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Ranting at Random by Grendel the Axegrinder
One hangover from being injected with Baptist memes as a child is that I believe the words really do matter, their content matters, and meaning matters. It's herpes of the mind.
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A trickster creator seems inherently more believable than a just god, a god of love. That our race commits theodicy with such abandon is the greatest of the Coyote God’s ort ort ort hey moe eye pokes.
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I saved this snippet from the Guardian a while ago back:
“Richard Dawkins, an Oxford science don, author of The Selfish Gene, suggested Mr Bush was just as much of a danger to world peace as Saddam Hussein, adding: ‘It would be a tragedy if Tony Blair were to be brought down through playing poodle to this unelected and deeply stupid little oil-spiv.’”
Ah, to have that fine sense of British reserve. But now it seems that the increasingly tragic Mr. Blair may bring down Bush. Blair’s speech to Congress and his joint press conference with Howdy Dubya just made chatting classes sigh wistfully and wish our country had a leader who could parse an English sentence unscripted, or that the PM was our president. The egregious contrast between fasttalking man and abominable slowman did not bring joy to the hearts of our homeboy hominid’s handlers, I reckon.
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It's one of my failings (ask my personal goddess Elspeth if you want a full list): I'm prejudiced against stupid people. Particularly stupid people with agendas. Call me an elitist, but possession of an agenda by anyone with an IQ 110 or under should be an criminal offense under the law. (Warning: For all you lurking lowbrow literalist rub-up-lick-ends; that was a joke.) Dubya is so dim he makes his father look like a genius, and the mental level of Bush the First would come in well under the threshold of my proposed ordinance. Let's just say he wouldn't bump his haid. This is a problem at the root of US civil life and politics: our agendas tend to be determined and our institutions tend to be controlled by mediocrities and sub-mediocrities, C-plusers, middle managers, people who get degrees in "education" or "business" instead of math or English or chemistry or history. That Dubya is vilely wrong-headed, and has a dangerous agenda, there is no doubt. But it's government of the stupid, by the stupid, and for the stupid that really gets my goat.
Note: I make a distinction between intelligence and cleverness. Plenty of stupid people are pretty clever, clever enough to fool the rubes anyhow...like the people who run Dubya.
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If this year was a movie I'd call it "The Year of Ruling Stupidly." Mel Gibson could play the Executive Shrubery; Kenneth Brannagh could play Tony Blair; Russell Crowe could do a cameo as Saddam Hussein; Jack Nicholson could play Ariel Sharon; Robin Williams could do Sec Def Rumsfeld or Att Gen Ashcroft; James Earle Jones could take the role of Sec State Powell; a slimmed down Oprah would be perfect to play Condoleeza Rice; Lara Flynn Boyle would do as First Wife... Help me out, people…
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I used to think our Obergruppen-Dubya was too stupid to have much scope as a sinner. No longer. But the Bushwah and his minions are walking examples of the mundanity and banality of evil.
"...evil is never 'radical', it is only extreme, and it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is 'thought-defying', as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its 'banality'. Only the good has depth and can be radical." Hannah Arendt
Speaking of the banality of evil, I most fervently wish that last lonely brain cell animating the ruined hulk of Teflon Ron a long, long half life before it finally flickers out. Empty suit Raygun’s state funeral should not take place until no one under 35 can remember him any better than he can remember his own name.
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Note to the Japanese (The machinations of whose government blocked the establishment of a whale sanctuary in the South Pacific as proposed by Australia and New Zealand at the annual International Whaling Commission meeting this June for the fourth year in a row.): Whales are sentient beings, and killing them is murder. Killing them for food is the same as killing a chimp or gorilla for food (as poor Africans are still doing) and is morally equivalent to cannibalism. Hell, it is cannibalism. It would be far healthier for the planet if there were more good old fashioned mano a mano Homo Sock Puppet cannibalism. There's more humans on the hoof by weight than any other animal but ants and termites. Ants and termites are high protein but in most people's minds they do not qualify as the other white meat.
Excuse me for a moment.
“SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!”
I feel better now.
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Benighted creatures such as chickens and cattle only exist because we, the human race, created them, by selective breeding from wild ancestors over generations, and by genetic manipulation since yesterday. Their degenerated races continue only because we find them tasty and expeditious with biggie fries and a 42 oz pop, at the drivethru--and because the Agricultural-Industrial Complex makes billions of dollars selling the flesh of their carcasses to us. Also, they've got to do something with all that corn. The Green Giant can only sell so much creamed corn. If we as a race stopped eating domesticated animals, Tysons, The American Beef Council, et al., would stop raising them. Their populations would crash, leaving only remnant populations in zoos, and farm museums, and possibly some feral pigs and chickens. So remember, if you give up the nuggets and the Big Mac, you're on the road to genocide--genocide most fowl.
I've never raised an animal for food, but I have killed, cleaned, cooked, and eaten fish, birds, and small mammals. It is strange to make a living animal dead, have it die at one's hands in one's hands, and to divide a whole body into pieces of meat and waste. But the Bible lies; the mark of Cain is on the heart, not the forehead.
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