Makin' Jokes About Rape (Or Maybe Not)

This post is largely inspired by this comic about when or if rape jokes are ever acceptable. Go read it, the 30 or so seconds you spend will be well worth it.


Comedy is something I think about a lot at a theoretical level, because I like funny things and I'm a nerd. In college I did improv under the tutelage of the inestimable Dr. Douglas J. Shaw, who in addition to teaching me a lot about the art of making the funny, also really encouraged me to think about why something is funny, why one thing is funnier than another, and why jokes work or don't work on any given level.

And because I'm a nerd who likes to think about these things, and have similarly nerdy friends, I find myself getting into a lot of discussions about how or if certain humor works. These discussions generally center on "edgy" types of humor, like racial humor (not racist humor that attributes motivations to people based on their skin color, but humor that invokes the idea of race).

Racial humor is really tricky because the hory nature of race relations in America creates a context wherein racial jokes are operating at a certain level of understanding regardless of the intent of the creator. When a typical joke fails, it's just simply not funny. But when an attempt at racial humor fails, it ends up not only being not funny, but also tends to sound pretty dang racist, even if that's not the intention of whomever's making the joke. Being a civil libertarian and big fan of free speech, I'm never one to say any particular topic is off limits for jokes, but it's obvious one needs to exercise extra caution when trying to make a racial joke, if for nothing else than not screwing it up and looking like a jackass and/or offending/upsetting folks.

And this obviously extends beyond the example of race into any number of other areas of comedy that deal with things that are potentially offensive or hurtful. Jokes about rape run a very similar razor's edge between possibility of humor and possibility of offense, probably even more so than racial jokes. This is likely compounded by the fact that one can usually tell if someone of a particular racial or ethnic category is around, and most people are then forced to ponder whether their joke is actually funny and worthwhile or if it should just maybe be left unsaid, if not for noble reasons then to at least avoid looking like an asshole.

However, rape is usually an invisible status, in that you're probably unlikely to know someone has experienced rape or sexual assault unless you're a very close friend/family member, and even then, there's a good chance you wouldn't know. And given the somewhat reliable statistics we have on such things, we know roughly 1 in 3 women will experience rape/sexual assault in their lifetime (the numbers we have for men are not nearly as reliable for a number of reasons, but I've seen estimates that put it at about 1 in 10).

So chances are very good that when you make a rape joke, you are doing so in the presence of someone who has been raped. But because this is, again, not usually something someone advertises about themselves, people seem to be more cavalier in making such jokes because they're not forced to take the extra moment to think about what they're going to say, like they probably would be with making a racial joke in a racially diverse group. Teaching criminology courses I often have to talk about rape and sexual assault, but even in a setting where I'm not going to be making any jokes about the subject, I still have to take a lot of care to measure my words. Because again, I know that statistically in my class of 100, there are probably anywhere from 10 to 20 women who have experienced rape or sexual assault, and likely a small handful of men as well. And given that most such assaults occur during the high school and college years, it's likely a very fresh memory for most of these people. I lecture about the subject because it's a necessary component of some courses, but the last thing I want to do is dredge up painful feelings about a horrible experience of my students just because I was cavalier with my language.

Again, the point is not that one can never make a joke that involves rape (as one friend is fond of saying, you can joke about anything as long as the joke is actually funny), but that such a joke requires an extra level of scrutiny before being delivered. Because rape can be (though is not always) an incredibly devastating experience for someone, and when you dredge it up just to make a lame groaner that isn't even funny...well, that's just a pretty shitty thing to do. Rape is really one of those topics where you should only joke about it if you come up with something to funny you simply can't avoid saying it.

So although I understand that for some rape is a subject that should simply be off limits for jokes, I can't quite go that far, because I, too, somewhat share the view that any subject is acceptable if the joke is truly funny enough. But I do absolutely agree with the comic that if you're one of those people who compares the cost of textbooks or the amount of papers you have to write or the taxes you have to pay to rape...well, you're just an asshole.

A Stock Life Love Story

So it appears I've just been posting links to other things more interesting people have done, but that serves a purpose, right?

Anyway, here's an ad some folks made for Getty images, showing off all the fantastic images they have in their stock photo collection. In this case, they use exactly 873 of those stock photos to create a fairly moving little life story called From Love to Bingo. Think the first few minutes of up, but less Ed Asner.

This Will Probably Blow Your Mind

Stare the cross in the center of these two images, and see what happens to the otherwise pretty faces you know and love:


Researchers have dubbed it "Flashed Face Distortion Effect." The working theory is that by playing these images at the same size and orientation next to each other forces our brain to make multiple comparisons between the two, as our brains are wont to do in such a situation.

But apparently by making these comparisons, something in our brain starts to greatly distort the differences until the faces becomes incredibly distorted. To me, the trippiest thing about it is how instant the effect is; if you take your eyes off the middle and look at just one of the images, they instantly become normal again. But as soon as you look back at that center cross, they go right back to crazy as all get out.

Were I in a clever mood, or at least not fried from constant dissertation writing, I would say something about how this demonstrates we must always challenge our assumptions and perceptions of even the most simple things. Except I'd say it in some really profound way that connects this to major world issues. So...think about those kind of things for awhile and then pretend I wrote about them.

Oh Hockey, No One Gives a Shit

If the NHL wants anyone to blame for why no one pays attention to hockey anymore, they have no one but themselves to blame. After all, this is a league that thought it would be a good move to take the team from Minnesota, the one place in America where people still give a shit about hockey, and move it to Dallas. Or to take multiple teams from Canada and move them to hockey hotbeds like South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and even Los Angeles.

In a shocking result that no one could have predicted, people in areas where water doesn't actually freeze don't care as much about hockey as people from places where the sport is basically a religion. Go figure.

Enter the LA Kings. They've had an ok season, but are having an amazing time in the playoffs, storming through them as an 8 seed (the lowest seed in NHL playoffs) and have become the odds-on favorite to win it all.

Yet even while this amazing run is going on, the Kings can't even get LA-area media to distinguish them from the Sacramento Kings (who are not in LA, and play basketball, not hockey). Multiple stations have used the Sacramento basketball logo in place of the Kings actual logo, most because, well, this is hockey, and no one in LA gives a shit about hockey.

But in keeping with the hilariously deadpan style their Twitter feed employs (seriously the only twitter feed of a professional sports team you should ever bother to pay attention to), the Kings have released this handy-dandy infographic to explain the difference between them and that no-particularly-local basketball team (click to expand). At least they recognize their place and understand that the only celebrities that watch hockey are the ones no one cares about...

What?!? The NYPD Has Some Problems?!?

If it's a double-interrobang headline, it must be news...

The NYCLU has recently released a report on the controversial "stop and frisk" program of the NYPD, and surprise, surprise, it turns out the program is less about stopping crime that it is about harassing, intimidating, and often incarcerating poor people of color. To those of us who study the criminal justice system, the news was met with "umm...duh," but to those who don't, this was apparently a bit of a surprise.

The idea behind stop and frisk is that NYPD are given a great (possibly unconstitutional) latitude to stop and search any people they deem "suspicious" and then run their name for any possible outstanding violations (when stop and frisk catches any criminals, which is rare, it's almost exclusively from the background check, not catching them in the act of doing anything wrong.)

The only problems with the program are that it doesn't work and it's horribly racist (other than that, huge success I'm sure). But using the NYPD's own data, the NYCLU was able to easily point out some other major problems with the program. You can go read the full report (which you should, it's short and interesting), but some highlights include:

--Although the make up only 4.7% of the city's population, young Black and Latino men accounted for 41.6% of all stop and frisks. So maybe these people are just committing more crimes and deserve this hideous violation of their privacy and other assorted rights. But...

