Radio Stupidity, and a Question.

I will put the following quotes from the man known as Michael Savage as he said them on his radio show. From Media Matters.

Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I‘ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is.

What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, “Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.”

Autism — everybody has an illness. If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, “Don’t behave like a fool.” The worst thing he said — “Don’t behave like a fool. Don’t be anybody’s dummy. Don’t sound like an idiot. Don’t act like a girl. Don’t cry.” That’s what I was raised with. That’s what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You’re turning your son into a girl, and you’re turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That’s why we have the politicians we have.

Wow, well, stupid and sexist. Apparently, autism is a disease for girls only, according to his logic. Now, this individual put his opinion out there, with no training whatsover and why is he still on? I can read about cancer and yet I’ll probably still know next to nothing, which is why I don’t put an opinion or diagnose anyone on the disease or cures or whatever. So, America, why is this man still on the air? Really? Please, explain this to me America. WHY? Please, America, take the garbage off the air. Oh, by the way, you have the politicians you have because you elected them…

Video Game Quote

This was written by Tycho of Penny Arcade last Wednesday. It is true and sad if you are a Nintendo fan. God, I hate irony. Where is the next Zelda damn it????

“This is the deep-dish, delicious irony endured by the Nintendo stalwart: to see their platform of choice ascendant, even as their bright God turns his face away.”

Quote of the Day

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.” Roger ‘Verbal’ Kint

That quote is from the movie The Usual Suspects. It’s a kick-ass quote from a kick-ass movie. I highly recommend it, very entertaining and well, it is very smart and I loved the ending. I just saw it the other day which is why I’m bringing it up. This is one of the smartest movies I’ve ever watched. Watch it!

A Couragous Stand

Well, this is not about immigration but I’m going to blog about it anyways. It is kind of old too but I’m glad that some people do have b***s. The past 4th of July, the man known as Jesse Helms died. As far as I’ve been told and now read, he was one the most racist and homophobic individuals to ever wield power in this country. Seriously, to the people of NC, what the hell where you thinking in electing this guy? So much hate, destruction, it’s ridiculous and embarrassing. You people should be ashamed. Here are some of the quotes from the illustrious man himself.

“The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian.”
– 1995

“The University of Negroes and Communists”
– Reference to the University of North Carolina devised by Mr. Helms when he worked for Willis Smith’s 1950 U.S. Senate campaign.

“Your tax dollars are being used to pay for grade-school classes that teach our children that CANNIBALISM, WIFE-SWAPPING and MURDER of infants and the elderly are acceptable behavior.”
– Fund raising mailer, 1996

“All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction.”
– After Mexicans protested his visit in 1986

“Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches.”
– 1995 radio broadcast

“She’s a damn lesbian. I am not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine.”
– Explaining why he was opposing the appointment of a woman for a cabinet post.

“They should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro.”
– In response to Duke University students holding a vigil after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, 1968

Anyways, back to the point. I read this article over at Alternet and decided to share it here. So, the governor of NC, Gov. Easley decided that all flags should fly half-staff in order to honor the memory of their dead ex-senator. One man said no. It was L.F. Eason, a 29-year veteran of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture. This is what he had to say about his choice.

“This is in no way a political decision. I simply do not feel it is appropriate to honor a person whose epitaph of government service was to have voted against or blocked every civil rights issue that came before the US Congress. His doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice cost North Carolina and our Nation much that we may never regain.”

All I can say is bravo good man, bravo. The man had to retire early from his post because of his decision Now, I say honor goes to the men who earned it. In my opinion, Jesse Helms didn’t earn any honor.

Writing Quotes

These are some quotes I found interesting. Slow Saturday…

‘You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you’ve got something to say.’

F Scott Fitzgerald

‘Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic.’

Julie Burchill

‘Coleridge was a drug addict.  Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was stabbed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman’s name out of a satire; then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to be a writer -and if so, why?

Bennett Cerf, co-founder of Random House

‘Without me the literary industry would not exist: the publishers, the agents, the sub-agents, the sub-sub agents, the accountants, the libel lawyers, the departments of literature, the professors, the theses, the books of criticism, the reviewers, the book pages - all this vast and proliferating edifice is because of this small, patronised, put-down and underpaid person.’

Doris Lessing’s writers’ manifesto, courtesy of Rosemary Friedman in Writers’ Forum

Every novel is an attempt to capture time, to weave something solid out of air.  The author knows it is an impossible task - that is why he keeps on trying.’

David Beaty

Different Seasons: Quotes

In one of my past posts I wrote about how I liked the book Different Seasons by Stephen King which has 4 novellas. Well, here are some quotes that I liked from the novellas.

“The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.” The Body. As a writer, I can vouch for that.

“Speech destroys the functions of love, I think–that’s a hell of thing for a writer to say, I guess, but I believe it to be true. If you speak to tell a deer that you mean no harm, it glides away with a single flip of its tail. The word is the harm. Love isn’t what these assholes poets like McKuen want you to think it is. Love has teeth, they bite; the wounds never close. No word, no combination of words, can close those lovebites. It’s the other way around, that’s the joke. If those wounds dry up, the words die with them. Take it from me, I’ve made my life from the words, and I know that is so.” The Body.

“There is no comfort without pain; thus we define salvation through suffering.” The Breathing Method.

