Impious since 2006
May 26, 2016
Apr 28, 2016
Things People Grind
"She said, 'How'd ya like to waste some time?' and
I could not resist when I saw little Nikki grind."
--Prince Rogers Nelson, a rockin' fellow
"America is not just a power, it is a promise. It is not enough
for our country to be extraordinary in might; it must be
exemplary in meaning." --Nelson A. Rockefeller, a prince of industry
commentary by michael j wright
Things people grind: grain, spices, gears in a manual transmission, r,
coffee beans, teeth, hips, noses to the stone, the daily, axes and beef.
By the way, Blasphemes now has a Facebook page. We've been meaning
to tell you. It is called Blasphemes. It's on Facebook. Go fig.
Scrollin', scrollin', scrollin'... Oh, here's an interesting rant.
I hereby present it to you once, uninterrupted. Then I'll discuss.
-------------
"Military, Hamburgers and Minimum Wage
Makes a good point...
Low military pay was not mentioned in the State Of The Union speech. However, increasing the minimum wage was for those fast food employees striking for $15 an hour. Let's do some math:
At $15 an hour Johnny Fry-Boy would make $31,200 annually.
An E1 (Private) in the military makes $18,378 or $8.85/hour.
An E5 (Sergeant) with 8 years of service only makes $35,067 annually or 16.86/hour.
So you're telling me, LaTisha McBurger Flipper, that you deserve as much as those kids getting shot at, deploying for months in hostile environments, and putting their collective asses on the line every day protecting your unskilled butt!?
Here's the deal, Baconator, you are working in a job designed for a kid in high school who is learning how to work and earning enough money for gas, and hanging out with their equally goofy high school pals. If you have chosen this as your life long profession, you have failed. If you don't want minimum wage, don't have minimum skills.
If you can read this, thank a teacher. If it's in English, thank a Veteran."
-------------
If the grammarian in me should at some point come to the fore,
Dear Reader, please remember it was not I who opened the door.
The argument being made here is not a new one, although this version of it is, at least, freshly ground. It is apparently a letter to an editor, and the portion above the underscore --both title and editorial comment-- is the responsibility of said editor. The title is fine, I guess, but the comment bespeaks a person who is unfamiliar with the essence of the argument, and/or is unduly impressed by it.
Everything below the underscore is from a citizen who shall remain nameless, but who was obviously moved to put their own english on what is quickly becoming an old and somewhat off-target sniper shot.
Point by point:
"Low military pay was not mentioned in the State Of The Union speech. However, increasing the minimum wage was for those fast food employees striking for $15 an hour."
Yikes, that second sentence is clunky. Sorry, but it is. Problems abound, and the whole thing should probably have been rewritten, but at the very least it cries out for a, ahem, dash of punctuation. I raise the issue of its clunk for two reasons. One: The writer of this letter will later charge all high-schoolers with being collectively "goofy," yet he or she employs here a sentence structure that causes the word juvenile to leap to mind. Two: Quality presentation is part and parcel of making a good argument and having it taken seriously; that seldom happens when the presenter trips over the carpet on their way to the podium.
"Let's do some math:"
Yes, by all means, let's do some math. Unfortunately, the math the letter writer is about to do is at best unfounded and at worst utterly pointless. That's almost forgivable, though, because the arithmetic itself isn't what's important. The real point is the comparison of numbers, rather than the crunching of them. On a seemingly unrelated topic, I recently commented that television and movie scenes involving a pump-action shotgun often require that the actor, by a now long-standing convention, work the pump action just before firing (or threatening to). This is not the way such a firearm would be operated in the real world, where a live shell would already be in the firing chamber and the gunman would ready for firing by clicking a small button to disengage the safety feature. They do it the way they do in the movies because the pumping action is more dramatic than pressing a small button, and the accompanying sound effect --a ringing, metallic *chung-CHUNK* versus a thin, plastic *tick*-- sounds more deadly. Similarly, "let's do some math" is less accurate than "let's compare some numbers," but it sounds more authoritative.
"At $15 an hour Johnny Fry-Boy would make $31,200 annually."
Unfounded. The only way Johnny makes thirty-one grand is if Johnny works 40 hours a week for all 52 weeks in a calendar year. This is unrealistic in most cases, and in some states it is downright illegal. Minimum wage is synonymous with part-time work; forty hours a week is synonymous with full-time work. Many states require employers to grant full-time workers full-time pay and benefits. Since certain employers don't want to do that, such laws have the inverse effect of limiting the work hours of minimum-wage employees.
Even if Johnny is working in an area where such statutes are not on the books, his boss is unlikely to give him forty hours a week no matter how much Johnny begs, and since Johnny is just as unlikely to work 52 weeks in a row because he sometimes gets sick or has to attend a family function, Johnny would be lucky to earn $24,000 a year (before taxes). Now, 24k goes further in some parts of the country than in others (which is an important point, though I'll not dwell on it right now), but it doesn't go very far anywhere when you consider Johnny has to use that money for his transportation, clothing, groceries, health care, rent (Johnny's alter ego is "Johnny No-Mortgage"), and at least some of his utilities.
Oh yeah, and taxes. Johnny has to pay taxes, because:
"An E1 (Private) in the military makes $18,378 or $8.85/hour."
Technically, an E1 is a private in the Army, not "the military." The Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard don't have the rank of "Private." The Marine Corps has privates, but they don't pay them. They feed 'em barbed wire and bilge water, make 'em burrow into hillsides of gravel for shelter, and teach 'em a word and a half of Latin so they'll have something noble to scream when they beat the [solid waste] out of you for some perceived affront like not knowing the lyrics to a song, or not becoming aroused by a picture of an automatic rifle, or pointing out that it is only a word and a half.
Also, please note that converting Jack Private's yearly earnings into an hourly rate here is a useless exercise. For one thing, the working hours of army privates are not tabulated for the purposes of base pay. Moreover, the whole point of converting Johnny Fry-Boy's hourly wage into even a pipedream of annual earnings was to weigh the two men's paychecks using the same scale. Crunching the private's salary into an hourly wage does not serve that purpose. Instead, it is little more than an attempt to bury the reader in numbers so bereft of meaning they are tantamount to telling a lie.
In fact, the numbers are inaccurate. It took me all of 75 seconds to discover that an army private's salary in 2016 is really $1566.90 per month (I did some googling), which works out to $18,802 per year (I did some math), before bonuses* and benefits. That's about 2.3% higher (doin' da math, yo) than what is quoted by the letter writer. That isn't much, but it does demonstrate the U.S. Army believes in the concept of a cost-of-living increase, which is more than can be said about employers of minimum-wage workers... and, apparently, their customers.
*Military personnel who are deployed into a combat zone, for instance, are paid more, so the letter writer's later claim that "those kids getting shot at" are as underpaid as stated here carries less weight.
So, let's compare numbers. It is far less dramatic than doing some math, but it has the virtue of actually addressing the topic. Yes, Jack Private earns a couple bills shy of nineteen grand and Johnny Fry-Boy makes maybe a couple bills more than twenty-four grand-- a difference of nearly 5500 dollars. That is unfair on its very face, especially when you consider Jack may be called upon to dodge hot lead while Johnny will only be called upon to dodge hot grease. There are, however, mitigating factors. As stated, Johnny must use his $24,000 for transportation, clothing, food and sundries, rent, utilities, and visits to the clinic. Jack, on the other hand, is given free transport, free clothes, free meals, and free shelter-- paid-for, in part, by the tax dollars of Johnny and others like him. Jack's expenses? Hookers, beer, and maybe condoms. (If not, his visits to the clinic are free.)
"An E5 (Sergeant) with 8 years of service only makes $35,067 annually or 16.86/hour."
Translation: "Hey, everybody! I am/was/am-related-to a sergeant in the Army, and I think I/they deserve more money!"
These two absolutely shocking revelations aside, this statement leaps beyond pointlessness and lands just over the chalk line of detrimental. To begin with, the hourly rate here is as empty and useless as the example of the private, and the salary claimed is just as inaccurate. As of 2016, an Army E5 with eight years' service makes $2989.80 a month, which comes to a base salary of $35,877 a year. Not surprisingly, this is also a pay increase of 2.3 percent. Good news, Sarge: you no longer make "only" $35,067.
Of greater significance than the precise numbers, however, is the sergeant's strategic misstep of including this bit of axe-grinding in his or her argument. Consider the ill logic. A purely hypothetical fry cook, earning a proposed fifteen dollars an hour and working an ideal and possibly illegal forty hours a week for an (arguably) optimum fifty-two weeks, makes a fresh-out-of-adjectives $31,200 in a year. An actual army sergeant, the recent recipient an actual pay increase, earns an actual $35,877 (more than $4500 more) plus bonuses and/or benefits in the same timeframe. Ergo, the fry cook is an [sphincter].
To put it another way: S makes more money than J would ever make even if J got a wage hike and more hours, so J is wrong to ask for a raise.
"So you're telling me, LaTisha McBurger Flipper,..."
I'm unclear why Johnny's double surname warrants a hyphen while LaTisha's doesn't. Racism? Sexism? Hyphenism?
"...that you deserve as much as those kids getting shot at, deploying for months in hostile environments, and putting their collective asses on the line every day..."
LaTisha is not making that comparison, Sarge. You are.
What LaTisha is telling you is that when she totals her earnings and her expenditures and then compares the two, it doesn't add up to enough to realistically pursue the so-called American Dream for which those kids are supposedly fighting.
Don't get me wrong. How well or how poorly our servicemen and -women are compensated is a discussion worth having, and there is almost certainly some rational merit in relating their salaries to earnings in the domestic, civilian workforce. The author of this particular letter-to-the-editor, however, adopts a tone so vehement that it seems to go beyond simply castigating minimum-wage workers for wanting higher pay, which is a bit like a dog who barks at the neighbors for mowing their own lawn, to flirting with actively blaming them for low military salaries.
An aside... Until just a couple of days ago, I could have said, "Actually, relatively few of our service personnel are currently being shot at. Thanks, Obama," but then the president announced he was expanding our military presence in Syria, nullifying my point. Thanks, Obama.
"...protecting your unskilled butt!?"
Thank you for protecting my posterior. [Screw] you for using the terminology of a ten-year-old to denote it.
As if the name-calling and loosely hinged ranting this argument has quickly devolved into weren't enough, the sergeant now seeks to hammer home the childishness with some good ol' double punctuation. It should be noted that the classic exclamation-point/question-mark combo was popularized by Charles M. Schulz, a cartoonist writing dialog for a whole neighborhood of the most emo eight-year-olds to have ever appeared in print.
Moreover, the exclamation point is sort of the little red Corvette of punctuation. In the same way a middle-aged man might buy a sports car because he fears getting older, would-be writers often employ an unnecessary exclamation mark to buttress a point they feel insecure about having made. It is the printed word's corollary to speaking more loudly lest anyone question your confidence. It is the next best thing to writing in all-caps. Consider: the paragraph which begins, "So you're telling me," and ends, "your unskilled butt," is one long sentence consisting of no less than 38 words (one of them a contraction). After all those syllables, our letter writer felt his or her entire point still needed reinforcement.
"Here's the deal, Baconater, you are working in a job designed for a kid in high school..."
The job was designed to keep the owner's expenses down, much like the pseudo-food they sell and the assembly-line way they prepare it. The job was designed for anyone, of any age, who is willing to take it (and/or is forced to by circumstance).
"...who is learning how to work and earning enough for gas, and hanging out with their equally goofy high school pals."
By far, the two places in any written argument you most want your grammar/syntax to lose traction are the introduction and the conclusion.
Also, not all high-schoolers are goofy, let alone equally so.
"If you have chosen this as your life long profession, you have failed."
No-one chooses a minimum-wage job as their life-long profession.
I'm going to go ahead and reason that our letter writer's charge, "you have failed," is supposed to mean they feel the minimum-wage worker has failed at life in general, or at least at the grand career-choice carousel. Otherwise, the sentence contradicts itself.
"If you don't want minimum wage, don't have minimum skills."
It is dicey to make the assumption that the sort of person who would engage in an argument like the one made in this letter would also be the sort to rail against the overseas exodus of good-paying manufacturing jobs thanks Obama. After all, that would make our letter writer a hypocrite. A person cannot lament a shortage of good-paying, relatively low-skill positions and then blame the workers themselves when they settle for the low-paying scut work that is left.
Not unless they're looking to save a few cents on their next burger.
"If you can read this, thank a teacher."
If you can do the math, thank your calculator. It's probably foreign-made.
"If it's in English, thank a Veteran."
(Psst. They're not sure what language this is.)
-------------
Found on Mars this week... a purple guitar, bearing a rune
that looks like a fleur-de-lis trying to fellate itself.
I could not resist when I saw little Nikki grind."
--Prince Rogers Nelson, a rockin' fellow
"America is not just a power, it is a promise. It is not enough
for our country to be extraordinary in might; it must be
exemplary in meaning." --Nelson A. Rockefeller, a prince of industry
commentary by michael j wright
Things people grind: grain, spices, gears in a manual transmission, r,
coffee beans, teeth, hips, noses to the stone, the daily, axes and beef.
By the way, Blasphemes now has a Facebook page. We've been meaning
to tell you. It is called Blasphemes. It's on Facebook. Go fig.
Scrollin', scrollin', scrollin'... Oh, here's an interesting rant.
I hereby present it to you once, uninterrupted. Then I'll discuss.
-------------
"Military, Hamburgers and Minimum Wage
Makes a good point...
Low military pay was not mentioned in the State Of The Union speech. However, increasing the minimum wage was for those fast food employees striking for $15 an hour. Let's do some math:
At $15 an hour Johnny Fry-Boy would make $31,200 annually.
An E1 (Private) in the military makes $18,378 or $8.85/hour.
An E5 (Sergeant) with 8 years of service only makes $35,067 annually or 16.86/hour.
So you're telling me, LaTisha McBurger Flipper, that you deserve as much as those kids getting shot at, deploying for months in hostile environments, and putting their collective asses on the line every day protecting your unskilled butt!?
Here's the deal, Baconator, you are working in a job designed for a kid in high school who is learning how to work and earning enough money for gas, and hanging out with their equally goofy high school pals. If you have chosen this as your life long profession, you have failed. If you don't want minimum wage, don't have minimum skills.
If you can read this, thank a teacher. If it's in English, thank a Veteran."
-------------
If the grammarian in me should at some point come to the fore,
Dear Reader, please remember it was not I who opened the door.
The argument being made here is not a new one, although this version of it is, at least, freshly ground. It is apparently a letter to an editor, and the portion above the underscore --both title and editorial comment-- is the responsibility of said editor. The title is fine, I guess, but the comment bespeaks a person who is unfamiliar with the essence of the argument, and/or is unduly impressed by it.
Everything below the underscore is from a citizen who shall remain nameless, but who was obviously moved to put their own english on what is quickly becoming an old and somewhat off-target sniper shot.
Point by point:
"Low military pay was not mentioned in the State Of The Union speech. However, increasing the minimum wage was for those fast food employees striking for $15 an hour."
Yikes, that second sentence is clunky. Sorry, but it is. Problems abound, and the whole thing should probably have been rewritten, but at the very least it cries out for a, ahem, dash of punctuation. I raise the issue of its clunk for two reasons. One: The writer of this letter will later charge all high-schoolers with being collectively "goofy," yet he or she employs here a sentence structure that causes the word juvenile to leap to mind. Two: Quality presentation is part and parcel of making a good argument and having it taken seriously; that seldom happens when the presenter trips over the carpet on their way to the podium.
"Let's do some math:"
Yes, by all means, let's do some math. Unfortunately, the math the letter writer is about to do is at best unfounded and at worst utterly pointless. That's almost forgivable, though, because the arithmetic itself isn't what's important. The real point is the comparison of numbers, rather than the crunching of them. On a seemingly unrelated topic, I recently commented that television and movie scenes involving a pump-action shotgun often require that the actor, by a now long-standing convention, work the pump action just before firing (or threatening to). This is not the way such a firearm would be operated in the real world, where a live shell would already be in the firing chamber and the gunman would ready for firing by clicking a small button to disengage the safety feature. They do it the way they do in the movies because the pumping action is more dramatic than pressing a small button, and the accompanying sound effect --a ringing, metallic *chung-CHUNK* versus a thin, plastic *tick*-- sounds more deadly. Similarly, "let's do some math" is less accurate than "let's compare some numbers," but it sounds more authoritative.
"At $15 an hour Johnny Fry-Boy would make $31,200 annually."
Unfounded. The only way Johnny makes thirty-one grand is if Johnny works 40 hours a week for all 52 weeks in a calendar year. This is unrealistic in most cases, and in some states it is downright illegal. Minimum wage is synonymous with part-time work; forty hours a week is synonymous with full-time work. Many states require employers to grant full-time workers full-time pay and benefits. Since certain employers don't want to do that, such laws have the inverse effect of limiting the work hours of minimum-wage employees.
Even if Johnny is working in an area where such statutes are not on the books, his boss is unlikely to give him forty hours a week no matter how much Johnny begs, and since Johnny is just as unlikely to work 52 weeks in a row because he sometimes gets sick or has to attend a family function, Johnny would be lucky to earn $24,000 a year (before taxes). Now, 24k goes further in some parts of the country than in others (which is an important point, though I'll not dwell on it right now), but it doesn't go very far anywhere when you consider Johnny has to use that money for his transportation, clothing, groceries, health care, rent (Johnny's alter ego is "Johnny No-Mortgage"), and at least some of his utilities.
Oh yeah, and taxes. Johnny has to pay taxes, because:
"An E1 (Private) in the military makes $18,378 or $8.85/hour."
Technically, an E1 is a private in the Army, not "the military." The Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard don't have the rank of "Private." The Marine Corps has privates, but they don't pay them. They feed 'em barbed wire and bilge water, make 'em burrow into hillsides of gravel for shelter, and teach 'em a word and a half of Latin so they'll have something noble to scream when they beat the [solid waste] out of you for some perceived affront like not knowing the lyrics to a song, or not becoming aroused by a picture of an automatic rifle, or pointing out that it is only a word and a half.
Also, please note that converting Jack Private's yearly earnings into an hourly rate here is a useless exercise. For one thing, the working hours of army privates are not tabulated for the purposes of base pay. Moreover, the whole point of converting Johnny Fry-Boy's hourly wage into even a pipedream of annual earnings was to weigh the two men's paychecks using the same scale. Crunching the private's salary into an hourly wage does not serve that purpose. Instead, it is little more than an attempt to bury the reader in numbers so bereft of meaning they are tantamount to telling a lie.
In fact, the numbers are inaccurate. It took me all of 75 seconds to discover that an army private's salary in 2016 is really $1566.90 per month (I did some googling), which works out to $18,802 per year (I did some math), before bonuses* and benefits. That's about 2.3% higher (doin' da math, yo) than what is quoted by the letter writer. That isn't much, but it does demonstrate the U.S. Army believes in the concept of a cost-of-living increase, which is more than can be said about employers of minimum-wage workers... and, apparently, their customers.
*Military personnel who are deployed into a combat zone, for instance, are paid more, so the letter writer's later claim that "those kids getting shot at" are as underpaid as stated here carries less weight.
So, let's compare numbers. It is far less dramatic than doing some math, but it has the virtue of actually addressing the topic. Yes, Jack Private earns a couple bills shy of nineteen grand and Johnny Fry-Boy makes maybe a couple bills more than twenty-four grand-- a difference of nearly 5500 dollars. That is unfair on its very face, especially when you consider Jack may be called upon to dodge hot lead while Johnny will only be called upon to dodge hot grease. There are, however, mitigating factors. As stated, Johnny must use his $24,000 for transportation, clothing, food and sundries, rent, utilities, and visits to the clinic. Jack, on the other hand, is given free transport, free clothes, free meals, and free shelter-- paid-for, in part, by the tax dollars of Johnny and others like him. Jack's expenses? Hookers, beer, and maybe condoms. (If not, his visits to the clinic are free.)
"An E5 (Sergeant) with 8 years of service only makes $35,067 annually or 16.86/hour."
Translation: "Hey, everybody! I am/was/am-related-to a sergeant in the Army, and I think I/they deserve more money!"
These two absolutely shocking revelations aside, this statement leaps beyond pointlessness and lands just over the chalk line of detrimental. To begin with, the hourly rate here is as empty and useless as the example of the private, and the salary claimed is just as inaccurate. As of 2016, an Army E5 with eight years' service makes $2989.80 a month, which comes to a base salary of $35,877 a year. Not surprisingly, this is also a pay increase of 2.3 percent. Good news, Sarge: you no longer make "only" $35,067.
Of greater significance than the precise numbers, however, is the sergeant's strategic misstep of including this bit of axe-grinding in his or her argument. Consider the ill logic. A purely hypothetical fry cook, earning a proposed fifteen dollars an hour and working an ideal and possibly illegal forty hours a week for an (arguably) optimum fifty-two weeks, makes a fresh-out-of-adjectives $31,200 in a year. An actual army sergeant, the recent recipient an actual pay increase, earns an actual $35,877 (more than $4500 more) plus bonuses and/or benefits in the same timeframe. Ergo, the fry cook is an [sphincter].
To put it another way: S makes more money than J would ever make even if J got a wage hike and more hours, so J is wrong to ask for a raise.
"So you're telling me, LaTisha McBurger Flipper,..."
I'm unclear why Johnny's double surname warrants a hyphen while LaTisha's doesn't. Racism? Sexism? Hyphenism?
"...that you deserve as much as those kids getting shot at, deploying for months in hostile environments, and putting their collective asses on the line every day..."
LaTisha is not making that comparison, Sarge. You are.
What LaTisha is telling you is that when she totals her earnings and her expenditures and then compares the two, it doesn't add up to enough to realistically pursue the so-called American Dream for which those kids are supposedly fighting.
Don't get me wrong. How well or how poorly our servicemen and -women are compensated is a discussion worth having, and there is almost certainly some rational merit in relating their salaries to earnings in the domestic, civilian workforce. The author of this particular letter-to-the-editor, however, adopts a tone so vehement that it seems to go beyond simply castigating minimum-wage workers for wanting higher pay, which is a bit like a dog who barks at the neighbors for mowing their own lawn, to flirting with actively blaming them for low military salaries.
An aside... Until just a couple of days ago, I could have said, "Actually, relatively few of our service personnel are currently being shot at. Thanks, Obama," but then the president announced he was expanding our military presence in Syria, nullifying my point. Thanks, Obama.
"...protecting your unskilled butt!?"
Thank you for protecting my posterior. [Screw] you for using the terminology of a ten-year-old to denote it.
As if the name-calling and loosely hinged ranting this argument has quickly devolved into weren't enough, the sergeant now seeks to hammer home the childishness with some good ol' double punctuation. It should be noted that the classic exclamation-point/question-mark combo was popularized by Charles M. Schulz, a cartoonist writing dialog for a whole neighborhood of the most emo eight-year-olds to have ever appeared in print.
