Category: Dumbasses

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Mediacom: Sucking Dead Bunnies Through a Straw Sideways (and Spewing Them Out on Customers)

Well, it’s now official. Mediacom sucks dead bunnies through a straw. Sideways. It doesn’t really affect me so much, because the Internet service is mostly OK, but the channel listings have been culled to the point that the already sparse selection of channels with something frequently _nearly_ worth watching is even smaller, while propaganda from CSPAN has tripled and a number of offensive holy roller crap channels that approach (or embrace) heresy have been added.

For nearly 20 years, the number of channels has varied very little–a few added here and there over the years, but not all that many. Suddenly, although our TV scan finds almost the same number of channels, only about 1/3 the raw number still display, the channels that do are very, very different in most cases (and complete and utter crap in those cases).

Unfortunately, the shows my Wonder Woman enjoys are not available (or not *cough* legitimately *cough* available) on the web, except through some sort of paywall, but it may come to excising the TV charges from our “service” and doing the paywall crap, just to get away from Mediacom’s disgusting schemes.

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People Who Cannot Even Speak or Write Their Native Tongue Are Stupid

eye-c-stoopid-ppl

I see stupid people. I see stupid “edumacators” who avoid teaching grammar and stupid students who avoid learning English.

Example: “If [I, they, he, etc.] would have” is a construction that, I suppose, is intended to indicate a class of conditional that should be simply, “If I had.” I am *gagamaggot* sick of seeing the evidence of laziness and stupidity “If [I, they, he, etc.] would have” demonstrates. Now, both of y’all who might comment on this are excused, since I have no doubt such abuse of the English language is off the table for you, but for those folks who may read this and grunt, in their most articulate manner, “Huh?!?” I have only this: *arrgggghhh!*

And that is the kindest, gentlest, most generous response possible. In fact, it is far, far kinder, gentler and more generous than such folks deserve, but that’s just me: kind, gentle and generous to a fault. 😉

N.B. Execrable grammar, word misuse, impenetrable amphiboly, etc., are all completely, totally and absolutely inexcusable* in text written by someone who wants to be PAID for writing. It doesn’t matter what excuse some lame-brained writer, editor or critic (IMO, critics who are writers are few and far between, so I consider the class to be separate, for all “intensive porpoises” *heh*) excretes, such abuse of English is offensive to anyone who thinks these things through, ESPECIALLY when the abuser wants to be paid for the abuse.

*An exception that proves the rule: dialog in a piece of fiction intended to build a character that is an illiterate boob is the one place such things can be marginally legitimate. Anywhere else these abuses occur just demonstrate that the author is an illiterate boob.

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Ah, Memories. . .

*heh* The video below reminds me of a kid who pulled a small caliber automatic on me some 35 years ago. Between my German Shepherd and me with a large wrench (already in hand; was working on car), he decided his lil .25 cal (what it looked like to me) Saturday night special. . . wasn’t so special. Saw him walking up the street a few hours later all torn up and bloody. Story came around someone took his lil ladygun away from him and fed it to him.

Typical “language” warning that accompanies such events. . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DepefuRqwQ

A lesson in manners to a trash-talking wannabe tough guy.

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There are some differences. . .

. . .between someone like Michaelangelo painting a masterwork like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and someone like Obama accomplishing only destruction and chaos.

Michaelangelo was a creative genius who had developed several areas of mastery.

He spent four long years creating an enduring work of genius.

King Putz the Petulant, Occupier in Chief of the Spite House, is a “feckin’ eedjit” whose only areas of competence are lying, blowing smoke up the skirts of masochistic Repugnican’ts (Who simply bend over for him and pitifully plead, “Please, may I have another?”) and accepting obeisance from his worshipers in the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind and the Useful Idiots they pump their toxic Koolaid into.

He has spent five long, painful years tearing down an once durable work of genius constructed by the Founders and paid for by the blood and toil and sweat and tears of generations of citizens.

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In Long Ago Days of Yore. . .

Getting a piece of fiction written and published once took a bit of work. First, there was that literacy thing–you know, being literate enough to at least have a fair idea when you’d just put something down on paper that proved you didn’t have the first clue what you were taking about, for one thing. *sigh* Developing that kind of literacy takes a LOT of reading and perhaps quite a bit of RW experience as well, in many cases.

Then, if one were literate enough to at least have a clue about the deficiencies in one’s storehouse of knowledge and experience, the ability to correct, or at least seriously address, those deficiencies used to come in handy.

And that’s not the whole skill and knowledge set that was once very, very beneficial.

Just having a pedestrian imagination and a verbal vocabulary defined by the lowest common denominator of popular media is all it seems to take to get a novel published nowadays. And the stupider the plots and dumber the characters, the better. *sigh* Evidence: Dan Brown.

