X-Tra Rant

I think I figured out where to get a great tattoo in Indianapolis. Conan Lea. His work looks absolutely amazing. Unfortunately he’s got a long waiting list so it’ll be summer before I can get an appointment.

I’m going for a constellation theme - specifically the constellation Orion. I’ll certainly make sure to document the process and everything on here once it finally happens.

Yet another entry in a long line of conservative paranoia and application of their own.. particular… world view to popular culture. CJ has been particularly interested in this topic.

But this one, oh boy does it take the cake. Jericho is a show that I’ve been really digging. I’ve always been a fan of post apocalyptic style stories, especially about survival and how a society changes after an event like that. But apparently to some people, the commies have taken over Jericho.

I was turned onto CBS’s new series Jericho by a friend who really liked the premise and said I should check it out.
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That’s back when this was a show about the struggle for survival in post-nuclear America. Real middle-Americans the people who pull themselves up by their bootstraps every day and make this country work. When the rest of the country is gone, they keep doing it.
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The people of Jericho didn’t wait for FEMA, they worked harder, despite a lack of electricity, an external food supply and any other lack of modern conveniences. They came together, showed that American spirit, ingenuity and resolve to survive.

Basically, real Americans doing real American work.

Ahhhhh the good old “real Americans” meme. See, only “real Americans” keep working under dire curcumstances. The only “real Americans” are those Americans in the middle of the nation - those real American red-staters. Last I checked, an American is an American, even if you live in Massachusetts or California. And last I checked, even those blue state urbanites can pull together in the toughest of times. Try telling a New Yorker “Real middle-Americans the people who pull themselves up by their bootstraps every day and make this country work.”

Oh but this is pure sanity compared to what’s next….

Then came the winter season break.

Jericho returned in February, but something had changed. Subtly but, like clockwork each episode has featured at least one left-leaning ideal.

First there was the idea that life is better without fossil fuel. One character suggested that windmills would be able to provide electricity for the town. Yes this may seem like splitting hairs when it comes to the plot of the show. Without a gasoline supply to power the town’s generator finding an alternative energy supply. However it was her exact words that when taken out of context of the show repeat those of anti-carbon environmentalists. “If we had working windmills we wouldn’t have rely on diesel at all.” Of course the more anti-energy environmentalist would complain that birds get caught up in windmills; however that’s a tangent we will not follow. More on windmills follows.

The lefties are coming the lefties are coming!! Hide the chilluns! IT’S THE REDDDDDDDS!

I’m really trying to understand how anyone can read into the windmill storying an anti-fossil fuel message. See… they have no gas. They need the windmill to survive, see. The author of this post himself says “when taken out of context.” Hell, I could take 75% of popular culture out of context to twist it into any message I want. Just saying, well.. see.. out of context this is an environmentalist’s sentence.. therefore LEFTISTS!!!!

It’s pretty obvious to me, and anyone not coming into their viewing of popular culture, that in or out of context what is meant is that they won’t have to rely on diesel and this is a good thing because THEY DON’T HAVE ANYMORE. The paranoid reading of ‘leftist’ messages into anything and everything is really somewhat sad. Oh, but it doesn’t end there.

A week later when our heroes had ventured to a trading post area they received their first news from the outside world. Among the news items: Mexico had closed its borders and was no longer allowing US Citizens in. On the surface this is a role reversal to show Americans how the policy of protecting their own borders can be unfair. If one looks at the situation deeper they realize that Mexico Immigration laws are such that their borders are virtually closed already. However the real flaw in this story element is that the writers believe that Americans run from adversity. American’s don’t run from danger. They run to, and face it head on. My own great-uncle, upon hearing of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, left the mill he was working in to enlist in the Marines. After 9/11 countless stories could be shared of young men and women who were willing to go to war (an inevitability) at the tender ages of 18, 19 and so forth.

Ahhhh more “real americans” and how the show is “obviously” making a statement about the reversal of the border issue. it really takes a special brand of paranoia to see a bit of text in the background as some sort of heinous leftist message.

But as for the “real flaw” in the story element, this whole idea that Americans don’t run from adversity and so there would be no refugee after a nuclear strike on multiple American urban centers. Not only that, this isn’t about people “running from Adversity.” Think of the issues around multiple nuclear strikes - fallout, radiation, the coming winter and no power, lack of food, etc etc. Not only that - given the way the story is unfolded with massive amounts of unrest between (and even in) towns and outside the affected cities there may not be anyplace to run to.

Ahhhh but it goes on. Back to the windmills and now we get a “lesson” in economics!

When the first working windmill arrives from the next town over an agreement is made that leads to a deal for a number of subsequent windmills. The deal is ten percent of Jericho’s spring crop for ten windmills. The new mayor of Jericho says this is unfair but reluctantly agrees. The first thing you learn in any economics class is that voluntary transactions are mutually beneficial. Since one party wanted windmills and the other party wanted food this seems to work out. We know there are other towns out there, most likely with other resources available to share. This means potentially more mutually beneficial transactions. Here we are being told that if someone is trying to sell you something you’re being screwed. If all purveyors of goods adopted this attitude there would be no more customers.

So apparently ANY trasaction is mutually beneficial, even if a gun is practically being held to your head. Jericho was basically given the choice: give up a share of your crop that could very well mean starvation in the fall or freeze to death. And later episodes where it is shown that New Bern is obviously arming for conflict against Jericho and it makes the mayor’s uneasiness at striking a deal with them pretty prescient.

As for the “economics lesson”, yes, a voluntary transaction is mutually beneficial. But that’s assuming this transaction was really voluntary. when you have no have no choice in the matter (i.e. facing starvation) it’s hard to argue the deal was voluntary. And just because they said that 10% was unfair doesn’t mean this was some sort of commie leftist message. Although I can see how a person might see that if their whole worldview is one of “the commie leftists hate the market.”

Oh but damn, the crazy train keeps rolling.

In what would be the most far-reaching and absurd case of leftist ideology in the series we find that the mastermind of the multiple city nuclear attack is none other than the director of homeland security. While his motivation is still a mystery, this is a fairly unbelievable plot twist. The director of homeland security’s primary mission is to NOT allow terrorist attacks on American soil. But even deeper this is a position created by the Patriot Act, that little piece of legislation that allows law enforcement to protect American citizens from attacks within our country. This has been a bane in the existence of liberals for some time. Any attempt to delegitimize or vilify this law is part of the American left’s attempt to change the minds of voters. Even if it is done through the prism of a moderately-rated fictional TV drama.

Wuhhhuhhhhhhh? And in Spiderman 3 where Peter Parker/Spiderman is shown to be vulnerable to his dark side only enables The Green Goblin. Any attempt to deligitimize or vilify Spiderman is part of the right’s attempt to change the mind of comic book readers.

This is seriously one of the most rediculous arguments I have ever read. IT’S A TV SHOW! FICTION! fic tion al char ac ters* This idea that it’s some insidious liberal plot to subtly change the minds of voters through a weekly television drama is the height of conservative myopia and paranoia.

It’s like the author wanted Red Dawn: The Series and instead got a show that challenges you and maybe makes you think about things in a way that makes you uncomfortable (the hallmark of good drama, by the way). Where’s Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen when you need them?

One of these things is not like the other

*name that movie

Update: Last minute thought. If you really want to read political messages into the show: Which town, New Bern or Jericho, is more like the conservative’s answer to tough times and a state of war, and which is more like the liberal’s vision? I’ll give you a hint - one of them as suspended civil rights, a militarized society, uses torture, imprisons people indefinitely and is willing to engage in preemptive hostilities to take the resources it needs and fight threats it perceives without proof. I’ll leave the rest of the answer as an exercise for the reader.

Now this is quite cool. My awesome webhost, Dreamhost, is now Carbon Neutral. that means that the websites I run are carbon neutral.

As if you needed another reason to use Dreamhost for your websites.

Can anyone recommend a good tattoo artist in the Indianapolis area? Just wondering. The reviews for Indy Tattoo Works on Citysearch seem all very good but if there are any other recommendations, leave a comments.

I added a new link to the main menu up top. Meta. Right now it’s jsut a really bare bones page pulling together some of the various webtwo-ohey type stuff out there and other links to profiles and whatnot i have on the web. I eventually want to clean it up, style it, all that. But this is enough for now.

I really want a Clocky. When you hit snooze, it will roll off the table and roll around looking for a place to hide before it goes off again.

We all remember Debbie Schlussel from awhile back. The old “Atheists Need a Hallmark Card” posts. Well she’s back and this time she’s turned the stupid up to eleven.

(First off I want to say that my thoughts are with anyone effected by this tragedy. I can’t find the words to even begin to describe what you must be going through)

You see, these horrible shootings at Virginia Tech are obviously the work of a dirty brown terrorist. And how does she know this?

Well, the murderer has been identified as a young Asian male. Pakinstanis are technically Asian. There were two attacks separate from each other and there had been bomb threats lately. THEREFORE: TERROR!!!

The leap of logic here is so astounding it really makes my head hurt. She doesn’t even consider the idea that it might be a kid who’s pissed and went crazy over his ex dumping him And others are saying they have seen that the Asian man was a suspect who was cleared and released. So who knows.

This is what you get when you let crazy wackos like Debbie Schlussel (who is DESPERATELY trying to out-Coulter Ann Coulter) make wild conjecture based on rumor and innuendo.

No the first thing to jump to mind of this crazy woman is scary brown Muslims.

It must be a sad sad existence.

Update:: Dear Debbie, Shut The Fuck Up. Looks like your raving lunatic theories of Pakistani terrorists and the scary brown people trying to kill us all was yet another addled fantasy on your part.

• I’m eventually going to post something about this on CWAMB. A pretty cool article about the statistical truth behind baseball’s hitting slump.
• So not only is she brilliant, an astronomy student and getting a grant from NASA to study methods to get a spacecraft to Mars safely behind the ’shield’ of a large asteroid, but she’s gorgeous too? Where do I sign up? And her idea for either using an asteroid as a ship itself or hiding a ship in the ’shade’ to protected humans from radiation from the sun is brilliant. One of those “why didn’t anyone else really think of this already?” kind of things.
• I REALLY want a Compubeaver.
• I… I have no words. Dennis Rodman in a movie with midgets. About a basketball team. Made up of midgets. The mind boggles.
• Irony alert, indeed. Microsoft and AT&T are raising questions about another company’s merger on possible antitrust grounds. Ha ha. It is to laugh.
• “Domain Kiting” is bad. Really bad. ICANN has got to do something about it, and if not the government should step in and force them to do something about it.
• Apparently Tony Dungy wants people to be more civil. What part of “being civil” includes giving speeches to known homophobic institutions?

That is all.

• Two related links: Ahhhhh the Bush Economy. To paraphrase Mel Brooks “It’s good to be the CEO.”
• The latest champion for those fed up with the direction our country has taken under arch-conservative George W. Bush: Lee Iacocca?
  “You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don’t need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we’re fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That’s not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I’ve had enough. How about you?”
  Color me both impressed and confused. A world where Lee Iacocca has become outraged with Republicans is a strange world indeed.
• I’ve been meaning to post a full entry on the rediculous Indiana “In God We Trust” license plates but I never seem to get around to it. TDW has done it instead. And better than I would have, too. I’d love to go into the BMV and ask for an “In No God We Trust” or “In Allah We Trust” plate sometime just for the reaction.
• All that scarrrrrry voter fraud that made the Indiana Voter ID law ‘necessary’? Ummm yeah. Turns out there’s not so much of it. Nationwide. We’re talking since 2002, when they made it EASIER to get vote fraud convictions, a grand total of 86 convictions nationwide. Wow. It’s a good thing we got that Voter ID law!!!
• “Watermelon” Dan Burton has been outraised by his GOP primary opponent by nearly 3x in the first quarter of this year. I certainly don’t know what sort of crazy challenger John McGoff is bringing, but it can’t be as much crazy as ol’ Watermelon Dan brings.
• You know, I was waiting for the first post of this flavor about the horrible shootings at Virginia Tech today. I just didn’t expect to see it said so soon that if only all those students had guns this wouldn’t have happened. As CJ said in IM about this, “If every VT student were carrying guns, do you know how many fights would have turned into shootings over the last few years? How many drunken disagreements would have ended in fatalities? You don’t? Then please come back to planet Earth from Unprovable Counterfactual Land and join the rest of us, mkay?” The Happy Pony Libertarian Land where everyone is armed to the teeth and responsible and happy and safe doesn’t exist. Yes, I believe in the second amendment but I also think rampant guns all over the place aren’t exactly making anything safer. There’s this… I dunno… gray area between the black and white of “guns or no guns!” that actually exists. Even in the minds of *gasp* liberals!!!

A non-politics link dump will follow later.

Google has this new thing with GOogle Maps called My Maps. I made a map of Indianapolis with things I like to do or places I like to go. Check out: Indianapolis Things To Do