--90% of men of color stopped had committed no crimes. So maybe you can argue that 10% deserved to have their constitutional rights violated (though even that's kind of a difficult argument), but I think it's hard to argue that hundreds of thousands of people should get stopped and frisked for doing nothing wrong.

--Finally, the number of young Black men subjected to the stop and frisk is larger than the total number of young black men in the city. So you've got to give the NYPD one thing: they are thorough as shit. Once your racist violation of constitutional rights has been spread to every Black teenager you've got, better start all over and try each one again, in case you hadn't yet made it clear how alive and pervasive institutional racism is in our society today...

Rob Ryan's Magical Mystery Bus

Direct from the Dallas Cowboys official website, let Cowboys defensive coordinator Rob Ryan show you his shitty van (seriously, it's well worth your minute and 12 seconds).

I have no idea why the Cowboys thought a tour of Rob Ryan's 1999 econoline, but I'm ever so glad they did. Among the many details you learn in the completely unironic love letter to an old van, is that the van has several DVD player/television sets (all of which don't work), it handles well, and it's probably got a lot of stains inside.

Whenever I stumble on something like this, it reminds me this is exactly why the internet exists. Think, not that long ago in the world, I would have no way to know what kind of vehicle Dallas Cowboys Defensive Coordinator Rob Ryan drives, and is that the kind of world you want to live in?

Surprise! Rich White Guy, Privileged From Birth, Is Apparently An Asshole

One of my favorite Vonnegut quotes (and that's saying a lot, because the man cranks out one liners like an erudite Rodney Dangerfield) goes something like "true terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." I'm especially reminded of it during political campaigns, which typically have even less maturity and decorum than high school student government elections. But in any setting, the point remains that people don't all of sudden grow up and magically become mature and intelligent people. For the most part, the petty bullshit that makes middle school and high school so great for a few people and generally pretty shitty for most people don't ever go away.

Take, for example, the hullabaloo over a recent Washing Post article that revealed, among other things, that Romney once assembled a gang of friends to tackle and cut the hair of a kid they thought was gay. Look, I'm clearly not a Romney defender. His politics and world view are pretty dang far away from mine. And I'm not going to discount how traumatic this event seemed to be John Lauber, the victim of Romney's bullying.

But I'm also pretty surprised at how big of a story this has become for some people. I'm sure part of it is just the bullshit of horserace politics in which each side tries to find even the tiniest defect in the other side to prove they can't be trusted (witness the "Romney was once mean to his dog" vs. "Oh yeah? Obama once ate dog meat" argument that actually happened in the midst of an election full of people who would otherwise appear to be rational, fully-functioning adults).

However, again even though the event in question is pretty shady, I don't think it really tells us anything we don't already know. To begin with, it happened in 1965, so it seems difficult to draw too much in the way of conclusions about someone's character when you're talking about an event that happened nearly 50 years ago.

But the bigger point is that who among us thought Romney held a high opinion of gay people? Or that he wasn't at least kind of an elitist jerk? This is the same man who steadfastly refuses to recognize same-sex couples and has fully embraced the reactionary anti-LGBT policies of the Republican party. This is also a guy who suggests that if you're having a hard time of things, you should borrow $20,000 from your parents so you can start your own company. This is clearly a guy who is not friendly to gay folks and is an out-of-touch rich douchebag.

And that's all that this Post story tells us; something we already clearly knew. And out of the many, many legitimate reasons to dislike and/or not vote for Mitt Romney, the fact that he was once an asshole to some dude he didn't like is probably not the most solid.

Update: Cops Definitely Giving Out Drugs

I wrote a bit last week about the somewhat explosive allegations that police had been picking people up at Peavy Plaza in downtown Minneapolis (where our wing of the occupy movement has set up), giving them drugs (often pushing people into taking them), then bringing them back to Peavy Plaza still clearly under the influence. As I wrote at the time, while it is standard police practice to learn what people under the influence act like, it is far from accepted practice to pull random people off the streets, cajole them into getting high, and then dropping them off in public while still clearly under the influence.

Not too surprisingly, pretty much every law enforcement agency in the state quickly scrambled to say they weren't involved and besides, there's no evidence this was going on, strongly implying it was being made up. But as usually happens in such cases, that lack of evidence soon became plenty of evidence, and the state public safety commissioner has announced the program is being suspended for now and investigations are underway.

There's not a ton more to say at this point (though it will be quite interesting to see what these investigations turn up, although when police investigate themselves, they have a tendency not to find too much), but it's still hard not to be fairly incredulous over the extreme stupidity on display here. It's almost enough to push someone to say we need some police reform around these parts, but I don't want to be overly critical...

I Would Say I'm Going To Do This, But Then I Wouldn't

Here's an interesting/uplifting article about a woman who is going blind and has come up with a list of all the beautiful things in the world she wants to see before she loses the ability to do so.

I've got a lot of respect for people like this, because I feel like it's the kind of thing we all think we would do it that situation. But I know that I, for one, would talk about it a lot but then never actually get around to it. Then I'd be a blind guy who's never seen anything interesting.

It's also a good reminder to live every day to its fullest, live like you're dying, another generic slogan about leading a fulfilling life, etc. Because really, we're all slowly going blind, we just don't have as specific a date attached to it as this person does. And without such a specific notice, most of us tend to go about our daily lives like we'll always be able-bodied people with all the time in the world to do the things we want.

So on that note, I'm going to spend today sitting in a mostly windowless basement working on an outline. Living life to the fullest!

When Is Dealing Drugs Not Illegal?

When it's done by law enforcement. An explosive new video investigation finds members of Minnesota law enforcement (Minneapolis PD deny they're in on it, but we'll see) coming to Peavy Plaza, where our local occupy camp is set up, to pick up demonstrators and offer them drugs. Why are they giving people illegal narcotics? Well, that's where the story gets interesting, because there's some conflicting reports.

Some evidence points to it being part of an on-going study to gain understanding of how people behave under the influence. Some folks report being taken out to suburban Richfield and given weed and other illegal drugs and then having their behavior monitored. While this is in line with sanctioned law enforcement behavior (it helps to know exactly how people on drugs act and/or what they're likely to do), it's not only skirting a moral/legal line in general, but no protocol I've ever seen involves picking up random young people for such studies and then dropping them off in public still very much under the influence. I believe most all official guidelines for such programs involve recruiting adult volunteers and keeping them under supervision until they are well sober again.

And if it just stopped there, we'd have a minor controversy on our hands and good time to discuss when and how law enforcement should be allowed to violate the law to serve a higher (no pun intended) purpose. But of course the story does not stop there.

Instead, several people have reported being offered large amounts of marijuana and other drugs to turn informant, a practice that is definitely not sanctioned by official policy guidelines. Even more problematic is that several people quoted in the story report law enforcement joining in while they toked up their free drugs.

Occupy organizers argue there's an even more insidious angle, as this could definitely be read as a ploy to discredit occupy by making them look like a lot of drugs addicts. As mentioned, it's definitely not protocol (nor legal, frankly) to pick up random people for these studies, and you're definitely not supposed to drop them back in public while still obviously under the influence. Add to this the fact that the still very high people are not being dropped off at their houses or another safe place, but are instead being dropped off at the occupy sight, which again, is definitely well outside of established practice (as well as, of course, being well outside basic logic).

Whether or not this program is an intentional effort to disrupt and discredit occupy, or is instead just some cops acting really, really stupidly, it sure seems like a lot more than a coincidence that they're both recruiting and dropping people off at Peavy Plaza...

Why Can't The American Left Ever Get Anything Done?