One of the worst things I see writers do mimics typical Hollyweird/BoobTube writing. When people who barely manage to inch into the first standard deviation above the norm try to write characters who are more than just average, they tend to write themselves and their acquaintances. Trying to write dialog for a very literate and “brilliant” scientist with a nominal IQ of something north of 150 using a semi-literate (or often even subliterate) mind capable of handling abstract thought at about IQ 115 results in characters that appear to be literate and brilliant only to persons to whom a Zabriskan Fontema appears to be a genius.1

To anyone with more than two active synapses between their ears, such characters seem to be dumber than a bag of hammers.

*meh* I do find such writing marginally interesting, though, as a window into the dull minds of the authors. Of course, when I ask myself, “What WAS this author THINKING?!?” the answer is usually, “Oh, right. Nothing at all. . . ”

1Visiting with a bright, thoughtful and literate person in the upper reaches of the first standard deviation above the norm (according to this person’s estimation; my experience of their abilities leads me to believe their one known experience with IQ measurement fell victim to test anxiety) has spurred me to expand this a bit.

Yes, “merely” bright people can write characters who are “brilliant” and do it competently, creating believable characters, BUT (and this is one HUGE badonka-donk “but”;-)) such persons MUST do their homework! Their research should include a LOT of reading of truly brilliant thinkers (and “conversation” with those thoughts read), face-to-face conversations with such persons–both casual and on-topic in those persons’ areas of expertise–and review of their characterizations and dialog by a literate person whose intellect is of a comparable level to that of the character written.

Better, of course, would be for an author to simply be of the class of persons he is characterizing, to have among his peer group more than a few persons of similar intellect, etc. But, alas! that is NOT the case with Hollyweird/BoobTube-influenced “bright enough for success in a dumbed-down high school setting” subliterates who seem to write most of the “genius” characters in contemporary fiction. *sigh*

BTW, while I enjoy the show in small doses, “The Big Bang Theory” is a very nearly perfect example of this problem in writing. Yes, it has at least one really bright consultant helping to get most of the science references at least within the ballpark of contemporary “consensus science,” but the characters are more laughable caricatures of nerds than perhaps the writers intend. . . or at least in ways the writers could hardly intend. It seems obvious from the writing (and directing and acting) that, aside from minimal input to keep “science-y” comments mostly on track, the folks involved in producing the show fit pretty well into the “semi-literate, nearly bright, clueless about genius” category of content creators I deplore here.

*shrugs* The show’s still entertaining in other ways, and if I view the “brilliant” characters as simply sophomoric poseurs with delusions of brilliance, it occasionally ends up being pretty enjoyable fluff.

But a steady diet would gag a maggot.

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How to Waste Your Time

A fact based, reasoned argument presented to a contemporary faux liberal (progressive, leftist, etc.) is like attempting to teach a pig to sing. All it does is waste your time and annoy the pig.

Ditto with the porker.

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“Compromise” *gag-spew*

Borrowing (OK, stealing) from Sluggy Freelance to translate King Putz the Petulant’s stance on compromise with any view not his own,

“Look, [if] you beat me fair and square, I’ll totally give you bragging rights. Now, just jump on my sword and see things from my perspective. It’s called ‘compromise’.”

Of course, the typical Repugnican’t manner of compromise with Dhimmicraps is to bend over and pitifully plead, “Please, may I have another?”

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Like Walking Into an Ebola Ward and Asking for a Transfusion. . .

It seems as though many people nowadays who jump on the Internet do so with the computer equivalent of logging onto a virtual ebola ward and just begging–nay! demanding!–the electronic version of a transfusion of ebola. They’re running onto the “information superhighway” without looking out for trouble, and so they are just asking for it.

No, seriously!

Consider: one’s data, identity, finances–all are just ripe for the picking by nefarious means if one just blithely wanders about the Interwebs, naively, thoughtlessly downloading and installing crap, visiting questionable sites or just blindly clicking links or executing attachments in emails. Heck, the crap one might thoughtlessly install (toolbars, webapps, browser extensions BHOs, whatever) might not itself be malicious, but many purveyors of such DGARA about your security or privacy and leave wide open holes for malware–or they have a crappy, wide open site that’s just begging for malware injections to mug their site visitors.

And many people just blindly, naively, thoughtlessly wander into these highly infectious plague wards and then wonder how they “got infected”.

They infected themselves by means of their own stupidity.

People who would NEVER think of just wandering out into a busy highway, who would stop, look BOTH WAYS and listen before crossing a residential street just wander into traffic on the Internet, cruise around looking for virtual streetwalkers to get computer “STDs” from and go hunting up electronic ebola wards to get a transfusion for their computer(s).

Just don’t be one of those guys, mmmK? 🙂