Tag: freakshow

Get over yourself already

First, “psychiatric therapy” is complete, utter, and total BS. It’s not therapy of any kind, it’s nothing more than paying someone to listen to you talk about your favorite subject under the guise of a pseudo-scientific veneer. A pastor (religion) or a pill (science) would do anyone more good. Some of us see this right away, it takes others 40 years of incessant “therapy” from a multitude of “therapists” to realize it. Second, it’s obvious that what is wrong with the author is nothing more than an extreme case of conventional female narcissism. That being said, reading this endless solipsism of the self-centered mind does nicely illustrate how a focus on yourself is ultimately crippling and provides women with a warning of the peril presented by constant snowflaking.

The truth of the matter was that in more than 40 years of therapy (the only person I knew who may have been at it longer than me was Woody Allen, who once offered me his own analyst), I never developed a set of criteria by which to assess the skill of a given therapist, the way you would assess a dentist or a plumber. Other than a presentable degree of intelligence and an office that didn’t set off aesthetic alarms — I tended to prefer genteelly shabby interiors to overly well-appointed ones, although I was wary of therapists who exhibited a Collyer Brothers-like inability to throw anything away — I wasn’t sure what made for a good one. I never felt entitled to look at them as members of a service profession, which is what, underneath all the crisscrossing of need and wishfulness, they essentially were…. Just as some people believe in the idea of soul mates, I held fast to the conviction that my perfect therapeutic match was out there. If only I looked hard enough I would find this person, and then the demons that haunted me — my love/hate relationship with my difficult mother (who has been dead now for four years), my self-torturing and intransigently avoidant attitude toward my work, my abiding sense of aloneness and seeming inability to sustain a romantic relationship and, above all, my lapses into severe depression — would become, with my therapist’s help, easier to manage.

The byline says: “Daphne Merkin is a contributing writer. She is working on a book based on an article she wrote for the magazine about her struggle with chronic depression.” Of course she is. It’s eminently clear that she couldn’t possibly write about anything other than her own precious little snowflake self.

Quote of the Day: “Neurotics are a rabble, good only to support us financially and to allow us to learn from their cases: psychoanalysis as a therapy may be worthless.”
– Sandor Ferenczi, President of the International Psychoanalytical AssociationSigmund Freud

However, I’m not saying that all therapists are con artists. The ones who actually help people are those who provide a service politely telling people to stop acting like self-destructive morons. But that’s not “therapy”, that’s just being paid to cushion the obvious blow.

In loco parentis

Adrien Chen misses the point:

Don’t pick on 11 year-old girls. Seriously. No matter how dumb they seem—no matter how much they might seem to deserve it—they are, at the end of the day, 11 year-old girls.

They are, that much is true. But what Mr. Chen appears to have forgotten is that 11 year-old girls eventually become 21 year-old women. And if they’re not smacked around when they first start copping an attitude, talking trash to strangers about their superiority, and threatening those who fail to acknowledge it with lethal violence, they are probably going to get more than just their feelings hurt one day.

Boys usually learn not to talk too much trash at a young age because one of their peers will eventually punch them in the mouth. Girls who are permitted to do so never learn to stop, which eventually tends to lead to negative consequences in various forms. In cyberslapping around that ridiculous 11 year-old girl, /b/ was actually providing her and many other young girls with a useful object lesson, namely, DON’T BEHAVE LIKE THAT OR YOU WILL REGRET IT. It is ironic, to be sure, but they were acting as better parents to her than her own idiot pair by teaching her a very important lesson: Discipline yourself or a cruel and uncaring world will discipline you.

Anyhow, the whole episode was well worth it simply for bringing us the epic phrase “Consequences will never be the same!” July has certainly been a most excellent month for linguistic progress.

The original Internet tough guy

Spencer Ackerman on Michael Ledeen:

Let’s just throw Ledeen against a wall. Or, pace Dr. Alterman, throw him through a plate glass window. I’ll bet a little spot of violence would shut him right the fuck up, as with most bullies.

And to Lenny Ben-David:

Lenny Ben-David, you and I will meet someday, face to face. I hope it comes very soon. I promise you it will be an unforgettable experience.

In case you’re interested, here is that intimidating hard man, Spencer Ackerman.

