Wading Into The Abyss

Need some St.Patrick’s Day sobering salve. Here ya go!

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 21:57:39 -0700

Need some St.Patrick’s Day sobering salve. Here ya go!

Invisible Children responds to criticism about ‘Stop Kony’ campaign

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:19:52 -0800

Invisible Children responds to criticism about ‘Stop Kony’ campaign:

Invisible Children’s director of idea development for Invisible Children called criticism over their video “myopic.” I’m still far from convinced that anyone should be sending them money but as a rational, balanced person I think they deserve a chance to reply to criticism. (Link to the Washington Post article via Simon Pegg’s twitter feed http://ow.ly/9wvYc)

It’s really just something to ponder before you send money...

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:54:00 -0800

It’s really just something to ponder before you send money to Invisible Children (or any organization like it for that matter). That money might not be going exactly where you think it is. (Post brought to my attention via @DaveAnthony’s twitter feed http://ow.ly/9ww3W)

thedailywhat:

On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far away as possible from KONY 2012, the latest fauxtivist fad sweeping the web (remember “change your Facebook profile pic to stop child abuse”?), but you clearly won’t stop sending me that damn video until I say something about it, so here goes:

Stop sending me that video.

The organization behind Kony 2012 — Invisible Children Inc. — is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called ”misleading,” “naive,” and “dangerous” by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of “manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes.” They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureau’s standards.

Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their financials be independently audited. That’s not a good thing. In fact, it’s a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money you’re sending them is going.

By IC’s own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone [pdf]. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) — which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many can’t seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone they’ve ever known.

And as far as what they do with that money:

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.

Let’s not get our lines crossed: The Lord’s Resistance Army is bad news. And Joseph Kony is a very bad man, and needs to be stopped. But propping up Uganda’s decades-old dictatorship and its military arm, which has been accused by the UN of committing unspeakable atrocities and itself facilitated the recruitment of child soldiers, is not the way to go about it.

The United States is already plenty involved in helping rout Kony and his band of psycho sycophants. Kony is on the run, having been pushed out of Uganda, and it’s likely he will soon be caught, if he isn’t already dead. But killing Kony won’t fix anything, just as killing Osama bin Laden didn’t end terrorism. The LRA might collapse, but, as Foreign Affairs points out, it is “a relatively small player in all of this — as much a symptom as a cause of the endemic violence.”

Myopically placing the blame for all of central Africa’s woes on Kony — even as a starting point — will only imperil many more people than are already in danger.

Sending money to a nonprofit that wants to muck things up by dousing the flames with fuel is not helping. Want to help? Really want to help? Send your money to nonprofits that are putting more than 31% toward rebuilding the region’s medical and educational infrastructure, so that former child soldiers have something worth coming home to.

Here are just a few of those charities. They all have a sparkling four-star rating from Charity Navigator, and, more importantly, no interest in airdropping American troops armed to the teeth into the middle of a multi-nation tribal war to help one madman catch another.

The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Don’t just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old “sad.” Learn a little bit about the complexities of the region’s ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention.

There is no black and white in the world. And going about solving important problems like there is just serves to make all those equally troubling shades of gray invisible.

[kony2012.]

maliciousglamour: Ann-Margret, “The Swinger”, 1966

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:51:17 -0800

maliciousglamour:

Ann-Margret, “The Swinger”, 1966

areasofmyexpertise: The Muppets Attack Fox News (by...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:00:16 -0800

areasofmyexpertise:

The Muppets Attack Fox News (by LeicesterSquareTV)

Wow. I had no idea Sally cosplay even existed until now. My...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:06:05 -0800

Wow. I had no idea Sally cosplay even existed until now. My verdict: HAWT!

#Lifegoal no. 285 Move into the shack across from the Blue Bayou...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:03:06 -0800

#Lifegoal no. 285 Move into the shack across from the Blue Bayou at the beginning of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. What’s the rent on a place like that? Hmm…

The White House doesn’t trust U.S. science, so it turns to New Zealand

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 13:44:06 -0800

The White House doesn’t trust U.S. science, so it turns to New Zealand:

Came across this when looking deeper into a post on FoxNews.com claiming Smoking One Joint is Equivalent to 20 Cigarettes, Study Says (from 2008). Found it interesting. The Medical Research Institute of New Zealand methods of data gathering sound…well, stupid. Check it out for yourself though.

A little Saturday Ann-Margret

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 13:35:45 -0800

A little Saturday Ann-Margret

Message to the youth: You might want to seriously think twice...

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:02:19 -0800

Message to the youth: You might want to seriously think twice before posting that youtube video of you singing or whatever. Once you post it, the content out of your control forever. Anonymous shitty Internet people can and will be mean as all hell. Seriously, think about it before you do it.

"Many eulogizers have prefaced their obits with “love him or hate him…,” but that’s not quite right...."

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 10:19:00 -0800

“Many eulogizers have prefaced their obits with “love him or hate him…,” but that’s not quite right. You both loved and hated Christopher Hitchens, as even when he wasn’t on your side—and even when he was on your side, yet still being a smug prick about it—you had to admire his tenacity and envy his eloquence. He was the best kind of intellectual: a brave one. (Also, one with whom you’d like to have a drink or three.) And our world is now far stupider without him.”

- Sean O’Neal puts it nicely in The AV Club.

In the end and at the end, Hitchens made me feel braver about most things, and especially non-existence, than any sermon ever could.

That is all.

(via areasofmyexpertise)

Impossible for me to put it any better myself.

“I say, this Blood On The Dance Floor the kids are...

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:54:18 -0800

“I say, this Blood On The Dance Floor the kids are listening to isn’t even music. Simply atrocious.”

lynxolita: Ann-Margret

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:39:33 -0800

lynxolita:

Ann-Margret

Hooray for pants! Not really, but…Ok. I just realized I...

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:35:55 -0800

Hooray for pants! Not really, but…Ok. I just realized I can’t pull off wearing shorts as well as I used to. Well, at all. It makes me look like a dangerously overfilled water balloon walking around on two straws. I’m not even remotely suggesting I won’t wear them ever again, but I get it now. I look fucking ridiculous. I’ll check after I’ve trimmed down[1][2] but I think I might have just hit the point in my life where I’m too old to wear shorts. Dammit! This sucks. Today was going good too…

[1]: Major dietary changes have, are and will be going on. More information on that at some later date.

[2]: I really need to learn how to do footnotes in tumblr.

Le rawrrr…or would that be den rawrrr? Thank you google...

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 11:32:48 -0800

Le rawrrr…or would that be den rawrrr? Thank you google translate!

Lifegoal no. 35 Read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest...

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 10:04:37 -0800

Lifegoal no. 35 Read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest on my Blackberry’s 360x400 pixel display.

An alcoholic, passive aggressive and e-thugging former landlord...

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:09:28 -0800

An alcoholic, passive aggressive and e-thugging former landlord of mine evicted me via myspace years ago. He is the paragon of proper communication skills compared to RIM. Just sayin’…

#Lifegoal no. 43 Learn how to shuffle…and subsequently be...

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:42:45 -0800

#Lifegoal no. 43 Learn how to shuffle…and subsequently be the creepy old guy shuffling as the kids run in terror/point and laugh.

Oh boy...

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:07:55 -0700

I’ll get all of my social networking sites in working order someday. I have a few things higher up on my list of priorities at the moment and sadly I think being a vengeful prick is one of em.

Ann-Margrock

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:14:35 -0700

Ann-Margrock