Earwig and His Fearsome Critters

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 18:28:33 +0000

This is such a great answer? No, that's not the right word. Sendup? I don't think that's it either because it's so much better and smarter than "Land of Confusion." I love Julian's voice so much, but by the end the cranked up autotune almost feels overwhelming. So good.

I did re-watch "Land of Confusion" after this, and it's still fine, but it's a pretty predictable 80s perspective when viewing it in 2026. I think it was kind of a big deal for a very short while when it aired. I just remember some of those puppets creeped me the fuck out when I was a kid. I worshiped at the alter of Jim Henson, I was used to all puppets being created with love. They were beautiful in their own way, even if they were meant to be viewed as "ugly" like some of the characters in The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. I thought the puppets in the video were just fucking warped and ugly and I did not like them. I didn't know anything about Spitting Image and didn't realize that repulsion was on purpose. It is weird though, I loved and collected Garbage Pail kids, the grosser the better, while owning a few Cabbage Patch Kids. I guess I just didn't like anyone fucking with my idea of what puppets should look like? I don't know, I was weird. Genesis was a band both of my parents loved, so they were on all of the time at either of their houses or on the car radio throughout my childhood. Dad was early/Gabriel Genesis, Mom more later/Collins Genesis, both often had music on in general. I am a little biased towards both good and shitty versions of the band because they're part of the my childhood soundtrack. Like Pink Floyd or Rickie Lee Jones, I didn't really have a choice, they were always just there. That said, I don't think "Land of Confusion" is a great song, but I'll probably listen to and enjoy it another 1000 times in my lifetime because it's part of the soundtrack. If I'm lucky. Now my adult kid can say The Strokes are part of the soundtrack of her whole life. I am old.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 11:21:31 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 21:51:05 +0000

That tracks.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 21:44:02 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 19:07:25 +0000

This whole interview is one big trigger warning, so make sure you're in an ok headspace if you decide to watch. I really appreciate her speaking out, her personal accounts are important.

I hope his conviction helps more victims come forward. Something tells me there are still a whole lot of people in that world that deserve a reckoning.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 22:39:24 +0000

Nazis wearing blue arm bands are still nazis.

11/6/26 5:39 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 18:00:07 +0000

This is amazing. Just don't fool yourself, this means many of the nazis will go back into the shadows, to a certain degree, but they're not going anywhere. If you think they're going to let the rise of socialism continue unabated, you've not been paying attention. A sitting US congressperson from the left just had her house raided 3 weeks ago with very little pushback. There's a reason socialism as an ideology has been labeled as a top tier "enemy" throughout my entire lifetime, don't think they're not prepared. The wide acceptance of Socialism and Islam means they are shitting their pants at how badly they've lost the narrative. Just hope they're as short-sighted, stupid and incompetent in coming for us as they are at doing everything else. I have a feeling Carlson is going to be front and center of everything trying to publicly rehab his/their nazi tendencies in the coming months.

11/6/26 1:00 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 17:17:32 +0000

More good news that made me cry. The turn toward the left is already showing results. Amazing.

A guy I knew when I was a teenager was still on death row in CA and from what I saw of the court transcripts, he wanted the state to kill him. He took part in a heinous crime, he admits it, but that doesn't make it any easier for me to imagine because that was not the person I knew. I was both shocked and also not shocked at all, but definitely horrified when I found out what he had done. He was always a bit detached and one of the few actual hard guys that was associated with Oakland gangs in our large group in the East Bay suburbs. They did some crazy shit, but I don't think when I knew them they ever killed or seriously hurt anybody. A part of me still thinks there is no way he pulled the trigger, and was set up by the others involved, but he took all the blame. I don't want to take away anything from the victims and their families, so I shouldn't speak on the crime. I don't know shit other than what I've read on SFGate and in the transcripts.

I've thought about contacting him many times throughout the years just to see if he'd want to talk. This crime happened only a few months before I left CA for the 1st time in Dec of '95, but I didn't find out about it until years later. When I first moved to CA a lot of people said/did some really shitty things to the fresh-meat country-bumpkin from KY, but he was always cool with me. We used to talk on the phone late at night, for some reason, even though there was no mutual attraction or anything. He's also the person that came to me in front of the courthouse with a message before a person we mutually knew went to court. He asked me to walk with him alone and then warned me that if my ex testified against the guy on trial he couldn't control what his boys would do. Before the guy on trial had gotten ahold of them, some of those "boys" had also been my good friends. In hindsight, that guy on trial was also a fucking pedophile, along with one of his friends I briefly "dated", in part due to his relentlessness, my first few months in CA. I was 14, he was 23, he'd lied and said he was 21. That's like my adult kid bringing home an 8th grader as her boyfriend. Absolutely fucking disgusting. Then, when he kissed me after cornering me at a party when I was already with my long term high school boyfriend, I had to immediately tell him I had "cheated" on him because I felt so terrible about it. So gross.

