SRF Heavy Industries

Thanks to brandonbird.com.

[*]

Say thank you, you uncivilized bastards.

[*]

I CAN HAS LOLCODE

KTHX

[*]

[*]

Apparently all it takes to get a visit from judge_floro—or one of his elves—is to mention his name. If I recall correctly a tidbit of the streaming wealth of material I’ve sifted already, Angel (the sister to either Luis or Armand, I forget which) has promised him worldwide fame. Being somewhat of a skeptic, I’d have to say spending twenty hours a day cutting and pasting a couple hundred links into comments on blogs and maintaining a presence on the top twenty social networking sites is a lot of work even for an elemental spirit like Angel, and it is likely that Floro or one or more of his human supporters is doing the bulk of the work. But the effort is, truly, inspired and likely to be effective at least in the short term.

I mentioned his name, made fun of his elves, and have received my own visitation. It’s nothing special—nothing you can’t get off the bio section of user profile page on LiveJournal—so I won’t bother linking. I didn’t perpetrate any serious satire against his elves other than mentioning some uses I might have for elves of my own, so I didn’t receive any serious special attention.

Some people are touchy about their elves. In fact, if Kellogg and Keebler were as touchy as they ought to be, there’d be a couple million cease-and-desist notices flying around right about now for the more insipid imagery I’ve had to put up with during my reading…. But my tortured sensibilities hardly enter into this.

First I would like to apologize to the elves.

I have some respect for the spirits that live in rocks and trees and winds and the wild waters of the earth. I don’t make a career of trafficking with them, but I’ve studied. Some I have summoned and experienced directly, some I have no knowledge of except by secondary effects, but I place some small amount of faith in them. However, these spirits are metals and semi-metals and non-metals and acids and salts and alkaloids and the bizarre suite of -anes, -enes, -ynes, -ones, -ols, -etc that make the chemistry of carbon so arcane, splendoriffic, and harrowing. I eat them, I breathe them, I drink them, and I use them to blow shit up. Twinkies® are made out of these spirits (and not just the organic ones). All hail the spirits. They are to be loved, respected, and occasionally feared.

But I don’t worship them. That gives them ideas above their station.

There are spirits of the mind, too. Subtle patterns of light and sound and electrical potential and thought, delicate and volatile and untouchable and occasionally strong enough to bend horseshoes around and powerful enough to populate or depopulate continents. I study these too. I particularly study encoding these for ease of packaging and effectiveness of transmission. I don’t necessarily eat them, drink them, or breathe them, but I’m not above using them to blow shit up. They are also to be loved, respected, and occasionally feared.

I don’t worship them either. Ideas certainly do not need to get ideas above their station.

For those of you who missed the first episode, judge_floro is Florentino V. Floro and was for a number of years an active trial judge in the northern section of Manilla, in the Philippines. Floro is a religious man—a spiritual man—and claims to have received the gifts of healing and prophecy from God.

Fine. Lots of people are religious and/or spiritual and consider themselves to be healers and/or prophets. Our own President and many of our legislators make similar claims. Ask me for my opinion about that later, when we’re back to discussing my tortured sensibilities.

Floro also had a career in a judicial system that accusers (including the semi-respectable James “The Amazing” Randi) claim is rife with corruption, where charges may be raised and lowered via the judicious application of the weight of currency to the scales of justice, and cushy government jobs are frequently just another form of currency. Floro is also one of those accusers. He claims his post was effectively sold out from under him, that he was never actually fired for reason of actual incompetence or bias (merely suspended from duty indefinitely), and that the more-or-less medical diagnosis of psychosis was used as a crowbar to remove him from the bench. He purports that the spirits who serve and advise him are, for the purposes of his judicial competency, a mere artifact of his religion and should not have any bearing on his ability to serve.

Mr. Floro, if you have been persecuted, ridiculed, or ostracized because of your religious beliefs, which are no weirder, when objectively viewed, than many others we find familiar and comforting, then I apologize for any disrespect. If you have lost your position of stability and respect and responsibility due to the political maneuverings a corrupt bunch of hypocrites who uphold the law when it suits them and feel free to abuse it when they think they can work around it to their own profit, then I apologize.

Mr. Floro, if you espouse ideas that interfere with your physical health and your relationships at work, at home, or with your friends, I do not apologize; but you have my sympathies. The aforementioned interference is the literal definition of illness. Ideas can make you ill as well as healthy, and sometimes cause damage in one area while curing something else. They’re tricky bastards like that. Don’t forget that religious beliefs are, at bare minimum, ideas to be loved, respected, and occasionally feared. If you realize you might have an illness, however, it’s your responsibility to look for a cure. If you have an illness and don’t realize it, then it’s the responsibility of your friends, family, church, and/or government to shield you from further harm and help you get help.

