Pressure

Pressure that's what we feel. Have you ever been fully engrossed in some endeavor, something critical that demanded your entire concentration, when somebody came along and with absolutely zero consideration interrupted you? Now you're forced to compartmentalize your original task and focus on this new attention forcing identity. He or she wants what he or she wants and doesn't care at all that you are inconvenienced by it. Now sometimes this is perfectly justified, but many times it's just inconsiderate. Whatever the case may be, the rule of thumb is that mostly people's actions reflect their own best interest and seldom anyone else's. Occasionally we find ourselves completely bombarded by attention seekers. Our primary task having been set on the back-burner and fully engrossed in the accomplishment of a secondary task, a third interrupter will intrude with a tertiary interruption. What of a fourth or even a fifth interruption? It's easy to get lost at this point. This is the everyday pressure most Americans are subjected to. This is the kind of pressure that wakes us up in the middle of the night heart pumping in terror.

The pressure of personal finance can be just as exhausting. Those of us who must juggle income vs. bills and set aside enough for a rainy day, enough for college for the kids, enough for retirement, it's a task that requires concentration and discipline. These primary personal finance goals must be met. Unfortunately secondary considerations soon put paid to the best laid plans: So the spouse says: I don't have anything to wear... I used up all the minutes on my phone and all the data in my data plan...and when do I get a new car?... Unfortunately, in the process of sorting out these new and unforeseen exigencies, inevitably tertiary factors come knocking on the bedroom door. Dad can I have...I need a new...When do I get a...all my friends have a... Why is it that the ones who don't earn the money always have the most insatiable appetite for spending it? We look around and it seems as though no matter how much money we make there just isn't enough to go around. This is pressure enough to make blood vessels burst, to cause grinding headaches, to cause ulcers, to drive us to drink as the saying goes.

Finally, the pressure of doing what is right, not just for you and your family but for society as well is like putting your own head in a vise and turning the screws. The saying goes that every vote counts but most of us know that this simply isn't the case. In the vast majority of cases the majority is an overwhelming one and our one little vote amounts to little more than pissing at a hurricane. Our chosen candidate wants our vote of course but he wants something else even more. He wants our money. Donate to this election or that one. Urgent, existential, dire! circumstances require every penny we can spare and a few that we can't to boot. The whole world is depending on us because it's not like anyone else is going to do the right thing. As the outrages mount, as the national debt skyrockets, as the Obama administration jumps shark, after shark, after shark, the pressure builds and builds until...

Confronting Islamic Terrorism—Because They Won't!

We know what Mother's Day is supposed to be about. For many it's a time for far-flung family members to reunite. For others it's a quiet day at home waiting on mama hand-and-foot (the way she does for the whole family the rest of the year) It's a time to give gifts and if you're a mother a time to receive them graciously. In New Orleans it's a time to go and watch the Mother's Day parade, take pictures, and have a lot of fun. Into this wholesome and mostly uncommercialized day of happiness, at least three people in New Orleans took guns and attempted to stage a mass slaughter.

Police are looking for the shooters and they may catch them or they may not. Who are they looking for? I know who they're looking for even if they don't. Not the specific identities but definitely the specific ideology...the ideology of hatred, that particular way of life that celebrates murder, that glorifies murderers, that exalts terror, and that reveres bloodthirsty-insanity, rape, slavery, and torture. Not to put too fine a point on it, I'm profiling your typical Islamic jihadist. That's who they're looking for. But they don't know it, do they?

I'm sure the police in New Orleans are looking for some kind of motive and obviously what these shooters must hate is people celebrating mother's day. So I suspect the police are poring diligently over orphanage records because perhaps the shooters are a group of disaffected orphans that were never adopted out and were forced to live their hard-scrabble existence in some state-run orphanage eating government cheese and drinking powdered milk.

