Something to Ponder

"You have to get back on the horse. Somehow, and I don’t know how this kind of thing starts, we have started to lionize horseback-not-getting-on: these casual, a priori assertions of inevitable failure, which is nothing more than a gauze draped over your own pulsing terror. Every creative act is open war against The Way It Is. 

What you are saying when you make something is that the universe is not sufficient, and what it really needs is more you. And it does, actually; it does. Go look outside. You can’t tell me that we are done making the world."

- Tycho from Penny Arcade

The Video Games Are a Separate Canon, but You Should Still Know Better...

"Word that something called the Florida Family Association had imagined some alternate universe version of Star Wars: The Old Republic was simply too juicy a vittle to resist. They’re clearly obsessed with RuPaul, I know that much. Presumably, being a Florida Family Associater involves a tremendous amount of Ru-search. A nontrivial portion of their conceptual argument is grounded in the mental image of a cyborg drag queen version of Darth Vader rendered in such excruciating detail that it is clearly an act of erotic worship as opposed to moral outrage. I can’t truck with this kind of ignorance.

I just want to grab them, and shake them, and say to them The Old Republic takes place thousands of years before the birth of Anakin Skywalker, the ill-starred boy who will one day become Darth Vader. The homophobia is also bad."

Tycho from Penny Arcade

It's Time to Pay NCAA Athletes

"The basic absurdity of having large educational institutions running multi-billion-dollar entertainment industries on the principles of unpaid labor, and the obvious existence of the underground economy that's resulted from said absurdity, is becoming too great for anyone to ignore."

- Charles P. Pierce

(A link to The Shame of College Sports by Taylor Branch. A slow read, but well-researched and informative.)

More Garbage

Many things had changed in the Philippines, but some things I didn't have the heart to go see whether they'd changed or not. There's a ski slope-sized pile of rotting, burning trash on the north side of town called Smokey Mountain. A thousand people, many of them sick and dying, live in the filth. I never want to go back there. There are some kinds of desolation that leave you impotent in the fucking that's life.

I could turn my pockets out for the Smokey Mountain residents, but that wouldn't go far. I could throw up, but I don't see how that would help. I could pester the dump-pickers as I had in '86 and write it up in a colorful way and make a buck off the whole thing, which I guess is what I'm doing anyway. I asked my photographer friend Gianni, who'd just been to shoot the place, if Smokey Mountain had changed.

"It's bigger." he said.
"But are the people any better off?"
"Yeah, they've got more garbage."

- paraphrased from PJ O'Rourke, Holidays in Hell

The Latin American GOOOOAAAALLL! Guy Has Competition

Everyone knows Messi is a great soccer player, but announce Ray Hudson takes it to another level. Every goal he scores Hudson gets crazier and crazier. So when Messi scored a hatrick to grab the La Liga scoring title (for the moment), hilarity ensues.

Lionel Messi makes the announcer literally shriek.

"The footballing equivalent of the bird of paradise! Warp speed Dr. Spock! Warp speed! MAGISTERIAL!"

Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow

AKA the Definitely not co-ordinating with Stephen Colbert Super-PAC

I find the fact that this can exist both hilarious and deeply disturbing at the same time. It really brings home the ludicrous nature of what political fundraising had become, especially since the supreme court ruling allowing unlimited corporate donations.

The newsletter cracks me up.

How Have I Not Heard of Grooks Before Now?

Thoughts on a Station Platform

It ought to be plain
how little you gain
by getting excited
and vexed.

You'll always be late
for the previous train,
and always in time
for the next.

- Piet Hein