Muttroxia

The other day I got a menu from a new Chinese delivery place. It said in big letters, “WE DELIVERY!” But that’s not what I’m up in arms about. It’s too easy, and I make too many typos to get preachy about it.
Yes, it’s the exciting conclusion to my Asian-themed trilogy o’ rants!

Here’s my latest beef (and I don’t mean with broccoli): fortune cookies — They’re not fortunes!!!! A fortune cookie should have a prediction about what could happen in the future. I’m not asking for specific, testable prediction, a simple “You will find great happiness next year” will do. Or “If you have no love for others, you will find yourself alone.” Some sense of consequences.

Instead what you get is inane blather. “Love is it’s own reward”. It’s even that way online, try a few sample fortunes at the Fortune Cookie Generator, or an Astrological Fortune Cookie.

Resist everything but temptation.
Well begun is half done.
Faith is the answer to success
” .” — Harpo Marx

Here are two from my favorite Chinese place growing up:

Today, by civil, but don’t go out of your way to be over friendly.

Draw upa budget and figure out how to cut down on your debt.

Folks, these aren’t fortunes. Half of them don’t even make sense. That last one is a quote. You might as well start adding in Jon Stewart’s latest one-liner, or directions to the bus stop. It makes as much sense as these, and would be more in line with the lottery numbers often added. Yep, the lottery numbers, there’s another alarming twist. C’mon, who is so desparate for tips on the lottery they think that a mass-produced fortune cookie has the answer, just for them. Anyone who plays the numbers on a fortune cookie should instantly be taken out back and castrated.

***LATE UPDATES***
I am informed by an old source that once the California lottery was in fact won by the number from fortune cookies. There were 300 winners. Lottery officials suspected fraud until the truth came out. (The truth being that they were all idiots, having to split the pot 300 ways).

Someone actually sent my wife a fortune cookie in the mail that said “You are the life of any party”. That’s not a fortune! (Although it probably does apply to her a lot more than me.)

Here’s another annoyance. Chinese food places always give you two pieces of silverware. A fork and a spoon. Why a fork and a spoon? Where’s my knife? Every meal I have to make a special point to ask for a knife. In every other way, Chinese food places rock. Do you know why? Service. You can waltz in with torn jeans, 3-days of stubble, reeking like the sewer, and they’ll still treat you like an honored guest. Except for the silverware.

I think they want you to use chopsticks. It’s only in a nod to Western culture they even include a fork and spoon. But if they’re going that far, where’s the knife? Don’t Aisans ever need to cut anything? Have you seen the size of those broccoli pieces? Chopsticks don’t cut anything. Chopsticks stink. I don’t care how cool it is to be able to use them, they’re stupid. Once your society passes the phase where you have to rely on bamboo for your flatware, it’s time to upgrade to actual utensils.

Give me a knife!

I am officially sick of hearing anything about pandas. It is not news when a zoo gets a panda. It is not news when one has a baby. They are evolutionary dead-ends that should be left on their own to go extinct.

Just because they have fur does not make them cute. They are not cute. They are big fat oafs.

They are stupid. Breathtakingly stupid. Did you know after the cubs are born, they have to be separated from the mothers? Yes, it’s because the mothers roll over in their sleep and crush their kid. That’s a good evolutionary winning strategy. I guess they’re still waiting for that one mutant gene that says, Hey maybe I shouldn’t kill my kids, wonder if that would work?

How much money do zoos spend on these drooling buffoons? Over a million bucks per panda per year. Why don’t they spend the money on something better? They’re goners. Pandas are goners, wake up and admit it.

And stop playing chinese music in the panda “pavillion”! If you play chinese music for the asian animals, then play AC|DC in the kangaroo pen.

Just let them die already.

I don’t get into the “I played it when it was a kid, so now it’s some kind of cool kitsch to love it as an adult” movement. A hipper-than-thou roommate ruined that for me. But Gnip-gnop just rocks. You gotta love a game where the strategy is to just hit the buttons as fast as hard as you can until you pass out from fatigue.  Good times.

So here I was, trying to figure out how to state the practical case against torture, without simply regurgiating Andrew Sullivan’s excellent article.

And then I read the latest. It’s too fitting. It’s just too perfect, in a sick I-can’t-believe-it sort of way.

Remember the case to go to war in Iraq? It wasn’t about making a pretty democracy there. It wasn’t about regional geopolitics. It wasn’t about oil. It wasn’t even about WMDs(*). These were all offered up as various excuses after the fact. The original and strongest justification was that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, despite the lack of evidence, and that if we didn’t stop Al Queda in Iraq, we were going to get nuked. This is the line that was fed congress and the public, and got them their authorization to declare war if needed (no, it was not a vote for war. Learn the difference). As I’ve demonstrated in other posts, they actually got most of the country to believe this swill. They kept repeating until the lie was no longer needed, after the 2004 elections. Isn’t it interesting that shortly after the elections, the populace no longer believes? It’s simply because the Bushies don’t care if you believe anymore, so they’ve let their propoganda machine die out. Believe what you want, we’re in Iraq, they’re in power, too late chump!