Maybe the police are looking at the more traditional bad guys: gang-bangers for instance. Perhaps the perpetrators are trying to become members of some street gang and this was their initiation? The problem with that theory is that street gangs make a living selling drugs and avoid law-enforcement attention. They try to avoid the kind of nationwide notoriety that a horrific event of this magnitude would necessarily entail. Well, orphans or street gangs, the list of suspects is being winnowed down. The FBI has already ruled out Islamic terrorists:

Mary Beth Romig, a spokeswoman for the FBI in New Orleans, described the shooting as "strictly an act of street violence in New Orleans," and said there was no indication it was an act of terrorism.

So there you have it folks. There was no indication it was an act of terrorism. Well except for the fact that there couldn't have been a financial motive because no money was lost or stolen. There couldn't have been a revenge motive because the victims were random strangers. This couldn't have been the result of an unhinged maniac off his medication because there were three or more involved in this conspiracy to commit mayhem and murder. So what does that leave us with? When I first saw this story I knew two things. One: This was an act of terror. Two: Police would move heaven and earth rather than admit that unavoidable fact.

As the police wander off on their various wild-goose-chases, hunting down clues that might implicate Crips, Bloods, La Rasa, Right-wing hate groups like the Tea-Party, or perhaps Little Orphan Annie, the actual perpetrators of this act of terror will quietly scamper away with the collusion of a national network of like-minded Islamists, and all this made possible by the state's absolute unwillingness to confront evil.

The Obama administration's on-going pattern of refusing to acknowledge the elephant in the room has been documented and annotated. You can read all about it here. For those who don't want to click through...and wait for this slow-loading page to finally load, here's a short excerpt:

A new Homeland Security report compares terrorism to “ordinary crime” in metropolitan U.S. cities and omits the radical Islamic factor, instead finding “significant variability in the ideologies motivating terrorist attacks across decades.”

This appears to be part of the Obama Administration’s Muslim outreach effort, which includes hiring a special Homeland Security adviser (Mohamed Elibiary) who supports a radical Islamist theologian and renowned jihadist ideologue. The Obama Justice Department also created a special Muslim Engagement Advisory Group to foster greater communication, collaboration and a new level of respect between law enforcement and Muslim and Arab-American communities.

And, in 2010, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano held secret meetings with radical Arab, Muslim, Sikh and South Asian “community leaders.” Judicial Watch uncovered documents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that includes a list of the individuals who participated, including radical leaders such as Imad Hamad, outed as a Hezbollah supporter by attorney and investigative journalist Debbie Schlussel, and extremist Salam Al-Marayati, founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Considering this cozy relationship, the new DHS terrorism report should come as no surprise. It compares terrorist attacks to “ordinary crime” in large, metropolitan areas which is why the nation’s terrorism “hot spots” are Manhattan, Los Angeles County, Miami-Dade County Florida, San Francisco County and Washington, D.C. As if to downplay the distinct difference between crashing a plane into a high-rise and a mugging, the DHS says “terrorism and ordinary crime occur in many of the same areas.”

UPDATE 05/14/2013 6:31 CST Police in New Orleans have identified a shooter in the Mother's Day parade shooting: Akein Scott who they say has a long history of trouble with the law. Perhaps this is just another example of a maniac off his meds, one crazy shooter and not an Islamic Jihadist terrorism conspiracy. I stand by my original statement however. Two or more conspirators causing harm merely to arouse the most possible fear and doing so in a large public venue are almost certainly Islamic terrorists.

Sometimes standing your ground isn't good enough.

Sometimes you have to push back. Ever since Sandy Hook, the left has been beating their drums and pushing as hard as they can to impose drastic new gun-control laws on the American People. Various personalities and celebrities have weighed in—mostly in favor of gun-control—and the result has thankfully been nothing. You'd think that would be the end of it but step back a second and think about it from their perspective. Did you ever tell a spoiled brat that this time they wouldn't be getting their way? How'd that go for you? Did the spoiled brat realize it was pointless and retreat or did they in fact redouble their efforts?

The answer is obvious. If shrill hysteria and dire threats of cosmic calamity seem to have failed, why then obviously these liberals haven't been sufficiently forceful in presenting their case. The solution then is to ratchet up the volume another order of magnitude. With the help of the NRA and conservatives in the House and Senate, the gun-control bill is dead. Today it's dead ... but you'll notice that they haven't given up. When you've won the battle, when the field is yours, it's no time to sit down and rest. Harry the enemy across the miles as they flee for their lives. It's not over until none of them are left. Never fight the same man twice.

The NRA brand has been rendered so poisonous by the Democrat-Media-Complex that gun experts can't even teach a gun-safety class to children. The gun-safety class teaches kids how to spot dangerous weapons left unsecured and then if spotted to immediately go tell the nearest adult about them. But officials in two Houston Texas schools were so alarmed by the fact that the instructor was affiliated with the NRA—gasp!—that they canceled these classes.

The gun-control bill may have been defeated but the war is far from over. This is the biggest gun-control powerplay we've seen since the Brady Bill, and they won't give up until they get what they want. The only answer to this campaign of theirs is to rout the gun-control advocates so utterly, to demoralize them so thoroughly that they throw down their rainbow banners, rip off their pink and purple costumes, and crawl in a ditch while scooping heaps of mud and dirt over themselves as they whimper and sob and finally lose control of their bladder and bowels. It's time to push back. As such it's also time for the NRA to lose their stodgy old logo and embrace the twenty-first century. Now's not the time for appeasement and back-stepping. This is the time for a full frontal assault!

Embrace the language of war—for what is this if not a war? And what do we fight for if not for our liberty, our way of life, and our very lives? If they want a war let's give them one they'll never forget! Get rid of that old-timey NRA logo and display a matte-black eagle with stainless steel claws. And under him a couple of weapons any red-blooded American would be proud to have in his arsenal. That's what you do...get rid of the hunting rifles and show 'em what we really think. You commies want our guns? Come and take 'em!


Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

The Charge Of The Light Brigade
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Educational Gerrymandering

My nemesis: an earnest man in suit and tie wearing a sympathetic expression and explaining the importance of rules.

Resolved: the purpose of formal education is not to educate, but to winnow the field. You read that correctly. Every school subject, every rule, every insipid and pointless hoop which requires jumping through is only there to separate out those who might upset the apple cart. It's all an elaborate system designed to identify those who'll happily follow the leader and those who might conceivably question authority. You see the purpose of school is to reduce the competition. Those in control wish to stay there. Every decision they make is designed to make it ever harder to replace them. This is quintessential statism. The main reason totalitarian regimes are so vastly unpopular is because once you're placed into your niche that's where you'll stay. That's where your children and grandchildren will stay as well. No matter how hard you work, no matter how talented you prove yourself to be, once you're pigeon holed that's that. What American institution is more totalitarian in nature than our public educational system? What other American institution is as unforgiving? Every year admissions staff at colleges and universities pores over the applications and the school records with a magnifying glass and an unforgiving eye. What's this? An expulsion! Avaunt!

The idea of reducing competition is tried and true in the liberal establishment. It's never about how talented they are but about who's the best of a mediocre crop. You don't believe it? Look at all the green companies with their lavish subsidies and extravagant grants, meanwhile Obama wants to raise the taxes on "Big Oil." Green initiatives—as they're called—are unable to compete with traditional energy technologies so they're given unfair government precedence meanwhile useful and competitive energy providers are hindered to the very limit of the law—and beyond.

In fact, the U.S. Treasury Department makes it very clear that they now regard oil and gas production as a problem. In each of the annual budget proposals they have sent to Congress, the Treasury Department calls for higher taxes on domestic oil gas and coal. Their remarkable reasoning is that unless taxes are raised, it will encourage the overproduction of oil gas and coal! For suffering motorists and families and businesses struggling to pay their energy bills, this is a cruel policy.

It’s very apparent that the real intent is to make oil and gas more expensive in order to make the heavily subsidized, unreliable and costly ”renewable” energy programs they are pushing more cost-competitive. This is the Tonya Harding approach to energy… break your opponent’s kneecap if you can’t win fair and square.

