squidbag

Obama's Nobel

Okay, okay, okay.

Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."  Efforts.  Not a result - efforts.  That's going to be important here. Do I think he "deserves" a Nobel Peace Prize?  Well, my initial response was, "no."  But I decided not to get nuts about it because I realized something very important: It makes no difference to me whatsoever.  I don't care.  People all over the world went nuts when this august body of Norwegian politicians randomly decided that our President deserved a Nobel Peace Prize.  For his efforts to create peace.  Whatever.  Who cares?  Rush Limbaugh does, 'cause he can get a week's worth of press out of it.  Obama's opponents, because they hate him and wish him only ill.  But ultimately, why do we care about the Nobel?  They're essentially a grant distributing body elected by the Norwegian Parliament to hand out money left in trust in a private fund.  Why do you even care what they think?  Or is this one of those things people get worked up about solely because it's on the news?  I spend a lot of time around people and still find myself consistently confused by their behavior, so this might need to be explained to me again.

"Deserve's got nothing to do with it," as a wise man once said.  It's all about effort, folks - not results.  Look at some of the past winners of the "peace" prize.  The IAEA took it 2005, because of their work trying to "prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way."  A resounding success, obviously, since the rollback of a nuclear world is one the things the Nobel's recognizing Obama for, four years later.  What about Henry Kissinger being in there, 1973?  Or Arafat, Peres, and Rabin (sans Clinton)?  For that lasting Middle East peace they pulled off?  It's not about the success rate, people.  And it can't be about motivation.  It's hard to say what DeKlerk would have done with his life if Botha hadn't had a stroke, and yet, there he is, on the list, sharing a prize with a man who spent 19 years in jail for his convictions.  Hmmm.

Peace is an elusive thing.  Technically, true peace would be an absence of conflict of any kind, but the Nobel committee rewards pacifism as a virtue, and often, that looks like doing nothing.  I for one, am a little lost on what the Dalai Lama actually does.  But I assume that's because I'm godless Western scum.

Politically conservative dickheads in this country need to understand something before they continue with one of their current arguments about this thing - "liberal" thinking, in the classic sense of the word, is more inclusive, and features ideas that are groundbreaking, at the outside edge of what can be achieved and even conceptualized.  Because you are conservative, it will often seem like the intellectual rest of the world is turned against you.  They are.  They reject conservatism - keeping a status quo, valuing traditionalism over the reality of the present and future - as a backward obsolete way to be, and refuse to participate.  When the rest of the world hated us while Bush was in office?  That should have been your first giant-ass clue.  You're wrong.  Not just in your ideas, but in the very process that allowed you to arrive at them.

Finally, the biggest problem with all of this Nobel / Obama mishigas is that we overlooked the fucking clown in space, people!  Cirque du International Space Station!  Priorities, guys.  If we get so caught up in hating on the President and a bunch of Norwegians that we can't appreciate the Space Clown, then I don't want to play anymore.  Unless it's some of the games on the Nobel site.

"I'm Calling You Out!"

So what happens in the real world is that a human stain like Rep. Joe Wilson out of South Carolina can yell out inappropriate shit while the President's talking, and then, due to that civility and statesmanship thing we keep trying to do - and which is receding rapidly in the rearview mirror of American discourse as we speed towards the future - Joe can then offer up a meaningless and fake apology, which in the dance of politics, the President will then accept along with the minor bump in the polls, and the whole thing is meant to fade away unless you're a Dem challenging Joe for his seat, and then you get 50 grand in contributions overnight from people who are sick of his shit.  But the short version is, he says what he wants, he apologizes, POTUS accepts, the thing goes under the rug.  I wish, however, I wish we did things differently.

(voice of Michael Buffer)

With the BRAWL ON THE LAWN!!!  A bout to work things out! 

In the red corner, hailing from South Carolina, the state that's famous for those little stickers with the Palmetto trees on them, and weighing in at 185 pounds of shit, The Joe who said No, the Carolina Heckler, the one and thankfully only, Representative Joe, WIILLLL-SONNNNN!!!

And in the blue corner, coming out of The Windy City, weighing in at 195 pounds of lean, solid muscle, The Noise from Illinois, the Barack Bomber, The Chicago Way, the one and only undisputed Leader of the Free Wooorld, the Man himself, The Chief Executive, Barack, K.O.-BAMMAAAAA!!!

(ringside)

Ladies and gentlemen, the Squidbag is here, ringside, bringing you the play-by-play on what promises to be a very exciting display of fistic prowess.  Most everyone is here tonight - there's John McCain in the rainbow wig sort of holding up the JOHN 3:16 placard, and there's Nancy Pelosi, appearing to take down names, not sure what that's about - we did have a little trouble earlier this evening when Glenn Beck was turned away on the grounds that he had no credentials for anything, whatsoever, in any capacity at all.  None.  Anyway, we're mere moments away from the bell, and some democratic pugilism that will hopefully settle the score between these two men on whether or not illegal immigrants to America will be recieving healthcare under the President's proposed plan.

(DING!)

And that's the bell, folks, and you can tell it's going to be a hell of a match already - Joe's patented Hillbilly Haymaker has landed a couple of times, and this crowd is going crazy!  OH!  But there's that reach - and not one of logic, like conservatives typically make, no, this is the three feet and change of the President's arm with his fist clanking off of Glass Joe Wilson here!  Oh, man, that's got to hurt!  This capacity crowd is on its feet cheering!!!  Witless Wilson looks wobbly out there, his knees can't seem to agree, and here comes Obama's hammer from downtown!  OOOHHH!!  That's it, I think!  YES!  DOWN GOES WILSON!  DOWN GOES WILSON!!  And that's K.O.bama, still the reigning champion of the ring, and Joe has yet to stir!  It's going to be sad time in South Carolina tonight!

(applause and cheering)

I'm just saying; that's how I would have done it. 

Turning the Tables

For awhile, but especially over the last few days, I have been hearing the sound of running water hitting shoes as conservatives have pissed themselves profusely and whined and gibbered in abundance and generally let their fear run riot in cleats over any kind of rational thinking as they reacted without acting logically to Obama's speech to children from earlier today.  And who could blame them?  The White House fanned the flames of paranoia by releasing the full text of the President's remarks a full day early, and then who could forget the mass rioting of children hypnotized by the President's dulcet tones, as they took to the outdoors, the nation over, and ran in mobs through the streets, drunk on socialism and The Liberal Agenda, spreading the twin gospels of free sex and "to each according to his need."  Eventually, the glut of angry children came to run amok, and society itself collapsed under the weight of burning cars and rage, broken glass and dreams, and youth gone wild as America came to a screeching fucking halt, commerce abruptly stopped, the rule of law was cast down and forgotten, and children came rushing out of statehouses, their faces smeared with ash, chocolate, and printer's ink, treading their Guy Fawkes masks underfoot as the skies of our once Great Nation were blackened with smoke from her burning schools, institutions, and capitals.  You remember that?  When Obama's speech brought the nation to its knees and destroyed democracy itself?  At about 11:18 CST this morning?  Cheapened public address as a form of communication and bent Justice over the desk?  Right after Labor Day?  If only we had listened to the prescient conservatives and buried our children's' collective heads in the sand - they knew the score, they had their ears to the ground, hearing the footfalls of  eminent destruction, listening to the keening death song of Lady Liberty.  Woe unto us.  O, Woe.

And, we, the pansiated liberal pseudo-intellectual elite in this country, cannot understand your lack of fucking perspective, you wingnut bastards.  You froth and foam and bitch and moan about how Obama's harmless little speech is going to "create a cult of personality" or harm your children, and you just don't see how we don't understand.  But we do.  Assholes, wake up.  We DO understand.  See, we lived with a "President" for EIGHT YEARS who stole two elections, and who had people thrown into secret prisons when he felt the time was right.  A man who wiped his ass with our rules and doctrines, and the one time we saw him address children, terrorists bombed our country with planes, giving him an excuse to run roughshod over the world and get more and more people killed by lying to them and generating profits for his friends with his family connections, the same ones that helped him steal the Presidency from Al Gore.  In a hotly contested election, one that was followed by another that was equally investigated and found wanting.  So yeah, we understand the emotion.  You lost, it sucks, you think the wrong guy is in there.  But when you apply it in this way to a man that won fair and fucking square, and you reveal so much fear and hatred - and let's face it, stupidity, ignorance and probably racism - we wonder how you can imagine that this is an equal situation to the one we just left.  The one that fucked us into the wars and recession with which the current guy is continuing to struggle.  That's the part we do not get.  Is Obama perfect?  No.  Is he the second coming?  NO.  Is he a damn sight better than the last guy, or the alternatives from last November?  That would be a big 10-4, red states.  Time for you to buy a helmet for your giant bitch session.

Because you ALL come off like the guy in the picture up there.  Massive, unyielding moronitude.  From FailBlog, natch.  One of your teabaggers from earlier this year, someone with some nervous hate energy easily manipulated by FOX.  You all seem backward, scared, off-topic, wandering - lost.  Lost in the new state of affairs and unsure as to where your rhetoric ought to go, or what form your energy should take, so like any emotionally retarded person, you lash out at everything, not bothering to choose your targets, and you come off like a flailing idiot, drowning in a sea of your own vitriol and tears.

Good night, citizens.  Apparently dreams and nightmares are all that's on the menu.

This is awesome, though.

Opting Out of Obama

Did you know that many of the people of the Great State of Tennessee are narrow minded douchecreatures?  You probably did know that, since we as a state have such a great history of fairness and intellectual heights, all the way from the Scopes Monkey Trial to Dr. King being killed here, and progressing forward into giving the nation a Bill Frist & a Lamar Alexander for every Al Gore.  We rule.  We are awesome, go Volunteers!

We are so awesome, in fact, that many of my fellow Tennesseans, in Sumner and Williamson Counties, specifically, are choosing to opt their children out of President Obama's speech next Tuesday, a speech specifically directed at children, something I cannot remember occurring before in my lifetime, and which would have been more appropriate, perhaps, when we had Presidents with the intellectual and emotional maturities of children; but I stray.  This aforementioned conservative clot of useless people would simply shield their kids' precious, precious ears from the words of the President of the United States than risk him saying anything controversial, conversation-starting or anything that the parents of these kids might disagree with.  They would rather hide their collective empty fucking heads in the sand (taking their children with them) than discuss the event, its pros and cons, and in so doing, respect the President of the United States in the context of civics and schools, and also risk their kids actually learning something (in a school!) which may or may not contain an oppositional point of view to the one espoused in their homes.

And they are not alone.  All over the nation, people - well, not people, conservatives - are rearing their ugly, cowardly heads and shrieking to school boards about how the President is going to do something awful to students, simply by talking next Tuesday.  Two things; One, nothing that Obama does next Tuesday (unless he dances around and exposes himself to our nation's children live on television, and let's face it, he's not Clinton) will be anywhere near as damaging to our childrens' education futures as was No Child Left Behind and the ridiculous mandated standards it spawned, and two - Yes, if this were last year, and the speech were being given by the Monkeyface, and directed at America's students during school hours, I would want my kids to hear their President speak. 

Comes a time when the artificial gravitas of the office needs to be manifest by We the People, even if it is only for a short time, or it becomes pointless to have elections at all, you embrace the philosophy of English Bob.  (You either understand that last bit, or you don't.)  If you can't even listen, or allow your children to be exposed to, ideas that counter your own, it's probably best that you stay in your insular little life, shuttling back and forth between only home and church, homeschooling and protecting another generation of people with only the most tenuous of grips on reality and an artificial sense of their own privilege and importance.

Shut the fuck up, America.  Let the man speak.  He's good at it, and your kids will be okay.

Moreau & Morons

Eh...

Senator Sam Brownback, from the 'great' state of Kansas - which to date, has only spawned imaginary people like Dorothy, Clark Kent, and former Senator, presidential candidate, pen wielder and Viagra pitchman Bob Dole - has introduced a bill (along with Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who must have quite the skull vacancy available) to prohibit geneticists from creating human/animal hybrids, despite the fact that they get better gas mileage, are better for the environment, and have a custom made cadre of fetishists waiting to bump uglies with them after man plays God in the lab.  Doc Moreau's gonna be pissed, but I bet it's just this kind of simple, narrow-minded legislation that ran him out to the island in the first place.  Won't work, though.  If we can get to the Swiss banks, we can get to your shady, offshore genetic tomfoolery.  Drop the ostrich egg before somebody gets hurt, doc.

They're not having it - they're even ruling out the Lysine Contingency.  Probably a good idea, that one.  A lot of people are going to be upset, though.  Narnia LARPers are going to be crushed - what does Brownback imagine Lucy did with that faun while she was waiting?  He's a faun. Anyone with an Aquaman crush is out, as are fans of the movie Splash.  The people over at Orangina aren't going to like this - but then, the French have the crack genetics team of Mein Kampf & Dr. Frog working round the clock on their shit, getting it ready for the spaceships, so they should be okay.  Anyone looking to fuck a centaur, minotaur, sphinx or (the queen of the) harpy(s) is going to be up in completely human arms about this thing.  Anyone going after their own livestock in the time-honored way is presumably unaffected by this legislation.  Garden variety animal fuckery will still be tolerated, I guess.

You got it - the only kind of genetic tampering or gestational manipulation that the cracker right will tolerate is when they force women to have unwanted children, or when they deny abortions to people on the grounds that theoretical people are more important than they are, or when they allow laws that tolerate children marrying children, or those that prohibit anything other than strictly missionary position man-on-woman sex.  Or when certain races of people are kept below the poverty line and constricted to certain areas, or when religions say some stuff is okay, and other stuff is not.  This other stuff?  This here animal stuff?  T'aint natural.

Strange Fucking Newsday

It's a Tuesday, and those can often be written off as nothing days.  They're not, though.  Not really.  My kid has flag football practice tomorrow, there was a school picnic today, and we've got a couple of big orders that need to get completed this week.  School is in full swing, day four is tomorrow, and there's already too much damned homework coming home.  My daughter made me a painting in green today, and there are birds in it.  One of the kids in her class got sick with a "fever in his mouth."  I've already run out of Car Talk podcasts on my iPod, and it looks like we're getting a new guy at the office.  On top of all that, it was a really fucking strange newsday today.  Did you notice?

Robert Novak died.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.  I like to the think that the brain cancer that got him was just rapid mutant cell growth brought on by his having tortured his brain into shapes that come unnaturally to most humans in the process of taking up every ridiculous conservative, "Prince of Darkness" stand during his years on "Crossfire," the show that made debate look stupid.  I hope it hurt.  I hope it hurt because I firmly believe that Bob Novak was a headline-grabbing shithead in his old age who committed treason during "wartime," natch, against a US asset abroad by exposing Valerie Plame.  He ruined another person's life - realistically, several lives - and that shouldn't come without consequences.  I think he did it to prove that he was still an "insider," still had credibility in a 24-hour newscycle.  Fuck Bob Novak, as much a hypocrite as the politicians he hounded for column inches and fame.  Media whore.

Stop.  It's Hammer Time again.  Tom DeLay's gonna be on "Dancing with the Stars."  (Not a good day to be a conservative, apparently.)  As Bill Hicks once asked, "Is life too fucking weird or what?"  I don't know if he can dance, and his selection for this show affects me not at all - it's the same feeling I got checking out my groceries tonight; The fucking Bachelor or Bachelorette is on the cover of one of those People-like magazines, and I think to myself, "Who cares?"  Obviously the readership of that rag, but why?  I mean, Jon and Kate are freakish attention hounds with too many kids like they're salmon or bunnies or something, and Brangelia have movies coming out and they're attractive.  But the magazine that leads with a news story about the non-event that is a reality TV hook unfolding?  Ridiculous.  Like Tom DeLay in dancing shoes. Or big Hammer pants.  I hope they make him do The Hustle or the Funky Chicken.  You should see this, though.

Brett "I retire all the time" Favre has decided to play some football again, apparently.  After an unremarkable (by standards he set) season with the Jets last year, he has now officially defected over the purple borderline to the Vikings.  In Minnesota.  Disgusting level of betrayal, really.  Cheeseheads only hate one team more than the Vikings, and that's Da Bears.  The Lions aren't worth the effort to hate; you just fall asleep in front of them on Thanksgiving.  I am ready for Brett to either make up his damn mind and play the game, or really retire, and stop doing farewells that no longer matter or have any credence.  Shit, it's not like we'd get the chance to miss him: He's going to be a talking suit at the semi-circular table during NFL pre-game and halftime anyway.

And then there's this kindly old Georgia couple killed by the wild dog pack.  Avoiding the obvious "formerly trained by Mike Vick" jokes, what the fuck?  Wild dog packs eating people are one of those signs of the apocalypse, and Akira Kurosawa would agree with me.  What's up, Lexington Animal Control?  I mean, yeah, sure - NOW they're rounding up all the dogs in the pack - supposedly - and offing them all without any kind of doggie trials or anything - too much, too late, fuckers.  This is after they killed two nice old animal lovers - the irony is the sole reason it's made so many headlines - and failed to eat the Jehovah's Witnesses who showed up on the scene later.  Everything about this story is disturbing, especially the love story - it kind of reads like if the Notebook was remixed with Cujo.

Now, it's after eleven, which is ridiculous, and I have a lot of email to sort.  Lunches are made and kids are finally at rest.  The Spear of Destiny has been returned to a safe place.  We're down three cupcakes, and I know people who want updates from me that I haven't provided.  Have a good Wednesday.

The Media Menace

Carried in the wind, the yammering of one thousand times seven idiots, preaching and wailing and tearing at their garments; trying in vain to catch the ears of passers-by, only to warn them of the insidious threat - THE MEDIA.  In our 24 hour news cycle, there is no escape from the Fourth Estate, they come at us from all sides, we outflanked before even a headline flies across the bow - from the papers and the magazines and the radios and the Internet and the television with its particularly toxic brew of empty visual madness, a hydra of noise masquerading as information, a ceaseless attack on the senses, upon sense, upon the goodness and virtue that we know exists in our society, if only the elite liberal media would just let decent people be, and stop perpetuating the lies we know it spreads like the gaze of Hecate, a triple insanity, electing a President and blinding the people, pushing the pillars from under our sheltered lives.

I am exhausted of your baseless bile, you impudent morons.  I am sickened unto a kind of soul-death of my water-clear thoughts, yea - even unto my sense of humor by your constant, content-free noises, your bleating and snorting, as you rut amongst the debris of reportage to find a morsel that buoys you, that can bring you peace, you narrow-minded fucks, screaming against a wind you still don't believe in.  I am tired of hearing that THE MEDIA elected our President - I voted for him, and your accusation in two-fold either assumes a media job I don't have, or yet assumes I am soft-headed enough to be caught up in the tide of promotion and propaganda.  No reality television aficionado, I.  Throw stones in your own glass house before approaching mine - I just Windexed.  I am weary of the endless drum that pointlessly beats for Sarah Palin, who is the worst ADHD child-bitch political celebrity ever, locked in a hypocritical dance where she first cultivates the attention and then cha-chas away from it, rose between her teeth, becoming pissy when the thorns prick her in her flapping lips and useless tongue.  The same folks who lament this ridiculousness gladly take up the banner of Limbaugh and trumpet his fecal dogma, tune into O'Reilly and read Coulter, forgetting, importantly, that these, too are creatures of THE MEDIA, hated and reviled unless it's interesting, or helps your point.

THE MEDIA exploits the death of Michael Jackson, but can you exploit a man who begs for water by leading him to a clear and rushing stream?  THE MEDIA focuses our attention on the teenage white girl of the moment, but what is that if we don't stop and lookand listen?  THE MEDIA clenches up and squeezes out song after song and film after film and word after word of drivel that takes advantages of our shortcomings as people - playing on our hates and fears, plucking the strings of our hearts, and pushing our nostalgia and yearning - anything at all to make us stop thinking.  When it's this loud in the world, you can't hear yourself think, and so you raise your voice and add to the noise, a shrill and disconcerting din that blocks out intellect, leaving only reaction in its place, snapping back to the stimuli that is THE MEDIA.

Fuck that noise.  Make a noise that truly belongs to you.  One born of a belief that boils out of your mind, not that comes from the world.  The chorus is homogenous and mayonnaise without elements of individuality, and groupthink is the enemy of righteous progress.  Community exists through tolerance, born of honor and honesty, not born out of assimilation.  Fuck THE MEDIA.

Chip

Lately, due to various factors, I have an enormous chip on my shoulder.

I feel insulted, in an abstract way, by elements of my recent routine, and by the fact that I must interact with certain people (and indeed, certain kinds of people) on a daily basis, while having to leave the people I would rather spend my time with elsewhere, and this is compounded by the sensation of an incredible amount of that which is unresolved, and some minor social pressure.  I am, as a result, annoyed by everything.  One recent example is the homicidal rage I experience when I hear (or read Facebook updates or Tweets regarding) parents asking, "When does school start back?  Hahaha!"  I want to smash all the bones in their idiot faces one by one.  With a tiny hammer, like the one they use on dead Popes.  Really, dickhead?  Your kids are so hard to deal with you're ready for them to be away eight hours a day?  Already?  Fuck you.  Perhaps you're ill equipped for parenting, and should seek help.  From someone besides me - they sell little hammers on the Internet.  Wishing away time is possibly the dumbest fuck thing you can ever goddamn do, and I hope you end up with less time because of it.  Shut the fuck up.

A week ago Monday, walking through a parking lot on the way to a 9 AM meeting worth a couple of thousand dollars:

RELIGIOUS NUT WITH SUITCASE: (waving small, yellow tract) Have you thought much about salvation?

ME: Have you?  (running over response) 'Cause if you had, had spent any time at all thinking about it, you would have by now realized that salvation of any worth must come from within.  It's not learned behavior that someone picks up out of a book or your pathetic fucking tracts.  Piss off out of my face with your useless drivel tract; I'm not buying.  SALVATION MUST COME FROM WITHIN, SHITHEAD!!

PERSON WITH WHOM I'M MEETING: (coming out of building) They're not supposed to be in the parking lot - we have to run them off like, once a week.

ME: Like an infestation.  Good morning.

Gas station convenience store, last week.  I'm walking in behind Father Time, one of Madison, Tennessee's most prominent homeless citizens.  As Father Time opens the door, he is blocked by a guy in a Polo shirt coming out.  Polo shirt fails to move, expecting Father Time, who's just opened the door, to hold it for him.

POLO: Excuse me - can you just move?

FATHER TIME: Fuck you.  (goes into store)

ME: You just got schooled by Father Time, man.

POLO: Oh, the homeless prick has a name, now?

ME: Yeah, he's fucking got a name, Polo, 'cause he's a person, you ass.  He's not some cock in a pink shirt expecting that doors will just open up for him on command and people will just clear out of his way.  He just wants you to fuck off and leave him alone.  And so do I.

Three weeks ago, stopped by a traffic cop on the interstate:

COP: Do you know how fast you were going?

ME: A very deliberate 60 in a 55.  This is rush hour.

COP: Well, there's a reason it's called a speed limit.

ME: There's a reason you're called a dick.

COP: What did you say?

ME:  I said, there's a reason you're called a dick, Officer Dick.  You're standing there with whatever authority gets you hard, about to give me a ticket for doing five careful fucking miles per hour over the speed limit in rush hour fucking traffic on an Interstate highway with my seatbelt on, and you want me to cower, admit fault, and tremble in fear, and I won't.  I'm a grown man with a wife and two kids and a job that I'm trying like hell to get to in my car that I'm thankful is capable of exceeding the speed limit, while you stand here on the road and do your dick thing.  So hurry up, give me my fucking ticket, don't lecture me, and let me be on my way.

I did not get a ticket.  I cannot explain this, or recommend the technique, such as it is.  Being an angry fuckhead works, I guess.

Pastor Fuckface Is God's Mouthpiece

Apparently, Pastor Wiley Drake of the Fuckholt Church of the RightWingnut has the voice of God, speaking right into his otherwise cavernously empty melon head, telling him to go on the radio and Internet, and ask for the death of Barack Obama, if that be His will.  Previous things asked for by Pastor Drake include the deaths of IRS employees, and some kind of action against Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.  Pastor Drake is careful to stress - probably to avoid a plague of black helicopters circling above the rock out from which he slithers each day - that he is asking for nothing save the will of Almighty God, but if he ends up on lists because of it, so be it.

A couple of things here, Pastor Drake.  Just some things bugging me, niggling at me, vying for my attention whilst I listen to your waste of breath and cells polluting the world; First, Why exactly would it be the will of God to put Barack Obama into the White House and then subsequently kill him?  Because it's God's will to have Joe Biden in charge?  Come on - no one believes that.  Second, why is it God only speaks violent shit to you?  Are you sure you're not listening to the nasty, drunken Old Testament God who was always throwing down on people, raining fire, floods, boils, and plagues, making bets with the devil and slaughtering firstborns?  I thought New Testament God was kind of God-by-proxy-through-Christ, sending Holy Spirit doves and shit.  But then - I'm not a pastor, I'm only a simple man, and there are perhaps things I don't know.

Finally, why is it you fucking people seem to have a monopoly on God?  Why does God only talk to crazy idiot fuckwits who then turn and spew their filthy gibbering mouths' effluent out on all of us?  Why can't God talk to the Squidbag?  Wait - I'm getting a call from God right now, and the connection's a little shaky, but it sounds to me like he's saying - wait, okay, yeah - SHUT THE FUCK UP, WILEY!!!

I mean - that's just what it sounds like to me.

Kiss it Goodbye

Bearing in mind that late afternoon on a Friday preceding a holiday weekend is historically the best time to bury something in the news cycle (especially bearing in mind what is sure to be the soul-destroying spectacle of Michael Jackson's relentlessly covered funeral, disposition and final affairs, the recent parade rampant of celebrity deaths, and the various official recognitions of the 4th from a freshman administration) but failing to take into account the rabid appetite of a 24 hour news cycle that not only does not sleep but actually mainlines crystal meth and eats the adrenal glands of small woodland creatures raw and, additionally, her own feeding-frenzy affect on the fourth estate, Sarah Palin announced that she would be resigning "in a few weeks" from the office of Governor of Alaska.  Y'know, as a casual type thing.  Really, just an excuse to put on one of those nice suits we as taxpaying voters bought her, and get up in front of people, and talk folksy bullshit.  Mooseshit.  Whatever the fuck Alaskans have; Innushit.

This led to endless speculation about WHY she had done it, as if there were ever actually a reason Sarah Palin does anything ever.  She did give a little interview today, which was precious, and featured dead animals, as has become the norm.  In it, she attacked the media and Barack Obama, both of which must now come as naturally to her as breathing, killing, and saying "You Betcha."  She says she left the office of the Governor because it was more effecient, that the state spends way too much money investigating all of her ethics violations, and that she wants to disengage from the vicious media machine.  It's not in her immediate plans to run for President, of course, but they always say that.  Finally, this barely coherent woman is writing a book.  I mix soda and bile and try hard not to contemplate bell towers as I drive by them.

Bye-bye for now, Sarah.  The best we can hope for is that she and Cheney have a hunting trip scheduled together real soon.  You betcha.