Notes from Hell

Bad writing sure do sucks

2006-06-20T09:03:00.000-07:00

So I was surfing my favorite news sites this morning when I came across an article from Orlando, FL., about how a certain city councilor – she once proposed an ordinance allowing stray dogs to receive food behind local restaurants – wants to limit the number of groups who can provide food to the homeless. She also wants to limit the times when food is distributed.

That sounds like a dumb proposal doomed to failure; ideas like this are neither new nor effective. It is rare, however, to find an Ace Crackerjack reporter who covers a story in the manner discussed below:

Each week, several groups travel to Lake Eola in Orlando to provide food for the homeless. However, the feeding sessions have some local businesses and residents concerned that they can lead to a spike in crime.

Feeding sessions? Okay, maybe the reporter added a teaspoon of dumbass to his coffee this morning. Let’s check my assertion by reading more.

Sheehan said the issue has become one-sided against her and she simply has the interest of all parties at heart, Local 6 reporter Chris Trenkmann said.

So…Trenkmann told the reporter typing this article that Sheehan said she had the best interests of the homeless at heart, or…? What the fuck does that sentence mean, exactly? And why is a news outlet quoting one of its own reporters in a print story?

"I mean I just really feel like I have not been treated very fairly on this ," Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan said. "I want to help people, but proper place, proper time. And if we are will [sic] to provide a location and this group doesn't want to use it because it is not pretty enough...huh."

Note how the writer behind this travesty introduces Sheehan by name and title twice in three paragraphs. And…huh? But that’s not the worst of his sins:

Sheehan has proposed moving the feedings to Lake Eola to Silvia Street. But, businesses in the area are not happy about the idea, Trenkmann said. A group of supporters for the homeless gathered in downtown Orlando Monday who say they have a right to have the feedings at Lake Eola.

The feedings…the feedings…the feeding sessions. This idiot spends too many hours jerking it to gorilla pix on the local nature channel. Throughout this article – or whatever the hell it is – Ace Crackerjack refers to the homeless in the same way as an agricultural reporter would talk about animals waddling to the trough.

666: We don't give a damn!

2006-06-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

The supposed "Day of Evil" passed without incident here in Hell. Fortunately, the bad publicity surrounding it spawned something useful: this.

Vox: Dumb ideas, dumber hair

2006-05-16T14:31:00.000-07:00

An axiom of Hell: you can tell the evil path by how easy it is to follow.

It takes many days of firing to bring a clay sculpture to life, and but a moment to break it; hundreds of hours to sew a quilt, and about five minutes burn to it; many years to raise a child, and seconds to kill it.

Please read the quote below with an eye for the lesson:

Not only will [mass deportation] work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society.

I’m going to ignore the many historical inaccuracies in this statement – there are two big ones that I can see, along with a particularly slimey euphemism in the second line – and point out just how easy the author makes this sound.

Shorter Vox: “Deporting 12 million people after using them as slave labor is easy; the Nazis managed to kill half that number in just four years.”

Write like a wingnut

2006-05-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

In World o' Crap's first contest at their new site, I prove demons can indeed quote the Bible for their own purposes.

More on the Nature of Hell

2006-05-02T20:59:00.000-07:00

In Hell, as on earth, the worth of a thing is determined by how useful it seems to be. And objects of show – in particular, those designed by a recognized master of his craft – are seen as particularly useful. They are symbols of increased social standing, and they’re worth as much as a person is prepared to pay for the higher status they represent.

In the otherworld inhabited by God and his minions, nothing inanimate has worth; everything animate does.

This is one difference between the values of God and those of he who commands me.

Another difference: those who stayed to serve God don’t lust after power, and nor do they demonstrate pride in their dealings. We, who rejected the peace of that realm, are afflicted by those traits the angels rejected in joining against us.

Bring out your dead!

2006-05-01T05:57:00.000-07:00

My minions and I are happy to report a change to the blogroll: The inestimable World ‘O Crap has its own domain! New dispatches from the underworld soon.

Ego nut-punch

2006-04-25T12:24:00.000-07:00

Barbra Streisand is an angry diva.

"Normally, I would not dignify vicious, mean-spirited mythology masquerading as biography[…]"

That’s a good policy, I think; it cuts down on the potential for egregious spelling errors.

Click here for the story.

Objects of Show

2006-04-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

About this article at Pandagon, I have but one comment: Naturally these men wish to assert ownership of their daughters’ sexuality. For some of them, it’s the only thing of value they have.

It takes effort, and a good dollop of luck, to become a high earner. Most men will never achieve that status. To collect possessions of value, then, they must commodify and attach a price to those things already within their reach. Females make up half the human race – a half conditioned to think of themselves as inferior objects of the male gaze – and so females are most easily fit into this need to own “things of value.”

The Devil says 'yum'

2006-04-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

In August 1971 Pihlip Zimbardo, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, executed an experiment designed to measure how people reacted upon being placed in artificial roles of dominance and submission. This study had been funded in part by the Navy, which was out to unearth the roots of systemic problems in its own prisons.

For an observational period of two weeks, volunteers - drawn in through a newspaper ad and selected for their psychological stability - would adopt roles normally found in a prison environment. Some of these men were assigned as guards, and others as inmates.

Certain elements of humiliation - wearing smocks with no underwear, blindfolds, and leg chains for example - had been added to ramp up the experience. These were not standard procedure at most prisons, but were added in the hope that two weeks might reveal truths that took months to develop in more ‘authentic‘ environments.

The “prison” assigned each inmate a number to be used instead of his name, so the process of dehumanization could be more quickly asserted and deconstructed. These volunteers had been warned about the possibility of facing verbal harassment, and about the austere environment in which they’d live for the duration of their stay.

What happened next is the stuff of legend, and Zimbardo still receives considerable criticism for it after 30 years: Although a limit had been placed on what the “guards” could do to their charges - these people were given no instruction but that they were not permitted to physically harm the inmates - it took all of a day before these boundaries were tested.

The first day had been uneventful: Prisoners were subjected to tests of physical exertion and to the dehumanizing treatment outlined above, but each group had yet to slip completely into its role. Guards were assigned shifts, and permitted to return to their own homes during off-hours

By the second day, however, prisoners had actually organized into a revolt. Guards called for reinforcement from among fellow students who had been placed on-call for that purpose, and they armed themselves with fire extinguishers to break the uprising. These men actually hosed down their prisoners before entering each cell and stripping their charges naked as a form of punishment.

Considering the experiment was only a day old by then, this behavior was remarkable - not to mention creepy. And even as the guards became more brutal in adapting to their positions, Zimbardo and his colleagues began to unconsciously take the posture of bona fide prison administrators.

The authors of this experiment were drawn into it and, instead of merely observing and recording the reactions around them, began seeing the prisoners as deserving of increasingly harsh treatment.

Otherwise sane young men were reduced to quivering masses of nerve, and a couple of them - student/prisoners - had to be removed from the experiment within the first couple of days. Zimbardo would later recall he felt some reluctance to let them go, since he believed they were conning him to get out of facing consequences they deserved.

By day four, Zimbardo was perfectly willing to counter rumors of an escape attempt by transferring the pretend inmates to an actual prison.

The overseeing psychologists suggested the guards use a backhanded kind of positive reinforcement, in the form of a “privilege cell”. Special incentives were offered to prisoners who, not unlike the kapo in Nazi concentration camps, were amendable to helping the guards in their task of keeping the inmate population under control.

These special prisoners were allowed to bathe and brush their teeth, as well as eat desired food in the presence of other inmates. To sow distrust among that population, thus breaking any resolve for collective action against authority, guards then revoked those privileges and gave them to other prisoners.

These guards, meanwhile, had been brought closer together by the shared experience of having put down the revolt. At night, when they believed the cameras had been turned off, a few of them demonstrated genuine sadism in their interaction with fellow students.

By the fifth day, prisoners had been forced to walk around blindfolded and shackled. They also cleaned toilets with their bare hands, and were denied “bathroom privileges” for minor infractions.

That night Zimbardo’s girlfriend, Christina Maslach, dropped in on the prison to familiarize herself with the experiment. A newly minted psychologist just hired on at the University of Berkeley, Maslach had been asked to conduct interviews with the prisoners on the following day, and wanted to look around ahead of time.

At first, Maslach, who was looking at security monitors to see what was going on, didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. She even chatted with one of the guards, whom she found to be charming and open - that is, until she saw him interact with the prisoners from her closed-circuit perch:

"This man had been transformed,” she said. “He was talking in a different accent a Southern accent, which I hadn't recalled at all. He moved differently, and the way he talked was different, not just in the accent, but in the way he was interacting with the prisoners. It was like [seeing] Jekyll and Hyde. . . ."

Things only went downhill from there, and Maslach fought a wave of revulsion when she saw prisoners being led around with their heads covered by paper bags. One of the researchers poked fun at her for her timidity. After all, 50 people had come to observe the experiment without complaint - among them psychologists, friends of the students, a lawyer, and a priest - before Maslach had raised an objection.

History, however, would bear her out. In looking over tapes and logs from that time, researchers saw the experiment had clearly gone out of control. Zimbardo, realizing this even in the grip of his own involvement, shut things down the next morning.

The Stanford Prison Experiment lasted six days.

I am the decider

2006-04-18T18:41:00.000-07:00

Sa Habla Entitlement

2006-04-17T19:18:00.000-07:00

I was aboard a Greyhound bus today, going about my Master’s business, when I chanced to overhear a conversation between two puny mortals. One was an immigrant from the Philippines; the other, a woman born in North America. Said the immigrant: “I miss the old ways, but I’m glad to be here. I own my time. I have my freedom. And I can say whatever I want without fear for my skin.”

Her simple eloquence reminds me of how one little girl eulogized Rosa Parks a few months ago: “Thanks to her, we can sit wherever we want.”

