I love the alternative press that has sprouted up online over the past decade. You get whackos from all over the world that gain their own little following and become pseudo-famous among their own harmless little group of crazies. It's so cute.
Take Alex Jones for instance. Alex Jones, in case you haven't heard (and you probably haven't), is a right-wing conspiracy theorist and talk show host who does a talk radio show out of Austin Texas, and more recently a series of videos tackling issues ranging from the modern atrocities collectively known as "The War on Drugs" (TWOD) to the modern atrocities collectively know as "The War on Terror" (TWOT). Anyone who has bothered to educate themselves on these issues know that both TWOD and TWOT are a load of shit, orchestrated by the government to maintain and exert various levels of control over the lives of non-billionaires in all nations.
Alex Jones has managed to somehow blindly stuble backwards and fall into some of these truths, which he now hurls at his listeners and viewers in a distracted montage of paranoid rantings. To be sure, his videos are quite interesting and often times even offer valueable documentation on the troubling and likely criminal behavior of our leaders, our increasingly militarized police forces, our criminal use of our military abroad, and the rich elite who have joined forces across international borders to control all this through corporations and international financial markets. Unfortunately, he somehow manages to combine all his arguements with some kind of reference to the Second Ammendment and how the government is trying to take our guns away like they supposedly did to all the Canadians. (Unfortunately for Alex, Canadians have tons of guns, they just don't kill each other with them so you don't notice them quite so much and their governement doesn't have to raise the issue every year like they do here in the US. The next time I hear some idiot talking about how Canadian's have no guns and no rights, I may have to shoot the motherfucker and move to Canada.)
Seriously though, I really like Alex Jones because he's sort of like a Republican that makes more sense than your average republican. Still childlike in his level of education and understanding of things, but he's got at least one set of wheels on the track most of the time. Recently however, I heard a show of his that really pissed me off.
I'm not sure when it aired, but I saw this Alex Jones audio file on the file sharing networks the other day and I downloaded it because it was an interview with an intellectual I've come to admire, named Noam Chomsky. If you've heard of Noam Chomsky, you most likely either love him or hate him and if you're an ignorant piece of shit that knows nothing and has no facts to explain your opinions, then you probably hate him.
At any rate, Alex Jones apparently had Chomsky on his show sometime in the recent past, under the guise of holding a civilized interview, but without really having a topic in mind, other than Jones' usual rambling list of conspiracy topics. Unfortunately, Alex Jones' knowledge on most topics is informed only by his own interpretations of his own research. Much of his research is gathered first hand, but I'll give him credit for doing tons of homework too. He's got reams of documents from every source imaginable to back up much of what he says. It's hard to say what percentage of these documents are taken out of context, unverifiable, or have already been proven as factually inaccurate. Usually though, it is not so much a question of whether his documentation is bad, so much as it is his interpretations and conclusions just being wacked out by his overbearing Christianity and Second Amendment issues. So usually he ends up combining some legitimate first-hand observation or documented fact, with a bunch of random Christian gun lover bullshit. I've usually got no problem with the gun nuts, I myself am the proud owner of four guns. But the Christian bullshit I just can't ignore. It practically invalidates everything that comes out of his mouth. It's amusing, bemusing, tiresome and frustrating all at once. Best in small doses during moments of anti-government angst, provided you can ignore the random conservative Christianity.
But there was a point to this post, I'm sure I remember....oh yeah. In his recent interview with Chomsky, Jones asked a bunch of questions clearly designed to get Chomsky to give him the kind of answers he could later berate. That was expected and Chomsky wouldn't walk into any of the rhetorical traps Jones was feebly trying to set for him, so Jones pretended to be civlized for a few minutes. Then as it became apparent to Jones that he would not make Chomsky look like an idiot as long as Chomsky was actually there to defend himself, the interview was cut short by Jones suddenly instulting Chomsky and then cutting him off (I can't remember if they cut him off in mid sentence or if they actually went to a commercial first). This was followed up by several minutes of Jones calling Chomsky various names, and continuing to argue his point against Chomsky who could not answer or defend himself now that the interview was over. Rather than actually debate Chomsky (who has more facts on the criminal behavior of our government than Google does) Alex Jones, like an adolescent child, threw a little temper tantrum and continued spouting a stream of near obscenities about Chomsky for several minutes.
Alex Jones lost major points with me for that. I apparently gave him more credit than he deserved as a purveyor of fact, but now I know better. I'll probably still watch his psychotic rantings for entertainment purposes, but not as a source of reliable information.
UPDATE: After further careful study of the photos I took, it would appear that this thing can sting the hell out of you. You may notice from the photos that the caterpillar has 3 sets of front legs and 3 sets of back legs. The three sets of front legs are different from the back ones though. They have pointy segmented portions that extend from the base of the leg and if you look closesly, you can just see what appear to be the little white tips of stingers protruding from inside these segmented legs. So it would appear that this biotch can sting you with six stingers at once, while simultaneously spitting some sort of green vomit at you. This is like some kind of Hollywood/Sci-fi caterpillar from another planet. Truly disturbing.
