Hey, can I interest you in a painting?

I gots art. Classy art.

It might be worth something someday, especially if I kill myself.

Read the first chapter of my scifi novel, Glyphics for free here.

Free read.

If you like it, you can buy the entire novel at all ebook stores. (Glyphics , Amazon , iPad, Mr. Moneybags). Only $2.99, and all proceeds goes to a worthy cause: Paying down my porn bills. If you don't, you can just go to Hell.

Happy Thanksgiving,

J. Richard Singleton

Jennifer Lawrence is now a 12 on the Pretentious Scale (She's like the female Lena Dunham.)

Recently Jennifer Lawrence has been taking the ole of fem-warrior, criticizing the patriarchy for the wage gap between the genders, relating how she ended up getting paid less than her three male costars for the 2013 film American Hustle. Like the previous hack of personal photos from her cloud account, Lawrence first blamed herself, then she blamed society for her decisions. This is what she does. She is careful not to accuse anyone or the studio itself. She squarely blames men. Unlike accusing the lonely men of the internet of being sex criminals, she makes a perfectly reasonable point: The "bitch" conceit. So many of us were raised to believe that women should apply a soft power throughout their lives. Of course, sometimes a bitch is just a bitch. Women want to be both assertive and liked. That's not doable. Men better understand that than women.

In last year's hack of Sony, it was revealed that Lawrence was paid less than any of her male costars. Understandably, at first, she things it's because she's a woman. (It's a bit strange that Lawrence never broached the subject of pay with her good friend Bradley Cooper, but whatever. Let's assume that she's being totally honest.)

When you work on a movie set, you learn your place quickly. The crew get to eat before the background actors. There might even be separate dining areas for crew and background. There's almost always special perks in being crew--like shaved ice, or a catering truck specifically marked "crew only." Just as movie stars don't have to deal with crew, the crew can alienate these temp workers. (Oh, and you movie stars have no idea who these background actors are. What's my name? Can Jennifer Lawrence name anyone who has ever worked on her movies who doesn't have an end credit?) Like plants, background actors have died because they weren't given enough water and shade. They're told to "stay here," and a lot do. It's just a matter of professionalism.

Background actors are paid nine dollars an hour to be in a movie briefly. They have no lines to memorize, and they're performing the most rudimentary of actions. Making Adam Smith proud, Hollywood liberals pay people as little as these folks will accept to do the job. Not really society's fault that you're being paid to stand there. You made your own choices.

Katherine Heigl was supposed to be a movie star--remember that? She came off Knocked Up and an Emmy for Gray's Anatomy and she pulled a Caruso. Eventually she was publically outed as "overpaid." I'm not accusing Lawrence of being another Heigl; Lawrence's movies clearly make money, and her work is clearly more diverse than bland romantic comedies where she plays the exact same character. My point is that no one can see the future, and when you have a slim track record, there's no crystal ball to predict one's career trajectory. Also there's no real logic behind how actors are paid, and it can take a column in a national magazine for the suits to realize that an actor is actually terrible, and has been terrible for a very long time.

Jeremy Renner, of the main cast, had the most in common with Lawrence: Relatively new to the world of blockbusters, with just a handful of cameos under his belt--but with critical acclaim for one or two roles. Failed series--just like Lawrence. He was famous for The Hurt Locker, and that's just about it. Meanwhile, Renner had the best response to the controversy: Not my problem. It is not Renner's problem that Lawrence did not get the best possible deal that she theoretically could've. Renner doesn't hate women. It's just that if a woman can't stand on her feet, does she deserve to stand? Plus being a movie star is fuckin' cool. Renner knows how perilous stardom can be, having been such a late-comer to the fame game, and he doesn't want to rock the boat. (In the 1950s, he might've named names--we don't know.)

Christian Bale had been acting since before Lawrence was born; he was in Newsies, when it was a terrible kids' movie and not a terrible Broadway production. Bale has the most awards for his acting. Cooper has a masters' degree in theater. Lawrence never went to college, and a few years prior to Hustle, she played "Mascot" on an episode of Monk. (Remember Monk? It was on USA... It ran for like eight seasons!) If you count minute by minute, Lawrence was probably in the movie the least, so she was paid the least--she was a supporting character, not the main character. Bale is objectively better. Her complaints about gender discrimination highlight another harsh reality: In showbusiness, experience is more often secondary to youth and beauty. Bale and Copper were peaking--nowhere for them to go but the Brando route: get fat and refuse to remember your lines. Lawrence is upset that as the next big thing, she wasn't compensated accordingly; and if she hadn't grown in prominence, she probably wouldn't be complaining at all, and we certainly wouldn't care.

My problem with feminism is when the feminists lie, including using misleading statistics. This can also be seen in the pronouncement that women make 80 cents on the dollar that men makes--or that for every dollar that a woman makes, a man gets a blowjob. (Speaking as a man, where the fuck is my "male privilege"? Jennifer Lawrence is a fuckin' millionaire!) Women have children. In having children, they must take time for from work, which interrupts their career paths. To find fairness, you would have to compare the career paths of a childless woman with that of a childless man. Then--and only then--would we know if the woman was underpaid.

