“You loser. You incredible loser. You don’t have a single cell of taste in your whole body. Not a cell, not a mitochondria, not even a virus. You should get out of the movie business tonight and go work at a 99 cent store where they sell cheap-ass rejects, because the movie you recommended to me tonight was the worst castoff reject-laden piece of shit I’ve seen since “Supertroopers”, and my FIFTEEN YEAR OLD SON even apologized for making me see that. This move had the stupidest script I’ve seen in years, most of the acting was phoned in, except for the lead, who appears to have gone to the Al Pacino School For Cheap Overemoting for this film. The writer/director didn’t miss a cheap or obvious opportunity in the script, and the producer…the same guy, coincidentally, who forgot to spend more than the 99 cents – like the stuff you should be selling instead of working on movies – on special effects WHICH WERE CRUCIAL TO THE FILM.
Not only do you owe me the $18 I spent on tickets, but I want the $400 I would have billed for the time, as well. What a god-damn unbelievable loser you are for recommending this film, and so are all the stupid loser people who are making it the biggest film in the country right now…
What are you doing for dinner Tuesday? Want to come over?”
As you may guess, we saw ‘Signs’ last night.
I did manage to crack up a few people in the lobby as I was calling my brother and leaving this message as we walked out. And the group of teenagers who walked out in front of us has the classic comment ”Jeez, we should have seen XXX”. No s**t, kids, you should have.

Forgot to add arch-liberal Andrew Edwards as well as fellow Raven, the Fusilier Pundit (had to keep the blogroll karmically balanced, ya know).

(from Junius): Jean Baudrillard’s new book: The Spirit of Terrorism. A quote:“In dealing all the cards to itself, the system forced the Other to change the rules of the game. And the new rules are ferocious, because the game is ferocious.”
And from the publisher’s blurb: Continuing an analysis developed over many years, Baudrillard sees the power of the terrorists as lying in the symbolism of this slaughter. Not merely the reality of death, but a sacrificial death that challenges the whole system. Where the past revolutionary sought to conduct a struggle of real forces in the context of ideology and politics, the new terrorist mounts a powerful symbolic challenge, which, when combined with high-tech resources, constitutes an unprecedented assault on an over-sophisticated, vulnerable West.
I just ordered it…

So I’ve added a few folks to the blogroll:
*Corsair the Rational Pirate
Geek Press
The Hamster
*IndePundit
*Me-Zine
Patio Pundit
Ranting Screeds
Stefan Sharkansky
Mike Silverman
South Knox Bubba
Testify!
Wahoo Pundit
…much good stuff, go read them and stop being so productive…

Otherwise I wouldn’t be surfing and have found this, the perfect design for the California quarter (given that Davis wins…)

The pomo idiot below has an English buddy…and Lileks rips him a new one.
This reminds me…
When I was a mere sprout, given to organizing demonstrations aginst the Invasion of Cambodia and suchlike, I was invited to join fellow upper-middle-class radical sprouts in ‘organizing’ poor black kids at a youth center in Will Rodgers Park in South-Central L.A.
I spent some time down there, realized that I was a pathetic loser at hoops and futball, but managed to talk to a fair number of the kids and their folks as I helped them with homework. And quickly realized that the only ones pushing for the big R were the middle-class white kids from UCLA. The folks we were talking to … the poor folks … wanted a job at the GM plant in Van Nuys, a house with a fence in a safe neighborhood, and good enough schools that their kids could go to college and become arrogant clowns like we were.
Just a thought.

Ranting Screeds lays even more groundwork for the ‘War on Bad Philosophy’ and he & I are now calling it.
I’m trying to get a proposal out the door (don’t forget that I’m looking for work, and will have to drastically cut back on blogging if I have to get a job as an airport screener…), but promise that I will get the last terrorism piece up today, and will follow up with some amplification on Ranting’s suggestions.

Aparently John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the LSE, has written a book explaining the errors of human exceptionalism (the assumption that we are somehow above nature), and suggests in the book that ‘Homo rapines is only one of very many species, and not obviously worth preserving. Later or sooner, it will become extinct. When it is gone the Earth will recover.‘
Some of us are trying to prevent that…
(from spiked-culture,via Instapundit.)

TANSTAAFL suggests a quick test for critics of the West:

Take a few minutes today to ask yourself a few questions about where you live, and how you live. Here are a few samples to start you off:
Do I like where I live?
Is there another place substantially different where I would prefer to live?
Do I have reasonably good access to the peaceful means of changing the laws and practices of my society?
How secular is my society? How does it treat gender differences? Sexuality? Race?
How free am I? Can I criticise the Government? The Police? Are my thoughts suppressed by government policy?
Do I have access to alternative sources of information? Can I disseminate my thoughts?
Are the processes of my Government transparent? Am I in danger of random arrest? Torture? Summary execution? Secret imprisonment?
What we’re looking for here is a kind of Aggregate Society Satisfaction Rating. There is no perfect society for all. It’s possible Mrs Kublai Khan and all the younger Kahns complained that Xanadu was too far out in the sticks. But realistic debate cannot proceed without an examination of the values that the Western Society stands for in large part, and a comparison to the alternatives of offer. Take a look at where you live, and how you live. If you wouldn’t live anywhere else, make that you starting point for any and all thought about your country, and keep it in mind before you open your mouth.

As a liberal, I’m constantly frustrated because this is where there is hope for the poor, the marginal, women, minorities. I’ve lived in Europe, and I’ll tell you there are few things I’ve encountered more racist and sexist than a Parisian dinner table in the 16th arrondissement, and relative to most of the world, France is good.
(link via Meryl)

Ask a simple question, and look what happens: Ranting Screeds takes off with an opening salvo of what we do to win the War on Bad Philosophy (my new name for the War on Terror). Take a look, you’ll be impressed.
I need some time to come up with responses that make me look smart.