It’s funny how The IP drafts a frivolous “WTF?” post only to feel compelled to make it wait and post something more important.  That change occurred today when I heard the president of Columbia University respond to critics of his “introduction” to Iran’s Excellency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 

Hearing Columbia President Bollinger respond to the interviewer pushed The IP over to one side of the fence he was straddling since reading all the “experts” criticizing him for being “rude.”  WTF?  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?  He deserves “respect?” 

The whole thing was like this morning when The IP heard that girl whose nutcase Mormon parents allowed and even insisted that the girl marry and have sex (against her will) with her cousin:

The girl bringing the accusations, Elissa Wall, testified that Jeffs told her it was her religious duty to submit to her husband, and that he was impassive when she begged him not to make her marry her 19-year-old cousin, who already had a wife. Ms Wall told the court she wanted to die after the cousin first forced her to have sex.

What really got to The IP was that, after winning her case, she said that she “respected” her mother’s beliefs.  WTF?  Why would you go to court if you “respected” such beliefs?  

And likewise, why would you “respect” a douchebag like Ahmadinejad just out of courtesy and political protocol?  Besides, Bollinger is not a politician, he’s a president of a university.  Remember what happened when Germans “respected” Hitler’s beliefs? 

Please read Bollinger’s “introduction” below.  There’s a link to the whole transcript of the Ahmadinejad address at the bottom of the post.   

MR. BOLLINGER: I would like to begin by thanking Dean John Coatsworth and Professor Richard Bulliet for their work in organizing this event and for their commitment to the School of International and Public Affairs and its role — (interrupted by cheers, applause) — and for its role in training future leaders in world affairs. If today proves anything, it will be that there is an enormous amount of work ahead of us. This is just one of many events on Iran that will run throughout the academic year, all to help us better understand this critical and complex nation in today’s geopolitics.

Before speaking directly to the current president of Iran, I have a few critically important points to emphasize. First, in 2003 the World Leaders Forum has advanced Columbia’s long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate, especially on global issues. It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas or our weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naivety about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open our public forum to their voices; to hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible.

Second, to those who believe that this event should never have happened, that it is inappropriate for the university to conduct such an event, I want to say that I understand your perspective and respect it as reasonable. The scope of free speech in academic freedom should itself always be open to further debate. As one of the more famous quotations about free speech goes, it is an experiment as all life is an experiment. I want to say, however, as forcefully as I can that this is the right thing to do, and indeed it is required by the existing norms of free speech, the American university and Columbia itself.

Third, to those among us who experience hurt and pain as a result of this day, I say on behalf of all of us that we are sorry and wish to do what we can to alleviate it.

Fourth, to be clear on another matter, this event has nothing whatsoever to do with any rights of the speaker, but only with our rights to listen and speak. We do it for ourselves. We do it in the great tradition of openness that has defined this nation for many decades now. We need to understand the world we live in, neither neglecting its glories nor shrinking from its threats and dangers. It is inconsistent with the idea that one should know thine enemy — I’m sorry — it is consistent with the idea that one should know thine enemies, to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil, and to prepare ourselves to act with the right temperament. In the moment, the arguments for free speech will never seem to match the power of the arguments against, but what we must remember is that this is precisely because free speech asks us to exercise extraordinary self-restraint against the very natural but often counterproductive impulses that lead us to retreat from engagement with ideas we dislike and fear. In this lies the genius of the American idea of free speech.

Lastly, in universities we have a deep and almost single-minded commitment to pursue the truth. We do not have access to the levers of power, we cannot make war or peace, we can only make minds, and to do this, we must have the most fulsome freedom of inquiry.

Let me now turn to Mr. Ahmadinejad.

First, on the brutal crackdown on scholars, journalists and human rights advocates. Over the past two weeks, your government has released Dr. Haleh Esfandiari and Parnaz Azima and just two days ago, Kian Tajbakhsh, a graduate of Columbia with a PhD in Urban Planning. While our community is relieved to learn of his release on bail, Dr. Tajbakhsh remains in Tehran under house arrest, and he still does not know whether he will be charged with a crime or allowed to leave the country.

