WTF

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Cassette tapes are hissing their way back into our hearts

Posted by Shoogle on March 20, 2019
Posted in: Geek Streak. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

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No.  Just…no.  The most shit-tastic music format ever is now a nostalgia thing?  I have fond memories of playing tapes for most of my childhood and teenage life, but what a pain in the ass they are!  People say the same about vinyl, but your record player doesn’t suck the record up into its hungry mouth and tangle the shit out of it.  You don’t have to respool records with a pencil because it gets pulled out of its shell and mangled.  Oh, and properly cared-for records actually sound good.  That hissy tape you’re playing degrades with every listen, and eventually the tape will break…and so will your heart.  Sad emoji.

It’s cool to spool again as the cassette returns on a wave of nostalgia

Pause. Stop. Rewind! The cassette, long consigned to the bargain bin of musical history, is staging a humble comeback. Sales have soared in the last year – up 125% in 2018 on the year before – amounting to more than 50,000 cassette albums bought in the UK, the highest volume in 15 years.

…“It’s the tangibility of having this collectible format and a way to play music that isn’t just a stream or download,” says techno DJ Phin, who has just released her first EP on cassette as label boss of Theory of Yesterday.  “I find them much more attractive than CDs. Tapes have a lifespan, and unlike digital music, there is decay and death. It’s like a living thing and that appeals to me.”

What’s next?  Wax cylinders?  I can hear it now: “I looove wax!!  It sounds so shitty, like music played in a freeway tunnel during a sandstorm or something.  It’s sooooo cool and unique and retro and nostalgic.  Oh, and cumbersome to play and handle and store.  I bought the new Katy Perry cylinder and it broke after only 2 plays!  It’s, like, the best thing evarrr.”

 

Obama’s finger of Muslim terror!

Posted by Shoogle on November 16, 2015
Posted in: Idiots & Assholes (Politics). Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

I have a certain family member who subscribes to the “Obama’s a Muslim” school of paranoid and irrational conservative thinking.  She knows — for a fact! — he’s a Muslim, because he wears a ring that says so.  Well that’s a new one for me, so I asked for details.  Apparently he wears a ring that has the phrase “There is no God but Allah” on it.  Oh really.  She no doubt picked this up from an email that had been forwarded by a thousand like-minded people before her.

So while on the phone I did a Google search on the words “obama muslim ring”…and lo and behold, a bunch of right-wing whackjob stories came up making this claim.  How in the world did I miss this?  In a nutshell, they have some grainy low-res photos of his ring and imagined that the squiggly lines on it is actually Arabic writing.  Aha!  PROOF he’s a stealth Muslim!  Except, of course, he’s not being very stealthy about it…

These infantile scrawlings are the “proof.”

obamaring

As usual a visit to Snopes.com shows us what’s really going on.  Spoiler:  it’s bullshit.  As if there was any doubt.

Isolating the ring from a much higher-resolution photograph of President Obama’s hand taken by photographer Miguel Villagran during a 5 June 2009 news conference in Dresden, Germany, shows the ring to bear what looks like nothing more than a plain loop-like pattern, with the top section matching the bottom.

We shared the above picture with a small survey of six different persons with fluency in written Arabic, and all of them said the pattern displayed on the ring appeared to be an abstract one with no discernible meaning in Arabic.

Check out the story on Snopes to see a highly detailed photo of the ring in question.  Yes, that is what all the fuss is about.  A bunch of fucking loopy shapes.

So I read the entire Snopes article to her, and she basically tried to brush it off with a “Yeah, whatever.”  Because nothing can sway paranoid (and dare I say racist) white conservatives from their Obama-hating opinions.  Facts are irrelevant.  Not to mention that the underlying Muslim=Evil idea is utter nonsense…

This is supremely disappointing to me because I know she’s not stupid–she just hates our black President and will believe anything that supports her irrational beliefs.  Well, it’s a kind of stupidity, I suppose…a self-imposed ignorance and gullibility.  A black hole of critical thinking.  And this happens with millions of people around the country, especially of the Baby Boomer generation…they get emails making outrageous claims with photographic “proof” of something (or they simply watch the shitfest on Fox News), and they immediately believe it without a second thought because it hits a raw nerve with them.  It happens everywhere:  email, Facebook, conspiracy websites…wherever ridiculous ideas like this can spread.  You can’t talk them out of it, either.  Their hatred has been validated by a badly-written chain letter with shitty photos and that’s all there is to it.

