Rhinocrisy

OMG i hav 2 tell u abt this thing i found out its a nu way 2 talk!!! seems like every 1 on da internet is doing it lol lmao. actually u no it is not ez it is like a dialect even! altho i havnt dun any kindof linguistic analises(sp??) so i dunno if its rely tru… proly its just a pidgin(?). ne way wut do u think??? i used 2 thnk since kidz were online all day they wud b reeding more n also riting bt seems like they dont lmao!!! i mean did u eva see ne1′s my space page no 4 real they are so gay i mean no 1 can spell its like they neva red ne books or ne thing. makes me sad o well cud just be im old and its like youth culture?? but then y is it so dumb?? cud b now ne 1 can rite online even if u r an idiot so we get more idiots riting?? i dont think thats it i think it is anti-intelectualism cuz if u dont spell rite and form complete sentences no 1 will think u r a nerd lol!!! 2 bad u wud think ppl wud want 2 b smarter n rite gud bt seems like frivolity is da rule 2day. goddamn i hope wen i hav kids they can rite gud cuz i wud be ashamed if they rote like an illiterate person… yo where is da pride??? ^_^ ne way l8rz much luv!!!!

aside from everyone?

Prize quote: “Although countries have talked about encrypting data that’s stored on passport chips, this would require that a complicated infrastructure be built first, so currently the data is not encrypted.” Good thing the countries of the world don’t want their borders to have any complicated infrastructure. That would have made it much harder for me to sell my passport next time I needed money while traveling. Not that I would ever do such a thing.

Plenty of people fear that the leaders of the U.S. are fired by apocalyptic fantasies.

And according to a 2002 Time/CNN poll, 59% of Americans think the events portrayed in Revelation will happen; 17% think the events will take place within their lifetimes.

I pity the fools.

They don’t realize that the Rapture took place on September 4, 2005. I was burrowing across the country with my pal in a car. We saw first one vehicle, pulled over on the side of the road, with belongings but no person inside. Then another. A few miles later, yet another.

There it was — these folks were Raptured up. I mean, all told, it’s not like there were going to be very many taken into the Kingdom. 144,000 — 12,000 from each of the tribes. Goodbye to them. I wonder if they’ve found what they’re looking for.

Now as for the rest of y’all, quit your hopeless, unrequited carping at the toenails of your almighty and get down with your bad selves. We have Sodoming and Gomorrahing to do.

Not content with making a building that looks like the headquarters for Team Depeche Mode, the planners behind the new World Trade Center-replacement continue to insist on calling the building the “Freedom Tower”.

Now, one must give them credit: they had the good sense to trash their previous design, which might have given unsuspecting tourists the mistaken impression that the city had suffered an abortive attack by some sort of giant robot, one of whose limbs (complete with trapezoidal metallic faux-biceps and pulverizing laser-cannon attachment) had been severed and left behind.

However, the new design really isn’t THAT much better, and it still features the pulverizing laser-cannon attachment, along with pulverizing laser. I was a fan of the short-lived ghostly light sculpture (“Tribute in Light”) put up a few years back to mark Ground Zero. This laser-cannon attachment, though, doesn’t pull it off nearly as well and just ends up looking hokey.

Hokey is, I have to conclude, what they’re going for; why else would they have dubbed it the “Freedom Tower”? My god, can you imagine the embarassment of its inhabitants describing their place of employment?

ROGER: I work in the Freedom Tower.

BELINDA: Oh, I’m sorry… hmmm… Freedom Tower! (Giggles.)

And moreover I fear the word “Freedom” is starting to suffer from that phenomenon of overuse, where you repeat a word so many times that it begins to feel rubbery and unfamiliar, as if part of your brain has become fatigued and refuses to acknowledge its meaning anymore. And the men who are fond of overapplying it so clearly misapprehend that meaning that I’m starting to despise the word itself. Its constant application is meant to reassure us of some great Value, no doubt, but as the word erodes I’m finding that the Value itself is becoming increasingly slippery, until, perhaps, I will cynically doubt whether it exists at all, whether it was ever anything other than the blubbery syllable floating off the lips of disgusting demagogues.

Wow! Crooked Timber points the way to this story, on Alabama State Senator Gerald Allen’s bill to prevent schools from using public funds to buy books about homosexuality, or even by homosexual authors!

This must be a really embarassing time to be a Republican. But me, I’m hoping that these paltry sorts of culture wars (Mr. Allen is surely condemned to the rubbish-heap of endless ridicule) will escalate into la vraie chose. If I play things right, I could end up being burned at the stake like Giordano Bruno! If I’m really bad, they may even nail my tongue to my jaw so I can’t speak poisonous lies!

Every once in a while, it’s good to step back and take a look at the world for a moment just to reassure yourself that it is, in fact, as crazed and Escheresque as you believed.

This week, the entire country is in uproar over typewriters. Pages and pages are being written about kerning, proportional fonts, superscripting characters, and the history and development of Times New Roman.

This is bizarre.

YOU are not bizarre because you don’t give a fuck about typewriters, and you think that this fascination with typewriters is cracked. You’re correct. Only a lunatic, a twisted headcase, could think that the differences between the IBM Selectric and the IBM Executive have dramatic implications. Only a madman would obsess about these things compared to a thousand other tragedies of infinitely greater magnitude preoccupying the world, could ignore all the travesty in this decadent giant and zero in with such a singular focus on the totally banal workings of a mechanical writing device.

We’re all getting warped by our prism, here. Step back, peel the lens from your eyes. Turn off the TV. Turn off the computer. Go outside. It’s a large world, larger than you might remember. It’s full of life. It’s full of many dreams, some dark, some dreadful, some hopeful. Forget about typewriters. There’s so much more, can you see it?

Breathe…