Revolutionary QOTD: May 20, 2006

"The monopoly capitalists - even while employing purely empirical methods - weave around art a complicated web which converts it into a willing tool. The superstructure of society ordains the type of art in which the artist has to be educated. Rebels are subdued by its machinery and only rare talents may create their own work. The rest become shameless hacks or are crushed."
~Ernesto (Che) Guevara

"The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this."
~Ernesto (Che) Guevara

Today is a QOTD two-for, because I have been remiss in my duties of providing the revolutionary inspiration that the masses have come to expect from this popular blog. When I say masses, I mean the hundreds of thousands who come here daily for that inspiration. When I say hundreds of thousands, that's not an exact figure. It's ball park. I could be slightly lower. It could only be a couple. It's an optimistic estimate.

But in not posting yesterday, I feel I have let all those people down, slightly. Because as I have said before, revolutionaries don't have days off. Not even weekends. We do occasionally have to, without warning, go underground and perhaps incommunicado. Like the Decider, when speaking of secret domestic spying programs, I can't go into detail about going underground. In fact, I can't really confirm or deny the reason that I didn't post yesterday was because of being underground. Because saying so would compromise revolutionary security. We're in a global revolution against the man here people. And we don't we don't want give aid and comfort to the man, by making him privy to revolutionary secrets.

Stand up and fight the powers.

Revolutionary QOTD: May 18, 2006

I and I build a cabin
I and I plant the corn
Didn't my people before me
Slave for this country
Now you look me with a scorn....

....Build your penitentiary, we build your schools
Brainwash education to make us the fools
Hate is your reward for our love
Telling us of your God above
~Bob Marley, Crazy Baldheads

I and I be in Santa Barbara this evening. I and I go to the club and hear the whitest Reggae band. This is not what I and I say, but what a white boy from Montana say to me after the band finish. He say to me, I think Santa Barbara, and I think I can hear real Reggae. But I say to him, the words of the prophet, I and I, Bob Marley, is da same no matter what people speak it. Go with Jah.

-Jah Rastafari and stand up and fight the powers

Revolutionary QOTD: May 17, 2006

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself
and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.
~Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching

It's Not So Good to Be the King (of Beers)

"Put it back in the horse!"
~H. Allen Smith, after he drank his first American beer.

This is classic. I was just forwarded this article from the Nation from a friend. Budweiser spent $40 million dollars for a monopoly on beer sales at this years World Cup. You'd think that would be good for Budweiser. That was before they knew it would be held in Germany. Budweiser is a company with German roots. That should be good news for them too. Not quite. The Nation article explains, "Unfortunately, Germans don't like the beer. They call it Spulwasser, which roughly translates as dishwater."

Any true beer lover knows this to be true. Trying to sell Budweiser in Germany is like trying to sell Boone's Farm wine in France. Or like trying to sell Burger King's croissandwich there. I went to Burger King in Paris, and they don't sell the croissandwich there. Yes, a McDonald's Quarter Pounder with cheese is a Royale with Cheese. My friend suggests, it would be like having Hyundai sponsor a NASCAR event. The Nation article says Budweiser had to back off, that selling it there would have resulted in riots:

"The Germans have even set up an anti-Bud website. If you take the time to drop in on the site, you will see pictures of Teutonic youths performing extreme anti-Bud acts."

I love it. Budweiser is tasteless piss brewed not for flavor but for mass appeal. And I love the Germans for rejecting their $40 million in advertising dollars and their bland brew. Here is what they say on their site. They could use some help with their English translation, but good taste has no language:

"Human dignity is inviolable"
[Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, Article 1 (1)]

Dish water. Insult to your tongue. The american "beer" Budweiser has faced many -- mostly desperate -- descriptions. "Official Sponsor of the FIFA World Cup '06 in Germany" was usually not amongst them. Sadly enough, this expression is as true as all the others since the american "brewery" Anheuser-Busch will be the official "beer"-supplier for the football World Cup this year. An insult to all true beer lovers, taste buds and football-fans.

What have we become? Self-denial for 40 million US-Dollars? What are our children supposed to think of us?

"A time to make friends" - with a bud in our hands?!

However, we won't give up without a fight. United we're strong. Your voice does matter. Become part of the BudOut-Community and send us a picture with you anti-bud-message. Two minutes of your life for the good taste. Two minutes of your life for a better future.

Be into beer.

-Stand up and fight the powers. And have good beer now and then.

Brown's Gas

Ok, I thought this was moonbat theory, a water fuel for cars, but see for yourself. It is called Brown's gas, named after its inventor. Everyone knows that you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, but not that you can recombine it into something called HOH, which is Brown's Gas. It burns not by exploding, but by imploding. Wouldn't be great if this guy put the evil oil companies out of business? There's more info here.

