WARP(?)

SIDENOTE: SCIENCE FICTION

I had a thought last night while I was driving home and the roads were totally empty. I had the windows open and it was very cold. It was a half finished thought, and I present it here as such.

Have you ever read a shitty science fiction novel in which they introduce some kind of hypothetical device/thing without explaining what it really is, but it has a name which evokes what it looks like and or does?

Just making shit up, but, for example:

Nutrition cube
Light gun
Hover bike
Crystal city

I had some kind of breakthrough last night wherein I told myself that emotions, and how we name and explain them, works in the same way.
I immediately didn't know what I was talking about but thought I might be on to something.

OH HOW FAR WE HAVE COME

(shoutouts to T.G.)

WHITE PEOPLE FLIP OUT ABOUT PORTABLE COMPUTER

"This changes the face of computing" said area white man.
Apparently the current face of computing opened its computer mouth and delivered a speech about some kind of tablet complete with stylus for digital cuneiformatting.
"I'm holding it in my hands but it is so light I am not sure if I am actually still holding it in my hands!" screamed a white woman, who was indeed holding the tablet. During her brief statement she checked multiple times to make sure she was still holding this marvel of science.
Later some people talked about a television show and a possible war between two rival television shows. Almost imperceptibly an explosion was heard in the distance.

2010: ENTERTAINMENT

MOTHER

Allow me to repost an email I received from my friend J.C., who is teaching English in rural Japan:

one of my students just turned in a worksheet about mother theresa where he says, quote, she has a nice bod

(posted without permission)

ATTENTION: AMERICAN PUBLIC DISCOURSE COLOR CODED WARNING SYSTEM MOVED FROM "APOPLECTIC" TO "HALLUCINATORY"

WHY IS THIS MAN CRYING?
I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE FUCK ANYMORE,
Somebody explain this to me:

1. Glenn Beck shows us a Coke and a Kodak advertisement as proof of a magic America which once existed, but sadly, has been taken away from us. Or is some kind of paradise lost(?).
2. Wrangles with an overwrought second-person metaphor about how we have been doe-eyed innocents at a bad kid party where there is some experimenting with drugs and alcohol.
Mom and Dad are going to be mad.
3. This leads into a tough love conversation with ficto-mommy about how we will be "financially grounded" and will lead to us having to stay in on metaphorical Saturday night.
4. Beck talks about the future and our children and is overcome with tears.
5. We will tell our children that we "hated the things we did at the time"(tears). At this point I have lost the narrative thread of the metaphor. Are we crying to our future children about the bad party we went to where we weren't even indulging in the debauchery? Or we hated the things our dad made us do? "And Dad was right"?

The metaphorical trainwreck he is driving home amounts to: the current financial meltdown was some delinquent party, bad things were done, now we are to be grounded, and though we were not involved in the the bad stuff that went down, we shall take our punishment, and tell our children proudly. Or that the bad teenagers at the party are the current Marxists in the white house? Or both? I don't know
Who can parse this shit?
Honestly I watched this clip again and I don't even know what the fuck.

The thing which frightens me the most is that this passes for discourse in America.
A few posts down is the footage of the 9/12-teabagger rallies, demonstrations staged and directed by Fox news, and Glenn Beck.
Any cursory glance at the signs being held by the protesters shows that they have no idea what they are actually protesting. All of the interviews show the protestors to be inarticulate and ignorant but united in anger. (And I don't say this out of arrogance. See how people in numbers strongly oppose Obama's appointment of "czars". Their logic being that czars are Russian kings. From that logical leap "Czar = Russian = communism = Obama"(!)(?) Motherfuckers can't google "czar"?)
What alarms me is the fact that Beck has political clout, considering, that what comes out of his mouth is an unadulterated stream of nonsense.
O'reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, et al have their share of nonsense but I can follow their tactics and twistings of facts.
False equivalency, strawman tactics, appeal to xenophobia and a false nationalistic neo-rockwell (via Reagan) vision of America. It is antithesis of everything I believe is good about America, but I understand how they do it. The bible thumping, the race baiting, these are standard boilerplate in stirring people up to support wars and politicians, to vote against their own political, social, and economic interests.
When I hear that shit, I hate it, because I understand it for exactly what it is.

But what alarms me is that Beck is capable of doing this while spewing stream of consciousness hallucinations.

Beck mobilized poor people without health care to march against health care on 9/12.
Is there an aspect to his paranoid-delusional maudlin delivery that I just don't understand?

Many commentators on the left say that what is mobilizing these people is some country-time down-home racism, which due to current social mores can't be vocalized in the same way it once could. Is it that simple?

I don't even know anymore.

CHILDREN ON LEASHES

WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED SO FAR

Received this in my email via Dr. A. Stabbyarms.
Recently this blog has just been youtubes, word up.