Always bet on black

I almost have a gambling problem.

I don't actually gamble much, and when I do I manage to limit the amount I risk, through a series of strategies--for example, limiting how much I bring to the table, or getting my casino fix in unthreatening environments like our local branch of Casino McVegas.

But I always feel like I am on the verge of having a gambling problem. I have the urge to risk it all!

Enter Swoopo.com. They call it "Entertainment Shopping." This kind of thing is really dangerous to me, because it is gambling in the guise of of something else. These kinds of things have potential to slip past my anti-gambling defenses.

I mean, for goodness sake, check this out:


Dude bought an $1,100 for $55.96.

Of course, "Stenvenson" had to get lucky. He had to be the last person willing to bid, at 60 cents per bid. In his particular case, he had already bid 214 times, meaning that in the end, he spent $55.96 on the television, but $129.00 on the bids.

To be sure, that's still a great bargain. But had he not been so lucky, he could have dropped that $129 and received nothing in return.

Like any well run house, Swoopo takes a substantial rake. It was a 2¢ auction, so the website brought in over $34,000 in bidding fees, more than enough to cover the price of the TV.

My advice is, don't try it. It's a sucker's game. Myself, I've purchased some bids, but like I said, I almost have a problem.

On nutsack tattoo visibility, and the improvement thereof

Gillette does not condone use of a straight razor to clear the underbrush. Rather, follow their approved technique.

The best a man can get.

North to Alaska

Want to be depressed? Follow this link.

Prophylactics may no longer be possible!

If I were a betting man, I'd bet that this blog is about to eat itself. That's right, we may have fallen within the horizon of yet another blogular existence failure. Or maybe not.

Maybe you noticed the BuzzFeed^[1] widget in the right hand column. Maybe you didn't. Anyway, it's there and it's been there for a few hours. Supposedly it will bring buzz our way through our participation in a wider buzz spreading project. Think of it as a no-cost pyramid scheme for buzz.

Anyway, the first bit-o-buzz that the widget spit out had the headine "underage gymnasts". Shortly after, the site went down. Now, there's just a message saying that the site is undergoing routine maintenance and an invitation to visit one of their hand picked list of ten or so buzz worthy sites.

I chose Erotic Falconry:

And a movement it has become! With nearly 60 proud enthusiasts with real email addresses, we’re taking the sexual fringe community by storm. You can bet that’s got the fellas at Nambla plenty nervous. Even celebrities like Robert Loggia, Carrie Strug, Liam Neeson and Ted Pennington are showing their talon marks!

Still with me? EYES ON THE TEXT! As I said above, I worry that we may be approaching a blogular catastrophe of more or less the usual proportions. The danger is porn-bots. Most likely Chinese porn-bots, but that's just speculation. I fear, in a word, that the entire BuzzFeed enterprise is a sinister porn-bot front and that the widget there is a virtual trojan horse. All may be lost.

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1 - May the record show that it was Jason's idea. Or, possibly, fault.

Huh?

...those who constantly remind us that giving “offense” is commensurate with “hate speech,” and as such, is worthy of special remedies (”diversity training” for benighted “haters,” a rather nuanced reconsideration of free speech that turns “tolerance” on its head, or — at best, the rise of “free speech zones,” which are nothing more than a progressive attempt at Jim Crow-ing the First Amendment) |Protein [ahem -- ed.] Wisdom|

Emphasis added.

I just don't understand what is being alleged here. As far as I know, so-called 'free-speech zones' have uniformly been created by entrenched power in an attempt to isolate and disempower^[1] dissenting voices. Do the wingnuts really think that this is a progressive idea? More to the point, what the Hell could possibly be meant by 'Jim Crow-ing the First Amendment'? Is there a literacy test involved? Could this test be used to ban particularly stupid bloggers?

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1 No, I do not believe 'disempower' to be a real word. Yes, I do despise myself for using it in a sentence. But, you know, if the meaning fits...

A Euro-Asian man don't need him around anyhow

I found this about where you'd expect.