Professor Yul Brown has developed a machine that will convert plain tap water to a stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen and oxygen without causing an explosion, hitherto fore thought to be impossible to do. He has discovered another state of water besides ice, water or steam. It is Brown's Gas! One liter of water makes 1860 liters of Brown's gas, when a spark is added to the gas, it still does not explode, it implodes. Brown's Gas implodes! When it implodes it makes the most unique welder in the world. People who can weld, confirm that it is impossible to weld dissimilar metals, glass to metal, metal to brick, and just about anything to anything, but you can with Brown's Gas Welder.

-Stand up and fight the powers.

Update: At first I thought the web site I found was the same guy as the video, but the article is about Professsor Yul Brown and the guy in the video is Denny Klein. Still researching to find out what is true.

More Update: Can't find anything yet on Klein, just Brown. Google, Wikipedia and a little bit of knowledge is dangerous.

Yet Another Update: Here's an article on Klein. Except for that local Fox News video, I am finding nothing on this guy in the MSM. But will go to the ends of the Internet to find out. Exhaustive research, as long as I don't have to get dressed, is what I'm all about.

Wash Down Your Thumbili With a Cool Soquid

As long as I'm on this sick culinary kick I may as well top it off with this. Thumbili. Yes, it's sick, but don't blame me. Not entirely. I'm only reposting it. It is the work of my nemesis, Richard Quick, Esq. It's the only thing a soquid is fit to wash down IMHO. Also, I hate it when a billionaire begs, so yes, Mr. Quick, you move back to the top of the capitalist pig hit list above Bill Gates. When the revolution comes, we will see you first, on the veranda. That's when you'll get your last good look from there, because then it will belong to the people. Though we may keep you on the estate to work the grounds if I am in a particularly forgiving mood at the time.

Today's Menu

I just noticed that I am on a particularly culinary bent this morning. Boiled frog, freedom fries and a smooth creamy soquid. Mmmm....

What the Fudge is It?

Ok, I know it is a stupid commercial about fast food, but I am mystified by how anyone can find it appealing. In Wendy's new commercials for their Frosty two cliche nerd types inform us that it is a soquid. Not liquid, not solid. It looks like it could be made of plastic. I don't trust any food that is marketed by a brand name that isn't followed by a generic name or something natural. They never describe a Frosty as a milk shake. Their site describes it as, "Cool, creamy and refreshing. Made with real milk, nothing satisfies more than this Wendy's original." When they have to emphasize that it is made with "real milk" that just sets off my paranoidar. Not only that, but if you look at the list of ingredients, they repeat the fact twice more:

Medium Frosty(TM)
Milk, Sugar, Cream, Nonfat Dry Milk, Corn Syrup, Whey, Cocoa, Dextrose, Guar Gum, Cellulose Gum, Mono and Diglycerides, Carrageenan, Disodium Phosphate, Artificial and Natural Flavors. CONTAINS: MILK.

Milk is the first ingredient and then at the end they say, CONTAINS: MILK. Is that emphasis meant to distract us from the long list of multi-syllabic, chemical crap in the ingredient list? It's weird because I used to live off fast food many years ago. Now I can't imagine ingesting something like this. Especially since Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me. That movie put me off fast food forever.

Revolutionary MOTD: Boiling the Frog

Today I am replacing the regular Revolutionary Quote of the Day (QOTD) with a Metaphor of the Day (MOTD). Today I got up early to listen to Rachel Maddow on Air America Radio. After all the domestic spying news that is being gradually revealed, they could call the network Radio Free America. It's coming to that, if it's not already there. And that is precisely the topic of the MOTD, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I have to get up early to hear Rachel, or stay up late, because here on the left coast she's on from 2am to 6am. I read an article about her somewhere and I hadn't heard her show before. Now I could plug in the credit card and plunk down the $6.95 or whatever it is they charge to listen to the archive. But I have an aversion to paying for what I could hear for free, especially when it's old.

I don't get that marketing strategy. Our content is free, except when it's already aired and the news on it is probably old news, then you have to pay for it. Interesting way of determining value for the customer. I wonder how that marketing is working for them. I thought of doing it just to support Air America, because I like them. But this is not the kind of idea I'd like to support. I figure listening to commercials is paying for it. I don't know if they leave them in the archived content, but if they did, that would be like pay. And I have to think offering free archives would only build their listenership. And for the advertisers it would make the commercials more than a one-shot payoff. But that's just me. Maybe without commercials it might be worth it.

So I wake up about 4:30-ish and listen and I like the show. This morning she had the perfect metaphor for NSA domestic spying and how the news is being trickled out to us. She called it, boiling the frog. She explains that it is not as common of a metaphor as she thought, after speaking with some of her colleages at the studio, so she explained it on the air. It goes like this, if want to boil a frog, and you throw it in a pot of boiling water, it will simply jump out. Why you would want to boil a frog and why you couldn't use a top trap the frog or incapacitate it in some way was not discussed. But hey, it's just a metaphor. The gist of it is, if you put the frog in tepid water and slowly heat it, the frog will not notice the gradual temperature change and you will have delicious, succulent boiled frog. Any fries with that?

How that works as a metaphor for domestic spying is apparent by now. We keep hearing examples of it that are "acceptable" in view of the Global War on Terror. So the American public accepts them. It's not the kind of extreme cases of spying that would set off the constitutional alarm bells and cause the public to react against it. But the examples get worse and worse, until one day we will find our freedom boiled. Have that with your freedom fries.

There's this case that was featured on HuffPo yesterday. The clip below is of Rachel debating Tucker Carlson on MSNBC, different day and different topic.

-Stand up and fight the powers.

Get Rich Quick!

This guy's got a pretty good schtick he performs on his blog. He's self-made billionaire, Richard Quick, Esq. He spends a lot of time harrassing people on other blogs in a pretty hilarious way. Check out this post from his blog and his comment on this post. I disagree with him on Colbert of course. But he's funny. When the revolution comes, of course we will have to return all his "billions" to the people. But we may be able to cut him some slack for having a real sense of humor. Not what passes for humor with Chimpy McFlightsuit and his crowd.

German Engineering in da House, Now the Garage

I just got this pic from a friend of a German engineered parking garage that according to him uses much less space:

....approximately only 20% of a comparable facility with the traditional design that is used primarily in the US.

Not only is the German structure less expensive to build, but vehicles are also "retrieved" in less time and without the potential of being damaged by an attendant.

I thought it would be the perfect backdrop for one of those new VW commercials like the one below, drop it like it's hot! I love those commercials. Our government could use some German efficiency. In foreign policy. In our educational system. In the national budget. I wonder if we could get VW to unpimp them. Drop them like they're hot....

Revolutionary QOTD: May 15, 2006

"Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours."
~Cesar Chavez

In anticipation of President Bush's address to the nation on Immigration, I figured it's time for another Cesar Chavez QOTD. An appropriate quote I think because social change is beginning in the immigration movement. And the quote emphasizes some of the key elements of true lasting social change, education, pride, and courage.

Si se puede!

Your Mother....

Call her, it's Mother's Day. I'm making dinner for mine. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there.

President Al Gore

Please tell me that this is true and that the last six years have just been a frightening dream. Pinch....

Ah well, maybe this version's not true, but a nation can dream can't it? Thanks SNL for showing us what could have been. Featured at C&L.

-Stand up and fight the powers.

Carnival of the Liberals

We are participating in Carnival of the Liberals, a blog carnival. It's being hosted this week by the blog, Daylight Atheism. Each carnival appears at a different blog and features the work of many bloggers. This blogger shares my admiration and respect for Ernie Chambers. Check out this weeks carnival here. Here's what Daylight had to say.

Being a liberal means standing up for your principles - something of which many incumbent Democrats sorely need to be reminded. The professional panderers of the Beltway could take a lesson from Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers, a personal hero of mine. The brilliant and fearless Sen. Chambers is profiled by A Revolution of One in a post titled Barak He is Not, which explains his support for a bill that separates the Omaha school district largely along racial lines as a genius political move.

The same post is also at the Carnival of Education at HUNblog.

Revolutionary QOTD: May 14, 2006

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
~Upton Sinclair.

Al Gore recycled this quote in a speech to the Sierra Club on Global Warming. It applies not just to the corporate interests who try to convince us that global warming is not a threat, but to many situations we find ourselves faced with these days. The fight for net neutrality and the other side's propaganda. Donald Rumsfeld and staying the course in Iraq. In fact it applies to W himself.

-Stand up and fight the powers.

Coffee Talk Meets Ann Coulter Meets Soccer Mom

Found this gem by way of Jesus' General. It's Coffee Talk meets Ann Coulter meets average suburban soccer mom. It's scary in a hilarious kind of way. Her message, we need a new network because Fox News is not conservative enough!!!??? It's almost enough to make me side with the anti-net neutrality side. Almost. But this is what freedom of speech is about. Everyone has a voice. Absolutely everyone.

Look out Air America and Fox News.
-Stand up and fight the powers.