The Long, Slow Burn

As stated previously in this space, apologies for the stagnation. The dog days of summer are taking their toll. Everything seems a bit overcooked, overworked, and overused. The days at work are simply a sweat-based endurance trial with no finish line. After a few days in a row on the clock I feel like the bastard son of Kafka and Henry Rollins.

This summer has left me on an island all by myself. My mind goes its own way, usually to the streets of my hometown. Summer becomes a jail, a ship run aground, a ladder to nowhere. The summer animal, I can never outrun or hide from it. The summer bores me out, turns me into a hollow carcass. Fueled by insomnia and a thirst for everything. I turn into boneless limbo man caught in the middle. My skin turns to leather, I turn inside in. I seal off. Underneath this leather exterior I scream, twist, convulse, and burn silently. I wonder to myself wouldn’t I be better off far from anything that bears the least resemblance to this? You can change the scenery that surrounds you. You can run from the fists that pound you, but you cannot escape your feelings. I’ve crawled every sewer from here to there and I’ve never done it. And I burn silently.

The streets lie, the sidewalks lie. You can try to read it but you’re gonna get it wrong. The summer evenings burn and melt and the nights glitter, but they lie. Underneath the streets there’s a river that moves like a snake. It moves with smooth, undulating, crippling muscle power. It chokes and drowns and trips and strangles and lures and says “Come here, stay with me,” and it lies.

Thanks Henry, I needed that. Stay cool.

Ares

Blame Canada

In honor of Athena's journey to the Great White North I've decided to pay homage to this classic. Best thing about this song is that it was nominated for an Oscar. Who'd have thunk it?

Universally Stupid

Hate to get too partisan here, but something crossed my bow that is insanely retarded. Seems the Democratic brain trust on Capitol Hill decided to axe the provisions of a bill that would shield people who report suspicious activity from lawsuits. This all grows from one of my favorite mycultural incidents of recent history: The Flying Imams cluster f***. As a result of their heinous mental scarring at the hands of a racist machine the Imams are suing everybody that got within range of the airport that day. With the help of our good friends at CAIR they have also threatened to sue the people that reported their activity as suspicious. Not wanting to take this like the French, Representatives Peter King and Steve Pearce sponsored the legislation.

I have yet to hear the rationale from the Democratic side, but one Congressman said he was afraid it would lead to racial profiling. Don’t they have any other buzzwords they can trot out, that one’s had the tread worn off it. I’d love to see a little chart explaining exactly where CAIR’s money is being spent these days. Somebody, anybody, find me one and send it this way. All joking aside, this is stupid ass politics putting lives at risk. Nothing new there though. By the way, the Supreme Court has already largely decided the issue of anonymous tips in Florida v J.L. In that unanimous decision they declared that police cannot act on anonymous tips unless it offers a predictive course of behavior. That said, all bets are off and the standards are different for flying. It’s been decided for a long time that flying is a privilege, not a right, and the normal standards of search and seizure don’t apply. I could wax at great length about the idiocy of killing this legislation, but the stupidity of it pretty wells speaks for itself. By the way, for all the shit talking most congressional weenies do about president Bush and his approval rating they’ve got zero room to talk. Congress’ approval rating currently stands at 24%. (Update:I stand corrected: 14%. They rated lower than HMO's. Holy crap!) Any lower and it will be inside the margin of error for zero.

Ares

The Ladies Of Fark

If you’re not Farking every day then you're just not making proper use of the Internet. Today’s Fark-based gem comes from World Net Daily. The good folks at WND decided to put together a summary of the teachers (female) accused of having sex with students. When viewing the list several thoughts come to mind. First, if this list were pictures of this many men accused of having sex with under aged female students Congress would be holding candlelight vigils and outdoing each other new legislation. (It would probably end with a law that allowed the cutting off of pee-pees upon conviction.) Second, what does it say about the pool of available adult males that this many women decided to skip the barrel and start shopping from the tree? Its no excuse but it makes me wonder. Third, it looks like this happens pretty much everywhere, but Colorado and Utah seem to have a pretty heavy representation for their respective size. Fourth, they’re all white women. Ban the white ladies and this would stop, so it appears. Fifth, in the looks department the ladies range from “Huba Huba” to OH MY GOD MY EYES! If you’re a teenage boy are there really that many cool points attached to getting it on with somebody old enough to be your mother wearing a face that could split concrete? Finally, one in particular caught my eye. Pamela Rogers Turner is a former model and Ms Nitro of the Nitro Girls fame. At 27 she had an ongoing relationship with a 13 year old by. After being convicted she continued sending naked pictures of herself to the kid. What the hell kind of mojo is this kid fishing with? It is all downhill for that kid. Why isn’t he doing those Axe commercials? That would be some truth in advertising.

Ares

Black Swan

I’m currently pounding my way through The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. What a stellar read. Briefly put, a Black Swan is an improbable or unpredictable event that has three aspects: it’s unpredictable, it has a massive impact, and we develop retroactive explanations in an attempt to justify it. 9/11 is everyone’s favorite example, but a Black Swan can be much smaller in scope and scale.

Taleb is one of those guys that are so smart it’s a bit scary. He’s an old-school, well-rounded thinker; educated like we used to do a couple of generations ago. He could probably pass this one with no trouble at all.