As with all the verbiage coming out of the reptilian stems of Farrakhans and Wrights, too many folks who should be thinking, are listening to cogitate, are applauding a concert or a vocal solo. Brothers don't ask themselves about the content of the words they is hearing from our unelected Negro leaders, who are only too happy to oblige with their histrionics, their impulsive head-twists, arm waving, plosive "ps" and labial "bs" their rising in terror "Ays" and descending to solemnity "um-hums" I'd say these ventriloquists have perfected the art of "pretense speech". They pretend to speak sense, but its mostly rhetorical smoke and mirrors expressing indignation at not having the choice to simply come-in and jive.

No, the Lord demand they speak - and lo, they imitate speech. A a bit of righteous outrage, colored words, shrill invocations, aphoristic mumbojumbo, and hyperactive metronomic gestures, to conjure up moral indignation and the Lords wrath. The brothers growing up and listening to this crap perfected the art of smiling, "a-huming" and getting up and swinging-a-clapping while not at all listening for logic, consistency, and implication. Its an ethnic circus show where everyone joins in on the act. Christian or Islamic, suffused with Ghanian shamanism.

While the Euro-Asian man has perfected the art of calm reflection and rational creative destruction - and made this the foundation upon which our world was built, a world transcending huts and canoes - the Negro leadership in this Euro-Asian world has decided to proclaim pride in its Tropical heritage, and perfected the art of "show thinking, and cliche pimping" in order to assault the foundations of the Euro-Asian world. This leadership has dug Americas blacks into a dark hole called "Fake Wisdom thought," but to suggest so is to be a Colonialist, anti-Africanist, Racist, Supremacist, or Race-Traitor.|Stop Obama|

Just to make the utter vacuity of the argument clear, let's note for the record that nowhere in the post is any concern shown for "the content of the words" spoken by Obama. It is entirely a critique of style, and a critique driven by two of my favorite fallacies, guilt by association and ad hominem. You can read the whole thing if you want, but it says here not to bother.

Anyway, what I want to draw attention to is the way that 'Euro-Asian' crops up at all the points in the argument where one would expect to see appeals to 'Western Civilization.' What's going on here? In particular, is this form of the argument something that arose sui generis in upper Wingnuttia, or is it an artifact of leftist critiques that contrast the industrial North with the so-called Global South? Not having read any of those leftist critiques, I'm at a bit of a loss here. It does sound similar to things I've heard at talks over in that neighborhood of the academy, though of course the application is rather different.

Addendum: By the way, I'd bet dollars to donuts that stop-obama.org is straight up politcal astroturf and that the bloggers at the site are little more than characters (the link goes to the whois entry). The interesting question, it seems to me, is whether it's Clinton astroturf or McCain astroturf.

It's official

Hillary throws in the towel.

(via)

Card check revisited

No, not really. I'm still working on that post. In the meantime, I think this is the worst television commercial ever made. Oddly, the comments over at YouTube are uniformly positive. Goes to show, I guess.

When doom comes calling, don't pick up

Wash your hands, computer geeks! by Wade Rockett.

I didn't see the debate last night, so it's a slow-post day from Austin. Consider this an open thread to discuss anything we should be blogging about. In the meantime:

Mobile Phone Virus Scare Jumps from Pakistan to Afghanistan

Rumours last week were spread around Pakistan that a deadly virus was being sent through mobile phones, and that anyone answering phone calls from some certain numbers would contract a fatal illness. The rumours claimed that "as soon as you answer your phone blood comes out of your mouth, nose and ears and you die"

The cellular operators moved to calm down subscribers and said in a joint statement "These rumors are completely baseless. They do not make any sense in technological terms." Farah Hussain, a spokeswoman for Warid Telecom, told Reuters that their customer service centers had been inundated with panicky subscribers inquiring about the so-called virus. | link

Okay, so that's not too interesting. But consider that the only other thing I had to post was Maternacord.

Monday poll: Which is worse?

• bodogFIGHT: St. Petersburg
  
• Find A Death dot com