Got some interesting news stories to gab on today, so let’s get down to it, boppers!

The Rise Of The Concierge

There is an interesting story about the rise of companies offering concierge services to the super wealthy in London over at The Guardian.

How wealthy do you have to be? Well, you have to be able to afford five thousand pounds a month, or slightly less then eight thousand dollars a month Canadian, for the services, and even after that, you still have to foot the bill for whatever you ask of them.

But demand is high because of all the super wealthy people fleeing European financial instability to the safe and secure shores of the UK (score one for the British banking system), and the services often have long waiting lists and hundreds of wealthy and powerful clients.

I find this very interesting not because I am inherently fascinated by the actions of the excessively rich, but because I find it interesting that people who “have everything” are willing to pay so much for someone who has what they do not : knowledge, contacts, and competence.

The role of the concierge is a highly demanding and multifaceted one. It required an incredibly high level of knowledge, access, customer service capacity, patience, ingenuity, and raw competence. The concierge is the person who knows how to get things done, and I am inherently fascinated by such people because I am the sort of person who almost never knows how to get things done.

So I fully understand why someone is willing to pay so much for this rare and valuable capacity. Even if I had a billion dollars, I would still not be that kind of person. It reminds me of the famous Robert Heinlein story “We Also Walk Dogs”, about a company that specializes in solving people’s problems much like a concierge might. (The title comes from the fact that it started out as a dog walking company. )

Meet Officer Mitt

And in other news, the evidence that Miit Romney is a terrible human being continues to pile up, as a college classmate has recently revealed that in college, Mitt got a state trooper uniform from his father the Governor and used it to impersonate a state trooper and play a cruel joke on some girls.

And not only that, he bragged to his fellow students that he was going to do.

Basically, he got the uniform through his father, then governor of the state, who had uniformed state troopers as his personal bodyguard. He also got a big flashing light for his vehicle, He then used them to pick up and harass girls from a local girl’s school, and to play a “prank” where he pulled over two friends of his who were in on the prank and scare the friends’ dates, who they then abandoned.

Obviously, impersonating an officer of the law is a serious crime no matter where you live, and I find it very interesting that a rich and over-privileged college freshman like Romney would be so attracted to one of the only forms of power and privilege unavailable to him : the law.

My increasing worry about Romney is that he is so absolutely out of touch with reality due to his extreme wealth and privileged upbringing that he has absolutely no concept of the consequences of his actions. That he is exactly the sort of person who would do terrible things and not only not care that he hurt others, but do them with a smile on his face and the full and honest expectation of praise and approval at the end.

That is exactly the sort of person who is far more dangerous than any mere sociopath, because sociopaths at least have enough sense of self-preservation to try to avoid the appearance of evil. Romney has no idea anything he does would even be considered wrong by others.

He is a terrible candidate. I hope that means he will lose.

Today’s Most Popular Murder

Finally, we present the most popular death by bludgeoning in a long time, the case of a father who discovered his four year old daughter having sex with a man, and reacted by beating the man to death.

Predictably, the Internet is abuzz with people declaring this murderer to be a hero, as pedophiles are officially the most hated people in society, and thus perfect fodder for venting our vilest hate.

The guy is not a hero. He is not a villain either, for that matter. To me, he is a tragic victim of circumstance, someone who stumbled across the unthinkable, reacted in an extreme way, and now has to live with the knowledge that not only did he kill another human being with his own hands, but that he did it right in front of his already traumatized four year old daughter.

So not only the child molested, she saw her father kill someone. That is not the outcome of heroic action, it is the outline of a terrible life scarring tragedy. And I am particularly offended by the way the article offhandedly mentions that the Sheriff described the child as “OK besides the obvious mental trauma.”, as though that was just a minor thing she can just walk off.

To me, it is obvious that the girl would have been far better off if her father had just pulled the man away from his daughter and then held him till the cops showed up.

But no, people have learned that it is socially acceptable to wish all kinds of horrors upon pedophiles, and so they caper with glee at the prospect of one getting killed in the act.

Screw what is best for the child, we don’t care about her. We like it better this way. Much more satisfyingly bloody and violent. Scratches that deep down witch burning itch we all share.

Rape is wrong. Child rape is even worse. I am not defending the dead man’s actions.

But whenever people are cheering the murder of any person, count me out.