Let me say this for the record, I call on the president today to ensure that Kian will be free to travel out of Iran as he wishes. (Applause.) Let me also report today that we are extending an offer to Kian to join our faculty as a visiting professor in Urban Planning here at his alma mater in our Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and we hope he will be able to join us next semester. (Applause.)

The arrest and imprisonment of these Iranian Americans for no good reason is not only unjustified, it runs completely counter to the very values that allow today’s speaker to even appear on this campus, but at least they are alive.

According to Amnesty International, 210 people have been executing In Iran so far this year, 21 of them on the morning of September 5th alone. This annual total includes at two children, further proof, as Human Rights Watch puts it, that Iran leads the world in executing minors.

 

There is more. Iran hanged up 30 people this past July and August during a widely reported suppression of efforts to establish a more democratic society. Many of these executions were carried out in public view, a violation of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party. These executions and others have coincided with a wider crackdown on student activists and academics accused of trying to foment a so-called “soft revolution.” This has included jailing and forced retirement of scholars. As Dr. Esfandiari said in a broadcast interview since her release, she was held in solitary confinement for 105 days because the government believes that the United States is planning a velvet revolution in Iran.

In this very room, last year we learned something about velvet revolutions from Vaclav Havel, and we will likely hear the same from our World Leaders Forum speaker this evening, President Michelle Bachelet of Chile. Both of their extraordinary stories remind us that there are not enough prisons to prevent an entire society that wants its freedom from achieving it.

 

We at this university have not been shy to protest the challenge — and challenge the failures of our own government to live by our values, and we won’t be shy about criticizing yours. Let’s then be clear at the beginning. Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator. And so I ask you — (applause) — and so I ask you, why have women, members of the Baha’i faith, homosexuals and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country? Why, in a letter last week to the secretary-general of the U.N., did Akbar Ganji, Iran’s leading political dissident, and over 300 public intellectuals, writers and Noble Laureates express such grave concern that your inflamed dispute with the West is distracting the world’s attention from the intolerable conditions in your regime within Iran, in particular the use of the press law to ban writers for criticizing the ruling system? Why are you so afraid of Iranian citizens expressing their opinions for change?

In our country, you are interviewed by our press and asked to speak here today. And while my colleagues at the law school — Michael Dorf, one of my colleagues, spoke to Radio Free Europe, viewers in Iran a short while ago on the tenants of freedom of speech in this country — I propose further that you let me lead a delegation of students and faculty from Columbia to address your universities about free speech with the same freedom we afford you today. (Applause.)

Secondly, the denial of the Holocaust. In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as “a fabricated legend.” One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers. For the illiterate and ignorant, this is dangerous propaganda.

When you have come to a place like this, this makes you, quite simply, ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated. You should know — (applause) — please — you should know that Columbia is the world center of Jewish studies — us a world center, and now in partnership with the — Institute of Holocaust Studies.

Since the 1930s, we provided an intellectual home for countless Holocaust refugees and survivors and their children and grandchildren. The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history. Because of this, and for many other reasons, your absurd comments about the debate over the Holocaust both defy historical truth and make all of us who continue to fear humanity’s capacity for evil shudder at this closure of memory, which is always virtue’s first line of defense. Will you cease this outrage?

The destruction of Israel. Twelve days ago you said that the state of Israel cannot continue its life. This echoed a number of inflammatory statements you have delivered in the past two years, including in October 2005, when you said that Israel “should be wiped off the map”, quote-unquote. Columbia has over 800 alumni currently living in Israel. As an institution, we have deep ties with our colleagues there. I have personally spoken — personally, I have spoken out in most forceful terms against proposals to boycott Israeli scholars (in/and ?) universities, saying that such boycotts might as well include Columbia. (Applause.)

More than 400 — more than 400 — more than 400 college and university presidents in this country have joined in that statement.

My question then is, do you plan on wiping us off the map too? (Applause.)

Funding terrorism: According to reports of the Council on Foreign Relations, it’s well-documented that Iran is a state sponsor of terror that funds such violent groups as Lebanese Hezbollah, which Iran helped organize in the 1980s, Palestinian Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. While your predecessor government was instrumental in providing the U.S. with intelligence and base support in the 2001 campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan, your government is now undermining American troops in Iraq by funding, arming and providing safe transit to insurgent leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces. There are a number of reports that you also link your government with Syria’s efforts to destabilize the fledgling Lebanese government through violence and political assassination.

My question is this: Why do you support well-documented terrorist organizations that continue to strike at peace and democracy in the Middle East, destroying lives and the civil society of the region?

The proxy war against the United States troops in Iraq — in a briefing before the National Press Club earlier this month, General David Petraeus reported that arms supplies from Iran, including 240- millimeter rockets and explosively formed projectiles, are contributing to, quote, “a sophistication of attacks that would by no means be possible without Iranian support.” A number of Columbia graduates and current students are among the brave members of our military who are serving or have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They, like other Americans with sons, daughters, fathers, husbands and wives serving in combat, rightly see your government as the enemy.

 Can you tell them and us why Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq by arming Shi’a militia targeting and killing U.S. troops?

And finally Iran’s nuclear program and international sanctions: This week, the United Nations Security Council is contemplating expanding sanctions for a third time, because of your government’s refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment program. You continue to defy this world body by claiming a right to develop a peaceful nuclear power, but this hardly withstands scrutiny when you continue to issue military threats to neighbors. Last week, French President Sarkozy made clear his lost patience with your stall tactics, and even Russia and China have shown concern.

Why does your country continue to refuse to adhere to international standards for nuclear weapons verification, in defiance of agreements that you have made with the U.N. nuclear agency? And why have you chosen to make the people of your country vulnerable to the effects of international economic sanctions, and threaten to engulf the world in nuclear annihilation? (Applause.)

 Let me close with a comment. Frankly — I close with this comment frankly and in all candor, Mr. President. I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions. But your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do. Fortunately I am told by experts on your country that this only further undermines your position in Iran, with all the many good-hearted, intelligent citizens there.A year ago, I am reliably told, your preposterous and belligerent statements in this country, as at one of the meetings at the Council on Foreign Relations, so embarrassed sensible Iranian citizens that this led to your party’s defeat in the December mayoral elections. May this do that and more. (Applause.)I am only a professor, who is also a university president.

And today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better. Thank you. (Cheers, extended applause.)  

  

TRANSCRIPT

  

Because The IP lives in Atlanta, he’s been collecting ATL-based LPs when he goes out shopping for thrift store vinyl.  Any album with a cover that features a skyline shot of the ATL or of a band that is from the area, he’s all over it.  There are more ATL albums than you might think.

The IP got an ATL-album “Double-Whammy” the other weekend when he scored two ATL-associated LPs at some dumpy thrift.  Boy, did they bring him back to the 70s.

People always say “Oh, things were just as weird back in blah blah blah” or “Just take a look at what they’re wearing today blah blah blah” or “You should have seen what they wore in blah blah blah back in blah blah blah.”  Point taken.

But The IP still thinks that some strange, inexplicable alignment of tastes and sensibilities occurred in the 1970s. Not just for clothes, but for music as well.  

It was weird. 

It was androgynous.

It had bizarre clothing.

It had lots of hair.

It used lots of synthesizers.

It was…well, inexplicable. 

Holy crap.  Would YOU wear any of those outfits????

But if you were there at the time, it was just “normal.”  In fact, to this day, when The IP hears “Moonlight Feels Right, he gets all nostalgic and melancholy, as if those were “good times,” even though they were anything but.  Or maybe they were?  Who knows?

The IP also picked up the above LP.  It’s a kinda creepy, lonely, scary, album cover, but that is the ATL in the background.   Alicia Bridges had a strange voice.  The IP finds both those albums fascinating to stare at…almost mesmerizing.

Moonlight Feels Right is a weird song.  The IP can never get over the way the singer pronounces Chesapeake Bay.  Next time you hear it, listen for that lyric:

I’ll take you on a trip beside the ocean

And drop the top at Chesapeake Bay

 Read about Starbuck here. 

Here’s the Wiki on Alicia Bridges.

Below are the lyrics to the two songs that put the above ATL artists on the map: 

I LOVE THE NIGHTLIFE

Alicia Bridges

Please don’t talk about love tonight

Please don’t talk about sweet love.

Please don’t talk about being true

and all the trouble we’ve been through.

Ah, please don’t talk about all of the plans

  we had for fixin’ this broken romance.

I want to go where the people dance.

I want some action … I want to live!

Action … I got so much to give.

I want to give it.  I want to get some too.

Oh, I … Ohhh I … I love the nightlife,

I got to boogie on the disco ’round, oh yea.

Oh, I love the night life,

I got to boogie on the disco ’round, oh yea.

Please don’t talk about love tonight.

Your sweet talking won’t make it right.

Love and lies just bring me down

  when you’ve got women all over town.

You can love them all and when you’re through,

  maybe that’ll make, huh, a man out of you.

I got to go where the people dance.

I want some action … I want to live!

Action … I got so much to give.

I want to give it.  I want to get some too.

Oh, I … Ohhh I … I love the nightlife,

I got to boogie on the disco ’round, oh yea.

Oh, I love the night life,

I got to boogie on the disco ’round, oh yea.

Oh, I love the night life,

I got to boogie on the disco ’round, oh yea.

Oh, I love the night life,

I got to boogie on the disco ’round, oh yea.

I love the night life,

I got to boogie on the disco ’round, oh yea.

 MOONLIGHT FEELS RIGHT

Starbuck

The wind blew some luck in my direction

I caught it in my hands today

I finally made a tricky French connection

You winked and gave me your o.k.

I’ll take you on a trip beside the ocean

And drop the top at Chesapeake Bay

Ain’t nothing like the sky to dose a potion

The moon’ll send you on your way

Moonlight feels right

Moonlight feels right

We’ll lay back and observe the constellations

And watch the moon smilin bright

I’ll play the radio on southern stations

Cause southern belles are hell at night

You say you came to Baltimore from Ole Miss

Class of seven four gold ring

The eastern moon looks ready for a wet kiss

To make the tide rise again

We’ll see the sun come up on Sunday morning

And watch it fade the moon away

I guess you know I’m giving you a warning

Cause me and moon are itching to play

I’ll take you on a trip beside the ocean

And drop the top at Chesapeake Bay

Ain’t nothin like the sky to dose a potion

The moon’ll send you on your way

The IP thinks you could say she was stupid for not thinking about how stupid others could be.  That factor (how stupid others are) is becoming more and more important these days, especially when those stupids are given an excuse to either be a “hero” or abuse their authority.

Our Latest Terrorist

But years of bad TV dramas and B movies that featured “bombs” with flashing lights and LED displays counting down the seconds have made people think they “know” what a bomb looks like; or what a “terrorist” looks like.  WTF?

Da Bomb

A few direct questions to the girl, like “WTF is that thing?” might have at least led to a less dramatic and costly debacle.  Sure, they could have asked her to explain her “art” in some secured office, but creating a huge scene that makes her an instant criminal and idiot is a bit much.

Boston’s Logan Airport will always be tainted and their security folks will always be paranoid because those 9/11 Saudis got on with no problem.  They probably looked like they went to MIT too, but without the flashing circuit boards on their chests.

The IP thinks that if any bomb makes its way onto a commercial jet, it will be in some load of checked baggage, or some delivery of crappy meals from one of those ubiquitous “food service” companies that you see delivering their crap to the jet while you wait at the gate.

Isn’t America great?  Where else can you find such a heady and contradictory mix of decadence and prudery?  The IP started thinking about that particular contrast when he read this week about The ATL’s own Hip Hop son, Jermaine Dupri, and his new ATL nightclub, Club 72.  The club had “tryouts” for their needed positions:

The positions include:

Go-Go Dance: Dance on bar for a set amount of time and interact with club patrons.
     • Must be able to provide a resume
     • Training and/or ability to dance to different styles
     • Required to wear crazy outfits
     • Height requirement: at least 5′6”
     • Model-type built, slim, athletic built
     • Ability to dance in heels or in go-go boots an extended period of time
     • Compensation: minimum of $30/hour, based on experience and personality

Swimsuit Models: Enjoy sitting in club’s hot tub, while interacting with club patrons.
     • Must be ok with getting hair wet
     • Must look fit in swimsuit
     • Should bring their own swimsuit
     • Height requirement: at least 5′5”
     • Model-type built, slim, athletic built
     • Compensation:  $125/night

Sushi Model: Willing to act as display showcase as sushi is displayed placed on body for patrons to eat off of.
     • Model preferable of Asian ethnicity
     • Height requirement: 5′6” to 5′11”
     • Slim built; clean and body shaven
     • Will wear bottom with pasty/string bikini top or topless
     • Compensation: $200/3 hours

Body Painting Models: Enjoy the art of getting body painted and will show off painted body to audience, as they mingle with customers.
     • Walk around club offering shooter type beverages and giving away various promotional items.
     • Must feel comfortable with being body painted from the neck down and possibility of being topless for body painting.
     • Model-type built
     • Height requirement: at least 5′7”
     • Bra Cup Size: “C” or smaller
     • Extremely important to have an outgoing personality
     • Compensation: $150/night

Eye Candy Models:  Present in club and interacting with patrons in different sections of club, as well in VIP.
     • Compensation: $100/night minimum

Dominatrix Model: Looking for at least 12 models to play role of dominatrix in club setting.
     • Must provide own attire
     • Extremely comfortable wearing high heels of 3 inches orhigher
     • Height requirement: 5′7”
     • Compensation: $150/night

Well, you can’t say they don’t know what they want in an employee.  And as one applicant stated:

“It’s a job. It’s a paycheck.  I’m open-minded. This isn’t degrading because this is more a classy setting. You expect Jermaine Dupri to uphold a certain standard.”

Yes, that is Janet Jackson with Dupri.  They are a couple.  Funny, Dupri doesn’t even meet the height requirements he sets for his own employees.  

And the prudery?  The IP ran into that while reading a Harper’s book/s review on the plane ride back from San Juan (see previous post).  Two of the books discussed were neo-“traditionalist” screeds against our decadent culture.  One is called Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It’s Not Bad To Be Good.  The other is titled Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both.  As the wryly observant reviewer, Laura Kipnis succinctly put it, “You learn pretty much everything you need to know from the subtitles…”

So how is it that some of us eat sushi off a female platter at Club 72 (talk about objectification: “I’m a sushi platter!), and then others campaign for us to live like the Cleavers?  

That’s what irks and fascinates the IP about our country.  But in this contest against the decadent (which is often only harmless fantasy) and the alleged “traditional,” The IP will take the former, at least if it’s in “a more classy setting” like Club 72.    For further reading, check out this stuff on Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/2126570/entry/2126575/

http://slate.com/id/2113399/

http://slate.com/id/2111753/

Today The IP presents some images from his latest trip to Puerto Rico.  He will post some more about his trip later in the week, but for now, enjoy the below pics taken by The IP:

Images copyright of The Incredulous Pithecanthrope

All Rights Reserved ©

It’s the new approach to conservation.  Yep.  Wrap it up in a glossy, feel-good wrapper of positive rhetoric and pan it off as some kind of altruistic project for all of mankind.  And to make it seem even more “positive” and “responsible,” engage whorish, non-for-profit organizations to lend their immediately sullied names to the whole thing.  It’s the new, Ownership Society Park System!  Poor folks not allowed, however.

The IP refers here to the growing spate of North Carolina (and other places) golf resort “communities” being shilled in the Sunday NYT by this international real estate conglomerate called…who knows?  In NC it’s called “The Cliffs,” but IT, whatever it is, also promotes golf resorts all over the fucking world.  

Read this shit:

At The Cliffs, our commitment to the well-being of Our residentsAnd to sustaining our natural resources has made us a leader in the development of “green” initiatives across our communites.

What a bunch of horseshit.  Seriously, take a trip into the fucked-up world of privatized, golf resort “preservation.”  

 Oh, they’re “green” alright.  “Green” like in show us the green, like don’t worry about the lower classes interrupting your fucking “Wellness Community.”  WTF? 

This is the new privatization of what’s left of undeveloped America.  They develop golf resorts for the rich and then make sure they “buffer” them with forest land.

Time to pitch a tent on the green at hole # 8.

But not everyone is psyched on this bullshit.  This from a NC blog:

It has happened again, or so it seems. A clutch of unattractive houses on stilts, under construction in West Asheville, is missing one of its brethren due to arson. It’s only the latest incident, and we can only hope that it’s not related to what appears to be an attempt to burn down the town of Spruce Pine, which due to two deliberately-set fires yesterday has lost ten businesses, two offices, and a church. Here in Asheville, it would appear that people have finally reached their limit of tolerance for the sprawl mushrooming around the city and they’re getting militant about it. Most recently of course, we have this fire set on Riverview Drive. Not long ago, someone heaved bricks through a developer’s office at the Grove Arcade and a realtor’s office on College Street, glued their door locks, and painted “‘Fudge’ Sprawl” on the sidewalk outside the realtor’s office. Before that, a suspicious fire was set at the site in Swannanoa where Jim Anthony wants to build The Cliffs at Some Place Name Jim Anthony Just Pulled Out of His Ass. Around that same time, at the Rose Hill Plantation construction site in Leicester, someone dumped sand into the bulldozers’ gas tanks, and decorated the fence around the site with helpful spraypainted suggestions such as “Don’t Buy Here.” That one set the developer back by about a month, not to mention several tens of thousands of dollars. It’s been going on for a while. When the Wal-Mart was under construction in East Asheville, someone ran a bulldozer through a wall, causing nearly $900,000 in damage, and it’s practically a rite of passage for activists in Asheville to vandalize the Starbucks in Biltmore Village. 

What’s going on here?

What’s going on is that people are saying to hell with the “system” and just burning shit down. 

OK.  The IP is on travel until Friday of this week.

Please discuss.

Hey.  Did you pithecanthropes know that the Dave Mathews Band and The Almond Brothers (go ahead, do a google and see how many people call the ‘Allmans’ that) are gonna have an ambiguously-free concert in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park?

If you didn’t, 50-85-thousand people did.  Hey, what’s 35-thousand folks give-or-take?  The IP wonders what kind of clusterfuck that concert will be this weekend; The IP will not be there.  He has nothing against either band, he just ain’t motivated to hang out with that many people.

Dave Mathews Band.  Whatever.

The IP prefers the Almonds over DMB. 

The concert is being billed as “Green,” meaning…well, meaning nothing really.  But it’s a good way to raise money for the expansion of an urban park (including a parking deck).

Not everybody around here realizes that Piedmont Park was designed by Brookline Mass’s F.L. Olmstead.  It’s like a tribute to damn elitist Yankee influence here in anti-Yankee Georgia.

 The IP worries about a clusterfuck because of the “Green” edict for the “Green” concert that:

There will be no parking on-site or in the surrounding neighborhoods. Parking limitations will be strictly enforced.

WTF?  What makes a neighborhood “surrounding?”  They don’t really say at any concert info-place you go on the Intarwebs.  And believe The IP, in this car-based MSA, it’s doubtful any “enforcement” will stem the tide of cars coming into the city for this “Green” concert.  Hey, The IP will be happy if that is not the case, but our MARTA transit system is basically just two lines, one N/S and one E/W.  And that gets clusterfucked just for a Braves game.  

The IP supposes that by not providing a map of where the “NO PARKING” areas are specifically, that will produce enough anxiety among the potential car people to induce them to make alternative transportation arrangements.  Problem is, Atlanta is not exactly one of the best MSAs for actually providing alternative transportation arrangements.

And to suggest biking to the event is rather ludicrous for those folks coming from OTP, which will probably make up the bulk of the participants.  Hell, even the Almond Brothers  were from OTP.

OK.  Maybe The IP is a little hard on this whole “Green” thing.  They have a pledge site for people to be “Green.”  It has promises one has to make to become so:

WTF?  Switch off your lights?  Wasn’t that from those stickers people put on their light switches back in 1974?

The IP has some pledges he’d like to see, but knows they will never happen…ok, he hopes some of them might happen.  But believe The IP, REAL change is dependent on the fuckers in power, the politicians and their corporate handmaidens.  The IP is getting really pissed off now, so he bids you farewell.

I pledge to stop all mountain-top-removal mining.

I pledge to stop logging in Malaysia.

I pledge to stop all hydroelectric projects in China and Australia.

I pledge to ban the construction of new, coal-fired power plants.

I plan to spend billions of dollars on public research on alternative energy sources.

I plan to make all private energy producers non-profit organizations.

I pledge to outlaw any car that gets less than 50 mpg.

I pledge to ban all Styrofoam take-out containers.

I pledge to build the world’s best and most extensive high-speed rail system.

I pledge that all new buildings, both commercial and residential, have rainwater recycling systems

I pledge to ban all use of chemical lawn fertilizers.

I pledge to ban all leaf-blowers.

And finally, I plan to fix ALL leaky faucets!

Duke: The lights are growing dim Otto. I know a life of crime has led me to this sorry fate, and yet, I blame society. Society made me what I am.

Otto: That’s bullshit. You’re a white suburban punk just like me.   

Duke:
Yeah, but it still hurts.   

 Here are some more quotes from the movie Repo Man (1984)

The IP expends more energy to criticizing The Atlanta Journal Constitution than he needs, but he’ll admit that, every once and a while, that paper actually has a great piece that is about something other than fuzzy puppies or the latest horrific murder.  

Yesterday’s AJC had a chronicle of a very busy dude.  He and his crew are reaping the benefits of others’ hasty desires for “The American Dream.”  When you think about it, what better a prism to look at this whole mortgage/loan meltdown than through the eyes of…A REPO MAN!

They can’t get refinanced,” he said. “You’re sitting in a house paying interest-only or an ARM [adjustable-rate mortgage] and it’s time to renew. The cars are the only thing they’re going to have left. They’ll lose the house first and keep the cars.” 

Richard Grosvenor stands amongst repossessed vehicles, including a Corvette taken from a plumber (left), on his 3-acre lot at Speedy Recovery in Lithonia on August 29, 2007. With credit and mortgage problems rising, Grosvenor has seen an increase in business at Speedy Recovery and repossesses a variety of vehicles including construction equipment, plumbing trucks and even realtors’ cars.

“It’s nothing for me to pull up in the driveway of a half-million-dollar home now,” said Grosvenor. “Maybe it’s the financing and these ARMs … that’s killing people.”Delayed gratification — a creed past generations lived by — has given way to delayed payments.

“It’s intriguing,” Wachovia economist John Silvia said. “It shows you the variety of the consumer credit experience. In some cases, people are living beyond their means … and that reflects the shortsightedness of some of these consumers.”  

Some voluntarily turn over the keys to the bank. Others, like the lawyer earlier this year, aren’t so accommodating. He pulled a gun on Grosvenor over a Toyota Camry. Some others don’t return calls or answer door bells, keeping their house lights off most of the time. Grosvenor has been chasing a homebuilder in Dawsonville for months, trying to get his Hummer.   In fact, his drivers had surpassed their August goal of capturing 400 vehicles several days before the end of last month. All of his drivers in the Lithonia office and three other offices around the state are getting bonuses.“I swear I feel like Dog the bounty hunter,” Grosvenor said referring to a popular television show.  “They’re surviving right now spending savings, living on credit,” Grosvenor said. “But it’s only going to get worse.” 

What was interesting to The IP was how the mortgage thing is part and parcel of the whole car payment thing.  These people are nuts! 

Barbara Ehrenreich, a writer/researcher The IP admires, recently wrote a piece about how this whole mortgage meltdown is a strange, unintentional “revolution” among the disproportionately poor people who took out those “ARMs” the Atlanta REPO MAN mentioned.  She cynically asks: “Why didn’t these low-income folks get lawyers to go over the fine print? And don’t they have personal financial advisors anyway?” 

The IP doesn’t care how bad at math you might be, one should not need a “financial advisor” to realize that he is living beyond his means.  Ehrenreich is dead-on when she notes that most entry-level jobs (The IP thinks the term “working class” is no longer useful) could never provide enough income to support a family, let alone provide even a minimum standard of living for single person, but at what point are all these economic and social analysts willing to even suggest that some people (or in the case of these loan defaults, a whole lot of people) just have no sense of personal responsibility, or, God forbid, suggest that maybe they’re just plain stupid? 

There must be stupid people in this country.  How does W get elected; TWICE?  Granted, a lot of people that voted for W were just plain greedy, but some must have been just plain stupid, don’t cha think? 

And The IP is not talking about one’s level of education.  He’s met plenty of un/under-educated folks who were smart and financially savvy.  He’s also met Ph.D.’s who were clearly “stupid” for any number of reasons.  

What does The IP know?  Some say our superficial, consumerist culture where material possessions and financial wealth are the mark of achievement and “success,” and where the ownership of the same (even if it’s fake ownership) garners respect from our peers, is the cause of our ills; but then social critics also bemoan the propaganda machines of magazines, TV shows, advertising, etc., calling them “unfair” mechanisms that take advantage of the poor and gullible. 

Well, The IP will admit that those mechanisms DO take advantage of the gullible.  I guess that’s his whole point.  The question is can we, as a society, prevent gullibility, or is that beyond our ability?  And what would preventing that human attribute do to our economy?  Think about that REPO MAN; he would be out of a job.

Every time he hears it, The IP feels awkwardly placed into an unnecessarily untenable situation.He gets up to the register and the cashier asks: “Did you find everything OK?”   WTF?  What does this person mean?  Seriously, each time he’s asked this, in order to maintain any sense of intellectual integrity, The IP has to answer the question with a question, which is an unfortunate act:

The IP:

“Are you asking me if I found the general conditions of my shopping experience to reach, or exceed, my expectations, or are you asking me if I was actually able to find the item for which I was looking, which, if the latter, somewhat insults my intelligence, since I’m standing here with the very item I want to purchase?”   

The problem with the opening linguistic gesture is the use of the vernacular “OK,” also spelled “okay.”  There is almost an implied “to be” in the question, as in “Did you find everything ‘to be’ OK?”  To which one could logically say:

“Well, ‘everything’ is a lot to shoot for, and to be honest, I found many things to my disliking, such as the background music, the arrangement of some of the book aisles, and I even found some of the books you stock to be personally objectionable. So no, I have to say that ‘everything’ was NOT ‘OK;’ but that’s certainly not your fault.”

Now, if we are to assume that the question is meant to determine whether the customer actually found the item/s he was looking for, wouldn’t it again be better to just ask “Did you find what you were looking for?” By using “find everything OK,” the question still baffles the rational mind.  It could then mean “Was the specific experience of seeking and finding the items for which you were looking better-than-average?” 

Again, this forces a subjective reflection on the experience, where the customer might say:“Actually, I had some difficulty in finding the item, and I had to ask one of your staff to point out where I might find it.  After I got to the general location where he said I would find the item, I still had trouble finding it.  Then, when I did finally find it, I was again frustrated when, having put the item down to consult your computer kiosk, another staff member took the item when my back was turned and put it back on the shelf from whence it came.  So to answer your question, NO, I did not find everything –and I was only really looking for one thing– OK.”  To which the customer might add: “Why do you assume that I was here to purchase more than one item?” 

Again, this makes “Did you find what you were looking for?” A much better, less ambiguous question, and one that would not hold up the line while The IP had to dissect the actual meaning of the original and faulty question.

However, in the end, it’s a completely useless question to begin with.  Are we to assume that the cashiers write down the customers’ responses?  What if The IP just answered with a forceful “NO!”  What kind of actions would ensue?  And that’s the point, they just say it as a way to pretend that they are “human” and “caring” etc.  In other words, it’s disingenuous retailing bullshit. 

And it’s essentially ludicrous.  If the customer couldn’t find an item, why would he wait until he’s in the checkout line to ask the cashier? 

And they do this at supermarkets too.  So, you get to the cashier and she asks you “Did you find everything OK?” and you say “Well, I couldn’t find that 14 oz. size of olives so I grabbed this 20 oz. size which is more than I really wanted.  Could you call one of your grocery staff and ask if they could go down to the basement and find the 14 oz. size?”  WTF? 

You see?  It’s just a meaningless, stupid expression, and The IP wishes people would not use it. The above was based on a real and recent shopping experiences of The IP.

But Craig instead wrapped himself up so tightly into a Conservative, family-values straitjacket that he was stuck, and the only place he could take it off was in some public restroom.  Jesus H. Christ in a Chicken Basket!!

And that, in the end (pardon the pun), is the issue.  For both homos and heteros and who-knows-what alike; please use public restrooms for their intended purpose.  The IP can’t even imagine getting a BJ or any other sexual favor inside a stinky public restroom.  Like the sound and smell of some guy in the other stall pinching a loaf is a turn on?  WTF?  Maybe it’s because closeted guys like Craig think that anonymous sex in a public restroom will leave only a toilet paper trail.