Psychopolitik 2.0

Curiosity re: that Tennessee church shooting:

A Powell man sits alone in a jail cell following a fatal shotgun rampage in a church prompted by a hatred of liberalism and Democratic leaders who have hamstrung the nation’s war on terror, records show.

Jim David Adkisson is charged with one count of first-degree murder. He is being held in the Knox County Detention Facility in lieu of $1 million bond.

But more charges await the 58-year-old man who authorities say has been frustrated by a lack of employment, a reduction of his food-stamp benefits and what he perceived as the liberal ruination of the United States.  (emphasis mine)

Years of pissing on restraint out of political expediency, and they get called traitors anyway, and ironically get blamed for some guy deciding because of the “liberal” boogeyman supposedly undermining his “War on Terruh” and cutting his food stamps (…WTF?) that this is as good a time as any to commit a terrorist act.  Let that bounce around in the noggin for a bit…

This kind of thing reminds me of how those “stranger danger” talks to kids way back when were shown to have backfired because their conception of a stranger tended to be some mythical giant, ugly, drooling monster.  I wonder what people like this would do if asked to draw a picture of a “liberal”.

Not surprised: Scrabulous, a Scrabble-ish game popular on Facebook, got stopped by Hasbro.

SERIOUSLY not surprised: some dude in PC Magazine argues that Scrabulous cheapened the value of Scrabble, thus yanking it was justified.

Surprised:…people still play Scrabble?  Shit, who deliberately played it in the first place?  Only board game I ever thought was fun was Monopoly, and that’s because my cousins and me regularly made up our own rules to it (example: y’know that “free parking” space?  One time we had an idea for a toll players paid every time they went around the board without landing on that, and whoever did land on it got the money collected from it).  Yeah, I know, weird of someone like me playing that game, but whatever.  Anyway, the other games generally sucked ass.  Then again, as an adult anything is interesting with shots.

-Trivia question no one seems to ask: Who invented pole dancing?  “Exotic dancing” itself has been around forever, with variations from burlesque to belly-dancing, but it doesn’t seem clear who first thought “maybe if we put a pole on stage…”.

-I’ve always felt the stereotype of old drivers going too slow was an odd one.  Technically, due to their age they have less time left, so they should really be in more of a hurry.  Imagine if old folks were the speed demons and young people drove at crawl speed…

-A few days ago was getting syrup for waffles, noticed something amusing: other than the all-natural maple kind (which was beyond my budget, sadly), they all had as their main ingredient high-fructose corn syrup…except for the diet kind.  Yet the label on the low-cal syrup said in prominent letters “sugar free!”.  It is sugar-free, but so are all the other ones.  Times like this I get the feeling a day will come where the only thing at the grocery store that doesn’t have high-fructose corn syrup in it will be the bottles labeled “corn syrup”.

-I wonder how popular the iPhone is with drug dealers…

-This came to mind while watching Anderson Silva whoop ass last Saturday: these are human beings we’re talking about, and people tend to have excess gases in them, so it’s inevitable that somewhere along the line someone has been punched in the face such that they fart as they go down.  Hell, when it comes to the ground holds, there’s probably at least ONE MMA’er that deliberately eats gassy food before the fight for a silent but deadly advantage in their ground game, or at least has tried it.

It’s too bad I don’t believe in Hell, because I’d like to believe the nonsensical sado-masochistic motherfucker who invented the necktie was burning there.

Don’t ask.

In an American Voices bit on The Onion, in response to Bush lifting the executive ban on offshore oil drilling:

“Is there a ban on printing more money? If so he should lift that too and fix the economy while he’s at it.” -Don O’Connor, painter

Rather than laugh about how obviously stupid that remark would be if someone actually said that, it reminded me of a quote Cunning Realist had up awhile back:

If prices went up, people demanded not a stable purchasing power for the marks they had, but more marks to buy what they needed. More marks were printed, and more, and more.

-Adam Fergusson, When Money Dies

Blargh…

While reading Radley Balko’s guest column on the Chicago Tribune website (about why Chicago came in dead last on a “freedom in big US cities” index done for Reason Magazine), I noticed in a sidebar of links to other articles on the site the following headline: “Motorcyclist dies in LSD crash“.

My first thought prior to clicking on that article: “…Now why the hell would someone do acid and then get on a motorcycle?  How’d they have the presence of mind to even get on it, as opposed to seeing it sprout tentacles and levitate while singing old heavy metal songs backwards in Korean?”

I’m not kidding.

So…wanna travel outside of the US this summer, but frustrated about higher prices & crappier service with air travel? Google Maps has the solution for you!

Check out turn #15 in the screencap above. Took that in case they realized the quirk & changed it.  Props to Sullivan.

Fuck death:

In one of his most famous routines, Carlin railed against euphemisms he said have become so widespread that no one can simply “die.”

“‘Older’ sounds a little better than ‘old,’ doesn’t it?,” he said. “Sounds like it might even last a little longer. … I’m getting old. And it’s OK. Because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won’t have to die � I’ll ‘pass away.’ Or I’ll ‘expire,’ like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital they’ll call it a ‘terminal episode.’ The insurance company will refer to it as ‘negative patient care outcome.’ And if it’s the result of malpractice they’ll say it was a ‘therapeutic misadventure.’”

1) RIP.

2) Suck it AP, I’m quoting one of my lifelong heroes here.

Remember when some idiot Blackwater employees played X-Wing fighter w/ a cargo plane in Afghanistan & earned a Darwin Award? Well, it’s lawsuit time for the widows of the soldiers they took with them, and Blackwater is cheaping out even further than I thought they would:

To defend itself against a lawsuit by the widows of three American soldiers who died on one of its planes in Afghanistan, a sister company of the private military firm Blackwater has asked a federal court to decide the case using the Islamic law known as Shari’a.

The lawsuit “is governed by the law of Afghanistan,” Presidential Airways argued in a Florida federal court. “Afghan law is largely religion-based and evidences a strong concern for ensuring moral responsibility, and deterring violations of obligations within its borders.”

If the judge agrees, it would essentially end the lawsuit over a botched flight supporting the U.S. military. Shari’a law does not hold a company responsible for the actions of employees performed within the course of their work.

Erik Prince, who owns Blackwater and Presidential Airways, briefly discussed the lawsuit in a meeting today with editors and reporters at The News & Observer. Prince was asked to justify having a case involving an American company working for the U.S. government decided by Afghan law.

“Where did the crash occur?” Prince said. “Afghanistan.” (emphasis mine)

Yeah, you read that right. This pseudo-patriot war-profiteer scumbag, to keep away from the possibility of any of his millions compensating these women for the fatal results of his company waging war The Wal-Mart Way, is endorsing Islamic law.  Hilarious…

Props.

Spotted in the classifieds of my local paper an ad promoting a special event at this butcher shop/restaurant.  A line in the promotion mentioned a contest they were having: “Enter for chance to win 20 gallons of gas”.

…I got indifference, that’s what I got.