evolution

Like most people with a conscience — even one as addled as mine by alcohol, Dungeons & Dragons, video games, and relationship failures — I was outraged when I read the popular account of Sony’s promotion of its new game God of War II, which went a little something like this:

Electronics giant Sony has sparked a major row over animal cruelty and the ethics of the computer industry by using a freshly slaughtered goat to promote a violent video game.

The corpse of the decapitated animal was the centrepiece of a party to celebrate the launch of the God Of War II game for the company’s PlayStation 2 console.

Guests at the event were even invited to reach inside the goat’s still-warm carcass to eat offal from its stomach.

Sickening images of the party have appeared in the company’s official PlayStation magazine – but after being contacted by The Mail on Sunday, Sony issued an apology for the gruesome stunt and promised to recall the entire print run.

Critics condemned the entertainment giant, which produces scores of Hollywood blockbusters each year, for its “blood lust” and said the grotesque “sacrifice” highlighted increasing concerns over the content of video games and the lengths to which the industry will go to exploit youngsters.

At the event, guests competed to see who could eat the most offal – procured elsewhere and intended to resemble the goat’s intestines – from its stomach.

They also threw knives at targets and pulled live snakes from a pit with their bare hands.

Topless girls added to the louche atmosphere by dipping grapes into guests’ mouths, while a male model portraying Kratos, the game’s warrior hero, handed out garlands.

Kotaku, Nick Denton’s gaming-yap blog, solicited comment from Sony’s people, which paints a milder picture — they bought the goat from a butcher. Also, they claim that the article above was written by someone not in attendance.

Still, I’d like to thank Sony for giving busybody dumbasses like Jack Thompson an extra ten years of things to do to try to destroy videogaming as a form of entertainment.

I liked games more before hipsters and marketing got involved…

UPDATE: This wire story fills in some gaps.

Sony hosted about 20 journalists at the March 1 event, which it called a theatrical dramatization with a Greek mythological theme. The goat, provided to the production company by a local butcher, was part of the set dressing, the company said.

The U.K.’s Daily Mail newspaper on Sunday published a story on the party, where female hostesses with breasts covered with nothing but body paint fed grapes to guests, who competed to eat the most “warm entrails” — a meat soup made to look like the goat’s internal organs.

Thanks again, dickheads.

» My host has been having problems today, so this site’s availability will be hit-or-miss for a day or two. My apologies. UPDATE [22:15]: I just learned that my host’s server is undergoing upgrades. Looks like it’s over now.

» This just in — I hate my upstairs neighbors. The latest outrage: sweeping bird seed directly through the slats of their deck onto my head and in my laptop keyboard, as I was clearly seated beneath them.

People are starting to come back to this site, so I thought I’d help some of you Googlers out who are popping in now and again. The following are actual search phrases used to reach this site (with ranking):

• im sick of this shit — Me too. (Not in the top 100.)
• poems on my lust for you — Poems don’t really work for lust. Or so I’ve found. (Google #4)
• elin grindemyr fake or real — I vote real (Link NSFW — not in top 100).
• purity ceremonies for single adults — Let me get you a towel. Or, if you prefer, a dirty sock. (Not in top 100 — Disturbingly, this search generated 375,000 results)
• kansas political blogs — Google #10, baby.

Man, you people are jacked.

Some Japanese folks, who apparently have day jobs as fucking idiots, were suckered by someone selling neatly-trimmed lambs as “poodles”. The UK Metro includes a helpful comparison, which I have embellished to help our friends from the Land of the Rising Sun:

Entire flocks of lambs were shipped over from the UK and Australia to Japan by an internet company and marketed as the latest ‘must have’ accessory.

But the scam was only spotted after a leading Japanese actress said her ‘poodle’ didn’t bark and refused to eat dog food.

Maiko Kawakami, who starred in the Japanese thriller Violent Cop, showed photographs of her pet on a television talk show only to be told it wasn’t a dog - but was in fact a lamb.

