Immigration

Posted on July 7, 2018 by gumbywan

Trump-and-Hitler

I used to try to make this blog somewhat entertaining, back in those days when life wasn’t yet so serious. I’d talk about TV programmes, professional wrestling, seniors driving, and sometimes the odd important issue, but still try to make it light and lively. Satire they call it. Well dear reader, the end times have come. The thing everybody said could never happen here happened here. The Comb Over on late night TV is not funny. Hitler on late night TV is not funny. Laugh now, but you won’t be laughing when they come for you. Get ready for the party to end. Bad hangover if you even wake up. Ever seen the film Cabaret? Well we’re living it. Money makes the world go ’round.

Now that I’ve re-started this blog again I don’t know where to start. There are so many untold truths. Maybe I’ve waited too long. But you’ve got to start somewhere. Bite size as they say.

So, let’s start with what I call the last straw. Images, sounds, of children wailing, desperately trying to memorize phone numbers in another language. Pictures of cages with children in them. Is this Bavaria in 1936? No, it’s Texas in the 21st century. Sounds like an alternate history sf novel kinda. Well, if you like that sort of thing, you’re living it now. Enjoy the ride into future history. The Comb Over has legitimized the incarceration of families, of human beings, people no different than you or I just born in another place and, seeking a better life for themselves and their loved ones. Look up the word Objectification, Look up Dehumanize. Do you think if this had been 1936 without social media that it would have stopped on its own? America was always about the hope of a better future for ourselves but even more so for our children and future generations.

Philosophically I’m socially Libertarian. I generally approve of unfettered immigration. Come on over everybody let’s have a party! There’s room in this house for everyone! That’s how America became the greatest nation it was. Invite don’t discourage. What if you hadn’t been born with the silver spoon that is American citizenship and white skin in this world? A fate you never deserved or asked for, just given, not as a right but as a fact of random chance?

Sure you get the bad with the good, but the chances are so small it’s ridiculous. Do you think that your chances of being victimized by MS-13 or Islamic Fundamentalism is so great that we should lock the door and hunker down with our guns and goods? Your chances of being killed by terrorists or cartels is less than falling down the stairs or in a traffic accident because of our lousy roads. Where are the sensible priorities? You are being victimized by the fear of bad statistics and bad science. A symptom of our failure to provide a decent education to our electorate. Besides Law Enforcement was supposed to take care of those things before it became the slave of the militarization of the War on Drugs. And sensible gun control would also take care of a lot of it. Those are other topics but I’ll have to save those for another time or this would get too long for the average State News, er, I mean, Fox News consumer. See I still throw in the odd one liner.

What the haves (Ubermensch) will not tell you is they want to let just enough of the “right” ones in to protect the white rich society; the Roman lifestyle they all live, and fool you into thinking you can aspire to in life, while keeping wages low and any talk of human rights and decency out of the equation. Healthcare, Shelter, decent living standards. These would put too much of a burden on “society” and ruin the economy. C’mon folks stop being swindled by the lies.

I’ll give you one last tidbit to ponder, not about immigration but even you will figure it out. Look up something called the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact between Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Now change the names to Trump, Vladimir Putin, and just for good measure throw in Kim Jong Un as Benito Mussolini. Hey, I think I’ve seen this film before…. Those who fail to heed their history are doomed to repeat it. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Blind acceptance is a sign of stupid fools who stand in line. Anger IS an energy.

If only CBS, or CNN, or anybody for that matter would point these things out I wouldn’t have to sit here over my vintage computer and I could get a low paying, benefits and pension free job in the New Economy and rest easy at night…. Satire.

Oh, by the way that’s not Hitler at the top but another nice guy from the 1940s trying to make America, er I mean Germany, great again. He poisoned himself, his wife, and all his children in the end. We should be so lucky. Sorry about the wife and kids tho.

The Comb Over (Part 2)

Posted on July 6, 2018 by gumbywan

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Yes blessed friends I’m back. And better than ever. It is my sad duty to have to exercise my First Amendment Rights as an American in order to inform you that The Comb Over is Adolf Hitler with orange hair. 45th President of the United States. If there ever was a sign of the decline of western civilization Donald Trump is it. I told you the parallels were eerie: a leader treated by the political and media establishment as a buffoon, a dimwit outsider and an “it can’t happen here,” lazy intellectual attitude on the part of an ignorant electorate due to a shabby school system kidnapped by Tea Party Christian Right Wing White Republicans in favor of charter, voucher, home school, and just plain minimal investment in the education of our future (our children). Then there is the Big Lie. Then there is the manipulation of liberal democracy by Billionaires and the Soviet Union, er, I mean Russia. I will prove to you in these bitter pages that to vote for a Republican now is to vote for the Nazi Party, Der Fuhrer. Wait and see. It will all become crystal clear.

