Cynical Proverbs 8:29

"I'm colorblind.

No, you're just blind!

"Hey, that's unfair."

What the hell? Oh hi Colorblind Guy

"But this is a good platitude. Let me explain."

Ugh! Ok, fine. Go ahead and clarify your position.

"All I meant was that the world would be better it were a mass of bland boring indistinguishable, depressing gray. Oh if only we can make the earth into the slice of heaven that is the Neutral Planet"

Do you really believe that?

"I neither confirm or deny it."

Cynical Proverbs 8:22

"Crime doesn't pay!"

Unless of course you're part of the for-profit prison industry. (Someone should really do something about that. Why, speak of the devil...)

Because "white-on-white" crime doesn't exist?

This is going to be another brief post here (Geez! I seem to be offering more "quickies" than Al Bundy, lately. But this time someone else is going to do the heavy lifting. This piece from Daily Kos is such a brilliant deconstruction of the odious "Black-on-black crime" talking point that pundits and concern trolls spew out whenever they need to paint blacks as pathological (it makes the "see, they're all thugs" counterargument stick whenever one of those "isolated incidences" that mysteriously results in a cop or an NRA vigilante "accidentally" killing an unarmed black person because their thuggish bikinis and gangsta cigarettes made them feel all "a'scared".) Seriously, read it! I'm jealous I didn't write about it first (although I have always loathed the phrase, as if white people never committed crimes against each other.) Let me just go all statistical on your asses by quote this from the linked entry :

Whites are 6 times as likely to be murdered by another white person as by a black person; and overall, the percentage of white Americans who will be murdered by a black offender in a given year is only 2/10,000ths of 1 percent (0.0002). This means that only 1 in every 500,000 white people will be murdered by a black person in a given year. Although the numbers of black-on-white homicides are higher than the reverse (447 to 218 in 2010), the 218 black victims of white murderers is actually a higher percentage of the black population interracially killed than the 447 white victims of black murderers as a percentage of the white population.In fact, any given black person is 2.75 times as likely to be murdered by a white person as any given white person is to be murdered by an African American.

If essays like this help get rid of the noxious dog whistle coda that is "Black-on black violence", then so much the better. That will be one less term used to dehumanize and deflect ("See they do it too!"). Good riddance.

The Cowardly Lion (Hunter)

Just a quickie here folks.

I'm sure many of you have already heard about some asshole dentist, who paid a whole bunch of money to hunt down and slaughter a popular Zimbabwean lion (even though, it honestly doesn't seem much like a "hunt" to me since the lion was, almost passively, led out of his holding to a killing ground awaiting his slaughter. It's more like a shooting gallery where there was only one target. This ain't Kraven's Last Hunt II, folks.) He's not exact.y real popular right now and is in fact in hiding from an angry public (yep, big bad hunter, that one.)

I know that the discrepancy in outrage been pointed out in other forums regarding how this incident seemed to inspire a huge outcry from the public, while the semi-weekly occurrence of black folk being killed or beaten by the police is greeted with an overpowering wave of indifference. That accusation has some basis to it, as the people have demonstrated a spirit of protest about Cecil the Lion that (aside from the #Blackfolksmatter crowd) hasn't quite come forth regarding African-Americans killed. (although, in an exciting "took-you-long-enough" plot twist, a recent poll suggests that white people are realizing that maybe, just maybe there might be a problem with the way minorities are treated in society.) However I would suggest a larger perspective be taking with this issue, since the thought process is drawn from the same well.: the need to totes a supposed superiority through dominance. As I joked about when an equally repulsive millionaire murdered a rhino:

 He's only doing this because the commie pinko libs won't let the 1% hunt the poorz like they REALLY want to.

Update: Apparently it looks like Digby also sees a connection of Cecil the Lion being "practice" for bigger and better game:

Hopefully, he’s going to sit there and say, ‘When I become elected president, what we’re going to do is we’re going to make the border a vacation spot, it’s going to cost you $25 for a permit, and then you get $50 for every confirmed kill,’ ” said Jim Sherota, 53, who works for a landscaping company. “That’d be one nice thing.”

Kind of like killing Cecil the Lion only a lot closer and cheaper

And kids be ready to trade in your copies of Grand Theft Auto because these people even had the foresight to create the hottest video game sensation since Ride to Hell: Retribution crashed (and burned) into your local game shop:

The lesson. Don't dismiss psychopaths simply because of who they are targeting.

Cynical Proverbs 8:14

"If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen"

 Or at least covers your second degree burns with ketchup, you pussy! (Of course turning down the burners to a temperature lower than "inferno" is not an option. The problem is you not putting up with blistering skin and heat stroke like a troopers, you roasting whiner!)

Cynical Proverbs 8:07

"Everything happens for a reason"

And often that reason is, "people feel like being shitty, today!" (Oh I'm sorry did you want a good reason?)

Cynical Proverbs 8:01

"Stop and smell the roses."

 I would comment on this one but we already got deep introspective musing on this very subject by our nation's brattiest philosopher and his pseudo-existing tiger. So deconstruct away, Bill Watterson: