There once was a man named Gore,
whom the media said was a bore.
"Stick your ideas up your tush,
we'd rather drink with Bush."
And now our asses are sore.
Inspired by the (much better) poetry friday at Republic of Dogs.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Top Ten Tuesdays: Why are we not raising the minimum wage?
10) Don’t want to damage profitability of our Wal-Mart stock.
9) Can’t risk losing our core voting base of poor white trash.
8) Somebody’s got to work for peanuts after we kick out the Mexicans.
7) Once you give people a living wage, they’ll start asking for health care, better schools, less crime, and the next thing you know, we’re Canada.
6) The free market should dictate what we pay our caddies.
5) The current minimum wage is more than enough to get a five-course meal off Wendy’s dollar menu.
4) Hoping that the poor get desperate enough to enlist.
3) If they’re so unhappy, they should just do what we did and have Dad buy us an oil company.
2) It's hard enough carrying enough change for the Piss Boy as it is.
1) Because when we made a pact with the Devil to get elected, we had to give him our hearts, too.
9) Can’t risk losing our core voting base of poor white trash.
8) Somebody’s got to work for peanuts after we kick out the Mexicans.
7) Once you give people a living wage, they’ll start asking for health care, better schools, less crime, and the next thing you know, we’re Canada.
6) The free market should dictate what we pay our caddies.
5) The current minimum wage is more than enough to get a five-course meal off Wendy’s dollar menu.
4) Hoping that the poor get desperate enough to enlist.
3) If they’re so unhappy, they should just do what we did and have Dad buy us an oil company.
2) It's hard enough carrying enough change for the Piss Boy as it is.
1) Because when we made a pact with the Devil to get elected, we had to give him our hearts, too.
Monday, June 26, 2006
I like the booze but the booze don’t like me
Once it hits your lips, it's so good!
In many ways, my relationship with alcohol hasn’t changed much since my first drinking experience 20 years ago. I stood in a San Diego parking lot at age 15, one hand on the waist of my white Bugle Boy cargo pants, the other holding a Corona to my lips, while a group of thirty people stood around me chanting, “chug, chug, CHUG!”
I have gotten slightly wiser/less ridiculous about consuming alcohol since then, but generally speaking, I am still a social drinker who tends to drink too much when socializing with other drinkers. I rarely drink by myself, because to me drinking is almost as much about who I’m with as what I’m drinking. Put me in a dim pub with friends, drinking good beer or Scotch while talking about the conservative twats ruining our country, and I am about as happy as Tom Delay opening a briefcase of money.
The problem is, like Delay, I have trouble knowing when to say when. This issue is hardly limited to drinking. I don’t know when to say when to Butterburgers, Coldstone, dropping f-bombs, dropping the conversational daisy cutter “c***sucker,” gambling, or rambling. The big reason I only inhaled pot once in my life is because I knew a second trip would start my transformation into Floyd from True Romance.
To avoid full blown alcoholism, booze and I worked out the Fermentation-Productivity Truce of 1986, shortly after my second bought of drunkenness and first trip to Barf County. I would not drink all the time, but when I did, I wouldn’t worry about going overboard. As long as drinking didn’t have any adverse affects beyond eating carne asada burritos at 3 a.m., we would follow a no-harm-no-foul policy.
The Truce held for nearly two decades. There were minor scuffles—freshman year in the dorms, my first year in New York City—but cooler heads of foam prevailed. Even in my New York publishing days, when I partied like it was 1999 but had to work like it was 9 a.m., I always dusted myself off and wore my 9 to 5 hangover like a badge of honor. Sure, we killed the bottle of Jäger, but a little coffee and some aspirin and I’ll be ready to number and photocopy that manuscript.
However, the truce came under attack during the Prom Blitzed-Krieg of ’02. The Lovely Becky and I, caught up in the undergraduate spirit of living in a college town again, went to the Writer’s Workshop Prom. It’s an annual event where America’s future Faulkners dress up and act like they’re in high school. I acted like I was back in the San Diego parking lot. The next day, I awoke feeling like I’d been shaken, not stirred, and hit in the head by Odd Job’s hat to boot. I left with TLB at 11:00 a.m., drove the 10 miles back to our apartment, and went back to sleep until 4 in the afternoon. Even Sunday, I still felt the buzzing, painful fog of excess.
Age had finally caught up to me. I refused, as most do, to acknowledge it at first. But with each hangover, the rubber band of sobriety seemed to get less and less elastic. And, like the Bush presidency, the hangovers kept getting worse over time.
Things came to a head (literally) a few weeks ago. I went out with some people from work. They like to have a good time, I like to have a good time, and yadda yadda yadda I’m drinking Bacardi Orange and Red Bull on a school night.
On the stumble home, I suspected I’d be a bit foggy the next day. Instead, a full Category 5 hangover landed. Jackhammer headache, upside down stomach, and icy cold sweats.
I tried sleeping in a little, thinking maybe an extra 60 minutes would get me in cubicle shape. No dice. I felt even worse. I finally had to accept the inevitable—I would be taking my first hangover sick day ever.
The Truce was broken. I felt guilty and kind of ashamed. That may sound silly, but for the first time, drinking had directly caused me to shirk a responsibility. On top of that, my body was telling me that playtime was over. I felt old.
“That’s it,” I told TLB with Bushian steely resolve. “I’m not drinking like that any more.”
My resolution lasted two whole weeks. TLB was gone, as were the spouses of my friends Grendel and HGF. We three headed out on a Friday night and proceeded to down more pitchers than Tommy John surgery. I spent most of the next morning and early afternoon in bed, moaning.
My loving, gentle, sweet wife, calling home the next evening, was her usual understanding self. “How long did that last?” she asked, giving the question an exaggerated, Chandler Bing delivery.
I have gotten slightly wiser/less ridiculous about consuming alcohol since then, but generally speaking, I am still a social drinker who tends to drink too much when socializing with other drinkers. I rarely drink by myself, because to me drinking is almost as much about who I’m with as what I’m drinking. Put me in a dim pub with friends, drinking good beer or Scotch while talking about the conservative twats ruining our country, and I am about as happy as Tom Delay opening a briefcase of money.
The problem is, like Delay, I have trouble knowing when to say when. This issue is hardly limited to drinking. I don’t know when to say when to Butterburgers, Coldstone, dropping f-bombs, dropping the conversational daisy cutter “c***sucker,” gambling, or rambling. The big reason I only inhaled pot once in my life is because I knew a second trip would start my transformation into Floyd from True Romance.
To avoid full blown alcoholism, booze and I worked out the Fermentation-Productivity Truce of 1986, shortly after my second bought of drunkenness and first trip to Barf County. I would not drink all the time, but when I did, I wouldn’t worry about going overboard. As long as drinking didn’t have any adverse affects beyond eating carne asada burritos at 3 a.m., we would follow a no-harm-no-foul policy.
The Truce held for nearly two decades. There were minor scuffles—freshman year in the dorms, my first year in New York City—but cooler heads of foam prevailed. Even in my New York publishing days, when I partied like it was 1999 but had to work like it was 9 a.m., I always dusted myself off and wore my 9 to 5 hangover like a badge of honor. Sure, we killed the bottle of Jäger, but a little coffee and some aspirin and I’ll be ready to number and photocopy that manuscript.
However, the truce came under attack during the Prom Blitzed-Krieg of ’02. The Lovely Becky and I, caught up in the undergraduate spirit of living in a college town again, went to the Writer’s Workshop Prom. It’s an annual event where America’s future Faulkners dress up and act like they’re in high school. I acted like I was back in the San Diego parking lot. The next day, I awoke feeling like I’d been shaken, not stirred, and hit in the head by Odd Job’s hat to boot. I left with TLB at 11:00 a.m., drove the 10 miles back to our apartment, and went back to sleep until 4 in the afternoon. Even Sunday, I still felt the buzzing, painful fog of excess.
Age had finally caught up to me. I refused, as most do, to acknowledge it at first. But with each hangover, the rubber band of sobriety seemed to get less and less elastic. And, like the Bush presidency, the hangovers kept getting worse over time.
Things came to a head (literally) a few weeks ago. I went out with some people from work. They like to have a good time, I like to have a good time, and yadda yadda yadda I’m drinking Bacardi Orange and Red Bull on a school night.
On the stumble home, I suspected I’d be a bit foggy the next day. Instead, a full Category 5 hangover landed. Jackhammer headache, upside down stomach, and icy cold sweats.
I tried sleeping in a little, thinking maybe an extra 60 minutes would get me in cubicle shape. No dice. I felt even worse. I finally had to accept the inevitable—I would be taking my first hangover sick day ever.
The Truce was broken. I felt guilty and kind of ashamed. That may sound silly, but for the first time, drinking had directly caused me to shirk a responsibility. On top of that, my body was telling me that playtime was over. I felt old.
“That’s it,” I told TLB with Bushian steely resolve. “I’m not drinking like that any more.”
My resolution lasted two whole weeks. TLB was gone, as were the spouses of my friends Grendel and HGF. We three headed out on a Friday night and proceeded to down more pitchers than Tommy John surgery. I spent most of the next morning and early afternoon in bed, moaning.
My loving, gentle, sweet wife, calling home the next evening, was her usual understanding self. “How long did that last?” she asked, giving the question an exaggerated, Chandler Bing delivery.
“Agh! Not so loud.” Her guffaws reverberated off my remaining brain cells. “I’m serious, no more death drunk.”
“Yeah, right!” she said. “Look, I’ve gotta go, the pool boy’s here.” (Note: I may have imagined this last sentence.)
Again, I resolved to beat the demon rum, or at least make it into a minor, more manageable devil. To do so, I would have to face an even stronger challenge: the El Gordo de Amore Goodbye Pub Crawl.
El Gordo de Amore—who in many ways is Will Ferrell from Old School, but Harvard educated—was moving from the IC back to the East Coast. We had a serious pub crawl planned, complete with T-shirts commemorating our bar stops. It would take some serious will to keep this genie in the bottle.
We started off on the familiar wrong foot at the pre-crawl BBQ. “Is that Jäger?” I asked Grendel. Grendel smiled a smile of both mischief and sad acknowledgement, the kind of smiles Butch and Sundance had on their faces right before the charged the Mexican army and got riddled with bullets. I saddled up and downed my medicine.
For once, I was glad to be Catholic. Catholics have extraordinarily strong senses of guilt. If you had a Catholic X-Men superhero, he would be called Guiltarias, with the power to bend people to his will by making them feel like shit if they didn’t. I could feel Guiltarias working on my psyche. Three strikes and you’re out, boyo (Guiltarias is from just outside of Dublin). Keep drinking and I’ll show up every time liquor hits your lips, friend, from now until Jesus comes riding back on a giant can o’ Guinness.
I commenced pub crawling and felt the needle moving up the Drunkometer: Sober, Legal limit, Half in the Bag, And let me tell you something else..., and Death drunk. I was hitting H, and I knew that the needle tended to pick up momentum on the way down to D. So I did what I almost never do: I slowed down. I started drinking at a normal pace. Maybe one pint per pub instead of two or three. Spacing my sips. Keeping my pleasant drunk going without getting unpleasant. I felt so, so...mature.
Ironically, TLB was the one square dancing with Bacchus. She put the Vodka pedal to the metal and left me in her dust. I was jealous, but I stayed firm. Besides, when her head was pounding like a Keith Moon bass drum, I’d have the last laugh.
We reached the 1:30 a.m. mark. I was getting tired. I’d either need to call it a night or push the needle to the red and wind up passing out pantsless next to Grendel’s dogs, probably with El Gordo’s arms around me. El Gordo was still in fine form, Greco-Roman wrestling ol’ John Barleycorn. I consulted with TLB. “I think we should go,” I said.
“Really?” she asked. It was asked in a way no man wants to hear, when your wife is being more of a “guy” than you are. But TLB didn’t let me twist too long. She finished her drink and we got up to leave. I felt like I was eating vegetables, doing the right, healthy thing, but pining for that bacon burger. Despite the admonitions to keep going, we said our goodbyes and walked home.
The next morning, something was missing: the shovel to the head and wringing of my guts. My stomach was stable, my head only slightly achy, and I was probably an omelet away from feeling completely normal. Sure, I was sad to close a fun chapter on my drinking life. But I still had fun the night before without treating my liver with Shock and Awe.
An hour after I was up, TLB rose. Here it comes, I thought. Surely if I, a man, was struggling with the Hangover Quotient, my wife would be in trouble after a night of heavy pounding.
“So how do you feel?” I asked.
“Not too bad,” she said, as normal as if she had been drinking diet pop all night. “A little groggy, but not bad at all.”
And with that my testicles crawled just a little bit closer to my stomach. So much for crossing a milestone. Instead, I found out I’m just a bigger hangover wimp than my wife.
That’s enough to drive me to drink.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Time: Friend of freedom or tool of terror?
A CJSD Special Report
War has been declared on wartime timetables. But will our deadlines and curfews suffer collateral damage?
Republicans opened a new front in the Iraq war this week—the war on timetables for troop withdrawal. Republican Congressmen and Bush Administration officials not only refused to set a date for withdrawing American troops from Iraq, they launched an offensive against Democratic calls for such timetables, saying they would not "cut and run" and that even talking about timetables was a "disaster."
But like many wars, these attacks on Iraq timetables have had effects beyond the intended battlefield. Now, right here in America, all manner of time-based milestones are under attack.
The politics of deadlines
In Chicago, at the ad agency Grand, Olsen, and Pecker, an account manager and copywriter nearly came to blows after the copywriter missed a deadline. The advertising scribe, Gerald Bartleby, failed to deliver copy for a credit-card check package. The account manager, Jennifer Kelsey, confronted Mr. Bartleby at his cubicle, demanding to know when he would be finished.
"It will be ready when it's ready," Mr. Bartleby said. "What do you want me to do, just leave these headlines without supporting body copy? Do you want a 3 percent response rate or not?"
"It's just a check package," said Ms. Kelsey, "you know, 'use these checks for anything you want' blah, blah, blah. You said you would be done six weeks ago. What the hell have you been doing?"
"You know, I don't think this is even about the check package," yelled Mr. Branch. "I think you're just using this 'deadline' to score political points against me."
Such deadline deadlock has been reported nationwide, particularly in the IT industry. Dylan E. Myers, a project manager at Home Page Solutions, a Web development firm, says he's dealing with a near-revolt from his programmers.
"We had an emergency status meeting because we were way late on a project," said Mr. Myers, "and all my programmers were like, 'dude, code doesn't come together overnight,' and 'we have to make sure this home page is an example to other home pages.' And I was like, I hear you, and I respect your craft, but Playtex hired us to launch this new maxi pad portal launched by Friday.
"So the next day, one of them bought a Neville Chamberlain action figure off eBay and left it in my inbox,' said Mr. Myers, shaking his head. 'And they keep asking me if I want a chicken sandwich for lunch.'
Other reports have surfaced of cable television technicians refusing to name hour ranges for appointments, authors leaving delivery dates completely blank on their contracts, and business boards refusing to report quarterly profits.
"Our numbers just aren’t ready to go out in public," said one chief business officer at a Fortune 500 company, "and I'm not going to rush out earning statements for the sake of some artificial quarterly reporting structure or to satisfy some weak-willed shareholders. The results could be calamitous."
The curfew conundrum
The war on timetables has had a domestic effect as well, especially among parents and teenagers. "I told my daughter that she could stay at the party until midnight," said Helen Chapman of Little Rock, Arkansas, about her daughter, Ann. "I originally said 11:00, but she whined and pleaded and I gave in. Midnight is plenty late for a 16-year old. Well, when I showed up to get her, you'd have thought I was the biggest traitor on the planet."
Arriving at the party in her minivan at 11:55 p.m., Ms. Chapman waited for five minutes outside the house of the party, but her daughter did not appear. Going inside to investigate, Ms. Chapman found there were no parents home—despite Ann's insistence that they were there—and that there was rampant underage drinking and "general fooling around," in Ms. Chapman's words. "There was no supervision at all," Ms. Chapman said. "Those kids were just doing whatever the heck they felt like."
Grabbing her daughter by the wrist, Ms. Chapman forcibly pulled Ann out of the party. She scolded Ann for not disclosing the nature of the party, but Ann insisted she told Ms. Chapman it would not be chaperoned. After bickering back and forth about the exact nature of the pre-party disclosure, Ann said that her mother never let her have any fun and that it was unfair that she had a curfew when the other partygoers did not.
Arriving at home, Ms. Chapman said, "I don’t care if all the other kids can stay out all night, you’re coming home when I say, and you’re also grounded for lying."
"God, why do you hate freedom so much?" Ann screamed before slamming her bedroom door.
A weary Ms. Chapman slumped in a kitchen chair. "Do you see what I have to deal with now? I just want to know when she’s going to be home."
Is it "time's-up" for time?
It's unclear whether deadlines, curfews, and other time-based metrics will help us fight terror or embolden our enemies. But there is one thing that no one debates about time, a point made very clear by Republican party chairman Ken Mehlman.
"Democrats can talk about timetables and deadlines all they want," said Mr. Mehlman. "But one thing is clear: time goes hand-in-hand with death. It leads to death. And by aligning themselves with time, it's clear that Democrats are—as we have said all along—the party of death."
Republicans opened a new front in the Iraq war this week—the war on timetables for troop withdrawal. Republican Congressmen and Bush Administration officials not only refused to set a date for withdrawing American troops from Iraq, they launched an offensive against Democratic calls for such timetables, saying they would not "cut and run" and that even talking about timetables was a "disaster."
But like many wars, these attacks on Iraq timetables have had effects beyond the intended battlefield. Now, right here in America, all manner of time-based milestones are under attack.
The politics of deadlines
In Chicago, at the ad agency Grand, Olsen, and Pecker, an account manager and copywriter nearly came to blows after the copywriter missed a deadline. The advertising scribe, Gerald Bartleby, failed to deliver copy for a credit-card check package. The account manager, Jennifer Kelsey, confronted Mr. Bartleby at his cubicle, demanding to know when he would be finished.
"It will be ready when it's ready," Mr. Bartleby said. "What do you want me to do, just leave these headlines without supporting body copy? Do you want a 3 percent response rate or not?"
"It's just a check package," said Ms. Kelsey, "you know, 'use these checks for anything you want' blah, blah, blah. You said you would be done six weeks ago. What the hell have you been doing?"
"You know, I don't think this is even about the check package," yelled Mr. Branch. "I think you're just using this 'deadline' to score political points against me."
Such deadline deadlock has been reported nationwide, particularly in the IT industry. Dylan E. Myers, a project manager at Home Page Solutions, a Web development firm, says he's dealing with a near-revolt from his programmers.
"We had an emergency status meeting because we were way late on a project," said Mr. Myers, "and all my programmers were like, 'dude, code doesn't come together overnight,' and 'we have to make sure this home page is an example to other home pages.' And I was like, I hear you, and I respect your craft, but Playtex hired us to launch this new maxi pad portal launched by Friday.
"So the next day, one of them bought a Neville Chamberlain action figure off eBay and left it in my inbox,' said Mr. Myers, shaking his head. 'And they keep asking me if I want a chicken sandwich for lunch.'
Other reports have surfaced of cable television technicians refusing to name hour ranges for appointments, authors leaving delivery dates completely blank on their contracts, and business boards refusing to report quarterly profits.
"Our numbers just aren’t ready to go out in public," said one chief business officer at a Fortune 500 company, "and I'm not going to rush out earning statements for the sake of some artificial quarterly reporting structure or to satisfy some weak-willed shareholders. The results could be calamitous."
The curfew conundrum
The war on timetables has had a domestic effect as well, especially among parents and teenagers. "I told my daughter that she could stay at the party until midnight," said Helen Chapman of Little Rock, Arkansas, about her daughter, Ann. "I originally said 11:00, but she whined and pleaded and I gave in. Midnight is plenty late for a 16-year old. Well, when I showed up to get her, you'd have thought I was the biggest traitor on the planet."
Arriving at the party in her minivan at 11:55 p.m., Ms. Chapman waited for five minutes outside the house of the party, but her daughter did not appear. Going inside to investigate, Ms. Chapman found there were no parents home—despite Ann's insistence that they were there—and that there was rampant underage drinking and "general fooling around," in Ms. Chapman's words. "There was no supervision at all," Ms. Chapman said. "Those kids were just doing whatever the heck they felt like."
Grabbing her daughter by the wrist, Ms. Chapman forcibly pulled Ann out of the party. She scolded Ann for not disclosing the nature of the party, but Ann insisted she told Ms. Chapman it would not be chaperoned. After bickering back and forth about the exact nature of the pre-party disclosure, Ann said that her mother never let her have any fun and that it was unfair that she had a curfew when the other partygoers did not.
Arriving at home, Ms. Chapman said, "I don’t care if all the other kids can stay out all night, you’re coming home when I say, and you’re also grounded for lying."
"God, why do you hate freedom so much?" Ann screamed before slamming her bedroom door.
A weary Ms. Chapman slumped in a kitchen chair. "Do you see what I have to deal with now? I just want to know when she’s going to be home."
Is it "time's-up" for time?
It's unclear whether deadlines, curfews, and other time-based metrics will help us fight terror or embolden our enemies. But there is one thing that no one debates about time, a point made very clear by Republican party chairman Ken Mehlman.
"Democrats can talk about timetables and deadlines all they want," said Mr. Mehlman. "But one thing is clear: time goes hand-in-hand with death. It leads to death. And by aligning themselves with time, it's clear that Democrats are—as we have said all along—the party of death."
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Top Ten Tuesdays: Why have we been neglecting our blogs?
Special extra overtime edition!
11) Been working like a dog, sniffing luggage and chasing mechanical rabbits.
10) Had to find out where the kids disappeared to.
9) World Cup fever merged with NBA Finals mania and led to couch potato pneumonia.
8) At this point, we’ve chronicled pretty much everything we’re going to see from Mom’s basement.
7) These two Swedish foreign exchange students said they needed help with their anatomy homework and we spent all week...okay, okay, we sprained our wrists using the Internet. Happy now?
6) Help! we’ve ROTFLOL and can’t get up!
5) VH1’s history of drugs made us a little nostalgic for an old fashioned 80s style weekend and yadda yadda yadda couldn’t get onto Blogger from the correctional facility computer.
4) We decided to escape the virtual shackles chaining us to the Internet, stand on our two feet, and explore the real world around us! As we sprang from our desks, we tripped over the phone cord and broke our DSL modem.
3) Can’t stop scratching.
2) Thought The Rapture had arrived, but it was just a very convincing street theater rendition of Jesus Christ, Superstar.
1) All we can say is we have no idea how the mouse got up there or why we didn’t notice sooner.
11) Been working like a dog, sniffing luggage and chasing mechanical rabbits.
10) Had to find out where the kids disappeared to.
9) World Cup fever merged with NBA Finals mania and led to couch potato pneumonia.
8) At this point, we’ve chronicled pretty much everything we’re going to see from Mom’s basement.
7) These two Swedish foreign exchange students said they needed help with their anatomy homework and we spent all week...okay, okay, we sprained our wrists using the Internet. Happy now?
6) Help! we’ve ROTFLOL and can’t get up!
5) VH1’s history of drugs made us a little nostalgic for an old fashioned 80s style weekend and yadda yadda yadda couldn’t get onto Blogger from the correctional facility computer.
4) We decided to escape the virtual shackles chaining us to the Internet, stand on our two feet, and explore the real world around us! As we sprang from our desks, we tripped over the phone cord and broke our DSL modem.
3) Can’t stop scratching.
2) Thought The Rapture had arrived, but it was just a very convincing street theater rendition of Jesus Christ, Superstar.
1) All we can say is we have no idea how the mouse got up there or why we didn’t notice sooner.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Top Ten Tuesdays: What changes are we making to our Iraq strategy?
15) Rethinking current invade first, ask questions later policy.
14) Requiring a permit to detonate an improvised explosive device.
13) Impressing Democratic presidential hopefuls into minefield-sweeping duty.
12) Replacing formal diplomatic visits with late-night diplomatic booty calls.
11) Opening a new front, the War on Bad News.
10) Using trail of Cheetos to lure young male conservatives who rabidly support the war to enlistment offices.
9) Swapping army uniforms for Burger King costumes to really creep out the enemy.
8) Showing solidarity with the troops by donning flightsuit, hopping into a jet fighter, and personally defending the Texas coastline from al-Queda.
7) Financing war with all the unclaimed inheritance we’re getting from Nigerian banks.
6) Conducting biological warfare against insurgents by letting them sleep with Paris Hilton.
5) Promoting American-style democracy by not only playing Freedom Rock, but turning it up.
4) Improving Islamic relations by commissioning a cartoon series showing the Prophet Muhammad hugging Americans.
3) Ordering the entire U.S. army to slowly walk backwards until they reach the Iranian border.
2) Giving Kiefer Sutherland 24 hours to figure the whole thing out.
1) Coming up with a strategy.
14) Requiring a permit to detonate an improvised explosive device.
13) Impressing Democratic presidential hopefuls into minefield-sweeping duty.
12) Replacing formal diplomatic visits with late-night diplomatic booty calls.
11) Opening a new front, the War on Bad News.
10) Using trail of Cheetos to lure young male conservatives who rabidly support the war to enlistment offices.
9) Swapping army uniforms for Burger King costumes to really creep out the enemy.
8) Showing solidarity with the troops by donning flightsuit, hopping into a jet fighter, and personally defending the Texas coastline from al-Queda.
7) Financing war with all the unclaimed inheritance we’re getting from Nigerian banks.
6) Conducting biological warfare against insurgents by letting them sleep with Paris Hilton.
5) Promoting American-style democracy by not only playing Freedom Rock, but turning it up.
4) Improving Islamic relations by commissioning a cartoon series showing the Prophet Muhammad hugging Americans.
3) Ordering the entire U.S. army to slowly walk backwards until they reach the Iranian border.
2) Giving Kiefer Sutherland 24 hours to figure the whole thing out.
1) Coming up with a strategy.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
1-900-WIRE-TAP
A CJSD Commercial production
A split-screen shows two Arab men talking on the phone, dressed in jeans and sitting in suburban family rooms. They are having a very animated discussion. A woman with a sultry voice narrates over the footage.
FEMALE VO
Do you want to listen in on hot, wild conversations that could be a threat to our national security? Do you want to hear what suspected terrorists may be doing? Then get in on the action and call 1-900-WIRE-TAP.
You’ll hear all the down and dirty details from sleeper cells that could be right next door. Our big, powerful, NSA computers flag naughty terrorist code words and connect you to where the terrorism may be going down:
We listen in on the conversation:
FIRST ARAB MAN
I’m telling you, Omar, Dirk Nowitski is going to blow up in the NBA Finals.
