Just An Observation

I’m forty, which, for those of you under forty, means some things; they’ll come as no surprise to you. My body has begun to give me subtle clues that it’s time for the long shutdown process to start. By the time I’m fifty, it will make those clues un-subtle, and convey them to everyone around me as well. I have doubts that my career is paying back all the energy I have invested into it. I’m reassured by the fact that many forty-year-olds have the same concern, but that very few fifty- and sixty-year-olds seem to. So in the next few years, either the concern itself will pass into oblivion, or my opportunity to do something about it will go there.

I think I know things because I’m forty. A lot of people think I need more time before I know anything. I see nearly all of those folks are under forty.

Here’s one thing I notice…it’s not pithy enough to be a Thing I Know, so I’ll just jot it down here.

I have learned a lot of people who want to sell me things, have settled into a habit of making the sale by comparing their product to someone else’s. They tell me their product does far better at the same job.

A lot of the time…most of the time…given the opportunity to prove themselves, these people fail. I find that to be a little curious, because one would think if these people were out-and-out lying, their claims would be verified through a process having to do with random chance. They would fail fifty percent of the time. But they fail, more like, I dunno…sixty…seventy…higher than that. Subconciously, over time, I have come to regard the experience of “Hey! It really does work better than the other guy!” as a narrow, epochal, exception to the rule, which over time almost never works out that way.

So I’m left to conclude the “My stuff is better than Brand X” is a harbinger for a failed experiment, should I be so inclined to provide the opportunity.

One of the tactics I see that seems to intensify the potential for failure, is something I have come to call the “Gonnadooz versus Havdunz” approach. It’s an indicator that the salesman is lying about the superiority of what he provides, and is acutely aware that his product is, in fact, inferior. It works like this. You pitch me something…you compare the service you provide to an equivalent service provided by the other guy. You talk about what the other guy does, you go on and on about the history of what he’s been doing, shining the light in the direction that accentuates the blemishes. That’s the “Havdunz.” And then you talk about what you will do. That’s the “Gonnadooz.”

You can’t point out the blemishes of a “Gonnadooz,” because there aren’t any yet. It’s like pointing out the warts of a ghost. It’s just an ethereal vision, nothing more. So it’s an unequal comparison. Prospective customers may be forgiven for overlooking the hobbling effect that this has on the comparison vehicle. But the salesman built that vehicle. He must know.

Sometime earlier this summer, I went to the Democratic National Committee website and told them I was a Democrat who was interested in getting Howard Dean’s updates. I have noticed the Chairman’s updates all use this tactic…religiously…as if Dr. Dean had someone in the room ready to stomp his testicles should he fail to work it in. Havdunz…what a boondoggle Iraq has been, and what Katrina was…versus Gonnadooz…the “Democrats have a vision of” stuff.

I particularly get a kick out of the vision for rooting out corruption. Great work there, Howard.

Anyway, the Democrats have something to sell. The way they act, they know what they’re selling, is inferior. At forty, I have come to learn when people have confidence in what they’re selling…or even if they don’t, if they suspect their own product is inferior to Brand X, but aren’t quite sure about it…they shy away from Gonnadooz versus Havdunz. This is a tactic used only by the guy who is selling snake oil, and knows, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this is what he’s selling.

So You Hate Blogs, Do You

What we call “blogging,” is nothing more than a medium of communication. There are people who hate it, and of all the misguided souls in our midst I have come to seriously doubt the existence of a more delusional character than the blog-hater.

Blog-haters are truly amazing people, gifted in the art of using truly amazing logic. It just bowls me over that they can even drum up enough brainwave activity and cohesive, organized thought to get dressed in the morning. I don’t get them. Even the ones engaged in a livelihood put lately at risk, or even in severe jeopardy, by “blogging”; I can understand their motives, but beyond that, I can’t figure ’em out, and I’m particularly mystified by their success at, simply, being. HOW do they work? Each one of them, beat millions of other sperm. How is this possible?

Cold Fury gives a great example of what I’m talking about. USA Today’s Bruce Kluger:

If ever America needed a wake-up call about the mythology of blogging, we got it this month.

On Aug. 8, Connecticut businessman Ned Lamont defeated U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary, a triumph widely credited to the rah-rah racket produced by pro-Lamont armies stationed along the Internet.

Indeed, the bloggers had scored big. They had helped vault a local politician to national prominence and cemented the Iraq war as Issue No. 1 in the congressional elections. Not a bad day.

But their victory was short-lived. Even before the primary, Lieberman announced that, should he lose, he’d still run in November as an independent. This electoral chutzpah effectively rope-a-doped the bloggers and recharged the senator’s fabled Joe-mentum. Lieberman’s still the man to beat in the general election.

If this wasn’t enough to drain the effervescence from the blogger bubbly, America’s noisy Web wags were dealt an even more sobering blow 10 days later when Snakes on a Plane opened nationwide to a decidedly flat $15.3 million box office.

Before its premiere, Snakes had been the latest blogger darling, as swarms of online film geeks prematurely crowned it the summer’s big sleeper. This hyperventilating fan base even convinced Snakes’ distributor, New Line Cinema, to up the movie’s rating to R, to ensure a gorier, more venomous snake fest.

To see life through this kind of fisheye lens, in which anyone who claims a class membership and wants to see something happen, represents that entire class in this desire, must result in taking in a picture that is unsettling at times. How does this make sense? It’s like saying, a telemarketer called me last night, I told him to fuck off (as I almost always do), so people who talk on the phone must be deeply unsettled at the rebuke I delivered to the telemarketer. What the hell??

Two factors at work here. One: This Kluger fellow perceives his livelihood to be threatened by bloggers. Two: He comes from a world in which, when you’re the protagonist and you want to see something happen, rarely does the occasion arise, nor should you expect it to, where you can use the two hands God gave you to make it happen. No, the only way you can make things happen, anytime, anywhere, is to take all the antagonists who have something to do with stopping it from happening, and write something to minimize them. That’s the only way anything gets done in the world inhabited by people like him.

And so he hates blogs…which makes no more sense than hating typewriters. To make them go away, he becomes a cheerleader-of-misery, rah-rah-ing away when the bloggers get something wrong — and, presumably, muzzling anybody who rah-rahs away if a “blogger” gets something right. Said muzzling, I would have to assume, to be executed by writing something to minimize the opposing-side cheerleader. It’s all just cheers and catcalls; somebody actually doing work, is a foreign concept.

And the bloggers threaten his industry, so they must die.

Oh, it’s all just so much speculation and conjecture. I’m trying to give him the benefit of every doubt. Because the only other theory up with which I can come, is that Kluger is wombat-rabies bollywonkers pigshit crazy.

Does he have a driver’s license?

Pull Pin, Walk Away

The words of the first Muslim Miss England seem, at first blush, to be an innocent re-interpretation of Rule #1 for Living With Me, which is, if I’m gonna be accused of something I wanna be guilty.

Hammasa Kohistani made history last year when she was chosen to represent England in the Miss World pageant.

But one year on, the 19-year-old student from Hounslow feels that winning the coveted beauty title last September was a “sugar coating” for Muslims who have become more alienated in the past 12 months.

She said: “The attitude towards Muslims has got worse over the year. Also the Muslims’ attitude to British people has got worse.

“Even moderate Muslims are turning to terrorism to prove themselves. They think they might as well support it because they are stereotyped anyway. It will take a long time for communities to start mixing in more.”

Yeah that makes perfect sense already, see. I’m a Muslim, and I don’t blow people up, see, nor do I support acts of terror. But those dirty little western people with their decadent lifestyles and their movies made by the filthy Jew, keep accusing me of supporting terrorism…I figure, what the fuck, I might as well. And so, I “turn to terrorism” according to her.

It’s just the only logical thing to do. Get discriminated against…turn to terrorism. Two Muslims face discrimination, one turns to terrorism and the other one doesn’t…what does Ms. Kohistani have to say about the one that does not? Which of the Muslims has something to learn from the other? It appears she isn’t even considering this. It’s like she’s saying terrorism is obligatory, once you are “stereotyped.” Even the moderate Muslims are doing it, after all.

Life gets complicated in a great big hurry for Ms. Kohistani when one starts to ponder the course of action to be engaged with this useful epiphany…if we stop stereotyping, will the moderate Muslims stop supporting terrorism?

“It is not for me to answer how to get people to turn away from terrorism. The politicians don’t know what to do and I am just a 19-year-old.”

I see, I see. In a life-and-death situation, we’re supposed to have faith in this adorable little psychoanalysis of passive supporters of terrorism…surely, sufficient thought must have gone into it, to ensure it’s an accurate reflection of what’s going on. Oopsie, though! Not enough thought has gone into it, to figure out what to do with it. That’s for somebody else. Cut her some slack, she’s only nineteen. But when she assigns blame, against the direction of common sense, don’t worry she knows exactly what she’s talking about there. She’s more an authority on who’s-at-fault, than Santa is on who’s-naughty-who’s-nice.

Just don’t ask her what to do…because, you see, that would require some responsibility being invested in the veracity of her theory.

This stupid girl is simply unaccustomed to a culture in which people are free to form their own opinions. You say stuff, and what you get to decide in such a culture is — the stuff you say. Nothing more. Just the gutteral sounds. People get to interpret that however they wish, which is where she’s having a tough time fitting in. She’s clearly expecting to distribute a message of “they who support terrorism are not at fault, the blame goes to those who notice them supporting terrorism” — and for people to actually pick up on that message. Exactly the way she wants them to. Why not? It’s what she wants, she’s the one speaking, and it’s not like people should be free to form their own thoughts about what she said. It doesn’t even seem to be occurring to her what a thoroughly miserable job she’s done of representing a) England b) Muslims c) the pageant d) nineteen-year-olds and e) pretty women.

