It's always weird when people that self-promote or are really into their "brand" start doing circular things like that. I got some dude I vaguely know's "musician's newletter" the other day, thru the "social networks" as Cristy Joy would say, the subject of which was "what musicians should put in their newsletters."
"In the upcoming erotic thriller "End of Watch," Gyllenhaal plays Officer John End, a toughened veteran DC cop, who is assigned all-hours personal surveillance duties after an assasination attempt on a sexy diplomat. As the mystery unravels, and he is drawn into a deadly, sexy game, will End only watch, or will End not be able to resist doing more than watching? Jake Gyllenhaal IS John End. WATCH WILL END this summer." - the best trailer writer, EVER
I laughed at this for 10 minutes last night, then came back an hour later and laughed for another 10 minutes. I have no idea why whoever made this decided to make it scarier than "Jacob's Ladder," but great work!
well, thanks for writing back.
In this case I wasn't writing about things not related to Videogum or personal beliefs. That's true because:
1) The post was about Fox news and the way they promote climate change skepticism propaganda ridiculously.
2) Kelly was funny in the way she was being ridiculously judgmental, but she wrote something that has much more to do with the personal style of people that tend to be climate change skeptics than I ever have: "I guess he always dressed like someone who probably didn’t believe in global warming, particularly the human influence on global warming, but also he was a jazz bassist so I figured he thought the same kind of normal things that the rest of the people I knew thought..."
3) I actually wasn't really writing about facts about climate change or people's style. I was responding to what I saw as an accusation that I had unfairly jumped in and dismissed someone without any reason or explanation. The main gist of my comment was the question "What did you want me to do considering we have very different ideologies and I don't even know the 2nd thing about yours?"
4) That comment took me a long time to write, I liked what I wrote, and in seconds you dismissed the whole thing.
My first message back to you was "If you don't want to read something, don't read it." But then I thought that would be passive agressive and off point, cause of course you knew that you could do that, and the point of your comment was to purposefully shit on my honest effort. I decided it was much more straightforward and fair to you just say "fuck you" to let you know that I got it, I didn't like it, and I'm smart enough to know that there is no reason not to let you know that I didn't like it.
The last thing, again, is that climate change has nothing to do with "personal beliefs." There is no "belief" involved. The reasonable thing to do is to learn what the scientific community knows about it, like you do with almost everything you learn and then get to have an informed opinion about. The unreasonable thing to do is to accept information from people outside of accredited science who have no credentials and other agendas. Your own personality, politics, style, superstitions, and anything else you "believe" for any weird reason is nothing like it, and has no effect on it. It's a set of facts. Learn it. know it. live it.
aw fuck. alright Son of Gabe, I guess now we're going to have to get all fucking sarcastic with each other also, cause 1. you know it's a patronizing, jerky move to call someone a patronizing jerk, 2. you're belittling the honest effort I went to yesterday to have a discussion about this shit, and 3. you're wrong
look at what I did:
Godsauce angrily and sarcastically accused me of flippantly dismissing him, and I decided, "ok, he's angry and sarcastic and doesn't really have a point, but since he accused me of being short with him, I'll have an honest discussion about what I could have done there." So I made a ton of effort to write something that explored what I could have done. It was in tone with 2 things: 1. the fact that I wasn't exactly sure what I was supposed to be doing in response to an angry sarcastic accusation that I had been too flippant, 2. the real world where lies about climate change are so rampant that I deal with people every day that have come to some backwards uninformed conclusion about this issue instead of being reasonable and learning something about what the scientific consensus is on the issue.
It's not patronizing to treat a sarcastic adult like a sarcastic adult. It's not jerky to be honest about how backwards it is to skip over or actively reject a scientific consensus like you know better. In THAT context, I was being perfectly normal, and I was being nice just by engaging the dude. You're accusation that I was being a jerk is wrong and jerky itself.
djfreshie - this is weird. I just went back to look at the Louis CK thing where I got a million downvotes but thought a productive conversation ended up happening...
