← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 19761 | Posts: 13 | Started: 2005-08-21
2005-08-21 17:34 | User Profile
The first is that - after years of not being able to access the damn thing - suddenly my version of Windows will let me view [U]the eXile[/U].
Hey, don't look at [I]me[/I], I dunno what changed allofasudden. For about four years, in order to read a Matt Taibbi or War Nerd column, I had to try to either read Taibbi in the NY Press or hope somebody had mirrored/copied Brecher's column. Anytime I typed in the eXile's url, either I'd get a blank screen, or my system would freeze up and require a reboot - it was usually the second - all due to that damned .ru extension which Windows (or my version of it, anyway) wouldn't frigging support. I just gave up trying altogether about a year-and-a-half ago.
Anyhow I tried it again a few days ago, ready as usual for nothing at all to happen - or at best hearing that 'boop!' sound that accompanies all pop-up "error" messages - when wah-[B]lah[/B]! Whatever changed - and it hadda be them, not me - suddenly I can finally [I]see[/I] this website.
Need I add this is the [U]greatest goddamn 'newspaper' printed in English today[/U]? Almost every single article is about war, hookers, booze, violent crime, abusing prescription drugs, stupid Amerikaner dogs....and usually a combination of all six!
The [B]second[/B] thing I have to get off my chest is that today, quite by accident, I was stumbling via remote control through that swath of cable stations I almost always avoid at all costs, meaning that clump of fake-educational/lifestyle channels....the various History/Travel/Health networks....when I encountered what is by far [B]the[/B] most profoundly grotesque, unnerving and depressing staton I have ever come across (having nothing to do with Iraq, immigration, ozone depletion, peak oil, or ZOG in any way): the Discovery Health Channel.
Ye Gods! And here I thought E! was as bad as television could possibly get!
Here's a channel that I [I]guess [/I] is supposed to cheer you up by focusing entirely on people with such [U]extreme[/U] medical problems that people with colostomy bags and flippers instead of arms would feel thankful for their good fortune. The 'day' begins with a special on Doomed Celebrities (I don't remember the show's actual name)...today's d.c. was Dudley Moore who died of a rare brain condition so ghastly that you watch it feeling prickly cold sweat forming on your scalp. I think it was called PSP, and - as opposed to Alzheimer's - involves the slow death of individual brain cells, slowly at first but then gaining in rapidity, that robs you of first the ability to focus on text....then the ability to speak coherently....then the ability to maintain your balance while walking...then the ability to move in any way. But here's the most godawful part: [I]your ability to think and reason is completely unimpaired.[/I] Which means that you KNOW what's happening to you at all times, but you can't speak or read or write or communicate or move in [B]any [/B] way: you can't even commit suicide. You can only wait for the inevitable death of those brain cells that shut down your ability to aspirate...and even as you die, you know what's happening, completely aware of your utter helplessness to [I]do anything [/I] about it (unless you're mercifully in a coma of some kind). And medical science knows [I]nothing [/I] about this disease. They [I]think[/I] it might be somehow genetic but so farr have no concrete evidence to base it on....one day it manifests out of the blue...and there's no treatment, no cure, no therapy, no common thread even to its victims - not even any hope that your death might provide any sort of a clue to researchers, who are completely baffled. Supposedly it strikes one out of every 100,000 people, with no presage or warning whatsoever.
Holy Mother of God...... Dudley Moore died with an estate of over $500 million dollars (I was stunned that he was that wealthy!) and if HE couldn't buy himself any way out of it, nobody can. Up until I watched this show, I'd idly assumed the one way I never wanted to die was...I dunno...burned in a fire; eaten alive by cannibals; bone-marrow cancer; any number of conventonally horrible fates. Then I turned on the tv this morning and watched this guy's last-ever public utterance, an almost-incoherent (you had to read the subtitles to understand him) "I know I am trapped in this body and I cannot get out."
And just as I'm trying to shake off the diarrhea-shiver of horror coursing down my spine, a picture-in-picture window appears in the lower left-hand corner of the screen and I hear this voice-over: "It's no laughing matter: see the daily struggle of MEN WITH BREASTS, next on Discovery Health...and later, a housewife desperately seeks a cure for her 200 POUND TUMOR."
These are [I]the actual names of the shows[/I]: MEN WITH BREASTS and 200 POUND TUMOR!!!
Later on, we are promised these sorts of program descriptions: "Knife attack victims; mountain lion mauling; boating mishaps; a man dies waiting for a liver transplant; cardiac arrest on a medevac; a man has his lost fingers replaced with his toes"; and on and on....24 hours a day of this stuff! I could barely get through the Dudley Moore thing, and I'm being pitched so much more of this Grand Guignol awfulness, each new one worse than the one before it, that I'm dipping my fingers in my coffee and flicking them at the screen, shoutring "[I]The power of Christ compels you...the power of Christ [U]compels[/U] you...![/I]"
Ghaaaaa - I'll never complain about LAW AND ORDER or THE WEST WING, [I]ever again.[/I] Just...just make the 200 pound tumor go away, [U]please[/U]....
2005-08-21 18:23 | User Profile
Your comp was possesed by ZOG -- did it come from the manufacturer with all the web content filtering installed?
Did you catch this article: [url]http://www.exile.ru/2005-March-25/feature_story.html[/url]
2005-08-22 05:55 | User Profile
That's what I can't figure out; it's been the same computer all along. I did add a bunch of MS 'conflict-resolving' patches last year, though, so that might be it.
Yeah, I've been catching up on Mark Ames, albeit in small doses. Nobody makes me as glad to be a ****ed-up American living under The Reign of Bush as he does, with his gray, washed-out, Kafkaesque slice-of-"life" episodes of pill-popping and whore-chasing in the Land o' Lenin. Have you read his charming reminiscence of life as an 8-year-old pothead kleptomaniac in San Jose?
[url]http://www.exile.ru/2004-September-04/walk_on_the_suburban_side.html[/url]
2005-08-22 11:55 | User Profile
Just think, thereââ¬â¢s a small crew/group of people running around the country searching for people whose lives are coming to a gruesome ending or have been disfigured in some manner. While the subjects are spending their last days in mourning or coming to grips with their life altering matter that has just stricken them, that crew is [I]rubbing its hands together with glee [/I] as they line their pockets with TV deals of their coverage. The TV executives [I]rub their hands together [/I] over advertising revenue for such coverage of suffering. The thought of people getting rich off others misfortunes makes me sick; the bastards. :furious:
2005-08-22 12:08 | User Profile
This is funny, and they update it on occasion:
[url]http://www.exile.ru/field_guide.html[/url]
2005-08-22 12:34 | User Profile
Hey, I wouldn't mind a [u]sitcom[/u] called 200 POUND TUMOR, or MEN WITH BREASTS. But a one-shot documentary special? Too grotesque.
And you're right....justifying this type of carny-freak 'entertainment' by concealing it under the guise of public-service "health" programming is the height of audacity. Or the nadir, in this case.
2005-08-22 13:26 | User Profile
IR, you're report on Dudley Moore made me think that euthanasia is not such a bad thing after all.
2005-08-22 15:55 | User Profile
I can't believe anyone would read that [I]stuff[/I] more than once. If Mark Ames isn't a Jew, he should be.
2005-08-23 15:58 | User Profile
Holy cow - Bardamu, you are [I]awesome[/I]. Excellent Jewish radar!
In the interests of disclosure, I should note that I am a Jew with Catholic blood. I spent more time as a child in various houses of worship than most people. As a Jew I went first to a Reform synagogue, then forced my parents to move me to an Orthodox synagogue because I hated all the guitar-strumming hippies in the Reform one; I attended an Episcopalian chapel every morning for four years, ages 6-9; I spent at least one Sunday a month at a Catholic church since all of my childhood friends were either Irish, Mexican or Sicilian; and one grandmother who was born half-Catholic later converted to Bahai, a Persian sect, which makes me I guess one-fourth Bahai. Even within my Jewish family I'm part Sephardic and part Ashkenazi, which inspired violent storms of cross-family intra-ethnic anti-Semitism on a scale you mere European anti-Semites couldn't possibly imagine.
Jeez, even "Ames" turns out to be a hebe monicker. I must shamefacedly admit that his white-trash roots had me completely fooled. Pretty funny movie reviewer, though.
2005-08-23 16:02 | User Profile
It's been well-known that Ames was a kike. For regular readers of the eXile, at least.
2005-08-23 16:13 | User Profile
I'd like to inflict some serious physical harm on that Jew-oligarch-loving degenerate.
Petr
2005-08-23 16:29 | User Profile
[QUOTE=madrussian]It's been well-known that Ames was a kike. For regular readers of the eXile, at least.[/QUOTE]
So sue me. I couldn't even access the site until three or four days ago.
Makes ya wonder, though - how many Jew "Johnsons" or "Williams"es [I]are [/I] there out in the world? I went to school - and I mean the fourth grade - with a Jewish "Smith", and [I]that [/I] was frightening beyond belief.
2005-08-24 00:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]Holy cow - Bardamu, you are [I]awesome[/I]. Excellent Jewish radar!
[/QUOTE]
Thanks Spider, but it was easy with comments like this:
Now Mike is dead, apparently from "drugs" or a "drug overdose." I don't find anything ironic or redeeming, in a nihilist's way, about his death or my survival. If anything I feel some respect for him, and for the strange and intolerably chaotic world we grew up in, [B]even if it was white, suburban, half-shitkicker, half-middle/upper-middle-class.Now Mike is dead, apparently from "drugs" or a "drug overdose." I don't find anything ironic or redeeming, in a nihilist's way, about his death or my survival. If anything I feel some respect for him, and for the strange and intolerably chaotic world we grew up in, [B]even if it was white, suburban, half-shitkicker, half-middle/upper-middle-class[/B]