Archive for August, 2011
Why Do We Mock The Mock Meats?
Posted by Keith Spillett in The Poetry of Death, Uncategorized on August 16, 2011
(Editors note: This is inane poetry that I wrote about 5 years ago during my conversion to vegetarianism. It reflects my general unease about the idea of fake meat. I have since grown to love the stuff. Mock meat, I mean, not unease)
Why do we mock the mock meats?
Is it our feverish fear of fakes?
That make us avoid eating mock snakes
Do we fear down deep that we are eating
Something that never was bleating
Some hybrid of bean sprouts and shark
That looks like a deformed snark
Do we feel people will see us as quirky?
If we down a box of Tofurky
Should we eat what does not cluck?
Like a steaming plate of mock duck
Or avoid things that do not moo
And happen to taste like Elmer’s glue
What is a new vegan to do?
Settle down to a plate of mock kangaroo!
When will the mock meat madness stop?
Will they open a mock meat butcher shop?
Will mock meat mania destroy our nation?
Will we become a mock civilization?
A mock culture in neverending retreat
Who cannot tell the difference between real and mock meat
Everything Is Dumb
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing, The Politics Of Catastrophe on August 11, 2011
“It is not a case of choosing those [faces] that, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those that average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practice the fourth, fifth and higher degrees.”
–John Maynard Keynes discussing Beauty Contests in the General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, 1936
Do you believe in big government? Then you must be a communist who looks to manipulate lazy poor people into voting for you by offering them the opportunity to spend the rest of their lives as indolent pikers. Dumb. Do you believe in small government? Then you must be an evil spirited misanthrope who doesn’t care one bit about anyone but yourself. Dumb. Are you pro-choice? Then you must be a maniacal baby killer who seeks to undermine basic human values. Dumb. Are you pro-life? Then you must be one of those religious psychopaths who want to force women back into the June Cleaver model of complete helplessness and social inferiority. Dumb. Do you like Obama? Then you are clearly in favor of the destruction of the American Way of Life. Dumb. Do you hate Obama? Then you are clearly a closeted racist unable to cope with the forces of progress. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
It’s all so insanely dumb. CNN had a question on their Facebook site last night asking all of their likers the question of what should be done about the economy. Everybody responded with some inane pet theory running the gamut from the flat tax to value added taxes to the repeal of all taxes to forcing the Chinese to send their entire work force to Africa to the Fair Tax to more sin taxes, etc. 2,658 comments in 15 hours. People inevitably started arguing and quoting dumb things they heard other people say. People called each other names. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Everybody’s an expert. Each man a king, each woman a queen. Dumb.
I am not exempt from this sort of asinine posturing. I have moments where I forget that I am part of the mob. Wishful thinking does occasionally overtake my brain. The wicked, awful truth is by contributing to the blogosphere, I have merely exchanged my pitchfork and torch for a MacBook. I get worked up over the horrors of military spending or the Ponzi scheme-like quality of modern finance or the disgusting, venal nature of American politics from time to time and write about it. Dumb.
The truth of the whole thing is far worse than a person can contemplate without a complete psychic meltdown. It’s not just that we are dumb, that idea by itself is tolerable, even somewhat amusing. It’s that the product of all modern discourse seems to be dumb. Let’s assume for a moment that some of us want to use reason as an antidote to the basic dumbness of our world. Fine. Good luck. The non-dumb folks among us are welcome to use subtle, intelligent arguments to understand the world. It’s a free country, as they say.
Now, let’s say one of the non-dumb want to step outside of the perimeters of their mental world and, say, lessen the suffering of others or effect social change on any level. Well, those folks will present their ideas to a population that, for the most part, is uncomfortable and even threatened by anything that resembles reason. Let’s say you are making a reasoned argument for the truth of global warming. How on earth could you possibly explain the nuances of a concept like that to a person who believes that science is completely untrustworthy and dinosaurs weren’t real? Every time it snows they will thumb their nose at you and scream out “SEE!” Let’s say you are a bright and articulate religious person and you want to make a reasoned argument for what you believe? You will be met with every anti-religious cliché in the book and lumped together with sycophants from Jimmy Swaggart to Ayman Al-Zawahiri. You can’t win.
Eventually, the pure force of dumbness will overpower any even moderately intelligent argument. Seeing this, a person making reasonable arguments might well begin to lose trust in their audience. In order to enact any sort of change in our world, one must not just have a great idea, one must have an idea that the mob can be talked into. When the realities of the situation begin to occur to someone with an idea, they naturally begin to tailor their ideas to the wild eccentricities of the mob.
Most people might not understand the nuances of the idea of a welfare state, but they can certainly be convinced that its not right that someone who has a private jet pay the same taxes as they do. Now, the argument has moved out of the realm of thought and into the realm of pure, visceral dumbness. Pretty soon, an intelligent point about general inequity has become a shouting match between “the defenders of those with private jets” and “those who hate America.”
The upshot of all this weirdness is that extremely intelligent people are forced into becoming absurd polemicists. The merits of the idea take a backseat to the constant push and pull of public opinion. This idea is perfectly captured in the earlier quote by Keynes. The whole thing becomes a Faustian Beauty Contest fought not on the merits of what is beautiful, but rather, on the merits of what the mob might find the most beautiful.
Finding a point of view that makes sense becomes a lot like defensive driving. You are not driving based solely on the rules of the road, rather you drive based on what the idiot in the Camaro doing 100 miles per hour with a Pabst Blue Ribbon in his lap might think the rules of the road are. Even if you drive well, the moron next to you can still kill you. So, you adjust to the stupidity of the whole venture. In that adjustment, ideas that are logical are often jettisoned for more acceptable generalizations that can be absorbed by a mass of angry people. And those generalizations are met with counter generalizations, which are met with counter generalizations. The whole thing gets pushed out to the n-th degree. Suddenly, we are excitedly screaming at each other over what Joe The Plumber thinks. After a few hundred rounds of this everyone’s an idiot and no one can tell the difference. Over and over and back and forth. Dumb.
I offer no solution to this problem. This may well be how democracy works when you get it out of the textbooks; I’m not sure. I do wonder what the outcome of this insanity will be. I feel like I’m chained to 300 million lunatics going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Everyone is paddling in different directions. Everyone thinks that they know how to escape and are just as convinced that the morons next to them are messing things up. We argue over how we got in the barrel, we argue over how to best get out of the barrel, we argue over whether The Falls are even real, we argue over how big the barrel is, we argue over who should get out of the barrel first, we argue over whether we should work together or separately. The result of all this strain and turmoil is no different then if we did nothing at all. We move towards The Falls with no clear explanation of what is happening and no possibility of ever getting out of our predicament. Dumb.
Members of Morbid Angel Eat Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in Bizarre Promotional Stunt
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on August 6, 2011
In an attempt to revive sluggish sales of their new record, Ilud Divinum Insanus, Florida death metal band Morbid Angel ate all four members of 60’s pop supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in a paganistic blood ceremony last night in Des Moines, Iowa. While the move was thought by many to be too extreme, Morbid Angel felt that they owed this to their fans. According to Vincent, “Several of our legion of metal warriors were disappointed by the latest release. We wanted to reach out and let them know, in no uncertain terms, that we are still committed to the values that once made us great. In eating these aging rock legends, we sent a message that Morbid Angel is back.”
Apparently, the band had been hunting Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young for over a month. After several near misses, they finally captured them backstage at the Iowa Peace and Freedom Festival after a beautiful encore of “Teach Your Children”. Initially, the band had only considered eating David Crosby, but the opportunity to devour the entire group proved to be tempting to resist. Morbid Angel was particularly lucky to have consumed the band in the State of Iowa, one of three remaining American states that have not outlawed cannibalism. “Every once an a while the good lord hands you a golden opportunity,” said guitarist Trey Azagthoth, “we knew it was the right thing to do.”
The eating of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young follows a recent trend of gormandizing grizzled rock veterans. Earlier in the month, Deicide singer and all around nice guy Glenn Benton ate the leg of Scottish singer songwriter Donovan during a spirited version of “Hurdy-Gurdy Man”. Country Joe McDonald, of Country Joe and the Fish fame, survived an attack of bloodthirsty members of the band Malevolent Creation by hiding all night in an abandoned farmhouse waiting for police. Clearly, Morbid Angel’s devouring of an entire band was meant to up the ante and bring death metal to the next level.
Since last night’s attack, Morbid Angel has received nearly 10,000 rambling letters of support. One letter was nearly 800 pages long with nothing but the phrase “Mormo loves me, Mormo loves us” scrawled again and again in red finger paint. Vincent claims he has been asked by several fans for his recipe. “Young was quite dry. It was important to add a good deal of cumin and sherry to overcome the taste of years of whiskey and bad living. The rest of the group required very little seasoning. Graham Nash was particularly delicious!”
As of now, Morbid Angel has no plans to eat any other celebrities, although with the declining economy, many Americans are expected to resort to cannibalism as grocery store shelves become emptier by the day. Morbid Angel’s record label, Seasons of Mist has already begun to capitalize on yesterday’s events by selling tee-shirts with “Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young” crossed out and replaced by “Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, and Dinner”. Rumors have circulated that a Morbid Angel human cookbook called “Morbid Angel Cooks With The Stars” may be available in time for Christmas.