Thursday, January 17, 2008

Baldness

I'm one of those follicaly challenged people who is too cheap and chemical phobic to use Rogain. So, in addition to my other disgusting physical defects, I'm stuck bald.

I bashed my head yesterday and now have a small cut prominent on my head.

It occured to me this morning that baldness occurs at proper ages for it to be helpful!

When one is born, the head is bald so that parents can immediately notice injuries to it.
Then, when one is old enough that they should be able to at least notify the proper people of a cranial injury, the head is covered in hair so that the injury will not clearly show and cause embarassment.
Finally, when one is old enough that mental faculties begin to regress towards the first stage, baldness returns so that the offspring or hopefully still lucid spouse will notice.

Baldness is therefore just a self perservation mechanism. Note, that this makes it likely that older people with a full head of hair are probably not as important to Mother Nature.

Of course, the fact that I began my torturous slide into baldness in my 30's could be some cause for concern.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Now it's Fun!

As I mentioned before, I am pretty confused as to my vote this election. It's been interesting but not fun.

Ah, but now it's becoming a blast.

Bill & Hillary Clinton and associates have been accused of making disparaging comments about Obama, Martin Luther King, and perhaps blacks in general.
In case you haven't heard, here's a an article about it, from the UK:
Times on Line, UK, Hillary Gaffe.

I posted the following as a comment on a friend's blog, teasing him about his assertion that he unhappily plans to vote for Hillary as the least sucky of the Dem candidates:

So, C.S. is you still gwan vote fo dat ho now dat it come out dat dem Clintons is a buncha racist mofo's? At de leas, dey is dissin' black folk!

Bwah hah hah hah hah! The Clintonistas are are (wrongfully I admit) being attacked by the very people they intended to exploit to get votes! They're going up against a black guy instead of just a bunch of rich suits and they don't know whether to shit or wind their watches!

This is great! As a conservative, I am absolutely loving this. Their words are being twisted and misinterpreted in exactly the same way that they and other Dems have done to attack Republicans for decades!
"The shoe is on the other foot."

NOW, I am loving this election.


Hah! Today I read this article.

Oh, stop, stop, this is too rich, I can't take much more of this, I'll bust my sides laughing!
Bill "Slick Willy" Clinton, America's first black president, groveling, kowtowing, twisting like a pretzel trying to explain himself and associates to the black community!

Oh the infamy! Trent Lott, Don Imus, and now, Bill Clinton.
I'll bet he's way pissed that Chris Dodd got away with a supposedly nasty racist comment scott free.
Of course, Bill will also emerge without a scratch. He's smarter than his evil racist predecessors, his Teflon is as strong as ever, and his buddies in the news media will eventually rally to his side if they haven't started already.
Hillary on the other hand? Well, who knows?

Don't care. For the short time this will go on I'm going to enjoy it.
Then everything will be back to normal and I can hear all about what a bunch of greedy, stupid, racist, religious fanatics Republicans are.

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Candidate Info

I'll be 50 this year, I voted every election since I turned 18, and only once was I ever unsure about who was the best candidate. That time, I voted for Perot instead of the Republican. Even the Republican primaries were pretty clear, and I never gave a rat's ass about the Democrat primaries.

This is the most interesting primary I've ever seen, since this time I just don't know who to vote for or even consider. Which Republican candidate is best? Do I even like ANY of them? The Republicans have not been doing their jobs for the last several years and I'm pretty disgusted with the party overall. And the Democrats aren't looking all that bad this time around. I think in the Presidential election, I may just vote Libertarian, but I really do want to vote in the primaries (in CT, you can't vote the primaries if you are an independent, that's the only reason I have stayed registered as a Republican).

To help myself out, I have bookmarked the Issues section of each candidate's website, along with the Libertarian's and a general ratings site. I haven't read all of them yet. I deleted Biden's and Dodd's since they dropped out. Starts with Republicans:

Huckabee

Romney

McCain

Paul

Clinton

Edwards

Obama

Kucinich


Libertarian Party


Washington Post candidate review

Of course, this is just their talk, I guess I'll have to try and look at what they've actually DONE too.

The one that surprised me was Huckabee. I viewed him as an over the top, bible thumpin' hillbilly who would pardon Son of Sam if a preacher told him to, but damned if he didn't have one of the clearest, most concise, straightforward set of positions! I'm really going to have to give him another look, even though I can't stand the thought of such an ugly fat ass family in the white house.

Hope this list of links helps some other confused soul out there.

Update: 01-28-08:
I've removed a few more who've dropped out and made the links into actual links.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Bratz vs Barbie

Right off, I hate Bratz dolls. I mean I freaking detest them. Despite that, I never forbid my daughters from playing with them. Didn't matter, as they liked Barbies more, though my oldest was into dolls before Bratz got popular.
I myself never bought them, but I never bothered with others.
Last I heard, Bratz had almost 50 percent of the doll market, and had just about caught up with Barbie. I suspect that they have now surpassed Barbie.

