Thursday, July 31, 2014

Please Recycle. I Do.

     Sorry I haven't been posting of late, guys. It's not as if I'm not aware of what's going on in the Ukraine and Palestine and, the biggest news of all, Lebron's return to Cleveland and Jon Lester's trade to Oakland. But this revision of Tatterdemalion's still kicking my ass and I still have more than 30,000 words to excise before I can even think of resubmitting it to that agency that'd asked for it last March. If it's any consolation, I haven't invested much time this summer on Twitter, either. These are some of my more noteworthy tweets from the last three weeks.

posted by jurassicpork @ Thursday, July 31, 2014   4 comments

Friday, July 25, 2014

Dear USAISC

     ...aka the insatiably curious folks at IP Address 150.226.95.18:
      I know you've been to my place today, specifically at 1:09 EST. I know that you are located not at the USAISC headquarters of Little Rock, Arkanas but at Fort Benning, Georgia, the home of the 101st Airborne (The Screaming Eagles).
     And, if I so chose, I could track your GPS coordinates with such frightening exactitude I could pinpoint your position to within a few inches or at least to the work station you use to spy on me and other bloggers of, apparently, all political stripes. I know: I did it to my ex when she was trolling my blog back in the first half of 2009.
     I do not know how I've suddenly excited your liveliest interest, considering that one day recently I'd garnered all of 98 hits, a small fraction of the traffic I'd enjoyed up until a few years ago. I used to be a B list blogger, one who'd posted several times a day and had an average daily hit count in four figures. Now, I struggle just to get three figures a day.
     But according to one guy who'd noted your IP address at his own site:
     A new scanning program has revealed that Wikipedia entries on the School of the Americas, renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/WHINSEC) have been edited from an IP address from Fort Benning to omit all references to human rights abuses connected to the school.
     WikiScanner, developed by CalTech graduate student Virgil Griffith, has traced the editorial changes made to the online encyclopedia to Fort Benning computers. The IP address used was 150.226.95.18. Any IP address that begins with 150.226 belongs to Fort Benning. That IP address has the name of doim1-358.benning.army.mil, which is via the Directorate of Information Management at Fort Benning.
     The program also revealed that an entry about Fort Benning was altered to delete all mention of SOA Watch. Graduates of the School of the Americas have a documented track record of using the skills they were taught at the SOA/WHINSEC against union organizers, social justice activists, faith leaders and everyone who speaks out for social change and the rights of the poor.
     The School of the Americas is also active against human rights groups within our borders. The school has not only monitored civilian groups and individuals who are working for a just U.S. foreign policy and the closure of the SOA/WHINSEC, but they are also using our tax dollars to actively interfere in the political process. Military officials at the SOA/WHINSEC are spreading misinformation to Congress, flooding the media with letters to the editor, and approaching student groups who are planning events on the SOA/WHINSEC to demand access to the campus.
     The SOA/WHINSEC is propagating a mindset that is not in line with the role of the military in a democratic society. In this light, it does not come as a surprise that SOA/WHINSEC instructors who taught "democratic sustainment" at the school from 2003-2004 were arrested earlier this month in Colombia for their involvement in one of Colombia's most notorious drug cartels.  
     In other words, you're engaging in the whiteboarding of history by rewriting Wikipedia entries and seeking the suppression or censorship of any mention to the anti-American and borderline fascist SOA/WHINSEC, which seems to have produced drug lords from within our own Department of Defense a la Gary Webb.
     Further investigation into just this IP Address shows you are attempting to hack into peoples' Google accounts and trolling on a daily basis so-called Family Values blogs screaming about our government's nonexistent "homosexual agenda", including one troubled individual from FreeperLand.
     While my sympathies for those right wing hind leg chewers don't extend much beyond my own nose, I do have to empathize on an abstract level on what is obviously a fascistic mission creep that seeks to chill, expunge, suppress, oppress or otherwise moderate any dialogue, however true or however misguided, aimed at addressing and improving the social fabric. This post is to call you on it and to let you know that there are at least as many black hats as there are white hats (although the rise of the Big Brother state and the good things done by Anonymous are making it increasingly difficult to assign white hats to you and black hats to them).
     You, too, can be tracked, you, too can be traced and your internet travels, including the version of which Operating System you use (Windows 7), what your monitor's resolution is (1680x1050x24) and which browser you use (Firefox 24.0, this time, although you've also used, against all rhyme or reason, IE). I can even determine where you've been today because for a bunch of super spooks, you guys sure suck at covering up your tracks. You leave behind a lot of bread crumbs for others to follow.
     And I'm just an ordinary guy, not even an amateur black hat but one with extraordinary skills of detection who does have indirect access to the black hats you justifiably fear so very, very much.
     It bothers me enough I get hits from staffers of right wing Congressmen who also love to alter Wikipedia. It almost amuses me that now I'm up to at least four hits a day from the DoD Network Information Center Monday through Friday (which, through some rudimentary ratiocination, I've divined is not a spider bot as previously thought but a person as I never seem to get hits on weekends or in the evening, making their recon of my blog a creepily casual 9-5 day job).
     But now I see I'm getting hits from a bunch of redneck fascists who work to subvert and undermine the American democratic system (or what's left of it) and the very first amendment (again, what's left of it), a cybernetic goon squad that not only tries to rewrite history like so many Winston Smiths with equally horrible haircuts who create criminals in the drug trade. Perhaps your craven curiosity has been piqued because of my opposition to the aforementioned fascist mission creep that's predicated on the insane and ultimately self-destructive supposition that America is a nation of 315,000,000 potential criminals and terrorists. If so, you are less than a joke: You are a self-fulfilling prophecy.
     You Fort Benning boys seem to take an unhealthy interest in those who even mention, much oppose, the SOA (The patriotic-sounding School of the Americas). Considering the SOA's history (One strongly tied to Pinochet's Chile and Operation Condor), one can begin to understand the paranoid mindset. On top of whiteboarding Wikipedia and altering history, you've also been suspected of killing American citizens such as 27 year-old Peter Jessup, an experienced climber and hiker who died in 2007 after he supposedly fell off a mountain. Peter, you no doubt remember, was an active and vocal opponent of the School of the Americas and even won an award for his courageous efforts the year before his sudden and untimely death.
     All the same, your sudden interest in me is inexplicable since in nearly a decade of catch-as-catch-can, all purpose blogging across three blogs and guest-posting on many others, I had never once mentioned the SOA/WHINSEC. Well, obviously, all that's changed. Leave it to Uncle Sam to excite curiosity in the very act of trying to suppress it.
     Bottom line: You, too, are being watched. Do not let my low hit count fool you. I am still here after a decade, others know I'm here and you'd be astounded to know who I know. You want to smirk at that, Geek Boy? Then let's have at it. Hit me again and I'll do some Kung Fu that'd make Aaron Swartz weep with envy.

posted by jurassicpork @ Friday, July 25, 2014   6 comments

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Good Times at Pottersville, 7/23/14


posted by jurassicpork @ Wednesday, July 23, 2014   0 comments

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Good Times at Pottersville, 7/22/14


posted by jurassicpork @ Tuesday, July 22, 2014   0 comments

Monday, July 21, 2014

Good Times at Pottersville, 7/21/14


posted by jurassicpork @ Monday, July 21, 2014   2 comments

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Good Times at Pottersville #21


posted by jurassicpork @ Sunday, July 20, 2014   0 comments

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Good Times at Pottersville, 7/19/14


posted by jurassicpork @ Saturday, July 19, 2014   0 comments

Sunday, July 13, 2014

World Cup Live Tweeting

     OK, so I'm sure everyone knows it's Argentina vs Germany in the World Cup Final (In Red Sox Nation, that means the other game besides the Red Sox/Houston matchup). A few quick peeks into the Pope's Twitter account shows Francis and Benedict are watching the game together at Frankie's place and the two aren't getting along so well.














posted by jurassicpork @ Sunday, July 13, 2014   0 comments

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Amazon Seriously Needs to Go Fuck Itself, Posthaste

     To those of you who've been paying attention, you know that Hachette, the nation's fourth biggest publisher, is engaged in a battle of wills with Amazon.com over the pricing of ebooks. In fact, I'd written about it last month (not that anyone gave a shit because I'm supposed to be completely ignored as a political pundit, not as a publishing pundit, which I am.).
     Well, the reason why I'm again writing about this two giant tug-o-war with authors and readers in the middle is because of Amazon's newest brilliant proposal: Let's let all Hachette authors keep 100% of the revenue of their ebooks (after we get to cut the price to the bone). Hachette, typically, said No and they were correct in doing so. Here's why:
     Amazon is cynically trying to win over the very authors they've been victimizing since at least last January when their ongoing pissing match with Hachette resulted in missing early ordering buttons and artificially delayed shipping times. This includes JK Rowling and Stephen Colbert, who raked Amazon over the coals on his show for hindering sales of his book.
     Missed by a maddeningly huge segment of the book world is the, one would think, obvious fact they're using the same tactic used time and again by the Republican Party in their so-called good faith "negotiations" with the White House. Throw in a poison pill you know the other guy won't go for and then scream bloody murder about how the other side isn't acting in good faith. Typically, Amazon reacted immediately to Hachette rejecting their latest hare-brained scheme by pissing and moaning, "We call baloney." They also said (hold your hats, folks, because this took some major league douchebaggery), "Hachette is part of a $10 billion global conglomerate," it said. "It wouldn't be 'suicide.' They can afford it."
     Of course, what the corporate sons and daughters of Jeff Bezos elected to delete from the record is the fact that, according to Amazon's NASDAQ filings from last year, they pulled down $74.5 billion last year in total revenue. Considering all their business is done online and they cheap out their own temp workers in their fulfillment centers sweat shops, meaning far lower overhead expenses than a meat world corporation like Hachette, that means a much higher rate of pure profit. Part of that ever-widening profit margin has been skinned off the backs of authors while crowing about how great they are for readers.
     But their pure profit margin notwithstanding, what Amazon also chooses to ignore is the very fact that Hachette ebooks would account for only a small fraction of their bottom line. Amazon controls literally half the book market and 60% of Hachette's book sales. Not that they ever expected Hachette to go along with such an insane scheme of handing 100% of ebook revenue to authors but even if Hachette called their bluff, it certainly wouldn't hurt the larger corporation's bottom line because #1 they can withstand the hit much better than can Hachette and, #2 unlike Hachette, which is a publisher, Amazon's diversified to the point where if you look hard enough you can buy remains of Jimmy Hoffa's skeleton.
     Plus, if Hachette authors get to keep 100% of their revenues, then it'll only take about two nanoseconds before authors of other major publishers will want the same sweet deal. A 100% royalty rate may sound attractive to overrated success stories like Hugh Howey but in the real world it makes for a horrible business model and it's designed purely to pull, pardon the pun, the wool over the eyes of people like Howey.
     But at bottom of this so-called "offer" is Amazon's nakedly pathetic attempt to elicit sympathy for itself by pretending to partner with authors (not the indies, however. No one give a shit how we feel about anything... yet) and penny-pinching consumers while pre-emptively positioning Hachette as the bad guy for saying no this week.
     If Amazon depresses ebook revenue to the point where it's no longer viable for Hachette to continue that format, it's going to hurt authors and, eventually, readers. Without the advance ordering buttons, which largely if not entirely determine the success of unpublished books that'll be another way Amazon will hurt readers and authors alike. And they won't care. Like the planet-consuming megavillain Galactus, they'll just move on to another publisher to victimize and use their enormous market share as leverage.
     And mark my words: They don't wish to use their nuclear option just yet on account of all the bad publicity it's gotten them in the recent past. That nuclear option is, of course, simply deep sixing the publisher's entire catalog altogether. They're loath to use that option since it will finally wake up a lot of people who aren't already clued in as to what a huge, arrogant bully they are. But it's on the table, hidden under a napkin and always will be.
     Again, for clarity's sake: Amazon is a corporation and quite an evil one, at that, in a planet full of such evil corporate entities. As I said in my last post on the subject, profit isn't enough: The ultimate goal is global domination and they're already halfway there. In less than 20 years, they've victimized and alienated their own customers, publishers, authors both traditional and independent, they victimize their own employees (although, technically,. they're low-paid, overworked temps).
     Once more, with feeling: Amazon is not your friend whether you're a customer, a publisher or an author. And corporations as big as Amazon never do anything that would seriously hurt their bottom line out of the goodness of their "hearts", for want of a better word. This is just a PR stunt, shadow boxing between two corporate entities where one just happens to be five times the size of the other.
     I don't have any great love for publishers that still skeeve me and other talented indies. But the Hachette Book Group isn't trying to corner the global market. They're just trying to make a buck, which is the right of every corporation.
     For Amazon, all the money in the world just isn't enough and they will step on the face of anyone who gets in their way and that includes you, Constant Reader.

posted by jurassicpork @ Wednesday, July 09, 2014   3 comments

Monday, July 7, 2014

Open Thread: Hello Kitty edition

     Because only real manly, masculine men like Islamic Front leader Zahran Alloush can get away with using Hello Kitty notebooks.
     Today's Mrs. JP's birthday and we're going to be busy celebrating that, making this one of the most time- and money-consuming times of the year (yesterday was #2 son's birthday, one he unfortunately shares with right wing meatheads Sylvester Stallone and George W. Bush). Anyway, I wanted to let you know that weeds aren't sprouting up between the floorboards at Casa de Pottersville just yet. I'm researching a post about our dreadful, underpublicized practice of... Well, I'll just make you wait until it comes out. I'm not going to spoil the unpleasant surprise. I've got pleasant surprises I have to spring on Mrs. JP.
     So, until then... laterz.

posted by jurassicpork @ Monday, July 07, 2014   1 comments

Friday, July 4, 2014

I'm Celebrating Independence Day by Watching INDEPENDENCE DAY

(By Cyril Blubberpuss, Esq.)

