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Three Years

It's been a little over three years since I really wrote stuff on here on a regular basis. I got busy, tired, unmotivated - pick one. Mostly, I blame you. The audience. The reader. The theoretical mass of broad, open faces focused on the the free "content" that I would occasionally fling across this page, like 10,000 drunken Jackson Pollack-inspired monkeys.

Why do I blame the collective you, other than it's simply easier than taking personal responsibility? Here's why. When I would spend days crafting a blog entry with a solid, escalating, logical argument full of insight about something, I would get a couple of reads and likes, and the attention would die down quickly, like an X-rated metaphor. When I would rant silly, like a bolt of driven rage pushing across pixels and filled with invective, my readers would reward me like a banana dispenser in a chimp piloted spacecraft.

Pavlov. You rewarded me for paying less attention and half-assedly throwing my shit at a wall until it stuck interestingly, and discouraged me from craft. To the point that I ceased to craft at all. Your fault.

Not really, though. In the meantime, we've seen the ascension of Twitter, which is a much more efficient way of ranting - so much so that our Least Executive, Resident Chump, uses this as his secondary form of communication, just after his primary form, assaulting people. I can't tell you how disappointed I am - I see the Chump election as my fault, in a way: I was vigilant during the President Monkeyface administration, and we got the Obama years. I take a break from blogging for a scant trio of annums and people from Appalachia team up with the Mercers and elect a reality show dickbag to the fucking White House.

This is why we can't have nice things, America.

So, I'm back. I have probably stuff to talk about. My kids are older, I'm trying to change some stuff, and the new job I posted about is now three years old. America is in the midst of a great Crappening, lots of comic book-related stuff is part of our country's mainstream conversations, and people are still doing that religion thing, so I should have some stuff to address, yeah?

Poll Position

A week ago today, I worked the polls for Rutherford County's Republican primary. Because I never had. I've been working in politics (kind of, more or less) for about 15 years now, and I got my degree in Poli-Sci; seemed like part of the package to go on in and work the polling place.

I've lurked around them on election days before - doing GOTV stuff (including once nearly assaulting a person) and getting the numbers for reporting. The first time I ever did that part, I was with Mike Basford and one of the machines broke down and we had to wait for a dot matrix printout for an additional hour. Nerve. Wracking. Nothing about these interesting election experiences prepared me for the mind-melting monotony that is a primary one month after city elections that mostly no one cares about.

I was required to be there at 6 in the morning (which is early for a loyalty oath), because I had two responsibilities, "machine operator" and "computer / printer hook-up." This second one was referred to by the registrars as "IT guy," which I found terrifying because I am not one of those. I arrived and set up tables and then took the next 30 minutes or so setting up three laptops, mice and printers and networking them to the dedicated hub that I brought with me. Once everything was active, I helped set up the actual voting booths, which took longer than it should have. The two other machine operators were well past retirement age, and this may have contributed to the delay. By 7:05 we were ready to go, with the one hitch that we hadn't actually ENABLED THE MACHINES TO START VOTE COUNTING when the first guy tried to vote. I got that fixed in about 30 seconds and we were off to the races.

'The races' were thirteen hours with 122 voters participating. I did get a lunch, read two books, and there was one printer failure (toner cartridge which required an "unvote" of one person and took 15 minutes to fix) but otherwise, this was easily the most boring thing ever. And I had jury duty the previous week. I did help a bunch of people, and had to explain more than once what the advantage was of Democrats voting in a GOP primary. The high point of my day was when an olive-skinned man named Khaled Mohammed came to vote and I, observing his name, said, "Khaled Mohammed; that must be tough to deal with here." He appreciated my empathy and told me his story, stating that I had helped reaffirm his faith in the electoral process.  Good times.

I'm glad that I did it, I'll do it again - I'm glad I'm not doing it again today.

Jury Redux

The Estes Kefauver federal building in downtown Nashville was probably a pretty swank edifice in the 1990s. The interiors are all vintage from that period – lots of chromes and heavy wood paneling in light colors displayed in anonymous and cloned windowless corridors. I know this because during my day of jury “service,” I was relentlessly pinballed down them half a dozen times and the overall feeling one has at the end of this is of being harassed. 

I don't inherently resent jury duty, and thought, once again, that it would provide an opportunity to learn a little bit about the system while discharging my duties as a citizen. I don't feel like I did any of that. After a week of thinking about it, it is hard to come away from the process with anything other than a profound feeling of waste; alleged criminals who waste time by allegedly committing alleged criminal deeds, wasted time, wasted money paid out to potential, rejected and serving jurors for wasted effort, attorneys who waste time and breath on ham-handed attempts to manipulate, who ask the same questions, time and again, wasting more and more time and effort and money. 

What is it all for? 

Twelve Angry Men is my favorite movie of all time. I watch it once a year, I own the play and I believe in the speechifying about duty and rights under the Constitution. Nothing about the process for reporting for federal jury selection is designed to maintain a sense of dutifully reporting for sacred honor detail, however. It begins with a letter and an online registration, then there is a series of phone calls every Monday for a month which can only be made after 5pm and tell you where to go the following day, if you are needed at all. This is annoying. Just tell me when to show up and I'll do it, but this “I can't make any plans for Tuesday, or indeed, the rest of the fucking week until after I make a phone call to a robot” bullshit is ridiculous. Of course, they waited until my 5^th phone call to tell me to report. Just when I thought I might miss it and started making plans again. 

Due to traffic on Interstate 24, it took me an hour and 20 minutes to travel approximately 35 miles. The bus down Murfreesboro Road would likely have been quicker. I paid nine dollars (reimbursed) for parking, and then had to take off my jacket, shoes, belt & keys and put them in a bucket while I ran the gauntlet of security. (The security guys were actually pretty nice, just not terribly helpful.) I then shared an elevator for eight floors with a non-uniformed Metro cop, two ladies who smelled like a perfume counter, and a nervous man sweating aluminum. I checked in at the desk and was asked how much I paid for parking (I would imagine some people lie and pad this number) and issued my all-important button. 

Sitting in a large room (big long Brain Candy conference tables, proliferate magazines, great view of Union Station, half-comfortable chairs) we were then subjected to daytime television from 8ish until about 9:30. The programming, if anything, fell off at this point while we stared at a DVD with various Justices and former jurors instilling us with importance and creating unrealistic expectations about what we were to endure. There was a lot of talk about solemnity and emotion and and the small deliberations room, and how “scary” things might become for us. Perhaps not the most effective rah-rah speech ever. Sometime after 10 we were escorted to actual court, a room so tall you'd get a nosebleed climbing it. This was filled with pews and pictures of old white men in black dresses. On the way there, a bailiff reminded me “You can't read in court,” and pointed at the book under my arm, Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. He scowled when I took it in with me anyway.

Over the next seven hours, the same questions were asked of us in a variety of ways, and I was once again disqualified as a juror, I believe because of one or all of these three responses:

Do you have strong opinions about guns and gun control? Yes, I believe that handguns, rifles, assault weapons and extended magazines should have more restrictions on their proliferation and that licensing should be more restrictive, with more oversight.

Do you feel strongly that some drugs which are currently illegal should be legal? Yes, I think that marijuana's illegality is an anachronism and Colorado and Washington are good experiments to be watched closely.

Would it affect your assessment of witness testimony if you knew that the witness would be getting something in return for their testimony? That depends upon what they're getting and who they are. (This one actually turned into a three-minute back and forth between me and one of the defense attorneys, during which he scribbled something on paper.)

Shortly thereafter, I was released (actually what it is called) and went home, feeling as though the system was slightly broken. Everything is done to mechanize our "duty," attorneys manipulate juries until they get the most boring, homogenized group you can imagine, and endless time and money are spent trying to punish people for what they've allegedly gotten up to.

Bah.

Russia Is Stupid

Um, before I actually get into the topic the title implies I'll be covering, I'd like to say that Pussy Riot, what they're trying to do, their music (which I have to go look up lyric translations for), what they're enduring right now, in terms of being separated from their families and freedom, and the whole DIY, illegal performances, "music as non-commodity" vibe that they put into their tunes, image, videos and everything they do is inspiring, and warms pieces of my heart that typically go unwarmed. Now watch the new video if you haven't already. It is decidedly unstupid.

