Jamal is my friend.
Archive for October, 2007
29
Oct
This is Jamal
EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT GOD IS WRONG!
This massive book systematically reveals the distortions, myths, and utter weirdness that have been shoved down our throats by organized religions of all stripes, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, new religions, and others who want to keep their lucrative franchises intact.
Russ Kick has assembled an unprecedented arsenal of writers, reporters, and researchers to invade the inner sanctum for an unrestrained look at the wild and wooly world of organized belief.
Russ Kick is one of the few things that I liked about Tucson. He runs a website, The Memory Hole, and edits books for Disinformation. This is their latest.
(Full disclosure: A piece that I wrote about necrophilia is included in Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong.)
October, 2007
Gov. Sonny Perdue declared a state of emergency in most of Georgia on Saturday, and called on President Bush to recognize that the historic drought had created a disaster for 85 counties.
October, 1999
tell your crew use the H2 in wise amounts since
it’s the New World Water; and every drop counts
You can laugh and take it as a joke if you wanna
But it don’t rain a full week some summers
And it’s about to get real wild in the half
You be buying Evian just to take a fuckin bath
18
Oct
Strike! Strike!
(Image via Flickr user kameelahwrites)
Always a beacon of sanity in the increasingly chaotic, idiotic media world, Haper’s Magazine makes one of the best suggestions I’ve heard in a long time. Specifically, Garret Keizer says:
If someone were to suggest, for example, that we begin a general strike on Election Day, November 6, 2007, for the sole purpose of removing this regime from power, how readily and with what well-practiced assurance would you find yourself producing the words “It won’t do any good”? Plausible and even courageous in the mouth of a patient who knows he’s going to die, the sentiment fits equally well in the heart of a citizen-ry that believes it is already dead.
The easy–and expected–thing to do is to immediately dismiss the idea as an idealistic, unattainable notion, but consider this. The vast majority of our populace believes that we should begin withdrawing our troops from Iraq, yet our elected officials–both Democrats and Republicans– whom we chose to represent our voices have done absolutely nothing to stop this war. A war which, of course, was illegal to begin with. These guys work for us. And they’re not doing what we want them to do. So…they should be fired. And we have the power to make it happen. Are we willing to exercise that power?
This image is currently on the front page of espn.com. No wonder LeBron was rooting for the Yankees.
(Image via Atwater Village Newbie)
Call it light rail. Call it a subway. I don’t care. Just make it happen. Now. This Los Angeles City Beat piece from last week dives into the people and politics of fixing our traffic problem.
But what will it take to get innovative, reality-based transit ideas rolling through the halls of power in Los Angeles County? This installment in L.A. CityBeat is the first in an occasional series that will examine all of the issues related to making L.A move again.
After a year of apathy and two years of hatred, I have grown to love Los Angeles. Of course, that love is not unconditional. Every major American city has it’s problems. Seattle pesters you with it’s Chinese water torture-like weather until you want to tear off your North Face jacket, kick off your Tevas and dart into the surrounding mountain-side screaming bloody murder. Chicago combines the ball-numbingly cold winters of the Northeast with the hellish humidity of the deep south. Atlanta is in Georgia, which is in the aforementioned deep south. Which is awful. Having lived in Arizona for two years I can tell you that anyone living in a desert city is either certifiable or in graduate school. And if they aren’t crazy, a few years of constant triple digit temperatures will fix that. If you even seriously entertain the notion of someday possibly maybe moving to New York…you’ll get a bill for $275 from Mayor Bloomberg’s office.
In Los Angeles, it’s the traffic. The awful, hellish, unbelievable, soul crushing, unavoidable, what the fuck are all these assholes doing on the 5 on a Sunday morning, traffic that has come to define Los Angeles.
If we don’t get serious about addressing it we are all seriously fucked.