The article goes on to politely excuse this mistake by saying that poodles are “extremely rare” in Japan. They’ve seen dogs though, right?

UPDATE [27 Apr 20:41] Damn — Snopes says it’s a hoax.

Sounds hot:

The motto of the new town would be “women never make mistakes, and men can never refuse women’s requests,” Chinese media have reported.

When tour groups enter the town, female tourists would play the dominant role when shopping or choosing a place to stay, and a disobedient man would be punished by “kneeling on an uneven board” or washing dishes in restaurant, media reports said.

Thank you, ma’am, may I have another?

A warrant for Richard Gere’s arrest has been issued in India, where he surprised Indian super-hottie Shilpa Shetty (if you want to see what I’m talking about, click here — SFW but annoying music) with kisses on the cheek. He is being charged with public obscenity.

For her part, Shilpa wasn’t impressed with Gere, but basically told everybody to get over it.

Commenters who make jokes about gerbils or hamsters will be joined in laughter shot on sight.

With a retinue of doctors. And hot naughty nurses, no doubt.

*

I’m skipping ahead a bit — Joel has dealt with Chapter III of Alexis de Tocqueville’s book here. I mean to deal with Chapters IV and V, which deal with the phenomenon of local, “bottom-up” government.

I do want to say a few words about his Chapter III post, which also references passages that I briefly touched on here. He read it quite differently than I did, but I don’t think his reading is any less valid. In fact, there is a logical consequence to his points about aristocracy and education:

In early America, we lacked bored heirs who, in the absence of having to build their own fortunes, devoted themselves to intellectual endeavours. The people who were wealthy had worked hard to accumulate the wealth, so by the time they had time to devote to, you know, smart things, they’d acquired other habits…

But since education is so accessible in America, Alexis says, almost everybody has some book learnin’.

The result: “A middling standard is fixed in America for human knowledge. All approach as near to it as they can; some as they rise, others as they descend.”

Joel then goes on to quote the same passage I did in my last de Tocqueville post, where I lamented the lack of unity of purpose in America today.

Joel and de Tocqueville both have it right regarding the dangers of homogeneity. We are indeed as a society sliding toward a soft socialism of “equality”, and people are starting to notice — they are starting to see what they can get away with. Some of the Republicans’ actions, particularly by those of social “conservatives”, of the last few years bear that out. And more than a few “liberal” (leftist) politically-correct technocrats feel that society needs to be “guided” by the loving hands of a handful of elites (themselves).

Which brings us to de Tocqueville’s musings on the nature and structure of local governments in early America.

The first thing that jumped out at me was this passage:

The principle of the sovereignty of the people, which is always to be found, more or less, at the bottom of almost all human institutions, generally remains there concealed from view. It is obeyed without being recognized, or if for a moment it is brought to light, it is hastily cast back into the gloom of the sanctuary.

“The will of the nation” is one of those phrases, that have been most largely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age. Some have seen the expression of it in the purchased suffrages of a few of the satellites of power; others, in the votes of a timid or an interested minority; and some have even discovered it in the silence of a people, on the supposition that the fact of submission established the right to command.

Alexis de Tocqueville could not have imagined modern polling data and its effects on the power-hungry, self-aggrandizing politicians which existed then as well as now when he wrote Democracy in America. What I have seen today* is that if the American people want something — even if it is contrary to or not found in fundamental principles of American government, i.e., the Constitution — they will find some craven politician to give it to them. This model will lead to an anti-libertarian society just as surely as the worst authoritarian dictator would. (Remember — democracy is a necessary but not sufficient condition of liberty.) Surely polling data is not the only cause of this phenomenon — misconceptions of what “equality” should mean play a major role — but it is an example.

de Tocqueville goes on to survey examples of local government. He addresses government at the township level, the county level, and the state level each in turn. He begins with the township, devoting a healthy chunk of Chapter V to it. He wrote that “[i]t is not undesignedly that I begin this subject with the township. The village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural that wherever of men are collected it seems to constitute itself.” Even though our “townships” have gotten quite a lot bigger with time, this is still true today. Each citizen of a town has a greater share of power within that town that he does anywhere else. What’s different is today is that, with the rise of an “activist” federal government and “activist” state governments which “govern” without end (or to no end in particular), these natural gatherings have much less latitude in which to self-determine. The affairs of the town are the easiest way for people to exercise their liberties to greatest effect. Consolidation of power in state governments and in the federal government — a phenomenon that’s made steady progress since 1900 — has, in my opinion, harmed the cause of liberty.

There’s another thing de Tocqueville notices about early 19th century America that is no longer true today — and again that is to our current detriment:

NOTHING is more striking to a European traveler in the United States than the absence of what we term the government, or the administration. Written laws exist in America, and one sees the daily execution of them; but although everything moves regularly, the mover can nowhere be discovered. The hand that directs the social machine is invisible. Nevertheless, as all persons must have recourse to certain grammatical forms, which are the foundation of human language, in order to express their thoughts; so all communities are obliged to secure their existence by submitting to a certain amount of authority, without which they fall into anarchy. This authority may be distributed in several ways, but it must always exist somewhere.

Does anyone seriously believe that about today’s federal government? The “movers” are everywhere, and again they are not exclusively Right or Left. The impersonality of a large bureaucracy cannot possibly have the interest of all the people it purports to serve at heart. It will thus necessarily fail at any such attempt. Even a state government cannot possibly be expected to serve all its citizens in its present-day expanded role. These governments were intended (and should today) to provide a few basic protections and services for its citizens (fewer with increasing government size), with the people of the towns intended to provide the rest. These governments doubly hurt the cause of liberty, because citizens end up working like dogs to pay off their obligations to them, leaving less time for interest in local affairs.

I leave you with the thoughts of de Tocqueville on centralized government:

The partisans of centralization in Europe are wont to maintain that the government can administer the affairs of each locality better than the citizens can do it for themselves. This may be true when the central power is enlightened and the local authorities are ignorant; when it is alert and they are slow; when it is accustomed to act and they to obey. Indeed, it is evident that this double tendency must augment with the increase of centralization, and that the readiness of the one and the incapacity of the others must become more and more prominent. But I deny that it is so when the people are as enlightened, as awake to their interests, and as accustomed to reflect on them as the Americans are. I am persuaded, on the contrary, that in this case the collective strength of the citizens will always conduce more efficacious to the public welfare than the authority of the government. I know it is difficult to point out with certainty the means of arousing a sleeping population and of giving it passions and knowledge which it does not possess; it is, I am well aware, an arduous task to persuade men to busy themselves about their own affairs. It would frequently be easier to interest them in the punctilios of court etiquette than in the repairs of their common dwelling. But whenever a central administration affects completely to supersede the persons most interested, I am inclined to suppose that it is either misled or desirous to mislead. However enlightened and skillfull a central power may be, it cannot of itself embrace all the details of the life of a great nation. Such vigilance exceeds the powers of man. And when it attempts unaided to create and set in motion so many complicated springs, it must submit to a very imperfect result or exhaust itself in bootless efforts.

Next time, we’ll discuss de Tocqueville’s thoughts on the judiciary and how they relate to today’s America.

Note: I have created a “Democracy in America” category and placed a link to all the posts in this series in the sidebar under “features”. You’ll be able to access all my DIA posts there.

Okay — here’s some more hipster flamebait. (My DIA post will be next — and I’m not done with them yet.)

I consider myself pretty sophisticated as whitebread, geeky men from Kansas go. I appreciate literature, poetry, mathematics (naturally), science, philosophy, cuisine, and music of all kinds. I stay informed on current events through a variety of means, and I have a vast array of technical items and knowledge to indulge these pursuits.

