the defeatists!

Update: We Irish have more than a passing familiarity with famine, hunger and despair

Link: .

1. The Famine Song - Johnny McEvoy

But, the scale of the world emergency, where what happened to the Irish in Black 47 could be a world wide debacle is incredible. While the bronze coffin-ship memorial and the other famine memorials stir up empathy, we need to be conscious  that empathy is not enough.

I got enthused enough about this post to contact the great Larry Kirwan of Black 47 and recommend that he arrange the Famine Song for their sort of Irish-Rock-Reggae world music beat. Larry wrote back, and reminded me of this number, from which the band got it's name...

Black 47 by Black 47

Hey, Apocolypse, I need a little information...

Why is this girl smiling? I'm guessing she's the owner of the mud cookie factory's daughter, doing the Haitian version of the Car Dealerships Kid ads we've all learned to despise over the years. The cuter the kid, the lousier the product in most cases...

"A girl eats a mud cookie in Cite Soleil to stave off hunger. The recipe on the ground is one part dirt, one part shortening and half a cup of water. The recipe internationally is one part charity, one part neo-liberal Reaganomics and one part dependence. "

Hmm, yum yum? I wonder if you can snackerdoodles or double mint? Maybe coat it in some dung to get a little more protein...

So, is Grain--the new gold? Somehow I don't think this was the way it was intended to happen but you know, the chickens are definitely coming home to roost, and they have been taking steroids and human growth hormone and doing a lot of pushups over in the corner, getting ready to land on a clueless world.

As prices rose, major grain producers including Argentina and Ukraine, battling inflation caused in part by soaring oil bills, were moving to bar exports on a range of crops to control costs at home. It meant less supply on world markets even as global demand entered a fundamentally new phase. Already, corn prices had been climbing for months on the back of booming government-subsidized ethanol programs. Soybeans were facing pressure from surging demand in China. But as supplies in the pipelines of global trade shrank, prices for corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, rice and other grains began shooting through the roof.

Now, it's true that the AXE has had some problems with the old outrage meter. It has been buried several times, and I've been actually having to do my psychic-social driving using the tach and my ear, because the outrage meter is permanently stuck at the incoherent WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH PEOPLE?????  But, the food crisis really has the potential to jump the old outrage meter right out of the metaphysical dashboard!  Even the French are starting to get it, while we remain absurdly, blithefully ignorant and are wondering about such critical issues as is Batshit McCain ethically compromised (YUP!!); is Hillary willing to take the Democratic hopes down with her in flames (Well, she'd never say so because she's clearly delusional); and, does Batboy have a tendency to hang around with questionable companions (Yeah, but then who doesn't? Hell, it occurs to me that I was in fact one of the people my parents warned me against...I'm a bad companion for myself... Anyway, about France...

The French, whose farmers over the years have become addicted to generous government handouts, argue that agriculture subsidies must be continued and even increased in order to encourage more food production, especially with looming shortages.Last week, French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier warned E.U. officials against "too much trust in the free market."

"We must not leave the vital issue of feeding people," he said, "to the mercy of market laws and international speculation." (AXE emphasis!!!)

Now, while that seems pretty rational to me, the Chicago School, Ayn Rand loving, fascist assholes who are currently running the Executive Branch really ought to get with it. Ben Stein -- another Nixon speech writer who appears to have found sanity after years of wandering from meaningless acting and financial legal shennanigans through the world of Comedy Central Game Shows and Visine ads, really gets the problems. While it may seem like a reach, the interconnectedness of the global system makes the solutions pretty complicated. However, Mr. Stein has another lucid and rational and on-target  column in this morning's Times about the problems inherent in the way things are currently going.

YOU may well be asking yourself, as I have asked myself, how on earth did the credit crisis on Wall Street become such a catastrophe? How did all of the mechanisms operated by the mind-bogglingly well-paid men and women of the Street go so wrong that we saw a major investment bank, Bear Stearns, essentially disappear? How did Wall Street firms of ancient lineage take such immense losses that they made banks clam up on lending — at great risk to the economy? Weren’t fail-safe devices in place to guard against risk? Weren’t government watchdogs there to make sure that catastrophes could not happen? Weren’t ratings agencies on the job to police what was going on in the canyons of Lower Manhattan?

To paraphrase Dr. Evil in the “Austin Powers” movies: “How about ‘no,’ Scott?”

