"Every day can't be a holiday. Who the hell is paying for this damn meat?"

It's currently 95 degrees Fahrenheit in Baton Rouge, LA.

 

This video clarifies her prayer. Is it also a form of prayer? Is the talk-into-webcam-about-problems genre popular on Youtube a form of prayer, or is it satire?

The Onion Kills it Again - Self Driving Cars

Google's Self-Driving Robot Cars Are Ruining My Commute

My hometown, Mountain View, Calif., has become the unofficial capital of the robotic car revolution. Each day, I seem to run into one, two, or three self-driving Google (GOOG) cars. They’re on my freeways; they’re in my neighborhood; they’re taking my shortcuts. One time, five of the self-driving cars gathered at a gas station equidistant from my house and Google headquarters. It felt a bit like the robots had taken ownership of my watering hole. People, likely well-paid engineers, had to fill up the cars as if they were fleshy lackeys. The rest of us waited for the robots to get full and head off to wherever it is robots go.

I'm not even going to keep posting here. Why bother when The Onion keeps slaying it? They got the satire game on lock.

Is "Accidental Racist" purposely embarrassing?

I saw this video on my primary connection to non-hip-hop music, Dan Brooks's Combat Blog. That he would take interest in it suggest it is not satire, but watch this thing.


I so badly want to imagine this will heal the wounds of racism. Somewhere deep inside me there still is a person inspired by the facile idealism of movies like Braveheart and Crash. I think they seem "real" or "authentic" because they show the protagonists suffer greatly, which satisfies the viewer that this is a serious look at serious problems. In actuality the movies white wash reality to provide something inspiring, much as magicians misdirect while their assistants slip out of hand bindings. Overcoming obstacles in real life is much more nuanced, long-term, and messy.

But LL Cool Jay will forget 200 years of enslavement if you'll let him wear a gold chain. A premise so laughable it is actually offensive to my well-educated outlook. I hope that outlook is wrong and this collaboration between Brad Paisley and Some Black Guy helps bridge a gap in the Skynard fans out there, to the idea that maybe what they do can qualify as "racist" even if only accidentally; that a Confederate flag, while a positive symbol of Southern independence and Skynard fandom, can simultaneously be a symbol of hate or rejection, and that the decision to wear one must be made with that tradeoff in mind; To an imagined future where both Pants Saggin' and White Men can maintain their individual senses of identity but allow for mutual respect and compassion.

For all the hilarious reason that's not what "Accidental Racist" will achieve, see S.Colbert's inspired jam, Oopsie Daisy Homophobe:

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Sheesh, "Accidental Racist" is bad. So bad both blacks and whites of disparate backgrounds can come together, and not sing along to it's childish lyrics and plodding pace. Oh well, two points for intention--assuming that intention wasn't satire.

After Dentist Videos: Micro-genre alert

The long tail of the internet has yielded access to an assortment of strange behaviors. To label any one of those temporary internet trends a micro-genre is probably careless, but I'm doing it.

The original after dentist video, as far as I'm aware, is David After Dentist. It documents a 7 year old tripping balls on the painkillers used to remove one of his teeth, to widespread youtube acclaim. As the video description, presumably written by the father though written at a 7 year old reading level: "He is very smart and always has something interesting to say about many different issues. His philosophical reaction to the medication didnt really suprise us." Welp, over 100 million viewers—roughly the population of Mexico—has found it rather novel.

It's been remixed and the parents have routinely gotten him fucked up again to try and cash in on easy views. With such popularity, should it be any surprise that there's a horde of imitators? Probably not. The question that concerns us, and them, is how does one stand out in a crowded field of imitators?

The following video suggests the answer is "over the top."

I ask, is this girl really concerned about the moral consequences of her dental surgery while stoned off her gourd? Or is she, in fact, making commentary on the after dentist micro-genre which has, in her view, gone a little extra-gourdal? Before answering, open the video in youtube and gaze at the suggested videos. Having a firm grasp on the edges of this micro-genre is important.

The account has one upload, which suggests inauthenticity. It reminds me of ol' cindymomof6 the fake profile of a professional producer who created a couple controversial videos, the best of which is an elementary school rendition of Scarface. Rather than introduce said video as something creative he participated in, he created a fake account and posed as a mom, which helped the video to trend. People have a notably different reaction to media based on its source. When people saw a "mother" uploading a video of a play they thought real, they loudly reacted. You can still see echos of that identity-declaring behavior in the comments on the Cindymomof6 profile. Even after the rouse has been exposed, people still feel a desire to share: "Great job teaching your kids about cocaine and murder at such a young age." Of course, such a comment is stupid, because the video is not real. But it's justified, insofar as that viewer thought it is real and yet doesn't know any better.

