Paging Doctors Benson & Hedges . . .

On this last day of 2008, I am sitting in the parking lot of the doctor's office in Salem AR, writing this post out longhand so I can type it in later.

I've completed all my errands that I could while my mother visits the doctor. It's awfully cost-ineffective to have to go visit the doctor just to get your prescriptions refilled, but that's just one more of the Way Things Are.

I've decided to try once again to quit smoking tonight. I want my last pack to be a good one, so I drove all over Thayer this morning looking for a pack of Benson & Hedges menthol 100's. No B&H of any kind to be found anywhere.

At Walmart, the final place I looked, they didn't have any either. They used to carry them; I wonder why they don't anymore.

I realized I would have to settle for something else, so I had the Cigarette Cashier Woman at Wally World grab me a pack of Salem 100's. When I got home with them, I found in little tiny print at the top of the front of the pack the words "Slim Lights." Ugh. I'm smoking one now. Ugh.

By 9:00 it was time to get ready for our trip to Salem. I decided to look for Benson & Hedges there. When I lived in & around Salem, you could find Benson & Hedges anywhere and everywhere.

I had to plan carefully, though. I only had twenty bucks and some pocket change on me, and I wanted to go to Glencoe and buy sausage, buy a newspaper, go to the Dollar General for two 6-packs of ramen and two $1.45 cans of soup for my Armageddon Stash, and top off with gas.

I made it to Glencoe and bought my two packs of sausage. It came to just under eight bucks. On the way, I passed first the Shell station, then the CITGO. Gas was three cents a gallon cheaper than in Thayer at both. On the way back, after stopping at the newspaper office, I drove past both to go to the grocery store, a place I KNOW used to ALWAYS carry Benson & Hedges.

Not anymore, apparently. I should have given up then and got my second choice, Camel Menthol Wides, but I just KNEW there had to be some B&H at one of the gas stations. I went to Shell first (that's White Oak Station for all you Salem longtimers) and topped off with gas there, because at least until January 20th, America is not as Communist as Hugo Chavez.

It only held .7 gallons. That couldn't be right; I had filled up in Thayer the day before and had gotten then, according to my figures, a dismal 13 mpg, nowhere near my usual 17 or 18. I wondered if someone had siphoned out a couple of gallons.

But now you're gonna tell me it ran 41.5 miles on 7/10ths of a gallon? According to the calculator on my cellphone, that's more than 59 mpg! Either we had one helluva tailwind or the pump kicked off too early (which I doubt because I couldn't force anymore gas into the tank).

I went inside and paid my just over a buck and asked if they carry Benson & Hedges.

"Sorry, no."

So I drove ALL the way back out to Hugo Chavez's CITGO. They didn't carry them, either. I gave up and got the Camel Wides. And they cost me almost a buck more than they would have if I'd bought them at the grocery store in the first place.

You just watch; after I quit, there will be Benson & Hedges tempting me everywhere cigarettes are sold.

I did a quick cash inventory and saw I had enough left for my soup and ramen, and headed to the Dollar General. Then a quick stop at the charity store, where I bought an Old Style beer glass for a quarter.

LATER

Back at home now. Mom got finished at the Doctor's office and we went out to eat for lunch at a place I used to frequent in high school for the video games, the 62 Dairy Freeze. There aren't any more video games there, and the marquee out front now says "For Sale By Owner."

We both had the salad bare. Mine had a little lettuce, some mushrooms, cheese, olives, ham cubes, bacon bits, and low-fat ranch dressing, with some pickled okra on the side, and an unsweet iced tea.

Why do I spell it "Kwaanza"?

Because the traditional spelling looks like the emphasis is on the ZA.

Kwan-ZAA!!!

Wasn't that a movie where Shaquille O'neal was a genie that couldn't rap worth shit?

Is "You Know" the new "You Betcha!"?

Now, that's recycling!

Doctor uses lipo fat to run his SUV.

“My patients universally love the idea of converting their unwanted fat into fuel,” he said in his blog. “Not only do they get to lose their love handles or chubby belly, but they get to take part in saving the Earth.”

No word yet on whether or not Obama's green energy, jobs, and pro-choice policies will all merge into a program to develop cars that run by burning aborted fetuses.

[BDP] I've got spurs that jingle-jangle-jingle like Oriental music.

My aunt came up and my uncle came down today and we went out to eat lunch at a smart little Chinese buffet in West Plains called Diamond Head. I assume it's named after some obscure Dick Tracy villian, because the only other Diamond Head I know about is a volcanic mountain in Hawai'i, and I cannot fathom any real connection between that and crab rangoons.

It doesn't have the variety of Houston TX's Lucky Village, but for an eatery in a relatively small town saturated with Chinese buffets, it's pretty good.

The hostesss asked us how many of us there are. We counted ourselves and allowed that there seemed to be four of us.

"Booth or table?" she asked. We huddled up and studied on this question a moment and picked the table option. "Table!" we answered, "Table Table Table!"

Well, no, not really, but I wonder how she would have reacted if we did.

She directed us to an excellent table, virtually in the entrance to the buffet line, next to the fish tank. I have often wondered if I could get away with sneaking a kiddie rod with a little Zebco 202 reel on it into the place and going fishing for the either giant goldfish or small koi that reside there.

On a shelf above the fishtank, among various Oriental knicknacks, sits a television that is always set on Fox News Channel and always has the MUTE on. It seems a bit out of place, and I wonder why it's there. Maybe it radiates Conservative Waves that soothe the fish. Or maybe the owners are trying to teach the fish to read closed-captioning.

"Your waitress will be with you in a moment," the hostess said, and she was off to return to the front desk to help the next customers.

It was actually three-fifths of a moment. We had barely gotten into our seats when a cheery American waitress appeared. That's one thing I really like about Diamond Head-- they have a good mix of Oriental and non-Oriental employees. Too many non-Orientals and the place has no ambience. Not enough and you run into a frustrating language barrier. And they all wear neat little professional-looking but not stuffy uniforms.

This one was not long out of high school, I would estimate. She had long dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, and if she wasn't genuinely glad to have us as customers, she was certainly an expert actress. Not an ounce of insincerity was detectable.

"You guys having the buffet today?" she inquired.

We assured her that indeed we were.

"How many get the senior discount?"

Now, that is a more complicated question than it seems. In some places, the senior cutoff is 65. In others, it's 62. We had two over 65 and one over 62, and I. Gray hairs in my beard notwithstanding, I am not yet a senior citizen. We elected not to bog down our waitress with a quiz on the details of their senior discount policy and answered that three of us were eligible. (We later made up the difference on the tip we left, so no coming after us with torches and pitchforks and angry, shouted denunciations about how cheap we are!)

"And what can I get you to drink?"

Four teas -- two hot, two iced.

"Help yourself when you're ready."

And she was off to East India, or wherever it is they get their tea.

Because of health issues, there are things my mother is not supposed to eat -- pork and sugar among them. Because of mobility issues, going through the buffet line would have been difficult for her, so I got her plate for her.

And so I found myself picking through all the typical Chinese food and selecting mostly rabbit food off the salad bar -- grapes, olives, cantaloupe, a couple of small chunks of General Chicken (wasn't he a character in a murder-mystery boardgame?) and three even smaller pieces of Honey Chicken (which, if I remember correctly, was the name of Raul Julia's character in the blaxploitation remake of Kiss of the Spider Woman). Other diners would look at my selections, look at my considerable size, and pause a few bewildered seconds before a blue screen would pop up on their foreheads that said "404 Error -- File Not Found."

To help them reboot, I put a piece of garlic bread, slathered in butter, on the plate.

That's another thing about Diamond Head. 95% of their selection, not including the rabbit food, is the epitome of Oriental cuisine -- pepper steak, mandarin pork, sweet-and-sour beef and the like. But in the middle of all that Far Eastern fare, they'll include two or three selections that are so obviously non-Oriental (fried catfish, onion rings, apple pie, etc.) that when you come across it, you almost get a 404 Error yourself.

I brought my mother her plate and saw the waitress had made it back from East India with my tea. It had been a remarkably quick trip, considering she made a stopover in Florida for a lemon, a crisp slice of which adorned the top of my glass.

I returned to the buffet line for my own plate, which I filled with a small helping each of Vegetable Noodles, Bourbon Chicken, Beef(?) Skewers, General Chicken, Crab Salad, a Crab Rangoon, and an Egg Roll. The last two aren't as good as they are at the Bamboo Inn in Springfield MO, where the owner disconcertingly shouts your order back at you while you are ordering the next item. But then, in all my travels, I've never found eggrolls and crab rangoons that good anywhere else, either.

