Yeah, I know exactly how she feels. If I wasn't a Manly Man I'd be whimpering now.
I actually can't login to facebook anymore because everybody's posting such ridiculous shit. Like somebody posts a picture of Christie & Obama together touring the damage and discussing relief plans, and someone comments "Obama voted AGAINST relief for Katrina victims, when he was a Senator? Now he pretends to be Comforter in Chief?" and then someone else says "What a F'ING joke!!!!! That the BIGGEST ANTI-AMERICAN IN THIS COUNTRY!!!! F'ING COMMUNIST BASTARD!" and gets a dozen likes. And someone posts a picture of Romney loading bottled water into a truck and someone says "hes helping with others hes not lazy like you demorcats get a life demorcrats."
I don't get it. It is inconceivable that people can have such extremely angry opinions based on so little information. And as the years go by it only seems to get worse. Even a friend of a friend who is a professor of economics at a university argues the most ridiculous far-right opinions about economic policies, and the worst part is that he is highly intelligent, well-read, with a large vocabulary and access to historical facts, and he still somehow manages to be a crazy right-wing nut, totally invalidating a theory I used to have that if you've been through higher education and been taught how to think analytically and how to find trustworthy information there's no way you could be a crazy right-wing nut. But there it is.
So I only login to facebook when my email tells me there's a notification I might like to reply to, and when I do I can only surf the feed for a couple minutes before something else disgusts me and I have to go back to my happy life of watching sci-fi movies and reading fiction with a cat sleeping on my lap.
Whistling in the graveyard.
One final note. XKCD posted a really fascinating graphical analysis of the house and senate over the history of the US (http://xkcd.com/1127/large/). It shows how the different parties gained and lost over the years, with a ton of annotations on specific historical events which fed certain power shifts. To me the most interesting tidbit of info you can gather is that since around 1980, the "far right" has been growing at a fantastic rate, and never in the history of our country has the far right so dominated US politics. In fact, the "center right" seems to no longer exist, at all. It looks like there've only been two times when there was a comparable imbalance--once right before the great depression, and once right around the civil war. Part of me is worried that the current political climate and the divisiveness which permeates the country (not just the power elite but the general citizenship) will only be re-balanced by something utterly catastrophic. I don't see the current political climate being the kind of thing that just sort of "goes away" by gradual shifting of opinions back to more centrist views. Unless Fox News somehow folds, maybe.
I've mostly given up on Facebook too. I've muted almost everyone but my immediate family. But more importantly Ender's Game is a wonderful book. The followup, Speaker for the Dead, is pretty good but very different. Also there is a parallel series that starts with Ender's Shadow that is fun. Have you read Simmon's Hyperion? If not, you might want to add it to your list.
I'm a veteran network news producer and manager, a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and the Daily Banter, and a writer who's been featured in the New York Observer and the Village Voice. I'm also the author of a book called Dead Star Twilight and the founder of DXM Media, a firm specializing in television production as well as social media strategies and consulting. On top of all that nonsense, I'm the co-host of "The Bubble Genius Bob & Chez Show" podcast and radio show with Bob Cesca. To find out more about me and/or throw money at me, go here. You can contact me at deusexmalcontent@gmail.com or chez@dxmmedia.com
A special edition of my full-length memoir, Dead Star Twilight, is now available in e-book format on a pay-what-you-want basis. The downloaded is absolutely free; if you choose to pay for it, just click the "donate" button below the download link. Pay whatever you'd like. Pay nothing. It's your choice.
"As a blogger, Chez Pazienza is filled with outrage, passion and insight -- delivered with a distinctive point of view, a wicked sense of humor, and a two-fisted style of prose. In Dead Star Twilight, he turns all these on himself -- and produces a fierce, funny, disturbing, but ultimately uplifting memoir. This is the book A Million Little Pieces dreamed of being."
PAY WHAT YOU WANT FOR "DEAD STAR TWILIGHT" OR GIVE A LITTLE TO DXM BY CLICKING HERE
NOTEWORTHY THINGS SAID ABOUT ME & THIS SITE BY PEOPLE WHO'VE ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISHED SOMETHING IN LIFE
"Interesting, unique... generally unassailable points."
-- Chuck Klosterman, best-selling author of Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs and Eating the Dinosaur
"That mad bent towards suicidal honesty that all my favorite people share."
-- David Baerwald, Golden Globe-nominated singer-songwriter
"Cuts through media bullshit like a hot knife through bullshit."
-- Drew Curtis, founder of Fark.com
"Pazienza could be accused of many things... but he could never be faulted for dumbing us down. His glued-shut prose and bawdy metaphors provide a deeply appreciated, and hilarious, literary diversion."
-- Gelf Magazine, "Insolence Is Bliss," June, 2008
"Snarly, not snarky."
-- Andrew Breitbart
"A delusionally subjective, condescending blog, filled with hostile generalizations and a million exaggerations."
-- Paul Krassner, 60s counter-culture icon
"You're the Antichrist."
-- Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon.com
"It is truly sad that someone like Mr. Pazienza has a public forum to express his views. In a more civilized time he would, at best, be confined to an institution for the criminally insane or, at the very least, marginalized from civilized society."
-- Huffington Post commenter "Pharmacan," October, 2010
3 comments:
Yeah, I know exactly how she feels. If I wasn't a Manly Man I'd be whimpering now.
I actually can't login to facebook anymore because everybody's posting such ridiculous shit. Like somebody posts a picture of Christie & Obama together touring the damage and discussing relief plans, and someone comments "Obama voted AGAINST relief for Katrina victims, when he was a Senator? Now he pretends to be Comforter in Chief?" and then someone else says "What a F'ING joke!!!!! That the BIGGEST ANTI-AMERICAN IN THIS COUNTRY!!!! F'ING COMMUNIST BASTARD!" and gets a dozen likes. And someone posts a picture of Romney loading bottled water into a truck and someone says "hes helping with others hes not lazy like you demorcats get a life demorcrats."
I don't get it. It is inconceivable that people can have such extremely angry opinions based on so little information. And as the years go by it only seems to get worse. Even a friend of a friend who is a professor of economics at a university argues the most ridiculous far-right opinions about economic policies, and the worst part is that he is highly intelligent, well-read, with a large vocabulary and access to historical facts, and he still somehow manages to be a crazy right-wing nut, totally invalidating a theory I used to have that if you've been through higher education and been taught how to think analytically and how to find trustworthy information there's no way you could be a crazy right-wing nut. But there it is.
So I only login to facebook when my email tells me there's a notification I might like to reply to, and when I do I can only surf the feed for a couple minutes before something else disgusts me and I have to go back to my happy life of watching sci-fi movies and reading fiction with a cat sleeping on my lap.
Whistling in the graveyard.
One final note. XKCD posted a really fascinating graphical analysis of the house and senate over the history of the US (http://xkcd.com/1127/large/). It shows how the different parties gained and lost over the years, with a ton of annotations on specific historical events which fed certain power shifts. To me the most interesting tidbit of info you can gather is that since around 1980, the "far right" has been growing at a fantastic rate, and never in the history of our country has the far right so dominated US politics. In fact, the "center right" seems to no longer exist, at all. It looks like there've only been two times when there was a comparable imbalance--once right before the great depression, and once right around the civil war. Part of me is worried that the current political climate and the divisiveness which permeates the country (not just the power elite but the general citizenship) will only be re-balanced by something utterly catastrophic. I don't see the current political climate being the kind of thing that just sort of "goes away" by gradual shifting of opinions back to more centrist views. Unless Fox News somehow folds, maybe.
Whistling in the graveyard.
Back to reading Ender's Game -- come here kitty!
All "Abby's" rock!
I've mostly given up on Facebook too. I've muted almost everyone but my immediate family. But more importantly Ender's Game is a wonderful book. The followup, Speaker for the Dead, is pretty good but very different. Also there is a parallel series that starts with Ender's Shadow that is fun. Have you read Simmon's Hyperion? If not, you might want to add it to your list.
Post a Comment