I'm Amazing (Surprise)

Many times I've mentioned the Republicans needing to change what they should consider to be "scary liberal," including yesterday I wrote the following HERE:

One thing "Conservatives" might wanna think of doing is moving the goalposts on what they deem to be "liberal" (Republicanese of course for "radical.) It's not 1955 anymore, thinking that marijuana should be legal or gays can get married or everyone should have healthcare are not things that get you put in the loony bin anymore. Most people are not necessarily cheerleading to go back to the Stone Age and would prefer cautious progressivism. As a matter of fact, I would think most people would consider wanting to live as if it's 1955 to be a lot more "radical" than wanting to live like it's 2010.

And then today we see THIS.

I continue to await my offer for a job from the GOP.

Swine Flu, A-Rod Edition

Until the A-Rod book is released next week and we can obsess over pictures of him standing behind the Grassy Knoll with a smoking rifle, I guess it's our job as Americans to let the media work us up into a frenzy about Swine Flu. I think it's important to keep things in perspective and remember that so far more Americans have been killed by Heisman Trophy winners who were in Naked Gun than have died from Swine Flu.

You want a REAL epidemic? This one was a fucking bitch.

Heckuva Job, Zeke

Hey, this is informative - FOX Business has Isiah Thomas on to talk about how to take an NBA team from the cellar to the championship. Someone should really be taking notes on this, I think.

Oh Oh

Short Bus just said to me "I wanna put on my fancy shoes." I don't know what's more distressing - that he's gonna be into dudes, or that he has more expensive footwear than me.

Don't Mess with Joe

I don't know what's more surprising - that THIS is the dumbest thing Biden has said, or that it took him 101 days to say something dumb. Good for him!

The Anti-Bush

The Daily News' resident buffoon Michael Goodwin is upset - worried that Obama seems to actually understand what he's saying when he's saying it. Certainly a terrifying thing to see in a president. Goodman is suspicious of a confidence born from intelligence and study of the subject; yearning for the days when presidents were confidant because mommy patted them on the head and told them they were the best.

Tramp

THIS BITCH is what gives women a bad name. Indecisive bitches who can't commit, always thinking "well, so-and-so is great, but maybe there's someone even better out there." For fuck's sake. Good riddance, probably-slut.

Well Well Well.Well Well Well.

Yesterday your hero Xmastime said THIS.

And guess what happened at last night's Philly show?

But tonight was less about history. The Clash's "London Calling" (hell yeah!) continued the band's recent run of punk covers, played for a sign in the crowd. (Actually inspired by a sign in last night's crowd, after which Bruce and the band worked it up at today's soundcheck and then found the sign again tonight.) Nobody nodding out on this one, with Bruce and Steve sharing a mic and the Boss taking a killer solo at the end. With a recovered Patti Scialfa returning to the stage for the first time her accident, a duet on "Red Headed Woman" welcomed her back—a country-swingish duet, and a fun, goofy show of affection from a laughing Bruce.

Baffling is a Cool Word

Every Republican I know rolls his eyes and sighs heavily as they implore me to "move on!" re: Bush aka Dubyanutz. Then they follow that with the claim that THEY ALSO didn't like Bush - they didn't like his liberal spending, and they also didn't care for his hyper-conservative social policies. The number of these people is in inverse proportion to the number of people that claim to have been there when Wilt scored 100, even though the stands were empty. It makes one wonder how he even got elected. Twice. But what's baffling is the one thing Republicans have chosen to circle the wagons on is torture. Of all things, torture is that the one thing from Bush they've all decided to lunge at and cling to with both hands, not letting go. Fascinating.

YESSSSSS!!!!!!!!!

Sarah Palin is on TWITTER!!


Jesus christ, I haven't seen a politician open themselves to comedy so much since Bill Clinton bought Girl Scout cookies!! I need an intern here!!!!!!!

I'm Not a Psychic, So I Didn't See This Coming

Gee. What a fucking shocker.

In a 53-to-43 vote tonight, the Senate followed the House in passing President Obama's budget. Not a single Republican voted in favor of the budget resolution, but a number of key Democrats including Sens. Evan Bayh (IN), Robert Byrd (WV), Ben Nelson (NE), and most notably Arlen Specter (PA) voted against it.

Hmm. Oh wait, maybe I DID!!!!!!! see this coming!!!!!

Hey, I've said it once, I'll say it again: SPECTOR IS CRAZY!!!

Class

I always feel more grown-uppy if I happen to have beer or liquor in the house. Usually if I get 20 beers I'll drink the 20 beers. But in the movies you always see someone visit, and the guy always says "Would you like a drink?" and heads to the hutch, where's there's a half-full bottle of scotch waiting. Seems classy if I could do that. Well, I guess I would need someone to come visit me too. But still.

Boy, me and my goals. When am I gonna give myself a break already??!?!!!

Georgie Girl

I know if you're a baseball purist it's more romantic, and maybe it would be if I was in the woods somewhere; but listening to Yankee games on the radio instead of watching on tv is frustrating. The YES guys are former ballplayers, including pitchers and catchers; all of whom rarely go more than a coupla innings without either pointing out some fascinating insight I've never heard before, or recounting a story from the old days that is great. Who do we have on the radio? A blind guy, and an old woman who was on Broadway. WTF? Hundreds of ex-Yankees, this is what we get? How did she even GET the job - she spent decades not on teams traveling across the country playing thousands of games, but rather singing and pretending to be other people? Really?

I'm not even saying the two of them are bad at what they do; I don't really know. But when you know what you're missing with the tv guys, it makes you wanna bang your fucking head against the wall.

Though it does make me think of Costanza, which always cheers me up

(side note: note the Constanzian prescience - blaming unions while in a crappy market!!)

JERRY: So, what are you gonna do now? Are you gonna look for something else in real estate?
GEORGE: Nobody's hiring now. The market's terrible.
JERRY: So what are you gonna do?
GEORGE: I like sports. I could do something in sports.
JERRY: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. In what capacity?
GEORGE: You know, like the general manager of a baseball team or something.
JERRY: Yeah. Well, that - that could be tough to get.
GEORGE: Well, it doesn't even have to be the general manager. Maybe I could be like, an announcer. Like a color man. You know how I always make those interesting comments during the game.
JERRY: Yeah. Yeah. You make good comments.
GEORGE: What about that?
JERRY: Well, they tend to give those jobs to ex-ballplayers and people that are, you know, in broadcasting.
GEORGE: Well, that's really not fair.
JERRY: I know. Well, okay. Okay. What else do ya like?
GEORGE: Movies. I like to watch movies.
JERRY: Yeah. Yeah.
GEORGE: Do they pay people to watch movies?
JERRY: Projectionists.
GEORGE: That's true.
JERRY: But you gotta know how to work the projector.
GEORGE: Right.
JERRY: And it's probably a union thing.
GEORGE: [scoffs] Those unions.

Yankee Stadium

Heeeeey, looks like I'll be going to Yankee games this year after all!

Faced with empty premium seats, the Yankees slashed top ticket prices up to 50% Tuesday in a desperate attempt to fill the front rows of their new $1.5 billion stadium.

Embarrassed that fans and the media made much ado about the backdrop of vacant field-side seats in the team's first homestand, Bronx Bomber big shots reduced top-tier ducats by up to $1,250.

I'm glad the Yankees are taking things in the right direction. But I honestly doubt anyone who can afford $1250 to sit in a chair for three hours couldn't already afford $2,500. We're not talking about people scrimping. Oh well, we'll see. Meanwhile, here's a picture of Weng throwing his patented 6-run double to a batter. Sweet.

Breaking News: Utah Gov Hates America, Loves Socialism

Maybe people like Michelle Bachmann and Eric Cantor are smarter than I think and know what they're doing, since apparently if you're a Republican and DON'T demand on being the biggest buffoon in the room you get punished, like Utah governor Jim Huntsman, who's had an upcoming fundraiser canceled for saying such off-the-rails wingnuttery Marxist shit as this:

Huntsman sharply criticizes the national GOP leadership, giving them an "incomplete" grade on their first 100 days as an opposition party to President Obama. "Instead of just kind of grousing and complaining, it would do us all a whole lot of good if we actually started engaging directly in finding compromises and common ground and shared solutions," said Hunstman.

Happy Thoughts!

Just like how I don't have the heart to tell the Short Bus that all the dinosaurs he loves so much have been dead for 65 million years, I never mention to him that the fire truck racing down the street with it's siren blaring as he jumps up and down and joyfully screams "fire truck!! fire truck!!" while frantically waving is heading to maybe peel burnt, dead bodies out of a burning building. I just dumbly wave along with him, beaming.

Found

More info HERE.

Another Reason I'm Amazing

Movies and boxing are alike to me in that in each case, I'd just as soon see a documentary. I can watch the American Masters joint on Warner Brothers all day, and I can watch a movie about Ali/Frazier, like the HBO doc Thrilla in Manila on a loop. And I'm jonesing to see the upcoming Tyson film, and I've seen his Charlie Rose interview three times. But if I had to actually watch a boxing match, or about 90% of any of the movies in the WB doc, I'd be asleep in about 4 minutes. This making anybody horny? Ladies? Girls? Skirts? Dames?

Born to Clash

Each show Bruce challenges the crowd to "stump the band" (tho I'd hardly call songs such as Wild Thing "challenging"), and last week he played The Ramones, which has led some people to hope he plays a Clash song. I'm stumped re: which of my many Clash slices I'd like him to play. I got a feeling we'll get London Calling. A great song, but there's others I'd like to see before it.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

One thing that's gonna be hard to explain to the next generation is how much of a batshit place Iraq used to be. I mean, before we went over there and they showered us with flowers and rim jobs and we built Cinn-a-buns by the dozens, the place was insane, right? Hard to believe now; hard to imagine Short Bus even remotely believing me when I tell him how violent the place was before we took care of things. And what'd it take us, a long weekend? Man. Progress is amazing!!

Never Forget

A la Billy Crystal Kristol HERE:

On May 24, 2001, I wrote an op-ed for The Post in the wake of Vermont Sen. James Jeffords’s party switch. I argued that the switch, which cost Republicans control of the Senate, could well turn out to be good for President Bush. Not entirely for the reasons I speculated on in the op-ed, I turned out to be right. Bush was still able to get enough cooperation to govern over the next year and a half, and he was also able to run successfully against the Democratic Senate in the fall of 2002. The GOP regained control that November.

Hmm. I'm trying to remember if an event occurred shortly thereafter that caused everyone to lockstep in line and do whatever Bush said to do. It's on the tip of my brain...seems like something I should never forget...oh fuck, what the fuck was it? Damn. I vaguely recall something, and everyone had to be scared super-patriots and do what the president said, but...I guess I'm making shit up, and just like Kristol said it was simply brilliant bi-partisanship diplomacy from Bush. THAT"S something I'll NEVER FORGET!

9/11 2.0

How excited has Guiliani gotta be now, after the recent NYC Air Force One scare? I mean, it's DOUBLED the number of days he can yammer about endlessly if he runs for governor. Good for him!

Voters Access

One interesting thing about the internet is analfisting.com how it might affect an election purely on how easy it is to access and catalog what a politician has said or done on a daily basis. For centuries, people mostly had a kind of vague notion of what a Congressman said at any time; even up until ten years ago if somebody said something asinine it MIGHT make it to the bottom of page 34 of the WSJ. So congressmen would get voted in over and over to a large degree by people thinking "well, I've heard of him, he's already there, good enough for me." But today, all you need to do is be able to read and stare at a computer screen to get a daily account of what everybody's saying and thinking.

Obviously, I'm think of someone like Michelle Bachmann. I won't be able to get through typing this post without news popping up online of her saying something completely retarded. Are Minnesotans come election time gonna decide you know what, this is embarrassing, she's a fucking idiot we hafta get somebody else? Or is it gonna be like the days of when nobody would even hear what she's blathering and vote via the ol' "fuck it, who cares" policy? If a complete buffoon is an idiot in a forest, does anybody know it? Hmm.

100 Days

Everybody's trying to make a big deal out of Obama's first 100 Days. I don't really know why - hell, my first 100 days I mostly laid around shitting myself and crying. I'm guessing his has gone better.

Tonight They Wanna Party Like it's 1955

Just now on the radio Joe Scarborough read a coupla polls, and one said that 60% of Americans consider themselves liberal. To which Joe quickly said "well that's not true, we're a conservative country." Which of course begs the question why even read a poll if you're just gonna decide what you're gonna decide to be true. Like if after the election someone said "well, a lot more people voted for Obama, but that's not right cause more people want McCain" and declared McCain the winner. Whack.

Last November I wrote HERE

But I don't know what the right is so scared of - in 2008, are things like wanting to (to quote the TP joint) expand environmental protections, increase the minimum wage, recognize same-sex marriage, and end the Iraq war really that "radical" anymore? Right now these things are maybe progressive and left-leaning, but hardly "radical", no?

One thing "Conservatives" might wanna think of doing is moving the goalposts on what they deem to be "liberal" (Republicanese of course for "radical.) It's not 1955 anymore, thinking that marijuana should be legal or gays can get married or everyone should have healthcare are not things that get you put in the loony bin anymore. Most people are not necessarily cheerleading to go back to the Stone Age and would prefer cautious progressivism. As a matter of fact, I would think most people would consider wanting to live as if it's 1955 to be a lot more "radical" than wanting to live like it's 2010.

Conventional Wisdom

Hey, this morning I watched a pot, and guess what? Eventually it boiled. Ain't that something.

Chris Buckley

Chris Buckley HERE has some fun with being an orphan at 55; obviously he is being quasi-comical, although what he writes here is true:

One realization does dawn upon the death of the second parent, namely that you’ve now moved into the green room to the River Styx. You’re next.

I would go Buckley one more and suggest that not only are you next, but you are not guaranteed to have anyone care when it happens. Friends may come and go, lovers come and go, siblings become pissed you haven't paid them back for that Kool-Man truck investment you tricked them into.

