stick and move

regina spektor sounds better live than anyone you have ever heard in your life.
i am not lying.
i though you all should know...
you may have seen better shows, you may have had a more fun and exciting concert experience, but you will never, ever, ever hear anyone sound better than she does.
goofy perfect.
so go see her if you get the chance.

my fellow concert go-ers reminded me that i am not quite as christ-like as i thought, because they really bugged the shit out of me (not, however, enough to ruin my good time...see i have grown a bit)...because the spice is here for you, let me give you some rules of the concert going road so you won't be a jerk...

know the audience (and they are not your audience). if you are at an arctic monkeys show, noone will probably care or notice if you talk to the person next to you or if you get up for a beer or a piss every five minutes...at a show where folks are expecting to sit and listen? if you do either, during a song...you are a horribly selfish, scumbag of a human being and you should be willing to give every last person within earshot of your idiocy their money back...folks paid to see someone sing and play not listen to your yap. how pathetic is it that tiny beautiful big singing fabulous ms. spektor had to shush people in the front row cause they were bugging her...sick freaks.
ALSO, you ought to realize that noone came to see or hear you. enjoy yourself, move your ass in your seat, humm, hell sing along (quietly and to yourself preferably)...BUT do not shout, do not holler, do not scream anything let alone the lyrics of a song (particularly a ballad), unless you have been encouraged to sing your lungs out by the performer.

know the artist.
i almost felt bad for the poor middle aged women in front of us who brought their husbands only to have them pout indignantly as soon as they hear the word 'fuck' come out of ms. spektors mouth. they had every right to come, be offended and leave early (all of which they did) but don't point fingers gawk and whisper loudly about every dude who walks by with a tatoo or 16 year-old girl with a nose ring...noone cares about your opinion and no one paid for it, so shut the hell up.

unless asked, do not EVER request a song...
no one really believes that you expect to hear that song, we all know that you think you are advertising how big a fan you are by shouting the name of some 'obscure' record that no one but you really knows. here is the deal, unless a performer asks, they aren't gonna play your stupid ass request anyway. we all came to hear them sing/talk/entertain and hear their set list, noone (other than maybe you) came to hear you shout stupid shit.

if everyone else is sitting? sit the fuck down.
now, there are obvious exceptions to this rule.
IF it were the case that you were at the monsters of rock show, in an arena, in 1987 and everyone was sitting while you were dead set on banging the hell out of your mullet to warrant?:?? Then stand on up brother and get the hell down everyone else is an asshole for sitting. BUT if you are the only person in the place standing up during a ballad? then you are the asshole. if you are ver in doubt as to what you should be doing? go with the flow, and the flow is the reast of the people who paid as much if not more than you did to see the damned show.

Sooo, here is how you oughta approach attending a show: you are one among many who paid money to see someone perform for you. that said, you ought to respect the hell out of the person who has the guts and skills to get up in front of a bunch of people and offer up something really fucking scary and beautiful and cool. You also ought to respect the people around you who are just like you and came to be wowed by the person doing the scary beautiful thing that y'all paid that person to do. Last, and perhaps least, respect yourself. Trust me, if you are making a spectacle of yourself in any way, if you are distracting from someone elses enjoyment...then you are really just a big baffoon and noone likes you, even you.

if for some reason you can not follow the above rules, there is only one solution: just go home and never ever venture out in public again...find a job you can tele-commute to, order in, get reallycomfortable with 'e-commerce', find a chat room you like and some good on-line porn and never, ever, ever subject the rest of us to your selfish scumbag idiocy again.

politico spring training is well under way...
time to start checking it out.

smooch

drive-by spicing

im on the move, can't slow down and it sucks.
regina spektor will make it all better tonight...

some things you ought to know, just to get you through the day becausei worry that ya'll are left confused and helpless without some spice...

sooo sooner than later some of the hooker humping politicos are going to be outed...big deal. weak willed, wusssified, no integrity fops are par for the course these days. nobody really gives a shit about accountability or responsibility, folks are more concerned about their lame ass partisan commitments....no big fallout, no big deal.