SECOND ARAB MAN
No doubt, Ali, that German is unstoppable. He’s going to destroy Miami.
FIRST ARAB MAN
Oh yeah, he’s going to kill everyone.
They laugh. Cut to an image of two Arab women on the phone, one holding a cookie while she talks.
FEMALE VO
Whether you like boys or girls, 1-900-WIRE-TAP puts you in the middle of a counterterrorism sandwich....
FIRST ARAB WOMAN (biting into a cookie)
Praise be to Allah, these cookies are dynamite! I could die right now and go to heaven. What’s in them?
SECOND ARAB WOMAN
It’s my super-duper secret recipe. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you!
They laugh, too. Cut to an image of a 30ish white man in a suit, talking on a phone.
FEMALE VO
Not into Arabs? 1-900-WIRE-TAP will catch all kinds of dangerous code words and let you listen in on other American enemies, like Democrats...
MAN IN THE SUIT
Yes, Senator Kennedy, with the President’s approval rating sinking, now is our time to strike. We’ve got to hit him hard on the Iraq issue and rolling back the tax cuts.
FEMALE VO
Academics....
Cut to a female teacher talking on her cell phone.
PROFESSOR
Hello, this is Professor Smith. Yes, I’m currently teaching a course on peace studies. I’d be happy to talk to a reporter.
FEMALE VO
The media...
Cut to a female reporter on the phone
REPORTER
Hi, this is Julie Morganstern from The New Yorker. I’m fact-checking a story by Seymour Hersh on the unconstitutionality of the NSA program.
FEMALE VO
And gays...
Cut to two men shopping at a department store. One talks on his cell phone:
MALE SHOPPER
I know, I keep telling my partner that we should just move to Vermont, but he’s about San Francisco...No, we’re picking out china patterns together. I hope we have enough room for all this stuff in the Miata.
Cut to a montage of all the callers.
FEMALE VO
For all the barely legal NSA monitoring you can handle, hook your phone up to 1-900-WIRE-TAP. We’ll be waiting...and we’re all ears.
MALE VO (speaking rapidly) All calls may be monitored without notification. $3.95 for the first minute, $1.95 for each additional minute. Children under 18 get your parents permission unless they hate America, in which case please press star 7 to speak to one of our operators.
A split-screen shows two Arab men talking on the phone, dressed in jeans and sitting in suburban family rooms. They are having a very animated discussion. A woman with a sultry voice narrates over the footage.
FEMALE VO
Do you want to listen in on hot, wild conversations that could be a threat to our national security? Do you want to hear what suspected terrorists may be doing? Then get in on the action and call 1-900-WIRE-TAP.
You’ll hear all the down and dirty details from sleeper cells that could be right next door. Our big, powerful, NSA computers flag naughty terrorist code words and connect you to where the terrorism may be going down:
We listen in on the conversation:
FIRST ARAB MAN
I’m telling you, Omar, Dirk Nowitski is going to blow up in the NBA Finals.
SECOND ARAB MAN
No doubt, Ali, that German is unstoppable. He’s going to destroy Miami.
FIRST ARAB MAN
Oh yeah, he’s going to kill everyone.
They laugh. Cut to an image of two Arab women on the phone, one holding a cookie while she talks.
FEMALE VO
Whether you like boys or girls, 1-900-WIRE-TAP puts you in the middle of a counterterrorism sandwich....
FIRST ARAB WOMAN (biting into a cookie)
Praise be to Allah, these cookies are dynamite! I could die right now and go to heaven. What’s in them?
SECOND ARAB WOMAN
It’s my super-duper secret recipe. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you!
They laugh, too. Cut to an image of a 30ish white man in a suit, talking on a phone.
FEMALE VO
Not into Arabs? 1-900-WIRE-TAP will catch all kinds of dangerous code words and let you listen in on other American enemies, like Democrats...
MAN IN THE SUIT
Yes, Senator Kennedy, with the President’s approval rating sinking, now is our time to strike. We’ve got to hit him hard on the Iraq issue and rolling back the tax cuts.
FEMALE VO
Academics....
Cut to a female teacher talking on her cell phone.
PROFESSOR
Hello, this is Professor Smith. Yes, I’m currently teaching a course on peace studies. I’d be happy to talk to a reporter.
FEMALE VO
The media...
Cut to a female reporter on the phone
REPORTER
Hi, this is Julie Morganstern from The New Yorker. I’m fact-checking a story by Seymour Hersh on the unconstitutionality of the NSA program.
FEMALE VO
And gays...
Cut to two men shopping at a department store. One talks on his cell phone:
MALE SHOPPER
I know, I keep telling my partner that we should just move to Vermont, but he’s about San Francisco...No, we’re picking out china patterns together. I hope we have enough room for all this stuff in the Miata.
Cut to a montage of all the callers.
FEMALE VO
For all the barely legal NSA monitoring you can handle, hook your phone up to 1-900-WIRE-TAP. We’ll be waiting...and we’re all ears.
MALE VO (speaking rapidly) All calls may be monitored without notification. $3.95 for the first minute, $1.95 for each additional minute. Children under 18 get your parents permission unless they hate America, in which case please press star 7 to speak to one of our operators.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Top Ten Tuesdays: What are getting for Anna Nicole Smith's baby shower?
America’s favorite white-trash billionaire-corpse humper announced she is pregnant. What will we get her for shower gifts?
10) Hooked on Phonics
9) Complimentary exorcism, just to be sure
8) Free baby pole-dancing lessons at Montessori daycare
7) Baby Bjorn carrier with airbags for when Mommy falls down
6) Psychotherapy savings bonds
5) A special version of The Little Engine That Could, where the Little Engine waits for the Big, Old, Rusty engine to croak so the Little Engine can get all his coal
4) A breastfeeding funnel for the poor kid
3) Foster care with a loving pack of wolves
2) Snortable pre-natal vitamins
1) Starring role on a new reality show, Mommy Worstest
10) Hooked on Phonics
9) Complimentary exorcism, just to be sure
8) Free baby pole-dancing lessons at Montessori daycare
7) Baby Bjorn carrier with airbags for when Mommy falls down
6) Psychotherapy savings bonds
5) A special version of The Little Engine That Could, where the Little Engine waits for the Big, Old, Rusty engine to croak so the Little Engine can get all his coal
4) A breastfeeding funnel for the poor kid
3) Foster care with a loving pack of wolves
2) Snortable pre-natal vitamins
1) Starring role on a new reality show, Mommy Worstest
Monday, June 05, 2006
Behind Blue (Girl's) Eyes
In commenting about the worst top 50 since Casey Kassem's dog dedication, our resident "flower child" Blue Girl attracted the interest of someone who's pretty darn special.
And yes, it really is him.* He stopped by Lance Mannion's place, too.
That is the beauty of blogging. Blue Girl is now officially a rock star (she's been an unofficial one for quite some time).
It also inspired me to listen to "Won't Get Fooled Again," just to see if I missed something that the Night Ranger brigade caught in making it their #1. You know, maybe some hint that Keith Moon was really a Tory.
Nope. Once again, conservatives show they don't give much thought to thinking.
Kudos to BG and Mannion.
*Update: Just to make things clear, Tom Watson confirms BG's guest is who he says he is.
And yes, it really is him.* He stopped by Lance Mannion's place, too.
That is the beauty of blogging. Blue Girl is now officially a rock star (she's been an unofficial one for quite some time).
It also inspired me to listen to "Won't Get Fooled Again," just to see if I missed something that the Night Ranger brigade caught in making it their #1. You know, maybe some hint that Keith Moon was really a Tory.
Nope. Once again, conservatives show they don't give much thought to thinking.
Kudos to BG and Mannion.
*Update: Just to make things clear, Tom Watson confirms BG's guest is who he says he is.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
"I do not think you know what those words mean"
"My name is Brando Montoya. You coopted some of my favorite songs. Prepare to die."
Blue Girl hipped me to this.
The National Review, the place where conservatives who aren't smart enough for business or politics find work, picked their Top 50 "conservative" rock songs. (Don't fear the linkage-- it goes to the New York Times.)
So you're probably thinking that the top 10 are all Ted Nugent and Sammy Haggar songs, right? Oh, my sweet, deluded, liberal child, think again...
1. "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who
2. "Taxman" by The Beatles
3. "Sympathy for the Devil" by The Rolling Stones
Here is the actual logic for #3:
The devil is a tempter who leans hard on moral relativism — he will try to make you think that "every cop is a criminal / And all the sinners saints." What's more, he is the sinister inspiration for the cruelties of Bolshevism: "I stuck around St. Petersburg / When I saw it was a time for a change / Killed the czar and his ministers / Anastasia screamed in vain."Just before my head explodes from cognitive dissonance, Skynnard's "Sweet Home Ala-awful Fucking Song" and the Beach Boys appear next, which briefly reduces my cranial swelling. Even U2's "Gloria" is not a shocker at #6 -- I will let them coopt U2's Christian rock if it means keeping Stryper off of any list.
But then #7 and #8 hit like a pair of roundhouse kicks to each cultural testicle:
7. "Revolution" by The Beatles
8. "Bodies" by The are-you-freaking-kidding-me Sex Pistols
What else shows up? How about "Rock the Casbah" as the best Middle East air sortie song evar? Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" as an anti-environmental anthem? Or "Who'll Stop the Rain" from Creedence Clearwater Revival, with this explanation:
Written as an anti—Vietnam War song, this tune nevertheless is pessimistic about activism and takes a dim view of both Communism and liberalism: "Five—year plans and new deals, wrapped in golden chains . . ."
Yes, and "Fortunate Son" is all about how it's okay to support a war without fighting in it.
The most frightening thing is that this is all done with a straight face. The members of the most respected conservative publication (pause for laughter) seriously think Joe Strummer was on their side. I mean, what's next? Rage Against the Machine's "Bulls on Parade" as a pro-Wall Street song? Ministry's "Stigmata" as an homage to St. Francis of Assisi and Catholicism? Maybe they should ask Neil Young for permission to use "Keep on Rocking in the Free World" at the next Republican National Convention. Cause one thing you can't do if you're not free is rock! Jeb could even revive the "thousand points of light" platform.
The one good thing about all of this: after reading the lyric excerpts and snake-swallowing-its-tail circular logic, I understand the push to invade Iraq much more clearly than before. "See this, these three lines say 'Saddam may have WMD.' It's like this report is speaking to me, man! Gimme another hit."
You know who I really pity? The Nuge. 50 chances to score, and the bow-hunting, jerky-making, flag-humping Motor City Blandman can't beat out After the Fire (!) and The Scorpions' "Winds of Change," a song so bad it made East Germany long for Der Kommissars to ban rock and roll again.
I guess this means if Condi winds up running for president, we won't hear "Wang Dang Sweet Poon Tang" at her rallies.
P.S. Lance Mannion has some good thoughts about how conservatives can't even interpret the Beach Boys properly.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Top Ten Tuesdays: What advice are we giving graduates?
10) Make sure you take the fries out of the oil as soon as the bell dings
9) Cheaters never prosper except in sports, business, and the arts
8) Go forth and enlist
7) Get that rash looked at before your student health coverage runs out
6) You can’t really appreciate the cradle of civilization until you call an air strike on it
5) Gunga galunga, gunga-gunga lagunga
4) When delivering anti-American tirades into your cell phones, please speak slowly and clearly
3) Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, but drunk and stupid is good enough for the White House
2) Remember: every song you download for free makes Baby Jesus cry
1) When you have thousands of voting-age Americans trapped in a room for hours, always remind them you’re running for office
9) Cheaters never prosper except in sports, business, and the arts
8) Go forth and enlist
7) Get that rash looked at before your student health coverage runs out
6) You can’t really appreciate the cradle of civilization until you call an air strike on it
5) Gunga galunga, gunga-gunga lagunga
4) When delivering anti-American tirades into your cell phones, please speak slowly and clearly
3) Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, but drunk and stupid is good enough for the White House
2) Remember: every song you download for free makes Baby Jesus cry
1) When you have thousands of voting-age Americans trapped in a room for hours, always remind them you’re running for office
Monday, May 22, 2006
Top Ten Tuesdays: What are we putting in our PowerPoint presentations?*
10) A wealth of sentence fragments, improper punctuation, and typos to inspire the sales force
9) Venn diagram displaying suspected movers of our cheese
8) Clip art of a chainsaw-wielding stick figure decapitating someone putting clip art in their PowerPoint presentation
7) An inspirational quote from Death of a Salesman
6) Storyboards for the new ad campaign showing Paris Hilton giving birth to a tasty Carl’s Jr. burger
5) MP3 of “Take This Job and Shove It” along with a scan of our winning lottery ticket
4) Plenty of bullets, fired through the projection screen
3) Detailization of the strategic strategies that will enable us to proactively take the initiative toward realization of sales goals re: revenue production per remaining operational in the marketplace
2) Pixilated image of two sets of tassled loafers facing each other in the men’s room stall with the caption, “How Bob really got his promotion”
1) A Photoshoped Dilbert cartoon containing our suicide note
*In honor of my all-day PowerPoint training session tomorrow.
9) Venn diagram displaying suspected movers of our cheese
8) Clip art of a chainsaw-wielding stick figure decapitating someone putting clip art in their PowerPoint presentation
7) An inspirational quote from Death of a Salesman
6) Storyboards for the new ad campaign showing Paris Hilton giving birth to a tasty Carl’s Jr. burger
5) MP3 of “Take This Job and Shove It” along with a scan of our winning lottery ticket
4) Plenty of bullets, fired through the projection screen
3) Detailization of the strategic strategies that will enable us to proactively take the initiative toward realization of sales goals re: revenue production per remaining operational in the marketplace
2) Pixilated image of two sets of tassled loafers facing each other in the men’s room stall with the caption, “How Bob really got his promotion”
1) A Photoshoped Dilbert cartoon containing our suicide note
*In honor of my all-day PowerPoint training session tomorrow.
Caught red Lohan-ded
Hi, my name is Brando, and I'm a dirty old man.
I don't know how this happened, but I do know when: during the opening minutes of Lost in Translation, when the camera pans over the moon peeking from between the clouds of Scarlett Johansen's underwear.
Shortly thereafter, she was on the cover of Esquire in a pose that almost made me drop the magazine. Now, I had seen her in Ghost World, and I knew she was young, but I figured she was probably around 25. Lo and behold, I turned to her interview, and the writer noted that it was six weeks before her 20th birthday. That made me drop the magazine. I think I let out an Ignatious Reilly-esque, "Oh my God!"
That was child's play, though, compared to the dark, dirty, icky sin of Lindsay Lohan. At least Johansson looks older, can act, and isn't one-step away from dancing around a pole. Bear in mind that I wasn't happy with the Lohan crush—which developed after seeing Mean Girls—and I was desperately seeking a cure.
Well, the ever-clever TLB found a way to cure me: The Libido Trap. Head over and see what she did, especially with the second picture she links to. Let me tell you, I am free of The Lohan.
But not Scarlett. I don't give a damn if I was 28 when she made The Horse Whisperer. I can't quit her.
I don't know how this happened, but I do know when: during the opening minutes of Lost in Translation, when the camera pans over the moon peeking from between the clouds of Scarlett Johansen's underwear.
Shortly thereafter, she was on the cover of Esquire in a pose that almost made me drop the magazine. Now, I had seen her in Ghost World, and I knew she was young, but I figured she was probably around 25. Lo and behold, I turned to her interview, and the writer noted that it was six weeks before her 20th birthday. That made me drop the magazine. I think I let out an Ignatious Reilly-esque, "Oh my God!"
That was child's play, though, compared to the dark, dirty, icky sin of Lindsay Lohan. At least Johansson looks older, can act, and isn't one-step away from dancing around a pole. Bear in mind that I wasn't happy with the Lohan crush—which developed after seeing Mean Girls—and I was desperately seeking a cure.
Well, the ever-clever TLB found a way to cure me: The Libido Trap. Head over and see what she did, especially with the second picture she links to. Let me tell you, I am free of The Lohan.
But not Scarlett. I don't give a damn if I was 28 when she made The Horse Whisperer. I can't quit her.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
TLB in the NYT
When we moved to Iowa five years ago, we left our dashing urbanite lifestyle behind so that The Lovely Becky could hone her fiction writing and publish a novel--a lifelong dream of hers. Seeing her book reviewed in the New York Times Sunday Book Review was part of that dream.
Today, that dream is a reality. The NYT reviewed Icebergs, giving her a full-page review.
The review is mixed, but it said a lot of nice things about the book. The reviewer is dead wrong about her prose. Like Big-Pussy-Swimming-With-the-Fishes dead wrong. (That joke will make more sense if you see who reviewed the book.) But just getting reviewed in the Sunday Book Review is a big triumph, a sign that you have been recognized as a serious writer by the literary community. That alone has made our journey to America's Heartland worthwhile.
And it's been quite a journey. In March of 2001, we lived in Chicago. I was happy--I had a good job at an ad agency, I liked living in the city, and we had an awesome condo we had just bought in the Lincoln Square neighborhood. TLB, though, was really not happy. She had been writing fiction since she was a little girl, but felt that she had hit a wall of sorts, that she needed to make a much fuller commitment to writing if she was going to publish. She wanted to take the next step, to study in an MFA program.
When you want to study fiction, the Iowa Writer's Workshop is the place to be. I won't get into the merits or demerits of the Workshop, but at the very least, it provides students with two years to devote to the art of writing fiction. Of course, it's ridiculously hard to get into, and TLB applied thinking she would never be accepted.
Truth be told, I wasn't expecting it either. Not that I didn't think she was talented enough. But when a program gets 700-800 applicants per year and admits 25 people or so, a lot of very talented folks will get left out. After all, they rejected me twice. I know, hard to believe, but true.