I knew because of one of my best girl friends had a long-term relationship with the guy on trial, but had been fucking with the guy who was warning me, there was underlying shit going on between those two guys. He wasn't warning us because he hated me or had any particular feelings toward my ex. He and I were cool, I'd always been nice to him no matter what was going on with him and whoever he was fucking in our group. He was warning me as a friend, he told me as much. I knew he felt some kind of loyalty to the dude on trial, but did not particularly like him in part because of some of the shit he'd done to my friend as her partner. I fucking hated the dude because of the shit he did to her. He also always gave me the willies. He'd say, "don't worry, I like you, even though you're trouble." I think he was 26 or 27 and she was fucking 15. When he tried to fuck with one of my other friends, she was 14. There was a lot of that going on during that time, like a very, very unacceptable amount. It's creepy as fuck to think about as an adult. The guy that was warning me, the one on death row, was only a year or two older than us, so I was all for her being with him, even though he had his own issues.

In the end, I convinced my ex not to testify, not just because of the warnings we'd gotten, he was already thinking about withdrawing, but because he was lying. He wasn't there. He was trying to be that guy by perjuring himself because no one else who was there would go on the record, or snitch. Noble because this dude was a piece of shit on so many levels (still don't understand how he was the godfather of my ex's niece), but really stupid and not thought through at all. Especially since this guy was a grown ass man with real ass ties to the Bloods in Oakland and supposedly knew "dangerous men" (hitmen) he worked on the same boats with in Alaska when he'd go up there to make a bunch of money for a few months. This wasn't a game and he was potentially putting not only us in danger, but the people around us. There were a lot of people there when the assault happened (I was not) who could have very easily gotten up on the stand and said my ex definitely was not there, so not only would this dude get off for something he definitely did -- he put a guy in the hospital (again) -- my ex's dumb ass would go to jail for perjury for nothing. Considering the guy on trial was already calling witnesses at their homes, including my ex's sister, this was a very likely outcome. So in some ways the guy that is currently on death row, or was, may have saved the father of my kid in more ways than one. My ex used to get really pissed at me when I told this story, he really wanted me to think of and describe the guy on death row as a piece of shit who threatened me, maybe I'm naive, but that was not how the conversation went.

Anyway, I'd kind of like to know if he'd be willing to talk. I had a prison pen pal in the form of a guy who was like my ex's and my brother for many, many years. I don't think they were ever in the same facility at the same time, but they would have been on opposite sides of the yard, if you know what I mean. Although, the guy who was like my brother told the nazis to fuck off, that he wanted to be on his own, and got the shit kicked out of him, his jaw broken in several places and wired shut for a long time for his efforts. One thing I worry about is the commitment. He literally needed us, there were times when there was no one else helping. I am not in a position to be that for someone again, financially or otherwise. We'll see. I am genuinely interested in how these guys, many of whom were likely content or happy with the state killing them, are handling the news of having to live.

[sorry for not doing better to identify the people in this story, I am not trying to call out or name anyone, for many different reasons]

11/6/26 12:17 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:12:31 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 14:39:37 +0000

If you don't like "Science Daily" you can just search DuckDuckGo or probably even useless Google for "climate change accelerating" and find tons of recent articles. Here's one from America's precious Time Magazine from a few weeks ago, if you need some neoliberalism sprinkled into your science news.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 22:57:06 +0000

I genuinely think we need to start a campaign/trend of GenX and Millennials going to their parents and showing them how easy it is to get rid of cable or satellite tv, and how much money they will save by doing so. Explain to them how the money they pay for their cable inevitably funds/supports propaganda that is directed back at them to fuck with their brains. Show them how it is created to trick them and it is not a secret, nor hidden. It's a nasty thing everyone knows, but does little to stop. I'm old enough to remember when junk mailers used to have scams directed at people like my Keepaw and Meemaw, where they'd mail in a check or money order for some dumb shit after not reading the fine print. Then, they'd get some sort of "certificate" or a cheap figurine that was worthless in return. I don't think they were all that religious, but there was a time when she worshiped Jerry Falwell and gave him a lot of money and bought his stupid shit. From the mid-90s to the early 2000s it was the Nigerian Prince scams and the "are you really safe?" alarm industry scams. All of that shit was directed at old folks in the same way phishing, virus and SPAM email is today. Now everything is a fucking scam because we elevated all the scammers to the richest people on earth. We're all in this together, there's nothing to be ashamed of.

Show your parent(s) they can get news that is fact-based rather than opinion from independent media and IT'S FREE (pay for their subscriptions, if you can). Show them videos about how and why they are deliberately manipulated and lied to. It'll make 'em so mad they'll email their second cousin and their 4th grade baseball buddies to let them know about this crazy conspiracy they just learned of. Explain how it's nothing new, they've been absorbing misinformation their entire life, and tell them about the history of using fear and coercion to narrow and control a population's perspective in order to keep them in line. Then, setup a mini-pc or raspberrypi on their big screen tv, so they can use a mouse in the same way they would a remote. Block the Nazi/nazi websites. Do NOT buy "SMART" tvs or anything else that has unavoidable ads. In spite of the market being fucked, mini PCs are still pretty cheap and since they won't be playing GTA6 on it, you shouldn't have to worry about them frying it.

Am I being serious? I think so?

ALSO - get the FUCKING NEW YORK STUPID FUCKING TIMES OUT OF THEIR HANDS!! I have very smart, reasonable people in my life who are tricked into thinking they're apathetic liberals because of that garbage rag. You are for universal human rights, no? You're against apartheid/genocide, yes? For Medicare for All, right? Free school for all for life, yeah? You're anti the military/prison/human trafficking industrial complex? YEAH??!! YOU ARE NOT A FUCKING LIBERAL, SO STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR THEM!!! Goddamn fucking NYT.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:48:37 +0000

Absolutely feel good about it (whoa-whoa-whoa, not you Schumer, go on and take a few steps back Jeffries), but what was won was a chance to change course. The real fight starts right now and it's not going to stop probably for the rest of our lifetimes. I know you're tired, we're all tired, it's been a long 3+ years, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that millions of people, not just here in the US, but all over the world, are waaaay more exhausted than we are. They've been fighting their whole lives and they know they have to keep fighting, every fucking day, whether they want to or not. Draw from their courage, wisdom, and experience, live your life and find contentment (happiness? I guess?) when you can, but lying to yourself doesn't help anything.

My name is Jennifer Welch. My pronouns are she/her. Woke is back. The bigots lost. And all around the country, we’re seeing exactly what it looks like to be liberated from the Christian Nationalist MAGA hellscape. https://ivehaditpodcast.substack.com/p/goodbye-maga-hellscape

- Jennifer Welch

Read on Substack

I have no idea if this video is going to load properly, so here's the link just in case.

Longer version:

I love her.

11/4/26 11:48 AM

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:52:00 +0000

Trying to figure out how long I should wait before taking my xanax. Initially, I thought it was in case things were looking bad, but I'm realizing I might need it even if we do well. I just can't let go that there are going to be some fucking shenanigans. It only lasts about an hour, so I gotta wait it out as long as I can. I don't think Booker will pull it out, but that it's a question at all is great. If only the establishment democrats gave a shit about the South as much as they care about Israel.

11/3/26 7:52 PM

11/3/26 9:40 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 01:13:23 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 00:00:17 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 23:34:04 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 17:34:27 +0000

I’m from Gaza. NAZA made me scream. - Samah Sabawi The Electronic Intifada 29 October 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 13:59:05 +0000

Who Is Mississippi's Justice System Really Protecting? - from BTNews w/ Marquell Bridges

Now, keep in mind, this was before Mississippi Lt Governor Tate Reeves was elected as governor, these people know who/what they're voting for. People like Gov Reeves are the norm for positions of power in places like MS, LA, and AL. Not mention large pockets in the rest of the South, part of the Midwest, the Southwest...the West coast, the Northwest, the Plains states, the Ohio Valley, the East Coast, New England, the Northeast. Did I miss anywhere? In the US, I mean.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 14:37:33 +0000

You can watch the Murphy video through the link.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 14:33:25 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 22:00:52 +0000

Let's not choose to pretend that Islamophobia (what a stupid, purposely defanged and inaccurate word) is going to go away or change next Tuesday. This doesn't stop or let up, whether the dems win or not. This is bigger than one midterm election. The nazis don't think in terms of election to election, they're already thinking about 2028, 2030, 2042. Just as they were thinking about 1960 in 1945, or 1968 in 1948, or 1990 in 1978. They're not thinking about right vs left, they don't give a shit about political boundaries, as AIPAC has so aptly shown, year after year. Always, always believe them. They will project every little thing they do or think onto their opposition, domestically, internationally, without fail. Always. They've been doing it for centuries. I can't believe we're still falling for this shit.

No whispered into the podcasting void mea culpa will make us forget who you are, HRC. I'm old and my memory may be shit, but I try to not ever forget the kind of people who use racism, bigotry, sexism, etc, to their advantage, especially while claiming to fight it. No one is going to forget the damage you have done. Some of us may appreciate your voice AT THE LAST MINUTE, but please, do damage reform after the election. And in 2027, 2029, 2030, 2031.

I am an atheist. I don't give shit about any one religion over another, like at all, if I'm honest. I do believe in your right to practice it. However, if the sect of your religion regularly says it's ok to think ALL/mOsT BROWN PEOPLE ARE BAD/DANGEROUS AND WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING VIOLENT ABOUT THAT, I don't care what color/belief you substitute, you should be kept from any and all positions of power, no matter what bullshit you tell yourself or your followers so you can look in the mirror every day. I don't give a shit about your prejudices or why you have them (I do, just not in this context). If you're saying this ONE BIG GROUP is THIS ONE DANGEROUS/SCARY THING and now me and my organized group INTEND TO MAKE LAWS around that uneducated, hateful belief to restrict your rights, YOU ARE A DANGEROUS FASCIST and you and your comrades probably need reeducation. Don't like that word? Then call it church. Don't like that? Then educate your fucking self with facts, you lazy loser.

Also, I don't give a shit about any war criminal's opinion on anything. That includes a large majority of the US political class that refuses to go away, no matter how much most people try to tell them they're not wanted. For Kamala, Biden's apologists are her apologists, they are interchangeable and they should all be tried and thrown in jail. I know you might feel weird because you voted for a genocide denier and enabler in 2024, but SO DID I in 2020, 2016, in 2014, in 2012, in 2010, in 2008, you get me? So did everyone who has voted for a republican for the past 40 years. You know now, yeah? You want them held accountable so you don’t have to do that anymore, yeah? Or no? So anytime anyone asks you about your opinion on their opinion, it's ok to just ask, "Do you give a fuck about Goebbles or Himmler or von Hindenburg's opinion on war, social issues, or the industrial scale oppression, expulsion, or execution of entire groups of people? Or of HITLER himself? You looking that shit up on microfiche at the library? No? Then why the fuck should anyone care about Kemala or Blinken or Miller (either of them) thinks about anything at all currently happening in the world?" Fuck her, anyone still connected to her and anyone else who still calls genocide and an overt 80 year ongoing ethnic cleansing "complicated" in lieu of doing, saying nothing. FUCK YOU.

10/29/26 6:00 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 19:59:19 +0000

Trump and Epstein’s intrasexual competition from Julie k Brown

"Former Miss Switzerland contestant accuses Trump of ‘brutal’ rape after event attended by Jeffrey Epstein"

10/27/26 3:59 PM

Update 11/02/2026 1:50 PM

The media blackout of the new rape allegation against Trump - Judd Legum

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 22:24:08 +0000

From Sirota:

[Trying something new - you can click the image for the article, or right-click to copy the link]

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 21:37:56 +0000

Must read:

Why is everyone lying? from Alec Karakatsanis

We have a long way to go in regard to the policing side of the judicial system, and unless it's fixed, not much of anything else we do to stamp out fascism will matter a whole lot. The left needs to catch up fast and stop trying to "bridge the gap" with "moderate" extremists. Tell the truth, stop hand-holding some of most dangerous and corrupt people in the country. I am not just talking about cops. It starts at the top. It's part of a huge industry that steers local, state, and national elections. It's bigger than beat cops and clear rates, or a shitty slogan that I believe was pushed through the media on purpose as a non-starter ("defund the police"). Also, maybe start questioning the people you're listening to if the media talking heads laundering these ideas won't do any fucking research or bother asking any insightful follow-up questions. You should read everything from Alec Karakatsanis.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 13:42:33 +0000

Gaza Starvation Reaches “CATASTROPHIC” Levels - From Noah Samsen