reductio ad obamum

i. blacks on crack

Every Single Company In America Is Hemorrhaging Jobs. No doubt about it. No two ways about it. No way around it. Bottom line: it is Tuff Business to stand on your own two feet in this day and age. Real Hard to be a Real Wo/man. It's humbling. Most everyone's getting The Raw Deal.

What's really shocking is that people are still reproducing. This is so not an economic climate conducive to feeding brand new mouths. This is when a smrt couple would say: "Hale no. Let's weather the storm first and wait until our finances, and the economy in general, are a bit more stable, after 2011 (or whenever it's being prognosticated that things are finally gonna hit bottom and then slowly turn-around)." But no. This ain't the case. People continue to breed like rabbits.

I'm actually inventing this fact. Maybe there are some solid numbers indicating that Live Births have been decreasing during this Recession. But it doesn't really seem like it, and if indeed they are, I'd wager they're not decreasing enough.

My obvious bias is that people reproduce too much even when times aren't so tuff.

Microsoft recently announced it cut 5,000 jobs, the first significant layoffs in their history, if I recall correctly. Starbucks just slashed 6,000 jobs. Motherfucking Starbucks. Starbucks is not really the world's greatest "ace-in-the-hole" for Desperate Job Seekers anymore, if it ever was. This Xmas when I did my Annual Mall Visit, many stores had signs in their windows saying "NoT Hiring." The bloody Mall! That friendly retail environment where many a high-school kid gets their first part-time job, where many a desperate Grad goes a-begging for some part-time bucks, is turning away people by the poor, huddled masses.

Times are tuff and competition is even tuffer.

Vivid dreams have been occurring on a nightly basis, contributing to inordinate early-morning sluggishness. Sometimes the night terrors are not so original: one featured yet another appearance by Pennywise the Evil Clown from "It", in several scenes far more terrifying than any featured in the movie. In one he had those jagged, horrible teeth you remember, but even more eXtreme and horrible.



In another, he had painted his snow-white skin a human shade - think when in Tim Burton's "Batman" the Joker did the same, so he sorta looked like Jack Nicholson again. So here, Pennywise looked like Tim Curry (where is he now?) and was lingering around me and behaving like he was at a funeral: crying and being mournful and sad. But when he wiped his tears, his pale white skin peeked through, and I could tell that he was really crying tears of Evil Laughter.

The rest of the dream involved me desperately running from Pennywise, with the distinct understanding that he could easily follow me wherever I went due to his Evil Superhuman Powers. I got into a car and tried to drive away as fast as I could, but the car was packed with tons of heavy stuff and could only go very slowly.

Then, a few states over, I managed to steal a motorcycle, which went uncontrollably fast, and I ended up driving it recklessly through a mall, eventually making it to the parking lot, where I was thrown 100 feet into the air. The Pennywise threat didn't seem to be as big of a factor any more.

And it just gets weirder: I found myself on a block of ice or concrete or something with a group of people, and we were floating out-of-controllably fast down a river that was actually a flooded freeway. The embankments were impossibly high and there was no way to escape to safety. Finally we approached a point where we could feasibly jump off onto actual land. I "steered" the floe up to it and we started jumping, many of us landing into the river.

One of us was a suspicious-looking black prostitute, and as we were scrambling to save our godforsaken lives, the prostitute took this golden opportunity to strip off "her" clothes and reveal herself as a Real Man and to be a general Khaos-maker. Disconcerting.

Well, we made it to safety, in someone's backyard no less. But did we throw ourselves on the mercy of the helpful homeowners? No, there was one of those strange "dream-understandings" in which we just "knew" we were Criminals, Fugitives, and that if we revealed ourselves we'd be arrested - at best. So we hid in the garage until a sadistic young boy managed to find us. We didn't really get in trouble, though. Going into the house, I discovered that The Grandmother had just died, and instead of taking her to a funeral home like normal people, they had her dead body propped up sitting on the couch, and crying family members sat next to her.

That was about the end of the Hyperweird, although later I was arrested because of my association with a friend who was illegally distributing flyers (!), and I got mad at him: "How could you not KNOW this was going to happen" and then there was a brief period where I was running around with a flamethrower incinerating obstacles and enemies.

Bottom line: Weirdest sheit ever. Some of it is more weird than terrifying per se, but I'll be glad when I get out of this phase. Because these Awfully Weird Dreams do seem to come and go.

And earlier in the week I had a dream that was less terrifying, but still weird: we were travelling on a public mass-transit system that took the form of overhead-suspended, open-air platforms, where we sat in chairs. But here's the thing: each person had their own Personal Female Dancer. They weren't "Strippers" - they wore little stewardess-esque outfits and never touched you and danced rather PG-ratedly - but the point is, you had to pay for them to do their dance nonetheless, and there was no way to get out of it.

All the women talked in fake foreign accents. I paid the girl to dance and she told me that I was not allowed to look at her face. I was sitting next to a young man and I gained an intuition that "my" dancer was actually his "girlfriend", and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. I couldn't blame him. This whole situation spelled trouble.

Then I was suddenly in "The Tim and Eric House" through which queued up a bunch of young diehard Tim and Eric fans. I was thrown in their mix and was trying to "blend in" - they all wore costumes to signify their devotion, but my costume was kinda weak and "poseury" - and then I finally said, "what am I doing here, I'm not really that diehard of a Tim and Eric fan", so I decided to leave. But the house was really difficult to navigate'n'negotiate, with a lot of stairs and platforms and pitfalls and stuff. SO WEIRD. Maybe this has to do with the fact that Tim and Eric had a live performance in town this weekend, which I missed, but I wasn't overly heartbroken about missing it . . . . ?

And THEN I found myself sharing a bedroom with Mikael Akerfeldt of OPETH fame. I was trying to go to sleep and he was in the bed next to me, laughing obnoxiously and being loud, and eventually he began playing OPETH songs on his guitar really loud, and I said "Could you please stop playing YOUR music so loud, I'm trying to go to sleep and my parents are gonna yell @ me" but none of this seemed to matter to him. This may relate to this one time I was listening to Opeth in my room at night at too loud of a volume and somebody told me to turn it down.

FACT: I have weirder dreams than You.

Everybody should take a How To Argue Correctly class. By that I mean they should learn not ever to use shoddy, logical-fallacy-based "arguments".

Although I think I do have a little bit of "Argument School Syndrome" myself, and I am starting to see Straw Men everywhere. But I would say that the Straw Man is a pretty prevalent pain in the arse. In this fallacy, critics shiftily misrepresent the other side's argument and then proceed to dismantle the Shifty Misrepresentation - the Straw Man - but not the actual argument itself. The Straw Man can be disconcertingly powerful, though, especially if you're preaching to a choir who has eaten it up in the past.

I watched Alexandra Pelosi's ("Journeys With George") documentary "Friends of God" the other day, and the Evangelicals proved quite fond of their Straw Men. She was talking with the inimitable Ted Haggard about how the godless pagans in San Francisco might not be a huge fan of him calling them immoral and godless and hellbound.

His response: "Morality is kind of like toothpaste. I like Crest toothpaste, I've used it for 50 years. Crest is the Best. So if you tell that to someone who prefers Aquafresh toothpaste, then naturally they disagree and get upset."

News Flash, Teddy Boy: Morality is NOT kinda like toothpaste. Not even a little. So what, exactly, is a meth-addled anal sex binge with teenage boy-prostitutes "kinda like"? What kinda Straw Man (Boy?) is gonna take the blame for that one?

I liked Pelosi's documentary better than I liked Bill Maher's recent "Religulous". Maher was very in-your-face, and half the film was him openly mocking the people he was interviewing. Pelosi prefers to let the idiots speak for themselves, and the rudest she gets is with a slightly incredulous tone that the interviewees rarely seem to pick-up on. She's great at getting the people to open their mouths and then to put their own foot in. Ya get more flies with honey than with vinegar blablabla.

One thing I do like about Evangelical Xtians is their jubilance and their sense of community. You pack 15,000 Midwesterns into a megachurch and they're all smiling, singing, dancing, and talking about how great their sex lives are. This is actually a little bit better than listening to monotone catholic priests sermonizing at 6am on EWTN.

There was an especially poignant part of "Friends with God" where a bonneted woman with 15 children talked about "the old days" when she was a reckless youth and was determined to go to law school and Not get married/have a gargantuan family. And then she met the man of her dreams. This situation speaks for itself, and does not require any (extraneous) commentary. What A World!

There's a pretty good series on PBS right now about The History of Comedy, with an apparent emphasis on 20th century American comedians. I'm digging it, and it's not a bad watch at all if you're listlessly flipping channels.

Joan Rivers has a segment, and they talk about her opening the door for (female) Comediennes. In those formative days, though, a woman really had to "Play by the Roles", and much of her humour was self-deprecating.

Well, you have to start somewhere, I guess, and I argue that the Take-Home Subtext here is: women don't necessarily act excruciating because they want to. That's just the rules of the game, and if they had the Initial Power to make the rules, then they probably would've made them a little differently. Or maybe that's just me being an Optimistic Feminist.

This is Old News, but I was gonna Opine on Kid Rock telling a judge to "S" his "D" because the judge would not let him credit his USO Tours in Iraq towards his required Community Service for his recent brawl in a Waffle House. Mr Rock went on and on about how he's bending over backwards to Support Our Troops, and that the judge is in the wrong for supposedly telling Rock that "he's not doing enough to learn his lesson."

I don't even know what kind of Logical Fallacy this is. The Pious Patriot Fallacy? The Red-White-and-Blue-Blooded Redneck Fallacy?

I don't know which is worse: Rock's smug self-congratulation for being "patriotic", or his indignation that he's not being sufficiently rewarded for it.

It all screams "look at me me me, gimme gimme gimme."

If he wanted to set a good example for his braindead legions of fans, he would treat the USO stuff as "just doin' my civic, american job; no thanks necessary" and then he also would QUIETLY do his mandated community service by helping some inner-city kids learn how to read.

I still like his songs, though. Vicariously emulating his ignorant arrogance makes me more attractive to Attractive Women.

GROOOAAANNN.

OH GOD.

The NYT has been pushing all the "right" buttons lately. There's a great article today called "It's the Economy, Girlfriend",

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/nyregion/28daba.html?_r=1&em

which spotlights a somewhat interesting group of mid-twentysomething NY women:

They shared their sad stories the other night at an informal gathering of Dating a Banker Anonymous, a support group founded in November to help women cope with the inevitable relationship fallout from, say, the collapse of Lehman Brothers or the Dow’s shedding 777 points in a single day, as it did on Sept. 29.

In addition to meeting once or twice weekly for brunch or drinks at a bar or restaurant, the group has a blog, billed as “free from the scrutiny of feminists,” that invites women to join “if your monthly Bergdorf’s allowance has been halved and bottle service has all but disappeared from your life.”

Theirs is not the typical 12-step program.

Step 1: Slip into a dress and heels. Step 2: Sip a cocktail and wait your turn to talk. Step 3: Pour your heart out. Repeat as needed.

WHOA BOY. The article has that aware-of-its-own-fluffiness tone-of-"Levity" to it, but it still made me want to vom. One of the women was even told to get reservations at her fave NYC-area restaurants now, because her man might have to relocate them to THE MIDWEST (OH, THE HUMANITY!!!) soon re: his J.O.B. Although I'm sure she could save herself the horrors by just trading-up to another financial manager who wasn't in the process of losing his job, hardee harhar.

This article continues two alarming trends I've been seeing in the Times: 1. Fluff Pieces on The Superrich, which have no relevance to 99.9999% of Amerikkkans 2. Pieces that don't have the most flattering view of women. I can appreciate the need to have a good Laugh just as much as the Witty Writers at the Times do, but I think they've been failing lately. (the actual DABA Blog is slightly better at conveying a chuckleworthy sense of "humour")

...And here's that obnoxious article on shirtsleeves in the oval office I predicted about a week ago. Damn, I'm good! It seems most commenters have used this forum to shower Obama with praise, rather than moan "Why is this even in the news?"

And probably what it symbolizes - a new president serious about "rolling up his sleeves and getting down to actual business, as opposed to being just an 'empty suit' " is indeed somewhat newsworthy. I was probably in a crabby mood that day.

The Male Feminist Blogger Figleaf offers his insightful comments on a titillating question: "do men ever say no to casual sex?"

. . . if a woman initiates in real life, especially at a time when circumstance or mood makes us disinclined, it isn't received so much as sexy, interesting, or a fantasy come true or, especially, for an opportunity to do something fun with someone who, other than genital anatomy, is just like you. When that happens men aren't given a lot of places to go except up (with superior pronouncements like "she's a bitch") or out (with escapist characterizations like "she's crazy") but never straight across ("I'm sorry, I'm already in a relationship" or "I don't think that would be a good idea... can I call you a cab, I don't think you should drive" or even "Not now but can I call you later.")

So this is obviously where My Masculinity gets shot down in flames like a Straw Man, because of my "Ad Hominem" association with A Feminist Man who also seems to be A Gay, Slightly Exhibitionistic Man who identifies with the Female Gender. I guess I could make a Coercion/Rape joke about my own Aggressive Willingness To Initiate With Extreme Prejudice, but...

That would be pretty gay. Figleaf is all-right, and has an interesting discussion of what he calls "The no-sex class", and I do give him the hat tip here for reminding me of the topic of Initiation. Initiation is "inherently" (read: culturally) masculine; it symbolizes agency/action, something which women are not really allowed to have, lest they be called "A Slut." Uh, I'm not really sure I really had a point here, other than: "Correct Initiation" is obviously gender-differentiated in our culture....and "Initiation" is directly related to Libido Itself. Patriarchy Hurts Men Too (tm), because they have to have a "damn good reason" like "I just got unjustly fired from my 500K-a-year-job on Wall St and I might have to move to the midwest and my brother just died"; they can't simply say "I'm just not in the mood", because that makes them Less Of A Man. Which is, of course, The End Of The [Man's Libido's] World.

Ya know who was a Man's Man Through-and-Through?



KARNOV!!!



Another thing I like about "The Office" is that Dwight listens to LIFE OF AGONY in his Trans Am. That is such a Dwight band to listen to. 90s superridiculousness at its finest. LOA is one of those bands that really makes me feel old because I can remember when they were relevant. (Of course, they're still relevant in a nostalgic way!) Whatever. It's kinda sad people don't really remember LOA any more. Or am I just out of the loop?




Feedburner tells me I'm losing subscribers to my feed. Yeah, I know the SIBHoD hasn't been so awesome lately, but that honestly kinda stings!


So. Yeah. Be doog and watch out for those Straw Men.