LIONEL PODCAST: The Exordium. The First of 2013. The First of Many. I Hope.

Posted by on January 1, 2013 No comments

The exordium. 2013 is the first year since 1987 to have four different numbers. And what does this mean? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And next year will also have four different numbers again as will the next. Look, it’s called numerology. Translation: the desire to make order and uniqueness out of everything and nothing. Locus of control. Pathetic grasping at control straws. Harmless. But amazingly attractive as an observation.

New “studio.” The acoustics are different. Echoed. Cavernous. New studio. New recording situs. And the horrors of moving and relocation. It’s all here, my dear friend. A peroration of the year, the microscopic analysis of the evident and the not so evident. Is this making any sense?

The latest reflection of death. Thanatology as poetry. I love this expression and phrase. It’s beautiful. It reflects the unfair dismissal of death as some kind of cosmic mistake. An oops, an error; yet it lauds life. Now, I can certainly see the immediate advantages of life versus nonexistence but the sentiment is beautiful. Death is the awakening from the dream of life. The inevitable. The necessary. The programmed and required. Apoptosis. Programmed death. Dig it.

Hail, television! “What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.” (Salvador Dali)

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LIONEL PODCAST: The Xmas We Get We Deserve

Posted by on December 23, 2012 No comments

Void where prohibited. The critical thinking abandonment that was Newtown is nowhere near cresting. It’s devolved into a gun debate as usual. That’s like arguing the effects of violent video games on kids by advocating TV or game or flat screen or computer control. Let’s go for the actual instrument that delivers the problem or message not the cause. It’s the same insanity we employed when we tried to make drugs illegal. If you avoid or ignore underlying causation the instrumentality of the problem is a literal and actual waste of time. Critical thinking is dead. It’s been replaced with polemics, sophistry and casuistry of the first order. Alas.

The most brilliant Xmas song ever. Ever! It’s more than just about Xmas or Christmas. It’s about disillusionment. Of being lied to for your own good. Like your government does. Daily. Sinfield’s lyrics are perfect as usual. It defines my drive. Never to believe anything as presented. We’re awash in myth. There’s no truth, no absolute. It’s always a version of a perspective someone’s created to deceive you. Never believe anything until it’s officially denied.

But let me remind you: Santa is real.

And now a word from our sponsor. Enjoy something silly today.

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LIONEL PODCAST: The Newton Post-Tragedy Analysis (Part II)

Posted by on December 16, 2012 No comments

The analysis continues. The horror knows no end. And neither does the most ridiculous of analysis that anyone could imagine. Casuistry and sophistry as an art form. But in the meantime, it’s critical that all attention be directed towards the treatment of the surviving children and their families followed by a serious discussion on how to secure schools. The school is now the magnet of the crazed killer. It’s the epicenter.

Myriad issues. Chronicled infra. The world goes on. Once we get past the paralysis.

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LIONEL PODCAST: The Brutal Truth About A Brutal Mass Murder (Listener Discretion Advised)

Posted by on December 15, 2012 No comments

Brutal reality. This horror doesn’t require my review to explain it. It’s gut-wrenching. It makes me sick. Psychically. Like I’ve been punched. The little girl, fifth from the right. Her face. She’s petrified. It’s a howl. Look how they try to maintain order. Order amidst chaos. Hands on shoulders. March in order. Order? What order? Imagine in her little, simple, kid’s (once) safe world to be thrust into a horror that’s inconceivable to even the most experienced combat vet. And she’s a baby. An innocent child (not after this) who will be forever scarred, branded, contaminated. Her sense of safety gone. She’ll most certainly suffer nightmares. PTSD. She’ll never feel safe. Ever. Truly safe. Loud noises will scare her. Fourth of July. Firecrackers. That sound will forever have a new meaning. She’ll need counseling. Plenty. Watch her grades drop. Watch for subtle clues as to problems. And it makes no sense. Then she learns of her friends who were killed. Why? Why not me? The simplest of survivor’s guilt. The most frequent question of the child: Why? There’s no answer this time. Certainly not from me.

And in the meantime. The left and right. Gun rights, gun control. MSDNC, Faux News. Sophistry as a spectator sport. Assault weapons. The media, video games. Security. Drugs and SSRIs. Mental illness. Notice. Second Amendment follies. A singular diarrhea spray of chat blather. Without surcease. Without reason.

On a lighter note. Everything’s lighter compared to this horror.

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LIONEL PODCAST: The Fishy Case of the “Suicide” of Jacintha Saldanha Explained

Posted by on December 9, 2012 No comments

What suicide? Who ever mentioned suicide. What evidence is there? It’s the most incredible story ever. Jacintha (Jess) is supposed to have committed suicide over erroneously transferring a call, as an operator would?! This makes no sense. She was a mother of two, respected and loved by coworkers. Seemingly rational. Not blamed or singled out for any discipline. If anyone was “negligent,” it would have been the actual nurse who gave out Kate’s information. Or the initial switchboard operator who took the call. The whole proposition is absurd. Imagine this woman refusing to put a call through. Was she supposed to vet the callers’ bona fides. It’s totally absurd no matter how you look at it. And stinks to high heaven.

Suicide isn’t painless. It’s becoming all too expected and rational and natural and somehow justified for any reaction. Now the “presenters” — I love that term — are under suicide watch. Puh-leeze.

Videos. Oh, yeah. I almost forgot.

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LIONEL PODCAST: A Pair of Dimes. A (Left-Right) Paradigm. Either Way, You Lose.

Posted by on December 3, 2012 No comments

How true, Peter. How true. You know, no matter how many times I say this I get the same reaction from so many: What the hell is the left-right paradigm? And who wants to hear that? Especially when the MSM push the canard that we’ve real, palpable differences. Ha! I know. I’m the Grinch that stole the elections. Or at least the perception of their legitimacy.

Boob Costas is a causation Boeotian. Boob submits that Jovan Belcher killed his wife and himself because of a gun. And that gun laws would have stopped the horror. Tougher gun laws. Boob. Please. Enough. Go home. Just go home. Herein I set Boob straight.

Video. Did you say “video”? Take a look. It’s free. For now.

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LIONEL PODCAST: A Cringe Well-Deserved and Well-Placed

Posted by on November 28, 2012 No comments

When the going gets weird … . The point has been made. The great distractor. The great obfuscator.

Howard Beale — and there was a Howard Beale, trust me — said it limpidly in Network.

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

Video. Video. Video.

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LIONEL PODCAST: Never Trust. OK, Trust. But Not Often. Sit Down. Trust Me.

Posted by on November 26, 2012 No comments

PARENTAL ADVISORY: This is a Thanksgiving, post-Thanksgiving pastiche. We’re talking mondo.

History would be a wonderful thing if only it were true. ​That Leo Tolstoy was on to something.Look at current history. How many folks think that Hopey is something he isn’t. He’s Dubya. That’s the truth but some folks’ reality won’t allow that perspective.

Could we have an example as to myth, please? I’d be delighted. Here’s a god one. Did Chris Columbus do what they said he did? Look, virtually everything you think you know about Columbus is a myth. Here’s a favorite.

Columbus set out to prove the world was round.

If he did, he was about 2,000 years too late. Ancient Greek mathematicians had already proven that the Earth was round, not flat. Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C.E. was one of the originators of the idea. Aristotle in the fourth century B.C.E. provided the physical evidence, such as the shadow of the Earth on the moon and the curvature of the Earth known by all sailors approaching land. And by the third century B.C.E., Eratosthenes determined the Earth’s shape and circumference using basic geometry. In the second century C.E., Claudius Ptolemy wrote the “Almagest,” the mathematical and astronomical treatise on planetary shapes and motions, describing the spherical Earth. This text was well known throughout educated Europe in Columbus’ time. [Related: Earth Is Flat in Many People's Minds]

Columbus, a self-taught man, greatly underestimated the Earth’s circumference. He also thought Europe was wider than it actually was and that Japan was farther from the coast of China than it really was. For these reasons, he figured he could reach Asia by going west, a concept that most of educated Europe at the time thought was daft — not because the Earth was flat, but because Columbus’ math was so wrong. Columbus, in effect, got lucky by bumping into land that, of course, wasn’t Asia.

The Columbus flat-earth myth perhaps originated with Washington Irving’s 1828 biography of Columbus; there’s no mention of this before that. His crew wasn’t nervous about falling off the Earth.

There’s a reason you hate certain people. I know hate’s a strong word. So is syphilis. But enough about Columbus.

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LIONEL PODCAST: Awash in Calumny the Constitutionalists Soldier On

Posted by on November 19, 2012 No comments

Behold our priorities. And marvel at the set-up. Think about it. The guy’s toast over ____ (your favorite pudendal reference here). I mean it’s beautiful. And I hope you saw Dr. Paul’s valedictory to Congress. ‘Twas stellar, insightful, elegant. The gravamen of his indictment was referring to them as psychopathic authoritarians. How beautiful is that? Being an American has never been more fun.

Did someone say “video”? Well, too bad.

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LIONEL PODCAST: Dave’s Honeypot, Benghazi Diverted, P-tards That Hoist & Goober Prompterbot Stares Narcotized

Posted by on November 12, 2012 No comments

Not buying it. Oh, sure, that he’s an idiot. Fine. I know that. But the timing?! Come on, Sparky. Wake up. Look this is the issue. This is where the fighters are. Look, look at the map. This is the issue not Petraeus, though he’s a schmuck and his ouster is certainly warranted. But be not diverted. Look, this is Cyrenaica. Specifically the Benghazi-Darnah-Tobruk corridor. This is al Qaeda. These are the rebels. This is where they originate. That’s the issue! But it would only make sense to provide a framed analysis there. But that would take time and effort and knowledge. Goober Prompterbot reporting for duty!

I sound like a broken record. No, I am a broken record. I’ve preached this since the Ides of March in 2011. As has the world.

Please review this most thorough compendium of the subject. It’s truly remarkable and worth perusing.

The Hindustan Times reported last year:

“There is no question that al Qaeda’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition,” Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer and a leading expert on terrorism, told Hindustan Times.

It has always been Qaddafi’s biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi.

Now do you see? Please nod. Hello? Anyone in there?

Tada! And now, something that might re-inspire a faith in the mainstream media. Prithee.

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