What does the credit melt-down have to do with world food shortages? Well, a number of things. First and foremost, the dollar has been undermined by years of tax breaks and runaway deficits. If you're like Darth Cheney and think that Reagan proved that deficits don't matter, you'd be right...they don't matter for the people that Cheney cares about, the rich and powerful. However, deficits undermine the dollars ability to buy things -- like fuel, food and talent. The credit mess exacerbates that problem, because if a business has trouble getting credit, the odds are pretty good they are on the way out. In a perfectly Malthusian world that might be OK. However, we have learned that Malthus doesn't have to be right, and it is possible to have global abundance, or at least, sufficiency. However, when the average American feels the need or seems to feel the need for a HUMMER or a 36 ounce prime rib for dinner, sufficiency becomes problematic. The world economy is not resilient, nor is the American economy.

Stein points out, quoting from a speech by David Einhorn, a successful Hedge Fund Manager, that

In a word, Mr. Einhorn says, the S.E.C. told Wall Street to police itself to save on regulatory costs, while not bothering to “discuss the cost to society of increasing the probability that a large broker-dealer could go bust.” A result of all this, he says, was as follows:

“The owners, employees and creditors of these institutions are rewarded when they succeed, but it is all of us, the taxpayers, who are left on the hook if they fail. This is called private profits and socialized risk. Heads, I win. Tails you lose. It is a reverse-Robin Hood system.”

Now, the way to balance the private-profits-socialized-risk is through a system of progressive income taxes. I don't think the old IRS rates back from when I was a kid where the highest marginal rate was 91% can ever be a comeback. ( For our readers who got sucked into this article by the Hannah Montana shot and don't get marginal rates in taxes as a concept, it means that income above a certain amount is taxed at that rate. P-Diddy and A-Rod and Hedge Fund Managers would need to worry about that. The sort of person who reads the Defeatists -- people making less than $200K a year for the most part -- would never come near to worrying about that...)But, reducing taxes for the obscenely rich just doesn't feel right in good times, and this is not a good time. Bailing out the obscenely rich is an equally bad idea.

From Stein:

It looks to me as if the inmates are running the asylum. One truth, that deregulation is sometimes a good thing, has been followed down so long and winding a road that it has led to an immense lie: that deregulation carried to an extreme will not lead to calamity.

The Housing Crisis and the Credit Crisis and the Oil Crisis and the now Global Food Crisis sure looks like an inter-leaved set of problems that add up to a calamity. However, nobody seems to notice. How are you going to spend your tax rebate? Vacation to Disney World? Or, buying guns and ammunition to protect the old family homestead when the peasants with pitchforks and torches storm the McMansion? Well, the Progressives are probably buying recorders and autoharps and plan on singing Kum Bah Ya and the Regressives are sure it won't happen in their gated community. As for the rest of us, hell, we're going to find ourselves in the mob of peasants unless something amazing happens soon.

Ultimately, it seems our policy is based on the idea that God takes care of drunks, fools and the United States. I haven't seen any proof of that in a long time, if proof rather than wishful thinking existed at all. Wanna bet some members of the RNC are looking at investing in mud cookie factories here in the US? They'll do it in the south, of course. Maybe in the Mojave -- we got sand for mud, all they'll need is water and they can get the animal fat from all the fast food joints in California...

 

The horror...the horror.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In case you were wondering, Crusader AXE signed a lot of petitions back in the day when he was young and idealistic and thought that anyone really cared about what the college aged students thought about. Since at that age, the primary thing young men were focused on was sex, followed by music, bridge and beer in no particular order, I assume that the campus habit of signing petitions to "end the war, eradicate poverty, save the whales and the rain forests (Whales in the forests?)" and so on was because we thought that it would help us get girls. Not a great plan, given that  Holy Cross was still all men at that time. Oh, in case you didn't notice, war-racism-poverty-whales-rain forests- et alia ad nauseum continued to be growth sectors of the cultural and political landscape. Except for the whales and the rain forests. However, I think that we were not opposed to whales and rain forests so much as in favor of protecting them. Hard to remember -- Haffenreifer pints were only 3.50 plus tax and deposit in those days.

So, I was shocked, shocked to find that the UK has actually institutionalized this crap with its E-petitions God save the Queen, because quite frankly, Her Majesty's government is obviously very confused... Just out of curiosity and echoing one of my favorite Brits, Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear, I decided to try and submit one, because "how hard can it be?" Entirely too easy. I did lie about my citizenship status of course, but I am at least somewhat Angolphillic at heart and if I weren't an Irish American, I'd probably not be here because the ancestors would have all died in the famine of 1847. However, here's what I threw up on their site. I did a Gaelic dance with my name, of course, but we'll see how that plays out. If it gets posted, I'll throw up the link so we can continue our successful war on the people of faith. (Which if I read the reviews of Bennie the Rat's visit and remember Jacoby's the Age of American Unreason) isn't really going so well. Fuck it, we'll go down swinging...)

