The Funny Farm
Where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats...
Adventures of a Basic Force For Good in Our TimeTM
Saturday, 5 Shivring 2008
Well - I found out what happened to The Poor Man:
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Why it is that I had to find this out myself, instead of being informed about it from the studio audience*, is beyond me...
By the way, there is lots of bloggy goodness freshly available at the blog formerly known as the Poor Man these days. In case you didn't already know...
* - of course, the studio audience which seems to largely consist of spambots sending junk emails to my comments section seems to want me to know more about unusual pornographic web caches and/or penis enhancement techniques than anything else. Unfortunately (for them) their services are not utilized, nor do they ever appear to be particularly imminent on the horizon, for any of the staff of the Funny Farm.
Somehow I don't think that will stop them from continuing to cybernetically harass me…
Sunday, 29 Premise 2008
I'm thinking of starting a new group, called
Let's Impeach All Republican't Sycophants.
I wasn't really sure if I should use this picture:
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or this picture:
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What do you think?
P.S. I couldn't find enough room on a t-shirt to put
Completely Obvious Republican't Proves Orally Resourceful At Telling Evasions
While Helping Others Ream Everybody.
But I did find the right picture for this one:
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Saturday, 28 Premise 2008
Sunday, 22 Premise 2008
It seems that one of the Republican't sychophants over at the Conservative News Network is getting his knickers in a twist because he's been called on his shameless hyperpartisan fluffing of a Republican't candidate for president. You know, it almost makes me a bit nostalgic for one of the first major smackdowns we engaged in with a former news personality on Faux Snooze Lite. The haughty elitist ridiculing of someone trying to point out the discrepancies between CNN's spin and, um, the reality of the situation. The pointing to credentials that are supposedly above reproach because somebody's actually paying for this dreck to be broadcast - when infomercials are more intellectually honest than any of the Republican't bobbleheads at Faux, CNN, and MSGOP these days. The savage personal attacks the have exactly zero meaning to the discussion at hand - but do help an awful lot towards turning reasonable inquiries about supposed journalism from the mainstream media into childish temper tantrums from supposed professionals.
Could you imagine the (properly disdainful) response if a blogger had sent something like this:
From: A Blogger
To: A news personality on TV
Subject: excuse me? I don't read biased uninformed drivel so I'm a little late to the game. But a friend who understands what the real story you distorted was and knows a little something about how badly you missed the mark sent me a link to your ramblings. Since you are being paid to ostensibly report the news, not make it up out of whole cloth, this suggests you have journalistic training, and maybe you forgot that good reporters tend to do a little research before they spit out words. Did you think to ask me or anyone who actually knows something about this issue whether what you're 'reporting' was even remotely close to being accurate? No. (It was not; just a biased opinion that has already been discredited by those with knowledge on this issue.) Did you reach out to look for confirmation of the factually lacking statements you made in a national broadcast? No. Or how it might have fit in with other questions being asked by other journalists who actually practiced their craft with regards to this issue that day? No. Or anything that might have put facts or context or fairness into your report? No. This issue, for better or worse, has a very large body of work available for the professional journalist to produce an intellectually honest and unbiased segment on the issue for broadcast on your network. If you did a little research (there's that word again) you would find I have done my share of due diligence on this issue. Because of those extensive professional studies on the issue, you should be able to go into every report with a minimal summary of the reality on the issue based on factual data. Your reporting was incomplete and biased. The report you gave was aired by your network across the country -- so by all means it is fair game for whatever "analysis" you care to apply to it using your right of free speech and your lack of any journalistic standards or fact checking or just plain basic curiosity. You clearly know very little about journalism. But credibility matters. It is what allows you to cover major issues of the day and be viewed as fair and respectful, while perhaps a little ignorant, but willing to tell the truth no matter whether you like what you find out. When I am writing something that calls someone's credibility into question, I pick up the phone and give the experts a chance to give their side, or perspective. That way, even on days that I don't consider my best, or anywhere close, I can look myself in the mirror and know I tried to be fair and didn't make crap up just to support a partisan talking point on the issue, or because I like seeing my name on a website or my face on TV. |
to a journalist at a professional news organization? Yet, a professional journalist chose to respond to a journalist blogger (Glenn Greenwald - maybe you've heard of him?) in a similar manner to the parody email above.
Now, can you imagine what a hack and smear job Oh!Really? would do when he actually had some sort of factual basis for his spittle-flecked screeds, as well as something like this? Can you then extrapolate this 'journalistic integrity' so that you can get an idea of how Bowtie Boy's and Spammity's wild fantasies on the subject would be broadcast ad nauseum after that?