He looks like Rambo, the Punisher, and Ivan Drago all rolled into one awesome, genetically-engineered fighting beast, doesn’t he? Spencer – seriously dude, you do know your name is Spencer, right? – if you would genuinely like to engage in a little spot of violence with a right-winger, I would like to cordially invite you to step into the octagon for two minutes of full-contact violence with me. I’d offer more, but frankly, I doubt you’ll make it that long. No bullying, no talking, no posturing on the Internet, just straight-up MMA action until one party taps out or is rendered unconscious.

Speaking as a former full-contact martial artist who has been knocked out, had ribs, thumbs, ankle, nose, toes, and feet broken, and been knocked down by a punch or a kick at least 200 times, I really find these pugnacious little media pipsqueaks who have never taken nor thrown a punch in their lives to be tremendously tiresome.

What a bunch of emo idiots

The JournoLister reaction to Obama’s election. It’s an amusing exercise in competitive moral posturing between white progressives… it would appear black rule is the goal towards which they wish to progress because it’s worked so well everywhere from Atlanta to Zimbabwe.

DAVID ROBERTS, GRIST: It’s all I can do not to start bawling.

LUKE MITCHELL, HARPER’S: I’m picturing something like VJ Day in Times Square. Seriously!

JOHN BLEVINS, SOUTH TEXAS COLLEGE OF LAW: It’s all I can do to hold it together.

MOIRA WHELAN, NATIONAL SECURITY NETWORK: I’m looking across the street at my polling place, and the line is wrapped around the block. I nearly burst into tears when I saw it. I’m feeling like today is closing the door on a terrible era, and opening another. I’m glad you started this thread because I was feeling kind of like I was the only one who is deeply emotional today.

HENRY FARRELL, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: I had to close my office door yesterday because I was watching YouTube videos of elderly African Americans saying what this meant to them and tearing up.

JOSH BEARMAN, LA WEEKLY: 11 months ago I burst into tears by myself on a plane while watching Hardball when my mind wandered to the image of President Obama being sworn in. I’ve been fighting it ever since.

EZRA KLEIN, AMERICAN PROSPECT: OHIO!

ALEC MCGILLIS, WASHINGTON POST: If you need further proof that VA is looking to go blue, check out what’s going on in VA-5 in deepest Southside Virginia, where Tom Perriello, my college roommate and a very good guy, is now up .06 percentage points — 2,000 votes — against Virgil Goode with 88 percent reporting.

GREG ANRIG, THE CENTURY FOUNDATION: This is really happening.

ADELE STAN, THE MEDIA CONSORTIUM: At last I can breathe.

SPENCER ACKERMAN, WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT: YES WE DID!

STEVEN TELES, YALE UNIVERSITY: I’m not sure why, but this part of the Battle Hymn of the Republic came to me . . . . Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Since God is marching on.

SPENCER ACKERMAN: [quoting Obama] “…we may not get there in one year or in one term, but America I promise you, we as a people will get there.”

HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT.

MICHAEL TOMASKY, THE GUARDIAN: I’m just jelly. Lord!

HAROLD POLLACK, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: I am awed by the responsibility we have taken on. Tomorrow a desperately ill African-American woman will present at my university hospital for care, and she will be turned away.* She will expect us to live up to what we feel tonight. So we’ve got a lot to live up to.

All this for an incompetent and probably ineligible half-negro who is doing his clueless best to turn America into a bankrupt Detroit. No wonder they’re so bitter about his rapid political implosion. As I see it, the only fitting end for them would be to have their hearts torn out at sunrise and offered to Quetzalcoatl by Aztlan separatists on the UCLA campus as part of the celebrations accompanying the first Rodriguez inauguration in 2020.

Yeah, they’ll get there. They won’t like it when they do, but they’ll get there. The problem is that they’ll take you with them.

*Special bonus humor. Michelle Obama was responsible for instituting this patient-dumping program at this very hospital.

Mailvox: Uber Dawks strikes three

You can’t stop him, you can only hope to contain him!

I did not mean “objective scientific evidence”, I mean any objective evidence at all. The Bible is not an objective piece of evidence, scientific or otherwise. Wrong. Try again in our bonus round. Reading the comments on your blog this morning, it seems that none of your ilk can come up with anything either. The Courtier’s Reply is still looking mighty valid.

