Due to not preparing or knowing how to deal with such low light, I was forced to make it look like some artistic stab at editing in order just to make these dudes visible. Hopefully, such video will improve as I do more of them.
I have plans to keep recording KTXT shows, if not other Lubbock shows in general.
I consider myself a pretty jaded person a lot of times. But I continue to be inspired by the imagination of Fox News. The only way to describe it is with adjectives that are themselves full of profanity - completely fucking mindboggling, brainfuckling, batshit crazy. Then again, I guess this next video/story is Bill O'Reilly finally elaborating on the "Homosexual Agenda" the far right always throws out. (Apparently it's to beat the shit out of people.)
The guest, Rod "Almost a Great Pornstar Name" Wheeler, quite ominously calls it a "National Underground Network" of lesbian deviants. Does he honestly mean to suggest that they are really that organized? A Network? A Crew? Like, a Legion?
Do they meet in the Hall of Doom, located beneath an anonymous swamp and devise plans with a Lex Lutherian lesbian leader? Do they have a five-point plan for the homosexualization of all good Christian children by the Spring of '08? Do they count Cheetah amongst their ranks, the cat-suit-wearing arch nemesis of Wonder Woman?
I, for one, find this news not so much threatening, a sign of a ruined culture full of feelings of disenfranchisement, or really, a cause for concern in the least bit, but instead...
Hot. That's right, America. Lesbians. Marauding bands of them assaulting innocent heterosexual men minding their own business. And if not men, they're assaulting other ladies, which also sounds pretty hot.
I consider this to be a great, great sign for the look and feel of the future apocalypse. I always imagined a sort of Mad Maxian future on the way anyway, but from the looks of things, the vast American wasteland of the dystopian future is looking a whooole lot sexier. Mr. Rod Wheeler didn't mention it, but I've heard rumor that the Lesbian Legion of Doom members dress in those big, awesome shoulder pads with spikes on them and have crazy mohawks.
Maybe I can join and observe them like Hunter S. Thompson did with the Hell's Angels. Except, you know, hot lesbians.
Honestly, didn't that news clip feel staged? I think both Bill and Rod just wish this story were true. And I guess it also helps to keep peoples' thoughts off the fact that the death toll for the past three months in Iraq - 329 - is the deadliest quarter for U.S. troops in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
If there were only hot lesbian insurgents in Iraq, perhaps O'Reilly would talk about it.
I found a job in Austin, and essentially, I could have my first day of work on July 9. That being said, I continue to look for other things, especially considering the doubts I have with the one I've found.
The job is with Texas Campaign for the Environment, a non-profit activist group, and I would basically be a canvasser. I would go door-to-door talking to people about the organization and health/environmental issues, and I would gather signatures, contributions to letter campaigns, and of course, financial contributions.
The last item there actually comes with certain required goals, and not meeting them means you may not get your full paycheck.
But even that may not explain my feelings of hesitation.
It may be the thought that I would have to take myself far too seriously and be bound to a memorized script.
I understand that in order to optimize the organization's reach and effectiveness, they train their workers to stick to a script, a script that has understandably undergone years (TCE Founded in 1991) of crafting, fine-tuning, editing and compacting into a tight message for maximum efficiency in minimum time. But I don't know if I would care to stick to it. We'll see. They are mailing it and other information to me so I can make a more informed decision in the following days.
I'm probably just making excuses. I'm sure the job would be better than some of the abominations I've found. And I can get behind the organization/my employer on a personal level. I mean, I wouldn't be working for a Corporate Multinational Globo-Chem-Pharma-No-Bid-Government-Contracting-Military-Industrial-
Complex-Bureau-Dept.-of-Greed. That's kinda nice.
Really though,
I'm just tired of looking for a job. (I realize I'm not alone in these feelings, and I am also aware I'm not entitled to any special sympathy just because I've written about it; I just need a brief reprieve from the soul-crushing drudgery of online jobhunting)
Apparently, I'm just going to have to get rich the old fashioned way.
Marrying a rich woman.
Hmmm...
What are my chances?
And besides being rich, she is improving her reading suggestions.
(Faulkner? Touche, Harpo Productions. But what about the latest Nicholas Spark's offering? ...No?)
