisements. I think I see the problem here: real terrorists don't actually cover their bombs in bright, colorful lights to make them more noticeable!

The FBI, which will now have to entrap a bunch more suggestible twenty-somethings, declare that it has stopped a series of terrorist attacks, and hope nobody considers that maybe giving out toy guns and detonators to people on the Internet is not the best use of its resources.

Two wars and the erosion of our civil liberties haven't made us any safer. And again, hey, maybe nothing any government official could have done would have caught this guy before he struck -- but the stupid shit they are doing sure as hell isn't working.