Goodbye from World's Biggest Polluter via the World's Biggest Asshole AND Big Air vs. Big Oil AND "Let Them Eat Cake" for a New Generation

There was so much in the news today that warranted comment, I just had to break from my roughly (VERY roughly!) bi-weekly blog entry schedule to share some thoughts.


Goodbye from World's Biggest Polluter via the World's Biggest Asshole
Have the Repugnant-Cons decided that their way to cling to power is to make the most inappropriate and lame ass jokes possible, thereby removing any doubt that they are lunatics who don't care who lives or dies as a result of their thoughtless actions?

I think they have! Observe Bush, saying "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter" as he leaves the G8 summit. It's pure tragicomedy. The tragedy comes from this powerful man who considers that polluting the entire planet, destroying the only thing ALL of us (including him) have is some kind of light-hearted laughing matter. The comedy is that the USA is no longer the biggest polluter. According to the article, China is. Even in arrogance, he can't get the facts straight. What an asshole.


Big Air vs. Big Oil
I once read a theory on why animal attacked by a predator screams. I can't remember the source or I would quote it, but the question posed was, what basis is there for expending energy to scream when all your strength should be concentrated on struggling to get away? The answer speculated upon was that the screaming could be a way of attracting other predators. This will cause the two predators to fight over the potential food, giving the screaming animal time to escape.

In short, there's no way a prey animal can win in a one on one fight versus a predator. The prey has to get the predators to fight each other in order to survive. Stretching that analogy further explains in my mind why the Enron scandal blew up into such a big deal.

Rich corporations (predators) have been attacking their workers (prey) for years and it's never been worth commenting on to the wealthy media and political species. However, the criminals at Enron were so greedy, they didn't just steal from the workers, they even ended up stealing from the rich people who invested in them. That's what led to the outrage from the media, the government, etc. Poor people can be (and are) trampled in bulk every day in human history and it doesn't merit a news story, but when the rich get screwed by one of their own, now that's an injustice.

So I was very excited when I opened my email this morning and found a letter from twelve Airline CEOs demanding more regulation of oil speculation. Summarized: oil speculation is the trading that occurs prior to the oil being sold to someone who is actually going to use it. Each time the oil is traded, it becomes more expensive. Without much regulation, that trading prior to someone using the oil can occur enough to drive the oil prices sky high, before anyone who is actually going to use the oil buys it. Imagine that! One industry calling for regulation of another! Awesome.

So years and years of the average consumer screaming about petrol prices has resulted in... nothing. But now that a fellow predator (Big Air is slimy) is attacking another predator (Big Oil is the slimiest) we can expect to see some change. So it is in the USA, where corporations rule too much.

Visit the site and stick it to Big Oil. Big Air is a bunch of jerks, too, but NO ONE is worse than Big Oil. Go to http://www.stopoilspeculationnow.com/.


"Let Them Eat Cake" for a New Generation
I know, I know. There's all kinds of debate as to whether Marie Antoinette said her famous line. The story may be false, but it has its uses (like religion.)

Regardless of if she actually said "Let them in cake," in response to being told the peasants were revolting because they had no bread, it clearly fits the mind-set of out-of-touch fortunates like her. In short, it doesn't matter if she said it or not, because Phil Gramm just did.

Who's Phil Gramm? Presidential McCandidate John McCain's top economic adviser. Gramm claims the U.S. economy is doing great, that the recession we're in exists only in the imaginations of the depressed and the U.S. is a bunch of whiners.

Hey Phil! First, shut up. Second, you're probably worth a few million or you wouldn't have been selected to be an insane presidential candidate's top economic adviser, so what do you know about what is and isn't in recession? Third, who cares if we're in recession or not? What's important is the lack of a social safety net. I've got a great job, but one downsize, one favoritism that saves someone else's job and gets met laid off, I'm on hard times without much help.

"Let them eat cake," Phil says, to which I say, hey Phil, eat THIS.

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Larry Nocella is the award-winning author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available at Amazon and Xlibris and other fine online book stores. Where Did This Come From? is also available as an eBook. For more info, visit Larry Nocella's website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.

Viral Cynicism (or, In Search of the Original Terrorist Fist-Jab)

Where everything is for sale, every communication needs to be evaluated as though it is advertising.

That thought came to me after thinking a bit about viral engineering. Not the biological kind, I mean the viral videos that prowl the internet. Some are natural, spontaneous, stupid videos that someone put together or caught on camera that are hilarious and get passed on a lot. Contrast that with those that are engineered. They are made to look spontaneous, but they're carefully choreographed and injected into the internet video stream to hopefully generate discussion and function as free advertising, a virus that gets your point across.

It's the internet's answer to the publicity stunt. It might even be simpler than that: it's the same old publicity stunts, simply harnessing the individual's power of the internet instead of the relatively fewer newspaper gossip columns.

I'm not really sure it's a bad thing to catch a video virus even if it is engineered. After all, you get entertainment out of it. What's really dangerous is when its propaganda.

For example, yet another throw-away-blonde from the Fox News network (E.D. Hill) referred to Obama's fist bump as a "terrorist fist-jab." This was hilarious on many levels. The first is that it served as yet another tally in the mounting evidence that TV news pundits are terrifically out-of-touch. Anyone who has even a toe outside the ivory tower knows that the fist bump is the modern high-five, a congratulatory gesture friendly to germophobes.

What added to the hilarity was the naked and feeble attempt at labeling Obama a terrorist. I challenge anyone to find a reference to a "terrorist fist-jab," or any video or image of terrorists (and ONLY terrorists) performing the gesture prior to Bimbo the Wonder Pundit calling it such. I almost feel sorry for her, she was clearly just doing what her bosses at Fox had instructed: trying at all costs to paint Obama as a terrorist. Her reward? They eliminated her show. Swim with sharks, E.D. and eventually they'll eat you. See you in Maxim.

Fox fools have tried and failed at viral engineering as well. Bill O'Reilly wrote a shitty book (Culture Warrior) in an effort to get his label "SP's" (Secular Progressives) to catch on as convenient slang for American enemies of America, like the word "communist" once functioned. Ann Coulter has found some kind of publishing success pandering to her hateful idiot fan base by calling fellow Americans "liberals" and treating it as an insult. So Bill tried to dish out the same bigotry.

It's clear the hate-marketers feel their dumbass fans are unable to think about any subject that does not invoke a good guy vs. bad guy narrative. I can just picture a Fox News viewer upon accidentally encountering reality, where it is not clear who is wrong or right: "God dammit," he laments, "Who am I supposed to hate?"

Anyway, getting back to engineered viruses: Another suspect is the LEGO creation of a giant boulder and a re-enacting of the scene from the original Indiana Jones. This video seemed to surface (May 16, 2008) a little closely with release of the latest Indiana Jones movie (May 22, 2008) AND with the release of the LEGO Indiana Jones video game (June 3, 2008). Coincidence or viral engineering?

Another fake viral suspect? Tim McGraw ousting an unruly fan. What really made me think this one was suspicious was at one point during the video, McGraw cocked back his fist so far it could have been seen from space. It was very dramatic and reminded me of pro-wrestling's slow moving theater. It also happened to coincide with his song's lyrics, "I ain't lookin' for trouble..." How convenient. Millions of people watched the video and thought to themselves, "Wow, what a good guy." News networks picked up the video (that's where I saw it) and provided him free advertising for his albums.

Here's where we come to the true infection of the fake viral: cynicism. Maybe Tim McGraw really is a good guy, maybe he was ousting a truly unruly fan. But viral cynicism has infected me, so I question it. He's not really helping get rid of an asshole, he's just trying to get his name in the news.

Thinking cynically of the LEGO video, was it a bunch of dudes getting a crazy fun idea with LEGOs and Indiana Jones? Nah, it's just to get a buzz going about some new products.

It's cynical, but that's the damage done when a society tries to inject advertising into everything. Kurt Vonnegut said, "What passes for culture in my mind is really a bunch of commercials."

So here we are: what's real? What's spontaneous and what's fabricated? We'll never really know (except in the case of the clumsy efforts at Fox.) It's harmless when I consider a LEGO project or a singer's chivalry. But when someone uses it as propaganda, then we've moved from publicity stunts to slander.

I'm skeptical by nature, so maybe it's just me. Why be so damn thoughtful about it? If it's a free video and makes you laugh, makes you smile, enjoy it as such and leave it at that. As long as they stay in the realm of entertainment, fine, but once they move into the world of politics, of factual news, then the virals deserve the cynicism necessary to learn anything in that field.

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Larry Nocella is the award-winning author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available at Amazon and Xlibris and other fine online book stores. Where Did This Come From? is also available as an eBook. For more info, visit Larry Nocella's website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.

Humanity Vs. Monsters

As you can see from the fact that both this and last time's blog entries are videos spanking John "The McCandidate" McCain for joking about war, his Okay-with-War stance really burns my ass.

Like the MoveOn ad says, "You can't have [my son]." I totally agree. I'm without children and always will be, but that won't stop me from strongly discouraging any one I know from joining the U.S. military, should they ever entertain the idea.

No one I love is going to feed McCain's loony vision of war without end. You can't have them. You can't use them as the security force for private oil business. You can't use them as the living shields of oil rigs. As Dick Cheney would say, "Fuck yourself."

So, as always when more than ten seconds pass without me having some kind of angst, I get self-conscious. Am I being uptight or something? John McInsane did say he was joking. I am taking the joke too seriously?

Fuck that line of thinking. This is WAR we're talking about. Hell on earth. The absolute worst creation of mankind on a grand scale. People killed, maimed for life, physically, mentally, emotionally. Why should I even entertain the idea that I'm uptight for refusing to laugh at a "joke" about it.

It's well-past time to severely condemn asshole pundits or politicians who "joke" about war, who casually threaten other countries with it, who call for the assassination of leaders, etc. as if these are all things that can be ordered up with minimal effort and no damage, like ordering a pizza.

So push pause on my regularly scheduled angst. I'm glad I'm uptight about war. If I wasn't I'd be an asshole just like McCain or Bush. Whether it's McCain singing "Bomb Iran" or Bush joking about being unable to find the WMD that people who wanted to serve America died looking for, it's time for humanity to stand up to these monsters.

Yes, monsters. If you joke about people in agony, people killed, entire lives, families, nations ruined destroyed, washed in blood and body parts, then you are a monster and my disgust is the very least of the punishment you deserve.

Below is the video equivalent of this blog entry. If you can't see the embedded file, go to this link.



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Larry Nocella is the award-winning author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available at Amazon and Xlibris and other fine online book stores. Where Did This Come From? is also available as an eBook. For more info, visit Larry Nocella's website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.

Experience Does Not Guarantee Wisdom

Taking inspiration from Samuel L. Jackson and the stupid movie Snakes on a Plane, let me say, "I am sick of these motherfuckin' warmongers casually threatening more motherfuckin' wars!"

Ahem. More articulately, let me start by saying I have visited the following thoughts several times because they're so counter-intuitive I need to keep reviewing their truth.

We think someone who has experienced racism would never discriminate against another, but they do. We think someone who is old would heave learned so much they would never be foolish, but they are. We think someone who has been abused would never be cruel, but they are. We think if someone has given birth they would surely be compassionate, but they aren't always. We think someone who has suffered due to war, they would understand its gravity, but they don't. We think someone who has been educated must be smart, but they aren't.

Maybe it's me or maybe it's American society's constant experience with people masquerading as experts who are as wrong often as not. Whatever the source, it is apparent that experiencing something does not translate into wisdom. Without a skill for appreciation, thoughtfulness or reflection, a willingness or an ability to change, a person could go through the most spiritual experience possible and still come out the other end as they began, as a superficial jackass.

Speaking of John McCain, he's running for president on a platform that he's experienced with war and he knows how horrific it is, therefore he expects us to take the intuitive route and believe that with all that experience, he must understand about war, be good at it, and understand its cost.

Yet he clearly doesn't. He made a joke of bombing Iran. Then when questioned about it, he said it was a joke and if you don't understand to get a life. It's all on video here.

No, John. No. You get a fucking life. If you're as impacted by the horrors of war as your ad 'Safe' claims, you would never, even in jest, have sung a tune to Bomb Iran. Clearly you didn't learn anything from your Vietnam years. If you understood war, you would understand that killing another human isn't something to joke about, even if they deserve it. You would understand that bombs don't kill only your enemies, they kill innocents caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Finally, leaving all that aside, if you don't mind yukkin' it up about killing your fellow human being, then you need to be kept away from any weapon and probably even sharp objects.

One more thing, John. There's this thing you would probably call The You Tube, where anyone can see your self-contradictory words, line them up and compare. Check it out. Maybe you'll learn something about yourself, but I doubt it.

(If you can't see the embedded file below, just follow this link.)



P.S. As you can see, my latest fad is video remixing, just not with Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0. It worked great for a couple days before it went into constant crash mode. So I had to trade it in for Ulead VideoStudio 11.5 Plus. Ah, much better. No crashes yet. Anyway, I just had to mention that because last blog I gave Adobe a plug. Consider the plug retracted!

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Larry Nocella is the award-winning author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available at Amazon and Xlibris and other fine online book stores. Where Did This Come From? is also available as an eBook. For more info, visit Larry Nocella's website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.