Twas the night before Wednesday, when all through the house,
“It’s a feature of Tuesday,” the man started to grouse.
The mockings were flung by the chummy who bear
good tidings to all, no need to despair.
The shoppers were wrestled, tho’ sick in the head,
while visions of sweet-deals they charged to their cred.
All for the purchase of some Christmas crap,
gift-giving that leads into a debt-trap. [Read more →]
It’s the end of the Spring semester, 2013. That means college undergraduates all over the country are freaking out over final grades. It’s odd how these grades become important to them at the end of the semester in a way that they weren’t at any other time during the semester, but I digress. What follows is a final email sent to my students this morning in response to a number of emails I received from them over the weekend: [Read more →]
The obituary of Robert H. Bork in The New York Times (Dec. 20 2012) notes that, “In a 1971 article in The Indiana Law Journal, [Bork] argued that the First Amendment’s protection of free speech had been wildly extrapolated beyond the intent of the Constitution’s framers. In a starkly narrow interpretation, he said free speech existed to perpetuate the process of self-government; therefore, he wrote, only explicitly political speech about governing was protected.” That is indeed a tortured reading. Explicitly political speech about governing could be construed as narrowly as speech about whether the Senate should change the filibuster rule. To Hell with freedom of speech about everything else. But there is a striking comparison between Bork’s First Amendment and the Second Amendment as it relates to the recently re-ignited gun-control debate. The Second Amendment has indeed been “wildly extrapolated” by the gun lobby beyond its original intent. The crucial difference is this: the limited original intent of the Second Amendment is clear, and is thrown into relief by the massive social and technological changes since it was written, whereas the narrow reading of the First Amendment is almost certainly not the intended one, nor is that amendment so antiquated. [Read more →]
Readers: You are not to ask me how I managed to intercept (ha, get it?) the following correspondence between Eagles’ ringleader Andy Reid and Commissioner/Hitler Reincarnate Roger Goodell. I will only say that it took a good bit of libel-licious spy stuff. Or perhaps more plainly, to quote the finest actor of our time, “You’re on a need to know basis, and you don’t need to know.” Enjoy.
From: Andy Reid
Date: Friday 7 December 2012 3:34pm
To: thecommish@nfl.com
Subject: Rule Changes
Dear Big Red,
Few thinkers were more different than David Hume and Immanuel Kant. One was a cynical, whiskey swilling Scot bon vivant and realist who enjoyed making people crazy with paradoxes in the pursuit of truth through dialogue, discussion and debate. The other was a German metaphysicist and idealist influenced by Pietism and theology. Yet, Kant read Hume, and re-examined his own thought based on what he’d encountered, writing that “Hume awakened me from my doctrinal slumbers…” We all need to find our own David Hume sometime… [Read more →]
One of the benefits of the profound ignorance of a large swathe of the American people lies in their inability to recognize irony. So, when a first term member of congress who is probably looking at being a one term member of Congress pulls something out not from the Karl Rove playbook but the Joe McCarthy playbook, people will miss it. Our political discourse has skipped self-satire and gone straight to slapstick. As Gibbs rule number 7 puts it, “when you lie, be specific.”
Allan West, Congressman from Mesron and Florida, is now trying to win a redistricted, largely Democratic district by railing against the Democratic Progressive Caucus as “Communists’ announcing that he’s “heard that 80 member of congress are communists.” [Read more →]
One of the loose collective of my friends — The Defeatist-Malcontent-Anarchist Slacker Collective and Bait Shop — a Vet who’s trying to get his band going in upstate New York doing kind of boogie rock with metal overtones, spends time he should spend doing something like picking up bottles for the return fee on a Marshall Amp blog, and one of the folks on it posted something about a piece of software that my pal had not heard of. He tossed it out to the collective, and one of the guys explained that it is really kind of an auto-cad system that enables engineers, architechts, and marketing types to overlay everything and walk the customer through the whole bloody thing. He then commented that if he wanted to go back to working for somebody else, he’s take some classes…and then realized what he just said. Commented that he hated his life, and went off to drink copiously in the pine woods of Maine. [Read more →]
Dear Harold,
Boy! I am certainly feeling a little silly this morning. It seems my faith in Woody Harrelson, the Mayan calendar and the world’s demise in 2012 has been exceedingly misplaced. According to you, the end of the world actually begins this weekend. Saturday—right after the six o’clock news!
10. When Sarah Palin said U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords should be “targeted,” she meant targeted with a surveyor’s scope
9. Sarah Palin used the term “blood libel” in a completely non-Jewish Christian context, referring to people who claim that wine in church isn’t really the blood of Christ
8. When Byron Williams, who got into a gunfight with police trying to attack members of the Tides Foundation in San Francisco, said he had been influenced by Glenn Beck, he really meant the singer Beck (“Odelay”)
7. When Sarah Palin complained that the shooting in Arizona had been unfairly politicized, then suggested that the gunman was perhaps a “left-leaning criminal,” she meant one of his legs was shorter than the other
6. When the mother of Gregory Lee Giusti, who was convicted of threatening former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, blamed Fox News, she actually meant the news that Redd Foxx had died
4. Tea Partier Sharron Angle’s suggestion of “Second Amendment solutions” for an out-of-control Congress was a misquote; she actually referenced the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments
3. Sarah Palin’s use of the phrase “don’t retreat, reload” was a reference to wash loads
2. When a relative of Charles Wilson, who was convicted of threatening Sen. Patty Murray, said he was “under the spell that Glenn Beck cast,” he really meant he’d been drinking Beck’s beer.
1. Whenever Sarah Palin uses the term ‘Democrats,’ she of course means ‘shitheads who should be taken out’
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
A friend of mine recently referred to her life as a mountain. Apparently she started climbing it years ago without realizing, then one day looked down and discovered how high up she’d gone. She also discovered that it would be nearly impossible to get down off of this mountain and start the climb up a different mountain. By different, I think she meant the one on which she had assumed she would end up. [Read more →]
My father-in-law recently faced up to the adult equivalent of “there is no Santa Claus.” Specifically, he discovered that, if the shit ever hits the fan, nobody is going to wipe his ass for him. Well … Maybe that’s unfair. He actually realized that, in case of disaster, he can’t count on “the authorities” to charge to the rescue.
Hmmm … I phrased it better the first time. [Read more →]
10. Once you start driving a Toyota, you’ll never stop!
9. Look out, we’re comin’ through!
8. Toyota. Moving forward! Whether you want to or not!
7. Click! Vroom! Yikes!
6. Have you driven into a Ford lately?
5. Toyota. Get the Feeling. Of Terror!
4. Accelerating the future!
3. Holy cow, even we had no idea the Prius could do 100!
2. The power of dreams! The reality of nightmares!
1. Give us a break!
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
10. “Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck both claim paying taxes contributes to socialism.”
9. “Wealthy people who are exceptionally good-looking should be exempt.”
8. “On April first, I got an e-mail saying that, as part of the stimulus package, there was a tax moratorium this year.”
7. “Trying to use the Qualified Dividends and Capital Gains Tax Worksheet, I got a severe brain cramp.”
6. “My buddy at the post office said he could backdate my return.”
5. “After I claim all the voices in my head as deductions, it turns out they owe me money!”
4. “This year, in the box labeled ‘For Office Use Only,’ I just plan to write ‘Approved – Send massive refund!’”
3. “Fill out a tax form?! I can’t even get my VCR to stop blinking ‘12:00’!”
2. “My accountant said I could deduct my late fees.”
1. “I just woke up from my New Year’s Eve party.”
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Thirteen Misconceptions Surrounding National Shelve Your Indie Novel in the Superbookstore Month
1) America did not carpet bomb any lawless tribal regions with remaindered and pulped copies of confiscated counterfeit Indie versions of Sarah Palin’s autobiography.
2) 103,017 bottles and cans of Coke and Pepsi staged a walk out from 7-11 freezer space across the country in protest of the marginalization of indie novelists and collusive practices across the country. [Read more →]
While I wasn’t old enough to have clear memories of Reagan’s Presidency, I’ve heard the stories and read plenty of articles about how the news was almost daily describing the plight of the homeless in America. To watch the 6 o’clock news, you’d have thought we were all living in a van, down by the river and that only the elites owned double-wide trailers. Then, almost as soon as Bill Clinton took office, those stories vanished. A bubble began to inflate. [Read more →]
I know you’ve all heard about the calamity which is about to descend upon the human race. The visions of death and destruction are downright Biblical. The seas will rise, the plants will die, the four horsemen of the apocalypse will reap a mighty harvest of flesh and bones. It’s the coming of man-made global warming!
We’ve been dealing with health care reform for the better part of a year now, and progress today is still as iffy as it was before the “Summer of Angry Town Halls”. The Senate is debating amendments and provisions, jockeying for votes, and trying to keep together the fragile coalition which allowed for debate on the Senate floor to occur. The average American, having long ago made up their mind, is probably becoming tired of the same speeches, the same talking points, and the intolerable actions of Congress people on both sides of the aisle.
As a college professor I believe that most students are hard working and honest, but invariably there are those who are not. My official policy is as follows: If I catch you cheating, you fail the course, not just the assignment. Harsh? Yes. Unfair? No. [Read more →]
As the Industrial Age recedes farther into America’s past and the Information Age becomes our universal experience, municipalities are understandably concerned with lowering the high school dropout rate. There are fewer jobs for dropouts than in the past, and communities are worried about what it takes to prepare their youth for the future. They are also worried about their own progressive images, but let’s not be so cynical as to focus on that side of things… let’s focus on the genuine concern that the system is failing; that large numbers of students are dropping out and forming a population of criminals or, at best, helpless government wards living on the dole. [Read more →]
