Ahmedinejad

I am probably misspelling his name, but I don’t care.  I should probably misspell it on purpose.

I am glad Columbia University gave this man a chance to speak for two reasons:

1. Most people don’t follow news, or at least don’t bother reading up about what other world leaders are saying, but the fact that this man was speaking on public soil garnered it more attention and put it in the spotlight.  This gave people a chance to finally listen to what this man was really about and listen to him spout lie after bold-faced lie to a crowd who booed him a number of times.  A very liberal crowd, I might add.  The response has been overwhelmingly negative.  Since I believe that military conflict with Iran is unavoidable and will be instigated by Israel to protect itself from the possibility of Iranian nuclear weapons, most likely within 12 months of today, I am glad that armchair international politicians were given a chance to start hating Iran.  Hopefully we’ll have fewer picketers when we bomb Tehran than when we bombed Baghdad
2. Universities have been in bed with the liberalism, progressivism, and the Democratic party for years, and everyone knows it.  People will remember this one year from now when a liberal, progressive candidate gets into a debate on how to handle the Iran situation, which I believe will only continue to escalate.  God help us if we elect a weak leader who thinks talk will work with a man who has demonstrated himself this week as a pathological liar.  Only the most ardent and insane liberals will be able to swallow that pill.

A lot of hardline conservatives are suggesting that we deny him the right to speak at all.  My opinion of the man is the same as what has proven to be the majority opinion in this country, and that is that he is a liar, a fascist, and a threat to world security, but the more we let him speak the deeper he digs his grave.  What this man fails to understand is that the only thing that keeps his country from being carpet bombed is the American public opinion of his regime.

The American people are a very sympathetic and open minded bunch.  Just look at how much protest we got from Iraq.  The truth is that Americans don’t give a shit about the Iraqi citizens or the Iraqi nation.  Americans are against what we’re doing over there because we can’t even conceive of another country doing it to us.  We are so spoiled by our superpower status that we have the luxury and the privilege to protest military action on moral grounds alone.  And because we’re a democracy, and politicians enjoy being reelected, our super power muscles are kept in check by public opinion.

Ahmadinejad is playing a very dangerous game.  He is banking on the American public to tie their government’s hands in doing anything about his regime long enough that he is able to execute his goal – that is, to gain a nuclear weapon which he can use as the ultimate bargaining chip in Middle East relations for the creation of the Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel.  His ultimate goal is very likely the reunification of the Persian empire.  Are we going to let him?

That all depends on whether enough pinheaded Americans believe his lies enough to condemn any politician who would dare try to stop him.  Bush has the balls to do something about it, and I hope he does before he exits in only 14 short months.  I fear very greatly that we will elect someone who is unwilling to stop this man, and the result will be disasterous.

Fortunately, after seeing the response to his speech at Columbia, my faith that my countrymen have some shred of common sense left is beginning to be restored.  Do not trust Ahmadinejad, and when it comes time for us to take military action against his regime, do us a favor and let your Commander-in-Chief bomb him back into the stone age.  Remember.

Buck Compton

Lately I’ve been listening to Buck Compton, who does radio commentary for at least one station up in Washington state and then posts the recordings on blogspot.

Who is Buck Compton you ask?  He’s one of the WWII soldiers featured in the book/HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.  Because I have testicles and Band of Brothers is about Americans saving the entire world with guns and tanks, I am biologically forced to enjoy said series and I’ve watched it a number of times.  Buck went on to get a law degree and prosecuted Sirhan Sirhan (who assassinated RFK).

His radio commentaries are a little tough on the ears because, well, he’s really really old.  But his commentary strikes me for two reasons.

First and foremost, this man’s alpha status is unquestionable.  You boys who devote all your energy becoming proficient at scoring cheap floozy puss at night clubs don’t hold a candle to this guy, and you never will (and neither will I).  Also, his contribution to America is orders of magnitude greater than 99.9% of the modern American population.  Not only did he serve in WWII, he also served as a police officer and as a district attorney.  He basically kicks ass.

