Tag Archives: Culture

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outrage is now apparently the taste of victory

Great news! Your team just won. It’s a moment to celebrate glorious victory on the soccer / football field / pitch. You have many choices available on how you’ll enjoy this wonderful moment:

 

 a) Drink lots of beer with family and friends in an unbridled moment of enjoyable life

 b) Calmly read a book with your mate, pausing repeatedly to contemplate how lucky you were to get to see your team win

 c) Viciously parse random social media comments and shout loudly about how outraged you are that somebody wrote something that bothers you

 

Yeah, I know! I’d choose (a) or (b) too, and, oh, what, [unintelligible muttering] I’ve chosen (c)? When? [unintelligible muttering] But I did (a) and (b) last night. Doesn’t that count? [shakes head] [unintelligible muttering] Oh.

Once upon a time social justice warriors and the news media had pretty awesome causes to get behind. You could go to Alabama and do battle against goons who’d turn fire hoses onto people based upon the color of their skin. Or you could go to Nazi Germany and work against those guys who were too focused on mathematics and spreadsheets to realize what horrible fucking people they were.

You can do these things today too. For instance, you could go to Lebanon and deliberately cover the mass human misery and help millions in desperate need of support. Or you could go to Baltimore and cover the grinding day-to-day (not a single brief week) of how hard it is to live in America’s urban wastelands.

But why do any of this hard stuff when you can spend your time parsing somebody’s tweet and get mad at its content. After all, solving ISIS or urban America is awfully hard. Eh, whatever, let’s do nothing of actual value. Let’s sit behind a desk and trash free speech. It’s much easier that way.

I, of course, do this too. But the difference between me and somebody who works for the BBC or Washington Post is I don’t get paid for this. Plus, they’re on the nagging side. And I’m on the anti-nagging side. I want people to be free to say whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want. Their ilk literally wants to control human thought.

Two lunatic events to this end:

The Washington Post thinks this tweet is the most offensive thing England has done since the vicious firebombing of Dresden #BomberHarris #toosoon:

 

“Our #Lionesses go back to being mothers, partners and daughters today, but they have taken on another title – heroes: …”

 

Activist, journalist, and stormy-cloud-frowny-face-man Ishaan Tharoor, who used to be a senior editor at Time and a Yale man (must be a coincidence) called this a “sexist tweet”.

But what if I alter this tweet a little and make it say this:

 

“Our #Lions go back to being fathers, partners and sons today, but they have taken on another title – heroes: …”

 

To which my point is: What’s the fucking problem?

Is it illegal for us to refer to these female humans for what they are? I’m pretty sure every female player on the England team is somebody’s daughter. Quite a few of them are mothers too. Maybe we need to sanitize this speech to the point it sounds like a faceless machine wrote it.

After all, isn’t the term “lionesses” sexist too? Doesn’t that imply that female athletes can’t be male lions? Isn’t the fact that we say a female human can’t be a male lion the most offensive English anti-feminist thing since King Arthur beat (alleged) his wife over an (alleged) adulterous act? The BBC doesn’t seem to think so (surprisingly). The term’s plastered all over their website.

Whatever, I got my Guests to write this very, very professional tweet:

 

“Our #humans go back to being humans, workers and oxygen consumers today, but they have taken on another title – winners of the game: …”

 

See how much safer and kinder this tweet is. If only all our speech sounded this way. Then nobody would ever say anything valuable or fun ever again. Think of how awesome that world would be.

Next up is the BBC who (not surprisingly) raises the issue of how many low-class-haters took to the airwaves to use the term Pearl Harbor in conjunction with the Japanese loss.

Apparently, poking fun at history is horribly offensive and juvenile. What kind of insensitive pig would do something like that? Well, me. This is what I posted prior to the game’s start on an unrelated social media platform:

 

“On July 5th, 1942 USS Growler torpedoed IJNS Arare and two other destroyers off Kiska or 2,527 miles from today’s stadium. Here’s hoping for an anniversary repeat. ‪#‎theystartedit ‪#‎toosoon”

 

But what if I alter this tweet a little and make it say this:

 

“On August 8th, 1942 Admiral Mikawa’s forces torpedoed and sank four Allied crusiers off Guadalcanal or 6,140 miles from today’s stadium. Here’s hoping for an anniversary repeat. #longlance #youstarteditoilembargo #toosoon”

 

To which my point is: What’s the fucking problem?