Where to start? Maybe at the end. The separation and caging of refugee children was the last straw. Where was the last place we saw families divided and sent off to “detention” camps when they came to a new country? Do I have to spell it out for you? You watch the History Channel, right? My father fought to liberate people from concentration camps. Almost died in The Battle of the Bulge. Am I gonna sit here and watch the same thing happen to the Red, White, and Blue? I’m disgusted, appalled. Crying children. My country? Cages. I’m ashamed to call myself American.

ICE. Jack-booted storm troopers. Sometimes you just walk away from your job because it is too repulsive, inhumane. You say “I won’t be a part of this.” Patriots just doing their jobs? So were the SS men in Dachau. Study the banality of evil. They say they’ll use DNA to match the right children with their families. What’s that about? Like parents won’t recognize their own children? Why do we need to match DNA? If this doesn’t sound creepy to you, you aren’t paying attention.

How many times have you heard someone ask “if you were back in Nazi Germany would you have participated in the Holocaust?” The answer is inevitably, “No I would have resisted.” Liars, every one of you.

The time for conversation is over. There is no such thing as “good people on both sides” when the Confederate flag is displayed. How would you feel if they put up a statue honoring Erwin Rommel and you were Jewish? Stone Mountain, Georgia. How does an African American feel about that monument?

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On today’s menu is Scott Pruitt Gauleiter of the Environmental Protection Agency. He resigns after disemboweling 50 years of environmental protection for the planet. Talk about putting the fox in the hen house. A lifestyle considered lavish even by Imperial Roman standards on my/your dime while you scrabble to get health insurance, he resigns not in shame, but in having done a “good” job. I’m sure there is a CEO/Lobbyist job he doesn’t need waiting for him in the Energy Sector somewhere. Probably the Koch brothers. Who knows. Presidential Pardon.

Enough for today. I’ll get back to you tomorrow. I have so much more to say….

Foreign Invasion

Posted on September 4, 2017 by gumbywan

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Now I watch a lot of broadcast TV and you should too. It’s the best way to gather information about the world other than the dark web but you aren’t ready for that. Patience.

When I’m not watching the #1 rated drama on US network television, NCIS, or one of its clones, on Sunday nights I sometimes creep over to the so-called “Public” television outlets on my high speed digital network. Now today, in this 21st Century Comb-Over Era, perception and expectation are everything, and I expect to only hear British accents over on what we will now call for brevity’s sake, the PBS television network.

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On a Sunday evening I expect to relax to some BBC 19th century parlor drama on my local public television station.

Some programs on Public Television are actually from other UK production outlets like the commercial ITV. This is fine by me as long as they get the accent right. I’m as free market as the next yob when it comes to high brow television. But what’s got me really upset now is that they are starting to screen inferior accented series from Australia and New Zealand on public television. As if we couldn’t tell the difference between a British accent and an Aussie accent. Some people may be fooled, but not me. When I see my Pride and Prejudice I don’t want anybody popping off to Outback Steakhouse during the sponsor breaks at pledge time.

Unlike the US, Australia and New Zealand are just down in the mouth British colonies that couldn’t make it on their own. Australia is just a shabby California. There’s nothing high brow or hoity-toity about these convict transportation camps that would interest the more advanced American viewers of TV like myself. It’s shameful to screen ersatz Brideshead Revisiteds next to genuine smart English television content. You can always tell when someone is trying to make it on the cheap. Substitute margarine for butter. Made in Polynesia for made in the UK. A downturn in pledge dollars doesn’t have to mean a sacrifice in quality. How much could reruns of Good Neighbors or As Time Goes By cost? As in all British TV, economical production values are overcome by high brow accents and big words where smaller words would normally suffice on large budget US TV programs like NCIS. That’s what the literate public TV viewer expects. Not G’day or throw another kangaroo on the barbie. Public TV has lost its rudder.

Alistair Cooke – More American than Apple Pie

Now we accept Irish, Scots, and Welsh or even Indian accents in our public television content because these are necessary for verisimilitude especially when properly accented English people are really in charge. This is only logical. Every country has its aboriginal peoples. Even America has Southern accents, but nobody is going to believe a documentary series about our founding fathers where people talk like they are from Atlanta or Sydney, people expect a British accent, and a low budget British production in some dreary castle would be even better. After all who is better suited to present past glories than the British? Nobody in America wants to see stories about small villages in the 1940s, or the 19th century in Australia or New Zealand and if public TV thinks they can foist this on American pledge givers as British programming just because cable network BBC America now gets the cream of British programming, along with the Star Trek franchise, well they need to wake up and smell the tea brewing. Pasty complexions, bad teeth and posh accents are what we expect on Sunday night.

Now with Brexit on the horizon the fear is that even more Oceania programming will make it onto the lucrative US public TV market. I say don’t stand for it. God Save the Queen! Vote with your pledge dollars. Sure you can expect lower production values in British television as a result but these can always be overcome with longer words and posher accents. More specials with dead 1950s and ’60s doo wop and pop groups are no substitute for high brow British mini series.

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One yearns for the days when Alistair Cooke introduced Masterpiece with the proper Theater sup-pended to it. Alan Cummings, although with a Scots accent, is almost more an American staple now than Cooke. And now Emma Peel! Now if only the current content were as good.

I say put the Theater back in Masterpiece and take the Masterpiece out of Mystery. Don’t stand for inferior colonial programming. The next thing you know they’ll be putting programming from the ultimate failed colony, Canada, on public TV. The most patriotic thing you can do today is write to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or your local PBS station to keep our American public television exclusively British. Hail Britannia!

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The E(nemma)ys

Posted on August 29, 2014 by gumbywan

You know I love television, I’ve promoted its cultural, psychological, and physical benefits here in this blog enough. You know that. But the Emmys are the one exception. This batch of back slapping circle jerkers get together each year to supposedly “celebrate” the best of the best. Well, I’m going to tell you this incestuous relationship only leads to celebrating the worst of the best, the best being TV of course. If this was truly the best where was River Monsters? Where were the Kardashians on the so called red carpet? Where were the housewives of New Jersey, the Amish Mafia, The Barefoot Contessa? And most of all, where was season 11 of the most watched drama on network television, Naval Criminal Investigative Service? Where was Emily Wickersham? What a joke. Most importantly, where was my vote? Where does the common man/woman get his/her say?

Meanwhile shows like Orange is the New Crap, Game of Throwups, Downtown Abbey continue to garner undeserved accolades. Talk about a crime that should be investigated. Put Gibbs’ team on it!

The problem is the Emmy council, or whatever you call it, is run by one of the international conspiracy outfits, the highly secretive Bilderbergs, The Council on Foreign Relations, or the Trilateral Commission. Maybe somebody else. I’m sure Alex Jones knows. It’s another example of the elite oligarchs thinking they know what’s better for “the masses.” The idea should not be about what’s good for us, but about maintaining the liberty of our entertainment choices. These eggheads and silver spoon manipulators think they should rule the common man for his own good. Well listen up folks, the last time I checked this was still a representative republic and not a dictatorship. But democracy only happens when the common man takes the military-industrial-media bull by the horns and dumps the elites out of the thrones of Emmy power.

Good TV

We need the equivalent of an Emmy Tea Party. Boycott the awarded shows on cable and streaming media. Threaten to drop HBO and PBS from your satellite package. On commercial television refuse to buy from corporations that continue to advertise during these bad shows. Disguise ourselves as ethnic stereotypes and raid the local Best Buy or WalMart and dump the DVDs for shows like Big Bang Theory or the overtly socialist Saturday Night Live into the equivalent of Boston Harbor. Make the Emmy a death sentence for any show that truly doesn’t deserve it. That is the only chink in the armor of the elite media types and we need to drive a wedge into it. All they respond to is money, money, money, so hit ’em where it hurts ’em the most.

Bad TV

Only if we, the common people, wrestle the reigns of power from the elitist snobs and the fixers can we hope to keep television the life enriching, some say life saving medium, it was always meant to be. Maybe then the Emmys will mean something good. Otherwise you are going to be consigned to watching Modern Family for the rest of your life. Need I say more?

Doctor Crap?

Posted on August 24, 2014 by gumbywan

Somewhere in the David Tennant era the train came off the tracks. It started to be about romance, too many episodes were on earth, there were too many folks following the Doctor around and related to him, too much self-reference to previous lives and eras, too many people actually saying “Doctor Who?” out loud. Too few good stories. Steven Moffat took control and things really got awful. In the last few years I can only think of a handful of episodes I really enjoyed. I think the Doctor actors have come off pretty well as characters, but especially Matt Smith was fed almost nothing but crap for scripts. He did as well as he could.

If you go back to the first era the series really petered out during the Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy Doctors. BBC screwed up the franchise then with poor writers and poor choices for Doctors seeing it still as a children’s program with little potential beyond that, and it’s on the verge now. Similar to what NBC did to Star Trek in the ’60s. Capaldi is a good choice for an actor but somebody has to hand him a bloody script.

