12.30.08
Posted in Unexplained Mysteries at 10:17 pm by Toby Petzold
It is a misfortune of our politics that the conscience that sets itself against thievery by public office is the very same that will not permit the person it governs to even serve. Who would consent to such personal scrutiny and abuse? None but the shameless. The general trend nowadays is to not quibble so much about character and the calculations that go into making leaders out of smoke and mirrors, but to just idolize power. Ambition must be the new black.
I am past apologies, baby; I am emancipated.
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12.29.08
Posted in America, Big Media, Democrats, Earth, History, New Economy, Science, Unexplained Mysteries, energy, moonbats, religion, stupidity, voting at 8:30 pm by Toby Petzold
I just watched about as much as I’m ever going to watch of Al Gore’s world-changing masterpiece An Incovenient Truth. It was something I had DVR’d off the Science Channel, so I can only hope that none of his sage insights were lost to the commercial breaks. And I stuck it out, too, for probably 90 percent of the whole sermon, so give me my propers.
The verdict? It is easily the most self-serving product I have ever seen a politician deliver. It was like a cross between Nixon’s Checkers Speech and a highly speculative episode of NOVA, like that one they did about the species of hobbit-people who once lived on the island of Flores. The Gorebot is a doctrinaire man and only superficially recognizant of systems that exist off the program. But this was the apologia he had burned to issue, so peace be upon him. What is it to me? Gore was an example to me in my early 20s, but now he is an object lesson. He doesn’t practice as he preaches, so he’s easy to ignore.
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12.11.08
Posted in Austin, Big Media, Unexplained Mysteries, beauty at 7:49 pm by Toby Petzold
The Statesman’s website is reporting that Michelle Valles is joining KEYE-TV’s morning news program with the so-called avuncular homunculus Fred Cantu. That’s great news because Michelle is altogether beautiful and pleasant. Let’s hope she minds her pints and quarts and makes us proud and perpendicular again.
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12.09.08
Posted in America, Election of 2008, Eminently Occidental, personal, sports at 5:07 pm by Toby Petzold
Owing to my near-total embargo on the news for the past month, I didn’t know about this until just a few days ago, but the next President is saying that he wants to “throw his weight around” on the subject of an honest-to-God eight-team playoff system for Division I college football.
Well, hell to the yeah! Barry, if I’d known we were sympatico on this subject —and I have been publicly advocating such a system for 15 or more years— I would have started liking you a lot sooner.
Do it, Mr. President. Throw that weight around and make these lousy bums do what they should’ve done years ago: give big time college football what every other collegiate team sport has to determine its champions: a playoff system. Teddy Roosevelt put his foot down on safety and violence in college football a century ago, so there is plenty of precedent for this.
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12.04.08
Posted in beauty, personal at 7:21 pm by Toby Petzold
So on my way back to the office with some chicken nuggets from Wendy’s this afternoon, I start to realize that I can smell me some chicken nuggets! Yay! Houston, we have smell! I was so excited that I had to go cubicle-hopping and tell everybody. I was sniffing around like McGruff the Crime Dog and the whole world was one big, glorious dog ass!
Actually, I never really thought of McGruff like that. He was always more about the trench coats and the crime-solving. Not so much with the trunk inspections.
*cough*
Oh, just bite me! What do I care? I can smell again!
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12.03.08
Posted in America, New Economy, Science, personal, stupidity at 5:48 pm by Toby Petzold
You want in on the ground floor of the next big way to help fat people lose weight? Come up with a way to neutralize their olfactory nerves. I don’t know how it would work —whether it be a surgical or pharmaceutical method— but so much of the pleasure in eating is related to smell and taste that such a measure would surely depress the desire to eat anything more than what sustenance requires.
Of course, the other thing that would be depressed by such a method of weight control would be the person’s spirits. It is extremely discouraging to be unable to smell or taste one’s food and drink. But a doctor could also prescribe happy pills to keep the poor bastard going, so maybe it would work. It’s no less crazy than stomach stapling or lap band surgery.
Oh, well. I don’t guess it would ever really work, anyway. For one thing, it’s dangerous to eat something you can’t smell or taste. Hell, it’s dangerous in general to not be able to depend on those senses. Someone could serve you up some enchiladas con caca and you’d never know the difference until it was too late.
As for me, I’ve got about two or three percent of my smell back —and I really have to work for even that. I find myself daydreaming about what my first smell will be. Will it be pleasant? Yes. Yes, it will.
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12.02.08
Posted in personal at 5:23 pm by Toby Petzold
I’m in there cooking ground beef with peppers and onions and I’ve got my face almost flush to the skillet, inhaling like I’ve never inhaled before and —nothing.
Nothing.
Seriously, I’m so depressed about my lost sense of smell that I will probably cry at the first whiff of anything. A fart! A fart! My kingdom for a whiff of even a fart!
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12.01.08
Posted in Science, personal at 5:05 am by Toby Petzold
Being sick the last few days —and unable to smell or taste anything— it occurred to me that human being is inextricably linked to those senses and that any robotic futures we might imagine for ourselves would fail to be fully human without them. That is, if you seek immortality and believe it may be had by uploading the contents of your brain into a supercomputer, then what you would be preserving is not human in any meaningful sense, but a soulless, worthless replica.
We are not merely cerebrocortical, but gloriously limbic. Give me my gravity switches and my magnetic alignments and point my pole to true north.
You may keep your robot pussy until that day.
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