In Which The Devolutionist Decides One Trip To Tucson Was Enough For A Lifetime

This was not a good weekend in the madhouse and anger chamber that is America.  Your Devolutionist, as is his wont, spent too much time in front of his computer following the events in Tucson and the ensuing finger-pointing in the blogosphere that seems to have only slightly abated at this moment, some 79 hours after the shooting.

The Devolutionist has no desire to rehash Saturday's events here. Already millions of words have been written about it, and he's probably read most of them.  Also written a few himself, on various blogs and websites, mostly countering the right-wing assholes desperate to deny that any of their increasingly hysterical rhetoric over the last couple of years could have in any way influenced a mentally unbalanced person and reinforced his rage until he snapped. No, certainly not.

Then one reads stories like this and wonders about the freak-out America would have if fourteen decapitated bodies were dumped at a shopping center in, say, Daytona Beach, and becomes grateful all over to live in America, as sick as some of the people here may be.

Years ago your road-trippin' Devolutionist spent a weekend in Tucson, tagging along with a friend who wanted to watch his Australian pen pals perform dance routines, accompanied by a rock guitarist who played his shows while wearing a motorcycle helmet complete with dark visor, during a roller derby match (don't ask.)  Tucson was a nice town, a sleepy college burg with some cool bars and restaurants and blonde sorority girls who all looked mostly the same.  The place was supposed to usually be hot as hell during the day, but it didn't seem so bad.

Still, driving into town one night from the suburban house where we stayed, a rabbit darted out in front of the car.  The Devolutionist hit the brakes and felt a thump.  We got out and looked around and could not find the bunny, so we assumed it had survived.  Relating the story a few weeks later back in L.A., another friend suggested it probably hopped off into the bushes to die.  This seemed ominous.  And Arizona has only seemingly gotten crazier over the last few years.

So sorry, Tucson.  You are a lovely place and you will survive this.

In Which The Devolutionist Enjoys Memories of Watching Willy Wonka While Stoned

Oompa Loompa-American John Boehner is now Speaker of the House. Finally, a victory for creamsicle-colored people in their long struggle against discrimination.

Jobs for everyone are sure to soon follow, as promised.

In Which The Devolutionist Faces a New Year With His Customary Grace

Your Devolutionist does not believe in New Year's resolutions.  Why does a person need the artificial stimulation  of an essentially arbitrary division of time to accomplish tasks he has been too lazy to accomplish before?  When a person actually accomplishes these tasks, then he can pat himself on the back.

The tasks always turn out to be so important they should exist outside the framework of a social construct.  Exercising more?  Good advice in general.  Get finances in order?  Why aren't they already?  Drink less?  Never a resolution your Devolutionist could endorse.  If you drink enough that not drinking is a resolution, you might need to get to a meeting.  Stop moping over past heartbreaks?  Your mental health depends on it, so if you've been moping for six months or a year or even longer, you shouldn't need a change in the calendar to motivate you to get over it.

But (there is always a but) your lazy Devolutionist does struggle himself with certain dictates of living this long-ass life.  He quit exercising in July in order to rest a sore toe and often-stiff lower back, and after more than five months has not gone back to the gym, even though L.A. Fitness still deducts $29.99 from the old checking account every month.  So making time to work out again is high on the priority list.

Also on the list: working harder.  There have been too many mornings of lazing around drinking coffee and surfing the net instead of writing, cleaning, sending out resumes and cover letters, just to name a few unconsummated activities.  So eliminating a fair percentage of natural sloth is also on the to-do list.

Finally, this blog.  The Devolutionist has neglected it...has in fact barely touched the damn thing over the course of 2010.  For a masturbatory outlet, he prefers actual masturbation.  But the blog began with the intention of being an outlet for mental masturbation, and that is at least as important to keep the writing muscles warm and shapely as physical workouts are for the body.  So the resolution from this day going forward for the blog: write more entries even if many, many of them are utter crap.

In Which The Devolutionist Tries To Remember His Yoga Breathing Exercises

It's Election Day 2010.  A few hours ago your Devolutionist cast his ballot for the most important issue of the midterms: Prop 19, the ballot proposition that would legalize marijuana in California.  Also, there was something about a governor, a senator, state budgets getting passed by simple majority instead of two-thirds of the Assembly, blah blah blah.

The temperature hovers around ninety here in L.A. today, which matches the Devolutionist's mood: overheated and angry.  This election season has been nothing but depressing in the quality of both the candidates turned out by both parties (particularly the Republicans/Tea Partiers) and in the discourse.  Once upon a time it seemed that even if we disagreed on solutions to problems, the major parties at least agreed on the issues.  Now it feels as if we're living in two different dimensions.  The noisiest of the Republicans see an America under assault by some sort of fascist socialist who wants the government to control everything and will stop at nothing, including using union thugs from Chicago or something, to achieve a country in which everyone is a slave to the state.  The rest of us live in reality.