But visual art — painting, sculpture, and the like — does almost nothing for me. I find that both its practitioners and its fans are incredibly pretentious, and as you know, pretension evokes an almost visceral, animal hatred in me. When I read reviews of visual art (and its cousin, architecture — which I originally went to K-State to major in), I want to throw up. These reviews, as often as not, contain words that may be from the English language, but represent utter nonsense.

Which brings us back around to “Banksy”. “Banksy” is a British graffiti “artist”, the most pretentious in the pretentious world of visual art. He has made a living — rather a handsome one at that — painting, using spray paint and random walls, what are essentially ham-fisted “subversive” sight gags. You can see examples of them here. He is enigmatic; he is said to jealously guard his identity, but he has high-profile art shows where his fans — among them meat-headed American celebrities — bid on his works. He is also apparently a total douchebag, as this Independent article notes:

Though various glittering creatures from the Hollywood firmament - Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Keanu Reeves, Jude Law and Macaulay Culkin, along with Christina Aguilera, the rapper Everlast and even Joni Mitchell - turned up to a Los Angeles warehouse to see Banksy’s latest exhibition the great man himself did not deign to put in an appearance…

It did not matter. Indeed, absence made the heart grow fonder, winning him the front page of The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as well as on seven US television news shows, including ABC’s Good Morning America. He even made al-Jazeera. And the celebs’ purchases left the street-artist’s bank account some £3m the fatter.

The three million pounds — about $6 million USD — becomes relevant now:

Jokes are important to Banksy. They tell the story which the bald details of his biography hide. His stencilled graffiti - he says he can’t draw freehand fast enough - are replete with humours juxtapositions.

Sometimes these are political in nature - he’s anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-establishment - a helicopter gunship with a pink ribbon beneath its rotors, a little girl cuddling up to missiles, an insect with air-to-air missiles beneath its wings, or a parody of that great American icon of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima - only in Banksy’s version the men are not soldiers but urban protesters.

Sometimes they set out to undermine the cultural status quo. The men from Pulp Fiction firing bananas instead of guns. A bomber hurling a bunch of flowers. A copy of Rodin’s The Thinker with a brass-cast traffic cone on its head (a symbol of ordinary people making culture their own, he says). The napalmed girl from Vietnam with Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald either side.

The perfect artist for the vacuous bumper-sticker politics crowd:

What came next was to raise Banksy’s profile internationally. In August last year he went to the giant wall the Israelis are building around the West Bank. There, on the Palestinian side, he painted nine images including one of a ladder going up and over the wall and another of children digging a hole through to the other side.

“As a graffiti writer you have to make a pilgrimage to the biggest wall on earth at some point,” he told Zoo magazine. “It is also the most politically unjust structure in the world today. It stands three times the height of the Berlin Wall and will eventually run for over 700km - the distance from London to Zurich. The wall is illegal under international law and essentially turns Palestine into the world’s largest open prison.” The Israelis were not amused.

The pieces of dead teenagers mixed with rubble from a Tel Aviv dance club could not be reached for comment.

Anyway, I mention all this because one of his paintings (this one) sold this week for £288,000 — or about $600,000. So much for “anti-capitalism”.

In a way, he’s the perfect visual artist for this vapid generation: image over substance, and philosophies that can fit on a bumper sticker. Or a run-down wall in Birmingham.

You’ll no doubt be glad to know that the Finney County district attorney has dropped all charges against the young fellow accused of pinching one off in the school cafeteria peas:

Finney County Attorney John Wheeler said he decided to dismiss the case based on lack of evidence to prove the child had committed the crime.

A USD 457 food service worker found fecal matter in the peas at the school. The matter was tested and found to be free of diseases and harmless to humans. No students were at risk of a food-borne illness.

Wheeler said there was no question that a crime had been committed but there was no evidence to support that the child had committed the crime.

I’d imagine it’s pretty clear to everyone by now who did it — it’s a matter of proving this in court, which is something different. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t think that would be too difficult — isn’t there some trace of DNA in your bowel movement that would positively identify you?