Just Read & Now Reading

Just Read:

West of Rome by John Fante

Now Reading:

Paradise by Koji Suzuki

This is the first novel by the author of the Ring (Ringu) series. I wonder if he worked on this while he was living in New York City?

Thank You, You Liberal Pot-Smoking Scum Of The 1960s! You Will Hang Some Day!

A dream lay dying
Times columnist and editorial board member Bill Maxwell kept a promise to himself, to become a professor at a small historically black college, to nurture needy students the way that mentors had encouraged him as a young man. His second year started with promise but ended in despair.

My colleagues and I were witnessing the result of low admission standards. Were we expecting too much of young people who scored poorly on the SAT, who were rarely challenged to excel in high school, who were not motivated to take advantage of opportunities to learn, who could not imagine where a sound education could take them?

“Low admission standards”? What “standards”?

“We’re crippling these kids by mothering them, ” I told a colleague over a drink one evening.

“We’re loving them to death, ” he replied.

As long as everyone feels good, isn’t that what matters?

I decided Leonard was an expert and the football player could quote him. But we did not have many students like him. Instead of taking pride in being exemplary students, many were devotees of hip-hop culture. They were anti-intellectual, rude and profane.

I always was amazed that so many of the women tolerated the crude way the men spoke to them. One afternoon in my English class, a male student called a young woman “a big-assed ugly bitch.” I expected her to slap him, and I would not have intervened. Instead, she dismissed the whole thing with a wave of her hand and turned to chat with her roommate. After class, I asked her about the insult.

“That fool don’t mean nothing to me, ” she said. “He ain’t nothing but a stupid brother from Anniston or somewhere.”

The lesson was clear and disheartening: Personal insult, crude language and threatening behavior were a way of life for many students. I saw this kind of exchange repeated dozens of times in the classroom and on The Yard. I had no doubt that the influences of hip-hop contributed greatly to this ugly reality and other deleterious trends.

Oh, but wait! Isn’t all this rap shit nothing but fiction? Isn’t that the point made in that essay I linked to, uh, just yesterday? How dare you state it has real-life consequences!

What a fucking waste. How many of them will wind up in prison or dead? And for what?

We’re such a great nation. Look at how we can afford to waste our own people!

Yeah, you liberal motherfuckers. You will hang. So here’s my advice to all of you: Die faster!

–linkswipe via reddit

Previously in this blog:
Anniversary Day Of Note: John Brown’s Birthday
I Start The Day (And Month!) Bitching (Did You Expect Anything Else?)
Fuck You And Your PC And Your MC
Everyone Knows What To Do About Everyone Else (Not That I’m Any Goddammed Exception!)
What’s That Wonderful Scent In The Air? Oh, Frankness! They’ll Hang Him Now.
Thank You. I’d Like To Kill Myself Now, Please.
What The 1960s Tide Of Liberalism Washed Up
My Heart Bleedeth Not
We Get Poorer And Poorer… And Now Dumber Too!
No, But They All Have Pretty Diplomas Anyway! So They Can Feel Good About Themselves!

Oh My God, Toto! We’re Back In Fucking Kansas!

Periodic Table of Elements if those morons in Kansas designed it.

Kansas, that state that doesn’t believe in that wacky new idea by that guy Darwin. Kansas, that state that makes France look sane! Kansas, which I wish the fuck we could excise from the rest of this country before its ignorance metastasizes!

And those eejits in the midwest don’t understand why the hell their kids, once they have the chance, flee to the coasts!

Flee, Dorothy! Flee!

Don’t Give Money To Restore Old Movies!

Scorsese launches foundation to preserve old films

The maker of classics including “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull” and “Mean Streets,” who finally won an Oscar this year for “The Departed,” said it was too late for many old films.

“In America, we know that 90 percent of all silent films are now gone. We know that all American films made before 1950 are gone, nothing exists.”

Tough shit.

Let’s get this clear: These are corporate assets.

How many times has the MPAA drummed that into our heads?

If you want money from the public to restore any movie, that movie should be assigned to the public domain, period.

Until then, they can fucking rot!

And if you don’t like that idea, then haul the asses of the motion picture industry into Congressional hearings to demand why they are letting our popular culture rot. Where are the stockholders to demand that corporate assets not be wasted?

You can’t have it both ways: Either movies belong to the studios, in which case they spend their money to protect their wealth — or we legislate that any movie that’s near extinction be confiscated and nationalized into the public domain.

Today’s Bellylaugh: Stock Photos

I saw this days and days and days ago but finally jumped on the link today because it was endorsed by those crazed loons at Junkiness. That made me think it was worth reading. As usual, Junkiness was right!

9 things I learned about the world according to anonymous stock photo models

Random-ass white dudes should be placed all over your corporate website for no fucking reason.

It is so funny!

Litvinenko Is Not Forgotten Here

Spy Murder Charge ‘Politically Motivated’
Former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi has dismissed as “politically motivated” Britain’s claim that he murdered fellow spy Alexander Litvinenko.

“I did not kill Litvinenko, have nothing to do with his death and can prove with facts my distrust of the so-called evidence collected by Britain’s justice system,” he told the Russian-owned Itar-Tass news agency.

Lugovoi will be charged if he can be extradited from Russia.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has said it will ask for him to be returned to the UK.

At a news conference, Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald said: “I have today concluded that the evidence given to us by the police is sufficient to charge Andrei Lugovoi with the murder of Mr Litvinenko by deliberate poisoning.

Previously in this blog:
“The bastards got me, but they won’t get everybody.”
“…but they won’t get everybody.”

3-D Usually Gets A D From Me

Top Directors See the Future, and They Say It’s in 3-D

LOS ANGELES, May 21 — If some prominent Hollywood directors and an Irish rock band have their way, moviegoers en masse will soon be heading back to the future, wearing newfangled 3-D glasses.

Bah. I don’t care how “good” it becomes. 3-D hardly ever works for me. I saw a demo at a trade show of a 3-D monitor. That worked. But whenever TV has done 3-D, it’s all a blur to me. This will probably be the same for me too.

Hey, MPAA! If everything goes 3-D, will you finally lay off P2P of 2-D stuff?

And all you eejits who’ve plunked down several grand on your chi-chi idiotic HDTVs — I hope they’re all obsoleted by 3-D HDTV!

Hey, Thanks Again, Republicans For Neutering Our Regulatory Agencies

US high-speed Internet is slow

The average broadband download speed in the US is only 1.9 megabits per second, compared to 61 Mbps in Japan, 45 Mbps in South Korea, 18 Mbps in Sweden, 17 Mpbs in France, and 7 Mbps in Canada, according to the Communication Workers of America.

And you can bet they are doing P2P in Japan like mad — of American movies.

Yet the MPAA treats us like criminals. At 1.9mbps!

Previously in this blog:
They Are Determined To Hijack Your PC!
How Long Before Nielsen Sticks Its Snout In This?
Hypercasting & Hyperdistribution
18 October 2004: The Day TV Died
There Had Better Be A Huge Outrage Over This!
P2P Like 4Evah
New P2P Tool To Help Kill The RIAA And MPAA
Battling The CopyNazis
P2P Alert: CopyNazi Infiltration!
Photo Album: More Bootleg DVDs For Sale In NYC
Photo Album: Bootleg DVDs For Sale In NYC
Hoist That Skull And Crossbones!
Book Him, Danno
The P2P The Suits Fear Above All Else
Well If You’re THAT Stupid, You SHOULD Be Punished!
Except The CopyNazis
P2P Forever And Ever!
P2P2P2P2P2P2P2P2P2P&c…
Reference: CopyNazi Detection
Cancel That Trip To Fantasy Island
Duh!RM
You Can’t Take The Sky From Me
Fantasy Island
CopyNazis Filthier Than Ever
Because This Is The Future
Another Tyrant Not To Luv?
Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These
CopyNazis Enlist Zombies
MPAA/RIAA: Fuck You
CopyNazis Repelled

In France, It’s Always Doomsday

France says no to mass legalisation of undocumented immigrants

France’s minister of immigration and national identity, a new ministry created by President Nicolas Sarkozy, has ruled out legalizing undocumented immigrants en masse.

The new ministry said today that government policy would be dictated by firmness and pragmatism.

“We have to put aside massive legalization. It doesn’t work and it penalizes, even immigrants,” Brice Hortefeux said on Europe 1 radio.

Emphasis added by me.

France also has a Language & Culture Ministry. It does things like making it illegal to use filthy American words such as “email.” Way to go, France. Les eejits!

Previously in this blog:
Yesterday Was Doomsday. Today Is Doomsday. Tomorrow Is Doomsday.
Yo, France. Wut Up?
Is It Happening In America?
Ah, Céline!
Le Pen Continues That Great Post-Modern French Tradition Of Stark Cowardice (While Balzac, Baudelaire, Dumas, Hugo, Nerval, And Zola Spin In Their Graves)

Yesterday Was Doomsday. Today Is Doomsday. Tomorrow Is Doomsday.

Path to national suicide

Addressing the Knights of Columbus in 1915, Theodore Roosevelt warned, “The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.”

In every way possible, Americans have said they do not want to take this risk with their country. Why, then, are our elites taking it?

It remains to be seen what will come of this. Arguments of this sort were raged over immigration from Ireland and Italy too. We lived.