Darth Vader, Father of the Year

Whilst searching for an appropriate birthday present for a two-year-old, I came across the book "Darth Vader and Son" by Jeffrey Brown. 

Brown's delightful drawings feature Pa Vader trying his best to balance his Work-life responsibilities as parent to son Luke and lead oppressor of the rebels of the Empire.

I Hate Gaspar Noe

I derived this opinion from the obscene pedophile video he made for SebastiAn's "Love in Motion."

It was my original intent to post the song to my blog but after seeing the piece of sickening trash that passes for the official video, I refuse.

The video features a scantily clad, prepubescent child wearing devil horns and streaky mascara writhing around on her bed and the floor of her teddy-bear filled room.

Where were her parents? I don't know how they do things in the Netherlands (where the child is from) but this sort of thing would have Child Protective Services on your doorstep double quick in the States.

Gaspar makes disturbing films and tries to pass them off as "art." I don't really care what sort of drug-fueled shock and awe garbage he wants to make with adult actors but he should could be kept far away from children.

Seriously, why hasn't this vile wannabe Terry Richardson been arrested for this hideous monstrosity?

Hide. Your. Children.

Oh, Dear Lord!

It happened one night in Borja! 

At left, the original painting "Ecce Homo" by Elias Garcia Martinez painted on the wall of the church Santuario de Misericordia in Borja, Spain. 

At right, the down-home restoration efforts of what one official calls, "a neighboring octogenarian who acted spontaneously and without asking anyone's permission, although she meant well." 

Max Read of Gawker writes:

A couple of weeks ago, the Centro de Estudios Borjanos in Borja, Spain, received a donation from the granddaughter of 19th-century painter Elías García Martínez. The image on right is how it looked when the Centro went to check it out on August 6th after receiving the donation.Hmm.

There is plenty of opportunity here for a mature, sophisticated dialogue over the destruction of religious art however, after spending the last hour in hysterics, laughing until I wept, I think it best to to keep myself out of such discussions.

The commentary on El Pais' website was highly entertaining but one remark really hit home for me:

"Parece el cristo de alfa-centauro"                         ~ Francisco Javier Navarro  

(It looks like the Christ of Alpha Centauri)

Young Mathijsen Learns His Lesson

Let's watch as Tobias Mathijsen's 15-year-old brother learns a quick lesson about revenge.

Here we see him going through a series of emotions: shock, denial and finally, acceptance.

Oh Nee!

Paul Ryan, My Womb Would Like A Word

Dear Paul,

I need to have a word with you about your seemingly unhealthy obsession with my womb and what goes on inside it.

First, I would just like to point out that your Libertarian street cred and claims to be against government overreach into citizen's private lives goes right out the window when you start trying to legislate what certain private citizens (i.e. women) can and can't do with their reproductive organs.

It's also hard to believe that you really want to limit the power of the federal government when you have signed on as potential "first in line to the throne" should Mittens actually be chosen as the next president.

I often wonder why the people who whine the loudest about "big government" are usually running for a position within it. I'll save those musings for another post.

Anyway, lets get back to my ladybits. You've made it obvious that you see social programs as unsustainable and crippling to the economy.

Yes, I know you're legit. You worked at McDonald's once and eventually managed to become a millionaire (through marriage). If you as a white male with no uterus to speak of can do it, why not the rest of us? Amiright?

As a woman who bore a child at the tender age of 19 and had to raise that child alone, with no physical or financial help from the father, I can vouch for the saving grace of government assistance.

It was the very same social programs that you want to cut that helped me and my child to survive.

I don't know how you think young women with no higher education or life skills can make ends meet without some sort of societal support, but I would love to hear about your plan to "magic" their problems away.

Seriously, I would love to know how you plan to make minimum wage, unskilled labor jobs sufficient enough to cover the cost of rent, daycare, food, clothing and health insurance.

Because the real hard work for women begins not when she is carrying a non- cognizant, non-feeling, non-viable cluster of rapidly dividing cells, but instead when she gives birth.

Suddenly she is faced with the fact that she is unprepared financially, educationally and, in many cases, emotionally for the demands of motherhood. Single motherhood is a particularly cruel process as a woman has to bear the burden of meeting all the needs of two people while barely earning enough for one.

Perhaps you and Mittens have set up a fund to support the children you claim to care so much about? No? Well color me surprised.

I've also noticed that your tax plan would place a larger burden on those who can least afford it. Taxing the plebeians in this way will force them to tighten their belts and panic over how to pay for the basics of everyday life.

Taxing million or billionaires a little more would, at worst, force them to change to a cheaper brand of feed for their polo ponies and perhaps dismiss three of their five pool boys.

I think somehow progress and innovation would not grind to a halt if this were to occur.

I'll end this post with a quote from your favorite heroine, Ayn Rand:

An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).

Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?

Watch It Ginger!

This is the cover for the forthcoming album from the Irish band "Two Door Cinema Club."