im on don imus' side...sorta...for a second....dude oughta sue the shit out of cbs and he will get a big fat settlement because there is no way in hell cbs can win. hell, it was still only poor judgment, taste and not as funny as he would have hoped...dude isn't a racist scumbag (at least no more than anyone else), he's just a pathetic clueless old man trying to play in the young man's pop culture game, clueless and out o' touch. im pretty darned sure that stupid jokes aren't good enough grounds to void dude's contract.

i was happy to see on ye old metacritical that folks are down with a wee bit of legislation that at least intends to protect our furry and feathered friends from some of th neanderthal scumbag fools who want to torture them.

why are the talking heads these days so much dumber and crazier than they used to be?
i was flipping channels and stumbled across glenn beck. gb was interviewing the left behind series dudes. i swear to christ (sorry glenn) that the glenn was advocating a literal interpretation of the bible and the use of scriptural prophesizing as an aid to understanding foreign affairs...that is just plain insane andor retarded. at what point did the u period s period start sucking so unbelievably hard (with regard to intellectual rigor) that we ended up with some freak on tv talking to dudes about the end of fucking days, the magical dissapearance of the majority of the worlds population, and scriptural prophecy as a guide to political policy???? even worse, when did a whole shit load of people start watching??? even worse than that, at least one member of that shitload of folks is nodding his/her head thinking, 'yeah, that beck guy knows what he is talking about...this whole iraq deal, definitely the beginning of the holy war betwixt good and evil that is going to end it all...yeah, that babylon sure is rising up...thanks god god is on our side...man that bible is goood stuff...i wonder what it said about the patriots and whether or not randy moss will catch 100 balls...hmmm maybe the yankees are really babylon....maybe jesus will pitch for the red sox...that'd be sweet.'...when did this happen and can we make it stop?

since the spice's job is to helpy you out, ill let you in on something...shhh its top secret....if you are ever tempted to use a literal interpretation of scriptural anything to inform your political position, any interpretation of religious flavored prophecy as guidance for political policy andor you talk to god and those conversations have an immediate effect on your life, then let me know...seriously, we can have an intervention or something, because if any of the above are true you are either: a. irrational b. have no integrity c. are lazy and or d. super friggen loony or e. all of the above. if you need me to explain and justify each of those claims, let me know, i'm happy to do it because i am here for you... but this one is so damned obvious i bet you can figure it out on your own.

like i said. steve nash is still the real mvp and dirk don't gots what it takes.

i changed my mind, oscar should lose in a k.o. something wierd is gonna happen during this fight. something crazy, loony off the wall fan man, ear biting no mas all rolled into one zany is going to happen before during or after this fight and it will cement the notion in everyone's head that boxing absolutely sucks and is completely goofy. mayweather is gonna break down and start crying in the middle of the ring or something....i just can't believe that a 'super fight' will go off without a hitch, because...well...boxing is full of crazies and criminals and weirdos.

well...im off.
have a hell of a weekend.
and dont forget...jesus gave both you and glenn beck reason for a reason, use it damnit!

a love poem

lilacs

when they write a song about us
it will remind people
of the old couple
on the green bench
on the northeast corner
of the sheep meadow
reading separate papers


pinkiestouching


in the morning speckle
amongst the lilacs

the sport spice report

i miss sport.
and you do too.
soooo, im gonna bust out the occaisional drive by sports report...

where to begin:

big flippin deal, three college students, who just so happen to be kids who are gonna get drafted by the league, admitted to smoking pot at some point in there lives...that distinguishes them from...hmm...4% of the college student population, and 90% of those folks are mormon.

barry gets closer.
hell hammerin hank can stay quiet as a mouse as far as i am concerned... dude had to face hate fueled by race, not by self inflicted cheatery. ill never feel sorry for barry, cause he is just such an ass. hell it ain't that big a deal, at his current pace, a rod is gonna pass him in 3 years (hitting 110 homers a year of course).

steve nash should be the mvp, but he won't.
thats all.
however if dirk wins, i can promise you that the mavs will not wina title. because i said so.

