The Insane Drivel of AOL

One look at the home page of AOL this morning captures the fullness of America's nonsensical, trivial insanity. You would thing this page might have the most relevant and important news items of the day, or links to information that had some artistic or intellectual value--but you would be very, very wrong. Here's what AOL thinks is important to America this morning:

Jeniffer's Dress Was Pretty Stretchy
Where Full Moon Party Rages
Deadliest Catch Star In Hot Water
Man Caught Applying Makeup on TV
Man 72 Claims to be Shortest in World
Guess the TV Star in Hot Pink Bikini
Kelly Ripa Flaunts Figure in String Bikini
Fox New Host Reveals Surprising Morning Ritual
Colbert Honors Mother in Show's Return
Kate Middleton Sports New Dress, Old Shoes
Biggest Loser Reveals Off Camera Secret
Happy 24th Birthday Rhianna
What "Fraiser" Star's Home is Hiding
Dog and Kitten are Adorable Pals
Highest paid Pro Athletes of All Time

The list above accounted for 95% of the home page screen real estate, and it was what AOL thought was vital and important this morning. Buried amid all these image laden article links was one single newsworthy story about the Supreme Court deliberation on Affirmative Action, and one on Romney's fundraising problem. All things considered, AOL's appreciation of reality is roughly equivalent to one of those rag newspapers like the Enquirer that fabricates odd stories for the local supermarket checkout aisles. Add to this the ubiquitous insult of the goofy girl in the stark blue ads for Progressive Insurance Company--insurance I would never, ever consider buying simply because of the stupidity and endless offensive drudgery of this ad campaign, and here you have a perfect montage of our ridiculous sludge like culture. My guess is that you can find much the same on other major portals like Yahoo, etc.

What is it about our media that consistently elevates this trivial, celebrity based "news" as important? I suspect the answer is that people click on these things--that this is what people want. Yet in visiting AOL this morning one had little choice. It was either click on the nonsense, or leave. I hung around just long enough to write this post, and then made a graceful exit, banishing AOL to the dustbin of irrelevant drivel.

Registration Game - Defeat the Tweet In Your Life!

Register, sign in, sign up, join! (And by all means "tweet" about it all)...What has happened to the web these days? Every time I find some interesting content and click to learn or read more I get hit with what I call the "Registration Wall." I get asked to sign up or join something to get at the content I was wanting to browse. If I do get through the wall to the content, now buried in an avalanche of tacky ads that all want to know my age or some other tidbit of personal info to learn their dramatic secrets, I invariably get asked to "Like" something. I get asked to tweet, post, or otherwise spread the word to everyone I know so that they can all go through the same fifteen minutes of Internet torture I just went through to read an article of interest to me. If you are much of an Internet user at all then you know exactly what I am talking about. You probably already have fifteen or twenty usernames and passwords. God only knows how many I have by now. And the net just keeps asking you to sign up again and again and again.

It's no mystery. Facebook popped the cork on its champagne bottles by registering users in massive numbers, so registration seems to be the name of the game these days.  Sites want to build a big, active database of registered users, which they somehow hope to associate with their net worth. I wanted to list a client web site in Bing's local listings the other day: BAM! Bing immediately wanted me to use my Windows live ID to sign on, and lacking that I had to sign up. OK...this was for a client... so I went through the unusually nosy registration process struggling with the Captcha at the end, including the arm twisting "I accept" process that puts up links to all their policies and forces you to read and accept them. (Who EVER reads the technical details of those policies before hitting the accept button?) I did happen to catch, with a grimace, the phrase that "from time to time" MSN would be sending me emails of interest to me," which actually meant "we're about to start spamming you big time, brother!"

I finally finish only to find that Bing was having "technical difficulties" and I was asked to return and go through the whole sign up process again later. Meanwhile...I have the odd feeling that my email and other information has already been harvested. They got what they wanted. I got nothing but the 20 minute signup headache and a "see ya later, bud."  Well here's my news for Bing this morning: It's over. The end. Yup. That's as far as I'm willing to go with Bing now. Goodbye, and I won't be back. Send me your junk email at your peril forever hereafter.

Frankly, there's nothing that prompts me to hit the "close tab" button faster than hitting the Registration Wall on a web site. What happened to good, old fashioned, ad-free CONTENT? ...Free content on a free Internet? Answer--the same thing that happened to Free TV shows. You get the show, but you have to put up with six minutes of 30 second commercials for every six minutes of programming. The Internet is getting far, far worse than that.

OK...I may sound unusually picky today but I also like to have TWO interior pockets on all my jackets, (because my wallet and cell phone just don't fit comfortably into the one standard pocket most jackets get.) Yes, I'm picky. I really like good Pinot Noir, and I'm NOT drinking Merlot. I like Honda Civics, and I hate Chrysler--especially the minivans. I don't watch Football--EVER. I read. Yes, these odd preferences put me into a certain category in life. I dare not venture to express what it might be. 

But dear Internet, now hear this: I DON'T WANT TO SIGN UP! I just want to browse my content in quiet anonymity, OK? I don't want to register, become a member, fill out a profile, upload a photo, give blood or DNA samples or anything of the kind, dear Big Brother. I don't want to "Like" you or "tweet" about  you every day. Just get out of my face and let me browse in peace! If I like what I see happening on your web site, I'll find you again if I decide to join...OK? If your content is good I'll tell others about it in my own way. Fair enough? Sigh...

