Let's Pick on Tebow Some More!

It's almost the end of the year and I have only a little time to come up with any more new coinages, bon mots, good slams, this year. Here's one that came to me while reading the attached article.

The best (facetious) was of describing Tim Tebow's public displays of faith would be:

FAITH PORN!
...
Now we all understand that the word porn was originally intended to describe graphic depictions of sex. But over the years, it has been used as a modifier for other excessively graphic images and imagery: gun porn, food porn, guitar porn. Ect. And when my mind got to thinking about it, yep. Even if Tebow's job on paper is athlete, he is also in the business of TV. So what he does on TV can count as graphic, if he does it in a graphic way. That's my case, and I standing by it!

Hey Lady! I Use More Energy to Roast a 4 1/2 Lb Chicken.

Shit on a shingle. I take one night off the Internet, away from my usual stops, and the natives go batshit. And of course I am talking about that law professor who's so eccentric to my mind, that I can't resist the "Rubber Necker" pull of her blog.

Today's (or make it yesterday's) freak-a-zoid post involves cooking pizza.

Yes. That's one half of it. The NYT Dining and Wine page published a recipe for pizza that required preheating the oven to 500 degrees for an hour, as prep for less than 10 minutes of cook time.

Feel free to shrug your shoulders now, and if you use your oven to roast things, do a double shrug.

Here's the other part of the bizarre equation. She tied that in with the NYT being in favor of green things generally, if not more efficient lighbulbs, specifically. Her argument was the NYT was some how hypocritical if they could on the dining and entertaining side endorse preheating an oven to 500 degrees for an hour, for less than 10 minutes of cooking, and on the other end, endorse more efficiency in lightbulbs.

And just to note it, and even if I am a notorious fan (and offender) of gratuitous use of the Eff Woid, her comment,"Shut up about my light bulbs. Just. Shut. The. Fuck. Up,"is not only unhinged from anything remotely resembling earth-bound reality, but using the 'shut up' remark, makes her the hypocrite. She's the one who preaches what I call the Gospel of Free Speech. She would call it the culture of free speech. Point is, I have even been trolled by her husband over my comments about her free speech bullshit. I told her husband (at least said in that thread) I think my right to tell people to shut the fuck up is a superior thing than any (culture of) Gospel of free speech.

It's deliciously ironic to see her play it my way. But still, I must call her out for hypocrisy in behaving consistently with my values instead of hers.

But that is not even the point. The free speech hypocrisy angle did not come to me until I started typing this post.

So let me link the shit now.

Free Speech Hypocrisy and an Irrational Slam Against the NYT Over Pizza.

And now we get to my non partisan, non political, non ideologically driven counter argument to her unhinged, illogical argument. When I read the part about preheat 500 degrees for an hour, and then the bullshit about that being such a waste of energy, my thought was,"What the fuck. I burn more energy roasting a 4 1/2 lbs chicken." And I checked my (god knows 50 year old) Good Housekeeping Cookbook. For a chicken weighing between 4 to 5 lbs, the roasting chart recommends 43 minutes per lb, @ 325 degrees.

That's almost 3 and a half hours cook time for a standard, small roast chicken.

So again I say, Ms. Althouse . . . What The Fuck is your Point?

Naturally, her minions in the commentary section were all stiff and sticky over this post. And I have gone longer with this than it deserves, but I will make the comparison to the mindless shit that I experienced when I was still wasting my time arguing with wing nuts on message boards. Some people are just so fucking stupid and so eager to land/score an imaginary point against their partisan, ideological rivals, they will sink to any depth of illogic and witlessness in that quest. Now I can not say I have had this particular shit thrown at me, but in the quest to score an imaginary point I have seen wing nuts ignore the commonly understood meanings of common vernacular metaphors on the level of,"It's raining cats and dogs." Now what Althouse is doing here is not exactly the same, but it clearly is a 'What The Fuck do you pretend to mean there' moment. Running an oven for an hour makes someone a green living hypocrite? What the fuck!


Edit to Add:

From one point of view, and that would be the one Ms. Althouse is/was totally blind to, one should view this recipe more as having a total 1 hr 8 minutes cook time than an 8 minute cook time. Puts the thing in proper perspective if you accept that the time it takes to get the oven up to proper temperature and heat state is every bit as important as the time the food is in the oven. But that would negate her silly argument, wouldn't it?

