Completely aside from my contemptable views on the subject…

What horrors will the coming “Aid Boom” in New Orleans do to that city? It appears that just about everything being done on Earth for the next few weeks is a Katrina benefit. I guess that means that about 10% of world GDP will go toward “rebuilding” New Orleans for the next few years.

If I lived there, I would not go back. I’d be too afraid of the Disneyland all this aid is going to turn it into over the next decade.

“THEY/THEM”= Those that live/work or lived/worked in New Orleans or the Delta region and were thus displaced or affected by the recent hurricane(s).

“WE/US”= Those that DO NOT live/work nor lived/worked in New Orleans or the Delta region and thus probably couldn’t have cared less about what happened to those areas until a political agenda could be gleaned from the hurricane(s).

“GOOD”= THEY receive voluntary charitable donations and insurance settlements (and, under my protest, small, individualized, qualified federal grants) to slowly and thoughtfully rebuild THEIR region into something that will be honorable to the history and integrity of the region, and sustainable for THEIR continued lives and livelihoods there, as THEY see fit to use or not use such funds thus.

“BAD”= WE throw all-strings-attached tax money at pie-in-the-sky public works and pork barrel projects and turn THEIR region into a brand new Disneyland for US.

“REALITY”= Throwing tons of public money and pork at New Orleans will prevent it from being a viable community to which the urban poor (who are what this whole stink is about) can return and thrive. Lots of outside contractors and members of the “in” crowd will make tons of money, and real estate will skyrocket and drive out all the dingy and interesting things and places that may have been able to otherwise return, and which previously made the region important to anyone. “Rebuilding” will result in a large urban museum similar to New York/San Francisco/LA where WE can go to get sloshed and expose ourselves in public several times each year, and the more money WE throw at it, the more new streets WE’LL be able to do the latter on.

“FANTASY”= Throwing tons of public money and pork at New Orleans will enable the poor folk to better their lot and better contribute to the local economy. 60-100 billion tax dollars will help THEM.

“LOWEST APPROVAL RATINGS OF HIS ADMINISTRATION”= What the fuck is wrong with you people?! He’s been an absolute ineffectual, dottering moron for 5 years now and it took an unrelated natural disaster (which, despite my desire to blame it on him, he did not cause) to wake you up to what a total waste of breathable air his administration is? What news source have you been watching before Katrina? What slimy cave have you spent 5 years masturbating in?!

It will go down as one of the coolest nights ever… Bauhaus, my hubby,Halloween, San Francisco…

The only things that could have made the evening better would have been:

• Any seating at all in the whole friggin’ venue (some of us don’t dance, y’know)
• Elimination of the stoners whose gross pot smoke gave me a wretched head and tummy ache which persisted until today
• Not having to travel thru some of SF’s worst ghetto to get to the venue

Lots of fun souvenirs, and one week left til I finally get to return home to Charlotte. For a couple weeks at least.

<rant>

Pardon me, but when did stoners invade the gothiverse? Last year I saw Siouxsie and was slammed by all the pot smoke in the room, and the same thing happens this year at Bauhaus… Ick.

My loathing of pot is stronger even than my loathing of alcohol. I can tolerate most legal vices: if you drink some alcohol or smoke some Camels around me I probably won’t flee, unless you’re getting annoyingly drunk or blowing cancer clouds in my face. But I’m likely to lose interest in someone entirely if I discover they use illegal drugs (regardless of my socially libertarian “no victim no crime” philosophy). By using drugs, my opinion of you has been lowered. By using drugs around me, you’ve threatened me by endangering my freedom. I get caught with you, I have a police record, regardless of how “unimportant” the charge is.

Why is it that stoners think they have the moral high ground these days? It’s like you can call the cops if someone puffs a bit of tobacco in the wrong restaurant, but insult someone by suggesting that smoking pot is wrong and suddenly you are Hitler incarnate, hell-bent on outlawing all “herbs” and “medicines” ever discovered by man…

Why is it that a culture which is quicker than lightening to outlaw pharmaceuticals (that have gone through years of expensive and scientific testing and governmeent regulation) as soon as a single person “might possibly perhaps maybe” had some potentially related side-effect; in the same breath demands the ubiquitous use of a drug which has had no quality control and no legitimate scientific medicinal background, despite years of study both in the US and abroad? It’s along the same lines with how we demand organic apples which have not had their worms removed but ban preservatives whether they are bad for us or not.