It's a question I've argued with many people in my short time on this earth. And while there's obviously a large confluence of factors (many of which the Left can only blame on itself), one that's often ignored is the bloody, violent, and oft-illegal repression of all things left of center. This repression runs the gamut from outright murder and trumped up legal charges, to McCarthy's insane crusade and anti-communist loyalty oaths being required of union members, to simply wiping the works and triumphs of the left out of our collective history (and in the case of public school history books, literally doing so).

One of the more on-the-nose examples of this is Labor Day. While every other nation in the world is celebrating labor day today, we celebrate it in September, because we don't want any association with the leftist recognition of what ironically took place in America. For the real labor day is actually a commemoration of the Haymarket Massacre, an important turning point in the fight for the eight-hour day.

But not only have we in the States moved our observation of labor day lest anyone accidentally learn anything about history, I only learned today that our insane government actually took it one step further. On July 18,  1958, May 1st became officially known as Loyalty Day in the US, a day when we are all to stop and reflect on how loyal we are to the United States government (way ahead of you -- the answer is not much).

So not only do we ignore the important history and symbolism of actual labor day, we've instituted our own "cover your eyes and put your fingers in your ears" day to take its place. And while this doesn't absolve the American left of its many faults, it at least gives a pretty good summation of the context we find ourselves working in.

Will Harvard Lead the Open-Source Revolution?

Without sounding too cynical about it, academic publishing is complete horse shit. Everything about the model these publishers use is completely bankrupt in both the literal and metaphorical senses. To begin with, to even be considered for publication in an academic journal, you have to pay them anywhere from $50-100 (again, just to read your shit in the first place). And then, after you jump through a thousand hoops for them, if you're lucky enough to be accepted, you have to sign over all copyright claims to your work. So you're quite literally paying someone to take your work away from you. And this is not even to get into the supposedly "blind" review systems that somehow always end up publishing the same select group of people, whether their work merits it or not.

But the funniest, most depressing part of this whole model, is that after you've paid a journal to steal your work from you, they turn around a charge simply exorbitant rates to libraries (and any individual foolish enough to subscribe themselves, but I'm guessing this never happens) for between 2-4 issues a year. And lest you think an impoverished communist such as myself has a skewed sense of what constitutes exorbitant subscription fees for a journal that comes out between 2 and 4 times a year and charges everyone who ever submits to it, here's an example:

The American Journal of Sociology (one of the big two journals in my field) puts out four issues a year. To submit an article for consideration (of which, only a tiny percentage are ever published after being reviewed *for free* by other desperate academics), it costs $30. If you as an individual want to subscribe to it, it will cost you 66 dollars a year. For four issues. Of one journal. But if a library wants access to it (and this is how almost all academics access journals, because you could never afford access to even a tiny sliver of journals at these prices), it will cost that institution $770/year.

You might be able to surmise already that such costs add up pretty quickly, especially when you consider there are at least 2 dozens journals just within sociology that any decent research library would need to subscribe to. Multiply this by an increasingly large number of fields at any university (and the fact that journals within the physical sciences are often even more expensive), and you can pretty easily see this system is not entirely sound. In fact, last week the Harvard Library's Faculty Advisory Council issued a public statement saying Harvard, the wealthiest university in the world, can no longer afford its journal subscriptions.

These folks even went so far as to encourage faculty and students at Harvard to start working with open-source journals, publications that do not operate on such an arcane and asinine funding system, but do not yet have even a sliver of the prestige of the traditional journals. And while this is unlikely to happen over night, when one of the world's premiere university makes a call for more open-source publishing, it certainly points in the right direction.

What really remains to be seen is whether a form of publishing that emphasizes creating and sharing important knowledge will ever be able to supplant the system that emphasizes profit creation and the suppression of all but a few voices. Funny thing is that you think the academic world would strongly prefer one of these models, but entrenched interests, etc, etc.

Change A Comin' (To College Football...probably)

The big news in the sporting world this morning (other than the NFL draft, which really shouldn't be news, but that's another post) is that the BCS, the weird, quasi-independent body that for some reason determines the college national championship, has recommended the NCAA move to a four-game playoff to determine a champion.

While this technically really isn't important at all (I mean, it is college football after all), it's a pretty big sea change for a stodgy old organization. And within the admittedly not very important world of college football, this is a really big deal. And I would actually go so far as to argue it is a somewhat important development for the rest of the world, even though, again, at its heart it's about some college kids playing a child's game.

So why is it important? Well, in the previous system, only the top two ranked teams were allowed to play for the national championship. But since there's roughly 8 billion college teams, it doesn't work the same way it does in the pros where the teams with the best records get to go to the playoffs. Because with so many college football teams, there are often several teams that finish the season with a perfect record. The BCS came about as a way to resolve this seemingly impossible situation by using a computer formula that would somehow determine who the two best teams are.

But there are a lot of problems with the BCS. In addition to the fact that the computer formula has never been publicly released (so no one really knows on what basis it's ranking these teams), the formula also greatly favored the teams from bigger schools with longer traditions. The old guard of the college football world essentially justified it by saying these teams are just always better (even when they're not) and because they've been around longer, they get the benefit of the doubt.

And again, even though this is in the mostly useless world of college athletics, this system had, like so many social systems, the practical effect of rewarding entrenched powers and preventing the rise of new challengers (just ask Boise State, the school with multiple perfect seasons in the past decade that has never gotten close to the championship). As such, any change toward allowing new teams in is inherently a step toward more democratic reform. And while the football itself may not be that important, the hundreds of millions of dollars attached to these championship games certainly does make a different to the schools involved.

The other heartening sign is that even though BCS officials are currently saying it will only be a four-team playoff and will never expand beyond that, they're just fooling themselves. One need only look at the NCAA basketball tournament to see how there's inevitably a push for more teams to be included in a playoff format. And by opening the doors for more teams to participate and have a realistic chance at winning the national championship, it makes it much more likely that the national champion (and the money that goes along with such a distinction) will be decided by the teams playing the games, not some faceless bureaucrats and a mysterious, byzantine computer program. And if you can't see why that in and of itself is a positive development, well, then you obviously care about college athletics even less than I do...

What's Good For The Goose, etc.

One of the best and most succinct explanations I've ever heard of abortion politics in this country came from my friend Dr. Doug. Although he put it more eloquently than this, the short version is that conservatives will never make abortion illegal, because they'll lose their favorite and most effective wedge issue. Instead, they'll simply keep passing absurd restriction laws to placate their base, while never actually taking the action of getting fully rid of abortion (why else would all those idiotic single issue voters vote Republican then?). History seems to back up the point, as there have been numerous situations in which Republicans had enough control of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches that they could have pushed through a repeal of Roe v. Wade, passed some sort of ban, or both.

And, as Doug would go on to point out, you just need to do a little thought experiment to see the point. If abortion were illegal, who would be able to get access to abortions? Women who live in major metropolitan areas (who could more easily find/access illegal abortions) and women who have the resources to travel somewhere and pay for a legal abortion. Then think about who can currently get an abortion in America -- women who live in major metropolitan areas or who can afford to travel.

Boom. Effectively illegal abortion while keeping it technically legal and thus a juicy wedge issue.

But the second part of that argument is why it's such a juicy wedge issue. Well, the short version, if you've been living in a cave on Mars with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears, is that there a fuckton (scientifically speaking) of people who are very against abortion. Like somehow quixotically believing it's ok to murder abortion providers levels of against abortion.

And one of the favorite tactics of these anti-abrtion crazies is to follow this Republican strategy (albeit for different reasons) -- if you can't make it illegal, do the next best thing and try to create an environment in which no one feels safe doing it. So in addition to committing acts of murder and terrorism (by far the most likely type of terrorism is this nation, though you wouldn't know that from watching the news or listening to our government), anti-abortion crazies try to make life really, really uncomfortable for abortion providers and those who support them.