Being a parent, this got me thinking about the differences between the worlds of Barbie and Bratz:

Feminists have hated Barbie for decades, and all the Stienems and Dworkins of this poor world loudly proclaimed that she was partly responsible for all the troubles of American girls. "Ban Barbie" they cried.

OK, let's suppose for the sake of this rant that you buy into the feminist argument that little girls are so intellectually and emotionally vapid that they will be scarred for life because they can't get themselves to look like Barbie. This despite the fact that it's generally known and understood that no human being can be built like that without major surgery.
Let's suppose that all little girls should have been playing with the Happy to be Me dolls to protect them. Those were a flop, so I guess the feminists just didn't fight hard enough.

And now Barbie is being replaced by the Bratz dolls. Maybe I'm out of touch, but I haven't heard any screaming about these from the feminists outside of some blogs, so I have to assume that, overall, they have no problem with these dolls. I guess feminism's third wave is real.

In my humble, male, old fart opinion, the Bratz are mutant hookers with currently stylish clothes and cool cars. The little wretches have to smoke crack because they don't have noses to snort coke with.
They do look like they're high. They look furtive and mean.

So let me get this all straight.

Barbie was horrible because she had an unattainably perfect body. OK, got it.
There were astronaut Barbies, and doctors, nurses, veterinarians, and so on. Barbie games had her rescuing lost and hurt animals, skiing, riding horses, and of course doing her hair and such. She had a nice smile and a positive can do attitude. Her movies reflected all this too.
But that's all materialistic and shallow I'm told.

Bratz do exactly NOTHING except endlessly shop for clothes.
That's it, pretty much.

Well, I must say that if little girls use dolls as role models, as feminists think they do, then Bratz are a hell of a lot easier to aspire to!
Barbie doctor? Dude, that takes work, ya gotta study for, like, hours y'know.
Why study or work when any girl can just hang out at the mall, charge a few bucks for sex with old pervs and pull in (pun intended) enough cash to buy some really stylish new designer clothes? Probably have enough left over for booze, drugs, etc. too.
I guess that must not considered shallow or materialistic.

So, it seems to me that feminists believe that unnaturally attractive, professional, positive attitude dolls are an abomination against all of women kind, but just plain unnatural, negative attitude, slacker dolls are swell.

In "researching" this for all of 10 minutes, I did come across a whole lot of blogs and forums with individuals complaining about Bratz. But nothing in the way of news articles. I remember reading about the horrors of Barbie in newspapers and magazines ad nauseum in the 80's and 90's. It's a huge difference.

Because of the resounding silence on the part of feminist leaders (perhaps there are no more? Perhaps feminism is dead as a movement since women have achieved so much that organizations and leaders are no longer necessary?), I can only conclude that Bratz represent the ideal of today's concept of feminism, the so called "third wave."

Well, I hope you like where you've ended up ladies.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Media Filter

I find this election the most interesting ever, and I may even post a few things on it.
Therefore, I figure I should mention how I filter the news (we all filter news, we are all biased, those that say they are not are the worst).

First off, I believe that there are 3 laws of news that all mainstream media follow, rather like Asimov's 3 laws of robotics:

1. "Sell Product." This means attracting eyeballs and ears. Get people to listen, watch , or read your news any way you can. Decency, accuracy, objectivity, and intelligence be damned.

2. "Promote the Democrat party and liberals, but denigrate the Republicans and Conservatives." The American people, and indeed the world, must be made to love and admire the Democrats and hate the Republicans. Were it not for the need of profit, this would be law number 1. So, Democrats and liberals are only made to look bad if law 1 requires it (such as the coverage of Slick Willie's sexual peccadilloes).
BTW, Fox News follows this second law too, only in reverse.

3. "Inform the public." This is way down in the order importance. Laws 1 and 2 are in constant conflict and the source of much agonizing, with law 2 triumphing often as not.
Law 3 is an afterthought.

OK, so generally it goes like this:

If there is news about a Republican/Conservative doing something wrong, the actual transgression was only half as bad as it is reported to be, and pretty much all evidence of wrong doing is reported at length.

If there is news about a Democrat/liberal doing something wrong, the actual transgression was at least twice as bad as reported, and much detail is left out.

Again, Fox does this in reverse.

Well that's how I view the news. So now you have some understanding of my world view.

Like that means something.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Free Speech Still Alive, kind of

Yeeeeeha! Don Imus is back on the air!
Mark your calendars, December 3 2007 from 6am to 10am on WABC, the same channel that brings us Rush, Levin, Hannity, etc.

Now I had quit listening to Imus years ago, as he just didn't seem very funny anymore. He spent most of his time bitching like any grouchy old fart. Hell if I wanted to hear how everyone in the world is "tedious" I could hang out at a retirement home.

But when Sharpton and Jackson used him as a vehicle to put themselves back in the spotlight and reaffirm their positions as leaders of the black community, getting him fired in the process, I was mighty upset.

I will listen to Imus now on my drive into work. I don't care if he's funny or not. I don't care if he just sits there and makes rude noises and drools. I'm listening to him simply because I'm glad those asshats didn't win completely.

Oh, and I'm going to really enjoy listening to and reading all the whining, like this:

LA Times Whine

Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

And again I say:

Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!