Why do I read the NY Times Anyway....

dabrooks@nytimes.com
Re: Mosh Pit Meets Sandbox
Dear Mr. Brooks.

Your latest column on the perils of parents in Park Slope dressing their children in ways that you don't find appropriate reminds me of a joke I once heard.

A father is in the park watching his kids as they run around playing in the dirt. An old man on the bench yells at him, "Hey, do you really think you should be letting your kids run around like a bunch of animals. You should try to instill a little discipline in them, otherwise where do you think they'll end up in life?"
The father turns to him, "I don't know, my parents raised five children and they've all been very successful."
"Oh, and did they let you all run around wildly and do whatever they pleased."
"Well, more importantly, they us them a valuable lesson."
"Which was?"
"To mind your own fucking business."


Best,

VJ

They Write Back

I got a reply from my emial to the defense department on how to best combat people emboldening our enemies , but frankly I'm a little disappointed. If the Secretary of Defense has the authority to arbitrarily decide that people are enemies of the state, haul them off to secret prisons and torture them, why isn't he more enthusiastic to use it? And why can't I get in on the racket?

This is the sort of shit that really emboldens the enemy.

Subject
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Internal Enemies in the Global War on Terror.


Discussion Thread
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Response (Directorate for Public Inquiry and Analysis) - 02/15/2007 12:14 PM
Dear Mr. Jones,

We thank you for your interest in the information provided on the Defense website. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support to the U.S. Armed Forces.

FBI operations investigates terrorist and foreign intelligence threats and enforce the criminal laws of the United States."

Please report any suspected terrorist activity directly to the FBI: http://www.fbi.gov/hq.htm.

We hope this information is helpful. Please continue to visit the Defense website for the latest information on the Global War on Terrorism.

Sincerely

Auto-Response - 01/30/2007 10:07 PM
Title: Global War on Terrorism - First 100 Days

Porntacular

I was unemployed when last we invaded a middle eastern country starting with "Ira", so I was able to watch 24/7 news coverage of it for days at a time. I found that, as pornography, it was pretty good. I was happy when I came across Watching Babylon: The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture by Nicholas Mirzoeff, he made the same connection that was so obvious to me, between war coverage and pornography (He relied on Foucault and Lacan references to make his point, whereas I backed my argument up more with indecipherable profanity). All those explosions lighting up my TV screen are glorified cumshots.

Sure.

And thats why I had no real use for all the commentary. I recall seeing a porn flic in China, which had actually done a pretty good job of translating the "dialogue" and i had to wonder why? Paying attention to that is even less credible than reading Hustler for the articles.

And I take essentially the same attitude towards what passes for reporting.

Somewhere towards the second day of shock and awe I discovered that if I just put the TV on mute and put a selection of Iron Maden and early Black Sabbath in the stereo on shuffle you got exactly the same information content as the "commentary", but it meshed with the visuals so much better.

Yes, hair metal is to war porn as fuzz guitar funk is to the real thing.

So, that's my question to you. What will your soundtrack to the invasion of Iran be?
my top 5 are:

1. Black Sabbath (first 5 albums)
2. Metallica (through Master of Puppets)
3. Iron Maden
4. Atari Teenage Riot
5. Zen Guerilla (Tom Jones singing for a cross between AC/DC and MC5- nuff said)

Thoughts?

If it looks like a duck

From today's New York Times:
"Speaking at a news conference in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Bush dismissed as “preposterous” the contention by some skeptics that the United States was drawing unwarranted conclusions about Iran’s role."

Well, excuse us if we don't take your every word (or, in this case, intelligence report) as gospel, Mr. Weapons of Mass Destruction! Jesus. I wish I had a stunning insight or new observation, or just that it didn't keep astonishing me, but it does: the insane, sociopathic arrogance of these people astonishes me. Still.

Insomnia

It's 5:30 in the morning and I've barely slept a wink. I think it has something to do with the 12 ounce hunk of medium rare cow I ate last night at the steakhouse to celebrate my mother's birthday. I'm not a vegetarian of any sort, but it has been a long time since I've put that much animal in my belly. I thought I would sleep like a baby with all that meat in my stomach, but I guess that fucker still had some life in it, or maybe all of the hormones and steroids they inject in cows wasn't completely cooked out and I'm pumped up on a steroid steak. Maybe I should go to the gym and try to get ripped before it wears off.

Besides the animal inside me, I've also got a lot of anxiety centered around finding a job and paying my bills now that I've broken away from my government job.

I spent a lot of my day yesterday frantically trying to cram some business Chinese for a telephone interview later today. I'm excited about any job that will give me a chance to get back to China for a quick visit.

Other than my own problems, I've got no comment about the world at large.

In Which I feel Vulnerable

The building that I work in is an odd confluence of widely different populations. Its something that I notice most often in the elevators. There is an organization that works with severely mentally and developmentally handicapped people, the board of elections, and my organization - which works with ex-offenders. I will frequently find myself staring my day sandwiched between thugs, bureaucrats and midget retards wondering exactly where I’m going in life, and how I got there.
Some of the developmentally disabled, the aforementioned dwarfs, are short with disproportionally large heads that make them look vaguely demonic. Some staff member made the same connection one Halloween and dressed them up as devils.
They will often square off with you in the elevator, giving you an intense but vacant glare while grunting aggressively. I live in horror of the day a client of ours freshly released from Rikers takes offense with that and attacks.
I ran into one of them in the bathroom yesterday. I had to pee really bad, so while I did notice that the stall to the toilet was open, with someone in it I ignored it and went to the urinal. I’m not in the practice of looking in other guys general direction while in the bathroom because I’m not gay. (Guy code, in the off chance that there’s a female reading this, you wouldn’t understand). But then I noticed that someone was stinking the place up something fierce, so I looked in the mirror and saw one of the midgets. His minder had left him on the toilet, rocking back and forth grunting.
It looked like he was about to charge me. The thought of having to make like a matador flashed through my mind... I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so vulnerable in my life.
I have since looked through Emily Post for some hints of how to handle such a situation in the future, and found her lacking. I just pissed as fast as I could, flushed and ran out the door...

What’s the moral of that story? I haven’t a god damn clue.

Teenage Lobotomy

My high school had a really top notch shop facility. There were several metal lathes, a forge for casting metal, arc welders, and a full mechanics shop. Most of them sat unused, gathering dust as retards like me fumbled around trying to make a cheese board.

There was a special room, where all of the paint, paint thinner and varnish was kept. It had an exhaust fan, to keep the noxious fumes from building up and exploding. Some kids would sneak in, when Mr. Sutter, the shop teacher, was out of the room. They'd pop off the tops of the cans of varnish, turn off the fan and stew in the fumes.

I don't ever recall hearing of any of those kids getting far in life. I never quite understood the instinct to give yourself a chemical lobotomy. Until now, that is. My roommate put a coat of varnish down on the floor of our apartment last night. I woke up with a chemical taste in my mouth, and not a god damn thought in my mind.

Its actually quite beautiful... I just spent the past hour staring at the wall without a thought at all coming through my mind. This is what enlightenment must feel like without, perhaps, the burning sensation in all of my mucus membranes.

Which is all a long way of saying that, maybe you won't be seeing me for a while. I think I'll be staying in for the near future... too many things to bump in to or knock over in the outside world...

Occasionally, pimpin' ain't difficult.

I love advertising. Maybe love is too strong a word. I certainly admire and respect it. I view it as an entity...a living organism. It can be benevolent or it can be evil and deceitful.

However, there is no denying that advertising is important. I doubt people realize just how much our economy is driven by advertising dollars. (No, I'm not going to turn this into a statistics lesson and besides, I'm far too lazy to look up such data. Actually, this is simply a long-winded introduction to a rather simple piece of fluff.)

I now take it upon myself to advertise two products that I have come across over the past weekend (and do so free of charge). I'm not sure if my words will reach anyone other then my fellow contributors to this tiny little corner of the intraweb, but I feel the need to get this out there regardless.

First up, and it relates to a previous post are Thursday Plantation Chewing Sticks. These little dandies are nothing more than fancy flavored toothpicks, but damn do they make your mouth feel clean. Plus, they make you look cool, like Sylvester Stallone in "Cobra" or something like that. According to the package, one of the purposes they serve is to relieve the stress associated with quitting smoking. They help to the point that I think they may be more addictive than cigarettes.

Next, to counter balance the health product, comes a new drug of choice. People that know me know that I'm much more of a beer guy then liquor. That may change. I have been introduced to Amaro Fernet Branca, an Italian liqueur of indescribable charm. I suggest mixing it with cola, not only to mellow the strength, but because the mixture gives your drink a Guinness-like body. Upon first sip, you may think that you're drinking medicine...and you wouldn't be far off. It was developed as a medicinal tonic by monks in the 1700's. However, as you further drain your glass, an inexplicable chemical reaction occurs, making your beverage yummier and yummier. I don't know the science behind it, and frankly I don't care. I just know that I really need a drink.

Oh the Things that I know

My God, every time that I decide to take a break from boycotting cable news, something that has greatly inhanced my general level of sanity, I see something that freaks me out to no end. I'm not sure if this is a sudden development, or if its been slowly growing for a while, but CNN was in full War Pimping mode for the invasion of Iran today. "This Week in War" was full of unsupported allegations about Iranian support for the insurgents.

On its face, that is rather bizarre. Most insurgent attacks on the US are carried out by Sunnis. Iran is backing people who are fighting the Sunnis. Why would they also be backing the Sunnis?
Beyond that, its depressing to see the media falling back into their role as regurgitating what the White House says.

As far as their faith in these allegations, the Administration said that they aren't releasing the evidence because they are afraid that it might be wrong. No shit? They are unsure about the evidence that they don't want anyone else to see and disprove it, but they're more than happy to share the judgments that they make based on it.

But beyond that, I just learned from CNN how to make an improvised explosive devise that can take out an Abrahms tank. All I need is some plastic explosives, a metal pipe, some scrap metal and an arc welder. For the love of God, why do they feel the need to broadcast these facts to the world?

Stupid Answers to Snappy Questions

I am always amazed and delighted when I find scientific answers to questions that you never thought would have one. At one point in my life, for example, I had a crippling addiction to 24/7 cable news networks. I would surf through MSNBC, CNN and, when I felt like slumming, FOX, while surfing through blogs and newspapers on the internet. This, for obvious reasons, led me to constantly wonder - mostly to myself, but sometimes aloud- why is everyone so fucking stupid?

I was amazed when I found out the answer. I wasn’t looking, I was trying to figure out cybernetics. I ultimately realized that was futile - I like the theory but cant stomach the math. But reading about it, I learned that communication consists of messages. Messages are not the transference of information between to people. Every message has a certain probability of successfully transferring information. The more information in a message, the lower the probability of it being successfully transmitted.

There you go. Why is there poverty in America, you ask? You could stand on one street corner and give the most nuanced and insightful analysis of why there is poverty in America there is. Stand on a street corner and explain it to people as they pass by. If, on the opposite corner, someone is shouting “People are poor because they’re lazy,” why is going to reach an audience?

Its not that people are stupid, per se. It’s the cost of doing business in a world governed by entropy.

I thought of that last night as I was at a family gathering. My uncle was spouting off some racist nonsense. Not the kind that burns crosses, or yells racial slurs. The more pernicious racism that is acceptable in polite company over casual conversation.

He said that he feels that Black culture is pathological, which is why there is such a high crime rate, such high unemployment, so many unwed mothers irresponsible fathers in the Black community. I asked him what culture was, how it is that culture is created, passed on, and how it causes people to act.

He did answer.

I was about to suggest that culture was a system of symbols, meanings, and practices that are embedded in historically constructed networks of power. I was going to say that we internalize cultural values and meanings into an internalized subjective principle that spontaneously generates culturally meaningful actions. I was going to say that the culture of a given segment of society isn’t a discrete entity among entities placed next to each other. Rather, they exist in a network - each part of which reflects on the nature of the whole. Thus, a pathology in any subculture is merely the expression of the pathology of the wider system.

I decided not to get in to it. Why bring up post-structuralist theory in mixed company?

And besides, I suspect that a lot of casual conversations about why inequality exist isn’t there to find out an acutal answer. It exists to assure us that it is rational, not accidental and certainly not due to any viciousness that is deeply ingrained in society.

Meh.

