If Yesteryear's Headlines Read Like Today's Website Headlines

I was pondering one night, weak and weary, pondering feverishly, that given the internet websites' odd 'zero tolerance' for important nouns and such, I pondered what yesteryear's headlines would be like given today's internet grammar, or lack thereof. I run on, verily.
Enjoy.

1865 - FFS! MRS. LINCOLN WON'T BE GOING BACK TO THEATRE

1876 - PLAINS INDIANS KNOW MATHEMATICS, ARMY NOT SO MUCH

1889 - LMAO, AMERICANS SURPRISED BY OUTCOME OF RESULTS

1912 - LOL, PASSENGERS ON LINER FIND THEIR ROUND TRIP TICKETS ARE ONLY ONE WAY

1929 - WALL STREET INVESTORS TO KEEP OFFICES ON FIRST FLOOR FOR THIS VERY OBVIOUS REASON

1932 - YANKEE DOES THIS AMAZING THING

1939 - SOUTHERN FILM WINS AWARDS

1941 - UNITED STATES IS ANGRY OVER JAPANESE HAWAIIAN AIR SHOW

1945 - OMG! HITLER FINDS SOVIET SHELLING NEARBY, THE RESPONSE IS PRICELESS

1945 - JAPANESE ANGRY OVER UNITED STATES AIR BURST

1953 - ROSENBERGS FIND CHAIR ENLIGHTING

1963 - TRIP TO DALLAS ENDS IN SURPRISE FOR PRESIDENT KENNEDY

1964 - BRITISH INVASION CURSES AMERICAN PARENTS WHAT HAPPENS NEXT WILL AMAZE YOU

1965 - U.S. TROOPS FIND THEIR ASIAN HOLIDAY NOT AS ADVERSTISED

1969 - BALTIMORE UPSET BY NEW YORK

1973 - PRESIDENT NIXON FINDS TAPED EXPLETIVE OFFENSIVE AND DELETES IT BY NIGHTFALL

1979 - LOL, AMERICANS SURPRISED BY REVOLUTION, WHO KNEW?

1980 - MT. ST. HELENS LOSES 1,000 FEET WHERE IT WENT MAY SURPRISE YOU

1983 - U.S. FLEXES MIGHT OVER TINY ISLAND TO SAVE STUDENTS GRADES SAVED TOO

1994 - EX-FOOTBALL STAR GETS VERY RUDE AWAKENING

2001 - LMAO, AMERICANS SURPRISED BY OUTCOME OF RESULTS


 

Critical Thinking Is Becoming Passe In The 21st Century

Any one (and as I look about me it appears to be an increasing few) with two critical thinking brain cells to rub together can see that critical thinking is becoming passé in the 21st century. But, there's the rub, I think one needs to have more than two to actually achieve a critical mass to engage in any sort of critical thought. What is more, is that the incredible cause for this bizarre dichotomy may be no more further away than the nearest internet capable device. It's fucking destroying any real discourse.

As this century devolves, it no longer comes as any surprise that when you go to sleep one night knowing that Native Americans are called Native Americans and when you wake up the next morning with news sites blaring headlines that exclaim, "Obama Visits Indian Country". "What the fuck?" no longer is standard operating procedure. No one seems to be questioning the change and you feel like changing your name to Winston Smith just so you can fall on the right side of whatever it is you're suppose to be allowed to be. You read history that the people of the United States were "war weary" after World War II only to discover that there have been almost 300 wars since then and the United States, war weary though it may be, strapped for cash though it may be, has started more than three-fourths of those wars. Then your head may start to have a slight but oddly persistence throbbing when realizing the last time the U.S. Congress declared war was for World War II! If you're lucky, though, your Winston Smith kicks in and you forget that because of that fact, every war since World War II has been illegal under the Constitution.

Because it takes some critical thought and at least a passing knowledge of history to realize that the United States is nothing more than a two party dictatorship, that doesn't prevent most folks from slipping and sliding down the same muddy hillside into the same muddy pig pen of the usual suspects to argue over. Incessant, pointless non-critical thinking "discussions" about the same issues that haven't really changed for decades. Abortion. Guns. Illegal Aliens. Racial divisiveness. And the new kid on the block, man-made climate change. The internet and its chat forums, instant messaging and so forth, have turned this devolving century's concept of a critical thinking "discussion" into a putrid cesspool of ad hominem, straw men fallacy, hasty generalization, begging the question, false cause, false dichotomy, ad ignorantum, burden of proof reversal, non sequitur, and/or bandwagon fallacy. This devolution allows for the impersonal aspect of any internet "chat" and for the "winner" of any argument to be self-proclaimed and to take their ball and go home, in a virtual sort of way.

Yet, there are even more "tools" to be used over the internet, thanks to the continued use and popularization by the Mainstream Media (MSM), politicians and progressive/regressive websites of two Orwellian words; Orwellian because their meanings have been changed into pejoratives. "Truthers", as if the truth is now a bad thing, and "haters", as if pointing out negatives is now a, well, hateful idea. The use of these pejoratives allows the so-called critical thinker to deliver an imaginary and devastating blow to the other person and allows themselves to be awash in the false knowledge of smug superiority over mere human peons.

It's not that the MSM is completely negligent in their reporting. We know that our computers and televisions, which are equipped with microphones and cameras are routinely used to spy on us, whether by governmental agencies or perverted hackers (which one might say could be one in the same). We find ourselves completely unalarmed by this apparently (there have been no riots in the streets over these facts) and when chatting with someone about the latest cool car or game, we do not blink an eye when ads start popping up on our devices exhorting us to purchase the very thing we had just been talking about!

You are devolving now into a bunch of Winston Smiths and soon you'll be arguing with me that 2+2 = 5 and will have been programmed enough to send whatever people you feel compelled to, and have them start snapping my finger bones when I say 2+2 = 4 just once too often.

And don't get me started about auto-correct!
 

Race Hatred: THE Divisive Issue

I am compelled to write this not because of any recent event or publication, but because of the comment section for an article about melting snow in Detroit uncovering the frozen bodies of dogs. As reprehensible as it is to discover dozens of dead dogs, most of which were fighting dogs, dumped in a city's public park, that this story unleashed such a despicable and even more reprehensible tirade of unabashed race hatred is both illuminating and hopefully educational.

It is no secret that I believe America has devolved into a two party dictatorship which serves not the people but the elite. To give the illusion of a choice between two evils on any given ballot, certain "hot button" issues are constantly used to keep the People arguing amongst themselves over seemingly divisive issues. A short list of these issues include: abortion, religious intolerance, gun control, carbon taxes, crime and the greatest divisive issue of all, race hatred.

(Poster for the film, "The Birth Of A Nation")

It's 2014, folks, but reading the comments section of the "dead dogs" piece on the WWJ-TV, CBS affiliate website, will make you believe that it's 1915 and these people have just stepped out of a screening of "The Birth Of A Nation". How a story about dead dogs became a conduit for an outpouring of such vile race hatred I will leave for the reader to decide. Here is a small sampling of the comments (and there are over 500 of them at the time of this writing) because that is all that is necessary in this case. The comments range from the subtle to the explicit.

"It is the damn jungle with snow !!! The North American Pavement Ape is a wild feral animal !!! I'm not gonna say it again. This story would have been excellent if the melting snow revealed hundreds of these FERAL ANIMALS"

"13%. Dark skinned. Dumb. I like the dogs better, poor things. License these people (if indeed they are people); not the dogs."

"There are two types of black people. There are the respectable folks who are, LAW ABIDING, educated, mannerly, considerate, employed and who have legitimate children. This group is called Negros, but they seem to be few and far between. And then, there is the apparent majority of blacks who didn’t even finish high school, think the minimum wage should be a living wage, suck of the welfare system for generations, breed illegitimate children like rabbits, participate in flash mobs, steal, rape, are gang members, own illegal weapons, fight to buy expensive things they can’t afford, are very racist, play the “knockout game”, live in a dump, currently occupy OUR White House, “department of justice” and some seats in Congress.....these are the n i 99 e r s, most of whom never had a “daddy” to provide some guidance in life (includes “obama”)."

"This is Dee-troit. Animal Farm where savage primates murder and cause mayhem. They are the ones who should be "put down", not the dogs."

"Negroes doing what they do best."

We can pretend such vile hatred does not really exist or that it is merely the product of the anonymity that the internet provides, but we would only be fooling ourselves. Aside from the adroit use of this dividing issue on the American electorate by the politicians, we can at least be assured that race hatred is learned and often at a very young age, regardless of color. We can call out the politicians who use this issue and we can also call out the corporations and individuals who contribute to their campaigns as well. We must constantly be aware of such hatred and not hesitate for a moment to not only shame but perhaps educate. That may seem a bit pie-in-the-sky, but as compassionate human beings we have to start somewhere!

 

WHAT IF THERE WAS A BOOK ABOUT YOU AND YOU DIDN'T KNOW IT?

Yes, the interweb is still a bit of a Wild West kinda place all right. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Amazon books was selling a book about me (yes, me) starting at $39 [plus shipping & handling] all the way up to $50. It is a small 68 page paperback that seems to be available in several languages. How is this even possible I wondered?

It is because in this era of free content there are several publishing companies that exist for no other reason than to publish books complied from these free sources. The free sources in question are Wikipedia, as the cover proudly exclaims, "High quality content from Wikipedia articles". In the case of the book about me, the publisher is Betascript Publishing which is part of a company called VDM (which ironically has a Wikipedia entry), a company based in Germany (it's always the Germans!) with offices in Argentina and Latvia. There are three "editors" credited for the book about me whose names I'll pass on putting in the blog post. Nevertheless, they managed a 68 page book about me from this Wikipedia entry and another about Stark Raving Theatre and who knows where else (and now that you have read the links you know about me without having to spend $40!).

THE STRANGE & DEADLY JOURNEY OF NAVY SEAL TEAM 6

Includes 5TH UPDATE

The news broke Sunday evening, May 1st, 2011. President Obama was going to make a statement on national television later that night. The internet was abuzz with theories of what the President would say at such a late hour on a Sunday. It wasn't long before the wide speculation centered on one man: Osama bin Laden. The consensus was he was either captured or dead. Soon, a leak confirmed that the President would announce that bin Laden had been killed by special forces.

Late that night, President Obama addressed the nation, and lied. Here is the relevant portion the speech: