Recently in just kill me Category

From Watts' site:

If you buy into the Many Worlds Intepretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car like army ants for no apparent reason; or perhaps they did, and I simply kept my eyes downcast and refrained from asking questions.

Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario's first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.

In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.

But that is not this universe.

More at Boing Boing and Making Light.

This is America today. We pay the salaries of these thugs. We let our culture descend to the point at which some of our fellow citizens respond to such outrages by "pointing out" that if one were merely appropriately deferent and had just cringed more all would have ended "well." As long as we all simply obey the commands of our overlords, without question, we'll all live happily ever after.

Live in fear. Do what you're told. Do not question authority. Do not make trouble. You have no rights.

I don't want to live in this America anymore.

Printing blogs on paper wasn't such a hot idea:

Mr. Karp, the founder of The Printed Blog, a Chicago start-up that we wrote about early this year, announced Wednesday that he would stop publishing the paper because he had run out of money and could not raise enough additional capital.

...

His idea was to take free articles and pictures from blogs, with their permission, and print them on 11-by-17-inch pieces of paper. Then he sold ads to local businesses and distributed the papers at train stations in Chicago and San Francisco. Though he still had to spend money on paper, ink and delivery people, he tried to cut costs by putting commercial printers in the homes of the delivery workers.

As Egon Spengler said in Ghostbusters, "Print is dead."

That was way back in 1984.

...and real writers everywhere bash their own heads against walls. From Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rapper Kanye West does not read books or respect them but nevertheless he has written one that he would like you to buy and read.

The Grammy Award winner, known for his No. 1 albums and outspoken statements on everything from racism in America to the banality of Twitter, is the co-author of "Thank You And You're Welcome."

His book is 52 pages -- some blank, others with just a few words -- and offers his optimistic philosophy on life. One two-page section reads, "Life is 5% what happens and 95% how you react!" Another page reads "I hate the word hate!"

That 52-page collection of fortune cookies will set you back 10 bucks. The book is deliberately not wordy or anything, because that's the author's philosophy on books:

"Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed," West said. "I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's autograph.

"I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life," he said.

*sigh*

Ah, the Internet. What a wonderful way to keep up with the past. As with the article published in The New York Times on Friday, November 5, 1999. It kicked off with this headline:

CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS

And it features these choice excerpts (boldface emphasis mine):

Frances Wilkinson asked this question at The Week last week, and it's hard to argue with him:

It's not obvious how young writers without accommodating, well-to-do parents or a trust from gramps make it these days. Surely they can't spend a year or two blogging without pay until an audience evolves to nurture them. They'll starve.

As someone who has created her own career as a writer online, I can assure you that even 11-plus years as a blogger -- since before the word blog was even conceived -- isn't enough to evolve a large enough audience alone to fend off starvation.

So font of wisdom Bristol Palin tells CNN.

*wipes tears*

At least she goes on to say "but it's not realistic at all.

Everyone should be abstinent. The mind boggles. Truly, it boggles.

God-fucking-dammit, why didn't I think of this: