Of course the man is a beyond reprehensible piece of shit who will hopefully fall into his bonfire, but hooray for him for being stupid enough to do the things necessary to speed us towards the ultimate goal of getting the fuck off the planet.
Mr. Jones, 58, a former hotel manager with a red face and a white handlebar mustache, argues that as an American Christian he has a right to burn Islam’s sacred book because “it’s full of lies.” And in another era, he might have been easily ignored, as he was last year when he posted a sign at his church declaring “Islam is of the devil.”
But now the global spotlight has shifted. With the debate in New York putting religious tensions front and center, Mr. Jones has suddenly attracted thousands of fans and critics on Facebook, while around the world he is being presented as a symbol of American anti-Islamic sentiment...
Mr. Jones who seems to spend much of his time inside a dank, dark office with a poster from the movie “Braveheart” and a picture of former President George W. Bush, appears to be largely oblivious to the potential consequences of his plans. Speaking in short sentences with a matter-of-fact drawl, he said that he could not understand why other Christians, including the nation’s largest evangelical association, had called for him to cancel “International Burn a Koran Day..."
He acknowledged that it had brought in at least $1,000 in donations. But he said that the interviews he had done with around 150 news outlets all over the world were useful mainly because they had helped him “send a message to Islam and the pushers of Shariah law: that it is not what we want.”
Mr. Jones said that nothing in particular had set him off. Asked about his knowledge of the Koran, he said plainly: “I have no experience with it whatsoever. I only know what the Bible says.”
Fuck all religions. They are all wrong and stupid. Nothing but old stories and morals, threats to keep in line. All gods are myths. There are no prophets. We have no saviors.
For a while, I was pretty sympathetic to a lot of Crimethinc. stuff. The more I hung around people who are into it and a part of it, the less I was into it. I could never get into most of their writings. It's a lot of super-verbose, dense, dry articles that don't relate in the least to the reality the overwhelming majority of people on this planet face. Which is fine, of course, but please do not position yourself as any type of revolutionary organization, much less one that has the faintest hope of winning favor with anyone outside of a nearly infinitely small group of people who essentially do nothing productive toward actually making a revolution.
I was really into Evasion when it came out. I related to a lot of it - the hardcore, the veganism, the shoplifting, the dumpstering bagels. Some of it was a bit much (positing anything related in the book as revolutionary outside of a selfish dimension, a tendency to over-romanticize some of his experiences), and I realized it was kind of a "best of" account of the guy's life. Truth be told, I likely wouldn't have dug it nearly so much were the guy not vegan and edge. But that's not a Crimethinc. publication. They just published it. Someone who had nothing to do with them wrote it.
Crimethinc. advocates a lot of ridiculous "lifestyle anarchism" positions, from dropping out of school at sixteen years old with no plans except traveling and shoplifting (I have no philosophical problem with shoplifting in many circumstances, but please understand that there is absolutely nothing inherently revolutionary or radical about it whatsoever) to the concept that one must abandon life within "the system" or whatever to actually be a revolutionary, at least by their terms:
It's the same with talking about quitting one's job and changing one's lifestyle - people who are currently trying to do that have much more useful perspectives on it than full-time anarchists who dropped out ten years ago. (172)
Breathtaking, to be sure. Let's meditate on that for a minute. "Full-time anarchists." What could that possibly mean, especially with regard to the United States. First, it must be stated that there is no legitimate, viable anarchist movement in this country. That is a fact. There has not been for close to one hundred years. Anyone who says otherwise is delusional, by my estimation. No doubt there are lots of people who define themselves as anarchists, and also a number of groups specifically dedicated to anarchist struggle, but I am unaware of any real "full-time anarchists." Especially ones without jobs. I know people who are pretty serious anarchists (adults, over forty) and have been involved with anarchist groups and organizations for sizable portions of their lives. If they are not in prison, though, they have jobs. You can't tell that they are anarchists by looking at them. They look like real people. Cause they are. The reality is that if you are a "full-time anarchist," which I take to mean dedicating your life to making revolution (like Lenin, Mao or Castro did for communism), you are either gonna be in jail (not for shoplifting or spray painting, or even cause you threw a rock at a pig), are out of jail after a long stint, in exile, in hiding, or dead. These Crimethinc. people fit none of those profiles. Likely, they never will.
You see, and again, this is only my estimation, Crimethinc. is the privileged person's anarchism (has anarchism been much else in this country for decades?). This is for people who can run back to mom and dad when things get rough. And they do. Rich kids living "the dream." It's for people who can choose "homelessness" and "poverty." It's hard for people of color to lead the Crimethinc. life. Shoplifting from a supermarket while traveling through Iowa ain't gonna go too smoothly, likely. You know what I mean?
If you've been poor, and I mean real poverty, not the kind that you choose and out of which you can move again at will, it fucking sucks. Being on food stamps because otherwise you don't eat unless your aunt brings your family food, sucks. Getting welfare because otherwise you are (literally, not "traveling") homeless, as a family, sucks. Not having a job because you have no car and you cannot afford a taxi to get to a potential job, sucks. The fetishization of poverty is offensive to those who live it with no choice. Only rich white kids choose "poverty." Fuck all these people on poverty vacations. Your existence grates on those with whom you claim solidarity.
But I know, you've really got one over on everybody cause you don't work. Someone has to, otherwise there would be no one from whom you could mooch.
And finally, you know what? I don't work either. I haven't had a "job" in over five years. But I don't fucking care. I don't go around telling people about it. And I certainly don't think that it puts me on some road to nirvana or whatever. I've long (always?) recognized that people have to survive, and in this world, it largely means working for someone else.
ATLANTA – Elias Abuelazam was about to board a plane for Israel when police arrested him in connection with a three-month stabbing spree that left five men dead, 13 others wounded and a Michigan city in terror. In the moments before the bald, pudgy man in flip-flops and shorts was handcuffed, passengers saw him nervously talking on his cell phone, insisting he wasn't violent.
The Israeli citizen and legal U.S. resident was charged Thursday in just one case out of Flint, Mich., the battered industrial city where most of the stabbings occurred, but authorities said more charges are expected there and in Ohio and Virginia. At least 15 of the 18 victims were black but it was unclear whether the attacks were racially motivated.
Flint residents hope the arrest ends their summer of fear. Roughly every four days since late May on average, the killer approached men on lonely roads at night, asking for directions or help with a broken-down car. Then he'd pull out a knife, plunge it into his victim and speed away; in one case he used a hammer. The youngest victim was 15; the oldest 67.
Nothing good, I can assure you. He's Christian, by the way. Or at least his family is.
Fuck these people. Holy shit, I cannot emphasize "fuck them" enough. Were there a god, or if I had the slightest delusion that there were one, I swear I would dedicate entire days to praying for the extermination of such people:
Protect Marriage, the coalition of religious and conservative groups that sponsored the ban, said it would immediately appeal the ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
"In America, we should uphold and respect the right of people to make policy changes through the democratic process, especially changes that do nothing more than uphold the definition of marriage that has existed since the founding of this country and beyond," said Jim Campbell, a lawyer on the defense team.
Reading/listening to Ian Mackaye can teach you a lot about life. It has me. This is a guy who has really thought about shit his whole life and ACTUALLY FIGURED SOME THINGS OUT. That's the big deal. Lots of people think about stuff, but this guy got somewhere. It's really something. That's what it means to be wise, to actually reach conclusions that can help people, to which people can relate.
I don't know how many times I would have a car go by and someone would scream, "Fuck you, you fucking punk faggot!" But then I realized that if you do not speak that language, you recognize that they are not talking to you. Let's say that I'm in Sweden, and a carload with a bunch of guys goes by and they yell something at me in Swedish. I don't know what they're saying. As far as I know, they are saying, "I love basketball!" Who knows? So when I'm walking along the street here and some guys go by in a car, and they don't know me, I don't know them, but they say, "You're a fucking punk faggot, fuck you!" then it should have the same effect. They are not talking to me, they don't know me, and I'm not what they say I am, so they must have me confused with someone else. In short, if you don't speak the language of violence, you are released from violence. This was a very powerful discovery for me.
