Sound Off

I'm gonna sound like a huge dick here for a few minutes -- and considering that I usually sound kind of like a dick but don't actually acknowledge it you can get an idea just how dickish I'm probably gonna be. You've been warned.

What with the backlash I've gotten over the last few days to my thoughts on marijuana legalization and the people who vociferously advocate for it -- making it a priority in their lives, basing their identity around it and hinging their vote on it at the exclusion of all else -- I figure now's as good a time as any to make clear my thoughts on Twitter. Hold on -- it'll make sense in a minute.

As usual, at lot of the reaction to the various pieces I've written lately has come by way of indignant tweets aimed in my direction, many of which I assume have been fired off in the hope of dragging me into a 140-character-at-a-time debate on the subject. I don't need to tell you that this is the way it works these days: You say something that somebody doesn't like; it catches the attention of a couple more people; they tell some friends or followers and the clouds suddenly light up and UFOs swarm down on top of you like in the final scenes of Close Encounters. No matter the subject, although particularly when it comes to politics, an opinion or two fired off via a blog post or otherwise published piece can immediately turn into a lengthy back-and-forth with people you've never met but who can't wait to tear your fucking head off in broken English because they have to keep it short in order to conform to Twitter's limited format.

Worst of all, there's generally a 99.9% chance that, since you took some time to formulate the views that you wrote out at length and the person pelting you with criticism obviously feels really strongly about his or her own views, in the end nobody's gonna budge and it's going to essentially come down to two idiots bitching at each other online, ad infinitum. Bottom line: For me, when it comes to disagreements, Twitter isn't the place for a decent debate of the issues -- it's a place to engage in an often meaningless and petty online "shouting match," one where very little progress is ever made and almost nothing ever gets resolved.

So with that in mind, I'm gonna put something in writing here that I've said on the podcast a couple of times and have let outraged critics know in 140-characters or less more than a few times: I don't get into Twitter battles. You disagree with something I have to say and want to let me know it? Feel free to fire away, but don't expect me to respond. I have a life and don't have time to get bogged down defending a point of view that I'm pretty sure I made clear from the get-go and have generally taken a good long time to consider and reconsider. I'm not saying that others won't have excellent counterpoints to my own and that they might provide me with a few things worth thinking about, but I'm not going to discuss those points at length on a platform as restrictive as Twitter. It just isn't worth my time.

Also, please keep in mind that just because I write something in an extended piece that you don't like, and I happen to have a Twitter account, it doesn't mean that I'm required to make myself available to you -- whom I pretty much guarantee I don't even know -- to address your concerns and defend my opinion 24/7. No, you're not entitled to my time just because I have an online presence and you have a bone to pick.

Now, if because of my unwillingness to play defense to your satisfaction and at your whim you feel like I'm some kind of intellectual lightweight or coward -- because you of course have that one special bit of logic and wisdom to impart that's going to make the house of cards that is my argument fall apart -- I can live with that. Again, there's a pretty good chance that I don't even know you and an even better chance that you're laboring under the entirely faulty assumption that I want to know you and believe that you're someone whose opinion I really need to take seriously. So, hey, if you want to turn around and tell the 500 people who follow you on Twitter -- the ones whose split-second decision to click your name with a mouse validates your sense of self-importance -- that you won the fight with the big, bad blowhard because he refused to get into it with you, thereby proving that you were right all along, have at it. I literally could not care less what you think of me.

I'm often happy to talk to people on Twitter, but I'm not required to do it -- particularly not with pissed-off people I don't know who just want to scrap and who will very likely be RTing my responses to their friends in order to get them into the fray, the digital version of calling in reinforcements and getting your friends to fight for you. There's nothing dumber than a Twitter feud -- which is why I don't get into them.

I hate to drop another sci-fi movie reference, but a Twitter fight is usually a futile game of tic-tac-toe -- and as we know, Joshua, when it comes to tic-tac-toe the only winning move is not to play.

Listening Post

The Offspring's Pete Parada grabbed dinner with my girlfriend and me a few weeks back and as we were riding around in the car, he played us this new track -- what would be the next Offspring single. As we listened to it, he basically made it clear that die-hard Offspring fans were probably going to lose their shit over it, considering that it sounds like Dex and Noodles may have simultaneously started dating Katy Perry.

But Pete admitted that people were going to have to see the video to understand that -- in the long tradition of summer-ready Offspring singles -- the song, while admittedly really, really catchy, wasn't meant to be taken too seriously or perceived as some kind of new direction for the band. No, kids, they haven't "sold-out" this far into their storied career.

Anyway, here's the song and the video to go with it.

This was released all of about eight hours ago -- it's Cruising California (Bumpin' in My Trunk).

The Bubble Genius Bob & Chez Show 6.7.12

Wisconsin Recall Post Mortem; Democrats and Liberals Undermine Themselves; Romney Could Win This Election; Republican Economic Sabotage; Romney the Tea Party Sock Puppet; Republican War Against Pensions; Guess Which Republican Commercial is the Fake One; America is Doomed; The New Karl Rove Commercial; Everything We Didn’t Get To Today Will Be Discussed on the After Party; and much more. Brought to you by Bubble Genius!