Despite being "underpaid" in the last movie that she did with David O. Russell, she will be appearing in his next film, Joy. She will also be paid 50% more than Chris Pratt (who's now a hot young thing) to star in Passengers.

So even if Lawrence were a man, he would be acting like a bitch.

Sage advice on Back to the Future Day.

Back to the Future Part III (1990)

Jennifer Parker: Dr. Brown, I brought this note back from the future and - now it's erased.

Doc: Of course it's erased!

Jennifer Parker: But what does that mean?

Doc: It means your future hasn't been written yet. No one's has. Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one, both of you.

I will stand with Ahmed Mohamed...as long as it's not really a bomb, I mean.

I am reminded of one of the earliest episodes of the American-version of The Office, where Michael Scott see a Sikh IT guy in the parking lot of Dunder Mifflin, heading for the building, and immediately freaks out because...terrorists!

It was in a pencil case, wasn't it? If it were attached to a propane tank or a pressure cooker, this would make a lot more sense to confuse it with a bomb. (Propane tanks routinely explode. I saw that in movies.) Expel the kid. If it were an airport, detain that whole family. In an airport, it is not the appropriate place to bring your mystery electronics.

This Ahmed fellow isn't even a particularly intimidating kid, so you can't Michael Brown him. The boy is about 90 pounds soaking wet. He has no history of anti-Americanism or any apparent disciplinary problems. Respectfully, the bespeckled guy is clearly a nerd of some kind. He did not ask for trouble; trouble came to him. Because he was an Arab, so many Texans thought "bomb," not "science project."

Plus since it was Texas, any idiot could buy or steal a firearm, and kill considerably more people than a bomb. Texas has more guns and more murder than just about any other state in the union. There is no connection. It's a total mystery why Texas has so many murders and so many legal gunowners. Have we checked the water?

Those who are attempting to ignore the racism and deprive Muslims of appearing discriminated against, point out the numerous cases where kids have gotten in trouble for pointing objects at people as if they were guns and gotten suspended/expelled. However, pointing a chicken finger at someone and saying "bang," does constitute a death threat. However, nearly all the other cases involved students with a history of disciplinary problems. However, very few were cuffed--these cases were handled administratively. Ahmed literally did not encourage people to believe this was a bomb. This was not a bomb-effigy. People saw an Arab kid with a clock and assumed he was up to no good. This is Trayvon Martin standing on a street, not threatening anyone. Rather than blaming a hoodie, they're blaming the clock.

Some of you are trying to blame CAIR for this. Americans can't possibly be this stupid, so many conservatives feel. Rightwing Americans are really geniuses, and this was a scheme of the Muslims to make Americans look foolish. Well, if this were a CAIR test, Americans failed. Americans now look exactly as racist as Muslim extremists say we are. CAIR, for all its faults, is not responsible for your stupidity, no.

When shit like this happens, the terrorists have won. They did not turn anyone into a Muslim, but they showed the world how ass-backwards non-Muslims can be. Like the Iraq war, civilized Christian men are just not too smart. We start with a biased view, then we work backwards to prove our bias. This is the ultimate stupidity because it does not aspire for betterment.

Now conservatives are enraged that Obama is inviting the boy to the White House--never mind that Obama is now trying to smooth things over, which would benefit all of us. Americans are not racist, and we don't hate Muslims. (Yeah, we kinda are--and we kinda do--but that's not good politics.) So, shut up, conservatives. We can't ignore racism and hope it goes away. Racism would still there; we would just be ignoring it.

Bristol Palin tweeted a snarky joke regarding this incident and Obama's attempt to cover-up the damage done by the state of Texas. Bristol Palin. As if a poorly designed science project were the worst mistake a teen could make. (To clarify, Bristol Palin has two illegitimate children with two different men and she's under 25--talkin' about that.) If anything Ahmed was trying to do the right thing, and Bristol has probably done a lot of wrong things. Plus Bristol is too damn old to be fighting with high schoolers. Her time has come and gone.

Turns out Hollywood has been sexually exploiting young women...

There has been a lot of discussion of ageism in Hollywood, especially after Maggie Gyllenhaal and Rose McGowan made statements that supposedly laid bare the sexism surrounding roles and aging. Maggie, age 37, has complained that she was considered too old to play the love interest for a man in his fifties. McGowan had a row with her agent after he sent her a note expecting her to dress in a sexy fashion to audition for an Adam Sandler movie. Both women make legitimate points; unfortunately, their accusations are biased and ego-centric, ignoring the realities of the business of filmmaking.

