These pictures are really awful and I'm not saying that as a sort of reverse psychology ploy to get you to watch. If you don't have the stomach for it, don't look. Really.
That said, I think everyone should take a look. It's a photo presentation with narrative by the photographer, Paul Fusco. The pictures are of people, mostly children, who have suffered as a result of the reactor meltdown at Chernobyl. Twenty years later, the children of the region of Belarus are horribly deformed, some suffering daily in unbearable pain, none of them able to live any sort of normal life.
The reason I think everyone should take a look at this is because it's a sobering reminder of what we're capable of. More importantly, it's a sobering reminder of the responsibility we're not able to handle.
Kind of morbid and depressing, but something I thought important enough to bring up. Maybe in 2007 we'll put a little more thought into our decisions. Maybe we'll have a little more consideration for those around us as well as for ourselves. Maybe in 2007 we'll take a step toward enlightenment instead of a step backward into foolishness and stupidity. Maybe we'll aspire to be something greater than ourselves.
I'm not putting any money on it but, hey...a guy can hope.
And it was only $14.88. Of course in 1970's dollars, that would buy you a full tank of gas, a carton of cigarettes, and round of drinks at the bar. Goddamn, we can be stupid.
Little slow with updates this week due to finals. Howard sent this to me. When I was a kid there was this game called Laser Tag. You wore some gay little chest plate thing that would register when you got "hit" by the "laser" gun. It was supposed to be fun but wound up being nowhere near as awesome as cap guns that actually made gun-like noises. Some stupid kid was playing Laser Tag at a school after the sun had gone down and wound up getting shot and killed by a cop. I don't know how old I was when this happened but I do know that I was young enough to be angry about the fact that I couldn't buy a realistic looking toy gun anymore, thanks to the ensuing legislation that followed the death of the child.
I'm one of the last generation of American children who remembers toy guns that looked real. I'd have shit myself in glee if someone had given me a toy cannon. Blows my mind...
"There was some sort of White Power protest in front of the Federal Courthouse in Wilshire. I saw it on Saturday, driving by.
Skinhead dudes tend to be pretty ugly. They look like me, with their heads shaved. And they're trying to keep their race pure.
However, whenever races mix, their babies are fucking gorgeous. That sort of caramel-y skin, and the way it off-sets the teeth and eyes. Yowza!
But when I was looking at this group of, basically, shaved cave goblins, I took a gander at their women-folk.
White Power chicks are...pretty hot. They've all got that blonde hair and, let's face it, even when it's dyed it's alluring. Something about a woman who's willing to suffocate her natural hair at the roots -- it's like saying, "I'll wear costumes and talk with an accent to make you come." And the ingrained hatred really tightens and tones those facial muscles. They look like Frank Cho drawings.
God, I'd love to fuck a White Power chick. In a threesome. With Rosaria Dawson."
I'm clearly getting a lot done at the office today...
EDIT: You have to be logged into a myspace account for that link to work. So I just swiped it. Fuck Myspace. However, if you're Patton Oswalt and this annoys you, just say the word and I'll delete the whole post out of respect to your comedic genius. But Myspace can piss off.
Those who condemn South Park for being offensive need to be reminded that comedy is by its very nature offensive. It derives its energy from its transgressive power, its ability to break taboos, to speak the unspeakable. Comedians are always pushing the envelope, probing to see how much they can get away with in violating the speech codes of their day. Comedy is a social safety valve. We laugh precisely because the comedian momentarily liberates us from the restrictions that conventional society imposes on us. We applaud the comedian because he says right out in front of an audience what, supposedly, nobody is allowed to say in public. Paradoxically, then, the more permissive American society has become, the harder it has become to write comedy. As censorship laws have been relaxed, and people have been allowed to say and show almost anything in movies and television - above all to deal with formerly taboo sexual material - comedy writers like the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, must have begun to wonder if there was any way left to offend an audience.
Along the same line of thought as the previous post, another group of assholes that annoy the shit out of me are the small business owners who don't realize they're supposed to be better than the evil fucks who run Corporate America. For that matter, the evil fucks who run Corporate America also annoy the shit out of me, but they're supposed to; they're evil fucks, that's what they do. When I make a purchase from AM/PM or Carl's Jr., or Del Taco, I'm basically saying, "Go ahead and fuck me. You're an evil piece of shit and I know that but I'm in a hurry today and my morals have to take the backseat to my schedule," and when they charge me a $0.65 ATM fee, I have no right to bitch about it.
