Whiskey Fire

Well, If YOU Have a Gun, I Sure Feel Safer!

Oh, hello there. More deep thoughts to share with us, then?

I cannot wait.

Teach gun safety in classrooms and leave sex education to parents. Plan B won’t save young people from incurable STDs, but guns will protect women and children from being raped or murdered. The more young people know about guns, the safer our society will be.

So, uh, what?

If every child in America carried a gun to school every day, America would be safer? Because their gym teacher would teach them about gun safety? So they can, I don't know, shoot chlamydia in its stupid face with a gun?

What?

Is THAT your thesis...?

Well, OK then --

Rush Limbaugh said on his talk radio show on May 1: “We know kids are gonna get guns anyway, why not teach them how to use them?” The king of talk was right. Instead of pushing morning-after pills on 15-year-old girls, we should be showing young people how to responsibly use the preeminent tool they have to defend themselves in the event of a violent attack—a gun.

All 15 year old girls should carry guns with them at all times? Because then they won't get pregnant? In what world does this make sense?

Beg pardon. Carry on.

Americans use guns to hold off assault far more than they use guns to commit murder or violent crime. Indeed, Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck has shown that Americans use guns to defensively prevent crime about 2 million times a year—often by merely brandishing a weapon in front of a would-be-assailant.

Hold on -- do you mean that 1992 study that "included gun uses against animals and did not distinguish civilian uses from military or police uses"? Because surely you realize as a thoughtful observer that you have to carefully analyze statistical research and account for bias, and that actually even this highly dubious study said "2.5 million" and not "2 million," so you've even botched your own point? Surely, you care about your facts -- excuse me?

What's that?

Right.

Well-rebutted.

Yes, I know I said "butt"...

Sure, point to you.

But how do we end gun violence, then?

More and more, psychiatric drugs are being miss-prescribed or abused and President Obama’s FDA is contributing to this mess. Medications are increasingly being prescribed to young people that could be setting them up for violent behavior. Instead of prescribing talk therapy, we are loading young people up on meds that are known to cause suicidal thoughts and/or incite aggression.

"Miss-prescribed"...?

Nevermind.

But... What medications are these? And... "talk therapy"? We need more Freud? What?

And if as you said before, violent crime is down overall, which you said is due to concealed carry laws, how could that be true when you then say that the youngsters, they're ever-more increasingly hepped up on goofballs?

Why, it's almost like you're totally whiffing on some obvious contradictions in what you're saying, or else you don't care, or else, perhaps, when the wind blows hard enough from the East your Western ear emits a mournful B-flat, reminiscent of what happens when a toddler learns how to make sounds breathing over an empty Coke bottle --

Gotcha.

Oh you're not done.

It’s time for young people to go through gun education before their teachers brainwash them about gun control.

Wait, weren't you going to tell us how if 15 year old girls had firearms training, they wouldn't need the morning after pill? Because that was kind of strange and I thought you'd maybe explain that --

OK.

Well congratulations, I guess, on finding the precise part of the world where you'll manage to keep yourself fed and employed. Since in the real world, you couldn't get a gig hiring yourself out as mulch...

Smutty Limericks and Socialism: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

Breaking News: Erik Loomis continues to not be fired. This has been reported by one "Oliver Darcy," pictured.

But of course there are even greater threats than Loomis out there. For reals. Believe it. There is, for instance, Alessandro Porco of UNC-Wilmington, who has published poetry. Or even worse: poetry verse.

The University of North Carolina-Wilmington has hired an English literature professor whose pornographic poetry verse include fantasies of sexual relations with freshmen female students, an education watchdog reported this week.

In Prof. Alessandro Porco’s poem “Hot Girl-Girl Action University” the fictional university president Jill Kelly offers a welcome to the freshman class.

“Who would say No to a gang-bang?
Who would say No to Prof. Poon-Tang?
Who would say No to my scholarly toungin’?
Thank you fathers for your daughters.”

That poem is part The Jill Kelly Poems, ranked 3,963,932 on Amazon, which chronicles the life of a porn star through poetry.

In an interview on PopMatters.com, Porco describes it as “my book-length ode to the adult-film star affectionately referred to as ‘the anal queen.”

Another of Porco's sexually explicit pieces included in The Jill Kelly Poems is “Ars Poetica.”

“Breakfast in bed & down on all fours;
You’re eggs-over-easy, muchin’ for more.
Vegans protest & brand it obscene;
But there’s no starving my anal queen.”

In another collection, Augustine in Carthage, Porco included what he describes as the “21 of the filthiest limericks I could think to write.”

Jay Shalin, of the watchdog group the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy pointed out the controversial hiring in an opinion piece earlier this week and argued that parents should be wary of placing their young adults in the classroom with Porco.

Indizzle. Likewise,

J. Joyce rakes hell, and the sewers, for dirt to throw at the fair face of life, and for poison to make beauty shrivel and die.... and Dr. Yeats undertakes that no citizen of Dublin shall fail to know his name. In season or out of season he has proclaimed him a genius... But there have been geniuses who have wallowed in the mire before, though any quite equally foul-minded, who shall say?

1. I have never heard of Porco until these idiots trying to get him fired brought him up. Now I'll buy one of his books. If it's good, I have read good poems. If it sucks, I have pissed off a dink. I win.

2. I don't know if Porco is as good as Joyce or Yeats; probably not, but who knows? Saying "you can't go there" and actually making it stick has not as of yet worked as far as discovering genius goes. Quite the opposite.

3. The "taxpayer" argument is ridiculous. I pay my taxes and consider dropping bombs on foreigners for obscure and probably counterproductive purposes "obscene." You have your priorities, I have mine. Yay America!

4. Also, Yeats got Joyce a modest payment from the Civil List; in the long run, totting it all up, that worked out to a tidy long-term public profit that is still paying dividends and is likely to do so for centuries to come.

5. It is inane and offensive for anyone to say that Porco is unfit to teach because of what he writes. He freely and openly produces poetry. Lots of folks, in the public and private sectors, consume pornography. And what he does isn't even pornographic -- you'd have to go to court there to prove strictly prurient intent, and good luck with that. (St. Augustine? Even in this decadent age... people masturbate to poetry among all available options? Really? Really?)

6. My "impressionable offspring" will, when they are of the age to encounter Mr. Porco, be old enough to handle college. If they aren't, I won't send them there, and I will likely also deny them the use of forks without corks affixed to the tines.

7. That said, I personally deplore foulmouthed limericks.

Out of the Barracks

One supposes that certain critics sincerely believe they have a point of some sort as to improprieties regarding "reporters" and "law enforcement" and "double standards" and the Petraeus Affair.

One... supposes.

But such finger and tongue-wagging smuggeries are mere priggish prudery.

So -- General David Petraeus has been "caught" having an affair with someone not his wife.

So -- General David Petraeus has been revealed as possessing an illicit, "dangerous" sexuality.

So -- what?

The cant! The hypocrisy!

Let us all face the truth. Let us stride manly forth into the daylight and say YES! YES! THIS IS WHO I AM!

Let us be bold. Let us be honest. Let us... be true to ourselves.

Admit it:

Who among us, in America, does not want to fuck a General?

Yes, we have all heard the slander, we have endured the pervasive cruelty. We have often been accused of being, as they say, generalosexuals. Or worse! But let us own the epithet. Let us say, loud and proud: I am an American, and I am a General-fucker.

Republican or Democrat, we have all wanted to fuck General Petraeus; we have for years cast him coy glances, batted our eyes, simpered, primped, and preened, flirted shamelessly, desperate for his favor, his manly charms.

Don't deny it!

That dear, dear David has cast his favors upon an unworthy BITCH, excuse me, TROLLOP is the polite term I am informed, must not discourage us.

Someone else will come along just like him soon enough, and since we will be faithful and true and sincere general-fuckers, we'll stay steadfast and unchanging, and be rewarded by getting well and truly fucked in the end.

I mean, not quite as fucked as certain foreigners, sure, but whatever.

Just BELIEVE.

MAS. In an apparent effort to make this all even more inane, were that possible... "Tuesday, the house remained quiet aside from the media circus.  A woman could be seen inside the home's large bay windows, but it was not clear if it was Jill or her twin sister."

Don't you fuckers know there's a war on?

Grown Wingnut Pops Wood Over Republican Dudes, Attempts To Hide It By Writing On Internet

I watched the debate tonight. Joe waxed that little twerp's Trans Am, like five times. But I haven't even had a chance to see the media coverage, and I'm still catching up, and for some reason the first thing I saw was from some dork at the American Thinker, J.T. Hatter, giving us all the reasons his dick is SO FUCKING HARD about Paul Ryan, but simultaneously NO HOMO, NO HOMO, OHHHHH MYYYYYYY GOOOOOOD DON'T STOP, NO HOMO.

(No homo.)

You can go to the website and cast your vote for who's hot and who's not.  Paul's Hot!  Joe's Not.  Cast your vote here.  OK, I admit it.  I voted.  Guess whom for. 

Gurl, we are aware.

That brought my teenage daughter into my office.

"My ears are bleeding! What are you playing?"

"New music video on YouTube.  Do you think Paul Ryan is hot?"

She looks at the computer.  "Isn't he the Olympic swimming guy?"

"He's our vice presidential candidate."

"Really?  Well...not my type."  She looks closer.  "He is kinda cute.  Yeah, Dad.  He's really hawt!"

Finally, something they can agree on. It's so difficult relating to teens, I know.

JFK Hair

This amazes me.  But I'm glad about it.  Romney's got good hair.  He's handsome for sure. 

Whoa, I was not prepared for him to switch tabs like that. Okay, so his legs are tingling over the "Paul Ryan" one, but all of a sudden, he remembers that he has Daddy issues? Intrigued, we all are:

But I'm glad about it.  Romney's got good hair.  He's handsome for sure.  Now I'm being told that Ryan, who I always thought looked like a CPA, is hawt (which I'm given to understand is much better than hot).  I always admired him for his good sense, compassion for others, and brilliance in understanding our budget problems and formulating workable plans to solve them.  Ryan's selection as VP impressed me more than anything else Romney has done.

And their cawks.

But this whole "Ryan is hot" thing is news to me, and a little strange, too.  You think I'm making it up?  This is even harder to believe -- the entire liberal agitprop news media wholeheartedly agrees: Ryan is hawt.

J.T. Hatter's friends and family need to be aware that he will be using this spelling from now on. 

Hatter goes on to include a few quotes from actual liberal sites, a few from centrist websites, and a few from TMZ (because Hollywoods r librul and in a conspeersy against wingnuts like J.T.), to show us that he is not the only one with a relentless erection at this hour.

Then he explains:

The Hawt Vote

Females across the nation say, "Wow!"  And that translates into an awful lot of votes.  Between Obama revealing himself as an empty chair and Biden being...well, Biden, we have a pretty good chance of pulling this election off -- despite what the media spinners and pollsters say. 

Because girlz are only concerned about hawt, because his teenaged daughter said so, and he bought into it because now that he thinks of it, he's not into Biden, and he's not ready to look at something so exotic as Obama, but Paul Ryan is omg so hawt you guyz. Wank wank wank...

We just need to let the public see our soon-to-be President Romney...

Aw, adorable.

and Vice President Ryan as they are: competent, experienced adults.  Perhaps we could show the public a little more.

Ryan flexing his pecs on nationwide television?  Worth two whole points.  Maybe three.

That was really the last way I ever wanted to find out how many, ahem, inches, this J.T., ahem, grows, during these times. Wow.

We could take Pennsylvania.  Somebody get his shirt off for fifteen minutes in front of the right camera, and we've got this election sewn up.

J.T. will finish the race, at least.

This Thursday night, do you know where your wife or girlfriend is going to be? Sitting right in front of the TV watching the Ryan/Biden debate. You'll see. She'll be smiling, too. 

Now that the debate is over and we know that Joe cleaned that little twerp's clock, I can only imagine the sad scene in J.T.'s house, as he sadly "finished" the race in embarrassment. If his wife took pity, well, she deserves the sainthood which is surely coming her way.

 

A Penis Universally Acknowledged

Uh...

Wow.

I was going to make fun of this astoundingly wrong stuff about Jane Austen, but then I glanced at the accompanying graphic.

Wow.

That's a dangly penis right there on the sideboard. Into the white soup, as it were.

Gosh.

You Know Who's Got Hands? The Devil! And He Uses Them for Holding!

And Tennessee rockets into the lead in the race to impose loony authoritarian sex laws.

Tennessee senators approved an update to the state's abstinence-based sex education law that includes warnings against "gateway sexual activity."

In a new family life instructions bill, holding hands and kissing could be considered gateways to sex.

No holding hands. That'll end the Scourge of Teen Pregnancy. Yep.

Not that this has anything to do with reducing teen pregnancy rates. "Abstinence education" is about political and social control, not public health. But you knew that.

Via.

 

The Rain in Rochester Falls Mainly on the Lame

Of all the barnyard-class deep-thinkers clamoring to make grunting fools of themselves over Sandra Fluke presenting her opinion to Congress, and getting called a "slut" for her trouble, among the loudest jackasses was Steve Landsburg, who brayed:

while Ms. Fluke herself deserves the same basic respect we owe to any human being, her position — which is what’s at issue here — deserves none whatseover. It deserves only to be ridiculed, mocked and jeered. To treat it with respect would be a travesty.

Landsburg said this because, as a Philosophical Economist, he either (a) doesn't understand how this newfangled contraption known as "insurance" works, or else he's (b) just kind of an asshole.

He in fact came up with a third iteration of this nonsense, though by that point most people were bored and kind of just sighed and moved on, because it was the same old -- the argument that if you pay a tax you get to veto every single use of your tax dollars is not strictly accurate, but even worse is the idea that if you yourself are paying a tax, you don't get a say in how that tax might benefit you, if someone else who is paying that tax objects.

The tax on fertile women who choose not to use birth control pills is the least defensible.

Fertile women who never use some form of contraception are in a minority consisting of Rainbow Brite, Princess Buttercup, Kathryn Jean Lopez, and not even Smurfette.

You definitely get a kind of Henry Higgins vibe off Professor Lansburg, though....

Higgins is standing up near him, closing two or three file drawers which are hanging out. He appears in the morning light as a robust, vital, appetizing sort of man of forty or thereabouts, dressed in a professional-looking black frock-coat with a white linen collar and black silk tie. He is of the energetic, scientific type, heartily, even violently interested in everything that can be studied as a scientific subject, and careless about himself and other people, including their feelings. He is, in fact, but for his years and size, rather like a very impetuous baby "taking notice" eagerly and loudly, and requiring almost as much watching to keep him out of unintended mischief. His manner varies from genial bullying when he is in a good humor to stormy petulance when anything goes wrong; but he is so entirely frank and void of malice that he remains likeable even in his least reasonable moments.

The "likeable" bit is not so apparent online, where, well, Landsburg's blog reads exactly like what Henry Higgins' blog would have read like, if they had the internet early last century, and Shaw hadn't invented him. (Ultimate grammar troll!)

Anyway, I thought of Higgins after I saw this... 

Steven Landsburg, the professor who was denounced by his university for criticizing Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, stuck to his position in an exclusive interview with The College Fix.

“Everyone deserves respect, but some people are not interested in discussing their ideas, or possibly examining a different side,” said Landsburg, a bestselling author and professor of economics at the University of Rochester. “Fluke clearly has no desire to do this.”

How does he know that Fluke feels this way? Who knows? And who cares? Yes, Fluke clearly believes that if she pays into an insurance scheme, it ought to cover contraceptives. This is an astoundingly non-controversial position. It certainly does not deserve to be "laughed at, mocked, and jeered."

But then note this, why Landsburg was told he was out of line by Rochester's president:

I am outraged that any professor would demean a student in this fashion.  To openly ridicule, mock, or jeer a student in this way is about the most offensive thing a professor can do.  We are here to educate, to nurture, to inspire, not to engage in character assassination.

Well, yeah.

When you're speaking as a professor, you shouldn't do that.

But then, dig this:

UR president Joel Seligman wrote an e-mail to faculty and staff that said he was “outraged that any professor would demean a student in this fashion.”

Landsburg found these criticisms to be absurd.

“Free speech isn’t the issue here,” he said. “Nobody, myself included, tried to stifle her speech.”

Right...

But free speech is so not the issue.

You being a dick is the issue.

 

Sometimes It's Hard, To Be a Straight Man

When Rush Limbaugh went slightly more nuts than usual and relentlessly called a woman who said something he disagreed with a "slut" and a "prostitute," making up a metric cystload of lies in the process, it's totally obvious who the True Victim Was:

Men.

Kathryn Jean Lopez makes this point with seriousness and care (TM).

I am a woman and I’m offended.

Egad.

I am offended that, once again, parties in positions of power have decided to pretend that all women are cut from the same political cloth.

Alliteration and a dead metaphor! This must be serious!

This is my favorite bit:

Liberal Democratic women ask, “Where are the women?” — ignoring women who have publicly opposed the coercive mandate in hearings and letters and protests of various sorts. And, just for the record, there is yet another answer to their question: Women are in the pope’s prayers.

Well, dandy. So there you are, girls! Pope prayers!

(?)

The basic fact of the matter is that we're all more free if our employer doesn't get to make our healthcare decisions for us. You get paid, you get insurance, it's yours. Your employer doesn't get to decide how you spend your paycheck, your employer doesn't get a say in how you fuck. It doesn't get much closer to first principles than that, no matter what pope is praying for what.

And how are men the victims...? This is a bit of a puzzlement.

And I am deeply offended by what is being said about men. A few good men have stuck their necks out lately in defense of religious freedom in America, and they deserve to be thanked and defended as they counter a dedicated campaign of dishonesty, hysteria, and raw bigotry.

These Laucelots sure are to be praised in their passionate defense of an Eternal Sacred Principle of Liberty that was only widely discovered last month, but still. St. Sebastian was a total weenie next to poor St. Rush. Or something.

It falls to even crazier others to explain the Male Victimization Angle, which is often obscure...

Oh, hello there, Doctor Helen.

But while talking is good, action is better. What men don’t understand is that this is a cultural war and it is being waged by women and their “Uncle Tims” in government and elsewhere against the average American male. Men have a hard time fighting back because they cannot psychologically go against the women they have been taught to protect, but that is changing and it should.

Good Lord! I am a perfectly average American male! I have always thought of myself as such! But now I am a slave of the sort Harriet Beecher Stowe, that... bitch (?) fought to free, if I were black, which I'm not, and used to be a slave, which I wasn't... FUCK this metaphor is getting kind of embarrassing... is the Average American Male meant to sound so whiny? Apparently so.

Because here is a very peculiar rant intended to describe why Men Are the Real Victims. Both Perfessers endorse it, so you know it is... that.

Well, here we go.

I normally don’t post politics here.*  There’s always a first time for everything.  And the everything right now is the fact that half of my field would rather commit suicide than actually think.  Particularly when thinking involves not repeating slogans that are pushed at them from above with the implication that “all the coolest kids think this way.”

Again, blame it on us being misfits, and misfits’ own misfits besides.  We’d do anything to fit in.  Well, most of us.  I still prefer to stand by the side of the road holding both middle fingers up.

OK. You're fifteen years old, then?

On my Facebook page I echoed a friend’s post of a Heinlein poster with a quote about how forcing a man to pay for a service he doesn’t want “for his own good” is the greatest tyranny.

So, yeah. "On my Facebook page I echoed a Heinlein quote."

?

!

.

And that is why it has been scientifically proven, by science, that Men are Oppressed.

(Pretending to not understand how insurance works is the new anti-misandry. Or something.)

(Also the quote is just dopey. There are worse tyrannies, many of which involve getting shot. Besides that, the "service" being enforced on women in many states of having to undergo unnecessary invasive medical procedures would seem to be clear instances of tyranny, by this definition, were our national polity not nuts.)

You're in Luck, Lovely Ladies! Smooth John Hawkins Has Some Sexy Sexytime Tips for You Girly-Girls

WARNING: Post may cause blindness or death

Noted wingnut John Hawkins has some Romantic Advice for the Ladies.

(This is the most terrifying sentence I have ever written, and likely the most terrifying sentence you have ever read. The creepiness factor of the following is approximately thrice that of John Boehner in a catsuit tiptoeing up behind you and unexpectedly tonguing your eardrum.)

(Hawkins is transparently ripping off the Cracked dot com format. He's done this for a while. It's all kinds of melancholy, what we have here. Attempted-Cool Wingnut Snarkland is a sad country, forelorn and lonely, plus dickish. LISTS! I WILL DO LISTS! ONLY I WILL DO THEM FROM A RIGHT WING POINT OF VIEW! YOU WILL LAUGH! LAUGH! LAUGH, I COMMAND YOU! WHY WILL YOU NOT LAUGH!)

****

Reading John Hawkins offering women romantic advice is like reading a recipe for a coelacanth soufflé: hard to accept as real, yet thoroughly unappetizing.

Still, there is some value here. Dollar-store wingnuts like Hawkins have nothing to pass to the world except half-digested, ill-dumped chunks of right wing ideology, and they can't help flinging their scat around. Higher-ranking conservative primates usually try to bury their fouler excretions. Sure, they do so badly. But with a lower-order knuckle-walker like Hawkins, it's all out there in the open, in all its redolence.

Hawkins' concept of "women" is, clearly, strictly theoretical. We can safely assume he has never had contact with an actual woman, in the absence of headlines such as "Half of Species Takes out Restraining Order against Condescending, Terrifying Cheeto-Beast."

But then, the entire right-wing concept of Woman is likewise as phony as it is didactic. Hawkins isn't going to tell us anything we don't know, but he sure will pour on the smarm, in the manner of a too-close, booze-breathed uncle ogling your tits while he lectures you about milk and cows and promise rings. Which is, in the end... the entire right-wing concept of Woman.

****

So here's Hawkins, talking about Women. 

Women are complicated because they have: A) a layer of logic, B) laid across that a mood, and C) on top of that an ever-fluctuating stream of emotion. If men are like checkers, then women are like chess — except the pieces are all kittens hopped up on catnip with broken glass taped to their paws.

This is... woeful.

Anyone capable of perpetrating this paragraph deserves ten harsh years in the catnip mines, strapping broken glass to kitten paws.

Beyond the crimes to metaphor, though, this is just boring sexism expressed incompetently. Women are only logical at the third remove? Unlike us plain simple menfolk (scratching balls, watching sports)?

A-yep. Dames. Fart fart heh.

Fuck you. I'm not checkers. I'm Connect Four. And MollyI is Parcheesi. Together we make Hungry Hungry Hippos. Or perhaps Battleship. The fuck? Board games...?

****

Women, in my experience, are not some sort of Unknowable Galactic Otherbeings. They tend to be people, by and large. I mean, Michelle Bachmann probably has tentacles, but I'm guessing she had them surgically implanted because she misheard Jesus talking in her dreams. ("I said you need to be more SENSIBLE! Not you need to skin-graft TENTACLES!")

It gets ickier:

I’m puzzled listening to my female friends tell me they don’t understand men. This is like a rocket scientist telling you she can’t figure out how a flush toilet works. Men are fairly simple; so how can we be so confusing to such comparatively complex creatures? How can women not already know these things?

I hate this. Men fuck fart sports ho ho. Women sensitive need to excuse please caveman bullshit then we girls go shop yay!

Like I said, smarm. "Damn, bitches, these are compliments!"

Also, men are not "simple." Nobody is. Not even Hawkins, I guess. (I wouldn't spelunk in that psyche with a GPS, two Sherpas, a quart of laudanum, and Freud his own badass crazy psychoanalytic self.)

****

Wait...

This entire column I'm making fun of is a total ripoff of Cracked dot com. 

It is. The list format, the tone, everything, down to the placement of the captions.

****

Fucking hell.

I could go through this in detail, but I'll just leave you with the following. It is verbatim. Kill me.

There is also an unhappier possibility. If you can’t find a “good guy,” maybe you’re making the same mistake that men do when they want a woman who “likes me for ME!” Translation: He wants a supermodel who likes him despite the fact he’s boring and unattractive. If all else fails, it’s always worth asking if the man of your dreams came along tomorrow and wanted to date, would you be the kind of woman he’d want to date?

Why can't I find a good man? Wait, it couldn't be something I'm doing wrong, could it?

This, according to Pajamas Media, is a good joke about dating. 

I'm done.

****

!

That Train's Never Late!

And, sort of as we expected... we've hit the trifecta!