But a mother is the only one that will cling to your pants cuff as you're dragged to the execution chair, the only one that even after insurmountable evidence would declare her love and belief in you; genuinely surprised anyone could think such a thing of you. And a father, even if he knows you fucked up, will defend you til the end. So when you wake up one day and you find that the only two people in the world who were born to love you unconditionally are gone and are never coming back, there is a feeling of well, ... that's that. No blanket, no umbrella, no nothing - just sheer fucking rawness, exposed. All the time, every day, until you die. No matter how long it takes.

Maybe that's bad, maybe that's good, I don't know. Even today, I feel like a complete pussy for even wondering so; but it would be a nice feeling to think that if I died suddenly today someone would HAVE to care. Something Mr. Buckley knows himself now.

Irony, II

Posting about claiming a girl has pig meat in her vagina to be able to watch ALF, and getting a phone call seconds later for dating advice. What a world, eh?

Raskolnikov

Obviously I'm on a bit of a Crime and Punishment high, and I finished it on the train this evening in a fervor I can't remember since reading the ending of Ethan Frome years ago.

And now it's occurred to me for the very first time that a character in my favorite book Peter Leroy shares the same name as the main character in Crime and Punishment. Must be something to that. Will have an inappropriately dressed intern investigate.

Swine Blu

Things have been a BIT slow for me in the romance department over the last several years. Nowadays, if a girl smiles in my general direction, I push a button and a priest pops out of the ground and immediately marries us and I stuff her in a hot-air balloon which takes us to an island where I will spend every minute of the rest of our lives worshipping her and loving her.

But it wasn't always that way...one time I was fooling around with some girl, a girl I had already been with a coupla times. She was blowing me, then I started eating her out, which I knew meant we'd be fucking in a matter of minute(s). But I had been on a bit of a tear that week, and wasn't really into it, and basically just wanted to sit on the couch and watch tv. And of course I didn't have the balls to simply say so to her, so I instead quickly crafted an idea to make her feel that something was wrong with her medically. Very mature, I know, I know.

"What the -"
"What?" (alarmed)
"Something's not right down here..."
"WHAT??!" (sharply pulling back legs)
"Yeah, looks like something funny in there."
"-"
"Looks like little square pieces of pork. Cooked white pork."
(Sprints out horrified, I grab the remote.)

Not satisfied with horrifying her about possible health problems there, I made sure to insert (pun intended) a word associated with pigs. Hmm.

Sigh. Ah well.

Irony

Technically, I do believe it's true that you'd burn MORE calories actually eating the foods here than you would sitting there looking at the website.

Les Nuits, Tous Les Bruni's Smoking Hot Chat Sont Gris!

A coupla months ago HERE I announced that Dubyanuts had pushed me into liking the French, even though I had long dissed them back before it was "alternative." And then I declared that like 2008 being my "Anglophile Year," 2009 would be my "Francophile Year."

Then I read something like this and I'm like le fucking christ - you had me at bonjour!! How much more amazing are the French looking to get this year??!?!?!?! Slow down, mon frites! :)

Oh Oh.

As everybody knows, Arlen Spector switched parties today - the first time a Senator has done so since that dude from Vermont in 2001. Without pausing to wonder how of all states Vermont could've had a Republican Senator as late as 2001, I just heard on the radio that Penn & Teller are doing an east coast show for the first time since...2001.

Anybody remember what happened in 2001? Anybody? Big, far-out guess on an Earth-changing event? here?

That's right - I fell in love. Head over heals, crazy-in-love, which of course led to utter disaster & heartbreak; albeit also the greatest mix-tape of all time.

Also, I remember a bump in shark attacks that summer, which led to my "Shark riffs" of that year. Must say. Looking forward to this summer!

40-oz Bottlecap Sculpture

Outdoor Space Heater.

Today's Posts

You KNOW I'm licking my chops for a chance to break out "During football practice in high school,..."

;)

Libelous!

If I was a pig, I do believe I'd be a BIT miffed that here I am, existing solely to give you motherfuckers bacon, sausage & pork chops and you thank me by sticking my name on a potentially catastrophic strain of flu. I'd be like fuck..........yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewww!!!

Can't See the Forest

Sometimes I wonder if you can be so goddam lonely for so long you lose any baseline for normalcy, and someone else looking in to observe such loneliness would be shocked at it as one would be to look into the fevered delirium of a fucking madman.

Hey, Bush Loves Baseball

During baseball practice in high school, most of our time was spent clumped together in the outfield clowning around during batting practice, and in between pitches coach would fungo balls to everybody. Over time you learned that if you looked like you were paying attention and were ready for a fly ball, Coach wouldn't hit one your way; ergo the trick was to look as unready as possible - back turned, laughing, plucking grass, whatever. THEN Coach would send one your way.

Which is what came to my mind this week whenever I've come across absurd shit like this:

Is Obama rushing another attack? ... That’s the working M.O. of this administration: no matter what we do, we’re going to eventually get hit again. ...So if the working theory is that we’re going to get hit again, what is the best response? After all, the public does credit George Bush with keeping us safe at 9/11.

The best strategy would look something like taking a band-aid off quickly. Get the pain over fast. And if an attack happens quickly enough into the new administration, they can blame Bush.

So the Obama administration is working hard to release all the memos on interrogations, change all the policies Bush implemented, and clear out the old as fast as possible. Never mind that if it were done slowly over time, our terrorist enemies might not be so incited to attack.

If your working premise is that they are going to attack anyway, get them incited quickly, get it over with, and blame Bush.

Only a group of people dumb enough to base Bush's legacy on "He kept America safe from terrorist attack except for 9/11!!" would even be able to dream up politicized cynicism like this. Hey, thousands of people have died of cancer since Obama took office, and I don't see him blaming Bush for not curing cancer. Bush: soft on abnormalities in the genetic material of transformed cells?

9/11 happened on Bush's watch, so despite their crybaby claims that it was all Clinton's fault, it will be forever tied around Bush's neck. And if we are attacked while Obama is president then yes, he will get the shit for it; it happened on his watch. It's not that complicated. This isn't Algebra II.

Though I would ask the Republicans to at least hide their fevered, gleeful expectations for that glorious moment when thousands are people are killed, therein meaning Bush is only TIED for the "Worst President Ever Against Terrorist Attack" title.

My Cap is Doffed

The post just below this one jokingly asked How Will Cantor and Bachmann Top This Tomorrow?  And god bless her, Michelle Bachmann didn't make us wait til tomrrow. Took her about 17 seconds. I swear, I wasn't even trying this time.

BACHMANN: I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under Democrat President Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it is an interesting coincidence.

I'm telling you, whenever you see this crazy bitch on tv try and make sure your children are watching, so one day they can tell their kids they saw the Jim Thorpe of the GOP Batshit Olympics. Honestly, it is an honor to watch her work.

How Will Cantor and Bachmann Top This Tomorrow?

During basketball practice in high school, the funnest team to be on was offense when Coach was focusing on team defense. You'd have complete carte-blanche to run and gun all you wanted; there was no ridiculous trying-to-be-Dr. J play you could try that he would even notice, as he was so focused on how the defense was playing.

Except, of course, Buuuuuuuuuuuuuf. One day during one of these sessions Buuuuf uncorked such a gawd-awful, "what the fuck?" shot that ended up in the hallway somewhere that Coach was stopped in mid-sentence and could only stare at Buuuuf for a minute before finally asking "are you alright? you're not driving yourself home, are you?"; this remained the one and only time any one of us saw Coach bother to question something the offense had done during these sessions.

Which is what I thought of when I saw this video featuring Jim DeMint. Whether or not you agree with what either guy has to say, the prompting of some drone from one of these news shows to actually follow up with "what the fuck are you talking about?" I think is the death-knell for any hopes one may have for a Republican congressman to appear in public and start talking without sounding like a complete fucking idiot. Hopefully more reporters will take this approach and insist that the people we've elected to run the country for us do more than read from Batshit Bazooka Joe Talking Points gum wrappers.

A while back I wrote this about the infamous Palin/Couric interviews (as well as the Laura Bush "Hubby isn't the WORST preznit ever" one):

Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?
Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.
Couric: What, specifically?
Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.
Couric: Can you name a few?

I wasn't shocked that Palin came off as an idiot. But I was shocked that in today's journalistic world of letting interview subjects off the hook without really answering cause instead of actually listening you're simply reading the next question in your notecards over in your head, Couric actually kept after her for an answer. Which is what this reporter should've done with Mrs. Bush.

Sometimes Even the Corporate Bathroom Turns You Into an Asshole

I just walked into the can, and apparently just after a dude who had eaten a barrel of rotten pork skins. "Good god," I said to myself, "this is awful - there is nothing worse in the world....well, maybe starving children...but maybe they're just being assholes, right? Ugh!"

She's Back!

I noted this commercial a year ago; now for some reason the exact same one has resurfaced on non-YES channels. Rusty jigsaws and all. What the fuck?

All week during Mike and the Mad Dog the YES Network has been playing their latest anti-smoking commercial over and over; today's Thursday and I've seen it maybe 16,000 times already. This one features a women whose lifelong addiction to smoking has cost her twenty amputations. 20!!!! So the commercial starts, and for some reason I find myself kinda paying attention this time. Which is funny, cause anything you can get from smoking is the one thing my 874 year-old body doesn't hafta worry about. So she's talking, yada yada, and as she's talking pictures of her hands and feet minus the amputated fingers and toes float in and out of the screen, along with hospital computer images of how the smoking did it, etc etc. That's rough, I thought. Then, all of a sudden, floating along the screen we see...a jagged, rust-covered jigsaw. What? Excuse me? Did she have her operations at the Battle of Gettysburg? Is this supposed to scare us into not smoking, knowing that for any amputation they'll pull out a JIGSAW to cut you while you take a shot of whiskey and chew on stick? Really? And I love that the saw isn't jolting enough, somebody actually thought "you know what, we should cover it in rust." Just like any instrument in a hospital would be, I suppose. Awesome.

Crime and Punishent. I'll Miss You :(

I know I love Crime and Punishment cause I ripped through 95% of it, and have put off finishing it for two weeks. When I'm reading a book I really love, I get depressed as I near the end; I feel like soon I will be on the outside of the story and characters, not wrapped up warmly with them. I'll procrastinate, find excuses not to finish it, I've gone months at a time ignoring a book as it sits there waiting for me to end it. Like having a hard time putting down a horse that has worked the farm relentlessly for 20 years I guess. I guess I'll end it on the way home today.

- Am I the only one who thinks Peter Falk's Columbo was based on Porfiry? Or is that general knowledge everyone else on the planet knows already? The circling logic buffered throughout by the self-deprecation? Hmm.

- I've mentioned before how shitty I am with names HERE. And that's with names that are in English! So you can guess how thrilled I was about having to keep Russian names straight. And maybe someone could've warned me that Russians apparently assign each other about 4 different names, none of which seem to be related in any way to each other to Joe Q. American Buck like myself? Grr.

- The characters quoting Gogol's Diary of a Madman made me wanna read the story; the characters' MISQUOTING Gogol every time made me REALLY wanna read the story. Interesting.

Anyways.

Eric Cantor is a Jackass

Because it's my home state and the state wherein Brothatime! and Sistatime! still reside, I feel it necessary to direct you to Eric Cantor's complete bullshit HERE.

Back in his district, of course, Cantor wants to portray himself as an agent for constructive change in Virginia. But you can’t be a constructive agent for change if you’re busy lying constantly and opposing everything.

WOW.

Just in case you were worried the Republicans couldn't take governing and legislating less seriously, Michelle Bachmann has been appointed to something called The House GOP American Energy Solutions Group. I look forward to tomorrow's announcement re: Colonel Sanders being named to The House GOP Bird Preservation Group.

Too Uncool to Die Like a Hero

I’m not worried about getting Swine Flu; I’m never included in anything “of the moment” with a large group of people. I wasn’t downtown for 9/11, I wasn’t caught in the compound at Waco. And if I was in a war I would never get the glory of dying in battle - my luck would be dying of diptheria at Pearl Harbor on Dec 6, 1941, or getting mauled by a runaway horse the day AFTER Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. I could prolly swallow an entire sneeze of someone who has Swine Flu, and then get hit by a bus. Maybe I'm just a bad joiner? Hmm.

Oh, Goody.

Another Democrat who will vote against the party. Hooray.

Detroit, MI

I was against the auto bailout, as I wrote HERE. I can't say I empathize greatly with a huge company that show no vision, try to stiffle progressive energy alternatives so they can crush the planet with street tanks, and then blame the line workers when they shit the bed. Nor am I impressed that after filling up their paws with federal cash they're jettisoning 21,000 more people. But hey, I'm an asshole.

But while I still think I’m right, I don’t think it’s outrageous to think we could use more guys like THIS than blathering opiners like myself.

Dino Update

Some dino-nerds are re-thinking the idea that an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs:

So if the Chicxulub (ed note - if you just look at it real fast, doesn't "Chicxulub" look like the name of a strip joint? wtf?) asteroid didn't kill the dinosaurs, what did? Paleontologists have advanced all manner of other theories over the years, including the appearance of land bridges that allowed different species to migrate to different continents, bringing with them diseases to which native species hadn't developed immunity. Keller and Addate do not see any reason to stray so far from the prevailing model. Some kind of atmospheric haze might indeed have blocked the sun making the planet too cold for the dinosaurs — it just didn't have to have come from an asteroid.

For the dinosaurs that perished 65 million years back, extinction was extinction and the precise cause was immaterial. But for the bipedal mammals who were allowed to rise once the big lizards were finally gone, it is a matter of enduring fascination.

When you spend a lot of time with a 2 year old and his friends, dinosaurs play a big part of your life - including wondering how the little fellas will handle it when they realize the dinosaurs have all been dead since even before Madonna spoke with a British accent:

Every kid I know is obsessed with dinosaurs. 24/7, its dinosaurs dinosaurs dinosaurs. I don't remember going through this stage as a kid myself. Tell you one thing, though. I don't wanna be in the room the day all these little fuckers find out the dinosaurs all died about 65 millions years ago. Man.