Finally, not that I need to justify any credentials, but since your ilk has been speculating, I am a Ph.D. candidate in Evolutionary Psychology at a prestigious major university. My views are not the minority among atheists, but the majority. Go to Pharyngula and you’ll see that I’m not alone. Read Dawkins more polemical work, read Sam Harris or Chris Hitchens, I’m not saying anything that hasn’t already been tackled at length by these great thinkers.

Also, for all the mocking of my celebrity atheist paragraph, I was not appealing to these men to validate atheism, but rather to show that the atheist in that comic is a grand caricature, representative of the kind of narrow thinking that you Christian fundies are known for.

evidence
–noun
1. that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.
2. something that makes plain or clear; an indication or sign.
3. Data presented to a court or jury in proof of the facts in issue and which may include the testimony of witnesses, records, documents, or objects.

Evidence is any information so given, whether furnished by witnesses or derived from documents or from any other source.

I have to admit, I’m not exactly what one would call concerned about the opinion of anyone who believes that there is no evidence for the existence when God even after the difference between “evidence” and “scientific evidence” has been pointed out to him. I am probably the least likely man on the planet to be moved by the arguments of anyone who genuinely believes Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens are, and I quote, “great thinkers”. This is surely the very worst site on the Internet to make an appeal to Pharyngula and as for The Courtier’s Reply, it requires the sort of innumeracy and complete philosophical ignorance we have come to expect of butterfly collectorsbiologists to take it seriously. But I have absolutely no doubt that his maleducated and irrational views are the majority among atheists; that is precisely why I titled my book on the subject “The Irrational Atheist”.

The thing that is so ridiculous about the definitionally challenged “no evidence” argument is that even third-rate minds like Dawkins know that it is hopelessly incorrect. The existence of testimonial and documentary evidence for God is the very reason Richard Dawkins wrote an essay arguing for the superiority of scientific evidence over eyewitness evidence in The Devil’s Chaplain, although scientific evidence is less valid in a court of law than eyewitness evidence and is rightly considered much less reliable than documentary evidence of the sort that the Bible represents.

Anyhow, I’m sure we all wish the PhD-to-be great success in his future career in the gastronomical service industry.

Attempting to redefine reality

To say nothing of blowing a hole right through Divine Exceptionalist theology:

A federal district court judge in Boston today struck down the 1996 federal law that defines marriage as a union exclusively between a man and a woman. Judge Joseph L. Tauro ruled that the federal Defense of Marriage law violates the Constitutional right of married same-sex couples to equal protection under the law and upends the federal government’s long history of allowing states to set their own marriage laws.

And now that the one man, one woman definition has been arbitrarily struck down on nonsensical grounds, there can be absolutely no question that the one man, one woman part will be challenged and struck down as well. All of the homogamy supporters who claim otherwise are already wrong, as anyone who happens to have read a pro-polygamy press release will know. That’s a done deal. It’s a bit more of a stretch to be able to tell if people will also be able to marry animals due to the presumed consent issues, but you can bet that some horse-loving freakshow is going to try. It’s legal in New Zealand, you know.

Of course, the licensed tripartite entity that the government calls marriage isn’t actually marriage anyhow, which is why I’m personally quite relaxed about this sort of thing. Two or three or ten men can call themselves a school of fish if they want to, but their self-application of the title doesn’t make them so.

Now, I tend to think that America is doomed because of its addiction to debt, but the social engineers are certainly building an impressive argument on behalf of the various religious eschatologists. It takes a pretty sizable set of historical blinders not to see the signs of a diseased and decadent society approaching its final days.

The Three Billion Images of Eve

They downloaded all the porn? It would appear so, seeing that The Artist Now Known As Prince Again has declared that “The internet is completely over“. I suppose this moment was always inevitable. Isaac Asimov even wrote a story about what would happen when the picture of the last woman on Earth to display her naked talents was finally posted on the Internet. Or something like that, anyhow.

Around the world, without any fuss, the servers were going offline.