Unfortunately, it's the loud voices that are most audible.  And that is depressing.

Tonight there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth here in the world headquarters of the Devolution, with long breaks to watch last night's Castle.  Fantasies of Stana Katic cuffing him to a headboard may well be all that will save the Devolutionist's sanity.

In Which The Devolutionist Finds Yet One More Reason To Never Watch Network News

In reaction to this news, can we lay to rest this idea that the mainstream media has some sort of liberal bias?

The networks are so determined to pretend to be impartial, they won't take five seconds to ask if maybe the right-wing nuts they are inviting onto the airwaves are in any way going to contribute to meaningful discourse.  Thus we have CNN now employing Erick Erickson of RedState, a man who once called a sitting Supreme Court justice a "goat-fucking child molester."  In the last year the Sunday show This Week has invited both Michelle Malkin ("Interning the Japanese during WW2 was the right thing to do") and Meghan McCain to participate in panel discussions.  Meghan McCain, it should be said, got schooled on Bill Maher's show last year, and ABC invites her to sit at a table with Christiane Amanpour?  You might as well have had a lightbulb sit in Meghan's chair.  A burned-out one, as that's the only kind of bulb that would be dimmer than Meghan McCain.

But then, Breitbart has been schooled on Maher's show too. Apparently looking like a fucking ignorant moron on freewheeling HBO is now a pre-requisite to being invited to participate in political forums on ABC.  There was a time that would have been considered failing upward, but given the recent trend I'd say Bill Maher has the upper hand.

Now that I think about it, Maher was once fired from ABC for saying something controversial and wound up on HBO a couple of years later. So there you have it: liberal says something controversial on ABC and gets fired, conservative proves himself not smart enough for an HBO audience and goes to ABC instead.  Somewhere Ted Koppel is laughing into a bottle of schnapps.

In Which The Devolutionist Pitches An Exciting New Reality TV Series

Well, not exactly new.  Your Devolutionist stumbled across a blog called WingNut Comments the other day and it gave him an idea for the next season of Survivor.

Survivor: Blog Commenter!

Here's the idea: lock a dozen people in their own small room with a four-pack of Red Bull, some of that dehydrated food astronauts eat, and a dedicated DSL line.  Each person must spend a certain amount of time reading and engaging with the commenters at certain sites: Free Republic, Hot Air, Red State, WND, Newsmax,  Reason, just to name a few off the top of my head.  You could rotate it, give each person particular sites on particular days and have them engaging each other on the comment boards without knowing it.  One person could secretly be designated as the Imposter Wingnut, writing the most outlandish shit he or she can think of and trying to drive the other contestants completely nuts.

There could also be challenges like the Troll Challenge, where an individual has to play Imposter Wingnut on the comment boards of some of the more earnest liberal sites: HuffPo, DailyKos, Firedoglake.

Contestants would be eliminated as they crack and beg to be let out of their room, smash their computers, put their heads through the wall, curl up in the fetal position under their beds while crying and muttering gibberish to themselves, and so on.  Maybe we even put them on Suicide Watch and take away all belts, bedsheets, and shoelaces for a time before elimination.

Hey Mark Burnett: call me!

In Which The Devolutionist Cannot See Reason

It's no surprise to anyone who follows our always-devolving political discourse that one theme always running through libertarian/conservative thought is that of Victimhood.  All those Tea Party folk?  Victims of liberal elitists, the lamestream media, racial politics, Jon Stewart, activist judges, big government, Alinsky tactics, George Soros, illegal immigrants, puppies, kittens, what have you.

The Devolutionist will now break out the world's smallest violin and play a rousing rendition of "My Heart Pumps Purple Piss For You."

Over at Wonkette tonight a Reason reader implored your Devolutionist to read this smarmy post but replace the word "Teabagger" with the word "n*****" and then tell him if it still seemed satirical.  Apparently in Teabagland "Teabagger" is an epithet on a par with a word used to dehumanize an entire race of people for at least the last three or four hundred years.  Apparently we're supposed to respect a bunch of shouting anger bears with no coherent set of beliefs, no respect for a progressive viewpoint, really nothing but high BMI and a shitload of tricorn hats, even when they compare their struggle of the last eighteen months to the centuries-long struggle for civil rights for blacks.  Apparently, according to this guy, "dehumanization is dehumanization."

Meh.  Your Devolutionist does not need a psychology lecture.  Really, it's not about dehumanizing anyone.  He's just sick of the whining.