Paresh’s Blog

well, chris wants an update, so here it is: 48.8% of july bar examinees passed the exam. i’ll give you two guesses to figure out if i’m one of them, but you really only need one. so, that pretty much covers the update and hopefully serves as an explanation for why there will be even fewer updates between now and the end of february. normally, i’d try to include something at least marginally lighthearted and humorous at the end of an entry, but i got nothing. that’s all.

so this is a political entry. i’ve been working on it for about 10 minutes now and i’ve written and subsequently deleted a few paragraphs where i try to be polite and non-partisan. hell, i had even started a spiel about georg (pronounced gay-org) wilhelm friedrich hegel and his theories about the marketplace of ideas. and as you have no doubt guessed, i tossed all that out the window. i’ll just say it, i’m a liberal and i happen to think conservatives are full of crap. honestly, i tried making that sound nicer but it was just more trouble than its worth. now let’s go over why they are full of crap.

so i was a poli sci major and i understand our founding fathers wanted this to be a democracy where every gets a say. now i’m not gonna say that we should ignore conservatives all together, but all you conservatives out there need to get some more rational (read as intelligent) people speaking on your behalf. here are a couple examples:

bill o’reilly: for those of you that missed it the first time, here’s what everyone’s favorite falafel fetishist had to say about a purely symbolic meaasure that was passed in san francisco on tuesday:

“Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you’re not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if al-Qaida comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.”

now i know fox news is full of shit. i mean they have as much to do with real journalism as a sperm bank has to do with money (ha, i wish i could take credit for that little simile but that was a review in the newspaper a few years back when our local wb affiliate tried to start a 10pm newscast). everyone knows fox news is the ever-present bullhorn of the conservative agenda but one would think they’d find a better mouthpiece. is advocating the destruction of a major american city by terrorists really the best vehicle for advancing the conservative agenda?

pat roberston: now this guy is quality crazy. first, he wants the US to assassinate hugo chavez. i know i’m not christian or anything, but the last time i checked, advocating murder really isn’t very christian of someone. and it gets better. for those of you that missed his latest bit of craziness in response to the city of Dover, DE voting down all members of the school board who advocated intelligent design, here’s a recap:

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God. You just rejected him from your city.”

so let me get this straight. say there’s a tornado and someone in Dover prays for their life, god’s just gonna give them the big digit (to borrow from o’reilly’s rant against san francisco)? interesting political strategy here, publicly condemning an entire city to death.

so here’s the gist of what i’m getting at: if you’re a conservative, that’s your choice. a poor choice in my opinion, but its your choice. but don’t get all pissy when people get mad at your agenda. your spokesmen aren’t really doing bang-up jobs at making you look decent and respectable. no one has denounced these comments and these two haven’t retracted their comments as, maybe, going just a litle too far. bush does A LOT of liberal bashing. he works hard to demonize liberals without looking in his own backyard. his camp has consistently lowered the tenor of discourse in this country. what would the founding fathers say if they could see what had become of their notion of an open exchange of ideas in the political process?

i have some more choice words, but i’ll wrap it up there and i’ll lighten the mood a litle bit with this picture of ted koppel’s evil twin kenny koppel: (ok, so the site i found the picture on not two minutes ago seems to be down, hopefully it comes back soon b/c its the only picture i could find)

so i get a lot of spam at my e-mail address for this site. i really only use my throwmyshoe.org e-mail for my blog (i.e. having comments e-mailed to me and registering for MT) but, as expected, i get tons of spam at this account. normally, i delete all the spam without so much as a passing glance at the actual message, but as i was deleting en masse just now, i saw something out of the corner of my eye that piqued my attention: a viagra ad that actually came with illustrated instructions:

now being the creative type i am, i figured these crudely rendered silhouettes could make for a groundbreaking new ipod advertising campaign. understanding fully, that i’ll probably be the only one that finds this funny, here’s a quick example i threw together in photoshop:

though to be honest, i’d be afraid to see the people that comprise this target demographic.

’nuff said.

hands down the best banner ad i’ve ever seen online. no flash, no annoying pop-ups or animations. nothing superfluous at all. it speaks entirely for itself.