A brief little excerpt is in order.

To Be Wrong With Infinite Precision

We harbor a crippling dislike for the abstract. One day in December 2003, when Saddam Hussein was captured, Bloomberg News flashed the following headline at 13:01: U.S. TREASURIES RISE; HUSSEIN CAPTURE MAY NOT CURB TERRORISM. Whenever there is a market move, the news media feels obliged to give the ‘reason’. Half an hour later, they had to issue a new headline. As the U.S. Treasury bonds fell in price (they fluctuate all day long, so there was nothing special about that), Bloomberg News had a new reason for the fall: Saddam’s capture (the same Saddam). At 13:31 they issued the next bulletin: U.S. TREASURIES FALL; HUSSEIN CAPTURE BOOSTS ALLURE OF RISKY ASSETS. So it was the same capture (the cause) explaining one event and its exact opposite. Cleary, this can’t be; these two facts cannot be linked. Do media journalists repair to the nurse’s office every morning to get their daily dopamine injection so they can narrate better?

I didn’t select the above section just because it bangs on the media, my favorite punching bag. I think this book and Global Brain should be used as texts in a course that should be required for all college students: Modern Cognition. Makes that Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric class I took as a freshman seem pretty pathetic. More to follow as I digest this one.

Ares

Another Layer of Hell?

Had a little aside thought last night. I spent several hours in one of those places most decent people pretend don’t exist. After several hours of sifting through the human detritus and sweating like Michael Moore in Cuba I got back into my car thoroughly soaked in sweat. Aside from stinking like me I also stunk like the interior of the building I had been in. My first thought after getting a moment to myself was a not-so-fond remembrance of Jean Paul Sartre’s famous quote: Hell is other people. After some reflection I think Sartre and the bible left something out of their descriptors of hell: Smell. There must have been some technical hurdles for the guys that penned the bible in attempting to describe the smells of hell. How do you define ‘bad smelling’ in a time and place where everybody rides donkeys and poops into open pits? I think it’s time we did a small addendum to the book of Revelation and add a few adjectives about eternal damnation. Something like this: “You shalt know of hell by its unyielding assault of odor that thou shalt be unable to take refuge from. The miasma shall be a bouquet of scents most evil; the coming together of rotting fast food, vomited alcohol, dehydration piss, unwashed armpit, and wool-encased feet in the Georgia summer.” Odor is one of those things that we do our best to pass through quickly and forget even quicker. It only becomes torturous when it can’t be escaped and persists. Maybe we should have recidivist sinner children clean grease traps for a week straight and then reevaluate?

Ares

Another News-Flavored Product

Today’s news-flavored crap nugget is courtesy of the New York Times. The following two quotes are shamelessly lifted from the Wall Street Journal.

"Now, a pact between local tribal sheiks and American commanders has sent thousands of young Iraqis from Anbar Province into the fight against extremists linked to Al Qaeda. . . . The deal has all but ended the fighting in Ramadi and recast the city as a symbol of hope that the tide of the war may yet be reversed to favor the Americans and their Iraqi allies."--news story, New York Times, July 8

"It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit. . . . Milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. . . . Whatever [President's Bush's] cause was, it is lost. . . . Keeping troops in Iraq will only make things worse."--editorial, New York Times, July 8

I guess my real question is this: Who decides what they should think on an issue based on an editorial? Is there anybody on this little ball of water & gas we call Earth that is still on the fence about Iraq? Since the obvious answer is ‘no’ I think we can all agree that the second quote is just some overpaid schmuck spraying opinions onto a billboard that no one drives past.

Ares

Didn't They Watch Braveheart?

In what might be the funniest development on the counter-terror front in years, the Scottish government unveiled its new secret weapon. Don’t think WMD’s or precision strike munitions. Think pint-swilling cab drivers. Seems ole Johnny Jihad that crashed his SUV into the airport in Glasgow got soundly and roundly kicked in the balls by a passing cab driver. This was a stark departure for Mr. Jihad, who was expecting rather different treatment in that personal region when he was acquainted with his requisite 72 virgins. The irony could not be any more delicious. In this corner we have Mr. Jihad: Trained in explosives and terror tactics at the finishing schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In this corner we have Alex McIlveen: Beer sipping average Joe trained in the deadly art of kicking in the mommy-and-daddy button. I’m sure glad the Scottish are on our side.

Ares

Infidels Live Here

Found an excellent piece on the web yesterday. The Daily Mail of London has a piece by a former member of the British Jihadi Network. One of my favorite parts of the article is that it’s written by a guy named Butt. No wonder he’s pissed off and disaffected. Seriously, it’s an excellent look into the mindset of the radicalized element. It also jives with what Steve Emerson has been saying for almost 20 years.

On a similar Islamist note, I just finished Terror at Beslan. That was a tough read. Heart of darkness type stuff, but real and replicated. Literally gave me nightmares, and I’m no wilting violet. (If you're serious about not sleeping for a while find and watch this.) I’ll spare you the particulars, but if you wanna know more you can read this or this. There’s a need to walk a fine line in reading this stuff. I don’t think we should flee from inspecting evil, but it becomes easy, almost seductive, to believe it’s more pervasive than it actually is.

Speaking of cataloguing evil, you really should read Michael Yon’s latest piece. Yon is doing absolutely stellar work. Yes, he’s neck deep in the most unpopular war in 40 years, but that doesn’t detract from the caliber of his observation and writing. Mike’s the Ernie Pyle of The Long War. If there were journalist justice he would have won a Pulitzer or two by now.

Ares

yup, we're boring

But I can at least say I did something fun yesterday. Thanks, Theresa, for letting me use your kids as an excuse to see this.

Been wanting to go since, oh, last September. And don't deny it; she's a cuteness explosion you can't resist. Best part: I didn't even have to sweat that much; it was *only* 80-some degrees here yesterday.

Vacations rule. And tomorrow I get me some fireworks...

Athena

What's That Smell?

Apologies for the stench of rotten blog that’s permeated this space for the past two weeks. Work truly pulled me under, followed quickly by a short but glorious vacation. The impending dog days of summer don’t bode well for current content. I’m sure this will greatly disturb both of our readers. Nonetheless, a Herculean effort will be put forth by the staff here at A & A.

Ares

Ares and Athena Wish List

Apologies for the overlong post that follows. We’ve been having a discussion for a while now about what’s not being said in the political theater. What passes for discourse is little more than staged sound bytes. If we could rub the political lamp and get the genie to grant wishes what follows would be the discussion this country would have when it chose leaders. Any of the below items that do come up tend to not survive longer than a few news cycles. The list isn’t some manifesto; just us thinking out loud. It isn’t all-inclusive either, just the big things we see missing from the discourse. As with all things in this blogspace, it is offered with the “IMHO” tag.

A & A Wish List

1: A reasonable, pragmatic approach to addressing health care. This is a unique issue as almost everyone that touches this topic agrees that it’s broken on some level. Included in this is a serious discussion about the raging gaps in mental health care. In the end, somebody actually doing something, anything, as opposed to making speeches and changing the topic.

2: A pragmatic discussion about social security that based on fiscal realities. This, along with all other topics, would have to include a disclaimer up front that changes some people aren't going to like are going to be required. In this as with all things, politicians need to get over their opinions and listen to experts.

3: A serious discussion about the role and factor of personal debt in this country. I'm not as insistent that politicians actually do something in this case. I'm more interested in them using political clout and legislative threat to coerce the financial community into being more responsible. Congress and the executive branch aren't financial experts and the more they tend to mess with these things the more they tend to screw them up.

4: Serious effort at infrastructure upgrading. Every single jurisdiction in this country is patching together an aging, arcane infrastructure. 85% of the infrastructure in this country is in private hands. They are doing no or the bare minimum of upgrading, with the exception of the telcom industry. Something like six and a half trillion dollars in upgrades will be needed in the next generation in this country. Nobody is even talking about how to begin to approach that.

5: The congressional appropriations process is an absolute travesty. The earmarks that dot every single piece of funding legislation that get pooped out are criminal. First and foremost on the list: The Department of Defense. The half-trillion dollar defense budget has numerous programs that are orders of magnitude beyond projected cost, which the DoD continues to support anyway. Added to this are numerous weapons systems that the military isn't all that keen on having, but congress uses as a federal jobs program. This is not like herding cats: The majority of spending goes to about a half dozen defense contractors in this country. Why is the government accepting a level of incompetence and graft that a high school dropout wouldn't tolerate from a home repair contractor?

6: Serious discussion about a long term strategy in the war on terror. Yes, it is a war. Yes, we are engaged whether we want to be or not. Pull whatever demagogue positions there are about the war in Iraq out of this equation and start actually thinking about the issue at hand. This war will be 80% non-kinetic, but there will still be times we have to kill people. Get cozy with that fact, and formulate a plan for the big picture. (Best suggestion, make everyone read Tom Barnett.)

7: A serious discussion about energy policy. Global warming will have to be completely removed from this discussion, as too many people are too deeply emotionally invested in the idea. Fix one and the other will follow anyway. This has to go beyond improving the CAFE standards and getting people to drive hybrids. Making people plug in their cars and manufacturing enormous amount of ethanol merely moves the energy consumption to a different part of the grid. A complete broad-spectrum approach is needed. This area is ripe for a Manhattan Project style approach, and the first one to claim that position will probably have the political high ground.

8: Lobbying and influence buying needs to be addressed on an adult level. The only people that think the current system is reasonable are those that benefit from it. Aside from being blatantly criminal it's an insult to regular people that play by the rules in this world. Here's a novel idea: Why don’t we hold Congressmen to the same ethical standard we hold cops to. The occasional comp'd dinner is as far as you can go when it comes to accepting gifts, and even that should be viewed with a wary eye.

9: A serious, dispassionate review of the "War on Drugs" is needed. Almost 40 years of effort has wrought appalling violence and incredible levels of incarceration. We need to ask ourselves if some radical, sacred cow-busting approaches wouldn't yield better results. Whatever rationale people are clinging to about the evils of marijuana will probably thin out even more and the baby boomers start confronting terminal illnesses in greater numbers over the next 10 or 15 years. Again, a complete, across the spectrum review is needed; not more laws and more jails.