Of course, I postulated my own theory on what killed the dinosaurs HERE.

But fuck it, Big Bear and I are sure doing our part to bring back the dinosaurs ONE STUFFED DINO AT A TIME!

You're welcome, dinosaurs!

Heavy Thoughts

The life of the male scrotum must be a conundrum, no? On one hand, it's probably thinking "gee, I'm responsible for the very seeds of human life; and yet this fucking dickhead in front of me gets to squeeze into a warm, wet pussy. Grr." But on the other hand, he also thinks "well, at least I don't hafta go through the shit this asshole behind me does."

40-oz Bottlecap Sculpture

Two kegs of Bud stacked up.

Someone Forgot to Remember to Forget to Remember

Apparently Air Force One scared the shit out of everybody by buzzing over lower Manhattan with 2 F-16s. Brilliant.

Too soon, Obama! Too soon!!!

Actually, it wasn't even Air Force One; it was AF1's decoy. A while back I wrote about presidential decoys of the air HERE; filed under "Gee, nothing stupid can come out of this, right?

Line of the Day

From WFAN's The Schmooze:

"So the Mets beat Florida, good for them...too bad they're about 7 months too late."

More Jackass Keifer Sutherland Should Be Prez Nonsensical Bullshit

This article has been popping up everywhere today; when I first saw it this morning I rolled my eyes re: more maudlin, over-the-top emotional egregious drama nonsense. But now this douchebag is clogging up time on my right-wing radio listening, so I feel I have to address this fantasy sequence which has been picked out as the money quote:

In surprisingly good English, the captive quietly answers: ‘Yes, all thanks to God, I do know when the mujaheddin will, with God’s permission, detonate a nuclear weapon in the United States, and I also know how many and in which cities.’ Startled, the CIA interrogators quickly demand more detail. Smiling his trademark shy smile, the captive says nothing. Reporting the interrogation’s results to the White House, the CIA director can only shrug when the president asks: “What can we do to make Osama bin Laden talk?”

I've never been a terrorist who's being interrogated or tortured about possible nuclear attacks (knock on wood!), but I would assume a suspect can do one of three things: tell everything he knows, don't say anything, or just spew a bunch of shit to get everyone off his ass for the moment. But I doubt that any of these chats go like this:

"Do you know of any attacks coming up?"
"Like what?"
"Nuclear attacks on America?"
"Oh, THAT - oh, sure, heck yeah. I know all that stuff."
"You know cities, dates, perpetrators?"
"Oh yeah, of course. I know all that stuff. Sure. Gonna be some cool shit, actually."
"So tell us everything."
"Oh, no. I can't do that. Sorry."
"Hmm."

In other words whether they're being tortured or not, and if it's Osama Bin Laden or anyone else I doubt they're using the "na-na-na boo-boo, stick your head in doo doo!" tactic.

But I'm also wondering, what happens to a suspect if he DOES actually give us useful information from being tortured? Let's say somebody tonight gives it up re: an attack coming tomorrow, and we stop the attack because of the info received. Do we then reward him by releasing him; giving him a one-way ticket back to Crazistan and a case of Bud Light? Obviously, as someone "in the know," he would therein be someone to be considered as dangerous, no? So there's no way we'd release him. And since he's given up some info, we're gonna assume he knows more, and keep torturing him again and again; it's not like we'd know at which point he was out of info. So now his life still sucks, and he's helping out the enemy. He has actually made things worse for himself, as now we'd know that it's POSSIBLE to get useful stuff out of him, and we'd never relent. So why would he talk? He's gonna get fucked with either way, so what's the incentive in being useful in any way to his captors?

Sex Timing and Cougars

Another way in which I've been extremely lucky is that my coming of age as a libidinous man was tucked perfectly between the years of the free love and fucking of the 70s/early 80s and the present day when girls give out blowjobs at 13 and don't count anal as "sex." God was thoughtful enough to invents AIDS just as I was moving on from Voltron to vulva. Fucking hell.

And, just to make sure I can't even look forward to the as-old-as-Adam rite of scoring a hot young trophy minx as I grew into a distinguished older man, the nexus of my passage from "young man" to "middle aged man" is crossing perfectly with women deciding they wanna fuck dudes half their age. What the fuck. I cannot win. If my dick grew another foot long, female biology would immediately make it so that only fingerprints can give women orgasms. Sigh.

Ice & Water

I like to fill a glass up with as much ice as possible, then pour hot water into it and watch the battle of cold vs. hot until an equilibrium is reached, and the melting is negated as the water is then cold enough to drink. I find this very satisfying for some reason.

40-oz Bottlecap Sculpture

Three-tiered wedding cake.

Things That Make My Head Explode, Vol. XXVVVVVXXXXXXVVVI

Why am I tipping delivery guys if the restaurant has already tacked on a fucking "delivery fee"? Wtf - I thought my tip WAS the delivery fee!!! When the fuck did this start? "Okay, the pizza is $12, tip the driver what you want, and then we're just gonna randomly add on this other $2 and hope you don't notice it. Thanks!"

So I end up paying $4 extra on a $12 pizza that took you about 4 minutes to bring on your fucking Vespa? Really? For fuck's sake, at least make it look tough even; make me think you suffered a bit getting here. Take some advice from my favorite book of all time, Peter Leroy:




Also - can you at least TELL me about the goddam fee over the phone? I like to make the transaction as quick and clean as possible; I arrange the money beforehand so I can merely walk down the stairs and hand it to him, knowing what the exact total is. I don't like being told "oh yeah, gimme an extra $2" and hafta hope that I brought down another $2 with me. I don't bring down my whole fucking financial portfolio and then slowly peel through my bills for 20 minutes, as if surprised the delivery appeared from out of thin air and I hafta pay for it. In other words, I'm not a woman.

I guess it's the Peter Leroy in me.

Swine Flu

Muslims do not eat pork. And we find ourselves with a fraidy-cat socialist Muslim in the White House. And now we have the first attack on American soil during Obama's watch. I guess we hafta ask ourselves today - Obama: weak on pigs?

The Xmastime Self-Portrait Exhibition Series

Sexy Flirting

Club Rules

First of all, if I am in a club watching a band and turn into one of those guys that takes a picture of the band with his phone and texts it to you then yes, that makes me gay.

BUT.

Having done that - what possibly goes through your head to think "hey, great picture from Xmas - looks like that band is really rocking. I should call him right now!!"

Hey numbnuts - obviously I am in a small room with a band that's playing crushingly loud guitar rock. And you know this because I have LITERALLY SENT YOU A PICTURE OF IT. I am not in a quiet cafe as a hologram of the band appears, the picture is not something I doodled at the library. My ear are being clubbed with the hammer of the gods - maybe I won't be able to chitchat about the Gossip Girls at this moment, n'est-pas?

Grr.

Guitar Notation

An inside look to how a hit is written:

G
And you're all I'm thinking

D
about tonight,


G
You're like a goddam line that

D
I can't get right

Swine Flu

From Yglesias:

I have no opinions on this subject beyond the observation that it would be nice to live in a country where, if fell seriously ill due to viral infection, your access to effective medical remedies was not determined by your wealth, income, or employment status.

When I moved to NYC over 11 years ago, the first job I had was graphic designer for a string of copy shops in mid-town. Coming from Virginia was bad enough, but I had just come from living in Mississippi for 2 years, so the people I worked with got a kick out of me being the resident Jethro straight-off-the-farm; they were probably mildly amused I was familiar with indoor plumbing.

For some reason, my first week there I literally broke every thing I touched. Computer, printer, 2 copy machines, the fax. My beefy paws touched it, it broke, finally prompting Parish, the copy machine tech guy who was from Trinidad and every single thing he said was funny, to blurt out "Dammit, you hafta be careful with the equipment, you're not back on the farm wrestling hogs Swine Boy!!" From then on, I was "Swine Boy."

Ahh, memories. :)

Gravitation Assist

Just now on the shitter I was reading about gravitational assist; apparently in the late 70s scientists used a once-every-176 years phenomena of the outer four planets lining up in such a way to allow Voyager 2 to be slung-shot from one planet to the next, thereby conserving fuel. According to what I was reading, the skill of the aiming necessary to perform such a feat is equivalent to making a 4-ball, four-pocket shot on a pool table 22 miles long.

Jesus christ; whenever I read something like this I grumble goddammit, why can't THESE motherscratchers be running the country?

Of course I then realize to hope that the governmental equivalent are in fact running things; shooting spaceship through outer space is simply more romantic and exciting than, say, trying to come up with a way to reduce the national student/teacher ratio.

Which makes me think about Timothy Geithner. I keep hearing a lot of grumbling that whenever he speaks, he doesn't "arouse a lot of confidence." Which drives me crazy - I want somebody in charge of saving our econmy to be a hyper-nerd with a freakish acumen for numbers and economic theory; I don't really give a shit if he's not great at giving speeches. Yeah maybe he's not great at pep talks, but then I'm not interested in giving Bill Parcells a whack at ending the recession either.

President Precedence

Republicans need to come up with something better than the eye-rolling, faux-frustrated "jeez, let Bush go, what's past is past!!" response to anyone wishing to hold the Bush administration responsible for signing off on torture. They have to somehow get it in their heads that this isn't some "oooooh, let's get Bush!!" witch-hunt; we are not driven by some irrational "Bush Hate Disease." The point is, we need accountability so that IT NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN. A while back I wrote about how executive power never naturally rolls back HERE:

To even dream that ANY president would roll back executive power is a pretty far-fetched dream of naivete. It's like breaking up with your high school girlfriend and thinking that with her next boyfriend she'll start back at necking and light petting. Sorry Skippy, but she picks up right where she left off - toothy blowjobs and ball-licking.

As much as I trust Obama's intelligence and calm rationale and wouldn't think he'd lunge for okaying torture as Bush did, the bigger point is I don't want him to be ABLE to. I don't want it to even be a choice for a president. And then god knows who comes after him - do we really want Sarah Palin or Chuck Norris thinking they might get away with okaying torture while in the White house one day?

Sorry, GOP - no witchhunt. Just hopes that the government is held accountable to the people that elected them. You know, whackshit, socialist crazed disease thinking.

Eugene Smith Update

Back in December of 2006, I wrote a post wondering about the fate of Eugene Smith; dude who went to my high school and 15 years after he graduated had points taken off his career basketball scoring, knocking him out of the coveted 1000 points club.

Now I know - he's inspiring artists at the GW Bridge Terminal. Way to go, Eugene!!!

Impressions

Fed up with my comedy bits ("you're not funny") and lack of any success whatsoever, my penis has decided to try to get his own spin-off blog. His specialty is impressions, check it out:

Here he is doing his impression of a Gatorade bottle. not bad.



Now here he is, pretending to be a bottle of Motrin, furtively glancing behind a computer screen. This one's pretty good, actually.



Good luck, penis!

Yes Michelle, I'll Still Do You, Even Now

Extending her streak for sounding like a complete fucking idiot every time she opens her mouth (The Iron Horse of Buffoons), Michelle Bachmann is now claiming that CO2 is a byproduct of nature, so we shouldn't bother doing anything on global warming.

Carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, is a natural byproduct of nature. Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can't even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that's on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that -- that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth.

Hey, you know what else is a natural occurrence on Earth? Wildfires. But we seem to spend a lot of time frantically fighting those, don't we? I mean, we haven't shut down the country's fire departments yet, have we? What would we do without all those hunky calenders?

Also a good example is hurricanes. Oh, wait; we DON'T do anything with them when they hit black people.

One day, someone on the Right is gonna turn his brain on and realize there might be $$$$ to be made fighting global warming. Until then, we hafta listen to assclown arguments like this.

Tron

One funny thing about my office is here we are putting out these super-modern magazines, and we all have fancy computers and gizmos, and everybody spends all day carelessly printing out huge color copies of everything in the world on a coupla printers prolly made at NASA; and yet here I am using the first printer ever made, complete with paper lined with holes on the side. But hey, what can I say, they have a superb ARPAnet connection here, so I can't bitch too much.

God Bless the USA

I think one mark of what a truly great American I am is that there’s a Kool-Man truck outside waiting to give us free ice-cream, and as I walked outside I said to myslf goddammit...all the way across the parking lot? Wtf?!?!!

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Ah yes, those scrappy Democrats.

Greg Sargent reports that centrist Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson (NE) -- who voted to confirm both Sam Alito and John Roberts -- will oppose Dawn Johnsen's nomination to lead the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel...Nelson is buying into the right-wing's war against Johnsen. Outspoken anti-choice Republican Rep. Chris Smith (NJ) said Johnsen has a "a prejudice against motherhood, the family and a fundamental respect for all human life." The National Review's Andy McCarthy claimed she would be a "culture-war agitator." Republicans have threatened a filibuster against her.

Seriously, how long until the Democrats figure out a way to have John McCain declared the winner of the last election?

Also, I just heard about a guy running for dogcatcher of Twinkass, South Dakota that believes in global warming - can the GOP stall Congress for a coupla weeks filibustering this asshole?

I Wanna Do This!....oh, wait....we sucked.

One of the few consolations in my life is that I'll never lose another high school football game. Not these guys, though:

It's been dubbed the No. 1 high school rivalry in the United States. But last decade, Phillipsburg High School and Easton Area High School left the football field without a clear winner: a 7-7 tie. Back then, there was no overtime in high school games, and it's stung ever since. In gridiron parlance, it's known as "kissing your sister."

"I didn't know how to feel, stopping the end of my high school career being on a tie," said Bruce Lebitz, an inside linebacker for the 1993 Phillipsburg team.

That's about to change. The gridiron grudge match will be played this weekend. There will be no ties this time around. They're even breaking a century-old Turkey Day tradition, all in the name of who gets the bragging rights from that night so many years ago.

The players are now grown men in their early 30s. Hair is starting to turn gray, and waistlines have expanded. Some are family men, and most have full-time jobs. They had eight weeks to get back in game shape, and most jumped at the chance.

Of course, we saw this first with one of my all-time favorite “late night Channel 55 movies that nobody’s ever seen before” flicks: The Best of Times. Awesome.

Housekeeping

Am I too late, or am I the first one to call Bernie Madoff “Bernie Made-off;” as in he made off with everybody’s money? Yes? No? I’m handsome/ maybe? Hmm.

I Love Corporate America

Free ice cream today. Gotdam. Sigh. (heart)

It's Here

a la Worlds Colliding.

Honorable Mention

It is indisputable that the two greatest characters ever on tv are Archie Bunker and George Costanza. There is nobody close enough to them to even make a Top 5.

But I would like to give credit to an overlooked, underrated character - Tony Shalhoub’s Antonio Scarpacci from Wings. I won’t say Wings was a great show; it was a nice, comfortable sitcom that served to mildly entertain, not turn comedy upside down on it’s head. But Shalhoub’s lovable, unlucky loser Antonio was the rare sitcom character in that he was actually capable of making you laugh out loud. Viva Antonio!

Time To Make the Doughnuts

I’m pretty much blind as a bat - in boot camp I did so poorly on my marksmanship test that it took the instructor several minutes to realize that I had actually been shooting at the wrong target altogether. It’s not often you leave a grouchy drill instructor speechless, but I did it. So thinking about having a career that involved wielding a gun was pretty much out of the picture.

Which is why all the GOP talk that torture is worth it because it worked one time is heartening to me - it means I can finally become a cop, since apparently one can go running down the street blindly spraying bullets and killing dozens of people as long as one of the bullets hits the bad guy. So I’m signing off here to go to the police academy!! Yes!

Hey, I’ll bring a video camera - Police Academy 8: What Time is It, Bad Guys? It’s Xmastime!

Bear Bar, 1999

Sometimes I sit around and wish it was November; that being the 10th year anniversary of the day Op and I got thrown in the clink uptown, it would be an opportune time to wow you with the saga. Sigh. Well, Op was in the clink anyways ;)

Obama, I Know You're Reading This - Get to Work!!

At some point, Obama is gonna hafta quit worrying about how the public sees any efforts of bi-partisanship and simply start governing. It's clear now that no matter what, Republicans are gonna oppose whatever he brings up. The level of resistance will be the exact same whether he bends over backwards for them, or if simply pushing through whatever he wants. So he might as well do the latter and not the former if it means progressive policy that the majority of millions of Americans actually want, despite the efforts of a half a dozen Republican Congressman.

Hey, I'm sure back when they were deciding it, somebody voted against having the government keep an active army. Yet when we're attacked these days, we think "gee, it's sure handy to have an army ready to go." Nobody thinks "yeah, it's okay; I just wish everybody had been more bi-partisan in setting our army up, you know?"

Take healthcare for an example. Republicans will have you believe this is some 4th quarter boogeyman Obama is pulling out - oh no! radical Marxist healthcare for everyone!! Except he ran his campaign on it, and mentioned it about 86,000 times, and Americans were so freaked out by it we voted him in with a pretty comfy margin. So maybe he needs to focus more on making sure the system he has is as efficient as possible and pushing it through and less about hurting whiny GOP congressman's feelings. If the shit works, then in 10 years everyone's gonna be sitting around saying "gee, we all have healthcare, isn't this great?" Again, nobody's gonna moan "yeah, but I wish Obama had been sweeter to the Republicans when they were hurling themselves in the supermarket aisle having their tantrums."

Willie Mays is known as "Hall of Famer Willie Mays." He's almost never referred to as "Willie Mays, Who's in the HOF, but Three People Voted Against Him, and I Wish Their Feelings were Taken Care of Better."

Xmas Gaga

If you run into me today, you should know that I'm responding only as Lady Gaga.

"Hey Xmas, what's up?"
"I wanna hold em' like they do in Texas Plays"
"What?"
"Fold em' let em' hit me raise it baby stay with me (I love it)"
"What the..."
"My P-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face"
"Anyways, you got that contract signed?"
" Mum mum mum mah"
" - "
"Cause I'm bluffin' with my muffin"
(gives up)

All day long...starting NOW!

Small Business Bullshit

One thing we've heard from "conservatives" throughout both the campaign and the economic crisis is that the backbone of the American economy rests on the backs of the small businessmen(women.) These are the "can do!" people that best exemplify what America's all about; these are the people that take the risks and employ everybody else while gunning for the American Dream. No handouts for them, thank you very much - just a real chance to compete in the open market.

Meanwhile, we also keep hearing from conservatives that should Obama raise taxes on these people even one dollar, they'll all simply crumble away to dust, taking the economy with them. Which, to me, seems to fly in the face of what I spoke of in my first paragraph.

Let's say, for example, Jim Orioles owns a small copy shop. Last year, after all taxes and expenses, he cleared $65,000. Now here comes Obama taxes...let's say because of them, after a year Jim Orioles brings home $45,000. Yes, going backwards $20k sucks. But the conservatives would lead you to believe that this would mean Jim Orioles has to shut down his operation, sending his employees and their discretionary spending to the poorhouse. But if Jim Orioles does what conservatives say his character would lead him to do when they're waxing poetic in front of a camera, he'll hang in there for his business and his employees - either weathering the drop for the year in an obvious economic downturn, or using some of that "magical American can do it-ness!!" we all like to talk about to come up with more ways to create revenue. Hell, $45k profit is still $45k profit - they can't tax more than you bring in. In folding up shop because of some new taxes instead of re-igniting his entreprenureal juices (which, after all, isn't that what the right claims is all anybody's asking for, a chance in the open market?), Jim Orioles would be espousing a "Can't-do" philosophy, which means maybe we shouldn't be proclaiming these to be the people worth basing our economical decisions on.

Also, cutting and running as soon as profits dip for a moment reflects the course hyper-Corporations take - not that their companies are in danger of going under, but that their maximum profits may have peaked, so it's time to cut and run with their wads of cash.

Perhaps "conservatives" themselves have lost track of how a small business, aka "the backbone of America" works; perhaps they should know that a small copy shop is not necessarily guaranteed to act the same way someone like Enron might.

But hey, they're the REAL America, right?

Thunder Pie

I'm not a parent, but as a 2 & 1/2 year Manny veteran I feel like I'm on the next level down. I also know the difference between the two is like they say the difference between Triple A and the Majors is: vast. But I feel like a grizzled vet who's been though the wars, which is why I'm enjoying my buddy Serge's travails with his newborn daughter over at Thunderpie.net

There's nothing people with kids love more than watching people who just had their first kid. We love to sit back in the chair and chuckle at what a difficult time the rookies are having, shaking our heads knowingly at each other while the new parent bumbles around, doing things "by the book" to the extreme, etc. Really, it's like those war movies with the grizzled vets who've seen everything getting a kick outta how terrified the newly-arrived baby-faced kids are. Except that one scenario is about life & death; the other is just war.

Oh, we feel for them - we remember how terrifying every moment of it is, the wondering how on earth anybody in history had ever survived past the age of 7 days. But we know now that there are chapters of about 3-4 months; and with the turn of every chapter comes the same thought: "boy, THAT chapter was easy; what the fuck was I so crazed about??!!!" Rinse, lather, repeat. When I first started watching Short Bus I would physically wear myself down from hovering over top of him while he was sleeping - I'd stand over him, checking every 30 seconds to make sure he's breathing; if I happened to look away for more than 6 seconds, then as I was turning my head back in his direction it would dawn on me that within that 6 seconds one of two things surely must've happened: a wolverine came in and took him without making a sound, or he had somehow gotten up, walked across the room, opened the front door, and wandered into the street, maybe buying some crack. While 9 weeks old. Now I look back and think jesus, I might as well have been babysitting a 5-lb bag of baking potatoes, they both are about as active as each other. But you only really understand that when it's too late to take advantage of that knowledge; usually when you're okay with the kid playing in the knife drawer if it shuts him up for an hour.

I spent a lot of time in the beginning looking at Short Bus thinking "there is no way I'm not going to kill this child. There's no way. I'm too big, I'm too dumb; every caregiver before me had some important child-caring gene that I don't have, and before the end of the day I will somehow accidentally leave him in a cannon that's about to be fired."

Now I realize the truth is it's actually a lot harder to do harm to the kid than not harm him - unless I show up to work blindfolded in a razorblade suit wildly swinging an aluminum bat, the odds are low that I will somehow hurt the boy.

Another thing I have felt in my career that every parent has felt is "jesus christ, I'm gonna kill this kid!!" Of course I have never come even remotely close to striking him, or shaking him - but there are moments when you're like "I would never do it, but you know what...I UNDERSTAND it."

Side note: after you have a kid, the hospital sends you to a room to watch a video about shaking infants. It's supposedly pretty horrifying. My dream is to sit in the back of the room with a box of popcorn, and everytime something happens on the screen and the brand-new parents are recoiling in horror, I bust out howling laughing in the back. That's a pretty good dream, right? Hey, I have goals. Fucking sue me.

Bill Cosby once talked about his parents walking into his house after he had had some kids, and their GLEE in looking at how frazzled he was, "Having a little trouble with the children, huh son?" And that's what "veteran parents" get a kick out of.

Don't worry Serge - before you know it, you'll be the grizzled vet chuckling! :)

Then again, there's no coyotes in Brooklyn. what the fuck do I know?

;)

Orbiting Gravity.

I never realized until I read it a few months ago how things like a satellite stays in orbit , when I read about Isaac Newton's Cannonball Theory:

Then Newton realized that if he chose just the right velocity, the trajectory of the cannonball would curve at exactly the same rate the Earth (being spherical) curves, and therefore the cannonball would always stay the same height above the ground. In doing so, he balances the inertia of the cannonball (which makes it want to continue traveling in a straight line, and therefore away from the Earth) against the acceleration due to the Earth's gravity (which pulls the cannonball toward the center of the Earth).

In other words, a satellite is actually continually falling back towards the Earth, but is moving at such speed that it constantly falls along the curvature of the Earth. The actual formula Newton devised is

Am I the only one this wasn't explained to in 7th grade? Christ.

Fireside with XMASTIME

Worlds Colliding

Supposably, one night Joey and Bruce met and Joey asked him to write a song for the Ramones. Bruce went home and wrote Hungry Heart, but before he could give it to them his manager Jon Landeau interceded, yelling at Bruce are you crazy, that's your next single!

Hungry Heart has never been my slice, and I've often tried to imagine how it would've sounded with them doing it instead of Bruce's version (prolly better.)

And now apparently last night the tables turned, and Bruce played a Ramones song for the first time ever:

The first request song of the night had the the E Street band tackling "I Wanna Be..." ...Where the Bands Are? ...With You? Nope -- try "I Wanna Be Sedated," a first, with Bruce telling the crowd, "Someone's trying to stump the E Street Band!" But Little Steven was having none of it. The band might have made their way through it without him, but with Steve on board? Steve, who has called the Ramones "coolest band since the '60s"? Who has described his Underground Garage aesthetic as "groups that inspired the Ramones, groups inspired by the Ramones, and the Ramones"? Fuggedaboutit. He looked positively gleeful as he conferred with Bruce and Nils beforehand, to make sure they all got it right. The crowd ate it up, with Bruce encouraging participation but hardly needing to.

The first hot chick that finds any video of this for me to post obviously gets a night of Xmas-loving in return.

Shimkus-Shimkus-Ko-Ko-POP!

It's pretty funny to me to watch this assclown distinguished Congressman claim that taking steps in controlling global warming while building a new economy is a more serious threat to our freedom and democracy than impeachment, two wars and terror attacks; the last two of course used by his very own party to curtail as many freedoms as possible while giving as much power as possible to one man.

I think this is the largest assault on democracy and freedom in this country that I've ever experienced. I've lived through some tough times in Congress -- impeachment, two wars, terrorist attacks. I fear this more than all of the above activities that have happened.

Of course, even funnier is this line:

Earlier this year, Shimkus argued that carbon dioxide is just "plant food" and that God will prevent global warming.

No word from Shimkus yet on why God didn't bother to prevent impeachment, two wars or terrorist attacks. 9/11 was on a Tuesday, which I don't believe is God's day to rest. I'm sure there's a good reason, and I welcome his answer.

Yoga, Part II

Apparently, yoga might be yet another thing I'm amazing at - my Swami is TRES IMPRESSED with how flexible my hips are, and I seem to be a prodigy when it comes to the cobra (and I don't just mean my spitting cobra this time, ladies.) My swami is quite baffled by me thus far, and I quote:

"Your body is a complete mystery!"

That's right ladies...let's not forget that underneath this 100 lbs of chicken skin there's still a foundation of polyurethane, twisted iron cable and tiger sinew waiting to be sprung!!

Another Fucking Douchebag

What Would Jesus Torture?

Sully mentions a double standard pointed out by Kevin Drum:

Kevin Drum notes a political double standard. And when the Republicans impeached a president for committing perjury in a civil suit, it was about the rule of law. But when it comes to holding a president accountable for war crimes in his public capacity, it is about criminalizing political differences. Do these people even hear themselves?

My guess would be that Republicans don't consider this a double standard cause Jesus may have been tortured in his life, but never got an inappropriate blowjob.

Advice for the GOP

Ta-Nehisi Coates nails it between D&D games:

The way forward is clear: Talk more about tea parties and torture. Have thrice-married, known adulterers, offer more sanctimonious lectures to Americans on "traditional marriage." Then have thrice-married, cross-dressing Manhattanites make the case against gay marriage. Make Sarah Palin the face of your party. Keep Dick Cheney talking. And when all else fails, just ask yourself this question, "What would Rush do?" Follow these steps, and I promise, you will give new meaning to the term "minority party." You have the power.

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