I don't want to tax your imagination too much, but I'm also wondering if you can imagine what the proper response to an email like this should be, regardless who was emailing it? Now can you imagine what the response should be to someone who also claims to be a professional journalist, when they send this type of email from their desk in between objectively (coughcough) broadcasting the news?
And people wonder why I am so much of a radical liberal that I don't automatically trust the objectivity of the employees of any major media outlet...*
* - there are, of course, exceptions to the rules (see Olbermann, Keith and a handful of others in the media today). But they are few and far between, and, surprisingly (cough), they don't seem to be able to get away with many too many mistakes.
Fryday, 20 Premise 2008
He thinks that, because he wants OPEC to deplete its' starting-to-dwindle oil fields faster, they need to pump more oil. Never mind that oil production capacity increases were larger than oil refinery capacity increases last year - so that increased production would be going exactly where? Never mind that oil production will be increasingly hard-pressed to keep up to current levels. Never mind that he's still pumping millions of gallons of that sweet Iraqi crude every day. The Ilegally Installed Drunken Cokeheaded Usurper wants him some more oil, so you OPEC guys better get hoppin'!
Note: Physical and technical difficulties have resulted in temporal displacement of this post.
Humpday, 17 Premise 2008
If you've been visiting the Funny Farm on at least a semi-regular basis, you probably might have guessed by now that the abuse of individuals' spirituality and faith by the various religious organizations out there is somewhat of a hot button issue 'round these parts. Being a (very) orthodox Catholic during my formative years might have something to do with that, as it enabled me to get a first hand perspective on the situation. Many have taken that to mean that I'm down on religion per se. That is not the case - if you want to believe that robots are stealing your luggage or that alien souls have been implanting themselves in human hosts for the past 75 million years, feel free to do so. Go ahead and have faith in whatever you think you should.
Having said that, the part that frosts my cookies is where those who are ostensibly leading their religious flocks start abusing that power in order to enrich themselves, persecute others, and/or justify their actions. Those that do this sort of thing, as well as those who (seemingly) are blindly following the dictates of their religious leader (when that religious leader starts engaging in this sort of behavior), are the ones that I refer to as the religiously insane. I have gotten a lot of grief from many who seem to be taking these kinds of statements personally. To them I say: if you are allowing your religious beliefs to influence your business activities, your willingness to obey the laws of the land when they do not agree with your religious beliefs, or your personal interactions with those who do not believe the same way you do (or engage in activities that your religious beliefs say require you to kill/ruin/persecute them), then, in my opinion, you are engaging in religiously insane behavior.
Quite frankly, one of the problems I have with those who I do not consider to have gone into teh gawd madness is that they don't seem to be too concerned with those who have been abusing their faith. This tends to make me think that they are somewhat in agreement with the more radical elements of their faith, and by and large wish that they would tone the rhetoric down (as opposed to wishing that they would discontinue it altogether). This, in my opinion, gives the more radical elements tacit support for their actions. A good example of this is the anti-choice position held by most religions. We'll be getting to an extreme example of their current activities, but for now let's just say that, because the majority of christians do not condemn these people for their militant (and borderline illegal) activities, those radical elements are not being pressured to stop pushing the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior. And so they continue to harrass those who activities they don't agree with because they think their Invisible Sky Fairy told them to.
Here's an example to show you when I consider this type of activity has crossed the line:
One of my siblings has told me, and I suspect the majority of the rest of my family would agree with him, that he thinks that Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ is just as factually accurate (if not more) than Michael Moore's Sicko. This is not religious insanity in my books. I do not think he is correct in his beliefs, but I don't think he's religiously insane because he believes what he believes in this instance. Now, if he were to be a member of the US House of Representatives, and he were to sponsor a bill that would legally define these two movies to be equally factually accurate, or he were to force others to watch either or both of those movies (for edumacational purposes), then he would have crossed that line and gone off the deep end.
Now, here's what has appeared on my radar this week which I would place in the category of religious insanity:
Apparently Someone murdered her children because she thought they were possessed by demons;
A man cut off his hand and them put it in the microwave because he thought it had the mark of the beast on it;
A man killed and cooked his girlfriend because he thought God told him to do it*;
A number of counties in Florida are trying to put religious dogma into science classes because they believe a "theory" with no scientific proof should be considered the same as a scientific theory with over 150 years of scientific data that supports it;
and, finally, in Orlando, Florida, anti-choicers put a billboard up displaying a dismembered foetus a few blocks away from the local abortion clinic. Just to drive the guilt meter up a few notches for those loose strumpets who dare to exercise their legal rights. A few anti-choicers have defended this practice by saying that, even if it's just one person that they can harass enough so that they'll be forced to bring a child into the world, it's worth all the nightmares that innocent children who have to look at their crap suffer from for the rest of their lives. If you don't want to have an abortion, then don't have one. But please don't foist your definition of life (based on what you think the Big Book of Christian Fairy Tales says it is) on anyone else. Thanks in advance...
