DAMN YOU 2020 (RIP Eddie Van Halen)

GODDAMN YOU 2020 WITH ALL THIS CELEBRITY DEATH, MAKING 2016 LOOK LIKE A PARTY RIGHT NOW.

No. No no no. I saw the news while wrapping up things at work this afternoon. Eddie Van Halen died of cancer today (via Stephen Thompson at NPR). NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

In a band known for its instability — due in part to a rotating cast of lead singers that most notably includes David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar — Eddie Van Halen and his brother, Alex, remained constants, appearing on 12 studio albums that reached across five decades and sold tens of millions of copies.

No matter the singer, Eddie Van Halen's high-flying guitar sound — heavy on tapping, with both hands on the neck of the instrument — was deeply influential, but also hard to imitate. He grew up obsessed with Eric Clapton, only to himself become a lodestar for generations of guitarists.

To explain how hard this hits: Dudes, I am a wild white boy who grew up in the mean streets of suburbia, off the shores of the Gulf Coast in North Pinellas County, where 98 Rock was our oracle and hard blistering guitar noises our tonic.

I am not exaggerating to say in my day, in that place, the bands you listened to were Led Zeppelin and Van Halen. The Tampa Bay area was/still is a heavy metal Mecca. Half the garages between Palm Harbor to Gulfport had 15-year-olds teaching themselves "Eruption."

My teen years was spent listening to that music, between Halen and Hendrix and Zeppelin and AC/DC (and also Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles, U2, the Police, the Hooters (yes, they were a band)... I have diverse taste). Driving back and forth on Gulf-to-Bay, windows down, blasting "Panama" or "Everybody Wants Some!" Well, okay, I didn't cruise all that often, but I knew guys and gals who did.

Christ. CHRIST GOD NO. This has been a shitty year for celebrity deaths just like 2016 and now I'm getting sick just thinking of the similarities...

In the meantime, I need to regroup. I was planning on a Bruce Springsteen album ranking this month but now, forget it, I gotta give my respects to Van Halen... (breaks out the CD collection) Huge heads up: I may be one of the few people who ranks Women and Children First as the band's best album.

I leave you with this legacy of the Van Halen juggernaut:

Whose side did you take, Halen or Roth? A shibboleth for a generation. I took the diplomatic approach: I bought and listened to Van Hagar (5150 and OU812) and Roth (Eat Em and Smile and Skyscraper). I have no idea what Van Halen was doing from Balance onward, but I ended up siding with the band. 

Oh crap, just watching that Airheads clip... Lemmy died a while back. Oh GOD HAROLD RAMIS DIED TOO. DAMMIT I'M CRYING HERE.

Fake News Is Part of the Problem. But REAL News Still Looked The Other Way While the Crime of the Century Took Place

I went to University of Florida for my Journalism degree, and while it's a Top 10 program, it's not as prestigious as Columbia's.

I just note this because the Columbia Journalism Review came out with a devastating report on mainstream media's failures during the 2016 Elections:

We agree that fake news and misinformation are real problems that deserve serious attention. We also agree that social media and other online technologies have contributed to deep-seated problems in democratic discourse such as increasing polarization and erosion of support for traditional sources of authority. Nonetheless, we believe that the volume of reporting around fake news, and the role of tech companies in disseminating those falsehoods, is both disproportionate to its likely influence in the outcome of the election and diverts attention from the culpability of the mainstream media itself...

...A longer and more detailed report by the same researchers shows that by any reasonable metric—including Facebook or Twitter shares, but also referrals from other media sites, number of published stories, etc.—the media ecosystem remains dominated by conventional (and mostly left-of-center) sources such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, HuffPost, CNN, and Politico.

Given the attention these very same news outlets have lavished, post-election, on fake news shared via social media, it may come as a surprise that they themselves dominated social media traffic. While it may have been the case that the 20 most-shared fake news stories narrowly outperformed the 20 most-shared “real news” stories, the overall volume of stories produced by major newsrooms vastly outnumbers fake news.

According to the same report, “The Washington Post produced more than 50,000 stories over the 18-month period, while The New York Times, CNN, and Huffington Post each published more than 30,000 stories...” 

