causalties of the mechanized modern world, yallz

me: in lieu of of having self-respect and a positive impact on the world, I guess I'll just show off my tits and be rewarded for them. THANKS WORLD.

kelly: THANKS COLLEGE. Actually, if there's one thing I learned in college, it's that I should be rewarded for my tits. everyone in the world is a retard and making more money than me at being a retard.

Let's get topical.

Here's what I don't get about this whole "Don't Ask Don't Tell" debacle: should gays, or anyone else for that matter, really be fighting so hard to go die for no real reason? Why do "liberals" who ostensibly don't support the war(s) care so much about giving gays the right to go fight in them?

Military Madness

"Over the past nine years, more US military personnel have taken their own lives than have died in action in either the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan."

Military Suicides: A Sign of Empire Pathology

Perhaps the story of Ron Kovic in Vietnam epitomizes the soldier aboandoned and left for dead by the machine he was donating his life for. Time has told that it's embarrassingly naive to assume that the United States and its raison d'etre, the military, would have turned a 180 in the span of the past four decades, but that the lessons of Vietnam still haven't been absorbed by the powers that be is a sign of criminal myopia.

Saw this on a SUV today

"To err is human, to forgive is divine. Neither is the policy of the U.S. Marine Corps."

Feel like crying?

I do!



This song was written in 1964. In the past past 46 years, we've learned approximately nothing.

gifts 4 evry1

New stuff here!!!

Gettin Paid

Dear Emily,

I wanted to let you know that I am bored out of my goddamn mind. Also, I printed off and filled out an application for food stamps while on the clock. What do you think of that?

Love,

Kate


Dear Kate,

Thank you for your correspondence.

I think that filling out an application for foodstamps whilst on the clock is a goddamn ingenious move. I didn't know you could do that on the internets and have been too lazy to get over their office. And by lazy I also mean embarrassed. For our country. And I also mean drunk.

You may also want to look into getting to food banks. They might even have cereal!

love&we should bring booze to work next time,

Emily

America's just about kicked it.

Kinda funny that people protest spending money on "education" and "health care" but like it when their "tax dollars" that they "worked hard for" go to "killing brown foreigners."

Kinda funny that people are "upset with Obama" when he's just "shoveling Bush's shit" and that the same people want to "save America." This might mean they want to "save the right to buy lots of shit they don't need."

You can read the whole article here if you feel like breaking a lot of things but need a little more motivation.

Looks like these fine human beings are the ones who put "my country right or wrong" bumper stickers on their Expeditions to "piss off liberals." Wonder if they're ripping them off now?

Think Obama should "bring the troops home" from Iraq to regulate a "brewing civil war" in the USA. Or to eradicate Kentucky of humans, maybe.

Also like how "mainstream media for dumb people" keeps us up to date on "the American people's displeasure with Obama as president." You can also read about how "yearbook photos may predict marraige success" from the same "news source," so while you are sad and lonely and watching "dancing with the stars" you can dig out your old yearbooks to see if you will ever "find that special someone."

Incidentally, Yahoo news also says that the sad and also fat human known as "Glenn Beck" is "a hit" with people who don't really understand things:
"As he was working himself into a lather on the set at Fox News Channel last week, Glenn Beck picked up a gasoline can. He pretended he was President Barack Obama pouring gasoline on the American people, as he emptied the can (filled with water) on a shivering actor and lit a match."

And that's what's Great About America in 2009: you can have the intelligence and creativity of a third-grader, but if you use both to appeal to dumb people's hatred and fear, you can be a Television Celebrity/ Valid Political Force!

“The Chinese Word For Crisis

...has two characters, danger and opportunity.”

This sentiment has become stock in the bad-news emails getting shipped around offices from HQ as "crisis" endures as the theme of the moment/year/decade?

Good thing we can turn to the wisdom of the ancient Chinese when what we like to call modern civilization is crumbling around us.