Similarly, just over the weekend, I was visiting family and I heard about what happened on one of those cooking contest shows that I usually miss. It was about the one with the ordinary people trying to cross over to professional status. Anyway, the contestants had one hour to cook a whole chicken. One of the contestants who advanced to the next round employed the following trick. First thing she did after they started the clock was to turn the oven up to full. That's how she guaranteed she would have a fully cooked chicken within the time limit. I think they call that technique blast roasting.

Will This End Birtherism? Hells Noes!

I have said that before, but now that the WH has released the other form, it does at least make those silly if not racist d-bag wing nuts look crazier and crazier.

Oh. And I am not swearing to it, but following bringing up that crazy reality TV moron on my FB page, it hit me. Remember the Week of Not Talking About Palin? I think we should try to do the same thing to that creature with the bad comb over haircut.

I do not think he will fade away if we just stop paying attention to him. The real world does not work in such clear causative ways, where human egos and insanity are concerned. But still. He's vulgar. He's a liar, and he's the worst of worst kind of cynical political and media whores. So let's avoid speaking of him. Ok?


Oh. And another quickie. Did ya hear about the lady arrested at the Rep. Allen West Town Hall?

Firstly I do not recall a single one of those insane, histrionic, loud and crazy tea baggers getting arrested. So this is a thing that makes me go hmmmm, right there. Talk about general hypocrisy. But beyond that, where's the crys about how the lady got arrested for using her free speech rights? WTF. Well I am not surprised. I have been saying it for a while now, how the GOP is basically hypocritical and bullshit on this issue. Scummy, they are!

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Althouse. Or is She?

Firstly, I personally dislike the phrase "Free Speech." We are talking about communication. And as someone who has experience in many forms of communication, I think using the word speech is too limiting, no matter what the judicial definition is. Anyway. Ann Althouse is such an ideologue on non-governmental "free speech" that she bitches and moans about people who communicate in a way she finds offensive and annoying.

More Cowbell! (Althouse On Blogging Heads.)

Now I have been following her blog, and I think her ideological "free speech" ideas are childish and odd. In any event, I have seen her, on her blog, and on various bloggingheads appearances going critical if not batshit crazy on speech she doesn't like. She doesn't like the chanting of the protesters in Madison. She doesn't like the drums. She doesn't like the shouting. She doesn't seem to recognize, never mind like the underlying message being passionately communicated. And at that rally she was attending, the unruly crowd, some of them at least, were communicating what seemed to me a very clear and easy to understand message: shut the fuck up! It might not be a pretty message, but it clearly counts as a clearly communicated message.

Now I am going to get a wee bit personal here. Fuck the being a lawyer/law professor shit. As someone with a fine arts degree, she should not need to have the offensive intent theory explained to her.

Without getting too deep into the sidebar, there was this time in college when I was taking a creative writing course. The last line of the 'protest' poem I wrote (continuing the feud I had with the actually nice and lovely teacher) was,"Art need not be pretty." She had a bias in favor of pretty poetry. I took her down roads she never would have done so willingly. She never admitted my POV per se, but I did knock her socks off so much with my (not at all pretty) imagery in my free verse poem about the Vietnam War, that she asked me if I had been there during the war?

Anyway, point is. Art need not be pretty. Everyone who took any kind of art classes, be they visual, aural, or literary, learns that particularly in the 20th Century, shock value is one of the things that can be deliberately communicated by artists. Or you can just get weird. Or both. Hell, even if one did not take any of the hands on courses, and only took Art History, and really learned their "isms" properly, one learns the theory. (Speaking of isims, I got see this great Dada exhibit at MoMa a couple two-three years back. Damned fine stuff. And after that came the Tim Burton exhibit. I have one word to say about that. "Stainboy!")

So what I am saying here, is either Ann Althouse is a hypocrite, in that she she's all for "communication" as long is it is within her comfort zone. Or maybe she ain't cause she has no problem at all shitting all over communication that rattles her nerves.

I mean I do get it, insofar as there are some people who sincerely, deeply, really believe in that "free speech" ideological bullshit. I reject it. Beyond the inherent problem with such an absolute, and that is the guarantee of hypocrisy when one re sets the boundaries, or carves out an exception that is usually self serving, there is the particular problem regarding communication. Push any fucker hard enough and they will hit the edit button. Or they will say "Enough. Stop the madness!" Or they will happily stifle the 'offending' speech. At least they will whine so much that the expression,"Do you want some cheese to go with that," is likely to come to mind.

