perfect crime?

A mind is a terrible thing.

Conspiracy theorists tend to look at events of historical impact or significance, and search for a way to establish that things are not what the masses believe. This seems to me to spring from some need to believe that there are sinister forces which are more powerful than we could fathom, and that these forces are singularly focused on duping the masses. I suppose that if one subscribes to this worldview, and one believes that he knows the truth (despite the efforts of said sinister forces), one could conclude that he has the upper hand. I suppose this could make one feel a little superior.

Their logic says:
Kennedy could not have been killed by an attention-starved looser with a $14 rifle. It must have been an intricate web composed of every sector of society that trades in secrecy—organized crime, the CIA, etc.

9-11 could not have been pulled off by a bunch of backwards-assed wife-beaters who shave what little chest hair they have and believe that rape is a useful tool. It must be the product of the most sinister forces on earth—the CIA and Israel.

We are so cosmically important that not only do alien life forms come here to study (and anally probe) us, our government (being the badasses that they are) has duped most of us into believing that they are simply the products of our overactive imaginations.

These are the big 3, but there are probably hundreds more, not quite conspiracy theories, but wacked-out ideas, based on the same kinds of beliefs—radiation in our currency helps the government to locate large sums of cash; the government is secretly planning on building a super-highway from Mexico to Canada to facilitate movement of illegal aliens, among other things; chiropractors are doctors; astrology; ghosts; diet crazes. . .

Here’s one that makes a bit of sense to me—who committed the perfect murder? Jack the Ripper? The ZODIAC? OJ? Stephen King http://www.lennonmurdertruth.com/ ? Hell no! It was William Shatner. No one even speculates about it, except me, and apparently this guy:
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/115594.html

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of Shatner’s; I think it’s especially badass that he got away so clean.

Quitcherbitchin

The California housing market has been in a state of strangeness for many years now. Around 2000 I started making enough money to consider buying a home. The market was heating up at that time, with many homes selling for more than their asking price. This was not a comfortable climate for a first-time buyer, so I decided to "wait it out." In retrospect, not a good decision. The "Maestro" at the Federal Reserve proceeded to push and hold down interest rates, driving home prices ever higher—for many years. (In fact, fueling a world-wide real estate bubble.)

Today, according to the California Association of Realtors, the minimum household income needed to purchase an entry-level home (at $504,080) in California is $101,550. Not only would one have to earn over $100,000 a year, one would also have to have saved over $100,000 in cash—the assumed down payment for such a purchase. For some time now, it has been effectively impossible for all but the richest first-time buyers to reasonably buy a house here. Of course there were those now infamous sub-prime, interest-only, and other such lunatic mortgages offered—and accepted by loads of people, eager to dive into the frenzy.

Now the other shoe has fallen, and many people are realizing that they bought more house than they could afford. Home prices have actually stopped rising! We are in a "crisis." Cable news pundits and politicians are crying out that, "something must be done!" Most in the media are saying that it is a virtual certainty that Ben "Obi Juan" Bernanke will lower interest rates next month; it is only a question of how much. Many politicians are even calling for a "bailout" for all the poor homeowners who bit off more than they could chew.

Am I missing something? Wasn’t it the Fed’s insistence on holding interest rates at artificially low levels for so long that brought us here? So now the solution is to cut rates again? It seems to me that people should "suck it up" and let things normalize. Not every day is sunny, even in California.

Slogans for Life in a Cubicle

Here are a few (of many many) slogans used by the marxist/maoist/gonzalo thought group "sendero luminoso"--commonly called the "shining path" in us media. They were most active in the early 1990s. I find that their language twists my melon:

BUREAUCRAT CAPITALISM IS IN THE WORST CRISIS OF ITS HISTORY AND THE PEOPLE'S WAR IS SINKING IT INTO INCURABLE COLLAPSE

STRUGGLE IMPLACABLY AGAINST CAPITULATION! UNMASK AND LIQUIDATE THE TRAITORS!