Moreover, the exclamation point is sort of the little red Corvette of punctuation. In the same way a middle-aged man might buy a sports car because he fears getting older, would-be writers often employ an unnecessary exclamation mark to buttress a point they feel insecure about having made. It is the printed word's corollary to speaking more loudly lest anyone question your confidence. It is the next best thing to writing in all-caps. Consider: the paragraph which begins, "So you're telling me," and ends, "your unskilled butt," is one long sentence consisting of no less than 38 words (one of them a contraction). After all those syllables, our letter writer felt his or her entire point still needed reinforcement.
"Here's the deal, Baconater, you are working in a job designed for a kid in high school..."
The job was designed to keep the owner's expenses down, much like the pseudo-food they sell and the assembly-line way they prepare it. The job was designed for anyone, of any age, who is willing to take it (and/or is forced to by circumstance).
"...who is learning how to work and earning enough for gas, and hanging out with their equally goofy high school pals."
By far, the two places in any written argument you most want your grammar/syntax to lose traction are the introduction and the conclusion.
Also, not all high-schoolers are goofy, let alone equally so.
"If you have chosen this as your life long profession, you have failed."
No-one chooses a minimum-wage job as their life-long profession.
I'm going to go ahead and reason that our letter writer's charge, "you have failed," is supposed to mean they feel the minimum-wage worker has failed at life in general, or at least at the grand career-choice carousel. Otherwise, the sentence contradicts itself.
"If you don't want minimum wage, don't have minimum skills."
It is dicey to make the assumption that the sort of person who would engage in an argument like the one made in this letter would also be the sort to rail against the overseas exodus of good-paying manufacturing jobs thanks Obama. After all, that would make our letter writer a hypocrite. A person cannot lament a shortage of good-paying, relatively low-skill positions and then blame the workers themselves when they settle for the low-paying scut work that is left.
Not unless they're looking to save a few cents on their next burger.
"If you can read this, thank a teacher."
If you can do the math, thank your calculator. It's probably foreign-made.
"If it's in English, thank a Veteran."
(Psst. They're not sure what language this is.)
-------------
Found on Mars this week... a purple guitar, bearing a rune
that looks like a fleur-de-lis trying to fellate itself.
Mar 1, 2016
Hillary=Nixon
Synonyms for "Tricky":
Cunning, crafty, wily, guileful, artful, devious, sly, scheming, slippery, slick, calculating, designing, sharp, shrewd, astute, canny
Antonyms for "Dick" ... results not entirely helpful. I'll take the first one and go from there.
Synonyms for "Arteria Vaginalis"....
Duct, Maidenhead, Fanny, Urethral Orifice, Epithelial Duct...
I'm sure someone, somewhere will come up with a less Clinical word to use.
They say Hillary has a "likeability" gap. A bit of a "turn-off factor."
Yes, yes, I agree. She does have a fantastic resume. As did Richard Nixon. It's the CHOICES they made while performing those jobs are what needs to be examined. Not just their likeability, but their morality as well.
If you think HillDog has some scandals in the past, just wait until she wins the seat formally held by her husband. Some scandals will not be warranted, as that's politics - but it's the ones that are - well, they'll make her husband's indiscretion with an intern the same age as his daughter seem almost silly.
Look I can make a laundry list of scandals and poor decisions that Hillary has made in her career. She's facing two separate FBI investigations while campaigning for the Presidency. That seems unprecedented. Spiro Agnew was only running for Vice President.
So far, Hillary has gotten by as she flexes her Clinton Machine to get what she wants. And she really, really, really wants to be the President. Why? I'm not sure. She doesn't seem to articulate that very well. Well, not on stump speeches. Probably in the speeches she gives behind closed doors to people writing checks to her and her Foundation. I don't know - she won't release the transcripts. It makes me wonder what she's willing to do to get there.
Remember, Nixon only 'got caught' because G. Gordon Liddy and the Plumbers put their slice of tape on horizontally, not vertically over the door lock when they entered the Democratic HQ at the Watergate Hotel. That's how they got caught. And Watergate, it's been said, was what Congress was able to get Nixon for. How about the Plain of Jars in Lous? Who knows just how many skeletons were left hiding in that Oval Office closet before he rushed out? Watergate was just the one that brought him down.
Ironically Nixon was a conspiracy theorist nut. It was the "Jews, Intellectuals and Ivy Leaguers" that he ranted about on the tapes. HillDog is convinced there's "a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" against her too. Maybe there is.
On the bright side, we have one more party than a Communist nation - as George Carlin so poignantly pointed out. But if you've looked on that side of the fence lately it's either 1933, or just a train wreck in an airport. But, again, looking on the bright side here, ding-dong, Jeb! is gone!
Jan 6, 2016
Auld and Knew
"Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--
the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden
turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
--C.S. Lewis
"[It] is not a milestone ... that I intend to go unnoticed.
I want to make some noise. I want to make a joyful noise.
I want to make too much noise. I want the neighbors to complain."
--Joss Whedon
commentary by michael j wright
Part One
Before I get to what is almost an obligatory topic of this day, I'd like to express a thought or two regarding Comedy Central's re-re-vamped The Daily Show..., which you already know is now hosted by Trevor Noah, but which form demands I spell out for you: ...with Trevor Noah.
I completely understand his and his producers' need and desire to differentiate Noah from the institution that was Jon Stewart. Consequently, I was fine with the new set and the new graphics. I was even okay with the decision to have Noah standing, out from behind the desk, while handing us our tag-riffic (if sometimes obtuse) Moment of Zen. Such things were no big deal.