A portion of the band is still in jail, you know - there was another parole denial today. She's already done something like a year and change for protesting for under a minute; if you were old enough to be missing the free speech suppression of the old "Evil Empire" red days of the Cold War era - Putin's here for you. His government is going to sock people in jail and just leave 'em there if the speak out publicly against religion, trade, patriarchy or you know, suppression. This, of course, is the first point of Russian stupidity being addressed: How many of you would even know about Pussy Riot if they'd never been arrested and tried? I'm not encouraging the old school method of simply disappearing folks from the planet, but ignoring them probably might have worked? This method has a huge flaw that I've noticed, anyway.

But the Russian government won't do that because it's stupid - next case: "Gay." Russia has an abysmal GLBT rights record; failing to take any kind of cue from the parts of Europe that are becoming more institutionally accepting, they've chosen over the last several years to go the other way entirely - wishing that they didn't have gay people in Russia anymore and refusing to let people talk about the ones that they do have. If you're a gay Russian, you can't have a pride parade (in Moscow) for 100 years, you can't serve in the military or give blood, and finally, you can't say what you are. No saying "gay." Also, they'll mask up and beat the shit out of you if you protest. Or, as in the above example, toss your ass in jail. You know, for spreading your gay propaganda.

(I was going to post links to more articles from Pravda about some of this stuff, but their website is troublesome, and also a great example of this "propaganda" stuff you hear so much about from gay people. Have a look. Actually, the more I looked, the more I became totally confused. *slaps forehead* I shoulda had Izvestia!)

Finally, the main reason Russia's stupid (we've been alluding to him all along) is President Forever Vlad Putin, Jr. Junior's the man who had the moment with Dubya Monkeyface where they looked into one another's eyes and made a connection, which is so not gay. Other stuff that Putin does that proves he's a big masculine Russian bear includes finding unburied treasure, shirtlessly camping and fishing for camera crews, flying jets and drugging wildlife, riding motorbikes, racecars and submarines and having comic books about him. None of this, of course, is remotely staged or in aid of his image, and there are people on hand to assure anyone who wonders about this that all of his acts "are completely normal thing(s) to do."

Sure, Junior. Go ahead and have your fun. Stupid bastard.

Presidential Football Dream

So, last night I had this dream.

There was a huge open lawn space upon which someone had scrawled a hasty gridiron and thrown up some rudimentary uprights. It was for football, and I, and some random acquaintances and friends of mine, had the honor of playing the sport of kings with a number of American historical political figures, mostly Presidents.

Reagan's not as good as you'd think, it turns out. Obama runs the ball like crazy, but then so does Teddy Roosevelt. And JFK. Lincoln's a great QB; makes sense, all those years of splitting rails giving him upper body strength and his height gives him reach and command of the field, while the debates with Douglas have instilled in him the quick thinking you need from a team leader. Ford and Nixon can both play, but Ike's nothing special. You've never seen a nose tackle like Taft, though McKinley was right in there. I remember seeing Truman and Grant on the sidelines, chatting with FDR. Alexander Hamilton was keeping score and Barry Goldwater was calling plays for one side. Henry Kissinger and John Madden were doing commentary.

Offspring was playing their half dozen or so songs I know while the game was happening. There was a little raised stage near one of the endzones, and they were set up, just running through this six song set list, over and over. I'm not particularly fond of Offspring.

You think this is a geeky dream, but just wait.

During "Come Out and Play" I was in the midst of trying to tackle Bill Clinton and bring him down before he could score when Al Gore got in the mix for some unknown reason. It was totally illegal - there was definitely a horsecollar in there - and since I already had a pretty good lock on Slick Willie and just needed to put my weight into it I kept with the play, but from within the dream, I began to instantly analyze whether or not maybe this little scrum represented Gore's need to separate himself and his post-Washington legacy from the negative aspects of the Clinton White House.

And then I woke up.

2013: The Year of Listening

I had this unfortunate moment last night.

See, in the hours leading up to midnight, I had been stacking canned goods(by date) in my den while listening to the news programs about the fiscal cliff, various celebrities, and the general state of our society. My shotguns and automatic weapons were cleaned and loaded and ready, and I had shored up the backyard against rear attacks, the land cleared, and lines of sight established. The right people had all been called, and the secret cache was full of gold, the back room with salted pork and pickled vegetables. We had been sitting around the campfire the previous evening singing songs of protest and overthrow while painting the banners we would fly when the time came at midnight on New Year's Eve. New utilities on, boots broken in, maps of the area committed to memory, I was whipped into a frenzy and ready to be an instrumental part of the bloody revolt I thought was coming at midnight. We would kiss in 2012, and awaken in 2013 in a world of our making, under a government we held and controlled as the skies blackened with the fires of passion and the tree of liberty was fed by the blood of those who had foolishly resisted us.

All of this was in my mind - clear and balanced on knife's edge - as I broke the traditional kiss and smashed out of my house and into the streets smelling of gun oil and adrenaline rage shouting "BACKS AGAINST THE WALL, MOTHERFUCKERS," only to find that instead of revolution at midnight it was a New Year's Resolution at midnight that we were supposed to make.

Boy is my face red. Maybe next year.

Your Nightmares Are True

Deep in your atrophied and shrunken black poison pump, you knew it all along. The voices in the night, in your head, in abandoned hallways and in the back of liquor stores behind dumpsters and prostitutes told you who the hell he was, all along - and they were right.

Obama's got a pineal eye - they cover it with make-up - and he's a leader captain general of the vanguard of an invading race from beyond this dimension with perceptions that far outstrip anything a burgeoning panopticon can muster; he sees when you are sleeping/he knows when you're awake/he knows when you're a lying terrorist who needs a CIA drone up the ass. He's not American - he's quantum-American from a space dimension all around you invisible - that's how he's warping so many minds.

He's coming out of a toxic cloud of painless opium fumes and stale cigarette smoke straight out of a 1950's cathouse and he's snatching up your guns and your knives and your cudgels and your Dixie flags and your weapons so that when he comes around with his pan-racial, post-racial racist agenda - hating everyone that's not the mix he is, exactly - you're defenseless, and you have to wear the featureless grey coverall as institutional non-race mayonnaise post-consumer no property Lennon/Lenin communism kicks in under a totalitarian regime we asked for, we begged for, because we let that smooth-talking motherfucker into the White House and he didn't save us, he didn't save our country from itself, he saved it for himself, the last and most delectable treat on the tree of conquest. The government's going to get so goddamn big that you'll be able to see it standing on your neck while it's walking away in front of you and yet - it'll still seem like everything's out of control and going down the shitter because the chaos makes you seek comfort from the father figure daddy Obama.

Barack Obama's going to force abortions on everyone - he's going to do the abortions himself as the man-in-black leader of a cadre of ruthlessly efficient abortibots designed to infiltrate and make certain that everyone has a forced abortion and birth control rammed down their gullets like everyone's a fertile musket of baby-making madness and the only way to control the flow is to black bag your children in the dead of night, mandatory birth control for all sexes, forced abortions that you can write off on your taxes and the utter destruction of Christ's church here on Earth under the foot of a giant Pro-Abortion Monster wearing an Obama loincloth and talking like Tarzan but with Janene Garofalo's voice.

Despite his affiliation with a controversial Christian Church, he's a Muslim. A secret Muslim who manages somehow to promote the secret and shadowy agenda of Islamists everywhere while also speaking up for women's equality, gay marriage and praying - secretly - five times a day under the watchful eye of the Secret Service. He learned his Islamist ideology and secret handshake and agreed in a blood and semen pact to corrupt America for terrorism in a madrassa in a foreign country because of course, in spite of his birth certificate, which is an expert fake concocted by allies who manipulated media to create Barack Hussein Obama as a candidate in the first place - brainwashing you all - he was born somewhere else. In another fucking dimension, I know, but you don't know that, you only feel it. The big trick is, though - he doesn't believe a word of it, because he's got a personal relationship with the alien space god through his connections as the pan-dimensional messiah of hope and change. It's a good train; get on it.

