{"id":1865,"date":"2009-12-30T11:28:33","date_gmt":"2009-12-30T11:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1865"},"modified":"2009-12-30T11:28:33","modified_gmt":"2009-12-30T11:28:33","slug":"quote_of_the_day_4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2009\/12\/30\/quote_of_the_day_4\/","title":{"rendered":"Quote of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

In response to ABC News’ exclusive photos<\/a> of the explosive rig worn by the so-called “crotchbomber” — who failed to bring down Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day, but did manage to burn the hell out of his own legs and, presumably, genitalia — Xeni Jardin over at Boing Boing remarked<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What better way to round out this scorched and shitty decade than to gaze thoughtfully into the charred, soiled underpants of a stranger. A troubled young man who seems to have hated America only as much as he hated his own junk.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wholeheartedly concur. This entire decade has been pretty much end-to-end suck. Don’t believe me? Check out Newsweek<\/i>‘s retrospective video<\/a> (not embeddable, unfortunately) and refresh your memory. From hanging chads in 2000 through 9\/11, the Iraq War, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and government-sanctioned torture; the PATRIOT Act; the TSA and its increasingly ridiculous “security measures”; the break-up of the space shuttle Columbia<\/i>; Hurricane Katrina; the rise of reality television and the belligerent vapidity that came with it; the general bellicosity that seems to have infected even the simplest public discourse; increasingly corrosive and seemingly intractable political partisanship; a truly frightening resurgence of religious fundamentalism all across the globe, and the outright renunciation of science by a shockingly large percentage of Americans; the proud-to-be-ignorant anti-intellectual attitude displayed by far, far too many people in a country that used to value education and expertise; the crashing economy; all the talk about global warming and peak oil; the general sense that The World As We’ve Known It is coming to an end; and a constant societal undertow of fear, uncertainty, and disillusionment, all leading up to the recent death of Patrick Swayze (which, even though I haven’t blogged about it, really bummed me out) and finally this dumbass with the bomb in his shorts. Not to mention the inexplicable popularity of Napoleon Dynamite<\/i> and Family Guy<\/i>. Is it any wonder that I am ever-more consumed with nostalgia with each passing year, if this<\/i> is the 21st century?<\/p>\n

On the positive side, I read somewhere that Google Books now has a fine selection<\/a> of back issues from the old Weekly World News<\/i> tabloid, so that’s something at least. Bat Boy, save us from our despair!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In response to ABC News’ exclusive photos of the explosive rig worn by the so-called “crotchbomber” — who failed to bring down Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day, but did manage to burn the hell out of his own legs and, presumably, genitalia — Xeni Jardin over at Boing Boing remarked: What better way to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}