...(The research team) found roughly four times as many Clinton-related sentences that described scandals as opposed to policies, whereas Trump-related sentences were one-and-a-half times as likely to be about policy as scandal. Given the sheer number of scandals in which Trump was implicated—sexual assault; the Trump Foundation; Trump University; redlining in his real-estate developments; insulting a Gold Star family; numerous instances of racist, misogynist, and otherwise offensive speech—it is striking that the media devoted more attention to his policies than to his personal failings. Even more striking, the various Clinton-related email scandals—her use of a private email server while secretary of state, as well as the DNC and John Podesta hacks—accounted for more sentences than all of Trump’s scandals combined (65,000 vs. 40,000) and more than twice as many as were devoted to all of her policy positions...

In other words, the mainstream media - the Beltway pundits that dominate the political discourse - flipped the real world. They focused more on Hillary's "scandals" - which turned out to be nothingburgers, inflated to inflame the voters against her - than on her policy positions to where I guarantee the average voter didn't even know what her policies were. They focused on trump's "policies" - which was BUILD A WALL, Start a TRADE WAR with China, and Shut Down NATO - while ignoring trump's failures, financial scandals, and sexual assaults.

In short: Hillary got all the bad press, trump got all the good press.

Go fuck yourselves, mainstream media.

What we're seeing in hindsight - looking back at how the traditional press handled themselves between covering Hillary vs. trump - is growing evidence that media bias played a role.

It's also telling, as an aside, that a lot of the male media pundits who displayed that bias - Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, and obviously most of the jerks at Fox Not-News - are turning out to be sexual harassers and misogynists.

They made it easier for trump - one of their own - to campaign against a woman who dared challenged their personal narratives of how women should be treated. Let's be honest: going back to 1992 when her husband Bill ran for President, there was more outrage aimed at HER than at Bill.

It makes me wonder what it will take for a woman candidate to get serious and respectful treatment from the Fourth Estate, ever. This is disgusting. And this is why we've got sexual predators in the highest levels of political office now.

Seriously, mainstream media, go fuck yourselves and die in a collective fire. We've got some wildfires consuming California right now that none of you are reporting on, that ought to do the trick.

Drowned In Moonlight: RIP Carrie Fisher

“Anyway, George comes up to me the first day of filming and he takes on look at the dress and says, 'You can't wear a bra under that dress.'

So, I say, 'Okay, I'll bite. Why?'

And he says, 'Because... there's no underwear in space.'

I promise you this is true, and he says it with such conviction too! Like he had been to space and looked around and he didn't see any bras or panties or briefs anywhere.

Now, George came to my show when it was in Berkeley. He came backstage and explained why you can't wear your brassiere in other galaxies, and I have a sense you will be going to outer space very soon, so here's why you cannot wear your brassiere, per George. So, what happens is you go to space and you become weightless. So far so good, right? But then your body expands??? But your bra doesn't- so you get strangled by your own bra. Now I think that this would make a fantastic obit- so I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.”

- Carrie Fisher

"Somebody has to save our skins!"

I wrote this bit for TV Tropes' Awesome page for A New Hope: "In that one moment, she utterly demolishes the Damsel In Distress image in favor of being an Action Girl equally participating in her own rescue." Someone's added to it since then, but this part is still up and I'm particularly proud of it.

I already wrote about how bad this year's been for celebrity deaths - oh man, I don't even have time or room to cry over the loss of Richard Adams, author of Watership Down - but I swear to the Old Gods and the New that 2016 should crawl off into a dumpster and fucking set itself on fire. If this year were truly anthropomorphized as a human being, I would be repeatedly punching him in the balls without mercy or regret.

My nephews and I got to see Carrie Fisher speak at the Tampa Bay Comic Con in 2015. She was witty, acerbic, doting over her puppy that she took everywhere with her.

I know that we can't associate the character with the actor, that Leia is fictional to where Carrie Fisher was real. But I'm a sci-fi geek. I grew up to Star Wars, associated to that franchise in a way I haven't related to anything else (maybe X-Files, but not with this level of love or sincerity). In a way, this is Leia dying, at a time when the full epic is still under production and we're waiting on Episode VIII (oh GOD is THAT going to create a wave of tears) and we just saw Leia show up in CGI (kinda painfully, because you could tell it was CGI and not Carrie in excellent de-aging makeup) in Rogue One (and I am tempted to write about that given its cultural and political immediacy).