One of their most tried and true strategies for this is to find out the personal contact information of abortion providers and pester them 24 hours a day simply by giving that info to their giant lists of batshit crazy people and having said crazies repeatedly call and threaten these abortion providers at all hours.

In a funny twist of harassment-as-political weapon in the abortion argument, one provider has turned the table on the crazies. After the crazies crossed the line by showing up at his 11 year old daughter's school, Todd Stave starting taking down the names and contact info of as many people calling and harassing him as he could. He then organized a small, but rapidly growing, group of people (now called Voices of Choice) to call the crazies back, politely thank them for their prayers, and inform them that abortions are a necessary medical procedure and they're glad there's a safe and professional clinic at which they're performed. Such crazies can now expect somewhere in the area of 3,000 to 5,000 return calls after they threaten an abortion provider.

Obviously this isn't going to end the abortion debate or any such thing, but it does serve as yet another example of the cliche: one person's unhinged telephone threats are another person's freedom fighters, or something like that.

It's Almost As If You Could Read Cynical Motivations Into This

Great piece a friend passed along to me this morning on the changing nature of biblical views. Specifically, the "biblical view" that life begins at conception, which you'll find out if you read the article (you should, it's short and interesting) is actually a more recent conception than the Happy Meal.

In addition to the interesting story of how life beginning at conception went from laughable to orthodox in the span of a few years, it's also a great example of cynical religious exploitation. Not to be too radical, but it's hard to believe that religious scholars somehow made an amazing discovery that a Bible that is completely silent on the subject suddenly has all sorts of guidelines for a medical procedure not invented until thousands of years after the Bible was written.

I'm certainly not saying anything new in claiming religious fundamentalists often cynically exploit the religion they claim to love so they can make political points. Though I guess I'm still naive enough to be somewhat surprised when such cynical exploitation is done in such an obvious manner. But what really gets me is the silence on such issues from rationally-thinking religious people.

Maybe it's just another good example of how the loudest and craziest always seem to dominate the narrative in American politics. So...uh...nothing new there, either.

I Would Rather Do This Than Write My Dissertation (Part I in a never-ending series)

Overall, being a grad student is really a pretty sweet gig. Sure, the pay is terrible and your employer doesn't respect you in the slightest, but that also describes about 99% of American jobs if I understand things correctly. Aside from such obvious detriments, though, it's not so bad. I get to largely set my own schedule, figure out my own deadlines, self-actualize my work and other such fun buzzwords, and all of that kind of good stuff.

But it's also hard not to look at what everyone else is doing and think that looks way better. Especially on mornings like this when I'm staring at the computer screen and trying to will words into existence (pro tip -- this does not work).

I get especially jealous of people who have no responsibilities or deadlines (but again, don't we all get jealous of such people?). Take for example this guy who hiked the entire Appalachian trail. For those not in the know, the Appalachian trail is the longest hiking trail in the US (maybe the entire world? I don't know, you have google, I assume), usually taking somewhere in the 6 to 8 month range to complete one end to the other.

If you try to do the whole thing at once, you obviously need to have a lot of supplies mailed to yourself to pick up along the way. But other than those few outposts where you'll pick up your food and changes of clothes, there's a pretty good chance you'll basically never run into people, or at least not more than one a day. As a world-hating misanthrope, it sounds like heaven.

But since I don't have the better part of the year to take off and go hiking, I'll just have to be content with this video, which the aforementioned hiker put together. He took something like 20 pictures a day on the trail and set them to music for this video. So in a little over 4 minutes, you can see the entire Appalachian trail. It's pretty cool.

I Shouldn't Have Ignored That Old Gypsy Lady's Curse

So I've been really, really sick this week. Not like sniffles and sleepiness sick, but the kind of sick that has you rolling around in pain on the couch, asking God what horrible sins you could have committed to deserve such a fate.

While today it seems like I'm slightly better and is giving me some optimism that I may eventually not be sick, the past two days have been horrendous. It was difficult to even watch t.v., which in addition to being something that is not difficult to do, is something I have extensive experience with.

As I've written before, it sucks to be sick when you're a grown-up, because there's no one there to take care of you and there's no school to skip as a consolation prize. Instead, in the few brief moments when I'm somehow able to break through the ridiculous haze and entertain rational thoughts, all I can think about is how much work I need to get done and how busy I'm going to be once I finally get healthy (though honestly it feels like I should be writing if I get healthy, not when).

And yes, I understand this is one of those "first world problems" things (though I hate that term and it's implicit racism) and that there are all sorts of people with much bigger problems than a nasty flu bug, etc. But if the internet in general, and the blog format specifically, don't exist so that people can bitch about the minutiae of their life to random strangers, then what do they exist for?

Anyway, normal posting to resume when I can walk up the stairs without getting winded and feeling like I'm going to pass out.

Baseball is Finally Back

After a long and cold winter (though not nearly as long nor as cold as it usually is), there's nothing more exciting than the return of baseball. Of course, as a lifelong Minnesota Twins fan, it's hard to get too excited about this season, seeing as the Twins' plan for the year is to cobble together a heavily sub-par roster and pray for the best. This strategy has some major flaws, and those flaws are already making themselves quite prevalent, as the hometown nine dropped 3 consecutive games against the lowly Orioles.

But still...baseball! As the Twinkies have their home opener tonight, I still can't help but get excited. But if you still need help getting adequately excited for baseball season, might I suggest this nice (but somewhat lengthy) read on the San Quentin Giants, the official baseball team of the notorious prison. It's a good piece on both the oft-forgotten humanity of prison inmates, as well as some, but thankfully only a little, Bob Costas-esque musings on the healing power of baseball and it's grandeur and all of that jazz.

Or if San Quentin doesn't pique your baseball interest, maybe you'll enjoy this song about a certain scrappy utility infielder the Twins could certainly use in their lineup this season:

Nick Punto scares the opposition/because he can play most any position

File This Under "Technically Illegal, But Really Pretty Awesome"

 File sharing is an incredibly tricky concept for our criminal justice system to wrap its collective head around. Obviously the major media conglomerates have been arguing that it's thievery and should therefore be treated with the same harsh measures we use on all other forms of Type I crimes (what are usually called the "street crimes").

But as this comic points out, file sharing (and specifically piracy) is not that conveniently analogous to theft. Because it doesn't actually remove anything from the original owner. In a traditional theft of an album from a music store, that store is out both what they paid for the album in the first place and the presumable profit they could have gleaned from its sale. But with digital piracy, the original owners are still very much in possession of what they have. So they obviously don't lose that first sum of money (the money that in the past was turned into a physical product). Now these conglomerates will argue this does cause them to lose out on the second sum (the profit) because that person took it for free rather than give them money for it. But this argument is built on a number of assumptions (that said person would have paid for this were it not free, ignores evidence of digital pirates also being the biggest purchasers of digital content, etc.) that may or may not be true, but clearly position it as different than the act we call theft our laws were written to address.

Now had I the time or inclination, this is where I'd make the argument that the music and movie industries really need to figure out a new business model because their old one is clearly becoming obsolete, but instead they refuse to acknowledge reality and instead are trying to sue it out of existence. But suffice it to say, the criminal justice response has been inadequate at best. And it's largely because our criminal justice system and the vast majority of our laws in these areas were more-or-less cemented into form long before the internet existed. The police and the courts simply lack the sophistication to effectively combat digital piracy. Because, again, not only are you not taking something away from someone, but you're also not even making a direct copy of one person's material. Instead you're taking fractions of that source material from thousands of different places. This is, in short, very hard to prosecute.