I garnished the plate with another piece of garlic bread and returned to the table.

I was famished. Knowing I was going to the buffet that day, all I had for breakfast was three thin little strips of microwave bacon, and because the power was out the night before, I couldn't cook supper, so all I'd had then was a couple of slices of turkey lunchmeat.

I finished my plate first, but I couldn't go get another plate yet because I have a wierd aversion to being the first one to get seconds. I have no problem wolfing down my food like Rosie O'Donnell let loose in an innocent and unsuspecting doughnut factory, but when it comes to being the first to go for another plate, I have a hangup.

So I pushed the miniscule pieces of leftover food around my plate with my fork until the cheery waitress came and took it away and refilled my tea from a full pitcher she had apparently brought back with her from East India.

The others were still eating, so I watched the fish as they made Mickey Rooney faces and pooped and were blissfully unaware that pieces of their unscaled, bewhiskered brethren lay battered and fried and ready for consumption not ten feet from where they were swimming. At least I assume they were blissfully unaware; it's hard to gauge the emotions on a fish. For all I know, they may have known exactly what lay in the warming trays on the buffet line, and they may have been giddy about it. There might be some civil war raging in the fish world that we are totally unaware of. Hell, the goldfish may have orchestrated the whole addition of catfish to the menu themselves.

For the first time this visit, I became aware of the music piped into the place. Thankfully, this was a Smooth Jazz day. Sometimes they decide to add "atmosphere" to the place and play jangly, melody-challenged Oriental instrumentals. I know there must be some people somewhere that enjoy Oriental music, but to me it all sounds like a set of windchimes beating up a xylophone inside a running clothes dryer that is rolling down a pile of scrap metal.

I also realized there's something not quite right about the lighting in the place. It should be brighter than it is inside, given the dozens of lights on the ceiling. Something about the combination of the lights being recessed and the maroon vertical blinds on the sizable windows being closed makes the light all funky inside. I suppose it's to make the experience seem all "mysterious" and "exotic" but it just makes me want to get up and go open the window blinds and let the sunshine in.

I grew weary of examining the fish and the light fixtures and let my gaze settle on a couple in a booth maybe 15 feet from us. They were, I would guess, in their late 60s. If the man had a black cowboy hat, he'd have been cast as the evil owner of a neighboring ranch in a spaghetti Western. His hair was snow white with Martin Van Buren sideburns, and he wore a Western shirt with an Arapaho/Brooks & Dunn print, a black leather vest, some lanky Levi's that appeared to be starched, and a pair of polished cowboy boots with the wierd metal tips on the toe end.

But it was more his demeanor than his attire that suggested he was the antagonist to Lorne Greene's protagonist.

She, on the other hand, wore frumpy hausfrau clothes and had a giant, Clairol-black white-girl Afro held together with Aqua Net and wore a set of glasses she seemed to have stolen from a 1950's suburban librarian.

They were an odd pair to behold, but the oddest thing wasn't their appearance; it was their seating arrangement. They were seated side-by-side, on the same side of the booth, the way you would sit with someone if you didn't want to talk to them. I thought for a moment someone else was going to join them, but they had already made a couple of trips each to the buffet line. If they were waiting on someone, they weren't waiting on them.

Finally, my uncle went back to the line for seconds.

I got some more crab salad, another crab rangoon, and two egg rolls. My aunt got a piece of apple pie and some decidedly un-Chinese vanilla ice cream. I asked my mother if she wanted anything else, even suggested a small piece of cheesecake. She decided to get something herself. When she returned, she'd gotten a sample of a few things, including a sizable and conspicuous serving of a pork dish. I didn't say anything.

We were all too stuffed to go back for thirds, so we paid up and left.

Before going home, we made a quick detour to the Dollar Tree, where I bought batteries, pretzel sticks, Burger King Onion Rings that taste nothing like onion rings but are good nonetheless, pork rinds, a universal remote, a DVD with two old beatnik-type movies on it, laundry detergent, fabric softener, some little Ziplocesque bowls so I can store leftover ramen noodles in the fridge, and cat litter.

[BDP] I don't remember the power going out this often in the Reagan Era.

