alec

Damn you Onion:

Local resident Alan Bower’s particular brand of sardonic, no-holds-barred commentary about everything around him has firmly established the 31-year-old policy writer as an absolutely terrible person who is always ready to crack a joke, sources reported Monday….

Other acquaintances indicated that shooting blistering one-liners at any person he comes in contact with is just one of the ways in which Bower can always be counted on to ruin a good time. Longtime friend Stephen Rosenthal said that dogs, infants, films, and even inanimate objects are never safe from Bower’s hilarious assessments.

“Trust me, nothing’s sacred to Alan,” Rosenthal said. “I remember one time he came to my 6-year-old son’s T-ball game, and he gave it the same type of relentless send-up that he would give to a bad movie or a Vespa scooter. There’s just no holding him back.”

Added Rosenthal, “He’s really, really funny.”

Welp, I’ve been called out appropriately. I’ll go die in a hole now.

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There was no way out
the only way out was to give in

Ergo, The Metric concert last night was good [Chris Farley voice]

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Last night, I managed to get banned from Gawker for what I thought was a pretty simple comment on their nefariously titled post Young Jews Are Not A Fan of Obama. The post features a video in downtown Jerusalem after Barack Obama’s speech, where American Jews and Israelis share their reflection on Obama and his Middle East policy. These include “Fuck that nigger, white power!” and the kind of angry, racist sentiment that could only come from years of cultural brainwashing. I left what I thought was a relatively simple observation about the inherent hypocrisy in the displayed sentiments:

“The funny thing about these people is they have no problem invoking the Holocaust, though the people [Palestinians] a few miles across the security barrier have suffered a 60 year campaign of ethnic cleansing specifically because they aren’t Jewish.”

If anyone there had managed to watch the video that was in the middle of the post, some young Israeli/American Jew starts going off on how his grandmother was in Auschwitz, and therefore the Arabs can burn in hell (a theme repeated over the course of the video). Does no one see the obvious contradiction in some over-privileged brat referencing the Holocaust as a justification for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians? Or does this make me a raging anti-Semite?

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Aw snaps, I’m moving back up to NYC [UWS, no Brooklyn yet, unfortunately]. If any of you actually read this blog (doubtful), we will be hosting several PBH meetups this summer, and by meetups, I mean you can find us in Central Park passed out at 2 PM after drinking 40′s.

In case there is any confusion, you can identify us by the group of mid-20′s white males that will be groping each other to this song:

Coldplay’s Viva La Vida has been viewed 46,214,101 times on YouTube.

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I don’t know who in their right mind picked the Cavs to win the championships this year. Yes, they won 66 games in the regular season, but have you seen the players Lebron plays with? Exhibit A:

Do you see this guy? This guy looks like Sideshow Bob mated with Big Bird and plopped out a kid that couldn’t hit a layup. The Cavs play this guy for 30+ minutes a game. Repeat, 30 minutes a game. They are fucking doomed.

Also see: Ben Wallace, that tall white guy who is probably in his mid-40′s, and Wally Szczerbiak.

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If you visited Reddit yesterday (and at some points today), the first post that greeted you was:

That links to a post by me entitled “What Exactly Has “Changed” Under Obama? The Rich Get Bailouts, Torture Goes Unprosecuted, AIPAC Decides The Fate Of Iran, and Democrats Are Still Silent Accomplices In Bush-Era War Crimes“. Followed by the posters comments on the story, it essentially implicates me and ProseBeforeHos as being mere operatives in a grander ploy by Republicans to turn social media sites against Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

First, I would like to address the accusation in itself: Under no circumstances would I ever take money from the Republican party. I spent my seventeenth year on this planet working on Ralph Naders 2000 Presidential campaign. I spent 2004 and 2006 working for state Green Party’s (Virginia and Georgia, respectively). I’m not going to go into greater detail about my personal history or beliefs, but I am the farthest thing from a conservative. I do not have any sympathy, desire to work with, or would ever take cash to either manipulate a social media site, to promote a Republican or conservative agenda, or do anything that undermines the integrity of this website. I don’t hold many things sacred, but the purity and honesty in which I pursue things is one of them.

Secondly, yes, the title was hyperbolic. But, I stand by the assertions I made. I don’t think it is a big deal Nancy Pelosi was possibly consulted about torture techniques. What I do think is a big deal is Nancy Pelosi and Co. spending 6 years cheering on the worst offenses of George Bush’s administration. And at the center of the torture debate, the Democrats are scared to death, because they are implicit accomplices in Bush’s war crimes by not doing a damn thing to stop them while they occurred.

Thirdly, the incident revealed one sad aspect of the social networking frenzy: it breeds the worst kind of self-obsession and bloated sense of collective ego I have witnessed online. At most, Digg and Reddit garner a couple hundred thousand unique visitors a day. Do you really think that, in the grand scheme of things, the social networking sites are such a great democratic movement? Do you really think that you are so important as to warrant a grand conspiracy to influence your opinions? The answer is no to both questions, and we’d all be a lot better off if you got over yourselves.

Love always,
Alec

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