We really don't know much of the project Maggie lost. The CHARACTER might have been in his mid-50s or the ACTOR might be in his mid-50s. Some men in their fifties are still relatively "boyish": They can pass for a decade younger if they do something as simple as dying their hair. Maggie, however, is an old mid-30s. It feels like she's been making movies as an adult for as long as we've all been alive. Her and Jake's parents were directors and producers; they never pounded the pavement looking for work, having doors slammed in their faces because they didn't have the connections necessary to find work. Maggie never paid her dues and played the ditzy girl or dead hooker or stripper #7. (When Maggie lost a role, she lost it because she sucked, not because someone wondered who she was.) She started at the middle and stayed at the middle, finding success as a substitute for Katie Holmes in The Dark Knight. Cameron Diaz and Amy Adams are about her age, too, and both started out as ditzy girls, before becoming movie stars in their own right. They came from nothing, in the Hollywood sense: They started their careers attractive, yes, and they used their physical gifts with grit, never resting on their laurels. The hottest fires form the strongest steel, and Maggie was never exposed to such flames. Their parents didn't get them jobs.

Hollywood movies are so often made for teenage boys because they watch a lot of movies, especially the bad ones, and the female leads must appeal to this demographic. Maggie could now easily be a teen boy's mom. Maggie could have an adult child--right now. So, yeah, she's old. By which I mean, she's Hollywood-old. Has she met Kristen Stewart? Because Kristen Stewart is her. Kristen Stewart is playing the roles that Maggie played a decade ago. (Pretty but not stunning. Moody brunette. Very pasty lady--never had a tan. Does nudity.) She's at one of those points in her career where she has to question what she's doing. She was never that great an actress--unlike Meryl Streep. She was never a great writer--unlike Tina Fey. She was never a box office star--unlike Julia Roberts. Never a child prodigy--unlike Jodie Foster--we could go on like this....

Let me clarify one point: Communal property laws make perfect sense when they recognize the importance of being a homemaker in the spouse achieving success. Historically women--especially housewives, not career women--have been screwed out of their contributions to the households' successes. A housewife's contributions to the household cannot be easily quantified--so now we just give the broad half.

However, a wife can also be a mean woman who steals half of everything you earned. When you reach a certain degree of material success, a housewife is no longer a woman who cooks and cleans but one who yells at the illegal immigrants whom she'd hired to do the cooking and cleaning. Your wife is no longer an important part of the household, but a middleman between the lord and the servants. She is not an overworked housewife, but just a rich-bitch. Your wife might end up torpedoing your brilliant idea for movies or businesses or inventions, thus preventing a man from achieving his full potential. Countless brilliant ideas have undoubtedly been lost because the wife didn't approve...and that's why we don't have hoverboards.

Hollywood movies are so often shaped by Hollywood insiders'--studio heads, producers, directors--view of reality, and in the entertainment community, having a second or third wife is not so unusual. There being a generational difference is not so unusual. The young woman gives the older man a second chance at love. To start anew with another mate--except now he has the money and experience to do it right. (Of course this second marriage might go south too. The third one will be the right marriage.)

A few months ago, '90s teen crush Rose McGowan revealed that she decided not to audition for an Adam Sandler film after receiving a note from her agent regarding her costuming requirement to augment her cleavage. Getting fired from an Adam Sandler project has to be like getting fired from a fart contest. With the fart contest, you probably won't get the entrance fee back, though. (His movies so frequently make money--but, c'mon, we know they're not good.)

McGowan's exhaustion with being treated as a piece of meat reeks of hypocrisy. "Sexy" has been the only role that she'd ever played throughout her entire career, and it was a role that she continued to play as recently as last year, when she did a nude photo spread. I'm not making this up: McGowan posed naked just last year. But now she's fed up with being objectified by Hollywood. She draws the line at being cast as the sexpot...in 2015, she means. Hollywood is an industry that exploits young women, it turns out. She's growing older, and she's asking herself what her career is going. Because, despite her beauty, the wrinkles are encroaching. So now she's a feminist icon.

Was the Charleston shooter motivated by the white man's ego?

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Black Like Rachel Dolezal?

She is a "wigga." It means "white nigga." Really, this is an unfunny Mrs. Doubtfire-type situation. This is a white person who has been engaged in a long scam to pass as a Negro--and, really, that's the opposite of how this is supposed to work!

Why would she do this, the media have asked breathlessly? I can only think she had an early love of black culture, and she wanted to help black people, so she figured the best way to help them was to live as one. (The NAACP has numerous whites in its membership.) The alternate explanation is that she is a dingbat. Whatever the reason, that she thought she could continue the lie in he Internet Age is what's incredibly bizarre. She started to lie, and got caught in the lie--like someone running a pyramid scheme, her only way out was exposure, death or prison. Exposure was the best way out for her.

Speaking of bizarre, one episode of Glee has the evil Sue tearing apart New Directions by pointing out how different they all are, insisting that they should be outraged. It ended with Mr. Shue pointing out that "we're all minorities." This makes no fuckin' sense. We can't all be minorities. There are numerous situations where everyone feels like "the other," but you're still NOT A MINORITY. Being a minority--whether the status is based on race, religion, sexuality or disability--is not a matter of temporary discomfort but of being permanently held apart by others. There's also the problem of whether being openly gay makes you a minority--just as there's an issue with whether spending a few thousand dollars on intrusive surgical procedures makes you a woman.

