The Bus Bench

Fun On A Sunday, While Awaiting A Bus. . .

Being an olde fan of Dr. Demento (his radio show dominated my Sunday evenings in the early 1980s) as well as philology and general nerdiness, I wanted to share this classic humourous tune.

 

-BusTard

Crime is now a crime!

Los Angeles, CA- Crime has recently declared a crime by the L.A. City Council.
Criminals are asked to take their activities elsewhere, where crime is not a crime.

Depatterning Societies, Anarchy, Pure Capitalism and The Stench of Semantics

In Naomi Klein's not-so-shocking title titled "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," the shock is that it seems shocking.
Indeed, one should be shocked that the rest of the world outside the western world, or at least the U.S., wonders why Milton Friedman's desire for a "state of pure capitalism" is merely a gentleman's way of introducing anarchism. To let the market dictate the ways and means would be one hell of a circus about bread, except that the circus-goers tend to pay whatever price those in power advocating "pure capitalism" desire. And it is these same folk what make such a hue and cry about the abominations of violent dictators who wiggle from out of their capitalist control.
To be sure, I am not advocating the abolition of any western government, nor anarchy of any stripe (anarchy, after all, is based in a responsibility to self; "anarchy" is not possible in a western world where even fat crayons are beyond the comprehension of the middle class) or any fashion of new idiocy.
A daily 99¢ burger at the local fast-food joint is a bargain to none other than junkies; the small bit of change saved for the day will be compounded by the dreadful paucity of quickly diminishing health. Milton, were he still alive, would not hesitate to inform such a fool as what thinks a few dollars a day at the local "fry & die" is done in the name of not spending money for "expensive" food, that the health benefits would be well into the red.

Bon appetit.

-BusTard

FUCK PUNCTUATION WEEK!*

Fuck National Punctuation Week!

FUCK, National Punctuation Week!

Fuck national punctuation; weak!
         (for fans of phonetics, of course)

Fuck. Natural Punctuation—WHAT?

Being a newspaper copy editor and production artist (the latter being a bloated term meaning that my eyes know the same pain—from strain—that was found in the collective hot-wax-hardened hand of strippers prior to DTP; I know both punishments equally), I tend to get behind on Mondays owing to it being the busiest of the three days during which I am working on the weekly paper at which I work. Worse, my memory tends to be short while my sentences run painfully long. Come Tuesday, I file the fucker The Paper, and tend to that which I failed to do Monday.
Seeing as I failed to formally celebrate National Punctuation Day—one might state that my lack of punctuality is itself never late in exhibiting itself—I am going to get on with it before “hump day” overtakes me. (Or should I eliminate quotation marks —neé double inverted commas—and just call it Hump Day?)
Anyhow.
The cursing having been accommodated (see above), let us now tackle the inevitable dash of pretension as well as some unmitigated idiocy—all in one insipid dollop. Hence my query: “Could it be that punctuation marks are transmogrified serifs? If so, what shape might the subsequent manifestation take? A sub-set of ultra-lower case lettres? Mayhap a malfeasant family of alpha-numeric-puncto marks? What if a whole new alphabet emerges to eliminate the english** language, a new tongue not unlike the mercury-mutated bear in Prophecy or the strange baby in It’s Alive!?! (After all, both monsters were born from past crimes and, like Frankenstein’s monster, reacted with fatal results as well as fatally.)
Then I got hold of myself as well as my crusty olde crystal tumbler and nearly half-empty bottle of cheap-ass blended scotch, enjoyed one last comma and got down to doing some serious drinking.

*Apologies to Bill Walsh, sorta. . . after all, I am unable to find  ONE SINGLE GOD-DAMMED NEWS AGENT IN ALL OF LOS ANGELES what sells the Washington Post, except one, and that place only barely counts because it is FUCKING PHOTOCOPIED on ledger-sized, 24-lb paper!!!

**The lower-case “e” in “english” was deliberate, owing to my problem with political boundaries.