It's a discovery on which I'm still working, but at least I've got some directions on how to get there.
Here is the other quote that really struck me in his exchange with Gabriel Kuhn:
There was a certain period in my life when I was very angry, when I was really agonizing over things. It made me feel miserable, and I began to question everything: What is the point of all this punk rock? What is the point of me singing? What am I trying to do? Eventually, I realized that the reason I was so angry was because I want people in the world to be well. And I realized that it was a worthwhile project to pursue in my lifetime. But I also understood that I myself needed to be well to do that. So I figured that I would do my best to live a life of wellness. This doesn't mean that I'm trying to bask in my riches. It means that I'm trying to release myself from the anger and agony. Remember what I said earlier about someone going by in a car and calling me a "fucking asshole?" They are not talking to me - 'cause I'm not a fucking asshole.
Brilliant, just fucking brilliant. I cannot explain how deeply I relate to that. I burn for people, animals and the planet to be well and the ensuing certain frustrations make me so angry and hateful towards the bulk of the human population. I feel this every day. It is constant. I just don't feel that there is really anything I can do to make anyone or anything well. It's all a series of frustrating, crashing defeats. Over and over.
Releasing oneself from the anger and agony, that is the challenge of my life. If nothing else, it's very comforting to read this and only further cements the idea that Ian Mackaye is an exceptional thinker.
It's so important to realize that Ian did this stuff, this letting go and moving ahead, without giving up. He didn't get a stupid haircut and snazzy new jeans. He didn't lose himself in some empty fashion, he didn't immerse himself in an indulgent, vapid, solipsistic music scene. No. He has been vegan forever, he is still straight edge and punk as fuck. He still cares about people and animals in a serious way, but figured out how to do it without destroying himself. I need to figure that out cause you better believe I'm not going to go out like the rest of those pieces of shit. I'll die alone and in misery before that happens.
Here's the next installment of my thoughts on what I read in Sober Living for the Revolution: Hardcore Punk, Straight Edge and Radical Politics. I read Dennis' interview with great enthusiasm. Some of it was pretty rad, but overall, I was not that into it. He's really image-oriented, which I am just so not about. He talks about how the Noise Conspiracy change their sound and their aesthetic every time they put out a record, saying crap like this:
I mean, we've been playing for ten years now with Noise Conspiracy, and you can look at our outfits throughout the years, and they've changed a lot, and so did the whole aesthetics. With every new record, we try something new - not only with the aesthetics, but with the politics and the music too. We maintain our ideas and our musical foundation, but we kind of switch and twist them a little bit every time and try to spice them up with something new.
You know, a lot of people try to decide what exactly it is that people should like about their band. We just figure that people can dig the politics, they can dig the snazzy outfits, they can dig the music, they can dig whatever - it's up to them to decide what to take with them when they leave our show or listen to our record. So while many bands are like, "This is what we are and this is what you should like about us," we just say, "Whatever you like is cool with us. If you don't like the politics, we're sure you find something else that you like."
I am just so turned off by that. It's like a fucking stage show. Politics is fun everybody. Whoo whoo, revolution rules! Slogans and marketing, fashion and image. Fuck all of that. Empty shit. Judging by people's responses to the last nine Noise Conspiracy full-lengths, I would say that lots of people realized that they are full of shit. Then he goes on to say something that made me like the dudes in Refused a whole lot:
I was always into this concept [changing images and ideologies], so with Noise Conspiracy I got a chance to realize it. Actually, when we did the last batch of touring with Refused, I tried to get the band to wear matching outfits, but the guitar players just happened to "lose" them. After a week of shows they were just like, "Eh, these jackets that we had tailor-made are gone..."
Good, fuck those jackets. What a bunch of boy band crap. Fuck.
Speaking of changing images, up top is a very recent picture of Dennis. He's punk as fuck these days, looking like it's 82. I guess it's appropriate, now that he's got his matching band.
So anyway, this is what Dennis has to say about his ideological and philosophical inspirations:
Personally, I like to mix different sources and hope that something cool will come out of it. Anarchism and socialism I've always been into. Situationism - which is as much an art movement as it is a political movement with an amazing critique of capitalist society, right at the breaking point of modernism and postmodernism - is just really well suited for lyrics, especially if you look at Raoul Vaneigem. And poststructuralism helps you understand how the world works today. Then you throw in some surrealism and some dada, and everything becomes even more interesting.
Interesting indeed. What a fun political collage life is. Anarchism and socialism? Situationism is not just well suited for lyrics, but also verbose, dense and largely irrelevant to those who aren't highly educated or pseudo-intellectual.
I guess he really does want revolution with a catchy phrase. What's after that? A bunch of well-dressed revolutionaries speaking to one another about a bunch of esoteric ideas? Way to be practical. So intensely privileged.
It's not like there's really any hope in anarchism (or socialism, or anything else he references), but come on, this guy is just making a mockery of it all and yet somehow has stood as an icon for radical music for years. People who are so into crafting their public self image really bum me the fuck out.
Some kids not too far from here beat a forty-seven-year-old man to death, preserving it for their children via cell phone video, strictly and solely because Abelino Mazaniego, father of four, was not born in the United States. There was no provocation. There was no conflict other than the one the kids made. There was no history of bad blood. He was a stranger to them. They saw him sitting on a bench after he got off work and decided to have fun, because they learned that American lesson that immigrants from south of the border are not people - they are problems, they are criminals, they are welfare-sappers, parasites and at best, landscapers. Racist demagogue politicians and talk radio garbage love to ride that crap to power. See the "Tea Party Movement," Sheriff Joe Arpaio, or the most recent Arizona Hispanic/Latina/o racial profiling legislation for current reference points.
He's fucking dead. Some kids beat him for kicks. Now he's gone, and his family is left with no father, no husband, and no source of income. He was their sole provider.
The kids who killed him weren't even interested in robbery, as a nurse at the hospital did that:
But it apparently wasn't an attempt to get the $640 in cash that Mazaniego was carrying.
Police found the victim after the beating and took him to the hospital, where, officials say, nurse Stephan Randolph, 39, of Flemington, took the money out of the unconscious victim's wallet.
Family members noticed the missing money and told authorities, who charged Randolph with third-degree theft Monday, six days after Mazaniego died.
Pure fun, they wanted. And they got it.
The racial aspects of this are pretty interesting. At least two of the teenagers who killed him are African-American. It took prosecutors about a week to upgrade the charges against them from manslaughter to murder. If they were white, I think it would still be manslaughter, at the most. If Abelino were white, they would all be up on the highest murder charge possible. The fact that prosecutors didn't put them up on murder right away reinforces the idea that Abelino and people like him are not people. Their office had to get pressured to act.
Duh. But this is for a reason other than being in Fall Out Boy. I finished reading this really interesting book a few weeks back, Sober Living for the Revolution: Hardcore Punk, Straight Edge and Radical Politics. It's an anthology of interviews and writings, as the title says, on straight edge and the ways in which people have politicized it, through connections with such (not necessarily) disparate ideas as feminism, veganism, radical queer analysis, anarchism, and communism. The book is international in perspective, including people from Brazil, Israel, Poland, Sweden, Holland, the U.K. and of course the United States. Some of the interviews are great (Ian, the two people from Poland and one of the dudes from Point of No Return), some are really good and some are pathetic for what they reveal about the interviewees.
In the midst of all this is Andy Hurley, whose interview is entitled "Straight Edge, Anarcho-Primitivism and the Collapse." Yup. I guess it's to present the ideas of primitivism through the mouth of someone a bit more recognizable than anyone from Gather or Peregrine. Andy doesn't seem to be too into his own ideas and just kind of regurgitates stuff from Derrick Jensen and the great Klan sympathizer/apologist (he writes that "Nonetheless, the loathsome nature of the KKK of today should not blind us to what took place within the Klan 70 years ago, in various places and against the wishes and ideology of the Klan itself.), John Zerzan.
First, take a look at Andy's ultraprimitive 6,000+ square foot lakefront home, with its five bedrooms, four bathrooms and multiple BMWs in the driveway
Nice house. So in the interview, on page 254, he talks about how veganism is only relevant in our modern industrial world:
I always understood that in a better way of living, in the way of living that humanity is supposed to live [what the fuck does this mean?], I wouldn't be vegan. There is just a different connection, a different relationship. There's a relationship between predator and prey that has nothing to do with the relationship that civilization has to the animals it uses in the meat and dairy industry, in factory farming etc. So I definitely don't agree with the analysis that veganism saves the world. Not at all, because the whole question is still about civilization, and about farming and agriculture.
Of course veganism doesn't save the world. But it does more than you talking on your fucking iPhone and taking orders for your "Fuck City" shirts while fishing "naturally" on land you bought cause you're fucking rich. I'm super tired of this "relationship between predator and prey" bullshit that Derrick Jensen loves to propagate through his fetishized ideas of "the" Native American and how he/she honored the kill. Yeah, as though something is right because Native Americans did it. The Mayan people (in their civilization, which is really inconvenient for primitivists who idealize Native Americans, considering that they were Native Americans who built a pretty serious civilization long before they had most unfortunate contact with European death bringer parasites) performed human sacrifices, which seems like not a good idea. All that relationship shit is an excuse. Just admit that you are killing and that's it. The relationship is that you kill something and eat it. Whatever animal you are killing has no relationship with you, other than the one of great fear that you give it when you take its life. Like a deer is coming to offer itself to you, knowing that it's the right thing to do, living in this newly re-wilded natural world again.
So then why bother being vegan at all? Don't worry, Andy (by way of his friend Kevin Tucker) has got that one all figured out:
Besides, within civilization veganism is important to me because, again, I'm against oppression and this applies to the meat and dairy industry and all that, and so that's another thing I just can't support. But I've been planning on buying some land up north in Wisconsin, to at least have something that can never be clear-cut and used for timber, and to have a place that's wild, a place that I can utilize natural survival skills on. And then maybe one day I'll start looking for roadkill, start fishing in natural ways and stuff. I don't know when I'll get to that bridge and when I'll cross it, but I assume it will happen. As I said, I've been struggling with this for a while now and have had lots of talks with [Kevin] Tucker about it. It's become kind of a running joke.
There you have it, veganism and vegetarianism are merely protests against civilization. They don't deserve consideration once we switch back to living like we're "supposed to," as though anyone can know what that means. People have lived so differently over so many centuries, and here we see people claiming THE TRUTH, going back to that original moment, where everything was great. Then what happened, aliens came down and gave us bad ideas, or those creatures who live at the center of the earth crawled out and showed someone advanced technology? No. We happened. People. Or rather, we kept happening. The same fucking species, year after year, has continually fucked things up more and more. I'll write another post about this later.
What's the running joke? "LOL, I'm gonna eat meat soon!!" "Yeah right, non-primitivist, privileged industrialist!! LOL LOL LOL!" So funny right now.
Perhaps you wonder why I care. It's not really anything about Andy Hurley. Certainly, I do not look to him for ideas on anything. Before this interview and doing some subsequent perfunctory research (which turned up the episode of Cribs), I only knew that he played in Fall Out Boy and used to be in Racetraitor and Vegan Reich. Some people I know who think that anyone who is vegan and straight edge rules told me that he is a primitivist. So yeah, Andy Hurley is not an important part of my thoughts.
The issue is that his notion of veganism is just so offensive to my own. Sure, it's good that the dude is vegan for the time being (if he even still is at this point) and has (had?) been for a long time. It's way more than I could say for most people. I guess he promoted it, somehow. Maybe not, I don't know. Fall Out Boy is a pretty stupid, meaningless band, after all. But to just say that, "Hey, when it comes down to it, animals really are here for us to eat," that fucking SUCKS. What the fuck? Seriously. That is anthropocentrism at its core. It's like that food chain chart from the "Lisa the Vegetarian" episode of The Simpsons - we are the center, everything goes to us.
I've never viewed veganism as a relativist concept, that it's only desirable under industrial conditions. It's like saying that racism was only bad as long as black people were slaves or that dumping a little raw sewage in the ocean is ok, as long as too many people aren't doing it.
And what's up with this dichotomy that we either hunt animals or have industrialized agriculture? Why can't we plant for ourselves and work little plots of land? Sustenance is not exploitation. Stupid, shortsighted shit.
At the end of the day, I find it sad that Andy Hurley has this internal dissonance where he feels that he has to beat back his compassionate desires and kill. He refers to it as a "struggle." I would imagine it causes a good deal of anxiety. It's like he can't be a good primitivist if he doesn't eat meat. I guess that's what you get when your only thoughts on primitivism/how to live life come from reading Derrick Jensen, John Zerzan and hanging hard with Kevin Tucker. It's like he has to turn himself into some kind of robot, some idealized version of primitive man that is not likely based on much research. And he's choosing food as the primary method of that. I don't get it. If someone were of the opinion that hunting and killing is the absolute only method of survival post-collapse, and that person were also heavily disposed to veganism, why not train yourself to do the necessary killing and trapping and whatever and then leave it at that? It ain't like the collapse is imminent. Really. I don't see what the imperative is to abandon veganism at this point, if its something you still believe in.
We have obviously better ideas than killing to survive, but we're supposed to abandon them because we think that our ancestors behaved in certain ways. They also attacked one another with axes and lived in caves, wiping their asses with leaves at best. I wonder which "wild" version of humanity is most popular.
I'm (we're) back, sort of. I had to take a break from the "news" for a while. It was kind of killing me. I hate everything enough as it is, and reading about the Gulf of Mexico several times a day was not helping the situation. As much as I wish for every piece of shit at BP to catch on fire, it will not happen and it was making my life worse. I have enough problems as it is; I don't need to give myself more. I also really don't have the time to keep doing that. It's unsustainable (ha, lolf). Really though.
But, I will start posting again, although it will be the occasional "news" story that makes me want to stab people interspersed with things I'm thinking about, like this book I just finished called Sober Living for the Revolution: Hardcore Punk, Straight Edge and Radical Politics. It made me think about a bunch of new things, and I plan on putting them up here soon.
Three police officers charged in the killing of two unarmed residents on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina and a cover-up that followed pleaded not guilty on Wednesday.
Sgts. Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen and Officer Anthony Villavaso stood before a federal magistrate in green prison garb, shackled at the waist and ankles. They will remain jailed at least until a hearing Friday. A tentative trial date is set for Sept. 13...
Five former officers already have pleaded guilty to charges they helped cover up the shootings. Prosecutors have said police fabricated witnesses, falsified reports and plotted to plant a gun to make it appear that the shootings were justified.
The shootings at the Danziger Bridge happened Sept. 4, 2005, six days after Hurricane Katrina smashed levees and left the city flooded and in chaos. Bodies floated in filthy flood waters. There were reports of looting and gunshots rang out throughout the blacked-out city.
It was in this backdrop that police, desperate to regain control, were called about 9 a.m. that morning after reports of gunfire at the bridge.
Seven heavily armed New Orleans police officers stormed the bridge. Prosecutors said they shot at the first people they saw, people they say were crossing the bridge to find food.
When it was over, two men were dead and four others lay wounded on the hot concrete.
The indictment claims Faulcon shot mentally disabled Ronald Madison, 40, in the back as he ran away on the west side of the bridge. Bowen is charged with stomping and kicking Madison while he was lying on the ground, wounded but still alive.
Stomped him to death. After shooting him in the back. Stomped.
Here's a related story that details the pigs shooting at the aforementioned unarmed family:
The indictment alleges that officers Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon and Villavaso open fired on an unarmed family on the east side of the bridge, killing 17-year- old James Brissette, and wounding Susan Bartholomew, 38; Leonard Bartholomew III, 44; the Bartholomew's daughter, Lesha, 17; and the Bartholomew's nephew, Jose Holmes, 19. The Bartholomews' 14-year-old son ran away from the shooting and was fired at, but was not injured.
Madison's brother, Lance, was arrested and charged with trying to kill police officers. He was jailed for three weeks before being released without indictment.
They tried to cover their filthy pig asses by charging the dead man's brother with trying to kill them. They say, "Well, when you have people who are trying to kill the police, we have the right to use any violence available to us in order to defend our lives." Yeah.
These are some standup pigs:
Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon and Villavaso also are accused of shooting at an unarmed family on the east side of the bridge, killing 17-year-old James Brissette and wounding four others.
Sgt. Arthur Kaufman and retired Sgt. Gerard Dugue, who helped investigate the shootings, were charged with participating in the alleged cover-up. Charges against them include obstruction of justice.
Kaufman and Bowen "specifically discussed using Hurricane Katrina to excuse failures in the investigation, and thereby to help make any inquiry into the shooting go away," the indictment states.
Kaufman allegedly took a gun from his home and claimed to have found it at the crime scene a day after the shootings, then lied about that gun under oath and in reports, prosecutors said.
This part actually made me laugh:
Gisevius cried quietly as he stood with his lawyer.
I would legitimately pay money to watch a pig cry in court. Coward piece of shit.
Also, they're potentially facing the death penalty. Yes, please.
Yeah, that's right. This song's kind of good and kind of terrible. This video, though, is the shit. The song is fairly irrelevant. Pretty much everything rules about it, from the very beginning. Crazy-ass mountain man singer, guitar player in a white suit, bored as FUCK drummer, mountain man singer going off, the mustaches, the singing keyboard player's kidtoucher stache and wonderful hair, so on and so forth. Just watch, we'll talk more after:
Ok, so how about that keyboard player singer guy getting fresh with the bongos? Sometimes you see the white suit guitar player guy off in the background with an acoustic guitar. He looks like he is being punished. Then in the middle of the first keyboard solo, the keyboard-playing singer slaps the mic stand out of his way, goes back to the bongos, gets crazy with the cheeze whiz, and then the mountain man comes over to support him in his struggle against the mic stand, by enthusiastically tambourining at him, so much so that his mouth opens. That man's hair, when viewed straight-on, is simply incredible. Shit is that drummer bummed.
Then the mountain man goes over to the other guitar player to support him while soloing. He's a really good guy, that mountain man. He serves a vital role. If you've ever seen Avail, you will see that Beau clearly took great inspiration from him. I would say that mountain man is a dirty rock and roll precursor to Beau, but thinking a bit more on it, they really are not very different, aside from hair length and Beau's higher energy level.
93 stop and frisks per 100 residents. Yikes. Make sure you don't spit on the sidewalk next time you are in Brownsville. They'll probably let you go though. Check the video. The fat white pig is my favorite. You can tell he's new.
First Louisiana, then Alabama, Florida, now Mississippi. Who's next? Georgia? South Carolina? Will it never end?
Mississippi’s lucky streak appears to have ended, with oil from the BP disaster washing into the Mississippi Sound and likely to make landfall on mainland beaches within the next few days, said Trudy Fisher, director of the state Department of Environmental Quality.
And to think of the proud history the South has of anticommunism and pretty much antieverythingism. What a disgrace. They're stealing what lots of people worked hard for and what we have to pay for. I don't see Obama Hitler lifting a finger.
Oh, but much worse for whales and anything else that lives in/off of the sea, I can assure you. We're all that really matters though.
Sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth's oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals, according to American scientists who say the findings spell danger not only for marine life but for the millions of humans who depend on seafood.
A report released Thursday noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. From polar areas to equatorial waters, the whales ingested pollutants that may have been produced by humans thousands of miles away, the researchers said.
Whoops. Wonder what new technology they will invent to attempt to clean up what the old technology left behind.
The researchers found mercury as high as 16 parts per million in the whales. Fish high in mercury such as shark and swordfish — the types health experts warn children and pregnant women to avoid — typically have levels of about 1 part per million.
The whales studied averaged 2.4 parts of mercury per million, but the report's authors said their internal organs probably had much higher levels than the skin samples contained.
"The entire ocean life is just loaded with a series of contaminants, most of which have been released by human beings," Payne said in an interview on the sidelines of the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting.
Payne said sperm whales, which occupy the top of the food chain, absorb the contaminants and pass them on to the next generation when a female nurses her calf. "What she's actually doing is dumping her lifetime accumulation of that fat-soluble stuff into her baby," he said, and each generation passes on more to the next.
We've been doing a good job, these last few hundred years. Look at how quickly we can devastate millions of years of slow, beautiful development.
I guess this is the article's main point:
"You could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species. I suspect this will shorten lives, if it turns out that this is what's going on," he said.
As if we deserve any less than a slow death of new, untreatable diseases from new forms of pollution.
Finally, down at the bottom, the author gets to what really matters in the overall non-anthropocentric picture:
The consequences of the metals could be horrific for both whale and man, he said.
"I don't see any future for whale species except extinction," Payne said. "This is not on anybody's radar, no government's radar anywhere, and I think it should be."
Cause no government cares. Those of Japan, Norway and Iceland are trying to empty the oceans of whales and there are lots of other piece of shit governments lining up behind them, awaiting the chance to engage in "scientific" whaling or whatever they try to call it. Filthy murder pirates. Fuck them all.
And COMPLAINING about it. Well doesn't that figure? I bet a lot of us would like to get free oil like they are! Ingrates.
Look at the public spectacle they make, crying and whatnot:
In Florida, thick pools of oil washed up along miles of national park and Pensacola Beach shoreline as health advisories against swimming and fishing in the once-pristine waters were extended for 33 miles east from the Alabama/Florida border.
"It's pretty ugly, there's no question about it," Gov. Charlie Crist said.
The oil had a chemical stench as it baked in the afternoon heat. The beach looked as if it had been paved with a 6-foot-wide ribbon of asphalt, much different from the tar balls that washed up two weeks earlier.
"This used to be a place where you could come and forget about all your cares in the world," said Nancy Berry, who fought back tears as she watched her two grandsons play in the sand far from the shore.
Disgusting. Not only are they getting (a very important) something for nothing, but they are acting outraged by it. Everyone knows it's really just an act they're putting on to mock the rest of us.
Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen says an underwater robot bumped into the venting system. That sent gas rising through vent that carries warm water down to prevent ice-like crystals from forming in the cap.
Allen says the cap has been removed and crews are checking to see if crystals have formed before putting it back on. In the meantime, a different system is still burning oil on the surface.
Before the problem with the containment cap, it had collected about 700,000 gallons of oil in the previous 24 hours. Another 438,000 gallons was burned.
The current worst-case estimate of what's spewing into the Gulf is about 2.5 million gallons a day.
A Jerusalem planning body on Monday approved a plan to raze 22 Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem to make room for an Israeli tourist center, a decision that could raise tensions in the divided city and deepen the conflict with the Obama administration...
The plan calls for the construction of shops, restaurants, art galleries and a large community center on the site where some say the biblical King David wrote his psalms. The 22 displaced families would be allowed to build homes elsewhere in the neighborhood, though it is not clear who would pay for them...
Barkat says the plan gives a much-needed facelift to Jerusalem's decaying al-Bustan neighborhood, which Israel calls Gan Hamelech, or the King's Garden.
The contested site is a section of a larger neighborhood called Silwan, which is home to some 50,000 Palestinians and 70 Jewish families. Demolitions elsewhere in Silwan have made the neighborhood a hub of tension between Palestinians and Jews.
Israel, generous as ever, is giving Palestinians a direly necessary community center at which they will not be welcome, in a section of the city that is barely occupied by Israeli Jews. That's a lot of spending.
This makes those stupid Palestinians who say they are oppressed or live under apartheid or whatever look dumber than ever.