            

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to cease all funding for and de-establish the Church of England.            

            

Submitted by Crusadhe Ahxd            – Deadline to sign up by: 20 April 2009

            

Category: People and organisations

            

More details:

The Anglican Communion consists of insanely politically correct and vaguely socialist pederasts. Continued recognition of the C of E is discriminatory, since the various other Christian and Heathen Sects don't get to call themselves the "Mosque of England" or the "Marharisnu Baghram of England" or such. And, how can the Muslims who will ultimately be the majority in England handle the impossibility of being "of England" in their religious label on the electronic id tags to be inserted in their bloodstreams to help deter terrorism. End of the C of E is critical to restoring our sacred liberties and defeating terrorism.

       

Now it appears that the 10 Downing Street Web Team will "vet it" to make certain its palatable. I suspect that they might do something like check voter rolls or something. However, if it sneaks through their bureaucracy, I'll have to click on a link on an email to activate it. I'm sure it won't be posted. But, it might be. We'll see...

 

So I'm having a bad day and this hysterical twit invades my TV...

Well, I read it in the paper and I see it on the television 
Ever'body's worryin' 'bout a World War III.
I am just a single boy, unemployed and ever'thin'
Somebody'd better stop and worry 'bout me.


Cho: Can't you just see me now?
     "Chin up! Chest out!
     Hut two three four" all day through.
     Ever'body seems to be worryin' 'bout somethin' 'nother
     Who's gonna worry 'bout a private John Q?

Sometimes I get downhearted and I try hard not to think about it's
All that I can do to keep from lettin' it get me down.
But I'll stand proud while ever'body else will be a-
Runnin' helter-skelter for a shelter underground.

When I'se a little boy I used to sit an dream of trav'lin'
Visit lots of foreign countries on a sight-seein' tour;
The way it looks now, I can stop savin' money
Maybe go free, sponsored by a third World War.

Keith Obermann needs to get a life. Seriously, Countdown was better when it focused at least half it's energies on silly stuff; I am supposedly taking a couple of days off for no reason connected to anything except that I'm starting to feel the evil circulating in my veins and figure that a really well timed explosion could result in a fiery end to it all. Might not be so bad, but I have this morbid curiosity about what happens next. So, I spend two hours in a meeting about Six Sigma training and contracting, and I spend three hours responding to crises through cell phone and email. I then go drop off a prescription at the Crossroads of Opportunity's newest and best pharmacy and they go into a panic. I'm thinking I need to get the oil changed and I head off to Walmart's Rapid Lube. In small cities, you have limited choices, and I didn't know of anyone I'd fired or refused to hire currently working at Walmart. And, they do drug test, as opposed to offering to share which seems to be the norm around here. I get the fuel injector cleaning, and la-di-da, they break a plastic nipple. They order a new one, they plan on having me bring it back as soon as they get it from the Dealer, but they don't goddamn tell me. They then have an idiot check me out who comes from a long line of first cousins by way of his sister-mother. This is after spending two hours waiting...

So, I get home. I read more email about things that I am supposedly getting away from. I then turn on Countdown and listen to Keith go menopausal about the fact that some "contract employees" decided to look at Batboy's passport files. The gang who are normally fairly well centered act like Savaronola discovering heresy in the sanctuary because they didn't tell Batboy sooner. Visions of Watergate and the Clinton passport debacle -- he went to Moscow when he was a Rhodes Scholar and was obviously recruited by the KGB/GRU/Smersh/Red Army/Cyborg-Commie-Dope-Smokers-Sex-Ring to be a fellow traveler, as was proved by Ken Starr in Weisswassertor, Das Sequelle! -- dance across the screen.

Ok, here's the problem. "Contract workers..." Condi Rice is not in on this one or the cover-up. They have perma-temps working in state doing this. The reason being that if they step out of line, unlike with Foreign Service types, they can just tell the contractor to get rid of them. This frees us from the threat of having to pay salary and benefits to the next Alger Hess whilst he awaits trial and conviction. However, I'm betting that given the population of DC, this was probably some kids from Georgetown or GWU working at scut work to pay the bills and saying,"Hhey dude, I just found Lindsay Lohan's passport file, and her picture is sooooo hot."" Dude, how about Obama."" Oh, yeah, he's so hot!" Dude, he was in Djakarta in 1972 -- "Dude, where's Djakarta?" At least they're not interns...

