Uncouth Reflections

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

• I’ve been pretty amazed at how quick many people have been to make excuses for the surviving Jonas Brothers bomber. Okay, I get it — he’s cute, he has cool hair, and if Obama had a son he probably wouldn’t look very much like him. But does it really matter if his older brother set him on the path to terrorism? Isn’t everyone who does terrorism encouraged down that path by someone in their lives? I mean, if I started buying you lots of delicious smoothies, and thereby gained your confidence, would you set off a shrapnel bomb in the middle of the Wal-Mart condiments aisle just because I told you to?  Or would that depend on how developed your frontal precortex is? (H/T Gucci Little Piggy)
• It’s true.
• Is it really a good idea to allow college “tribunals” to circumvent traditional legal standards when adjudicating sexual assault claims?
• “You have to understand that to a boy of the 1970s, the line between comic books and real life people was hopelessly blurred. Was Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man, real or fake? Fake? Well, then, how about Evel Knievel jumping over busses on his motorcycle? Oh, he was real. The Superman ads said, “You will believe a man can fly,” and Fonzie started jukeboxes by simply hitting them, and Elvis Presley wore capes, and Nolan Ryan threw pitches 102 mph, and Roger Staubach (who they called Captain America) kept bringing the Cowboys back from certain defeat, and Muhammad Ali let George Foreman tire himself out by leaning against the ropes and taking every punch he could throw. What was real anyway?” — Joe Posnaski (H/T Daring Fireball)
• Shouting Thomas takes an inquisitive look at thrash metal. I was a big fan of thrash when I was between the ages of 11 and 15. Seeing this post reminds me that I had that Vio-lence album. It is a pretty great cover.
• Genius.
• It’s become a thing lately to accuse the porn industry of racism because some women won’t do stuff with black guys. Here’s the thing: “interracial” porn isn’t just about race; it’s also a genre. And as a genre it’s generally pretty rough: lots of scenes involving guys playing “hood” characters, lots of scenes involving women wandering into the ghetto and then being taken advantage of by dudes who say things designed to highlight their conquests of white women, etc. I’m sure it’s not all like that, but I believe that’s the image that’s become associated with the genre. Anyway, is it really so bad if a performer isn’t into that sort of thing? I see it as being like a mainstream actress not wanting to be in a certain type of movie. Shit, some female porn stars probably don’t want to work with a rough-stuff guy like Rocco Siffredi. Because they know what that entails. There’s also a marketing angle involved: if a girl avoids doing interracial stuff, she can maybe charge more for it down the road. Finally, I call bullshit on the above-linked article’s contention that porn involving white guys and black girls is “quite popular.”
• I’ve been loving catching up with Unleash the Beef over the last few weeks. Smart, ballsy, hilarious stuff. This post on recent idiocy is really good. So is this one on sexting. Oh, and this one on porn. Fuck it — you should read through the whole damn blog.
• Speaking of recent idiocy. Can you believe this guy is apparently getting paid (not to mention feted in the media) for painting over the makeup on Barbie heads?
• I got a big kick out of this movie and pop culture blog. Worth spending a few minutes looking through it.
• Is it important to like the same movies as your significant other? I don’t really think so, though I guess it helps. That reminds me. . . I once forced Buster Keaton’s “The Navigator” on a girl I was dating. I felt certain it would convince her that silent movies were enjoyable things. She didn’t laugh once. When it was over, she looked at me and said: “That was nice. But we won’t have to do this again, will we?” I later rogered her while maintaining a perfect Buster Keaton stone face.
• Does global warming cause hookers? (H/T Glynn Marshes)
• “In Charles Royster’s excellent and only mildly neo-Unionist picture of the Civil War, The Destructive War, he mentions a foreign traveler in 1864 who asked some random American to explain the war. ‘It’s the conquest of America by Massachusetts,’ was the answer. Massachusetts, of course, later went on to conquer first Europe and then the entire planet, the views of whose elites as of 2007 bear a surprisingly coincidental resemblance to those held at Harvard in 1945.”  — Mencius Moldbug