Goodbye To The Hippest Trip In The West

I often times make the joke, "I'm a redneck" because I was (mostly) raised in the country; red barn, farm animals, huge garden with corn 6ft tall, the whole nine yards. The other side of that joke is "I'm also black." Well, not really, but I'm down with the brothers and sisters, that is fo sho. Recently "The hippest trip in the West", Don "freekin" Cornelius, passed away. It is still early, but it looks like suicide.

What can I say and how can I say it...When we were in the country the only radio station we could get (or listened to) was KFRC in SF. We referred to it as the white station. On TV, I think it was Saturday morning, we watched American Bandstand. It was the white dance party. But...there is always a but, but when we went to visit grandma in South SF everything changed.

All of a sudden different radio stations with different, more funky and groovy music could be picked up. Instead of American Bandstand on the weekend morning, all of a sudden there was Soul Train. In comparison, Soul Train was funky and nasty. American Bandstand was good, but compared to Soul Train, it was conservative, buttoned up and, I'll just say it...white. The dancing on Soul Train was tooooottttaaaallllyyyyy different than the dancing (and music) on American Bandstand.

I come from two worlds. I'm Filipino and I'm American. I'm part of the "accepted", conservative Asian culture, but I'm counter culture to the bone. Yea, I was raised in the country and went to live animal auctions where the dudes would go all "do I hear fifty-five, fifty five, going once, twice, oh lady up top calls, sixty, do I hear sixty-five, going once twice...sold to the lady up top." But there were also many a weekend when we would go visit grandma in the City and me and my cousins would watch the "black dance show", with their super funky outfits and hair, the looser and groovier music and yes, my main man, the man with the deep baritone voice that would always say...

"The hippest trip in the West, Soul Train."

RIP Don and thanks for the memories.

* Article

Prejudice, Intelligence And The GOP

I just set the record for late starts. Today I didn't get up until 3pm. I know...I know, WTF.
I culd-a slept some more but my thinking was, "hell man, it must be, like 10am-ish...I should get up." So I got up. It's really weirdo drinking coffee in the afternoon, when I'm usually drinking beer at this time. Any who...

Sometimes stupidity is funny, but when it goes too far, then...it's sad.

I'm still very groggy, but you can imagine how shocked I was to discover that not only is bigotry stupid head, but so are the practitioners of bigotry. Really, it was in a survey so it must be true, right. Fellow Team members, whether on Team Atheist, Team Prog-Lib, Team Feminist or Team LGBT, often wonder (out loud and frustrated) "why they hating on us." It must be so frustrating for my LGBT homies to be prejuice-d on by conservatives, when the LGBT homies have not done anything to them. Imagine being a super hottie (because you have an evolved state of mind and you are independent) but you get prejuice-d on by a sexist conservative (probably white) male and all YOU did was get up and go to work in the morning-probably really frustrating, non'.

I Googled "smart Asian people" to get this one.

( I'll create a new paragraph for this next one...) What if you are on the Mighty Team Atheist and you read over and over again in all the newspapers and studies and surveys that you are more hated than murder'rs and trusted less than a rapist. Of course you're gonna go, "WTFF*".  Well, here's the answer...

"Low intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies...Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change (I underlined that), attitudes that can contribute to prejudice."

A million gazillion studies that preceded this one concluded things like hi levels of prejudice are directly linked to low levels of that education that the prog-libs, science minded and generally better looking and smarter than you are peeps keep talking about. Sooooo, you have so little education that you are considered, I'll just say it, stupid, combined with subscribing to a system that "stress hierarchy and resistance to change", gosh where have we seen anything like that before...RELIGION**

This is a world map of IQ's. Of course i don't understand it.

Generally speaking the republican right is God's party. Generally speaking the more education one has, the more likely that person is an atheist and visa versa. The less educated a person is the more likely they are religious and not only that, the more likely a person is uneducated, the more likely they will believe that the bible is written by God and without err (air, I thought it was funny). Finally, and this is just my opinion, I didn't go all survey to find out this information, but...the party with the most rednecks (GOP) is the party most likely to believe bullshit, never question that, and hate brown people (there I said it.)

* WTFF...What the frackin' fuck.

** That is the first time I evah had to use the capital locks combined with the "bold."

*** OK, I changed tone middle way there, sorry. not very focused. any who. Read the article it has bunches and bunches of good information...and they don't fool around. Awesome.

*** SF Gate

What Could Possibly Go Wrong With This

 Wow check out this handsome feller', what could an honest redblooded American from Texas possibly do wrong. I'll tell ya...

Handgun instructor Crockett Keller went all hate-y and divide-y and bigot-y recently when he put out this really awesome ad to drum up business.

“If you are a socialist liberal and/or voted for the current campaigner-in-chief, please do not take this class. You’ve already proven that you cannot make a knowledgeable and prudent decision as required under the law. Also, if you are a non-Christian Arab or Muslim, I will not teach you this class. Once again, with no shame, I am Crockett Keller (link)."

This is my gun. S&W .357. The bullet is too big to be practical...that is why I chose it.

 Yessirie...no shame, and why would ya have shame. The Texas Dept. of Public Safety will not revoke his instructor's license (and for a while that was up for debate, but not now). Since the ad came out "Crotchety Old Man Crockett has publicly said that he will now teach non-Christian Arabs (Muslims) how to operate a firearm, but he also added that he "views them as the enemy." Me, "No wonder the world hates us. Thanks Texas."

My next gun should/will be semi-auto and in .40 (aka The Man Killer). Baddass awesome.

Look man, I own a gun and I hate it when one or a few wacko's make us all look bad. It is like I always say, there is normal religion (that I don't believe in) and there is extremist religion (that I really don't believe in, and feel that it must go the way of the dinosaurs). Not all believers are like Westboro Baptist Church and likewise, not all gun owners are bat shit crazy and prejudice.

* I've been going to this place lately, dud does really good work. Jonathan Turley