When LJ and Politics collide!

This is an online quiz, by the Pew folks, designed to tell you what "group" you fall into.

Go ahead, read it. It's written worse than lots of LJ memes. The questions are a series of false dichotomies. They're not opposites, and they're not more than caricatures of the positions they're supposed to be determining.

It's sad, really. Why pay people to do that when you can have random LJers make up better ones for free?

And tomorrow: Rabble Rousing and more about False Dichotomies. Really.

Tags: Politics, Links, Quizzes, The Internets, LJ

Notes on a day: In Which Our Hero Becomes What He Hates

I can't keep myself from constantly realizing how utterly pointless my job really is. I don't even enjoy it that much, which would let me ignore it. I'm a computer interface half the time, and the rest I'm straightening crap. It's nothing that NEEDS me there to do. I sell people crappy, crippled CDs from an ogliarchy of media companies. The only reason I even have the job is because it'd be nearly impossible to program a computer to do all the various stuff I have to do, there's too much stuff that's simple for people, but really pretty hard. Because it was designed for and by people. But it's really, really, really mind-numbingly pointless.

And there's a limit to how much I can listen to random well off white chick singer bitching about her love life. Thanks to in-store music, I have long passed it.

Also, I was amused by this lady who came in and was buying Star Wars for her kid, and was concerned about how violent it was, but said "at least there's not any sex in it." Her kid was seven. Until kids hit puberty, mostly, they don't care about sex. It's mushy stuff. It's boring weird grownup obsession stuff, kissing and all that. Or it's gross. It's not interesting or anything. And after puberty? Kids are inventive, there's plenty of places they can find sex stuff. Somehow, I doubt seeing boobies is going to make their kids turn into evil little rapscallions. Besides, I'd rather teenagers were having sex instead of going out and beating the crap out of each other, or killing people. I mean, really, you would assume that most parents would hope their kids are going to eventually have sex, and I would think most parents would hope their kids aren't ever going to have to kill anyone. So why is violence worse than sex? I can't figure it out, other than the fact that we have a bunch of body-hating religious zealots in this country, who have media power far disproportionate to their numbers and keep making a big deal out of sex. And if you keep repeating "sex is bad!" long enough, people will sometimes start to think it, even if there's no bloody reason to. "Protecting children!" Protecting them from boobies and sex. Yes. Right. Sure. Nothing more important to protect them from, like, say, parental zealots who're going to leave their kids screwed up for life?
I'm still not actually DOING anything, though. I'm just another lazy consumerist American who can't be bothered to do anything but bitch about stuff. I'm just like the people I like to bitch about.

Tags: Me, Mindscribbles, Sex, Life, The Universe, and Everything

I wish I'd written this

A post, over on Hullabaloo, by Digby, about the separation of church and state.

It contained a link to this little flash from USA today, with the results of a poll about religion. Now, if you've listened to me before, you know polls aren't all that trustworthy, but it's still kind of surprising. Especially when you add in this poll at religoustolerance.org (scroll down a bit), asking people if they'd vote for an otherwise qualified candidate for office if they were, for example, a woman, black, Muslim, gay, or atheist. I'll let you guess which polled lowest.

Discuss among yourselves.

Tags: Politics, Mindscribbles, Religion, The Internets

This is why parody is dead

Because then people go and do things even sillier than you could parody them doing.

Such as this, the Bush Fish.

I'm speechless, really. Partly because I'm out of breath from laughing so hard. This is so dumb on so many levels. Slacktivist gets into a few of them, mostly from the more religious side. I mean, besides the whole "Bush was appointed by God" thing, and the total ignorance of their own religious dictates, there's the staggeringly hilarious symbolism. Fish are symbolic of many things. Quite a few of them are rather baudy. And reproductive. And then with BUSH in big letters on it, it's hilarious on many levels. And also, the fish looks like it's streaming blood. I don't know if it's supposed to be a shark, or if it's been attacked, or what.

And yes, their website is funny in its own regard.

Tags: Politics, Links, The Internets, Religion, Language, Nifty Stuff

Julie

I would just like to state that Amtrak has a very good voice recognition setup and well executed computer assisted phone menu program. It works well, and understands people. Why they don't license it to other companies, I don't know.

Tags: Nifty Stuff