Showing posts with label barbarian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label barbarian. Show all posts

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Death's who's coming for breakfast


Five-year-old Payton Benson was eating breakfast Wednesday morning when a bullet with her name on it exploded through the wall of her north Omaha home and killed her dead.

The cussing ghetto toddler of Omaha viral-video fame fired the shot.

The gang bangers poisoning the young mind of the cussing Omaha toddler fired the shot.

The idiot teenage mother of the cussing Omaha toddler, who thinks "kids cuss" because, no doubt, that's as normal for a 2-year-old as breathing, fired the shot.

The deviant, criminally inclined and now-imprisoned mama of the idiot teenage mother of the cussing Omaha toddler fired the shot.

The no-count baby daddies so quick on the draw and even quicker to split when a hot mama turns into a baby mama fired the shot. Ditto for those young women so frustratingly committed to looking for love in all the wrong places.

The perpetually aggrieved talking heads who condemned the Omaha police union for highlighting the obvious -- whatever its motive at the time -- because to tell an inconvenient truth is somehow self-evidently racist . . . they pulled the trigger, too.

The law-and-order politicians content to "solve" the crime problem by cramming the state's prisons to bursting with the thug children of an underclass anticulture -- and doing it while ignoring grinding poverty, invincible hopelessness and that underclass anticulture thing. . . . 

Pulled the trigger.

No doubt they'll demand the death penalty for everybody except themselves. Because crime.

Because "justice."


ACTUALLY, little Payton Benson died because a bunch of American Frankenstein's monsters a block over -- no doubt once just like the cussing Omaha toddler, poisoned by the same culture of death that hates life and knows no hope -- were shooting it out in the middle of the street. Witnesses mentioned a handgun and a high-powered rifle.

A slug from one of those guns missed whomever its intended target was, flew down the block and down the block and down the block some more but still had enough juice to penetrate the walls of 3328 N. 45th St., and then the little body of a little girl who never saw death coming. Says the Omaha World-Herald:
The mother, Tabatha Manning, ran out screaming, a relative said.

Payton was Omaha's first homicide of the new year.

“Bullets know no boundaries, they know no target, they are going to land where they land,”
[Police Chief Todd] Schmaderer said during a press conference Wednesday evening.

“Enough of the gang violence, and enough with the random shootings.”

Schmaderer and
[Omaha Mayor Jean] Stothert promised to find the person who killed an innocent girl. Both leaders expressed their sympathy for Payton's family members.

“I promise this family and I promise this community that my homicide investigators, my gang investigators, will work around the clock, leaving no stone unturned to solve this homicide,” Schmaderer said.

Shell casings indicated that gunfire broke out at the intersection of 44th Avenue and Emmet Street, a block from Payton's house. Multiple people exchanged gunfire, Schmaderer said.

Police were looking for three black men who fled in a black Jeep Commander. Initial 911 reports described one as having a handgun, one armed with a high-powered rifle and the third wearing a bandanna.

Police found a Jeep matching that description at St. James Manor Apartments, 3102 N. 60th St., but they had not determined whether the vehicle was involved.
(snip)
The chief said he had a message for the assailants: “You know who you are, and law enforcement will find out who you are. It may not have been your bullet that struck this little girl. So do the right thing and do yourself a favor in the process. Come down and talk to law enforcement and tell us what you know.”

Massey Allen III, 33, who identified himself as a relative of Payton, said he was stopped at 45th Street and Bedford Avenue when he heard gunfire and ducked under his steering wheel.

Allen estimated that about 20 shots were fired. Several neighbors called 911, and officers patrolling the neighborhood heard the gunshots and responded, Schmaderer said. Payton was pronounced dead at Creighton University Medical Center.

Allen said Manning, 31, had recently moved to Omaha from Chicago. She wanted to earn a nursing degree, he said.


SEE WHAT trying to better yourself gets you in the 'hood? Your kid killed at the breakfast table by the unintended consequence of unintended consequences. That's the underclass anticulture for you. How very racist of me to mention that, despite it not being just a black thing.

Today, the police chief is outraged, the mayor is outraged and the whole city is outraged. We've been outraged before; we'll be outraged again. We Omahans -- we Americans -- are goddamned good at outrage, but not so much at actually doing something about that which outrages us again and again and again and again and again.

We're working on it, though. Results are preliminary, but we're pretty sure the solution has something to do with giving teachers concealed weapons, blaming big government (or institutionalized racism . . . one or the other), lowering taxes (or raising taxes on the rich), moving farther out in the suburbs, moving to a dee-luxe apartment in the downtown sky, cutting food stamps because . . . well, look at Those People . . . and going shopping.

The shopping part, we've got nailed.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

America in the looking glass


What's the difference between your average Islamic-extremist jihadi and your average American teenager with a gun?

The jihadi, at least, has a reason for killing. I'm not saying a good reason, but at least he has one. For three homegrown poster children for the culture of death, according to Oklahoma cops, not so much.