If you can read and understand the following poem, you're probably on my side.  And to get the text to post it here I had to fight my way through a massive pop-up ad on birth control, a strange entity dancing on a Warcraft banner ad, and about five other annoying sidebar advertisements. But I got it... all for you.  I read it again, and now I feel so much better. Do you?

    THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
          Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
          Little we see in Nature that is ours;
          We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
          The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
          The winds that will be howling at all hours,
          And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
          For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
          It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
          A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
          So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
          Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
          Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
          Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

William Wordsworth, 1888 

The Alarm Clock Bomb

When the revolutionary fires of the "Arab Spring" burned close to the core of Western interests in the Middle east in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, note how quickly the protests were quashed. The Saudis had no qualms about using their police and army units to fend off trouble, and in fact, they sent a full armor brigade of US made M1-A1 Abrams tanks into Bahrain to flatten that popular uprising. One mustn't disturb the long entrenched oligarchies in our precious Gulf States. The spice must flow...

Now, with the flames igniting in Syria, it is not Western interests at stake, but the axis of Syria, Iran and their two primary supporters on the world stage, Russia and China. The loose "co-prosperity sphere" forged by the two giants has economic and strategic roots growing in the soil of Iran, and the Iranians have long had cooperative agreements with Syria and a connection to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Assad's regime.

The moment I saw the uprisings begin in Syria I knew it was going to become a bloody affair, and I also knew that we were not going to see tough military action by Europe, NATO or the US. Three words sum up the reason why this is so: the Syrian Army. Unlike Libya which had a few brigades run by Gadaffi's sons, Syria's army has long been scaled to stand off against the formidable military forces of Israel. It presently has 220,000 regulars and another 300,000 reservists arrayed in twelve division sized formations, which include 8 armored divisions and 3 mechanized divisions and a special Republican Guard unit, with three more divisions in reserve. Note how quickly Western nations were to direct military action against Libya, which had no large geopolitical backers and a fledgling army that was easy to find and target from the air. Note how Western nations huff and puff now, but don't expect air strikes on Syria any time soon, though Assad's actions will be every bit as brutal Gadaffi's.

When you draft resolutions in the UN against Syria and both China and Russia veto them, you have a problem. Of course, all of this ties neatly into the "Iranian problem." The neo-cons that engineered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan always said in the end "real men go to Tehran," and the West has wanted to break the back of the Iranian regime and restore Western oil and gas company influence there ever since the Shah fell and Ted Koppel's "America Held Hostage" show took off to eventually become "Nightline." 

The recent assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists were mirrored in this week's "terrorist attack" against Israeli embassy personnel overseas--and they used the exact same methods to make that connection obvious. Israel has been wanting to turn its air force loose over Iran for years now, and seems driven by the sound of a ticking alarm clock they think will go off and rouse them from their nightmare of an Iranian bomb by making that prospect a grim reality.

There's a poem by the Russian poet Kudryavitsky called "The Alarm Clock Bomb" that comes to mind here. 

The Alarm-Clock Bomb

The alarm-clock bomb rings up

like an uninvited guest

and offers you an experience

of ravaged Nirvana.

There's nothing you can do

except sing it the pointless song,

'May there always be me.'

Sometimes the alarm-clock looms up first,

quietly ticking in the doorway.

It's better that you hear it...

That clock is slowly ticking in the Middle East, and it's better if you hear it first before that jarring alarm goes off and we get a war there that is almost certain to bring the interests of the West into direct conflict with those of Russia and China. Yes, it's better if you hear it...

Bush, Romney & Chlorine Gas...

Monterey CA - Feb 13, 2012

As Rick Santorum surged in the polls, and with voters in recent primaries, there was a curious conjunction of stellar Republican dignitaries here on the Monterey Peninsula. The area was busy with the recent Pro-Am Golf tournament at Pebble Beach, where former president George Bush (Jr) was seen in attendance and at local area restaurants. Curiously, Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was also in town, though on no official business. The candidate's itinerary had "no scheduled events" for Feb 11 or 12, yet he flew here to Monterey and over-nighted Sunday evening...And Bush was in town... Humm...

Romney reportedly stayed at the swank Portola Plaza in the Fisherman's Wharf area of Monterey and was up early to get to the airport for a flight to Phoenix scheduled to leave at 6:00 am. His schedule for February 13 showed one event, hosting a rally at Mesa Amphitheater in Arizona. So one is understandably curious as to why Romney was in town here on Sunday?

Even more curious was the sudden emergency at the hotel at 7:30 am on Monday morning when employees began to get sick. Apparently, the hotel was threatened by a "chlorine like gas," and over 200 guests were immediately evacuated, with 30 hospitalized.

Romney left just hours before the gas outbreak, which was attributed to hotel employees mixing two common household cleaning chemicals together. Was this a first for these employees? They would have been using these products for years, right? Why today, early in the morning, on a night when Romney was known to be in the hotel, would this mishap mysteriously occur?

And just why was Romney in town in the first place? The Pro-Am Golf tournament was over Sunday afternoon. When asked about this the "a hotel spokesperson declined to say why Romney was in Monterey." A casual observer might say...Gee...Romney makes an unscheduled stop in Monterey, where former President Bush happens to be vacationing. I wonder why? Might he have been courting an endorsement? A Bush endorsement in 2002 was instrumental in Romney's early political career, though candidates have not openly courted him this year...for obvious reasons.  There was no confirmation as to whether the two men met.

But the chlorine like gas was certainly an odd way to start the day, wasn't it?