Instead of job hunting, I've been thinking I could maybe make a video resume with me doing cool Patrick Swayze-Roadhouse shit mixed in with some state-of-the-art, multimedia tomfoolery and some friends providing inspiring testimonials about how I saved Christmas, went to school, joined the army, slam-dunked, went to camp, and also, Rode Again.
Wait, that last part may have been Ernest's career filmography, not actually anything to do with me. Sorry Jim Varney.
Anyway, then I could put it on youtube and wait til' the offers from Hollywood, Bollywood, Dollywood and James Woods come pouring in. Followed shortly by of course, the money.
Stay tuned for said video resume...
Without even adding buffer posts between this post and the previous, I decided to address the media's current narrative fascination, the Paris Hilton Story - another meaningless sensation I have wavered between adamantly ignoring and briefly railing against, as recently as the previous post. So yeah, I recognize the hypocrisy. So I do regret adding another chunk of the Internet to this nonsense, but I'm hoping it's a better chunk of nonsense than others, a chunk of commentary on nonsense, if you will.
Originally I had planned to post the most recent CNN story about Hilton followed by a quote from Henry David Thoreau and then leave it at that.
Here's Thoreau, around 1854, in regard to all the hoopla over increased communications technology, and how he predicted it would mostly be a harbinger of world-wide trivialities and technology for the sake of technology.
From Walden:
"We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough."
While discussing the situation with a friend of mine at the bar yesterday, he told me that he kind of felt sorry for her. In a way, I agree with his sentiment - she certainly has more attention paid to her than she may or may not desire, and no one can say how much of this being in the spotlight all her life has led to her (awful) personality. I understand that it's also not fair to judge celebrities, anyone you don't know - except, most talk of her and other celebrities as if they know them. So, I'm aware of that argument - that she gets shit on by people who don't know her.
And here's my rebuttal: If I did get to know her, I'm 99% sure that I would find her completely unbearable - the kind of idiot sorority girl at Texas Tech that never learns to avoid actions with negative, often financial, consequences, shrugging it off with a mention of how their dad will pay for it.
I'm also aware that I may be projecting personal aggression toward the idiots I have to deal with, on to a celebrity, on to Paris Hilton. She basically helps me feel better, in a vengeful sort of way, because she serves as a symbol of idiocy, the complete embodiment of the awful personality traits I despise in people in my own life.
So, in that regard, she is a tragic figure. A sort of pop-culture Atlas, bearing the weight of a world of grievances accrued by the frustrated common man, castrated and incapable of exacting his fantasized revenge. She's a symbol. And so when she wails "Mom, Mom. It's not right," as she's led out of the courtoom, we, (hmm, or is it just me?) feel a twinge of satisfaction. We feel that finally, justice has been served.
I have another social theory that attempts to explain the success of reality shows about the rich and famous, but that too may be a projection of mine. I'll go into more at a later date, but suffice to say that seeing rich people do stupid shit and commit morally questionable acts justifies middle-class Americans' class warrior attitudes, that rich people are in fact no better than anyone else - they just have more money. But it's not quite developed, so I probably should not have even mentioned it. Ah well.
But if you are tired of reading about Paris Hilton, and you damn well should be, I can confidently say that it's going to require responsiblity on the part of both the media, and ourselves. Individual responsibility in the form of refraining from reading that shit. Don't click the story. Web masters can follow that, and the most visited stories move up on the Web site and become the head story. Which is preposterous considering the other news out there. So next time you're tempted to read that story, take the initiative to read something about the Alberto Gonzales tomfoolery, policy positions of the less publicized presidential candidates, or, ANTHING that would promote democracy's most important necessity - an informed citizenry.
All right then - I'm removing my badge of moral superiority now - I'm just going to lay it down on top of my stack of US Weeklys for a minute.
You can actually hear people yelling in the background of the MSNBC newsroom. Also, ironically, you have to watch an ad before you watch this clip. So truly, the American Media Problem in a nutshell:
Watch
True news is that which informs its citizenry in order to enable them to keep their freedoms. I'm still not sure how watching "Shore Leave" Hilton cry informs me with knowledge to know what my government is doing and how I can be a responsible citizen. You know what? Fuck you MSNBC.
No comment.
Next -
Neat!
What the hell? What is the relationship between the duck and the bullfighter dude?
You can find a bevy of old timey advertisements here.
