squidbag

Constitutional Television

I know that this will be two whole seasons behind you hard-core watchers of the show, but my wife and I are working our way through the show "24," which I know Bunny McIntosh watches religiously, and which my comrade and fellow citizen JB turned me on to.  We have just finished season two and begun season three.  Jack Bauer is a bad motherfucker (shut yo mouth), the show's a little formulaic and takes a major suspension of disbelief (but then, I've been listening to people talk about Rambaldi for four seasons now) and I could really give a shit about what Kim Bauer gets into - but hey, I'm thoroughly enjoying the show, even when I question what's going on.  Case in point (for those of you ready to completely geek out with me):

During a period of crisis in the second season, President Palmer's cabinet members invoke Section 4 of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which states:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principle officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

'Ja get all that?  Now, lifting aside for a moment that no one submitted shit in writing on the show, and they sequestered the Prez immediately after a preliminary vote, I was wondering what's to keep the President (in real life as well as in 24) from just firing all of his cabinet members before or during such a vote.  Or indeed, just after, during the written appeals process.  Nixon fired people all the time to preserve policy, so did Reagan.  I was thinking this, because with the insane, jacked-up cowboy fuck we've got for President now, you would think that somebody somewhere could convene a meeting and vote him out - they could use my house. Of course, then he could just turn around and point at everyone, saying, "Fired.  Fired, fired, fired, fired."  And you know he would - he thinks he can run things by himself, like Harold Lloyd in the clocktower of government.  Anyway, does anyone know why this can or cannot happen under the Constitution, or if there is any precedent for the situation?

Anybody want to argue constitutional law with me?  Rant about the President?  Or just talk about 24?  About how dreamy Tony's eyes are?  About Kiefer's earlobes?  About how Los Angeles should sue the show 'cause it makes it look like an even more dangerous place to live?

Club of the Dismissed

I have, as of Monday, joined an unlucky (and yes - somewhat dumb) fraternity of folks who have been fired from their jobs for blogging about them.  You may be a little confused, since you don't even know what company I was working for, I never having mentioned it by name.  Or any of my co-workers.  In fact, the references to my job are contained here, here, here, here, and here, best as I can tell.  There are probably others that offended, but they must be buried in other entries, and frankly, I can't be bothered to look for them all.  In spite of all of this non-mentioning of the place where I used to work, I was summarily dismissed for having a "negative attitude," as exemplified by this blog.  I would point out that the previous week I had put in 40 hours in four days for a visit from one of our corporate bigwigs, without complaining, and that the week (or maybe two) before that, I had helped deal with the flood.  So it was just that my blog "reflected poorly on the company."  To the bitter end, eh, boss?

So now I'm in a club with this guy.  But of course, he mentioned the place he worked.  I didn't do that.  And this Croatian diplomat.  A diplomat being fired for being undiplomatic makes my situation look pretty banal.  There's also this guy, who gave away Microsoft "secrets" on a blog.  I don't think I gave away any secrets, like who has a secret coke habit, or anything like that.  There's also this guy, and the person for whom the phenomenon is named, Dooce.  She even warns her visitors not to be stupid and do what she did.  I always did learn things the hard way, though.

Ultimately, it's hard for me to feel too badly about this.  If you get let go for being late or something, that's kind of embarassing, but this is something I'm proud of, which has a fair number of readers, and which makes people happy.  I suspect that (especially after reading all the stories about these other people in my club) firing folks for blogging is really just a way corporations have of cutting malcontents loose, but I still don't think it's fair.  And again, I didn't much like the job anyway, and mentioning it is why I ended up getting fired.  You're going to miss us malcontents when we're gone, and nobody has the balls to say anything against the system!

Yeah.  Anyway, I haven't decided whether to post revealing details about the company on this site, yet, or maybe some kind of open post to those responsible for my demise - but you'll know about it when I do.  Well - or shortly thereafter.

Max's Story

Sitting in the library with Max tonight, I was holding him on my lap and I asked him, spontaneously, "Do you think we have too many books?"  This is the conversation that ensued, with Max entirely in italics:

There are good books and there are bad books.

Oh, yeah?  What are some of the bad books?

The bad books live in the library on the hill in the fire castle, next to the frost forest.  When people open the bad books and read them, monster hands come out and pull them inside the books into a desert, where the monster hands with their big claws try to make the people dead.

Why do they try to make them dead?

Because they're really, really bad monsters. The people try to use their brains and their swords to fight the monsters, but they can’t beat them until the pelicans come out of the pelican trees and beat the monsters.  The pelicans can put the monsters in jail, and save the people, but the monsters get out, and then the pelicans have to make the monsters dead, even when they don’t want to.  Then the people are safe from the bad books.

Okay.  That's a really good story.

Thanks.

Downing Syndrome

Tonight at dinner I was discussing (sort of) the Downing Street Memos with a conservative friend of mine, and out of the blue (or so it seemed to me at the time) he asserted that they were a hoax, forgeries which were in place solely to discredit the President.  I was stunned, jaw agape for several seconds, buffalo wing in hand, not really going anywhere.  I am used to way-out conspiracy theories being the purview of the left-wing, not a tactic used by the other side.  But this is how a great many conservatives are choosing to respond.  The idea that the President lied repeatedly to them and led them by the nose into a disastrous war that he planned to have almost immediately upon taking office is embarrassing, and if you accept that, the question of what's to be done about it is even worse.  These people are not prepared to turn on their Chief Executive, and indeed, his whole administration, so it's easier just to deny it, to pass it off as a hoax.  I know this, because I have some personal experience with conspiracy theories.

See, I'm a huge fan.  I love them, can't get enough of them.  I have this idea that the more of them you absorb on a given contested subject, the more of the truth (whatever the hell that is) you have the potential to digest.  And this Downing Street phenomenon?  Well, I've seen that before.  Take JFK - there's no doubt in my mind that a conspiracy killed Camelot, but the more outlandish and complex theories about this are there to distract you from the one where LBJ fucks JFK's head wound aboard Air Force One, because that government is still in charge, and that's just to horrible to contemplate.  We need to believe the bizarre, because we are frightened by the facts.  So you conservatives, you parrot Hannity, you ditto Limbaugh - you do what you have to do to maintain your sanity, because your moral center, your spiritual and political leader is a liar and a murderer, and I forgive you if you can't accept that right away.

Cruise's Handlers 'Cut the Shit'

In a move today that they described as "cutting the shit," Tom Cruise's handlers took their hands from their electric cattle prods, Electropsychometers and their hypodermic needle guns long enough to hold a press conference in New York City announcing that their charge, Mr. Cruise is "batshit insane."  Though there was briefly some controversy over "batshit" or "directly out of his fucking mind like a rabid zoo ape on speed," brevity won the day.

"You think this is a job we want?" one man, identified only as Bruce R., was heard to say. "Most people would have publicists, maybe an agent, but Cruise is so out of control, it takes a team of handlers just to get him on the Today show, and then the fucker picks a fight with Matt Lauer.  You take what you get in life - in my case, it was this or life in a Chinese prison.  Getting Cruisie back into the cage is a real bitch, too.  He should all be destroyed."  (Like three people are going to understand that joke.)

Cruise's handlers were addressing the rumors stemming from allegations that he's totally bonkers, such as his sham relationship with Katie Holmes, his rumored gay wrestling photographs, (I have naked photos of Nicole Kidman for those who don't believe he's gay and this great website) his ADHD drugs, his rage at an English TV show prankster, his couch/ass bouncing outburst on the Oprah Winfrey show, and his recent haranguing of Lauer, who, in all fairness, has kind of been asking for it for years.  That smarmy bastard.  Smarminess aside, Cruise did go ballistic on Lauer, basically denouncing him as a moron, and calling all of psychiatry a "pseudo-science."  Excuse me, but aren't you a Scientologist?  The only religion I can think of whose name sounds like a joke about religion?  Thought up by a science fiction writer?  I mean, Stanislaw Lem and Philip K. Dick are cool, but I'm not going to let them tell me how to think.  Shit, especially not them.  Crazy fucking douchebag.  I love the fact that Katie Holmes has to convert so they can get married, too.  'Cause, you know, otherwise they'd be living in sin, I guess.  Surrounded by bad ergones, or whatever.  I think at the end of the Scientologist wedding ceremony, you take your dignity and sanity, wrap it in fine linen, and crush it underfoot.

At the end of the press conference, Cruise himself busted in, naked and covered with skunk pelts and body painted in feces, waving a Gyro sandwich and bellowing "ASS!!!  ASS!!!"  He was eventually subdued and prepared for shipment to the next location where he will continue to refuse to admit that he's just a crazy gay actor, and keep freaking everyone out.

