ZOMBIE BENTHAM

HI Friends it has been too god damn long. I almost gave up on this blog thing--but sychronicity baby!
Bam 1: I learn about zombie bentham.
Bam 2: I finished my big nasty ass paper for the semester. I can smell summer.
Bam 3: My robot x friend posted one funny ass blog.
Bam 4: Crazy dreams about mortality. Inspired by zombie Bentham? who knows.

Fact: Utilitarians are nuts: "The cabinet contains Bentham's preserved skeleton, dressed in his own clothes, and surmounted by a wax head. Bentham requested that his body be preserved in this way in his will made shortly before his death on 6 June 1832. The cabinet was moved to UCL in 1850.

Not surprisingly, this peculiar relic has given rise to numerous legends and anecdotes. One of the most commonly recounted is that the Auto-Icon regularly attends meetings of the College Council, and that it is solemnly wheeled into the Council Room to take its place among the present-day members. Its presence, it is claimed, is always recorded in the minutes with the words Jeremy Bentham - present but not voting. Another version of the story asserts that the Auto-Icon does vote, but only on occasions when the votes of the other Council members are equally split. In these cases the Auto-Icon invariably votes for the motion.

Bentham had originally intended that his head should be part of the Auto-Icon, and for ten years before his death (so runs another story) carried around in his pocket the glass eyes which were to adorn it. Unfortunately when the time came to preserve it for posterity, the process went disastrously wrong, robbing the head of most of its facial expression, and leaving it decidedly unattractive. The wax head was therefore substituted, and for some years the real head, with its glass eyes, reposed on the floor of the Auto-Icon, between Bentham's legs. However, it proved an irresistible target for students, especially from King's College London, who stole the head in 1975 and demanded a ransome of £100 to be paid to the charity Shelter. UCL finally agreed to pay a ransome of £10 and the head was returned. On another occasion, according to legend, the head, again stolen by students, was eventually found in a luggage locker at a Scottish Station (possibly Aberdeen). The last straw (so runs yet another story) came when it was discovered in the front quadrangle being used for football practice, and the head was henceforth placed in secure storage."

Utilitarian Hedonist=future zombie.
Stick with the Stoa my friends. You can be happy on the rack and when you die you can rot like a man.

Things that are okay

This picture is okay.

Other news:
The movie "Fitna" gets a big thumbs up from Professor Smooth Hands. I watched it, and felt kind of sick. It might be xenophobic and it paints in broad strokes. Still, I have heard enough idiots shout that zionism=racism and that Islam is the religion of peace. I have yet to hear a good argument for either claim. I am curious to hear your thoughts on the film.
Before anyone poo poo's the film's thesis, note that the website that first hosted this film had to take it down due to death threats.

Watch the film and leave a comment or give me a call.

Its time for change!

I am not a fan of most politicos. But there is a politician (not the awesome guy pictured above) we can love. There is a politician who can lead. I, Professor Passion, hereby endorse Mark B Graham for President of the United States. Click on the title of this blog to learn about this great man.

Huckabee sucks. Does Kant?

I want a cat

Keepin' it Fresh

Here at Tales of Passion, Professor Passion works hard to stay abreast with all the current cultural poops. Well readers, today I review one of the biggest cultural poops I have ever seen: The movie 300.

This movie was not very good. It is about a bunch of Spartans who have big hole in the center of their town. Their king kicks some guy into the hole while shouting the name of his town. “This is Sparta,” he said, and he kicks some guy into a hole. They could have called the movie “Sparta, and the Great Hole kick”

The king kicked the guy because he did or said something wrong. Its not really clear what he did, but the viewer can be confident that the Spartan King did the right thing when he kicked the guy down the hole because his hot wife nodded at him. It is only after she nods that he kicks the guy down the hole. They could have called this movie “The Kick Happy King and the Wife who nods”

The guy who got kicked was a Persian. This means he was probably a monster of some sort. According to this movie the Persian army had lots of monsters. They even had big birds or dragons flying overhead when they came ashore to Greece. They also had a giant grey guy with them who was all chained up except when he fought the King of Sparta. The Spartans fought for Freedom. The Persians fought for Xerxes, an effeminate muscle man with a deep voice. He seemed nice.

The Spartans were crafty fighters. They jumped around in loincloths and built walls of corpses that they pushed on a single Persian. Boy oh boy did they put the name “immortal” to the test. Hyuck Yuck. “Immortal” is the name of the elite Persian swordsman unit. According to this film the “immortals” might have been zombies. Their faces were all jacked and grey. A good subtitle for this movie would be “The Zombie that died when Spartans push bodies.”

The King of Sparta knew that the best place to fight a giant zombie army with a few red towel wearing men was by a cliff and canyon. The Spartans kept running into waves of Persians though, and hardly used the Phalanx formation that was their strength. Instead, they put on the Korn real loud and rocked the ass out of the Persians. They were so good at slow motion killing that the muscle man named Xerxes rubbed the Spartan King's back. This movie should have been called, “Don’t rub the King, unless you want a spear in the cheek.”

While all this fighting was going on, the movie flashed back to some politics. Some of the Spartan guys were in congress and they sucked. The queen got raped by one of them and then killed his ass. Also she gave a speech. The king and queen knew it was time to fight because “Freedom isn’t free.” The old guys didn’t know this. She told them that the fighting was necessary. This movie wasn’t. Some guy who looked like ET got a uniform and some love action with lesbians. The king told him to live forever. I will think of this movie as “The Unnecessary Hunchback who got sexed up by Lesbians”

It is easier to link movies than to write

I've had many discussions about why I don't really care about the music scene. Now that I'm getting old this hasn't been a problem of late. People tend to recognize their hobbies as just that, and people seem to acknowledge that one might have other things to do with their time than worry about the new flavor of the week. I also tend to like the music that my friends make. I don't hate musicians.
So I am not raging against the scene anymore.
I thought however I would still share this. Here is irrefutabe proof that the recent years of "nerd rock" was a lie: When real nerds (not the losers that can't do math but affect the mannerisms of nerds) make Rock n Roll, it doesn't sound sensitive, pretty or even heartfelt. It sounds angry, confused and disturbed. This is what is missing from all the "smart" bands that people recommend to me. This is what is sounds like when DEVO cries:


And this is maybe the greatest music video ever made. Rock concerts are creepy. Devo shows us how creepy: