Category: Rant

What’s wrong with our picture?

I didn’t know I was getting newsletter e-mails from Senator Herb Kohl until I had to fix some mail configs and dug into an account I haven’t really used in years. Suddenly there was this nice fresh one. So I read it. I’m still scratching my head at the apparent (to me) insanity. Some kind of megalomania, schizophrenic power-trip; whatever, it disturbs me. It says something terribly discomforting about the USA.

I thought this guy was relatively all right, until I read this:

“…as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, I introduced the bipartisan No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act (NOPEC). It would authorize our government, for the first time, to take action against illegal conduct of the OPEC oil cartel. The NOPEC bill would establish clearly and plainly that when a group of competing oil producers – like the OPEC nations – act together to restrict supply or fix prices, they are violating U.S. law. I recently raised the subject of increased oil prices with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke at a Senate Banking Committee hearing to gain insight about current efforts to curb rising oil and gas prices. It is time for the U.S. government to fight back against efforts to fix the price of oil and hold OPEC accountable when it acts illegally.”

No matter what we think of them, the OPEC nations are not part of the United States, and are not subject to our laws. So what is the point of waving a provocative red flag of empty threat?

The USA must stop acting as if it owned the world and start cooperating with other nations as peers. That is called growing up. Being a playground bully and whining about the terrorism that it inspires with its careless arrogance (while indulging freely in terrorism) is not building any respect for us. You have to GIVE respect to get it.

I guess this rant should show that I am not just a knee-jerk anti-Republican. :p

Off Our Walker — Rap

Another contribution by A. Nonymous:

Knock-Rap for the Guv

Little Scotty Walker
Playun with his Raygun
Shootin down people
Who dare to be prayin
For jobs and food
For their family
He got a news slant
On the economy
The few should be great
And the many, little
To make ends meet
Just throw out the middle

Little Scotty Walker
Wanna shut down the state
If the cameras are runnin
That gonna be great
Think about winning
Politics is a game
If something not working
Just pass the blame
Keep your eye on the lens
Givin fisheye looks
Americans for Prosperity
Be Koch-in the books

Scotty flappin his flags
An wavin his bats
Got no clue people died in the past
For GI Bills
Social Security
Stuff to help him climb
His family tree
That he’d conservatively take
From you and me
He tryin to sound like a
Super smooth talker
But if you misjudge him
You off your Walker

Off Our Walker — Rant I

Guest posts by A. Nonymous, via e-mail.

Went to a Democratic Party meeting in Sturgeon Bay Thursday night — very interesting. Jon Erpenbach, the minority leader of the state senate, spoke to us by phone from Chicago and answered questions. He said morale is good among the 14 senators holding out on the budget vote and he personally would like to see the entire budget redone not just the section on unions. Walker is trying to privatize state jobs and eliminate accountability. It gives him the power to rewrite the rules for who is eligible for Medicaid and Senior Care and he is interested in selling power plants to his friends. He said the Republican senators are not happy with the Walker phone call and the cavalier tone he has adopted, and they need to hear from people who will encourage them to consider individual issues rather than be in lockstep with Walker. The minority Democrats are seriously worried about saving the American dream and the middle class from this power grab with political payoffs.

The local Democrats are staging a protest Friday on our steel bridge (make your own sign) Friday in connection with rallies on bridges all over the state. About 100,000 people are expected in Madison Saturday but you will never hear it on Fox, as they have consistently underreported numbers of previous groups except for the tea party which mysteriously swelled to thousands instead of hundreds. The bus drivers bringing people from parking areas to the downtown say the protestors have already numbered 100,000 at the Capitol, which is the goal for this weekend too. The local people who went last week said it was a very moving experience with everyone becoming very energized but staying courteous, no pushing and shoving.

Somebody researched what the Koch brothers are making their billions from and discovered it is just about everything — Angel Soft, Soft n Gentle and Quilted Northern toilet paper; Brawny towels; Dixie Cups products; Mardi Gras, Vanity Fair and Zee napkins; Stainmaster carpets; Dacron fiber; Comforel fiberfill; all the Georgia Pacific products, and that’s just for starters. They have been making donations to conservative candidates all over the country, but Walker may be the most enthusiastic in trying to pay them back.

appended from e-mail reply:

Yay for working. It’s becoming increasingly rare. Just think — with the cooperation of some business moguls who are not expanding at the moment, the US could raise the GNP by 3 or 4 points and generate enough in taxes to solve the budget shortages. For some reason said moguls are sitting on their hands until various
states use draconian measures to increase the dictatorial power of governors and reduce the options and
benefits of workers, thus generating a bigger future percentage of profit for those who need it least. Does anyone remember Teapot Dome, trustbusting, etc. at the beginning of the last century? Why do we have to replay the Greed card vs. the Fair card over and over? And in the future will anybody hear about it even once with a new crop of teachers whose boss lives in Madison?

For your entertainment:
Koch-Walker Prank Call — Part 1
Part 2

No, no, not another!

I was once a fan of Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children(TM) series.

I loved Clan of the Cave Bear. It was the best cave-people novel I had ever read (unfortunately, that’s not saying too much; the competition back then was sickly).

I loved parts of Valley of Horses. Parts of it were…let’s just say, not what I was looking for.

I loved some things about The Mammoth Hunters. The rest I lived with.

I enjoyed the scenery and the characters in Plains of Passage.

I re-read all of them, more than once, and many scenes remain vividly painted in my mind despite the obstacles.

I managed to drag my ass through Shelters of Stone one time. One stinking time, and I mostly remember one very unexciting scene. All attempts to re-read have drowned in a tar-pit.

Now we have The Land of Painted Caves. Ayla’s incredible(sic) prowess is veiled in yet another stupefying mass of congealing prose. Veiled, not unveiled; that’s what I said. Rather than improving over the many years, Jean Auel’s writing style seems to have grown worse. The action, the characters, everything is buried in verbosity that defies belief. There’s hardly a paragraph, in what I have read so far, that couldn’t be reduced by a third.

Dialogue is another sore point for me. Did stone-age people really talk like cardboard cutouts? Did they care that much about perfect syntax? If people had always spoken in such an egg-walking way, language would never have evolved. I want to hear some life in the way characters interact.

Add Ayla’s know-it-all-ness, Jondalar’s wuss-ness, interminable “As you know, Bobelar” explanations, and the usual heavy-handed head-hopping, and you get a flavorless stew that sticks in the throat of any discriminating reader.

Having sampled what is available on the Web, I have no great desire to rush out and buy the book. Not even to borrow the book. I don’t think it will add a whole lot to my life experience.

I will give Jean credit where it is due, however. Because of her, I have become a much better writer. In the eight years since I kick-started myself by writing parodies of her work, I have written more and learned more about the craft of writing than in my entire life before that.

So long and thanks for all the stone knives and bearskins 😉

When is a blog not a blog?

I don’t blog often, but at least when I do it’s my own content. Unfortunately, there are a shitload of “bloggers” whose only aim is to get as much traffic as possible, by any means possible. I assume that they are doing this for the sake of some sleazy advertising on their sorry moshblogs that I can’t see because I have pretty effective ad-blocking on most of the time.

Anhwhey, their shitty little lazy trick is to dumpster-dive for content in the sump-pits of content mills, resulting in a motley mix of copycat content. Try this: go to almost any blog that is posted on with great frequency and constantly tweeted. Copy part of a sentence from any post. Take it to Google, in quotes so that the entire string is searched for, not just parts of it.

How many results do you get for that string and all of the material surrounding it? Only the original(sic) blog? Odds are good that you’ll get one or more, sometimes many more; sometimes even the true original source.

This is even more fun when you can nail a distinctive typo or usage error. Pseudo-bloggers can’t be bothered to check the verity, much less the quality, of the content-farm garbage that they post.

