Pointless Emission

Sometimes people really astound me in their effort to be presentable and professional. There are those who believe formalities get in the way of actual business, and then there are those who care a great deal about the way they present themselves and then wind up screwing it up so badly it’s as if they are a walking parody of themselves. This brings me to a popular Cracked.com article about the importance of using appropriate fonts for things like company newsletters, e-mails, fliers, and wobsites.

In it they reference a church newsletter which bastardizes beyond possible comprehension any conventions people typically choose to adhere to when creating a specific print or electronic document. I don’t think Cracked.com did it enough justice. This is the most horrible thing I have ever looked at in my entire life. Those videos of people being beheaded by Al-Qaeda are nothing compared to this newsletter. This is fucking disgusting. It’s like someone is taking shards of glass dipped in sewage and then slicing my eyeballs into small pieces with them. It’s like listening to Good Charlotte live or “Believe” by Cher.

At first glance you might not even think it’s that bad. This is normal, because your brain is probably still dealing with the shock, kind of like when George W. Bush’s approval ratings weren’t that bad when he first took office. Now try to comprehend what was going on in the designer’s mind when they made this. It’s horrible isn’t it? Reaching for the revolver in your dresser drawer? Well I can’t blame you.

Why the fuck are all the fonts on the page different? What reason could this possibly serve other than to give the reader a headache? It’s not like you need to make the fonts all different to make sure the reader doesn’t get bored and stop reading, it’s about 3 fucking paragraphs of text. Unless the person has ADHD so bad that they’re unable to form a complete sentence while talking this just makes the page vomit-inducing. You literally get sick as your eyes have to adjust themselves to read each font, because not only are they different font faces, they’re different sizes. One font is stretched, another is italicized. It’s like a computer ate the digital equivalent of a PF Chang’s entree and then decided to take a dump on some white space.

Which brings me to my next point, the headings are all different too. Headings are important because they separate blocks of text according to their subject matter, and sized based on importance. But it doesn’t look like the designer had any clue what purpose headings actually serve. All of the headings are different sizes, font faces, some are italicized, some are underlined, and some are colored differently. There’s even a block of text that doesn’t even have a heading, and a couple of sentences under a different heading with a different font that doesn’t even have any business being under that heading. Kim Ingram is a part of the ministry now? Why does that belong under the birthdays heading? Why can’t there be an “Other” heading that separates all of the random information deemed too unimportant to have its own heading? Was the designer autistic and blind with severe ADHD? Did someone drink an entire bottle of Aristocrat and then drop some acid?

Why does the title of the newsletter take up a third of the page? Why is there so much extra white space? Was it really that important to make sure people knew that this was a newsletter for youth ministry? Did the designer assume that the reader was retarded and it wouldn’t suffice to just put a simple heading at the top? Why choose purple? There’s no color theme whatsoever in this newsletter. Why the fuck would you ever use Curlz ever? People who use this font should be neutered and burned at the stake. It should be illegal and punishable by death everywhere on the entire planet. I hate Curlz.

And why isn’t there a color theme? You know, a theme to give some sense of continuity to the page so it doesn’t look like a bunch of random bullshit. Not that it would really do it any good anyway though, considering it’s as if a bunch of random sentences were just thrown into whatever available white space there was on the page. Organization obviously isn’t an important part of creating a coherent newsletter. I’ll tell you what IS important though, the fact that this newsletter is for the month of October, 2006. In fact it’s so fucking important it needs to be the third largest heading on the page with some random ass bubble font in fucking rainbow shitty ass colors. It takes up more space than the largest paragraph on the page. So there you go. There you fucking go. The title and the date of the newsletter take up close to HALF OF THE ENTIRE NEWSLETTER.

The organization of the information on the page is appalling. Looking deeper into the content there are only three sections and there appears to be exactly 0 thought put into what deserved its own heading. As you peer into the unholy conglomeration of pixel arrangement with the uncanny ability to deteriorate your retinas you’ll find that it was important to talk about a fund raiser, the birthdays of a few people, and something worthy of taking note. Isn’t everything on the newsletter noteworthy? Isn’t that the point of fucking putting it in the newsletter? Why don’t the other stretched out, indecipherable sentences get their own heading? The editor must be completely devoid of any sense of spacial arrangement. Why the fuck would you find it so important to display the month and the title at their current size so that you would be forced to stretch the text in the middle into a format that is virtually unreadable?

That’s it, I’m going to give this thing a rating on a scale of 0 to 5 based on different categories.

Readability: 0/5
This isn’t readable. This is the opposite of readability.

Content: 1/5
As far as I can see, there appears to be almost no useful content. Why was a newsletter even necessary?

Aesthetics: -1,000,000/5
This is the most visually unappealing piece of garbage you could ever feast your eyes upon. I may need glasses because of it. I hate this so goddamn much.

Overall: -1e76/5
$#@!

I am watching Fox News’ America Live while eating lunch. Megyn Kelly is talking about a number of opinion polls showing popular anger, nay, outrage at the Obama Administration. I’ll cut right to the chase.

Critics say the president should be focused on creating jobs rather than fighting the Arizona immigration law. Today, the White House is trying to convince the country it’s doing both.

If I may interject for just a moment, I’d like to commend you on your sly wordsmithing. By telling us the White House is merely trying to convince us it’s working on creating jobs, you create the subtle implication that it’s not doing anything, and therefore needs to spend effort convincing us of something untruthful. Much like saying that a teenage girl is trying to convince her parents that there aren’t going to be any boys at Jessica’s party. Very insidious, Ms. Kelly, very insidious indeed. Continue.

But another just-off-the-presses Fox News Poll shows that most Americans have their doubts. 40% think that the stimulus has created hardly any jobs at all. Only 5% say it produced a lot of jobs.

I am not an economic expert. I do not know how many jobs the stimulus package has, in fact, created. But somewhere, there is a number that can tell us how many jobs the stimulus package has created. People’s opinions will affect this number precisely not at all. If you want to find out about the impact of the stimulus, you could ask someone who knows what they’re talking about, instead of “900 registered voters” who I’ll dare to wager have not done exhaustive studies on the questions you’re asking, making them what you might call “uninformed”.

Just thought I’d point that out.

“If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats.

Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity?”

- Pat Buchanan

Uh.. this is actually kind of um..

Glenn Beck never fails to amaze me. I couldn’t count the times that I’ve thought he couldn’t get crazier, and subsequently been proven wrong. This is a few weeks old but I just found it thanks once again to Media Matters.

Nazis and communists:

Goddamnit.

I’m going to go get my ibuprofen. Something tells me I’m going to need it.

big government apparatus, based in redistribution of wealth and social justice for all.

No. He did not just… Did I actually just hear that?

Nazis and communists: big government apparatus, based in redistribution of wealth and social justice for all.

There is so much wrong here I don’t even know where to start. Let’s just, I don’t know, pick it apart bit by bit?

Big government apparatus

This is actually true. Both Nazis and communists believed in a supremely powerful central government. Well done.

based in redistribution of wealth

Eh, communism was based on redistribution of wealth, I’ll give you that one. But Nazism was based more on the idea that might makes right, and the supremacy of the German race over the rest of the world. Hitler might have implemented economic reforms in his time, but that’s because he was the leader of a nation so impoverished that children literally used stacks of money as toys. I wouldn’t say that “redistribution of wealth” was the basis of Hitler’s entire platform. Because that would be false.

This is why citing sources is fun and important.

and social justice for all.

I don’t know what Glenn Beck’s strange vendetta against social justice is all about, but this is just absurd.

This kind of applies to communism in the sense that the communist radicals leading reform movements argued for social justice for all, but people like Mao Zedong and Josef Stalin used a wholly different set of tactics to implement their version of “social justice,” like mass murder, which Obama doesn’t seem to be such a fan of. Although you’re kinda sorta correct, this is misleading and you know it.

But Nazism? Based on social justice for all? How the fuck did you come to this conclusion? Did you even think for a second that an ideology based on the idea of racial supremacy had anything to do with social justice, let alone for all? Are you aware that Hitler’s biggest claim to fame is systematically murdering millions of people based on their race, political affiliation, and sexuality?

Only God Himself can make things equal. There is only one great, grand equalizer, and He doesn’t do it by force.

… he said, as if it were somehow relevant to United States law.

You must ask yourself, are these people communist Marxist Nazis? I don’t know! Are they progressive? Yes!

Looking past the obvious point that Marxism/communism and Nazism are mutually exclusive concepts, this is wildly offensive. Let’s see if I can convey just how offensive this is.

You must ask yourself, is Glenn Beck a child molester? I don’t know! Is he a Mormon? Yes!

That would be borderline slanderous and blatantly offensive, wouldn’t it? Yeah, I thought so. Being progressive has nothing to do with being a communist or Marxist, and even less than nothing to do with being a Nazi. You need to stop doing this.

Progressives build the structure that a communist, a Marxist, a Nazi would love to have.

Again. You did it again. How is being progressive anything at all like being a Nazi? Saying it again doesn’t make it true.

Can you imagine a government that can just read your email? Oop, we’re getting one. Can you imagine one that could track your every move on the internet? Oops, they’re fighting for that. Can you imagine one that says, “You don’t have a reasonable right to personal location” because your cell phone can be tracked? And so the government can track you without a warrant? Oops! They’re fighting for that.

Can you imagine a government that practiced all of these for years? Oops! We had one for 7 years under Bush. Can you imagine a world where all of this has been true since long before Barack Obama became president? Oops! We live in one. Can you imagine a media figure that claimed his political opponents were “fighting” to control every aspect of our lives à la Big Brother without providing a single example of how? Oops! I’m listening to one.

By the way, you know who else was a progressive? This guy. What an un-American commie Nazi.

We have a Twitter now. Just thought we should put that out there.

http://twitter.com/PointEmission

We do realize this makes us douchebags.

I am aghast. Look ye, and despair.

Let’s go through all the things wrong with this.

First of all, your caricature of Arabs and Muslims is simplistic, generalizing, and offensive. This is not a claim I need to support; it is self-evident. The implication that terrorists are emboldened by due process and Miranda rights is, however. That is something you need to back up. The burden of proof is on you. You can’t just say “Terrorists like due process because it allows them to spread their message,” and respond to the obvious question of “Why?” with “Because it makes us weak! Duh!”

But the most offensive and troubling thing about this ad is his assertion that Arab/Iranian/Pakistani-looking people look like terrorists, but white people do not. This is out-and-out racism. The imagery at the end of the Muslim terrorist with a bomb strapped to himself, wearing a turban and gagged with duct tape only adds to the evidence that you are a shamelessly prejudiced asshole, the kind of shamelessly prejudiced asshole who believes he’s standing up against invasion of privacy. Speaking of which, it’s not an invasion of privacy to ask you to comply with basic security procedures at an airport. If it is, then it’s also an invasion of privacy for someone that looks different than you. Your whiteness does not mean that you have privacy rights others don’t, and it does not exempt you from routine security checks.

But he has a point, right? After all, the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks were all Arab Muslims. So I guess unless we can find an example of white people committing terrorist acts, our only option is to single out Arabs and Muslims, because that’s who the terrorists have always been.

And about that bit implying that you’re good-looking and ripped. I realize you’re probably trying to insert humor here, but self-congratulatory humor is kind of inappropriate immediately following the kind of racism that would have given Strom Thurmond a fat chubby.

In case you were wondering, Glenn Beck, this is why people still talk about racism despite “white America” sitting through “the inauguration of a black president.”

-The Colonel

Something seems out of place…

Must be the font.

-The Colonel

MediaMatters.org is basically like the National Geographic Field Guide to the Idiots and Assholes of North America. So today, I went idiotwatching, and boy, did I find what I was looking for.

Oh boy.

I’ve actually had an idea. Nobody listens to little old Sean Hannity.

Yeah, I’m going to have to stop you right there for just a second. Um, “little old Sean Hannity”? You have some of the highest-rated shows on both radio and cable television. You make $20 million a year from radio alone, not counting your income from your television shows, print media, public appearances, and anything else you might have going for you. You are not an ignored voice in the media. You are The Man. And not like in Finding Forrester, either. You are The Man to which people are supposed to stick it.

I think the Iraqis, with all their oil resources, need to pay us back for their liberation. Every single, solitary penny.

…

Are you serious? You cannot be serious. There is no way that you are… you’re serious, aren’t you?

Let’s go over the chronology here, because I think it’s important. First, we invaded their country contrary to international and domestic law. Since the invasion 7 years ago, violence has been directly responsible for approximately 100,000 civilian deaths. This is, of course, not counting combatant and insurgent deaths, nor is it counting the numbers of people wounded, nor is it counting the millions of people who have fled the country seeking to escape the chaos and violence. All of these things put a colossal strain on a nation’s economy, workforce, health care system, etc, the kind of strain America has not felt since the Civil War.

And who benefits from all of this destruction? It might not be the US, given the massive debt we’ve accumulated in the war, but it’s certainly not Iraq, I’ll tell you that much. A number of American firms have been given contracts in Iraq, working towards rebuilding their infrastructure that we laid waste. Iraq benefits very little from the reconstruction of their own devastated infrastructure and economy.

So if I can get this straight, you’re saying that, after invading their country illegally, ending hundreds of thousands of lives and ruining countless more, and causing irreparable damage to their economy, infrastructure, and general state of the nation, they owe us a trillion dollars?

It should have been part of the deal.

Except that there was no deal. That’s kind of the idea of an invasion: that you send your military into another country unasked. That’s what an invasion means.

And I think it should be now, I think they owe us a lot for that.

Your logic is bulletproof.

I think you may possibly be the most callous human being I have ever seen.

-The Colonel

This post is the first of many to come. A semi-serious evaluation of what I believe to be some of the most dishonest and irresponsible journalism you can find on American television, brought to you by mediamatters.org.

mediamatters.org showcases a plethora of clips from Fox news and predominantly conservative media outlets that as you will soon see, unfairly bash the O-guy to a degree of absurdity. The video that I will talk about now shows several clips from various Fox news anchors and opinion commentators (notice the lack of distinction between opinion and news reporting as you watch or read).

Let’s begin.

Even at the inauguration of a black president it seems that “white America” is being called “racist.”

Hypocrisy is a strong theme on Fox News. As you can see here, Glenn Beck gives “white America” credit for voting Barack Obama into office. I’m sure we have the people who thought Obama was a Muslim from Kenya, that he was a terrorist, that he hated white people, to thank for being elected. And how dare we call those people racist. These are just legitimate criticisms that are made with ALL presidents, if I’m not horribly mistaken.

He’s not going to succeed, socialism has failed!
How do you quantify whether or not your country is socialist?
Sure feels like open season on capitalism on DC!

What is acceptable about refusing to talk about what socialism actually is? Seeing as Fox News anchors and commentators usually talk about Russia, they’re talking about the failed communist system which in practice turns out to be the exact opposite of what socialism is supposed to be. In short, communism and socialism tend to result in completely opposite forms of government.

Guys when are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating this country?

I thought people who said Bush was fascist needed a reality check, but if we were truly on the road to a fascist country, it would mean conservatives running it. Why? Well it doesn’t take much time to stop screaming on the side of a road holding a Hitler-Obama sign to realize you should probably gargle septic fluid. Fascism has absolutely nothing to do with universal health care. None. Fascism is an authoritarian form of government.

Now if you said that the United States was the most fascist country in the world, you would be right, but for probably the wrong reasons. Right now the United States incarcerates 754 people per 100,000. It doesn’t sound like a lot (thanks to people who ACTUALLY believe in “freedom” in government) until you throw out the figure that the US has 1/20 of the world’s population and 1/4 of the world’s prison population. This figure would be more ridiculous if China didn’t have such a huge population (and a relatively high incarceration rate as well).

Let’s say you run a small business owning a store with around 20 employees. Fascism would be similar to holding a gun up to your employees in the break room, asking them to give you their salary, and then having the power to decide whether or not to keep it. Socialism is sharing the profits of your small business with all of the employees equally.

Now you can see why saying they’re the same thing isn’t only retarded but probably means you’ve never read anything in your life ever. Ever.

And it’s the conservatives who constantly talk about how we need to have a “safe” country, that we need to be “tough” on crime. It’s the GOP who actually had a problem with an American citizen being given constitutional rights, even though the constitution extends due process to “peoples” and not just citizens.

So I guess the GOP doesn’t really care about the constitution that much, do they? I guess that’s fine.. as long as they’re consistent.

The Obama administration is trashing the constitution.

.. Oh.

So our benefits are going to be going down and our taxes are going to be going up.

This is the opposite of what is true. The health care bill passed extends benefits to several groups of people, and the only tax increase Obama has ever proposed was on people with an income of $250,000/year or more. The rest of average Americans will receive tax cuts. Forbes.com complained about how Obama is trying to increase taxes (by eliminating the Bush tax cuts), but obviously that hasn’t happened yet, and to be honest, it probably won’t.

I just have to say that if you have an income of more than $250,000 a year you can go smoke your fucking pole for not wanting to give away your fucking tax cuts. You don’t deserve any, and if you really cared about the economy, you would realize that the tax cuts TAKE AWAY MONEY FROM THE GOVERNMENT.

Should white Americans be concerned about Judge Sotomayor? - Bill-O

This is just racist.

Obama’s health care plan; Scarier than cancer?

This is just stupid.

This is what Hitler did with the SS - Glenn Beck

Nothing of what Obama does is like Hitler. Nothing. Please slob on a knob.

It seems to me that he has some malevolence toward this country with is unabated.

The only disdain Obama showed towards the United States has been well… from the perspective of the existence of a source of some kind… nothing.

I guess his worldwide apology tour has worked?

Since when is showing respect for world leaders a sign of apology? And I believe the only explicit apology he made to anyone was to Europe, which, because it isn’t a part of America, isn’t a part of the real world! You can’t really include it when you use the word “worldwide.”

Obama is going to great lengths to indoctrinate YOUR children.

Sean Hannity read a book once. It was a few pages long, and it had the word “indoctrinate” in it. He thought that word was so cool that he could use it whenever he wanted, even when it wasn’t appropriate, and even when it didn’t mean anything.

Obama seems very reluctant to stand up for the values on which America is based.

… Like what.

American leaders do now bow to leaders of other countries, they are on par with other leaders… oops

Oops indeed. I believe it’s a courteous gesture to bow to another person in Japan (which Obama kind of fucked up, but points for trying!). But I suppose the responsible thing to do, instead of talk about how other cultures work, would be to promote ignorance about everything that isn’t American. I hope you choke.

After a guest made this comment on Sean Hannity’s show, it was his time to respond. Surely we can trust Sean to correct his guest’s mistake, perhaps -

They’re [Obama abstraction] bowing at the altar of socialism!

… Oh. Wait, Japan isn’t socialist. They’re more conservative than the United States. They have a greater free market. They…….. fuck it. No. Fuck it.

I’m done. That’s it. This is enough. Ben Stein makes an appearance at the end of this video along with a few other hacks spewing the same garbage you see everyday.

But seriously, and I am being seriously serious right now, while being redundant and repeating myself twice and being redundant, people watch this shit. They live by it. Fox News is the most popular news organization in America. People trust their entire knowledge about the United States with this garbage.

Media matters.

In honor of May the Fourth, I want to make something perfectly clear.

This is Yoda.

This is not Yoda.

This is even more not Yoda.

For more information, please consult the following two reviews of Star Wars Episodes I and II, by RedLetterMedia. Watch all parts of both reviews, it is completely worth it.

The Phantom Menace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI

Attack of the Clones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfBhi6qqFLA

May the Force be with you.

-The Colonel