I went to the indpendent bookstore a few months back and went to their politics section but I sort of had to go away in disgust. They had Sean Hannity books and Laura Ingraham books mixed in with the regular stuff - the Chomsky and Michael Moore books that are what people are actually buying. I didn't want to hang around there because I didn't want someone to see me in front of that shelf and think that, while I was looking at some book on American imperialism that I was really checking out some Michael Savage thing. I bet the clerks get really mad at you if you try to buy some stuff like that, and I don't blame them.

Fortunately, though, they seem to have improved their policy. I went back and noticed they had divided their politics into 'Politics' and 'Politics, Conservative.' I doubt that that labeling scheme is sufficient to the problem - do you really want to dignify some piece of work by David Horowitz as 'conservative?' - but it does mean any sicko interested in that stuff will have to make himself visible by standing in front of the aisle. And it's in clear sight, where anyone can see that you're there and what you're looking at. And - and this is important - their security camera points right at that shelf. I guess that's in case they have to show the police a picture of someone who comes in looking for The Turner Diaries or The Way Things Ought To Be.

But the basic problem is that they carry books like that at all. Get a clue, people. "Independent" doesn't mean "we sell Karl Rove press releases."

Labels: Sellouts

That's all.

Sometimes I wonder what we need all this technology and luxury for. It's not like people these days are any happier than they were hundreds of years ago. I bet if you sat around all day with an American family and counted their smiles, then did the same thing with a family from some small village in Mauritania, I bet you would find the family from Mauritania was far richer in smiles. We Americans get so hung up on money, but all it does is make us miserable. Do you think Bill Gates is any happier than the lunch lady at the school cafeteria? I wouldn't bet on it. Americans are so consumed with things, when they should be consumed with thinking. About things. About how things could be better, and poor people could be fed and clothed.

I was looking through this National Geographic, and they had all these pictures of school kids in Venezuela, and they looked so happy! I wish I could be so happy. Those kids can just live their lives care free, and they don't even have to worry about how their country was hijacked in two fradulent elections, and how their president is making their country the most hated country in the world. I don't see what's so hard about making a world like that, where everyone could be that happy. It's not that hard, all you have to do is stop all of the rich from exploiting everybody else. Where people in countries like Cuba can enjoy benefits of their years of rich culture, and shop at their traditional marketplaces, without having to worry about a WalMart moving in and taking all their jobs.

And remember gang, Jesus was a liberal.

Everyone knows that experiment where you pour Coke on pork chops and a million squirming worms appear. But has anyone considered that the worms are in the Coke and not the pork? Remember, Coke is a corporate product.

Labels: Using Your Head

As part of every citizen-of-the-world's duty to stand up against the Evil Hegemonster, I make a note to read banned books when I get the chance. And I saw this thing come up called "Huckleberry Finn," and the name sort of reached me, in the same way that "Sush Bucks" and "Nuck Fewt" do. It was by some guy named Mark Twin.

Anyway, I can see sometimes why someone would want to ban books in the first place. Every other word in that book was the n-word, sort of like what you'd expect at some white power rally.

Dude, it was incredible. It was like the sixties never happened for this Mark Twin guy.

Labels: The Stupidity of Lesser Mortals

...they're actually trying to open a Wal-Mart here in Austin, just a few miles north of the center of the city, in some old mall that's been quietly expiring for years now. It's like the suits and penny counters didn't get the memo, haven't got a clue, and can't figure out that the debate is over, the polar bears are drowning, and it's time to stop the madness with all this insane consumerist cultism. I don't know why Keith and Jon aren't hitting these clowns harder. Well, yes, I do. Someone's bought them off, they're just more cogs in the same old corporate media, bleating with the rest of the narcotized sheep while the occasional prophet in the wilderness (you know who I mean, Michael!) goes unrecognized in his own country.

Labels: Fiddling While Rome Burns

Which is known for plotting grand schemes on paper that do not translate to anything workable in the real world?
Which is known for explaining to the hapless rubes about his own infallibility based on his qualities as a "super genius?"
Which one of these is a ridiculous cartoon character that we long to see fall miles off a mesa to go SPLAT on the desert sands below?