     Just today I was telling one of my junior vice presidents as we opened the office (Oh, quit your liberal bellyaching- we only work eight hours on July 4th) that this is one great country.
     Now, granted, I'll admit my patriotism usually peaks on July 4th by watching Independence Day with Will Smith and wishing that Bill Pullman was our president before stuffing pieces of roasted animal carcasses in my mouth. Because, let's face it, that and killing irreplaceable brain cells by swilling alcohol perfectly defines what it means to be an American.
     But to me, Independence Day means more than even that. To me, July 4th was the beginning of the transition between black people and Indians replacing the oppression of white British aristocrats for that of white American oligarchs. And, as a Commie comic once said, "America! What a country!"
     We've outlived the Roman, Greek and Ottoman Empires (although the Ottoman's furniture still, thankfully, endures) and it looks as if there's no end in sight. While I still have to tamp down my gag reflex at having a president who isn't sufficiently white, the numbers don't lie: Wall Street is doing better than ever, the outsourcing of jobs spearheaded by the Chamber of Commerce continues unabated and we're finally tackling the problem of homelessness by criminalizing indigence and charity.
     The homeless spikes, also, are really taking off.
     We're floating like bloated whales on a sea of cash totaling $2,000,000,000,000. Scrooge McDuck? He was a fucking piker. His swimming pool of gold coins is smaller than my hot tub.
     Now, granted, it wasn't all wine and roses. About 80 years ago, some crippled liberal apostate named Roosevelt started fucking shit up by cultivating this unnatural sympathy for the bottom 99%. Less than 30 years after that, another rich liberal named Kennedy started handing out civil rights like Rockefeller tossing dimes to the poor.
     But now we're finding our true north again by returning to our capitalist roots. Do not think for a minute that we're the democratic republic that the politically pious keep telling you. We're a capitalist, oligarchical collection of corporations, always have been and always will be. From the slave-owning cotton merchants who founded this country all the way on down to their descendants who own the tomato and lettuce fields in California, America was never founded with the actual intention of giving inalienable rights to Americans of all walks of life, all races, creeds and religions.
     That's horseshit and you all know it.
     Otherwise, how can you explain us oppressing one minority after another in some white man's round robin tournament of Manifest Destiny and Eminent Domain? First it was the blacks, the Indians, then the land grabs and annexing huge swaths of land from Mexico to bloat the size of Texas, to our persecution of the Catholics. Back in the 60's, Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty. But now, with the rise of real patriots like the Canadian-born Ted Cruz we're finally waging the war we should have been waging all along: A War on the Poverty-Stricken.
     It took us long enough but now we're finally peeling back the misguided liberal bullshit of a century ago that resulted in child labor and antitrust laws, Glass Steagall, bringing back Jim Crow. And, like Glass Steagall, God willing, soon the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts will also be a thing of the past.
     Now, if we can only just do something about all those fags getting married...

posted by jurassicpork @ Friday, July 04, 2014   8 comments

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Tweets From the Edge

posted by jurassicpork @ Tuesday, July 01, 2014   2 comments

KindleindaWind, my writing blog.

All Time Classics

  • Our Worse Half: The 25 Most Embarrassing States.
  • The Missing Security Tapes From the World Trade Center.
  • It's a Blunderful Life.
  • The Civil War II
  • Sweet Jesus, I Hate America
  • Top Ten Conservative Books
  • I Am Mr. Ed
  • Glenn Beck: Racist, Hate Monger, Comedian
  • The Ten Worst Music Videos of all Time

