hell’s handmaiden

“Animal abusers are cowards,” says PETA Manager Martin Mersereau. “They take their issues out on the most defenseless beings available to them. Seattle residents have reason to be concerned. According to leading mental health professionals and law enforcement agencies, perpetrators of violent acts against animals are often repeat offenders who pose a serious threat to all animals - including humans.”

$2000 reward: Pigeons shot with darts

But, hey, we kick the shit out of each other too!

More charges over alleged DVD assault | Herald Sun

Image via WikipediaAskimet catches virtually all of the spam that hits this blog but sometimes I scan the logs just to see what’s coming through and to assure myself that nothing genuine is being flagged as spam. And what have I found lately? Well, sex. Lots of sex. And drugs– most of which concern sex. And ringtones.

Now, the sex I understand. Sex runs deep, like eating and breathing and otherwise not dying. Sex makes sense. Drugs that help make sex happen make sense. Drugs that make man parts swell to gargantuan proportions and stay that way for way too long are… well… complete and utter nonsense on several levels but insofar as they hook into male paranoia and male– yes, male– fantasy they make sense. Sex sells. That makes sense.

Once again the nation is convulsing over a celebrity sex scandal. Racy photos of yet another teen star are making the news, and boy is it shameful!

Except that the whole thing is nonsense. Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus was photographed showing her back. Yes, that’s right. She was photographed exposing that thing with the spine in it and the shoulderblades and such.

I’ve written here and there about climate change and I also think that I’ve mentioned my fetish for technology. The problem, rather obviously, is that technology requires power. I like power. I do not wish to return to those halcyon days when long distance travel meant going to the next town and ingrown toenails were a serious medical condition. Not my bag, baby.

The trick then is to generate power without killing ourselves in the process. And that is quite a trick, but I don’t think it is impossible. I’ve made a few offhand comments on the topic.

Short but hopefully inflammatory.

The United States was founded on a strong set of principles, most if not all of which I favor by the way. But lets think about something else. Since its founding, people in the United States have had a kind of religious zeal about those founding principles. Politics seems to be eternally about returning to an earlier age. The suggestion is that the such an earlier stage somehow approached perfect and hence all we can do is preserve it. We can try not to stray too far from our foundations but we have little hope of doing better. Whether the founders thought of it this way is a different question.