CRUSH THE HOAX OF 'PACIFICATION AND DEVELOPMENT'!

ELECTIONS, NO! PEOPLE'S WAR, YES!

Garrison Keillor: Jeffersonian of the Modern Age, Modern-day Profit, Ringleader of Pabulum-Prose? Inbreed. Cretinoid. Dolt.

Below is an essay I wrote some years ago. I originally posted it on a website and got some outcry from Keillor fans. Seeing him on John Stewart last night made me recall this:

Here we find a photo of one of the most popular, powerful, and dangerous retards in the United States. This man, with his smugly self-confidant mutant grin and his folksy but pretentious mental-floss monologues, single-handedly controls his own many-armed political machine, and the consumer appetite of legions of his genetically-botched followers. Lake Woebegone is an asylum for Keillor’s zombieoid pancake-heads who, because of their inbred nature, can’t tell the difference between the true messiah and a three-hole blow-up doll.

Each week, broadcasting from his virtual small-town utopia "cleverly" named "Woebegone," Keillor leaks his insidious drivel to his legions of Volvo-driving tofu-eating chuckle-heads who believe him to be in possession of some arcane wisdom about the American Condition.

Unfortunately, what they fail to realize is the inherent danger in Keillor’s doublespeak. With his nudge/wink reverence for the "simple life" he laughs at the very lifestyle he appears to be embracing. Aren’t the simple, unenlightened, country-folk sweet? Isn’t it fun to play like we’re peasants, when in fact we’re the landed gentry? Our Ivy League stature allows us to safely dabble in the bucolic depravity of the Common Man.

I pity them all for not realizing their true tard-nature.

His attitude becomes all the more alarming when placed into context with his little-known background. Keillor, though he cleverly portrays the image of an educated mid-west country gentleman, is actually the product of six generations of ritual abuse. He suffered twenty-six years of dirt-eating and buggering in the name of family "pride" and "historical tradition." He and his seventeen brothers and sisters were kept in a secret crawl-space under the "ancestral home" until 1978, when he and his mutant brethren (all the offspring of a young mongoloid man-child and his blind, spastic, subnormal sister) managed to escape undetected by Burl—the patriarch. It was during this formative period that Keillor (actually a rare Type IV Waxworm Cretinoid) managed to develop his defense mechanisms to the extreme levels that we now find weekly on his radio program "Prairie Home Companion." The "Prairie Home" being a not-so-subtle moniker/symbol for his own "ancestral home," where he learned to be the pernicious pedophile he is today. (This information will not likely appear on A&E’s Biography.)

Over the years, his psychological deviance has developed from simple forms of man-child ogling, into a form of full-fledged psyonic mind control. His "folksy poetry" diatribe flows out over the airwaves every week, like an egocentric shitstorm of psychic diarrhea, inundating and befuddling the already putrified minds of his followers. We see much of this same self-deprecating doublespeak in his numerous "Woebegone" books, which some putty-heads seem to find humorous and quaint.

It is no coincidence that Keilor bears the same glazed-over, blissfully discombobulated look on his face as many a tard who’s risen to the top of the tower of public adoration, only to fall, drunk with his own power, and land on his own hydrocephalic noggin. (Jimmy Swagghart, Gary Coleman, Martha Stewart, King Kong Bundy, et. al.)

Heed this warning! I know full well that this pup will squirm in the end. Beware of this dangerous man, for the only thing more dangerous than a wounded hyena is a fallen cretinoid with his own radio show.

Sincerely,
Carl Braunschweiger

Howdee Doodee Genocide

I expect this will become one of those open-ended blogs, if I continue with it. I'll post musings, observations, rants and whatever else I deem share-worthy. I may even be so motivated as to write some fiction, but I doubt I'll have the wherewithal.

I'm a bit curious as to whether anyone will ever read anything here.