Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

…for broken fibulas, torn ligaments and metal screws. And so a city waits for another ugly end.

P.S. If the end isn’t so ugly, could I ask all of you kids from South Jersey for a favor? Would you please hold your riot on your side of the river? Thanks.

[Update] And inevitably, there is this.

Over the last month or so, I’ve become a pretty big fan of the Aggressive Progressive. While I’m certain that I’m a bit fonder of DailyKos than he is, and I kind of like that whole ‘reality based’ thing, even though I don’t employ it myself, I think this post is well worth a read. Here’s a little:

Okay, Mr. and Mrs. Reality-Based (and isn’t that pretty damn arrogant?): while we fight tooth and nail with people who agree with us 85 percent of the time, the bad guys are winning. By that I mean: people are dying on the streets of Baghdad, and let’s be frank, they don’t give a fuck about NAFTA. Somewhere in the county you live, a child will go to sleep tonight hungry (far, far too many of them) and they could less if the Tooth Fairy is the next chair of the Democratic National Committee, but they could really use a hot meal. There’s an unemployed steelworker who just found out he’s being laid off from his crappy McJob at Wal-Mart who is way less worried about tort reform then how the hell he is going to pay his rent.

If you think the current Republican regime is evil, does it matter whether you think Howard Dean is a saint or a jerk? Does it matter what you think about Joe Lieberman? Neither of them are the bad guy, but once again, we’re ready to kick the hell out of each other. Regardless of what you think, both guys are on our side, they’re both good guys in the big picture.

I was just reading this great post by the Liberal Avenger about some recent paranoia from Jerry Falwell. Apparently Christmas is in some type of danger. Who knew? Anyway, I made the mistake of clicking on the link to the Falwell article and came across this little gem:

Our founders were men who explicitly embraced Judeo-Christian principles in the founding of this nation. Even those who were Deists openly recognized the need for the citizenry to fall to their collective knees and beseech God’s favor. They understood the need to recognize God in our Constitution, in our courts and in our schools.

I think Jerry may need to better familiarize himself with that fellow named Jefferson who wrote this in 1823:

“One day the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the United States will tear down the artificial scaffolding of Christianity. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

Or perhaps he should look into some guy named James Madison who wrote this in 1785:

“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.�

[Update] I love a coincidance. A few additional James Madison quotes from Media Matters.

“I think I know I mean a “Yes” but it’s all wrong, that is I think I disagree” - John Lennon

That pretty much sums up the way I’ve been feeling of late. You know shit’s going downhill when you start quoting song lyrics. Anyway, sorry about the recent dearth of worthwhile posts (as if there ever were any). Let me give you the short version of what I would have been writing, had I been writing anything at all:

The war is awful….blah..blah..blah…Getting worse…blah..blah..blah..Bush sucks….blah..blah..blah…cut & paste…blah..blah..blah…Democrats should do something…blah..blah..blah…I know they won’t…blah..blah..blah…cut & paste.

Whatever. Enjoy your day.

I’ve made some changes to the look of the site in order to make it a little easier to read. At some point I will do a complete overhaul, but for now I’ll live with this. If you feel like the changes have actually made it harder to read, shoot me an email and let me know. Thanks.

Update: Ok, that wasn’t too popular. I’ve switched it back and I’ll give it another try next weekend.

When you can’t think of anything original on your own, just steal it right? In tribute to my favorite blogger, Jim at the Rittenhouse Review, I present you with How They Got Here, an idea stolen entirely from him (You can view his latest here). For some odd reason there seems to be more profanity involved in my search strings than his. Go figure.

Some searches that led people to Rowhouse Logic in December:

pre-raphaelite retreat from modernity
I assume this search led them to that little Mark Leyner play I posted a few week ago entitled Jenny Jones Takes on Postmodernism. On the subject of Modernity, I had the utterly peculiar and somewhat uncomfortable experience of studying Modernism, under Camille Paglia, for a full year when I was in college. She once accused me of plagiarism, which was good fun indeed. I managed to convince her that her claim was baseless, and may have dropped something about the fact that nearly every member of my family is a lawyer. She called me up at home and apologized - sort of. Other than that, it was a pretty decent, if strange, class.

Perzel, suppressing voters
One of my perennial favorites, Pennsylvania Speaker of the House, and apparently my cousin (gasp), John Perzel. He certainly did talk a good game with regards to suppressing the Philadelphia vote in the Presidential election - I’m not sure how successful he was. I’ll get to him later.

Flaming Shitstorm
There isn’t a man, woman or child alive who doesn’t, on occasion, enjoy a flaming shitstorm.

Koala Crapped
I often do feel as though a koala crapped a rainbow in my brain.

Seth Williams Philadelphia District Attorney
Not yet, but if he plays his cards right and runs a good campaign, he will be.

Rowhouse
Um…they’re usually rectangular and made of brick…found in rows…

one day the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the united states will tear down the artificial scaffolding of christianity. and the day will come when the mystical generation of jesus, by the supreme being as his
Er…Mr. Adams?

Coltrane Kmart
I hope some other people are as pissed about using Coltrane’s music in Kmart ads as I am.

Vigorously Heterosexual
I believe that this had something to do with my koala friend.

I’ve stolen what is posted below my pitiful little rant, entirely from Atrios. I repost it here with many troubled emotions.

The idea of a war over values and culture, at least in the way that war is currently framed, sickens me. In my mind, the values war that should consume the minds of an informed public, when it comes to federal elections and federal office holders, should concern the actions of the federal government, and how those actions represent the American public.

When we discuss public morality, we rarely discuss the moral implications of executing prisoners, the implications of social policy, or the moral implications of our foreign policy - be it a war or a trade agreement. Instead we discuss religious beliefs or the lack thereof, sexual orientation, or a preference for one type of artistic expression over another, however depraved or without worth, which is deemed more or less morally acceptable than another.

What on earth are we thinking, where on earth is this going, and what possible good does it serve? Bemoaning another person’s cultural depravity is every American’s right, and lord knows I’m guilty, but what on earth is this line of thinking doing in our political discourse?

We, as a nation, have ceded our sense of civic morality to the basest elements of our society. We engage in a cultural war with those who choose to willfully ignore the meaning of our founding documents and choose instead to deal in historical fallacies and lies. We accept their notion of a Judeo-Christian nation without ever bothering to examine many of our founder’s Deism or the ideas of the Enlightenment, which they attempted to infuse into our Constitution.

We engage in the ‘values’ argument on their terms (as I do below). We never invoke the true meaning of the electorate’s moral responsibility for the actions of its elected government. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people, I might add.

More fool us.

So why do I post what I do below? I don’t even know. I don’t care about this person and I don’t particularly care about his hypocrisy in invoking a ‘war on our culture’.

I suppose I’m angry. I’m angry that people who fancy themselves so much better than me, rule my country and have elected an incompetent President. I suppose I don’t mind seeing them cut down a notch, particularly when that President is involved. This gentleman’s alleged failings are certainly not the sole possession of a particular ideology or…blah…blah…blah…whatever…

It’s a special day for Mike (Hintz) and Sharla, not because they’re with the President or with Chairman Grassley, but because it’s their 13th wedding anniversary. Theirs is a typical story. See, last year they received a child tax credit check for $1,600 for their four children. And under all the tax relief we’ve passed, they saved about $2,800 last year. With this extra money they bought a wood-burning stove to reduce their home heating costs. They made a decision for their family.

-President George W. Bush, commemorating his signature of the Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004 in Des Moines, Iowa

“Where we are in this world, with not just the war on terror, but with the war with our culture that’s going on, I think we need a man that is going to be in the White House like President Bush, that’s going to stand by what he believes.”

-Reverend Mike Hintz, commemorating President George W. Bush’s Signiture of Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004 and discussing, breifly, the war with “our culture”.

Something else about Reverend Hintz:

Rev. Mike Hintz was fired from the First Assembly of God Church, located at 2725 Merle Hay Road, on Oct. 30. Hintz was the youth pastor there for three years.

“They did acknowledge with their congregation that Mr. Hintz had made apparently some admissions to his inappropriate activity, and they took a proactive approach and immediately terminated him from his position,” Johnston police Sgt. Lynn Aswegan said.

I woke up this morning and to my great delight saw that one of my five guest posters had actually posted something. Hurray! I’ll take this occasion to point out the obvious. The opinions expressed by my guest posters are their own and not mine. The opinions that I express are mine and not theirs.

I’ve tried to sign up people who I think will have interesting things to say, regardless of whether or not I always agree with them or don’t agree with them at all. I haven’t given them any rules and they are more than welcome to write anything they like, even if it’s a flame of something I’ve written.

I hope the whoever decided it was okay to use Coltrane to advertise Kmart, lives a very long, awful and brutal life. Defiling one our country’s greatest artist’s work, for comercial or any other purpose, is utterly beneath contempt.

Ah, where begin? This story has it all; A young reporter leaving ‘ill advised’ voicemail messages, psychic friends, an assortment of nuts, and even everybody’s favorite dog lover and home schooler, Rick Santorum, in his new role as ‘baby killer’. Bless the lot of them. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll lock your doors.

It’s for these special occasions that I feel I must reprise my favorite simile, and why not, it’s won me such high praise in the past. Yes indeed, that shit is so out, I feel as though a koala crapped a rainbow in my brain.

(Simile Courtesy of Sealab 2021)

[update] Pretty sloppy on my part. Santorum isn’t involved at all - silly me. Oops. It’s my other Senator, Alren “whip me” Specter, who is the ‘baby killer’. I should really cut back on the daytime drinking.

Well I must be even further out of the loop than I thought. I had no idea that superstores were selling this sort of thing. I guess that as a concerned liberal, I should be worried that this will put local business in jeopardy.

…Chasing the noses away.

I’m not sure whether I’m still recovering from the server eating my homework, or if I’m just well fed, but I don’t have a thing to say. Enjoy whatever it is you’re supposed to enjoy about Black Friday.

I wrote all kinds of great stuff last night. Really terrific, earth shattering stuff. The kind of stuff that would leave you breathless and inspired. Really! Way better than any of the other crap I’ve got on this site. You’ll have to take my word for it though, because my server ate my homework, or whatever. Anyway, after such a loss, I fear I won’t be doing much writing today. Recovery and all.

To compensate I’ve placed a short play by Mark Leyner named Jenny Jones Takes on Postmodernism, in the extended entry. It’s well worth a read.
Read the rest of this entry »

I think Hunter S. Thompson programmed the robots that are haunting my site. They are completely obsessed with offshore gambling, cheap speed, and low-grade porn. Fucking robots! Anyway, I’ve made some tweaks to keep the robots at bay. I know there are not any lines forming to leave comments here, but if you have any trouble, shoot me an email.

Here’s a topic I haven’t thought much about. Apparently the annual World Toilet Summit is taking place in Beijing. Decent sanitary conditions should be considered a basic human right. With so many other pressing issues - so much blood being spilled - I doubt this issue will be seen as anything other than unimportant for quite some time. We have a long way to go.

According to the organisers, the toilet topic is one of the world’s last great taboos - on a par with sex, which gave rise to the sexual revolution in the 1960s, women’s rights, which led to women’s liberation in the 70s and reappraisals of stigmatised diseases such as leprosy and Aids in the 80s and 90s.

“People are saying ‘We want good toilets!’ because toilets are a basic human right and that basic human right has been neglected,” said Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organisation, a co-sponsor of the summit. “The world deserves better toilets.”

Most of the bars I frequent could use better toilets. Perhaps I just need a new bar.

E.J. Dionne Jr asks a magnificently stupid question in his column this morning: “So will moderate Republicans stand up?”. Hahahahaha. Just bask for a moment in the bright glow of unfiltered lunacy. Be careful. You may get a burn. Our mission to Mars will be well underway long before something as outlandish as a moderate Republican bucking their party’s leadership ever even comes close to happening. I expect that by the time a moderate Republican actually speaks out, we’ll all be having our brains placed inside robot bodies. Whatever you do, don’t hold your breath.

[Update] The column itself isn’t all that bad. It’s just the question that got me giggling.

Good old Bill will publish his very last piece on January 24, 2005. What will we do? What deranged conspiracy theorist could possibly hope to fill Bill’s shoes? I wonder if he’d like to take a part time gig as my grammar nanny? The pay is terrible but I’ll be sure to keep his food dish stocked with nuts.

Did anybody else happen to catch MSNBC’s coverage of Yasser Arafat’s funeral this morning? Coverage isn’t really the right word. The right word escapes me. Let me try to explain.

Apparently MSNBC simulcasts the Don Imus radio show in the mornings (the sad things one learns while on vacation). Anyway, today’s show consisted of him chatting with Andrea Mitchell, who was posted on a rooftop in Ramallah to cover the burial. She was basically playing the straight man for a bunch of pretty tasteless, humorless jokes about Palestinian funeral customs.

Listen, I don’t really understand thousands of people shooting their guns in the air either, but that’s one of the ways they pay respect to people they consider military heroes. Most Palestinians probably wouldn’t get my family’s custom of eating too much and getting really drunk after a funeral. Such is life on a big planet.

The problem with shooting guns in the air is that all of those bullets come back down somewhere. This is actually a pretty serious problem in Philadelphia, of all places. I used to live in a neighborhood where some people (not me) go outside on holidays, like Independence Day or New Years Eve, and shoot handguns and semiautomatic weapons into the sky. Inevitably somebody, usually completely uninvolved, will be found later with a bullet lodged in their brain and a bullet hole in their ceiling. Brutal stuff.

Nevertheless, I’m fairly certain that the Palestinians are fully aware of the dangers of their custom and they still choose to attend funerals, en mass, where it takes place. That’s fine I guess. They can do as they please. What’s not fine is that MSNBC had Andrea Mitchell, and her whole off camera crew, posted on rooftop, completely exposed, while tens of thousands of people were shooting guns into the air - all so she could play Don Imus’ straight man. She was clearly scared half out of her mind - stammering and pausing and unable to finish sentences or sometimes even words. All the while, good old Imus continued his unfunny, tasteless blather.

On second thought, she has enough clout to get herself out of doing something so mindlessly stupid without hurting her career. Her crew doesn’t.

There are no words.

“Our guys will come in here and look at it and be able to take it back with them. This team will bounce back. It’s a character team, and we hit a bump in the road here.”

-Andy Reid discussing the election Sunday’s Eagles loss to the Steelers.

I just wanted to make a correction. In this post I said that Vince Fumo was no longer my State Senator. I was, sadly mistaken. Back to civics class I suppose. Some of the other claims I made about him have yet to be disproved.