Mark W Tiedemann

Category: Absurdity

The Madman In The Auditorium

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I like Barney Frank.  He says what he feels, usually in a way that makes his argument better.  But it’s almost a no-brainer to do a comeback on the idiocy with which he was faced in Dartmouth, Massachussetts this past week.  I mean, what do you say to someone who thinks it’s a valid statement to compare Obama to Hitler?

A woman carrying a poster with Obama’s image modified with a Hitlerian mustache stepped up to the microphone to ask why Frank supports a Nazi policy.

There are so many things wrong with this it boggles the mind where to begin. …

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Dante’s HMO

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Now for something less sturm und drang (which is ironic, since just now it is thundering and raining outside) and more reflective.

We’re still attending the Dante reading group.  Yesterday we did Canto XIV of Purgatorio and indulged some lively conversation over the meaning and intent.  It’s become fairly obvious (long ago, back in  Inferno it was obvious) that Dante was not talking about the afterlife, not in any serious way.  All of this is a critique of the world and its denizens.  It is a thoroughgoing strafing and scourging of the component parts of the world through which he moved. …

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Can’t Get No Women So I’ll Die Blues: An Absurdity

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

George Sodini never got it right, apparently.  He posted a kind of diary entry on the web explaining how not right he got it.  “The biggest problem of all is not having relationships or friends,” he wrote.

According to his confession on the web, he hadn’t had a girlfriend since 1984 or a date since May of 2008.  Hadn’t had sex for 19 years.

“Women just don’t like me,” he wrote.

So he came up with a solution.  If he couldn’t get his life the way he wanted it, he would end it.  He acquired firearms, ammunition, he set down a plan. …

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Readingless Writers—Not Right

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I’ve heard of this phenomenon, but never before encountered it directly.  Excuse me, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the utter vapidity of this…

I have a MySpace page.  Admittedly, I pay less attention to it these days in lieu of my Facebook page  (all these Pages…for such a functional Luddite, it amazes me I navigate these strange seas), but I do check it at least once a week.  I post a short blog there.  And I collect Friend Requests.

I received such a request the other day from someone whose name I will not use.  Unless it’s from someone or something I recognize, I go to the requester’s page to check them out. …

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On Knowing Your Limits

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Something that annoys me no end is people who make promises they don’t keep.  Not people who are prevented from keeping them or due to circumstances beyond their control find they simply cannot do it.  No, as aggravating as that might be, life happens.  The circumstances deserve our ire, not the people—not if they’ve made an honest effort.  No, what I’m talking about are people who can do something, know how, but as they make the promise know they probably won’t.  Bad scheduling, bad planning, bad whatever—or just lack of real interest.  Or the habit traditionally known as Biting Off More Than You Can Chew.…

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Comments

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Because I am a computer doofus, it takes me forever to figure out the simplest things.  Sometimes.  Like, for instance, activating the Comments function on this blog.  I’ve been getting complaints from a few people for some time that they’ve been unable to post comments here for some reason.  I’d go into the guts of the blog, make sure the right stuff was checked—especially the one that says Allow People to Comment?—and still, no go.

Well, there was a pre-registration function apparently which I’d set so only authorized Users could register and comment.  Well, hell, I’m the only authorized user besides my webmaster. …

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Life Sometimes Takes You…

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Mind you, I am not defending Governor Sanford, not really.  But I have to admit to be pleasantly surprised at his current stance, vis a vis his affair.

“I will be able to die knowing that I had met my soul mate,” he said in an interview.

So many public figures indulge in affairs, get caught, and then drag the whole thing out in a back yard lot, pour gasoline on it, and set it ablaze in a spasm of self-loathing apologetics.  I suppose the most dramatic was Jimmy Swaggart, weeping openly on television, going through a self-flagellation of Medieval proportions, at least psychologically.…

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Who I Am Is No One Else’s Business!

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

As this just happened, I thought I’d come right home and write about it.  I just had one of those customer service incidents that sends me over the moon.

I walked into a store to find something.  I was in a frame of mind to buy.  I found the something and asked the sales person “How much is that?”  Back at her desk, she sat down, I sat down, and I expected her to punch up the price on her computer and tell me.

Instead:  “What’s your name?”

“Private individual,” I replied, a bit nonplussed.

“I need a name for the quote,” she said.…

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It’s The Women, Stupid

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

And now for a romantic interlude in the otherwise dangerous realm of Afghan social morays vis-a-vis the Taliban.  A young couple whose families disapproved of their union ran off to get married.  Married, mind.  Not live together outside wedlock or anything so dramatic, but married.  The result?  They were shot outside their mosque after a tribunal of mullahs condemned them.  Here is the story.

It is difficult seeing this to remember that this sort of thing is really not consistent with mainstream Islam.  But, just as with certain splinter groups of so-called christian sects, the Qu’ran is continually used to justify the persecution of women.…

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Titles That Amazon Has Stripped of Sales Ranking

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

A sample of some of the books that have been stripped of their sales ranking by Amazon’s (now disclaimed) Adult Content Policy:

  • Fiction:  E.M. Forster’s Maurice, D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges are not the Only Fruit, Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet, and books by Nicola Griffith, among others.
  • Biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs:  Randy Shilts’ The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, Dan Savage’s The Committment: Love, Sex, Marriage and My Family, Quentin Crisp’s The Naked Civil Servant, and Gerald Clarke’s biography of Truman Capote.
…
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