squidbag

Fun With eBay

I once listed a picture of Jesus on eBay.  I knew a guy in Pensacola who insisted that the fuzzy black and white image that his girlfriend carried around in her pocket was an image of Christ, flanked by a lion and a lamb.  At best, it looked like a failed Rorschach, at worst, something viewed through a cataract.  There was no interest in my item, and it eventually just quietly died.

I've been on eBay for awhile, but my initial account saw so little activity that I eventually closed it.  I was using it for cheap comics exclusively anyway, and before that had been a loyal devotee of Yahoo Auctions.  I started another eBay account when I wanted to sell equipment (a $10K laser engraver and a four-station T-shirt silkscreen press) affiliated with my Pensacola sign business when it closed in 2005.  Since then, I've used it pretty regularly to not only fill gaps in my comic collection, but to auction off books I've read, white elephant gifts, and sell stuff we were just tired of having.  Currently, I'm using it to sell off thousands of trophy parts which have been sitting around the sign shop where I work, some of them for nearly 30 years.  The dust alone is amazing, but the boxes are lined with newspaper, and even more astonishing are the ads from 1980s and 90s newspapers for electronics.

I once used it to sell off old mannequins for another job I had.  The phone calls & emails  I got on these auctions were predictably weird.  "Are they all naked?"  "Do you have any Asian or Black ones?"  "They don't have the - you know - all their parts, do they?"  And finally, "Are there any available without faces?"  (shudder)  Working in a roomful of mannequins is not as fun as you might imagine - Kim Catrall never shows up, and many of them contain spider nests.  Remember that the next time you're out shopping.

Most recently, I've had two diametrically opposing experiences on eBay.  One was the guy who drove all the way to Nashville from Robbinsville, NC to buy the 1st round of trophy parts, and who liked what he saw so much he hit a cash machine while he was here and bought some more.  I think he would have taken whatever would physically fit in his vehicle.  He was great, and is apparently starting his own trophy, award, and engraving shop in Robbinsville when he retires from being an EMT.  Look him up next time you're in Robbinsville.

On the marred and tarnished flipside, is Mohammed Ismail Zaghari, also of North Carolina.  Ismail recently tried to fuck me over on a busted Zune, and so I promised him during the ensuing argument that I would post that fact in any forum I had access to.  I always keep my promises.  Ismail is a very poor businessman, and an even worse loser, as he's been pouting through a series of bitchy emails since PayPal found in my favor and sent me my money back.  Anyway, from this point forward, all spam emails and complaints about this blog should be sent to Ismail Zaghari, 4620 MacKinac St., Charlotte, NC, 28269.  You can call him at 704-503-5742, or email him at [email protected].

32,144 Suckers in Nashville

For those of you Nashvillians who are still attempting to rationalize and justify your support for last week's English First amendments to our local constitution, I'd like to point something out to you, via fund raising reports and the Tennessean; You were all tools, dupes, patsies and suckers last Tuesday.  Whatever BS argument you applied to your support of this measure, the real reason that it was on the ballot is because John Tanton, a former opthamologist, wanted it there.  Dr. John has a big network of English First / Anti-Immigration (legal and illegal) organizations that he funds out of his pocket.  ProEnglish is the one who donated 90% of the funds our local assholes raised to get this on the ballot, and he founded them in '94.  He does this because he's a radical environmentalist (Hitler was a vegetarian) who believes that we cannot sustain our lands because there are too many people on them, and the best way to achieve American zero population growth is to cap immigration.  He believes that Mexicans, specifically, are dangerous to the current American way of life and our environmental stability because they are lackluster in their participation with regards to civic affairs and because they fuck too much and make too many babies.  Additionally, he's affiliated with an organization - The Pioneer Fund - that promotes eugenics, just like the Nazis did.  So: an outstanding motherfucker in the field, then.

Not unlike Councilman Eric Crafton, who repeatedly lied about where the money was coming from when he told us that it was from local sources.  Virginia's not terribly local to Nashville.  Short version of all this is that if you supported this recent "movement," all 32,144 of you got played like a secondhand fiddle.  And you can't justify ex post facto that it made sense anyway, in spite of who funded it, because that's like saying the Klan did some good things for the American Southeast after the Civil War, or that the Nazis made the trains run on time.  No one gives a shit about anything else when the primary agenda is racist.

To conclude, then: You LOSE, you were wrong from the very beginning, and you were funded and supported by isolationist xenophobes who promote everything from the exclusionary language practices you voted for to selective breeding designed to promote ideal racial harmony through genetic homogenization, and your paper-thin rationales for voting the wrong way are revealed for what they are, a potent mixture of privileged white guilt, paranoia and sheer unadulterated fear of the "other."

You must be proud.  Suckers.

Fortune Cookie Wisdom II

I officially hate fortune cookies now, and will be boycotting them for the foreseeable future.  Why?  The fortune cookie manufacturer's conglomerate has managed to get a pretty good bead on which Asian places I will frequent, (I picture ninja spies) and plants the worst fucking fortunes imaginable inside the cookie I will get.  I mean, for the most part, I only ever get assertion cookies, or opinion cookies, aphorism cookies or observation cookies anyway.  Anything with a really solid fortune in it goes to someone else at the table.  And even when they're ALL just assertions and bullshit pseudo-Confuciuons, I get bullshit on Smurf toilet paper.  I get the stupidest, most butt-ugly-ass fortunes you can imagine, a fortune that actually makes you resent a free fucking cookie.  Last Friday night was the straw that sent the proverbial camel to the chiropractor though, as my four person family was treated to these:

My lovely wife: "You are the master of every situation."

My 7-year old son: "You have patience and intelligence."

My 2.5 year old daughter: "Good fortune will smile upon your whole life."

Me: "A nice cake is waiting for you."

...

A nice cake?  Mastery, patience, intelligence and fortune for my whole family - what, you ran out of virtues?  I get fucking cake?  I always get a crap fucking fortune.  This is bullshit.  Fuck fortune cookies, man.

Stick to the Plan

Like Utah Phillips' mom, I have never been able to outright condemn a bank robber.  Bank robbery - at least, of the sort committed only with implied violence - always seemed like stickin' it to the man.  Banks, runs the convential wisdom, are corrupt and huge and threatening and run by Thomas Nast style fat cats with giant stogies & top hats lurking in secret oak paneled rooms wearing vests than strain to contain their bellies swollen with filty lucre stripped from the pockets of the working man.  Okay, probably not, but last fall's "surprise" collapse of the American economy would seem to imply that this assessment, while perhaps a tad hyperbolic, isn't all too far off the mark.  The banking system is a usurers wet dream run by greedheads looking to line their pockets with other people's money.  Personally, my experience with banks tends to run from the "jumping through hoops for the privilege of paying my bills online" at the far end of the good part of the spectrum on down to "hopelessly fucked in the customer service department to the point that I am reduced to my account number and nothing more."  So yeah - not fond of banks.

I love heist movies, and when they involve banks - all the better.  A well-crafted plan that screws over some rich bastard while the thinkers and men of action get well in the meantime - what could be more satisfying?  Stealing it yourself, sure - but short of that, the movies will have to do.  In real life, you don't hear about anyone really getting away with this shit.  I idolized D.B. Cooper (not a bank robber, but still, a case study for getting away with it) for years, and privately still do.  However.  It's that whole brains in motion, sharp perception thing that makes the plan, and indeed the robbers, worthy of our respect.  Not like Exhibit Zero in the next paragraph.

Earlier this month, in Nicholasville, Kentucky, a man tried to knock over a bank that was no longer a bank.  Apparently, the local branch of the Farmer's Bank shut down and was replaced by the offices of The Jessamine South Elkhorn Water District.  Our would-be class hero is about to be shut down by his twin inabilities to read and accept reality, because when he is told that the building in which he is standing is no longer a bank and has no money, he assumes he is the victim of some clever dodge from the front office of the bank.  A Jedi mind trick, if you will.  "When they come in to rob you, tell them it's not a bank.  Try waving your hand as you do this."  They do this, and he responds with, "I know you have money.  It's a bank."  No, it really isn't.  Nice try, though.  Initially, you have to admire his tenacity in the face of abject failure.  It's not even a bank, but since he came to rob a bank, he's going to try and fucking do that anyway.  I can hear him whispering, perhaps internally, as the clerks of the Jessamine South Elkhorn Water District employees snicker at him and clammy sweat breaks out across his forehead, "...stick to the plan...stick to the plan..."  He leaves with an empty sack, an impotent firearm and some sad, sad pantyhose on his empty goddamn head.

The lesson: Do your research, bud.  Make sure when you're digging tunnels, planting charges, and planting a man on the inside of that bank that it's actually a bank.  You'd hate to rob a bank that wasn't one.  Think of the bar conversations with other petty criminals this guy's in for for the rest of his life;

"Hey Fred.  Fred!  You remember that time you tried to rob the Water Board?!?"

Special SquidThanks to Cayce for bringing this to my attention in the 1st place.

For the Cheap Seats

January 22nd, 2009, is when most of you will read this. It is the day that two crap amendments to the Metro charter show up on the ballot.  The aim of these two ballots is make English the primary language of business and government in Metro-Davidson County, and to restrict circumstances in which translations must be provided.  (No, you are not having deja vu, I did do this argument once already.)  Amazingly enough, there are still proponents of this thing willing to argue that they are not, in fact, xenophobic assholes bent on restricting the activities of others because they feel some kind of deep need to more narrowly define what it is to be an American, or, failing that, because they have a gut-wrenching annoyance/paranoia about the encroaching non-homogeneity of our culture.  ("Omigod!  Mexicans!  RUN!  They've already lowered their cars and pants - what might they do to the tone?") These people, all white as the driven snow, are delusional.  They have mustered their arguments of convenience in a big pile to shield their racism and isolationist social tendencies.  Fuck them, and fuck their arguments, too.  Shall we?

"Well, it'll save us money in the long run, on things like additional signage and translators."  As a signmaker, let me point out that almost any dual verbiage you see on interior or exterior signs is mandated by either the ADA, OSHA or EEOC - all federal fucking agencies, so you can't outlaw what they demand with local bullshit like this.  In addition, this hogwash about translators has two major problems: First, why do you want to disenfranchise translators in a struggling economy, and second, you calculate the savings at $100,000 a year.  This special election (staged by "special" people, natch) is costing the taxpayers of our fair city $350,000, and that's not counting what it will cost to defend legal challenges to this clunker.  So you expect us to reap the savings in what - 10 years?  Thanks for nothing, fuckwits.  Fuck this argument.  Next!

"It's not exclusionary, it's inclusive, compelling people to learn English."  Yeah, it's exactly inclusive like a goddamn hug.  Look, I agree with the point that people who live in America should want to learn English - it's the best, most efficient way to acquire information here.  Making it a law that shit will be unavailable to you unless you do?  Yeah, that engenders goodwill.  Why would you want to force someone to pick up your mother tongue when the first thing they're going to want to do with it is bitch you out in a way that you will well & truly understand?  Stupid, pseudo-crunchy rationalization from a group of locos pendejos grande.  Next!

"It's entitlement to provide these special services to non-Anglophones, and empowering to take them away." The next white person I hear fucking kvetching about entitlement needs to be taken out, horsewhipped, fucked nearly to death by wolverines, and then ridden out of town on rail studded with broken glass & coated with fire ants and habenero peppers.  Arrogance, just shouted into the wind, that's all this is.  Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime, tell a man he has to fish as directed by law, and he'll rankle at your interference, tell you to go fuck yourself, and find a way around your stupid rules, if the State Supreme Court doesn't beat him to it.  Finally, I fail to see how government regulation makes us less dependent on government.  Bleagh.  Next.

"English is the language of commerce.  If immigrants can't speak it, they're likely to be taken advantage of, or simply not be part of the system."  Oh, so it's white man's burden again, then?  Time to educate your underprivileged brother so's he can stay in the game?  I have pulled out my Bullshit Megaphone, and I address you through it thusly; If you are truly embracing an economic argument for this (and I doubt that you are, suspecting that this is another dodge of the facts) then you should be willing to also embrace a laissez-faire position in regards to self-correction within the economic system.  More simply, out of deference to people who make this shit up - if someone wants to participate, they will learn how.  If not, they won't.  If they are taken to the cleaners (who are also probably immigrants to this country) then they will fix it next time.  Self correction requires no intervention on your part, especially when you seek to limit the options of individuals.  I bitch slap this argument with Adam Smith's Invisible Hand.  Next!