Mr. Floro, if you espouse ideas that you transmit to others that causes them harm, then I hope you understand that’s an act of violence. And I’m sure I don’t have to explain to a judge that violence is never innately just or unjust; but if it’s not justified it is unarguably unethical or immoral or criminal. In any case it’s pretty much the opposite of healing unless it’s actually part of a medical procedure—and even then it’s a risk. If you use rare gifts, talents, and special abilities to commit violence against others who don’t have similar rare gifts, talents and special abilities to defend themselves, then this makes you, at best, a bully, especially if those uses are petty or self-serving—whether or not the violence is justified.

Retribution is petty and self-serving. Even if you disclaim any responsibility for the actions of your spirit associates, you’re responsible for your associations. If you can encourage them to heal others, then you can discourage them from harming others. If you are a holy man and a healer, you won’t take credit for their benevolences and hide behind them snickering for their malignancies on your behalf. That sort of behavior is unethical, irresponsible, and pathetic. I hope that’s not what you’re doing. Although you have said yourself that you are much in favor of curses falling on your enemies and innocent members of their families. I believe you have made your position clear.

I’m curious to know why you’d even want your job back. There’s a hundred pages of legal opinion and documentation showing that it would be hell on earth for you if you went back. You can make more money and have more power as a lawyer or legal consultant. Or a healer/prophet/evangelist.

I invite discussion and dialog here, Mr. Floro. If you want to come here and leave responses and discuss things with myself and my other readers, feel free. But this is my blog, my journal, and my forum. If you’re pasting a hundred links in comments here just so Angel can increase your fame and world-wide impact, then that is abusive, and you’re inviting “ungodly retribution” from my own elf-buddy Cracker (mentioned in my previous post).

[*]

Follow this link to footage of the Furries vs. Klingons league bowling tournament held this past weekend in Midtown Atlanta. Many thanks to “El Lebowski Grande” for the recordings.

Luis, Armand and Angel: The three little elves that cost Philippine Judge Florentino Floro Jr. his place on the bench and netted him a request from the Philippines Supreme Court to stop making threats of “ungodly reprisal” in an effort to get his job back. Luis, for instance, is a “king of kings” and an “avenger” as is apparently none too happy that Floro has been kicked out of the courthouse for being a bloody loony. Rumor has it that the families of the Philippines Supreme Court judges have been falling ill and suffering accidents….

Apparently it’s time for me to start hiring a few elves of my own. Not that I particularly need a seat on the bench in the Philippine courts, but being able to threaten my enemies with ungodly reprisals (with a straight face) appeals to me somewhat, as does the promise of extending my healing ministry to the television networks. Hell, it’s working for Floro.

It seems obvious that “Luis”, “Armand” and “Angel” are references to fictional vampires (as opposed to the other kind) from Rice and Wheedon, and are therefore code names. The “king of kings” reference is the real clue, though, hearkening back to the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century goetic works (c.f., The Lesser Key of Solomon, The Lemegeton and The Steganographia of Trithemius—the last of which is actually a work on cryptography disguised as a work on summoning and compelling angels and demons, but I digress) classifying demonic abilities and heirarchies (now and forever “lowerarchies” in my head, thanks to Pratchett and Gaiman), and is about the only place you’ll find someone with a rank of “king of kings” who will still deign to pick your nose for you.

Anyway, as of this minute, using cryptographic sorcerous techniques left lying around in insufficiently banned books from the tail end of the fifteenth century, I have compelled service from “Smack”, “Cracker” and “Punk”—who will now beat the living shit out of anyone who reads this who does not either XVFFZ LUNVE LCVAX NFF or promise a dollar to my 2008 Presidential Campaign Fund. And be warned: Cracker is a Duke of Emperors or some shit and has certified training as a chiropractor and a dental assistant, so he knows about ungodly reprisals, particularly the ones that involve excruciating pain. (Punk, on the other hand, is an auto mechanic, and he’ll just make sure you get good and screwed on your next car repair. As far as I can tell Smack isn’t good for anything but an unhealthy amount of weight loss and providing a decent jazz soundtrack to the rituals, but you can’t just have two elves. They come in a three-pack, minimum.)

Also also, suck it, Geico Gecko:

[*]

Jarvis Cocker versus Tex Avery over the underage corpse of Owl Jolson:

This is what you get because I’m writing literature, motherfuckers, and that’s tougher than writing SF/zombie pulp and ten times scarier. It’s (in the future-tense) a couple hundred thousand words of epic poetry disguised as prose because even Snorri “Snorey” Sturluson figured out no one wanted to read really really long works of poetry back in the early thirteenth century, and prose is tough to write when you’re thinking poetry. It’s also scary because there’s nothing scarier than the inside of the head of a perfectly sane person who thinks nothing at all like how you think. Times ten. Or however many characters you think is a good number to have in a decent story, whether its prose or poetry.