He's gay, too. He's a gayesque bisexual pansexual straight guy who's just cool enough to get it on with anything that moves, and he's going to force the omnisexual agenda down the throats of all straight people everywhere like a load from a fully fluffed and hung damn ready pornstar just waiting to pump you full of hot ideological ejaculate that will disgust you all and damn you to hell and erode gender lines and whatever else you're afraid of, because that's what he is - the embodiment of all your fears, phobia made flesh, walking, talking, looking cooler than you, staying calm, cool and collected, a near-emotionless robot drone on a mission to bomb your America into dust and replace it with conspiracy Shadow America, waiting just beneath the surface - a quick left and you're there.

The media sold you a comprehensive nightmare, and you all bought in, with your hysteria and your need for change and promise of a new day - and you'll get it, cold sweating and wrapped in chintzy sheets under a steel-cold dawn and riding on the back of a mongrel demon from places you can't bear to consider. We know you believe it, and for you that's like knowing, and in the swirl of thoughts that echo in your brainpan you can't exactly nail down but you know you're in a nightmare of filth and lies and you can't figure out how this happened and you're surrounded all the time.

Your madness is real. Obama is the impossible sum of all of these things. Nightmare made flesh.

It's all under control.

Have a nice day.

Advice to Republican Friends

Republican friends and family of mine who read this blog - both of you (rimshot) - think of this as an intervention. Because I care. Well. In an abstract way that crunchy hippie nice people friends of mine compel me to care. I care because I have to.

On this blog, you may have noticed, I frequently use rudely sophomoric grammar constructions to not-so-subtly imply that Republicans are deplorably immoral, stupid, socially backward, and often crazy. "Right wingnuts," "Republicunts" and "Republican'ts" are a few of these; there are others if you go and look. I made it through the entire Dubya presidency wthout ever referring to him by his given name, opting for the more descriptively accurate "Dubya Monkeyface." The time for these half-assedly witty monikers is coming to an end, though - soon, all a citizen of these United States will need to utter in order to connote a tragically lowered intelligence, fried logic and societally unacceptable levels of craziness will be "Republican." It'll be a derogatory term all by its lonesome, and how long do you want to be associated with that? There's already an "R-word," so I don't even know how we'll discuss you people and call elections once your name is a slur - but I'm looking forward to it.

You, individually, on the other hand, should get out now, while the getting's good. It might already be too late - I don't know if you can escape a tornado of bullshit like what's being spouted from this incontinent elephant's ass without getting a little of it on you. Let's face it; the GOP (and its bastard child, the Tea Party) in this country has long been a shelter for those who don't give a fuck for anyone but themselves and have a need to justify this propensity by associating themselves with something that looks like an ideology, or failing that, surrounding themselves with similarly inclined people. (I would have said "like-minded," and in fact, went back and replaced it, because it implies a mind at work, and I'm not certain that's accurate.)

You can prove a Republican doesn't care about anyone but himself with any argument, but I'm going to use gun control, because it gives me an excuse to draw attention to this before it drops out of the public memory forever. Only Republican conservative thinking would argue, in the wake of multiple instances of gun violence that people should maintain relatively unfettered access to guns, because of course, they don't want to give up their rights to guns. They'll tell you that it's because guns don't kill people - which is true, but it would be a lot fucking harder to build houses if you banned bricks and mortar. They'll also try to whip out the 2nd Amendment on you, but that was 221 years ago and a flat backward refusal to re-evaluate texts after that long a period is religion, not governance.

Some solid examples of backward-ass thinking have come from the Repubbies this week, which is why I think it might be time for you rats to get the hell off the ship. First up is Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, who shared with us what happens when you speak using your ass instead of your head with his now famous definition of rape biology: "It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down." This begs all kind of questions: How the fuck did this guy get elected? I mean, I know Missouri votes for dead people, but come on. Who are these doctors; Mengele, Doom and Frankenstein? How does a "legitimate" rape differ from an illegitimate one? Is there a 'level of effort' consideration here? Finally, the female body does have ways "to try to shut the whole thing down;" they're called mace, knives, keys, fists, and self-defense classes. Also, they can vote against Republicans like your dumbass self. Maybe you could for once focus on the male body's way of shutting the whole thing down - NOT RAPING PEOPLE. Why don't you address that, halfwit?