"English first movements don't make us look unfriendly and unwelcoming to the rest of the world.  It'll be good for business, despite the $135 million annually tourists from all over the world funnel into our economy, and the global businesses that currently find us attractive."  This one is a desperate lifeline from conservatives to other conservatives, and almost not worth mentioning, other than in the context of highlighting not only their ignorant hatred of the "other" but also their greed.  There are righties who will vote this down because they're worried about conversations local government would no longer be able to have in Japanese or German with Japanese investment groups or the VW people, respectively, and not because it's principally wrong.  And if they don't think the rest of the world is paying attention, then their worlds are very small indeed. I choke on your lack of morality.  Next!

Anything else?  Yeah. There is. I got the fact that we voted this down once already, I got Teddy Roosevelt being invoked by the English Firsters who obviously don't have anything more current from a respected leader, so they had to reach backward through 90 years of more progressive thinking to bring us this obsolete & outmoded idea of America, and I got the fact that the "official language" by law and charter and official fucking document of the city of Nashville and state of Tennessee is already English, so what the hell is this shit for, other than to send a message to people who you feel are taking over a limited geographic area that never belonged to you in the first place.

So, if you're voting on the 22nd in Nashville, Vote Against the English Only Amendments and strike a blow against pointless xenophobia and delusional pricks.  I wish I could do something funnier there with "blow" and "pricks" in the same sentence, but I'm tired now.  Feel free to translate the Squidbag into any language for wider dissemination.

1-20-09: Observations

I was all ready to be thrilled at the incoming President.  I was not prepared for the intense joy I would feel watching Dubya Monkeyface board a helicopter that was NOT Marine One, and fly the fuck into history.  It was dulled a bit for me when it first happened, because I listened to it happening on the radio.  I work for a living.  But when I got home, and there was the magical C-Span moment on DVR, well - now I can re-live that moment again and again.  And what a moment it is.

Of course, the Evil Dick was in a wheelchair today, due to some sort of back injury he got while moving box after box of classified material into his various undisclosed locations.  Really, I assume all of this was so that he wouldn't have to stand up at any point while Barack Obama was becoming the 44th President of the United States.  Bye-bye, Dick.  Good riddance to bad rubbish.  Who wouldn't like to see his bent and mangled wheelchair splattered across the road, one Mobius wheel turning ominously in the wind, his earthly body destroyed, and his pure evil form rejoined with the cairn from which it sprang?

I never enjoy the inaugural poem, and this year's was quite awful.  I ran heavy machinery rather than sit through it.  Sitting through Rick Windbag's endless conversation with the many-named Jesus was bad enough, but coupled with the prayer, you begin to see a strategy at work: Obama's under a lot of pressure to make a good speech, so if it doesn't fly like it should, better to have a couple of windy bores flank you to make you seem all the better.  I liked the John Williams piece (though a Raiders-like fanfare would be fun for Obama), and the ending benediction had the most secular call for an amen I've ever heard.  So, amen!

It's over now, and the real work begins.  I find myself a bit like Inigo Montoya towards the end of the Princess Bride; I have hated the Monkeyface White House for so long, and now...it's over.  But I still have hate.  Hate, rage, anger and pain.  What do I do with them?  Oh, sure, something will come along for me to hate - but not soon enough for me.  I need a direction for this volatile emotional resource.  I tried hating Mariah Carey at the Neighborhood Ball, but it felt like a waste of hate.  A paltry, half-assed hate.  I mean, I was able to soldier through and hate her anyway - I'm just not really sure that's a good use of my hate.  I'm actually thinking of selling out.  Hate for sale!  Will hate for cash money!  I know I shouldn't be worried.  There's always going to be stupid motherfuckers, right wingnuts, evangelicals, and garden variety racists all over the place.

'Til then I have hope.  But I have to share that with almost everybody.

Inaugrification

On this Inauguration Day, we as a nation stand poised to enter a new era of American hope and involvement, a time when people can see a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel, and a period in which differences can be made, and potential can be explored.  Let's be honest, here; all of this is possible because of the extreme amount of suction applied by the last eight years of malgovernance.  Of squandered possibility, of shipwrecked hope, of stolen rights and privileges, and of malignantly negligent stewardship.  Why do people demand change?  Because things suck.  And the harder they suck, the more change people demand.  Suckage times duration of suck equals proportionate demand for change.  Kids!  Throw appropriate exponents in there for your own rewarding equation.

