Journal

I love me a good Internet controversy

Michael Koppelman, Leave a comment

Here is the synopsis:

1. Two writers from Jezebel go on a comedy show hosted by Lizz Winstead, a co-creator (or something) of the Daily Show.
2. The show turns out pretty lame and uncomfortable and not that funny.
3. Lizz Winstead proceeds to lambast the Jezebel writers (and cross posts it on the Huffington Post), accusing them of being drunks, idiots and bad role models. The commenters hog pile on.
4. One of the writers, “Slut Machine” aka Tracie Egan, links to a video of Lizz Winstead acting like a complete bitch.

It’s all fascinating and hilarious, IMHO.

Here is my quick analysis:

1. It’s unfair to invite people on a comedy show and then grill them and expect them to be role models for 15-year old girls. I say all sorts of stupid things when I’m trying to be funny.

2. They said some things that sound pretty stupid unless you think they are funny, which I kinda do. Like she said “I don’t get raped because I live in Williamsburg, and all the guys there are pussies.” and “And I know it’s an irresponsible thing to say, but it’s (pulling out) The Most Fun Way Not To Get Pregnant”. That’s hilarious. Unless you think rape can never be funny and jokes about unsafe sex are deeply harmful to young people in light of the current AIDS epidemic.

3. With that said, I’m sure Lizz Winstead is a smart and well-meaning person but instead of writing this off as bad humor she interpreted it as some major failure in these young women and I think it was unfair.

I love me a good Internet controversy

Buckle the fuck Up

Michael Koppelman3 Comments

From MinnPost:

Just 23 percent of Americans live in rural areas, and their roads carry less than half of the nation’s traffic. Yet they account for more than half of the nation’s vehicular deaths, according to a report issued this year by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation. In 2006, for example, 55 percent of all motor vehicle fatalities occurred in rural crashes.
…
One reason is that more rural residents shun seat belts, according to the national report. Last year 84 percent of American in urban areas said they buckle up compared to 78 percent in rural areas. A University of Minnesota study reported in December found that pickup truck drivers were the least likely in the state to use the belts.

Buckle the fuck Up

Happiness is a process

Michael Koppelman4 Comments

Happiness is a process. I used to say that happiness only occurs in retrospect. That’s probably true for a lot of people. It doesn’t have to be, though. A lot of the whole “be here now” concept is just a matter of realizing how wonderful your life is, with all its warts and struggles. You’re a miracle — with feet that walk, eyes that see and a brain that thinks. You are a survivor. A raging success.

Happiness is the craft of enjoying yourself, forgiving yourself and bettering yourself, a little every day.

Happiness is a process

That Boing Boing thing

Michael Koppelman, , Leave a comment

I have to admit, I don’t like Teresa Nielsen Hayden. She has always struck me as a condescending know-it-all, even here on my own blog.

Then there is this shit storm and this utter bullshit of a post explaining what happened:

Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her.

So they deleted unpublished all references to Violet Blue on their site.

On the one hand, they say they don’t want to lend her credibility and on the other they say, innocently, that all sites delete content for various reason, as if they were just doing some regular maintenance.

You can’t have it both ways: did you unpublish because of this credibility thing or did you unpublish because of regular maintenance? Says Hayden: I’m almost impressed by the pretentious meanings people have been reading into “unpublish.”

Speaking of pretentious, do you think unpublish is actually different than delete in any tangible way to visitors on the web? Of course not. So quit this word parsing nonsense please and get your story straight.

I do agree that Boing Boing can do whatever the hell they want. But this looks like a lover’s spat gone public and it makes Boing Boing look like idiots. Their response makes them look even worse.

Just say “she pissed us off so we deleted every mention of her out of spite”. Then we’ll say, OK, fine, you little babies. Instead they pretend they are so above the fray and so mature and get this wordsmith to spin it for them like, what’s the big deal about regular maintenance?

The big deal is it’s fucking lame to unpublish posts about someone for any reason. Yes, you are free to do it, it’s still lame. The reaction you are getting from this, Boing Boing, is because you did something lame. Just admit it.

That Boing Boing thing

On Violence

Michael KoppelmanLeave a comment

I blog when I’m mad a lot because being mad is a very inspiring feeling. I don’t mean that I like being mad, I don’t. I don’t like it at all. But when I am mad I am motivated to change things.

I’m not a violent person and I abhor violence. It represents so many failures. Violence is never the best thing except when it is the only thing.

This poor woman was raped by a gang of men. I don’t want to rehabilitate those men. I don’t want to make up for their unfortunate upbringing, their shitty parents, their fucked up role models. I don’t give a rat’s ass that these men, some would say, are victims. There is not a single atom of sympathy in me anywhere for these men. I want them killed. I want them beaten up with baseball bats or raped to death in prison. I want the remainder of their lives to be a living hell of regret at the horror they unleashed on this woman. I want them to whimper and cry like little babies as they suffer and suffer in humiliation and pain. I want their lives over except in those ways they can be made worse than death.

This is why wars start. In the olden days of tribal warfare, a gang of men would go over to this house and kill every male in a 6 block radius. You are either for us or against us and if you do this shit or harbor people that do this shit, we are taking you out. Then those people would get mad and come back and kill people over here, and so on.

Note I do not know the race of any of the parties involved. I’m not talking about race wars I’m talking about tribal wars. Those two have often been strongly correlated in the past. It’s not really the case any more today. In this case the tribes are peaceful law abiding people on one side and gangsters and criminals on the other. That’s why our jails are full of gangsters and criminals. Unfortunately our streets are too.

In the end, like it or not, laws are enforced, literally and philosophically, with violence.

On Violence

God damn you divorced people

Michael Koppelman, 1 Comment

I called the doctor today because my infant son was exposed to chicken pox. The person on the phone, after verifying my identify thoroughly (which I appreciate) proceeded to tell me that someone else had already called the doctor on behalf of my son but she could not tell me who it was.

So…the hospital can’t tell me, the father of my son, who called the hospital about my son? That is fucking insane.

It’s probably related to all you divorced people who hate your ex. If this was a rational world, not only would they be able to tell me who is calling the hospital on behalf of my son, they would fucking call me and tell me about it. Apparently being the legal parent and guardian of my son doesn’t give me the privilege of knowing who is getting medical care for my son? Again, that is fucking insane.

God damn you divorced people

Not on their budget

Michael Koppelman, , 1 Comment

I realize that MNDot and DOT’s around the country are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. We hate road construction but we also hate under-maintained or under-capacity roads. The pain is impossible to avoid.

But I think that people in charge of these projects vastly underestimate the amount of economic potential that they waste because the time that people waste in traffic jams is not on their budget. There is no one at the table looking after the interest of commuters. Especially in these times of high fuel costs, it is irresponsible and negligent to assume that there is no cost associated with inconveniencing drivers. There are very, very high costs — lost productivity, wasted fuel and increased air pollution, not to mention the human cost in terms of stress and reduction of family time.

These people are pissed off about it and they should be. MNDot has made tons of shitty decisions in the wake of the 35W bridge collapse. They completely ignore the impact on drivers of these shitty decisions and we should throw the bums out.

It just cracks me up that on the Internet engineers get woken up by pagers if there is congestion or outages. On the roadways, it is just expected that the system totally breaks down several times per day. It’s unsafe, it reduces the quality of life, it wastes energy and we have to prioritize modernization of our urban roadways. But our governor is too much of an ideological chicken shit to raise the money to get it done.

Not on their budget