Just heard of this guy. He’s got a mixtape out now, The Potential, which is definitely worth a look. He completely kills it on “Awesome”. Don’t know who produced the beat, but it’s bangin’. And Tyga flow is as dexterous as I’ve heard for a while – changes up his cadence several times throughout the song. Check it out!
If I Get Locked Up Tonight – Eminem
Hit Me Off – New Edition
What’s So Different? – Ginuwine
Beep Me 911 – Missy Elliot
No Diggity – Blackstreet (ft. Dr. Dre)
Operation Blade – Public Domain
If you keep a large dog in a small house or apartment – you deserve to have it bite you. And your children.
A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald (2-3 May, 2009) reported that “Dog attacks are more common in inner-city areas than in the western suburbs.” Well, duh. People in the western suburbs, as gullied up as they may be, are at least imbued with the common-sense understanding that large dogs need large spaces. Staffordshire terriers, Australian cattle dogs and German shepards are the three biggest offenders of biting attacks. With “263 attacks in people, which resulted in 169 injuries, 23 hospitalisations and one death” so far this year. And it’s only May, people.
Look, I don’t care how small your penis is or how desperately insecure a woman you are from watching too many episodes of Today Tonight – You should not have a big dog if you live in a densely populated area. You don’t! I’m no PETA-donating vegetarian, but I like dogs. I feel for dogs. And I understand why dogs who are kept chained up or cooped up all day in tight confines may snap. It’s not their fault – it’s their brain-dead owner’s fault. How feral would you turn if someone locked you up in a room the size of a bed all day long?
And, perhaps, most upsetting about all this is the pathetic euphemisms we use to spare the feelings of us over-sensitive humans. Especially, if they are directly at fault. Offending dogs aren’t killed. Hey, we don’t even say “put down” anymore. Too inhumane. Instead, we use the terms “disposed of” or “destroyed” – as if they were no different from any other faulty consumer item. Which, sadly, is how too many self-centred yuppies consider them. I may be a snob, but I draw the line at being directly responsible for the prolonged suffering of anyone that lives under my roof.
The breeds that bite don’t need to be made illegal, stupidity needs to be made illegal.
Most people don’t consider themselves crazy. Sure, mediocre and uninteresting individuals will call themselves “crazy” in a vain attempt at uniqueness. And loads of people pay a great deal of money to mental health “professionals” to have themselves diagnosed defective in some way; so as to validate both their feelings of inadequacy and their sense of entitlement to an elevated level of deference from their family and friends. But, putting all these societal trappings aside, people don’t consider themselves crazy – that is a label reserved for others whom we find threatening, incomprehensible or simply unpalatable.
But, I’ve come to realise, we’re all crazy! That’s right. You, me, all of us. It is the work of social theorist and psychologist Dieter Henrich that has brought me to this realisation. In his essay “Hegel Grundoperation”, Henrich explains that human consciousness is comprised of an I-subject and an I-object. In order to speak about our thoughts, our feelings, our reactions, our minds (both to others and to ourselves) – we externalise our consciousness from the confines of our minds. In other words, when you admonish yourself for being scared or shy, your I-subject is telling your I-object to behave. When you can’t help but react in an emotional and irrational way despite yourself, your consciousness is being objectified by an I-subject that you believe yourself not to be in command of. Confused? I don’t blame you.
So what does this all mean? You’re nuts, basically. We are all. In a way, we all suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorders (formally known as Multiple Personality Disorder). In order to talk to ourselves, or to talk about ourselves, we must separate or disassociated our consciousness.
In other words, you have to be more than a little crazy to be called sane.
Margaret Atwood’s 2006 short story collection is as broad, sprawling and internally conflicted as its central character. Nell. But how can a collection of short stories have a central character, I hear you say? Well, with Atwood nothing is ever straight forward. And so it is with Moral Disorder in which we are told a series of short stories from, what initially seems like, various 1st-person perspectives. Atwood carefully conceals the time, place and identity of many of the narrators in these stories – insisting, instead, that you slowly piece it together through diligent appreciation of the person’s character, psychology and behaviour. A process which is fun and irritating in equal measures, much like a challenging crossword.
Typical of Atwood, all the stories here are centred on women. The characters are deeply fleshed-out, so much so that they seem more real to you, by the time you get to the last page, than the people you know in reality. And it is this willful suppression of our true minds, especially from those most close to us, that is the central theme of the novel. A truly timeless theme.
Unfortunately, the brilliance of Atwood’s psychologically insightful stream-of-consciousness style and penetration into the hear of the human condition is marred by her gyno-centrism. All her female characters are so well drawn that they transcend the page, but when it comes to male characters (whether minor of major) she stoops to cliche’ and generalisation. Much of this could be forgiven in the stories that centre upon the narrator’s experiences as a young woman, but not so when she has grown older and supposedly wiser. Such parochialism can be effective character development, but not so when we are dealing with a character who is delivering great insight about the changes in the world around her. When the narrator has reached the almost omnipotent insight of her twilight years, it is simply unbelievable. And you cannot exuse it as a willful omission, without having to concede that Atwood is guilty of the ultimate feminist hyprocrisy.
Poor Bill. Now that he’s had to hang up his George W cheer-leader outfit, he’s reduced to this…
Or, maybe not so poor Bill. Those two blondes are hot.
It’s amazing how much has changed since I was a kid. Back in the early nineties – when Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen, Larry Bird and Shaq were dominating the NBA – people were going crazy over Basketball. But it seems that the enthusiasm has waned. So greatly, in fact, that the Australian National Basketball League is folding.
Basketball Australia will officially announce today that the 2009-10 NBL season will be cancelled through lack of interest.
The drastic and sudden collapse comes after the Melbourne Tigers yesterday informed Basketball Australia that they were joining reigning champions South Dragons in pulling out of the 2009-10 season – saying the new NBL was “unsustainable”.
The Daily Telegraph, 13th May 2009.
Given that I, too, lost interest around the time that Jordan retired – I can’t help feeling somewhat to blame for the lull in interest in Basketball in Australia. Hopefully there will soon be a resurgence in interest in Basketball. A comeback tour, so to speak. I suppose it will happen once Basketball is a sufficiently distant memory that it can be re-marketed as kitsch or retro.
