Category Archives: Age of Reagan

Your Daily Hot Air

The Right Way To Kill

Here is the second (natch) of the 10 Commandments of the Holy American Empire, Inc.:

Thou shalt not kill, unless it is with bullets or factory-made bombs, then kill away.

Our Pontiff…, er, President, Barack Obama yesterday issued a bull from the Domus Alba (hehe, I’m getting all Catholic-y and Latin-y on you) saying that those nasty Syrian thugs under Bashar al-Assad have just gone too far, what with whacking their own citizens with sarin gas.

We, the faithful, won’t stand for this!

See, we’re a very moral people. We have faith in mass-produced piercing projectiles and explosive compounds (once again, made only in free market-, 2nd Amendment-anointed enterprise facilities). They are sacred and can be used for any purpose their purchasers desire (although most pious Americans use them to free their fellow human beings from the chains of this Earthly realm.)

Machine Gun Factory

Holy Killing Machines

Whew.

Glad we’ve got that all cleared up. The Syrian civil war has thus far claimed upwards of 100,000 people. Most have been killed, of course, by bullets and bombs. And although their premature leave-takings are somewhat regrettable (they are, after all, only brown people), we Americans have always found a way to excuse the air-conditioning of human bodies by means of ammo.

But sarin gas? My god, man! What kind of animals are these Syrians?

We’ll stand for a hundred thousand or even a million bodies being blown to kingdom come by high speed hunks of metal but any madmen who dare to take 150 lives by dropping pellets of poison gas near them must be stopped before the whole of the human race is wiped out.

That’s it for today’s sermon. Go in peace.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

The Reagan/Bush/Bush Supreme Court, which usually swoons and bats its eyelashes at big corporations, dealt Myriad Genetics a huge blow yesterday when the justices ruled unanimously that human DNA cannot be patented.

Human DNA

Not So Fast

Imagine. Myriad and several other mad scientist outfits wanted to put patents on the human genes they’d isolated and identified, forcing other researchers to pay them hefty royalty fees should they decide to delve into those genes themselves. Clarence Thomas, whose utterances I generally take as seriously as those of a ranting street corner preacher, wrote the decision. “Myriad did not create anything,” he wrote, exhibiting a wisdom I’ve found lacking in him since his elevation to the Court by George H.W. Bush in 1991.

Let’s be frank, this decision is a shocker. SCOTUS just last month ruled that Monsanto had the right to squeeze every penny it could out of family farmers who dare to harvest a second generation of soybeans originally planted with the evil agribusiness empire’s pesticide-resistant seeds. In other words, that same unanimous court had ruled that Monsanto will own the rights to all the soybean plantings on Earth within a few years, considering the fact that pretty much every farmer who wants to make a buck on soybeans will use the company’s Frankenseeds.

The Monsanto decision coupled with the work of the company’s legislation-writing lobbyists are prima facie evidence that Big Business is the real government of this holy land.

So, what’s with Myriad? All it wanted to do was own the genetic encoding of every human being on Earth. What could be more entrepreneurial than that? Ayn Rand would have had a string of spontaneous orgasms just thinking about it.

Rand

Own Me, Myriad, Make Me Your Slave!

So here’s the latest scoreboard of the Age of Reagan Supreme Court:

1 — The Good, Decent, and Friendly People of the Earth

998 — Corporate pirates, banksters, war profiteers, polluters, etc.

Well, it’s a start.

The Business Of Piece

The Pencil Today:

THE QUOTE

“Read The Electron Pencil everyday, especially now that we have daily event listings. Scroll down to our Go section. What are you waiting for?” — Big Mike Glab

WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK….

So, Bloomington has been blessed by Parade Magazine as the fourth-hardest working town in these Great United States, Inc.

I don’t know if Bloomingtonians are dancing in the streets just yet (I’m still sitting in my underwear in my garage office typing out this bilge, after all) but I’m going to have to dump some cold water on all the glee.

Typical Monday Morning In Bloomington

What in the world does this arbitrary list mean? Do the people of, say, Santa Clause, Indiana, which is not on the list, just sit around dreaming of Christmas? Does the populace of Hoboken, New Jersey refuse to work because they’re busy listening to hometown boy Frank Sinatra’s records?

“I Just Don’t Have The Time To Work.”

Here’s the most troubling thing about Parade’s survey and findings: Bloomington ranked so high mainly because our citizens are, as a group, the most willing in the United States to work weekends (“an astounding 15 points above the national average”).

Ever since unions started becoming unfashionable and workers rights turned into a pie-in-the-sky ideal in this Land of Reagan, Americans have been compelled to work longer hours and sacrifice more of their personal and family lives for employers who have been laying them off as never before. The weekend as well as the lunch hour and, for that matter, even an uninterrupted dinner have come to be viewed as luxuries.

I wouldn’t throw a party for the Parade ranking.

READ TO LIVE — LIVE TO READ

Happy World Book and Copyright Day!

Bet you didn’t know this holiday existed. Unless I missed the news, I don’t think there’ll be a parade down Kirkwood Avenue today in honor of it.

Why Not?

Here’s what I suggest you do — take your favorite book to work or school today and just give it to somebody. It could be a stranger or your best friend. No matter, just give her or him a book.

And if the loss of the book makes you feel deprived, I have a simple remedy for that, as well. Go to your local independent bookseller (he he) and buy a new one.

Simple, no?

WELL, I NEVER!

So, John Edwards goes on trial today for the heinous crime of conspiring to conceal his extramarital affair during his aborted presidential run in 2008. Additionally, the Secret Service/prostitutes scandal continues to race along.

This weekend whiny Joe Lieberman, Independent (read: incapable of commitment) senator from Connecticut, wagged his finger and revealed that one of the offending Secret Service agents actually stayed at the hotel where President Obama was scheduled to occupy when he arrived in Colombia. The horror!

Lieberman: They Had Sex, Those Fiends!

Other than obvious atrocities like shooting an unarmed black teenager on a dark street in a white neighborhood or Mel Gibson offering his opinion on anything, the worst thing you can do in this holy land is have anything other than missionary position sex outside the sacred bonds of marriage.

Ergo, Secret Service agents have been fired and may yet be prosecuted and a presidential candidate whose top talking point was the poor eventually may be sentenced to time in the joint.

Meanwhile, these fine citizens continue to roam the streets freely:

The Unindicted

Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Monday, April 23, 2012

◗ Bloomington, Citywide — IU’s Arts Week Everywhere 2012; Ongoing, various times

The Kinsey Institute Gallery“Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze,” exhibit, art by women examining men; Ongoing

From the “Man as Object” Exhibition

IU Memorial Union, State Room East — Lecture, Dr. Joseph Collentine, chair of Modern Languages at Northern Arizona University, “On the Compatibility between SLA Corpus and Variationist Research”; 2:30pm

IU Asian Culture CenterHenna 101 with introduction and hands-on application; 5:30pm

IU Auditorium“Spirit of Indiana Showcase,” annual student-athlete awards gala; 6:30pm

Bell Trace Health and Living Center“Life in a British Period Drama,” 4-session class on British class life; 6:30pm

Madame Walker Theatre CenterAuditions for “Queen Esther — A Fearless Shero”; 6-8pm

IU Hutton Honors College, Great Room — Indiana Review Editors Showcase; 7-8:30pm

The Player’s PubSongwriter Showcase; 8pm

The BishopNo Requests with DJ Burke; 8pm

The BluebirdDave Walters Karaoke; 8pm

The BishopSpirit of ’68 Presents: WOODS with Mmoss & Apache Dropout; 9pm

The BluebirdLaidback Luke; 9pm

Laidback Luke

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