Drowning out Mrs. Palin with chants, and cowbells, and horns and what ever is every bit as much genuine communication as what ever moronic dribble Mrs. Palin would have communicated. Anyone who doesn't get that really doesn't get communication. Then again, I am the guy who's grade in Video Production II likely suffered, as with my camera and editing, I made Burlington VT look like a dump. Have you ever been to Burlington? It's utterly charming. Mere fact I made it look like a dump should have secured me an A. Now that took skill.

Anyway, remember, art need not be pretty. Nor does communication have to be to one's liking to be honest communication.


Oh. One last point. A few months ago, I had a discussion with a work mate who had been an Art History major, after starting out at SVA as a film or video major. Jumping to the point, we had a disagreement over a similar idea/issue. Now the conversation was not as bogged down in the mire of ideological stubbornness or hypocrisy, however I made the argument that everyone edits. I said something like the process of creation of any art is one that starts, continues and ends with editing. It's actually the normal way a human mind works, to cut away or ignore some things, while choosing others. Now this might not seem to be that much on point, but it's a nature and process grounded real world argument against the all speech is equal (sorta) line of bullshit. And I am again revealing my bias. I would rather start off honest and deny being a full "free speech" extremist, rather than being caught being a hypocrite, down the road.

The Impossibility of Not Covering Again, Old Ground.

I have had a certain thought in my head. And I would have posted about it (again) but there's the dilema. If I have not explored that idea here, in the past, I am sure I made the argument as what I would call a "throwaway." That's what I call it when I toss off/out the bare bones of the argument, while either bolstering a main line of attack, or otherwise going all shotgun/scatter shot about it.

Anyway, the thought in my head was how twisted the GOP is nowadays. It resembles more the traitors who made war against our great nation, back from 1861-1865, than the Republican Party that fought that war to preserve our Perpetual Union. Not a terribly original thought. But some days the noise level from them people just highlights that fact moreso, than other days.

Anyway, some other thing has been crashing around in my head. And that would be that silly argument Ann Althouse made in that bloggingheads.tv performance I linked, over the past few days. (Either way you are going to get something partially recycled from me, today.)Personally, I find that libertarian, Pollyanna view of non-judicial, extra legal, not constitutionally protected free speech, to be flat out childish. And at some point today, it occurred to me, that is not only merely bullshit (as I said last time visiting the subject,) but it is a logic loop of stupidity, to say it is anti free speech to express the idea that some people need to shut up (get off the TV, what ever) with the shit they spew.

Mind me. First you have the offensive shit spewer. They are engaging in "free speech." Then we have the critic who takes offense or otherwise rejects the first speaker. That's "free speech" too, even if the speech is,"For the love of all that is decent, shut the fuck up with that mindless shit!"

But now we have the libertarian, "free speech" extremist, bullshit child mind's "free speech." Perversely, they do essentially the very same thing speaker number two does, and that is deliver a message ,"You should not say what you did just there. STFU with that!" But oddly, if not hypocritically, they engage in the very same sort of (allegedly) anti free speech, at the very time they claim to be defending "free speech." It's as consistent a matching of ideology and behaviour as to be in the middle of the act of beating your dog with a pool cue, while waxing forth about the evils of animal cruelty.

Analogy aside, it's just plain stupid.

And no matter how much longer the the chain or argument goes on and on, we still have lots and lots of "free speech" flying around. But the perversity of criticizing some one's speech for their criticizing of an other's speech is just it's own level of bullshit.

And again, I am not a free speech extremist. I would rather see less pointless bullshit than more. And no kiddies. the mere fact you think you have a point doesn't mean you are not engaging in bullshit. The level of sincerity you show your thought is not even relevant. Well, I have to correct myself there. As Professor Frankfurt would say (spoiler alert) and as the last line of his book reads:

"Sincerity itself is bullshit."


Last thought. I have been stuck on the overlap between politics and linguistics and rhetoric for years. And I retreat to that meta level of analysis sometimes, just to avoid dealing with the same old partisan shit. And today is one of those days. (And it's not like it is worth it, every day at least, to actually spend my time deconstructing the bullshit arguments the other side makes. And makes. And makes. Talk about covering old ground, again!)