According to the US government, to be a part of a Native American tribe, you only need to be 1/16TH(!) of that tribe. Seriously--look it up yourself. You only need to be 1/16th Cherokee, for instance, to claim to be Cherokee. So your great great grandma knocked boots with an Injun? Congratulations! I can only imagine this was to keep the tribe's numbers large, but it's quit ridiculous when you think of it as a matter of race.

Race is arbitrary and often situational--and 50% dependant on everyone else's view of you as your self-image. Major productions now put out a casting call for someone who "looks Asian" (or, Asian) in order to skirt modern anti-discrimination laws. An Asian will be hired, now--maybe Emma Stone--but they must appear as tolerant and inclusive as possible. Because there's no discrimination in the entertainment industry. Outside of Hollyweird, there's wide disagreement on how to classify Obama. Generally consensus, in America, is that the President's black. The "one drop" rule makes no sense; if you're part black and LOOK black, you're black--and that's a better rule. If you can pass--pun alert!--it's a gray area. You wouldn't want to deny your ethnic heritage, but if you haven't lived your life being viewed as a black person, are you really a black person? The short answer is you're not black, no.

But how do I feel about affirmative action? My viewpoint has changed quit a bit over the decades. Racial set-asides have been illegal for awhile now, and I loathe people who imply that they're still a thing. We have been talking about a point system for awhile now, so let's raise the question: Should being a (real) minority entitle you to a leg up not given to a proud white guy?

My niece is 75% black. She certainly looks blacks. She will spend the remainder of her life as a black girl and a black woman. And I don't want my niece to lose an opportunity because some blue-eyed, blond kid who's 1/8th Navajo wants the opportunity too. ("Hey, we're both minorities!")

In summary, I no longer support affirmative action because white people--including white liberals--will cheat the system. Capitalism is the best economic system since it plays off humanity's desire to be superior to others. Conservatives have won because they're so terrible, lacking optimism in minorities or the human race in general. Good job.

Okay, but Caityln Jenner does not look like a woman, right? (Or "She look...like-a man.")

Remember Ms. Swan from MadTV? That's some old-school racism! But, really, am I just crazy? Because I'm not seeing it. A guy will think Jenner is a woman if he's mentally challenged, in a bar, and it's dark, and he's drunk--and there are no other woman for immediate comparison. Then he will buy her a drink. I will not lie and say Jenner is attractive. I will not play along. I am not a hypocrite. I am a Jew-black guy who cannot become anything else--and neither can anyone else. You cannot change the ones and zeroes that make up the DNA that the Creator or nature gave you. Jenner is clearly a man who spent money to legally become a woman. Jenner does not look like a woman--science is not yet advanced enough to make a person look like the opposite sex, so 99% of the time you get an odd man-woman combination that's not realistically appealing to anybody who's free of a political agenda. Jenner looks like a transgender woman (or man--or whatever). (And, hey, femi-ninnies, we are not supposed to objective women, remember? Attempting to validate Jenner's appearance is sexist and wrong. And that's checkmate, ladies!)

What is unfortunate is that the ESPYs are giving Caitlyn Jenner their annual courage award, not the little girl who raised money for cancer victims. Of course, there's no better way for a little girl to learn the ropes of America than to get cheated out of something by a rich old white guy. (Oh, and Bruce Jenner won those Olympic medals fair and square. Rapists can keep their medals--transgender people can keep their medals too. Only cheaters should be stripped. And, believe me, no one wants to strip Jenner. Zing!)

Meanwhile, the Republican Jenner has benefitted from California and the news media's liberalism. Orange is the New Black actress Laverne Cox has claimed that calling a transgender person by the identity of their DNA, not the one of their choosing, is a "hate crime." No, Brandon Teena suffered a hate crime. Calling someone who is genetically a man "he" is just one belief system, but at least it's a belief system based on science, and some activists are trying to get us to ignore common sense, which I can never support. Laws can be passed to force us to let people choose whatever gender they feel like, and we should all follow the laws until they become too persecutorial, then civil disobedience will be called for, which neither side is ready to do.

Getting a sex change is not heroic. Bruce Jenner was an accomplished Olympian, businessman and motivational speaker--these things are at least interesting, if not necessarily heroic. Caitlyn Jenner is kinda a bitch who has accomplished nothing except showing fake tits. Caitlyn will have a few decades ahead to establish Caitlyn as a person of quality, but right now Caitlyn Jenner wants the limelight on Caitlyn Jenner. I will not entertain anyone in the Jenner or Kardashian family as an important person unless the title is for world's biggest fame whore.

So, is anyone in the media going to talk about Kylie Jenner's relationship with a grown-ass man? Is anyone going to talk about the possible case of vehicular manslaughter that Bruce caused JUST A FEW MONTHS AGO!?! (My controversial pet theory is that this change of assignment is to escape criminal charges, but I'm no lawyer.) Because GOOD JOB, MEDIA!

Have we ruled out that Michael Bay and Zack Snyder aren't really the same person?

Their movies certainly look good, but so quickly fall apart when viewed thru any lens of reality. The dialogue is so insipid as to come from Screenwriters' 101 on plot twists and character development. Their jokes flop. What they lack in wit, they make up for in noise. They both worked with actors like Ben Affleck, Jackie E. Haley. Both men occasionally, as if by accident, make a movie with hints of greatness (Pain & Gain, 300). Watch Man of Steel and Armageddon as a double feature. Who directed which movie?

This might be a Hannah Montana-type situation. Michael Bay, realizing that he was aging after the Millennium, decided to invent a young, hip auteur so he could continue making terrible movies without any gravitas whatsoever. I don't believe Bay killed a man named Zack Snyder and assumed his identity; rather, he invented a persona that existed on paper, then he became that man. He switches between this persona and his real self so often that it's now a seamless transition. Additionally, this allows him to date twice as many lingerie models, and someday he might want to murder someone, then disappear.

(And Brett Ratner? No, Brett Ratner is too busy with his rapes.)

Think about it, Internets. Has anyone ever seen them both at the same place and the same time? My pet theory is that Bay is really wearing a latex mask, and some day he's going to pull it off, Mission Impossible-style and yell: "Fooled you, Hollywood! It was me--Michael Bay--all along!" I think Ben Affleck knows.

"It's not the plane."

My mind is frequently drawn back to one of the best episodes of The West Wing, "Noel," which had a subplot involving an apparently mentally balanced fighter pilot suddenly taking a jet on a joyride before crashing into a mountain in an evident suicide. Josh wanted to know why the plane crashed and became drawn into this incident as part of an existential crises that he'd been having since getting shot. He needed to know--to find a rational reason--why a plane would crash. He would only be left with the pilot's last words: "It's not the plane."

After the Germanwings flight 4U9525 crashed in the French Alps, we immediately thought terrorism, but quickly ruled it out--even though terrorism is by far more statistically likely than what actually happened. There has only been several cases where a commercial airline pilot took the opportunity to commit suicide with a planeload of people with him.

Why aren't we considering the terrorism angle? The first explanation is that he was white. The second is that he wasn't a Muslim. The third (and, actually, the best reason) is that he didn't make a statement, before or after, the attack. He just locked the pilot out, and he waited for the end to come in silence. There was no manifesto--which makes it all the more disturbing. This was a suicide with 150 casualties--it is not an act of terrorism, which requires a political/social/religious component. It is like when a person kills themselves by parking their car on railroad tracks. This would make the suicide sudden, like an act of God and not a conscious attempt to end one's life. Unfortunately, parking your car on railroad tracks significantly increases the likelihood that other people will be injured/killed in your attempt to end your life. This makes you not sick but an asshole.

The airline was supposed to anticipate that a pilot would someday wait until he is alone in the cockpit, lock everyone out, then fly the plane into a mountain? Common sense is that no one will try to kill themselves--ever--in any occupation. Humans have a biological and cultural urge to survive. Especially at work, where dying is not part of the deal or job description. Dying is a private act, and not one in which you would generally like to share with your coworkers. No mechanical back-ups or policy will alter that. That's the most important safety measure: People will want to survive.

In America, airlines are required to bring in a second person (even a flight attendant) to spend time with the co-pilot when the pilot leaves. That way, there will always be at least two people in the cockpit at the same time. Of course, the pilot could still kill or incapacitate the second person, then do the exact same thing. It's another safety measure, yes. Does not significantly decrease the chances that this won't happen again.

Flying is somehow the safest way to travel. You can fly millions of miles and die in bed surrounded by your great grandchildren. How is THAT even possible? That is the one thing that always blows my mind, and should give us all perspective concerning this latest air tragedy.

great scott...

I feel that I have done all that I could on this blog to defend cops' actions in excessive force complaints. But words do not come easily in addressing the controversial shooting of Walter Scott.

Whenever a black person is shot--whether armed or not--the black witnesses declare that the dead man "wasn't doin' nothin'." Normally the black man is doing something illegal or at least poorly advised when the police shoot him. (In the case of Eric Gardner, for instance, he was accidentally killed during an arrest owing to his refusal to cooperate and his poor medical health. Michael Brown was attacking a cop when he was shot.) This isn't murder. It's crap police work.

In the Scott case, the cop apparently shot the black man because he didn't feel like running after him. We cannot ascertain what was in the cop's mind when he was shooting. What is evident from the tape was that this cop was trying to shoot a fleeing man in the back. Then he planted a weapon on him. Then several cops lied about performing CPR on him. And the man wasn't just very tanned--he was certainly black. It was so atrocious that the police department has condoned him. It was so terrible that all the cases that he has worked on will now be re-inspected by the media and lawyers for decades to come.

Yes, Walter Scott was most likely a deadbeat--but he never murdered anyone, white people. Let's get it straight who the thug is in this scenario. A guy who kills a man, then plants evidence is a worse human being than a man who has fallen behind on his childsupport and maybe hit a cop. The cover-up is worse than the crime of accidentally shooting a black suspect.

