In Your Direction / From The Satellite Mind

That Gaping Maw

Now Playing: Little Boots - Symmetry

From the Rush Limbaugh show, Jan 13th:

 "Yes, I think in the Haiti earthquake, ladies and gentlemen -- in the words of Rahm Emanuel -- we have another crisis simply too good to waste.  This will play right into Obama's hands. He's humanitarian, compassionate.  They'll use this to burnish their, shall we say, "credibility" with the black community -- in the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country.  It's made-to-order for them.  That's why he couldn't wait to get out there, could not wait to get out there.

[...]

CALLER:  Mega Rush Baby dittos.  My question is, why did Obama in the sound bite you played earlier, when he's talking about if you wanted to donate some money, you can go to WhiteHouse.gov --

RUSH:  Yeah.

CALLER: -- to direct you how to do so.  If I want to donate money to the Red Cross, why do I need to go to the WhiteHouse.gov page and --

RUSH:  Exactly.  Would you trust that the money is going to go to Haiti?

CALLER:  No.

RUSH:  Would you trust that your name is going to end up on a mailing list for the Obama people to start asking you for campaign donations for him and other causes.

CALLER:  Absolutely.

RUSH:  Absolutely right.

CALLER:  That's the point.

RUSH:  Besides, we've already donated to Haiti.  It's called the US income tax."

 Atleast 30,000 people have died in the poorest country in the western hemisphere, and Rush Limbaugh is more concerned with scoring points off Obama - who, of course, is only concerned with this because it is a black issue. 

It was bad enough when he mocked Michael J Fox' Parkinson's symptoms, when he flat-out stated that he wanted Obama's administration to fail - if anyone had said that about Bush, he'd have been first in line crying High Treason - but this is just beyond the pale. When is someone going to stand up to Rush Limbaugh and say, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

In Which A Very Questionable Metaphoric Decision Is Made

Now Playing: Lindisfarne - Meet Me On The Corner

"Having curly hair," I mused, "is like being in an abusive relationship."

"What?!?"

"No, really. You know how abusive spouses can be sweet as pie one day, and then the next day they break your nose because you didn't get their coffee right, or whatever?"

"Um, okay?"

"And then, even when women leave their abusive husbands, a lot of times they have trouble getting into new, loving relationships because they've come to expect craziness from their relationships as opposed to normalcy?"

"And how does this have anything to do with curly hair?"

"Are you kidding me? It is exactly like curly hair. One day, your hair curls exactly the way you want it to, the next, it's a giant ball of frizz that's too pathetic to pass off as an afro. On and off, off and on, until you don't know which way is up and you can't take it anymore, so you buy a hair straightener and iron the curl right out of your hair."

"Um..."

"And now you've got straight-ish/wavy hair that is easy to manage and a hairstyle that doesn't change daily depending on the wind, humidity and the caprices of the curl, right? Except now, that's boring. You've come to expect changeable, unpredictable hair. Hair that simply sits on your head and does what you want it to is somehow... bleh. So you trash the straightener, wash out your hair and let the curl do what it will. Just like an abuse victim going back to her abuser."

"You're seriously comparing having messy hair with being the victim of abuse."

"Um, yeah. It's like, I started the metaphor, and then midway I got how awful it sounded - "

"- and you finished it anyway?"

"...yeah."

"Alrighty then."

Awkward Prose, Let Me Show You It

Now Playing: Cory Monteith - I'll Stand By You

“What makes a masterpiece? One answer is mastery. But that raises questions of its own. What is it? Where does it come from? And is it enough?”

I won’t lie: I totally cracked up typing up that quote. And come on, who wouldn’t? Doesn’t it sound like the opening to a particularly awkward high school essay? “Please write 500 words on what makes a masterpiece. You may include examples from music, literature, film and television. No video games please.”

It’s actually the opening to a piece in today’s The National discussing Beethoven’s fifth symphony. It’s the most juvenile prose I’ve seen in print in a long time, so thank you, Ed Lake, for bringing a smile to my face before the caffeine kicked in. But seriously, what were you thinking? And where was your editor, for that matter? The rest of the article is quite good, but that opening is inexcusable.

Too Hideous For Words (and I don't mean the "fatties")

Now Playing: Friendly Fires - Kiss of Life

How vain do you have to be to join a site called BeautifulPeople.com? A site so "exclusive" you can only get in if existing members agree that you're hot enough? How desperate for validation must you be?

It's alright though, they love you! You're officially one of the Beautiful People! But then, tragedy strikes. It's the holiday season, there are carbs everwhere, you can't avoid that turkey dinner with the folks, and before you can say "superficial," you've put on weight.

As easily as that, you've lost the acceptance of your peers - who aren't actually your peers anymore, as they've voted you and 4,999 others off the island and you're no longer a member of BeautifulPeople.com. Are you worth anything anymore? How can you know you're beautiful unless other people tell you so?

It's not the site's fault, of course. It had to maintain its standards as the last bastion of the Certifiedly Attractive on the internet. In the words of site founder Robert Hintze,

"As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld. Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded."

So even as you languish in exile, you have hope. Because there is still a place for your people - or the people you used to be, at any rate - where beautiful people roam, unmenaced by the fatties, the plain, the uncoordinated and the unprimped. One day, you will get back into paradise - if you have to starve, purge or cardio yourself to death to do it.