A Quote

“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man” Fredrich Nietzche. Sometimes it is true…

American Gods

American Gods is a book written Gaiman. I enjoyed it quite a lot. I think I’m biased because the main character goes by the name of Shadow. Anyways, this is one of the passages that I liked a lot. This is the character of Sam, telling Shadow what she believes in. Everyone should read the book!

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen-I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline of good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. Believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in the woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.” She stopped out of breath.

Quote of the Day

From Mexican director, Guillermo del Toro, the man behind Pan’s Labyrinth and the upcoming Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. Here is a quote about monsters and beauty.

The Mexican director, whose latest movie “Hellboy 2: The Golden Army” opens next month, said Thursday night that monsters have a inherent beauty that not enough people appreciate.

“We live in a world that’s constantly trying to tell you what (expletive) products to use to diminish your ugliness, or smelliness or the unpleasantness”, he said Thursday. “I say (expletive) them all, let us be whatever we are, let us be free in our ugliness, fatiness, stretch markings, whatever the (expletive) we are. Monsters can be that, monsters can represent something else”.

Obama is a Jedi

When I first saw this in one of my feeds, I laughed. I’ve always been a huge Star Wars fan/nerd. I’ve seen the 6 films in a row and made my girlfriend (before she became my girlfriend, actually) watch them as well. Okay, not all of them on a row, she is not as crazy as me. I originally sent the link out to her but what the hell right, here is what George Lucas, master of all things Star Wars, said, and I quote.

“I would say that’s reasonably obvious,” he said. That is answering the question on whether Obama is a Jedi. Which begs the question, is McCain a Sith lord? He unfortunately didn’t answer the following the question, Who is President Bush more like: Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader?”

The following link is where I got the article.

The Law is the law!

Oh, how I hear that phrase all the time in forums, comment sections in online papers, editorials, letters to the editor and blogs. The law is the law and it should be followed. I agree, not following the law leads to anarchy and no one wants that. Now though, I believe that people should follow laws that make sense. For instance, it is wrong to commit murder or rape someone. Laws against those actions are laws everyone can agree with.

Now, immigration laws, that’s different because we live with a broken system. How is it broken? Broken enough that we have people dying at the borders and millions of people like me, living in the fringes, in the shadows. The antis think it is just easy to follow the law, but they’ve never done it, and well, they would never have to. Immigration is a mess.

But it really bothers me is the antis’s stand on the law. The thing the law is infallible. The should be followed to the letter. Well, sorry, the world doesn’t work like that, and it never actually has. We are talking about a country that was founded on the breaking of British law, which was unfair. Unfair, curious word isn’t it? Unfair is what immigration laws are now, making people risk their lives for something that America does want, the labor.

The law has never been followed to the letter, and some laws shouldn’t, as history shows us.

British law was unfair to the American colonies, America gained its independence and broke away from the motherland, breaking the law.

During the slavery era, some enlightened people took part in the Underground Railroad, breaking the law in an effort to help their fellow men. No one looks back on them as law breakers.

During the Civil Rights movement, countless laws were broken in order to bring about justice to African Americans. Once again, the law was broken.

Americans committed genocide against original population of Native Americans, they were just following the laws and their ‘rights’.

During the time of Nazi Germany, the laws were followed and it gave way to the extermination of 6 million Jews. That is an example of the law being wrong, because everything that happened in that country was legally correct but morally wrong.

I’m sure everyone who has ever driven a car has broken the law once. Everyone who has been young has broken the law or curfew once.

No one is without sin when it comes to obeying the law. And not all laws are just. Take a look at the following quote by Howard Zinn.

“Historically, the most terrible things- war, genocide, slavery- have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”

So, yes, the law is the law, but the law is not always right. And you have never followed the law to the letter. This is not a call for anarchy, no, but for forgiveness for something that immigrants didn’t want to do but were force to, by a broken immigration system and unjust laws.

Funny Quotes from George Carlin

I’ll be putting quotes from George Carlin, he was one of the best. Again, RIP George Carlin. Once again I say, the world has become less funny without you.

At a formal dinner party, the person nearest death should always be seated closest to the bathroom.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.

Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.

Electricity is really just organized lightning.

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

“I am” is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that “I do” is the longest sentence?

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me - they’re cramming for their final exam.

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

If God had intended us not to masturbate he would’ve made our arms shorter.

If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.
There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

You know the good part about all those executions in Texas? Fewer Texans.

I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

Old Quotes but Good Quotes

These are quotes that I used on my old blog, but I wanted to use them again because they are important. The first one is important and all Americans should remember it, you are all connected to immigrants and immigration, like it or not.

“Remember, remember always that all of us and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And the next quote is from Martin Luther King Jr. This quote is about us, in the pro-immigrant bloggosphere and those those who fight for immigrant rights.

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.“

Immigration Quote

I like this quote. I believe it to be true.

“It’s as if we expect border control agents to do what a century of communism could not: defeat the natural market forces of supply and demand… and defeat the natural human desire for freedom and opportunity. You might as well as sit in your beach chair and tell the tide not to come in.” - Michael Bloomberg

For those who are apathetic…

This quote is for those who are apathetic. I say get up and stand for what you believe in. If I can do it despite all the risks, you can do so too. Do something.

People often say with pride, “I’m not interested in politics.” They might as well say, “I’m not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future, or any future.”

By Martha Gellhorn.