10: It’s time for a new political party. A serious one, not one thought up at Ralph Nader’s mommy’s kitchen table. We’re not the first ones to say it, and we won’t be the last, but there’s not a shit’s worth of difference between the two biggies anymore, and we all know it. I’m still trying to forget H. Ross Perot’s venture into national politics, but good grief, somebody do SOMETHING. (Ares note: I actually voted for Perot, mainly because he had actually done something with his life besides politics.) The last time we had a new political party that stuck in this country was just before the Civil War. The soil is ripe for some innovative reinvention, especially as the baby boomers move off the stage.

In reading over this list it appears to me that the thing we need most is decisiveness and a willingness to try new things. We need to look down on the floor of our debate houses and see lots of broken rice bowls and dead sacred cows. Innovation and exploration is our birthright, not our peril.

Ares and Athena

Genocide, The Game You Play At Home

I’ve got a question that’s been stuck in my head for a while now. Why is it that after self-induced lightweight slaughter in Palestine it’s referred to as “sporadic violence”, but a bomb in Baghdad means an intractable civil war is at hand? A quick consultation of my Funk & Wagnalls shows that they both fit the civil war descriptor pretty well. There is some strange violence-labeling algebra being applied. The tragic-comic relief of the entire episode in Palestine was when the “government” was dissolved. Guess this means all those employees Palestinian Park Service and National Archives won’t be getting their regular paychecks.

While we’re in this neighborhood I’ve got another question stuck in my brain box. Where is the Muslim engine of indignation at the slaughter that’s taken place in Palestine? Every time a Palestinian gets killed by Israeli troops in retaliation for a suicide bombing the chest thumping Arab media machine works itself into a lather. I guess they view these as noble deaths. If there is one bright side that might come out of this, it’s that to the average Palestinian, (Mohammed Six Pack, if you will) Israel seems pretty reasonable in the context of their own leadership. Why in the name of the almighty are we giving so much as a nickel in foreign aid to this place?

Ares

Update: I was feeling pretty alright about this post....until I clicked over to Michael Totten's latest. As is usually the case after I read his stuff, I'm feeling pretty small. I'll simply implore you to read his latest as I offer a hearty "Yea! What he said!" in concurrence.

Nobody CAIRs

Happy news about one of the organizations I love to hate. Turns out CAIR’s membership rolls have been falling faster than the President’s approval rating. They’ve dropped from 29,000 in the year 2000 to less than 1,700 in 2006. Oh, and the bonus statistic: Pew Research estimates there are only 2.3 million Muslims in the U.S. This is significant because it’s less than half the number CAIR used to pimp, which means their “market share” is even more pathetic. Seventeen hundred out of 2.3 million is almost statistically non-existent.

Let’s do a little comparison shopping, shall we. According to the FBI, in 1995 there were 1,100 members of the North American Man Boy Love Association. Aum Shinrikyo, the apocalyptic cult that released sarin gas on the Tokyo subway and released Anthrax on several other occasions, currently has 1,500 to 2,000 members. Jim Jones’ People’s Temple “church” boasted 3,500 at its height, and nearly a thousand of those drank the kool-aid. Are we starting to see the statistical company they’re keeping? Now if we could just get the media to stop pretending they represent anyone.

Ares

All Things Not Considered

I came up with a new drinking game the other day at work. While listening to NPR: Every time they say “Congressional Republicans” or “Congressional Democrats” take a drink of your beer. Every time they use the terms “failure” or “quagmire” in relation to the war in Iraq take a shot. If you wanna play Dublin Rules you have to take a shot every time they say “President Bush”.

Ares

Media Whores Part II

Mrs. Ares and I were at a hole in the wall last night having dinner. CNN spewed forth from a black box near the ceiling on today’s fear of the day: The “TB Patient”. (We’ll put aside for a moment that Mr. TB is a world class asshat.) The topic may have been Mr. TB but the theme was fear. The pure and simple peddling of angst and unknown. He’s a little test you can do at home, if you even still watch the news. Look how many segments are loaded with the words fear, uncertain, doubt, concern, possible, or deadly. Charged words that designed to induce an emotional state in the viewer. (Hard to talk about this stuff without sounding like a conspiracy theorist. I assure you this is the absolute last thing I am implying.) Ultimately, the news media is selling a product. The product is their version of information. Getting the facts correct is a distant second in priority. Uncertainty is designed to keep you turning in, which in turn keeps the ad revenue flowing in.

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina I went to a preparedness seminar put on by a large corporate sponsor. The audience was about 200, mostly civilians with a few public safety people thrown in. Good information on how to get yourself ready. One of the last speakers was a retired CDC official. After his very common sense presentation that only tangentially touched on terrorism there was a Q & A session. The first one to shoot his hand in the air was a pudgy middle aged guy in a suit. He was pretty earnest when he asked what he should do to prepare for the dirty bombs. The CDC guy sighed and the public safety people rolled their eyes. The civilians leaned forward and were fully attentive to the speaker. A patient and lengthy answer, loaded with facts and statistics, was delivered by the CDC guy. Four follow up questions from other members of the audience made it clear that facts weren’t sinking in.

There are 300 million people in this country. Over forty thousand of those die in car accidents every year. Half of those accidents are alcohol related. Sixteen thousand people are murdered, most by people they know. Cardiovascular disease killed over 800,000 in 2004. Thus far dirty bombs have killed exactly no one. In the event of a dirty bomb more people will be killed in traffic accidents attempting to flee than from radiation. But the body politic is swallowing the line that dirty bombs are the thing to fear in their lives. Overweight smokers that live in the suburbs and commute over 50 miles a day primarily fear gamma radiation. This is learned behavior, and guess where it was learned?

Barry Glassner, in his absolutely excellent book Culture of Fear, talks at length about this idea. Culture of Fear is probably the most infuriating book you will ever love. One little factoid from the book is worth repeating. During the ‘90’s the murder rate declined by about 20%(if memory serves, Athena has my copy of the book). The reporting of murder by the main stream media rose by 600%. Guess how we see our world? Not as it is but as it is presented to us. Folks, there are an enormous amount of people going forth into society each day. What is truly amazing are all the bad things that don’t happen.

Ares

Love that Cynthia

This kind of stuff almost writes itself. You couldn’t ask for a better entertainment subject than Cynthia Much-Ado-About-A-Hairdo McKinney. Found this little nugget on YouTube from election night. (Sorry about the Fox News, couldn’t find it anywhere else.) That would be the night of the election she lost. By the way, in case you were wondering, there wasn’t so much as a bleat of apology from her camp after this little episode. And for those not local, the New Black Panther Party is to race relations what the Salafi Jihadist movement is to tolerance.

Just to recap on Cynthia’s credentials, she’s also a signatory of the 9/11 Truth Statement. (Not going to honor those assholes with a link.) You know, these are the folks that think the Twin Towers were a controlled demolition and the Pentagon was hit by a missile. Also, according to Wikipedia she’s trying to pimp herself as the ’08 Green Party Candidate. By all means, take it on the road and inflict yourself on the rest of the country. Then she can blame all of the Jews when she loses and not just the ones in the 4^th District.

I’m thinking about posting the following personal ad:
Wanted: Representative for the 4^th Congressional District. Must be able to speak in complete sentences, have a modicum of education in public service or public administration and lack criminal record. Charisma desired but will settle for articulate and well groomed. A strong grasp of reality and facts is essential. Ideal candidate must have at least a passing respect for authority and not make District residents nauseas.

Ares

Media Whores Part I

Today I was trapped for several hours in a venue that had CNN blaring. With nothing else to view but my fellow human it was inevitable that I spend some time looking at the glazed over phosphor glow. Let me give you the highlights of what you already know so well: Iraq, Iraq, 2008 Presidential Race, What The President Did Today, it rained somewhere. Repeat ad infinitum. I know nothing more about my world than when I woke up this morning as a result of this involuntary investment. The formula for all segments was to present the most contentious angle possible. Even the weather made sure to harp about the storms that were going to wreak havoc on poor defenseless people.

There was another annoying factor aside from pandering to idiocy and fear, and that was the obsession with dead American soldiers. I've taken pains over the past few years to learn as much as I can about terrorism, guerilla warfare, and insurgency. Most of what passes for inspection of this phenomenon concerns itself with the kinetics (killing people and breaking things). If you read about the practice of Fourth Generation Warfare, and read with the leaders on the Salafi Jihadist movement write and say, you'll learn that the conflict is 80% non-kinetic. It is stage managed violence that is formulated for maximum visual impact beyond the battlefield. (Here's a little example of this type of conflict. When the PLO was engaged in the Intifada we were bombarded with imagery of Israeli military forces wreaking destruction upon the Palestinian people. Conditioned response: Those Israelis are slaughtering helpless civilians. How many video clips did you see of suicide bombers detonating themselves in Israeli restaurants and cafes? None. This is Fourth Generation Warfare at its most clinical.) There are virtually no strategic kinetic fights. What you have are a series of tactical engagements that are positioned to give a strategic appearance. This is where CNN comes in, willingly.

The endless obsessing about death serves absolutely no positive purpose. The "other side" views this as weak, overwrought wailing. The domestic consumers have images constantly piped into the visual cortex, bypassing cognition. The deep inspection of each death serves to keep viewers in the emotion and well away from logic or analysis. This is precisely the state that Fourth Generation Warfare opponents need us kept in. The broadband obsessive-compulsive stream of conflict that is being constantly mainlined into our jugular keeps us intellectually anesthetized. While immersed in emotion sound judgment is essentially impossible. Imagine, if you will, doctors that broke down uncontrollably every time a patient was diagnosed with a serious life-threatening illness. This overproduced microscope of television creates self-fulfilling prophecies. Just like your life, complete daily inspection of all aspects will rarely show marked progress. The ancient lie told since the beginning is that they are merely reporting what transpires and aren't responsible for what happens in the world. A cursory inspection of Fourth Generation Warfare reveals this to be turned on its head. The other lie passed off by big media, that they're just doing what everyone else is doing, wouldn't pass muster between a parent and child but is willingly swallowed by an entire society. Eventually, in the long term, I think this issue will sort itself out. I have yet to meet and discuss this very concept with anyone that is anything less than disgusted. When enough people vote with their eyes and feet this whore of a dinosaur we're forced to endure will wither and die.

Ares

The Future of Food

With thanks to Drew:



Watch it. This is important.

Athena

Warning

Found another little gem on the Internet: The Warning Label Generator. I’ve been having all kinds of fun with it at work. Take it for a spin.

ht: Boortz

Ares

Useless Donkeys

The new, fledgling legislature of Afghanistan almost has the hang of it. They’ve suspended a female member of parliament for some things she said. Her sin: She said a stable was more useful than congress. “A stable is better, for there you have a donkey that carries a load and a cow that provides milk”. Amen! Apparently that’s flamethrower language in Afghanistan.

This actually works on a couple of levels. First, it proves that legislatures are the same worldwide. Second, I think she actually meant “Democrats”, but inserted the more common “donkey” reference. (Just want to see if Athena’s paying attention.) Still, it’s a huge step forward that they just suspended her. Back in the day she would have been lucky to just be beaten for speaking out. During Taliban times she ran a school for girls, an offense that is still occasionally punishable by death in that part of the world. Personally, I think the men of that august body of law makers looked at themselves, then at her, and realized they weren’t measuring up in the proverbial dangling genitalia department. More than anything cowards hate people that are more than they could ever become. And that male dominated collection of inferior souls hiding behind Islam is the most stunning example of externalized cowardice ever witness by humanity.

Ares

Exposed to Art

So Mrs. Ares’ employer had their annual awards diner last night. The good news is the grub was free and there was an open bar. The bad news is that it was at the High Museum. It’s only bad because all forms of art appear to be lost on me.

After diner and the awards ceremony the museum opened for our perusal. The current centerpiece is the Louvre exhibit. Let me give you the abbreviated version: Painting, painting, rug on the wall, somebody’s dishes, and a few statues. Walking among the old stuff made me long for a single wish. I desperately want to come back 400 years in the future to see what detritus from our current landscape will pass as art. Call me a heathen, but a lot of the ‘art’ looks like stuff that was just lying around. My crowning moment of mental inferiority was looking at the miniature bronze figures from the first century A.D. About 4 inches high, my immediate thought was that they looked like the Star Wars action figures I played with as a kid. Apparently George Lucas really was on to some universal themes. My next thought, which I idiotically shared aloud with Mrs. Ares was “Look! Mercury has a little itty bitty penis!” That was one of those ‘or worse’ moments they mentioned somewhere in the wedding ceremony.

It was a nice evening. Just about perfect weather and the High is a beautiful space. A tidy little island of serenity tucked into the canyons between skyscrapers in Midtown. The only intrusion was the occasional thumping of car stereos on nearby Peachtree Street. (If there’s a place in metro Atlanta to get away from that I haven’t found it.) The High is also home to the Atlanta Symphony. A little fact I learned about Symphony attendance: You can get gourmet coffee with a shot of Amaretto and a box of Junior Mints before listening to Tchaikovsky. That might just make it go down a little easier. Maybe I’ll be better at the symphony that I was at the Louvre.

Ares

The Final Frontier

This still feels a little silly, writing the miscellaneous whatever and posting it to the great nothingness. I’m not a scholar with an intellectual bunker to defend, nor am I an ‘issue’ blogger advancing a tightly held concept. Just some guy in somewhere America, scrawling on his 15 column inches of fame. It still seems a little narcissistic, but also a little cathartic. Maybe it’s the flight from nothingness that appeals. In posting to that great formless yet all-encompassing Internet you become part of something bigger than yourself. With apologies to our father, a sort of confessional and communion with a keyboard. Makes you wonder if the Internet might someday supplant that portion of the psyche that organized religion currently occupies. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch, given that there are 65 million MySpace registrants. The irony is too sharp to measure, millions of people spending more time alone in order to be with other people. Then again, it’s the best way to enjoy other people: Selectively filtered. This is new psychological territory, somebody’s PhD thesis waiting to happen. In the mean time, I’ll just keep pecking away.

Ares

Middle East Rochambeax

So Hamas kills Fatah, which begats Fatah to kill Hamas, which begats everyone to kill Israel. This is a new twist that no one didn’t see coming. Seems the Palestinians skipped that pesky rule set thing that goes along with self-rule and went straight to the civil war. I don’t think its considered racist anymore to observe that Palestinians have a propensity for self-destruction. But in truth this is more about the retention of power by a select few and fighting over the checkbook than anything the Israelis ever did. It’s just that it gets a little wearisome watching generation after generation self-immolate.

I’m only half-kidding when I offer the following suggestion. Why don’t the Palestinians clean up some of that rubble, make a trip to Home Depot, and build themselves a world class casino or two. Take a page from the Native/Original/Indigenous Americans. Do themselves a Dubai, if you will. If they can talk themselves around the Koran’s prohibitions against slaughtering innocents surely they can step around the gambling verses. Everybody sneers until the money starts rolling in. Besides, wouldn’t it be better for the Palestinian ego to have Israelis serving them drinks and cleaning their toilets, just like whitey does in Tunica and Cherokee? Because if they don’t get some sort of plan, some alternate trajectory, I’ve got two words that perfectly describe their evolution: Easter Island.

Ares

Open Up and Say Stupid

Today’s edition of the WTF Files comes to you from Lawrenceville, Georgia. An enterprising fellow decided to open his own dental practice….in his apartment. (No citation available, the Atlanta Urinal-Constipation puts their stuff behind a firewall. Deep thinkers, all of them.) Who needs certification when you’ve got desire in your heart? This story bothers me on two levels. First, who has a burning desire to stick their hands in other people’s mouths? That career pushing a broom just wasn’t enough, so he thought he’d really level up and pretend to be a dentist? But weirdness knows no bounds, so it’s not too difficult to believe.