This is getting to be a Thursday “thing”, isn’t it? Damn. I am a writer, I am supposed to be creative and unpredictable. Yet no matter what, order and stability always emerge from the chaos.

I am pretty sure there is something really deep and meaningful in there about chaos math and emergent systems like, for instance, life. But I got content to share and people to do, so I am not going to go into it now.

Thus, it will dissolve back into the chaos of my mind, and emerge again in a completely different form.

Creativity is so freaky!

All right, what all do I want to share?

Well, there is this pic that Weird All (all hail the Al!) posted to his Twitter recently :

SHOVE YOUR CAN INTO MY CRINKLY HOLE HUMAN!

Al’s caption is “I always get a little grossed out whenever I see a Pepsi sphincter. “. Bet most of you did not even know that is where Pepsi came from….

Just kidding. This is not Futurama and Pepsi is not Slurm.

If you haven't seen the episode, trust me, you don't wanna know

But still, there is definitely something uncomfortably sphinctoid about that design. I am sure Al was not the first person to note this.

Not that I blame Pepsi. That is the natural design for things you want to only go one way. Nature does know what it is doing sometimes.

And honestly, I am a pretty straightforward, pragmatic, direct person, but even I would have trouble being the guy at the meeting who raises his hand and says “Um…. doesn’t this look just a little too much like a butthole for something we want associated with a brown drink?”

Even if they agree with you, they are never going to look at you the same way again.

Speaking of pictures, this one had been making the rounds of the Internet because it expresses a simple truth of our times so well.

Same hate, different era

Sorry to drop the serious on you all, but this is the sort of thing that needs to be shared.

The Twitter message that went with this pic puts it perfectly.

“These two pictures will be viewed/judged identically by our children and their children. ”

Spot on, my friend. From this point onward, history will judge the two fights for civil rights, and the incredibly ugliness that the light of reason and charity drives to the surface when the fight is nearly done, to be the same. They will see no difference between people marching to prevent interracial marriage and marching to prevent gay marriage. And there is a reason for that.

Because there is no difference.

We in the GBLT community should not take the recent victory of the anti gay marriage forces in North Carolina too hard. This is the sort of thing that always happens when the fight is nearly over. The right wing reactionaries always put up the biggest fight when they realize public opinion is against them and they know that this is their last chance to try to pray the tide away.

And it never makes a bit of difference, because all their protesting and blocking entrance to schools and spewing hate into every available microphone does is further cement their image as horrible, cruel, mean, nasty people who are definitely way outside the mainstream, and hence, they lose all credibility with the massive movable middle who truly decided how things work.

They make it so that nobody who thinks of themselves as a nice person, a sensible person, or even just a socially acceptable person will be willing to associate with them, and hence the balance shifts towards the liberal side of the teeter-totter.

And it will never shift back.

What else should I share…. well, there is this thing.

It it making the rounds of Internet movie fans with remarkable speed, and I can see why, but to me, it is highly flawed. The editing is quite jerky and unnatural, the compositing is crudely done, and there are large stretches which are not comedically justified.

I mean, sure, the whole “You talkin to me?” scene is the most famous scene from Taxi Drive (for some reason), but that does not mean you have to just stick a Mickey hat on DeNiro and put it in there. That is just not funny or interesting.

And sure, what they did with the “All the animals come out at night” speech was amusing, but even then it was off pace and went by too quickly.

Again, I can see why it has caught on. But to me, it is far too sloppy, crude, and unfunny to justify its popularity. I think it gets passed around mostly on premise alone, and that is never pretty.

Finally, a depressing bit of news that nevertheless needs to spread far and wide : Mitt Romney was a vicious bully in high school.

And he went to a very expensive and exclusive high school. So those were other rich kids he was bullying. He cut off one “presumed gay” student’s hair.

I am pretty sure that makes him officially evil, right? As if his bastardly practices at Bain Capital, where he and his rich friends had tons of fun taking successful business and running them into the ground for fun and profit, were not enough.

Nope, he was also a laughing, smirking, cruel, mocking bully who made fellow students’ lives miserable and seemingly had no idea what he was doing was even wrong.

I was a victim of severe bullying as a child, so I might be biased.

But now I just want the fucker to die, die, die. Mo mercy for bullies. They show none of us. We will show none to them.

There is no way a bully can be elected President.

And sure, that was a long long time ago, but I do not care.

Die in flames, you bastard.

Tonight, continuing the non-introspective streak for an unprecedented two in a row, I will be discussing two interesting items from the news in order to warm up for tomorrow’s regular Friday science jag.

It does me a lot of good to get over myself get away from myself for a few days and let my introspective muscles rest for a while. Too much of that, and you lose all sense of perspective and proportion, and that is literally the worst thing in the world.

Well, enough introductory palaver. Time to get on with the news items!

First one : I just love the word “palaver”.

But coming in a close second….

Catholicism Remembers Compassion

I have a lot of problems with the Catholic church. Things like protecting pederast priests, living in golden palaces filled with priceless works of art while billions starve, and worst of all, their entirely nonsensical and extremely counterproductive opposition to contraception are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I cannot decide whether they are a net force of good in the world, or evil. There are just too many variables.

And complicating the issue even further is when a story like this one about the Vatican condemning the Paul Ryan budget in the USA comes along and shows that despite their appearance of unrelenting and hopelessly antique and backwards evil, the Vatican does do a decent thing now and then.

Here is a clip :

“Affordable housing programs have not been protected in various budget and deficit agreements, and as a result many families are at further risk of being pushed into poverty,” said one letter, written by the Rev. Stephen Blaire, the bishop of Stockton, Calif. “We urge you to draw a circle of protection around the programs that serve ‘the least among us.’ ”

And that is exactly why I can never entirely condemn the Catholic church. Not just because they do this sort of thing (in this case, via the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) but because they seem to be the only one of the large Christian sects which remembers Christ’s actual teachings about helping the poor and being compassionate.

At the very least, they remember to pay lip service to it. Eric Ryan claims to be Catholic and that his Catholic faith “informed” his budget, but it would seem the Church does not agree. All reports say that is a distinctly cold hearted budget, which ignores the true financial score in favour of just cutting all the things social conservatives do not like regardless of how much that will save versus how much misery it will cause.

It is good that the Catholic Church seems to at least faintly remember that Christ said to sell all you own and give it to the poor, and that nobody who calls themselves any kind of Christian can possibly spew hatred of the poor when their Savior, the one their entire religion is supposedly about, taught them to love their neighbor and give of themselves freely.

And even to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. You know, taxes?

Making Homelessness Illegal

And speaking of massive right wing abuse of the poor, how about the laws passed in Hungary recently making it illegal to be homeless?

That is the effect, anyhow. Technically, the set of laws in question merely make it a crime to habitually reside in a public place or to store belongings there. And we all know that without laws like these, everybody would do that all the time, right?

Wrong. This is the result of a concentrated two year campaign to make homelessness illegal, presumably driven by the kind of people who, out of sheer moral laziness, think homeless people, like all poor people, are just lazy, and could change their position in life any time they wanted to do so.

That is a classic response from the morally bankrupt who will gladly believe absolutely anything that gets them out of having to care about someone who is not themselves. They are doing well, so the world must be fair, and they got where they are via the prime empty virtue of our modern world, hard work (funny how many supposed rugged individualists still want a pant on the head and a dog treat for being good little worker drones), ergo anyone not doing as well must not be working hard to the exact degree they are less successful.

Ergo, homeless people must be the laziest people in the world. Anything else would mean caring! And even worse… maybe actually doing something, or… the worst thing of all… SHARING.

And sharing means you have less stuff, and if you have less stuff you are more poor, and if you are more poor that means you lose social status in the incredibly minutely competitive world of the middle class, and losing social status is, to middle class people, worse than death.

So clearly, this sort of thing is reprehensible. But to me, the irony of it all is that the next result is clearly just going to be a lot of homeless people into jail, where they will be inside where it is warm and out of the elements, and getting three meals a day plus free medical care, and guards to protect them from other prisoners somewhat….

… in other words, it will improve their lives immensely by turning all prisons into really, really expensive homeless shelters.

So apparently, these people would prefer to spend far more money (homeless shelters are way cheaper than prisons) in order to satisfy their puny punitive reptile brains that they are cracking down on the problem, rather than risk seeming even faintly compassionate (higher brain functions pain them so) by just increasing the number of homeless shelter beds and thus solving the problem more cheaply, more humanely, and more practically.

Well, that is all the rant I have in me tonight. I had forgotten how exhausting it can be to have opinions. No wonder I got out of the habit.