The second reason that his commentary rules is because his analysis is completely impossible to refute.  He makes perfect sense.  And why wouldn’t he?  He’s had a lifetime to analyze, observe, and come to the right conclusions.  I like to think that even batty liberals would agree that you grow wiser with age, but who knows.  One of the hallmark characteristics of liberals is that they themselves know better than everyone else and therefore should be in charge of things like your money, hospitals, and corporations, but hey.  I’ll try to stay on topic here.

I particularly like his rant about Europe.  I know exactly what he’s talking about – those showers drove me crazy when I was in Greece.  That, and the food sucked.  I am tired of everyone creaming up over Europe.  In case you hadn’t noticed, all of the smart Europeans emigrated to the United States about a hundred years ago, which is why we singlehandedly won World War II.  Buck knows all about that.  He had to parachute out of an airplane and shoot one type of European to protect the other type, and along with the rest of the U.S. GIs, bail them out 60 years ago.  And I’m sure the first time he bruised the shit out of his legs trying to get in and out of those awful showers he muttered to himself that he should have just let them bomb each other into oblivion and spared him the trouble of having to grip the towel rack for dear life as the bottom of the shower’s absolute zero coefficient of friction conspired to break his hips.

Check him out.  In a few years, our grandparents and our great grandparents will all be dead and woefully forgotten, along with the wisdom they fought very hard to obtain, the same wisdom that our parents spent a lifetime trying to undo.  Soon, the only ones we’ll have left are our impoverished boomer parents crying about the social security they were “promised” and guilting their children into letting them live in their houses because they blew their retirement income in the 1980′s.  As you know, I hate almost everyone born between 1940-1975, so finding a guy like Buck who has a bit of the common sense our culture has squandered in the last 60 years is like a breath of fresh air.

Check it out – Buck Compton Online.  Link on the right, too.

Money Talks, Bullshit Walks

Meet the Beavens.  They made the international press by turning their “posh Manhattan flat” (that’s apartment to you colonials) into a new kind of Eco-friendly, “zero impact” living that would make even the Amish desperate for a few simple amenities.

“It is a bit dark and there are no lights on. There is a strange quiet feel to the flat, perhaps due to the lack of any appliances – no fridge humming, no TV interference, even no air conditioning, though it is hot and humid outside.

Walk into the bathroom, and you will notice that there is no toilet paper, no bottles of shampoo or toiletries.

In the kitchen, berries and cheese are laid out on the counter and there are candles on the dining table.

This is the home of No-Impact Man, aka Colin Beavan, who describes himself on his blog as a “guilty liberal who finally snaps, swears off plastic… turns off his power… and while living in NYC turns into a tree-hugging lunatic who tries to save the polar bears.”

Pay close attention to that last paragraph.  Pretty catchy, isn’t it?

So what, you say.  Old news.  Crazy eco-maniacs have been making headlines for years, mostly due to the morbid curiosity we have with fanaticism in all its forms.  These are usually the same people who believe in things like the Age of Aquarius, free love, and have probably spent a large portion of their time smoking weed.  Who needs electricity or appliances when you’re high as a kite, man?

In keeping with their zero-impact mantra, they try to steer clear of the carbon cycle outside the home too, which of course means – you guessed it – they ride their bikes to get around!  How avant garde!

The article goes on to talk about how they get by using only seven gallons of water per day, recycle to the point of refuting new goods of any kind, and play Scrabble in the dark with “friends.”  Yada yada.

What does this have to do with money and bullshit, you ask?

I won’t answer you.  I’ll let Colin Beaven, eco-darling, answer you with the punchline of this article:

“Colin is planning to write a book about his year as No-Impact Man – his publishers are looking at sustainable ways of publishing. “

Sounds like he’s already come up with the title and, as I quoted you above in italics, the book’s jacket text.

Money talks, bullshit walks.

Dear Sheila

“Dear Gail,

We were shocked to learn that our mortgage is going up nearly $500 a month. We knew that buying this house a couple of years ago would stretch our finances to the limit, but we really wanted our kids to attend this school district so we decided to bite the bullet and keep to a very strict budget in order to make this work.