The really, really disturbing part is how many people fell for the good ‘doctor’. I’m not sure how many there were, but one is too many. Let me walk you through the mental gymnastics that were required by the participants.

‘Doctor’: Welcome to my office.

‘Patient’: Isn’t this your apartment?

‘Doctor’: I’m just working out of here until my office is ready.

‘Patient’: Okay. Where is your office staff?

‘Doctor’: Uh…they’re at lunch. Have a seat in the chair.

‘Patient’: It’s 9:30 in the morning. Isn’t that a Lazy Boy?

‘Doctor’: I’m waiting on new furniture. Let's have a look in there.

‘Patient’: What’s that in your hand? Is that a screwdriver? Why do all of your dental tools say Craftsman on them?

‘Doctor’: Uh…Craftsman has a new line of dental tools.

‘Patient’: Don’t I get any anesthesia?

‘Doctor’: Sure. Take this.

‘Patient’: This is an aspirin.

‘Doctor’: Uh…yea. It also helps if you happen to have a heart attack.

And so on. Whoever this ‘doctor’ is I think he’s got a bright future in sales. Then again, DeKalb County will be looking for a new CEO next year. Gig probably pays better than being a fake dentist. Job comes with its own armored SUV and a phalanx of body guards. That should help when those pesky regulators start asking questions. And he couldn’t possibly be any worse than Vernon “We-Gotta-Darken-This-Place-Up” Jones.

Ares

Tinky Winky Says Hi

Welcome to the sad club there Athena. We’re gonna get jackets made. Wasn’t it Drew Carey that said “There’s a club for that. It’s called everyone, and it meets at the bar.”?

And now for something completely different, I have a grassroots campaign I’d like to start. I want people to start leaving Tinky Winky dolls on Jerry Falwell’s grave, once he gets there. Jerry reminds me that the old saying “He fought for his people” is usually the first half of a complete sentence. The second half is “and crapped on a lot of others in the process”. World probably would have been a better place if he’d just learned to MYOFB, as we say on the Internet.

Ares

Love in the Modern Age

I’m trying to remember what it was like before the Internet. How the first cut was generally made. But now, in the age of eHarmony and match.com, the cut comes differently.

A friend recently told me the story of talking to her not-so-ex-boyfriend (seems strange, in itself, to call him “boyfriend” since he is in his late 50s and she is 60, but there it is). He spoke of his current paramour—my friend is most insistent that all other connections be disclosed—and how she differed from my friend. My friend, knowing they met online, made note of details, and very shortly found the new paramour’s profile. She discussed this with her ex; and he agreed with her when she listed the ways in which the new woman fell short. This is all just a bit too open for me, but its not my life, so I merely listened, in awe of their ability to discuss all.

So then we come to me and my tiny little life. I decide, genius that I am, to check out a certain online dating service. I have tried many methods over the years: personal ads, online dating, telling ALL my friends that they should introduce me to their single male friends. And I’m still single. Never married. At least I can say I never paid a divorce lawyer. But I digress. I go to this unnamed online dating service, and within 60 seconds, I see the profile of my most recent ex-boyfriend. The person I thought was my soul mate. The man I intended to take for better or for worse. And he’s out there lookin’ for love.

At first I was stunned. Then angry. Now, I truly wish him well. Because, if I say I loved him (and I do) then I have to want him to find happiness somewhere, somehow. And I am no saint, but I do not subscribe to the scorched earth theory of love.

However, I do know this in a way I apparently didn't know before: its over.

Athena

Gilbert's Got Back

Just a little bit of silliness, courtesy of an old friend. I think you have to be uniquely damaged to get this one. If they gave Oscars for creative wastes of time these guys would be winners.

Ares

she's alive

Yes, I’m alive. No, I haven’t been hiding in a cave. However, if my work life continues as it has been, I intend to look for a nice, quiet cave. Just in case anyone out there wondered, accreditation is not for me. Never has been, never will be. Not long ago, a trusted colleague told me that it is in my “skill set.” I thought (but did not say) “yes, and so is tearing out and eating my own toenails, but you won’t catch me doing it.” This too shall pass. Meanwhile, I will try to do better about checking in. Ares isn’t a blog-hog; he’s just the only one that’s been dutiful about posting.

Later, dudes.

Athena

Getting Old

I discovered one of those tiny truths in life this morning. As I rolled out of bed the first thing I registered was soreness from doing more than I should have yesterday. Going through the machinations of getting ready for the day I continued to catalogue the various aches and whatnot. Today’s issues were less about overuse and more a small reckoning with years of mild abuse. The little truth was this: Getting older means it gets tougher to lie to yourself. Not as small a thing as it may seem. There are little bouts of delusion that aren’t necessarily evil, just a little mental cover. But at some point you come face to face with it and make a decision. I think fully accepting it is almost a form of sobriety: You acknowledge there is a thing you are powerless over. And much like sobriety you always have to work at it. You can’t just waive at the idea and move on. It’s going to keep challenging you.

