{"id":217,"date":"2005-05-05T02:25:16","date_gmt":"2005-05-05T09:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/?p=217"},"modified":"2017-09-13T20:18:51","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T03:18:51","slug":"clowns-to-the-left-of-me-jokers-to-the-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/?p=217","title":{"rendered":"Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bamf<\/a>…sorry for disappearing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said elsewhere, work and illness conspired to eat up what little free time I had left for the last month or so.\u00c2\u00a0 It got kind of daunting after a while.\u00c2\u00a0 Writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddoing\u00e2\u20ac\u201danything, anything at all has been a physical drain.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s getting better.\u00c2\u00a0 At least now it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t involve as much caffeine to bluff the flesh and spirit.\u00c2\u00a0 Each forward lurch becomes less half-hearted.\u00c2\u00a0 Eh.\u00c2\u00a0 Whaddaya do?<\/p>\n

Speaking of half-hearted, this li\u00e2\u20ac\u2122l entry probably won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be too coherent.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a few points, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be jumping all over the place.<\/p>\n

Weather<\/span><\/p>\n

While the supposedly liberal media lauds the virtues of Michael Crichton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s State of Fear<\/i>, the weather is getting strange out here in the real world.<\/p>\n

Here in the Pacific Northwest, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dry as a bone, pushing the mercury up to the 75-degree Fahrenheit mark.\u00c2\u00a0 Down south in California, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s raining to the point of flooding.\u00c2\u00a0 North and south, glaciers and the polar icecaps are getting smaller.\u00c2\u00a0 Melting.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m on a marginally regular basis with several people across the country; my wife, with several more people worldwide.\u00c2\u00a0 Why are so many people complaining about how weird the weather has been?\u00c2\u00a0 It seems as if everyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s climate is acting screwy.\u00c2\u00a0 Granted, anecdotal evidence isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t entirely useful.\u00c2\u00a0 And yet there is a great preponderance of said evidence.<\/p>\n

If there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no such thing as global warming, what the hell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going on with the weather?<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve stumbled on a few reviews<\/a> and articles<\/a> that shed light on Crichton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s latest<\/a>, but this line from David Roberts’ review<\/a> at Grist Magazine makes a telling point:<\/p>\n

But what’s the reality at the core of State of Fear? Crichton’s not asking
\nus to believe that environmentalists really run a ruthless transnational
\ncabal, of course. But he is asking us to believe something more fanciful:
\nthat in the real world, they have engineered a global scientific and
\npolitical consensus on climate change without one.<\/p>\n

Two Girls in Need of Lemons<\/span><\/p>\n

You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to see the Hitchhiker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Guide to the Galaxy movie to follow my meaning.<\/p>\n

Jamie and I went to see it last night.\u00c2\u00a0 We have to watch it again.\u00c2\u00a0 Not because we liked it.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean, we did.\u00c2\u00a0 But the whole experience was ruined for us\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfor everyone else in the theater, for that matter.<\/p>\n

Except for two girls.<\/p>\n

Well, they sounded like girls.\u00c2\u00a0 Giggling, immature, cute in voice if not in conduct, jailbait girls.\u00c2\u00a0 Jamie told me (and now you<\/a>) that only one of them was.\u00c2\u00a0 The other one was a grown woman.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look.<\/p>\n

Much as I try not to contradict my esteemed freckly better half, I must in this case.\u00c2\u00a0 Girl #2 might have looked Jamie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s age, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m judging it was a girl, an immature female, based on existential instead of phenomenological evidence.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, the airhead sounded too vacuous to be a grown-up.<\/p>\n

Anyway, a few rows behind us, at our four o\u00e2\u20ac\u2122clock, two girls yakked through the trailers.\u00c2\u00a0 Through all three \u00e2\u20ac\u0153please silence your cellphone\u00e2\u20ac\u009d signs.\u00c2\u00a0 Through the whole damn movie.<\/p>\n

When a trailer for a new movie about Herbie, the precocious sentient VW Bug that won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fraggin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 die, was blasting past us, one of them bubbled, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, I love Herbie!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 When a Vogan construction fleet comes to Earth with bureaucratic tidings of steaming hot doom, one of them giggled, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yup, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the Vogons!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 When Marvin made his first appearance, they blurted out, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Marvin!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently they expected their amygdala-deficient ardor was going to make him wave or something.\u00c2\u00a0 At the sight of dolphins, one of them squealed, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ooh, the dolphins are coming back!\u00c2\u00a0 Yay, dolphins!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

As I’d said before, I didn’t look.\u00c2\u00a0 Stopping myself from turning and making eye contact was the only way to keep myself from leaping out of my chair and eating their flesh.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean, that would\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been the sensible thing to do, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it?\u00c2\u00a0 So there I was, trying to leave such thoughts where they belong.<\/p>\n

At work.<\/p>\n

Clearly, these girls were convinced that they and they alone were capable of enjoying Douglas Adams\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 master work properly.\u00c2\u00a0 They prided themselves on knowing the story, knowing where everything in it went, and knowing their knowing that they knew.\u00c2\u00a0 In the presence of such sagacity, only a heat-stricken wombat would fail to gouge out its eyes and wail in reverence.<\/p>\n

And yet these Hitchhiker mavens didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sigh or cheer or praise God for answering that one teeny prayer when \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Journey of the Sorcerer\u00e2\u20ac\u009d made a triumphant entrance.\u00c2\u00a0 They didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to recognize the original Marvin or the original Arthur Dent when they appeared.\u00c2\u00a0 They didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wail when Douglas Adams\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 face appeared in a semi-subliminal flash.\u00c2\u00a0 And they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem at all aware that some of us were Hitchhiker fans back when it was just a radio show, whose hearts broke when Adams died, who brandished our towels proudly in his memory a year later, and that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been waiting for only 20 bloody years to see this movie.<\/p>\n

A ten-year-old boy was also there.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say a word.\u00c2\u00a0 He made them look stupid.\u00c2\u00a0 A gaming console wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even involved.<\/p>\n

Girls, word to the unwise.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody in that theater thought you were cool froods who knew where their towels were.\u00c2\u00a0 But we did think you were morons.\u00c2\u00a0 Several minus billion for being rude, self-absorbed little twits.\u00c2\u00a0 j00 F4Il.<\/p>\n

Last Refuge of the Scoundrel<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot,
\nbut don’t let that fool you.\u00c2\u00a0 He really is an idiot.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201dGroucho Marx
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been following my little bloggy rantings, you might remember a few mentions to the neocon mouthpiece Mark Levin.\u00c2\u00a0 Wretched little man<\/a>, sort of like the opposite of a TARDIS.\u00c2\u00a0 Big on the outside, really small on the inside, goes absolutely nowhere…unless UN black helicopter territory is considered somewhere.<\/p>\n

I was following his show for Media Matters for America<\/a> for a while, but technical difficulties got in the way for a while.\u00c2\u00a0 When I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t able to get captures of his radio show, I figured I could just leave him behind.\u00c2\u00a0 He was a big fish in a little pond out on the east coast, I thought.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like the Pope or Mitch Hedberg<\/a>, somebody who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been everywhere and left a positive mark on the world, however small.\u00c2\u00a0 I told myself he was best forgotten.<\/p>\n

No such luck.\u00c2\u00a0 Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another far right wingnut with a book out.\u00c2\u00a0 This one is a collection of screeds pushing the myth of judicial activism, of liberals making law from the bench.<\/p>\n

He can argue his way out of a wet paper bag, sure\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut he needs fangs to do it.\u00c2\u00a0 His arguments stand up<\/a> to the light of neither sun nor moon.\u00c2\u00a0 Heaven help him in the event of an eclipse.\u00c2\u00a0 Without cheap shots, name-calling, or factual distortion, he’d have nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 His answer to any caller he disagrees with, “Get off the phone, you big dope!”\u00c2\u00a0 When cornered, the best retort he can unload on a worthy opponent is, “Who cares?!”\u00c2\u00a0 His witticisms are limited to elementary school scatology and sound board buttons.\u00c2\u00a0 His answer to the first anniversary of the breaking of the Abu Ghraib story is singing along with the holiday song parody “Walkin’ Round in Women’s Underwear<\/a>.”\u00c2\u00a0 His ethical and empathic muscles have atrophied.\u00c2\u00a0 They work only for call-in sycophants.<\/p>\n

He has fans that worship him, people who think ad hominem<\/i> attacks on his opponents make him a hero and a genius.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s the slimmest of chances they might find this single lame-ass blog post on a Google quest.\u00c2\u00a0 I doubt it, but they get seriously, painfully, mortally wounded by any slight against their guy.\u00c2\u00a0 I can only assume it really hurts them because they get really mad about it, wherever and whoever the source of that slight.\u00c2\u00a0 Anyone who fails to squint at the brilliance of their golden idol is called names.\u00c2\u00a0 “We called that lib ‘jerk,’ ‘moonbat,’ and ‘loser.’\u00c2\u00a0 Then we nailed him on his typos.\u00c2\u00a0 That’ll show ‘im.”<\/p>\n

Stuff like this used to depress me; to think, grown men and women resort to playground epithets and blind worship to feel good about themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 Now it’s just sadly amusing.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve glommed onto the biggest, loudest bully on the block, offering their lunch money, their thinking, and their sycophancy to him just so that nobody else beats them up.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no real concern for America’s future going on.\u00c2\u00a0 If someone is reduced to poverty, if a woman is beaten, if a dark-skinned man is tortured, if a child is made into a sexual slave, they don’t make a move.\u00c2\u00a0 But if their hero comes yelling into their homes, warning them about an evil conspiracy, they’ll call in and love him to death.<\/p>\n

I guess I see the benefits.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s easier than hearing out a contrary view.\u00c2\u00a0 Easier than actually doing something.\u00c2\u00a0 giving someone a sandwich.\u00c2\u00a0 Easier than seeing a common darkness within themselves, something we all share.\u00c2\u00a0 Easier than holding a kid’s hand. \u00c2\u00a0 Instead they dismiss an electrocuted sand N1Gg3R with mockery and laughter, then sacrifice their compassion and their minds to a demagogue, all because they’re afraid of the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Poor things.<\/p>\n

If they ever bother to approach a cosmic nobody like me, I’ll try not to laugh, I swear.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Let’s not end on a dark note, hm?\u00c2\u00a0 (For once.)<\/p>\n

A quick shoutout to some nice folks.\u00c2\u00a0 First, my old friend Frank Shaw in San Jose.\u00c2\u00a0 I haven’t buzzed him in, like, a century.\u00c2\u00a0 But I think about you and Jeong Hee all the time.\u00c2\u00a0 The Mars Attacks!<\/i> flying saucer toy helps.\u00c2\u00a0 Brrr-zap brr-zap!\u00c2\u00a0 Ack, ack ACK!\u00c2\u00a0 Ack ack!<\/p>\n

Second, for my next trick, I’m gonna suck up to a fan.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe not a fan, but it’s nice to know I have a few supporters.\u00c2\u00a0 And no money exchanged hands or anything, either.<\/p>\n

A couple of months ago, I got an e-mail from a kind lady named Jessica who was wondering where I’d gone to.\u00c2\u00a0 She’d read the stuff on my old Blogger account, but lost track of me.\u00c2\u00a0 The way I flitted across two or three blogging services, it was bound to happen to someone.\u00c2\u00a0 She tracked me down to the Afterhell <\/a>website.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently that wasn’t enough to run screaming.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Anyway, I brought her up to date and sent her links to my other blogs.<\/p>\n

Now, whenever I get burned out or frustrated, I sneak another look at her e-mail.\u00c2\u00a0 I try not to care what people think.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a dangerous thing, especially for folks with pretenses toward art, truth, or individuality.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s good to get some positive feedback, a little support, some warm human contact.<\/p>\n

And one thing about e-mail:\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t have to worry about finding mysterious strands of long red hair in it.\u00c2\u00a0 I just don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.<\/p>\n

I’ll explain later.\u00c2\u00a0 Nightie night. \u00c2\u00a0 [thud<\/b>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bamf…sorry for disappearing. As I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said elsewhere, work and illness conspired to eat up what little free time I had left for the last month or so.\u00c2\u00a0 It got kind of daunting after a while.\u00c2\u00a0 Writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddoing\u00e2\u20ac\u201danything, anything at all has been a physical drain.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s getting better.\u00c2\u00a0 At least now it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t involve as much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,30,6,27],"tags":[35,58,60],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-livejournal-postings","category-movies","category-offtopic","category-personal","tag-livejournal","tag-movies","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}