Because of that, an Australian baseball player out for a Friday jog in Duncan, Okla., is making an unexpected trip back home. In a coffin. Solely because he decided to go for a jog in his American girlfriend's hometown.

And solely because, by chance, three teenagers -- it is alleged --  decided that day was a good day for somebody to die, then happened to spy Chris Lane, catcher for East Central University in Ada, Okla.
It comes after a 16-year-old boy confessed to pulling the trigger and killing Lane, according to police chief Danny Ford.

Chief Ford said the 16-year-old was with two other teens aged 15 and 17 when they killed Lane during a random drive-by shooting in the town of Duncan.
He said the three teenagers had no motive other than to make a name for themselves.

All three are facing the charge of first-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of the death penalty.

Chief Ford told 3AW this morning one of the accused has confessed to pulling the trigger, saying he just wanted to kill someone.

"Lately there has been some pretty weak motives, but I don’t know that I’ve had one that they told us they were just going to kill somebody," he said.

He said the three teens were on a "killing spree" after , leaving a chilling message on Facebook.

Peter Lane said his son had left his mark and his death was just so pointless. 
(snip)

Chief Ford said the teens drove to another house to murder a second unrelated victim just hours after shooting Lane in the back and leaving him to die in an upper-class area of Duncan at 2.57pm local time Friday (5.57am Saturday Melbourne time).

"They wanted to be Billy Bob Badasses," Chief Ford said.

"I think they were on a killing spree.

"We would have had more bodies that night if we didn't get them."

On one of the alleged killer's Facebook pages investigators said they found the message: "Bang. Two drops in two hours".

The accused are in custody in Stephens County Jail, awaiting formal murder charges expected on Monday local time.

Earlier, Chief Ford said one of the teens had been co-operating.

"He said, ‘Yeah, we did it but I’m not going to tell you who pulled the trigger’," he said.

One of the alleged murderers was Caucasian, the other two were black, Chief Ford said.

Lane, 22, grew up in Oak Park in Melbourne’s north and was in the US on a sports scholarship.

He was jogging through an area of "high dollar homes" after leaving the home of his American girlfriend, Sarah Harper, when he was followed and shot at the intersection of Country Club Rd and Twilight Beach Rd.


AMERICA'S gun nuts think we could prevent a lot of this kind of thing if only everybody -- or at least enough people --were armed.

What I want them to explain to me, though, is how you defend yourself against being shot in the back, out of the blue. Because that's how we roll in the red, white and blue, every-man-is-an-island incarnation of the culture of death.

Nerve, defined


The headline on NPR's Planet Money blog sums it up so well, it leaves one with little else to say:
Robin Thicke's Song Sounds Like Marvin Gaye. So He's Suing Gaye's Family.
WELL, that about covers it. All I have to add is Robin Thicke's actions here pretty much define "nerve."

In this new age of the barbarian, the future belongs to the plunderer.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The way we are

"This is not who we are, and it's certainly not who we represent when it comes to the great majority of men and women in uniform who are serving there."

Actually, when this kind of thing -- and worse -- happens often enough, it kind of is who we are.

And we seem to be on a macabre streak in Afghanistan. That's not even getting into the streak of "not who we are" U.S. troops were on in Iraq -- or the official torture that went on at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and at top-secret CIA prisons abroad.

No, I'd say the record indicates this is absolutely who we have become after more than a decade of endless war. It probably is who we were even before almost 11 years of endless war.

Think we have a cultural problem much? Do not delude yourself that it's limited to the young kids in U.S. uniforms. Their "not who we are" behavior didn't just arise out of nowhere.

Thanks to the Los Angeles Times for pulling back the mask just a little bit more.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Lord of the Fritos


When I was a kid, there was always the same public-service announcement before the late news.

"It's 10 o'clock. Parents, do you know where your children are?"

Boy, is
that so 40 years ago. There are so many other questions TV stations could ask "parents" today.
"It's 11:30. Parents, did you know that your little thugs are cleaning out the Kwik-E-Mart?"

"It's 6 o'clock. Parents, did you know your little darlings will be on the news in just a couple of minutes?"

"It's 10 o'clock. Parents, do you give a flip where your children are?"

"It's 3 in the morning. Parents, are you really worthless pieces of s***, or is that an unfair inference on our part?"
MAYBE that's something KATU television in Portland, Ore., might want to consider. It would be a nice complement to stories like this:
Police are hoping the public can help identify several kids who stormed a local gas station this past Saturday night and stole everything they could grab.

On the surveillance video, one person came into the Chevron convenience store on SE 92nd and Foster. Then a second person came in and pretty soon, a large group of kids was packed into the shop. Soon, they were stealing anything they could, from drinks to gum to candy

Carlos Garcia was working Saturday night at around 11:30 p.m. when the incident happened. He said there were 16 kids in the store. Garcia said the kids grabbed anything they could and shoved items into their pockets or simply carrying them in their hands and out the door.

"My first reaction was call police because I can't do more," he said. "I don't want to hurt them -- they're kids. I called the police. They don't stop they're just picking picking as much as they can."

