"Don't Bone Me"

Sterling Hayden in John Huston's Asphalt Jungle.

One of my favorite films—a well-crafted mix of human foibles, strengths and sad outcomes—bleak and wonderful.

Kinetic War Pigs

Good 90's cover of War Pigs.
In 1990-91 I shredded my Faith No More cassette.

ALSO...

Work-Life Soundtrack—play both really loud.


UPDATED:
A friend at work HATES the second song, Epic.

Grifting Excitement

Do you feel it?

• Record profits
• Pay no taxes
• Demand concessions from workers (to increase future profits)
• Fuck you! 

Also, too.

High Functioning Retards or Objectivists Collectively Market Shitty Ideas

This is my favorite.


Context:

Too much text in the previous post...I like my blog to be purty.

Good monsters.

Compendium of Privledged, Lying, Right-Wing Monsters

They will drag the entire 2012 presidential campaign to the right. 

• Michele Bachmann: Fact-challenged kook.
• Haley Barbour: Fat cat civil rights revisionist.
• John Bolton: Mustachioed menace.
• Herman Cain: African-American. Enough said.
• Mitch Daniels: Cheese-eating surrender monkey.
• Newt Gingrich: Unlikeable, amoral flip-flopper.
• Mike Huckabee: Culture-warring colonialist.
• John Huntsman: Obama's favorite Mormon.
• Fred Karger: Openly gay. Enough said.
• Sarah Palin™: Jew for Jesus. ;)
• Dr. Ron Paul or Dr. Rand Paul*: The gold standard of crazy.
• Tim Pawlenty: Action movie zero.
• Mitt Romney: Unnuanced pander bear.
• Rick Santorum: Google him.
• Donald Trump: Megalomaniacal birther.

 From Daily Kos

It may guarantee that a non-crazy Democrat wins in 2012, but sadly a Democrat who would have been considered a moderate Republican a mere decade ago.

Republican politics is a reality television show.

Reality television frequently portrays a modified and highly influenced form of reality, utilizing sensationalism to attract viewers and to generate advertising profits. Participants are often placed in exotic locations or abnormal situations, and are sometimes coached to act in specific scripted ways by off-screen "story editors" or "segment producers," with the portrayal of events and speech manipulated and contrived to create an illusion of reality through editing and other post-production techniques

From here.

No Fun

"...maybe call Mom on the telephone..."

Genius.

Butt-Hurt

That's all.

Well...there's this.
Also Krugman.

1977

This band (and this song) takes the wrongheaded to new heights, but in 1977 they blasted away my midwestern boredom.

To this day, there's still something moving about the futility of the Sex Pistols—a headlong race to an existential nadir—shattering the facade of both commercial and political culture by creating one that was empty and soulless (which makes you realize you have one).

Take all the commercialized artifice of The Monkees, turn it upside down—then punch it in the face.

Also.

It was cold

I went out last evening to try and catch a shot of the "Super Moon." I should have used my telephoto ("but it's supposed to be huge"), and I should have used a filter to reduce the glare, a tripod would have helped. I'm a lazy photographer.
Lastly, I thought I had the perfect spot until the lights started to go on in the McMansions across the meadow.

I'm torn between the experience and the record—one gets in the way of the other. But, it was nice to slow my brain down as I waited—watch the sky dim and listen to the birds transition from day to night.

Wave of Mutilation

For the record, Frank Black states that this song has nothing to do with tsunamis or air strikes in Libya.

Office Supplies

That's funny, just this week I bought a dry-erase board for my job—I don't think it stands a chance against the Power Point guy upstairs.

Effective Derision

This is a few days old, but it works for me.

Just because Republicans are incapable of feeling shame for their creative ignorance, doesn't mean they shouldn't be shamed.

UPDATED:
Also, too.

CNN's Nancy Grace Searches for Missing Boy in Japan

Once found, he resists her repeated attempts to get an exclusive interview.
.

Value Added Zombie Growth (VAZG)

I've become numb to the insidious banality of management-speak and what it obscures—real thought and thievery.

Occasionally a creepy phrase will emerge—science of liberty, (what the fuck?).

Koch brothers culture delivered in a soulless word salad—capitalist schizophasia.

Work-life Soundtrack

...and for Boston commuters (in 1973).



also...

Nothing to see here...

Matt Groening

Absolutely tragic.

Fuck!Fuck!Fuck!

 A second hydrogen blast at Fukushima.

Tractors!

85,000 to 100,000 Americans gather in Madison.
Far fewer racists than a tea party and no guns.

h/t First Draft

NPR and PBS kind of stink, but...

This morning, I signed one of those petitions and composed a message to Congress requesting that they try to maintain funding for a media outlet held in the public trust.

Dear Congress,
Despite the strenuous attempts by NPR to over balance its position toward the right-wing of American political culture—which makes their coverage of public policy dishonest—I still believe that there is a place for publicly supported media in this country.

In the future, there will be a time when most Republicans wont be venal, corporate shills and most Democrats wont be afraid to not be venal, corporate shills. Therefore, when that time comes, I would like there to be a media outlet that can function as a steward of public information and an advocate for citizens and citizenship—not just a vanilla alternative to the corporate media monopolies of GE, News Corp. and Disney.

Please retain the funding for NPR and PBS.

Sincerely,
Patrick

That was actually satisfying.

UPDATED:
On Saturday, I posted this for about 10 minutes, then pulled it down. I was conflicted.

NPR and PBS aren't terrible—just sad. They're trying to hold on to a journalistic and editorial model that doesn't work today, and because it doesn't work it often rings false or too strenuously hedged.

Since the news media has been entirely co-opted by corporate interests, editorially they have created a "centrist" fantasy land to do two essential things—keep corporate management happy (their influence hidden) and minimally inform the public—about everything—except for salacious distractions like Charlie Sheen.

This balanced American "center" doesn't really exist, but was created to provide the media with a counter-factual and virtual world to report on—a landscape where a millionaire like Chris Mathews can pretend to be a "workin' stiff," and millionaire Andrea Mitchell can scold both sides for not cutting entitlement programs she doesn't need.

Lucian Freud

Reflection (Self Portrait)
1985

Great painter.
You have to see them to understand their beauty—a fantastically visceral grasp of the human form, pictorial space, and light.

Lucian Freud

Wisconsin has nothing on Michigan

State by state—the Republican plan:

• Devastate the middle class with job smothering austerity
• Allow municipal and state governments to whither from the lack of tax revenue—high unemployment and tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy
• Install a crisis manager to eliminate collective bargaining throughout the state and suspend elected officials
• Upend democracy
• Accumulate obscene amounts of wealth in a deregulated, undemocratic paradise

Shock Doctrine 
 

Hawaii

I'm watching Hawaiian coverage of the tsunami's approach. One of the news anchors said she was "trying to effort a phoner."

Huh?

Japan

Tragic and devastatingly sad.

Breaking news:
Corporate media celebrates event by not covering American class war.

Brilliant

h/t Blackmoon

In Memoriam

Wage slavery is key to America's exceptionalism.

Also...

Millionaire Republican politicians and millionaire media pundits agree to share the act of sacrificing the middle class.

In the United States, the median wage in 2009 was $26,261—lower than it was in 2000. When you average in the billionaires, it was only $39,269.

Heather Digby Parton

The assault on unions by Republicans to benefit their corporate supporters (and eliminate a core Democratic constituency) is going to end badly.

Back in the early 90s when I made $23,000, I often thought that it was madness for business interests to reflexively apply downward pressure on middle class wages. Who, I thought, would be able to buy the crap that corporations produce, and where would tax revenue come from to support the already inadequately funded services that government contributed to society?

Clearly I was naive, and not paying attention to the globalization rhetoric of both Democrats and Republicans at the time. In roughly a decade, US corporations (multi-nationals) went from bleeding just over 250 million rubes in this country to 6.5 billion globally.

Corporations today make record profits and tax revenues are at record lows—we're screwed.

Macro-future

 
Micro-future

UPDATED:
I know there are plenty of millionaire Democrats, and they're complicit in this shit storm. But, unlike millionaire Republicans, they aren't ideologically driven to screw the middle class, they're just cowards.

High Functioning Alien Retards

Who knew?
Alien retards from the Managerial Caste are oppressed as well.

Tom Tomorrow

More of this...please.

National People's Action

Tax the rich...please.

Make the fuckers go Galt.

Mechanical Mule

Not much to say about this (and it's been floating around for quite awhile), but this thing is both creepy and fascinating to me—is it just because it isn't flesh and blood?

I also feel a little sorry for the thing, I'm perplexed.

Boston Dynamics