The World O' Crap Archive

Welcome to the Collected World O' Crap, a comprehensive library of posts from the original Salon Blog, and our successor site, world-o-crap.com (2006 to 2010).

Current posts can be found here.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Star Trek: “The Gibberish Initiative”

Captain’s Log:  We have begun scanning Townhall for signs of intelligent life.  So far, all results have proven negative, but Lt. Uhura reports that there’s a being with the unpronounceable name ofD’Souza (what is it with these aliens and their yen for inappropriate apostrophes?) who is attempting to contact the ship via a really crappy dial-up connection.
On screen, Lieutenant.
dinesh.JPG
Now that Barack Obama has pretty much wrapped up the nomination, it’s time to raise a question that lots of people have been talking about privately but not publicly. Is it possible that Michelle Obama is the force behind Barack Obama’s refusal to embrace traditional patriotic symbols? Could Obama’s wife be largely responsible for the candidate’s damaging associations with crackpot race-baiters like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Reverend Michael Pfleger? In sum, could Obama’s wife be a large part of his political problem?
Great.  More weird alien names.  What the hell’s a “Michelle?”
angelafistpump.jpg
Ooh.  She does look angry…
Obama himself seems, at least on the surface, relatively free of the kind of corrosive racial resentment that is so common among African American activists of our day. This resentment is especially puzzling as it often comes from people who, far from being victims, have actually enjoyed benefits and privileges that they would probably never get if they happened to be white.
Well, that just made no frigging sense.  Hey, anybody have a Universal Translator on them?
universal_translator.jpg
Good, thanks.  Try not to hold it like it’s your dick, Chekhov.  All right, run that last paragraph through and let’s see if we can figure out what this humanoid is trying to say…
Translating…
Obama seems to hate Whitey only half as much as most blacks, probably because he’s half white.  Lucky for him he’s got a touch of the tar brush, though, since black people get first pick of top universities and the best-paying jobs, and they get to cut to the head of the line at Space Mountain, and run red lights without getting tickets, and they can eat all the Frusen Gladje and nobody can say anything about it.
Ah.  Okay.  That’s what I thought he meant.
Consider the case of Michelle Obama. She was raised in a two-parent, middle-class family. She applied to one of America’s top universities, Princeton, and was admitted. Of this experience, Michelle says on the stump, “All my life I have confronted people who had a certain expectation of me. Every step of the way, there has been people telling me what I couldn’t do. When I applied to Princeton, they said: you can’t go there, your test scores aren’t high enough.”
Translating…
Low test scores didn’t stop George W. Bush from getting into Yale!  You know, Michelle, people might respect you more if you spent less time bitching about racism and more time oozing out the birth canal of a rich, politically-connected white woman.
Which is all very moving, except that her test scores weren’t high enough. Michelle Obama is part of the affirmative action generation of above-average but far-from-stellar performers who were granted preferential admission to America’s most elite institutions.
Translating…
You’re a quota baby who could barely pay off her student loans.  I’m a “scholar” at the Hoover Institution, and I write books for Regnery like, “What’s So Great About Christianity?” and “What’s So Great About America?” and “The Virtue of Prosperity,” where I prove the counterintuitive fact that having money in your pockets is better than lint!  Yeah, sure, each one is stuffed from cover to cover with pure, nitrogen-rich bullshit, but guess what?  Whitey pays through the nose for it!
And yet, amazingly, you don’t hear me whining about how unfair the system is.
Michelle notes that she graduated with honors in her major. Again, the problem is that her undergraduate thesis is on the web. You might expect that she wrote about Shakespeare’s sonnets or the political evolution of W.E.B. Du Bois. Well, no. Essentially Michelle Obama wrote about the problems of being a black woman at an Ivy League university.
Translating..
So Michelle wrote some tendentious boilerplate about black people fitting into white society, blah, blah, blah, and because of affirmative action, she got a passing grade.  Just the kind of thing you’d expect from a black liberal feminist who’s black.  See, the secret to real, earned success in American letters is to crank out shockingly original and transgressive material that is so contrarian you would never imagine it coming from the pen of a conservative with a sinecure at a right wing think tank.  Just take a gander at my ouevre:
Ronald Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader
Reagan Versus The Intellectuals
How Ronald Reagan Won The Cold War
The End of Racism
The Self-Esteem Hoax
We the Slaveowners
Two Cheers for Colonialism
10 Great Things About America
And then I throw my change-up…
10 Things To Celebrate:  Why I’m An Anti-Anti-American
Here is a typical passage: “By actually working with the Black lower class or within their communities as a result of their ideologies, a separationist may better understand the desparation of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight.”
Alas, the grammar is all wrong here. More than once, the tenses are garbled. People are ignorant “of” the plight of the lower class, not ignorant “to” their plight. And”desparation” should be spelled “desperation.”
Is it actually legal to grade someone’s paper twenty years after they’ve turned it in?
To wreak so much havoc on the English language in one sentence, without conveying anything of substance, is perhaps deserving of a prize. Is this what her professors were thinking when they granted her honors? Whatever the Obamorons say
…they clearly have no respect for the grandeur and majesty of their mother tongue, the stupid Obozos.
…let’s remember that that these are not mere typos; they reflect an estranged relationship to the English language. Moreover they appear not in an off-the-cuff transcript but in a thesis that is supposed to reflect the culmination of one’s college career.
Translating…
Perhaps it made a modicum of sense in the original Swahili.
Subsequently Michelle went on to further appointments and even managed to cash in big time on her skin color and marriage to Barack Obama. She was hired by the University of Chicago hospitals to run “programs for community relations, neighborhood outrecah, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity, and minority contracting.” Here her salary was $400,000 a year.
Just for failing the Paper Bag Test.  Wow.
One might expect that the reaction of someone who gets so many privileges to be grateful to a society that makes them possible. But no. Michelle Obama thinks that her very success is an example of white oppression. By a bizarre twist of logic, she converts “you’re not good enough, but we’ll take you anyway” into a message of “they said I wasn’t good enough, but I proved them wrong.”
Or perhaps like many minorities in this country, especially African-Americans, and particularly African-American women, she encountered closed doors, preconceptions, and outright prejudice and had to excel beyond the standards expected of white men in order to achieve a position of responsibility, and a salary commensurate with her professional duties.  Of course, that just proves she’s too dumb to take a job as a decorative blackamoor on Richard Mellon Scaife’s estate, grinding out 700-word encomiums to the blameless and alabaster ruling class.
Ordinarily these psychological peculiarities may be of little interest, except perhaps to a therapist.
Or someone who titles a column, “Michelle Obama’s Inferiority Complex.”
But Michelle now stands next to a man that may be elected president of the United States. Barack Obama wants everyone to “lay off” his wife. He doesn’t seem to realize that this is not a reasonable request concerning a woman who clearly influences him and who stands to have public influence in her own right. Moreover, for months the media has been laying off her precisely because she is his wife. Like Michelle, Obama seems to confuse preferential treatment with ill treatment.
Whereas if somebody smacked Dinesh upside the head, I’m sure his superior powers of ratiocination would permit him to eventually sort out the motive.
Of course we’ve had controversial first ladies in the White House before. The Obamas, however, aren’t there yet. Will Barack Obama be ultimately forced to distance himself not just from the Reverend Wright and the Reverend Pfleger but also from his own wife?
Translating…
Will I continue to get a paycheck for cut-and-pasting crap off the Internet and padding out the word count with grammar lessons and rhetorical questions?
All right, you can stow the Universal Translator, I’ve heard enough.  Let’s dust off and nuke the planet.  It’s the only way to be sure.

Posted by scott on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 7:43 pm.

9 Responses to “Star Trek: “The Gibberish Initiative””

Do you know I’ve actually met people who think Dinesh D’souza and Jonah Goldberg are good writers?
I can’t even imagine how that happens.
Oh, now, be fair. Dinesh D’Souza is so proud of America that he became a citizen when he was pushing forty, married to an american citizen, and working for the president.
After twenty five years of telling americans how to run the place.
I can’t believe you would compare that to Michelle Obama feeling out of place in a university where a current Supreme Court Justice (he put it on his resume, yo) helped get a ‘bas les gens noirs society started (thereby illustrating that his parents hadn’t explained a great deal to him about being southern italian outside of South Jersey).
I’m just glad William F. Buckley had time to repent of this piece of trash before he died.
Let’s dust off and nuke the planet. It’s the only way to be sure.
Aye-firmative.
Really? It’s “ignorance to”? Holy shit, that’s some weapons-grade monocle-fondling right there. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who achieved that level of pedantry, and I know scads of pedants. Even English professors of my acquaintance have never said “ignorance to”. Dinesh, buddy, try the decaf.
neighborhood outrecah
pot calling kettle, stat
So, the guy came to America through a Rotary International program, and he’s pissy about special treatment for others?
Huh. Coincidence, I’m sure.
Okay, so the First Lady Collegiate Writing Competition goes, once again, to Eleanor Roosevelt, and, unfortunately, Ol’ Blue Eyes isn’t still around to compare Michelle’s fellatio talents to Nancy Reagan’s, so let’s just move on to the Laura Bush road race course, shall we?
“…let’s remember that that these are not mere typos; they reflect an estranged relationship to the English language.”
That would work better as “relationship with.”
’nuff said.
Projecting like crazy as usual.
“there has been people”
Goodness me, Michelle Obama learned grammar with GWB!

Attack Of The The Eye-Babies

Over at his blog today, Michael Medved reminds us all that guns are forkillin’, and marriage is for baby-makin‘…
Marital Intercourse: Uniquely Intimate, Uniquely SignificantThe act of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman is the only human interaction capable of producing offspring, and therefore enjoys recognition in every culture as the most significant form of intimacy. Gay couples, as well as heterosexual partners, may engage in other erotic contact but this affection can’t count as consequential or as serious as intercourse.
When married people hump, they mean business!
Society and law rightly give unique weight to this one form of physical contact…
…while withholding government sanction for other forms of physical contact such as Dutch Rubs, Wet Willies, and spontaneous games of “Got Your Nose!”
…and pay less attention to other forms of affection or pleasure.
Otherwise, women would marry their vibrators, and men like Michael would have no choice but to court a box turtle or a beagle.
What, after all, does it mean to “consummate” a same sex marriage?
Not that I’m an expert, but this sounds an awful like an opening line from a Falcon Studios video, such as Dare, or Greased
Michael Medved:  I tell you, Eryk, this whole gay marriage thing has me so confused…I mean, how would two guys even consummate a marriage?
Eryk Eberhard-Faber:  Well I’m glad you asked me that, Michael — Oh, hang on, someone’s at the door…Hey, it’s 9 guys named Chad!  What a coincidence!  C’mon in, fellas, Mike and I were just talking…
We know how to define “virgin” in heterosexual terms…

…but what, exactly, does that designation mean for lesbians or gay males?
And most important of all, how do we preserve our sons’ and daughters’ ocular virginity?!  Via TBogg:
…a student at Pensacola who withdrew in 1997, was disciplined for what is known on the campus as “optical intercourse” — staring too intently into the eyes of a member of the opposite sex. This is also referred to as “making eye babies.”
“Don’t look at it, Marion!  Whatever you do, keep your eyes shut!  Don’t look–!


Awww, crap!

Posted by scott on June 27th, 2008

Friday Beast Blogging: The Yeah, Yeah, We’ve All Got Problems Edition

I’m off for a consultation with a doctor at the Cedars-Sinai Pain Center to see what, if anything, can be done about my herniated disc, and it’s wholly-owned subsidiary, “Ouch!”  I hope to be back later today, but in the meantime, here’s some cat pictures.
Riley:
I can’t stop thinking about Pepsi…!  Why?  WHY?!
And Moondoggie:
Phew, what a day!  I’m too tired to even lick my own junk…
Hey…Can you put that camera down and help a brother out?


Posted by scott on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 11:09 am.

11 Responses to “Friday Beast Blogging: The Yeah, Yeah, We’ve All Got Problems Edition”

Riley is a complete cat slut, isn’t he?
(That could be the title of a book. The Complete Cat Slut: Everything You Wish You Didn’t Have to Know about Your Feline Friend)
Yikes! Kitty Porn!
Clearly I meant Moondoggie! My brain is still dysfunctional.
Is that balls? Do cats have balls like that? I’ve only ever had girl or fixed-boy cats.
To be honest, I have no idea what that is, but I do know…I ain’t getting close enough to find out.
And yes, while Moondoggie is gentle, loving, and a thorough-going goofball good for hours and hours of enjoyment, if there was one thing I could change about him, it would be his tendency to flop onto his back and air out the jewels. Especially when company is over.
Well, with a set like that, who can blame him for wanting to show off! My goodness!
Hope you feel better soon, Scott – though I must say you have been on quite a roll. I’m not sure I want to lose the effects of whatever it is that you’re on!
Good luck, Scott. And pet the kitties for me, provided you can bend over.
We saw the Atlanta World of Coca-Cola today, btw. I too can’t stop thinking about Pepsi, I swear to god there’s not a drop of it in the city limits. Which is fine for me as a Tab drinker, but still weird. If you get the chance to go to the World of Coca-Cola, don’t. It’s creepy. The only actual appeal is the tasting room, where I sampled a beverage flavored with candied pine nuts today. It is apparently popular in Africa. They had four taps serving that, and only one in the whole joint offering Tab. I feel so persecuted. Someone get Janet Folger and Joseph Farrah on the line so I can get pointers on being poutraged…
The Monterey Bay Aquarium was the same way — 90 minutes just to get in the door on a weekday morning. Definitely worth the wait, though. Oddly, the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans was a piscine ghost town — and this was a year before Katrina.
As for the World of Coke, there’s not a chance in hell I would ever visit it, mainly because I never touch the stuff, but partly because — to be honest — Tab creeps me out. Nothing against the beverage per se, but it reminds me of my mother, who basically lived on Tab and amphetamines, and spent most of my childhood vibrating like a tuning fork.
And when Mary gets home I’ll subcontract her to deliver your pettings to the kitties. I assume you wouldn’t object to a little bit of cronyism under the circumstances…?
hope your back is better
as for moondoggie — wouldnt you lie like that if you could get away with it
Nah, can’t complain. Iala has been abandoned till Sunday, so we’ve been calling the answering machine and talking at it to her. My partner is amazingly tolerant of Teh Silly.
MBay has actually never been that bad when we’ve been there, weird. But as members (whoohoo!) we get to use the members entrance to this one, which means no line. Or did yesterday anyway. The weird thing about the Georgia Aquarium is they make you buy tickets for a specific hour entrance–if you bought tickets for noon to one, you ain’t gettin’ in early. Members can turn up without reservations and be allowed in whenever. That, combined with the two days’ worth of admission and the discount on the behind-the-scenes tour made it worthwhile even though we’re unlikely to ever be back.
As to the World of Coke, I dunno. My beloved and passed on grandmother used to live on the stuff too, so I have fonder memories. The creepiest thing (aside from the weird-ass movie they showed us about what goes on inside a Coke machine) was actually the sense that you were going to run into James Lileks at any moment.

Invasion Of The Snatchless Bodies

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