No one said it would be funny

I hate it when celebrities make me feel like less of a lefty
than they are. Their money and ample free time makes it
easy to have an expansive social conscience the rest of us
cannot easily afford. Hey, maybe I'm not buying tissues
made of recycled paper, but then maybe I'm not buying
tissues at all. Maybe I'm using leftover fast food napkins
because I'm not only tight but truly willing to sacrifice
a bit of comffort for my planet.

The average person can't buy things like recycled tissues
and super expensive green products. And I really do think
celebs don't get it that mowt Americans can't just opt to
spend twice as much on their basics and still expect to feed
their kids and pay their rent. Fine. Maybe they are a bit out
of touch, but it doesnt excuse it when they make bad jokes
and embarrass the environmental movement with their
silliness.

Recently singer Sheryl Crowe jokingly advocated limiting
toilet paper usage to one square per visit. It wasn't taken
entirely as a joke because this is exactly the kind of "quirky"
BS people expect to hear from celebrities. It's like listening
to Britney Spears make fun of people who think she's
stupid and trashy by "ironically" pretending to be stupid
and trashy. Nobody's gonna get that. It's like making a
joke by pretending to be upset about something that you
are actually kind of upset about. If the the joke is too close
to the truth as other people might see it, then it is a really
bad joke that undermines your point.

Celebrities have a lot of access and therefore a disproportionate
voice to be used however they see fit. Rich people, politicians
and TV pundits do as well. So there are no rules suggesting
anyone is entitled to a greater voice or obligated to no take
advantage of greater access. But use your damn head. If you
jokingly suggest that people should only use one sheet
of toilet paper in the context of making suggestion about
what people should do to protect the earth in a country where
many people still think environmentalists are crying
"the sky is falling" then the misunderstanding is your fault,
not theirs.

All you're doing is giving the crazy hateful right-wingers a
grand opening to attack you, belittle the environmental cause,
and alienate sensible left-wingers who don't want to be associated
with crazy.

Addendum: As I was writing this, an SUV commercial came on
featuring Crowe's song "Every Day is a Winding Road." The main
bragging point in this commercial? The SUV gets 26 mpg. Oh that's
rich. Hypocrisy on top of facetiousness.

Innocent Man #200 Freed by DNA Testing after 26 years in Prison

Jerrry Miller went to prison at 22 for a crime he didn't commit.
Read more about it HERE. Consider my disgust fully registered.
The monumental weaknesses in our criminal justice system are
overshadowed only by the bloodthirsty masses who stand ready
at every opportunity to burn anyone accused of any crime at the
stake of public opinion.

Medicine Wheel

Click the pic to check out this fairly local archaeological
wonder in Wyoming:

A Few Tips on Getting Around Net Cesorship

Long live freedom of information, expression
and getting whatever the hell you want on the
Internet even if you live in China.

Rod Recommends

Wow, you are TOTALLY gonna burn in hell.

Rod wrote:

Here is a quote from Christopher Hitchens, "monotheistic religion is a
plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion
of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few
nonevents." He has a new book out called:

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

--
Rod

A Screed Apart

I love this screed from Bob Cesca on HuffPost. Here's a sample:

"Every day we're bombarded from all sides by marketing that
tells us that our bodies aren't ripped enough. Our credit score
is too low, but a Visa card is priceless. We need a bigger car. We
need more chemically polluted foods, then the diet pills to interdict
with the chemicals, then mAore medications to interdict with the
diet pills, then additional meds to give us boners and free-flowing
piss when our organs stop functioning from all of the above. We
need plastic surgery to feel accepted. We need acceptance in order
to be popular on MySpace. We have to redecorate our homes, buy
a souped up chopper, eat brick oven pizza with five varieties of cheese
and we need to display bumper magnets that prove to the dickhead
behind us in traffic that we unequivocally support the troops."

Shocking American Massacre ... really?

From the BBC website in re: the recent Virgina Tech shooting:

"A six-member independent panel - including former
homeland security chief Tom Ridge - will examine how
authorities reacted to the crisis, amid claims officials
ignored warning signs that Cho, who had been admitted
to a mental health unit in late 2005, was a danger."

If only the administration had responded this fast to Katrina.
If only we showed this much compassion for life in other countries.
If only this weren't some thinly veiled political move to demonstrate
compassion.

God forbid I don't jump straight onto the "we are united in grief"
bandwagon every time some freak goes on a shooting spree, but
in a country where having the right to bear arms is considered
sacrosanct above life itself, I think it's hypocritical in the extreme
to constantly search around for someone to blame post-massacre.

Is it really a surprise that Virginal Tech officials didn't have a game
plan in place to cover rampaging psycho killers? Do we really think
that just because an English major sends some annoying text messages
and writes dark, disturbing crap that someone should have caught
this guy BEFORE he killed 32 people? Being "in" the mental health
care system and taking anti-depressants are de rigeur for crappy
writers. Having a couple of professors hate you and not want you
in their class is also not unusual, especially if those professors are
weak-willed lecturers who don't like vigorous argument or weird-
asses.

