It's a Polite Way of Saying "Hello, I'm Tedious and Vapid"

Berlin, a city where being individualistic always seems to mean sheepishly following one dingbat style cult or another, is holding a "hipster festival. Gack. Most of them think the former east is charming. In other words: hide the children and the livestock.

From the Chronicles of the Implausible

"Get Your Fresh, Hot Zeppelin Liver Sausage"

Prison Luuuurve, and the Women Who Can't Resist Them

Queue the hideously bad music:

Are you a lady looking for love? Have you found relationships with men who haven’t done time in federal prison to be lacking a certain je ne sais quoi? Does the idea of being with a guy who has an elastic view of securities laws do anything for you? Then girlfriends, you are in for a treat. Roy Ageloff, a “former millionaire trader” who is finishing up an 11 year sentence for running a “vast pump and dump manipulation,” is schedule to be sprung free on Dec. 11, 2013 and he hopes you’ll be waiting for him. Interested?

He'll be shooing them away with a stick with this kind of world-class slickness.

Unfortunately, I’ve temporarily been dethroned of my crown.

Granted, he's working it without his wingman, who actually past English Comp.

A Dangerous Strain of an Old Disease Emerges

Spring Street Mullet sighting:

They're calling it a full on mullet, due to its "party up front, business in the rear. No doubt," but we're thinking it's distinctive poof gives it a bit of a Jersey Shore vibe.

File under: livestock

Cow Mutilations are up!

Mark Wadsworth brings us Cow attacks in the news

You Know them by their Blank Stare

Berlin's eternally dyspeptic "Wutbürgers." Their intellectual heft makes one nearly want to evacuate in situ.

Poetry Break

In fact it’s all about beef

Terribly upset.
It is my birthday today.
No one gave me beef.

An Empty World, Where you Highest Purpose is to be ‘Useful’

"There are no bigger donkeys than these workers.... Look at our "craftsmen"; Sad that world history should be be made with such people".

- From Carl Marx to Adolf Cluss in a letter dated 20 July, 1852

Compare and Contrast

"All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm… these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character… [A general war will] wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward."

- Friedrich Engels, "The Magyar Struggle," Neue Rheinische Zeitung, January 13, 1849

“As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map,”

Elsewhere

“There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world, ...”

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “The World without Zionism.”

Look Ma, No Commies!

Spiegel Online has a gallery of before and after photos of buildings and places in the Former East Germany. Much as it is that the word “utopia” actually means nowhere, collectivism means “it’s no-ones’”.

The Masses are not Revolting

Luís Afonso Assumpção of Porto, PT looks at those that call themselves “radical” in this world, and finds no radical novelty in their thinking, that there is something about them that has never changed, and that there is something akin to a personalization of drama in their actions , but also a consistent laziness and incapacity to deal with life’s challenges.

The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset wrote in the first half of the twentieth century (before the Second World War!) A fundamental study to understand what we call "modernity", or a personal description-my-"the intellectual decay as counterpoint to the material and scientific progress. "

It’s called "The Revolt of the Masses"
The edition I have in hand (Portuguese), on page 80 summarizes the fundamental thinking of the brilliant Spanish:

"Everything that follows (note: in the book) is a consequence or corollary of this radical structure could be summarized thus: the world organized by the nineteenth century, to automatically produce a new man, give him a formidable appetites, powerful tools of all kinds to meet them: economic, physical (hygiene, health, better than any time before), civil and technical (the tremendous rise in practical efficiency that the average man lacked in the past) . After introducing him all these powers in the nineteenth century but abandoned him at the same, the average man following his natural character, ended up looking inward. Thus, we find ourselves with a mass stronger that of any other time, but, unlike the traditional, tightly closed in and incapable of dealing with anything or anyone else - in short, restless. The things continue like this, Each day you will notice more across Europe - and, as a reflection in the world - that the masses are unable to leave and drive in any direction.

During difficult times that approach for our continent, it is possible that, seized by suddenly anxiety, we enough good will to deal with pressing matters in the direction of modesty.

But this willingness will fail because because the texture of the radical’s soul is inward and brooding. Because they lack the will and the instincts to deal with real problems in front of them, so they won’t. They will want to follow someone, but will not. They will want to hear other opinions, only to discover that they are deaf. "

In short, the reason they seem like losers, and always have, is because those who call themselves “radicals” are, especially when they do it from a position of attention seeking and do it in the same robotic way so many others have.

The Pause that Depresses

Have you ever wondered what to give people who think they’re funny/witty/intelligent? At least on the college sophomore level - when they’re unaware of how tedious they really are?.

No, Seriously. You First.