badtux99: @grumpyhistorian @KelliMarshall Historians are grumpy because they're always watching us repeat same mistakes over & over, right?
grumpyhistorian: @badtux99 @KelliMarshall That's part of it. Though our ability as a species to develop new forms of f*ck*ps is, honestly, deeply moving.
Not much I can add to that.
-- Badtux the History Penguin
Top scientists, hounded by paparazzi, call for stronger laws protecting their privacy.
Because Americans have such an abiding respect for intellectual pursuits and such an overwhelming preference for science over superstition, top scientists have been hounded by paparazzi trying to get the latest scoop for the tabloids. They've discovered their trash bins ransacked, they've had paparazzi pose as potential grad students doing campus tours, it's been just an awful situation altogether.
Of course, it could be said that this is just a natural consequence of the fame and wealth that these scientists chose when they decided to pursue four years of undergraduate study in science, then four years to get their PhD, then a minimum of two years of post-graduate studies, then a decade moving from adjunct position to adjunct position all around the country prior to landing a tenure track position, then finally qualified for tenure due to the brilliance of their research and political connections with the tenure committee, but really. Oh sure, they chose this life, but even the rich and famous deserve to have a bit of privacy!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Yeah, I came up empty today. But the World's Most Reliable News Source(tm) came through for me!)
It seems odd, but nothing seems to inspire creativity more than the collapse of everything you've known all around you. Look at the collapse of the great empires of the past, and you will find great art.
You'll notice that I've not had any shortage of music videos to post here. What gets posted here is only a small percentage of what I come across, there is a lot of good stuff out there in all kinds of genres. Despite the wailing from the music industry about its death, music itself is not dead at all, it has simply retreated to small venues punctuated by day jobs, with the exception of assorted pre-fab acts like Justin Beiber and assorted has-been dinosaur acts playing stadiums. Well, and Lady Gaga, but she's a pre-fab act too, just one that had a hand in fabricating the act.
But then, I guess this is to be expected in a time of imperial collapse, when our entire world seems to be collapsing around us, when our dreams have shriveled and shrunk into tiny barren things that pine for the water of someone else's dreams for just a few moments of our pathetic little lives...
-- Badtux the Pondering Penguin
American Dream Declared Dead As Final Believer Gives Up
Well that's that, then. When America's most reliable news source weighs in, that's all she wrote.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
For almost 100 years it has been thought that the HMS Titanic sank because it collided with an iceberg. For almost 100 years it has been thought that those who did not flee in the lifeboats, who were stranded upon the sinking Titanic, drowned upon the ocean. But it was a lie. A bald-faced lie, a lie propagated by both survivors and authorities because the truth, the real truth, was too horrifying for public consumption.
But photographic evidence has now surfaced of the real cause of the sinking of the HMS Titanic and the fate of those who could not flee in the lifeboats. I ask that small children and those weak of stomach turn their eyes aside now, prior to seeing the photograph below, which is so horrific as to bring tears to one's eyes as you contemplate the fate of the lonely survivors on the Titanic who were, one by one, consumed by the horrific beasts which sank that bold ship....
Yes, fellow blog readers, the Titanic was sunk by giant cats, and those who failed to escape were consumed, each and every one, in most painful and horrifying way as the giant cats tore through the hull of the ship sniffing out every morsel and drawing the poor man, woman or child screaming to its gaping maw.
As for those who claim that this cannot be so, because cats do not swim... I present this video proof that you are completely incorrect:
As for the authorities who hid the existence of these giant man-eating cats from humanity for all these decades: For shame, gentlemen. For shame. How many others died because of your refusal to give ships' captains the information needed in order to protect their vessel and their charges from this dire threat? This penguin is sad, thinking about all those people turned into fish bait just because Mayor Larry Vaughn decided that the profits of his shipping lines was more important than the life of innocent passengers...
-- Badtux the Tongue-in-beak Penguin
I have to do it too, because it's so true:
A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across, takes 11 cookies, looks at the tea partier, and says, “Look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie.”
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
If you don't want to be compared to Nazis, quit proposing Nazi solutions to problems facing your nation.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
In a store: Asian girl shrugs out of a brown jacket as her Anglo boyfriend stands in front of her.
Girl: I don't like it
Boy: Put it back on! You look cute in it. It makes you look thin!
Girl: WAAAAHHHH!
Somebody's not getting lucky this evening :).
-- Badtux the Easily Amused Penguin
The Walkabouts (Chris and Carla), "A Life full of Holes" off of their 1995 album by the same name. Sadly, the only place to get the album is from the German publisher, or as an import via Amazon.com. No iTunes, no American publication. Siiiigh.
-- Badtux the Music Penguin
Lisa Germano, "Of Love and Colors" off her album Geek the Girl. A disturbing song.
An Atlanta superchurch pastor comes out as gay in hopes of stemming suicides of gay youth.
A song I wrote last year:
Another song.
That is all.
-- Badtux the Music Penguin
Uhm, okay. Just clean up after yourself, right?
From that friggin' site that has me laughing hysterically..
-- Badtux the Amused Penguin
From Overheard in New York:
Upper East Side girl reading book about knights: Mommy, what does our family crest look like?
Upper East Side mom: Poor people being crushed by a boot.
-- Badtux the Peasant Penguin
YouTube is flooded with people poking fun at a 11 year old girl who posted a couple of videos where she appears to be more than a little troubled (and with an idiot daddy like the one who appears in one of those videos, how could she not be?). I don't get it. Why do people want to tease and insult a troubled child? What a vicious, sad, pathetic bunch they are. But, alas, I'm not surprised. There's just a meanness in this world, that's all.
Peace, brothers and sisters. Peace. And people do grow up, sometimes, and become penguins.
-- Badtux the Saddened Penguin
Hoisted from comments below:
Penguins are generally Tuxologists -- worshippers of the Great Penguin. The current popularity of ice hockey all over the United States is part of a secret plot by Tuxologists to finance the building of Ice Cathedrals for the purpose of partaking of the Sacrament of the Herring, and if at a hocky game you see some formally dressed short big-nosed folks at the back of the crowd who do not appear to be paying attention to the game but, rather, are passing around small bits of herring on a cracker while drinking beer, you have stumbled upon a secret and solemn religious ceremony celebrating His continued somnolence (the Great Penguin is a lazy penguin, okay? And we like it that way!). Just beware if the herring appears to be raw rather than kippered, because that means you have stumbled upon a cell of schismatic Rawists fundamentalists rather than good upright Kipperists, and your fate may not be good if they discover you observing their ceremony... as with religious fundamentalists everywhere, Rawists tend to be violent, and you risk the Rawists gathering around you and, err.... giving you a wedgie. The horror, oh the horror!
Hey, what can I say, worshipping a lazy fat sleepy penguin that has been asleep for the past few million years doesn't exactly drive one to energetic exercise of violence...
Some have noticed the similarity between the attire of nuns and penguins. This is actually a secret acknowledgement by the Catholic Church of the *true* nature of man.... see, the Christian fundamentalists were right. Man is *not* evolved from monkeys. Rather, Man is *devolved*... from His perfect creature, PENGUINS! And the devolution is continuing, thus the existence of the band "Devo" and teabaggers. The penguin attire is a sad attempt by nuns to re-attain the state of grace that Man had when Mankind was simply a slightly less formally attired breed of penguin.
So there you have it -- the Truth, as laid out in the holy scriptures of the Church of Tuxology. And if you refuse to believe it... die, heretic, die! Well, eventually, anyhow. We all do, after all.
- Badtux the Religious Penguin
I'm having a problem finding certain music on YouTube because 9/10ths of what I find turns out to be fan slash fiction about Justin Bieber. At which point I Google him and find that he's the latest teen heart-throb "singer" amongst tween girls. At which point I say to myself, why? So I go to Google Images and... dude. This is the most effeminate looking guy that I've seen since the drag queen parade at San Francisco Pride. Crap, *more* effeminate than the drag queens, now that I look more closely at it. He looks like a teen girl, slightly butch but not outrageously so. At which point I *still* wonder... why are the teen girls so hot on him?
The only thing I can think of is that he's non-threatening to tween girls. He's the non-bitchy best girlfriend they wish they had, the dyke girlfriend who they can dream about without actually having to worry about the actual, like, icky part (though the slash shows that not *all* of them stop at the icky part... ick!). Sort of the 2010's version of Lief Garrett. I guess that means he's going to grow up to be a scuzzy-looking felon living on the streets, that's just how these things work...
-- Badtux the Ancient Penguin
There are some people whose apparent sole purpose in life is to take up real estate, convert food into shit, and consume valuable oxygen better used by more deserving organisms. More deserving organisms like slime molds.
-- Badtux the Misanthropic Penguin