If we as a human race cannot laugh and tell jokes (even offensive jokes) about the most horrible war in human history, we’ll rapidly discover that humor no longer exists and we’re just a bunch of boring losers.

Somebody needs to get Tharoor and the BBC a bunch of beers and watch them drink until they calm down. Then they can just simply celebrate victory with the rest of us. They should try it now and again. They’d sleep better at night.

Normally I wouldn’t care, except that Tharoor and the BBC are powerful enough that people who actually matter are going to listen to them and further do what they can to control our speech.

It’s going to get to the point that anybody, anywhere is going to be afraid to tweet or say like, things, or anything at all, because they’ll be too afraid that what they say is offensive to somebody, somewhere, over something.

And what we can / cannot say will be dictated to us by an elite BBC woman and super-elite Yale man; upon pain of outrage and social ostracism. I fear this world. For when it arrives, it’s going to be a freaking miserable nightmare.

As an example, I almost, almost didn’t post my Kiska thing because I thought it’d offend people or folks would think it too juvenile. But I did it anyway. I’m glad I did.

stormy

The Arcturus Project’s Weekly (Not Weekly) Stormy Cloud Award goes to His Ivy League Eminence Ishaan Tharoor. Smart Yale man you might be, but wise you are not. Do you get it? I did a thing there.

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on symbols, hate, and freedom

I general, I think as a society we tend to get wrapped too far around symbols, or speech.  Just because somebody gets offended can’t mean we have to rearrange society.  On the other hand, the Confederate battle flag wasn’t flying on Charleston government property until 1962.  In other words, a bunch of then not dead Confederate generals in 1878 didn’t think the flag should be there.  But a bunch of idiots decided to put it there in 1962 just to make themselves very, very clear about what they stood for.

Whatever your understanding of the Civil War, it’s pretty apparent that in the end one side was dedicated to the principle of living as an apartheid slave state.  And seeing as how we’re not likely to approve of flying the Nazi flag from government property, we probably should take the Confederate one down.

But at the same time I get somewhat iffy when Walmart and Amazon (Money!) decide to stop selling Confederate items.  What business is it of anybody if Steve from Minnesota wants to buy one to help reenact the Civil War with his buddies.  On the other hand, I’m the idiot who wants to burn Hitler’s art.

Just for the hell of it, I searched on Amazon to see if I could buy Nazi items.  When you search for “Nazi flag”, you realize Amazon doesn’t sell Nazi themed items.  But the first item that comes up in the search is a Soviet flag.  The Soviet Union killed more of its own people than Hitler did.  Yet you can still buy their stuff.  So one of history’s monstrosities is okay but another isn’t?

Maybe instead we should just let it go.  Forget the symbols, let people be free to make whatever purchases or decisions they want.  Then we’d get the chance to yell at the goon dressed like an SS officer at Halloween.  And we can throw rocks at him until the point of unconsciousness.

Fixing hate is about more than just symbols.  Remove the Confederate flag from human existence, and black men are still nine times as likely to end up behind bars as their white counterparts.  Fixing this shit is hard.  If only society could muster 1/7 the outrage at symbols and instead get into cold, hard, facts, we’d all be a lot better off.  I wonder how many of those who are shouting about flags today, have the stamina (or desire) to talk comprehensive law and justice reform tomorrow?  Or get out there and volunteer?  Or give cash to a charity not run by a celebrity?

One last thought, part of learning from history is being able to remember it, study it, even breathe it.  You can’t erase evil, you have to bathe in it, learn from it, and then banish the hate that created it.  When Egyptian Pharaohs took control they would occasionally sweep the entire kingdom and literally chisel out the names of their enemies in order to remove their lives from history.  This is not a behavior to emulate.

We cannot chisel away hate by battling symbols.  We fight hate and gain freedom by chiseling away hate’s roots.  So okay, take the damn flag down, but then be ready to come back tomorrow to fight that much harder, on far more important battles.

The Civil War’s outcome in many ways is still not finished.  We have a legacy we’ve inherited that requires us to keep going.  We still have work to do.  Freedom is our responsibility.  To hold it and grow it.  We must keep fighting.

dayattheoffice

ordinary, average men inviting us to pick up where they left off; and ensure their sacrifice was worth every bit of it

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I require the services of The Doctor and Seth Bullock to anger Hitler’s ghost

So this will take a moment or two to explain. I wish I could blame this forthcoming lunacy on alcohol, but it’s the middle of a weekday and so sadly I have no reasonable excuse to justify my insanity. So first off, the source of today’s rank confusion with humanity is this weird article from the BBC about how morons are still buying Hitler’s art:

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-33222486

I especially like how the BBC wraps their article with this one liner about Hitler:

“He went on to become Germany’s military and political leader from 1933 to 1945, launching World War Two and causing the deaths of millions.”

For some reason they wrote this line in a non-dominant, weak voice; like Hitler was just some disgruntled toll booth operator who spray painted his bosses’ car.

How about this instead, BBC:

“He went on to brutally acquire the title of Germany’s military and political dictator from 1933 to 1945, attempted to conquer Europe and committed cultural, physical, and emotional genocide against tens of millions. Nobody misses him.”

Oh man, there’s so much else wrong with this:

1) They held the auction in Nuremberg; maybe they could have bothered to not hold a Nazi themed auction in the city where they all got put on trial for crimes against humanity

2) There are apparently people willing to pay six-figures for Hitler’s art

Why?

Is it:

a) An attempt by freaks to study the art in order to establish some kind of window into the mind of a monster?

or

b) Some freak just really wants to show off a piece of art painted by one of history’s great monsters?

We’ve already covered (a) on this blog previously:

https://arcturusproject.com/2015/03/31/how-about-hes-just-an-evil-dude/

And if it’s (b), then there are some really, really sick people out there. I could probably get $1.5M just by fraudulently claiming I had possession of Genghis Khan’s chamber pot.

If you’re foolish enough to read this blog on a regular basis; you’ll already know my broad position on free speech. But I’ll make humanity a deal, if you murder north of 10 million people, you get your free speech rights revoked.

In the first season of Justified, there’s a neat little subplot where Robert Picardo plays an art dealer who buys Hitler paintings and then destroys them. Says The Doctor to Seth Bullock, “So I buy Hitler’s shitty paintings — and I burn them.”

picardo

And so I wish I could acquire the cash necessary to outbid these idiots in the BBC article. I overbid them by one dollar each, just to mess with their sick heads. I get Hitler’s paintings, Olyphant stands next to me armed with both a Glock and a Colt to keep away the haters, and Picardo breaks out a bottle of bourbon.

We douse Hitler’s shit in bourbon, set it alight in front of everybody, and then we three take a swig of bourbon. Then we give Hitler’s ghost the finger. Then we carry on with our daily lives.

hitler

Oh, Hitler dude, we’re just so very sorry for what’s happened to you in your past. If only somebody had liked your paintings, maybe you wouldn’t have tried to liquidate the human race. That must be the reason you did all those horrible things. Poor Hitler.

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Arcturus News Muster – Swift seizes West Coast, proclaims New Republic of Love

Cupertino, California – 22 June 2015 – In a shocking joint statement Apple Music head Eddy Cue, speaking alongside California governor Jerry Brown, surrendered unconditionally to the forces of Taylor Swift after a violent, bloody twelve hour struggle.

Battle hardened Silicon Valley warriors solemnly listened as a tearful Cue summarized his decision to unilaterally end all hostilities, “… our forces had already experienced a lot of concern from indie artists whose rear echelon attacks had begun to drain our bottom line, but our recent defeat leads me to the conclusion that our cause is finished.”

Cue later tweeted, “We hear you @taylorswift13 and indie artists. We submit to your authority. Please, please just stop. Love, Apple.”

The unexpected termination of hostilities followed this weekend’s crushing defeat of the Valley’s Sixth Division outside Sacramento. Initial reports indicate the Sixth Division suffered upwards of 95% casualties encapsulated by an unverified Tumblr video appearing to show a blood stained Swift holding the severed head of Apple CFO Lieutenant General Luca Maestri.

Panicked evacuations from various Valley campuses were indicated by the numerous private jets, helicopters, and auto-gyros arriving at Aspen bearing panicked Valley leaders toting what meager worldly possessions they could gather as they fled, such as $20K Apple Watches, $15K pop-collared shirts, and a $4 VCR.

Rumors swirled throughout the West Coast that Swift’s forces were occupying government buildings and public spaces riding armored hybrid-electric vehicles blaring “Shake It Off” from loudspeakers.

Governor Brown’s concurrent statement seemed to confirm this capitulation as he’d apparently placed the California National Guard under Swift’s command. “I don’t know what else I can do, my state’s essentially bankrupt, we’re outta water, I don’t remember where I left my keys, but hell, she’s got enough money to fix all this. Right? I think?”

Yet Valley devotees expected Cue’s capitulation would not impact Apple CEO Tim Cook’s plan to run a government in exile until a point he could use Apple’s mammoth reserved funds to build the world’s fifth largest standing army and counterattack.

Said one Apple insider, Tim’s counting on the loyalty of his Foxconn employees to manufacture a bunch of awesome new iWeapons to turn the tide. He figures they’ve been loyal to Apple all these years, and so he can trust them to back his return.”

swift

“I say this with love, reverence, and admiration for everything else you have done: If you betray my rule, I’ll kill you all.”

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I want to self-identify as a ham sandwich

The topic of identity seems rather uncontroversial lately. This shouldn’t be a crazy issue to wade into. Nobody has strong feelings at all. But I guess to be clear, I truly desire to self-identify as a ham sandwich.

Think of the benefits! Well, no, I guess I can’t really think of any benefits, but at least I’d be cool. And free to choose to live my life as a ham sandwich because it’s my desire. I’m not actually a sandwich, but who cares. Seriously, who cares? It’s my call. My life.

Well, I guess a lot of people care. Caitlyn/Bruce/Human Jenner is apparently more popular than the Pope because he has enough money to dramatically alter his life in a way that doesn’t destroy it. If he was poor with traumatic gender confusion, he’d just be screwed. But he has money and so he’s good to go. Money!

So despite what his chromosomes say, he’s self-identified as a female. And despite what her genetic code says, Rachel Dolezal says she’s black. In other words, both of them have self-identified as something that they are clearly not.

And yet, seriously I’m so very confused here, one of them is a hero but the other is evil? I honestly don’t get it. Logically it doesn’t make one bit of sense to worship one and hate the other. But in our super-modern culture nothing makes sense. So why should this?

But generally speaking, I don’t actually have a problem with this. If Jenner wants to be Caitlyn, okay. If NAACP lady wants to be black, okay. If I want to be a ham sandwich, okay. It’s our lives. Get off our backs.

Where I guess I get concerned is where people get shovey about it. They get the idea that their freedom of choice is more important than the freedom of choice of others. And so Jenner will likely sue so she can use whatever bathroom or cake shop she wants. And NAACP lady will, or has already sued a whole bunch of people for things I haven’t bothered to read about. Lawyers!

You know, I’m awfully sick of all of this. Generally speaking, on really, really controversial issues I think I’m beginning to learn my preference is that as a society we should either be all in or all out. So let’s go all in.

What do I mean? Well, if you remember, the media Titan race and gender baiter in Oprah interviewed Raven-Symone who expressed her desire to be:

“…a human who loves humans.”

At which point she was demolished by Oprah and by idiots for not self-identifying as black, or gay, or female, or a ham sandwich, or whatever. In other words, people wanted to tell her who she was. Uh, so, like, I’m pretty sure nobody but Raven-Symone has the power to tell Raven-Symone who she is.

And so that should be our baseline.

Nobody but Caitlyn Jenner has the right to tell Caitlyn Jenner who she is. And if Rachel Dolezal says she’s black, so be it. And if I’m a self-professed freaking ham sandwich, then I’m a freaking ham sandwich.

You know, speaking of that Pope guy, I think he gets it too, when he said, “…who am I to judge?”

We need to tattoo that phrase on everybody’s eyelids before our judgment / criticism culture destroys us all. And we also need to take a step back and realize that some things just aren’t that big a deal, or go against our ideals and values.

Who uses what bathroom or what cake shop or leads what race based organization are all concepts that are infinitesimal compared to ignoring the most important lesson we have as a human race in, quite simply, “…love one another…”

So let’s just make every bathroom a human bathroom and get it over with. And yeah, sorry, this means the 43 year old soccer mom has to let Jenner into the girl’s bathroom with her 11 year old daughter. Otherwise mom needs to get off social media about what a hero she thinks Jenner is. We have to be all in, or all out.

And I’m pretty sure that if Jesus owned a bake shop, and a gay / trans / multiracial / whatever couple wanted a cake, I think he’d be like, “Of course my children. What flavor would you like? Peace be with you.” I think similar things happened in this book I read that he was in.

And this after all, is the highest expression of our humanity. That you can disagree with somebody, hate who they say they are, or despise what they do, and yet still love them as a fellow human being. So I guess, forget ham sandwich, I want to self-identify as a human.

ham sandwich

Mmm, tasty, tasty love.

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it’s perfectly okay to stare at the wall and do nothing

Depending on what your cultural background is, this may not come as a shocker.  However, I grew up in a society where Seinfeld’s David Puddy was a comical guy because he tended to stare off into oblivion like a lunatic.  That was the joke, that’s it, that he just stared at nothing.

Puddy's_apartment

It also helped that Patrick Warburton did the joke particularly well.

Years ago, during one of the rather darkest moments of my life, I often found the urge to sit in a chair and accomplish nothing. This is real dark shit, where you don’t want to / can’t work, read, eat, sleep, nothing. You just want to sit there staring at a wall for twenty minutes. It’s all you’ve got.

At the time, I confided to a wise person that this behavior bothered me immensely. That there was something wrong with this ala David Puddy. To which the person said in response, “It’s perfectly okay to stare at the wall and do nothing.”

Boy was she right.  Even now when life isn’t as, relatively, dark I still allow myself to do this on a regular basis.  When made a regular part of your daily life, it helps to cleanse your brain.

And when you think about your caveman self, this makes perfect sense.  Once upon a time some hunter dude would just blankly stare at trees for eight hours while he awaited the forthcoming sabertooth tiger kill.

When I traveled to Sicily I heard them refer to this concept as, “The Blessed Nothing”.  I’ve never forgotten that phrase.

And yet in our high-impact-super-modern-culture we never bother to employ this cleansing.  We can’t even sit down for eight seconds without having to do: something, anything.

When I was on the road this last weekend and on long layover at the airport bar I happened to notice that of the twenty or so folks sitting at the bar, every single one was holding a smartphone.  I was the only one just sitting there slowly sipping my beer and staring at the wall.  It’s relaxing.  But taken at face value, somebody would be like, “Who’s the weirdo just sitting there without his phone?”

Even worse was the couple at the small table behind me who instead of, you know, talking to each other were just sitting there in silence tacking away at the smartphones.  I haven’t been in a decent relationship in a long, long time.  But I’m pretty sure that if all you’ve got to talk about as a couple is a smartphone, that there’s a problem at hand.

So friends, the next time you’re at the bar, or seated alone in the terminal awaiting your flight, or waiting for your friends on a park bench?  Just sit there and do nothing.  Stare into oblivion.  And see what delicious places your mind can take you.  Once you get used to doing this on a regular basis, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.  Your brain will thank you.

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what if velociraptor fought terminator?