At any rate, the topic is 9/11 and Iraq. There was never the least shred of evidence to connect the two directly. There didn’t seem to be much to even connect Iraq to Al Queda. They hated each other, what with Sadaam actually being a secularlist. Sure, there were very weird reports of an isolated “contact” between the two, as if that meant they were allies. We had extensive contact with the USSR throughout the entire Cold War, no one would be stupid enough to think that meant we were buddies.

So, what to do? You need some information. This is where it gets juicy. You just go out and get it. Torture until they confess.

The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.

And there’s your perfect case for why torture is not only an offense against God, but completely impractical as well. Yet another of the pillars for the war completely destroyed. Is it any that those parts of planet Earth that don’t already hate us are beginning to? Every step in this lunacy has been held to the highest standards of immorality, and is fundamentally unamerican. Torture, crushing lawful dissent domestically, preemptive war, manufacturing propoganda lies for both domestic and foreign press, callous disregard for other points of view, slandering and libeling political opponents, disgracing one of the only honorable people in their administration (Colin Powell) by knowing whoring on his integrity, giving away the spoils of wars to cronies, hiring mercenary armies to do the dirty work, the list goes on.

*(WMDs covers both chemical and nuclear weapons. Everyone know there were no nuclear weapons, but we were only 90% sure about chemicals. By constantly referring to WMDs instead of nukes, Bush took a clear lie and conflated with something that was just very improbable, again avoiding being caught in a clear lie. It is helpful to translate WMD in your head whenever you hear it though.)

Does the Bush Administration torture? The short answer is, well, duh. The evidence is overwhelming. It’s not even truly denied by the administration, their denials take the form of “We have created legal opinions about what torture is. We do not engage in practices that we have defined as torture. Therefore, we do not torture.” Note that this is entirely dependent upon what the Bushies themselves say torture is. It doesn’t matter if international law, human rights organizations, or common sense say it’s torture; as long as Gonzales and crew have said it ain’t, it ain’t.

An stronger justification is the form of “Torture is illegal. Everything we do is legal, since we decide what is legal. Therefore we do not torture.” Bush used this one recently. Note that this is literally no way to torture then. Anything you do is legal, by definition. Since torture is illegal, nothing you do is torture.

Is torture justified? No, not at all. It’s appalling that this discussion is even taking place. Did you ever think the day would come where you could have a straight-faced discussion about whether the US should torture as a regular practice?

Andrew Sullivan, once a pro-war hawk, shows how far we’ve come. Waterboarding (one of the many non-torture tortures employed by the Bushies) is a torture popularized by Torquemada during the Spanish Inquisition. Click to the link, and compare the description of Torquemada’s techniques and the CIAs. Identical.

Andrew has a lengthier article on torture. It is worth taking the time to read in full, it does a much better job than I could ever do on laying out the case against torture. Continuing with the example of waterboarding, we read:

“According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the waterboarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said Al Qaeda’s toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two and a half minutes before begging to confess.”

If the toughest guy in the world can only take two minutes, and most garden variety toughies can only take 15 seconds — that is unquestionably without doubt torture. QED, end of story.

In addition to being fundamentally immoral, one of the most immoral actions concievable, torture is also fundamentally useless, if not counter-productive. (More on that soon)

Well acted, good photography, definitely some neat scenes. But it left me wanting more.

It didn’t seem to add up to anything. War is hell, war is great, Iraq was bad, Iraq was good, Bush is great, Bush is bad, whatever. It doesn’t say anythign like that. It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened. I’m in favor of that for a comedy, but for a serious film? What’s the point?

I wonder how much of it was true. It was based on Swofford’s autobiographical book, so it’s certainly true in the big strokes. It has a good look into the military world, there are many little touches that are far too realistic to be faked. On the other hand, during the course of this film a recruit got shot in the head during training with no real outcry. Another flipped out and attacked a superior officer, with no repercussions. Several were borderline nuts. All of this was treated as ordinary. That doesn’t jibe with any other book I’ve read about military life.

If you enjoyed Jarhead, I reccomend two other sources:

Making the Corps: ” In Making the Corps, Ricks follows a platoon of young men through 11 grueling weeks of boot camp as their drill instructors indoctrinate them into the culture of the Few and the Proud. Many arrive at Parris Island undisciplined and apathetic; they leave as marines.” It’s a great book, you get to see how the military mind is shaped, and how the military wants it to be shaped. You all see all the tensions between the Marine ideals, and how the exist once they get out in the real world.

