there are several alternatives to "right"

Eric Raymond at Armed & Dangerous

...while I’m not entirely sure of everything the alt-right is (it’s a rather amorphous phenomenon) it is not the KKK and neo-Nazis. The most that can truthfully be said is that ‘alt-right’ serves as a recent flag of convenience to which some old-fashioned white supremacists are busily trying to attach themselves.

Also, the alt-right is not Donald Trump and his Trumpkins, either...

The defining characteristic of the alt-right is, really, corrosive snarkiness... mordantly nasty but unserious.

..part of what is going on here is a visceral rejection of politically-correct leftism, one which deliberately inverts its premises. The griefers pose as racists and misogynists because they think it’s the most oppositional stance they can take to bullies and rage-mobbers who position themselves as anti-racists and feminists...

Whether the alt-right even exists in any meaningful sense is questionable... it has the aspect of a hoax (or a linked collection of hoaxes) being worked by 4chan griefers... who have noticed how readily the mainstream media buys inflated right-wing-conspiracy narratives and are working this one for the lulz. There’s no actual mass movement behind their posturing, unless you think a thousand or so basement-dwelling otaku are a mass movement.

..the alt-right looms largest in the minds of self-panickers who project their fears on it. And of course in the minds of Hillary Clinton’s hangers-on, who would rather attribute her loss to a shadowy evil conspiracy than to a weak candidate and a plain-old bungled campaign.

I’m worried, however, that that the alt-right may not remain a loose-knit collection of hoaxes – that the self-panickers are actually creating what they fear.

For there is a deep vein of anti-establishment anger out there (see Donald Trump, election of). The alt-right (to the limited and conditional extent it now exists) could capture that anger, and its provocateurs are doing their best to make you think it already has, but they’re scamming you – they’re f*****g with your head. The entire on-line ‘alt-right’ probably musters fewer people than the Trumpster’s last victory rally.

It’s a kind of dark-side Discordian hack in progress, and I’m concerned that it might succeed... If you keep [hyping it], the vast majority of the rootless and disaffected who have never heard of it might decide there’s a strong horse there and sign on.

moral bankruptcy

The Federalist, on another Google problem:

"to a company with a crippling liberal bias, human traffickers are less icky than people who say things that challenge their political preferences."

read the rest

bee stings

babylon bee has a lot of good stuff, here's some of the top recent ones:

http://babylonbee.com/news/kim-jong-un-consults-planned-parenthood-learn-cover-atrocities/
http://babylonbee.com/news/i-am-more-offended-than-you/
http://babylonbee.com/news/enlightened-minecraft-character-denies-existence-game-designer/
http://babylonbee.com/news/serial-killer-released-explaining-murder-3/

thanks for the me... somethin somethin

back in those carefree days of ought-five, this blog had a satirical spinoff made by the author of mish-mash / sackofcatfood.

today i found this seven year old cartoon based on our alter egos :)

irony board

I found this Robert Heinlein quote posted at a rabid militant atheist's blog:

“You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.”

Well, isn't that just a bit... morrisettian?

Is his last name Streisand?

"The Reddit user responsible for bringing the hacked photos into the public eye has decried an invasion of his privacy by the media."

To rephrase, John Menese, a 33-year-old onanism promoter from Nevada, is upset that his privacy has been violated because he violated the privacy of others.

(title reference)

missing inaction

both harvey and i were gone last week, but his (niece's) excuse is funnier than mine

i'm still here

, just don't have much to post about. be back eventually...

the looking spoon

there's only one image currently on this site's front page that i can't recommend - look at them all and guess which one!

preferred phraseology

i looked at my stats page and noticed a referring site "flopping aces", which kindly mentioned this site as being where he found a favorite quote: "It’s Gilbert Gottfried loudly narrating your life wherever you go." I had compiled it in a list of obamacare metaphors, but the author took it in a (very slightly) different direction.

it turns out that he returned the favor, and now i have a new word to describe the original topic of obamacare - the vulgarity-implying but entirely-applicable "clusterfix". :)

sporadicitylessness

as you may have noticed, i have trouble maintaining a steady pace of posting here. i've heard that some sites pre-plan their posts and let the site automatically publish them at some set time. i'm going to try that too (and admit it up front).

the following series was collected (and occasionally slightly edited) from imao's "wisdom of the day" series, which they in turn collected from twitter. done without explicit permission, but judging from past experience i think that everyone's cool with it - especially because they're linked and attributed.

enjoy!

imaolanche!

thanks imao for the recent linkage:

to tantra
to miley

so sorry, this is the abuse room

you want the argument room next door...

yeah i'm still here

should be back eventually...

made up words

believe it or not, a friend of mine helped me write a perl program to generate words* like the ones dustbury found in his spam folder - so i had at least as much fun coming up with some definitions for them as he did:

• "viscent" - n. - a small coin minted in honor of a viscount.
• "simposconcia" - n. - the practice of electing morons to positions of leadership.
• "gramazing" - adj. - in a manner that elicits wonder in cows.
• "reextruch" - v. - a medical term for the action of giving yourself leg cramps
• "matempendully" - adj. - in a manner similar to the flabby upper arms of a maternal ancestor.
• "recroutratess" - n. - a woman who serves seconds at a german restaurant.

and two of them are proper names.

• "disgroonesset" is the name of a massachusetts island, derived from the algonquin words for "fever and vomiting".
• "squero" is a vehicle produced by a pontiac-scion joint venture.

* as a phonotactic experiment related to conlangs, not for spam.

wrong wrong oh so wrong

the name should be "BEST titles of 2012"

neither gone nor forgotten

...just haven't had anything to say

may be back after the holidays...

layout change

it was about time to refresh the look of this blog - more to come...

who's in charge?

splotchy is in charge!

"who's in charge?" blog is back from a hiatus. go join in the fun at blogspot and/or tumblr

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bump: seriously, guys, the more the merrier - vote early vote often :)

must... post... something...

does this count?

i'm guessing not... ;)

be back eventually