Editorial & Opinion
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[ 1 Comment ]Posted on January 21, 2012 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Saturday, January 21st, 2012Including a simple recipe for self-destruction: one part MPAA, one part RIAA, one part Washington, and three parts greed and ignorance.
I’m sorry movie and music industries, that you’re so goddamn stupid that since you can’t figure out how to make money with one of the greatest technological achievements in human history, you want to destroy it. No really. I feel bad that the mostly white, fatass males that run a multi-billion dollar industry that pays most of the hardworking working people struggling to get into it a pittance in comparison to their own incomes can no longer lounge in ease by the pool with a bevy of hookers. I’m also sorry that after buying Led Zeppelin IV
Is It Wrong To Pee On Dead People?
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on January 13, 2012 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Friday, January 13th, 2012Call me old fashioned, but I think this debate was framed all wrong.
 Let’s face it. LOTS of things may have contributed to this despicable act. |
I’m so (ahem) relieved that world leaders have finally taken a stance on that whole peeing on corpses thing. Afghan leader Hamid Karzai’s heart seems to be in the right place; I think most of us would agree with his assessment that peeing on dead people is wrong. And I guess it was pretty big of the Taliban to not take offense over the whole affair, but I imagine that whatever public statements were reported by the press omitted the part at the end where the spokesman muttered “Hell. We do it to YOUR guys ALL THE TIME”. Call me old fashioned, but to me the weirdest part about the global dialogue about the appropriateness of urinating on the dead was the way it was framed in the first place. I mean sure, pissing on someone – whether they’re alive OR dead – is just plain rude. But isn’t it even RUDER to KILL them? So there’s that. But having accepted that you’re going to put a bunch of men in killing suits, and then having trained them for several years to get into a calculated frenzy to kill OTHER guys in killing suits, what do you expect? Imagine you’re one of these soldiers. You’ve just spent months in the desert with a small band of comrades who are the only thing between you and certain death at the hands of ANOTHER small band of comrades – whose biggest ideological difference with you is really just that they want to kill you – and you finally achieve the goal. Which is of course not getting killed, and often involves killing the other guy in terrifying night time conflicts where half the time you’re more worried about not getting your family jewels blown off by an IED, or not killing your pals in the dark by accident than anything else. Face it. A person is pretty pent up and stressed out at this point, and has been driven beyond any sense of rational human behavior. What are they supposed to do? Re-enact some cheesy scene from an old war movie, and hold the guy dying in his arms while he says something quotable for his Wikipedia page? The absurdity of this whole debate about peeing on dead soldiers led to a heated argument with a friend of mine. We were talking about warrior conventions, and he said something about how Klingons – the quintessential expression of the warrior spirit in Star Trek films – would probably find few things more dishonorable than urinating on their dead comrades. I pointed out that there were numerous incidents in the Star Trek sagas that specifically highlighted the Klingon’s lack of concern for what was done with their lifeless bodies. But then my friend asked “In any of these instances, was someone trying to PEE ON THEM?” I had to concede on that one. If you know a Trekkie who can answer that question with any authority, drop us a line. But in the meantime, I have an idea that will help avoid the sticky question of whether or not it’s appropriate to pee on someone after you kill them. How about we don’t kill each other in the first place. And heck, for good measure, let’s also just generally agree to not pee on each other either. Unless of course it’s someone like Kim Jong Il, who – now that his body will be lying in state for ETERNITY – stands a pretty good statistical chance of getting peed on. Which reminds me for some reason of the video below Read the rest of this entry »
Dissociated Press Says Au Revoir
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on April 10, 2011 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Sunday, April 10th, 2011We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.
 It’s not the end of the world. But it may be the end of Dissociated Press. |
In part due to an incredibly light response to last week’s How Am I Driving? question, I’ve decided to go on an extended hiatus. But this is definitely not “goodbye”, this is more like “au revoir”. After nearly three years of daily articles about Popular Media, Music, Politics, Lifestyle, Clean & Green issues, and my continual spewing of unsolicited opinion, I’ve simply become too busy with other projects. I’m nearly finished with a book called Why Everyone Should Wait Tables For Two Weeks, I’m working on a small “start up lab” called Amusing Enterprises (not much at that link as of this writing), and perhaps most exciting for me personally, I’m working with two partners on a long-term self-improvement “information product” that will involve seminars, books, DVD’s, and web content. Creating and maintaining a site like Dissociated Press is a blast, so I will almost certainly be back before long, and there’s a good chance that when I do return, it will be with a new brand, and some development partners (contact me if you’d like to be one of them). The name Dissociated Press is clever but too quirky, and doing this alone is just too much work for one person over time. Not to mention the fact that the era of the “web magazine” is at such an interesting juncture. While “dead tree edition” barely has had a chance to become a useful phrase, I think we’ll be seeing another shift that even makes sites like Salon, Wired, or Slate look archaic. Which is a nice segue into another little plug. The tablet and the mobile device are clearly the platforms to watch, and an old acquaintance of mine is light years ahead of many on this. He’s working on a startup called “Defrag”, which he’s calling an “Interactive iPad Magazine of Global Culture”. Learn more about the venture on his Kickstarter page. So as I said, this is not goodbye, it’s au revoir, and ’til we meet again, here’s a little song to keep us in each other’s hearts ….
How Am I Driving?
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on April 2, 2011 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Saturday, April 2nd, 2011While I take a week off, let me know what you think. And just for fun, you can even CALL, at (530) 763-3477. That’s (530) 763-DISS.
 Yup. That’s a real phone number. |
The motorcycle helmet was starting to feel heavy on my head as the waist-high weeds gave way to the bumper of the car, and the random locust buzzed through the non-existent windshield. “NOW?!?” I shouted, with sweat dripping into my eyes. I glanced over quickly as my brother grinned and yelled “GO FOR IT!”, and with the accelerator jammed to the floor, I flipped the wheel fast and hard to the left, sending the battered Hillman sedan flipping sideways. As a ten year old, few things are more exhilarating than feeling yourself catapulted up in an arc that soon has you upside-down, then right side up, then hanging from your shoulder harness sideways wondering if the sputtering engine is going to blow up before you figure out how to get out of the car. This is part of how I learned how to drive, and explains a little bit about my approach to life. I never did bother to get a drivers license. Even some of my close friends assume I lost it years ago in a drug-induced tragedy involving dozens of children and senior citizens or something. The fact is, I just think cars are stupid, so I don’t have one. I tend to apply this eager and ignorant approach to a lot of things. You learn a lot that way. And that’s part of the approach I’ve applied to this site for a couple of years. I’m enough of a nerd to know how to generate site traffic so that I can generate ad revenue – a business model that has wrecked the web, in my opinion – but almost three years ago, I thought I’d try something different. I thought I’d just try writing actual content, and see if it slowly drew an audience. The result? Well, it has sort of drawn an audience, but only about 10,000 unique visitors a month. If you know how these numbers work, you know no-one’s getting rich here. So I’m taking a few days off to ponder the direction of the site. I’m trying to finish a book, develop another venture (not much to look at right now at that last link) as well as working on a couple of other projects related to personal development or novelty ideas like this or this. So now’s your chance to tell me how I’m driving. I don’t usually LIKE comments, it just means I have to moderate them, and fortunately the only people that have commented much over the last few years were shills like these or Glenn Beck viewers like these or these who think they’re e-mailing Glenn Beck. So let us know what you think. If you’re new to the site, you can always check out our Best of 2010 or 2009 to get a feel. We’re trying to make this easy for you; you can contact us here, or leave a comment, or for maximum amusement, CALL US at (530) 763-3477. That’s (530) 763-DISS, by the way, and that’s a real number. If we get any juicy messages, we’ll post the audio files when we come back in a week. Oh, and to really show your love, you can always donate via PayPal. We’re not profitable, but we’re not non-profit either, so don’t get excited about your tax break. Read the rest of this entry »
War – What Is It Good For?
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on March 29, 2011 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011Absolutely nothin’. Say it again.
The other day I was pondering the events of September 11, 2001, and wondered what America would be doing to celebrate the tenth anniversary of those events later this year. I hope what ever we do shows a little more strength and dignity than what we did shortly after the atrocities perpetrated that day. I’ve always been of the opinion that the fellows charged with responding to those events were rather pleased that they had occurred, because it allowed them to pursue their previously stated desire of “Creating Tomorrow’s Dominant Force”, as they so charmingly put it. I won’t belabor the absurdity of initiating two armed conflicts abroad, killing more than a million people total, including at least 6,000 American deaths in addition to the 2,996 resulting from the original attacks as a response to those attacks. Anyone who can silence the partisan gibberish in their head for a moment can look at the numbers and the results, i.e., the fact that there’s still a Taliban, still an al-Quaeda, and that Osama bin Laden is probably enjoying his falconing hobby in relative comfort in Iran – and realize that someone was fibbing somewhere, and had another agenda. Or perhaps the famous Donald Rumsfeld poem (also below) just reflected that there are a lot more things “we don’t know we don’t know” than he knew. And even if there were truth to the notion that somehow tracking down bin Laden was the real aim, that strategy embodies the same absurdity as the Italo Calvino story Conscience . If you’re not familiar with the story, I won’t spoil it. It’s only a page and a half long, so I’ve embedded it below. So I could go on for days, citing numbers, pointing fingers, and trying to show off what I think I know about the causes of war, but I have this seemingly irrational hope that in spite of thousands of years of history that contraindicates the possibility, that perhaps within my lifetime, humans will actually abandon war as an approach to resolving conflict. The tragically high suicide rate of returning American soldiers seems to me a sad reflection of a heightened awareness of the sickness of the human psyche that makes war palatable to the entitled few, who then send the less-entitled and more honorable to execute their sociopathic, murderous plans. It’s unfortunate that there has to be an oppressed people for truly inspired, spiritually driven leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi to rise to prominence, but every time a person like this lives a life and leaves their mark, it gives someone in the present some tools to keep building a better future. And I don’t think I’m being dramatic when I suggest that an incredible number of people, from a vast variety of nations and cultures, are oppressed right now. And that a remarkably small number of people are benefiting from this oppression, and helping perpetuate it. Maybe the next inspired leader who battles racism and hatred with love will be fighting for the human race. Some quotes and the story “Conscience” below….