like the folks say...its red sox vs yankees and a handful of other teams apparently play baseball too.

de la hoya loses a decision.

the ufc is as much fun as it has ever been with the new crop o' talent from pride.

and that is about that.

im gonna have to whip out these drive by's more often...
the sports news of the day is always worth seasoning.

smooch

sick and twisted on top of sick and twisted

Soooooo a crazy loner bastard freaks out, decides to pay the world back for all the mean nasty things it done did him by shooting a whole bunch of people dead...shocking? Of course. the same way that a dip in an ice cold lake is shocking. Surprising? Not really. I mean you knew the water was gonna be cold when you jumped in. Think about the relevant characteristics of the world we live in and it should come as no surprise that some shy, angry, marginalized kid takes out his real/imagined ouch on people who don't have the same real/imagined ouch by shooting 'em.

This sort of thing is just plain old bound to happen, sad, tragic and sucky as it is...you just have to accept that it is a consequence of living in the world that we do. What you do not have to accept are the absolutely absurd, pathetic, repulsive, nasty and plain old stupid arguments that are popping up about how to prevent this sort of deal and/or who to blame for it having happened...Since pointing out shitty arguments and explaining to you why those arguments are shitty is what I do, I’ll consider them over the next couple of days.

That completely insane (and either really stupid or a really good actor) coulter lady offered up an argument very similar to a bunch you are going to be hearing from the gun nuts for the next few months. Coulter's argument basically amounted to this: Mass shootings happen at places where the possession of guns is restricted. Schools and post offices restrict the carrying of weapons. Virginia Tech restricts folks from carrying guns (specifically, they do not honor state granted carry and conceal permits). Therefore mass shootings would either a) not happen at schools if folks were permitted to carry concealed guns on school grounds because insane freaks who intend to go out and kill a bunch of folks are aware of the gun laws and consciously choose to attack places where there are restrictions on concealed weapons knowing they will meet less resistance OR b) the mass shootings would not have been as bad if there were no restrictions on guns at Virginia Tech because there would have been a passer by carrying a weapon who would have gunned down the assailant.

Now, what I have presented above is a pretty generous version of ms. coulter's argument. Her argument gives very little justification as to why there is a causal relationship between gun restriction and mass shootings (she more or less offers the anecdotal evidence that shootings seem to happen at schools and post offices as proof that there is such a relationship...the avoidance of fallacious confusion betwixt corollary and causal relationships is apparently not something they teach them thar politico punditos these days). What allows ms coulter's argument to avoid the goofy assed correlation=causality problem is that she gives us some reasons, in the form of explanations as to why one leads to the other: Mass murderers would be scared away from schools if they didn’t prohibit concealed weapons and/or john rambo would inevitably be walkin' by and 'take the shooter out!' before s/he did too much damage. Soooooo, if we buy her reasons? Her argument is sorta kinda alright...maybe...(in that it might very well prove that it seems as if mass shootings might be less likely if we followed her advice (the notion that it would necessarily diminish the number of or eliminate them is just too idiotice to bother considering)). However, we cannot buy her reasons, because they just plain suck:


Reason a. Mass shooters make a conscious choice to shoot folks at schools because they are well aware that it is less likely that they will run into someone carrying a concealed weapon.
This ought to be a one sentence competency exam for participation in society, if you find it remotely appealing, you should be denied the right to vote, have kids, speak in public and/or belong to a book club.