I hope in this forthcoming weeks we see plenty of feel good stories about the many good cops throughout America. I really do.

Doggone it!

A few years back, my father shot an apparently vicious dog, which was attacking another dog. (He's dead now, if it makes you PETA-freaks feel better. My dad's dead.) I often think about this one incident and what it says about him and myself. But ultimately, this leads to an unavoidable conclusion: It was just a dog. In some parts of the world, dogs are food. My father, for all his flaws, never shot a person or a primate or a dolphin--any creature higher than a dog. Dogs, despite their apparent intelligence, are not particularly high on the evolutionary scale. Beating them is not the same as assaulting a human; it just makes you a world-class douche.

Sarah Palin recently tweeted a pic of her mentally challenged son, Trig, using a dog as a stepladder. It is not so much disturbing that a mentally challenged kid accidentally caused a dog discomfort so much as that his mother transmitted the photo as a source of pride. Sarah Palin--a former governor and current Fox News correspondent--is supposed to be really smart.

It is not evil to kill an animal for food or cloths, but it still doesn't deserve to be turned into a floorcovering to demonstrate how little taste that your family has. Trophy hunting is sickening. Such a gaudy display of slaughter makes a mockery of God wanting humanity to practice responsible stewardship of the environment. The grizzly is one of the most potent land creatures that has ever lived. God did not make grizzlies so the Palin kids can have sex on it. (Drill, baby, drill!) Further, Palin's past reference to herself as a "mama grizzly" makes no sense, seeing how she proudly kills grizzlies.

Palin is, in one regard, a woman from a different time. A Republican such as Theodore Roosevelt supported conservation not because there was a natural order to the world and that humanity had no right to eradicate a species, but so future generations would have something to kill. Hunting has long been a sport of the ruling class, having their other needs met, there's nothing left but to pretend to rough it. I don't have a blanket opposition to hunting; the steak that I had at Sizzler last week wasn't a product of cow suicide.... Hope it was cow.

Palin, meanwhile, has defended herself with her proxy defense: Lamestream media hypocrisy. She pointed out that talk show host and liberal darling Ellen DeGeneres recently posted a pic of her using a dog as a footstool--from 40 years ago. (The dog is long dead, and I presume the animal lover DeGeneres didn't kill it.)

I must rack my mind over the differences, and here's the one that I can come up with: Americans like Ellen; we hate Palin. Ellen does not compartmentize people--when she looks out at a crowd of Americans, she sees Americans. When Palin sees a crowd, she immediately divides people based on them being "real Americans" and non-conservatives such as members of the liberal media elite, who ruined her political ambitions by asking her such "gotcha" questions as: Which newspapers do you read? Ellen supports rejecting the meanness of society; Palin basks in it--except for when such cruelty and moral judgments are directed against her own family. Sarah Palin wallows in human prejudices like a pig of intolerance. I am not a lesbian and I certainly am not a liberal, so I can safely say: You're a bitch, Sarah Palin. Jesus--who is obligated to love everyone--must be deeply conflicted about you, Sarah Palin.

Most of all, the photo confirms what so many of us knew about Sarah Palin: She hates animals. She shoots wolves (which are closely related to dogs) from a helicopter. She loves nature so much as she can profit off it, and she hates God's creatures. The same could be said about Marion Barry's crack use and Bill Clinton's numerous sex scandals, and anything George W. Bush ever said or says or will say in the future. Palin is thus right in claiming that the media are picking on her--she has just refused to alter her behavior to become a more decent human being.

#TheDress #DaFuck

I saw this weird tweet and reference across the Internet when it happened. ISIS is beheading groups of people, and we need to stop everything to talk about this. It's a white and gold dress.

I think anyone who sees the dress for what it is is a damn liar. It's like when people find out how a magic trick is performed beforehand, then acts like it's plainly obvious how the magic trick is performed. (I'm looking at you, Justin Bieber.) In this picture, the dress is clearly white and gold. Perhaps in real life, this dress is blue and black--in the image, it is white and gold. The more you stare at it, you see shades of blue, yeah--like it's a white dress with a blue light on it.

There is a great scientific reason for why this dress can appear to be two radically different color schemes, but damnit, I don't understand it--and it's a white and gold dress! Get out of here, nerds!

Oh, but wouldn't it be great if this dress causes another civil war in America? All over a white and gold dress.

Both terrorists and artists tend to be assholes. (Je suis...I got a D in French.)

Bill Maher declared this was an Islamic terrorist attack in the hours afterward, before the corpses were cold and the suspects were named. A few years back, a tasteful depiction of Muhammed was censored on an episode of South Park, with the overarching theme being a satirical jab at artists for kowtowing to the Islamic extremists who are literally the only people who demand that Muhammed is never shown. (Christians, meanwhile, have a complicated issue as to whether Jesus/God could or should be depicted in graphic form.) A few years prior to this, Muhammed was depicted on the Comedy Central show as a superhero in the legion of religious figures turned superheroes. No one noticed.

