Star Trek fans think the movie sux.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
Phood Phun
I like the name “Cthulhu bites” myself.
Where There’s A Will…
…there’s often a Lileks.
George Will unaccountably goes to war against blue jeans. James Lileks makes short work of him.
Another Failed Federal Initiative
Despite the claims of MADD, the federally imposed minimum legal drinking age of 21 doesn’t save lives. But it does restrict the freedom of adults, and erodes federalism. In fact, that 1984 act (under Reagan) is one of the reasons that I don’t miss Elizabeth Dole.
Lileks Went To Disney World
Again. Here’s an amusing Retweet Theatre on the subject. More extensive coverage of the expedition can be found here and here.
Which One Are You?
Michael Malone has a commenter bestiary. Some of my commenters are combinations of his descriptions.
Origins
I had the pleasure of dining with Alan Boyle (with a few others) on Friday night in Phoenix. Unfortunately, he couldn’t attend Space Access, because he was in town at another conference, sponsored by Arizona State University. It looks like it was pretty interesting.
Coon Hunting
…Detroit. It’s the other other white meat.
Why I Read Lileks
For grafs like this:
I bought some taco shells before leaving; the clerk, an immense creature who resembled a six-foot soft-serve ice cream treat, asked howr you. I said “damp.” She gave me a look of such unbelievably bovine incomprehension I almost apologized for not saying “fine.” It was almost a warning: don’t get fancy. We don’t take to fancy here. That’s one of the reasons I don’t go to that grocery store anymore. They hired the clerks from the cast party of a Fellini movie and ran them through a Hee-Haw filter, then eliminated the ones who were so antisocial they had fewer than three tattoos of their children’s names on their arms.
I can’t wait to see the novel.
Can’t Spell Crap
Ben Shapiro follows Eric Holder’s advice, and talks bravely about race:
rap isn’t music; rap culture is disgusting and degrading; rap creates racial stereotypes and revels in them.
First, rap isn’t music. Music has three elements: melody, harmony, and rhythm. Rap is all rhythm, very little melody, and virtually no harmony. Cultural relativists who say that Eminem is like Mozart make Barbara Boxer look like Einstein.
Second, rap culture is disgusting and degrading. Not every song, of course – the culture as a whole. It values the basest elements of human nature, from promiscuous sex to maltreatment of women to sickening violence. It’s no wonder that rappers have the life expectancies of fruit flies: by the time they’re 40 – if they hit 40 – there’s a good shot they’ll have shot somebody, been shot, been busted for hard core drugs, or acquired an STD (see this short list). The millions they earn from gullible white kids in the suburbs who just want to seem cool end up flushed down the drug/sex/fancy car toilet.
Third, rap culture creates racial stereotypes and revels in them. Many rappers (including Ice T, who now plays a cop on television) target the police for special hatred based on their alleged discriminatory tendencies. Meanwhile, rappers kill each other in gang rivalries … and then have movies made about them (see Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. – and T.I., who was involved in violent altercation with rapper Lil’ Flip and Ludacris’ manager Chaka Zulu). It provides ammunition to racists who wish to slander all black men as rap-loving violent misogynists, and it encourages ignorant and disadvantaged young black men to become rap-loving violent misogynists. Lovelle Mixon may have listened to late Beethoven string quartets when he wasn’t busy committing felonies, but somehow I doubt it.
Somebody had to say it. Of course, I thought the same about much of disco, at least to the degree to which it was music. I have no interest in “music” in which the percussion carries the melody.