On the other hand, when I patronize a small business, it's supposed to be a different game. But the fuck-holes who own and operate the Valero Station down the street from my apartment haven't figured that out yet. These clown-shoes ass-lickers *refuse* to accept credit cards and have the balls to charge a $1.00 ATM fee. See...here's the thing: If you own a small business and patronizing your business is actually *worse* for me than doing business with Arco...you're a heinous piece of shit and you need to be beaten within an inch of your miserable life with a two-foot-long black dildo. Seriously, fuck you, at least I can't see the faces of the assholes who are stealing my money when I buy gas from Arco.
I was at a Union Station in Sierra Madre the other day and while the truck was filling up, I went inside to get a soda. I took the bottle up to the counter and pulled out my ATM card and the guy looked at me as though he knew he was about to get yelled at and told me they had a five dollar minimum if I wanted to use my ATM card. I told him to fuck off and went back to my truck and stopped pumping gas. Congratulations, douche bags, instead of a $65 dollar fill up, you got $13 dollars out of me. Way to go. And hey, I understand that there's a fee you get charged whenever people use their ATM cards. Really, I get that. But that fee is less than a fucking dollar and you're telling me I have to spend at least five before you'll let me pay with my ATM card? That's not passing the cost on to the customer, that's fucking greed and you need to be beaten within an inch of your miserable life with a two-foot-long black dildo.
For two years, I worked next to a breakfast and lunch place called the J&R Deli in Ontario, CA. The testicle-shitting jack-off who owned the place charged a $0.50 ATM fee and kept jacking the price of his drinks up by a dime every four months. The last time I was there I asked for a large drink and he told me it was gonna be $1.95. I told him to fuck off and walked out as he yelled after me that the price of his Styrofoam cups got raised. No they fucking didn't, he was a jack-off running a jack-off little business, who tried to pad his income by charging bullshit ATM fees and unreasonably high prices for his product.
To these three fucktards and every loser just like them, I say the following: I want to support small business. Corporate America can go fuck itself and I'd rather not do business with them, but you have to bring something to the table. The fact that you're small isn't enough reason to do business with you. You're supposed to make stimulating the local economy a rewarding experience. Most of the time the big guys have better prices than you do and you're supposed to make up for that fact by providing superior customer service or a better shopping experience or by just having your shit together. If I deliberately don't fill my tank at an Arco Station in favor of shopping at your family-owned "Gas & Sip," you're not supposed to fuck me in the ass just like Arco would.
Goddammit...
You people need to wake up to the fact that when you fuck your customers over just like the big guys do you're no longer small business owners. You're fucking sharks, just like the corporate pieces of shit who run Arco and all the other oil companies. The only difference between you and them is that you do business on a street corner and make tens of thousands of dollars every year, while they do business all over the world and makes tens of billions of dollars every year. In other words, by big business standards - the standards by which you run your business - you're failures.
Which is exactly what you deserve you fucking turd gobblers.
Does it occur to people that they don't have to be assholes?
Seriously, just because a person's job is to call me at home and ask me if I want to take part in a survey doesn't mean that they *have* to call me at home and ask me if I want to take part in a survey. They *could* get a new job. But they don't. Why is that? Is it because those jobs pay so much money they just can't afford to work anywhere else? Nope. Maybe these people are handicapped and have to work from home. Fine, but they don't have to work for the fucking devil from home, do they? Couldn't they work for a non-satanic company from home? Of course they could. But they don't. Why? I have to assume they're all assholes. Either that or they have some really weird kink and excessive verbal abuse really gets them off.
Every time someone calls me at home, whether it be a salesman, a politician, or some filthy prick who wants me to provide him with free market research, I point out to the individual on the other end of the line that they don't have to be an asshole. I point out that if they wanted to, they could quit their job right now and go get a job that didn't require them to be an evil piece of shit who interrupts peoples lives for a living. Every single time, they hang up on me. Not once has one of them acknowledged that I was speaking the truth. Now, either they're fucking assholes and they're hanging up on me because they've been found out, or they're fucking retards who don't know what to say next because I've gone "off script." Either way, my world has no place for them and they need to step off the planet.