Please note that this is only a sampling of the relatively well-published stories of one flavor of religious insanity over the last week. I'm relatively sure that I could include items from most of the major religions, and probably quite a few of the minor sects, too...
* - funny - I had to search through multiple articles about this horrific incident before the little tidbit about God telling him to do it could be found. And after seeing it in the majority of articles I read earlier in the week - almost as though the mainstream media is trying to get us to forget that this nutbar was Jeebus inspired...
Saturday, 14 Premise 2008
There is something sticking in my craw these days that I would like to talk to you about:
- late in 2006 I was amazed and honored to be contacted by Keith Tucker of What Now? cartoons and allowed to promote his site and display his latest toons. After a few months of doing so, I was starting to see his work being regularly featured on a number of other progressive web sites (with a lot more visits), including Bartcop. And, shortly thereafter, I was asked to stop displaying his cartoons on my site because it was 'cutting down on the number of page views to his site'. While watching all of his cartoons, from then on, being displayed on more popular web sites. I complied with his wishes and stopped putting his cartoons (linked to the original at his site) on my web site. For some strange reason, I was somewhat upset that a podunk blogger (with less hits over five years than the other blogs who were featuring his toons get in a day) was asked to stop displaying his work while at the same time other blogs were now starting to do the same thing. I'm pretty sure I got another email from him informing me he had moved and asking me to infotain the studio audience on the subject. Funny - somehow I never got around to it. Until now.
Keith, if you're out there reading this, I would appreciate finding out from you why it was suddenly not okay for me to display your cartoons here (because I was 'taking away hits' from your site), while at the same time it was suddenly okay for other, much more popular sites, to be doing the same thing. I usually link to the original cartoon on your site when I show them here (something I don't see others doing) and save a copy of the toon on my server (so you don't have to pay for bandwidth at my site when somebody looks at your work over here). Is there something else going on that I'm unaware of?
Anyways,... this is not keeping me up at night - and it's not as if I obsess about it. Just, once in a while, I get mildly annoyed that I don't know why I seem to be singled out for special treatment. So there's that. But somehow I feel lots better just posting about it here...
Fryday, 13 Premise 2008
He thinks he's going to be remembered as a hero. coughcoughcoughbwhahahahahahahahahahaha... excuse me. I couldn't find a way to consider this seriously:
"I can predict that the historians will say that George W. Bush recognized the threats of the 21st century, clearly defined them, and had great faith in the capacity of liberty to transform hopelessness to hope, and laid the foundation for peace by making some awfully difficult decisions," Bush told Yonit Levi of Israel's Channel 2 News. |
I can predict that a vast majority of the human beings on the planet for the next hundred years will curse the Texas Souffle as soon as they stop laughing at his sorry a$$.
"When he needed to be tough, he acted strong, and when he needed to have vision he understood the power of freedom to be transformative," Bush said of himself [snip] |
When he needed to pull his head out of his anal sphincter and look realistically at the clusterCheney he has been responsible for, he instead found a way to delude himself that he acted and understood anything at all.
As for the people of the Middle East, Bush told Hisham Bourar of al-Hurra Television: "I would hope that they would say President Bush respects my religion and has great love for the human -- human being, and believes in human dignity." |
As for the people of the middle east that he hasn't murdered yet, I would hope they realize that the pRetzelDunce respects nothing and no one, and that he has a hole in his psyche where a soul would be. And that his idea of human dignity includes insulting others, unjustly imprisoning others without due process, and torture.
The Bush record, the president told Nadia Bilbassy-Charters of al-Arabiya Television, is one of liberation -- "liberation, by the way, not only from dictatorship, but from disease around the world, like HIV/AIDS or malaria." |
The Cokespoon Cowboy's record, realistic rational people have told anyone who would listen, is one of disastrous incompetence - incompetence, by the way, not only in domestic policy, but also in Cheneying america's standing with all nations around the world.
On a personal basis, Bush told Bilbassy-Charters that he hopes that people would know "that he hurts when he sees poverty and hopelessness" and "that he's a realistic guy." |
On a personal basis, I am telling all and sundry that people should know that the Disaster Monkey has never seen poverty and hopelessness, or approached it personally - so he's talking of what he knows not, and that realistically he would be making license plates in a federal penitentiary if Republican'ts hadn't been covering for him since before he stole the oval office the first time.
Thursday, 11 Premise 2008
Pat Robertson says that the voices in his head his concept of awl mighty gawd told him who was going to win the 2008 election. And he's not going to tell us about it until after he can verify who's going to win and use 20-20 hindsight to make the voices in his head match the actual results Andy Rooney can no longer make fun of him (for this bit of religious insanity) on 60 Minutes.
Let me get this straight - supposedly he gets the election results ten months before they take place straight from his Invisible Sky Fairy, and he doesn't want to tell anybody else because he fears ridicule from a TV personality? After centuries (if not millennia) of people willing to risk their lives pushing their particular brand of occult superstition? Doesn't he have faith that his Magical Sugar Daddy would protect him from such abuse?
Humpday, 10 Premise 2008
I've just been wading through some of the incredible torrent of posts about the recent Iowa caucus (just along the little corridor on the Fashionable Left Bank of Blogtopia (y!sctw!), and I must say thanks to you all for keeping me so infotainally occupied of late.
It seems to me that there's some points that haven't really been focused on enough:
- all of the inter-party sniping that goes on does nothing to help, and a lot to hinder, the party as a whole;
- that is the meat and drink of the supposedly liberal media, who are now in early feeding frenzy mode;
- eventually, hopefully, if a Democratic* candidate becomes president, most (if not all) of those running for president will be included in some measure or form in the next administration. Maybe you should all focus on the ineptitude, divisiveness, and elitist Republican't candidates, and tie them to the Anchor In Chief this season, and look towards working together to bring this country back from the brink of oblivion once one of you get the nomination. A nice helping of media scorn and/or pointing out the media's obvious biases wouldn't hurt, either**.
- the Iowa caucus results seem to indicate that any of the big three can take any of the Republicant's in the general election. And that turnout will be higher than usual. Which could turn this November into a completely different ballgame - or more of the same old same old. I'm personally hoping that america will be able to show the world that it is a participatory democracy once more, and that turnout in November 2008 will top 70%. But I've always been a dreamer...
And so once more we go into the fray, ladies and germs. Hang on - it's going to be a wild ride in ought eight.
* - by the way, has anyone else noticed that suddenly increasing numbers of the MSM have remembered how to use Democrat and Democratic properly and appropriately again?
** - like, for example, publicly banning Faux Snooze and Oh!Really? from Democratic press fluffers until they learn some manners...
Tuesday, 9 Premise 2008
10. Will I be able to quit smoking this year?
9. Will anyone be interested in purchasing a Midling Calendar this year?*
8. Does anyone else think it must have taken an awful long time to winnow down all of the stupid legalese coming from the current junta (just over the course of 2007, mind you. If they looked at the entire course of the clusterCheney that is this sadministration, they would probably still be at it) into a top ten list?
7. Will the (Funny Farm NFL fave) Miami Dolphins turn into an adequate team again sometime in my lifetime?
6. Will the (Funny Farm NHL fave) Montreal Canadiens win the Cup again before the (Funny Farm NHL unfave and perennial punching bag) Toronto Maple Leafs?**
5. Will the Democratic politicians out there finally get a semblance of a spine, and will Republican'ts continue their hyperpartisan win-at-all-costs political philosophy? In other words, will either of the major american political parties start acting like a political party again?
4. Will the frelling irony alert siren remain in its' tenuous Hactar-like existence*** throughout 2008, or will it once again re-form and start screeching at three in the morning?
3. Will Sadly, No ever run out of Reich wingnuts to (justifiably) ridicule?***
2. If you have to lie, cheat, and steal to survive, and you have problems with lying, cheating, and stealing, how do you survive?
And, the number one burning question here at the Funny Farm:
1. Whatever happened to the Poor Man? I haven't been able to bring that site up for quite some time now, and have not yet read anything about their sudden demise.
If you have any answers (especially to the last question), here's your chance to edumacate the Funny Farm staff. Just leave your answers (in the form of an answer) in the comments to this post.
* - it's the signature product from the Funny Farm (even though you can't find it at Country Store). So, please talk to me if you'd like more details on a different way of looking at time...
** - because, if the Leafs manage to get their names engraved on the Cup before the next time the Habs do, it will cause significant cash drain from the Funny Farm coffers in lost wagers, and there are no shortage of Leaf fans with wounded pride who will be wanting some payback from Your Humble Narrator...
*** - Hactar was pulverized into its' component atoms; but, since its' individual components contained the pattern of the whole within them, it continued to exist as a gaseous cloud of atoms loosely held together.
**** - Sadly, No!