Because if you don’t do this properly you end up like my boss, a guy in middle age that is engaged in a constant campaign of euphoric recall while hurtling towards his demise. The longer it goes on the more elaborate the mental dance becomes, and the final reckoning is probably going to splatter you on some mental pavement somewhere. My point isn’t to dropkick my boss but to thank him in a backhanded way. Even the ass***** in your life have something to offer. Usually they’re a human sign that says “Don’t go there!”

Ares

Another Digression

Just a short little aside, which is all this blog really amounts to anyway. Found a link on the ever cool Common Sense Technology. Seems somebody had the brains to ask a simple question about temperature collection methods used to support the global warming idea. Short version: They changed the type of paint used to cover the boxes at National Weather Service data collection points. The new paint doesn’t reflect as much infrared radiation, thereby making the boxes hotter. Also, they are some collection points directly adjacent to concrete and asphalt expanses. Don’t take my word for it, read the article. He doesn’t say everybody’s full of poop, just says we might want to reconsider some of the data.

Ares

Papa Hemingway.....Still Dead

Today’s little dose of foreshadowing irony comes from Ernest “Ate-a-gun-in-61” Hemingway.

“Some made the long drop from the apartment or the office window; some took it quietly in two-car garages with the motor running; some used the native tradition of the Colt or Smith and Wesson; those well constructed implements that end insomnia, terminate remorse, cure cancer, avoid bankruptcy, and blast an exit from intolerable positions by the pressure of a finger; those admirable American instruments so easily carried, so sure of effect, so well designed to end the American dream when it becomes a nightmare, their only drawback the mess they leave for relatives to clean up.”

I just finished To Have and Have Not. They must have been hard up for good material in the 30’s because that book is largely a piece of crap. Hem pulls it out a bit in the final 20 pages, but meanders and drifts for the bulk of the work. I get the themes about class struggle and man verses man and whatnot, but what does that have to with three chapters of sitting in a bar getting obliterated? We won’t even talk about his love of the n-word, which is absent in the other things I’ve read by him. And just a little side note, I think I’ve got an idea why he took the cosmic hit on the 12 gauge bong. These are just a few of the medical conditions he suffered from at one point or another: Anthrax, a cut eyeball, a torn groin muscle, Spanish Flu, shell fragments, machine gun fire, concussions, loss of vision in his left eye, loss of hearing, crushed vertebra, ruptured spleen, kidneys, and liver, paralysis of the sphincter (WTF!), first and second degree burns, and, of course, depression. Can’t say I blame him for hitting the bottle.

Ares

Those That Do

Been gone a while. That wages for work concept intruded once again into my life. Another four day entertainment extravaganza. (Just an aside thought: Doesn’t it feel like decades of marketing and advertising has cheapened words like extravaganza and spectacular into uselessness?) Came home at the end of it a choking, human-sized bile duct. Mind you, it was nothing I actually had to do or see at work that left me that way. It was the management of my own organization that left me spelunking the depths of human incompetence while sitting on my couch at 7:30 this morning.

I feel very old when I resort to analogies like this, but I’ve come to believe there are two types of worker in this world. The first are those that do for a living: Driving a truck, mowing lawns, moving furniture, answering phones. At the end of the day they have a work product of some variety that justifies their fiduciary existence within an organization.

The second are those that administer for a living. Not having a product they can articulate using nouns, they merely tend to a given process. More often than not this process is the movement, deployment, and juxapositioning of those that do in this world. Because they lack the metrics to measure worth there is a default to belief that process is reason for existence. Inordinate amounts of time are expended calculating the angles, obliques, and intercepts of the human trajectories within their power. The interpersonal aikido serves two purposes: It gives a masturbatory feeling of power when the process is exercised and it redirects the questioning energies back onto those that do. Worth and competence are benchmarked against how the organization’s human dynamics can be bent and negated within desired parameters.

In my organization these are cowardly, chicken-hearted boys posturing to be like men. We suffer under an astounding weight of management and an appalling vacuum of leadership. In lieu of leadership we endure infantile temper tantrums about our lack of faith to the process. A process that is so empty without flesh-and-blood inspiration that merely being on the clock empties your soul. A form of mental radiation, it lays latent but silently takes away invisible chunks of those in its orbit. The justifications are a one act human puppet show that consists of the refrain “Because I said so” followed by a gesture towards a title. The work product machinations of those that do are a sanctuary from those that administer. This sanctuary, one of the few places on earth where respect can only be purchased from other participants through competence, enrages and mystifies administrators with its lack of manipulatable human levers. Having existed on credit for so long they cannot grasp the mechanics of hard currencies.

Hemingway once wrote “All I’ve got is my cojones to peddle.” Nothing could be more truthful of the doers in my organization. They offer their very existence by showing up. In this shadow stand the administrators, inspecting the stark difference and attempting to bluff what they cannot purchase. Alas, I am not member of their collective. I didn’t participate in The Great Raid of File Cabinet 3 or The Battle of Tuesday Staff Meeting. In lieu of concrete peril they fester over parliamentary procedure. A common, self-justifying mantra of denial heard from on high is some form of “if people don’t like it why are they still here?”, as though you can measure success by the lack of corpses. The absence of flight from those that administer is not a reflection of their competence; it is a testament to people that believe what we do is a powerful benefit to our fellow man. But there is a limit to what men will endure and tolerate.

Ares