This is why it is important to talk to crazy strangers.
I watched CNN at the gym and it said that Republicans they polled were rating 'illegal immigration' as their top issue. I guess we know what the new 'gay marriage!!1!' or 'abortion!!111' will be this time around.
In related news, Ron Paul is even crazier than you thought.
Via Lindsaywho has other fun details.
but he's been listening on the radio, and that Thompson, he shoots from the hip and tells it like it is
9:41 p.m. | Confrontation at Sea Mr. Thompson rocks tonight. Asked about the recent confrontation between United States warships and Iranian speedboats, he suggests casually that if Iran's Revolutionary Guard becomes more hostile, the Iranians will see those virgins they've been looking for.
It's a really, really low bar, but that is in the running to be the most pathetic thing ever to appear under the banner of the NY Times.
Why did you and FSG try so hard? You were in a pool...
WL gives us a brief explanation that jail isn't so bad as long as you stick with your own kind.
I am reminded of the Seinfeld-in-HBO's-Oz SNL sketch:
"You a Hebrew?"
"Yes, but people don't seem to have a problem with it on a national level."
Henley's been on the Paul thing a couple of days now, complete with entertaining battles about whether it's worse to be a racist or a liberal.
Ron Paul, awesomely, is on the record as saying that libertarians are incapable of racism, because racism is a collectivist idea.
You need to have more acceptance of diversity.
What about the hot bassplaying lifeguard with the taut body and other excellent features?
11: So libertarians don't see color?
Also, does Ogged commute to, like, Colorado to swim? I thought he lived in a promised land where people didn't think this way.
Helpy-chalk, even Michael Savage lives out here.
This, on the other hand, is the height of political discourse.
Awesome.
The whole implosion of Ron Paul thing has been highly entertaining, too.
Speaking of awesome and some other foreigner, this is why we have engineers.
The whole implosion of Ron Paul thing has been highly entertaining, too.
Especially since the rest of the Republican field is so promising and non-crazy.
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Interview went nicely, I believe. It's funny, I really want to do this, but on some level I can't believe I'm getting tense about interviewing for a job that pays literally 40% of my current one.
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18: Yes, but didn't he start out penning homosocial paeans to Allen Ginsburg, or something?
It takes driving like one hour, tops, away from SF to find some fully-formed rednecks. Sometimes they even look like dirty hippies and fool you.
23: That's terrific! Also terrific is the fact that you now have a way of feeling not-that-bad if you don't get. Success all around!
In much of the US dirty hippies and rednecks overlap extensively.
Best wishes, LB!!!!
I was really hoping Paul would beat Giuliani in NH. He came close.
didn't he start out penning homosocial paeans to Allen Ginsburg
That's what wikipedia says, yeah. Plenty of rednecks in these parts, indeed.
In Soviet Union, you pay boss to go to work!
Savage actually is a New Age fascist (animal rights, natural healing, etc.) Paging Jonah. He hates liberals but he also hates Bush.
Hmm: "The 170,000-member International Painters Union endorsed Huckabee, per the governor's statement. About 30% of the union's members are Republicans. This is the first time the union has endorsed a GOP candidate in more [than] 100 years."
31: Yeah, apparently this is old news, but I just found out.
Note to self: I'm like Hee-Haw, I just throw out something that sounds close has become my new personal mission statement.
Speaking of awesome, the hack in 21 is awesome.
30, 32: But they also endorsed Hillary on the Dem. side.
33: That letter is crazed, Robert. Does anyone remember Plain Truth magazine? Does it still exist? Sounds like that lunacy.
You should vote for people based on what they say, not emotions, not because they cry and you feel bad for them.
Mmmhm. You're in good company, Ogged.
"The 170,000-member International Painters Union endorsed Huckabee, per the governor's statement. About 30% of the union's members are Republicans. This is the first time the union has endorsed a GOP candidate in more [than] 100 years."
[insert whitewash joke here]
What's the problem with Ron Paul's letter?
I haven't seen Plain Truth in ages, but I did just recently see the anti-Catholic Jack Chic tract "Death Cookie" in a student lounge.
Judging by the tribe of students who hang out it that particular lounge, I think it was being held up as an object of ridicule.
My favorite Chick tract was one of those 4-color full-sized comic book ones and it was all about a guy who lost his faith and became a God-cursing hippie all because he went to theology school and LEARNED ANCIENT GREEK!!!
21: You know what I love about that guy (aside from the way that he is increasing the value of my degree)? He's so nerdish, and yet so composed.
Well, he was right about the stereo thing- no one ever came over to steal your stereo back in the early days of the republic. We should give him that much at least.
42: What's so wacked about that is that one of the good things about Protestantism was the emphasis on Bible-reading. But somehow we've got this Evangelical culture in the US that deprecatesdamns to Hell any non-King James version of the Bible, apparently including the original Greek. You go, ignorance-worshippers!
37: In David Foster Wallace's article on McCain in Rolling Stone from when DFW was following him during the 2000 campaign, he reports that McCain responded to someone asking about scandal-monging type of stuff with tears. Maybe there's footage of that moment kicking around somewhere.
Does anyone remember Plain Truth magazine?
Ha! I remember seeing ads for that in issues of Reader's Digest that I would read at my aunt's house. All about how their track record in predicting global power shifts was unparalleled and how the mag was the key to undersdtanding the future .
46: That's exactly what it was. The guy (a nice clean cut boy) freaks the fuck out in class because the teacher is saying things like, "Well, the KJV says "virgin," but of course the Greek is "parthenos." He ends up beating the crap out of the teacher, becoming a hippie, and going to jail.
42: I was actually interviewed as part of the research for that tract.
46: Your implication that KJV-only types are dominant or hegemonic in evangelicalism is flatly false -- only the true old-school fundamentalists are KJV-only-ers, and the evangelicals' mania for "relevance" keeps them from even singing old hymns, much less using centuries-old versions of the Bible.
Ron Paul, awesomely, is on the record as saying that libertarians are incapable of racism, because racism is a collectivist idea.
I think what he's getting at is that to be a truly effective racist you have to organize collectively to deprive others of their rights (or at least be individually willing to use violence to deprive others of their rights). Contemporary rhetoric emphasizes racism as almost a politeness issue -- it's impolite to show any distaste for other groups -- and plays constant "gotcha!" games around it. But that's actually a relatively harmless thing when compared to racism as a violent collective conspiracy. So I think it's not unreasonable to argue that someone who is truly deeply devoted to the protection of individual rights could not be a dangerous racist.
Unfortunately, Paul's newsletter seems to have been associated with some people who were into violent collective conspiracies.
18: Of course a conservative of any means is going to live on one of the coasts. He ain't gonna rub elbows with the masses.
I am occasionally moved to tell my right-wing-but-East-Coast brother that if he thinks they do things so well in Mississippi, he ought to go live there.
Every time I think about Huckabee and the Republican Party, I smile.
My Lutheran Church now has a gospel service for the folks who don't like the old Lutheran music, and the music in the non-gospel service is relatively lite.
50: What do these "relevance" evangelicals think about Ancient Greek? Or don't they? Too busy turning out the l33t b1bl3 or something?
I've been hoping that Huckabee (Fuck me!) gets the Republican nomination and then Paul decides to make an independent bid, splitting the Christianist and libertarian wings of the party. It won't work, though, if the Paul campaign fizzles.
Oudemia, ancient Greek was used mostly by pagan devilworshipping abortionists and queers.
54: I'd suspect they don't. 21st-century American evangelical Christianity is too pagan an enterprise -- you give God stuff; God gives you stuff, accordingly -- to be entirely comfortable with the languages associated with actual pagans.
Evangelical preachers refer to the Greek text -- or at least individual Greek words -- all the time. There's nothing especially erudite about it, as they're usually following trends. For instance, for a while there was this big deal about how Jesus calls God the Father "abba," which is supposedly a more intimate name, blah blah blah... That might still be a trend. And there's also the classic division between two Greek words for love: eros and agape, with agape being the good Christian kind.
Olivet Nazarene University requires Greek of all of its religion majors, and I assume that any evangelical college would as well.
Evangelicals are of course horrible for any number of reasons, but hostility toward the Greek text of the New Testament is not one of them. The KJV-only people are truly dead-enders. I don't know for sure if Chick is among them -- his thing with Greek in that comment might be more of an "uppity book-larnin'" type of issue.
When I was in Alabama, I saw a bumper sticker saying "The King James Bible is God's Only True Holy Word"
What the hell is "welfare cable"? C-Span?
60: Aha. Thanks. I think "abba" is one of those Aramaic, slip -in words, though, no? And of course about the eros/agape bit -- I got so excited once when I saw a license plate that said "AGAPE," until I immediately realized that it wasn't because they were sitting home reading Sophocles.
As to the Chick tract, you're half-right about the "book larnin'" bit. Certainly that was there, but it's clear that the guy's crisis of faith is precipitated by the prof insisting that the KJV wasn't "right." This blew his mind and rocked him to his core.
Out here in the boonies I recently met a retired military man / free-lance minister of the gospel from Texas who had studied both Greek and Hebrew. He was a jolly, friendly guy who was happily waiting for Armageddon, and he gave my sister some bloodthirsty literature (maybe by the Late Great Planet Earth guy). He was a damned impressive drinker too -- I think he finished six beers between about 2:00 pm and 5:00 PM.
In short, the stereotypes are false -- these guys are nice fun people, but still crazy as hoot owls.
"These guys can be nice fun people". Not all of them are.
The David Brooks schtick really steams me. He'll stick up for these guys philosophically and politically, but I'm the guy who has to buy them beer. I do not see David Brooks sitting and chatting with the guy.
63: It is indeed an Aramaic word.
No less an authority than Augustine believes that the eros/agape distinction is bullshit. But evangelicals don't give a fuck what Augustine thinks, by and large.
65: However, David Brooks is a renowned master of disguise. Who knows but maybe you've bought him beer. Sobering thought.
In addition to the wacky logic, I got more fun than I should from this statement of Ron Paul's due to the highlighted cheap shot.
However, I oppose the Congressional Gold Medal for Rosa Parks Act because authorizing $30,000 of taxpayer money is neither constitutional nor, in the spirit of Rosa Parks who is widely recognized and admired for standing up against an overbearing government infringing on individual rights.
Two beers an hour is impressive? My calibration on this stuff really isn't like yours.
For a 60-year-old minister of the gospel, yes.
I've always been rather fond of Augustine, mostly because of how charming he is when he talks about how much he liked going to the theater, etc. Pe/ter Wh/i/te taught a notoriously tough class on him at Chicago. Much wailing rose up from the classicists.
The David Brooks schtick really steams me. He'll stick up for these guys philosophically and politically,
I disagree with that. What David Brooks does is give a caricature Middle American a starring role in his ongoing morality play about why America is good and liberals are bad. That's a long way for actually sticking up for those guys, whoever they really are.
I have an explanation of all Western civilization since his time in terms of Augustine at my URL. he was the first resentful, alienated grind.
But aren't there three words, eros, agape, and the other one, just as there are three Wilson brothers, Luke, Owen, and the other one?
Obviously the person with the AGAPE license plate was William Gaddis.
74: Wiki comes through: philia, eros, agape, storge and xenia.
I actually blame Gottschalk, not Augustine, for the subsequent path of Western civilization.
he was the first resentful, alienated grind.
This is Nietzsche's whole analysis too, Western thought as the revenge of the nerds. He understood the type well, perhaps because his mother tried to force him to be one. I think you might point that out too -- I'm probably plagiarizing already.
72: Many have probably already seen it, but here is the classic takedown ("Boo-boos in Paradise") of his "Red Lobster" tales in Philly Magazine.
But here is why you really want to move to the heartland, you can get awesome license plates like this one. (It is only a rumor that the original design showed the Murrah Bldg.)
If only Hrabanus Maurus (Rabban Maur) had triumphed!
Philia was the third one.
"Storge" and "xenia" sound kinky.
Only to dirty Jewish minds. You and Woody Allen.
From Storge to Eros. Now that would be kinky.
there's still plenty of lattitude in translating greek to give especially sexists interpretations of things. And of course, its really common to get sermons started by some etymological bullshit; there's a lot of rabbit hole there.
There's a difference between the old-school types and the megachurch types.
Presumably "welfare cable" = "basic cable."
The Presidential debates aren't being shown on basic cable?!? Color me skeptical.
Storge isn't so very common a word, I think.
The license plate of the "polity vehicle" at St. John's College reads "H APETH" -- phonetically "he arete" -- or in English, "Virtue."
87: Actually it wouldn't surprise me at all.
He said he has cable, but doesn't get CNN or Fox. I have no idea how that can be, but I don't live in Wingnut land.
Someone in the Chicago area has an I-forget-how-they-worked-it-out license plate for eudemonia.
Cultural difference. We have storge up the yinyang around here.
This business of specific cable stations' having the rights to presidential debates pisses me off. I know that, by and large, the footage is available for rebroadcast on more public stations later on, but still: that shit should all be on C-Span, and C-Span should be free.
My imaginary world is a very pleasant, strictly ordered kind of place.
How many letters can be on an Illinois plate?
My imaginary world is a very pleasant, strictly ordered kind of place.
Liberal fascism in a nutshell.
Maybe it was EUDMNIA? That would be recognized by anyone who would, you know, recognize it.
Ben, see if you can get SCORTUM on a plate.
SCRTLLA
"EUDMNIA" is flawed in that none of the internal vowels are represented. I was thinking something like "UDIMNIA" which obviously gets the orthography wrong, but arguably the captures the more closely. But I think some states allow eight letters on a plate, which would obviously make things better.
CNAEDUS
I really don't like the I for for the AI or AE, though. All or nothing!
It occurs to me that having one's own license plate read CNAEDUS, SCORTUM, or (as just occurred to me) PATHIC is a bit odd. Wouldn't it be better to arrange for one's enemy's license plate so to read? Mine will read IRUMATR.
The issue, one hastens to clarify, being the negative connotations of the terms, not the denotations.
Ha! You wish!
Although that is something like a NY plate I saw. You can get actual Yankees license plates, and this BMW had them. The plate itself, however, read STINK.
That reminds me, though, of those super cheezy Colleen McCullough books. She had, oh, I don't know, Livia or whoever saying "You have made me an irrumator!"
Wouldn't she be more likely to be made an irrumatee? Or have I got the meaning backwards?
NO -- you're right! That is why the book was hilariously bad.
I knew someone in grad school who had an EPISTEME plate.
If I had to have Greek on my license plate, I think I'd go for SKIAS ONAP (provided I'm allowed 8 letters). Skias onar -- dream of shadow. From Pindar's Pythian 8:
For we are but creatures of a day. What is someone? What is someone not? Man is but a dream of shadow. But when the Zeus-given gleam is upon him, a clear light is with him and a sweet life.
(from memory, so maybe not terrifically affecting)
I rented a room in San Francisco a couple of years ago where the cable for some reason only had channels up to 35 or so. I thought it was broken, but was told that's all they were paying for - the other "basic cable" channels would be extra. The news channels, I think, were above the 40s.
I give Ogged credit for talking with the crazy people.
I had a very productive week of getting crazy people to speak to me.
I got an unsolicited letter from some lady whose child was stolen many years ago. Fortunately, she recognized that a young child in a recent movie must be her grandchild because the grandchild had a similar dimple to her stolen child. She wanted me to recover this child of her stolen child.
In the middle of the letter, unrelated to anything else, she adds, "I target shoot." Fabulous.
I once represented someone whose plate said "Pink PSY."
I argued that she loved flowers.
The closest to intellectual I've gotten in my license plate phot collection is W84GODO. The rest are mostly boring, like VENOM X on a Dodge Viper, OILBGON on a Prius, and DR RHYTM and so on. I have no idea if the last is for a percussionist or fertility doc.
115: The best cutesy license plate I ever saw was SKWEWY on a VW Rabbit.
My high school physics teacher wanted a license plate that read FISMA. But someone else already had it.
A nice computer one from back in the day. IEHCAR. Way back in the day.
117:
That is good. If it isnt good, it isnt worth getting a personalized plate.
I hate, hate the ones that say "Hot nurse" or "sassy Rn." So unoriginal.
Or "CLSKS GRL"
I've already mentioned on this blog the HWAET car that regularly drove around the UC Berkeley campus. That's the last time I was really envious of a license plate, I think.
117: I liked the "POORCHE" plate I saw on an old bug.
For instance, for a while there was this big deal about how Jesus calls God the Father "abba," which is supposedly a more intimate name,
Gimme, gimme, gimme, a God after midnight .... to take me through the darkness to the break of day ...
I've always been rather fond of Augustine
Me, too. Next to Jerome and Justin Martyr, he's my favorite Saint. Back in the day when I thought I might possibly someday do some real work in Late Antiquity, I really liked Brown's bio and O'Donnell's website. (Oh, God. I was using Mosaic when I first read that website!)
If I had to have Greek on my license plate
I still think "KOAX 1234 (or whatever) would be funny.
I've been thinking of something like "1o0I01o". Figure I can watch nerds squinting in my rearview trying to figure it out while simultaneously evading license-plate identification (not that I need such evasion, as a law-abiding citizen).
123: I'll get BRKEKEI and we'll park next to each other.
123, 125--NERDS.
AND!--I'm hanging a 20 sided die from my rear view mirror.
126: Of course we can't compete since yours says, by special dispensation:
SPATALOCINAEDUS
on your Fiero.
It's like you're going bar bar bar, oud.
I have an oud. Got it for Christmas. The 133 fretless 'lute' kind, not the other.
Oh man.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- President Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel's Holocaust memorial Friday and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memorial's chairman said.
136: holy cow. He's dumber than a three year old.
re: 137
Actually, some Jewish groups have argued for years that the UK or the US ought to have bombed Auschwitz.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/bombau.html
I don't find that page altogether convincing; as somebody quoted there points out the Germans were pretty good at finding ways to kill Jews, but regardless, are you arguing with my larger conclusion?
re: 139
are you arguing with my larger conclusion?
Shit, no.
The argument re: bombing Auschwitz is just one I've heard a fair bit of, as they made a fair bit of it when I went to Terezin [some of the guys who escaped from Auschwitz were original interned there].
Tying together the Nazi and "wingnuts who don't get it" threads, see if you can guess which rocker with BDS wrote these lyrics:
Get ready
Stormtroopers comin'
Comin' up that street, jackboots steppin' high
Got to make a stand
Looking in your windows and listen to your phone
Keep a gun in your hand
I'm having a little trouble visualizing the incident: when you say tried not to piss yourselves laughing do you really mean you tried not to piss in the water laughing?