Princess, Senator, General... Leia was the Rebellion against the Empire, against the darkness of the Sith and the galactic fascism it all represented.

And now she's gone. Leia's gone. Carrie Fisher died today.

/stands up

The Fight Continues. This war isn't over until every soul is free.

I Am One With the Force, And the Force Is With Me.

"Hope." - the final line in Rogue One

Addendum: posting again some of the photos I got of Carrie Fisher at the comic con. I apologize but three of them were shaky thus blurry.

A Saturnalian Wish List for the Darkest Year Yet: Damn You 2016

This is indeed a disturbing universe. - Maggie Simpson

Facing once again the nightmare of insufferable Christianist bullies who won't give heathens the right to celebrate Saturnalia as the Romans intended, it's left to me to try and plead to the Powers That Be to grant me these boons and set right what once went wrong...

1) I pray to Saturn, Time Lord with a Blue Box, that the incoming train wreck that is the Trump Administration doesn't f-cking blow up the planet any time soon, or ever for that matter.

2) I pray to the Old Gods and the New, that the incoming train wreck that is the Trump Administration only causes damage to their own, to the 62 million morons to willingly voted for a goddamn racist sexist con artist of a candidate all because he stirred up their unjustified fears and unwarranted outrage. If there is ANY moral justice in this universe - sadly, there isn't - the ones who voted for this shitgibbon should be the only ones who pay the price.

3) I pray to the One True Goddess Belldandy that the incoming train wreck that is the Trump Administration is so vile in its treatment of people, so inept in its avoidance of facts, so corrupt in its greed that finally - FINALLY - the Republican Party collapses into its goddamn grave at last, and that EVERYBODY wakes up to the realization that the Randian Utopian Fantasy of the Far Right NEEDS BE avoided for the next ten generations.

...

Yeah, I know. We're gonna be stuck with 62 million Trumpshirts dragging the United States back to 1850 and wrecking the entire planet while doing so. And that's the OPTIMISTIC view. Given Trump's insane mindset about nuclear weapons, we could be facing WORSE...

So with that all in mind, here's the last known Saturnalia any of us might celebrate before the Dark Times overwhelm us.

Resist. Find Hope.

IO SATURNALIA.

P.S. It wouldn't hurt, Saturn, if you used your time powers to go back to 1988 and slap some goddamn sense in me about better social skills heading into college...

Ron "Shepherd Book" Glass RIP

Okay, 2016 can officially go fucking die in a fire now.

Book: This should do.
Zoe: Preacher, don't the Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?
Book: Quite specific. It is, however, somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps.

We can't blame this on the hair.

2016 has just basically been an incredibly shitty year for celebrities and important people.

Angry Moderate Blues 2016 Edition

I was hoping we'd have a sane response to an insane election year.

Instead the madness will get worse as the LEAST QUALIFIED HUMAN BEING to ever run for President will take control of the steering wheel and drive this bus over the cliff.

I'm watching another replay of the disasters I've seen here in Florida since 2010 and 2014: where a depressed Democratic voter turnout - all because the Far Left were having their hissy fits about centrist candidates - led to the Republican candidates winning key elections leading to a goddamn Medicare Fraud in Rick Scott becoming governor and wrecking our state in some form or another. Only now I watched it happen to the entire nation as Trump - a far bigger and more destructive crook - wins on Election Night.

All I can do is look at the polling results and come to the unavoidable conclusion that too many of my fellow Whites are a bunch of racist sexist assholes who sided with a racist sexist asshole to be their President.

This election cycle, we as a nation did not answer to the better angels of our nature.

As a result, everything that Barack Obama did the last eight years gets erased.

His signature attempt to curb health care costs with Obamacare will die on Day One in Trumpland.

Obama's foreign policy efforts to end Iran's nuke deal will get shredded, most likely by a return of harsh sanctions that will drive Iran back into their WMD program, thus ensuring the neocons get their nice little invasion plan going for 2017. Depending on whether Trump gets to drop a nuke or three on Syria and Iraq to show them who's boss. Not to mention every early attempt to open Cuba back up will get shut down. In the end, EVERY effort Obama made to repair our nation's standing with our NATO and Asian allies will take a huge blow. We'll end up siding with Russia, God help us.

Obama's efforts to improve equal pay for women? Gone. Obama's efforts to protect women's health? Gone.

Obama's efforts to grant gays equal rights under the law when it comes to serving in the military, and with gay marriage? I am expecting the Far Right to be especially gleeful about bringing down the hammer on this.

Business regulations that Obama got signed? Everything gets deregulated on the Republican platform, remember?

All that effort to repair the economy, to bring down unemployment below 5 percent? I guarantee you the coming slash-and-burn Ryan budget is going to do exactly the same thing the slash-and-burn budgets in 1981 and 2001 did: ruin job growth and lead to MORE unemployment.

I had hoped, I wanted to believe, that every person who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 realized that his legacy was at stake with this election, that voting for Hillary at the least would have ensured Obama's administration would have a more lasting impact. Instead, voter turnout dropped. And some of it was more than just the Republicans' efforts at voter suppression. Despite all the early voting returns suggesting an uptick in overall turnout, instead we got a wet blanket.

Just enough Dems and Indys and Moderate-leaning Republicans were so put out by Hillary that they ignored the virtues of having her as President and ruined everything.

If there is any bright spot to this dark week, it's that certain things are now unavoidable.

For one thing: Trump will self-destruct. He always does.

The second thing: The Republicans will self-destruct. They are repeating the same mistakes they've made in 1981 and 2001 with their god-awful budget plans and deregulation desires. Each time they created massive economic upheaval, scandal, and self-immolation. There's a reason why I'm still sticking to the argument that the Republican Party is dead even though they've just won a major election. The Republicans are dead because they keep falling back onto the same zombie ideology that never worked, and they can't break free of that extremism to where they will evolve and survive. This will not really end well for the Republicans.

Sadly, here's why this week is one of the bleakest our nation's ever seen: The Republicans win the long game of securing the federal courts, especially with filling the Supreme Court vacancies. Mitch McConnell deserves a special place in Hell for his obstruction this past year, denying Obama's nomination for the vacancy, but McConnell got what he wanted: there is no chance now of the Democrats filling the top legal bench with Left-leaning jurists, and the Republicans can easily fill this ninth seat and any other vacancy that pops up during the next 2-4 years. Clarence Thomas is reportedly keen on retiring: Anthony Kennedy (key swing vote) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are both well past retirement age. Trump can well fill three seats maybe four if he makes it to one term, and do so in a way to affect the Court for another 30 years.

It pisses me off not enough Democratic or Moderate voters realized that was at stake.

It pisses me off that too many Americans eagerly backed a racist sexist con artist like Trump, seemingly out of sheer spite for the entire nation.

What the hell, America.

What.

The.

Hell.

/deep sorrowful mood swing

So, It Has Come To This. Game Seven As the End of the World...

From the Revelation of Buck O'Neill 8:1-6

1 And when Shoeless Joe had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in that cornfield in Iowa for about the space of half an hour.
2 And I saw the seven Fielders which stood before the Manager; and to them were given seven gloves.
3 And another player this one the Catcher came and stood at the plate, having a golden mask; and there was given unto him much body powder, that he should use the deodorant with the prayers of all saints upon the home plate which was before the Pitcher's mound.
4 And the chalky dust of the deodorant, which came with the prayers of the game attendees, ascended up before the Manager out of the Catcher's hand.
5 And the Catcher took the home plate, and covered it with dirt of the Wrigley Field, and cast it into the earth of Cleveland: and there were Voices on the PA, and Thunderings in the stands, and Lightnings in the upper decks, and an Earthquake felt all the way to San Antonio.
6 And the seven Fielders which had the seven gloves prepared themselves to ground out.

IT'S THE END TIMES PEOPLE.

I woke up this morning to radio chatterers talking about how rigged it all was, but I found out they weren't shilling Trump's latest campaign points about losing this election, they were talking about a rigged Game Six in the World Series so that the Chicago Cubs play the Cleveland Indians in a Game Seven.

See, Game Sevens are like GOLD in the pro leagues. Hockey, Basketball, Baseball... Anything that goes to the FINAL GAME and the FINAL OUT, where EVERYONE knows EVERYTHING is on the line... The TV and radio ratings for such a game are through the roof.

And the word is, the Cubs/Indians Series has been great for ratings.

That's because we're honest-to-God watching history. Of all the teams in pro baseball, these are some of the teams with the longest histories and the darkest, most painful jinxes.

It used to be the Boston Red Sox were the most jinxed team in sports - the infamous Curse of the Bambino - but after winning a Series in 2004 they're no longer the team to feel pity for.

No, that's been the Chicago Cubs - haven't been to a Series since 1945, haven't WON since 1908 (?) - and then the Cleveland Indians - haven't been since 1997, haven't won since 1948.

Cleveland's bad luck has been the source of one of the better baseball movies out there, Major League (avoid the sequels, the original was best).

Chicago Cubs' bad luck is so ingrained into the American culture nobody even remembers thinking of them as winners, despite all the fan love the Cubbies (and beloved park Wrigley Field) get.

Other baseball cities don't have this as bad, save for Washington DC home of the maligned (and long-gone) Senators (thrice!) and always-second-best Nationals (who used to be the sad-sack Expos).

So here we are for Game Seven. Between two jinxed teams, looking to break those jinxes. And only one of them can.

So here we are for the End Times.

Because this is how God rolls, son.

Did you think the Good Lord is gonna let Chicago Cubs or Cleveland Indians off the hook? End all that heartache? Granted, one of these teams' fanbase will carry on the Great Sorrow, but the energy and happiness released by the victors will drown out any Sorrow across the nation.

And God can be both merciful and cruel.

Look at the rest of the world. Wars and rumors of war. Plagues. Mayans refusing to build a new calendar to replace the one that ended back in 2012. Celebrities dying at an alarming rate. An American Presidential election that defies, no worse denies all sane reason.

This is it, people. THIS IS IT.

The Yellowstone Caldera is raring to go, I can feel it. I CAN FEEL IT.

Also, I think the Cubs are gonna win this in the 10th Inning, 4-3.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY LINKS MENUS

So I'm posting a morning blog about my broken bicycle and begging for funding to fix, and I notice my Links tabs over on the right are ALL GONE.

WHO THE HELL MESSED WITH MAH BLOG?

...

This is more serious than whoever leaked Trump's 1996 tax returns.

I will have my revenge.

In the meantime, can someone remind me how many freaking other sites I've been linking to?!

Update: know what? I'll just create a Tab for a page of Links. Should be easier to do.

Help a Blogger Out With His Bicycle

So I was cycling this morning for my exercise when the seat broke.

Yes, I am that much of a fatass. I *am* losing weight, though.

It's just now I can't do it with my bicycle. The seat needs replacing and the frame probably needs checking to make sure it didn't bend when I fell off into the mud.

So here I am, hat in hand, asking if the 8 regular readers of this blog might know about 50,000 people or so who can pass around the donation plate so I can afford finding Bicycle Repairman to fix my ride.

There's a PayPal button to the right, and any help would be most appreciated.

If you're very kind, you can visit my Writings tab and see what stories and books are on the market and then any purchases will lead to some earnings that will help with the bills.

Also wik, gotta get prepared for the upcoming annual NaNoWriMo, so to anybody out there joining in on the novel writing efforts, good luck!

It's Official. The 2016 Is Killing Everybody We Like (RIP Gene Wilder)

Whoa! WHOA! I was at a training session at Winter Haven Public Library when I saw a tweet go out. Gene Wilder died?!?!

DAMN YOU 2016!

I am serious about this now. This HAS to be The Rapture after all. Why else would people like Bowie and Prince and Abe Vigoda and Kenny Baker (R2! NOOOOOoooooo) and Harper Lee and George "Boys Are You Buzzing" Martin and... and... oh man, this year just SUCKS for celebrity deaths.

The only good thing to say about this is that at least Mr. Wilder is with Gilda Radner now. Otherwise this is sucks-to-be-us type of news.

And now, back to wars, floods, insane politics, and an unending cycle of Anthony Weiner d-ck pics. DAMMIT.

Added: from The Little Prince.

"...And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye..."