Even rich people from the South “get it”: "It’s kind of like we all went overboard. And we’re trying to get back to where we should have been,” says Sacha Taylor, of Atlanta, who wore a 10-year-old dress to a charity function, on the decline of conspicuous consumption. If the highlighted trophy wives of Atlanta lawyers wearing pre-worn clothes doesn’t signify the end of days, what does?

Since becoming a poor, I’ve had a lot of time to think, since thinking is free. I’ve also had a lot of time to rely on the generosity of friends who are willing to share what they have. So far, the “economic crisis” kind of feels like less stuff, fewer breakfasts served to me by people I don’t know and more time spent with the people I care about. I feel less like a consumer and more like a human.

Isn’t the cause of our “economic collapse” our God-given right as Americans to consume what we don’t need-- with money we don’t have? Given that this existence has forced billions of the world's people into a star-spangled choke hold, lamenting its loss seems to be about a rung above war criminal on the depravity ladder.

Bob Herbert of the New York Times says:

The seeds of today’s disaster were sown some 30 years ago. Looking at income patterns during that period, my former colleague at The Times, David Cay Johnston, noted that from 1980 (the year Ronald Reagan was elected) to 2005, the national economy, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. (Because of population growth, the actual increase per capita was about 66 percent.)

But the average income for the vast majority of Americans actually declined during those years. The standard of living for the average family improved not because incomes grew but because women entered the workplace in droves.

As hard as it may be to believe, the peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973, when the average income per taxpayer, adjusted for inflation, was $33,000. That was nearly $4,000 higher, Mr. Johnston pointed out, than in 2005.”

So maybe we’ve stopped consuming, because only because we’ve been forced. But what does that mean as far as “quality of life” is concerned? How can we make a smooth u-turn on a narrow road that’s decades long and trillions of dollars deep?

"The Americans always do the right thing. After they've exhausted every other available option." –Winston Churchill

Myths that Politicians Happily Perpetuate

For fear of appearing too "smart" or "sophisticated" or French, America just keeps getting more American, and politicians are only too happy to cater to the whims of what they perceive to be simple-minded, big-hearted folks of this vast nation of plains, farms and honest-to-goodness blue-collar workers. Too bad those have all been slowly disappearing since after WWII, but the Vice President nominees seem to have missed out on that. (Farms today are run by millionaires and their illegal immigrants, who keep our lettuce cheap. If it gets too expensive when higher-paid legal workers pick it, we complain about the economy and want to kick all the immigrants out because they're taking American jobs). But honestly, why do politicians insist on allowing the myth of the American Redneck to determine the parlance and values of the country?

From Slate:
"At times what was supposed to be a throw-down turned into a hoedown as the candidates tried to out-folksy each other. Sarah Palin took us to the sidelines of the soccer games. (First hockey, now soccer—we'll be getting a spring sport soon.) Biden took us to the gas station and Wal-Mart. Palin was dropping her G's and using expressions like doggone. Joe was speaking to the Catholics with 'God love him' and reminding us a few times that his father called him 'Champ.' I'm just glad there wasn't dancing. Although, if there were, we might have been able to use those words."

This nation does not belong to blue-collar workers. They perform very important roles that we couldn't survive without, but the same group that pats them on the head is systematically indenturing them in low-paying, uninsured servitude. And then outsourcing their jobs elsewhere. A very small, very smart group of very old and very white men run the entire show, more so than we would be comfortable to even imagine, and politicians and their patsies to get down on their knees and shamelessly beg for votes is disingenuous and offensive, and the reason that debates and politics in general are completely worthless.

Also, for both VP candidates to stand up in front of America in 2008 and claim that our country is founded on the "sanctity of marriage" between one man and one woman is also a lie, and to rely on the other almighty sacred text, the Constitution, is just as asinine as relying on the Bible. Both are equally outdated and misinterpreted. The only appeasing fact here is that one day, everyone who went on record stating that alternative unions are somehow morally wrong and un-American will be as loathed as slave-owners are today.

Finally, another nasty little habit of politicians that needs to be curtailed is extolling the virtues of Americans to themselves. America is in a very bad place right now. That is mostly because most of us (51%) voted for George W. Bush in 2000. And in 2004. That was dumb. Now we're screwed. When a kid makes a mistake, you might let it slide. When the kid makes the same mistake, you do not tell him how smart and hardworking he is. You tell him you're in charge and he needs to listen. America has proven it can't handle it's responsibilities and needs to be told what to do. This metaphor is going nowhere. But Sarah Palin is a smug idiot, and the presidential debates are a spectacle that haven't been relevant since 1960 when Nixon lost to Kennedy because the former was old and sweaty. The "debate" has been boiled down to a slick production that's more performance than politics, just another formality in the skeleton of a rational democracy that now exists in America.

Bush's Idiocy Takes (More) Shape

Andy Warhol's Endangered Species series was commissioned in 1983 by political and environmental activists Ronald and Frayda Feldman. 25 years later, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, passed by Richard Nixon, is threatened by President Bush, cementing his place as even more destructive and idiotic than even our most embarrassing modern president.


The Bush administration continues its reign of terror into the non-human world by choosing to benefit oil companies over endangered species. In order to keep big business out of harm's way from those pesky environmental groups that threaten to impose limits on emissions, Bush is eradicating the tenets of the Endangered Species Act, the biggest blow to the contemporary environmental movement since the last club Bush took to a baby seal's head.

From the Associated Press, 8/11/08:

"The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants....If approved, the changes would represent the biggest overhaul of endangered species regulations since 1986. They would accomplish through rules what conservative Republicans have been unable to achieve in Congress: ending some environmental reviews that developers and other federal agencies blame for delays and cost increases on many projects.

The chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the Interior Department, said he was "deeply troubled" by the changes.

"This proposed rule ... gives federal agencies an unacceptable degree of discretion to decide whether or not to comply with the Endangered Species Act," said Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va. "Eleventh-hour rulemakings rarely if ever lead to good government." *

The new regulations follow a pattern by the Bush administration not to seek input from its scientists. The regulations were drafted by attorneys at both the Interior and Commerce Departments. Scientists with both agencies were first briefed on the proposal last week during a conference call, according to an official who asked not to be identified... "This is the fox guarding the hen house. The interests of agencies will outweigh species protection interests," said Eric Glitzenstein, the attorney representing environmental groups in the lawsuit over the wildfire prevention regulations. "What they are talking about doing is eviscerating the Endangered Species Act."

*Possessing the rational level of a high school debate team star renders this man too smart for politics.

The CIA Reads this Blog

"President Bush signed a bill Thursday that overhauls rules about government eavesdropping and grants immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the U.S. spy on Americans in suspected terrorism cases.
He called it 'landmark legislation that is vital to the security of our people.'"
-Associated Press, July 10 2008

"This is 1984 shit, man."
-Kelly Schirmann

We'll be old in 2050

"On Tuesday, leaders of the Group of 8 pledged to 'move toward a carbon-free society' by cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases in half by 2050. But Group of 5 poorer countries refused to sign onto that goal. They are holding out until rich nations like the United States take more aggressive steps to cut pollution over the next decade."
- NYT, July 10, 2008

America Hearts Chastity, Teenage Girls' Asses

Apparently these are flying off the shelves at Kmart stores nationwide. The headline of the New York Daily News reads: "Bottom line benefits as girls are hot to trot out chastity-pushing sweats." A more unlikely or nonsensical phrase would be hard to find, and it would've been funnier if they said "hot to trot out of chastity-pushing sweats."

It's nice to know that reinforcing that age-old American institution of restrictive gender roles can still turn a profit in today's floundering economy. Especially because all of our endless and complex national woes can all be traced to one thing: teenage girls having sex. Uncle Sam and God want all those virile young boys to have as much sex as they want, as long as the girls stay out of it and keep their sweats on.