During the late afternoon of September 12, 2007, Republican Presidential Candidate Dr. Ron Paul came to the USC campus in Los Angeles to speak to a great number of students and have dinner with his benefactors.
For those of you who don’t know, Dr. Paul is a congressman who has represented the 22nd district of Texas from 1979-1985 and 1997-present. He is an Air Force flight surgeon who was drafted and served during the Vietnam War, and spends his non-political time (on weekends and such) as an obstetrician, having delivered over 4,000 babies.
Ron Paul and his wife Carol have been married for 50 years and have five children.
Despite those unbeatable characteristics, that’s not why I love this man. I love Ron Paul because when it boils down to the basics, he believes in three major things:
Constitutionalist freedom,
Sharply lower taxes, and
Non-interventionist peace
It’s really that simple, and his voting record backs it up. He voted against the Iraq War, he voted against any loss of civil liberties, including the horribly-named Patriot Act, and he has never voted to raise taxes.
So on September 12th, I donned my Ron Paul t-shirt and made my way up to USC. After an absolutely stunning National Anthem sung by Baraka May, Ron came on the stage and gave a great speech to the crowd of students. Ron warned of our uncontrollable fiscal policy, loss of personal freedoms, the dangers of preemptive war and meddling in other peoples’ business, and border security.
Rather than read my words, see Part 4 of 5 for yourself:
It’s not that complicated people. If you want dead American soldiers, don’t vote for Ron Paul. If you want high taxes and socialist regime, don’t vote for Ron Paul. If you want the government spying on you, stealing your property, and censoring your voice, then certainly don’t vote for Ron Paul. As for the rest of you, what in the hell is the problem?
Ed Griffin, the man who introduced Dr. Paul to the followers, put it best: The only person who can win for AMERICA is Ron Paul.
And with that, I officially launch my support for Ron Paul for President 2008, and I will write-in if necessary.
Hello legion of readers - Today I’m going to hand things over to my friend Dan Donatelli, owner of Gone Fiction and writer of his infamous annual magazine, Green Genes. Please join me in thanking Dan for his insightful prose. I now present his latest piece, Milk Nipple Envy:
Hello Berto’s Bloggerheads! This is Berto-friend Dan Donatelli coming at you today with a Berto-sanctioned guest blog article on everyone’s favorite subjects: nipples and milk!
You see, I was higher than God’s balls the other day, eating box after box of cereal — as is my wont! — and staring at a gallon of milk when I started thinking about women: how they gripe, how they have nipples!
Now, I’m a man. I drive fast; I chew dirt; I wear leather boxers; I use semicolons with approximate accuracy. And, of course, I drink milk straight outta the jug! And like all men, when I generously suckle a sweet sip of the white goodness, I am relentlessly under attack by all of Womankind who remind me time and again that they find my milk-drainage practices boorish, disgusting and devolved.
I just happened to be chuggin’ from the jug when it occurred to me — me being the person who was thinking at the time (please try to keep up) — that maybe women’s unbridled obsession with keeping men from drinking milk straight from the bottle goes beyond civility and manners. I think their revulsion goes all the way down to…
Biological Jealousy.
You’ve heard of Penis Envy? Meet Milk Nipple Envy. (Name subject to change.)
For millions of years, women had a monopoly on the milk racket. Their “jugs” — or as I call them “Lactose Palaces” or “Tits” — had the market cornered, and if men or babies needed a sweet teet treat, they and their precious nipples were the place to go.
Because of that, when they see a pair of human lips puckering up for a delicious swig of ice-cold milk — the dessert of beverages, the ambrosia of bone density — they and their breasts feel useless and old fashioned. They feel vulnerable. They feel unwanted. In short, they feel like women.
And now women have competition everywhere — from cow’s milk to goat’s milk to soy and rice milk. (Imagine that — a grain of rice or splotch of soy with udders!) So what do women do? They do everything they womanly can. They staunchy stop men from enjoying a mighty mouthful of milk by griping away until he pours the milk into a non-threatening, non-nipple-looking cask.
So what’s the moral here? What’s the lesson?
I don’t know.
I suppose it’s just another reason for me to hate women.
Tune in next week, when I will dissect the cultural and pharmacological differences between Nick Nolte and Gary Busey.
Dan, I consider the lack of comments left for your profound and perverted article a small, but significant injustice. But let’s face the facts; the faithful Berto blog denizens are still trying to fully comprehend and absorb the multi-faceted beauty of Berto’s previous blog, pertaining to web hosting. Your post has merely been drowned in the wake of the post-”New Web Hosting - Lunarpages.com” blogpocalypse that Berto has unleashed upon us and that we now must live in. The standard for blog posts has been raised around the world wide web, and your timing couldn’t have been worse.
After over a year of being dissatisfied with my previous web host, I have moved mikeroberto.com to Lunarpages.com. It has only been a week, but I am very impressed with them so far.
Finding a good web host is a very difficult thing, even for experienced webmasters. Googling for the best web hosts is like throwing yourselves to the wolves while wearing steak underpants. All of those “Top 10″ lists are simply paid-for lists, and all are equally shady.
The best way to find a good host is to first know what you want, and then go and look at the lists that allow the users to rate everything. The best site I found for this is www.webhostingjury.com. There are many user reviews and ratings. Currently, Lunarpages is #4.
I then went through the top hosts, and determined that Lunarpages gave me the most bang for my needs, which include multiple domains, unlimited databases, 350GB space (which I’ll never use), a good upgrade path for when my sites get popular, and some other stuff. I also did some research on www.myipneighbors.com to ensure that I’m not sharing a server with 650 other sites (like my last host, which is one reason why bertopics.com is so painfully slow).
Soon bertopics.com will be migrated, but that migration is going to be a pain.
Now that I have a host I can trust, I’ve also changed my official e-mail address. It is now [myfirstname]@mikeroberto.com — where [myfirstname] is mike. Still powered by gmail, but now with a better domain!
So if you need a web host, click on my new sidebar link or the image above, and check out Lunarpages. If you order, please use me as a referral!
For well over three years, I have been constantly abusing the word “humiliation”. I revel in the minor doses of fame resulting from stories of my getting into and out of pitiful situations. I didn’t know that this would happen, but it now seems as though personal humiliation is an incredible way to get attention in today’s morally-declining American society – which often equates to measures of success.
Take, for instance, the mother of all humiliations in the news recently: Miss Teen USA 2007, South Carolina – Caitlin Upton. It’s been viewed over 14 million times, and I still can’t watch the entire thing:
Ten years ago, this girl’s life would have been over. But not anymore, thanks to the Internet. Tell me, how many of you can actually recognize the winner of Miss Teen USA? I know I couldn’t, but if I saw Caitlin on the street, I’d immediately recognize her. Not only that, but she’s now had major follow-up interviews, and I can guarantee you that magazines like FHM will are trying to get her into sexy photo shoots. The landscape has changed indeed.
There are two ways which Britney could have gotten all of the attention she received:
She knocks everyone’s socks off (not likely), or
She is a trainwreck (very likely).
As expected, Britney bombed in flying colors, yielding more press than a good performance would ever have received. Her constant humiliation has kept her in the spotlight. For someone struggling to keep things alive, no press is bad press.
What hasn’t been removed from YouTube, however, is the defensively embarrassing video “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!” from Britney’s #1 fan, Chris Tucker. Nobody heard of this loser until this video was made. Now nearly 5 million people have watched it. In case you haven’t, here it is:
In case you didn’t know, Chris is a male, and is somehow gaining a monstrous fan base. Does anyone see a problem here?
Now let’s take a look at the lighter side of popular-culture humiliation. The Zombie Kid who Likes Turtles:
Ten years ago, 10,000 people in Portland, OR would have seen this on the evening news, said “what in the hell?”, and went to bed, all to forget about it the next day. Now, over a million people have seen Jonathon Ware — he gets recognized everywhere, t-shirts have been made with the “I Like Turtles” slogan, and there is a Washington Post Article summing up the whole experience.
For my last exhibit, my favorite humiliation of all, is “Flaming Shot Goes Terribly Wrong”:
I’ve seen this video over 50 times (more on that in the future), and laugh every time I see it. These guys are true heroes to our generation of idiots, including myself. “Flaaaaaaaaming!”
What’s the point?
My point is this. The Internet is moving towards a self-aggrandizing style of short-lived entertainment fueled by Generation Y-ers’ passion to put themselves in the spotlight at any cost. America has loved humiliation for several years, starting with the television show “COPS” and MTV’s “The Real World”, and then moving towards reality TV and shows like “Jackass”.
Your typical 30+ year old would never want to be shown on the Internet partaking in such self defeatism. They wisely cower at the sight of video cameras, and don’t want to be the center of this Internet-based attention.
Generation Y, however, is embracing that humiliation, and taking it to levels I never imagined. We are, as a young society, increasingly becoming attention-whores.
The rest of us just revel in everyone else’s humiliations because it makes us feel better about our worthless, emotionally-neglected selves, thanks to the lack of proper parenting because we decided to toss a generation of children in extended day care rather than raise them like normal humans just so that everyone could afford a 3,000 square foot house and country club membership.
Whew - that was all very profound……….However, the best (and of course, my favorite) was your last paragraph….. Let it be known, Mikey Roberto was NOT A DAY CARE KID…… Hence, the reason our family was never rich (in $$$) or belonged to a country club. I’d like to think he was raised by “normal humans”, but then, where did all this humiliation come from………….Gotta love him!!!
Holy crap, that leave britney alone video can NOT be real. That kid needs a serious ass whoopin! Unless he is home schooled, he will probably get one soon.
During the late afternoon of September 12, 2007, Republican Presidential Candidate Dr. Ron Paul came to the USC campus in Los Angeles to speak to a great number of students and have dinner with his benefactors.
Ed Griffin, the man who introduced Dr. Paul to the followers, put it best: The only person who can win for AMERICA is Ron Paul.
As expected, Britney bombed in flying colors, yielding more press than a good performance would ever have received. Her constant humiliation has kept her in the spotlight. For someone struggling to keep things alive, no press is bad press.
Dan Donatelli said,
09.25.07 at 10:19 am
Bravo! Brilliant! I love it!
Minh said,
09.25.07 at 10:46 pm
Dan, I consider the lack of comments left for your profound and perverted article a small, but significant injustice. But let’s face the facts; the faithful Berto blog denizens are still trying to fully comprehend and absorb the multi-faceted beauty of Berto’s previous blog, pertaining to web hosting. Your post has merely been drowned in the wake of the post-”New Web Hosting - Lunarpages.com” blogpocalypse that Berto has unleashed upon us and that we now must live in. The standard for blog posts has been raised around the world wide web, and your timing couldn’t have been worse.