BUDS Training Documentary: Nothing has ever made me feel less of a man than watching this. Whenever it comes on Discovery Channel, I can’t turn away. This follow a call of 83 soldiers who are trying to get into the the Navy Seals program (BUDS=Basic Underwater Demolition). It is truly amazing. These men are held to the most mind-blowing standards of physical and mental excellence I can comprehend. They might as well be an entirely different species.

The city of Atlanta has recently finished up a big contest for our new theme song. Perhaps I should just say our theme song, since I’m unaware of any previous one, unless you count hillbillies trying to get laid. It is part of a “rebranding” campaign. I guess the “Atlanta: A relative oasis in the middle of a state of ignorant racists that is Georgia” wasn’t cutting it anymore.

This blog will now conduct a scientific test. I have not yet listened to the new song. And yet, I feel confident in stating it will stink. And doubly confident in saying it will never convince one tourist to send one incremental dollar down Atlanta’s way.

Wow. I can’t get it. They are actually charging money for it. This is mind-blowing. Do they expect people money to actually pay for a song that is advertising Atlanta? That’s like paying for a poster of the Jolly Green Giant, but without the kitsch factor. That is, worthless. I am stunned.

I will proceed with my scathing analysis unabated by actual facts. To the best of my knowledge, there is exactly one geographic branding idea that has succeeded. “I love New York”. Huge success. In fact, if memory serves, it was written as “I [heart] New York”, and gave birth to the heart-icon-representing-the-word-love that is all over the place now. So what did it have going for it?

* It’s New York. New York is one of the 4 American cities that are unique and must be visited. (That may be a future post). Let’s just say there was a reason Osama went after New York, and not Bismarck or Macon.
* No one else had done it yet. The market is saturated. Every podunk metropolis has a brand, a logo, and a theme song. You can’t compete anymore.
* Originality. I [heart] New York is clever, when no one else has done it yet.
* A catchy jingle, that is short. Was there a longer version? Don’t know, don’t care.

Guess how many of these Atlanta’s theme song has? You don’t have to listen to it, just guess. I’m going with zero.

Oh, and guess who wrote the theme song? Dallas Austin. Yes, Dallas Austin, there’s a name guaranteed to confuse everyone.

(Thank to Art’s head for the post idea.)

I’m going to try and start writing again. Politics just depresses the hell out of me these days, and I’m running out of ‘silly’ topics.

Having a newborn makes it hard to write. We’re coming out of the hardest stretch, hopefully I’ll have a little more time to compose for this.

Back in July, I wondered what it would take before the country started realizing what they had in Bush, before it was publicly acceptable to call him out for what he is. I guess the time is finally arriving. Bush’s popularity continues to plummet (36% at press time), 57% of the country think he misled us into war, 80% think the Plame affair is serious, etc. His once monolithic empire is crumbling around him. It was bound to happen, I am only sad that it didn’t happen a year ago. Still 3 years left of this corrupt idiocy.

Those numbers are atrocious, and just getting worse. Compare them with the numbers I went through in my 2004 election analysis (written just over 6 months ago). There are a whole slew of lies this administration fed the populace, amplified by a docile media, that the country believed. (Why shouldn’t they, who would expect their president would be a bald-faced liar?) The lies are coming out. Some are out already, some are in process of being undiscovered, and some are obvious but will never be precisely pinned down.

I wonder about those people who voted for Bush and have turned against him. Somewhere between 15 and 25% of the country voted for him and now have turmed against him. I’d be very curious to hear from those people. What was it that changed their mind? What made them finally wake up and realize what they had voted for?

I think there were two turning points.

1) Katrina. Like a mantra, Bush always invoked 9/11. He used it to get us into Iraq, to cut taxes, to impugn anyone who stood in his way, he could always rely on good old 9/11. He was the one who was keeping us safe from the terrorists. Only Katrina showed he wasn’t. Katrina showed that there were no plans, no defense, no strategy, no nothing. And this wasn’t in response to an incredibly tricky unforseen diabolic strategy. This was against wind. This was against wind that had been predicted multiple times by multiple agencies in multiple years. Any citizen could see for themself how ill-prepared we were. Anyone could see that instead of trying to protect us, Bush had served up political hack after political hack, leaving New Orleans in the hands of a man who spent the critical day trading e-mails with his secretary about how good he looked.

2) Media. The media has always been complicit. Always needing to find two sides, always needing to protect sources, always needing to lick the hand that feeds them, always needing access, always needing money — Bush learned he could say anything and get away with it. He could debate Gore, lie through his teeth, state obvious fallacies, and still get the media to talk about Gore’s sighing. It just got worse. Well, somewhere along the line the media started to wake up. They are still a long long way away from where they should be, but they’re getting there. Was it time, was it McClellan’s obvious lying, who knows.

