Monday, December 5, 2011

The Golden Age

Andrew Klavan:
O’Sullivan’s Law says, in effect, that any organization that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time. So it is with cultures too, I believe. And how could it be otherwise? All leftism is, really, is a form of decay, and all things made by man decay as time goes by.
That is an interesting law. Klavan's link leads to the Wikipedia, and not to an article outlining the actual law. It turns out that it doesn't say anything "in effect" but instead says it:
All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.
That is a warm puppy of a law for those who wait wait wait for the children to walk onto their lawns.

Oh yeah, also NO WAY WAS J. EDGAR HOOVER A FAG.




34 comments:

Smut Clyde said...

This is why it is constantly necessary to found new right-wing organisations, despite the clash between novelty and conservatism. The old ones keep succumbing to the Lure of the Left.

Substance McGravitas said...

The thing is all the other organizations slowly moved leftward so you wind up starting from the position that you can't sell people. RIP OFF.

Smut Clyde said...

That is an interesting law.
More could be said about the smug prattishness of O'Sullivan, who is not content to state his generalisation, but believes it to be a dictum that future generations will revere; not trusting them to elevate it to the level of a Law, he calls it that himself.

wiley said...

I'm not really blogwhoring here, I'm genuinely curious if any of you have an idea what this mess is

http://wileywitch.com/2011/uncategorized/oy/

I'm assuming it's some sort of dog, but it may actually be a franken-thing that was assembled from various bits of road kill then animated with a bolt of lightening,in a castle, on top of a huge hill, by a mad scientist.

Smut Clyde said...

A few days ago I saw that animal and was inspired to send an e-mail to the e-address somewhere on your blog. It's an Australian Blue-heeler and yes, they are supposed to look like that.
They're bred as sheep-dogs, and sheep are not noted for being particularly fast on the uptake, so blue-heelers are also supposed to bark. A lot. Until the sheep go in the right direction.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

He/she/it/dog is funny looking!
~

Substance McGravitas said...

Y'see this is what them comment thingies are good for.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

yeah. You can also start AMAZING arguments in them.

Dr.KennethNoisewater said...

Yeah, you actually have many interesting things on your blog I'd like to comment on..but I can't. I know you're kind of ADD and post a lot, but remember you're under no obligation to answer every comment that people put up. Plus, you can just have an "I'll get to you when I get to you" policy. I try to answer a lot of my comments, but not everyone is as conversational. I don't take that personally and I don't think anyone else does either.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

o blue-heelers are also supposed to bark. A lot. Until the sheep go in the right direction.

I think America could use A LOT of these dogs.

We'll start by using them to replace all our journalists.

Hamish Mack said...

AHAHAHAHA, look at the book advertised above Klavan's droolings.
So far I can see ripp off ideas from harry Potter and the cover is Star Wars.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

:All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.

Nah, it just means that right-wingers are all purity trolls who can't allow any hint of nuance or dissention to intrude into their closed minds.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Hey, is there a corollary to O'Sullivan's law that states that all ideas on the right come to be seen as socialist?

Cap and Trade
Individual Health Insurance Mandates

Smut Clyde said...

So a policy of non-gay-oppression is simultaneously a feature of the left wing and the libertarian-right?
I am confuzzled again.

Substance McGravitas said...

Confusinger and confusinger. One interesting thing about John O'Sullivan is how your standard British Tory maniac comes to live in Decatur Alabama.

And just to free-associate like a good conspiracy theorist, Decatur's Wikipedia page seems to be somewhat shy of historical events.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Hey, is there a corollary to O'Sullivan's law that states that all ideas on the right come to be seen as socialist?

At this point, any ideas that result in government actually accomplishing something -anything!- are seen as left-wing.

Let's call that Zombie's Maxim.

Dr.KennethNoisewater said...

Zombie's Maxim is one of those douchey magazines filled with douchey advice on how to nail hot zombie wimmin.


As to the bald guy, he doesn't seem that gay-friendly to me.

Also, apparently he's a mind-reader, because he can't just take it at face-value that the movie reviewer genuinely saw merit in the film. IT'S ALL PART OF THE GAY AGENDA.

So gay-friendly, this guy.

Although the term "screaming queenery" makes me think he may be more than gay "friendly."

J— said...

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
All groups become left wing as they grow old

fish said...

I'm assuming it's some sort of dog,

I want to know how it swallowed a whole watermelon.

wiley said...

I'm working on two commenting forums. It should be up in a week or two. Clouds just got back from his first vacation EVER. He spent time with his step-bro in Portland. He's got cool pictures and saw waterfalls and, and, and...

But we haven't even activated the mailbox yet. My categories are gelling as I go along and I'm getting ready to migrate to Linux. I've already told Microsoft to kiss my ass.

Wiley's Speakeasy is going to be a place to chit chat about whatever. I'll let you know when my mailbox is working and would love to hear your suggestions for the form of that forum and for coffee and cigarettes an internet cafe which I want to be a forum for instant messaging and twittering.

I also want places on both forums where people can hang whatever they want on the "walls" so to speak, or write graffiti directly on the walls; so we're going to have our work cut out for us. But clouds is good.

I've already downloaded a widget that would allow anyone I WANT to upload material on my website(not just any random guy like D____s--- the troll whose name we will not speak.

Actually, if there is a way everyone can upload their mini-me
in the cafe and speakeasy we could seriously get way more expressive than just making comments with text.

I also want to work with voice a lot for quite a few things. Clouds has a digital recorder and I'd like for everyone to make a set of animal noises, for instance, as worthy retorts to various kinds of troll "logic" and such and we can stick them in a library for everyone to use and link to and embed. Sampling could really enrich that too-- Clouds just did his impersonation of Killer the Buzzard. That's a retort!

I want people to show their stuff and talk about themselves at length more than just to make comments. It's an "artists' circle" and all you sadlynaughts be artists.

I want to go deep, not wide. Am I making sense? The internet is only using a teeny portion of its brain, and I think all of us together can move way beyond post, comment, comment, comment NEW THREAD...

Substance McGravitas said...

It makes sense to want to have a place like that, but getting the contributions can be hard as people already have a bunch of outlets for their art and such. Some of the silly things I do here, for instance, are dependent on a crappy bit of drag-and-drop code, or knowing the width in pixels of the space I have to deal with so I can layer things. Newt here, for instance, wouldn't work on another site unless the spacing was exactly right and the drag-and-drop script (which is actually pretty trivial to install) was present. And if I went out of my way to make something crazy, I'd probably want it to be here. Mind you I do have a mess of stray photos that might go somewhere.

The reason I wanted you to have a website was to read what you have to write, and not THE SAME TIRESOME PEOPLE WHO ARE HERE DAY IN AND DAY OUT OH THE MISERY AND MY FEET HURT.

I assume you've seen things like Fark or Something Awful in which the right to post pictures gets you some threads that are unbelievably amusing.

Oekaki sites might be along the line you're considering, and it seems to me that there must be programming environments you can easily heist that'd let you import pics and mess with them in a way that was particular to the site itself...so I think what I complained about in make-your-own-art websites has probably been defeated by shit I thought was old hat years ago. Even if it's primitive a site with its own art toolkit built in is attractive for noodlers.

Look at this site. On-the-fly trading is a great concept, but so much of what's there is shit. Mind you I would never have made this sad monster without it.

Troll defeating is not really that big a deal for most sites; there's uprating or downrating or you just let people be mods and have deletion powers or whatever, and the troll has to get something out of it. Dennis at Sadly, No! gets attention and the hosts are mostly absent; it's not that big a deal if there are enough empowered people around.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

ZOMBIES ARE NOT TROLLS.

I can't stress that enough.

wiley said...

I will re-read what you said, Substance and take it under consideration. Of one thing I am certain--- I don't want to deal with comments RIGHT NOW. I am going through every bit of digital property I own, working on my own streamlined classification/filing system, learning Linux, and MORE. I, being adhd and more acronymonious must insist that I cut out all chatter until my strategy and logistics have gelled.

Since you guys think it's important, I probably will enable comments on posts after I finish migrating.

As far as the amount of traffic goes, I'm not concerned about it. My domain is literally literally about getting my life in order and documenting all my work and storing it in safe places so that five or ten years from now I'll have evidence that I haven't been sitting around with my thumb up my ass for the better part of this century.

AND THIS IS JUST THE KIND OF STUFF I SHOULD WRITE ON MY blog.

I'm learning a whole lot right now.

wiley said...

Awwww. Look at the wittle, bloody zombie snowmen! Cu-ute.

J— said...

and not THE SAME TIRESOME PEOPLE WHO ARE HERE DAY IN AND DAY OUT

Shan't be back.

Substance McGravitas said...

My domain is literally literally about getting my life in order and documenting all my work and storing it in safe places so that five or ten years from now I'll have evidence that I haven't been sitting around with my thumb up my ass for the better part of this century.

That's a better project than my idea for this place, which was supposed to be where I'd collate the stuff I was thinking about elsewhere on the web. It turned out, very quickly, that it was just impossible to do it in the way I thought I could and it became something else. It made me think about different stuff and make different stuff, and a big part of that has been the people who pay attention. They may not know it, but they seem to really want manipulations of a naked guy with his ass open, and it's not my thing but I'm all about public service.

wiley said...

I'll never get that little bit of innocence back, will I/

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

but they seem to really want manipulations of a naked guy with his ass open, ...

It's part of your brand.

fish said...

manipulations of a naked guy with his ass open

Too long for a band name, not long enough for the title of a scientific article.

M. Bouffant said...

You're overthinking.

And protesting too much (both sides doing it):

They may not know it, but they seem to really want manipulations of a naked guy with his ass open, and it's not my thing but I'm all about public service.

Substance McGravitas said...

Nonsense. You know the zombie wants poop, and you provide!

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Obviously, I am able to provide my own poop.

Smut Clyde said...

Too long for a band name, not long enough for the title of a scientific article.

Just right for one's memoirs!

J— said...

Manipulations of a Naked Guy with his Ass Open

MANGAO rocks!