Sissy Nation strikes again

I just checked my email, and there, sitting proudly in my inbox was an urgent post from TrueMajority.org. It seems that TrueMajority is appalled (with reason) by what is transpiring in Tibet of late. Anyhow, they want me to sign a petition to be delivered to the Chinese government calling for China's President to at least hold talks with the Dalai Lama. However, the letter they plan to deliver was obviously written by a true Sissy. The letter (in its entirety) says:

"We call on the Chinese government to live up to its international obligations and respond to the Tibetan protests with peace and nonviolence. President Hu Jintao, we call upon you to open up a direct dialogue with the Dalai Lama to work toward a long term solution."

What I want to draw your attention to is the part which asks China to "...respond to the Tibetan protests with peace and nonviolence." Yeech!! How wussy can you get? Jesus! Why not hit 'em where it really hurts...the pocketbook. "Stop beating up on the Tibetans or we will boycott all products made in China. Your economy will crash and you will have a billion angry peasants of your own to worry about." Of course, that would mean that Americans and Europeans would have to suck up and stop purchasing shit made in China, and that would probably throw a crimp into our economies also. On the other hand, manufacturers who were quick off the mark and moved their production lines to other cheap labor markets could score big.

Deliver that note to the Chinese, and all you do is risk a few cases of apoplexy caused by them laughing too hard. Sheesh!

Stoopits and the American Dream...

I was at work last night when one of my cashiers started to laugh. She was reading (usually a no-no, but business was really slow...) a new book, Sissy Nation (which sounds pretty cool and is something I think I want to read) so I asked her what was so funny. Well, she proceeded to read me two exerpts, which made me both laugh and wince. The first was basically how the author, John Strausbaugh, defines "sissy" and the second is about the term "Stoopits". Well, a nerve was hit, a button pushed, and I had to buy this book.

Having purchased said tome, let me quote for you the first 4 sentences of this book, and then you tell me if it doesn't strike home. Page 1, line 1:

America has become Sissy Nation. A culture of fat, soft, stupid, fearful, whiny, infantile, narcissistic, fatalistic, groupthinking victims. Once we were warriors. Now we're just worriers."

Strausbaugh goes on to state that by "sissies" he does not mean "girly man". Rather, he defines "sissy" as "...lack of courage and conviction, spine and balls". Later on in the first chapter, he writes "There's an episode of Star Trek where members of a mildly retaded alien race, let's call them the Stoopits, bumble around the galaxies in spaceships they can barely pilot, buying or stealing what they need from smarter species. I've always taken it as a metaphor for us. It won't be long now before American is Planet Stoopit."

That part about bumbling around in "spaceships they can barely pilot" immediately made me think about traffic in the fair Garden State. I would swear that the above description applies to a majority of the drivers on New Jersey's roads; they are piloting vehicles they can barely handle.

Ah well, like I said, I have purchased this book, so you, gentle reader, can expect a number of quotes drawn from said book that will serve as my starting points over the next few weeks (months?). When you think about Stoopits, we can start by thinking about l'affaire Spitzer and then yesterday's bailout of one of Wall Streets largest brokerages, Bear Stearns. *sigh*

I am impressed...

In an act of pure whimsy, I signed up for a free course at Sony's My 101 on Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. Turns out, however, that I've already learned a couple things I didn't know and that I've been mildly inspired. Seems da Vinci's notebooks, those that still exist, are the surviving pages of a journal he kept for over 40 years. During that time, he averaged two pages per day. Now, sometimes those pages only held a single sketch or a couple lines of text, but other times the pages were crammed with everything from grocery lists and daily to-do lists to profound insights into how things work and why.

So, Leonardo's work covered some 40 years from his late 20's through his late 60's. If I start try to emulate him, at least in keeping a journal, he'll have about a 30 year (shut-up, "serpent's tooth" *grin*) head start on me, and I don't see me actually getting two pages a day done...But maybe I can average a page a day of some sort. Some of it will be here, and some will be hand written in real ink on real paper, some will be on my other site (still unnamed, s.t.), some will be sketched (I hope) and some will be in spreadsheets. My hope is that by making a commitment I will actually post here at least a couple times a week. Who knows, I may actually build up an actual online following...

And this counts as a page...