RSSRants- General Archives
June 27, 2010
Statements Never Uttered By Any Female, Ever
My instrumentation and research have identified 5 statements never ever ever uttered -- at least sincerely -- by any human female since the emergence of our species. Young, old, good, bad, radical, traditional, gay, straight, drunk, sober, right-wing or left wing, Palin or Steinem, hijab-bedecked or pole-dancing, none have ever said these and meant it.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 12:34 PM | Comments (3)
April 07, 2010
(Not quite) Gout Diary: THIS HURTS!
{Turns out it's an osteoarthritis of sorts, but close enough} DAY 1 – OMFG this HURTS! Toe humongous. Surrounding joints tender.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2009
You See Me Cryin' Alright: Aerosmith's Betrayal
O you *$(#ks! You evil b*&^%*s! Yes, you DID INDEED play this song live on this year’s tour! The only time, or almost the only time ever in the like 500 decades since it appeared on, and signed-off, your best studio album. An underrated and underperformed ballad, with Mr. T singing his vocal chords out, it is of similar quality with the mega-hit “Dream On”. Especially with the orchestra on studio. And now that you’re all hissy-fittin’, bone-breaking, catty-snipin’, solo-touring, it may never happen again, you D$%$S. {More ranting below}
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2009
Religionphobic? Take the Quiz
You know who you are, and that you have it. Let’s name this condition with a more clinically pretentious sounding term: fideophobia (via Latin, fides, faith). Fideophobia is the hysterical fear of, or hostility towards, religious faith or those who observe one. I am not talking here about healthy skepticism, or even that Marxian ol’ time anti-religion that’s good enough for Mao. Nor do I mean hostility to specific faiths, which is something rival faith-holders can have for each other. For fideophobes I mean those who, after encountering just about any outward expression of religiosity, have a near-epileptic seizure.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:54 PM | Comments (8)
November 14, 2009
Book Review II: Like A Rolling Stone -- The Strange Life of A Tribute Band
Another in a series of scribblings about books I've read over the past months.....
Like A Rolling Stone: The Strange Life of A Tribute Band, by Steven Kurutz.
Most pleasurable book I’ve read in a long time. Well-written, amusing and sad, the author takes us on tour with various tribute bands – bands that mimic the appearance and music of more famous rock bands -- a phenomenon that took off with the imitation-Beatles Broadway show, Beatlemania. (He particularly takes us along with Sticky Fingers, a Rolling Stones tribute band). We learn often of might-have-beens, sincere musicians seeking greatness in their own right who, unable to do so, settled for the second-best option: the adulation of looking and sounding like a rock music legend. The author spends less time with, though hints at, many well-adjusted successful tribute bands who are simply in it for the fun and money, and apparently quite happy about where they are, like the all-female tribute band Lez Zeppelin. Despite some emphasis on the more interesting dark side, he happily doesn’t dwell on Deeper Cultural Meanings too much, nor trash the phenomenon. Ultimately the answer given to why these bands exist is provided by their members: it’s a lot of fun and beats just holding a regular job someplace for a few dollars an hour. The book’s a journey, not a destination, and well worth the ride.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 08:50 AM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2009
Book Review: A History of Pi
One in a series of scribblings about books I've read over the past months.....
A History of Pi, by Petr Beckmann
Couldn’t quite get through all of it but it is a mostly pleasant tour for the nerdy among us, which takes us through the history of mathematics' and mankind’s quest for that famous irrational number which defines and describes the ins and outs of the circle, via the relationships among radius/diameter and circumference and area. The author’s unapologetic politics sprinkle the text with intermittent sermons against the science-retardant aspects of Communism and Christianity. It gets a bit Ayn Randishly over the top stupid at times, but the anti-totalitarian and anti-imperial ("What have the Romans ever done for math?") perspectives give the book a unifying theme that adds readability. Surprise eureka extra factoid: Archimedes WAS the military-industrial complex of his day.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 03:03 PM | Comments (0)
November 08, 2009
QOTD -- Murder, Dismemberment: Crazy? Only If You Do it At Home
I kind of thought this quote from an AP article odd, regarding the alleged serial killer who is said to be of that unusual type who deposits his victims' remains in his own yard.
Sowell's alleged crimes place him among a rare breed of serial killers: those who literally work close to home. . . .. "The fact that they would dirty their own nest, as it were, is peculiar to me and suggests a level of mental illness or sickness," said Berrill, director of the New York Center for Neuropsychology and Forensic Behavioral Science.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 05:57 PM | Comments (1)
September 27, 2009
World War Two Observation: Nazis Eschewed Bioweapons
Per an earlier entry in which I mentioned I would be dropping observations over here on World War II and its lead-up as derived from various research projects, here's another one.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 03:26 PM | Comments (1)
September 19, 2009
US Health Care Political Debate: The Core (ReDux)
Just narrowing down the feeling that my thoughts from a prior post are indeed confirmed, just by watching the tenor of things in this country. Here I summarize the political conflict more succinctly.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 09:02 AM | Comments (3)
September 15, 2009
Observations on World War Two: Nazis & Brazenness
Over the past few years, I have been lookng at media and hardcore original archival records of the period of history leading up to and including World War II. (Various personal and professional projects.) Not sure if I'll ever get to share several thoughts and discoveries - or if even sharing them are worthwhile -- but I'll dump a few here intermittently just to try them out.
Some may merely be a rediscovery of the non-original obvious. Others may report interesting (or even boring) matters that are well-known to specialists but worth an emphasis, I think.
Below is observation #1. (Observations are not in any special order, just as I come up with them.)
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 01:50 PM | Comments (3)
May 22, 2009
Gender Differences, part 657
Just noticed over the course of a lifetime, though perhaps just in my narrow experience or my still narrower imagination, a subtle difference in how the shock-driven harrumph is expressed:
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:16 PM | Comments (3)
May 13, 2009
Lawrence Olivier - Lawrence Olivier = William Shatner
So went an old actor algebra snipe I read somewhere. Which while humorous, I do disagree. But this person here says what I want to say:
The insufferably cerebral and moralistic elements of Star Trek have been bad enough to make even devoted fans wince many, many times, and if the acting often seemed weak it might have been because so few actors can credibly recite some of the drivel generations of actors have been forced to say over the decades.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 06:40 AM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2009
Probing Fears and Medical Tests
Three things I fear about the standard prostate exam:
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 07:06 AM | Comments (1)
April 12, 2009
Keynes Enabled
Keynesianism is only a few weeks into official respectability here in the superpower, and already there is self-parody. ("The idea's to stimulate the economy. So what if we blow a few billion on the wrong things? ")
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 07:24 AM | Comments (0)
March 17, 2009
Irish-American Contributions to America:
My annual, if increasingly outdated, not-so-reverent St. Patrick's Day look at my tribe's contributions to America. The part on the Irish (Gaelic) language is for us language nerds only but Irish-American contributions to municipal corruption, public vomiting, and terrorist fundraising are not overlooked.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:46 AM | Comments (1)
February 28, 2009
The Future in All Its Facebook Horror
Shamelessly poached via Jim Henley, comes this vision of the future.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2008
Gender Observation & Hair Care
I've come to the realization that no matter how destitute, bankrupt, broke, foreclosed-upon, forlorn, bereft, or empty-handed a woman may be, she always has enough to buy hair color. I picture in some post-feminist future a lost all-woman astronaut exploration trip to the Martian poles. They are found months later deceased in a horrible scene of scattered oxygen canisters, shredded food pouches, and nightmarish evidence of desperate cannibalism. But next to them, piled high in neatly stacked boxes and measured out on smudged plastic instruments, lie carefully mixed shades of Lady Clairol.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 08:59 PM | Comments (2)
September 28, 2008
Paul Newman, RIP
Not a great fan, but always found him likeable. (For the MENA-oriented, he might be especially loved or reviled given his role as The Man Who Made Israel Sexy, leaving the gals sighin' for Zion.) And funny, he didn't look Slovak. Legends have come and gone recently. I am glad though that Newman will probably get the tribute he well deserves, and not the unjust passing mentions another recently-passed legendary influence on modern culture received.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 12:11 AM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2008
Norman Whitfield, RIP
Entirely too brief attention to the loss of someone who belongs up there with Lennon-McCartney; Brian Wilson; Rodgers and Hammerstein; Jagger-Richards as a creator/producer of songs that seemed timeless and classic when they were fresh and new. I Heard It Through the Grapevine; War (what is it good for?); Smilin' Faces; Just My Imagination (Runnin' Away with Me); Ain't Too Proud to Beg; even Car Wash. To name but a few. Sad. Very sad. Hard to beat something like this; I do believe that's the man himself being portrayed behind the studio glass at the start of the video.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 01:15 AM | Comments (2)
September 10, 2008
September 11, 2001 and me
Abusing my journal privileges, I add below a story I sent off in a rambling hurry to a now-defunct internet news service right after the 9/11/2001 events happened. I add new stuff in { }'s to clarify and clean up some text and background. Some good guesses, some less so. People got mad that I warned against calling the attackers cowards, something I still regard as a no-brainer. But it's easier for me, as I don't assume all courage, or even non-cowardice, is intrinsically admirable.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:38 PM | Comments (4)
June 24, 2008
Wanted: A Cure for Envy Deficiency
People work and even pray to acquire virtues. But I need a vice. A certain particular one. Forget "vice", let's use an old-fashioned word - "sin", because it's one of the classic seven deadly ones. Now, I am not short of vices, but one I do lack feels like some kind of vitamin deficiency. So I beg divine favor to give me some of that four letter word which sounds like a two-letter word: envy.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 11:53 PM | Comments (6)
March 12, 2008
My Kermit the Frog Nightmare
I had a moral nightmare the other night while asleep. It was Kermit the Frog. He was singing that song about it not being easy to be green. And he sang it to its conclusion about acceptance, and the wonders of the ordinary.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 11:55 PM | Comments (5)
December 15, 2007
Population Control Propaganda Slipped Casually In
In the middle of a Washington Post story on China now experiencing a population increase, in part due to the erosion of its totalitarian forced one-child policy, this paragraph of population control propaganda slips in without even the decency of legitimate weasel words like "many say" or "officials say" or "is widely held":
For more than three decades, China has imposed tight controls on population growth. By limiting how many people compete for scarce resources, the country has been able to lift millions out of poverty.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 08:57 PM | Comments (4)
December 09, 2007
More Brains Equals Less Happiness (with related Jumbled Thoughts on anti-Bush/anti-Jock sentiment)
Too little time to ramble appropriately. But here's a jumble of semi-related issues on nerd alienation, anti-Bushism and anti-jockism. First, the comments to this posted article on growing up brainy but inevitably unhappy are interesting, even touching (the comments are more interesting than the article). Though myself a fully formed non-jock last-picked-for-any-team somewhat "brainy" nerd, I nevertheless experienced less trauma than these folks did with "jocks" and other less eggheady types. Perhaps because the school environments I had were not too pro-jock, and were definitely pro-nerd. (That didn't stop all of the usual expected adolescent brutality and social ineptness coming my way, however). Then, I jump below to a bunch of slightly related half-formed theories here, going from the social exclusion of nerds to a distantly related political one: a working theory that alot of anti-Bush personal (not political) sentiment is fundamentally anti-jock resentment by nerds. To which discussion I append an appreciation of jocks.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 11:53 AM | Comments (11)
November 03, 2007
Safe from Pakistani worries
This just in on Pakistan: "Musharraf’s leadership is threatened by an increasingly defiant Supreme Court . . . ." Well, glad we don't face any dangers like that here in the USA.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 11:08 PM | Comments (1)
October 26, 2007
Petty thoughts: She's not worth it
An "oldie" of sorts, like me the listener, on the radio. Tom Petty's Listen To Her Heart. And the opening line that I hated then and now. So I just have to say this these many years later.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2007
Make that song stop!
Would those young kids out there here in the USA please get that Delilah song off the radio?! (Actually it's kind of nice, sort of like an "unplugged" version of "Last Train to Clarksville", and has a cool background story, but enough already, that adolescent poetry and singing gets to my old age.)
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 11:21 PM | Comments (2)