Sometimes you see something that really sets you off. Today I read that a high-school student in Florida was expelled for setting something off and charged with a felony to boot. My friend that I work with—who possesses the same close-minded and intransigent attitude of the progressive crème de la crème—argued that kids who break the rules should get what's coming to them. He further argued that it doesn't matter that no harm was intended nor harm inflicted...rules are rules. He stated categorically that whether or not someone was hurt the possibility existed for someone to get hurt. I.E. a device which could have inflicted harm was used on school grounds and therefore regardless of whatever safety precautions 16-year-old Kiera Wilmot put in place to ensure the safety of herself and her classmates during her impromptu MacGyver-esque experiment, she should experience the complete and utter consequences of her actions. And in this case the consequences are a one-ton rulebook flung into Kiera's face with all the imperious fury that these pedantic officials in Florida can muster.

Well Kiera—if you're reading this—I just want you to know that your peers in high school are grateful that you're one person they'll never have to compete with in the public sector or at any university. They'll graduate and some of them will go to college and achieve degrees in history or sociology and then finally perhaps even bigger and better things like Master's degrees and PhD's, while you'll probably be home schooled and perhaps if you're very lucky you'll get your GED. After that maybe you'll even go on to community college and perhaps one day if you play your cards right you may even get a decent paying job. What you won't do is threaten your peers with any possibility of competition.

You see Kiera, the people you find teaching at school, administering at school, and securing government funding for a variety of pointless and insipid academic studies of one kind or another, are deliriously happy when people like you—Kiera—fall through the cracks and just disappear. You threaten them. Your innate curiosity—if it had been permitted to flower—is the one thing that truly frightens the privileged educational aristocracy—someone with talent, drive, and education. You may well go on to invent a better mousetrap and become fabulously wealthy but it's highly unlikely you'll ever find the cure for cancer or diabetes. For disease cures you need formal education, degrees, Ph.Ds, laboratories, and funding, things only available to those lacking your unfortunate curiosity. You've been pigeon-holed Kiera. You've proven that you're a troublemaker. It's highly unlikely that you'll follow the leader and wait your turn, and they can't have people just going around solving all the world’s problems, not when those problems are the hill and they're king of it.

Statistics were people, first.

Often statistics are numerically true but fundamentally dishonest. I stumbled on this blog post this morning and perused the statistics and the implied argument therein. Here's a short excerpt of it:

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Comparing the CDC numbers to terrorism deaths means:

– You are 35,079 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack. You are 33,842 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack.

Wikipedia notes that obesity is a contributing factor in 100,000–400,000 deaths in the United States per year. That makes obesity 5,882 to times 23,528 more likely to kill you than a terrorist. The annual number of deaths in the U.S. due to avoidable medical errors is as high as 100,000. Indeed, one of the world’s leading medical journals – Lancet – reported in 2011:

A November, 2010, document from the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services reported that, when in hospital, one in seven beneficiaries of Medicare (the government-sponsored health-care programme for those aged 65 years and older) have complications from medical errors, which contribute to about 180,000 deaths of patients per year.

That’s just Medicare beneficiaries, not the entire American public. Scientific American noted in 2009:

Preventable medical mistakes and infections are responsible for about 200,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to an investigation by the Hearst media corporation.

But let’s use the lower – 100,000 – figure. That still means that you are 5,882 times more likely to die from medical error than terrorism.

The CDC says that some 80,000 deaths each year are attributable to excessive alcohol use. So you're 4,706 times more likely to drink yourself to death than die from terrorism.

Wikipedia notes that there were 32,367 automobile accidents in 2011, which means that you are 1,904 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack. As CNN reporter Fareed Zakaria writes this week:

Since 9/11, foreign-inspired terrorism has claimed about two dozen lives in the United States. (Meanwhile, more than 100,000 have been killed in gun homicides and more than 400,000 in motor-vehicle accidents.)

According to a 2011 CDC report, poisoning from prescription drugs is even more likely to kill you than a car crash. Indeed, the CDC stated in 2011 that – in the majority of states – your prescription meds are more likely to kill you than any other source of injury. So your meds are thousands of times more likely to kill you than Al Qaeda.

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Statistics only matter to the people reading the statistics. They only matter to the actuaries who wager dollars with each other based on actuarial tables in some kind of ghoulish dead-pool. Who cares what you're likely to die of statistically? The only thing that matters is what actually kills you. If it's a heart attack or cancer, okay—yes that sucks—but see that's the luck of the draw. Likewise nobody likes losing at cards but all we can do is play the hand we're dealt. Except when there's a dirty stinking cheater sitting at the table. All you can do then is pin his dirty sneaky hand to the table with a steak-knife and grin while the blood and the aces pour out of his sleeve.

You ask why it's so awful to have Americans killed by terrorist attacks—why we make such a monumentally big deal out of them—when so many more Americans drop dead from everything else? It's because terrorism isn't just a violation of the law. It's not just a few deaths. From the person killed, to the family left bereaved, to the community left reeling, to the nation left in terror, it isn't just an accident. It isn't just a murder. It isn't just senseless violence. We've come a long way from the days we spent hiding in some hole while fiercer predators ruled the world. Terrorism hits us at the root of our pride, at the base of our ego, at our position on the top of the food chain. It hits us right in our humanity. We humans don't like being hunted as if we were still prey. It evokes a righteous fury all out of proportion to some statistical body count.

So what if we're more likely to die of cancer? So what? A family who has lost a loved one to cancer isn't afraid to leave their homes. A person who's watched in horror while EMTs try to save his friend during a heart attack doesn't fear going to the mall or the ballgame...or the marathon! The purpose of terrorism isn't just to kill Americans. It's to make us afraid. Its purpose is to put a big dirty boot on our necks and leave it there over the days and weeks and years while we wait and wait and wait in horrified anticipation...for the day when finally all the weight will come crushing down.

Herd animals quickly forget. When one of their number is culled it seldom registers. Life for them is eating grass and leaves and running from danger and then forgetting. People don't forget. We remember. We learn from our mistakes. We learn to identify our enemy. And once he's identified he's dead meat. He can run but he can't hide.

George Washington or whoever you are, don't you dare preach statistics at me! Tell it to the victims. Tell it to their families. Tell it to their friends. Tell it to their community. Tell it to every American who now has to worry about inimical predators in addition to cholesterol and second-hand smoke. Finally, I don't know where the chances fall on your statistical wheel-of-fortune, but if you choked to death on a turd-sandwich you might not appreciate your sudden status as statistically highly improbable, but I bet somewhere somebody up in heaven would understand the cosmic irony.

I'm dubious

If you’re mixing up a cocktail and worried about how drunk you’ll feel after finishing it, you might be closely measuring the amount of liquor that you pour in. But recent research suggests that your choice of mixer—whether regular soda or diet—plays a key role in determining how that alcohol affects your body.

A new study, published by Cecile Marczinski and Amy Stamates of Northern Kentucky University in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research (ACER), indicates that drinking diet soda with liquor causes breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) to rise more quickly than if the exact same amount of alcohol was mixed with regular soda instead. Among the 16 participants who were tested as part of the experiment, those who’d been given diet soda as a mixer had their BrAC peak at levels 18% higher than those whose drink was mixed with regular soda.

The theory that the researchers proposed to explain this heretofore unknown alcohol-magnification-effect was that the human body treated the sugar in the regular soda as food and therefore slowed down the absorption process while allowing the diet soda to flow through unimpeded. Well, they always tell you to eat something before you start drinking so perhaps they have something there. Nevertheless, I'm dubious. You'd think they'd have used plain water to test their hypothesis but there's no evidence that they did so. Is it possible that something more interesting is going on? Is the alcohol and the aspartame in the diet Squirt reacting somehow with the acid in the stomach? Something's going on here and at first glance it seems to be something fairly major.

A drinker who regularly drinks a couple of bourbon and Cokes when out with his friends and never experiences any noticeable impairment while driving, will suddenly be DUI if he decides to go on a diet. I'd say this was major; wouldn't you? Unfortunately however, the study referenced above only had 16 subjects and there's no mention at all of a control group. I don't have access to the full study's details so I'm unaware what if any constraints they put in place to maintain ceteris paribus in the study. Were the experimental subjects each instructed to eat or perhaps not to eat for some predetermined period of time before the commencement of the study? An eighteen percent difference in BAC is massive. Imagine running 18% faster or losing 18% of your weight or getting 18% better gas mileage! The other thing this study is to me, is horrifying. What's going on here? If aspartame increases alcoholic absorption by 18% what might some other brand new-and-improved artificial ingredient do to us? I'm curious. You'd think they would have tested these artificial sweeteners with a variety of foods and drinks, including alcohol before putting them in practically everything.

What about you? Is this good news, bad news, or just news? Will it make you drink less, switch drinks, or happily get more for your money? My favorite drink—and believe me I've tried 'em all—is my own concoction. It's a jigger of vodka, three ounces of orange juice and six ounces of diet Mountain Dew. It's a cross between a screw-driver and a dew-driver, and it's far better than either one. It's also fairly low calorie. Today I found out it's also exceptionally efficient as in a little dab'll dew ya.

Wrapping things up

You only get so many meals so you should think of food as a treat and not a chore. It's been my experience that everyone has different tastes and that often people will try to get you to eat things that are dull, bland, or perhaps even disgusting. Many times they'll explain that this or that food is a delicacy and highly prized by this or that nationality, group, clique, or food critic. Maybe it is but you won't find me eating something that's disgusting just because Gordon Ramsay says it's a delicacy. No mollusks, larvae or roe for this fella. You can keep your funguses and moldy cheese as well. Cottage cheese, turnip greens, liver, Brussels sprouts? If it's gross I won't eat it just so you'll think I'm sophisticated.

Wraps are my new favorite. Flour or corn tortillas stuffed with tasty and spicy food of one kind or another are the most common wraps but nowadays they're putting just about anything in them. A traditional tex-mex burrito is composed of seasoned ground beef, cheddar cheese, chopped tomato and onion, salsa, and sour cream. You can wrap regular sandwich meat like turkey or ham up in a tortilla with lettuce and cheese for something quick, filling, and fairly low-calorie. My wife gave me a recipe that she got from her Cuban friend that's truly special. Pan-fry strips of pork loin in olive oil and when cooked combine them with chopped tomato cucumber and onion. Serve on fried corn tortillas, but don't forget to drizzle on some lime juice before rolling these incredible little wraps up. Muy delicioso! My personal favorite which I concocted myself from the best of all things is this: a large flour tortilla warmed in the oven or microwave, some cream cheese spread thin, strips of rare steak, melted cheddar cheese, a strip or two of crispy bacon and finally a liberal helping of jalapeno peppers to set it all off. It is sublime.

On the subject of wrapping things up, I just finished A Memory of Light. It was the thirteenth and final novel in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. It was exquisite as Thom Merrilin says, but more than that. The first book in this series was published 23 years ago in 1990 and I've been a true fanatic ever since I turned the first page. You only get to read so many books, so if your book is dry and tedious and you've scheduled a certain quota of pages to trudge through today, I wonder why you're doing it?

With so many things... food, the arts, entertainment, and politics, people wrap themselves up in the expectations of others. Whether it's that NYT bestseller with all the excitement of drying paint, or that popular political talking-point that's antithetical to your religion, or perhaps oozing slime mold that some cook found under a rock and put on your dinner plate, if other people claim that everyone thinks that something is great we often either change our perception or sometimes only pretend to. This is the Emperor with no clothes paradigm. What the world needs is more people telling other people that stuff sucks regardless of how popular it is. Here are two examples of stuff that sucks:

1. Ogden Nash
   A Caution To Everybody
   Consider the auk;
   Becoming extinct because he forgot how to fly, and could only walk.
   Consider man, who may well become extinct
   Because he forgot how to walk and learned how to fly before he thinked.
   

2. 
   Picasso