Given what we know about the folks who have gone batty and shot a bunch of folks at a particular school, how high do you think concern about their well being in the face of someone with a concealed weapon ranks? Umm, I’m guessing right after the concern about what they should wear to prom. These folks have plenty of reasons to be at a school...whether it is where the peers who have committed imagined injustices against them just so happen to be, or it ends up being a place where a convenient number of relatively defenseless little kids hang out (the same kids that are responsible for whatever psychosis inspired hurty hurty in their heady head) on any given week day....the notion that shooters choose that particular location because it is absent the throngs or of warm hearted, well-intentioned concealed weapon carrying vigilantes that patrol our streets unappreciated and unnoticed is just ridiculous (and completely unsubstantiated).
Here is a little secret, just a fact to help you all out. No one other than wing nut gun fetishists even thinks about conceal and carry laws (If you are curious, here is a one question test to determine if you are a gun crazy whack job: Have you, at any time worried that the gun laws applying to handguns/ 'assault rifles' are important to your everyday life, and that your wellbeing and/or happiness would be profoundly and directly impacted by changes in them? If yes, your love of that hot steel in your hand has smooshed your rationality. I hate to be the one to tell you, guns just shouldn't be that important to your average joe.) I know that this is surprising news to those of you who sleep with a 9mm under your pillow and a desert 50 in the nightstand, but no one fucking cares. The rest of the population doesn’t even think about these things (even the violent sociopath crazies that want to kill a bunch of people). Most people assume that everywhere they go is free of folks with a gun in their shoe. If you ask fifty people what the conceal and carry laws in their state are, I guarantee you fewer than ten of them will have any fucking clue…Crazies who want to kill people are worried about other things…like the girl who turned down their advances at the 6th grade school dance, the kid who whooped their ass in gym class or the time that uncle willy diddled them in the broom closet.
In short the first reason is just plain lame for a couple reasons…No one (including, and perhaps expecially, crazy killers) knows or cares about concealed weapons laws, nor do people perceive that those laws have any real effect on the percentage of gun toting vigilantes in any one area (because most folks assume that wherever they go is free of folks with a glock in their sock). SOOO we have no reason to believe that laws regarding concealed weapons have absolutely anything to do with the frequency of mass shootings in particular locations.

Now, because we are the spice and we want to give folks the benefit of the doubt, maybe we can give ms. coulter’s argument a few more and sharper teeth. If she were to have claimed that we ought to turn places like schools into the sorts of places where folks ought to reasonably expect to encounter some sort of armed resistance if they were gonna try to start shooting folks….then sure, that might work. If, for example, we were to require that all teachers/professors carry a weapon then yes I absolutely agree that there would likely be fewer mass shooting deaths taking place in schools. However, I sure as shit do not believe that this is an option that ms. coulter (and/or anyone else) would want for the following reasons:
1. It would cost a lot of money to arm and train all those folks and I can promise you ms coulter doesn’t want more taxes to pay for teacher weapons training (or anything else for that matter).
2. I cannot assure you that school related gun deaths would decrease (given the numbers I can all but promise they would increase) because there would be plenty of accidental deaths, plenty of misplaced and stolen weapons and plenty of crazy ass teachers pulling the trigger.
3. Do you really want teachers to have guns? What happens when the wrong person accidentally walks into the wrong room and spooks dr. nervous nelly into popping off a couple rounds?



Reason b
If there were no laws prohibiting concealed weapons on campus, superhero sam would have been around the corner packing heat and he would have run in, guns ablazin’ and saved the day!
Ok this reason is so stupid that it almost feels like cheating to pick on it. It really ought to be a straw man somewhere because no one would actually make an argument that is this bad. Alas, ms coulter would. It is so obviously the result of delusional gun nut vigilante fantasy that I feel bad that I am going to ruin someones dream life by pointing out its goofiness. Well, here’s the deal, it is nice to fantasize about being superman, but it is just a fantasy. There is absolutely no way of assuring that there would be someone on that campus with a gun, in the right place at the right time to do anything about the Virginia Tech shootings no matter what laws were in place. The notion that merely having had a law in place which would have permitted someone to legally carry a concealed weapon onto that campus would have increased the chances that someone would have actually carried a concealed weapon onto that campus and been in the position to do something to prevent the whole deal is the same argument that my issuing a press release declaring myself eligible for the NBA draft increases the likelihood that I will get drafted.
I hope you al realize how absurd that is.
I hope you realize why that is all that needs to be said.