There’s very little I wouldn’t give up to see this vicious bout. What purpose would it serve? I don’t care. Why should you? It’d be senseless and fun. That’s good enough for me. I assure you, you’ll pay money to see it. Plus, for one thing it’d make a movie ten times better than the mess that’s about to appear on screen.

For I have seen into the future. My Guests facilitated my journey into the outer reaches of the cosmos where I had the opportunity to see through time, grab a beer, solve the unified field theory, speak with Hitler, and watch both Jurassic Actual Park and Terminator Misspelled Word.

In order to increase the hi-larity, Hitler insisted that we use the powers of the sixth dimension to summon the corporeal form of Richard Attenborough. We also used these powers to procure enough alcohol to overcome even the level of suffering that Steven Spielberg and James Cameron are likely to endure once they realize what these people did with two of their finest creations.

Of course, this is to assume Spielberg and Cameron actually bother to watch these movies. Which of course they won’t. Instead, we’ll get the glory of two hack directors who’ve never made a decent movie but do their best to prove just how much they’re exactly like Michael Bay. Because that’s where the money is.

About halfway through World, Richard started to chug uncontrollably from a bottle of gin and then blacked out mumbling, “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.” A third of the way through Genesis (sic) Hitler remarked that the only thing worse than this film experience was when he watched Downfall and realized what a total asshole he actually was.

And now having seen both of these movies, I have thus proven my original two conclusions correct:

1) Both these movies are horrible

2) Each of these movies will make $1B minimum

Kindly observe the awfulness on display before you’ve even watched five minutes of these putrid creations known as their trailers:

Terminator Minor Sins:

a) Arnold fighting his younger self; one liner to young Arnold: “Don’t run for office you dirty fuck! Don’t do it! I know your fate!”

b) A flying yellow school bus action scene that puts the Los Angeles river motorcycle chase scene from Terminator 2 on par with the chariot race from Ben Hur (by the way, replace the word Terminator or Jurassic with Ben Hur; and you’ll also receive a perfectly accurate film review of the forthcoming Ben Hur remake)

c) Arnold flying through a functioning death saw known as an airborne helicopter; a situation that would completely destroy the character from Terminator 2 known as The Terminator

Terminator Heinous Sins of One’s Soul:

A) Turning John Connor’s character into a half-man / half-machine psycho

Jurassic Minor Sins:

a) genetically engineered super dinosaur that will make all humanity wonder why this movie isn’t called Godzilla 19

b) a body count higher in the trailer alone than all three previous movies combined thus proving the intent to make slasher porn rather than an actual movie

c) implication of a cinematic tone so devoid of adventure and excitement as to make one wonder if the desire was to make the audience depart the theater exhausted and convinced life is just a big meat grinder

Jurassic Heinous Sins of One’s Soul:

A) brain control of the velociraptors to the point they become either mind slaves or allies of Chris Pratt

Jurassic Park is in my top five of great movies. Terminator 2 is likely in my top ten. If you think I’m a lunatic for these assessments, then you’ve read too much of this blog post to begin with. But even if you disagree with my rankings, you cannot dispute that these two movies were at least, movies.

I’m not sure what Terminator 5 and Jurassic 4 are? But they’re not movies in the sense that I understand the term. At best they’re like loud theme park rides. Which I think is the new concept for the summer blockbuster.

Take a name the populace will recognize, make it a Bay style action movie, and shove it down everybody’s throats whether they like it or not. And when you make $1B? Nobody will care.

Well I care dammit! I care a great deal. Because I have no life, and my Guests won’t leave me alone. So I’m always out to distract myself. Such as with the advertising and marketing campaign for my new sixth dimension creation where the velociraptor and terminator will participate in a Dual of the Fates at Madison Square Garden on July 25th at 8pm. Live. Pay Per View! $100.

You will pay. I assure you. I bought Chris Pratt for one afternoon to use his sexy mind control powers on millions. I can’t lose. I’ll make $1B for sure!

dual of the fates

Clever Girl over Cyberdyne in seven rounds