When the show returned to the air for this first full week of the new year, however, bigger deals were afoot. I'd tell you I chose the word afoot with care, but the truth is words like that sometimes just pop into my head. The reason afoot is particularly fitting here is that the first thing one notices about The Daily Show's most recent cosmetic tinkering is the decision to open "cold," in the parlance of the biz, with Noah standing in/walking from one of the sizeable set's seldom-seen crannies, trying valiantly to fit his South African accent around distinctly American words like "Ar-egon."
I don't yet know whose decision this was. Perhaps Noah lobbied for it; perhaps the show's producers told him to give it a try. Likewise, I don't yet know the thinking that went into the decision. Maybe Noah is more comfortable standing than sitting. Maybe the obvious fact that Noah's face and physique are more appealing than Stewart's led someone to the, um, epiphany that those assets should be more often showcased. Whatever the cause, and however awkward it may seem in the short term, the results are nowhere near disagreeable enough for even a curmudgeonly nit-picker like me to raise a proverbial ruckus.
What happens after the cold open, on the other hand, is sacrilege of the first order: they changed the theme music.
Actually, to say they changed the opening theme doesn't do the dastardly deed justice. It would be far more accurate to say they did away with it. For years, the straight-outta-central-casting, big-voiced announcer's list of date, location, and title was followed by a stirring snare-drum roll and rousing guitar riff. It got the blood pumping. Now, that same litany is followed by a handful of fall-flat notes, probably (judging by the utter lack of soul, depth, warmth, et cetera) generated by a computer. It is to its predecessor what erectile dysfunction is to arousal: I want to watch the show, but I don't think I can now. It's depressing. Instead of being pumped to see The Daily Show's clever take on the events of the past few days, I now involuntarily say, "Nope!" and wonder why I suddenly feel so blue.
{Addendum: Having seen two additional episodes, I now realize The Daily Show did not "do away" with its theme, but merely substituted a different arrangement or mix. Maybe yelling "Nope!" isn't the best way to listen for sonic subtleties. With that acknowledgement, I stand by my characterizations of the new mix's aural impact.}
Daily Show, please take note...
When Disney bought LucasFilm, millions of fans were a little brought-down by the realization that the next installment of Star Wars would not be preceded by the trumpet-laden 20th Century Fox fanfare. When they went to see The Force Awakens, however, John Williams' familiar opening measures still underscored the sudden STAR WARS logo and opening text on the screen-- and they cheered. There is a lesson to be learned from that.
Part Two
An acquaintance of mine recently wondered openly if there was an official date when he could stop pretending to give a [negative term of your choosing] how every-damned-body-he-has-ever-known's holidays were. (I'm paraphrasing.) I suspect the question was prompted by the phenomenon of every-damned-body he has to passingly interact with asking how his holidays were. You know the type. People who can actually convince you they give a [see above] are said to have charisma; people who try very hard and don't quite pull it off are almost always in sales.
Fortunately, there is a firm date when the holidays are over. It's today.
Centuries ago, the religious clerics who invented Christmas --and by invented I mean they stole it from some sun-worshippers and re-vamped it to differentiate the new host from the old; new set, new theme music, the whole schmeer-- decided the season should be twelve days long. (Hence the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas," which appeals mainly to choir directors and autistics.) The basis for this time frame is the legend that the Magi, or Three Wise Men (who were up-jumped to kings in their theme song), did not arrive to pay homage to the newly born King of Kings for the better part of two weeks. Because even wise men who are running late can learn something new, the event was called the Epiphany (which basically means realization), and because January 5th is the twelfth day of Christmas, January 6th was dubbed the Day of the Epiphany (or usually just Epiphany).
Of far greater relevance to most of us, with our modern, temporally
expanded, more secular notion of the holidays, is this...
By the church's own calendar, January 6th of every year is the first day of
It Officially Ain't Christmas Anymore, Jack, So Stop Asking.
Part Three
Today, we here at Blasphemes celebrate ten years of impiety. For reasons loosely tied to the discussion in Part Two, it was on January 6th, 2006 that this here site was officially launched, or founded, or opened, or whatever. Please honor this milestone, Dear Reader, by engaging in a vice of your own choosing. At the very least, give a passerby a dirty look and let them wonder why.
-------------
Found on Mars this week... a fragment of star map,
and a mile post numbered 1138.
the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden
turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
--C.S. Lewis
"[It] is not a milestone ... that I intend to go unnoticed.
I want to make some noise. I want to make a joyful noise.
I want to make too much noise. I want the neighbors to complain."
--Joss Whedon
commentary by michael j wright
Part One
Before I get to what is almost an obligatory topic of this day, I'd like to express a thought or two regarding Comedy Central's re-re-vamped The Daily Show..., which you already know is now hosted by Trevor Noah, but which form demands I spell out for you: ...with Trevor Noah.
I completely understand his and his producers' need and desire to differentiate Noah from the institution that was Jon Stewart. Consequently, I was fine with the new set and the new graphics. I was even okay with the decision to have Noah standing, out from behind the desk, while handing us our tag-riffic (if sometimes obtuse) Moment of Zen. Such things were no big deal.
When the show returned to the air for this first full week of the new year, however, bigger deals were afoot. I'd tell you I chose the word afoot with care, but the truth is words like that sometimes just pop into my head. The reason afoot is particularly fitting here is that the first thing one notices about The Daily Show's most recent cosmetic tinkering is the decision to open "cold," in the parlance of the biz, with Noah standing in/walking from one of the sizeable set's seldom-seen crannies, trying valiantly to fit his South African accent around distinctly American words like "Ar-egon."
I don't yet know whose decision this was. Perhaps Noah lobbied for it; perhaps the show's producers told him to give it a try. Likewise, I don't yet know the thinking that went into the decision. Maybe Noah is more comfortable standing than sitting. Maybe the obvious fact that Noah's face and physique are more appealing than Stewart's led someone to the, um, epiphany that those assets should be more often showcased. Whatever the cause, and however awkward it may seem in the short term, the results are nowhere near disagreeable enough for even a curmudgeonly nit-picker like me to raise a proverbial ruckus.
What happens after the cold open, on the other hand, is sacrilege of the first order: they changed the theme music.
Actually, to say they changed the opening theme doesn't do the dastardly deed justice. It would be far more accurate to say they did away with it. For years, the straight-outta-central-casting, big-voiced announcer's list of date, location, and title was followed by a stirring snare-drum roll and rousing guitar riff. It got the blood pumping. Now, that same litany is followed by a handful of fall-flat notes, probably (judging by the utter lack of soul, depth, warmth, et cetera) generated by a computer. It is to its predecessor what erectile dysfunction is to arousal: I want to watch the show, but I don't think I can now. It's depressing. Instead of being pumped to see The Daily Show's clever take on the events of the past few days, I now involuntarily say, "Nope!" and wonder why I suddenly feel so blue.
{Addendum: Having seen two additional episodes, I now realize The Daily Show did not "do away" with its theme, but merely substituted a different arrangement or mix. Maybe yelling "Nope!" isn't the best way to listen for sonic subtleties. With that acknowledgement, I stand by my characterizations of the new mix's aural impact.}
Daily Show, please take note...
When Disney bought LucasFilm, millions of fans were a little brought-down by the realization that the next installment of Star Wars would not be preceded by the trumpet-laden 20th Century Fox fanfare. When they went to see The Force Awakens, however, John Williams' familiar opening measures still underscored the sudden STAR WARS logo and opening text on the screen-- and they cheered. There is a lesson to be learned from that.
Part Two
An acquaintance of mine recently wondered openly if there was an official date when he could stop pretending to give a [negative term of your choosing] how every-damned-body-he-has-ever-known's holidays were. (I'm paraphrasing.) I suspect the question was prompted by the phenomenon of every-damned-body he has to passingly interact with asking how his holidays were. You know the type. People who can actually convince you they give a [see above] are said to have charisma; people who try very hard and don't quite pull it off are almost always in sales.
Fortunately, there is a firm date when the holidays are over. It's today.
Centuries ago, the religious clerics who invented Christmas --and by invented I mean they stole it from some sun-worshippers and re-vamped it to differentiate the new host from the old; new set, new theme music, the whole schmeer-- decided the season should be twelve days long. (Hence the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas," which appeals mainly to choir directors and autistics.) The basis for this time frame is the legend that the Magi, or Three Wise Men (who were up-jumped to kings in their theme song), did not arrive to pay homage to the newly born King of Kings for the better part of two weeks. Because even wise men who are running late can learn something new, the event was called the Epiphany (which basically means realization), and because January 5th is the twelfth day of Christmas, January 6th was dubbed the Day of the Epiphany (or usually just Epiphany).
Of far greater relevance to most of us, with our modern, temporally
expanded, more secular notion of the holidays, is this...
By the church's own calendar, January 6th of every year is the first day of
It Officially Ain't Christmas Anymore, Jack, So Stop Asking.
Part Three
Today, we here at Blasphemes celebrate ten years of impiety. For reasons loosely tied to the discussion in Part Two, it was on January 6th, 2006 that this here site was officially launched, or founded, or opened, or whatever. Please honor this milestone, Dear Reader, by engaging in a vice of your own choosing. At the very least, give a passerby a dirty look and let them wonder why.
-------------
Found on Mars this week... a fragment of star map,
and a mile post numbered 1138.
Oct 1, 2015
Pole Position
"Well, I'm a-standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona--
it's such a fine sight to see:
It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford,
slowin' down to take a look at me.
Come on, baby, don't say, 'Maybe.'
I've gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me...
Take it easy, take it easy.
Don't let the sound o' your own wheels
make you crazy." --The Eagles
commentary by michael j. wright
Someone once said that a picture is worth a thousand words. The photograph I wish to discuss is protected by one: a password. Woe and alas and something else I'm sure, my tech-savvy is insufficient to hackus-packus said image to a pixilated point right before your very eyes. I would, like, rend my garments and tear out my hair, really I would, were it not for two factors. One: I feel that my writing chops are up to the task of activating the projector in your mind, and in far fewer than a thousand words. Two: while it is important that you have some idea of the image itself first, the main point of this post will be the caption that comes with it. (News Flash! Writer Discusses Words Not Pictures. Video at 11.)
The photo is patriotic porn in an almost-pure form. It is the sort of image that seems designed specifically for those who have an absurd need to feel disproportionately proud of living in the land in which by chance they were born, but who need, you know, a little help getting their blood stirred. I'm sure the symbolism in the image is indeed stirring, too, if you're into that sort of thing-- almost enough to make you want to recite "The Star-spangled Banner." I said recite, not sing. Francis Scott Key did not write a song, he wrote a poem. It was his Original Intent that it be recited, dammit-- all four stanzas. Yea and aye, lo and high, this country started to lose its way or something, fellow citizens, the day we put that [stuff] to music. Only by getting back to the fundamentals and whatnot will we be able to come together as a People and beat Ohio State or whatever.
By now you are probably wondering about the actual picture.
Oh, fine, then, I guess I'll tell you.
A bald eagle is perched atop a flagpole.
Hanging limply from the pole is a United States flag.
Well, you know what they say about a limp flag: typically, it is a symptom of being in the middle of a large high-pressure center. Hey, if you can't joke about the weather, what can you joke about?
Admittedly, I am working here with two of the most-recognizable icons in our culture: a bald eagle and a U.S. flag. Moreover, I spent no time detailing the precise orientation of the bird (a shameful short-shrifting of invaluable info, to be sure), nor did I mention the grey backdrop of an overcast sky, nor did I attempt to capture the technicolor vibrancy of either the stars or the stripes. Still, "A bald eagle is perched atop a flagpole. Hanging... from the pole is a United States flag," does put a picture in your mind, right? Seventeen words. Just sayin'.