My Dread Lord hates this, of course, and so he commands us – no pun intended – to demonize immigrants through his most loyal organs: xenophobes too ignorant to discern on which side their bread is buttered.

While legal immigrants like the bus passenger above used to be the bugaboo of our loyal pets, their new target is illegal immigrants (i.e. underpaid serfs who are at once exploited and denounced by Ayn Rand wannabes who benefit by all that el cheapo labor).

Ha-Satan’s latest order involved one of his beloved chosen, Star Parker. "Feed her self-centered arrogence," he said; "and her ignorance of where she comes from." So I did, and with happy results.

In her latest example of neighborly love, Parker says she’s a libertarian, but that the Mexicans are seriously trying her commitment to small government. Behold:

The recent pro-immigration demonstrations around the country have been a major turnoff.

There is something not convincing about illegal immigrants demonstrating to claim they have inalienable rights to come here, be here, work here, become citizens here _ and make all these claims in Spanish.

Were I good rather than evil, I would argue that if Americans benefit by their in-country labor, Americans have an obligation to extend these workers the same rights as they themselves enjoy. "Guest workers" wouldn’t go to the United States if there weren’t an ample supply of disgusting jobs just waiting to pay them 50 cents an hour.

But wait! They are demanding a life greater than that of despised servitude – and they’re doing it in Spanish. Merciless Hell. Empty the canning factories! Turn pickers out of the fields! Their native tongue is offensive to dear Parker’s ears. It…uh…turns her off.

Hearing "We Shall Overcome" in Spanish just doesn't provoke my sympathies.

Since Parker is a self-proclaimed libertarian, I doubt the sight of an uninsured American dying in the street for a lack of health coverage would inspire her sympathy. So this little tidbit here is just filler she threw in to meet her TownHall quota of stupid.

I don't buy that, along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, our Creator endowed anyone with the right to sneak into the United States, bypass our laws and set up shop.

No, but the Creator – or perhaps my Dread Lord – did endow Americans with the right to exploit marginalized groups for cheap labor. First, US citizens imported black slaves, and now they’re allowing for Mexican ones; as long as the darkies don’t protest, they can stay. Or maybe they’ll have to leave for awhile, but just until the hubbub about their “rights” and America’s “responsibility” dies down.

The civil-rights movement was about enforcing the law, not breaking it.

So segregation was against the law before the Civil Rights Movement? Like, wow. Totally.

And speaking of the law, didn't my preeeeecious gain her current status as a "Conservative Messenger" by pimping out a book about how she cheated on welfare? I guess crime should only pay if you're American.

Go here to read the rest. And remember, my pretties, no one loves you like Satan loves you.

The Four Points

2006-04-16T15:37:00.000-07:00

A few years back, on orders from The Accuser, I resurrected an old lie – that marginalized people are that way by choice – and gave it a facelift for our times. I’m pleased to see that my sibilant whispers have paid dividends: the ex-gay movement, which holds that homosexuality is a choice, has grown quite popular of late.

And our favorite son, Jerry Falwell, has been at the forefront of this shift. He’s probably turned more people off of Christianity in the last ten years than I have – and I’ve been at this ‘ancient evil’ business for a long time.

Gather ‘round children, whilst I demonstrate the way by which he drives sinners from the fold using a devilishly simple rhetorical technique we natives of Hell devised in prehistory.

"Someone must not be afraid to say, 'moral perversion is wrong.' If we do not act now, homosexuals will 'own' America!...If you and I do not speak up now, this homosexual steamroller will literally crush all decent men, women, and children who get in its way...and our nation will pay a terrible price!"

Does this kind of argument look familiar? It should. It follows a pattern we call the “Four Points.” We’ve used the Four Points numerous times over the centuries to incite cruelty.

Here’s the way of it:

1. Identify a social out-group
2. Indicate this group has a singular agenda – a destructive plan that threatens the common good
3. Suggest how the fulfillment of this plan could lead to the destruction of a preferred majority
4. Recommend a course of action to head off the terrible damage

Observe:

Muslims…wish to turn America into a theocracy…through terrorism…so we must place tight controls on their activities.

Illegal immigrants…are costing taxpayers money and depressing wages…which leads to a higher rate of joblessness among Americans…so we should take drastic measures to prevent border crossings.

One characteristic that differentiates the Four Points from legitimate argument is a lack of convincing evidence for its claims. And by legitimate evidence, I mean facts that come from unbiased sources.

A person’s ass has an unlimited capacity to generate meaningless numbers and statistics. You may immediately discount any data pulled from that source. You can also discount information from think tanks that rely upon a collective of human asses for their statistics.

Another characteristic that defines a Four Points argument is an undercurrent of animosity towards the out-group in question.

Take Falwell’s statement, for example: he is saying that homosexuals will take over America; that they want to take over America and destroy it for no better a reason than that they’re homosexuals. That, children, constitutes underlying animosity on Falwell’s part.

Horn-tip to radical feminist Amanda for reminding me that Jerry exists.