/I cannot repeat this enough: college creative writing classes/
/are filled with hacks writing about psycho killers ... it would/
/be a red flag if a fiction class didn't have one of these guys in it/

And now we all bow our heads, lower our flags and make a public display
of our shock and grief because quiet dignity is too easy to mistake in a
country where subtlety is appreciated about as much as a healthy meal.
We all want to look "normal" and "good" even if the truth is most of us are
just mimics any way. I mean, pretending to be shocked and grieving is
what good and normal people do after the largest mass killing in American
history -- not counting 9-11 apparently -- isn't it?

We are such phony bastards. If we are going to be bully on guns, innocent
people are going to get killed. The least we can do is not pretend surprise.

Nancy Grace is an annoying loud-mouthed unethical bitch

For the best part of a year, CNN rabble-rouser, Nancy Grace,
has gone on a tear over these Duke lacrosse players who were
accused of sexually assaulting an "exotic dancer" or "stripper (yes,
there really is a difference). Grace's job is supposed to be examining
current legal cases, but mostly she just bitches about how much
she hates people who are accused of crimes and talks about how
she'd like to either see them get the death penalty or kill them
herself. Her second favorite activity is blaming everyone in sigt
for not having done something in advance to stop whatever
horrendous and unstoppable horror it is that she's kvetching
about. She loves to make everyone else the Judas goat, man.

So it should come as no surprise that now that the charges
against the lacrosse players have been dropped, she isn't making
much of an effort to apologize. In fact, the very night the charges
were dismissed and it was revealed the stripper made it all up, Grace
had a substitute anchor her show. I'm sure it wouldn't even occur to
her that she was wrong in the first place. After all, these boys were
accused of a crime and isn't that all we really need are some alleged
criminals to hang? Isn't that all a primitive society needs to feel like
something is being done to stop crime? Who cars if that is an injustice
in its own right?

Luckily for Grace, the Virginia Tech shooting took place the very next
day so she can change the subject and go on another tear about how
irresponsible Virginia Tech administrators were for not locking down
the campus in a timely manner or for not detecting the shooter's "obvious"
insanity based on his violent-themed creative writing exercises and few
annoying text messages that are now being deemed as evidence of stalking.

She is the epitome of sensationalistic television presenters (not journalists,
I wouldn't give her that kind of credit) who will say and do anything for ratings.
She needs to go.

And I thought WE were fascists

Most people know by now that England is covered in CCTV
cameras that capture everything from suspected bombers
to litterers. Now the Brits have taken the 1984 paradigm
one step further by adding loudspeakers to the mix so anyone
starting a fight or even just littering can be admonished,
instructed and even thanked for conforming.

Read the story here.

It's tempting. I'm sure people feel safer in the downtown areas,
but Jesus is this really the answer? You can get on board with
stopping crime because that's how all this stuff always starts.
But "anti-social" behavior? That could mean just about anything...
and ultimately will.

Where I've Been (or God this boil hurts)

I've gotten a couple of emails wondering why haven't posted
in a while. Long story short, I was in the hospital for about a week
because a boil in my thigh turned septic and really fucked me up.

Yeah, my doctor pretty much said it was the biggest abscess of its
kind he'd ever seen. Fourteen centimeters across and Lord knows
how deep. I had to go the emergency room and have a surgeon hack
on me. God damn bed looked like someone had a baby in it. I swear
to God I've never seen that much blood anywhere. The next day,
a pus bag the size of a baseball burst while I was on the toilet. It hurt
a good deal, but mostly I heard it. Sounded and smelled like someone
dumped a can of Chunky Cream of Veterinarian's Office Soup on the floor.
The pus was worse than the blood.

The best part of the experience ... besides knowing that I fought death ...
was the drugs. Jesus Christ. I had morphine and dilaudid, a hydromorphone
that just knocks you on your ass. It's like a warm bath for your mind. They'd
give me a shot of this stuff and a wave of pleasure would just wash over you
while you nodded out riding the fine line between waking and dreaming.
Morphine kind of sucks. I had the drip with the button so I could give
myself a bump every 20 minutes and it was just a dark. Kind of a rough
high that wasn't much fun or even that much pain relief.

After five days of being confined to a hospital bed, pissing in a jug and
watching basic cable, I was ready to get the fuck out. Now I'm homebound.
I've got nurses coming by to change my bandage and unpack the gash in my leg
and repack it. I'm bored as shit, but at least I don't have people waking me
up at 5 a.m. to do blood cultures, check my vitals and ask why I didn't go
to the doctor sooner. Oh I don't know. Because I'm not a pussy. I hate doctors
and hospitals and IVs and stupid questions and massive bills.