Category: Politics

Fascist Theocracy

2012-11-27, 11:05 pm
Categories: Games, Music, Politics, TV

Zappa's legendary 1986 appearance on Crossfire -- pardon the audio quality.

I'd read a (maybe partial?) transcipt before but never actually sat down and watched it in its entirety. It really is quite astounding just how aggressively ignorant John Lofton is -- incest is a major problem in America because of Prince? Seriously? Jesus Christ. Good thing conservatives had their priorities straight -- not like there was anything more important going on in early 1986.

Douchebag of Liberty Bob Novak seems downright moderate by comparison.

Judging by the E-Mails I routinely get from the Washington Times (thanks to foolishly signing up for a mailing list from a local Republican politician I knew professionally in 2006), they have roughly the same journalistic standards today as they did then. But that's a story for another day. (A story titled Is Obama Ruled by Demons?)

The parallels to recent debates about adult content in video games should, of course, go without saying.

Get a Real-Estate License

2012-11-23, 11:56 pm
Categories: Music, Politics

Okay, I am running out of today, so phoning this in a bit with another interview posted on afka.net -- though the last one was from early in Frank's career and this one is nearer the end:

Frank Zappa Has a Tip for Serious Musicians: Get a Real-Estate License, by Laurence Vittes, Los Angeles Reader, October 13, 1989.

You're clearly concerned with the state of society today. Is it as bad as the sixties?

Much worse. The major challenge for every American today is to imagine a U.S.A. where the government worked, where you got bang for your buck, where everything they said was fabulous actually was. Probably more difficult than sticking a man on Mars.

Turkeyfuckers

2012-11-22, 11:37 am
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

Christmas Creep has bothered me since I was old enough to really notice it. Christmas starts earlier and earlier every year, and there's ever more pressure to consume! To buy shit, to go places, to be with family even if all it's going to do is stress you all the fuck out and make for a less-than-appealing family memory. Too much stress, plus too much traffic making for miserable driving, breathing, and shopping.

For a number of years I'd spend the week before Christmas out of town, out of the city, off at my mom and stepdad's quiet little home in Chino Valley. Unplug for a few days, though I don't think that expression was vogue yet.

Haven't done that these past few years but man it's tempting.

It should come as no surprise that I am not a huge fan of this "Let's have Black Friday -- on Thursday!" trend.

I don't shop on Black Friday. I sure as hell don't intend to shop on Black Not-Friday. I hold any company that tries to lure people away from Thanksgiving for holiday savings! in the same contempt they so clearly hold me. And their employees. And their customers.

I heard on the radio that last year showed a sizable dip in early-December shopping, theorized as "shopping fatigue". I hope that keeps happening. I hope it keeps happening until they learn. But unfortunately I don't think they'll ever learn -- any more than the airlines will learn that their business is dipping because they have made flying a fucking miserable experience.

I also heard there are folks saying people should support local businesses on Saturday. If that helps local businesses, hey, that's great -- but I don't really put much stock in "Everybody do X on Such-and-Such-a-Day to send a message!" as a strategy. You know all those "Don't buy gas on Saturday; that'll really show Exxon-Mobil!" forwards your idiot slacktivist friends constantly send you on Facebook? Do you recall any of them ever really showing Exxon-Mobil? No? Well that's because it doesn't hurt Exxon-Mobil's business when everyone just fucking waits until Sunday to buy the same amount of gas.

So while I wholeheartedly endorse supporting local businesses, I really think you should probably be doing it more than one day a year.

Fuck, the whole idea that people should only be encouraged to shop on a single specific day is the problem here.

So support your local business. Saturday, Sunday, whenever the fuck you feel like it. Friday, if you must, though I don't intend to leave the house that day myself.

But if you actually go out and support those turkeyfuckers at Wal-Mart and Target in making their employees knock off Thanksgiving dinner early to come in and sell you shit? Well, look, I know the economy's rough and beggars can't be choosers. But I don't think you need that new TV that damn badly.

On a more cheerful note: there's a whole lot in this life I'm thankful for (for example: not being a retail employee on Thanksgiving), and I hope there's a lot you're thankful for too. I hope you keep that in mind today and enjoy your turkey and gravy and cranberry sauce and what-have-you.

But that's just one more thing that shouldn't be confined to one day a year. Stay upbeat. Keep things in perspective. Remember the good things each and every day.

Now, cooking an entire turkey dinner, on the other hand? That's probably okay to confine to one day a year. That is a whole lot of work.

Hoops

2012-11-20, 9:27 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness, Work

Tomorrow I need to refer to Reemployment Orientation, or, as I marked it on my calendar, Reeducation Camp.

It's another of those things, like the ill-conceived "look for work on four separate days each week" standard, that is a good idea in principle but which I'm not so sure is going to work out in real life.

I'm pretty confident I was selected at random, from a pool of everybody who's been unemployed for the past month.

There may have been other factors -- like how this is the second time I've been on unemployment in as many years -- I don't know.

But I'd be pretty surprised if my degree and work experience were considered in my selection. And there's the rub.

I've got a BS degree in a field that's not doing a lot of full-time hiring, and about a decade's experience in a related field that's doing more full-time hiring but still not nearly as much as it was a few years ago. My needs are kind of different from somebody who hasn't finished college. Which isn't to cast aspersions on anyone without a degree -- to the contrary, there are lots of very smart people looking for work who just need some training.

And hell, maybe I will end up meeting with somebody who knows who's hiring programmers -- or at least migration techs. Maybe they'll have some good tips on punching up my resume, or hook me up with another temp agency, or have a site that gives me a better ROI for my search hours than CareerBuilder. I'd be grateful for any of those things.

But I can't help thinking that anybody who knows all that stuff is probably not going to be working for DES telling a random sampling of the unemployed how to look for a job.

But I'll go in with a smile and say please and thank you and be grateful for my unemployment check. Anything else on top of that is just Thanksgiving gravy.

I'll let you know how it goes. Probably.

Rolling Over

2012-11-18, 9:11 pm
Categories: Politics

Yesterday I praised the Republican Study Committee for putting out an excellent paper on what's wrong with copyright and how to reform it.

Today they pussied the hell out and retracted it under pressure from Hollywood lobbyists.

Who the hell do you guys think you are, Democrats?

My continued support and praise to everyone who still supports copyright reform. And a great big raspberry to all the craven little shits who backed down.

This isn't over.

Strange Bedfellows

2012-11-17, 5:21 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

I can't say I agree with the Republican Study Committee on many things -- among other things, their leadership is responsible for holding the budget hostage to pursue more tax cuts for the 1%. (At least they're willing to discuss cutting the budget for the military.)

But, per Cory Doctorow and Mike Masnick, they've put out a paper called Three Myths about Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix It, and while so far I've only skimmed it, it looks pretty fantastic.

There is a strong conservative case to be made against modern American copyright law: it's a big-government handout to Hollywood that grants artificial monopolies, interferes with the free market, stifles innovation, and is clearly not what the Founding Fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution.

I'm not optimistic about the Republican leadership, or the Democratic, picking up the baton on this one. But I think it's a pretty big deal that people are actually talking about it -- and that some Republicans still remember that what "conservative" actually means isn't just "tax cuts for the rich".

All the major copyright landgrabs of the past couple of decades, from the DMCA to TPP, have been bipartisan efforts by lobbyist-owned politicians, with as little input from the voters as possible. SOPA/PIPA showed that while their support among politicians may be bipartisan, their opposition from an informed public is nonpartisan.

Even if nothing comes of this right away, I'm sure we haven't heard the last of it. Kudos to any politician willing to speak truth to power on this subject, regardless of party and regardless of disagreements we may have on other issues.

Interview/Chunga

2012-11-15, 11:14 pm
Categories: Music, Politics

Interesting to hear him talk about the Libertarian Party -- I've always figured he was ideologically closer to them than either major party, but wouldn't be able to reconcile their total lack of empathy for their fellow man. Guess this confirms it.

New York, '88; another upload by tomtiddler1.

I hadn't set out to do another election video so soon after we got through the damn election, but what the hell, it's a pretty good interview.

Now, the concert video looks like the 1988 equivalent of a cell phone video, but what the hell -- maybe I'll give Chunga's Revenge a do-over at some future date. But it's not a bad rendition, for all that.

More Parallel-Universe Politics

2012-11-07, 10:36 am
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

You know, I got to thinking last night.

If John McCain had been elected in '08, Jan Brewer would never have become governor. SB1070 would have been vetoed.

And a McCain Justice Department sure as hell would not have dropped an investigation into Joe Arpaio right before the damn 2012 election.

I'm beginning to see why candidates almost always win their home states: sure, I still think McCain would have been a terrible choice for the country...but I'm beginning to think Arizona really would have been in much better shape if he were President.

Then again, Russell Pearce would probably still be Senate President. So there's that.

Hey Karl Rove?

2012-11-06, 9:41 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

My brother asked me the other night if I was voting for Goldman or Sachs.

That is largely how I feel about this race and about Obama. (I wound up going Stein, BTW.) But on the whole he's the lesser evil, and this is a victory for a number of reasons -- gay rights, taxation, healthcare, and, perhaps most importantly:

A big Fuck You to Karl Rove, Shel Adelson, Citizens United, SuperPACs, and all the plutocrats' best efforts to buy this election.

Sure, tomorrow we're back to gridlock, drone strikes, warrantless domestic surveillance, mass unemployment, high gas prices, impending sequestration, and a vanishing middle class. But tonight? Maybe I'll sleep a little bit better than those fatcats.

And then go back to looking for work while they count their money. But hey, I'll take what I can get.

More Zappa on Politics

2012-11-06, 8:47 pm
Categories: Movies, Music, Politics

This'll probably be the last one of these for awhile.

Per uploader dannen59, "It's from an Austrian documentary called "Das Beste von Frank Zappa - 20 Jahre Extravaganza 1969-1989"."

In a parallel universe somewhere, the 1992 election featured Bush, Clinton, Perot, Zappa, and Nader. A man can dream...