Month: October 2023

Speaking of Infowars…

…They’ve finally admitted to being what we always knew they were:

…which is to say: careless. They’re not really admitting to being far-right, whoever posted this is just citing the opening sentence of the NBC article it links to… but yeah, the author of this tweet wasn’t exactly paying much attention to what they were cutting and pasting. Or was it an automated thing and no one’s really to blame as such? I don’t know. But in any case, it’s nice to see Infowars post something honest for once… and it’s been up for a few weeks now, so there’s certainly no one at Infowars paying enough attention to their own Twitter feed to do anything about it…

The zombies are already here

Yeah… so this is the antivax mob’s latest bullshit. The real zombies, of course, are already among us: they’re the ones propagating this nonsense. Via Rolling Stone:

Virtually nothing in these comments is accurate, save for the fact that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Federal Communications Commission are conducting tests of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) on Oct. 4. (The Emergency Broadcast System, or EBS, was replaced by the EAS in 1997.) The wireless portion, to occur at approximately 2:20pm ET, “will be directed to all consumer cell phones,” and consist of a simple message: “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.” At most, it will be a mild surprise or annoyance. And it certainly won’t turn you into a zombie (which the often fatal Marbug virus doesn’t do in any case).
But for online conspiracists, the bland, bureaucratic announcement of such a test can only portend some kind of disaster — preferably the kind they can brace for while the rest of the clueless public remains unprepared. The exact nature of the Oct. 4 event depends on who is offering the prediction, but theories tend to focus on the alleged dangers of vaccines and 5G signals. 5G cellular networks, which telecoms began implementing in 2019, have been erroneously associated with Covid and vaccines by conspiracists throughout the pandemic; in the U.K. this past June, two anti-vaxxers were convicted of a criminal plot to destroy 5G towers they referred to as “enemy infrastructure.”

So. Much. Psychosis. The best thing is that they couldn’t even agree on what the conspiracy really was supposed to be, whether it was graphene oxide, RFID chips, or various viruses, just that Covid vaccines were involved and FEMA was behind whatever was supposed to happen…

…and then you have this dickhead who reckons it could still happen cos the Infowars clone he retweeted told him so. It’s like they want this to happen, really.

More poetry from Peterson

So one of Jordan Peterson’s tics
on his Twitter account
in recent times
has been writing his tweets like this
in short lines
as if they were poems
which I’ve no doubt he keeps doing
mainly because other people snipe at him for doing it
just like Nick Cave kept his moustache
to piss people off

But the content of his “poetry”
is arguably the real problem
particularly in this instance
the logic of which I do not understand
as if “trying new sexual experiences”
necessarily means doing them
with the same sex
rather than men and women
doing things with each other

Apparently in spring
a bitter old Canadian’s fancy
lightly turns to thoughts of men
doing dirty, dirty things
I can’t understand why
especially since I don’t think Jordan
wants new experiences of any sort
least of all sexual ones…
unless perhaps
large quantities of meat are involved
and if they are
I’d rather not know how

At any rate I think
I prefer his older stuff to his newer stuff
if this is indicative
D minus, come and see me after class

Art for art’s sake

Someone posted this on Mastodon:

…and I found it immensely amusing because I’ve actually kind of been in the latter situation:

I produced this at the ripe old age of “3yrs 5mths” per the tag at the bottom, which must make it from March or April 1978. Deteriorated over the years, obviously, but you can still get a sense of whatever the hell it was I was trying to do. My no doubt proud parents hung it up when I got home from kindergarten with it, where some family friends saw it when they visited:

“Oh, have you been investing in modern art?”
“No, the boy did that at kindergarten the other day.”
“…Oh.”

But the really funny thing is that, many years later, I was reading a book about 20th century and was kind of struck by one image that had a similar sort of… streaky aspect to the colours, I don’t know a better way to describe it, as what my picture did. I can’t remember what the actual artwork in question was now, but I did note that the effect was produced by a technique called decalcomania, and though it apparently goes back to the 1700s it gained new life in the middle of the last century thanks to the Surrealists. I can’t remember any more how I made my own masterpiece, but it must’ve been something like decalcomania. So there you go, I used a surrealist technique without even knowing it was one; not even being aware that you’re doing surrealism must be about as surrealist as you can get…

Whoops

The most surprising thing about this story is that Glinner still had a TV agent, given he hasn’t actually done anything for TV since 2017 and became more interested in other people’s genitalia… the agency in question, incidentally, also represents David Tennant, who earned Linehan’s opprobrium for, you know, being opposed to transphobia:

Oh. DEAR. Here’s what he had to say for himself the other day at an event attached to the Conservative Party Conference, after telling the attendees how hard it was to find anywhere that would let him express himself:

“I guess the other interesting thing that happened to me is I just lost my TV agent because I criticised David Tennant,” Linehan told the crowd.
In July, the Irish writer branded Tennant “disgusting, ignorant, reckless” after the Doctor Who star wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the words: “Leave trans kids alone you absolute freaks”.
Tennant did not respond to Linehan’s comments at the time, but has previously spoken about the importance of “fighting the fight” for LGBT+ rights.
Expanding on the claims he was dropped by Independent Talent, Black Books writer Linehan told the audience at the panel: “I only found this out later because I looked at the list of people Independent Talent represented.
“David Tennant was at the top, and he’s making slightly more money than me at the moment, so I had to go.”

You didn’t “criticise” him, you arseclown, you DEFAMED him. You accused him of committing an appalling crime without having, you know, evidence to back that claim up, and you made it in a country that has functioning libel laws. You’re damn lucky Tennant hasn’t sued you for the little you’ve still got. And, frankly, if I were a talent agency, I would also be more interested in representing someone with an ongoing and successful career over someone who’s frankly obscenely terrified by trans people to the point where his fucking wife and kids left him because of it. I mean, good grief, you don’t have to love all trans people or even like them… just don’t hate them all and say you hate trans people because you’re standing up for women. Like I said, the only surprise is that it took Linehan’s agent so long to drop him; I’d have thought they would’ve recognised years ago that he wasn’t exactly bringing home the bacon any more.

Action!

Behold one of the best photos I’ve ever seen:

Found on Tumblr many years ago. The timing of this is just magisterial, getting both the man and the dog running and both in a perfect running pose at exactly the same time. Bonus, of course, for the dog being a Hungarian Puli and therefore one of my favourite dog breeds; a Puli in motion is a marvellous thing in any case, but in this combination it’s even better.

And the hat is done

Oh, here’s one of my own photos found during this archival trawl:

June 2013, Killing Joke were playing in Sydney for the first time in a decade, and this was my first live encounter with them. I was, alas, between camera at the time, my trusty old Nikon Coolpix having died the year before and I still hadn’t invested in its replacement, so I was stuck using my rather shitty phone camera. The shots I got were, needless to say, inadequate at best, but I love this one anyway… cos someone down on the floor of the Metro near the stage was sufficiently moved for whatever reason to toss their hat into the air, and somehow I managed to press the button just in time to catch it while it was still airborne.

Harsh but fair

Given the recent allegations against Russell Brand…

…I just thought it was worth remembering that he’s always been a bit of a tit, and that includes the time when he was on the same side as me politically. Something about him, I don’t know what, made it hard for me to take him seriously as the political guru he evidently seemed to think he was during the ’10s; it felt like a grift then just as much as it does now that he’s taken a hard turn towards right-wing conspiracy bullshit. Never understood the appeal somehow.

Or maybe not

Going through the archives again tonight, I found this:

I no longer remember if I took this screenshot myself or if I just found it somewhere else, but whatever. The date stamp on the file is 10/04/2017 and the video had evidently already been up for a year by that point…

…and that there is a fresh screenshot I just took from this clown’s YT channel, a full eight years after it was originally posted. I don’t think it’s in much danger of being banned somehow. For what it may be worth…

…here’s one of Dave’s more recent videos. Do you recall the NWO being announced on the 18th of last month? Me neither. I feel like we’re not dealing with one of the Lord’s more accurate prophets here…