As I stated earlier, the photograph itself is not what spurred me to compose this diatribe. It was the accompanying caption, which reads:
"Of all the places he could have landed..."
Yes, of all the places he could have landed... this was probably the highest.
Bald eagles are birds-of-prey, which is a cool way of saying they are flying animals who hunt small, non-flying animals. They like to hunt from on high, because it is easier to both see the prey and attack it. Conveniently, they're birds, so hunting from above is rarely a problem. Every now and then, though, all that flapping and coasting and flapping and coasting gets literally tiresome, so they rest. They don't stop hunting, mind you, they just take a break from flying. They prefer to take these government-mandated passivity periods in places that are relatively far off the ground and relatively far from surrounding impediments, the better to see a potential target and swoop down upon it. Flagpoles, it turns out, make for near-perfect vantage points, especially on calm days when that annoying sheet of distractingly colored fabric isn't dangerously dancing about.
For most of us, the odds against seeing a bald eagle in the wild are pretty long. Anyone who finds themselves in such a circumstance, however, with a bald eagle hunting and a flagpole within half a mile, and some time to spend, will likely see him land on it. He won't care what flag is flying from it, either, be it the U.S. stars and stripes, the Confederate stars and bars, or the proud pennant of the Potentate of the Prickly Pear and Chocolate-covered Prune. He will be thinking: Is that a field mouse over there by that bush?
A bald eagle is perched atop a flagpole;
hanging from the pole is a U.S. flag;
and the caption reads:
"hay guys, seen a Balled eegle !! wated 20 mins..
for hi to sit still so i could take a pic !! lol"
-------------
Found on Mars this week: A badly corroded
fishing pole, and a spool of light-duty line.
it's such a fine sight to see:
It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford,
slowin' down to take a look at me.
Come on, baby, don't say, 'Maybe.'
I've gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me...
Take it easy, take it easy.
Don't let the sound o' your own wheels
make you crazy." --The Eagles
commentary by michael j. wright
Someone once said that a picture is worth a thousand words. The photograph I wish to discuss is protected by one: a password. Woe and alas and something else I'm sure, my tech-savvy is insufficient to hackus-packus said image to a pixilated point right before your very eyes. I would, like, rend my garments and tear out my hair, really I would, were it not for two factors. One: I feel that my writing chops are up to the task of activating the projector in your mind, and in far fewer than a thousand words. Two: while it is important that you have some idea of the image itself first, the main point of this post will be the caption that comes with it. (News Flash! Writer Discusses Words Not Pictures. Video at 11.)
The photo is patriotic porn in an almost-pure form. It is the sort of image that seems designed specifically for those who have an absurd need to feel disproportionately proud of living in the land in which by chance they were born, but who need, you know, a little help getting their blood stirred. I'm sure the symbolism in the image is indeed stirring, too, if you're into that sort of thing-- almost enough to make you want to recite "The Star-spangled Banner." I said recite, not sing. Francis Scott Key did not write a song, he wrote a poem. It was his Original Intent that it be recited, dammit-- all four stanzas. Yea and aye, lo and high, this country started to lose its way or something, fellow citizens, the day we put that [stuff] to music. Only by getting back to the fundamentals and whatnot will we be able to come together as a People and beat Ohio State or whatever.
By now you are probably wondering about the actual picture.
Oh, fine, then, I guess I'll tell you.
A bald eagle is perched atop a flagpole.
Hanging limply from the pole is a United States flag.
Well, you know what they say about a limp flag: typically, it is a symptom of being in the middle of a large high-pressure center. Hey, if you can't joke about the weather, what can you joke about?
Admittedly, I am working here with two of the most-recognizable icons in our culture: a bald eagle and a U.S. flag. Moreover, I spent no time detailing the precise orientation of the bird (a shameful short-shrifting of invaluable info, to be sure), nor did I mention the grey backdrop of an overcast sky, nor did I attempt to capture the technicolor vibrancy of either the stars or the stripes. Still, "A bald eagle is perched atop a flagpole. Hanging... from the pole is a United States flag," does put a picture in your mind, right? Seventeen words. Just sayin'.
As I stated earlier, the photograph itself is not what spurred me to compose this diatribe. It was the accompanying caption, which reads:
"Of all the places he could have landed..."
Yes, of all the places he could have landed... this was probably the highest.
Bald eagles are birds-of-prey, which is a cool way of saying they are flying animals who hunt small, non-flying animals. They like to hunt from on high, because it is easier to both see the prey and attack it. Conveniently, they're birds, so hunting from above is rarely a problem. Every now and then, though, all that flapping and coasting and flapping and coasting gets literally tiresome, so they rest. They don't stop hunting, mind you, they just take a break from flying. They prefer to take these government-mandated passivity periods in places that are relatively far off the ground and relatively far from surrounding impediments, the better to see a potential target and swoop down upon it. Flagpoles, it turns out, make for near-perfect vantage points, especially on calm days when that annoying sheet of distractingly colored fabric isn't dangerously dancing about.
For most of us, the odds against seeing a bald eagle in the wild are pretty long. Anyone who finds themselves in such a circumstance, however, with a bald eagle hunting and a flagpole within half a mile, and some time to spend, will likely see him land on it. He won't care what flag is flying from it, either, be it the U.S. stars and stripes, the Confederate stars and bars, or the proud pennant of the Potentate of the Prickly Pear and Chocolate-covered Prune. He will be thinking: Is that a field mouse over there by that bush?
A bald eagle is perched atop a flagpole;
hanging from the pole is a U.S. flag;
and the caption reads:
"hay guys, seen a Balled eegle !! wated 20 mins..
for hi to sit still so i could take a pic !! lol"
-------------
Found on Mars this week: A badly corroded
fishing pole, and a spool of light-duty line.
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