The Beautiful People

I had no idea the official video for that tune has over 200 million views.

Holy shit... I've been sharing my insights into the state of the universe for almost ten years, and I'm not quite at half a million looks yet. This clown has 200 million looks on one single video?

Brian Warner is in a bit of hot water these days. Seems the "tortured artist" card isn't a get out of jail free card anymore. Unless you're the Rolling Stones. And nothing has tortured them for decades.

Be that as it may, Warner's shtick proved a cultural bellwether. Michael Moore turned him into a serious person with that spot on Bowling for Columbine.

He is obviously an intelligent dude. 

I think guys like Brian deserve their get out of jail free cards. After all, they provide an essential service to the ruling elite. They channel the potentially disruptive energy of disaffected youth into the bank accounts of music industry executives. 

Hey, I can think of worse outcomes...

T-shirts in the headlines

Nevermind peace in the Middle East and global warming... here's some REAL news!

If Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones loves Dixie, as we are informed, how does he feel about the Confederate flag?

In my estimation you can't love Dixie without considering the Confederate flag to be just a part of the air you breathe.

But Keith is not the only T-shirt provocateur in the news today.

Nosiree!!

Justin Bieber went all the way to Australia to crash a Christian revival shin-dig to piss everybody off with his satanic T.

Yup, that's a major media platform using up bandwidth to do PR for Justin Bieber and Brian Warner and pass it off as news!

I guess we shouldn't really be blaming the media... they're just giving us what we want.

Koran burning: could military do more to offend Muslims?

You've probably run into the story by now. Pissed off Afghans rioting outside the US embassy in Kabul. So far they've managed to kill seven fellow Afghans.

What are they pissed off about?

Seems the cleaning staff at one of the local torture centers discovered the charred remains of several Korans in the course of their normal duties.

You'd shudder to think what they normally find in the course of their "normal" duties. Teeth, fingernails, blood, bloodied implements of one kind or another, dead people.

All in a days work.

But they find the remains of a charred Koran and all hell breaks loose.

Just highlights how a modern society like ours and a primitive one like their's have different perspectives on this sort of thing.

If we found a stack of charred Bibles in America we'd naturally conclude that a Marilyn Manson tour had just passed through town. No big deal.

Over there, they take their religion seriously.