It’s hard to write this. I want to yell, “I told you so! I told you so! I was right, I was right!” to the world, but that doesn’t matter much. Our presidency, our government, our country, and our world are worse for these last years. I only hope we can regain what we lost.

When you’re stuck in the surreality of a hospital room with your wife, a new baby, and 48 hours to talk, you cover a lot of strange topics. Like, where would I grade Quidditch as a sport, how does it rank in my sports funnel theory? Surprisingly high.

Defense: Absolutely. In huge quantities. You’re allowed to hit the other guy and throw things at him (or her).
Team/Tactics: Absolutely. The tactics make no sense at all, but they’re clearly there.
Variety of athletic skills needed: Strength, speed, agility. And of course being able to fly.
Athletic Effort: Gobs of it.

Here are a couple more parameters which have come up in conversation since that post (to address deficiencies in bowling, golf, darts, pool).
Sweat: The more you sweat, the more legit the sport.
Clothes: If you don’t have to change clothes to play, it bring the level down.

But wait, Quidditch has even more! Over the course of 6 years, 3 matches a year, Harry Potter has been sent to the hospital multiple times and nearly been killed by dementors. He has been hit numerous times by objects, part of the game, whose only purpose is to ram into people and hurt them. In fact, there are two members of the team whose sole purpose seems to be whacking these things at people. Fantastic! Also, it is played outdoors in the natural elements which is worth another point. And like a real world version of wrestling (except for that it’s not the real world), the players genuinely hate each other guts, use dirty tricks on each other, and even have biased announcers.

Quidditch has one big strike against it. The design of the actual game is one of the dumbest things ever. Everything comes down to catching the snitch. The rest of the team might as well play backgammon and just wait for the usual Potter vs Malfoy Snitch-catching fight. 80% of the action is completely irrelevant to the outcome. If I was running a team, I would start the game as normal, and every 2 minutes, I’d have another play leave their usual position to be a snitch hunter, until I had 2 goalies and 4 snitch hunters. If a goalie got the ball (whatever the ball is, I can’t keep the quaffles apart from the bludgers), he would be instructed to fly around as far as possible, a variation on the 4-corners offense of college basketball before the shot clock.

I don’t get college sports. I don’t like they’re as interesting as pro sports, and I don’t understand the fanaticism.

College sports is hard to follow. Let’s pick basketball as an example. Whereas the NBA has 25 or 30 teams, there are literally thousands of college teams. Thousands. And the turnover is huge. You only see a given player for 4 years, and if they’re any good, they will try and jump to the pros early. The players that are worth following are only the team for one or two years. So how can you follow a team? How can you be a casual fan? You probably don’t know any of the players, and if you do, you probably don’t know many on the other team. Contrast this to the pros, where most players stay on a team for at least 5 years, and many of the big names will be on the same team their whole career. If you add the front-office career factor, it can be decades. (Consider Larry Bird, Jerry West, Red Aurebach, Phil Jackson, Doug Collins, etc..) I just don’t know how you can follow college sports. I realized only a few years after I graduated that nobody who was part of the program was still there. Of course all the players were long gone, but the coaches, assistants, and athletic director had also departed. Who exactly was I rooting for, where was my connection? (True, the connection in the pros is also tenuous, but the stability of the league makes it much less so.)

And finally, the quality of play just isn’t as good. It’s self-evident that the pros are better players, I’m amazed I even need to argue the point. Sometimes I hear the rebuttal that college sports is more fun to watch because the players aren’t as good. OK, fair point, but why stop at college then? Why not watch high school sports? Junior High? Hey, I spent an hour with my 2-year old today watching him try to dribble, that doesn’t make for entertainment. (For more on this idea, read The Sports Guy’s definitive analysis of why the WNBA sucks.)

Now let’s talk about the fans. Whatever connection I have to my Alma Mater’s team is because, I in fact, went there and spent four years being part of the school. That’s the connection, however weak or strong that is 15 years later. It may not do it for me, but I guess I understand those who were into their college enough to want to keep feeling part of that world forever. At a recent wedding, the final event of the night was the playing of my Alma Mater’s fight song, which was shouted by the entire extended family of the groom, who had several generations go there. I thought it was a little weird to make that the climax of the wedding, but it was nice that their family had something they could share across the generations. If they felt that bond between them, good for them.

But. But, but, but. What about people who didn’t even go there? My next door neighbor is an enormous Auburn fan. (I think it’s Auburn. Maybe it’s Georgia Tech. See how much I care?) And he never went there! He just picked it at random. That’s not right! I mean, what the hell! And he didn’t even pick one of the great teams, if you’re going to just choose to be a fan of a team, at least pick a good one fercrisakes. I have another friend who coincidentally is a huge fan of my own school. Lives and breathes blue and maize (for my one reader who doesn’t know where I went, that’s a clue). And she didn’t go there. Again, what the hell!?