So as I've mentioned, the industry's response to this has been to try to sue individual downloaders (you will never be able to sue even a fraction of all people who have illegally downloaded something) and file-sharing sites (ignoring the fact that these places don't have control of their users and provide many legal functions as well). But as anyone who knows even the slightest bit about the internet will attest, shutting down individual websites doesn't do anything. It's like arresting individual drug dealers; sure, you stop that particular one, but there will be another doing the exact same thing in the exact same place by tomorrow at the latest.

Further complicating matters is the continuing advance of technology (and the resulting price drop in formerly prohibitively expensive technology) means digital piracy can evade any attempt at stopping it through the criminal justice system simply by keeping somewhat up-to-date. For instance, take Pirate Bay, the world's largest (and arguably best) torrent site for digital piracy. Operating out of Sweden, they've been indicted by several US courts, but have argued that their physical location in Sweden means they're not subject to US laws. The US DOJ responded by attempting to strong arm the Swedish government into getting involved. Sensing the writing on the wall, Pirate Bay has announced they are going to send their servers into space in unmanned drones, where it's pretty well agreed that if laws don't count once you're 20 miles into the ocean, they must not count in space (though maybe someday we will have some sort of...Space Law. Which, incidentally, would make for the world's best t.v. show and profession. I would totally go to space law school).

And this is when even the staunchest defenders of law and order have to admit the criminal justice response is simply not ever going to work in stopping digital piracy. Because now that pirates can have the only physical thing you could possibly seize to shut them down (their servers) out in outer-fucking-space, you're probably not going to catch them. Unless we're willing to invest billions in a police program that sends highly-trained officers to space to intercept these drones, which I don't doubt someone will seriously propose, but will likely not happen (though, on second thought, it totally should. Space Police! I think we just found a show and profession better than Space Law.)

So I Don't Have Good News To Report

When I last left you, dear reader, I was awaiting the election results determining whether I would be union represented or not. Things did not turn out like I had hoped/expected, and I will not have a union. Instead I will have the same shitty pay check and crappy work conditions. Maybe someday when I'm not still all pissy about the way things turned out I'll post something explaining why I think things didn't work out, but today is definitely not that day.

Being a radical leftist, I don't experience many victories in the political world, especially electoral victories. So it's not as if this is the first time I've ever been on the losing side of a political movement. But this one hurts a lot more than most any other loss ever has. I don't know if it's because it was so personal or because I was so highly involved (though I doubt it, because that describes my participation in a lot of things), or if it was because this is one of the few times I really thought I was going to be on the winning side. I mean, truly believed it.

Though if my life of being a Minnesota sports fan has taught me nothing else, it's that as soon as I start to believe, that's when everything falls apart. I must admit last weekend I experienced a feeling eerily similar to watching Brett Favre lead the Vikings down the field for what should be an easy field goal to win the game and send them to the Super Bowl. I distinctly remember saying aloud to no one in particular "Damnit, I'm starting to believe, and that means they'll lose" only moments before Brett threw that ridiculous interception.

So instead of the difficult albeit fun work of moving forward, last week was mostly spent drowning my sorrows and trying to get back to a regular work schedule. And while I think my sorrows could still use some drowning, at least I'm back to being marginally productive.

But really, all of this is just exposition and an excuse for me to say go read this article about how Wall Street investors are psychopaths. And please do keep in mind these are the same psychopaths that will try to explain to you why you don't need a union. Please don't listen to psychopaths.

Why I Haven't Been Blogging Lately (A Good Excuse This Time)

Normally when this blog is dormant for long periods it's for some bullshit reason, like work or having a personal life. But this time, it's for something actually worthwhile.

As many readers already know, I'm part of a campaign to win recognition for Grad Student Workers United (GSWU-UAW). This is the 4th attempt to unionize graduate workers here at the University of Minnesota in the past 20 years. While previous campaigns have been defeated by administration misinformation and right-wing think tanks pouring money into defeating the union, this campaign is different.

We studiously poured over all available materials we could find from past campaigns to understand what went wrong and how we could avoid doing the same. And in that regard, we've been incredibly successful. We've had state and US senators and congressional representatives publicly state their support. The campus newspaper has come out in favor of the union. The graduate student government has come out in favor of a union, noting that student government can't negotiate with the university and instead only make recommendations the administration almost always ignores. Even a former Regent of the University has published an op-ed explaining why we need a union.

But most importantly, we've got a broad base of support across all disciplines and campuses. From chemical engineering to gender studies, from economics to aerospace, from sociology to mathematics, graduate workers in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth all demand a union.

And after three days of voting, early results are looking pretty good. But voting is still going on today and tomorrow, so the fight is far from over. Today the voting location is in my little corner of campus, so it's my day to turn out every single person on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota. Although we're all invested in the campaign and have worked all over every campus, there's some pride in making sure your corner of the world turns out in massive numbers, and you can bet your ass I'll make sure that happens.

So I'm off to spend the next 11 hours knocking on doors, making phone calls, and putting what feels like a couple thousand miles on my shoes as I pound the erudite pavement making sure we not only win, but win big and let the administration know it has no choice but to negotiate with us as equals and to respect the massive amounts of work we grad workers do to keep this university running.

I likely won't post again until next Tuesday after all the ballots have been counted and the results are official. I'm pretty optimistic that post will be the happiest I've ever written....

Spring Break! Whoo!

Of the many things that suck about growing up, one of the biggest is losing spring break. Sure, as a grad student I still technically get spring break, as there are no students around so I don't have to teach this week. But I'm well past the point where spring break is anything more meaningful than giving me the 3 hours I would have otherwise spent teaching.

And it's not like I get to use those hours doing tequila shots in Cabo San Lucas, or whatever it is those damn kids do these days with their spring breaks. No, once you get past a certain point in academia, spring break mostly just means a week where campus is a lot more empty than usual. Otherwise, nothing changes about my week.

Granted, I know the entire rest of the world gets no spring break, so it sounds stupid of me to complain. But what gets me is that people still think I get a spring break, so while I'm stuck in my basement pounding out dissertation pages like I am any other week, everyone I know outside of academia assumes  I'm sitting on a sunny beach sipping pina colodas or some such thing. Not that I don't want to be, mind you.

So all of this is just to complain about the fact that I'm busy as ever, but for this week, the rest of the world thinks I'm on an awesome vacation. Nuts to that.

But since I'm well aware of the fact no one gives a shit about my petty problems, here's a picture of A-Rod taking his official publicity photo in the men's room:

This so excellently sums up all my feelings about the Yankees

I've Always Thought Of Beer Drinking As A Religious Experience, Too

Regular readers will remember last year this time when I wrote about the story of J. Wilson, the man who went on a beer-only fast for Lent, a fast which he broke in the most bad-ass way possible by having a bacon shake.

And while it sounds like a frat boy's dream or a funny prank, it's actually well inline with the practices of monks of old, who would brew and drink an especially heavy beer often referred to as "liquid bread." This liquid bread would be all they subsisted on for the entirety of lent, an especially intense understanding of what it means to fast. Also something that's relatively hard to get away with in today's world.

But Wilson not only got his employer to agree to allow him to drink at work, he completed the entire fast. But again, it wasn't simply the act of drinking beer for 45 days, but instead a time to reflect and all of that other boring religious stuff. Now a year later Wilson isn't doing another beer fast, but has come up with some pretty interesting insights from the experience.

Who Deserves Compensation For Their Work?

I haven't blogged about it much because I don't want the annoying people who find everything written about it so they can troll their little hearts out to come squat all over my blog, but I'm one of the thousands of graduate assistants at the University of Minnesota who supports unionizing. After a strong majority of grad assistants at the U signed union authorization cards, we asked the University administration to accept our majority and file for a union with us, since they have repeatedly said they respect grad students (just not enough to listen to us, apparently).

As in any movement to improve people's lives, there's always a few sour jerks who can't stand the idea that someone's life may be improved. These folks, predictably, have argued that we're lucky to get what we have, and besides, there's a recession going on and the university doesn't have any money. So union supporters such as myself have responded that, sure, we're lucky to be employed in this economy, but that doesn't mean we don't deserve basic respect. And as for the recession part, well, the U always seems to have money for football stadiums and whatnot, but not for the people doing the research and teaching that I would argue are somewhat more fundamental to the mission of a university.

Well, in the midst of this on-going argument over unionization, here's yet another example of how administrative compensation is way out of control. If you don't have time to read the article, it notes such things as how the out-going UMD chancellor was handed well over a half-million dollars on her way out the door as she retired, because she's just a cool person, I guess.

Those same people who argue against unionization tend to argue that admins receive these absurd retirement packages because they're necessary to draw the top talent. Not only has this never been proven (or even attempted -- show me a university that has tried hiring admins without ridiculous pay and bonuses), it's funny how this argument only applies to administrators. When grad assistants ask for some more crumbs, we're told to shut up and be grateful for what we have. When admins are handed over a half-million dollars just because, we're told this is absolutely necessary and only an idiot would argue against it.

But what these huge (and hugely unnecessary) admin bonuses and retirement packages demonstrate is not market values or other such nonsense, but that the University's funding problems (much like the nation's at large) are not really about the amount of money in hand, but the priorities for using said money. The half million dollars given to this former chancellor would easily pay the salaries, tuition, and fringe benefits for well over a dozen grad assistants, who will provide much, much more than that for the university in the form of teaching and research. As opposed to that chancellor, who will provide nothing to the university, seeing as how she's leaving and all.

But then again, what would I know? I should just shut up and be happy that there's still plenty of money to make sure my social superiors continue to live in the lap of luxury...

Conditioning You To Laugh

Early television had a problem -- it was really new and weird. People were used to radio shows, but those required you to imagine everything that happened, not watch it happen for you. People were also used to plays, but those were seen in the company of many others, an event to leave the house for, not to slump on the couch and mindlessly watch.

People just really didn't know what to do with television, so t.v. producers quickly realized they were largely going to have to tell people what to do. And one of the most direct ways this was accomplished was in telling you when to laugh, by supplying an audience to laugh for you. In many ways, this recreated the theater experience, in which there were a lot of cues about when it was ok to laugh, right in your home, in which there usually weren't too many other folks around to supply such social cues. It says something powerful about the social effects of the behavior of our peers, but that's yet another post.

Nowadays laugh tracks are sneered at by the television intelligentsia, who have moved on to their fancy single-cam shows filled with snarky references to current events. But this being America, there are a lot of people scared by such developments who prefer the comfort of a pre-recorded audience telling them when to laugh.

The people turn to places like CBS, where everything is designed to primarily appeal to people over 75. But to not completely denigrate these laugh-track shows, they do require a certain talent. Much like the theater, the actors have to learn to allow for pauses as anything they might say would be overpowered by the audience's laughter (although in the theater, it's actual human beings laughing). As such, they really do need to develop a certain kind of comedic timing. A type of timing that is completely creepy without the canned laughter filling the spaces.

Take for example this clip of the Big Bang Theory (which, all told, is really not that bad a show), presented with only the laugh track missing (embedding for some reason disabled). It's eerily compelling...

What Makes a Rival?

The sports world is fueled by rivalry. Sure, there are plenty of other reasons people follow sports, but rivalries are what really make them interesting. And once enshrined, rivalries are often desperately clung to -- witness the upheaval over college football realignment.

But how do rivalries become enshrined? And what makes for a rivalry? Some come about naturally, like the Vikings and Packers. As everyone knows, 'Sconnies make for the natural enemy of the Minnesotan. It's like a mongoose-snake thing.

But some come about through a shared history of hatred and contempt, like the Twins and the White Sox. There's nothing about the match-up that really makes for a natural rivalry; there's no history of competition between Minneapolis and Chicago (Vikings-Bears is no big deal), the White Sox have been around a lot longer, so it's not like there's some crazy-long shared history.

Rather, the Twins and Sox rivalry seems to have come about mostly in the last two decades or so, especially the last 10 years in which the Twins have come back to relevance. Since I've been living in Minnesota, it's become one of the preeminent local rivalries, ranking right up there with Pack-Vikings in terms of hatred, invectives, and calendar-circling games.

And if you need any further proof the Twins and White Sox are rivals of the highest order, it's now a matter of legal precedence. Not sure how many rivalries, no matter how heated they may be, can claim that...

Man, I'm Really Unoriginal

Consistent with my theme of not having enough time to write long-winded blog posts on my out-of-touch political positions, I've been pretty light on the original content lately.

As an apology to you, dear faithful readers, here's an awesome video recreating Jay Z's hit "99 Problems" entirely using film clips to comprise the lines. Watch it, and while doing so, please think about the various ways Western capitalist global hegemony is destroying our planet and all who inhabit it...


99 Problems In Film (EM) from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.

Post-Valentine's Blues Got You Down?

Maybe you had the world's best Valentine's day yesterday, filled with love, confectioners sugar, and incorrectly-shaped heart themed gifts. Or maybe you had a terrible Valentine's day, full of self-loathing and depression, sitting in front of the t.v. alone as your tears dripped into the tub of ice cream you were eating with a fork because you were too depressed to wash the dishes.


If you experienced the former, congrats. But if you were one of the many who found yourself experiencing the latter, simply call 719-26-OATES and let Daryl Hall and John Oates soothe your weary soul. It's apparently some sort of viral advertising scheme for some sort of business I haven't bothered to figure out what it does, but the bigger point is that some sweet aural lovin' is just 10 short digits away.


And really, aren't you comforted knowing there's a Hall & Oates hotline at the ready?

Busy, Busy, Busy

Lots of stuff going on these days, so little time for blogging. But you know who does have a lot of time on their hands? Besides people who can come up with a better transition than that, there's also this guy, whose been using scale-model r/c trucks, back hoes, dump trucks and whatnot to dig out his basement.

"But that would take forever!" I can already here you saying. Yes, yes it would. That's why he's been doing it since 1997 and is nowhere close to completion. But things take longer when all the work is done by tiny, remote-controlled equipment rather than, you know, human-sized stuff.

And be sure to not skip checking out this great collection of videos of the adorable li'l construction project in action.

Oh When Will They Complain About This Waste of Tax Money?

The thing about conservative politicians is that they're hypocrites. Well, I guess pretty much all elected officials are hypocrites, but big-time conservative politicians seem to have a special claim to the throne of hypocrisy.

For instance, a major rallying cry of modern American conservatism is that the government spends way too much money, and most of it foolishly. And given that foolish government spending has already been thoroughly documented, it's hard to argue with that basic premise. But alas, these folks are not opposed to all government spending, they're opposed to government spending on things they don't like. Now granted, we pretty much all feel that way, but it doesn't make for a very principled stance.

Take, for instance, professional sports stadiums. While these would seem to be a horrible waste of money (almost all are completely or majority publicly funded, they don't bring in much business nor do any of the profits from this public money go back to the public, etc.), conservatives seem to generally support new sports stadiums. The cynic in me would say this is because teams and the few businesses that benefit from new stadiums tend to be owned by conservatives, but that's another post for another day.

Yet what's more amazing about this whole scenario is that when people try to get some form of public good out of these major public expenditures, it's rarely supported. For example, Florida law says that any sports stadium built with public money has to offer shelter to the homeless on non-event nights. As you may have guessed, this never actually happens. But given that Florida leans pretty far to the right politically, you'd think there would be conservatives out in the streets demanding these public expenditures be met with some return on the investment, at least in the form of services since we've already established monetary rewards are not forthcoming.

But surprisingly, I've yet to see any conservatives taking to the streets demanding less money spent on stadiums or that these stadiums fill their legal duties. It's almost as if the cries of government waste are really just political expedience and not an actual ideal, but again, that may just be too cynical of me...

Teaching Sociology: Politics and Hegemony (Part something in a never-ending pop-pedagogical series)

Hegemony is  tricky concept to understand and is rarely used outside the crumbling-plaster towers of academia (they took away our ivory years ago), but it's incredibly important to the work I do, and I think it helps one understand the world much better.

To way over-simplify it, hegemony refers to when a group of people have the power to make their view of the world seem like the only one. For instance, in American the ideal of democracy is hegemonic -- pretty much every discussion on politics takes democracy as a given, and it's incredibly rare to hear anyone in mainstream America suggest we should have any type of government besides democracy. Or in a much sillier example, it explains why we still use the shitty qwerty keyboard.

But what I really think the concept of hegemony is handy for is understanding politics. And with the Super bowl coming up this weekend, the nexus of sports and politics.

For instance, this weekend, the Indiana branch of the occupy movement is setting its sights square on the big game with an Occupy the Super Bowl movement. Specifically, they're protesting the possible passage of a "right to work" law in Indiana that, like all of the Orwellian-named laws of this ilk, will destroy the ability of people to join and form unions and weaken the already-existing unions.

The NFL's media gatekeepers have already cried foul, shedding giant crocodile tears over the fact that someone would dare "politicize" the Super Bowl, a day that is supposedly free of politics. Yet, as Dave Zirin expertly points out (as he so often does), the Super Bowl is already one of the most politicized events in our nation. The opening coin flip will be conducted by General David Petraeus, leader and architect of much of the ill-fated Iraq invasion. There will be military fighter planes flying over the stadium. There will be a giant flag unfurled across the field large enough to compete with Newt Gingrich's ego. There will be commercials advertising our military and your chance to join them in their fantastic adventures abroad.

And this right here is the essence of hegemony. American imperialism has become such a hegemonic ideal that all of those obvious paeans to America's illegal wars do not even register as politics. No, as long as you glorify the American war machine it's not political at all. But the second you suggest maybe not everything is perfectly fine and rosy in this li'l nation of ours, then you are inappropriately politicizing a supposedly non-political event.

So again, when you can make something into a giant 6-hour commercial for the US military and then complain that some people holding home made signs outside the front gate are the ones politicizing the event, you know your ideas have achieved a hegemonic position in this society. It also demonstrates that you have world-class chutzpah, but that's a different subject...

When To Support The Two Party System

Every major election year there's the same big debate amongst progressives and radicals -- is it better to vote for the Democrats as the lesser of two evils, or are both of the two big parties so corrupt and out-of-touch you can hardly ever justify voting for them?

As is most likely obvious from everything I've ever posted here, I lean much more toward the second of those two options. But really, I don't care that much, because I'm actually more aligned with the school of thought that says elections are basically pointless and good or bad policies will result from social movements pressuring politicians into doing their work, regardless of party affiliation. I'm not quite of the hardcore school of thought that sees elections as actually harmful (because they give the illusion of free choice and an open political process, pushing people to limit their political action to meaningless elections at the expense of more important social activism), but I sympathize with the viewpoint.

But regardless of where you come down on this issue, I think it's especially revealing to look at who the big money donors support. Because Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, and all of their friends don't give a shit about abortion or gay rights or the environment. They care about one thing -- increasing their profit margins by any means necessary. And as such, they will give money to whomever they feel will best do that, pretty much regardless of that candidate's view on any other issue. Thus, the funding streams of these big money donors can tell us a great deal about who the candidate is working for the hardest.

For example, here's a list (from the incomparable opensecrets.org) showing you Mitt Romney's top donors and the top donors of two major presidential candidates from two previous election cycles. The highlighted organizations on the previous candidates represent groups who are currently major Romney donors.

In case you can't guess who they are, the 2008 candidate is Obama and the 2004 candidate is Bush Jr.

Sure, there's context and nuance and all that and it's more complicated than this, but it's a good example of how it doesn't really matter who it is; as long as they're a nominee of one of the two major parties, they will be reliant on the same donors for the bulk of their funding. And I don't mean to sound too cynical about the state of American politics, but I'm guessing these major corporations giving millions of dollars to political candidates expect some sort of return on their investment...

Oh, and So Close To MLK Day

Because he can tell the difference between Ice's T and Cube, Bill O' Reilly (remember that guy? Before Glenn Beck, he was the one you always got upset about) proclaims himself to "be a brother, man."



Ice T disagrees with O'Reilly's assessment of himself.

Why I Hate The News

The problem with mainstream news sources in America is not just that they're shitty, but that they're aggressively shitty. American newspapers and news television shows don't just ignore important stories or let important claims go unchecked, they intentionally ignore important stories to not anger their sources or harm their advertising, and rarely if ever question a politician or unnamed "official sources." Hell, just last week the public editor at the New York Times, the most prestigious and respected newspaper in our entire nation, wondered aloud if reporters should occasionally check if all of the random assertions important people are making are, you know, actually true or not.

Two good recent examples show this problem quite clearly. As Dan Savage pointed out his column last week, why is it that both Rick Santorum and his daughter are both allowed to continually claim they're not homophobic because they have gay friends? And that these mysterious unnamed gay friends support Santorum despite his repeatedly comparing them to pedophiles and dog rapists? As Savage points out, isn't an obvious follow-up question who exactly these gay friends are? Wouldn't that make for an interesting story about how these people don't exist, or if they do, how they pull off such torturous logic?

Or take another good/horrible example from the Joe Paterno case. In his first interview since the child sex scandal broke, Paterno claims he didn't know anything, but even if he did, he wouldn't have been able to understand it because he'd never heard of male rape. As Drew Magary points out in the piece linked to there, this is about as obvious and blatant a lie as someone can make. And yet the "journalist" interviewing him didn't think it was worth a follow up question of "are you fucking shitting me?!? You're trying to pretend you don't even know what rape is?!?" Hell, she clearly didn't think it was even worth a polite follow-up pointing out that the biological sex of the people involved doesn't really change what rape is, and surely a grown human being knows what rape is.

But even beyond the basic os journalism 101, these are a prime example of how the powerful are protected. Paterno never has to pay for his crimes because he can claim ignorance of something any adult human being clearly knows. Similarly, Santorum can hide his hate behind fictional gay friends he invented to make himself look like less of a biggot. And they know that the subservient "journalists" sent to interview them will never challenge these claims, no matter how obviously false they are to anyone with even the most basic ability to understand logic...

Life Imitates Art

With a name like that, in Baltimore, it simply had to happen sooner or later.

Talk about pressure in living up to your name...

Merry Christmas!

Introducing possibly the greatest Christmas sweater ever:

And, of course, what holiday season is truly complete without a list, by orifice, of things people have had to have removed from them this year. Enjoy!

Sorry, Busy End To The Semester

So it dawned on me today that I've not updated this in a couple of week's, which more-or-less defeats the purpose of having a blog. My excuse is that I'm really busy because of the end of the semester and job applications and all of those fun things.

So instead of something witty and clever, I'll give you some happy Christmas news: R. Kelly has apparently written 32 new chapters of his magnum opus "opera" Trapped in the Closet. For the uninitiated, Trapped is a Dada-esque tale of cheating, violence, redemption, and midgets farting, all told in a completely non-linear and oft-impossible to follow story. Basically, it's like listening to any R Kelly album, only slightly more insane.

But before you get too excited, apparently Kells is having some money issues and doesn't have the scratch to film it yet. So instead, take your time to review and digest all the brilliance of the original 22 chapters with this handy flow chart to explain the action:

What Do Hipster Children Eat?

As a poor child who grew up eating lunchables, I'm jealous of how the other half eats...

How Solid Is Your NFL Faith?

Now that Brett Favre is truly and honestly retired for what appears to be for good (there's roughly a billion NFL teams that need a QB right now and he's still not playing), there's no one left for the gushing sports media to slobber over. Sure, there's Tom Brady and his all-American good looks, an there's Aaron Rodgers and his dominance, but none of them inspire the same all-around worship as the ol' gunslinger.

But maybe there's hope on the rise, as Tim Tebow has come along and is already starting to get the ridiculously over-the-top, unearned adulation. To explain the process to people who don't know how to properly genuflect to the appointed leaders of sport, here's a NFL Chick Trak to inspire you.

You Make It Really Hard To NOT Point Out Your Blatant Racism

After Alabama passed HB56, their own version of Arizona's SB1070 (the "show me your papers" bill), it was roundly criticized as racist by those opposing it (as was Arizona's). Yet defenders of the bill(s) were quick to point out there was nothing racist about the bill(s); after all, the bill(s) don't make it illegal to be hispanic, they say, they only increase the attention paid to people who are in this country without legal documentation. Now, if it happens to target Hispanics more than any other group, they claim, well then maybe those darn Hispanics should keep their noses clean and stay out of trouble.

This is a classic racist ploy -- as long as you dress your racism up in neutral language, you always have plausible deniability. After all, there's no way to prove either HB56 or SB1070 were designed to harass and intimidate Hispanics. But in practice, it seems Hispanics continue to bear the brunt of these measures -- remember, about half of all undocumented immigrants in American hail from Europe, and yet somehow very few Europeans are being arrested or harassed under these statutes.

But sometimes events happen that just really pull the curtain back on all of these shenanigans. Events like when a German executive of Mercedes-Benz in the states for a meeting at one of the company's manufacturing plants near Tuscaloosa is arrested. The officer at the scene did what was required of him and brought in the executive to be detained while his immigration status was investigated.

So here's a perfect example for the it's-not-racist crowd: a white person, nay, a rich white person, was subjected to detention and search under this apparently not racist law. What a chance to trumpet the law as color-blind and status-blind! You see critics? It's not a tool to harass and intimidate (largely poor) people of color, it's applied to everyone!

And yet, their reaction could not have been farther than that. Rather than see this as one of the many examples they love of their law in action, a group of Republican representatives has already called for rewriting portions of HB56. Presumably to include the direction that even though this is not a racist law, it's not supposed to apply to white people...

Dear Police Brutality: Zing

This photo has caused quite a bit of shock lately to people who don't regularly follow issues in American policing (to those of us who do, it's neither surprising nor shocking). It's a member of the UC Davis campus police casually point-blank pepper-spraying a group of non-violent and non-confrontational demonstrators who had not left when told to disperse. I say it's not a surprise to people who follow such things because many police have gone on record already saying this is  standard procedure.

Amid calls that the officer, his superiors, and even the university president should be fired or step down over the incident, the internet has sprung to action to get a more immediate, if somewhat less satisfying, retribution on the officer responsible. His phone number and address are now widely-available public knowledge, and he's become an internet meme -- the casually pepper spray everything cop.

And while this is what it is -- fairly juvenile mocking of someone who arguably deserves it -- it shows one of the internet's greatest collective powers these days. While retribution of any meaningful kind will probably never come to this guy or those issuing the orders (police have such incredibly strong unions that firing them is nearly impossible), at least we can take comfort in the fact that this guy is now a world-wide punchline and poster boy for police abuse. And that's something...

Christmas is Coming

And I have found the only present I ever want. If you buy me this Whiskey dispensing machine, you officially win the abstract concept of "friendship" for now and all time:

The Happiest Person Ever Photographed

Jeffy Calls Meatballs "Meatbulbs"

Bill Keane, the creator of Family Circus, died this past week. Not to speak ill of the dead, but from a young age, I've always thought of him as one of the greatest con men to have ever existed. After all, he took one of the most bland and unoriginal creations ever and spun it into a life long job and million-dollar empire. Somehow he was able to keep getting paid in exchange for cranking out trite and repetitive comics of children pronouncing words wrong and their creepy grandfather spying on them from a heaven in which everyone inexplicably wears potato sacks and rope belts.

The small solace we can take in this travesty of a man making millions for being actively stupid while we work actual jobs for much lower pay is that it is both easy and fun to mock this shitty comic mercilessly. One of the best examples is the Nietzsche Family Circus, pictured above. But even better is this classic list of reviews of one of the Family Circus books. Coming from the era before Amazon tightly controlled the reviews and comments on its website, these little gems represent some of the earliest (and best) snarky destruction the web has become so good for.

At least Keane's survivors can take solace in the fact that these comics both seem to write themselves and people somehow keep reading them, so they will be wealthy for generations to come...

Ha, ha! Suckers!

As regular readers know, I'm a Ph.D. candidate in the tail end of my degree program. This means I'm supposed to start looking for a job. But applying for and interviewing for academic jobs is not like most jobs. It's like another job in and of itself in terms of the sheer volume of documents and proposals and whatnot they expect out of you.

Since it's such a big process, I decided to try it this year, just so I could learn how it was done when I went back and did it for real the next year. Well, somewhere along the way I must have learned it well enough, because I actually have a job interview. This was completely unexpected.

And while it's mostly terrifying, because I rarely if ever feel prepared for big life events, it's also pretty damn good news. So this is what Dog and I sounded like pretty much all morning after I got the e-mail inviting me out for an interview:

The Simpsons Predict Reality Again

As I've noted before, the Simpsons is quite adept at predicting the future. The ol' "life imitates art," if you will. Well, it turns out they've done it again.

As any Simpsons fan will know, there's a three-eyed fish (or multiple three-eyed fish, it's unclear) swimming the waters near the Springfield nuclear power plant. In one episode, Bart caught this fish, which Mr. Burns, in an hilariously apt take on standard pr practices, named Blinky and claimed he had an evolutionary advantage with his third eye.

Well, whether an actor portraying Charles Darwin will come forward an suggest this fish is somehow superior to others, but fishermen in Córdoba, Argentina have caught a three-eyed fish near a nuclear power plant.

This really leaves us no other option than to spend the rest of the day contemplating what other Simpsons episodes will soon come to pass...

Sigh...Long Break Again

Oh wonderful and intelligent blog readers, how I have failed you. This fall has been particularly busy as I attempt to start writing my dissertation, and as such, incredibly important things like blogging have fallen by the wayside. But I make this commitment to you dear readers -- there will now be pretty regular content on this here interwebs site.

As regular readers recall, last month was Healthy October. Having now mastered completely every form of healthy living, I turn to my scholastic endeavors with Studious November. Gone are late nights watching t.v. or playing video games. Gone too are weeknights spent with friends or doing anything remotely enjoyable. For if I am to finish this dissertation any time in the near future, I need to get back to working an absurd amount every day.

But on the plus side, all of this sitting frustrated at a computer will give me both the time and material to pump out regular blog posts again. So please, cancel your suicide plans and ignore your family, job, and all other appointments. This blog once again exists and demands your attention.

In the meantime, here is a picture of a literal Wall Street fat cat: