In Other Nebraska News

I once knew a man who had stolen somebody's garage door opener.  Said he could get some "street money" for it.  Yes he was a meth addict.  On that note there's apparently someone who thinks there's a market for human ashes.  And you know, there probably is.

I saw rolling pickup gallows open a show for Hank Williams III and Macgyver suicide once.  They were okay.

For no particular reason at all...

In Religion/Health Care/Jon Bruning is a Shameless Hack News

Our state attorney general is among those who sued to prevent provisions for birth control in the HCA that would deny employers the freedom to prevent other citizens from exercising their will. He remains undaunted. 

“Today's decision completely disregards the federal government's continued shell game when it comes to this rule,” he said. “Essentially, this decision asks millions of Americans to watch and wait for their religious liberties to be violated.”

I have a strong intuition that Bruning is a half-sincere, dishonest shill, and I actually like him better than the Gov for that.  My sense is that Heineman honestly believes his own hateful, small-minded nonsense, which would make him a breed of human far more loathesome than a mere hustler.  Bruning, I'm convinced, has simply strapped himself to the gravy train that is the dominant party of a small state and the relatively easy access to the governor's mansion or Capital Hill that comes with that.   What a shame, that he seems bound to end up just like Don Stenberg, doomed to never attain the big Brass Ring(s) in spite of being a good obedient soldier. 

Shame for him anyway.  Rather delicious to ponder for some of us.

Long As You're Groovin, There's Always a Chance

That's all I have for today. 

In My Dreams I Had a Prophetic Vision

There is, in this town right now, someone with a slow roasted boar of several tons that they want to share with everybody.   They need only be found, or perhaps smelled or even felt.  I know that I'm not wrong on this. 

The Old Saw of Happy Conservatives

Has been examined some more recently. 

There have been many, myself included, who have described intense, dogmatic, self-defining belief as 'Romantic' in the classical, capital R sense.  But one could well argue that this 'capital R' Romance actually differs very little from the more commonly used definition of romantic love.  Certainly the prose of any authoritarian crank or aspiring martyr from any era is unfailingly grand, purple, and florid. It seems clear that to imagine ones own beliefs as the obvious truth that only the willingly evil object to does satisfy a sort of lust.  To imagine ones own beliefs, customs, and folkways as the Only Path demanded of everyone seems to produce the same kind of transcendent rapture normally ascribed to the most idealized form of Eros.  Ayn Rand would probably be the best and most famous example of this.  As even her most horrific, genocidal putdowns of the leaching masses carry a definite air of satiation, purring agitation, and indulgence.  (And then of course there's the rape fetish, which....)

Why this should be the case is for obvious reasons probably beyond rational understanding.  I suppose it could serve as a substitute for immortality.  To view one's own culture and belief system as the only legitimate ones can justify all the things one's self will never see or experience as not rightfully meant to be seen or experienced, aleve the smallness of one's own life with the illusion that,  in the rightful course of things, ones own life will be eternally repeated by everyone. 

Anyway, to get back to the old parlor question of why conservatives tend to report as more happy than liberals.  Well there is, first of all, the fact that we are living in a prosperous country where happiness is the expected social norm, and conservatives are by their nature more likely to give the normatively expected answer out of hand without too much reflection.  There is then again also the ecstacy of self-assurance that I described above.  Brooks in the link article does point out that conservatives are joined by those on the far left in being happier than moderates or mainstream liberals.   "One possibility is that extremists have the whole world figured out, and sorted into good guys and bad guys"  Perhaps.  Or it may be the case that the happiness of the True Believer is the same as that of the newlywed. 

Friday the 13th

It's been a solid month now since the last rain, and still it is quite literally and uncannily cloudless.  When rain does come it tends to be a protracted torrent that lasts for hours or even days without end. so that instead of what's historically normal on the Plains; most summer days ending in a post-sunset thunderstorm that lasts for an hour or so, after darkness alows heat and evaporated water to escape the earth, it is now only either drought or flood for the apparently permanent future. Thank you, Nebraska neighbors, for speaking out against those dirty global warming socialists. 

Shaytanic Black Metal

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/07/when-black-metals-anti-religious-message-gets-turned-on-islam/259680/

You know, there was never anything close to a time when I conciously thought to myself that Arabian Black Metal was inevitible.  Yet if you were to ask me if somewhere in my bones I somehow Knew that Arabian Black Metal was inevitible, I would tell you in all honesty that yes, I probably did.  It's a trip to live in the twenty first century. 

Of course, since this is Black Metal, it isn't particlarly good music;.... at all.  Still there's a definite air of historical determinism at work here. 


"FUCK JESUS FUCK MAHOMA...HAIL SATAN! SALUDOS DESDE COLOMBIA"