Posts Tagged angry frothing rants
USA Today’s Propaganda
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Government and Law, Mother Culture on January 26th, 2011
It’s been a while since I served up a frothing mug of culturally-induced bile; it’s's been a while since I went on a business trip too. The two are definitely related. The more time I spend exposing myself to the Voice Of My Culture (media), the more I find to comment on. Business trips are good for blogging, but bad for my sanity.
Case in point: this article from USA Today:
The sub-heading was what really caught my eye and made me sputter: “Purposely put at risk by insurgents.” Am I to infer that the author of this article has entered the mind of the “insurgents,” Being John Malkovich-style, and determined that the civilian casualties were purposeful? Of course not. So what’s the source for this statement? Unlike most cases where a newspaper trumpets a piece of government propaganda, the source of the message is explicitly acknowledged in this very article. Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, is quoted as saying, “The enemy put civilians purposely at great risk by its tactics and actions.” Well, shit. A Pentagon spokesperson got to write the sub-heading of your article. Now there’s an unbiased source if ever I heard one. Good journalism, USA Today!
Of course, the U.S. has also caused civilian casualties, but presumably those were not “purposeful.” Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, “tautologically those were not purposeful.” When the U.S. military causes civilian death, the American media assumes that reasonable efforts were taken to avoid that outcome. “Our” enemies are not afforded the same courtesy.
How much does the U.S. military actually care about avoiding civilian casualties? The answer, once again, is right here in this very article! From the invasion in 2003 to 2007, four years, the U.S. cared so much about civilian casualties that they, “did not show much interest in tracking [them]…. It didn’t see population protection as central to the mission or our core responsibility.” Who’s purposely putting civilians at risk again?
It disgusts me that this type of propaganda is passed off as reporting.
Give Peace A Chance
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Money and Marketing on August 23rd, 2010
Watch this video.
Fuck this tea.
This tea is pissing on John Lennon’s grave, and the memory of every hippie who stood up to oppose war in the name of capitalism and imperialism. For the record, I have looked for examples that this tea is using the word peace as more than just an advertising slogan. I have looked for works of altruism and activism that they have performed. Nothing. Just perverted quotes about peace from leaders like John Lennon and Martin Luther King. If I believed in sacrilege, this tea would be it.
Peace tea company is whoring out the corpse of the hippie movement, and when you buy and consume peace tea, you are the John.
Saving The Environment
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Mother Culture on June 19th, 2010
In honor of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, I’d like to share with you some tips for saving the environment that I found in a magazine.
Yay! Everything is going to be okay now!
But of course it’s not. No matter how many of your electronic devices you unplug, mountains in West Virginia are still going to be strip-mined for coal to put the electricity on the wires. No matter how often you turn off your car instead of idling it, there have already been thousands of spills in the Niger Delta (just to name one place). All of these tips might be meaningful ways to conserve a resource that was being obtained in an environmentally sound way, but when environmental damage is built into the system, focusing on conservation is cold comfort.
Environmental damage is not occurring because you and every other American left your car idling; it’s occurring because we’ve built a society in which nearly everyone must have a car in order to survive above the poverty line.
Environmental damage is not occurring because you left your cell phone charger plugged in; it’s occurring because we build houses with no thought towards natural heating or cooling, and then the only option is to run 3000 watt air conditioning units every day of the year to keep the temperature at 68-72 degrees.
Environmental damage is not occurring because you eat too much cow and not enough fish; it’s occurring because we expect to have strawberries in December and mango and pineapple in Detroit, and so airliners deliver them from Hawaii and Chile every fucking morning.
These are the things that would have to change in order to “save” the environment. You cannot “save” the environment by doing the things on that list, because those things are not what is harming the environment.
When I see lists like this, I wonder whether their real effect is to distract me. If I think that I’m doing something meaningful by turning off my engine when I get out of the car, I will be derailed from thinking about actually meaningful actions that I might perform.
Just to be clear, I still think there are good reasons to conserve, I just don’t think that “saving the environment” is one of them. For one thing, conservation may make you less personally dependent on the energy that is being derived in a harmful way. This makes you more open to actions that reduce the availability of that energy, which many non-harmful options do.
For your enjoyment, here is a funny video from Derrick Jensen, talking about meaningful environmental actions.
Reality Has Jumped The Shark: Cordless Power Grill Brush
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Money and Marketing on June 18th, 2010
I’ve decided to start a type of post called, “Reality Has Jumped The Shark.” For those of you who aren’t familiar with the phrase, here’s the Wikipedia entry.
Jumping the shark is an idiom used to describe the moment of downturn for a previously successful enterprise. The phrase was originally used to denote the point in a television program‘s history where the plot spins off into absurd story lines or unlikely characterizations. The expression was popularized in 1985 by Jonathan M. Hein, who would later create the web site jumptheshark.com (which now redirects to TVGuide.com). Hein explained the concept as follows: “It’s a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on…it’s all downhill.
This post, I present to you the cordless power grill brush.
I literally stood and stared in bemusement at this product for three minutes or so. Let’s just be clear here. Originally, humans cooked meat by barbecuing it in a large pit over coals. This involved: 1) catching a big animal and killing it; 2) digging a big hole with primitive hand tools; 3) chopping enough wood to line the hole; 4) making fire by hand. You can understand that was a lot of trouble to go to, so various improvements made the whole process more convenient. The invention of the barbecue grill. The invention of charcoal briquettes. But even briquettes were too much hassle, so propane was substituted. Meanwhile, on the whole, “procuring meat” front, industrial food production makes it possible to walk into the store and buy a big hunk of beast with no more trouble or inconvenience than wiping your ass.
And somewhere, someone at the end of this process looks at his or her dirty grill and thinks, “FUCK! MOVING MY ARM BACK AND FORTH WITH A BRUSH IN MY HAND? THAT’S FOR CHUMPS!!!
Reality has jumped the shark.
Retail Commentary Quickie
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Food, Money and Marketing on May 6th, 2010
I keep meaning to write deep, in-depth posts about these images, and they keep piling up on my phone, so here’s a quick dump. Imagine that I kept ranting for another ten lines about each one and you’ll get the full experience. You can probably copy-and-paste some of my older posts without disrupting continuity too much. It’s like Mad Libs!
“Bikini Ready” by May 1 or in just four weeks? Fuck you for implying that there is an arbitrary physical standard outside of which a body is not “ready” for a “bikini.” Fuck you twice for lying about your magazine’s ability to bring people into compliance with that standard in an arbitrarily short amount of time. My body is “bikini ready” the moment I decide to put on a bikini.
“Get my body back?” Where did it go?! You’d think I would have noticed! Fuck you for implying that my fat, flabby, middle-aged body is not “mine.” No matter what its physical condition, this is my body and I love it. I had better, because I am going to be in it until I die, and I can’t think of anything more miserable than spending my entire life in a body that I hate. Spending my entire life in a culture that encourages me to hate my body is up there, though.
“Guilt-free” food? Is there a moral component to my food choices that I’m missing? If you’re referring to feeling guilty about the terrible ways that animals are treated in industrial food processing, then I’m on board, but I bet you’re not.
-
Love Live Grow- Soft February 5, 2012Keep Reading […]
- Baby in the Sunshine February 4, 2012Keep Reading […]
- Paycheck February 1, 2012The thing I am most excited about lately is blogging. I’ve been writing online for… about 7 years now. I started out on LJ, wrote a thing or two for Associated Content, and kept starting blogs every time a new idea popped into my head. I have started so many blogs and owned so many domain names over those years! LoveLiveGrow has been around for a couple of y […]
- Soft February 5, 2012