Atheism: the anti-Game

PZ Myers considers why women don’t like atheists:

It’s an odd way to put it, I know, but it gets your attention. I could have called this the Atheist and Skeptic Problem, which is more accurate, but leads people to start listing all of our problems, starting with how annoying we are, and just for once I’d rather not go down that road. So here’s the Woman Problem, and it’s not a problem with women: it’s a problem with atheist and skeptic groups looking awfully testosteroney. And you all know it’s true, every time I post a photo of some sampling of the audience at an atheist meeting, it is guaranteed that someone will count the contribution of each sex and it will be consistently skewed Y-ward.

Let’s me get this straight. Women don’t like a group of men who are known for being socially difficult, taking every excuse to pick arguments, launching unprovoked attacks on other’s beliefs, throwing hissy fits at the drop of a hat, and basically behaving like drama queens on all occasions. And on top of this, they tend to be inordinately interested in science.

This is a mystery? Seriously? All that’s without even taking the high Creepy Guy factor which some of the atheist women report of the skeptic conference attendees and even atheist leaders into account.

Now, obviously not all atheists are hapless when it comes to women. Consider the examples of Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins, who managed to marry seven women between them…. But I would be interested in hearing from the women here why they are disinclined to find atheist men attractive beyond the obvious desire to marry a man of like religion.

The Twilight of the Damned

I am entirely confident that had vampire porn been around in the first century, Twilight bed sheets would have been included along with adultery as legitimate Biblical grounds for divorce.

I am an enthusiastic fan of the Twilight Saga and have recently purchased an Edward Cullen pillowcase and blanket. Here is the problem – I am married and my husband has taken great offense to having these items on our “marital bed”! I have argued that he is a fictional character and that these are just objects…and if he wanted to put Pam Anderson on a pillowcase he could gladly do so. He thinks I am not in touch with reality (which I find offensive) and am not being a considerate wife. I want to make my husband happy but does that mean that I have to compromise my happiness in order to achieve this?

Attention deltas and gammas. Remember this email the next time you find yourself tempted to take anything a woman says seriously or to place her on a pedestal. This is not a joke, it is an actual example of the way that a living, breathing, adult married woman thinks. Now, steel yourself and try to imagine what must be going through the head of the average woman who doesn’t regard herself as being sufficiently grown-up for marriage!

The mind reels.

There is so much wrong here that it might seem hard to know where to start, but in fact it is entirely clear. The bedsheets go and the wife can either decide to grow up or she can go too. Her immature, self-centered lack of respect for her husband is total and it is hilarious how she “finds offensive” his statement of the completely freaking obvious given her equation of happiness with teenybopper bedsheets.

The advice given by the fat little complacent gamma was totally predictable of course. As soon as I saw his picture, I knew his advice would be to ignore the fact that the wife is a complete lunatic and tell the husband to let her have her way. After all, doing exactly what a woman tells you to do is the way that you may occasionally be permitted to have sex with her, right? This is the point at which the observer is forced to note that as many as four of the advice columnist’s seven children might actually be his.

Sure enough: I’ve read those Twilight books, they are pretty romantic. So let your wife enjoy her dreamy fantasy of fangs and foreplay and she may just turn out to be the most considerate wife you could imagine – nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Did I call that one or what? Romance novels and romance TV are nothing more or less than female porn. Most women will furiously deny it, but their very vehemence underlines the reality. Women get the same buzz off romance porn that men get from Victoria’s Nasty Secret Vol. 37 and the fact that the female variant happens to be more acceptable in public in the West is no more meaningful than the fact that tentacle monsters penetrating spread-eagled teen girls in tattered school uniforms is equally acceptable in public elsewhere. I’ll never forget being puzzled by the sight of a middle-aged sarariman openly reading a comic book on the train next to me and glancing over his shoulder to see what sort of childish superhero cartoon it was. Such was my eye-opening introduction to the significant difference between shōnen and seijin manga.

The point is that while a man should tolerate a woman’s moderate porn habit, if it’s gotten to the point that she’s doing the female equivalent of bringing a Jenna Jameson blow-up doll to bed, she’s out of control and requires reining in. But this woman is so far gone that there may be no hope for her. Forget the sexual and sanity implications, I’d leave the poor freakshow solely on the basis of aesthetics.