Day: February 19, 2022
Same Kind of Animals
…as those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on 1.6.21. Comforting to know that ugly goons are also in Canada.
CFR.org, posted on 2.11: “The so-called Freedom Convoy protests, which began about two weeks ago in Ottawa, were sparked by a mandate that requires Canadian cross-border truckers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. But they are less a reaction to last month’s mandate and more a reflection of the general frustration with the pandemic-related restrictions of the last couple of years.”
I was doing a live hit with @MSNBC this afternoon when our crew was mobbed. One guy actually spit at us, others called us Nazis. MSNBC had to cut it off almost after it began. Then they chased us down the street to our bureau. pic.twitter.com/K21NIHgGCS
— Glen McGregor (@glen_mcgregor) February 19, 2022
⚠️WARNING: Profane language.
My camera operator and I get swarmed by protesters and followed — after an interview with police media relations.
Officers escort us to our vehicle after we receive verbal threats. #bcpoli #TruckerConvoy pic.twitter.com/280fzoq2UD
— Kamil Karamali (@KamilKaramali) February 19, 2022
Schoolyard Fisticuffs
Who would dispute that boomers have been the worst generation ever? The greediest, most wasteful, most indulged, most sociopathic. They’ve made life economically arduous for Millennials, and almost futile if you look at things from an environmental perspective.
Eight years ago I read P.J. O’Rourke‘s “The Baby Boom: How it Got That Way and It Wasn’t My Fault and I’ll Never Do it Again.” That same year Reason‘s Nick Gillespie did a video interview with the libertarian O’Rourke during Freedom Fest 2014, and one of O’Rourke’s topics was about how today’s culture is much gentler for kids, or certainly less rough-and-tumble.
“Just this whole process of going through the baby boom’s history, I began to realize what a nicer society — kinder, more decent society — that we live in today than the society when I was a kid. I don’t think my ten-year-old boy has ever been in a fist fight. I mean there might be a little scuffling but I don’t think he’s has ever had that kind of violent confrontation that was simply part of the package when I was a kid.”
In my twelve years of primary education I got into one (1) schoolyard fist fight. It happened in seventh grade on a sunny spring day (or was it early fall?), on the edge of a baseball diamond. The other kid started it, but I fucking finished it.
It was over in less than a minute. Okay, 90 seconds. I took a few blows, but I kept punching and punching and actually knocked the guy down. The downside is that my hands were pretty swollen from all the hitting, and I think I may have gone to the family doctor to get my hands or wrists taped up.
I once came upon a pair of eight- or nine-year-olds beating up Jett. It was near the end of a school day, during some kind of outdoor recess. He was crying and crouching against a concrete wall, and his two attackers were standing over him. I stopped it, of course, and went over to the teachers who were presiding and explained what had happened. They in turn told the mothers of the two attackers, and subsequently those mothers really read the riot act to their boys.
All-Time Greatest Ranter
HE to God #1: “Cosmic design, unity and connectivity are obvious to anyone with half a brain, but as a beyond-intelligent entity do you and your only begotten son feel just a teeny bit responsible for the massive amounts of stupidity, ignorance and arrogance that are directly attributable to religious devotion? Which is partly responsible for destroying the earth as we speak? Are you good with all that?”
Roughly 25 years ago I was hosting a Woodland Hills screening series called Hot Shot Movies, and one of the films I booked for the fall of ’97 was Taylor Hackford‘s The Devil’s Advocate. It’s no one’s idea of a great film. It has, however, a great Al Pacino speech at the very end — the Devil himself (i.e., “John Milton”) explaining what a pious asshole and sadistic mind-fucker God the Father is.
I don’t know who wrote Pacino’s rant, but the film is based on Andrew Neiderman‘s same-titled 1990 novel; the screenplay was co-authored by Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy.
Milton: “Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He’s a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does he do? I swear…for his own amusement…his own private cosmic gag reel, he sets the rules in opposition. It’s the goof of all time, [and] he’s laughin’ his sick fuckin’ ass off! He’s a tight-ass, he’s a sadist, he’s an absentee landlord.”
HE to God #2: “Do you agree or disagree with Gilroy‘s assertion that you’re an absentee landlord? When I was a kid I thought you were that deep, slowed-down voice in Cecil B. Demille‘s The Ten Commandments; now you’re nothing more than a component in one of the ugliest political-religious movements in U.S. history.”
The Resurrection
George C. Scott: “What do you mean ‘if I love you’? I raped you in a suicidal rage. How do we get love and children all of a sudden?”
Diana Rigg: “For heaven’s sake, Herb…I ought to know if a man loves me or not. You must have told me a hundred times last night that you love me. You murmured it, shouted it. One time you opened a window and bellowed it out into the street.”
Scott: “Well, I think those were more expressions of gratitude than love.”
Rigg: “Gratitude for what?”
Scott: “Well…my God, for resurrecting feelings of life in me that I thought dead!”
Rigg: “Oh, my God…what do you think love is?”
Scott: “All right, I love you! You love me! I’m not about to argue with so relentless a romantic.”