Herbie: Fully Loaded

Yesterday, I took Max to see the newest Herbie the Love Bug film, Herbie: Fully Loaded.  Roger Ebert says that this is the only family movie to come along in a great while without fart jokes, and he's right - there's not a single fart joke in the entire film.  There's Lindsey Lohan, though, who's way more distracting than Buddy Hackett could ever have been - unless of course Hackett had appeared in micro-mini skirts. (shudder) This is Lohan before the recent massive weight loss, looking less like a dessicated shell of a waif and more like a normal person - or more accurately, a normal person with a digital breast reduction.  I, for one,  could have lived with seeing those two cup sizes in the film.  She's good, but consistently upstaged by Kevin Spacey, who brings method acting to a whole new level as the title character.  He's better here than he has been since Seven.  Matt Dillon is brilliant too, playing the comedic dickhead role he was born to play - or at least the one he's been sliding into since such comedy farces as One Night at McCool's and Wild Things.  Michael Keaton does a fantastic job of keeping his SAG card, and the supporting cast, like a jockstrap, provides all the support this little movie needs.  You also get to see Herbie tricked out as a street racer (complete with neon) and as a NASCAR-ready vehicle, sort of.  If you're three and a half, you'll love the film, (but still walk away hating Matt Dillon - really) and if you're a parent, the best viewing advice is right there in the title.  Go fully loaded.

Charley Sunshine

Friends, I come from a long line of confidence men, storytellers, and grifters.  My name is Charles Ulysses Sunshine, but you can call me Charley Sunshine.  My pop's name was Robert Sunshine, and he was named after my grandaddy, Wilson Q. Sunshine.  We Sunshine boys have been spreading the good word about Sunshine ever since the President's poppa was squoze from his momma's hind end.  We come from a school of thought that says you never get anything done if you are a dark rain cloud, no sir.  Think hard, now - I know you know a dark rain cloud or two, just itching to thunderstorm all over your day.  Can't have that, can we?  Bastards.  Got to keep a sunshiney outlook, come what may, and harness the power of the sun that lives within all of us.  Sounds too New Age for you?  Well, stop burning sage and listen up, 'cause I'm going to tell you the story of you, and we're going to figure out how to tap into that spaceborne nuclear reactor that lives inside all of us, and bring your sunshine out into this cloudy day.  A day without sunshine wouldn't be much of a day, would it?  Imagine the world without whiskey, or kids - it'd be like that.  Not very pleasant - certainly not some place I'd want to live!  Now keep your eyes wide open and guard your ass end, because the simple truth of the sunshine method is going to hit you like the horse's mouth square in the groin teeth!  You deserve to be happy, right?  Of course you do - you're a decent person, you pay your taxes often enough, and you follow through on the commitments of everyday life - for the most part, yeah?  Your happiness is yours for the taking, and you'll have to wrest it away from every single one of those worthless sons of bitches thinks that it belongs to them.  Once you crack open a skull or two, you may realize that you can see a lot more sunshine when the dark rain clouds are quiet beneath your feet.  You have to fight for your happiness, and if you won't, well, we might as well check you into the home right now, missy, 'cause the sunshine's coming in, whether you've got the blinds drawn or not, and it gives a fuck for anyone.  Anyone interested in coming along down the road to sunshine, more and more, should let me know by plugging their credit card information into the comments field below, along with all relevant billing data and personal info, blood type and children's names, because we are going to get down in it, up inside it, tear off a piece of it, and let it know we were on it!  Who's with me?  Who's ready for some sunshine?!  Let me hear you!

Summertime

When really, if you could hang out in a lawn chair listening to Sublime, smoking cigars and drinking Red Stripe all day, you pretty much would.  Especially when you live in Florida. 

My car's A/C failed a long time ago, so I have what my friend Jones refers to as 4/55 air conditioning, where I roll down all the windows and drive like hell to cool down. Sometimes I wear a hat.  The clock in my car is dead, too.  Due to some arcane electrical problem (which, in all honesty, may just be an old battery) my radio and clock re-set themselves whenever the ignition is off.  So I never know what time it is anymore, I just know how long I've been on the road.  It took me fourteen minutes to get to work the other day.

I'm up at four in the morning because it's summertime.  Schedules are a thing of the past, discarded along with routine, and even simple, basic order.  My wife and son are out of school for the summer, which means that I'm the only one who has to keep to a schedule - and my house is a wreck as we empty every closet and every box looking to simplify our lives.  Big garage sale coming.  Huge.  Time to get rid of some shit - putting all the VHS onto DVD.  Some stuff just doesn't need director's commentary.  Like the Vagrant.  I can only imagine what that would be like.  "Ohh fuck.  Oh, shit.  God, here's the thing with the fingers - sorry, folks.  I just can't apologize enough for making this fucking movie.  Shit, there goes Paxton again.  Christ, I am so, so sorry."