Predictably, a firestorm of criticism - some sincere and some staged for effect - landed on Akin's goober head and everyone short of the Ghost of Abe Lincoln himself condemned Akin's comments, including Romney, who has to. Everyone's calling on him to step down and stop running, but true to the monomaniacally zealous thinking of current Republicans, he's staying in there, not giving a shit if anyone thinks he should. There's a point at which sticking to your guns in the face of adversity becomes bull-headed arrogant jackassery, and that point is distantly fading in Akin's rear-view.

Today Akin got some help from Iowa Republican Steve King, (co-sponsor of the "redefining rape" bill from last year with Akin and Eddie Munster-looking mook Paul Ryan) who contributed his own turd of wisdom to the conversation by stating "I've never heard of a girl getting pregnant from statutory rape or incest." He went on to say that he'd be open to a conversation on the subject, but that no one had ever presented this information to him in any personal way. So he's a maniac, but he needs to have his offices filled up with people who've had to deal with pregnancies caused by statutory rape or incest, just so he can't say shit like this again. Theoretically. I mean, it won't work, because facts aren't part of the equation with Republicans - beliefs are WAY more important.

As demonstrated by the Texas Republican Party platform's language which now includes this little nugget: "We oppose the teaching of higher order thinking skills, critical thinking skills, and similar programs that are simply a re-labeling of Outcome Based Education which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority." Really, this is just the first step to "Slavery is Freedom, War is Peace," but you would have had to have read Orwell's 1984 to know that, and Republicans don't read anything not ghostwritten for one of their radio or TV talking heads. This is the crown jewel of ignorance for the GOP, and it's astonishing that it comes from the state that de facto controls our textbook standards nationwide.

So Republicans in Texas are against higher order and critical thinking skills, because those things frighten them with the questions and whatnot. You can tell they don't like questions, because they're also against early childhood education - one wonders how they handle "Why is the sky blue" when their unfortunate kids ask that one. To answer accurately is to educate. Hmmm. I think these are people who could have used some additional behavior modification - and what's so wrong with that, anyway? What do you dickheads imagine (if you can imagine) laws and social mores are for? They've been modifying my behavior for other people's benefit since 1974. Finally, no one - and especially not a child - should have any belief that is "fixed." If it's fixed against data, discussion, facts and reason, it's wrong; it's a stick lodged in the ass of idiocy, and you pricks stuck it there.

O, jump! Republicans, jump while you can from the ship of the USS GOP - it is a crippled and perilously listing craft; escape into the icy waters of thinking for yourself - board another ship if you wish, but please don't lash yourself to the mast of stupidity as the whirlpool consumes you!

States of Stupidity

I wasn't previously aware of it, but apparently, there's a big contest going on to see which of the United(?) States is the stupidest fucking one we have, and then they've agreed to crop-dust it with painkillers, pop music, booze, bombs, sterilizing agents and lethal radiation.  Not really, but I wish that sometimes.

ILLINOIS: Illinois got their entry in early, when a Catholic Bishop (not one of those firebrand MethoBaptiChrister fucks) said that President Obama was waging a cultural war on religion, and that Catholic Masses could go the way of the dinosaur under his administration, comparing him to Hitler and Stalin, a comparison that one thinks would probably have upset Hitler and Stalin.  This entry is under review, of course, due to the automatic review process started with any evocation of Godwin's Law.  (His language about Christians huddling and hiding solely in the confines of their churches gave me a funny little tingle, though.)

ARIZONA: Arizona's entry came in last week, when its lawmakers decided that life begins two weeks before conception, or roughly when married couples with kids start making plans to spend time together alone with the barest possibility of sex. The idea here, of course, is to limit a woman's right to an abortion even further, where soon only women who aren't pregnant will be able to get them.  The determinant is an impossible to accomplish overreaction to a perceived problem - just like all other recent Arizona legislation.

KANSAS: Not to be outdone, Gov. Sam Brownback signed a bill this month making it legal for pharmacists to refuse to sell any drug to a woman that they believed could cause an abortion.  Now, if Dorothy wakes up from a threesome with a munchkin, a flying monkey and the Scarecrow, there's no morning after pill for her unless she knows her non-asshole pharmacist personally.  Proponents of the ruling describe it as a furtherance of previously standing laws making it clear that no one should be required to participate in abortions, which is interesting, since by denying Dorothy the drugs, you're just about requiring that she participate in an actual abortion.  The obvious natural extension of this law would restrict the sales of certain herbs, teas, coat hangers and bleach.

FLORIDA: The marching band at Florida A&M has been forced to suspend its program for another year after some of the band members beat a guy to death during fucking hazing.  I don't even know why we have the word hazing, since bullying is synonymous and everyone's angry about that.  Hazing is just bullying to see if you're good enough for the bullies; you want to affect change, call it what the hell it is. They're proposing a lot of staff and rules changes before the band can come back - strangely missing: Prohibiting Hazing.

NEW YORK: The Republicunt Party there has nominated the estranged husband of a current Democratic assembly member from Nassau County to run against her this fall.  This couple shares the same last name still and has been separated for less than a year, but the folks responsible for this little American travesty of marriage and politics assure us that Schmucko the Candidate "will run a dignified and issue-oriented campaign."  I don't know how many divorced and divorcing couples you've ever been around in your life, but I can smell the bullshit on this one from here.  They can't even order lunch together mostly, much less run against one another for office.  Congrats, NY GOP - you just turned this race into an episode of Maury fucking Povitch.

OKLAHOMA: Republican Congressman James Lankford recently told a reporter that not only does he still believe homosexuality is a choice, but that if one makes that choice, one ought to be fired from one's job, which is going to be awesome when they catch him with an officeful of rent boys.  Seems to me, though, the worst thing about being gay is that it makes straight people fucking stupid.  Since Obama's support of gay marriage from last week, there's just been a slew of outright ignorance and stupidity flying around, and sometimes, you hear someone like Lankford, who, as an elected official, enters his state in the contest with his comments.

TENNESSEE: Flying high on the strength of the ongoing efforts by the Mosqueteers, Tennessee's governor Bill HasBeen decided to essentially outlaw "gateway sexual activity" in an effort to reduce teen pregnancies. Presumably, this would cover hugging, kissing, touching, necking, fondling, touching, dry humping, over clothing handjobs and rubbing, touching, and lots of kinds of sitting and dancing.  I got news for you, Bill: You REALLY want to see a jump in teen sexual activity?  Take away all of the stuff on this list. Tell people they can't do it, and watch frustration levels climb until people are just like, "Fuck it, let's fuck.  That's not illegal."  Yet.

A couple of honorable mentions, here: Pastor Paul Cameron, working for the Family Research Council out of our nation's capitol, grabs his lectern and says that he thinks the President is gay and that gays should be locked up before they rape kids - so, by extension, the President needs to be in preventative gay kid rape prison.  I can't remember any time before in my life that the right was this desperate: "He's not from America!  No?  Okay, he's a Muslim, then!  No?  He's gay?  Yeah, let's try that."  There's also international stupidity going on when Lady Gaga has to cancel a sold-out show in Indonesia because Islamic lawmakers think she'll corrupt the youth with sexiness.  I'm pretty sure that's her whole act - how did this show get booked in the first place?  Also, out of Britain, John Limey Horrorface declares that white people in charge of shit historically works best and is the way to go, embracing the term "White Supremacist."  I gotta be honest, here - I sometimes no longer know if conservative pundits know they're being ridiculous.  Did he think there was a point to be made here, or did he just wake up pissed at non-whites one day?

I'm not sure when the voting in the contest takes place, you'll have to check with my office staff.

Murfreesboro Mosque III

Ah, Tennessee.  Your tradition of ignorance lives on.

Andrew Jackson, 7th President of the United States is from here.  Trail of Tears and all that? Pet Banks? Yeah, we got him. We're proud as fuck of that guy. We also got Polk, who was so similar to Jackson that they called him "Young Hickory." Then there's Andrew Johnson, who tragically fucked up Reconstruction while also becoming the first American President to be impeached. Tennessee was with the CSA during the Civil War, of course. Let's see - there's also the overblown madness of the Scopes Monkey Trial, which is only kind of our fault, and then Dr. King being shot & killed in Memphis, but Ray was from Illinois, right?  It did take us until 1953 to get rid of poll taxes, though.  I mean, I know it's not all bad - there are many good things about Tennessee - but there are days when it really doesn't feel that way.

The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, which you can read about from me here, here, and to a lesser extent, here, (and visit their FB page) is back in (local) news again, as possibly the dumbest trial since - well, Scopes, maybe - ramps up here in the 'Boro.

The thrust of this most recent round of legal wrangling stems from the complaint from local hatefilled anti-Muslims that they weren't properly notified of the County Planning Commission hearings that approved this building, because if they had known, they'd have shown up to protest it.  This, despite notices in one of our local papers preceding the meeting.  Apparently, the paper's not good enough, says local shithead Brian Gregory of Millwood Drive in Murfreesboro, who was empty-headed enough to say out loud, to a reporter, "I thought the county should notify me. Should I be expected to go down to the Square every day and pick up newspapers?" To which the answer of course is YES!!!  Yes, goddammit, you ridiculous dumb lazy motherfucker!  If you want to know about shit, seek it the fuck out!  What's next, you asking for fucking Paul Revere on horseback riding through Murfreesboro yelling "The Muslims Are Coming?"

These people also think that the notice that was published in the Murfreesboro Post needed to have borne a big red label reading WARNING: MOSQUE instead of the Planning Commission doing what it always does and following years of court-tested legal precedent and rules and treating the Islamic center just like any of the other too-massive places of worship which dot Murfreesboro.  See - you have to treat them differently because they're Muslim, and many folks here wash out their mouths after they say that word.  They have tried, over the last two years or more, to intimidate the mosquers away, then to claim that they were terrorists in open court, making all kinds of ridiculous statements.  There's been vandalism, the Daily Show, and so on, and now what?  "Well, we think we shouldn't have to read the newspaper to find out about stuff in our community we don't like.  And also, the Post is too small to count.  Oh, yeah, and there should have been flyering."

So you're a sense-of-community impaired dickhead who doesn't like living here is what I get out of that. You couldn't get a group together to flyer, and your paper's not widely circulated enough.  Wow. Between all of that and the Muslims already (for 30 years) in our community who'd like a bigger building, I think you should move.  I think you'd be happier someplace else.  I know I'd be happier if you were someplace fucking else.

But perhaps not; since here you're led by King Dickhead, otherwise known as Kevin Fisher, who has to be the dumbest mouthpiece for hate ever to defile dirt with his very presence.  Using a string of garbled sentences, sports metaphors and misleading language, he's been leading the charge on this thing for a couple of years now, since he unsuccessfully ran for School Board.  He's one of those guys who's never really on message - claiming in one spot that he's just defending a "love centered community" and in another saying, "I should not have to chase down information from the government, especially when it involves an ideology that I do not agree with."  Once again, for the cheap seats: IT WAS IN THE FUCKING PAPER!! The newspaper.  It's everywhere - libraries, the schools, grocery stores. You're not having to chase it down.  Also, Kevin - I disagree with your ideology, and I'm tired of chasing down your information on Facebook, Google and in the paper.  I want my fifteen minutes back, and in future, you should send me this information directly, or perhaps rent a dirigible with the notice painted on the side.

Look; this all gets down to you people hating on Muslims, and thinking that they shouldn't have a bigger building here because, according to you, they're bad for the community.  Try to see this from my point of view, folks: I think 99% of what religion does is bad for the community, and your big-ass buildings rape your god's soil and block out his sun.  I'd never hear from any of you fuckers again if I had a choice, but I don't, because it's your country, too.  Sharing is about nobody getting all of what they want. Just admit it - you don't like the competition, and you've got an ideological axe to grind, but really, really, you don't have a logical argument that actually works.

All I ask is quiet.