Listen and subscribe for free on iTunes

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Listen on your smartphone via Stitcher.com

Comment of the Week

From regular reader, always brilliant commenter, writer and attorney Eric, responding to the argument that smoking marijuana should be considered a civil right.

"Mmmmmmm--no.

Look, if I had my druthers, marijuana wouldn't just be decriminalized, it would be legalized and states would sell it the same way they do alcohol and tax the hell out of it. My state grows a lot of the stuff and we could use the revenue. And the War On Drugs corrupts law enforcement, ties up court systems with a lot of piddling horseshit, incarcerates a lot of non-violent 'criminals', creates a lot of incidental violent crime via prohibition, and has all sorts of nasty effects.

There's lots of good arguments for decriminalization and/or legalization, in short. More arguments than there are for criminalization.

But 'it's my civil right to do what I want with my body' isn't one of them. Because, you know, it's not really true: first, because society can forbid you from doing things that affect others. Second, because society can implement at least some restrictions to keep you from hurting yourself. And society can implement restrictions to protect people who can't protect themselves. So it is that society can regulate food additives, alcohol sales, smoking, seatbelts, motorcycle helmets, assorted drugs and all sorts of things that one might try and say "it's my body."

There are a number of incredibly irritating marijuana advocates in this country who will annoyingly overstate health benefits, understate health risks, and make all sorts of spurious arguments about incidental and industrial uses of hemp, when all they really want is to get high. If they confined themselves to making the argument that marijuana is almost certainly somewhere between tobacco and alcohol on the spectrum of health and public safety and that society just can't afford to keep processing minor drug offenders through the courts and incarcerating many of them, they'd be on to something. But no. They have to go on as if weed were a miracle plant and all they're concerned with is the general welfare and enlightenment of humanity, blah, blah, blah. You know what it does? It doesn't make anyone want to legalize pot, it fills people who might otherwise favor legalization with an urge to fire potheads out of a very large cannon aimed at the middle of the ocean."

That just about sums it up.

Pledge Hammer: Day 3

Just a reminder that we're almost at the end of our quickie Welcome Summer Pledge Drive around here.

You know how this works by now: There are three ways you can put your hard-earned money toward DXM and all the various other horseshit I do online. The first is the easiest: Just click the Paypal electronic tip link in the right-hand sidebar of this screen and donate away. You can also use the Paypal tip jar to pay-what-you-want for a digital copy of my book, Dead Star Twilight, for iPad or Kindle. Go here to begin your instant download. Remember, it's a full length book -- 300-some-odd pages -- and it can be yours for whatever you feel like putting toward it. The last way you can give is by buying a physical copy of Dead Star Twilight from Amazon. To purchase the paperback, just click here. (By the way, buying the book gives the least amount of money to the site since I only get a small cut; I want to sell books but I know there are some people out there who would want to be made aware of that.)

Please know that all proceeds will go toward buying me a giant stash of marijuana -- so pony up, all you nice people I've offended the shit out of over the past few days and weeks.

A special shout-out to Gordon Jennings, Riles and Brett Skean -- your generosity is truly, truly appreciated.

The drive officially ends tomorrow night.

And now, in his memory, here's ten straight hours of the Trololo guy.

Everybody Knows

Last week on the podcast I mentioned Bentham's Panopticon. For those not into 18th century British radicals, Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher who, among other things, first proposed the idea of a new kind of prison where all the inmates could be watched by a single guard tower in the center of the complex but the inmates themselves could never tell exactly who was watching them or if anyone was at all. It was revolutionary -- and it was called the Panopticon.

I threw the term out last week because I think it's safe to say that these days we're living in a kind of digital, social media Panopticon -- requiring us to be vigilant at all times to the possibility that we're being watched and recorded. That everything we do is under surveillance of some kind.

Take for example the case of poor Brian Presley: C-list actor, Christian, not-so-recovering alcoholic, married man, father -- and now worldwide internet laughingstock because he seriously picked the wrong girl to hit on during a flight out of Los Angeles recently.

Get ready to cringe.

I'm Pretty When I Lie (Tumblr): Would-Be Adulterer's Entire Pick-Up Attempt Live-Tweeted/6.7.12

Bentham had no idea.

...And the Hits Just Keep on Coming

As promised just a little while ago, my latest post for the Daily Banter is now up -- seemingly in record time -- and it deals with even more backlash in the wake of my Banter/HuffPo piece on pot culture.

Here's the opening shot:

"You know, at some point I want this little debate over 'Marijuana the Amazing Wonder Drug®' to be over, I really do; the thing’s been going on in one form or another for about two months now. But I guess I can’t complain that I cross-posted the original Daily Banter piece on pot culture that I banged out a couple of months ago over at the Huffington Post and now the floodgates have opened. (If nothing else I hope it helps to bring attention to the good work being done here at the Banter.) ..."

Read the Rest Here