When I hear this stuff I can’t help but think:  the 2016 election can’t come soon enough!

Appallingly amusing

Posted by Shoogle on October 18, 2015
Posted in: Fun Stuff. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

My cousin, who lives in London, recently posted this to Facebook and it just begs to be shared.  Her caption:  “Halloween in England.  Sigh.”  All they’re missing is one for minstrels in blackface — OMG wouldn’t little Katie look absolutely darling in that??  (Correct answer:  no.)

halloween-in-england

Congressman enjoys a tall glass of Popejuice™

Posted by Shoogle on October 7, 2015
Posted in: Holy Shit! (Religion). Tagged: , , , , . 1 Comment

Sometimes I wonder if I have too much fun at Christians’ expense on here.  I’m fully aware that I tend to hammer on that topic a lot, and I’m sure turns more than a few people away from reading anything I write.  But then I come across a story like this and…it’s like Christmas.  This one’s an absolute stunner — pure woo-woo insanity from beginning to end.  It’s the kind of thing that makes blogging fun.  Let’s watch!

Thirsty-Ass Congressman Steals Pope’s Glass of Water, Drinks From It

While addressing Congress on Thursday, Pope Francis took a sip of water from a glass at his side. Afterwards, Congressman Bob Brady stole the glass, brought it back to his office, and drank from it.

Holy shit.  Do go on, I simply must know more!

“I’m sure it’s blessed if the Pope drank out of it. Why not?” Brady said. “If not, I’m saying it is.” (It’s not.)  “I’m considering it as holy water. I’m not checking with anybody. I don’t want to know. Some things it’s better not to know,” the congressman said. “I mean, the Pope drank out of it, the Pope handled it… It’s good enough for me.” (Okay. But it’s not.)

OK, look.  I know not all Christians are this nutty.  This guy’s on a deeper level of self-delusion than most people can hope to achieve in a lifetime.  But he’s a Congressman, an elected leader and lawmaker.  I would hope that those people are held to a higher standard of rationality and sanity than this, but maybe that’s being too optimistic.  And it continues:

Brady told the Daily News that he poured the rest of the water into a bottle, saving it to bless his four grandchildren and his great-granddaughter. Also, he is keeping the glass in a brown paper bag, and plans to ask Philadelphia police to dust it for fingerprints to prove its authenticity.

The guy’s a fuckin’ nutjob, no other way to put it.  He’s living in a delusional reality where magical powers are somehow transferred via water, and he hopes to somehow absorb some of those magical powers by drinking from the Pope’s glass.  Nothing batshit crazy about that, is there?  Does he realize his subconscious desire to touch his lips to the Pope’s lips?

However, with that “I don’t want to know” comment I think even he might wonder if he’s completely full of shit.  And yet he chooses magical thinking over reality anyway, because it feels good.  Should we have people like this running our country?

(And I kid you not:  as I type this, my husband started playing Madonna’s “Holy Water” in the other room.  I’m 100% serious.  Heeeee…)

Cosmetic surgery. Botox. For pets. Seriously.

Posted by Shoogle on October 6, 2015
Posted in: Cultural Wasteland. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

psdogWhat is WRONG with people??

Cosmetic Surgery and Botox for Pets a Growing Trend in South Korea

Some of the popular procedures include tail shortening and ear trimming for dogs, to make them ‘cute’ with pointy ears. Fat reduction is another popular surgery, along with stretch marks removal, wrinkle smoothing, double eyelid removal and even botox injections. These procedures start from $60 and ostensibly run into the thousands.

If cosmetic surgery is done to improve the health and lives of the pets, or even save their lives after an accident or something (which is how it originally began), then fine.  But this?  Come on.

In fact, a few vets are actually pitching cosmetic surgery to pet owners. According to an article in Chosun Daily, a woman visited a vet to get vaccinations for her five-month-old puppy. The doctor, however, asked if she wanted to close the gap in the canine’s mouth which he considered unappealing from a cosmetic perspective.

Foie Gras: cuisine pour les assholes

Posted by Shoogle on September 8, 2015
Posted in: Cultural Wasteland, General Blatherings. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment
This picture isn't meant to shock. It's just how they make that delicious stuff you put into your asshole mouth.

This picture isn’t meant to shock — it’s simply how they make that delicious stuff you put into your asshole mouth. Bon appétit!

I do eat some meat (chicken and turkey 99% of the time), so in that way I’m contributing to the industrialized killing of animals, just like most of the rest of the country. However, there’s a slight difference between that and eating something that resulted from an animal being force-fed until its organs nearly explode. Foie gras is simply animal torture with the sole purpose of pleasing some human’s tastebuds.  It’s a grotesque luxury item. The “foodies” will tell you that the birds are roaming freely around the yard, happy and comfortable, and occasionally someone comes by and “gently” funnels a mass of food directly down their gullets. Um, even if that was true (and I’m not convinced it is), does that make it any less of an asshole thing to do? On the asshole scale it’s right up there with people who make or eat veal. The foodies can suck it on this one.

Foie Gras Is For Assholes

Foie gras is made by force feeding birds until their livers swell up. It is the Abu Ghraib of poultry dishes. Many people believe that eating any sort of meat is immoral, because you have to kill an animal to do it. I am not even arguing that position in this blog post. I am arguing the much more modest position that you should not torture your food before you eat it.

“Why eat food that only involves killing an animal, when I could eat food that also involves torturing an animal?” – A foie gras aficionado, and an asshole.

Kiddie couture: the latest trend for wealthy, self-absorbed parents

Posted by Shoogle on March 30, 2014
Posted in: Cultural Wasteland. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Yes, we all know that your kids are an extension of you, and that’s your biggest problem.  You’re programming them with a taste for the kind of ridiculously overpriced (and, I must say, quite hideous) clothing you somehow think they would naturally choose for themselves, but let’s be honest:  it really just comes down to molding your kids into a Mini Me version of yourself because it makes you feel better about getting older.

Meet the parents spending thousands on kiddie couturekidcouture

But these pieces — each with a price tag of $1,420 — are not for Monteiro to wear herself. A girl’s size 6 and a toddler size 2, the Bonnie Young outfits are for her adorable daughters.

Vera, age 4, and Yasmine, 5 months, are accompanying their label-conscious mom on the upcoming business trip and will be packing dozens of designer clothes from their miniature closets back home in Fort Greene.  “My kids are an extension of me, and if they look good, I feel good,” says Monteiro, 35, a financial analyst-turned-shoe designer. “They’re my priorities in life and it’s nice to splurge.”

Your baby just lifted its head? Gasp! You must TELL THE WORLD!

The most telling sentence in this story:  “Many of our customers are affluent 30- and 40-somethings influenced by mommy blogs and actors who appear with their kids in celebrity magazines.”  These “mommy bloggers” are notorious for being self-absorbed and turning their kids into little cult objects, so it’s not too surprising that they’re inspiring other self-absorbed parents to spend vast amounts of money on clothes their kids are too young to have an opinion about.  It’s all for the parents’ benefit, to show the world their kids are somehow better.  These are the same parents who use puke-inducing mobile apps like My Baby Just… to announce to the world every little thing their baby does, even though it’s not unique or special in any way and nobody really gives a shit.

Let your kids be kids.  Quit smothering them with fashion and documenting every minute of their lives.  Give your kids some room to breathe, for fuck’s sake.

A Nazi-themed party in a German restaurant? Heil-arious!

Posted by Shoogle on March 22, 2014
Posted in: General Blatherings. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment
pauladeennazi

If only she had been the caterer…

These WWII reenactment people see absolutely nothing wrong with having a Nazi dinner party and apparently have all kinds of justifications for why it’s harmless and even necessary.  Yeah, sure…whatever helps you sleep at night.  My biggest question is:  why in the world would ANY German restaurant host an event like this?  Seriously.

Fancy Midwestern Restaurant Hosts Nazi-Themed Dinner Party

When you head out to Minneapolis’ premier German restaurant, Gasthof zur Gemütlichkeit, you expect brats and bier and kraut. You might not expect the Third Reich.  But then, Christmas is a time for special celebrations.

City Pages got an anonymous tip last week in the form of a photo that appeared to show a Nazi hootenanny at the convivial Teutonic eatery.  This week, they heard from a reader who was at the Sieg Heil hoedown—and there’s a perfectly good explanation!

“All of the German [re-enactment] groups in Minnesota have a Christmas party because we don’t typically have events going on in the winter,” Boorom says. “It’s just like any club that has a party. Because they dress up like Germans from World War II, it’s cool to go to a German restaurant, eat German food, and drink German beer.”