So, in March 2001, several months after she submitted her application, TLB and I are vactioning in Rome. A routine check of messages at home uncovers a voice mail from the Writer's Workshop. They need to talk to TLB. Due to the time difference, we must sleep before talking to them.
--What could it be? TLB asks
--Well, I'm sure they don't call people to tell them they didn't get in.
--Oh my God, do you think...?
The truth is, I do. I know right then that she has gotten in. But it is best to not jump to conclusions, so I say that they could be calling if something was missing from her application or for some other reason. Best to not get ahead of ourselves blah blah blah.
The phone call the next morning confirmed what I knew--that my wife is one talented lady and that I am going to need to sell my condo, find a new job, and figure out what the hell a Hawkeye is. In one of the less proud moments of my life, I whined and moaned a bit over all of this for a few weeks, despite being very happy for my wife. I knew the experience would be good for Becky, but would it be worth it?
The answer is yes, and has been yes since before she even sold her novel. It's been a great experience here, and the review today just validates that we made the right choice. As do the rave reviews she got from the Chicago Tribune (home cookin' is always the best) and Nancy Pearl, the Goddess of Librarians who reviews books on NPR.
So if you're looking for a book that opens with a bang (literally) and then pulls you in with a deeply moving, emotional storyline spanning several decades, buy Icebergs today on Amazon or at your favorite bookstore. You'll be happy you did, just like I'm happy that we turned our lives upside down to chase a dream.
Today, that dream is a reality. The NYT reviewed Icebergs, giving her a full-page review.
The review is mixed, but it said a lot of nice things about the book. The reviewer is dead wrong about her prose. Like Big-Pussy-Swimming-With-the-Fishes dead wrong. (That joke will make more sense if you see who reviewed the book.) But just getting reviewed in the Sunday Book Review is a big triumph, a sign that you have been recognized as a serious writer by the literary community. That alone has made our journey to America's Heartland worthwhile.
And it's been quite a journey. In March of 2001, we lived in Chicago. I was happy--I had a good job at an ad agency, I liked living in the city, and we had an awesome condo we had just bought in the Lincoln Square neighborhood. TLB, though, was really not happy. She had been writing fiction since she was a little girl, but felt that she had hit a wall of sorts, that she needed to make a much fuller commitment to writing if she was going to publish. She wanted to take the next step, to study in an MFA program.
When you want to study fiction, the Iowa Writer's Workshop is the place to be. I won't get into the merits or demerits of the Workshop, but at the very least, it provides students with two years to devote to the art of writing fiction. Of course, it's ridiculously hard to get into, and TLB applied thinking she would never be accepted.
Truth be told, I wasn't expecting it either. Not that I didn't think she was talented enough. But when a program gets 700-800 applicants per year and admits 25 people or so, a lot of very talented folks will get left out. After all, they rejected me twice. I know, hard to believe, but true.
So, in March 2001, several months after she submitted her application, TLB and I are vactioning in Rome. A routine check of messages at home uncovers a voice mail from the Writer's Workshop. They need to talk to TLB. Due to the time difference, we must sleep before talking to them.
--What could it be? TLB asks
--Well, I'm sure they don't call people to tell them they didn't get in.
--Oh my God, do you think...?
The truth is, I do. I know right then that she has gotten in. But it is best to not jump to conclusions, so I say that they could be calling if something was missing from her application or for some other reason. Best to not get ahead of ourselves blah blah blah.
The phone call the next morning confirmed what I knew--that my wife is one talented lady and that I am going to need to sell my condo, find a new job, and figure out what the hell a Hawkeye is. In one of the less proud moments of my life, I whined and moaned a bit over all of this for a few weeks, despite being very happy for my wife. I knew the experience would be good for Becky, but would it be worth it?
The answer is yes, and has been yes since before she even sold her novel. It's been a great experience here, and the review today just validates that we made the right choice. As do the rave reviews she got from the Chicago Tribune (home cookin' is always the best) and Nancy Pearl, the Goddess of Librarians who reviews books on NPR.
So if you're looking for a book that opens with a bang (literally) and then pulls you in with a deeply moving, emotional storyline spanning several decades, buy Icebergs today on Amazon or at your favorite bookstore. You'll be happy you did, just like I'm happy that we turned our lives upside down to chase a dream.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Top Ten Thursdays: Why Do We Wish We Were in Canada Instead of the US, Eh?
10) The Canadian Supreme Court approves of sex outside of the missionary position
9) Their Border patrol says, “please,” before conducting body cavity searches
8) Their Sin City only has the good kind of whacking
8) Kids in the Hall reruns crush the heads of new Saturday Night Live episodes
7) The metric system makes gas seem lots cheaper and speed limits way faster
6) Canadian Idol auditions involve 20-minute sci-fi dystopias with complex time changes
5) Domestic violence is swiftly punished with a trip to the penalty box
4) Even though many Canadians don’t agree with Ann Coulter’s beliefs, they politely respect her wish to become a woman
3) When having improper relations with an intern, you can use Cuban cigars
2) Trailer Park Boys refers to a TV show, not the Republican voting base
1) No Cheney
P.S. I'm definitely asking for asylum if Jeb wins in 2008.
9) Their Border patrol says, “please,” before conducting body cavity searches
8) Their Sin City only has the good kind of whacking
8) Kids in the Hall reruns crush the heads of new Saturday Night Live episodes
7) The metric system makes gas seem lots cheaper and speed limits way faster
6) Canadian Idol auditions involve 20-minute sci-fi dystopias with complex time changes
5) Domestic violence is swiftly punished with a trip to the penalty box
4) Even though many Canadians don’t agree with Ann Coulter’s beliefs, they politely respect her wish to become a woman
3) When having improper relations with an intern, you can use Cuban cigars
2) Trailer Park Boys refers to a TV show, not the Republican voting base
1) No Cheney
P.S. I'm definitely asking for asylum if Jeb wins in 2008.
Friday, May 12, 2006
Used-Car-Program-Related Activities
I'm off to Michigan (where The Lovely Becky is on a panel at the Ann Arbor Book Festival) and then onward to Windsor (where I will smoke Cubans and drink with TLB's awesome Canadian relatives). I may be able to squeeze in a Top Ten if they have the Internets in Canada, but otherwise the jerking will be taking a breather until later next week.
My recent purchase of a new used car* (to replace the tornado-totalled one) and the WMD shenannigans with Iran reminded me of the following, a piece I wrote in spring 2004 that later became my first blog post, back when I was posting at a blog called Jane's Calamity and CJSD was just a twinkle in my eye. I thought it would be fun to resurrect it.
*purchased from my father who, while a staunch Republican, always cuts me a great deal.
I.
--Hello, sir, I’m George. How can I help you?
--I'm looking for a new car.
--This is the used car lot. See, says so right up there.
--No, I meant I’m looking to purchase a car. A used car. I’m under a very tight deadline, and I have very little money to spend.
--Oh, well, then you’ve come to the right place....
--Hans.
--Hans. Nice name. Nice German name.
--I’m Swedish.
-- I love your meatballs!
--Um, thank you. Now, about this car....
--This one is one-of-a-kind, Hans.
--It’s a Datsun.
--Yes, but they don’t make these anymore, Hans.
--Why not? Is something wrong with it?
--No, no, of course not. In fact, this one was owned by a little old lady. Myrtle Jenkins. She cried when she had to sell it, Hans, that’s how much she loved this car.
--Really?
--Yes, she was nearing the end of her life. She had seen her father go off to a world war. Her husband fought in the next world war. She sent her son off to the jungles of southeast Asia. And her grandson....
-- Why did she sell the car again?
--She couldn’t afford to keep it, Hans. See, Myrtle lives on social security. Unfortunately, that didn’t provide her as much money as she banked on. Not as much, certainly, if Myrtle had been able to control how her social security was invested through private investments.
--I see. But it’s in good shape?
--Hans, a pessimist would say this car is in good shape. A pessimist. I would say this car is in phenomonable shape. Probably better shape than you or I, even though I’m a jogger. You jog, Hans?
--No. It does seem to be well maintained.
--Phenomonable, Hans. It’s met all of the state's minimum safety requirements.
--That price almost seems too good to be true. Safety is very important to me, George. And this car is a bit...
--Vintage?
--...old. I’m worried about its safety features. Does it have anti-lock brakes?
--Hans, it has something better than anti-lock brakes. Neo-anti-lock brakes. With traditional anti-lock brakes, what controls the braking? A machine, a computer chip. Now let me ask you a question. Are you smarter than a computer chip?
--Yes of course, but—
--Exactly. No little piece of silicon can out-think the ol’ human noodle that God has blessed each of us with. But a while ago a bunch of liberal engineers decided to take braking out of your hands, Hans, and put that life-and-death decision into a chip. These neo-anti-lock brakes restore your power to choose when to pump your brakes. If they lock up, then you decide whether or not to take your foot off and pump. You remain in control during the whole decision process, Hans, not the little computer chip.
--Well, I don’t know....
--Hans, how do you like the sound of “free CD player”?
--Okay, you have a deal.
II.
--Hello, can I help you?
--Hi, George, remember me?
--Franz, right?
--Hans.
--Right, from Sweeden. Love those meatballs!
--I’m not...never mind. Look, it’s about that free CD player.
--Nice, isn’t it? Much better sound than those old records. That’s the beauty of progress.
--Yes, well, George, the problem is I can’t enjoy that crystal clear sound without speakers.
--I see. The best suggestion I can make would be to purchase speakers, then have them installed. That should solve your problem.
--Yes, but I think you should do that.
--I don’t follow you, Hans.
--Well, you deceived me about the speakers. When you said, “free CD player,” I interpreted that as “a CD player that plays through the car's speakers.”
--Hans, correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t say, “free CD player that will play through the car’s speakers.” All I offered was the free CD player.
--Yes, but, who in their right mind would offer a free CD player without something to play it through?
--You seemed to think it was a great offer, Hans.
--But you told me the speakers were there, George. Remember? You pointed to the speaker covers in the back and in the door and said I would be “blown away” when I heard the CD player through those. But when there was no sound and I checked under the covers, it looked like the speakers were removed quite some time ago.
--Hans, I’m sorry. I assumed those speakers were there. I see speaker covers, I assume there are speakers underneath. All the information I was given suggested that there was a high probability that those speakers would be found where one would expect to find those speakers on this model of car.
--Just put the speakers in.
--Sure thing, Hans. Again, I repeat to you, the capacity to have a good owner’s manual means that a car salesmen can make good calls about the features of the car. So please don’t tell my manager.
III.
--George!
--Hans! Good to see you. How’s the Toyota?
--Datsun, you lying sack of—
--Whoah, buddy, let’s simmer down.
--Simmer? Is that a joke, George? Because my Datsun is simmering at the junkyard now. It caught on fire.
--Fire?
--Remember the gas smell I asked about? You said it was because the Datsun used a high efficiency engine that actually recycled some of the gas.
--I don’t recall saying that exactly....
--It turns out it smelled like gas because it was leaking gas. The insurance inspector said there were holes in the fuel line. How the hell can a car meet “the state’s minimum safety requirements” when there are holes in the fuel line?
--That sounds like a question for the state. I am as shocked as you are, Hans. It sounds like we were both lied to.
--I want to see the inspection records.
--Okay, okay. I have them in my files. Let me see...yes, right here.
--What’s this big smudge? There’s eighteen months of inspection records I can’t read.
--Well, I’ll be. I don’t know how that got there. But see that signature at the bottom? That’s from the state inspector. He wouldn’t sign that if the car wasn’t safe. Wouldn’t be much of a safety inspector, would he?
--George, I swear, if you’re lying...
--Hey, Hans, we’re friends. There’s no need for that kind of hate speech. Tell you what, I’m going to get you another car, okay, and I’m only going to charge you...I can’t even say it out loud, because I’ll get in trouble with my manager. That’s how good of a deal I’ll make. I’ll even throw in those speakers I was supposed to install. Now, you look like a Yugo man to me.
My recent purchase of a new used car* (to replace the tornado-totalled one) and the WMD shenannigans with Iran reminded me of the following, a piece I wrote in spring 2004 that later became my first blog post, back when I was posting at a blog called Jane's Calamity and CJSD was just a twinkle in my eye. I thought it would be fun to resurrect it.
*purchased from my father who, while a staunch Republican, always cuts me a great deal.
I.
--Hello, sir, I’m George. How can I help you?
--I'm looking for a new car.
--This is the used car lot. See, says so right up there.
--No, I meant I’m looking to purchase a car. A used car. I’m under a very tight deadline, and I have very little money to spend.
--Oh, well, then you’ve come to the right place....
--Hans.
--Hans. Nice name. Nice German name.
--I’m Swedish.
-- I love your meatballs!
--Um, thank you. Now, about this car....
--This one is one-of-a-kind, Hans.
--It’s a Datsun.
--Yes, but they don’t make these anymore, Hans.
--Why not? Is something wrong with it?
--No, no, of course not. In fact, this one was owned by a little old lady. Myrtle Jenkins. She cried when she had to sell it, Hans, that’s how much she loved this car.
--Really?
--Yes, she was nearing the end of her life. She had seen her father go off to a world war. Her husband fought in the next world war. She sent her son off to the jungles of southeast Asia. And her grandson....
-- Why did she sell the car again?
--She couldn’t afford to keep it, Hans. See, Myrtle lives on social security. Unfortunately, that didn’t provide her as much money as she banked on. Not as much, certainly, if Myrtle had been able to control how her social security was invested through private investments.
--I see. But it’s in good shape?
--Hans, a pessimist would say this car is in good shape. A pessimist. I would say this car is in phenomonable shape. Probably better shape than you or I, even though I’m a jogger. You jog, Hans?
--No. It does seem to be well maintained.
--Phenomonable, Hans. It’s met all of the state's minimum safety requirements.
--That price almost seems too good to be true. Safety is very important to me, George. And this car is a bit...
--Vintage?
--...old. I’m worried about its safety features. Does it have anti-lock brakes?
--Hans, it has something better than anti-lock brakes. Neo-anti-lock brakes. With traditional anti-lock brakes, what controls the braking? A machine, a computer chip. Now let me ask you a question. Are you smarter than a computer chip?
--Yes of course, but—
--Exactly. No little piece of silicon can out-think the ol’ human noodle that God has blessed each of us with. But a while ago a bunch of liberal engineers decided to take braking out of your hands, Hans, and put that life-and-death decision into a chip. These neo-anti-lock brakes restore your power to choose when to pump your brakes. If they lock up, then you decide whether or not to take your foot off and pump. You remain in control during the whole decision process, Hans, not the little computer chip.
--Well, I don’t know....
--Hans, how do you like the sound of “free CD player”?
--Okay, you have a deal.
II.
--Hello, can I help you?
--Hi, George, remember me?
--Franz, right?
--Hans.
--Right, from Sweeden. Love those meatballs!
--I’m not...never mind. Look, it’s about that free CD player.
--Nice, isn’t it? Much better sound than those old records. That’s the beauty of progress.
--Yes, well, George, the problem is I can’t enjoy that crystal clear sound without speakers.
--I see. The best suggestion I can make would be to purchase speakers, then have them installed. That should solve your problem.
--Yes, but I think you should do that.
--I don’t follow you, Hans.
--Well, you deceived me about the speakers. When you said, “free CD player,” I interpreted that as “a CD player that plays through the car's speakers.”
--Hans, correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t say, “free CD player that will play through the car’s speakers.” All I offered was the free CD player.
--Yes, but, who in their right mind would offer a free CD player without something to play it through?
--You seemed to think it was a great offer, Hans.
--But you told me the speakers were there, George. Remember? You pointed to the speaker covers in the back and in the door and said I would be “blown away” when I heard the CD player through those. But when there was no sound and I checked under the covers, it looked like the speakers were removed quite some time ago.
--Hans, I’m sorry. I assumed those speakers were there. I see speaker covers, I assume there are speakers underneath. All the information I was given suggested that there was a high probability that those speakers would be found where one would expect to find those speakers on this model of car.
--Just put the speakers in.
--Sure thing, Hans. Again, I repeat to you, the capacity to have a good owner’s manual means that a car salesmen can make good calls about the features of the car. So please don’t tell my manager.
III.
--George!
--Hans! Good to see you. How’s the Toyota?
--Datsun, you lying sack of—
--Whoah, buddy, let’s simmer down.
--Simmer? Is that a joke, George? Because my Datsun is simmering at the junkyard now. It caught on fire.
--Fire?
--Remember the gas smell I asked about? You said it was because the Datsun used a high efficiency engine that actually recycled some of the gas.
--I don’t recall saying that exactly....
--It turns out it smelled like gas because it was leaking gas. The insurance inspector said there were holes in the fuel line. How the hell can a car meet “the state’s minimum safety requirements” when there are holes in the fuel line?
--That sounds like a question for the state. I am as shocked as you are, Hans. It sounds like we were both lied to.
--I want to see the inspection records.
--Okay, okay. I have them in my files. Let me see...yes, right here.
--What’s this big smudge? There’s eighteen months of inspection records I can’t read.
--Well, I’ll be. I don’t know how that got there. But see that signature at the bottom? That’s from the state inspector. He wouldn’t sign that if the car wasn’t safe. Wouldn’t be much of a safety inspector, would he?
--George, I swear, if you’re lying...
--Hey, Hans, we’re friends. There’s no need for that kind of hate speech. Tell you what, I’m going to get you another car, okay, and I’m only going to charge you...I can’t even say it out loud, because I’ll get in trouble with my manager. That’s how good of a deal I’ll make. I’ll even throw in those speakers I was supposed to install. Now, you look like a Yugo man to me.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Armistead Maupin's Tales of the Site Meter
Like a lot of bloggers, I am fascinated by my Site Meter. There's the inexplicable numbers fascination part: how many people came by today? It's inexplicable because whether 5 people or 5,000 show up, I am not any richer or wiser or more endowed (could you imagine the traffic stuffing that a Site-Meter-enabled penis enlargement would produce?).