So things suck right now: we have a two front unnecessary war on an indefinable group of people who elude capture and whose ringleader is still at large, since we're not looking for him where he is, and instead are waging a two front unnecessary war.  One front is in a place he might have been, once, and the other front is in a place with no connection to him.  Or, at least, no connection until we invaded them.  The economy is in the toilet, shown to be the big, dollar-signey lie it always was - a tool for the GOP almost formerly in power to make mad ducats for their buddies.  Our reputation abroad is non-existent, now that we have shown that not only can we botch the one thing we're good at - war - but that we can't even take care of our own country when something like Hurricane Katrina happens.  Americans have traded their freedom for security, which is a bullshit trade and we should totally call trade-back on it, and people's confidence in the systems meant to ensure continuance is completely eroded.  So Obama's got a lot to do - and he knows it.  Look, they've already got him painting the office over there.

This raises my big question, and it's one many have asked; Who the fuck, in their right mind, would EVER want to be President, much less President now?  What motivates a person to run for and accept the office of President, and why should we trust and/or support anyone who does, since it clearly indicates some kind of mental or emotional aberration?  Does making a grab at the Presidential Brass Ring indicate rampant, doe-eyed idealism that would be unattractive on an undergrad fresh from mom & dad's, or does it point more toward a more intense, insane, villainous megalomania?  How should we really feel about the internal state of the leader of the free world?

I say all of that to say this: Today we inaugurate Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, and while I wish him all the best, as of tomorrow, I'll be keeping my giant 30 inch squideye on him, too.

Birdsuck

With today's controlled glider Hudson River engineless touchdown handled by none other than Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III - who possibly has the best name in the history of aviation ever, and by all accounts is an unadulterated hero - It seemed appropriate to link to it, and also to Eddie Izzard's wonderful deconstruction of the phenomenon whose media nomenclature has amused so many today - "Birdstrike."

Birdsuck - By Eddie Izzard from his "Glorious" album.

It's really not often enough that you hear a news story about a crisis averted by quick thinking and fast reflexes - people keeping cool under pressure and doing their jobs competently.  For once, my cynical little heart is just happy for the survivors, and proud that grace under fire managed to win out for a change.

Give the media a few days, though.  They'll fuck it up.

The FAG Detector III

Maybe it's just me, but this seems like a classic example of technology run amok.  Making things we don't need, filling needs we don't have.  Or that no reasonable person should have, anyway.  Now, from the Schaeffler Industrial Group, we have the FAG Detector III.

Come on, people.  I mean, I can be classless, but is this really the best name you could come up with for what is, ultimately, a glorified toy?  And three times in a row?  I suppose GayDar is already under copyright, but what about Homo Homer, or Queen Machine?  The FAG Detector seems like spreading a little insensitivity frosting over your homophobic cake after you took it out of the hate oven.  What the hell, guys?  Nobody thinking over there in marketing?  Maybe you should use your little machine and find some people on the edge of what's hip and happening, yeah?

And that brings me to my next point - is this really necessary?  I mean, they're like, 10 to 20 percent of the population, so they're all around - is a detector really something you feel like you need?  Is this an issue of need?  I mean, I can tell you where to find them; certain bookstores and coffeehouses and such.  They gather all the time - their clubs are in the phone book.  Oh, and they have concerts and dances and parades at least once a year.  Usually when it's nice out.  I guess you could, if you're still having trouble after all that, scan a mall or a Home Depot.  Or check your closet.  Or maybe your mirror, you machine-making assholes!

Can't we just leave each other to live in peace?  What's next?  ReligionFinder?  PoliticoPing?  This is a dangerous idea, and it needs to be stopped before it is much, much too late.  FAG Detector, indeed.

Blagojevich's Balls

Pay attention, jerkwad!

Once again, from the genius people at The Landline - Recently impeached Illinois soon-to-be-ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich is going to tell you how to fucking get things done, chump. Brought to my attention by Deviant Synapse, who can't blog this because he has responsibility and and integrity, qualities by which the Squidbag is unencumbered.