And YOU were the other main dude then that actually stuck around and peacefully debated shit with me until we sort of just got peacefully tired of debating things.
At the time I disagreed with most of what you said, but not all of it, and I thought you were cool then just for being willing to talk about it. Later I thought about things more and thought some of the things you said that I thought were wrong at the time were a little more right.
You even came in that time excited to see a debate, while these regular boring people like That One were playing their same "oh boy, everyone calm down" roles.
You probably don't care but I liked you more when you were interested in shit then, than when you were just shitting on everything today.
Godsauce the last time we interacted on here, I actually thought it went pretty cool. You said I was too angry at Louis CK, I objected and said I was the right amount of angry at Louis CK, you got sarcastic, and I called you an "asshole" for getting sarcastic when I was expressing something sincere... but then, weirdly, you started listening to me. And you conceded a point or two, and you made some points I couldn't object to. It turned out to be the best we've ever gotten along, and I actually liked you a lot more at the end of it. While you were fighting it out you were actually listening and thinking. Cool. Facetaco has never interacted that way - he just jumps in, fucks with me, and jumps out.
Considering the way we've interacted around here, I didn't think it was that far out at first to ape your joke about Jon Scott, and just tell you to "shut up." You put an opinion out there, one you probably knew wasn't gonna be popular; I said "shut up," but that aint that bad. And in contrast to what you are now saying ("there was no call for you to respond at all") notice that your initial reaction could definitiely be seen as a challenge, if not invitiation, to talk more about this; I actually thought you were going to appreciate me talking to you just now dude. And, by the way, scan my comments for rudeness - worst word in there is "idiot" and it was directed at Jon Scott.
And THEN the thing is, for a climate scientist, I didn't say a lot that my "presumed authority on the matter" vouches for. Instead of getting into climate science, I got into what anyone's options are when ALL they know is that they are dealing with someone who is (albeit vaguely and incompletely) broadcasting an ideology they strongly disagree with. Kind of Kelly's point too. So in contrast to "making a lot of assumptions about your position based on very little information," I started from exactly that place and said "I know I have very little information about what you think; but here is what I disagree with about the ideology you are claiming part of."
I'm not going to argue that much more about what is wrong with "climate change skepticism." But I am going to defend myself and say that my position has nothing to do with being "unwilling to entertain alternate theories and ideas."
Here's a hypothetical. Before you try: I'm NOT suggesting an equivalence between these two issues.
What if I'd said "Whatever your starting point is, being a self-proclaimed racist is an unacceptable ending point, and that’s not intolerance to say that."
You wouldn't have followed that up with "Your point seems to be that you will accept no dissent from orthodoxy, however slight, and that your presumed authority on the matter should silence all who dare to even suggest disagreement."
You know there are some things we can actually say about the world. So stop saying things like "You're trying to silence me!" If you don't want to be silenced, SAY SOMETHING! And stop saying things like "Your problem is you come into every argument just thinking that you are right!" It's a ridiculous cover instead of actually arguing. Of course I think I'm right - if I thought I was wrong I would CHANGE my opinion. Here's something else - YOU think YOU'RE right too. And It's YOUR assumption that I have never thought about other viewpoints until we're arguing. An assumption which is wrong!
I'm an adult dude. I've been around. I read one of Bjorn Lomborg's idiotic climate change skepticism books. I've watched Barack Obama concede everything liberal left in the country based on the idea that both sides should have something to contribute. And I don't believe that stuff, cause I thought about it and I SHOULDN'T believe that stuff.
It is not an unwillingness to entertain other viewpoints, or bad science, or intolerance, or whatever you think it is, that allows me to say that the idea of "climate change skepticism" is a joke. Climate change skepticism ACTUALLY IS A JOKE!
haha. you didn't make an argument in the first place. you walked into a room and announced "I'm a "climate change skeptic.""
Not a lot of info there, so ain't much to say to that. One could say "I don't know and will never know which of the millions of facts involved in climate science you have learned and what about your personal politics and psychology have led you to be a unsolicitedly-self-proclaimed climate skeptic. BUT - I am both shallow and completely without experience in dealing with people that say things like that and then act like it is COMPLETELY UNFAIR that they be judged by people who don't know EVERYTHING ABOUT THEM THAT THEY DIDN'T SAY. ALSO, I don't know enough about this subject not to accept a "belief/nonbelief" dichotomy as appropriate here, and as if it were between equally reasonable sides. So I will just also make an unsolicited announcement that I am a climate change skeptic/not a climate change skeptic. I didn't judge you, so that makes me tolerant. yay."
One could say nothing - if that person is not a "climate change skeptic," this is the mild conundrum Kelly described above.
One SHOULD say "I object to the idea that a long complex ever changing natural process about which there are millions of volumes of research is EVER discussed as if it has anything to do with the concept of "belief.""
One could start at the top with "CO2 was at holding steadyish at ~280 ppm for 10000 yrs until the last 200 yrs, and since then it has climbed to ~390 ppm." Everyone on earth that got past 5th grade should already know that of course. But the purpose there is not just that fact; it is that that fact alone should end the discussion between any two reasonable people about whether climate change is something that it is actually possible one could be "skeptical" of. Of course it's not. It's a process that can be either be understood or not understood, but not believed in or not believed in.
One could think that even though this "climate change skeptic" is, by definition, an unreasonable person, maybe they are smart, and therefore close to becoming a reasonable person someday. One might then decide that it is worth their time to ask the "skeptic" what their starting point vaguely is on the subject, and then help them with some facts they don't know yet.
In this case, you might have thought you were showing yourself to be worthy of that kind of benefit of the doubt, since you dismissed this dude Jon Scott for being a TOTAL idiot. But in reality, nobody gets any credit just because they maybe understand that everything on Fox News is propaganda for some set of corporations that own Fox (I don't even care anymore which ones) so of course the idiots they hire lie about this, and of course they should shut up. That's a given. What you said in your comment was not proof of "nuance" or "moderation" on your part - it was just that you understand ONE of the givens. An easy one of them.
I don't know what else to say right now man. Whatever your starting point is, being a self-proclaimed climate skeptic is an unacceptable ending point, and that's not intolerance to say that.
"...when you say ‘I scared you,’ you can literally mean that I scared you!”
That's a good example of David Cross' bad uses of the word "literal." And not because he wouldn't be literally scaring someone if he jumped out at them wearing a torturer suit.
Because the figurative version of that situation never happened. Nobody ever watched Hostel and then literally said "Eli Roth scared me." 90% of the people that saw it said things along the lines of "Whoa. That movie was gross."
Trebek's partner entered the forensics lab. The autopsy was in session. "Well," he asked, "what the fuck have you found?"
"We fucking found 1,280 hundred dollar bills in his stomach." The forensic expert pulled out Trebek's intenstines. "And in his large fucking intestine." The forensic expert dropped Trebek's colon and it crashed onto the table. "and in there."
"What kind of cockfucking shit is this?" asked Trebek's partner. "Why would Alex Trebek swallow so much buttfucking money?"
"Well," said the forensic expert, "I guess that's the..." he paused and put on sunglasses covered in Alex Trebek's fucking blood.
"128,000 Question"
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
"I'll find the the killer" said Trebek's partner. "All I need is a chat with some witnesses, a peek at some evidence, and time for a little bit of *sunglasses* -classic concentration.
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
oh, well that sort of explains why the announcer interrupted himself with just "THE praying mantis...". He'd already been talking about it.
Weird that this actually was a confusing sports clip for me.
I can't tell if the announcer is real and live, but there's something sort of awesome and surreal about it if he is. it cuts in so fast and he say things so fast and it's hard to tell what he says. but the way he transitions from talking about baseball to the praying mantis without a comma is pretty hilarious.
"...makes the catch the praying mantis with him being high to Logan Morrison. LOOK OUT LOMO! LOOK OUT! HE'S DOWN! TOMMY! MEDIC! MEDIC! He's.... (nearly maniacal laughter for 20 seconds)"
WHAT IS A 5K ZOMBIE CHASE?
CRASHING TO THE GROUND AND RIPPING YOUR ACHILLES TENDON WILL BE THE LEAST OF YOUR PROBLEMS!
PUT YOUR UNDERWEAR ON AND COME TO BALTIMORE ON OCT. 22!
Trebek continued, showing how good natured he was about the incident, telling participants: "Some of you may have to go to the bathroom during the Championship. If you cause a disturbance by getting up to do so, I will have to rip your Achilles tendon and steal your bracelets and your money."
haha. this is actually an insanely weird list of film clips and emotions:
Amusement: When Harry Met Sally and Robin Williams Live
Anger: My Bodyguard and Cry Freedom
Contentment: Footage of waves and a beach scene
Disgust: Pink Flamingos and an amputation scene
Fear: The Shining and Silence of the Lambs
Neutral: Abstract shapes and color bars
Sadness: The Champ and Bambi
Surprise: Capricorn One and Sea of Love
I guess it's true though. When I saw "beach scene" I felt the most extreme amount of contentment I had ever felt. And when I saw "abstract shapes" I felt a huge wave of emotional neutrality.
what?
It's not a stretch to say that politicians getting inspired by this is "in poor taste," and it is really not just about "poor taste." It's about a whole style of thinking about violence, and thinking about what is an ok way to talk about violence. Bob Cesca was pointing out another piece in the pattern of the right wing's use of violent imagery and rhetoric. Sarah Palin said something about 'reloading' again the other day. and now the inspirational movie scene for them is Ben Affleck saying he's going to 'hurt people.'
Right now there is an intelligent and necessary global discussion going on about the ideologies that this Norwegian guy took inspiration from.
It is perfectly fine to make this example of the pattern of violent rhetoric part of that discussion.
no facetaco. I am comparing politicians to a mass murderer.
I am agreeing with a blogger that it is a very strange time for people to be using crazy rhetoric.
and you get that I'm doing that dude. your feigned outrage just now was a strawdog argument where you put words and actions in my mouth that I clearly didn't say or do. fuck you dude. don't act so fucking stupid.
the blogger Bob Cesca put it best, I'm just quoting him below:
ThinkProgress reminds us: “In the movie, the characters then put on hockey masks and bludgeon two men with sticks, then shoot one man in the leg.”
Check your calendars. It’s been how long since a right-wing freakdog went on a killing spree in Norway?
I got the pxl-2000 fisher price video camera for christmas in 1987. I know that cause I still have audio cassette tapes labeled "Christmas 1987." I still have the camera. It doesn't really work anymore, but you can still watch the old tapes, and a couple years ago I did. My 12 year old big sister did an awesome Michael Jackson impression, except her moonwalk kind of sucked.
hmmm. this is one of the links above, at least on my screen. maybe that was your joke. or maybe Gabe just got at that comedy pill bottle first.
http://videogum.com/251201/love-and-other-ughs/webjunk/
here's something WEIRD. I made this video. that's me doing the alien thing with my shirt and then riding in the grocery cart at 1:13.
the more you know!
Kip, Sean Penn likes to think that by starring in "I am Sam" he was doing a service for the mentally disabled, but David Byrne thinks he did it for the paycheck and thinks that the script and his performance were borderline offensive in their simplicity, and that it's kind of always at least a little bit fucked up to make jokes of mental disabilities.
get it?
dude, actually, I haven't really understood any of this or been able to tell if you actually think my music sucks for a little while. we're joking very weirdly, but also nicely with each other, right?
Kip, David Byrne called. He told me to tell you that he wants people, when they correct other people about the name of his band, to do the correcting by posting a jpeg of the original 1982 version of the album, and not with a jpeg of the 2004 reissue - cause, he says, all those people that weren't even BORN in 1982 bought that reissue.
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