Friday, February 10, 2012

Because someone had to do it


Some of the language here is NSFW. But Dad is just reading
what his 15-year-old wrote about him on Facebook.


This is the best reason I've ever seen for not enacting stringent gun control.

Personally, though, I would have gone for either buckshot or slugs in a 12-gauge shotgun. At least three shells' worth, maybe more. Sometimes, you need to kick a little ass -- or blow up a laptop -- to stem the rising tide of entitled barbarianism.

Oh . . . save the .45 and the hollow-points for the little princess' smart phone. That would be AWESOME.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Whiz kids of a dying empire


This video is disgusting and
Not Safe for Work. The video is, however,
instructive of what a decade of war does to a military and a country.



Some people whistle past graveyards. Not us.

No, Americans send their Marines to Afghanistan to piss on the graveyard of a terminally ill empire -- ours. Americans send their military to Afghanistan to fight in a war long past its expiration date for an empire approaching its.

Our dying empire sends its youth to fight an endless war against barbarians, all in the name of protecting the homeland, preserving our freedom and fostering democracy.
Supposedly. At least that's the official story put out there by Washington and swallowed whole by the media and the public.

At some point, though, you realize something. You realize we have become that from which we must be saved -- barbarians. Barbarians who revel in killing. Barbarians who no longer can restrain the beast within.

Barbarians who piss on the dead.


WE TURN ON the television or log in to YouTube to see our young Marines -- our sons -- pissing not on the enemy -- not ultimately -- but instead on what separates us from the animals. We watch in decadent comfort as American Hessians piss on the humanity of Taliban fighters in a land known as the "graveyard of empires."

We shake our heads (or maybe not) as our sons piss on human dignity . . . and on respect for the dead . . . and on the "civilization" we say we fight to uphold. We gawk as our children -- clad in camouflage and carrying sniper rifles -- piss on their dead targets and on our own awaiting grave.

Once you have handed the moral high ground to the "barbarians" against whom you struggle, you have nothing more for which to fight. You have met the enemy . . .
in the mirror.

THE BBC REPORTS on what our barbarians have done to Afghanistan's in a war exposed as having no particular point anymore:
Afghanistan's Taliban has condemned a video that appears to show US Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters.

A spokesman told the BBC: "It is not a human action, it's a wild action that is too shameful for us to talk about."

But Reuters quoted a Taliban spokesman as saying the video would not derail attempts at peace talks to end the war.

The US military is investigating the authenticity of the video and the Marine Corps said the actions were not consistent with its core values.

The footage shows four men in military fatigues appearing to urinate on three apparently lifeless men. They have brown skin, bare feet and are dressed in loose-fitting outfits. One appears to be covered in blood.

A man's voice is heard saying: "Have a great day, buddy."

The origin of the video is not known, nor is it clear who posted it online.

The men in military fatigues seem to be aware they are being filmed.

(snip)

Already, the video has stirred up anger in Afghanistan about the foreign military presence.

"The US soldiers who urinated on dead bodies of Muslims have committed a crime," Feda Mohammad told Reuters in Kabul.

"Since they've committed such a crime, we don't want them on our soil anymore."

Afghan Member of Parliament Fawzia Kofi said ordinary Afghans, no matter how they felt about the Taliban, would be upset by the video.

"It's a matter of a human being, respect to a human being," she told the BBC.

"I believe that the brutal acts that the Taliban did here during their government and even now is condemned by Afghans. So is watching a brutal act by international forces. We condemn that as well," she added.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Really? You think? Nahhhhhhhhh.


The man with his finger on the racing pulse of reality TV thinks it's only a matter of time before someone in the genre goes "too far."

Did I just write "before" reality TV goes too far?

Of course, you have to understand that every time our culture goes too far, we have to come up with a new, more "out there" definition of "too far." For the first decade or two of the Television Age, "hell" and "damn" were "too far." And you couldn't say the word "pregnant." It was "family way," darn it!

And Rob and Laura Petrie slept in separate beds.

THESE DAYS, says Today's blog The Clicker, "too far" pretty much is a reality-TV snuff movie. "Too far" is Americans sitting slack-jawed on their couches, shoving their faces full of chips and delighting in a "magnificent violent act."

"People will watch to see if we can find signs of 'did we see that coming?'" said Robert Galinsky, founder of the New York Reality TV School. "'Was I a good enough detective to see the signs that Russell Armstrong was going to take his own life?' 'Did I tap into my inner David Caruso and detect that Kim was faking her wedding?'"

(snip)

Reality is all about the here, and the now -- if it’s done, it's over. So they have to keep pushing the envelope. And with both "Housewives" and "Kourtney & Kim" we’ve been invited to watch the evolution of two of the worst things that can happen to couples -- sudden death and divorce. It's hard to imagine that other reality shows won’t find some way to give us more somewhere down the line.

Galinsky figures we haven’t even gotten close to ultimate reality TV: "The line we cross is when we see something ultra-violent -- domestic violence or the like -- live," he said. "Reality TV still has a filter, yet a questionable one, and we haven’t crossed the threshold yet, but we'll see it soon in the form of a murder, suicide or some other magnificent violent act that will make its way onto the screen."

Waiting for that "magnificent" violence to erupt may be some viewers' idea of a good time. But what we have now, the slow crawl to the inevitable ending we know is coming, doesn’t really feel much like entertainment any more. It’s evolved into something else, something we may not have a word for yet.

I SUPPOSE -- whether or not we actually get to see "snuff TV" -- the mere fact that there is such a thing as the New York Reality TV School is yet another sign that we are the new barbarians. That we stand to push the exhibitionist genre beyond, in its worst permutations, mere casual cruelty and idiocy and into bloodlust and criminal intent, all for our entertainment, is a sign that we may be monsters.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

College in the ruins

Xavier’s mission is to educate. Our essential activity is the interaction of students and faculty in an educational experience characterized by critical thinking and articulate expression with specific attention given to ethical issues and values.

Xavier is a Catholic institution in the Jesuit tradition, an urban university firmly rooted in the principles and conviction of the Judeo-Christian tradition and in the best ideals of American heritage.

Xavier is an educational community dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, to the orderly discussion of issues confronting society; and, as would befit an American institution grounded in the humanities and sciences, Xavier is committed unreservedly to open and free inquiry.

-- Xavier University mission statement

The University of Cincinnati serves the people of Ohio, the nation, and the world as a premier, public, urban research university dedicated to undergraduate, graduate, and professional education, experience-based learning, and research. We are committed to excellence and diversity in our students, faculty, staff, and all of our activities. We provide an inclusive environment where innovation and freedom of intellectual inquiry flourish. Through scholarship, service, partnerships, and leadership, we create opportunity, develop educated and engaged citizens, enhance the economy and enrich our university, city, state and global community.

-- University of Cincinnati mission statement

Thursday, November 10, 2011

'We are . . . Penn State!'


Oh, goody.

I think I've just located the one generation s****ier than my own.

That would be my generation's children. As a Baby Boomer, I'm so proud . . . not.

If we had any honesty and shame about us, we'd clothe ourselves in sackcloth and
cover ourselves in ashes at the sight of the Neanderthal darlings we've so carefully taught on the prowl at Penn State, rioting against the reappearance of rectitude in its besoiled halls.

Of course, The New York Times has all the news that's fit to weep over, as America dies a little more every day:
“I think the point people are trying to make is the media is responsible for Joe Pa going down,” said freshman Mike Clark, 18, adding that he believed Mr. Paterno met both his legal and moral responsibility by telling university authorities about Mr. Sandusky’s alleged 2002 assault on a boy in a school shower.

Demonstrators tore down two lampposts, one falling into a crowd of students. They also threw rocks and fireworks at police, who responded with pepper spray. The crowd undulated like an accordion, with the students crowding the police and the officers pushing them back.

“We got rowdy and we got maced,” Jeff Heim, 19, said rubbing his red, teary eyes. “But make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach. They tarnished a legend.”

An orderly crowd first filled the lawn in front of Old Main when news of Mr. Paterno’s firing came via students’ cell phones. When the crowd took to the downtown streets, it’s anger and intensity swelled. Students shouted “We are Penn State.”

Some blew vuvuzelas, others air horns. One young man sounded reveille on a trumpet. Four girls in heels danced on the roof of a parked SUV and dented it when they fell after a group of men shook the vehicle. A few, like Justin Muir, 20, a junior studying hotel and restaurant management, threw rolls of toilet paper into the trees.

“It’s not fair,” Mr. Muir said hurling a white ribbon. “The board is an embarrassment to our school and a disservice to the student population.”

(snip)

Greg Becker, 19, a freshman studying computer science, said he felt he had to vent his feelings anyway.

“This definitely looks bad for our school,” he said sprinting away from a cloud of spray. “I’m sure Joe Pa wouldn’t want this, but this is just an uproar now, we’re finding a way to express our anger.”

As the crowd got more aggressive, so did police officers. Some rioters fought back. One man in gas mask rushed a half dozen police officers in protective gear, blasted one officer with spray underneath his safety mask and then sprinted away. The officer lay on the ground, rubbing his eyes.

Paul Howard, 24, an aerospace engineering student, jeered the police.

“Of course we’re going to riot,” he said. “What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o’clock that they fired our football coach?”


OF COURSE they're going to riot, for they're a bunch of overindulged, self-centered moral black holes. Just like my generation raised them to be.

Because the board trying to clean up a child-molestation scandal "
is an embarrassment to our school and a disservice to the student population." And because it's important that collegians find "a way to express our anger.”

Not only do we find that in a world without God, "everything is permitted," but that it most certainly will happen if you take away people's false gods as well.
Like Joe Paterno and Nittany Lion football.

The narcissistic little goons of Penn State are the spawn of my narcissistic generation, which majored in idolatry back in the day and called it "the New Morality." We were looking for hope, but settled for peacesexdope, then raised a Millennial tribe poised to settle for even less.

How very devo -- D-E-V-O -- is the over-educated mob that's not only become living proof of de-evolution, but also has made prophets out of a kitschy New Wave aggregation from the late '70s and early '80s. Naturally.

Jocko homo, y'all.

Here's more proof of our present de-evolutionary state. The parents of Penn State's precious little Visigoths used to do this kind of stuff to protest a bloody and unnecessary war in Vietnam. Their children, however, do this kind of stuff to protest trustees firing a football coach who cared more about keeping up appearances than about stopping an alleged child-rapist when he had the chance. A man who loved to talk about "character" but lacked the guts to exhibit even a little of it when it counted.

"We are . . . Penn Rape!"

That would be truth in advertising for the barbarian hordes of Happy Valley.

HOW FITTING that the carefully constructed illusion of Penn State as some sort of honorable, model institution would come crashing down along with the carefully constructed illusion that was the man who built it -- Joe Paterno.

Cry me a river, you little bastards. More tear gas, please!

Friday, December 24, 2010

Hip-hop all the way to hell


Culture precedes politics . . . and everything else.

Music both produces and is produced by a culture.

A culture centered on titty bars -- music deemed stripper friendly before it can burrow into your children's brains -- is no culture at all. It is an anticulture.

NPR was on the anticulture beat Thursday. I'm not so sure the reporter would have been this bemused had she known what she was dealing with. Then again, maybe the NPR report is part of the anticulture just as much as titty-bar-tested hip-hop singles -- I don't know.


JUDGE for yourself:
Hip-hop producers have been breaking records in Atlanta strip clubs for a long time now — at least as far back as 2003, when Lil Jon was doing it with songs like, "Get Low." He's been quoted as saying "the butts don't lie," meaning if the strippers can dance to it, the song has potential. In Tamara Palmer's book, Country Fried Soul: Adventures in Dirty South Hip Hop, Lil Jon says "Get Low" had a slow start: the dancers "didn't feel it at first." But eventually it grew on them and several dancers at different strip clubs asked the DJs to play it during their stage sets. "Get Low" took off — in mainstream clubs and on radio and TV across the country.

What attracted us to this story was that the strippers seemed to have a lot of power in the hip-hop hit-making process. Obviously they are the focal point when a new song is being played. As DJ Scream told me, "There's nothing like seeing a woman dance to a record. There's records that I hate and when I see a woman dancing I think, 'It's not that bad.'"

Another reason strip clubs are the perfect place to test out a song is the clientele. In Atlanta, I'm told nobody thinks twice about going to strip clubs for a bite to eat or just a night out. They're so popular that some of the dancers are treated like local celebrities.

On any given night you might find record label execs and radio programmers, other professionals, college students and couples watching the booty shake.

The dancers have an incentive to make a song exciting: They get paid when the patrons 'make it rain,' or throw money on the stage while they're dancing. I asked Sweet Pea, one of the main dancers in the Snack Pack at Magic City, if she'd ever refused to dance to a song she didn't like. She made it sound as though that just doesn't happen. "If it's got a good beat, you can dance to it," she said. In other words, even if she doesn't think a song has potential, she'll give it a try because she knows the folks from the record label will make it rain extra hard when she's dancing to their song.

As for the strip club DJs, they get paid when the dancers tip them at the end of the night. So it's in their best interest to keep the dancers happy and play whatever songs they request. Record label executives usually spend a lot of money on those nights they're trying to break a record, not just on the dancers but on drinks and food. When the song is working, and the dancers are happy, it might rub off on the patrons who — it's hoped — will spend even more money. So the strip club owners fully embrace the process. Sweet Pea says, "It's like a little promotional circle." One DJ told me, "We're all just hustling each other."
ANTICULTURES CANNOT long endure. They're either going to collapse utterly of their own societal, dysfunctional weight, or they're going to fold like a cheap tent before some opportunistic onslaught. See Visigoths, The.

Decline and fall -- one way or the other.

Laugh if you like. The ancient Romans did.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Not safe for work . . . or most places


This is what social activism has come to in a country with the manners of Attila and the mind of Forrest Gump.

Where every single person is on the make.

And, no, this online ad
(as you no doubt can tell from the title) is not safe for work. Or for in front of the kids. Or for most places where people might be offended by a 5-year-old dropping the F-bomb.

I MEAN, that is just so fu . . . well, you know.

But, hey! A whopping five bucks out of the $13 price of every T-shirt goes to a charity devoted to "unf***ing the Gulf." And people get to go online and vote on what charities to fund.

They'll probably end up funding free prostitutes for oil-spill cleanup workers. Somehow, that would be fitting . . . or at least in character for this fine example of Social Activism for Loutish Dummies.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Lindsay's fickle finger of (epic) fail


Once upon a time, you could bargain with the barbarians.

Even Attila the Hun could be persuaded by Pope Leo the Great not to sack Rome.

But in our addle-minded age of unceasing incivility, nothing and no one, I'm afraid, can dissuade Lindsay Lohan and her whole generation of poor little rich kids from a ruthless sacking of what's left of Western civilization. What's to be said for a society where it's possible for the famously troubled actress to go into a Los Angeles courtroom to beg a judge for mercy, all the while giving the honorable court -- and the world -- a fingernail-sized "f*** you"?


TONGUES were wagging on the Fox 411 blog:
Lindsay Lohan may have come with a message for the Los Angeles Superior Court when she appeared for her probation revocation hearing on Tuesday, and it could spell more jail time on top of her three-month sentence.

Lohan, who was sentenced to 90 days in prison and 90 days in an in-patient rehabilitation facility for violating the terms of her probation, appeared in court
with the words “f**k u” printed on her middle fingernail.

And according to one expert, this could spell serious trouble for her sentencing, which was already triple the amount that the prosecution requested.

FOX411.com reviewed photos from three separate photo agencies -- Thompson Reuters, Associated Press and Getty -- all of which appeared to display the words on her middle left-hand fingernail.

A Thompson Reuters rep told FOX411.com in a statement that “the images of Lindsay Lohan published yesterday by Reuters were not altered beyond the normal bit of toning to correct color balance and contrast.”

An Associated Press rep said that after discussion among their photo editors, they sent out an advisory to clients that read in part "EDS NOTE: OBSCENE LANGUAGE ON LEFT MIDDLE FINGERNAIL."

If indeed Lohan's message was aimed toward the courts, "it would be a separate charge for contempt,” says New York City Public Defender Stacy Schneider. “She
could have an entire extra sentence heaped on top of her current one. If the judge were angry enough, it could run even consecutively.”

Los Angeles Public Defender Greg Apt echoed Schneider's sentiments, calling Lohan's fingernails a "creative" way to land in contempt of court.

"The judge could hold her in direct contempt, which could be between three to five days in jail for vulgarity," if the judge deemed the
words were aimed at the court, Apt said.
THAT'S THE RESPONSE of our terminally ill society. To debate whether or not Lohan's message was meant for the judge and, thus, constituted contempt of court.

On what planet is walking into your hearing with F U on a T-shirt, your lips or on your middle finger not contempt of court by definition? One can't imagine even ol' Attila tolerating suchlike.

But here on Planet Hollywood, it's just more grist for the media-fueled mill grinding down an entire civilization.

Lock the bitch up. Throw away the key. Then stop feeding the animals . . . and the voyeurs who love their dysfunction.

Friday, May 07, 2010

At least the shipping is discreet


Y'all, this is what the end of the world looks like. Really.

It looks like a bunch of sniggering hens talking about finger (expletive deleted) --
complete with a leering, old-lady librarian sagely advising the young'uns about autofreakeration -- while Corporate America turns millstones into stockholder value. The Huns, Visigoths, Vandals and other barbarians had nothing on us.

Nothing.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Facebook, you ignorant slut!


I'm told the average IQ in this country is 100.

Seems rather on the high side to me. Then again, I've just been on Facebook.

If you hang out enough on the Internet, it's pretty easy to find lots of reasons to fear for one's country. For me, this is one of those moments.
Let me explain.

OUT THERE on the Interwebs somewhere, an Omaha web-design firm, What Cheer, has placed a simple-enough website called I Live in Omaha. The sole function of the site is to have Omahans fill in the blank of an innocuous-enough statement -- "I live in Omaha because. . . ."

Nice idea. Nice way for all of us to get in touch with some of the things we love about this place we call home.

At least in theory, that is.

The problem is the medium . . . and the shortcomings of (for lack of a better term) human "intelligence." And when you combine all that with original sin and this country's toxic political culture, it's "Katie, bar the door."

LOOK WHAT HAPPENED when one of the folks at What Cheer said "I live in Omaha because we are a blue dot in a red state." From the comments:

**** ******* at 10:04am May 27
f***ing liberals

*** ******** at 10:06am May 27
f***ing conservatives.

*** ***** at 10:08am May 27
f***ing dumbasses!

***** ***** at 10:09am May 27
Thank the universe for that!!

**** ******* at 10:10am May 27
haha this s*** is stupid

****** ******* at 10:11am May 27
WTF!?

***** ***** at 10:12am May 27
very.

*** ******** at 10:34am May 27
peace love and pot?

******** ************ at 10:37am May 27
Peace. Love. And pot.

******** ********** at 10:43am May 27
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. oh and don't forget the stds.

**** ****** at 10:48am May 27
Oh the STD's. Lol, for the fear you might lose your genitalia if you sleep with anyone from Omaha. xD and yes Peace. Love. Pot. Another sign you're in the big O

**** ******* at 11:31am May 27
with all the pot everyone is an obama humper, go smoke your pot with obama

******* **** at 11:41am May 27
(Name deleted) shut up. let me guess you voted for nadar

******* **** at 11:42am May 27
oh i forgot mccain had his d*** in your a** lmao

***** ****** at 12:06pm May 27
OMAN U SURE TOLD HIM LAWL

***** **** ******* at 12:25pm May 27
wow you guys are morons.

******** ****** at 12:38pm May 27
i live cuz i want ok

******** ******at 12:39pm May 27
i live here cuz i want to ok ppl i mssed yup on the first one

**** ******* at 1:02pm May 27
No (name deleted) you just had your whole fist up obama's a** you f***ing white liberal

******* **** at 1:14pm May 27
i didnt like obama fagtard thts how much you know

***** ***** at 1:15pm May 27
Boy, these kinds of comments sure make Omaha seem attractive. Shut up and grow up.

******* **** at 1:16pm May 27
hey f*** you lady.

***** ***** at 1:17pm May 27
Yea, real smart reply

******* **** at 1:19pm May 27
ok im sure your quite the genuis type huh? (name deleted)

***** ***** at 1:21pm May 27
wow. real mature. glad we live in a city where people can be adults.

******* **** at 1:23pm May 27
wow why do you really care. its not like you know me so dont assume.

******** ***** at 1:29pm May 27
OK children, back to go your corners

******* **** at 1:32pm May 27
lmao
IF I DIDN'T THINK most other cities had an even greater percentage of barbarian morons than Omaha, I'd be out of here tomorrow after reading that. And that's what we're dealing with as a culture -- we do not await an assault by the barbarian hordes; we, instead, are the barbarian hordes.

And we can't write, punctuate, spell or go more than two combox posts without saying something vulgar.

Unfortunately, the Internet -- a development that has such potential for good -- has become something akin to Miracle-Gro for the "id." This, I suspect, is because computers lack the capacity to hit their users upside the head with a two-by-four.

Increasingly, "society" has come to lack such a capacity as well. And that's why freedom's just another word for
@#$%! #&*+@ !$%&* $%**! @#!&$%!


UPDATE: After one of the guiltier participants in this now-deleted Facebook thread, realized future employers and family members can use this thing called Google to look up all the stupid things he's done on the Internet, he left a comment asking me to delete the post.

Sorry, but I don't delete posts.

But I did go to a lot of trouble to extend an instance of radical mercy to this individual (and all the others who likewise covered themselves in ignominy) by deleting the names from the account of the Facebook comments.

This is your one free shot at getting a clue, kid. Don't screw it up.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Something's just wrong with folks down there


I was born and raised in Baton Rouge. I have lived in Omaha for 20 years now.

With that kind of background, you start to draw some conclusions about where you are -- and about where you're from. You look at the lingering racism back home. You look at lousy public schools, crooked politicians always on the make -- and on the take -- and every bit of the public infrastructure falling apart.

You look, and you think "This is not good."

AND IF THAT WEREN'T ENOUGH, you read stories like this -- and, really, you wish you hadn't just read a story like that -- and then, a week later, you read this from WAFB television in Baton Rouge:

A worker at a Baton Rouge photo lab is used to developing photographs of birthday parties, beautiful sunsets, and vacations. A picture of a girl cutting up a dead puppy, however, was a first.

The worker, from a Baton Rouge Walgreen's drug store, immediately called sheriff's deputies, who launched an investigation. Deputies were led to a student from Woodlawn High School who told them her mother had gotten the dead puppy for her from the East Baton Rouge Parish Animal Control, according to a police report.

The puppy that was given to the student's mother for the school assignment had previously been euthanized, investigators were told. Upon further investigation, deputies learned that the dissection of the dead puppy was part of an assignment from the girl's biology teacher, Dennis Dyer. The assignment read, in part, "Skeletal preparation can be an interesting and rewarding project for those who recognize that beauty and have the stomach for the grosser side of Biology." A report from the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office says the teacher told his students if they could not find a dead wild animal, they could get one from animal control.


(snip)

The teacher says the student approached him and stated that she went to animal control and workers there "offered to provide her with a euthanized animal if it was for a school project," Trahan said. "Once they've been euthanized, they are disposed of," said Hilton Cole, director of the EBR Animal Control Center. "And that's the end of their little lives and it's rather unpleasant. So, if somehow, some way, one of these animals can somehow help a student or help an educational program or enhance a life maybe in the future and stimulate some young mind to become a scientist or an investigator of some sort, I feel like that's a worthy cause," Cole said.

THE TANGIPAHOA PARISH animal-control center putting down 170 animals in a day. The East Baton Rouge Parish animal-control center giving away euthanized puppies to be dissected by a kid at home.

Now, the expatriate wonders something else. No, "wonders" is not the correct word. The expatriate knows something else. He knows the Thing Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken.

He knows that "It" is true -- that which has, in the past, been thrown in his face by people who looked at him like he was from a particularly rough patch of Albania.

Yes, Louisiana is a pretty backward place.

Yes, something's just wrong with people down there.

Sorry.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Nobody 'needs' killing


The following post was meant to be a comment on Rod Dreher's Crunchy Con post about the Turlock, Calif., toddler-stomping madman who "needed killing."

After writing the thing and checking it twice, I hit the "post comment" button . . . and the damn thing went into the Beliefnet moderation queue, which is kind of like a black hole, only worse. And I'd worked so hard on it. . . .

So here you go.


Anyway, it occurred to me that what the man "needed" wasn't killing but, instead, stopping. And the only way the cops could do that was by killing him. The difference may seem to be nothing more than mere semantics, but it's not.

The difference is between civilization and barbarism.

MY COMMENT BELOW takes the bait of a poster who asked "Libs in the room who are anti-abortion and pro-death penalty please raise your hands."
I'm a lib in the room who's anti-abortion AND anti-death-penalty.

It just seems to me -- even apart from any religious convictions I have on those matters -- than any "solution" to a problem that leaves someone dead isn't much of a solution at all.

In the case of abortion, there are possible solutions where no one has to die. The expectant mother can be assisted by government programs and by churches, crisis-pregnancy centers and other private initiatives. If she chooses to keep her child, there are programs to assist her in that as well -- though not enough.

And I know this is a radical concept, but the father also could, like, step up, be a man and take 50 percent responsibility in supporting and raising that child.

Then, there always is the option of adoption. Back in the "bad old days," we somehow recognized that option, and there was an entire infrastructure -- usually private -- for caring for young women in a tough spot who were willing to agree to adoption.

Sometimes, there isn't a solution that leaves no one dead . . . like in the case of "just war" (which Iraq ain't). That would be called an unavoidable tragedy, if not a catastrophe.

Likewise, in the case of the California maniac, it looks like the only way to stop the madman (albeit too late) was for the cops to take him out. No one ought to rejoice in that, or to say he "needed" killing.

Obviously, what he "needed" was help. He didn't get it. He killed his kid, and the cops had to end the threat in whatever way they could. It was a lose-lose situation.

But the minute we start thinking that someone "needed killing" in order for some greater good to occur -- that killing is a necessity, a good thing in itself, instead of a profound FAILURE of some sort -- we surrender yet another part of our soul to the barbarian within. And we surrender yet another piece of our incredibly fragile society to the barbarians at the gate.

Who would be us.

It is insufficient to be against the death penalty only because we might screw up in X number of convictions. We must be against the death penalty in all but the most extreme and desperate circumstances -- as in, that's the only reasonable and possible way to remove the threat of the evildoer . . . circumstances that are exceedingly rare, indeed -- because the life of even the worst murderer has worth and possesses some inherent dignity.

And when we violate that dignity, we violate our own and coarsen our society just that much more.

I will be the first to admit that there are some evil, violent SOBs who I think "deserve" killing in the worst way. That's emotion talking. Not only that, telling me to kill is the part of myself that has a hell of a lot in common with the evil SOB I so hate.

Giving in to that -- deciding that, yes, some people "need killing" -- is no virtue. It's a horrible vice.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Barbarism to a phat beat

In the first Dark Ages, the barbarians were the uncouth louts who showed up at the city gates -- or, rather, stormed the city gates -- to kill, rob, rape and pillage. Fatally weakened by the rot within, even mighty Rome could not hold off the Hun armies.

In these new Dark Ages, the barbarians don't need to storm anything. They're homegrown, they're mainstream, and they're a vital part of the "bread and circuses" distracting a postmodern empire as everything falls apart. But for this multitasking generation, our "entertainment" -- in the name of lawyers, guns and money -- also represents the s*** which has hit the fan.

And now --
as the minstrel Reuters regales us -- one tribe of well-paid savages stands accused of waylaying an unsuspecting teen wearing the mark of a rival tribe, and is thus being sued for a share of their plunder:
The lawsuit filed by James Rosemond and his mother, Cynthia Reed, says Universal Music Group -- owned by Vivendi SA -- and its labels Interscope Records, G-Unit Records and Shady Records, bear responsibility for the assault because they encourage artists to pursue violent, criminal lifestyles.

The lawsuit also names 50 Cent -- whose real name is Curtis Jackson -- Violator Management, Violator CEO Chris Lighty, Tony Yayo, a rapper and a member of 50 Cent's G-Unit hip hop group, and Lowell Fletcher, an employee of Yayo.

All defendants declined to comment.

Rosemond says he was assaulted on a Manhattan sidewalk in March 2007 by four men including Yayo and Fletcher.

The lawsuit claims Rosemond was targeted because he was wearing a T-shirt by Czar Entertainment, a management company that represents The Game. The Game is a former G-Unit rapper who fell out with the group and had become a rival rapper.
PEOPLE OFTEN SPEAK of the "culture of death" solely in terms of widespread, legalized abortion. I think that's wildly inaccurate. Abortion is just a symptom. As is the gangsta cultcha for kicks and profit.

The "culture of death" is all about what we -- as free people in a free society -- have come to value, of our own free will. And in so many ways, for such a variety of souls, it is death we crave.

It is death we sow. It is death we reap.

Somewhere, Atilla the Hun surveys what's left of Western civilization, shakes his head and ruefully observes, "And they called me a barbarian."