I must give in to my baser command of English when I pose this sincere question: What the shit is this shit? 

You have a band made up of three, seemingly non-threatening waif types who write fantastic music that you can listen to over and over again and this is what gets put on the cover of their sophomore album? 

Is this what happens when you transfer pasty lads from the Emerald Isle to the rough streets of L.A. for a recording session? 

I guess the misogyny smog just floats in through a window and gets into everyone's brains.

The lead singer, a sweater-wearing ginger named Alex Trimble has an innocent baby face and his voice makes me imagine that he has a passion for trees and Hush Puppies loafers. He seems like the type who would bring you daisies from a field and ask politely if he could give you a peck on the cheek. 

What the hell were you thinking Trimble? 

This doesn't make the band look cool by the way, it makes them look like a group of douche canoes headed for Douchebag falls.

It's like they wanted to prove that they can, in fact, "get girls" but then they don't know what to do with them so they stick them through the ceiling and wire their crotches for electrical current.

Here we have a hanging vagina lamp and inexplicably, the album is called "Beacon." 

Why? 

Is the light from the glowing hooha there to draw in nerds like little moths and then zap them? 

To me it just looks like a woman being reduced to her reproductive parts and used as decoration. 

And then it gets worse:

This is the image for the single "Sleep Alone."

A woman bound and almost naked on the floor.

To me it looks like she is a powerless victim who might be facing all sorts of horrors, like rape.

I find this image repugnant and said as much in an email to the company that handles the band's U.S. press.

I don't know what the flip these guys were thinking but I hope there's a public outcry and they are compelled to do away with these images.

Until then, I won't be buying any more of the band's music.

Development and the Privileged Class

I am currently in a graduate studies program. My degree concentration is in International Policy and Conflict Resolution.

The amazing thing about my school is that the majority of the student body is international. In addition to getting an education from the publications and professors, my classmates often have first-hand experiences in a region we are a studying.

I have learned about the Arab Spring from a Cairene who was in Tahrir Square when the revolution began. My close friend from Angola has taught me about the down side of foreign direct investment in his country when coupled with government corruption. My friend from Palestine had two of his brothers murdered by IDF soldiers and he still desires peace with the Israelis.

These students have made my educational experience that much richer.

The cost of my private institution means that the students, no matter their home country, usually come from a privileged background. Unfortunately, many of them are lacking insight into "how the other half lives." This isn't always the case but there is an undercurrent of elitism that remains in the classroom.

One need not have lived in abject poverty in order desire its eradication or to have a modicum of compassion. However, a life of relative ease coupled with youth and inexperience sometimes causes a frightening lack of concern for vulnerable and exploited populations.

This might be merely unfortunate in a student of finance or business but with students of public policy (who will very likely be crafting policy in the future) it is appalling.

I have heard fellow students make excuses for development models that devastate local populations by forcing them into a life of abject poverty and servitude.

"Well, at least the sweatshop gives these women a option other than prostitution," they might say.

The false dilemma seems to be a popular go-to fallacy.

Today, our instructor asked if it was fair for the economic system to assume that because no one was being forced to work in a sweatshop, that they had entered into that job freely, that that made it okay.

Remarkably, some people seemed to think that this sort of work was better than "nothing."

We watched a video on women in Bangladesh who work for 12-14 hours a day for 8 cents an hour in the smothering heat of a factory overseen by men who may hit them when they "slack off."

I'd like to think some of my classmates rethought their original positions after that.

Some of them still reasoned that wage increase would fuel mass unemployment, drive businesses to other markets or kill innovation and investment.

Happily, none of them seemed to object to having a fan installed in the factory to circulate the stifling air- so I guess there's that.

I will now insult the reader's intelligence by pointing out that the people thinking this way are the ones who will always profit from the situation. Neither they or anyone they know personally will ever have to work in these conditions.

Noticeably absent from our debate were any actual sweatshop workers. I assume if they had been present they wouldn't have shocked me by confessing to an enjoyment of being abused and shat on by powerful foreign multinational corporations.

Sweatshops do not empower future generations or allow for the formation of a middle class. They keep people in a constant and lasting state of poverty.

Heaven forbid one of these workers should become incapacitated and unable to ever work again. There is no health coverage or unemployment program to take care of ill and injured. There are also countless workers to replace the ones that have been rendered "useless."

The lack of ethical conviction in some of my fellow students kills me.

So many people are willing to shrug and say that some sacrifice is necessary for capitalism to thrive. As long as said sacrifice stays abstract and doesn't hit too close to home, it's perfectly acceptable.

Soon the Fall semester will begin and a whole new crop of students will appear. Some of them will continue to embrace and defend the same tropes that have allowed for some of the worst abuses against our fellow human beings.

Inevitably, several of them will try to get away with this sort of crap in one of my classes.

Heaven help them.

Another Reason I Love New Zealand: The All Blacks Haka