As always, the quest for authenticity is quixotic. We shouldn't care whether a video is real or not. What's really real? In what sense is a Scarface play performed by children for a youtube video less real than if it performed by children in a public school? In both instances actual kids are being taught about cocaine and murder. What difference should it make that one of those situations has the saction of a producer and volunteers, and the other has the saction of teachers and volunteers? I contend this imagined distance between the two instances makes a mountain of difference to the viewer, but a molehill difference of objective substance.

Back to our sad, tooth-murdering girl. How would fake outrage while drugged be any less real than real outrage while drugged? Or another way, how would fake outrage while not drugged vs. real outrage while not drugged? In each of these permutations a video is being served up for viewing, and we probably need to start there before trying to take away meaning reacting. In other words, if we jump right in to reacting and skip the semiological meaning of an after dentist video, we are participating and actively abeting its purpose. We instead should look inwardly to determine the meaning of our would-be reaction, lest we forget 1) the system appropriates symbols for us to react to, outside the actual substance of those symbols, and 2)we don't want to look stupid if it is satire. Is it satire?

Putting Solar Panels on a Grass Hut

Distributed clean energy, such as this solar PV system being installed in Ethiopia, can reduce the need for kerosene lamps and provide energy access in remote areas (Source: Flickr user Bread for the World).

This image is taken from a Re-Volt blog post, the criticism arm of the world-renknown development thinktank World Watch. Re-Volt describes its mission as seeking to cause a revolution in the development and aid policy conversation.

The development community fails to appreciate the dangers inherent in unstructured aid and the wide array of institutional dependencies it creates. Despite an abundance of research data, [international development organizations] have failed to steer the world from a point of action to the point of understanding. It is now clear that the creation of stable institutions, new modes of development, and a new sustainable aid economy requires a true revolution.

I'm a big fan of World Watch, and have a few friends in international development who would agree, putting solar panels on a grass hut is a daft proposal. Theory suggests that investment into basic infrastructure (water, electricity, safe transit, access to medical care, etc.) is the most cost effective way to transform lives and create a foundation on which a society can exit poverty. However in practice, thousand dollar pv panels tend to weigh more than some grass roofs can support. The tensile strength of inch-diameter support beams and long twigs fluxuates depending on local environmental conditions, but are are frequently substandard in areas where houses are made out of nearby biomass.

NRA Cannot Into Logic

This next video comes to us from the No-Fucking-Way file. Then again, pretty much everything comes from that file. This kind of inexplicable video is why we need the file in the first place.


I refuse to believe that someone made this video without a sense of irony or satire. This is a cruel mockery of gun activists, implying that their brains are made of kevlar and simple anti-Obama associations control their belief system. The liberal who created it thought it would be appropriate to denigrate the NRA with its authorship, as if the entire organization is filled with idiots incapable of thought. I mean, if this is not satire, then what would satire of a gun-thumping idiot look like?

D.Brooks has done an excellent job of detailing the ways in which it fails the sanity test.

The central contention of this advertisement reads like a multiple choice question on a test about logical fallacies. Besides refusing to assign Secret Service protection to your children, here are some other ways in which President Obama is a hypocrite:
1. Obama tells his children he loves them. When was the last time he said he loved you?
2. Obama’s children get to wrestle with him on the couch, but if you wrestle the president, a guy in sunglasses will break your arm.
3. Malia Obama gets to have cute cornrows, but when you got cornrows, you looked stupid.

When viewing this, it looks 70% likely to be from Onion News. When tracing the uploading user's account and reading press reports in third party news media, however, it looks to be real. This is really an NRA video that was a)thought up b)created and c)published. Somewhere along those steps it a determination that this video achieves something. And the line of thinking is is so eldritch as to baffle me.

How. The. Fuck is anyone with a brain supposed to think that Obama, the President of the United States of America, is being elitist by having armed protection for his family. Presidental security and armed guards in schools are not parallel issues. In fact, they're so perpendicular that only intersect one place in our known universe: this video. And at that point is a singularity of a)stupidity so dense it sucks the light out of my soul or b)cynicism so great it sucks the light out of my soul.

Local Oregon Sheriff Sees Judge Dredd, Becomes The Law

Reeling both from the enormous unfulfilled demand for lawyers in the U.S. and a recent viewing of Judge Dredd, Linn County Sheriff Tim Mueller has taken to interpreting Supreme Court decisions himself. In a letter inexplicably written to Vice President Biden, the law enforcement official warned he would not enforce future laws and executive orders that he, by law, as a law enforcement official, would be legally required to enforce.

