Computer Funk

There are a couple of things I do by habit when I sit down at my computer, which is several times per day.  1) check to see if I have any new emails  2) look at the headlines at MSNBC or CNN.  The problem with checking email is that I almost never get any.  On my home email account I only receive things I have subscribed to, which includes various newsletters, the Word of the Day and Quote of the Day, from which I reap little gems like this:

All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God'schildren are, in fact, barely presentable. 
   -- Fran Lebowitz

I dont get interesting email at home, and at work 80% of emails are bearers of complaints, billing errors, and new rules.  And advertisements of course.

And the problem with reading the headlines should be fairly obvious.  But today, I am especially hostile toward all the news sources’ combined glee at reporting to the world about a particular traffic jam in Los Angeles.  As if this were something new, as if we all didn’t get stuck in traffic jams from time to time.  But if LA has highway repairs, we interrupt the budget talks.  What is this – traffic jams of the rich and famous?  A reality TV show is in the making right now, bet on it.

And accompanying my hostility at this journalistic solecism, this breech of reporting judgment, this insult to the rest of the disinterested nations, this insinuation that the fruitcakes in California are beset with burdens too great to be borne and the rest of us should pay attention, to add injury to insult is the unimpressive, not humorous, little word someone invented for the event - ‘carmageddon’.  Ha ha.   Yes, someone was just too clever when they thought of that one.


So, a big highway in LA is getting some repairs, and the residents are panicking like the arrival of a Blue Letter in the Hudsucker Proxy while the rest of the world is adding another reason to avoid Los Angeles to their long lists, and the hopelessly myopic news community is pooping out clever little attention grabbers, comparing traffic delays of LA commuters to the eschatological battle between the forces of evil gathered together in the Valley of Meggido against the Jesus Christ returned to earth for final judgment of all nations.

Just an ordinary day.

Thoughts on those filthy Yankees

I just finished watching the Academy nominee film The Fighter.  You know what my first thoughts are?
Northeastern culture – New Jersey, Massachusetts, and those states like them – is the SCUM OF THE EARTH.  Lower than the remotest Asian, African or Eskimo culture.  A distance of EPOCHS behind the Australian Aborigines.  Centuries behind Sumerian civilization, even tribal cultures.  Trailing far behind, say, the Incans in art, speech, literature, cooking, dress….but excelling ALL THE GLOBE in application of hair products and self-congratulatory, head-bobbling, palm-upraised, what-did-I-say?, you-talkin-to-me?, ham-tongued, never left the 50’s, gangsta hip-hop, dancing with the stars, American Idol wanna-be, fennel cake eating, chest pounding, cleavage showing, gaudy flamboyant colored, arched eyebrow’d, teeth-bleaching, artificial-leather sporting, fat-concealing, slimy warmed-over Sicilian stepchild outcasts!
Starting with their simian, guttural, sleazy accent.  Why is it that whenever you want a character that sounds sleazy, you bring in someone from New Jersey?  “Yo!  Bitch, where’s my hot pocket?  I woirk all day installin’ window tint, and all you gah fuh me is a bowl of frickin’ apple jacks?  Whad izzit aroun’ hea?”
Why is Jersey Shore such a spectacle?  One comedian said it best:  when I want to feel good about myself, I watch Jersey Shore.  It’s like watching National Geographic.  Those people are from an island in an undiscovered ocean.
…and moving on to their general filthy appearance…
…their obsession with the lowest levels of commercialism…
…their ugliness.  Dang!  Those people are so ugly!
My next thought is that I probably shouldn’t be blogging at this hour immediately after watching a movie. 
But Jiminy Christmas!  What a bunch of losers!  What a slimy, manipulative, self-serving, Neanderthal bunch of apes! 
[deep breath]  Ok.  Wait.  I’m sure they’re not all that way.  I…   I was hasty.  No, there are probably some very descent people there.  There.   Up there.  Way up there, in NEW JERSEY!!  In the septic tank of America, the vortex of social decline!  Fraah!  I need to take a shower!  I feel as if I’m about to start saying, “ya know?” after every sentence.  Ya know?  Hey.  Mickey.  Come on.  Im ya brother, right?  Mickey?  Hey come on.  What?  Ya gonna treat ya family this way?  Hey?  Come on.  Mickey?
[sanity restored.]
I would like to humbly request at this point that some director of films, some Ingmar Bergman or Cecil B. Demille of the modern theatre, an artiste, someone with a venue, someone who can tell a story, make us break out in joyous song…
with all haste, make a new film.  A movie that will redeem that far away repugnant land…
someone with means to produce a movie, yes, a celluloid rendition, a motion picture that would help me…
…just…a film, a receptacle of cinematographic artistry, sensitive, enlightened, human,
Sir, I need you to help me.  You see, right now, I hate everyone in that land.  I can think nothing but the worst kinds of thoughts about them.  And I know that is not tr…
…that is probably not true. 
It could be.  But it’s probably not.  And with a nice redeeming movie about noble deeds…involving a rescued virgin, perhaps a grail…
transpiring in our country’s founding lands… You see, I dont want to despise them, I really dont.  But I need your help – make a film that will restore my…OUR faith in those little states.  Those tiny, little, highly influential states, up there.
They are so awful.  Please show me a narrative, in film, yes, a narrative that will show them in all their gentleness, eloquence and magnanimity.  In their quest for knowledge, hungering after wisdom, eschewing fashion and the praise of men.  Lest I hate them forever.