SOOOOO, what are the morals of today’s story: Woulda, shoulda, coulda is easy as pie and people suck. It is really easy to come up with half assed knee jerk bullshit reactionary solutions to the problems after the fact, particularly when youa re never going to be responsible or accountable for the suggestions you make ever actually being put into place.
Selfish jerks are going to use this horrible deal to try to advance their own personal or political agendas for really terrible reasons. The gun lobby is bound to be saying absurd shit, as are the folks who wnat to ban guns. Lucky for you, you have the spice. So you won’t let anyone get away with shitty reasons. More horrid scumbags trying to use tragedy to advance their own idiocy tomorrow…



smooch

some bite sized poems to distract from the icky

6 haiku about poetry

#1
there there little one
he did not mean it when he
spoke to you with math

#2
some cried when he read
about things wrong with the world
i felt uncomfy

#3
sun through glass through shade
burnt yellow, toasty curry
prettier than smart

#4
do not ever trust
anyone who writes about
politics or sex

#5
birds in the lilac
move like magnets...push pull push
skitter skitter hop

#6
'language poetry'
like carving a pumpkin with
a water balloon

Natural (F)Law Theory..Gayness Continued and Concluded

sorry for the delay...i been sick and busy.
the spice moves on...
a last bit about gayness...and then????


Closely associated with the Divine Command theory I babbled about last time is Natural Law Theory. The two end up being linked because they both have a wee bit of common theistic history. Divine command is the morality of the church a long long time ago, Natural Law theory? The morality of the church a long time ago (and well to this berry day for some.). The name most often associated with Natural Law Theory is Aquinas. The problem is that the version that St. Tommy offered, if we are to read it generously, doesn't resemble the sort that your average person who is commited to the deal advocates today...

To over simplify Aquinas' account, the deal was this:
There is a divine law (because there has to be or the world just wouldn't make much sense).
God done gave us the key to understanding the divine law when he done gave us reason.
Reason is the key because we are the only things that got it and we alone were made in God's image, so it makes sense that reason is pretty darned special.
In that we have reason, a chunk of our purpose must be to use it (cause god wouldn't have done givin us reason for no reason).
It only makes sense (is rational) that things oughtta fulfill their purpose.
Therefore, in order to take full advantage of our faculties and rationality we must use reason to create our human laws because its the bestest tool for the job and part of our purpose is to be rational...(this is pretty darned much the natural law...we have to do what is natural to us the same way that beavers ought to chew wood).
The divine law is rational and to the degree that we formulate moral rules that are rational and in accord with god's word, our law (the human law) is in accord with the divine law and it rocks the moral hizouse...


Now this should remind all you wanna be philosophers out there of Aristotle's teleology based virtue ethic...Aristotle too woulda said fulfilling one's purpose is the way to go, he woulda also thought that reason was particularly important...but he wouldn't have put God in the picture. For Aquinas the natural law, the purposefulness of the world becomes a wee bit more important because rather that that purposefulness just being a consequence of the way the world works, it is handed down by God. So fulfilling one's purpose is pretty damned important (because, well God done gave everything it's particular purpose).

SOOOOO, what does that have to do with gay humping?
Well, quite a bit actually. It's not hard to see where the argument is gonna go. If part of our obligation is to act according to our divinely granted purpose, then anytime we deviate from that purpose we are doing a naughty thing. Obviously you have a willy or a puss for a particular purpose (to have babies) therefore any use of that willy or puss for any other activity is in violation of its intended purpose, is irrational, ungodly and morally wrong.

Now, although absurdly over-simplified, this version of natural law theory is roughly 4,328 times as sophisticated as the arguments you will hear regarding how gayness is 'un-natural'. Alas, even this slightly fleshed out version is pretty darned shitty. Because...well...no one who advocates it is willing or able to consistently adhere to it. Given that one of the premises in the whole deal is that reason is king, embracing a contradiction is going to be a pretty darned tough pill to swallow. Contradiction is one thing we can all agree is just plain irrational (and if you don't agree, you are using a definition of 'reason' that is so far removed from history and/or convention that you oughta stick to poetry).

The contradiction rears its ugly little head when we start considering purposes and nature...