We both have jobs, but there’s no way we can come up with another $500. And home prices have really come down since we bought our house, so if we have to sell, we’d probably take a loss.

I’m just sick over this. I heard that President Bush has announced a program to help people like us. What can you tell us?

Thanks,
Sheila“

Confessions of a Teaching Assistant, Part 1

Rather than stick to the usual cynical diatribe, I thought I’d share with you some of the funnier moments I had as a teaching assistant.  I taught a variety of courses during my college days, but the best one was ANTH220 – Introduction to Biological Anthropology.  I ran the lab portion of that course for 5 semesters.

We introduced the course with a simple lab about biometrics.  We took various biometric measurements, things like the length of your forearm, the distance between the top of your upper lip to the center point between your eyebrows, etc.  All designed to emphasize variation in a population but also force students to pick up some basic statistics like standard deviations and chi-squares.

After the lab was done, the students went home with a spreadsheet of everyone’s measurements (identified of course only by gender) and we asked them a variety of questions to write up as part of the lab report.

One of the questions we asked was:

Pick two or more measured traits and propose a correlation between them that is stastically significant, and propose an evolutionary justification for this relationship.

Answer #1: “Females have slightly longer femurs in relationship to total leg length than males.  This trait evolved to support doggy style sexual position which can be very awkward and difficult if the male’s pubic region is too high or too low.  Females have slightly longer femures because the penis is higher in the pubic region than the vaginal entrance.”

This answer wouldn’t have been so hysterical if it hadn’t come from a girl who couldn’t have been taller than 5’1″ and who I had previously seen at the dining hall with her boyfriend who was also ridiculously short (and dressed like a wigger).   I cracked up inside every time I saw her in class trying to imagine the frustration she must feel every time her midget boyfriend attempts to assume the position and can’t line up because he’s not tall enough.

Comment: “Good observation, but I would recommend dating someone taller before submitting this hypothesis to Nature.”

Grade: 8/10.

Answer #2: “The man’s penis has evolved to favor greater length in relation to the depth of the female vagina.  This is because the sperm is delivered closer to the uterus which will give a higher chance of impregnating his target.”

Comment: “When were you measuring penile length and vaginal depth?  Besides, most girls have a natural inclination to perform a gravity assist to get the sperm closer to their cervixes after being inseminated to avoid leaking.  Nice try, Romeo.”

Yes, I did actually write that comment.  A ridiculous answer deserves a ridiculous response.

Grade: 2/10

Answer #3: “Females have wider pelvises than males.  This is to allow an effect we call in popular culture the ‘ghetto booty’ which as Sir Mix-a-lot will tell you ‘even white boys got to shout baby got back’.  The desire for a large rear end is universal among males but who can say why?  But boys don’t have ghetto bootys because their pelvises aren’t big enough, which is why girls dont’ like them and try to lose weight when they have a big butt.  Also asian girls don’t have booty so this probably also varies by population but we only have gender in the chart so its hard to say who has the smallest booty, because there is pelvis width overlap between males and females.”

Comment: “Actually the wider pelvis is to accomodate the birthing of babies with larger heads, but as you correctly observed, the wideness of female pelvises does vary by and even within populations…”

Grade: 5/10

The parenthetical post script to my comment would have been “…for example, your mother.”  But I held back, because this girl was a giant black girl who I confused for a Terrapin defensive linemen until I noticed she was carrying a purse and that her name was Kweaneshia.

Good times, folks.  Stay tuned for part 2 in the on-going series of Evan’s Teaching Assistant Adventures™.

Standard of Perfection

Have you noticed that ever since that Clinton impeachment nonsense of the late 90′s that every single public figure, mostly celebrities and politicians, are being held to unattainable standard of perfection?

Every little thing that anyone does is immediately swallowed up by the media and portrayed in the worst possible way.  If a politican makes even the slightest “transgression” they are immediately harassed out of office through a media-driven witch hunt inspired and pursued by the opposing team, regardless of whether or not the “transgression” mentioned impacts their job performance in the slightest bit.

