Category: Do the Right Thing

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Stupid Book Blurbs (for Stupid Books?) Level: Grandmaster

Here’s one that starts badly with the first word and goes downhill from there.

“Shalthazar the dark wizard came to Llars seeking power beyond imagining, and got more than he ever imagined.”

*doh*

I’m almost sorry I missed this book. (But, I wasn’t really aiming, anyway.)

I’m also unimpressed by blurbs that mention an “affirmative action” award–you know, one reserved for some ethnicity or whatever “disadvantaged” multi-culti “lit-ur-airy” Balkan state group author who can’t write well enough to win a legitimate award.

Oh, heck. ANY award not decided strictly by everyday, ordinary readers of the book is bogus. In that vein, book awards should be based on (actual, real, legitimate) sales, and, in fact, the only awards that really count are those that go into the writer’s pocket.

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Talking to the Dead

I have fun reading book blurbs of books I’ll never read. Take a recent blurb about a “cozy paranormal mystery” featuring two young women, “One a baker, the other a mortician’s assistant, and both blessed (or cursed) with the gift of talking to the dead. . . ”

OK, even leaving aside the stupidity of the supposed “gift/curse,” methinks the blurb writer should go back to Remedial Blurb Writing 101. ANYONE can talk TO the dead, or pretend to (or delude themselves into thinking they are). I’d not expect any real two way conversations, but imagining one is talking TO dead people is something many folks do. Not me, but others seem to do so.

But, if I were dead and just hanging around (although I rank that as happening somewhere around the Twelfth of Never), I wouldn’t stand for being talked to by some flesh puppet. Nope. Wanna talk to me? Buh-bye!

More seriously, what’s the appeal of necromancy, eh? I mean, #gagamaggot.

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Urgent Need for Organ Donors

The Trumpery needs a brain. Anyone who has a brain to spare, please take note.

Meanwhile, The Queenie Cacklepants Cylon needs a new heart. It ate the heart of the little child it had sitting on its desk.

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Really? (Dunning-Kruger Redux)

From a FarceBook, urmm, farce post:

dunning-krugerite

Oh, really? I can falsify that “Romanist Contrarian” argument in one statement:

Isaiah 1:18, for but one reference, makes it clear that white has indeed been used to represent purity: “‘Come now, let us settle the matter,’ says the LORD. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.'”

IMO, anyone living in an English-speaking society who is unfamiliar with classic biblical quotations is [formally] illiterate.

Methinks “The Romanist Contrarian” may be afflicted with Dunning-Kruger Syndrome. . . *sigh*

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Pragmatism

The main problem with pragmatism as a life philosophy is that we can never know enough to infallibly predict the outcomes of our “pragmatic” behavior–especially if/when it involves how others react to our “pragmatism.”

The second most difficult problem for pragmatism as a life philosophy is that we (none of us) are as smart as we think we are. No, not one.

If only we were omniscient or something. . . Yeh, that would help.

Proverbs 3:5-6

5 “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. 6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

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Islam vs. Christianity: the Short Version

A brief rant: I’ve already seen on FarceBook a number of moral equivalency arguments made for the faithful follower of Islam who committed the Orlando shootings. One particularly egregious lie paints Christianity and Islam as equivalent: “equally bad” (as well as “equally good”–essentially, no differences) in what they teach. Really? _Obedient_ Muslims (“muslim” means submitted–short form: to the word of “Allah” as revealed by Mohamed) can, within the constraints of normative Islam, as defined by the words of Mohamed, legitimately emulate Mohamed and follow his clear teachings in committing acts of mass murder, rape, pillage, torture, slavery of unbelievers, etc. Being a true “moderate Muslim” (not committed to doing such things or supporting those who do) means disobeying Mohamed’s commands and disrespecting his life example.

OTOH, those who claim to be Christians and engage in acts that emulate the life of Mohamed (mass murder of unbelievers, etc.), NOT Christ, must do so in direct contradiction of the teachings and life of the founder of Christianity. Obeying Christ’s teachings about the treatment of others–unbelievers included–requires acting in a way that is completely antithetical to Mohamed’s teachings.

Christianity and Islam are in no way, shape, fashion, or form equivalent. Anyone who claims differently is either ignorant or a liar. Since the truth of the issue is quite easy to come by, anyone who is ignorant of it is either dishonestly avoiding the truth or butt lazy. Or both.

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The Iron Law of Bureaucracy at Work

So, fifth time in six years that “city” *cough* workers *cough* are “repairing” the water line to the house. Yeh, the guy in the hole didn’t like me sticking around to see that he was just putting a patch over the hole in their line. Replace the faulty line? Heck no! That would take work. *sigh*

But at least it keeps them busy going back and re-doing their crappy work.

One of the principles of Type II “Bureaucraps” is to NEVER actually solve a problem, because that doesn’t let them request more funding, more personnel (at the end of the “job” there were five “workers” busyworking the job. Oh, it never needed more than one to do the “work” and another to lean on a shovel and issue directions (which, when it came to the so-so use of the backhoe/FEL at least gave the guy five minutes out of two hours of legitimacy, but it needed five to eat up some time on some time cards), more “turf” to claim as their own.

And their supervisor, of course, set it all up the way it was run, from excess workers using equipment oin a manner assured to take the most possible time with the equipment used, to shoddy repair. All designed to eat up resources in the most inefficient manner possible and assure ANOTHER leak down the road.