IMHO this kind of blogging is just another variety of SPAM, spewed out over the Internet to clog search engines rather than dumped in our inboxes, forums, or blog comments.

Cheated again!

Yes, again. I paid for a good night’s sleep and all I got was a 2-hour nap. This is worse than usual; four hours is more typical. All you normals out there, please don’t bombard me with suggestions for how to overcome insomnia. NONE OF IT IS RELEVANT. Most of it is old wives’ tales, AFAIC, and the best of it comes off as horribly patronizing. I am not mentally impaired, not inexperienced, not ignorant. I am very aware of what is going on in my own mind and body, accustomed to finding my own solutions to problems, and my success record tops anythig medical professionals have tried to perpetrate on me.

My sleep irregularity has roots unfathomable. It is an irregular irregularity, a chaotic cycle that has no truly predictable pattern. I can often tiptoe around it and achieve some apparent success by timing and regulating my food intake — but there are no guarantees. A day filled with healthy outdoor activity, ending with a light snack at the proper time, and no big worries, may result in too-short sleep, while a good night of 6+ hours may follow a low-down day with a heavy afternoon nap. It’s my body and it’s fucked up. Always has been, always will be. You don’t have my genes or my background, so shut TF up. BS me no BS.

In my early years, my sleep was often disrupted or delayed by my immature parents’ screaming battles. That certainly had its effect on establishing a pattern, or lack of it. However, it’s been a long time since then. 3am is a peaceful time here and now. I am in control of my own life — as much as anyone can be.

Yesterday I could understand the short night. Although I worked hard and could, by “normal” standards, expect to sleep soundly, I anticipated an unusual schedule, and that left a back door open for unconscious sabotage. It was no surprise to suffer what I call the four-hour curse. Today, with no fixed appointments ahead of me, no restraints, a good feeling following a pleasant conversation, I expected something better than a two-hour nap after staying up until after midnight (going to bed earlier is a guarantee of short sleep for me). Yesterday was productive, too. I earned a good sleep. I didn’t get it.

So here I am, having a beer or two and blogging before dawn. There’s a good morning’s sleep ahead, with my head buried under a pillow. If you love your life, don’t call me.

For your irrelevant amusement, here’s my latest desktop screenshot, featuring a bit of my own front yard:

Speaking of Twitter….

I’ve been in it for over a month now. I like it. Finding new friends, renewing old aquaintance, following interesting links and learning about things I would have overlooked — tons of redeeming social value.

But then there is the Dark Side of Twitter. Individuals whose main objective is self-promotion for profit at the expense of others. MLM whores who will randomly follow anyone in the hope of building their downline. I have one thing to say to these bloodsuckers — Fuck off. Following me will only get you one good slap in the face and a lifetime of being blocked.

Because my tweets are varied, I expect to collect a lot of short-term followers who latch onto some keyword in a search. I check out all followers. If I like what I see, I follow back. If I don’t…see previous paragraph.

10,000 Big Codwallops

omfg maize
Corn and beans -- who needs Columbus?

As Tweeted:
Library, DVD, 10,000BC stupidest mammoth hunt ever, bamfsckingboo spearshafts, fscking MAIZE, GMAB OMFG ROFLUIH

I haven’t been much of a moviegoer/watcher for a long time. No TV, no money, no car. However, I do have a computer, so once in a while I do get hold of something. Lately it’s been happening more often. DSL helps, LOL. So does having a regular job and my property taxes paid up. Last year I bought the Lord of the Rings. This spring, I’m feeling a bit livelier, so I can walk to the library. That means even more movies.

Yesterday, I had returned Apocalypto and was browsing the shelves. Couldn’t find anything that jumped out and said “Watch me!” so I decided to take 10,000 BC home and see how bad it was.

It surprised me — it was better than I expected. It could have been better yet, had it been called Godslayer, or Legacy of Atlantis, or some such thing befitting the (sadly abbreviated) epic fantasy that it wants to be. Because it is certainly not a story about what might have occurred anywhere, anywhen, around 10,000 years BCE.

Consider the fact that it apparently covers at least three continents, on both hemispheres. Points lost there, big time.

That mammoth hunt. Cheese and tripes, it is amazingly bad. These are experienced, profesional mammoth hunters? They expect to eat tomorrow? The lead bull — ROFLUIH! Just that alone is so sad.

Proportions — yes, mammoths were big, but really. And the pussycat. Not to mention it looked kind of silly bouncing away in its last scene. I rather liked the Androcles-and-the-lion bit, though.

D’leh — how can you say it without thinking “delay”? He wasn’t such a bad character, just needed a little common sense behind him. I’d like to have seen the whole storyline fleshed out a bit instead of glossed over with see next paragraph

The sporadic narration. I’m on the edge of writing a flaming rant about movies that tell instead of showing. Talk about pitiful. There is no place in the body of a film for that sort of thing unless it is autobiographical. While 10K is not as bad in this respect as the Clan of the Cave Bear superfail, it’s bad enough. For God(dess) sake, look at Quest for Fire. Please. It’s an amazing masterpiece, or at least tour-de-force, of paleo-fantasy. QfF is a rare phenomenon. With no understandable dialog, it hasn’t even the slimmest chance for an as-you-know-bob, and there is not one word of intrusive narration.

And speaking of dialog — fscking Tribalspeak! With an accent, yet, and oodles of rolled R’s. Don’t get me started.

Army marching through desert with no visible means of support. Numbnuts who can’t follow the stars until another numbnuts points out something stupidly impossible. Mammoths working their big hairy butts off in a desert with no mile-high haystacks in sight. People, listen to me, if an army marches on its stomach, a mammoth sees their rations and raises them a hundredfold. Pachyderms are eating machines.

And then, after all that, one of the African types hands over a baggie of corn. Zea maiz, primo cultivar of the New World. Where T. F. are we? Kansas?

I could take 10K, I could love it, as a Conanoid fantasy. But I’d like to clean it up a lot even for that.

Going to have to watch Apocalypto again to take the taste of stale joke out of my mouth. Except for certain little details of the moon, that one is everything I could want in prehistorical film.

E.T.A.: I forgot to mention the galloping mammoths in the climactic scenes. ZOMG. Galloping . Mammoths . *groan*

The invisible crutch phrase (rants and confessions)

What is one of the most useless sets of pad-words, a mainstay of badfic, a hallmark of inattentive or amateurish writing? Hint: It isn’t on any of the big lists of useless crap.

Watched as

Watched WHAT as? “As” implies simultaneous action. “As” is overused and abused enough without this pernicious parasitic phrase.

This well-established writerism goes unnoticed, even when it is used twice in the same page. How many occurrences can you count in your work? Can you live with it once you’re aware of it?

I am painfully aware. It bugs the hell out of me; the w.a. flea jumps out and bites me wherever I find it. When I see it in a beginning sentence, I read no more, because I know the rest is going to be poorly written. I confess to having let it slip out once, several years ago, in a fan-fic. This is all the more embarrassing because I am generally uncanonical and iconoclastic in my ficking. I hope to atone for that sin by raising awareness in others.

Ask yourself what it stands in for. What did you mean when you dropped in that habitual “watched as”? Does it mean merely that the character is watching something happen? Then say, “MC watched the parade pass by,” or “MC watched Villain skin Friend alive.” Does it mean more than that? Then say, “Held by the spell, MC watched, frustrated and helpless, while Villain skinned Friend alive.” Lousy example, but you can see how little meaning w.a. has.

A warning about “As” in general: While actions may be simultaneous, they can also have causative relationships, and/or might not have the same duration. I’ve seen a lot of as-linked phrases that implied a role reversal. “The specters crossed the room as the candle flickered once” does not give the same picture as “The candle flickered once as the specters crossed the room“. The first example is totally cockeyed; it says that the spectral parade lasted only as long as the brief flicker of the candle. I’ve seen this done over and over by writers with a bad as-habit.