This is 5:00 pm, last night. I miss my evenings!
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I Miss Daylight Savings
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Monthly Archives: November 2011
The RIGHT Way to Express Yourself
I’ve come up with bumper stickers that I believe accurately reflect the values that many in this county hold near and dear. As everyone knows, there are few ways that so effectively and concisely sum up one’s raison d’etre than ribbon magnets and bumper stickers. I hope these help…
Most conservatives believe, along with the world’s major religions, that homosexuality is a filthy choice made by depraved, maladjusted individuals. Those who change their minds and play it straight are allowed to live in relative harmony with the good God-fearing citizens who chose to be straight when they were born. Those fiends who choose to prance around in blatant defiance of God’s word, rejecting his love and forgiveness, well, they deserve to die. With this simple message conservatives and religious zealots alike could save lives, and more importantly, souls. What better way to share God’s compassion than to save someone from being beaten to death or killing themselves? It’s as simple as turning right rather than left.
As every Christian knows, the world was messed up right from the beginning. The cause? Women, snakes, and knowledge. IF Eve had never spoken to Satan in his snake suit (why not a bunny?), and IF Eve hadn’t eaten an apple from the Tree of Knowledge (the one and only goddamn thing that God had told her not to do), and IF Adam hadn’t been so distracted by boobies that he had a taste of that same enlightening bit of fruit, none of us would be suffering today. We would all be dumb, happy nudists. Today’s conservatives understand the value of ignorance. I think it was Jesus who said, “Ignorance is bliss.” You can’t worry about what you don’t know about. They just want us to be happy.
Adam Sandler Should Stop Now
I’ll bet Rolling Stone’s movie reviewer, Peter Travers, really hates his job sometimes. Anyone who had seen the preview for Adam Sandler’s latest attempt would have known how terrible it was likely to be. (Actually, if you’ve seen the majority of his movies you would know the very high probability of this one sucking.)
According to Peter Travers:
The plot is a stew of half-baked ideas that quickly turns rancid. Jack has problems at work; his company will go under if he can’t persuade Al Pacino to play himself in a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial. Watching the Oscar winner bust a move and freestyle rap while he extols the virtues of sipping a Dunkachinno is to witness desperation incarnate.
Sandler and director Dennis Dugan must have something on “The Godfather” to make him lower himself to these depths. “Burn it,” says Pacino after watching the commercial Sandler creates. “No one must ever see this.” The same goes for the movie.
The only reason I’m bringing it up is because I love the title of the review.
Another Letter to President Obama
The super-committee debate over budget cuts reminds me again of just how angry I am at you for how you handled the debt ceiling issue.
And now, to make matters worse, the Democrats on the super-committee seem to be going out of their way to cut even more than is required. And what for? Is cutting the deficit going to grow the economy? No! Just the opposite.
How I wish there were someone running next year who I wanted to vote for. At this point, your best chance is that I glumly drag myself to the polls and vote for you. What kills me about this is that I’m sure this is what you were counting on all along.
Why Media Mail
I sell books on Amazon. It is not a big deal. Mostly, I just do it to justify spending hours at thrift stores and book sales. The amount of money I make is small, but I doubt most of the people who buy from me think so. I know I used to think, “I just paid $3.99 for shipping this book and this seller ships it Media Mail! What gives?”
What gives is Amazon and the huge cut they take out of each sale. For example, suppose I post a book for sale for $1.00. A buyer pays $4.99 ($1.00 for the book and $3.99 for shipping and handling). How much do I get? $2.50. That’s right: I get $2.50 and Amazon gets $2.49. I just shipped a paperback book that weighed just over one pound; it cost me $2.82 to ship via Media Mail. So you see, I have to charge more than $1.00 for any book that weighs over a pound.
And what about those one cent books you see all over Amazon? I can’t sell anything for that price. If I sell a book for $0.01, I get $1.66 and Amazon get $2.34. I can’t ship anything for that.
Things get better as the price goes up. For books costing $10.00, I will get a little more than that ($10.15). But this is the exception. I rarely get anything close to that for a book.
I can’t even sell my own books on Amazon, because the discount the publishers give me do not allow me to sell them cheaply enough after Amazon takes its cut for existing.
So if you aren’t happy with the prices at Amazon: it isn’t the sellers. We are just scraping by.
But don’t get me wrong. I like Amazon. I buy a lot of stuff from them. Although, increasingly I buy things from AbeBooks.
Mother Fuckers!
Mississippi rejects the personhood amendment. Ohio Turns Back a Law Limiting Unions’ Rights. And what is the top story on Google News? Herman Cain: I’d take lie detector test to rebut Sharon Bialek claims. Why oh why can’t we have a better press corps?
Update
An hour after the New York Times reported it, Google News finally puts Ohio above Cain. Still no Mississippi on the front page.
Update II
Whenever I write about Herman Cain, Google puts an ad for Cain’s The Iowa Fund. Go ahead and click on it. Please do, in fact. But do not give any money to that fucktard.
Update III
The CBS News headline “Herman Cain: I’d take lie detector test to rebut Sharon Bialek claims” is very misleading. Cain only said he would take a lie detector test after challenged. Even more important, he seemed incredibly nervous when he said it. And finally, he added a caveat that makes the whole statement worthless; here is the whole answer after he was asked if he would take a lie detector test: “I absolutely would, but I’m not going to do that unless I have a good reason to do that.” In other words, “Are you kidding? No fucking way!”
The Mythical Perfect Government Killing Machine
On September 7, Brian Williams asked a question of Rick Perry at the Republican presidential campaign debate. It was about the 234 executions that have taken place under Perry’s governorship. The question itself was not widely covered. What really caused a stir was the audience response to that statistic: applause and later cheers; the audience was overjoyed that so many people had been executed.
It is unfortunate that the question did not get more coverage because it is an important one. Williams asked,
Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times, have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?
Perry brushed off the question, claiming that the state of Texas had a very “thoughtful, a very clear process in place.” He continued on, saying, “If you come into our state… and you kill… one of our citizens… you will be executed.”
That wasn’t the question, though, was it?
To make it perfectly clear to Governor Perry: is it possible that someone who comes into your state might be executed even if he hadn’t murdered anyone?
This is not a question that any death penalty advocate wants to answer. Conservatives like to claim that the government can’t do anything right. Two of their favorite sayings from St. Reagan are, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” and, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'”
So are we to believe that the government can’t do anything right except when it comes to guilty decisions on death penalty cases?[1] That is what conservatives are claiming: our judicial system is perfect.[2] Got that?
Since 1973, we have seen 69 people taken off of death row because DNA evidence has proven them to be innocent. That certainly suggests that before DNA evidence was viable, just as many innocent people were executed. What’s more, most death penalty cases have no DNA evidence. These cases, in which no DNA is available that could possibly exonerate the accused, show that it is entirely reasonable that just as many of these people are innocent.
Liberals do not claim that the government is perfect—only that it is useful and necessary. In order to believe in the death penalty, one must believe that in this regard the government is infallible. But the most fervent believers in the death penalty are those who believe that the government is utterly incompetent. In order to hold these opinions, one must ignore all the evidence and believe in some magical place called Government-Can’t-Do-Anything-Right-But-They-Are-Perfect-When-It-Comes-To-The-Death-Penalty-Land.
[1] Many people, include Rick Perry in the video above, make the argument that the appeal process somehow makes the death penalty faultless—that it provides a error-free check to balance a otherwise imperfect judicial system. This is not a compelling argument. For one thing, plenty of people have been proven to be innocent after their appeals have been exhausted (for example, John Thompson). Secondly, only the original trial comes close to being truly fair. Each step in the appeals process puts greater limits on the evidence that can be used. It is not, as is commonly believed, the case that each person accused of murder (or anything else) gets four or five tries to be found not guilty.
[2] There is another brand of conservative who claims that any innocents who are executed are unfortunate casualties in the judicial war against murder, and that it in no way comprises the integrity of the system itself. Such a philosophy is repugnant. Let me only say here that such a system is as guilty of murder as any person who is legitimately put to death by the system. And what do we do to murderers? At the very least, we give them life without the possibility of parole so they cannot hurt any more innocent people.
The Right Wing’s Hyperbole
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It’s a play off of “hyperbaric” chamber. Get it? It’s pretty damn funny if you ask me. Even if I did design the poster myself.
On the Subject of Torture
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My Fan at Michael’s Furniture Warehouse?
Since starting with Goodle AdSense (Although I don’t know why I try: nobody calls, nobody clicks…) I’ve been very aware of my website traffic. And here’s the thing: when I write a lot, I get a lot of visitors (well, between 100 and 200 per day). When I don’t, the number of visitors goes way down (to less than 100). That’s just what I need: more anxiety in my life! Now, in addition to everything else, I have to worry that if I’m not writing for Frankly Curious, all my readers will go away.
Truly, I didn’t know that there were people who actually read me on something like a regular basis. I just thought all my readers were college students looking for ways not to writer—or to steal—their term papers. The first idea I had that this was not true was the mysterious Kayla. Although I had no idea who she was, she was writing thoughtful comments regarding my articles. For example, she commented on my article There, There, There:
Hahaha as an English major, that shirt in the picture made me chuckle. I am not a huge stickler on spelling, but I do cringe a little bit when people confuse their/there/they’re or your/you’re, or even two/to/too. I am not a grammar pedant or anything like that and I don’t correct people as they speak or write, but I definitely notice!
There was one thing that made me wonder, however. She listed her user name as Cheap Furniture Burbank with a URL that pointed to Michael’s Furniture Warehouse—which is actually in Panorama City or Van Nuys, depending upon who you believe.
I have absolutely no problem with people using my website to advertise as long as they add to the content here. And Kayla certainly does that. Most people do not. Check out my article Zombies (and Kory Stamper Fans) are Attacking! for a full rundown of my ongoing war against such people and monsters. Anyway, I went over to the Michael’s Furniture Warehouse website and I found no indications of a Kayla. Is she an employee? A relative? Or just a booster for all the furniture stores in and around Burbank? (Are Panorama City and Van Nuys in and around Burbank? My geography is very bad. It is my Achilles’ heel while playing Jeopardy. I just looked. They aren’t that close.)
Recently, Kayla has stopped posting. This doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I know I have to keep writing or people will stop visiting and stop not even clicking on the Google ads. Hence: this article.
Tune in Tomorrow for what I had for breakfast!
Gold Diggers
The Bohemian has a mostly forgettable article about the gold buying business by Joe Rosen. But Rosen does do a little investigative reporting by testing some of the local (Santa Rosa area) gold buyers. He used a gold ring weighing 2.95 grams that was purchased for $200 in 1999 to test the widely made claim by gold buyers that they pay anywhere from 70%-92% of the current selling price of gold. This claim is ridiculous on its face. No gold buyer would pay more than the wholesale price of gold and that would be roughly half the selling price of gold. But no matter, it is a good thing to check.
A local jeweler, who offered $81 for the ring, said that he would sell it for $400. That sounds about right. And it isn’t jewelers who are making the outrageous claims mentioned above. Nor are pawn shops. The one pawn shop The Bohemian approached offered $45. (This is entirely in keeping with general pawn shop philosophy: 10%-20% of the selling price of an item. This isn’t a good deal, but at least pawn shops are clear about what they offer.)
Currently, gold is selling for roughly $1600 per ounce. That’s roughly $56.50 per gram. So the ring should be worth $166.50, just based upon its gold content. Thus, if these gold buyers were really offering 70%-92% of the selling price of gold, they would offer between $116.50 and $153.00. So how did they do? One offered $75 (45%) and the other $39 (23%).
There are two lessons in this exercise. First, these gold buyers are liars. Second, you should shop around if you are selling gold. And don’t pass up jewelry stores, or even pawn shops (the pawn shop here out-bid one of the gold buyers).
Demand the Impossible
In the October 2011 issue of The Progressive Matthew Rothschild writes a commentary called “Demand the Impossible.” In it, he discusses income inequality and how it has affected democracy in the United States. He points out that the rich own those with political power: “Their Republican servants in Congress, and their contract employees among the Democrats, have so rigged the legislative process that the vast majority of the American people can’t get what they desperately want and need.” And that our savior is no help: “Meanwhile, President Obama readies the public for cutbacks in Social Security and Medicare.”
His answer: demand the impossible.
What to do? An old slogan of the surrealists applies here: “Be Realistic: Demand the Impossible.” It was a slogan that the French students adopted in their uprising in 1968. We should adopt it again today.
Instead of going along with the neoliberal acquiescence that so typifies the Obama Administration, we should put forward robust demands that will lead us toward the kind of society we want to build and inhabit.
I agree completely. Rothschild provides his own list. I agree with everything on his list and it informs my own.
- Instead of not taxing income above $106,000, the Social Security Tax should be double the normal rate (6.2%).
- Increase the minimum wage to a level where anyone working 40 hours per week would make four times the average rent in their area.
- Demand that the Fed target a 2% unemployment rate and when they don’t meet that require the federal government to hire any unemployed people who want a job.
- Require that no public school class size exceed 10 students. Require that no college class size exceed 20 students.
- Demand free college education and job training for all students who qualify.
- Universal healthcare now.
For those who say we cannot afford it, Rothschild has an excellent answer.
I refuse to believe this. Whenever a President wants to go wage a war somewhere, he can always find $3 trillion to do it. Whenever the banks need bailing out, suddenly trillions more become available. So don’t tell me we can’t afford it.