And yeah, this’ll sell about as well as Lee Press-On® Merkins in Tokyo’s Red Light District. And that’s your fault.

[*]

In honor of International Talk Like A Pirate Day: ARRR!

Also, here’s a monkey hugging a pigeon:

The Locnar has landed.

Additionally: “Where the hell is my flying car?” … in turn-of-the-[20th-]century French postcards.

Facial Hair Club for Men. Didn’t win. Maybe in 2009….

Fish-fucking in the news.

More gems where this came from.

The blather: “What are our news outlets investments coming to when they throw away $100,000 so a non-profit can run an anti-war ad attacking a ‘war hero’? No wonder their stock is down.”

First things first. There has never been a ‘war hero’. There have been heroes who have been sent to war and have shown themselves to be heroes there. These people would have been heroes as fire fighters or police or bus drivers or teachers or insurance salesmen or accountants. Heroism is wasted if the only place you ever see it is in war. The first people who will ever tell you that are soldiers.

Whether Petraeus is any kind of hero is a different argument. Heroes will risk their own wellbeing to save others. He’s certainly risking his career and credibility to save Bush’s occupation plan, so I’m sure Bush considers him a hero. Having more US soldiers in Iraq shooting at other people who are carrying guns, I admit the possibility, may make it more likely that soldiers already stationed there are at less risk, if only by increasing the number in the herd and averaging the risk among them. Removing all of the soldiers, however will reduce the risk to all of them. So I doubt the majority of the soldiers think of him as a hero—unless Petraeus has ever shown up on the battlefield personally, guns blazing, rescuing the wounded like a motherfucker. There are possibly ten or fifteen remaining Iraqis who seriously do not want the US soldiers to depart because they would likely die, so I suspect Petraeus is a hero to them.

Then there’s the blatherer’s main argument. He believes a news outlet’s first obligation is to making a profit for their investors by selling ad space profitably, not by giving deep discounts to a “deep pocketed liberal advocacy group”.

This is me, responding to the blatherer’s main argument:

One: He makes no measure of the depth of MoveOn.org’s pockets. Pocket depth is a very relative measure. I am a lobbyist. My pockets are microns deep at best. George Soros has pretty deep pockets indeed. How deep do pockets need to be before $100,000 isn’t a serious purse-lightening?

Two: There is no consideration of whether someone else’s pockets were involved. Did someone Soros-like cover the short $100,000?

Three: Executives in charge of selling ad space agreed so much with the ad that they decided to write off $100,000 in income? This appears to be the blatherer’s combination assumption and conclusion: that, potentially, the New York Times offers discounts to political advocacy organizations that are aligned with the suspected liberal bias written into the corporation’s by-laws. And that’s bad for business? Oh, come on.

Not that anti-war statements are any longer necessarily strictly liberal. Current pro-war Republicans in office have dropped to somewhat less than fifty percent.

Dear blatherer, according to your arguments, the best business a news outlet can be in is the one in which it sells every square inch of space to the highest bidder. However, many feel that news outlets have different duties that, if they were not fulfilled, would make the newspaper worthless to potential viewers of that sold space, and that would likely kill profits by dropping circulation and ad rates. Besides, if you know that the presence of that controversial ad alone will generate more than 50,000 extra sales at $2.00 apiece and get extra load/views of your online advertising, then you know you’re making the discount back AND ALSO boosting your circulation numbers—which means you can hike your ad rates. And someone paid them to run it.

In fact, I am thinking of offering to the New York Times a full-page-sized color Xerox copy of my naked pink ass (with a magic marker version of Spider Jerusalem’s “Kiss Here” tattoo applied) and a dollar to pay for the space, since I know the outrage-spurred increase in sales and circulation would more than cover the $167,156 shortfall in their standard political advocacy page-rate.

NPR (for example) exists so that we may be guaranteed of at least one news outlet that doesn’t have to be tempted to modify the content in order to satisfy pressure from investors. While they do get pressure from time to time to prove that they actually have an audience and that public funds aren’t just being converted into photons being beamed into space, they would not likely be tempted to (if it were somehow possible) air a xeroxed copy of my naked ass. Unless they could also justify that it was news: Amateur Opinion Journalist Willing To Show Naked Ass To Demonstrate Irreverence And Make A Point, Film At Eleven

In fact, Robert Reich, during an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, had some interesting things to say about how people like the blatherer come to exist—people who whine about how corporations show a lack of civic duty to (for instance) produce unbiased news and simultaneously whine about how dividends are down because those corporations aren’t screwing everyone they can for a buck. These are people who vote for minimum wage increases while simultaneously rewarding the fuck out of CEOs who cut the bottom line by firing increasingly expensive hourly workers in the US in favor of cheap overseas manufacturers. Heart in the right place, maybe, but dollars definitely in the wrong place.

I just wasn’t prepared to meet someone schizophrenic enough to try to put both whines in the same sentence.

[*]