The days are sliding together, when you can't really remember when something happened, or even what day it is currently.  I'm also watching the second season of 24 on DVD, which tends to fuck with your sense of time a little.  I stopped wearing my watch when I stopped caring what time it was, and now I only know in the mornings, when I clock in and out at work.  Work.  We still have fans and disaster reclamation people in and out, attempting to fix last week's flood damage, and we're frantically preparing for events and things that may never occur.  Looking into an alternate job, (mmmm...alternate job...) but I don't want to jinx this one, so I'll tell you when I know more.

My son continues to swim more and more every day, this shoehorning Bolton thing is getting on my nerves, and today I pretended to be someone named Charley Sunshine for half an hour.  I wish Tom Cruise would just admit that he's a big freaky gay Scientologist and move the hell on.  These shirts are fucking hilarious.  I have a friend who's become an urban legend this week, and I have to go now.  I have to work on something to convince some people to move to a place I want to move to.  You know how it is.  Summer projects and all that.

Weekend Stuff

Right off the bat, I'd like to wish a happy Father's Day to everyone who reads this blog and needs to have one wished to them.  You know who you are.  I got the best card ever from Max and Christie today, and new, smaller T-shirts (that I can now fit into) so my Dad's day is complete.  Half the time, I think I'm a pretty good dad, and then I remind myself that it's only going to get harder, and this is an easy job to fuck up, so I try not to rest on my laurels, as it were.

The rest of this is kind of a potluck, like a lot of blogs I read.  First, I'd like to remind you sign the damn petition, if you haven't already, and save Public Broadcasting.  To steal a joke from an old Mad Magazine, today's letter is P.  P as in, "I'll be proud to prance over to your pad and punch you in the puss if you don't pony up for public television."

Secondly, in the "somebody already said something way better than my sorry ass could ever have come up with" category, we have this from my buddy JB over at A Relative Path, calling for the impeachment and removal (in a logical way that even conservative fundamentalists should be able to understand) of the President, and this from my lovely wife, Christie, reminding us all of something we should have already known.  (If you don't have the proper passwords to read her site, feel free to blame the conservative dunderheads in the panhandle of Northwest Florida.  I believe there's a brief recounting here, if you want to go and look.)  They both (JB & C) demonstrate an eloquence that inspires jealousy from me, and I applaud them, both upon their rhetorical skills, and their ability to level-headedly discuss the issues at hand.  We don't do that here at the Squidbag.  Vitriol and profanity are spoken here.

Porter Goss.  Some of you may remember that like, the second entry ever in my digital stream of conciousness was about Mr. Goss, so this is like a coming almost home for me.  This article is fascinating.  I see this as a kind of double-bluff; "No, no - we know where Osama is, because, being the US, we know everything.  We just don't want to catch him right now."  So suddenly, the forces of freedom here in the US are like the Paul Masson wineries?  We will catch no terrorist before his time?  What the hell?  It's good to see that Porter has come so far from his "arabist" days.  It's also always fun to see the distinguished gentleman from Arizona going off-message.  I don't think they make drugs strong enough to make John McCain fall into line.

Finally, and I wanted to end with this, my kid swam today.  Max dog-paddled, without aid, several times, a short distance (six feet or so) between me and his mom.  For a kid who was afraid of the pool, this is a huge deal.  I'm so proud, everyone's bursting with pride, and he's proud of himself.  You know you've conquered fear when the kid is making outboard motor sound effects with his lips (what George Carlin referred to as the bi-labial fricative, I believe) while kicking in the pool.  This was the end of a great father's day, and shouts out again to all the dads!

NPR & PBS in Peril

The House has recently OK'd huge cuts in the funds that go into Public Broadcasting.  These cuts will delay equipment upgrades, and force public entities, if they want to survive, to cut programs, eliminate some shows, and ultimately privatize, killing the last bastion of thoughtful media outright.  If you have any doubt that we are in the wrong place right now as a country, remember this: Ultra-conservative Newt Gingrich tried to do this back in '94, under the Contract On America, and he got shot down by public outcry.  Not now.  Now, we're under the thumb of the fundamentalists, who could give a shit about public broadcasting, since they all watch (and parrot) Fox News and fucking Focus on the Family.  (These are the same people who trash PBS for having a liberal bias in its news programming, but seem not to notice the starboard lean on Fox News)  So - sign this petition, contact your reps, call your local stations and figure out what you can offer, 'cause otherwise, Elmo's out of a job, and that would make my son cry.

And you don't want that, do you?