Is there anything less arousing than "Girls Gone Wild?"

If a Republican politican is caught in a sex scandal, it will be homosexual.

If a Democratic politician is caught in a sex scandal, it will be heterosexual.

If a Republican politician complains about sexual deviancy, homosexuality will make the list.

If a Democratic politician complains about sexual deviancy, homosexuality will not make the list.


Discuss.

There is a band called Falconer. They're from somewhere cold and snowy, but they're pretty cool. They manage to rock out while being nerdier than you can imagine.

But I can't listen to them without thinking about this Faloncer.

A conundrum.

In other music news, The Sword released their second album, Gods of the Earth, a week ago. It's on iTunes. What are you waiting for?

Damn you. Damn you all to hell.

So... I went to the optometrist today. She put some drops in my eyes that numbed them and then dilated them. Everything's gone blurry and I can't read words on paper, though the screen is better (albeit still fuzzy). So if I make spelling errors, forgive me.

That being said, I've seen a meme on today from... some people on my friends list whose names are not in focus... saying that I should post and tell you guys that you're free, for one post only, to ask me to write about subjects I don't normally write about. Since I have pontificated long on divers topics I doubt there is anything new under the sun, but feel free to ask. I don't promise I'll answer, but there it is.

I stole this from matrexius and raven_oreilly. The trick is to guess which movie the quote came from without resorting to cheating. If you cheat, I'll know, and personally hunt you down and kick you in the gooch.

( We've got movie sign!!! )

Link: The Metaphysician Test written by Jaylhomme on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test View My Profile(Jaylhomme)

All the best philosophers have awesome facial hair. Discuss.

Don't marry dem debil Merikan women! They will cheat on you, take your hard-earned munny, and then kill yer favorite dog! Marry one a dem furrin womenz instead!

Also,

he will not only be helping you assert your right to sexual fulfillment despite your mother's disapproval, HB, but helping you deconstruct a patriarchal heteronormative discourse that reifies female purity and holds up female undergarments as moral status markers.

Text behind the link may not be safe for work

I think we're missing the true meaning of the Iowa primary tonight -- Ron Paul was soundly thrashed.

We can only hope that this will take some of the self-righteous wind out of the puffed-up Libertarian sails of Paultards.

So, I watched a bit of "SiCKO" earlier tonight. I like Michael Moore. I don't know what it is, but I think he makes interesting and effective films. Sure, it's a tad overdramatic, and you can tell he's not going for statistical accuracy or real evidentiary standards with his anecdotes, but I'll be damned if he's not very effective in getting his message across.

By the end of it, something had solidified for me, something that had been cooking in the back of my brain for a bit. The for-profit model of society has to go the way of the dinosaur -- buried in the earth by God to trick us into thinking it really existed extinct. The idea that the desire for profit drives innovation is plainly false -- consider that a sizable amount of important research is done at academic institutions. All the desire for profit drives is people to engage in activity principally directed at making money.

In the end, what results is a system where those behaviors that tend to produce more profit (e.g., we create a job whose sole purpose is to find ways to deny people necessary medical procedures because it's good for "the bottom line") are the behaviors that are "rewarded." We don't laud people who make important humanitarian contributions. Well, we might pay lip service to their "tireless work" or whatever, but it's not like we truly appreciate what they do. "It's a nice thing," we say, "but we could never do it! Think of how much money we'd lose!"

And the saddest part is that we really don't have to be wage slaves. Right now, my career choices are limited by where I can actually make enough money to support myself after having spent three years in law school without a job. That's hardly fair. If I weren't beholden to the system in place, I might practice my profession free of the desire to make money, as long as I could ensure that certain basic material needs were met. If it weren't for the desire to have enough money to afford both necessities and luxuries (like, you know, books or a television or a computer) I could feel free taking a job that is vital to the functioning of society.

Instead, if I want to make money as a lawyer, I have to defend those same companies I was complaining about above. I have to go in, with a straight face, and say, "the denial of service was valid because a reasonably prudent person, exercising due care..."

It's crap. And it's crap because of the system. And the system is crap because it rewards greed, avarice, and underhanded, cutthroat paly. This ties back in to my post earlier about the type of people who actively seek power generally being those least suited to the assumption of power. Consider two scenarios -- a baseball team and a large university student government election.

In the first case, the team will generally choose a captain on the basis of a limited set of criteria -- how people perform during games, the ability to inspire good playing in others, etc. The leader is chosen on merit. He or she might not want the position, but will be chosen because he or she is the best suited.

In the second case, the person self-selects. He or she might be doing it for resumé padding, or because it is expected, or any other number of reasons unrelated to performance. And strictly speaking, the demand for proficiency in performance is low. Most political positions call for actually a very small amount of leadership and a good deal of posturing. So we end up with someone whose sole desire is for the office for completely selfish reasons... or even worse, someone who wants the power because they want to abuse it.

My point here is that our current highly individualistic, ultracompetitive system tends to produce leaders and workers who are driven by the desire to dominate and control. In short, our liberal society is geared toward producing corporate totalitarianism as its end product.

This crystallizes something that began to form in my mind last quarter when I was doing an in-depth study of critical crimonology (basically, critical theory applied to the philosophy of criminal law) -- capitalist society has got to go. It's not just a nice idea any more; it is a historical necessity that we do away with this form of society. Communistic society is the only morally defensible way of structuring society, at all.

Oh, and feminism comics for the win.

Read it here.

If you know any fans of fantasy fiction, please forward it on! It's fairly short and can easily be read in one sitting.

PS -- No hate mail, vox_diabolica. I know that you only like stories that include graphic scenes of otherkin mating, but respectable publications tend to veer away from that sort of thing.

"Imagine a Jesus that is a combination of talk show host, investigative reporter, movie producer and comedian--and you begin to discover the brilliance of his communication skills."

From our "I swear to Thor I am not making this up" department comes a press release by an author about how to be like the "greatest communicator who ever lived." No, not Cicero, not Homer, not Socrates nor Plato, not FDR or even myself -- but Jesus. Jesus H. Christ.

I'd like to think that the author is serious, but I cannot. This is like those "Biblical diets." It's a marketing gimmick to sell self-help books to people who buy anything because it's the "Christian" way to do it. I swear if I made a book called, "The Christian's Guide to Carpentry: Work Wood Just Like The Messiah!" I'd put Bob Vila out of business in three days. Or maybe 40 days and 40 nights. Depends on how much startup capital I get.

But seriously! Jesus spoke in riddles and parables, and for two thousand years his fan club has dedicated itself to figuring out just what he meant, with little, if any, agreement! Great communicator my heathen ass.

Just click the link. There are no words. NO WORDS.

The link might not be safe for work or sanity.

At the very least, Wal-Mart has stopped selling them.

However, I'd like to meet the executive who approved these things for sale. Meet him, and punch him.

This is from 99catsaway: The Band Meme

Since I've always wanted a band (with long hair and an appropriately Nordic name), but have chosen the path of pain, this will be the closest I get.

Here's the gig, for those playing along at home: go to Retardopedia and hit the random article button. Do this 17 times total. The first is the name of your band, the second is the name of the album, and the next 15 are songs.

Then grab your axe, learn to wail like me, and then be the second most brutal band on the planet.

Band name: Pritchardia Thurstonii
Album: Spirits

1. Haughton
2. Wayne Bartrim
3. The Journey
4. Shraga Feivel Hager
5. Sampoorna Kranti Express
6. Kankakee, Beaverville and Southern Railroad
7. The Group
8. NGC 5653
9. Maple Grove Elementary School
10. Collegium International
11. Made Beaver
12. Lady and the Tramp II
13. Q-Tee
14. Torsion Spring
15. Poseidonia

---

My God; I sound like a crappy indie band. Guess I better go put on girl's jeans and not be brutal.

Actually, now that I look at them again, I sound like a pretentious post-rock trio who think that atmosphere is a substitute for a good, driving backbeat. Still not brutal though. Unless you're Pelican. Then you can be both brutal and artistic.

We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n.

---

Why does Satan get all the good lines in Paradise Lost? Did Milton not want to go to heaven?

They're what plants crave!.

This is the way the world ends... not with a bang, but with a belch and scratch.

WSJ (yeah, I know) article on the coming tyranny of Vlad the Putin and Hugo Chavez.

From the article:

A second line has it that the Putins and Chávezes of the world owe their popularity to bread-and-circuses tactics: the canny manipulation of the media, their appeal to nationalism and xenophobia, bureaucratic patronage and above all the benefit of having petrodollars to shower on favored constituencies.

Here the argument is that the two men rule by what amounts to an elaborate hoax. Yet that only begs the question of why the hoax is so widely believed. Venezuelans and Russians can travel abroad, and still have considerable (albeit diminishing) access to foreign sources of news and opinion; they can read the anxious op-eds warning of creeping dictatorship.

Replace Putin or Chavez with "Bush" and Venezuelan or Russian with "American" and the sentence is still true.

The more I think about, the more I come to believe that all those who seek power, who actively seek office, do so out of some infirmity in their own character. I've begun to ask myself what kind of person seeks out political power. Why do we reward avarice instead of capability? Does democracy force us to choose not between those best suited by those who hunger for the office the most?

A good leader takes the mantle of leadership when duty compels her to do so; nothing but poor leaders can emerge from those who fight over it like dogs fighting over scraps.