Look at this Craig nonsense.  Does the fact that the man enjoys sucking cock in airport restrooms when he’s not in the senate chamber affect his ability to pass legislation?  Does it even raise questions about his character?  Look, the man is and has been married for many years, has children, and although I don’t care enough to look at his voting record because I’m not living in Iowa, how does this arrest have anything to do with his job performance?

The answer is a resounding nothing, but it has become an accepted cultural practice to expect that anyone we might read about in papers or see on TV has to be perfect in every way.  I bet it won’t be long until we start reading headlines like, “Lindsay’s out of rehab, but sources say her farts smell like brocolli” which will inspire a public statement from her publicist.

The reason I bring this up is because these ridiculous standards that “we” are holding public figures to are impacting “our” way of thinking.  And by “we”, I mean the millions of journalists whose jobs are threatened by these insidious groups of people known as “bloggers” and “blog readers” and by “our” I mean people who buy into this media bullshit rank-and-file.

Newspapers, cable news, and every politican wants you to believe that absolute perfection is required at all times.  They want you to seek out and find the slightest flaw in anyone or anything and make a news story out of it.  They do it at the national level, but if you watch and listen to these people long enough, you run a very real risk of starting to do it at a micro, personal level.

I honestly feel, in listening to my generation and reading their blogs, that meeting this ridiculous standard of perfection we’ve been raised to believe is mandatory for success is influencing our intrapersonal relationships in a very real manner.  It’s so obvious that far too many people are far, far too picky when it comes to love that they will never, ever be happy.  We are always looking for what’s wrong with a person that we fail to see what’s right.  We are also abjectly unwilling to forgive any transgression, overlook any flaw, or compromise on any issue big or small that we have become the idiots we see on the news talking about how our lawmakers should resign because, regardless of how successful they may be in their careers, they do something in their private time that we don’t like.  They have to go.

Nobody’s as perfect as the media would let you believe everyone should be.  The next time you see desperate journalists fishing for a story by addressing someone’s extremely minor and inconsequential weaknesses and blowing them way out of proportion, take a step back and ask yourself if it really matters at all.  Chances are, the answer is no.

But more importantly, catch yourself when you start doing this to other people.  There’s nothing wrong with observing people’s flaws, but there’s a lot wrong about failing to forgive them their flaws.  I had a (crazy) professor in college who used to say, “everyone’s got their bullshit” which meant that everyone’s got a laundry list about as long as yours of personal quirks which you are likely to consider flaws if they conflict with habits and beliefs of your own.

You’ve got a few takes when you analyze these flaws.  The first is to critique them which means they’re likely to piss you off and land in your list of “cons” which, after that list grows large enough, you’re forced to disassociate yourself with that person.  The next is to chalk it up as something for which to pity them, but this is dangerous because it leads to a “shit don’t stink” outlook on life and will turn you into an asshole.  My preferred method is to simply shrug my shoulders and determine whether it’s a deal breaker.  99.9% of the time, it won’t be.

If you’ve read any of my other posts you can probably infer that I am against above all other things hypocrisy, which is why this standard of perfection bothers me so much.  If any of these crusaders turned the microscope on themselves for 10 seconds they’d fail their own tests of perfection they impose on everyone they cover in their bullshit news stories, but they do it anyway to keep the gerbils hitting the feeder bar.

So, keep that in mind when you’re busy picking someone apart, but be careful that you don’t end up going too far.  The key is to hold everyone else to the same standards you hold for yourself, and to remember that if you set the bar too high, you’ll always be unhappy.  Everyone’s got different thresholds, but if you’ve been struggling for years to be content with yourself or someone else, try lowering the bar.  That’s not an easy thing to do, by the way.  But from what I’ve observed, that’s one of the first major obstacles that a young person needs to overcome in order to pass as an adult.

Too bad the media’s stuck in arrested development.  As long as it sells papers, I guess.  But newspapers are losing circulation every year and at least for me, this is why.

Oh, and as far as Craig is concerned – the only person who should care about his airport cocksucking habits is his wife.  Judge him by his performance in the senate, not his performance in a bathroom stall.  After all, you’re not sleeping with him.  If he gets HIV, you won’t catch it from him.