Something Inspired Someone Else Said

"Then, knees touching, neck muscles relaxing, brow drying in the cold dry air, we should drink. Certain things were put upon this earth for our enjoyment, and it’s wasteful and wicked to condemn them," -Barbara Holland, "in praise of the happy hour, the darkened bar, and the winding down of the day".

The New Yorker article I took the quote from begins thusly:

A few weeks ago, the headline of an obituary in the Times caught my eye: “Barbara Holland, Defender of Small Vices, Dies at 77.” A “defender of small vices”—what a fine title by which to be remembered, the kind of informal, appointed job that you didn’t know exists but then seems essential once you do.

I never knew Ms. Holland, nor did I even know of her before today, and although we were divided by forty years and a vast swath of the United States I already consider her a kindred spirit. In Endangered Pleasures I think I may have just found the next submission for my book club.

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I Burnt A Copy Of The Quran

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how we do that.

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American Power And American Taliban

I'm not planning on reading Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas' new book "American Taliban" for two reasons: 1) it's apparently mostly filled with extreme rhetoric from the political left that's tailored to reinforce and stoke liberal and progressive hatred by pointing out the worst behaviour currently emanating from the political right and I'm already well-versed in that subject, and 2) being well-versed in the worst behaviour currently emanating from the political right I can definitively say that it's nowhere near as bad as that currently emanating from the Taliban and other terrorist organizations. Moulitsas is merely taking advantage of the extremely partisan nature of American politics today by making outlandish claims combined with a controversial title in order to sell as many copies of his book as possible. His rhetoric no more represents the views of the majority on the left than do his claims represent the actions of the majority on the right, and only an extraordinarily bitter partisan hack would think otherwise.

Speaking of extraordinarily bitter partisan hacks, my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power seems to agree with me on this point in his review of the book:

It's not scholarly. In fact, there are no footnotes to document the majority of the outrageous claims offered. What's important to note is Moulitsas' tactic of finding the most out-of-the-mainstream personalities and foisting these off as mainstream conservatives. It's a smear-by-numbers approach that at times pulls in top Republicans like Sarah Palin, etc., adds a couple of the more colorful quotes from said personalities, and voilà! You're got the modern conservative movement 100 percent equivalent to the medieval barbarian Taliban, REAL TERRORISTS who cut off noses of Afghan women and behead apostates from the Islamist creed, and not to mention Americans such as Daniel Pearl. It's absurd, of course.

Of course. The political right in America is not nearly as dangerous or brutal as terrorist groups like the Taliban and making the blanket claim that one half of the political spectrum is so only makes Moulitsas look like a partisan fool. Now some of you are probably asking, "But James, Don has proven himself to be a partisan fool innumerable times in the past: how is it possible that he's suddenly become a rational thinker as it applies to this subject?" And the inevitable answer to that question is: it isn't. Because after unequivocally declaring how absurd Moulitsas is for claiming that the American right is in league with the Taliban and America's other enemies, in the exact same post, he writes the following in response to another blogger's more positive characterization of Moulitsas' book:

No, Digby, American Taliban's whole point is that the American religious right is perfectly indistinguishable from the Taliban of South Asia --- and the "American Taliban" is the bigger threat to the U.S. than global jihad. Folks really need to read this book and quit lying about what is or isn't said there. Digby is right up there with Markos Moulitsas as a crazed leftist demonologist who wants a revolution to topple the traditional bases of American politics, if not the constitutional regime itself. Don't be fooled by these people. THEY ARE ALLIED with the Taliban, al Qaeda, and global jihad to destroy American freedom. It's plain as day. I write about it all the time.

You see, according to Don, definitively declaring that the political right is in league with terrorists and wants to destroy America is completely absurd. Outrageous accusations like that only divide Americans and distract us from the very real threat we face from international terrorism. It should be obvious to any sane individual that it's the political left that's in league with terrorists and wants to destroy America. Duh! All kidding aside, this is what I'm talking about when I say that certain people and their opinions are not to be taken seriously. Now some of you are probably also asking, "But James, if Don isn't to be taken seriously why do you read his blog and post about the things he writes?" Again, two reasons: 1) his fail is just too entertaining, and 2) irony is like a drug to me. And if irony were a drug, Don would sell it by the gram.

This Post Now Has A Title

Apologies for the lack of posting lately, a lot of things have been piling up. I'm happy to say that my NFL fantasy draft went fairly well this morning (even got a few Dallas Cowboys on my team) and my book club meeting earlier this evening was all fundamentalist Mormonism, sushi and martinis; good times and a great combination. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Something Wise Someone Else Said

"Write drunk, edit sober," -Ernest Hemingway.

I do enjoy writing much more than I do editing. Salut, Papa.

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Picture Of The Day

I was looking in the Fiction section but this does make more sense.

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Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Yes, it's a real book. It actually sounds like kind of an interesting read, written around the actual events of our sixteenth president's life, but I think that it's also evidence that the current popular fixation on all things vampiric might be approaching its zenith. And if it eventually becomes a movie I wouldn't expect to see crowds of screaming Twihards at the premiere either. Here's the advertisement for the book:


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Why Men Shouldn't Write Advice Columns

Sorry, Sweetheart. Fuel pumps are a bitch.

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Kirk Cameron Celebrates Darwin Anniversary

I guess I'd consider doing this too if my crazy religious rantings couldn't stand up on their own merits:

Kirk Cameron, best known for his role in the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains, now spends much of his time advocating for far-right Christian evangelical causes.

In a video posted recently to YouTube, Cameron lays out a plan to subvert 'Darwin Day' on November 22, 2009 -- a date marking the 150th anniversary of the publishing of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species." Cameron says that he and like-minded activists plan to deliver 50,000 copies of an altered version of Darwin's book to students at dozens of U.S. universities.

Cameron explains that this "very special" edition of the "Origin of Species" will include an introduction explaining "Adolf Hitler's undeniable connection" to the theory of evolution, and highlighting "Darwin's racism" and "his disdain for women." Cameron's edition also exposes the "many hoaxes" of evolutionary theory, while presenting a "balanced view of Creationism." (There's a pdf of this introduction here.)

They're able to do this because Darwin's book was written so long ago that it's now in the public domain. I'd say the best thing to do here would be to get one of their free books, tear out the first fifty pages and give a brand new copy of "Origin of Species" to a loved one. You can watch Cameron talking up his plan and hear about how oppressed Christians are in a country where over seventy five percent of the population is Christian here.

If You Printed The Entire Internet...

I love to read but this is a bit daunting...

I Finally Completely Unplug For 72 Hours...

As sad as this may be to admit, these next three days I'll be spending camping in Sequoia National Park will be the longest I've gone yet without Internet access since Brain Rage went live back in February of 2008. True, I've taken various vacations during which I've had several days off from actively blogging but this will be the longest I've gone without at least periodically checking in and monitoring the comment sections to some extent.

So as always I've loaded up a multitude of post-dated posts to be liberally dispensed during my absence and I've even included a jaw-dropping confession to be put up if I fail to return within 24 hours of my original plan (I assume that this will happen as the result of my untimely death either from evisceration by a rabid chipmunk or complete liver failure because yes, we're taking up a significant amount of distilled spirits). I would also like to encourage as many comments between regular readers absent my ever-witty rejoinders as possible. In addition, please feel free to talk as much shit about me while I'm gone as you wish but also know that upon my return I'll be going full-Big Brother on all your Winston Smith-asses.

So adios, Brain Ragers! Keep an eye on the place while I'm gone and if you can, try to pick up a bit around here. The bon mots are seriously starting to pile up. Adieu.

Something Stupid Someone Else Said

"Sarah Palin loves God. God loves Sarah Palin. And that is why they hate her...and Him. And why she -- and He -- will be back.

[Palin said] the growing of government "outrageously" by President Obama is "immoral." She deliberately chose a God word that suggests evil.... [I]t is evil because it is accompanied by crushing debt that will, ultimately, devour large chunks of individual income, stimulate runaway regulation that will rob us of freedom, and establish involuntary servitude as measured in hours worked to support government. And most of this will fall on future generations; in other words, unborn children. Sarah Palin is concerned about unborn children -- another God thing. Fancy that," - Stuart Schwartz, American Thinker.

OK, OK, fine. I'll finally admit it: I hate Sarah Palin. I hate her because she didn't attend an Ivy League college and because she doesn't go to the right inside the beltway cocktail parties and because she's from a small town. I hate her because she's a strong, independent female and because she supports capitalism and because she embodies traditional American values. I hate her because she didn't abort her Down Syndrome baby and because she likes hockey and because she doesn't wear pantsuits. Oh yeah, and God too. Man, do I hate that guy because...um...because he didn't include superpowers in my DNA, I guess. I want my bone claws, dude!

