When the un-repressed play the "I'm being repressed!" card

Jon Stewart had a great show on a few weeks ago that provides yet another example of a group with plenty of political, economic, and social power trying to play the "I'm being repressed!" card:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
GOP - Special Victims Unit
www.thedailyshow.com
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It seems even in the nearly-meaningless world of sports that representatives of certain groups who most certainly are not being repressed in the U.S. -- but who seem to have a deep-seated need to try to convince people otherwise -- are playing this card.

This is ridiculous. Here's an historically accurate representation of real repressive violence inherent in the system:

Meaningless SpamPuffery

I opted to check out the quarantined spam messages on my Sustainability History Project website and found a funny pattern that I have not experienced with my email spam.

My email spam is predominately about porn, V!agra, a panoply of other pharmaceuticals, and those ridiculous 419 scams. All of these kinds of spam and scams have existed for so long that I'm surprised that they're still around -- surprised, that is, that there are still enough people among us who are so dense as to fall for these kinds of scams to keep the scammers in business.

One of these days I may write a rant about this ridiculous dynamic, but this post is not going to be such a rant. This post is about the funny theme I noticed in the quarantined spam messages on the Sustainability History Project website . . .

Answers to two Very Big questions

I can write with the utmost confidence and without qualification that you, reader, have asked yourself the following two Very Big & Important questions:

1) Certainly there are many alternate universes, but how good is the band Joy Division in the Playmobil universe?

2) What does God look like?

As soon as you look below the fold, lucky reader, you'll have answers to both pressing questions.

I can throw a football over the North Salem High School football team

In spite of what it may seem like with what I'm about to write, I don't spend my days fixated on the "coulda-woulda-shoulda" regarding my high school football experience. I'm not at all like this guy:

Movie Videos & Movie Scenes at MOVIECLIPS.com

However . . .

"Historic Past / Proud Future"

Driving through the city of Monmouth, Oregon, on Highway 51 over the past few months, I've noticed some banners hanging from the light poles. The banners read:

"Historic Past / Proud Future"

I just checked the street views in Google Maps and don't see the banners in these images. I also ran an Internet search using the words "monmouth oregon historic past proud future," and did not come up with any relevant hits on the first couple of pages. I was hoping to find some information related to these banners through the City of Monmouth website or a local historical society.[1]

The motto "Historic Past / Proud Future" strikes me as amusing for the following reasons:

Veracity in the movies: Oregon Trail

There comes a movie, every now and again, that reflects the historical record so accurately and so thoroughly that nothing more needs to be said beyond the movie's trailer.

Enjoy.

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Thanks to dana @ EotAW for bringing this video to my attention.

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Quite funny indeed

I just got turned on to The Armstrong & Miller Showthrough a recent EotAW post, and just have to share the links below.

This is some of the funniest stuff I've seen in many, many years . . . I'm writing this from the floor of my office in the midst of convulsive fits, with at least three of my ribs broken from laughing . . .


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEle_DLDg9Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGp4DvFEgh8&NR=1&feature=fvwp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ9yj_BXRp0&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeaN8UBwg2M&feature=related

(Reminiscent, a bit, of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rKYL0tW-Ek&NR=1&feature=fvwp)

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Learn to Speak Teabag

Haha! This is funny:



Of course it's over-simplified and left-leaning, but not without it's grain of truth:



. . . check out this one as well:



(Hmmmm . . . maybe the cartoon is not an oversimplification, after all?)

Here's the apology from NPR for hosting the cartoon in the opinion section of their site.

What do you all think of the NPR Ombudsman's take on this issue, in response to people who criticized the cartoon?

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The Crusades (as relayed to us by Terry Jones)

Has anyone yet seen this documentary series on The Crusades narrated by Terry Jones?

If so, I'd like to hear what you think about it.

I'm not a historian of The Crusades, and I haven't seen this series in many years, but I was enthralled when I did watch it, as it provided a fascinating overview of the topic interspersed with Terry Jones' creativity, lightheartedness*, and reverence for the specific topic, for history in general, and for the desire to communicate complex topics to as wide an audience as possible.

I need to see this series again.

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* Seems almost blasphemous to say this about The Crusades.

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