first three posts together

A couple of weeks ago I started writing a blog in a site (gnurotic.com) I'm putting together in RapidWeaver. Since then, I've decided that the blog component of that site would work out better if it was on Blogger, with links back and forth between gnurotic and Blogger. Consequently, I've taken the three blog entries I made on the RapidWeaver page and put them here as my first entry on this site. Entries, dated, follow below:


9/3/08: the evil of banality...
In her 1963 treatise Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt spoke to us most eloquently about the banality of evil. This evening, after having had the misfortune of hearing some of VP candidate Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican party convention, I feel compelled to comment on the Evil of Banality.

Aside from the expected cheap shots at the Democrats, Palin's focus appeared to be on underscoring how average she was, how ordinary she was, how she was just like the archetypal American Everywoman. Her talk was a veritable celebration of ordinariness.

By definition of the term, most of us cluster around ordinary, banal, average. This is just the way things are. It is a matter of mathematical truth. On the other hand, do we really want the people we charge and entrust with leading this country to be just average? Do we really want to give someone who will be standing by to take over what may be one of the most complex and intellectually demanding jobs on earth to someone of mediocre intellect, who is just like the average Joe or Jill? We've tried that for almost the past 8 years, and it has not worked out well.

John McCain has said on numerous occasions the he puts America first. This is a lie. McCain may subscribe to an odious political ideology, but he is not stupid. He is well aware that Sarah Palin has neither the background, nor the experience to be the POTUS, a position she would be a heartbeat away from should the Republicans win the election. Putting such a mediocrity in such a position, demonstrates that campaign strategy is way ahead of America on his list of priorities.


8/28/08: Air America
I listened to a broadcast on Air America today. Maybe I live in a bubble, but this was the first time I'd tuned into the station (via the internet). From what I had heard, this station is supposed to be the liberal answer the typical quasi-facist talk radio which has been so successful on the airwaves, and blah blah blah....

Folks -- if this is the best we can do, then we are all in big trouble.

What I heard were a bunch of commercials for the type of scams you expect to be sponsoring the likes of Michael Savage: debt consolidation scams; some sort of phony water softening device; reverse mortgages; investments in gold. If I had listened a bit longer there no doubt would have been commercials for penis enlargement pills, various diet scams, and get rich by stuffing envelopes at home schemes. These kinds of businesses are the lowest form of scum --- examples of the P.T. Barnum School of Capitalism which preys on the naive and trusting suckers who are born every minute. Is this what liberals want to promote??

As if that wasn't enough, when they finally got back to the show the host didn't seem capable of speaking a sentence which did not have the words fuck, fuckin, or fuckhead in it. I'm not someone who really goes in for deleting expletives, but this was way over the top. It was nothing more than vulgarity for the sake of vulgarity. Is this the kind of content we want to put out there to promote a liberal point of view?

The verdict: Air America Sucks


8/27/08: Oldies night at the casino
Last week a friend mentioned she was going to get some tickets for a concert down at one of the Indian casinos to see 3 Dog Night. Even though I couldn't have told you off the top of my head any of their hits, they were a band from my generation -- more or less -- so I told her to pick up a ticket for me as well. Another thing was that I had never been to the casino, and was curious to see if I would find it as déclassé as I expected.

Arriving before the concert began, I had the opportunity to wander around the casino a bit. It was everything I expected -- noisy, smoky, and full of people wearing either skimpy, tight-fitting ensembles which showed off too much stuff that wasn't particularly nice to look at, or the local crowd from Green Valley wearing their uniforms of polyester pants (or pantsuits), plaid shirts (or blouses), bolo ties (or fake pearls), and white leather shoes.

The only thing that surprised me was that the machines did not take coins. You put in a bill and got credits, which were paid out in credit slips if you were lucky enough to win anything. There were also some blackjack and Texas hold-em table with animated, rather than live, dealers. I suppose they go over well with the kind of people who prefer the virtual to reality.

Bored with that scene I had a decent meal and proceeded to the concert. It was an almost transcendent experience. As the band began it's first piece I looked around an surveyed the crowd. It seemed that I had become one of **THOSE PEOPLE** -- Those people with gray hair you see swaying and clapping their hands in the backrground, watching Roger McGuinn, Barry McGuire, or The Temptations on those PBS specials they run continuously between the "pledge breaks" when they're trying to raise money. I suppose the point with those things is that you give them money to stop the oldies and get back to their regular programming...

Well, at least it wasn't Lawrence Welk...

Surprisingly, after the first couple of songs the band started to get quite decent, and I found that I was indeed familiar with their music -- I knew the songs but had just forgotten which were theirs. 3DN even surprised me with a couple of really well-done pieces. Unfortunately, the sound quality was awful. Either they were using the world's worst speakers, or the concert hall had awful acoustics, or they had a tone-deaf moron running their sound board, but the volume was deafening and the distortion was severe.

Two minor annoyances were the air-conditioning (which was weak, if not absent), and the band's closing remarks of "Support the Troops" and "God bless America". I would have preferred to hear them say something like "bring the troops home" and "peace on earth". The patriotic jingoism made me cringe and I felt very out of place at that moment.

Despite this, I managed to enjoy myself and take a break from my usual reclusiveness.