I hate stoners. They make me sick. They don’t grow and their brains erode with time. They stink and their hygine is questionable. If you smoke pot and I made the mistake of continuing to have anything to do with you, please let me know so that I can correct that.

</rant>

90% of anyone who says they need pot to help “their condition” are just big hypochondriacs, or mean “addiction” when they say “condition”.

I’d like to find any qualified, objective source that could tell me that the smoke inhalation is better for you than any reduced effects of any “condition” precipitated by using the drug. If there really was a legitimate medicinal use for the *active ingredient* (which I admit there is), drug companies would have spotted the hole in the market and produced quality-controlled extracts available by legitimate prescription (which they have).

The problem is that since medicinal marijuana became en vogue in the 90s, anyone bagging the stuff or the morons that use it are immediatly branded as incompassionate (not that I necessarily mind this brand). If you tag a pothead and tell them to stop smoking around you, *every single one* seems to invariably have some “condition” which justifies their drug use and dehumanizes those who object to it.

I’d like to recommend this really useful medicine called crack - it really helps their worst condition: being alive/annoying me. There’s also a similar medicine called H which has similar benefits.

OK, you asked for it. Fuck art.

This campaign includes billboards plastered all over San Francisco talking about how children to not recognize who Caravaggio was, of PSAs interrupting my stock crack on Bloomburg featuring a little girl who asks her dad to read her a planning and ordinance tome and another child changing the radio station to financial news in their parents’ car. They are trying to say these children are defective, nevermind that such children would probably grow up to be far more interesting and successful people than a child who spends their whole youth watching Gilbert & Sullivan musicals.

Fuck art. If these self-rightous morons think that art is more important to emphasize to obviously gifted children than the passions actually driving these children, they deserve the society they’ll get from it. I was one of those kids who would rather have read the encyclopedia than Huck Finn when I was young. As an adult, I would rather attend a planning session at City hall than the Opera. I would rather put my money into stocks and watch it grow than throw it into subsidies for a symphony and watch the hall be at half capacity on good nights.

Thus, I’m defective in some way. Society suffers from my lack of appreciation of art. Fine. Fuck Art.

I hereby declare war on art. Specifically, war on self-righteous, logic-loathing, economy-destroying art advocates. Fuck Art.

Sports only amuse me to the extent that humans seem to have a severe need for fake conflict, and sports are a HUGE outlet for that. It seems like the times when there is relative stability in a society are the times when sports receive the most gravity by that society.

Today is no exception. Sports ‘news’ sucks up almost a third of the nightly news. More in smaller local markets. It’s got it’s own section of the daily newspapers.
It’s a huge revenue generator for ad dollars, due to its all-consuming popularity among the converted (though I argue it is in most cases a false econcomy), but when you look at who puts up the investment capital in the sporting-industrial complex, it’s overwhelmingly cash-strapped municipal and governmental bodies.

The worst part isn’t that these governing bodies act as venture capitalists, it’s that they act as venture surrogates (I need to trademark that). They take all the risk and put up all the start-up cash, then turn it over to team owners and players unions for the profit-making.

I really need to get over my sports putrification and invest in some teams of my own…

These ads are rich.

The only two arguments being made by the Yes on 8 people are 1) Half the California Supreme Court should not have been allowed to override half the California electorate (by declaring Prop 22 illegal, a ballot measure which received about the same margin of ‘yes’ vote as the May Supreme Court ruling) and 2) Same-Sex marriage will result in children being taught about homosexuality and thus boys will immediately start ass-fucking.

Of course, on the first, one of the reasons we have a judiciary is to protect rights from angry mobs. I’m sure most of these fundies would more than welcome court intervention in a popular uprising against guns or protestantism (both likely to be issues in an increasingly liberal and Catholic state).

On the second, I can only chuckle. The idea, I suppose, is that if kids learn that homosexuality exists, they’ll immediately ignite a statewide orgy and never look back. Nevermind the fact that most currently practicing homosexuals didn’t learn much about sex at all until adolescence. What’s really scary here is that these people think that avoiding discussions about sexuality or specifically homosexuality would reduce the potential of gay kids. That’s really the issue. Bigots still think that if they shield their kids from happy homosexuals that their kids are less likely to be homosexual.

If you became straight because your parents denied knowledge of homosexuality to you, please comment - I’d love to hear from you!