The more fascinating part to me is who stops by. Some I know, some are what Blue Girl calls imaginary friends, but there are also a lot of folks who come by and see the blog who I may never have had any contact with. I especially enjoy the thought of someone I don't know in some far away place reading the blog and laughing (or, if they are from the Vice President's office, preparing to expose my secret identity).
The most amusing entertainment of Site Meter comes from the search results. What are people looking for when they wind up here, a site that is neither about gay sex nor country dancing? As you can probably imagine, when you have a blog with Circle Jerk in the title, you get plenty of amusing hits from search terms like circle jerk, co-ed circle jerk, two males jerking each other (that was one from today), and married guy circle jerk (did I leave a window open?).
Before today, the most odd and unsettling episode of Tales of the Site Meter was "Sammy and Elijah." I wrote a sketch called Jehovah's Witness Protection Program that had two characters with those names. I started getting hits from searches for "Sammy and Elijah." Naïve boy that I am, I assumed there was probably some religious context for those names that I didn't know about. I googled the term, and wound up on a gay sex site dedicated to two young men named Sammy and Elijah. From the 1.7 seconds I spent looking at the site, they also looked like borderline NAMBLA bait. I slammed the browser in reverse and got the hell out of there. The last thing I need is to pull a Pete Townshend and have to explain to the FBI that I was "researching" my Site Meter hits.
But today, I saw the best search term I have seen to date, the (literal) royal flush of search words: peanut looking chunks in my feces.
That's the Site Meter equivalent of Michael Jordan hitting the game-winner over Bryon Russell during the 1998 NBA finals. I almost think I should quit looking at the search hits, because everything else will be like Jordan coming back to play for the Washington Wizards.
The worst part is, I want to know the rest of the story. Was it a hit from sub-fetish too freakish for even Dan Savage? Was it a dire, extra-crunchy-Skippy-related medical emergency? And was "peanut looking" supposed to be hyphenated, or was the Peanut the subject and doing the looking?
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the real beauty of Site Meter. You get just enough info to write your own story. It's Mad Libs, Choose Your Own Adventure, and an endless Dickensian serial drama all rolled into one. Only with peanut feces and group groping included.
The more fascinating part to me is who stops by. Some I know, some are what Blue Girl calls imaginary friends, but there are also a lot of folks who come by and see the blog who I may never have had any contact with. I especially enjoy the thought of someone I don't know in some far away place reading the blog and laughing (or, if they are from the Vice President's office, preparing to expose my secret identity).
The most amusing entertainment of Site Meter comes from the search results. What are people looking for when they wind up here, a site that is neither about gay sex nor country dancing? As you can probably imagine, when you have a blog with Circle Jerk in the title, you get plenty of amusing hits from search terms like circle jerk, co-ed circle jerk, two males jerking each other (that was one from today), and married guy circle jerk (did I leave a window open?).
Before today, the most odd and unsettling episode of Tales of the Site Meter was "Sammy and Elijah." I wrote a sketch called Jehovah's Witness Protection Program that had two characters with those names. I started getting hits from searches for "Sammy and Elijah." Naïve boy that I am, I assumed there was probably some religious context for those names that I didn't know about. I googled the term, and wound up on a gay sex site dedicated to two young men named Sammy and Elijah. From the 1.7 seconds I spent looking at the site, they also looked like borderline NAMBLA bait. I slammed the browser in reverse and got the hell out of there. The last thing I need is to pull a Pete Townshend and have to explain to the FBI that I was "researching" my Site Meter hits.
But today, I saw the best search term I have seen to date, the (literal) royal flush of search words: peanut looking chunks in my feces.
That's the Site Meter equivalent of Michael Jordan hitting the game-winner over Bryon Russell during the 1998 NBA finals. I almost think I should quit looking at the search hits, because everything else will be like Jordan coming back to play for the Washington Wizards.
The worst part is, I want to know the rest of the story. Was it a hit from sub-fetish too freakish for even Dan Savage? Was it a dire, extra-crunchy-Skippy-related medical emergency? And was "peanut looking" supposed to be hyphenated, or was the Peanut the subject and doing the looking?
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the real beauty of Site Meter. You get just enough info to write your own story. It's Mad Libs, Choose Your Own Adventure, and an endless Dickensian serial drama all rolled into one. Only with peanut feces and group groping included.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Top Ten Tuesdays: What changes will we be making at the CIA?
Special extended confirmation fight edition!
12) Removing the “para” from “paramilitary.”
11) Taking Jack Bauer seriously when he tells us there's something fishy going on at the airport.
10) Relocating prisoners from secret overseas prisons to American prison system, where no one will pay attention to them.
9) Mandating that all martinis be stirred, not shaken.
8) Settling disagreements with the Defense Intelligence Agency in a winner-take-all steel cage match with Rummy.
7) Keeping that Negroponte from getting too uppity.
6) Switching to Verizon for all secret wiretapping.
5) Reducing operational overhead by starting new “authorize one assassination, get the next one free” policy.
4) Improving readability of the President’s Daily Brief by changing it to a picture-based format.
3) Banning use of Magic 8-ball when writing National Intelligence Estimates.
2) Activating special 2008 election mind-control program, The Frist Supremacy.
1) Respecting the rights of sovereign nations, even when we disagree with them...just kidding, we’re going to ask Pat Robertson which world leaders God says have to go.
12) Removing the “para” from “paramilitary.”
11) Taking Jack Bauer seriously when he tells us there's something fishy going on at the airport.
10) Relocating prisoners from secret overseas prisons to American prison system, where no one will pay attention to them.
9) Mandating that all martinis be stirred, not shaken.
8) Settling disagreements with the Defense Intelligence Agency in a winner-take-all steel cage match with Rummy.
7) Keeping that Negroponte from getting too uppity.
6) Switching to Verizon for all secret wiretapping.
5) Reducing operational overhead by starting new “authorize one assassination, get the next one free” policy.
4) Improving readability of the President’s Daily Brief by changing it to a picture-based format.
3) Banning use of Magic 8-ball when writing National Intelligence Estimates.
2) Activating special 2008 election mind-control program, The Frist Supremacy.
1) Respecting the rights of sovereign nations, even when we disagree with them...just kidding, we’re going to ask Pat Robertson which world leaders God says have to go.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Why I will probably not be featured on Taxicab Confessions anytime soon
Driving back to Iowa from Nashville this weekend, my lovely wife and I passed the Leviathan-sized giant cross of Effingham, Illinois. Or, as I would dub it if I lived there, the "effing gianormous cross of Effingham."
"Jesus Christ," B said when she saw it.
"Exactly," I said.
Soon after basking in this multi-storied Christian grandeur, we saw a sign for a Bible Factory Outlet store. That prompted this conversation:
Me: "What the hell do you sell at a Bible Factory Outlet store?"
B: "Beats me. Maybe used Bibles?"
Me: "Hmm... that could be cool. What if you could buy Bibles that were used in an exorcism?"
B: "No one would want something like that."
Me: "Are you kidding? I would totally buy a Bible that had been used to cast out demons."
B: "No one normal would want something like that."
"Jesus Christ," B said when she saw it.
"Exactly," I said.
Soon after basking in this multi-storied Christian grandeur, we saw a sign for a Bible Factory Outlet store. That prompted this conversation:
Me: "What the hell do you sell at a Bible Factory Outlet store?"
B: "Beats me. Maybe used Bibles?"
Me: "Hmm... that could be cool. What if you could buy Bibles that were used in an exorcism?"
B: "No one would want something like that."
Me: "Are you kidding? I would totally buy a Bible that had been used to cast out demons."
B: "No one normal would want something like that."
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Dude, that was my skull!
Pop quiz: what does this picture show:
a) Verizon's new "Dude, can you hear how high I am now?" campaign
b) A new PSA, "Friends don't let friends doobage dial."
c) A still from the set of the new movie, Harold and Kumar Go to a Phish Concert
d) The annual spring barbecue at Matthew McConaughey's house
e) 21st century police work at the Colorado University Smoke-In?
The answer is e, and Trevor Jackson over at Creekside Review has all the dope and links to some really, really funny pictures.
Plus, for those of you indie rock lovin' hipster doofuses (or is it doofi?), Trevor also puts up a monthly mix of great tunes to download, including The April Mix. Find an up-and-coming band you can love before they get all popular and you have to disown them.
a) Verizon's new "Dude, can you hear how high I am now?" campaign
b) A new PSA, "Friends don't let friends doobage dial."
c) A still from the set of the new movie, Harold and Kumar Go to a Phish Concert
d) The annual spring barbecue at Matthew McConaughey's house
e) 21st century police work at the Colorado University Smoke-In?
The answer is e, and Trevor Jackson over at Creekside Review has all the dope and links to some really, really funny pictures.
Plus, for those of you indie rock lovin' hipster doofuses (or is it doofi?), Trevor also puts up a monthly mix of great tunes to download, including The April Mix. Find an up-and-coming band you can love before they get all popular and you have to disown them.
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