Really being offended at a depiction of Muhammed is not the strangest thing that Islamic terrorist do, is it? They sincerely believe that THEY are being attacked and are merely resisting. They believe that killing women and children will make Muslims look better the world over. The people whom Muslim religious fanatics are most liable to kill are Muslims, followed by non-Muslim aid workers and journalists. They are so divorced from reality that they make American Christian fanatics seem downright sane.

This terrorist attack has had the unintended side effect of rightwingers declaring a moratorium on Franco-phobic jokes. (How badass was that raid, by the way? They shot the terrorists. Good for them! I have a mental image of them afterwards shooting their automatic guns into the air, yelling: "U-S-A!") Real politics involve the notion that the "enemy of the enemy is my friend"--and the French, who are normally terrible, are now confronted with the threat of Islamic extremism. This existential threat to human civilization is worse than liking Jerry Lewis, who was never that good.... Muslim terrorists: worse.

Occasionally funny short person Bill Maher is not so much concerned about life but about bashing religion--any religion, I believe. Rightwing Christians are agreeing with him because he is agreeing with them: Islam is not a religion of peace. Politics make strange bedfellows. Of course, the modern state of Islam is an excellent promotional material for atheism. Islamic society at one time led the world in civility--including women's rights. For whatever reason, Muslims the world over had grown stupider across the centuries. Christians suffered their dark ages, and now these are theirs--unfortunately, the rise of Western thought has coincided with the decline of Islamic thought. Most of the world's Muslims are illiterate; they cannot read the Koran. And when non-Muslims tell Muslims what are in their religious scriptures, it is understandably greeting with suspicions. And, face it: It's not our book. They are literally just making up Islam as they go along. Meanwhile most Western Muslims are literate, and the educated Muslims are most often the ones to stage Islamic terrorist attacks. This should make us give pause--but it won't.

As a fellow artist, I have to say: I'll write whatever I damn well please. As an intelligent person, I have to say: No, I won't be drawing a picture of Muhammed. Because, in the words of Stan from South Park when asked if he thought the elderly should be allowed to drive: No, I don't hate the elderly; I just don't want to die. I think a lot of artists feel the same, criticizing a backwards religious ideology from the safety of the crowds. There is now a rush to depict the prophet Muhammed MORE after this terrorist attack. Saying "fuck you" to random people is a hallmark of democracy. However, attempting to make a stand on principle even if this principle is not worth standing for makes you a douche--you're drawing Muhammed to make the Islamic extremists livid, not because you have anything intelligent to say about the prophet Muhammed. So do as you will, artists, but I will not think you brilliant or brave.

There's an unfortunate racial angle to this, too: Europe has an immigration problem. The Mexicans aren't performing suicide attacks to appease the Virgin of Guadlupe. (Don't start, Mexicans. Wouldn't be cool.) Europe is situated near North Africa and the Middle East. They have generous welfare programs, and enough technological development and freedom of expression to allow people to do whatever they want. It's like the French have created a perfect environment to start mass murder. What has previously stopped them was a lack of guns--and, I suspect, butter-rich diets. It's hard to murder when you're full of butter. You just feel good and the saturated fat slows you down. Europe will now have to clamp down on immigration, which might further alienate the Muslims already there, which will be a problem to be sorted out at some later day.

Americans should be thankful that terrorists have never learned that they could just buy a bunch of guns and begin killing Americans--there is no need to construct bombs or poison the air. In real life, a good gun will not protect you from a bad guy with a gun who shoots you in the back. (He's a bad guy; that's what bad guys do.) It is an egregious error to believe that your enemies are as noble as yourself.

Muslims in developed countries, meanwhile are so often complete hypocrites. They hang out at Western universities. They receive social benefits--such as unemployment, transportation and free primary schooling--they get laid and drunk. Then they decide that the West is evil and no other Muslim should benefit from the advantages that they have received. Many of these homegrown terrorists are converts to Islam. They do not wish to practice the religion--whether Islam or atheism--so much as are seeking a pretense to be obnoxious (which is something Maher should consider) to non-believers. We should welcome Muslims in our society. Their religion is no more stupid or violent than any other religion.

When addressing the notion that Islam--an old religion of over a billion adherents--is a death cult, I am reminded of an (okay) unrealistic scene in The Dark Knight, where the Joker has rigged two ferries full of people--one with convicts, the other with civilians--with explosives and gives them a countdown to kill each other, to prove that humanity is fundamentally bad. The minutes tick by, and nothing happens. As the debate rages on, the ferry captain of the good boat realizes: "We're still here." That brings me comfort.

But Maher is still an asshole, right? He's an asshole.

Officer cameras could be defeated by a sticker.

Last year at the Metro/7th subway stop (for non-Angelenos, that's a hub that connects several rail lines, including the hellish passage into Compton), I saw two sheriff deputies--white or Latino, a male and a female--deputies conversing with a mentally ill black man, who was quit animate about some point. (It is safe to say that they were arguing about fare non-payment.) The fellow raised his hands high above his head, and that was the cue for the male cop to tackle him. The two went to the floor, and the female deputy joined in and arrested him. To my knowledge, no one died during that arrest. And though someone could've been killed, the deputy made the judgment call that he needed to end this confrontation. From my distance, it looked like police brutality.

The cops in the Eric Garner case were attempting to grab Garner by the wrists, but he waved them off. (Garner, who was 6-3 and over 350 pounds, had a history of resisting arrest.) It is a myth that Garner wasn't trying to resist arrest at the time of his death--though no loose cigarettes were found on him--he was clearly arguing with the cops on scene. He clearly didn't want to be arrested or touched. (I don't like being touched either, by the way. However, I can also recognize that the cops are allowed to touch me in a non-sexual manner in order to aid their investigation.) In Officer Pantaleo's brilliance, he thought to use a chokehold on the much larger adversary. It was a dick move, and it was against NYPD policy. In hindsight, the cops should've tried harder to negotiate a favorable outcome. There will be a million dollar settlement going to Garner's family. But none of that changes the fact that it wasn't a murder.

Let's get the terminology correct. "Homicide" means an unnatural death, not murder. Jeffrey Dahmer strangled over ten black men to death--he murdered black men, and he often used strangulation. Dahmer was not a cop trying to arrest anyone. He had the motive of needing to assert control and an incredibly bizarre fascination with death, leading to one of the most bizarre true-life American horror stories of the 20th century.

I am concerned with how sarcastic the "hands up" movement is. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BLACK MEN, DO NOT COME AT POLICE WITH YOUR HANDS RAISED!!! (There.) When the cops want you to come over, they will ask you to come over. You can yell and curse at cops all you want from the comfort and anonymity of the crowd. When the cops are talking to you, check your attitude. NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS. Any number of these shooting incidents have been caused by racism, yes, but also by black men oblivious to how they are perceived by others. YOU KNOW that you're a nice guy, but the cops don't know this.

There is an unfortunate anti-authoritarian attitude among so many American blacks that leads to self-destruction. American doctors so often just don't want to be subjected to the argument or accusation that they are attempting to enforce an Anglo-centric standard of beauty onto blacks. (I'm not making this up: Doctors refuse to tell black people to lose weight.) "Fat" is certainly a relative term, to be clear; there is a stigma among African American girls of being "boney." Mo'Nique has built an entire persona around criticizing "skinny bitches." Meanwhile, diabetes is striking down blacks and numerous blacks seem confused as to the cause. Libertarians tell us that blacks should be allowed to eat whatever they want--and the government shouldn't pay for poor blacks' healthcare. Thank God for Michelle Obama, in all seriousness. Can you imagine the accusations of racism if Laura Bush had told black women that they were too damn fat?

The use of video footage "proves" that it was a murder. We are overly reliant on video footage and not logic--if the cop wanted to kill Garner, he would've shot him. If you're planning to brutalize a suspect, you wouldn't do it while a camera is rolling. You would turn the camera off. (Advocates of officer-mounted cameras tend to ignore that the cops will be able to cover up the lens with a sticker. Or experience "battery failure" or "forget" to wear it--I can go on.) You wouldn't do it on a public street, in broad daylight. The image of this arrest is haunting, certainly. However, if he hadn't died, this never would've made the news. What makes the video haunting is that he did actually die after proclaiming that he was about to die.

Garner should've yelled: "I'm experiencing shortness of breathe." Rather he yelled: "I can't breath." Garner was not an educated man, and he used more common vernacular to describe his current health state. The cops, lacking much medical knowledge ("shortness of breath" being a red flag for a health crisis) and well-attuned in the art of BS, assumed he was faking it. They weren't really strangling him. They weren't really roughing him up--no healthy man should've been injured during the course of THAT arrest. Numerous rightwingers, bizarrely, are still using this as proof that he was faking it: If you cannot breath, how can you say that you cannot breath? Science!

This death brings to mind the late LAPD Chief Daryl Gates, who proclaimed in the early '90s that so many black men were being killed during chokeholds not that his people were using too much force but that "black people didn't respond to chokeholds like normal people." This statement has two potential meanings: Black men are so belligerent that they end up being accidentally killed or that black men are biologically unable to withstand a few seconds of strangulation. In either case, Gates was throwing out a nonsensical and fairly racist justification for his people's actions. You can be right and completely tone-deaf to the person whom you're explaining your logical conclusions to, and Gates's political idiocy led to the LA Riots. The use of chokeholds was abandoned for nightsticks...which led to the beating of a suspect named Rodney King, which led to the Riots. Thus both a controversial police tactic and the attempt to rectify a controversial police tactic led to the Riots.

According to the coroner: Contributing factors to Garner's death included bronchial asthma, heart disease, obesity, and hypertensive cardiovascular disease. Garner was not going to live a long life. He didn't follow doctor's orders--or he was never given doctor's orders. He also didn't listen to the cops, having been arrested multiple times--including for resisting arrest. His death was not entirely caused by his bad decisions, both legal and medical. He suffered an attack from overzealous law enforcement officers.

Still not murder.