Day: September 20, 2005

Via Outside the Beltway(via a detour offa NIF, I think)

Hurricane Center May Run Out of Names

Yeh, right.  Too snooty (or too dumb) to even use the whole alphabet.  I mean, maybe the ACLU oughta get in the act and sue the Hurricane Center for sumthin’ er other , ya think? What’s this about not using q, u, x, y and z? What’s that all about, anyway?

Gee, it’s such a shame that because the folks in the Hurricane Center (whatever the heck that is) are subliterate goons that we’ll never have a hurricane name Quentin or one named Queenie or Quiana (cousin to Lakeesha, with the big fat butt).

And why can’t a hurricane be name Xerxes or Xavier or Xanthus?  And why no Ubu or Uma? What’sa madda, can’t they spell or pronounce Yates or Yardley or even Yoko, Yuki, Yvette or Yvonne?

Yeh, and I’ll sure bet that Zarina, Zena or Zenobia (not to mention Zachariah, Zachary or Zane) would simply blow some small-minded fuses somewhere—probably in the heads of some Mass Media Podpeope called upon to attempt reading such names.

Feh. They say if they run outa names from their list of names starting with letters they’ve allowed, they’ll what, “go to the Greek alphabet”?

Come on.  How many of y’all have the Greek alphabet on your computers (Symbol font doesn’t count–it’s crappy)? How many of y’all can hardly wait to hear some blow-dried airhead Mass Media Podperson attempt, Deianira or Erytheia or Ixion, Jorisr or Kirillosr? (And yeh, I’d pay to see lackwit Mass Media Podpeople attempting to read Greek text in Greek lettering, preferably all uncials… *sigh*).

A pox on them all.

Via Red Hot Cuppa Politics

Red State has the details.

Form follows function

Keep that in mind. I’m going to apply it in several different ways, but the connection to things, events, processes around you is something you’ll need to make on your own.

Form follows function.  It’s a central principle of good design.  For example, if a car body is designed without taking into account wheel travel and range of motion, there’s a good chance that, while it may look cool, it won’t drive right.

Simple, eh?  But it’s more than that, of course. Once mechanical aspects are taken into account, the form will affect the way something is used or interacted with by people in different ways. A minivan and a sports car are both designed to transport people, but that lil 2-seater Miata has its form designed for its function as fun transport, a playtoy, the same as the minivan’s form follows it’s designed function—getting a carload of kids to soccer practice and back safely.

The Bauhaus style of architecture was designed to suit a philosophy that viewed people as interchangeable cogs in an industrial society, and its blank, boxy, depersonalized look is well suited to inhabitation by blank, depersonalized cogs in an industrialized society (which is why it’s so damned ugly). See in apposition the gothic architecture that was designed around an entirely different philosophy: designed to inspire, to draw the eye, the heart, the mind upwards.

Form follows function: slutty womens/girls fashions (“Yeh, baby!”) designed to say loudly and clearly: “Here I am, nothing but a sex object.  Grab some ass, honey!”  It’s not just displays of flesh. No, it’s the crude display of secondary sex characteristics in a way designed to encourage men to think the least of the wearer, to see them as nothing but hookups for letting off a little sexual tension.

Yeh, baby, you’ve come a long way… Wanna come on back?  

Go ahead.  Apply the form… function principle to politics. Entertainment. Work. Family. Language.

Haphazard or not; designed for and by ourselves or not, our lives are strictured, pushed, tugged and stalled by the design of many, many elements that we normally don’t even think about.

Count on it.  Someone(s) is(are) thinking about the designs that influence your life. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to look into those designs for yourself?  Maybe you can make some modifications that would be more to your taste and suit who you are.

Sand in the gears…

Earth to Nzinga, Earth to Nzinga; come in Nzinga…

Just listen to this to put yourself in the right frame of mind to watch this.

Un. Be. Lieveable. Lost in “the mother ship” somewhere, no doubt…

[NOTE: while this isn’t my best post, by far—not even this week—it does contain my fav snarky graphic from any time in recent memory. It’s the second one in the post below… BTW, Note the linkfest at Stop the ACLU this weekend.]

Hellooooo! Has anyone checked Jean Fraud sKerry’s* hearing aid batteries, recently? (*The birth name of that mountebank known as “John F. Kerry)

Or, is he just completely tone-deaf and/or scared spitless [original word redacted]? What is in his records that he refuses to have them truly made public? The more he stalls, stonewalls and lies about releasing his records, the more it seems possible that he has something truly devastating to hide…

Or is it that he is simply to stupid to see how his behavior plays, too tone deaf to his own words to hear how they sound?

Image courtesy of LindaSog.com

TMH’s Bacon Bits mini-fisks a speech Jean Fraud gave at Brown University the other night, pointing out once again the sub-par intellect and tone deaf thinking of Teddy-the-Lesser. Methinks Jean Fraud needs to enroll in an ESL course. Here’s the outstanding thought of the Junior Blowhard from Taxachussetts quoted by TMH:

The incompetence of Katrina’s response is not reserved to a hurricane. There’s an enormous gap between Americans’ daily expectations and government’s daily performance.

What a maroon. (If it passes you by, give yourself a break: coffee deprivation can do that sort of thing to a person. See TMH’s snarky mini-fisk of the statement above.)

But anywho… *sigh* Why do pols like sKerry get away with this sh— crap? Passing off subliterate, inane comments as “thoughtful” and “insightful”—you know, “nuanced”? Well, subliterate voters, malinformed** by a Mass Media Podpeople’s Army determined to remake reality in their own image, allow sKerry and his ilk to get away with lies, obfuscations, obscurantisms and other deliberate deceptions as well as simply world-class stupid remarks like the one above.

Nah, what’s needed now (and for the protection—or perhaps restoration?—of the republic) is an army of folks who will pledge themselves to the principle: No More Bullshit from politicians.

Jean Fraud sKerry would be out of a job, for sure.

Join the advance guard of that army by joining in the Free John Kerry’s 180 blogburst.  Just  visit Cao’s Blog for instructions. And check out some of the others (listed under Free John Kerry’s 180 in my sidebar).

**no, not misinformed: malinformed because it’s at least in part deliberate and almost always harmful

Yep. Another one of those days when I am greatly blessed by the Holy Brew. (I really need the 3-point IQ boost each cuppa joe gives me today!)

O Blessed Holy Caffeine Tree —performance by the Morning Coffee and Afternoon Tea Chorale

O Blessed Holy Caffeine Tree,
In gratitude I sing of thee,
For all the ways you give life zest,
O Caffeine Tree, you are the best!

Amen.