This is not a sign of the end of civil liberties and if the worst thing the Republicans or Clintonicans do to Batboy is hack into his travel file, he's getting a pass. This is a sign of the cult of incompetence that runs the country. You know, bureaucrats tend to follow the rules -- that's what infuriates us all with them, admit it. They're square pegs in square holes with square doilies covering the holes with square vases filled with square flowers. Fucking bastards, they like rules. Kill them all and replace them with...people who don't know, understand or remember the rules. So, this one speaks to the cult of incompetence, not the vast right wing conspiracy.

Keith probably figured he had a lousy show and this could turn into Army v. McCarthy. Instead, it bears a startling resemblance to a Britney-Paris chihuahua fight, only with more underwear and less dignity. The gone to soon anarcho-Defeatist poet Roger Miller put it well in his sonnet shown below. I would have linked a video, but they missed this one...

Take a little bitty town
Elect a mayor of that little bitty town
A square little man to make it go round
Squares make the world go round

Pick out a state
Elect a governor of the state
A square little man to make it go round
Squares make the world go round

Hey! squares make the world go round
Sounds profane, sounds profound
But government things can't be made through
Hipsters wearing rope soled shoes

Take the whole world
What does it take to make the whole world whirl
What does it take to make the whole world whirl
Squares make the world go round

Hey! squares make the world go round
Sounds profane, sounds profound
But government things can't be made through
Hipsters wearing rope soled shoes

Take the whole world
What does it take to make the whole world whirl
What does it take to make the whole world whirl
Squares make the world go round
What does it take to make the whole world whirl
Squares make the world go round

Vote for the Vegetarian Party!

Oh, the horror. Exactly who would he hurt? And, do we really care? Since the kids are all fainting and screaming and dribbling for Barack, who's going to PIRG this guy onto the ballots? Senility strikes at the oddest times...

Why we are who we are

This is what differentiates us from the Daily Kos and Shakespeare's Sister. This, and the testicles...

Rather than some god of progressive political correctness and earnestness, we worship at the altar of Pastis. We are unworthy...I strongly recommend, as the oldest defeatest but not an attorney, that you buy all the Stephen Pastis things you can. Seriously.

Time to stoke up the fires in the belly of the best

By August of 2004, the great Crispin Sartwell, Philosopher/Sex Toy designer and Godfather of Amish Speed Metal/Hip Hoop (you hop in an out of a hoop to Metallica) got up each morning and asked himself, "What can I do today to ensure that John Kerry loses?" Well, thanks to the Daily Kos   and Fox News, we're at that point already...

Now, Fox

Fox News:

Now, Fox is contending that this is all the Daily Kos fault and that this sort of Machiavellian 
stuff doesn't work. Shit. The Kos points out that the Republicans have been pulling this crap in Michigan for decades. Machiavellian stuff is what Fox and Murdoch do...can anyone say Chris Wallace? Swift Boats? Fox is opposed to Romney, which would indicate some good sense on Murdoch's part except that they are invested so invested in Rudy G and his Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Actually, I think Fox is behind this, and are certainly behind blaming KOS. After all, if Romney wins in Michigan and defeats Huckleberry and Rudy, well, shit, it was all the fault of those far out drug crazed liberals over at  Daily Kos... Would have nothing to do with name recognition, family loyalty, GM execs remembering the good old days, more money more money more money more money... It's the Democrats who did it.

Hell, I'm going to call my Autoworker Brother in Law and my sister and tell them to vote for Romney. They hate Romney. I can think of no better vengence than to keep him in the contest for a few more rounds. Is it me, or am I the only one who notes the Android Resemblance to Kerry?

Thrilla in Vanilla: Klein vs. Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald, responding to Ezra Klein responding to Greenwald's positive comments about Ron Paul.

If people who support a candidate with the wrong position on abortion (or gay rights) can be accused of being indifferent to the rights of women or gay people, then -- by the same exact "reasoning" -- those who end up supporting candidates who affirm America's right to act as an imperial power or who want to continue many of Bush's executive power abuses [as Hillary Clinton certainly does and as even Barack Obama and (to a lesser extent) John Edwards do] should be accused of being indifferent to constitutional liberties, the rule of law, and the lives of millions of innocent Muslims.