If we are to stick to the simplified version of natural law provided above...we have a wee bit of a problem when we try to figure out the purposefulness deal because things have more than one purpose...one can use sex organs to make babies, for pleasure, to make cash, to help create intimacy in a relationship etc. Noone can claim that baby making is the only true purpose of the junk in your shorts, because there are just so darned many. However, if you are willing to commit to the notion that the baby making purpose is THE REAL purpose, and the use of one's naughty bits for anything other than that purpose is morally wrong then it MUST follow not only that diddling your own button is wrong but that I am doing something morally wrong when I wink at you or roll my eyes because certainly those aren't the REAL purposes of my eyeballs...in fact, if things can only have one REAL purpose then at least one (winking or rolling) MUST be at least as morally wrong as gay humping...and, well no one is trying to prevent eye rollers from getting married. No one will consistently commit to the notion that each organ that we have only has one real purpose and that any other use is morally wrong. If one cannot commit to that claim, then they cannot commit to the notion that gay humping is wrong on the grounds that it violates the purpose of your naughty bits.

Now, plenty of other seriously flawed reasons have been given under the name of natural law (more often than not unwittingly)...these reasons often differ from the account above in terms of the definition of 'natural'....some of those equally bad (if not worse) arguments to consider and dismiss:

The notion that 'natural' really means normal...or fitting within the realm of what is considered normal...
This is just ridiculous. Morality and normalcy don't have a damned thing to do with one another (and in fact we can prove that indeed they cannot have a necessary connection) BUT for the sake of brevity, all we need to do to effectively refute this idiotic argument is to point out that by these standards we'd get rid of anyone and everyone who happens to be exceptional as morally abhorrant. Noone wants to consider a prodigy or a smarty pants or someone who cultivates a partiucular talent morally wrong but practicing a particular skill all day is certainly abnormal. Unless you want to claim that every kid who is first chair in his schools orchestra is morally wrong because kids that age shouldn't practice their instrument so darned much you gotta give up on this absurd position...in order to hold this view, you just have to be an idiot or a liar.

Folks sure as hell don't think gay humping is unnatural in the sense that it violates the 'laws of nature' (this is what the person who calims 'animals dont do it!' is really getting after).
Since when have the laws of nature determined right or wrong? Never, of course. I have a bum ticker, naturally my heart is gonna give out by like forty-five...I sure as hell don't think i will be doing something morally wrong by putting in the artificial valve that is gonna keep me alive...and neither do you. You like man's accomplishments and creations...If 'natural', in this sense, is the standard for morality then you are going to have to give up on social convention in it's entirety, technology, medicine, art etc. because all of those things are inventions of man and consequently immoral. If you claim to want to get rid of all those things? Well you are just an idiot or a liar.

The 'it is icky' argument isn't going to hold either...'gayness seems gross so it is unnatural. dudes are naturally repulsed by dudes and women by women'. That is just plain stupid. Brain surgery is icky too, that doesn't mean it is morally wrong. If you claim to believe this? Yup...idiot or liar. This, by the way, is also why those of you who think icky pictures of blood covered baby monkeys are important to the 'abortion' argument are sorta jsut plain stupid too...just cause something is gross or difficult to looka t, sure as shit doesn't make it morally wrong. Fallacies are sure easy to come by, aren't they...

SOOOOO, having considered a handful of the arguments as to why gay humping is morally wrong I hope to have brought you to the only rational understanding one can have regarding the moral nature of the issue...there is no RATIONAL justification for the belief that homosexuality/homosexual behavior is in and of itself morally wrong...

Because the spice is here for you, I'll let you know that anytime you make (or attempt to make) an argument that gayness is somehow morally wrong you are sorta kinda advertizing that you are a thoughtless baffoon. However, i'll be happy to listen any arguments you've got and explain to you why they make you sound like a complete idiot before you say them out loud to anyone else.

other than that, i am moving on. i don't even remember what inspired the gay rant (i think it was general so and so saying such and such a month ago and the idiotic discussions the he inspired)...i got bigger and better things to worry about now. sooo, next spice report? either some poetry or some thoughts about crazy kids with guns.

smooch