Doctor What?

You cannot save this by bringing back the Daleks to menace the earth once again. How many times have we seen that? Quit bringing back “beloved” characters from previous episodes, eras, without some original and exciting writing to go with it. Piss on the romance. It was always about affection not romance. A certain amount of sexual tension is good until outright romance jumps the shark; a grasping at simpering sentimentality instead of good writing.

The Current Problem?

I missed Dr. Who when it went off the air in 1989 and I miss it now.

Classic Doctor Who

Thomas Ligotti

Posted on August 15, 2014 by gumbywan

Thomas Ligotti is my kind of guy, sorta. He always expects the worst. He spends all his time worrying about how he’s going to suffer and die and expects that everyone else is just the same, except some of us are better at fooling ourselves about the outcome. That makes him mad. He thinks all the folks that don’t worry about dying and suffering are deceiving themselves and just distracting themselves with ideas of afterlives or just having a good time, you know, trying not to think about it. And he’s right, but these other folks are a whole lot happier than he is. Now we can see the real problem, sorta.

Ligotti has a big head, a really big head and that’s why he thinks about all these dreary things all the time instead of watching television or playing golf. He’s always talking about how consciousness and self awareness are a tragedy and a curse on humankind; a crappy adaptation that evolution sneaked in there. The thing he forgets is most people are really unconscious most of the time anyway, even when they’re not sleeping; they’re clueless about this kind of stuff, so why does he want to remind them and take them into his pity party? Leave them alone with their fairy tale lives. Don’t bring ’em down. Don’t rain on their parade. Not enough hobbies I guess. Not enough television. Not enough high speed internet downloading those “short films.”

Well what’s Ligotti’s answer? Don’t have any kids. That’s it. What, you say? That makes him feel better about things? Yeah, his basic argument is that by having kids we doom all the future generations to the suffering and death we have so we shouldn’t have any: antinatalism they call it. Let the species die out. Well if Ligotti had any kids he wouldn’t be worrying about his great grandbaby’s suffering, he’d be worrying about his own suffering trying to deal with his own kids, getting them through college and boyfriends, etc. I bet his parents suffered plenty with him. Forget about future generation’s suffering. Besides his kids would be the kind that would suffer because all the bullies would rag them about their egghead dad.

I think his problem maybe is really low testosterone and therefore low sperm count. He isn’t gettin’ it on enough. Only those coffin chicks would even consider hangin’ out with him he’s so dreary and down. He needs to jerk it more too, take some of the tension and pressure off it. He can’t have kids so he wants us to join him. Sour grapes.

Ligotti writes a horror story about once every decade or so, when he isn’t feeling sorry for himself and the rest of us. They’re pretty good, but enigmatic. Now I don’t expect you to understand a word like that, nor a story like that, because you are correctly spending your time feeling good and not worrying about future generation’s suffering or how the joke’s on us. Stay away from funerals. Hide the razorblades.

Sure, we’re all going to step off the pier sometime, but why waste any time thinking about that? Remember I told you to always expect the worst, so now that that’s over let’s move on to feelin’ good.

I’ve given you all the prescription you need in this blog to quit thinking about that dirt nap: TV, NCIS, loud music, giant monster movies, malt liquor. So, mix up some cocktails and turn on the wide screen to some NCIS and put a Chuck Berry record on that stereo set ’cause we’re goin’ out with a buzz in our heads and a smile on our faces.

What’s so bad about feelin’ good for the rest of your miserable little life?

Siamo Innocenti

Posted on February 13, 2014 by gumbywan

Okay, here we go. My subtext today is pissing off European Italians, so if you think this might offend you, go away now!

Once again the Italian justice system has shown how screwed up it is by convicting Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito of the murder of Meredith Kercher for a second time, after being found innocent in-between! I’m not sure what political agenda is involved in this other than Europeans, specifically Italian Europeans, who see this as a way to once again bash Americans. What sort of pastafazoole is it that keeps retrying a person already found innocent? Is the Italian criminal justice system as faulty as their government?

Anyone who has followed this nightmare knows that the Italians already have the murderer in jail. There are so many detailed descriptions of how the murder actually went down and how non-existent the evidence against Knox and her then boyfriend is (plus the lack of any motive). The Italian justice system tried to portray Knox and her boyfriend as some sort of drug crazed maniacs. Look at the videos from the crime scene, do those look like hung-over drug crazed maniacs?

Now the Italians are trying to extradite Amanda from the US. If the United States buys into this spaghetti farce it will simply go to show once again that the US justice system is just as messed up as the Italian justice system is. Besides, when have we ever listened to foreigners, especially ones that don’t live here, much less let them tell us what to do.

I’m sure that most Italians also think this whole thing is a load of ravioli stuffing but the lawyers, judges, and politicians involved with this thing, plus anyone who is just in this as an American hater, isn’t fit to even be a spaghetti bender.

Happy New Year (Always expect the worst)

Aside

I’ve got a holiday treat for you tonight as you ring out the worst year you’ve ever had and look forward to more bad news in 2014.

Hide the Razorblades

Shunned

Posted on November 16, 2013 by gumbywan

It seems I’ve been shunned, cast into the dust bin of the blogoshphere. This isn’t to be unexpected. Great minds have always been unrecognized in their lifetimes and the fact that I warn you, the 50% that are below average, off the most important and mind expanding posts, for your own good I might add, just makes it harder to be heard and appreciated.

Maybe it is because so many of you have taken my advice and devoted your life to not caring about anything, always expecting the worst, and a D minus effort. Maybe your spouse is pushing cheeseburgers under your locked bedroom door as you watch endless reruns of NCIS from your 11 season BluRay DVD collection. Perhaps you’ve discarded your cell phone and landline and your internet connection to take yourself off the grid so the NSA cannot peep on your miserable little life. You’ve given up that daily torture ritual you called fitness and sold your Nautilus machine and stationary bike and canceled your gym membership. This means you’ve taken my advice to heart. Maybe I should be glad I get so few hits and that your apathy is a testament to my persuasiveness.

I should have expected this; taken my own advice and expected the worst (for me personally). At least you have lightened my load and I can quit doing all the heavy lifting here as you tell the friends that wonder what happened to you, why they never see you, about your new, better, lifestyle. Perhaps this whole thing has gone viral but in a non-digital way, by old fashioned word of mouth.

I feel better now knowing that you have ceased to care that the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges never work or that another government shutdown is looming in a few months, or that the Philippines are under water . This means I’ve done my job making your life just a little better and that in turn makes my life just a little better as well.

Keep up the D minus effort and we’ll all make it to the grave just a little bit less stressed out.

I’m Here For You

Posted on November 6, 2013 by gumbywan

A lot of people blog because they have a big ego and think tens of thousands of people out there are going to hang on their every word. They want people to nod their heads for every opinion they write about. They want comments about how brilliant and how oh so right they are. They think everyone wants to look into their private psychoses and their dreary website and affirm their useless digital scribblings. It’s all about me, me, me…

Well this blog is different, it’s all about you, you, you. I’m here for you. I’ve got your back. What other blogger warns you off some posts while putting others out there that you know will improve your life? Don’t some posts seem to have been written just for you personally? Huh? Do you think I’d sit here punching this keyboard if I didn’t feel an urgent social responsibility? I’ve got tons of episodes of NCIS on the DVR and I could be parking my lazy ass on the divan and enjoying the best TV program ever made. But no, I’m here trying to improve your miserable life, a complete stranger. That’s how big I am; a giving person, a servant.

Where You’ll End Up

Oh sure I have to use tough love sometimes and point out the deficiencies in you and your world but you know it’s for your own good. I don’t like doing it but somebody has to or you are going to end up on the trash heap of humanity. I worry about you all the time, especially the 50% of you that are below average. I stay up late trying to think of something that is going to stick in your little pea brain, that can pull you up from the desperate and hopeless state you are currently in.

Fairies and Rainbows

I try to temper these intense self-improvement posts with other posts of whimsy and carefree fun that will brighten your otherwise dreary day. I add the occasional important current event because I know you haven’t touched a newspaper in years and when you did all you cared about was what the Kardashians were doing. See these are all for your own good too. I spend a lot of time each and every day thinking about how to get through to you and improve your life just a little. I put all my needs aside to serve you, dear reader.

I’m Here for You!

Well I just wanted you to know that when the chips are down, like they always are for you, you can count on me. I wanted you to know I’m making more than a D minus effort for you. Whatever disaster comes into your world I’ll be putting all my resources into how best to deal with it and keep you from circling the drain. Think of me as the FEMA of bloggers, but in a better way that actually arrives in time and helps the afflicted.

Remember I’m here if you need me and I’m ready to make time for you day or night. Oh, and like I’ve told you before, lowered expectations are the key to a less than miserable life so just expect the worst and everything will be all right.

Welcome to my dreary life…

Hide the razorblades…

Category Archives: pessimism