Apparently Greenwald forgot Cardinal Rule No.1 of the Proglosphere: any comments regarding Ron Paul that are not specifically critical, negative or hostile shall be immediately addressed by multiple proglospherians and its author shall be reprimanded swiftly.  If said author does not recant his/her comments he/she will be banished from all future white wine circle jerk parties. I don't support Ron Paul and I will not be voting for him. (In fact, I don't support any politician - my attitude towards that profession is one of pure loathing). However, I believe he brings a unique and much needed perspective to Clusterfuck 2008. Besides the marginalized Kucinich (most likely my choice for the primary) no one else has dared to challenge the imperial consensus. I thought progressives welcomed a nuanced healthy debate, but apparently they are just as black and white as their cousins in the wankosphere.

This leads to Cardinal Rule No.2 of the Proglosphere: For a person, work of art, cultural product, or political discourse to be fully embraced and accepted by the Progressive Movement it must be 100% certifiably progressive, i.e., it cannot contain raunchy humor, individualistic thought, anachronistic ideas about social relations, etc.  Heaping praise on something that is not 100% progressive is by all means forbidden and will be dealt with immediately.

doo-wop (that thing it is you do?)

shorter Atrios:

                                    TREEHORN
                         People forget,

              He taps his forehead with one finger.

                        that the brain is the
                        biggest erogenous zone--

                                    DUDE
                        On you, maybe.

                                    TREEHORN
                        Of course, you have to take the good with
                        the bad.  The new technology permits
                        us to do very exciting things in
                        interactive erotic software.  Wave
                        of the future, Dude.  100% electronic.

                                    DUDE
                        Hmmm.  Well, I still jerk off
                        manually.

we here at Defeatist Central have flung ourselves all willy-nilly onto our swords on many an occasion.  it's fun!  now I run mostly on intuition, and four things stick out to me about the defeatists in our midst: 1.if what you're doing, blogging, is not fun or fulfilling (something) in some way, then why are you doing it?  2.show me how exactly blogging has changed or upset the structures that bind us.  3.show me how you've infiltrated the existing structures and morphed them from within (via the internet, like arthroscopically and shit).  4.what sort of sad person does not do this for fun, and thinks this is the new means for ch ch ch changes!? (sing it) 

now, there is nothing as satisfying or enjoyable as being completely and utterly useless.  that is simple and resistant anarchy:

That's when [Fry Pan Jack] told me - you know, he'd been tramping since 1927 -
he said, "I told myself in '27, if I cannot dictate the conditions of my labor,
I will henceforth cease to work."  Hah!  You don't have to go to college to
figure these things out, no sir!  He said, "I learned when I was young that the
only true life I had was the life of my brain.  But if it's true the only real
life I have is the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain
to somebody for eight hours a day for their particular use on the presumption
that at the end of the day they will give it back in an unmutilated condition?"
Fat chance!

but to sit up at attention in one's barcalounger and bellow across the tubes that this is simply not the case, and to whack those that are pointing out a simple truth, and to settle back into the chair, somehow satisfied, is well...sad.

It's rather odd to spend all your time following political news and blogs if the only reason to do it is to provide justification for your view that All Is Lost. Just go out and have some fun instead.

I don't know what he does for work, but I work tangentially for a local government, which is constantly pointing out to me how hopeless everything is, because even at this level, it's bad, real bad, and if I didn't have this to entertain myself, I might just go insane. 

so entertain myself I will.  and we do.  one of the best scenes, I think, from the favorite of all favorite Defeatist movies, TBL, is this:

                                    CHIEF
                         Mr. Treehorn draws a lot of water in
                         this town, You don't draw shit Lebowski.
                         Now we got a nice quiet little beach community
                         here, and I aim to keep it nice and quiet.
                         So let me make something plain.  I don't like you
                         sucking around bothering our citizens,
                         Lebowski.  I don't like your jerk-
                         off name, I don't like your jerk-off
                         face, I don't like your jerk-off
                         behavior, and I don't like you, jerk-
                         off. Do I make myself clear?

               The Dude stares absently.

