Category: Absurdity

Schools

Posted on January 31, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

I spotted this over at John Scalzi’s Whatever and it brought back some memories.

A woman in Ohio has received a felony conviction for deceptively sending her kids to a school in a district where she didn’t live.Â Her father colluded in this.Â The article linked doesn’t go into the reasons she did what she did, but I can imagine some of them, and it would have entirely to do with quality of school experience.

Fifty years ago, my schooling experience—and I phrase it that way because I’m talking about much more than just what you learn in the classroom; it’s a total package, going to socialization and self-image and the whole magilla that a lot of people condemning American public education, depending on their political slant, don’t want to think about—was in the process of being thoroughly fucked up.Â …

Ahistorical Nonsense

Posted on January 26, 2011January 26, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

Representative Michelle Bachman is the national voice of The Tea Party.Â Recently, in speaking to a group of Iowans, she made some claims about American history that would be laughable if they had not come from someone who likes to style herself an authority of Constitutional matters.Â She claimed that the glory of our country is that color and language didn’t matter, nor did class or parentage, that once people got here, “we were all the same.”

Wishful thinking at best.Â Certainly that was the idea behind the Declaration of Independence, with its grand opening phrases, but like all such ambitions, it took reality a long, long time to catch up—and it still hasn’t.Â …

Crazy Is As….

Posted on January 15, 2011January 15, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but bear with me.Â A bit of confessional time.

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I’m an atheist.Â To put it simply, I basically grew up and got over it.Â Religion, to me, is historically and psychologically interesting, but does not represent any kind of reality.Â The world, the universe, what have you, just doesn’t work that way, and for every example you can pull out of your hat of supposed “miracle” I can equal or better it with “shit happens” and just plain human synergy.Â That anecdotal game can go on and on with neither side really running out of examples, leading no where, but just the fact that most miracles can be explained by mundane models suggests to me that the miracle is actually occurring inside the witnesses skulls.Â …

Other Buzzzzzzzz

Posted on January 14, 2011January 14, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

I am not going to go see the new Green Hornet movie.Â I knew that long before its release, when I heard Seth Rogen had been cast as the Hornet.Â I just knew it would be a waste of everyone’s time, money, and sentiment.

I’m sorry.Â Hollywood has been doing superhero movies now for decades and they’ve gotten a few of them pretty right.Â Except for a ridiculous semi-musical romantic interlude, the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve was fine.Â Mostly this was due to Reeve and co-star Gene Hackman (who can save just about any movie), but they treated the material lovingly the whole way.Â …

So Right It’s Wrong

Posted on January 4, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

Recently, Justice Antonin Scalia shot his mouth off about another bit of “social” judicial opinion and managed to be correct to a fault again.Â Here is the article.Â Basically, he is of the opinion that if a specific term or phrase does not appear in the Constitution, then that subject is simply not covered.Â Most famously, this goes to the continuing argument over privacy.Â There is, by Scalia’s reasoning (and I must add he is by no means alone in this—it is not merely his private opinion), no Constitutionally-protected right to privacy.

As far as it goes, this is correct, but beside the point.Â …

Why I Am (Partly) Not A Conservative

Posted on October 29, 2010October 29, 2010 By Mark Tiedemann

I try to ignore Glenn Beck.Â I think he’s pathetic.Â All he can do is whine about things he quite often doesn’t understand.Â For instance, his latest peeve has to do with being bumped out of line by science fiction.Â Yeah, that’s right.Â Glenn Beck’s book Broke has been number 1 on Amazon for a while and it apparently got beat out finally by a science fiction anthology.

His complaint that this is from “the left” is telling.Â First off he’s trying to make it sound like some profound philosophical issue, that a science fiction collection outsold his book on Amazon.Â …

Didn’t They Throw The Tea In The Harbor…?

Posted on September 17, 2010September 17, 2010 By Mark Tiedemann

Christine O’Donnell is one of those public figures that emerge from time to time that make any writer of fiction envious of reality.Â Only a truly gifted writer could make someone like this up and then sell her as a plausible character.

At the heart of it, she is the problem with the Tea Party.

Here’s the thing I’ve never understood about the far right: fiscal responsibility is well and good and certainly we could do with a lot more—we could have used some for the last thirty years, certainly, a period during which Republicans (and by inference conservatives) have been largely in control of Congress—but how come is it we can’t seem to get candidates who are just about that without dragging all the social issue crap along with them?Â …

Radio Markets and Discontent

Posted on July 16, 2010July 16, 2010 By Mark Tiedemann

Personal gripe time.Â This is one of those instances where I believe The Market is a hydrocephalic moron and people who put their undying faith in get what they deserve.

Shortly after the 4th of July just past, a St. Louis radio station changed hands.Â KFUO 99.1 FM had, for sixty-plus years, been our commercial classical station.Â Before the first Gulf War, our local NPR affiliate, KWMU, was largely a classical music broadcaster, but after that first foray into Mid east adventurism they became pretty much All Talk All Day.Â Mind you, I like some of what they offer—Fresh Air, Talk of the Nation, Diane Rheem—but I am a lover of music.Â …

Mel Gibson and Other Musings

Posted on July 10, 2010July 12, 2010 By Mark Tiedemann

So Mel Gibson has been exposed (once again) as an intolerant, sexist, abusive person.Â A recording of a phone conversation with his former girlfriend is now Out There on the internet and one can listen to Mel spill molten verbiage into her earpiece while she calmly refutes his charges.

All I can wonder is,Â So what?

What business is this of ours?Â This is private stuff.Â People lose control.Â Between each other, with strangers, but more often with those closest, people have moments when the mouth ill-advisedly opens and vileness falls out.Â The question is, does this define us?Â Are we, in fact, only to be defined by our worst moments?…

Labels

Posted on May 19, 2010 By Mark Tiedemann

Conservative.

Liberal.

We act as if we know what these labels mean.Â Conservatives are traditionalists, fiscally opposed to anything that smacks of gambling, private, often religious, and pedantic on what they consider “appropriate” in either government or personal conduct.

Liberals, on the other hand, are often taken for progressive, willing to spend social capital to repair perceived problems, tolerant, agnostic if not atheist, and overly-concerned with a definition of justice that ought to be all-encompassing rather than what they perceive as sinecure for the privileged.

Well.Â Over on Facebook I posted a brief quote (my own) to boil down the actual underlying distinctions.…