Sounds pretty fucking stupid when you string all of these desperate right-wing talking points together just to explain why we "hate her", doesn't it? And did I not get that memo? "...He -- will be back." Did God resign because of the vicious liberal media onslaught as well? Are we going to see Him doing interviews with CBS whilst wearing a massive pair of waders, hooking blue whales and landing them on the beach without a care in the world because St. Peter took over running the universe for the rest of His term? And all while also insisting that He too is not a quitter just because He quit? "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last... Well OK, I suppose I'm not technically gonna be Omega anymore. I guess I'm more Omicron or Pi now. No wait, I'm staying on until the end of July so I'm gonna say Rho. Yeah, I am definitely Alpha and Rho. Continue to fear me, bitches! Hey Todd, can we ride snowmachines now?"

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The 10 Most Disturbing Books Of All Time

Pop Crunch assembles the list with The Turner Diaries at #2:

The Turner Diaries is a racist, antisemitic novel written by William Luther Pierce, the crazy ass former leader of the white Nationalist organization “National Alliance”. It depicts a racist’s wet dream consisting of a violent revolution in the United States that leads to the overthrow of the US government and the extermination of all non-whites and Jewish people. To Pierce, Hitler’s problem was clearly that he didn’t go far enough. The rest of the plot is too crazy to even go into (let’s just say it’s about as well written and realistic as you’d expect a book like this to be), but the book gets bumped up a few notches on our list due to the fact that Timothy McVeigh was a big promoter of the book, and may have used a scene in the book as inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing.

And the not at all scary thing is that this is still being sold at gun shows all over the US. Sleep tight!

This is one of the five books on the list that I've read myself (Cormac McCarthy's The Road was particularly depressing) and this description leaves out most of the worst of it (one of the major plot points was that the government was rounding up guns from all of the good, God fearing white people while installing the dirty, uneducated black people into positions of authority). I can't remember if the president of the United States was black in the book or not but regardless, a lot of the hate-filled rhetoric and fear-mongering being spewed forth by the right-wing blogs and talk radio lately is starting to sound eerily familiar.

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[Update: Just came across a trailer for The Road. It doesn't look any cheerier than the book:
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The Science Of Little Red Riding Hood

One of the coolest versions of this fairy tale I've ever seen:

Finishing Timequake

No time for any more blogging today. I need to finish reading Timequake, written by one of my absolute favorite authors Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., before my book club meeting tonight. Also need to clean up my place and buy some wine before everyone arrives this evening so I'll talk to you again tomorrow. If I have time I'll try to write up a review of the book to post here soon.

Brain Rage Is One Year Old Today

Crap, I almost forgot about it. My Sitemeter counter went live on leap day last year but I actually put up this inaugural post one year ago today. Wow. I could probably have written an entire novel with all the time I've spent working on this site but I have a feeling that the same handful of people would still be the only ones who would read it. Thanks again to everyone who wastes time here (and no, I didn't have a cake made; it's just been altered digitally).

Wordle

Yet another online time waster:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

The image above was made using my post-election essay about Barack Obama's historic presidential run; I'm pleasantly surprised that I didn't use the word "change" more often. You can click on the image to enlarge.

Picture Of The Day

From National Geographic:

Flaring the gills that give the species its name, a frilled shark swims at Japan's Awashima Marine Park on Sunday, January 21, 2007. Sightings of living frilled sharks are rare, because the fish generally remain thousands of feet beneath the water's surface.

Spotted by a fisher on January 21, this 5.3-foot (160-centimeter) shark was transferred to the marine park, where it was placed in a seawater pool.

"We think it may have come to the surface because it was sick, or else it was weakened because it was in shallow waters," a park official told the Reuters news service. But the truth may never be known, since the "living fossil" died hours after it was caught.

Is it just me or does this thing remind you of Falkor the luckdragon?

Have Turkey - Will Travel

I'm winging my way to Seattle, WA today to visit my friends Brent and Joanne and their daughter Anna (previously featured here) for the Thanksgiving weekend. I'm going to try to post a few times over the holidays but don't expect too much action on that front; I'm leaving my laptop at home since it doesn't travel well and I still need to focus on reading "Killing Pablo" for my book club meeting on Sunday. I'm out, bitches.

Palin Asks About Banning Books

Check out this news story about Sarah Palin and the local library when she was mayor of Wasilla, AK. It's already become obvious that this list of books is fake and I'm not suggesting that it's not but you have to ask yourself: why inquire about how to ban books in the first place unless you were at least considering the idea? The more I find out about Palin the less I want her in line for the presidency, and weeks after being chosen by McCain as his running mate she still hasn't spoken to the press despite the McCain campaign's whining that asking serious questions of her is tantamount to character assassination; if she's so qualified and such a great candidate, why would they do this? My guess: she's not and they know it:

"Put it another way: The Iraq war was a great idea on paper. I know. I bought it. So is Sarah Palin. This time, I'm waiting to see what the reality - not the concept - is." -Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish