Absurdity

Oregon man shocks his four
children, 3,6,8,9, with electric dog
collar. He thought it was funny.

Speaking of funny, this is one of those moments when everything strikes me as completely absurd. For example, in Egypt, 300,000 pigs have been slaughtered because of the fear of swine flu. There is no swine flu in Egypt. Even more absurd, in Afghanistan there is only one pig in the entire country, in their zoo. This poor animal has been confined to a special place because of their fear of swine flu.

Hillary Clinton has apologized for the killing of dozens of innocent Afghan civilians in another one of our bombings. Does anyone keep track of how many times we have apologized to the Afghanistan people for killing their civilians? It seems to me that it happens every day, or virtually every day. So what is the point of constantly apologizing for something we do on an almost daily basis? Although I don’t know for certain, it may be the case that this was another drone, dropping bombs on what they erroneously thought was a target. Doesn’t it strike anyone but me as utterly absurd that we should be employing drones to drop bombs on random targets, apparently just hoping to hit someone of relevance? In fact, why are we allowed to use drones at all? Why should drones not be disallowed by the (granted, laughable) rules of war? Why should poison gas and cluster bombs be disallowed while drones operated from thousands of miles away, for which the people have no credible defense, be acceptable? This seems to me completely absurd (to say nothing of cowardly).

And doesn’t it strike anyone as absurd that the “New face of the Republican party,” consists of Cantor, Bush, Romney, and now Palin? I mean, how completely absurd can they get? And Cantor, who said he had been short-listed for Vice-President, but wasn’t, also said they were embarking on a “listening tour,” only to retract that when Rush Limbaugh said they didn’t need a listening tour? There seems to be little doubt that our fat, drug addicted, lying, piece of crap, Rush Limbaugh, is now in control of the Republican Party. Oh, they will go far on their road to recovery with good ol’ Rush directing them.

The Republicans also have Palin’s daughter, who got knocked up by not practicing abstinence, out preaching the gospel of abstinence. You know, don’t do as I do, do as I (the Republican Party) tells you to do. This is the same young lady who not long ago said that abstinence was not entirely practical.

Jon Stewart, of the Daily Show, made a comment the other night that Truman might have been a war criminal. I thought it was pretty stupid, and the next day he corrected himself and said he should not have said that (which I think is true, he should not have). But now Justin Raimondo, who seems to know everything there is to know about everything, has accused Stewart of moral cowardice (because he thinks Stewart bowed to his bosses who told him he had to apologize). Now I don’t know if I think Jon Stewart is a moral coward or not, nor do I know if his bosses ordered him to apologize, nor do I really understand why Raimondo is in such a snit about it, but what I do know is, why in the hell is anyone worrying about whether Truman was a war criminal or not, when we have many current war criminals in our midst at the moment, and it appears they may all get off without being held accountable. I believe what Truman did when he dropped the atomic bombs was in fact unconscionable and reprehensible, but I doubt that it can be construed as a war crime (it was probably worse than that).

Finally, for the moment, I think it is absurd that I continue to watch TV. I don’t watch much TV. Over the past few years I have learned that probably 95% of what is offered on TV is not worth watching, and I am not at all certain about the other 5%. I have managed to cut my TV time down to only four shows: Olberman, Maddow, Stewart, and Colbert. I occasionally watch golf or a football game. That’s it. The only reason I even watch this much TV is because there isn’t much of anything else. I have canceled my subscription to our local racist, conservative, pretentious, newspaper that pretends to be non-partisan, and I cannot completely trust the blogs. Even so, I believe that I (and others) who watch TV are basically masochists who enjoy being insulted. TV is an insult to the intelligence of anyone. The standard programs are insulting, and the commercials are even more insulting. How we could have allowed TV to run roughshod over taste, morality, and common decency is a mystery to me. I am trying now to get to the point of not watching TV at all as I am tired of being insulted for two to four hours a day (I regard the programs that I do watch as among the least insulting one might find). TV, which had a marvelous potential when it began, has developed into a cesspool of the basest of human interests, a carnival of the utterly absurd, a tool for the corporate owners to keep us all “knocked up, barefoot, and pregnant,” so to speak.

LKBIQ:
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
Rod Serling

TILT:
The longevity of boa constrictors in captivity is 20 to 30 years, with 40 years possible.