Ted Cruz Campaign Promise

Ted Cruz wants you to kill for him.

While campaigning, Senator Ted Cruz promised that if elected, he would grant a presidential pardon to anyone convicted of murdering any or all of his political opponents, thereby smoothing his path to the Oval Office.  The staunchly pro-life candidate added that a coupon for 15% off a Smith and Wesson high powered rifle with a scope was available for download at his campaign website.  Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association praised the move as the kind of decisive leadership this country needs.

Bike Stuff

Things for which a bicycle makes a superior substitute:

1. metrocard
2. gym membership
3. hair dryer
4. hair stylist
5. video-game console
6. oil-war-centric foreign policy
7. prozac

Why Doesn't NYC Have These?

First World Problems

- Google took over Blogspot and now I have to sign in with a gmail account or something.

- My favorite place to order brunch delivery isn't on seamlessweb, so I'll have to either call them on the phone or order from my second-favorite brunch place.

- I had lots of unfinished drafts of potential blog posts and now that Google has taken over, I'm not sure how to access them.

- All our institutions are the exact opposite of what they say they are.

Santorum

Santorum is a frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter created by engaging in anal sex.

Thought of the Day

Speaking truth to power is easier than speaking truth to the fools exploited by it. Of course, for democracy to survive, we must do both.

All Come Home - music video

Today is 11-11-11.  As a Levin, I feel somewhat responsible for everybody having an okay time today.  To that end, I offer you a tasty little bit of superpositivity in the form of a glowing audio-visual rectangle -- a music video for the song "All Come Home" by the electronic pop project Tiny Machines (Jon Margulies, April White and Lydia Ooghe)...

Enjoy!

What Should I Have Done?

Years ago, back when I still sorta participated in human mating activities, I started seeing a lovely young woman I will call "Lenore."  She was smart and cute and fun and stylish and quirky and creative and cool and I really enjoyed her company.  But whenever we were together I felt a weird vague unease.  At first, I couldn't put my finger on why, so I just ignored it.  Denial makes all bad things go away!

But when I got together with her and the unease came back, I was so consumed trying to figure out what the weirdness was about that I couldn't just relax and enjoy Lenore's company.  Then it hit me... from certain angles she kinda looked like my mom in her youth.

Oh.

Yeah.  That's a problem.  I mean, my mom is a very nice person and all, and was certainly attractive in her day, but you know... it's my mom.  I believe the scientific response would be: Ew, gross.

Of course, it was only from certain angles.  From other angles she looked nothing like my mom.  And Lenore was really very attractive from all angles, regardless of who she resembled.  I tried to ignore this too.

But no.

Because I was trying so hard to pretend there was no actual resemblance, or that it wasn't an issue, it took me a while to resign myself to the fact there was just no hope of any boners in her presence. 

She soon noticed that despite how well we were getting along, nothing was really developing between us, and she wanted to know why I was holding back.  She asked me if anything was bothering me.

I didn't want to hurt her feelings and I didn't want to lie.  I rationalized that since the situation was nobody's fault, completely out of our control and just one of those unfortunate life things, the truth wouldn't offend her.  So I told her, as gently as I could, that she kinda resembled my mom (a young and lovely version of course).

Though she did her best to remain composed, I'm pretty sure she was deeply offended and weirded out.  And I never saw or heard from her again.

But what else could I have done?  I mean, really?

Imagined Phone Call

It is the late 60's/early 70's and LSD has swept the nation. The CEO of, say, Lockheed, or GE or some other giant military contractor, is talking on the phone to, say, some high-ranking military official. In the CEO's office, there's a giant TV nearby showing footage of dancing body-painted hippies at a huge war protest rally in a park...

CEO: Yeah, I'm watching it. ... Yes I agree, this is completely unacceptable! A bunch of drugged up shirtless queers who look like they never learned to bathe are actually undermining popular support for our WAR?! HOW the FUCK did this happen? ... Well what are we gonna do about it? Because I'll tell you something General, nothing like this is ever gonna happen again! I guarantee you that! ... Well sure, we all know we need greater control of the media. And we should have control over the government soon enough. ... Yeah, I think Reagan has worked perfectly in California and there's no reason why we can't try installing him in the White House eventually too. And if that works out, it'll prove the concept beyond all doubt and then the sky's the limit! We'll control the presidency forever and nobody will ever know.

[the footage on the TV shows a hippie who looks just like every popular depiction of Jesus ever, except with the words "Peace" and "Love" painted on his face]

CEO: Damn hippies! ... Yeah ... I hate the Christ-looking ones the most too. Jesus was supposed to be OUR thing! Christians aren't supposed to dance around naked protesting against war with fucking flowers in their beards! Christians are supposed to do what we tell 'em! They're not supposed to want to BE LIKE JESUS! They're supposed to subconsciously assume that if they behave like Jesus then we'll torture them to death! The Jesus-on-the-cross-warning worked so well for so long! How the hell did we let THAT get away from us!? ... Really? You think that in just one generation, LSD could override centuries of subconscious conditioning? ... Fuck! We are gonna need to update our goddamn playbook here!

some thoughts

- If the right wing virtuosos of greed continue calling the shots for much longer, the other 99% of us will soon have only the following choices:

1. roll over and die
2. turn yourself into a raging selfish asshole in order to be accepted and able to survive
3. actively fight back and be labeled a terrorist, or discredited as insane (or both)

- I certainly don't want to be an apologist for the often-disappointing Obama administration, but we all knew that Dubya was leaving him with an impossibly huge mess to clean up, and that he'd be working in an environment of incredible hostility to his mere existence. There are right wing pundits and politicians (and those voters still fooled into drinking their kool-aid) who hate Obama and everything they think he represents so much, that they are willing -- and actively attempting! -- to burn the nation to the ground just to make sure Barack looks bad. OK sure, they're not literally setting buildings on fire (as far as I know). Their current weapons of domestic mass destruction are mostly economic, of course. President Eisenhower, a Republican and former General, warned us against allowing the military-industrial complex to get too powerful. Well, we obviously didn't listen to him and now the monster has become the military-industrial-media-financial-complex. As far as I'm concerned, the wall streeters who got rich by decimating the housing market are guilty of high treason and it's a little shocking that they haven't all been executed.

- Wait, why isn't Rupert Murdoch's head on a pike in the middle of town again?

- trying to imagine myself as a 12 year old in today's world. interesting kid. feel kinda bad for him though. his outlook is pretty bleak. or maybe he's happily making good creative use of shit like garageband on the iPad he bought with his paper-route money an' shit. Oh wait, nobody reads newspapers anymore. How do 12-year-olds make enough money to buy iPads these days? Selling meth I guess.

Bicycle Meditation Video

Everyone in the US...

Unpacking and setting up some Magnetic Poetry™ yielded this:

Hip Surgery Scar

Not for the squeamish...



That's most of it.

The full story of the accident is coming soon. Writing it up now.

Cheers!

Movie Review

Just watched Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story."

Yep.

Thinking of moving to Denmark now.

clean energy

Many Americans are depressed. Why would that be the case in such a wealthy and wonderful country? I imagine much of the time it's because people don't have meaningful work to do. They might be jobless, or might have jobs that ultimately do more harm to society than good. There are many such jobs in the mainstream these days. Maybe even most.

In our current "system," work that doesn't cause harm generally doesn't pay very well. That's not a system. That's a global pig-fuck.

But people tend to have families to feed. Or expensive habits. Or both. So people go along to get along and everything keeps sliding into the shitter, while the poor suffer and the wealthy try to distract themselves from the damage they do with ever greater parties and ever more obscene luxuries.

Even if people have enough genuinely joyful distractions to prevent them from focusing on this whole "sliding inexorably into the shitter" thing, many of them are vaguely aware of it, and it makes them vaguely uneasy. They don't quite know, or admit, why. But they just feel depressed. So we medicate them with Prozac and the like, to keep them in the game. Like shooting the QB's knee full of a local anesthetic, it enables continued service while increasing the damage to oneself, and perpetuates the game that causes the harm in the first place. From my own life, antidepressants once made it possible for me to keep getting up in the morning and driving myself in a shitbox car on a dreary highway to go to sit in a windowless mailroom performing an utterly mindless routine in service to a ridiculous and utterly wasteful industry, for such little pay that it only sustained me enough to keep me showing up for the godawful work. Woo hoo.

Instead of that, people with no jobs, or with shitty oppressive jobs, should have access to a system that makes it easy for them to transition into well-paying work helping to create the sustainable clean-energy future. Tax money should no longer go toward anything that kills or poisons anyone anywhere or damages wildlife and ecosystems. That, of course, will free up hundreds of billions of dollars to devote to creating, running and maintaining sustainable clean-energy systems free to all people everywhere.

From a Comment on Chelsy's Recent FB Status

"1-800-Universe, how may I direct your call?"
"Uh, travel department please?"
"One moment."
[less than one moment later...]
"Travel, how may I help you?"
"Uh, traffic is way heavy right now, and um, I'm totally gonna miss my flight, ya know?"
"Ah... yep. I see it right here. Yeah, no way you're gonna make that flight with the traffic as it now stands. Literally, from the looks of it."
"Can you do anything?"
"We're the Universe. Of course we can do anything."
"Let me rephrase the question. How should we proceed?"
-----
"Well, that all depends. Which universe do you wanna move to?"
"What are my top, say, 3 options?"
"There's the universe where the dude who broke down on the highway in front of you, causing the traffic jam you're stuck in, decides to stay home and play video-games instead. You make it to your existing flight. There's one where traffic remains lousy, but a mechanic accidentally drops a wrench into a part of the plane your flight's on that should never have a wrench rattling around in it, and it takes long enough to remove it to delay the flight until you're safely on it. You make it to your destination just fine, only a couple hours late. Next we have a semi-wacky universe in which a hot-air balloon filled with rodeo clowns gets blown off course and makes an unexpected landing right next to your car so you jump out and impulsively ask if they'll give you a lift to the airport. They check the wind conditions and agree. Up you go, but it turns out they are dastardly rodeo clowns who intend to kidnap you and enslave you to the balloon-traveling rodeo show they're part of. Now, before I continue, if you pick this universe, there will be a question of whether you decide to join the rodeo clowns or actually get to your flight. And even if you do opt for the flight, there will still be a 40% chance or better that you will one day join the rodeo clowns, for they are highly persuasive rodeo clowns. Sorry, I just like saying 'rodeo clowns' for some reason."
"That's okay."
"Oh, and of course, you could always just opt to stay in this universe, miss your flight, spend an evening in the hotel airport, fly out the next morning and get to your destination a day late."
"What are the various ramifications I should consider for each choice?"
"Well, if you go with the video game guy staying home, nothing bad happens to you, nothing especially amazing either. The guy who stays home loses his job though. He's on his couch, smokes some pot, gets into 'Halo' or whatever, forgets to call in sick, and they just can him. Ah, but there's a slim chance this motivates the guy to get his shit together. Or possibly try to reform his band. Ooh. Not good. Um, also, several of the other people on the road make it to respective flights which they wouldn't otherwise, and one of those leads to a marriage proposal. Ah, but it gets shot down and the would-be suitor goes into a terrible depression for years. When he comes out of it, he has an idea for an invention that he thinks could make him rich (makes it possible to get toothpaste back into a tube... huh...) um, but if he pursues it he will lose his shirt because as it turns out, nobody gives a crap about getting toothpaste back into the tube. That, and the invention is the size of a small filing cabinet."
"So, wait... is that a good choice universe or not?"
"Hmm... really not sure. Let's see how it compares to the other choices."
"Good. Hit me."
"In the dropped-wrench universe, you make it to your destination a bit late, so you avoid traffic heading to where you're staying, which gets you there very quickly and in precise timing to catch a cat-burglar, making you a hero to the community. But your car takes a turn fast enough to startle a pedestrian into dropping his cel-phone leading to a chain of events too long to list but which ends with a very old man getting crushed by a falling refrigerator."
"What, out on the sidewalk?"
"In a stairwell. It's okay though, he lived a full life."
"Next?"
"Well, next is you join rodeo clowns who travel from show to show via hot-air balloon and often miss their targets leading them off on crazy adventures full of wacky hijinks. Also, the possibility exists that you visit NYC briefly in the middle there."
"What kind of wacky hijinks?"
"You mean, precisely? You want an itemized list? Well, many of them appear to be falling-out-of-balloon-and-landing-on-something-wacky-related. Can we maybe group those together and--"
"I think I get the idea. What's next?"
"You chillax at the airport hotel for an overnight. The room is adequate but you can't sleep, so you go to the lounge for a drink in the middle of the night and are mistaken for a spy. A waiter mysteriously slips you a check before you've even ordered. When you open the black leatherette check-folio thingy, the slip says 'Room 404, under the bed, 649' and there's a key to the room taped to it."
"Then what?"
"You go to the room, crawl under the bed and find a small box taped to the underside. You pull it free, and see it is combination-locked. You slide the numbers to read '649' and it opens. A voice instructs you to--
"Maybe just cut to the chase?"
"You survive your attackers, foil the evil plot of a genocidal madman, defuse a bomb with mere seconds left, and are then recruited by a super-elite secret strike force. But during a shootout with evil henchmen, one of your bullets ricochets off a fire-escape, through an opposite window and kills a young boy's pet lizard. He swears revenge and one day grows up to be your arch-nemesis, Doctor Iguana!"
"Oh, I am TOTALLY doing that one!"
"You sure you wouldn't rather do the wrench one, or the universe with the--"
"This is between me, and the lizard man."

Jon Margulies DJ's Hobotech at Coachella

If Republicans Get to Run the World...

...for an extended period of time, we may eventually see winters when homeless people freezing to death in the streets all over the country, are rounded up and marched/dumped into furnaces to heat the homes of the wealthy.

Balancing Act