“In the wake of the recent criminal events, politicians are attempting to exploit the deaths of innocent victims by advocating for laws that would prevent honest, law-abiding Americans from possessing certain firearms,” Mueller noted in the letter, evoking the long and storied commitment to the presumption of innocence by police forces across America. Troubled by the continued exploitation of recent tragedies, Mueller mailed his letter to local sheriff departments and newspapers.

Discussing his duty to citizens of Linn County and the Constitution, he said they “Have entrusted me with a noble cause: to keep them and their families safe. My deputies and I take that responsibility very seriously and like you, have sworn to support the Constitution of the United States.” Although surveys suggest swearing to support the Constitution is at an all time low, a recent Pew Center survey notes public oaths to the Constitution are on the rise among political interest groups and individuals who have never read it.

Mueller said neither he nor his deputies will enforce any regulation enacted by Congress or by executive order of the president that offends the constitutional rights of Linn County residents. Although regulations are enacted by executive agencies and statutes are enacted by Congress, Mueller is correct that Linn County residents have constitutional rights. Whether the Constitution he has sworn to uphold entrusts the protection of those rights to the local sheriff or the court system is a legal grey area.

Initially the Constitution was heralded for its bold separation of powers. Its strict boundaries between those who interpret the law and those who enforce it have fallen by the wayside in recent years, however, owing to the law's excessive red tape and a lack of qualified legal personal to practice it. Combining the interpretive responsibilities of the judiciary and the enforcement activities of the executive branch in a single judge/executioner is increasingly favored by legal scholars and proponents of small government.

Mueller wrote, “It is the position of this sheriff that I refuse to participate, or stand idly by, while my citizens are turned into criminals due to the unconstitutional actions of misguided politicians.”

Mueller says his misguided political action is constitutional, based on a 1997 Supreme Court decision which neither the Gazette Times nor Mueller elected to specify. He is believed to be referring to Printz v. United States, a case in which the Rehnquist court continued its unique mission to scale back the Federal powers. In the split decision, five justices stipulated that Congress may not require state officials to be agents of federal enforcement. Almost as many justices held the opposite view that Congress could require it, like it had been, for over a hundred years in landmark cases like McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), and Gitlow v. New York (1925).

The consequences of the Prinz indecision promised to be far-reaching, overturning years basic high school curriculum. “I spent my whole weekend memorizing terms like 'necessary and proper,' the 'elastic clause' and the 14th amendment. For the Supreme Court to come along and erase all that established law really bugs me,” said Samantha Pennington, an 11th grader at a Chicago area high school at the time of the decision. “Do those justices even read the law? Why do I have to study this stuff if they don't?” The practicable effects of the decision were negligible, however, as most state officials were happy to implement the sensible background checks mandated by federal law, and very few saw their job as to actively endanger the public.

Ultimately, Prinz opinion may be moot as it speaks solely to statutory requirements from Congress and says nothing about executive orders issued by the President. Of the 30 gun and safety proposals made by by President Obama yesterday, 17 of them are executive orders to which the Prinz precedent would not apply. At the time of press Mueller could not be reached to comment on whether he his legal staff had prepared briefs on the issue.

Following the overwhelming support for the Mueller letter from obsessive Ron Paul supporters on social networks like Facebook, a local teachers union has decided not to teach curriculum they do not agree with. “We only have so many hours in the day. Every hour we spend on difficult subjects like STIs or evolution is an hour we don't spend on Huck Finn,” said a spokesman for the Eugene Education Association, a 4J school district teacher's union. “Some of us really love Huck Finn. And Kids love the n-word,” he added, “Choosing topics we're eager to teach is part of our duty as teachers.”

This grassroots trend is finding support all the way at the national level. Congressional Republicans have rededicated themselves to their of duty preventing the lawmaking body from making laws. In a speech at a recent GOP fundraiser House Speaker John Boehner said, “We were elected by the citizens of our district for a noble cause: to keep them and their families safe. We take that responsibility seriously, and are looking forward to the upcoming debt ceiling negotiations as a chance to do so.” Regarding the potential violation of constitutional rights in Obama's gun and safety proposals, Republican spokesman Michael Steel gave a terse statement to reporters: "House committees of jurisdiction will review these recommendations, and,” pausing briefly to unclench his fists and jaw, “if the Senate passes a bill, we will also take a look at that."

Whether his inaction garners action or not, Sheriff Mueller expects fireworks on Facebook to continue to fly over over his widely publicized, yet completely apolitical stand. He has been elected sheriff of Linn County twice, and is not trying to get his name out there at all. “It's just about The Law. I am The Law.”