    • Assclowns of the Week

  • Links to the first 33 Assclowns of the Week.
  • Links to Assclowns of the Week 38-63.
  • #106: The Turkey Has Landed edition
  • #105: Blame it on Paris or Putin edition
  • #104: Make Racism Great Again Also Labor Day edition
  • #103: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Toilet edition
  • #102: Orange is the New Fat edition
  • #101: Electoral College Dropouts edition
  • #100: Centennial of Silliness edition
  • #99: Dr. Strangehate edition
  • #98: Get Bentghazi edition
  • #97: SNAPping Your Fingers at the Poor edition
  • #96: Treat or Treat, Kiss My Ass edition
  • #95: Monumental Stupidity double-sized edition
  • #94: House of 'Tards edition
  • #93: You Da Bomb! edition.
  • #92: Akin to a Fool edition.
  • #91: Aurora Moronealis edition.
  • #90: Keep Your Gubmint Hands Off My High Pre'mums and Deductibles! edition.
  • #89: Occupy the Catbird Seat/Thanksgiving edition.
  • #88: Heil Hitler edition.
  • #87: Let Sleeping Elephants Lie edition.
  • #86: the Maniacs edition.
  • #85: The Top 50 Assclowns of 2010 edition.
  • #(19)84: Midterm Madness edition.
  • #83: Spill, Baby, Spill! edition.
  • #82: Leave Corporations Alone, They’re People! edition.
  • #81: Hatin' on Haiti edition.
  • #80: Don't Get Your Panties in a Twist edition.
  • #79: Top 50 Assclowns of 2009 edition.
  • #78: Nattering Nabobs of Negativism edition.
  • #77: ...And Justice For Once edition.
  • #76: Reading Tea Leaves/Labor Day edition.
  • #75: Diamond Jubilee/Inaugural Edition
  • #74: Dropping the Crystal Ball Edition
  • #73: The Twelve Assclowns of Christmas Edition
  • #72: Trick or Treat Election Day Edition
  • #71: Grand Theft Autocrats Edition
  • #70: Soulless Corporations and the Politicians Who Love Them Edition

    • Must-see blogging.

  • Empire Of The Senseless.
  • Christwire.org: Conservative Values for an Unsaved World.
  • Esquire's Charles Pierce.
  • Brilliant @ Breakfast.
  • The Burning Platform.
  • The Rant.
  • Mock, Paper, Scissors.
  • James Petras.
  • Towle Road.
  • Avedon's Sideshow (the new site).
  • At Largely, Larisa Alexandrovna's place.
  • The Daily Howler.
  • The DCist.
  • Greg Palast.
  • Jon Swift. RIP, Al.
  • God is For Suckers.
  • The Rude Pundit.
  • Driftglass.
  • Newshounds.
  • William Grigg, a great find.
  • Brad Blog.
  • Down With Tyranny!, Howie Klein's blog.

    • Other liberal blogs and humor sites.

  • Wayne's World. Party time! Excellent!
  • Busted Knuckles, aka Ornery Bastard.
  • Mills River Progressive.
  • Right Wing Watch.
  • Earthbond Misfit.
  • Anosognosia.
  • Echidne of the Snakes.
  • They Gave Us a Republic.
  • The Gawker.
  • Outtake Online, Emmy-winner Charlotte Robinson's site.
  • Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo
  • No More Mr. Nice Blog.
  • Head On Radio Network, Bob Kincaid.
  • Spocko's Brain.
  • Pandagon.
  • Slackivist.
  • WTF Is It Now?
  • No Blood For Hubris.
  • Lydia Cornell, a very smart and accomplished lady.
  • Roger Ailes (the good one.)
  • BlondeSense.
  • The Smirking Chimp.
  • Hammer of the Blogs.
  • Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.
  • Argville.
  • Existentialist Cowboy.

    • Invaluable News Resources.

  • The Progressive.
  • The Nation.
  • Mother Jones.
  • Vanity Fair.
  • Salon.com.
  • Citizens For Legitimate Government.
  • News Finder.
  • Indy Media Center.
  • Lexis News.
  • Military Religious Freedom.
  • McClatchy Newspapers.
  • The New Yorker.
  • Bloggingheads TV, political vlogging.
  • Find Articles.com, the next-best thing to Nexis.
  • Altweeklies, for the news you won't get just anywhere.
  • The Smirking Chimp
  • Don Emmerich's Peace Blog

    • Miscellaneous Resources.

  • Wikileaks.
  • The Peoples' Voice.
  • Dictionary.com.
  • CIA World Fact Book.
  • IP address locator.
  • Tom Tomorrow's hilarious strip.
  • Babelfish, an instant, online translator. I love to translate Ann Coulter's site into German.
  • Newsmeat: Find out who's donating to whom.
  • Wikipedia.
  • Uncyclopedia.
  • anysoldier.com
  • Icasualties
  • Free Press
  • YouTube
  • The Bone Bridge.

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