Monthly Archive for October, 2007

A dose of sarcasm

Published on October 27, 2007 in Thoughts. 0 Comments

Yahoo reports:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – As lawyers for Britney Spears and her ex-husband fought a court battle over custody of their two young sons, a publisher said on Friday that the pop star’s mother is writing a book about parenting.

I suppose it’s going to be sort of a what-not-to-do kind of thing, right? Or is it going to be called How To Pimp Your Daughter, Ruin Her Life and Get a Book Deal Out of It? Either would be fitting.

Religious publisher Thomas Nelson said it will publish “Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World,” by Lynne Spears. Nelson spokesman Curt Harding said the book, to be out next spring, will be about Lynne Spears’ raising three children and will have a religious element.

Well, I’m sorry for all religious people. I guess more than a few of them will buy it, but let’s be honest: using your children as a gateway to fame and money while turning them into little more than deranged prostitutes with no grasp of reality isn’t exactly something Jesus would’ve… appreciated. In fact, I almost think he might’ve, you know, objected. Strongly, even.

Meanwhile lawyers for the pop singer and her ex-husband Kevin Federline were in a Los Angeles court to argue over whether the two have complied with court orders over parenting and, in Spears’ case, random drug testing.

And that’s all because her mother did such a wonderful job of raising her daughter that she managed to turn her into a proper drug-gobbling panty-losing Christan girl. Hallelujah!

Jesus frickin’ Christ… when Kevin Federline - Kevin “Yuck” Federline himself - starts looking like a rational person, something is deeply wrong with the world.

Spears, 25, and Federline, 29, split a year ago and for months have waged a custody war over Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1, as Spears’ life slipped out of control.

It was in control before? Really?

The pop diva, who rose to stardom on the Disney Channel, has spent time in drug and alcohol rehab, clashed with paparazzi and become the fodder for numerous jokes after being photographed in public without wearing underwear.

Well, what do you expect when someone starts seeing the world through the lunatic eyes of Disney? All that fake sweet sugar-coated optimism with its boiling undercurrents of oppressed sexuality and misanthropy can’t be healthy.

On Thursday, a judge dismissed an automobile hit-and-run case against her after she settled with the owner of the car she hit, and she pleaded not guilty to a lesser charge of driving without a license.

But her singing career appears to be rebounding with a recent single, “Gimme More,” that is topping digital download charts, and a new album “Blackout,” set for release October 30.

Oh dear. More is certainly not what she needs. (It’s also not what we need; I once, quite by accident, was forced to listen to her rendition of I Love Rock N’ Roll on the radio. It still hurts.) The only two things Britney Spears needs more of is sense – and the idea that music is actually art. It’s fun, and it’s meant to be fun, but it can also be beautiful and mean something at the same time. It can even mean something fun – like, you know, a lot of rock ‘n’ roll did. Freedom and joy and rebellion and hope – instead of repetitive prepackaged cliché bullshit.

Actually, it’s not two things that she needs, it’s three. She also needs underwear.

Still, family Court Commissioner Scott Gordon in recent weeks has yanked visitation rights from Spears only to reinstate them after she complied with his rulings.

Gordon has ordered both parents to seek counseling and hire a parenting coach. He has told Spears she must submit to random drug testing twice a week.

A model Christian family, I suppose? Ironically, in more than a few cases the answer would be “yes”. Poor old Jesus. You put so much effort into something, get your ass nailed to a cross, all to make a point about humility and sacrifice and tolerance, and what do you get? You get Lynne Spears using your name as a PR device to sell books about her career as a female ponce.

It’d be funny if it weren’t so depressing.

a short comedy break

Published on October 12, 2007 in Thoughts. 0 Comments

They gave Al Gore the Nobel Peace Prize.

*audience laughter*

No, seriously.

*more laughter*

I’m not quite sure why they did it. I guess a powerful commitment to making yourself the centre of attention by pretending you are the great crusader for the environment – after you’ve spent eight years as Vice President doing nothing about it – does pay off.

Seriously, people. There are certainly more disgusting figures than Gore – Bush, Kerry, Blair, etc. But just because he’s occasionally put forth an idea which isn’t catastrophically idiotic (Bush), appallingly opportunistic (Kerry) or just butt-crawlingly evil (Blair), doesn’t mean he should be elevated to being the god of the Vaguely Progressive There’s Something Wrong With The World But We Refuse To Use Our Brains To Analyze It movement.

Oh well. Back to Desert Bridge.

UPDATE: Strangely enough, some people linked to this post. Even stranger, though, is the fact that they only quoted the penultimate paragraph, and in some cases seemed to think that my opinion is somehow right-wing. Which, I guess, might happen if you don’t actually read the paragraph above. My point is that Gore is a hypocrite, not that doing something about global warming isn’t important (is is, in fact, one of the most important issues in human history). Furthermore, an in-depth discussion of global warming must delve into political matters – after all our policies and methods of production are a large part of the problem. So no, Mr. Gore, it isn’t just a moral issue – it’s also very much a political one.

UPDATE II:

Posted by Jakob

I just have to ask, what is your opinion about the film “An unconvenient truth” by Al Gore? (I don’t know if you have seen it but you have surely heard about it) I haven’t seen it yet but from what I have heard it seemes like it makes peoples eyes open up for the problems with nature.

Even if he sometimes indicates that it is worse than it actually is..

My problem isn’t that the movie makes global warming seem worse than it is. It doesn’t. Global warming is a HUGE problem. Probably worse, actually, than the movie predicts.

My problem is that the movie is all about Al Gore being the superhero of environmentalism. And he isn’t. The man was Vice President for 8 years. What did he do in those years to help stop global warming? NOTHING. And don’t tell me about Kyoto. Kyoto was a joke, nowhere near what needs to be done, and in fact the United States pushed to weaken it, not strengthen it. And I repeat: Gore was Vice President. He was one of the most powerful men in the world. And he did NOTHING.

So the very idea that he is this great crusader for the environment is basically just spin. And that’s what he got the Nobel for. Not for what he did, but for what he claimed he did. Which isn’t much. Except support the illegal and immoral war in Kosovo, in which radioactive weapons were used. Like the German Greens, who also supported that war and now portray themselves as a power for peace, that sort of screws up his credibility.

Beyond that, An Inconvenient Truth does not really talk about the causes of global warming on a political level. It more or less fails to mention, say, giant corporations and their policies. In fact, Gore’s often-repeated message that “The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level” is a wonderful way of avoiding the truly inconvenient truth: that to battle climate change, we must change our socio-economic system. Changing the way we live as individuals isn’t enough. Recycling soda cans or not washing your hair too often or using better light bulbs will not save the planet. Even Gore’s own film makes it obvious that the problem is huge – and it follows logically that the measures to combat it must be of equal scope.

But Gore is ultimately a representative of the very system that has for so many years prevented people from taking global warming seriously, and his main interest is in making himself appear oh-so-wonderful. It’s just PR.

It makes me miss Carl Sagan. Now there’s a man who was capable of explaining the scientific aspects of an issue in a fascinating way while also not neglecting its social and political implications.

UPDATE III: I just realized that I barely mentioned how ludicrous it is to give Gore the Nobel Peace Prize, given his support of so many wars. So I’m going to steal this quote from the WSWS:

Vice President Gore, however, is hardly to be identified with the cause of “peace.” One of only ten Senate Democrats who voted for the first US war against Iraq in 1990, he was second-in-command of an administration that dispatched US troops to Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia, financed death squads in Colombia, bombed Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan, maintained an economic blockade of Iraq that caused the death of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children, and waged a devastating air war against Serbia.

Blackwater thoughts

Published on October 12, 2007 in Thoughts. 0 Comments

As you may have noticed, there’s something of a controversy going on about Blackwater USA, a mercenary army in the employ of the United States. They’re making quite a bit of money in Iraq, and have been spending quite a bit of their time shooting civilians. So now a number of people have been going on about Blackwater being too trigger-happy and that something has to be done about it.

It’s not that I disagree. Obviously terrible crimes are being committed by Blackwater, and the people responsible need to be brought to justice. But let’s think for a moment. Who are the people responsible? Is it just Blackwater?

Or let’s put it another way: why do some people think any of this is surprising? Blackwater consists of mercenaries, for Dog’s sake. And not just that – they’re mercenaries whose job it is to oppress a recently invaded and conquered country, which has turned from a fairly stable secular dictatorship (not nice at all) to a land ravaged by a religious and political civil war (even worse). Their job is to keep Iraqis from trying to win back their nation’s freedom.

So what do you expect? They work for Bush, not Santa. It is a proven fact that terrorizing the population and murdering innocents is part of George the Conqueror’s official strategy, as it has been the strategy of tyrants and dictators throughout history.

And it’s not like Blackwater is the only security contractor killing civilians for no good reason. Even if you throw Blackwater out of Iraq, even if you send observers and create new rules and whatever else is being proposed – none of that will change the fact that the Iraqi people are being occupied by a foreign imperialist power, and occupation has always meant violence. Because people don’t like giving up their freedom. Even if they weren’t free before they were subjected to this new dictatorship.

If you want peace, you have to be peaceful. Getting out of Iraq would help. Christ, apologizing would help. Not killing any more people would certainly help. The main reason monsters like Osama bin Laden have any supporters is because Western foreign policy has driven them there. Do you really believe people are so eager to blow themselves up because they dislike someone’s “way of life”? Bullshit. People cling to their lives – always have, always will. It takes extraordinary circumstances to drive someone to that kind of insanity – circumstances such as having your country bombed, or having foreign governments support a regime that decimates your people and quite possibly your family and friends.

People don’t blow themselves up because someone, somewhere happens to be allowed to do something that they think is immoral. To a guy living somewhere in a poor village in Afghanistan, American freedoms aren’t real. They’re something you see on TV, something far away. Almost fiction. Not enough to give everything up for. But the smart bomb that kills his sister, or his child, or his parents – now that is real.

Obviously there are also other reasons – poverty being a particularly important one. People on the edge of starvation don’t – can’t – think clearly. People with full stomachs and a comfy bed are much less likely to go and blow themselves up. And the Bushes of other countries know how to use that – that and religion – to make people hate the faceless “Americans”.

But I think we can safely assume that decades of war, oppression, murder, assassination, bombing, colonialism and imperialism may have something to do with the problem.