Disinfotainment Today #176

[Michael Dare]

Issue #176

is brought to you by...

See the whole thing here.

 

 

What is it?

 

It's not laziness or stupidity or lack of conscience, and it's got nothing to do with a paucity of passion or anything physical like back pain or a paper cut. It's not anything mundane like inability to keep to a schedule or no interest in repetition. The cauldron of variety is packed full of goodies like frustration and anger tempered by sarcasm and humor, not to mention the insatiable urge to explain things that can't be happening, not in this world, not in my world. I didn't create it and its not talking. It grabs you by the throat and won't let go. It packs a wallop and it's light as a feather. I'll never get to it and I'm not even sure it exists, though I will come up with a clever way to end it, but this isn't it. It has its cake and eats it too. It's much longer than this but much shorter than that. It tends to go on and on and on till you want to throw it in a human pyramid of naked Iraqis playing pick-up-sticks till it yells uncle. It's not your uncle and it's not your aunt, though you're definitely related. It won't take a DNA test so don't ask. If it's Monday, it must be Disinfotainment Today, but it's Thursday. It wants to know who writes these things so it can write an angry letter to the editor who writes these things. It's not a question of rhyme or reason, even though it's full of both, because it's not a question, period. It's horribly misunderstood and it doesn't take things for granted as much as it used to. It's the reason this issue came out late. It assumes it has a point. It's getting close to the end of this paragraph, but still has a couple aces up its sleeve. It knows the difference between its and it's. It's got nothing to do with this picture, the scariest of the week...

 

 

"To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong."

- Joseph Chilton Pearce -

 

Many Answers to Several Stupid Questions

 

First, I asked how Tom Robbins would write about Dubya...

 

"There are three states of political awareness that interest me," said Amanda Ziller, awaking from a nap. The first is liberalism, the second is conservatism, and the third is apathy. Liberalism is voting against Bush and wanting desperately to get him out of office. Conservatism is voting for Bush, and not caring if he ever leaves office. Apathy is not voting at all and . . . Oh, What the hell, John. I'm bored. What's on TV?"
- Horace J. Digby

 

    Probably something like...

    Imagine a free-flying hummingbird glorious in his wings as he darts glimmering with the morning sun delighted by sweet nectar and prospects of infinite tomorrows smashing hope-filled face first into Duncan's Lawnmower Repair Shop's only external window, hurtling limply until completed by the grease-stained concrete....

    But probably not.

- Bob Oboc

 

    George Bush is a man blessed by tragedy.

    With his daddy's buddies gang-sodomizing the very Constitution his family have solemnly sworn to protect and defend for three generations, he coasted through an indifferent first year in office as he coasted through Yale, the Vietnam war, and his entire life. Then, on September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden handed Bush an express ticket to glory, which Bush also proceeded to sodomize. Within fifteen months, Osama's role in the global sucker punch would be swept under an increasingly bulging carpet (the Saudi role would be obfuscated from day one, even hour one), and Bush would successfully transfer American outrage back to Saddam Hussein, for no other reason than because Saddam made Bush's daddy look bad.

    The apple doesn't fall very far from the Bush.

    Now, his approval rating is finally dropping from the momentum of that tragedy, and people are finally getting squeamish about a manufactured round two of a war his father instigated solely to prove he wasn't a wimp (and to jack up his own disappointing approval rating). Hundreds of thousands of lives shattered or sucked dry to satisfy the wounded family pride of a disgustingly imbecilic and illegitimate president will, tragically, once again be pimped as a source of national pride.

    Every tragedy gives Bush a chance to milk our own precious tenderness without actually doing anything, and to hide the disgusting activities of his entire cadre of billionaire ticks behind the patriotic bunting called compassionate conservatism.

    You have about as much chance of finding compassion in a conservative as you do of finding pork in a can of Pork 'N' Beans. There's just enough for a little flavor, hardly enough for any nutritional value except as a little fat, and certainly not enough to merit top billing.

    Where is the compassion in manufacturing a war and then spewing outrage at the very people who want to rewrite the history he's already rewritten? Where is the compassion in first gutting first American sovereignty and then the concept of the sovereignty of nations in general, Iraq being example one? What's compassionate about starting a war just so it can be out-sourced to, not the highest bidder, but the ONLY bidder? That's not just wagging the dog, that's the TICKS getting the tail to wag the dog so the blood will flow faster. And the blood itself is as red as the ink in the Great Ledger Book of our Grandchildren's Future.
- Jimmy McConnell

 

OH THE PLIGHT OF THE LONELY COWBOY, DISPOSSESSED IN A DRUNKEN STUPOR, YELLING "FIRE IN THE HOLE" AS HIS DICK EXPLODES INSIDE THE FLESHY FOLDS OF A MEXICAN WHORE. FOR A PRECIOUS MOMENT A THREAD OF TRUTH DROPS A STITCH IN HIS CONSTIPATED BRAIN CASE. OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! EVEN GIRL COWS GET THE MOOS.
- JD

 

    A sleek Viking longboat glides into the bay of your small fishing village, and out pours a horde of handsome, muscular men. They wear fine leather and furs that make your local lord appear to be garbed in dirty rugs and carry the most excellent polished swords. You know that barbarians in longboats will burn your village, kill your grown men, enslave your children, rape and kidnap your women. All of the
villagers save the most antisocial cheer as all you hold dear is destroyed, and everybody spends the rest of their lives breathing smoke in poorly ventilated
huts, polishing swords and tanning leather with raw sheepbrains, the women while constantly pregnant.
    When you suggest that it may have been a good idea to attempt to fight back, you are beaten by other slaves for being ungrateful to the wealth bestowed on all by
the mighty Viking masters of all that could be desired in transportation, fine clothing, and freedom in life.

- Robin Zoellner

 

In the one and only issue of Heavenly Times, I grabbed a bunch of "biblical contradictions" from a site that lists hundreds and asked "What was God thinking?"

 

Blessed is the man who's wealth goes through the eye of a needle.
Happy is the man who seeks me early but increases his knowledge.
He does not find me for in much wisdom is wealth and riches in his house.
Sorrow increase the man who findest and getteth an easy kingdom camel.
Answer upon me! Fearest, though I will not call! What grief! Rama Lama Ding Dong!
- Bill Moses

 

your taking these verses out of context
- Bcolddogg

 

Short term memory loss. What was the question again?
- Chris McFarland

Take anything out of context and you can make it read any way you wanna. Yes, there are contradictions in the Bible, but you haven't found 'em
yet.

- Ben Baker

 

This further proves that god is a woman, or minimally has feminine tendencies, not that there's anything wrong with that, what with all the mind changing, and nagging, and going around in a robe all day.

- dave cogan

    If it is of any use, the aforementioned verses weren't actually written by a nether-worldly supreme entity, but rather were transcribed by some long ago forgotten scribe without access to so much as a pencil, much less a ball point pen, or even a word processing program.

    Indeed much like the party game "Telephone", the original message was not taken down directly, but was passed along orally until such time as an alphabet, the stylus, and the clay tablet were invented.

    That God is, or is not, perfect is neither a matter of conjecture, nor at all the case in this instance. This is merely yet another example of a number of unknown drudges collectively screwing up.

- Herr Bookmonger: God is a Southern Baptist by Jiminy ! All other faiths: Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

 

Blessed are the cheesemakers.

- John Ishihara

 

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. Truth fears no questions. REASON, v.i. To weight probabilities in the scales of desire. Love is love's reward.
- Douglas Kirk

He means to drive us crazy.

- Charles Watkins

 

"When divine power plans evil for a man, it first injures his mind."
- Sophocles

 

"Whom God wishes to destroy he first makes mad."
- Seneca

 

"For those whom God to ruin has designed, He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind."
- John Dryden

 

Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    Y'know it really bugs me when the liberal media makes fun of religion like this. Just because there's a few stupid Christians out there that are blind to their own hypocrisy, the rest of us have to sit through atheistic ire as if the beliefs of the hard-right fundamentalist rednecks (who quite wrongly call themselves Christians, in my opinion) reflected our own.

    If you want more examples of apparent contradictions in the bible, click here.

    Now for some pretty basic lessons everyone should have before they discuss the Bible.

1. The Bible was not written by God. It was written by people. Furthermore, it was written by different people at different periods of time, in different languages. Even furthermore, these peoples (and others) wrote a lot more than what is currently in the Bible. What we call the Bible isn't much more than a best of all the religious literature that was around at the time. For this reason, some of it is good, some is rubbish, some contradictory, and much of it boring. 
2. The meaning of language changes over the years. Your two first examples contain abstract concepts like happy, wisdom, knowledge and understanding. Could you define what any of those means? Can you guess what happy translated as 1500 years ago in Aramaic? Or 1300 years ago in Hebrew? Did they mean happy in the sense of satisfied, content, bliss or ecstasy? What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom. If you look hard enough, you'll find little but contradictions in the Bible. 
3. So why all these apparent contradictions? Ill tell you THE BIBLE ISN'T MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY. Much of it is purely to elicit a certain emotional response in the reader, and makes no logical sense at all. People often hypothesize about the existence of a Hidden Doctrine, or whether the Vatican is sitting upon a version of the Bible that makes more sense, or contains more clues. There is no need for such a book. Almost everything you need to know about your own spiritual path is hidden in the Bible; but only for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Handy get-out clause for when it doesn't make sense, eh? It also happens to be true. If you find contradictions in the Bible, it is the limits of your own mind that fail to comprehend opposite sides of the same idea at once.

    Trust me, readers. Read the Gospels (Matt, Mark, Luke & John) then look me in the eye and tell me you saw nothing there. Put your hand on your heart and tell me you didn't feel anything unusual, or sense anything indefinable you couldn't express properly through language.

    Yep, there's all sorts in the Bible that contradicts Jesus teaching and Gods commandments. But remember they were written by different people with different languages in different periods. Also remember that the Gospels were originally written by the disciples, not some 3000 year-old crackpot like Leviticus.

    Language is incredibly limited as a means of communication. Apparent hypocrisy is often unavoidable when we have to resort to it.

- Nick Kent

 

    Well, that last quote comes from the New Testament, not the Old, and there has been some minor yet gory scholarly debate about whether Jesus was God, directly related to God, or even existed at all, this last point reinforced by the baffling insistence of some sects that his mother was a virgin. (On the other hand, if true, it must have been quite a shock to both lose your virginity from the inside out -- not even a divine hymen could withstand a baby emerging -- and birth a child all on the same day.)

    As science has been gradually discovering over the years, whatever force controls the universe and existence apparently has a robust sense of the absurd, and absurdity admits all contradictions; right now most physicists think the String-Tie Theory, that posits there are 11 secret herbs and spices that keep everything functioning, is probably most accurate, although there are still some adherents to the Ruby Fruit Jungle Theory, which holds that the entire universe is contained within a drop of sweat on a lesbian's labia, also known as 'Lynne Cheney's Paradox.' Of course, there's always the largely discredited Unified Field of Dreams Theory, which claims the whole shebang (with God played by William Hung) is one eternally-tied baseball game in extra innings between two miserable last-place teams composed of dead people.

    Speaking of contradictions, I like the White House Weisenheimer Certainty Principle which states that the only way you can be ethical and patriotically loyal to your country is to act unethical and unpatriotically disloyal to your country when it suits your purposes of convincing others of your ethical and patriotic loyalty to your country.

    Well, here's my hat and what's my hurry -- say 'Thank you, Mr. Science' as the door hits me on the way out.

- RSJ

 

    I find that you are funny but like you say it really doesn't matter becasue God onws your ass. youre going to burn in hell for ever and your army in Iraq is getting aboslutly slaughterd. getr over, you just fucking suck

    God is greatest!!!!!!!
- David Holleran

 

He is a losrer just like all of you.

- Paul and Alice (failing to mention whether they're talking about God or Dubya while misspelling "loser")

 

I wish I didn't need to say this. But you are not Satan: ( No one on the Internet is, there are sooo many people claiming it. I believe that Satan will not claim his title, nor will the Antichrist be fully aware that he is indeed the Antichrist until much later on in his life. However you have GREAT GREAT political views, and you are a good speaker. Satan's eventually goal is to beat God. And since he lost by force, he will now do it on a different level. Man was the perfect being (before the apple) Perfect in his simplicity. If God's greatest creation turns their back on him, then God must be faulty. Not only that, but a perfect being would have not felt the urge to create. Perfection lies in Oblivion and the absence of this chaotic universe. Anyways.... I will write again later, I am in the middle of research for an important Term Paper. Your Ideas are Golden. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Really run! Get your voice out! Change some things around so you will actually get the votes (don't claim to be Satan, you might not win)

- Merrion

 

I was against the execution of Tookie Williams for all kinds of reasons, one of which was that he seemed to have at least partially redeemed himself by writing children's books warning about the dangers of gangs. How did I not realize there was something funny about that? Always proud to give a set-up for a punchline I failed to deliver...

I was doing 85mph in a 55 zone. State trooper clocked me and gave chase. I immediately informed the cop of my redemption and told him I'd write and "anti-speeding" book for teens. He wrote me a $200 ticket anyway...must've been one of them, "believers" - or worse, maybe even one of them, "Christian" cops. Asshole.

- Mac

Since Tookie's execution went forward, Scott Peterson has realized the futility of attempting to redeem himself with his children's book, "Daddy buys a boat."

- Doug Powers

 

    Ah yes indeed -- and Sparkles the clown has resolved to stop molesting and killing children, which makes him higher evolved than those who would Tookie away his big red nose, floppy shoes and water squirting flower...

    It's a harsh and terribly unfair world out there ... which is why I always tend (I'm a coward) to reserve the limited ordinance of my emotional stockpile of tears for far less meaningful and Hollywood championed catastrophes -- such as waking up every morning to a world full of starving children...

    Tookies 'N Milk -- it's all relative...I guess.

- Daniel W. Steep

 

Job Opportunity of the Week

 

"Every day in every part of the country, the drug war is having an impact. Newspapers, television programs and radio-shows frequently run stories on drug problems, drug seizures, methamphetamines, teen addiction, etc. The people that news outlets generally find to comment on these issues push the fallacious propaganda about drugs and the drug war that we are trying to combat. Media Coordinators watch for such stories and once a story has broken, s/he contacts newspapers, radio shows and television programs in their assigned area and urges them to broadcast an alternate perspective which will be offered by one of our speakers. For each completed interview that you are able to arrange, you will receive $7.50. As with the Speakers Bureau Coordinators, we do not see this as a wage, but rather as a sign of our appreciation for your important contribution. Media Coordinators have an opportunity to help us reach large audiences that may not otherwise hear the truth. While no prior experience is required, media and/or PR experience is extremely helpful. We will provide the orientation and training required of the position."

- Allison Silva: Program Associate, LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) -

 

Stupid Question of the Week

 

In response to testimony about alleged torture by his regime, Saddam Hussein complained that his U.S. guards were abusing him. How should those guards be punished?

 

Send your answers to: punishment.

 

or

 

What is it?

 

Gallery of the Week

Who's got nothing better to do than knit an entire digestive system?

These guys.

 

I Feel So Much Safer Now

 

    "During this afternoon's White House press conference President Bush confirmed that he would attempt to impose military curfews and quarantines in case of a flu pandemic occurring in the United States.

    "The comes on the heels of a majority of the nation's governors rejecting the Bush administration's proposal to use active-duty military assets in providing disaster relief. Understanding this in the context of Hurricane Katrina, this means total gun confiscation and enforced evacuation at gunpoint."

- Paul Joseph Watson: Bush Cites Military Takeover In Case Of Flu Outbreak -

 

    Or you could listen to these guys and just take oil of oregano, which kills viruses, bacteria and fungi.

 

Satan Doesn't Want You To Know

 

This isn't where this headline is supposed to appear.

 

Pointless Censorship of the Month

 

Borat, the ridiculous fictional Kazakhstani idiot played by Sasha Baron Cohen, has had his website taken down by the Kazakhstani government, who had this to say, without a hint of irony: "There are no idiots in Kazakhstan." You can still see Borat's "unofficial" site here.

 

Satan Doesn't Want You to Know

 

If aspirin were invented today, it not only wouldn't be approved by the FDA, it wouldn't even make it out of the lab.

 

Don't Take My Word for It

 

"You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism."

- Cindy Sheehan -

 

"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it."

- Pablo Picasso -

 

    "If you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcomed in Washington, D.C.

    "Do you remember those doctors a few years back who got together and announced that it was a simple, clear medical fact that we could not survive even a moderate attack by hydrogen bombs? They were not welcome in Washington, D.C.

    "Even if we fired the first salvo of hydrogen weapons and the enemy never fired back, the poisons released would probably kill the whole planet by and by.

    "What is the response in Washington? They guess otherwise. What good is an education? The boisterous guessers are still in charge - the haters of information. And the guessers are almost all highly educated people. Think of that. They have had to throw away their educations, even Harvard or Yale educations, to become guessers. If they didn't do that, there is no way their uninhibited guessing could go on and on and on."

- Kurt Vonnegut: Your Guess Is as Good as Mine -

 

"We are concerned that the figures that were released to the public by your administration do not accurately represent the true toll that this war has taken on the American people," the group wrote Bush on Dec. 7. However, in my mind, it is not only American casualties that count. I think the Bush administration should share the number of innocent children, women and men who have been murdered and wounded, the number of civilian lives that have been shattered in the course of a vaguely defined war on terror (except for terror created by the US, of course) and the pursuit of a relatively small number of 'terrorists' and 'insurgents.'"

- Seven US Congressional representatives in a letter to Bush -

 

"Our problems today are more complex and more threatening than at any time in history. Sadly, we cannot even begin to solve those problems, because our reality orientations are lower than a snowman's blood pressure. We squint at existence through thick veils of personal and societal ignorance, overlaid with still more opaque sheets of disinformation, thoughtfully provided by the state, the church, and big business (often one and the same). The difference between us and Helen Keller is that she knew she was deaf and blind."

- Tom Robbins: Wild Ducks Flying Backwards -

 

"But, the most interesting thing about this 'winability' issue is that Bush himself, in one of his unguarded, un-ventriloquized moments, stated his belief that the war can't be won. For those of you who've forgotten, let me remind you that when GWB was campaigning to fool us again in '04, he gave an interview to Matt Lauer of NBC Today Show fame in which he said the war on terror couldn't be won. It was probably the most honest thing that man has ever said. He was referring, of course, to the 'war on terror,' for which, as we know, the war in Iraq is the 'central front.' He tried to take back his words subsequently, after his handlers told him what a bad thing candor is (something he has diligently avoided since), but by then the damage had been done."

- Marty Aussenberg: GADFLY: Defeatist-in-Chief. In the aftermath of the GOP attacks on Murtha and Dean, let's not forget who first told us the war couldn't be won. -

 

"The president has, I think, made up a law that we never passed."

- Sen. Russell Feingold: D-Wis. -

 

"In fifteen minutes, everyone will be famous for the future."

- Warhol Andy -

 

"The man who cannot believe his senses and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane."

- Gilbert Keith Chesterton -

 

"One of my contributions to human evolution is to live without expectations and life becomes a sheer dance. I believe neither in logic nor in faith. I simply believe in the irrationality of existence, because a rational existence would not be worth living. Existence remains a challenge, a continuous provocation for the courageous, an invitation for those who are ready to go beyond the mind and appreciate the beauty of a rose without asking for any explanation."

- Osho -

 

    "Scope out the Bird Flu Czar from Amtrak. Stewart Simonson is now in charge of 'the protection of the civilian population from acts of bio-terrorism and other public health emergencies,' according to his government biography. He is also in charge of ensuring that the country has adequate vaccines and anti-viral meds to combat an avian flu epidemic.

    "This would be peachy-keen if Simonson had any experience in public health, bio-terrorism, epidemics or even management. Unfortunately, he's a political lawyer. As he recently told a congressional subcommittee, 'We're learning as we go.'"

- Molly Ivins: Spot the Next Brownie -

 

"As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death."

- George Bernard Shaw -

 

"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."

- Sir Winston Churchill -

 

"Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."
- Robert Frost -

 

"Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it."

- Russel Lynes -

 

    "For many presidents in recent history, getting re-elected has been a mixed blessing. From Richard Nixon and Watergate to Ronald Reagan and Iran-Contra to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, a second term is rarely another four-year honeymoon.

    "Ever since his inauguration in January following yet another nail-biter of an election President Bush has been on the receiving end of an almost unprecedented streak of bad news. How bad has it gotten? The president, who had a 90 percent job-approval rating in the days following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and held a higher rating three years into his presidency than Presidents Clinton, Carter or Reagan, is now staring at a rating in the 30s in the wake of the fall-out from the government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, an indictment in the CIA leak scandal and a rising tide of discontent with the war in Iraq.

    "On November 20, at the end of his recent trip to China, the president was just trying to walk off a stage and he accidentally went to the wrong door, yanked on it and, through a forced smile, told reporters he was 'trying to escape ... it didn't work.' It was, of course, a simple gaff, but you can't help but wonder if Bush wasn't telling us a bit more than he let on."

- Gil Kaufman: The 50-Point Drop: How Did Bush Fall This Far? -

 

    "Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.

    "Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.

    "GOP leaders told Bush that his hard-core push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

    "'I don't give a goddamn,' Bush retorted. 'I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.'

    "'Mr. President,' one aide in the meeting said. 'There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.'

    "'Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,' Bush screamed back. It's just a goddamned piece of paper!'

    "I've talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution 'a goddamned piece of paper.'"

- Doug Thompson: Bush on the Constitution: "It's just a goddamned piece of paper" -

 

"Shoppers embarking on the annual post-Thanksgiving spendathon may have paid little attention to the wording of the advertising circulars being trampled underfoot, but to more vigilant eyes, the message was unmistakable. No mere marketing slogan, the phrase 'Happy Holidays' is an act of aggression against God-loving people everywhere, and has been proven scientifically to make baby Jesus cry. Sure, no one is trying to lock the churches or douse the Yule logs yet. But if we can't count on our beloved big box stores for a hearty Merry Christmas, it's only a matter of time until the liberal Grinches are creeping down every chimney in the land to steal our stockings and force conversions to secular humanism. These are dark days indeed for America's tragically persecuted Christian super-majority."

- J. Daniel Janzen: Happy Fucking Holidays -

 

"I'd always thought that Sun Records and Sam Philips himself had created the most crucial, uplifting and powerful records ever made. Next to Sam's records, all the rest sounded fruity. On Sun Records the artists were singing for their lives and sounded like they were coming from the most mysterious place on the planet. No justice for them. They were so strong, can send you up a wall. If you were walking away and looked back at them, you could be turned into stone. Johnny Cash's records were no exception, but they weren't what you expected. Johnny didn't have a piercing yell, but ten thousand years of culture fell from him. He could have been a cave dweller. He sounds like he's at the edge of the fire, or in the deep snow, or in a ghostly forest, the coolness of conscious obvious strength, full tilt and vibrant with danger. 'I keep a close watch on this heart of mine.' Indeed. I must have recited those lines to myself a million times. Johnny's voice was so big, it made the world grow small, unusually low pitched - dark and booming, and he had the right band to match him, the rippling rhythm and cadence of click-clack. Words that were the rule of law and backed by the power of God."

- Bob Dylan: Chronicles Vol. 1 -

 

That is from Bob Dylan's Chronicles, volume I.

    "The basic result is that online illegal file-sharing does have a negative impact on traditional sales. The size of this effect is debated, and ranges from 0 to 100% of the sales decline in recent years, but a figure of between 20 and 40% would be a reasonable consensus value (i.e. that file-sharing accounted for 20-40% of the decline in sales not a 20-40% decline in sales). Beyond this basic result several other very interesting facts have emerged.

    "First is the differential impact of file-sharing on an artist depending on their existing popularity. According to Blackburn who investigates this issue the bottom 3/4 of artists sell more as a consequence of file-sharing while the top 1/4 sell less.

    "Second is the first tentative estimates (by Waldfogel and Rob) of the welfare consequences of file-sharing. Waldfogel and Robs dramatic result is that file-sharing on average yields a gain to society three times the loss to the music industry in lost sales.

- miscellaneous factZ -

 

    "Cradle to grave; Americans are being prepared for the slaughter. The chances for upward mobility or even subsistent living are being eclipsed by the day. The yoke that one shoulders at birth will follow him until his death.

    "Greenspan's racketeers have absconded with the nations bounty behind a smokescreen of low interest rates. They lulled us to sleep with soothing words of no-interest loans, no down payments, and a real estate windfall for anyone bold enough to sign on the dotted line.

    "Now, the grim reality has begun to set in. Interest rates are rising, the dollar is reeling, energy costs are skyrocketing, consumer confidence is plummeting, and gold is shooting through the roof. When China and Japan decide to jettison their worthless US Savings Bonds; Greenspan's mighty fortress will collapse in a heap.

    "The American people are crazy to think that a privately owned institution like the Federal Reserve will ever function in the public interest. The Fed operates behind an iron-curtain of secrecy to protect the interests of its primary constituents; the parasite class. It was authorized under executive order by Woodrow Wilson who was coerced into putting the country's future into the hands of its central bankers so he could finance World War 1. Bankers have always understood that the one who holds the purse-strings calls the shots. This explains what Thomas Jefferson meant when he said, 'Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.'"

- Mike Whitney: How Greenspan Skewered America -

 

"There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him."

- Antonin Artaud -

 

"I must make it emphatic that Zen, in its essence, is not a doctrine. There's nothing you're supposed to believe in. It's not a philosophy in our sense, that is to say a set of ideas, an intellectual net in which one tries to catch the fish of reality. Actually, the fish of reality is more like water - it always slips through the net. And in water you know when you get into it there's nothing to hang on to. All this universe is like water; it is fluid, it is transient, it is changing. And when you're thrown into the water after being accustomed to living on the dry land, you're not used to the idea of swimming. You try to stand on the water, you try to catch hold of it, and as a result you drown. The only way to survive in the water, and this refers particularly to the waters of modern philosophical confusion, where God is dead, metaphysical propositions are meaningless, and there's really nothing to hang on to, because we're all just falling apart. And the only thing to do under those circumstances is to learn how to swim. And to swim, you relax, you let go, you give yourself to the water, and you have to know how to breathe in the right way. And then you find that the water holds you up; indeed, in a certain way you become the water."

- Alan Watts -

 

"In politics, an organized minority is a political majority."

- Jesse Jackson -

 

"A truth's initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic."

- Dresden James -

 

"The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal."
- H. L. Mencken -

 

"Turn a mountain upside down, you have a woman. Turn a woman upside down, you have a valley. Turn a valley upside down, you get folk music... Turn folk music upside down, you get mythology. Turn mythology upside down, you get history. Turn history upside down, you get religion, journalism, hysteria, and indecision."

- Tom Robbins: Wild Ducks Flying Backwards -

 

Everything Else

 

After cracking down on MP3 file sharing, the music industry is going to war against websites that offer unlicensed song tabs and lyrics. The Music Publishers' Association (MPA), which represents US sheet music companies, says all such sites are illegal and will begin the crackdown in 2006. People who occasionally need to look up the lyrics of a song to make sure they're quoting the writer correctly are sending the MPA a big cake.

 

We're killing off the rest of the wild buffalo. Wild Bill would be proud.

 

Was the Book of Job meant to be a play? Some call it blasphemy but the original is pretty much all dialogue. Call your propmaster, tell him to gather sackcloth and ashes, and perform it.

 

Drive sailors crazy. These animations show you how to tie any knot, and conversely, how to UNtie any knot.

 

 

Don't let this happen to you

 

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Acknowledgment

dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is free and may be reproduced in any form, preferably parchment. It consists of information from dozens of sources, cut up, thrown in the air, and recycled randomly. It is sent all over the place, so I apologize if you're seeing the same thing twice. If you see a joke, graphic, or news item that came from or through you, thanks, send more, and please accept the fact that much of dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is unacknowledgeable, and if I sought permission from everyone whose bastardized material showed up here, I'd never get anything else done. Please note that I don't even put my own name on it. If you're still pissed off, hey, it's either satire or fair use.

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Mr. E. Guest 

 

http://www.disinfotainmenttoday.com

 

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