                                     DUDE
                         I'm sorry, I wasn't listening.

if there is one thing the internet and blogs have helped the "royal we" sharpen, cultivate and hone, it is the art of the Fuck You.  which I think is the greatest thing ever, because it is one of the best tools we have for upsetting the powers that be.  (from fruitcake to f-bombs and back again, baby!)  I can probably find a fake picture of Bush humping two midget twins on the internet somewhere, and I can also find amazing essays and posts that tickle the best parts of my brain, that inspire and invoke and sadden.  (maybe we're making rebel music)  both of these products of blogging do in fact shape and manipulate the political, if that is the intention.  both are as useful as they are useless.  but, what is the utility, or the effectiveness, of blogging, or for that matter, a blogger?  feh!  not one damn thing I do or write on the internet is going to un-President the President, bring the troops home, dismantle our government, or bring about any noticeable change to the machine.  a million of us chirping away in the tubes won't either.  what we're here for, really, is to commiserate, to backslap, to create a little, to share, and to maybe, you know, learn something in the process.  because no matter how hard we try, when we close the browser window, we go back to the world as we know it. 

nothing is as defeatist as thinking otherwise.

the revolution will not be blogged

blogging for me is like talking to an answering machine: nobody is really home, or they're hiding from you, or listening and snickering.  the feeling you get from blogging is similar: you know noone is listening, but you're trying real hard to get past the voice in your head that has you questioning your tone and forgetting the reason you called in the first place.  this awareness can be pretty creepy, especially when compounded, globally!  ahh!  holy shit!  the whole world is listening; good god!  what shall I say?  typical blogging is about as satisfying as masturbation: you know what the outcome is going to be, and hopefully nobody is there to witness your throes of self-inflicted agony.  most people are pretty content seeing the words they type magically appear on the internet.   some of it is real good, some of it is real bad.  pictures help.  it is important that the author(s) recognizes the inherent self-aggrandizing nature of the medium; witness their propensity for vanity and understand the absolute futility of one person reaching out and writing to an entire world - on the internet, no less!  the blogger, no matter how good they are, must realize that they're special and unique, just like everyone else.  for some this is not enough.  witness:

One of my pet peeves has long been a certain strain of defeatism.
Understandably we all feel defeated at times, but there's a certain
kind of defeatist out there on the internets, people who spend most of
their time chastising others for thinking it's possible to have any
influence and attacking the "stupidity" of those who even bother to
try. Maybe those people are right. Maybe there never is anything to be
done. But if that's the case, get a new goddamn hobby. It's rather odd
to spend all your time following political news and blogs if the only
reason to do it is to provide justification for your view that All Is
Lost. Just go out and have some fun instead.

wow, a pathetic diatribe attacking trolls.  a troll, to trolls!  from, get this, an internet troll!  to paraphrase Atrios: get out, you fools!  and let the professionals get r done!  seriously, people, listen up!  how will we ever reach a consensus with all these damn people kicking my shins and tripping me up?  do they not fathom the importance of this, that which I just wrote, and the movement, man, the freaking movement.  so what if I'm wrong?  you're the one's who are slowing down the structure and mechanisms of real motherfucking change, yo!  begone!  we, brothers, we have the power to affect, and effect even, real change...if only.  if only! 

if only, Atrios, you didn't suck large donkey dong. 

you'll note that we've been blogging here at Defeatist Central for about 3 years now, and we're as organized as a bunch of old college roommates trying to get to the homecoming pre-game parking lot party.  we've organized nothing, contributed little, snarked and poked and slipped and joked our way through the tubes, creating a vast log of half-thoughts, some semi-truths, but mostly we've just generated ironic and back-handed insults and wise-cracks laid in disgust.  and that's about as good as this gets, or is supposed to get.  there's no rallying spot.  this shit is digital, man.  people don't run home to check out the hot blogging action at Kos or whatever.  (I myself am a 43 year old, 400 pound, blonde tipped, brunette at the roots, female shut-in, to, I am sure, many people's surprise.  there's not a lot of rushing going on here.)  and yet, we're as relevant as the next guy.  which is cool.  if there is anything blogging, and the internet for that matter, is good for, it is bringing down the median, and highlighting just how exciting alienation can be.  dude, we just don't want you to get all power mad and actually believe you influence change, any more than the rest of us.  shouting into the `tubes is not sane!  no one cares.  and your final ascension into an influence peddling corner of the empire will not be blogged; nor will the revolution.  thankfully.

so, you win, dude.  you're the King of the Internet.  let the rational polity and organizing begin, hencewith!  forthwith!  bitches!  over yonder and under the bridge and through the river and yada, freaking, yada.

we seriously.  fucking.  give up.
 

(the fact that some of the pointers that have led me in the past to Eschaton were to little nuggets of Atrios snark, is itself, not completely lost on me, in the realm of teh universal.)