Deeper into the Depraved

Listpic is a really neat site - it allows you to browse through craigslis by viewing all of the pictures posted in the given category. So, I decided to look through the personals section, viewing all categories to get a cross section of how people across the spectrum choose to represent themselves to others. That link is by no means work safe, and if you are fragile of mind it will leave you twisted.
It is definitely a data point, and there are clear patterns that jump off the screen. Mostly in the form of cocks. Lots and lots of cocks. Second to pictures of guys showing off their schlongs for the world to see, are guys showing pictures of their muscles. There are more dick picks than pictures of women in any context. Most of the pics of girls showing their tits are actually trannies.
I'm not all that sure that I want to draw any conclusions from it, but I suspect that somewhere in there is contained the battle of the sexes.

Cut the cord

The paperwork has gone through. As of 1 March 2007, I will be discharged from the USAF. Starting next week sometime, I'll be on terminal leave. For people that know me well, you can imagine how relieved I am to be getting out.

On the other hand, I'm a little nervous about not getting to nurse from the government's tit any longer. The pay wasn't bad, and the benefits are rarely matched in the civilian world.

Recently I've begun looking for new jobs. Although I'm not going to apply to these positions, having military experience and a security clearance gives me a leg up for positions in organizations such as the CIA,the DIA or the FBI. Awesome. For reasons far too many to list here, there is no way in hell I will apply to any of these organizations. I'm tired of working with Republicans. I'm also tired of having my personal conduct outside of work regulated.

I'm a little depressed that I'll probably make much less money in whatever job I get outside of the federal sector. Seems like you're either a player, some body's bitch, a military officer, or federal spy. Since I'm not a player, quit my job as an officer, and have rejected other federal agencies, looks like I'm going to be a bitch and hope I can get health insurance.

The government has gotten huge in the last 7 years. I remember back when I first went to China in 1996. Capitalism was taking off but much of the previous structures were still in place, all of the well to do people in the society were members of the Communist Party and/or working for the government. It would be a gross over simplification to compare us to China in the 1990's however, the fact that I know loads of people who want to work for the government and stay in the military because of the job security and benefits is pretty depressing. Their patriotism is fueled by how well Uncle Sam takes care of them. Let's face it, unless you do something illegal you're not going to get fired from the Army right now. You might not get fired even if you do something illegal.

If money, benefits, and job security were my only motivations in seeking employment, I would be crazy to get out of the Air Force now. Instead I would highly consider staying in for 16 more years, and then retire at 46 and begin receiving my pension immediately for the rest of my life and also retain my health care benefits. Then I would get a much more lucrative job in the defense industrial complex for a company like Lockheed Martin or Haliburton which is run by former military members. But I might not even have to stay in the Air Force until retirement. If I would have played my cards better I could probably jump into a lucrative job in the defense industry right now. Unfortunately, they can see through me. They know I'm not really one of them and I probably couldn't get hired. Although six figures would be pretty sweet.

I know my outlook seems a little narrow, and there are lots of ways to make money in America outside of the government and defense industry. My point of view is skewed because my own job experience leaves me most qualified for positions in the government. My perspective is further skewed by the location from which I'm writing: San Antonio, Texas. The backbone of this city's economy is three military bases and the defense contractors located nearby to support them. Furthermore, I don't have the mindset to become an investment banker, real estate mogul, engineer, or dotcom CEO. My point is that it's possible to do better financially with a career in the military than many other industries. I don't think it was like that 10 years ago, but I'm no economist just a job seeker.

I've been had.

I realize that most of the stuff you hear/see on the internet needs to be taken with a HUGE grain of salt, but the bride and her hair problems had me fooled. Good for them. Those are some serious acting chops!

Full Story

This put a smile on my face.

I'm not sure how much people are aware of the Adult Swim debacle, but I found it quite funny.

Apparently, in an effort to promote one of their top shows, Cartoon Network's adult swim placed LED light displays of characters from "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" in conspicuous locations throughout several cities in the US. Boston didn't take kindly to it.

That's right. Major thoroughfares were shut down and bomb squad technicians brought in to dismantle what is essentially a Lite Brite.

But wait! It gets better! The promotional materials also scared some in the media!
The displays, featuring the Mooninites characters making "obscene gestures" proved too much for some.