Emptybottle.org

I’ll have more to say when I sober up, but for now, a blast from the past.
You f–kers.

I said this over there.
Hindsight will show how much this (and all the other American campaign related program activities on the internets) have made an impact on the vote for World Leader #1 this year, but I have no doubt that whatever happens next week (and probably in the weeks following, if it’s anything like 2000), that if the elections aren’t cancelled in 2008, the power of freed-up culture, rumours on the internets, the resurgence of an engaged wired citizenry and the decline of old media and yes, even the self-obsessed wankery of the blogotroposphere are going to kick some political ass.
Gives me hope.
For the moment, though, spread the word, link the link, and take those bastards in the White House down.
Update : When asked for his opinion about these rumours on the internets, Mr Bush had this response for the American people.

A few times in my life, I’ve felt the Fear. When terror — long drawn-out exhausting fear — works itself to such a pitch inside you that you end up punching right through it, and a calm resignation takes over. You understand at a time like that that there’s absolutely nothing you can think of doing that might change the flow, to alter events in any way, and you become an observer. Whether it’s the cornered herbivore going limp as the predator’s teeth close around its throat or a detached zen calm is a matter of debate. Either way, it’s an instructive place to sit, in the eye of the storm, wrapped in a mental silence, utterly still.
I feel that way at the moment with regard to the American election. As anyone who’s ever subjected themselves to the Comedy Ranting of the wonderchicken is amply aware, I’ve made clear my feelings about the criminal scum who’ve left their snail tracks of glistening goo all over the remnants of a once-great nation. Although I’ve been accused of trying to sway people with my screeds and polemics, that has never been the case, at least not consciously. I was just playing. Writing for me is a ludic thing. I don’t want to change your mind, I just enjoy speaking mine, and playing with words while I do it. Maybe even having a conversation.
The rage, of course, was always genuine. It still is. But the fire’s banked at the moment. Not a flame to be seen, even if the carbon-black belly of the stove is glowing fiercely. It’s not about me, though.
It’s about you, my American friends. Much as I’ve castigated you as collectively stupid, hopelessly parochial, misguided and misled, lazy, fat and terrifyingly unaware of the great evils wrought in your name all around the world, well, I still love you. In the particular, if not the abstract. I was just poking fun. Serious jokes. You always hurt the ones you love, right?
Just like Jon Stewart, I want it both ways, you see. I want to be the funny monkey, and I want to tell hard truths. Serious jokes. I do believe it’s possible to have it both ways, and dangerously simpleminded to expect otherwise.
But this time, I’m going to speak plainly, from this terrified pocket of calm, not because it will make a difference to what’s going to happen, but because I would be betraying myself if I remained silent. We’re begging you, our American friends, our American enemies, our American taskmasters and landlords, our American occupiers and our American pimps, our American sisters and brothers, to do the right thing next week. We’re depending on you, all of us out here in the Outlands. We know you don’t give a flying f–k about us, really, all us furriners. We know you want what’s best for your country, your people, your families. You don’t want to hear our opinions about your politics. We understand that.
But do you remember when the whole world wept along with you and averred ‘We are all Americans‘ after that terrible day 3 years ago? It was true, then. It is hard, my friends, to find many who feel that way today.
Many of us believe that what’s best for America need not also be what’s worst for the rest of the world.
So please. Please. Vote next week. Think, read, put aside your tribal affiliations, and vote. I don’t even care who you vote for, because, much as I’ve abused you all in fun, I trust that most of you are good people, and that if more than the customary 40% 55% [thanks, Dan] or so of you do your duty as citizens and go to the polls, nothing can result but a landslide for the Other Guy.
I’m begging you. We’re all begging you. Do the right thing.

Anal rape of children is bad. This is a sentence that, in the normal course of things, one would think that it would be unnecessary to write. I’m pretty sure — much as I loathe humanity, most of the damn time — that the majority of humans on this planet, obsessed as they tend to be with their progeny, would agree with me that raping children is a bad thing. One of the worst things that you can do, they’d probably say, short of maybe genocide.
Or rather, cleansing. Ethnic cleansing, to wash away those pesky ethnic underarm stains that are so embarrassing in polite society.
‘Rape’s a part of war, though, stav!’ I hear you cry, as I cup quivering-with-rage hand to shell-like ear. ‘To the victor the spoils, and the orifices. The plunder, the glory! It’s part of our common human heritage! It’s tradition, damn it!’
Well, sure. But butt-f–king kids while their mothers look on? While videotaping it? I’m not sure that’s really in line with the ‘rape, loot and pillage’ modus operandi so loved and respected throughout human history. Pushing the envelope a little, that. It may not be specifically forbidden by the letter of Geneva Convention, for example, but I’m pretty sure it goes against the spirit of it.
Which is why the Bush administration spent so much time and effort trying to ensure that their troops would not be bound by international law, of course.
Because that’s what the Americans were doing, it seems, at least until they got caught.
Raping children. With Soldiers Gone Wild spring-break videography.
I wrote an deliberately, egregiously offensive piece called ‘Neocon Allegory‘ many months back, in which Dick Cheney anally rapes and murders an Iraqi boy. It was the most over-the-top offensive thing I could come up with, that little piece, after the unwelcome images of that tableau had gotten their claws into me, and I knew I had to write it down to get it out of my head. I wrote it down alright, and I’ve thought about deleting it many times since. I’m glad now that I didn’t.
How horrifying is it that the central metaphors of that post — the rape of children by Dick and George, the rape of two nations, of the whole f–king planet — would seem to have come true, in as literal a way as one could imagine in the worst mescaline-driven nightmare? How awful that the worst metaphorical flight of nasty invention I could come up with is now a reality in fact, and it’s being hidden by the powerful and ignored by the hypnotized?
Pretty awful. And they ask why I seem to hate America so. They keep asking.

If you’ve landed in the ‘bottle looking for some invective-laced wonderchicken perspective on the impeachment of Noh Moo Hyun here in Korea today, well, you’re outta luck, my friends. At least for the moment.
I will opine that the sh-t is quite possibly going to hit the fan, though. Will it be a tipping point, where the resentment and anger at how badly this country is governed by the wrinkly old chaebol rent-boys finally spills out of the confucian cup? I don’t know, and I’ve got beer to drink, but in the meantime you could do a lot worse than going here.

Interesting.

This hilariously unfair but nonetheless revealing image comes from the always amusing uggabugga :

Share and enjoy.

Here’s George Bush’s recent speech.
Here’s the same speech, with the following substitutions :

• “Marriage” becomes “whiteness“
• “the same gender” becomes “a brownish color“
• “the union of a man and a woman” or “the legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” or “a union of a man and woman as husband and wife” becomes “racially superior“
• “a husband and wife” becomes “white people“

Please note upfront that I am about as far from being a racist as one can get, and I am astonished that anyone could think that gay marriages are in any way a bad thing, for anyone. Bigotry in any form is repulsive. This thing is meant to shine a light on Mr Bush and his puppeteers, and that’s all.
I hope this little search-and-replace exercise helps put things in a historical context for you, dear reader. It did for me.

[Credit where due : I stole this idea from half of these people here (but I’m not going to tell you which half – ha!), via a certain not-to-be-mentioned kitty-loving community website, but I think I improved on it a bit.]
[Update : There are those who would protest (even though I’m not seriously equating them) that racial and sexual-orientation discrimination are apples and oranges. Perhaps, but they are more interrelated in American law than I had thought.