Thanks to her incredibly ignorant comments, just speaking for myself, I’ve got a fresh impulse to get the voting age raised, throw some tea into Boston harbor, repeal womens’ suffrage and profile at the airports. Isn’t it ironic? That impulse is the natural result of the very logic she’s trying to use…except it doesn’t seem to occur to her, that the principle may have an effect on anyone besides the poor, oh-so-put-upon, “yeah we support terrorism but we have a great excuse for doing so” Muslims.

I guess if you’re a Muslim, you get to make decisions about what’s going on, and what to do about it…and if you’re not, you don’t.

What a dirty, racist little bitch.

Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself… XVIII

Bullwinkle Blog makes a great point. I have nothing to add.

Bush Is Wrong About The Democrats.
Posted by: Bullwinkle in General on September 1, 2006 at 5:45 am

In Latest Push, Bush Cites Risk in Quitting Iraq

SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 31 � President Bush said Thursday that withdrawing now from Iraq would leave Americans at risk of terrorist attacks “in the streets of our own cities,” and he cast the struggle against Islamic extremists as the costly but necessary successor to the battles of the last century against Nazism and Communism.
:
The speech, the first of five addresses on national security Mr. Bush plans to deliver between now and Sept. 19, was part of an orchestrated White House offensive to buttress public support for the Iraq war and portray Democrats as less capable of protecting the country, a theme that has proved effective for Republicans in the past two elections.

Even as Mr. Bush spoke, a series of explosions ripped through Baghdad, providing more images of a sort that he acknowledged have been “sometimes unsettling” to the public.

Democrats aren�t less capable of defending the US, just less willing. It�s all a matter of priorities and the only identifiable priority the Dems seem to have is to regain power. The end result of that happening would have them taking charge of the same military, same weapons, same infrastructure and same resources. That would leave them with the same capabilities we currently have to fight terrorism. The problem is that they won�t do it. [emphasis mine]

This isn’t an argument about what to do in Iraq; if it was that, the Democrats would be able to figure out what their plan was, and articulate it to the rest of us. No, it’s an argument about what should be of concern to everybody. Love the war or hate it, while it’s going on, it’s a little tough to get worked up about the issue of fleecing thirty-something apartment rats to pay for free Viagara for rich old people with summer homes.

It doesn’t matter what your political party is…people understand, down to the marrow in their bones, when dirty little men roam the planet wanting to blow us up, whatever nanny-state entitlement programs we have inextricably entangled into our constitutional government, is purely a moot issue. It’s something to be pondered when danger has passed…or, when we choose to remain ignorant of it. Democrats don’t want to retreat from the War on Terror, necessarily. What they want, is for us to simply stop talking about it, so the fecal-sandwich bake sale can start up again.

Shockingly Permissible

I see that Stop The ACLU has a decent write-up on this brain-damaged idea to put the assassination of President Bush into a movie.

No, I don’t call it a brain-damaged idea because I’m in favor of censorship. I’m in favor of free speech. Free speech, with very narrow common-sense exceptions, which don’t apply here.

I’m also in favor of pointing out when tiny little groups of people start to dictate what “everyone” else has to be thinking, and when they can get away with it and then cover it up. The message has gone out: You shouldn’t even talk about the President being assassinated, UNLESS, the President has oafish national security policies and mispronounces the word “nuclear” like that idiot President Bush…then it’s okay.

Two-thirds of a century ago, if the President used a wheelchair you weren’t allowed to take pictures. Now you can…uh…

It�s an extraordinarily gripping and powerful piece of work, a drama constructed like a documentary that looks back at the assassination of George Bush as the starting point for a very gripping detective story.

It�s a pointed political examination of what the War on Terror did to the American body politic.

Yeah right, what HE said.

Retard.

Cranial Fulmination

This was posted a whole week ago on The Nose On Your Face. Thank goodness for the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler or I’d never have found out about it.

Fox News personality Greta Van Sustern died from what doctors are calling a “cranial fulmination” yesterday after a cruel hoax went horribly wrong. A spokesman for Van Sustern explains.

“I received a phone call from what seemed to be a very nice couple last night who said they had a hot news tip,” explained On The Record producer Jason Teague. “They identified themselves as the Dover’s; Ben and Eileen. The story they told was so pure, so wonderful that I should have seen it as a hoax. When I told Greta the details she began to tremble, her eyes opened very wide and she whispered ‘Oh dear lord. The prophecy has come true.’ Then she was… she was… gone.”

No, no, Van Susteren is still around. It’s a j-j-j-JOKE. Click…read…