And what you have to remember is that, except for six months in Peoria IL at the very beginning and four months at the very end in Springfield MO, I lived WAY out in the sticks during the Reagan Era. We're talking you-can't-get-cable-here country, where if you were lucky, you could get three TV channels but more often than not it was just two, and it was not unusual to just get one, which was the Government Programming Channel with the poofy-haired painters and the puppets and the in-depth documentaries on Inuit sockmakers.

Occasionally, when the atmospheric conditions were just right, a Mexican signal would overwhelm the KYTV station, an NBC affiliate, and you'd be treated to about thirty seconds of a cornflake commercial where the sparkling green rooster would qui qui ri qui at you for no reason, or some loud, urgent gentleman would try to sell you some gawdawful ugly stone cats. At least I think that's what he wanted. The puppets had only taught me enough Spanish to understand about every fifth word.

My mother was convinced the interference came from Castro, who was obviously trying to jam our broadcast signal. Why Fidel would want to deny us the day's Chiefs/Oilers score from Ned Reynolds (or, as he pronounced it, "Nid Rinnilds,")is beyond me. A few times I explained to her that Castro is Cuban, not Mexican, but it didn't do any good. The next time it happened, she'd be back to blaming Castro. Or worse, she'd be at the local gas station/pop & cigarette store and the topic of bad TV reception would come up.

"It's Castro jamming the signal," she'd tell anyone who'd listen, matter-of-factly, as if it had been proven, or some bit of secret information God had given her personally. It's bad enough she BELIEVED it; did she have to TELL it to people -- people we KNOW? I tried my best to melt into the floor, or to appear invisible and/or adopted.

But I digress about two levels deep. First, let me dig back up to only one level deep.

After about 30 seconds, the KY3 signal would momentarily fade back in, and we'd be treated midsentence to a stern Tony Beason lecture about how, yes, the bottom of the West Plains sewer system fell out, but those of us who were downstream along the many underground waterways of the Ozarks should just pretend we don't see the little brown specks floating in our well-drawn tapwater.

Twenty seconds later, the Mexican channel would re-emerge and there'd be an interview with the country's el Presidente, sitting on a tacky yellow couch that would be circled by a sad clown on a tricycle who would squeeze his bulbhorn at random times.

Ten seconds later, back to KY3. They would switch back and forth like that, at decreasing intervals, until they meshed together into a giant mess that looked like someone had electronically vomited a Dali painting onto the screen and sounded like a banshee was forcibly sodomizing a walrus. That's when you knew there'd be no more NBC watching for the rest of the day, so you'd get up and change the channel (back in those days, you had to actually remove your ass from the sofa and physically CHANGE the CHANNEL, but then there's no reason to channel surf when you only have two channels) and see if the vampire puppet could teach you anything about counting six bats.

But it's time to corral this train of thought and get back to being all non-digressy. What was I saying? Oh, yes -- I told you all of that just to flesh out exactly how out in the sticks I was.

It wasn't suburbia, or even exurbia; there was no urb within a hundred miles. If anything, it was a-urbia. Even the word "rural" didn't do it justice. It was the type of place where you didn't go out into your own yard at night unless you HAD to because, just beyond the edge of the glow thrown off by the buzzing vapor light in the yard, there was a very real possibility that a pack of wolves, a bear, a mountain lion, Bigfoot, Nell, Sling Blade, and the two gentlemen from Deliverance were hiding, salivating at the thought of dragging you off into the darkness, never to be seen again.

That's how remote and isolated it was, and even under those conditions, I don't remember the power going out all that often.

Maybe it's just that we weren't as dependent on technology as we are today, so it wasn't as big a deal as it is now. If the power went out, you could go outside and shuck corn or garden or decorate a Maypole or do whatever else a rural family does outside. Maybe play a banjo or Jew-harp down by the moonshine still until the power came back on, I don't know. Yeah, maybe the power went out every other week and we just don't remember it.

Maybe, but I don't think so.

Because it sure doesn't seem to me like the power went out more than a couple of times a year. The problem was always fixed in a relatively short time, and when it GOT fixed it STAYED fixed.

Here in the present, it seems the power's been going out about once a month for a while now. And like Baghdaders or Californians under Gray Davis or Brezhnev-era Soviets or the beaten-down American society in Atlas Shrugged we just accept this as the Way Things Are and don't believe anyone can do anything about it. Nobody wonders why, with the advances in technology, power outages aren't happening LESS often, but MORE. Nobody wonders, because there's no point in asking questions that nobody can answer. Who is John Galt?

The power went out twice today, once at 3:00 for an hour and fifteen minutes, and once at 6:00 for twenty.

Have some vodka, comerade. It will help you not to wonder why things are the way they are, and why there isn't anyone left in the world with the desire or the ability to do a damn thing about it.

Question.

Is it okay to wish someone "Happy Holidays" now without the War On Christmas types throwing a hissy fit that you didn't say "Merry Christmas"?

Follow-up: Were Andy Williams and The Osmond Brothers launching a War On Christmas?

Finally got my Twitter Page all set.

If I haven't posted here in awhile, check over there. I should post more regular-like there.

Obama says we can disagree without being disagreeable.

How disagreeable is it to tell someone who is gay and who was molested as a child that he is equivalent to his molester?



If I was the type to attend the inauguration (and I'm not; I'll be busy that day celebrating the beginning of the final year of my 30's) I wouldn't know whether to boycott the thing entirely or attend and, when Warren begins speaking, stand and face the back until he's done.

I'm a problem-solvin' kinda guy.

What to do with The Sludge Slick?

The amount of coal-ash sludge released Monday when an earthen dike failed at a Kingston Fossil Plant retention pond was triple what TVA has estimated.

Sell it to OHIO!

Hamilton County crews usually spread 20,000 tons of salt each winter, but this year, trucks have only 11,000 tons, according to Chief Deputy Engineer Ted Hubbard.

So Hamilton County crews are mixing salt with sand and bottom ash - a coarse byproduct material generated from burning coal.

R.I.P., Best Catwoman Ever.

Eartha Kitt dies in Gotham at age 81.

What sort of loser douchebag . . .

... complains about someone building a snowman on his own property?

Backdated post: Kwaanza Eve.

Ever notice how much abyssmal, miserable dreck is on television on Kwaanza Eve? And the radio, if possible, is even worse.

I spent most of the day bored out of my skull and going stircrazy because there is literally nothing to do in a small town on Kwaanza Eve. I went to both 24/7s and both liquor stores, and after that half-hour was up, I was done because there was literally nothing else open. I even thought about hitting them again, but how many times can you look at a cigarette lighter with a John McCain characature on it?

I had made a serious mistake in planning the day, you see. I have these little reminders that pop up on my cell phone to do little chores around the house every day ("Fix breakfast," "Take out trash," "Wash dishes. Laundry?" etc.) If I don't have a schedule, I get into these Inertia Spirals where I know stuff needs to be done but I either can't think of what to do, or can't summon the energy to do them, especially this time of year. After I complete them, I reset the alarm for that task to the next day. I decided I was gonna take Kwaanza Eve off and reset all the tasks for the 26th.

It made for a VERY long day.

I got so bored, in fact, that I did a load of laundry just for something to do. While hanging them on the clothesline, I hummed the first line from Sinatra's "Strangers In The Night" over and over and over, and made up in my head new lyrics. Those lyrics ranged from the relatively uninspired "Stranglers In The Night, Exchanging Victims" to the brilliant and sublime "Christmas Sucks My Ass, Fluidic Druids!"

Of course, I left the clothes out on the line all night and it fogged on them. They are wetter now than when I hanged them up.

I watched the VHS copy of Titan A.E. that I bought myself for a buck at a resale shop. I had seen it before, several times in fact back when we had HBO/Cinemax/The Movie Channel, but I liked it enough to buy it. But this version was I think a little chopped up. There was a scene where the creature with the bizarre bowlegs is on one spaceship. Then, suddenly, she's on another, and the people there make no acknowledgement of her arrival. Took me out of the movie for a bit.

When that was over, I watched the copy of Braveheart I bought myself for Kwaanza Eve. I had to wonder if it would be a different movie entirely if instead of Mel Gibson as director, it had say Ollie Stone or Ang Lee.

Would it have, for instance, a scene where Wallace's buddy Hamish confesses that William stirs feelin's in him that a man shouldna be feelin' for another man?

A different movie entirely.

Backdated post: Iced in.

Woke up this morning to a glaze of ice. Weird thing was, it didn't seem enough to be measurable, but it was slick enough to send a pickup truck sliding sideways down the hill in front of my house and into the ditch.

That was AFTER I made a daybreak ciggie/lottery run. The sidewalk wasn't slick. My driveway wasn't especially slick, but once I got out in the road, I had to spin the tires on my little front-wheel drive titty-pink Escort wagon all the way up the hill to keep from sliding backwards.

By then, it was too late to turn back. I made it to the 24/7 with only a couple of instances of sideswishing, but on the way back, my car would not stop, even only going 20 MPH, so I could turn onto my road. I had to drive all the way down to Front Street and go around the other way, which meant I had to drive UP the hill on my street to get to my house. That was probably a good thing, though. I spun the wheels all the way up the hill, but if I had been going DOWN the hill, I almost certainly would not have been able to stop at my driveway and would have wound up in the ditch too.

Radio said there were accidents all over and around Thayer, including a flipped-over bread truck and an ambulance injury accident.

I emailed Mr. Whited that I was not gonna leave the house again until spring.

Coupla hours later, cabin fever set in and I walked/slid all the way to the library. The radio hadn't said anything about it being closed, like it did the Thomasville Library. Made it all the way and found not a soul about. Realized there was this neat thing I could have done to see if they were open; it's called CALLING THEM. Made it back home without falling down once, although my left ankle's still a bit sore from all that sliding.

I settled in for the day and raided my Armageddon Stash of a couple of cans of soup for lunch and dinner.

I'll have to replace them before the first, so that money counts toward W's economy and not Barry O's. And just in case Armageddon comes, of course.

Celebrate the Founding Polluters.

Happy Boston Tea Party Day, all!

D'oh!

Set up a Twitter page today.

One problem.

I don't know my cell number, or rather, I THINK I know my cell number, but am not quite confident enough to plug that puppy in there. And I didn't bring it with me here to the library.

Oh, look. Over there -- something NEATO and SPARKLY!!!

You know, you can take the Crunchberries out of Cap'n Crunch With Crunchberries, and you have Cap'n Crunch WITHOUT Crunchberries.

It seems my brain is shrinking to the size of that of a Cereal Woman*.

I'll try not to look up at the sky when it's raining long enough to drown.


* - Cereal Women are sorority girls who some twenty years ago used to infest the dining halls of then-SMSU. They always ate cereal, were incapable of individuality, and were bright not so much. That Cap'n Crunch quote was actually overheard from one of them. See also "Blonde Bowheads."

You will jog for the master race, and always wear a frowny face.

IN bans smiling for drivers license photos.

Since smiling can distort facial features measured by the facial recognition software, Indiana BMV officials want people to put on their best neutral expressions when being photographed, according to numerous media reports. They also don’t want people having hair hanging over their faces, or wearing glasses, headscarves or other accoutrements that also might distort their facial features when getting license photos taken. No word on beards and mustaches.

So if you don't want Big Brother recognizing you, slap on a grin.

Smile, you're on camera...

Atlas Barked And Wants His Belly Rubbed.

Research finds that a dog will no longer do a trick if another dog is rewarded and he is not.

Article: Dogs will go on strike over unfair treats.

To see if dogs have a sense when pay for work is fair, a kneeling
researcher asks for a paw to shake ... If that dog doesn't get treats for
repeated handshakes, but sees one of its pals rewarded with a bit of bread or
sausage ..., the unrewarded animal eventually goes on strike, refusing to shake
hands any more.

If I had been the researcher, I would have named one dog "Taxpayer" and the other "Welfare Recipient."

Barney Frank will no doubt totally ignore this study.

A little ditty 'bout Campeon & Bebe . . .

Thursday I'm at a little local salvage grocery store, and I find myself skimming through school supplies. I've already sent out all the Kwaanza gifts I plan to for this year, but there's no reason not to get a jump start on next year, and maybe beat a little inflation to boot.

I come across these neat little personalized camouflage pencils and think these might be just the thing to send to my friends next Kwaanza. The ones for boys are green camo and the girly ones are pink camo.

But there are no Kevins. No Callies. No Toms. No Roberts, no Bryans, and certainly no Rs.

There are, however, plenty of Campeons and Bebes.

I didn't get them. Yet.

I have plenty of time to decide by next Kwaanza whether or not I want to rename all my friends Campeon and Bebe.

The Libertarian 12 Days of X-Mas!

On the 12th day of X-Mas, my true love gave to me . . .

Altas Shrugged For Dummies,

Screw The I.R.S. game,

Pocket Constitution,

Suzette Kelo's picture,

gay wedding announcements,

subscription to Reason,

AK-47,

some slot machine tokens,

funky copyright laws,

Cannabis sativa,

a laissez-faire T-shirt,

porn and a bar of gold.

WARNING: Somewhat homoerotic science content!

Does he count as one of the Ten Most Fascinating People of 2008?

The Ten Least Fascinating People of 2008.

10. Anyone who fainted at an Obama or Clinton rally.
9. Jill Biden.
8. Rosie O'Donnell.
7. Anderson Cooper.
6. That Pregnant Man Dude With The Lady Parts. (Doesn't that make him not a man?)
5. Barney Pelosi.
4. That guy that Barney bit.
3. Axl Rose.
2. The Mac Guy in the Mac vs. PC commercials.
1. Onch. It must take work to be the least fascinating person on a Paris Hilton show, but Onch nails it.

Kwaanza presents for the person who has everything.

Ha ha.

[H/T 2 cnn.com/ntm]

Surfside SC may be getting a little ban-happy.

SC city about to ban feeding birds.

Why not instigate an argument between the big-government types by reporting these guys to PETA?

Question.

Does freedom of religion on a military base include the right to protest a religion?

What's the opposite of a boycott?

I need to know so I can shop at Lowe's in order to counter this doofus.

While you're at it, little skater dumbass boy, boycott everywhere else people go, so you'll stop being in our way.

Because I probably won't be in to post tomorrow . . .

... I wish you a Happy End of Prohibition Day.

Oh joy, the blogosphere is complete.

Miller Redfield has a blog now.

Speaking of Aussieland . . .

... here's a fine example of the Law of Unintended Consequences:

TOWNS across the nation are bracing themselves for a potential wave of drunken violence when the federal Government delivers one-off payments for families next week as part of its economic stimulus package.

What's black & white & red down under?

Not a graded schoolpaper in Queensland, apparently.

It all started yesterday when we reported that Queensland teachers were
being advised to stop using "aggressive" red pens to mark work. A Queensland
Health kit on dealing with mental health in classrooms tells teachers to use
black or blue pens because red is considered too confrontational.

Someone please explain to me what's to prevent the child from soon associating the blue or black ink with failure?

What about fish-drawing people?

Here's the headline:

Tuna sector opposes ban on fish-drawing devices

Which means that if I was a robot, the ban would prevent me from doing this:

The simile of the day . . .

. . . comes from a Yahoo UK & Ireland article on soccer.

...[N]egativity wafted around Anfield like a stale fart.

I'll give Barry O credit.

Our President-elect has found the real Bill Richardson and rescued him from his evil counterpart from the mirror universe.

If Marilyn Manson did a Christmas album . . .

. . . you can bet this would be on it.



(There is another version of this that may have been done by Burl Ives. It is REALLY creepy, but I can't find it!)

I didn't know they offered a degree in Drowning Pregnant Secretaries and Getting Away With It.

Harvard to give Chappaquiddick Ted an honorary degree.

For about twelve hours, I had an adorable little puppy.

I named her Gidget. She's a nine-month-old black Pug that showed up at my uncle's house a couple of weeks ago. He found her owner, but her owner told him to keep her.
He doesn't do inside dogs, so he was keeping her outside.

He gave her to me. I picked her up around 3:00 PM Friday.

She spent most of the day sleeping on my lap, in between determined attempts by Tiny, my elderly min-pin, to molest her. A couple of times she awoke long enough to playfully chew on my fingers a couple of minutes, then she was out again.

She crapped in the floor twice, and once in the bed. I had to get up in the middle of the night and throw my sheets in the washing machine.

At nine months, housebreaking was probably not going to happen.

And all the while, Tiny kept pestering her for some nookie. Finally, so I could get some sleep, I put her in the dog carrier. That worked for about half an hour, then she started whining and wouldn't stop.

So I brought her back to bed, and she decided she wanted to play by tunneling under me and nibbling at me. Constantly. For two hours. And wouldn't stop.

Sadly, I decided this wasn't going to work if she wasn't going to let me sleep. At two-thirty in the morning I loaded her up in the car and took her back to my uncle's house, letting her out without waking him up.

I guess I'm not meant to have another dog.

Devon (UK, I think) city makes the walk home safe for alcoholic chicks.

Offers free flip-flops for drunk women in high heels.

No word on whether or not trannies can get 'em too.

What's next, free GHB for date-rapists? Free kiddie p0rn for pedophiles? Free loot bags for bank robbers?

How about a car to ferry cops between the firing range and the bathroom, 2.5 football fields away? Hey, it's not like cops should have to be physically able to walk that distance, right?

Apparently, teachers, school administrators, and policemen never fart.

13-year-old Stuart FL boy arrested for farting.

How much of the Stuart FL city bank account is dedicated to helping the Fart Police win the War on Farting?

Got an old DVD that you never watch anymore?

Or maybe one your well-meaning friends or relatives gave you as a gift that you have no intention of watching? (Ishtar, perhaps?)

Send it to a vet through DVDs4VETs.

There are two of these guarding the gates to Hell.

Or at least there USED to be two of them. This one ate the other one. For Thanksgiving.

Looks like I bought it too early.

The movie 300 will be on sale for six bucks at Walmart the morning after the Festival of Gluttony.

I paid $13 for it a couple weeks ago.

Still, I may venture out on Capitalism Day morning and check what other movies are selling for six bucks.

Or two.

Maybe I can get enough that I won't have to buy any more for the next four or (shudder) eight years.

We shall overcome.

You know how reality shows always come with a twist that shakes up the game?

In Survivor, it was the merge. In The Biggest Loser, it's the team swap. Whatever show you're watching, the creators throw in a curveball in the middle of things to make it interesting.

Shortly after the election of Barry O, I came upon the idea that the only way it made any damn sense at all was if my life was a Joe Schmo-type reality show and this was the twist.

Periodically, the rules of the game are reversed. Think you can win by earning your money? Hell, let's just switch the game around so that now need, not ability, is rewarded. And once you as a player figure that out, we'll switch it back again.

I even texted Mr. Whited that I may be the star of The John Show. He suggested I change the name of this blog to that.

Now it seems I'm not the only one afflicted. There's even a name for it -- Truman Syndrome.

I wonder, do we each get our own reality show, or is American society as a whole the star of one reality show?

Or am I the only star, and they are just characters PRETENDING to have Truman Syndrome?

Fight The Power By Burning Newspapers.

I noticed that about half of the bulk of my trash is paper or cardboard.

So I've started burning the paper and cardboard in the backyard where I burn leaves.

As expected, it cut the amount of trash I have in half.

How does this fight the power, you ask?

Using one trash bag every two weeks instead of every week cuts the amount I spend on trash bags, and the taxes I pay on said trash bags, in half.

We shall overcome.

Snippets; snippets good.

Nosferatu takes control of House Energy & Commerce.

Are the same politicians griping about Big Auto's private jets willing to be served only ramen noodles in the Capitol cafeteria? What costs the taxpayers more, a $25K flight or a $400K Freakin' TEAPOT MUSEUM???

I wonder if future Secretary Admynistrative Assystant of State Hillary Clinton had to bake those cupcakes as part of her application process.

I hope they're brown noise guns. And I hope someone comes up with a fully-submersible tanker that will surface undamaged after an hour or so.

Libertarian talk-show host jailed for 100 days. For having a couch in his own yard.

Just a reminder . . .

... the Dow Jones Industrial Average was over 12,100 when the Democrats were elected to take control of Congress in 2006.

Yesterday, it closed at 7,552.59.

But I thought Big Business was EVIL!!!

Mattel replaces autistic boy's massive Hot Wheels collection lost in the California wildfires.

And what has MoveOn.org done to help this family? Has Barack Obama cut a check out of his massive campaign surplus to help this child? How about the DNC? Did any of the Huffington Post's contributors mail even a single Hot Wheels toy to this family?

You know, all those people that keep preaching about how big business is evil and the less fortunate ought to be helped. And about how they really, really care about the little guy.

Voodoo Factchecking.

About ten years ago, I went through a phase of every year buying the [That Year] World Almanac and Book of Facts. It was quite a useful thing, whether you wanted to look at how many state legislatures were controlled by Republicans or you wanted to know the name of a group of animals (a herd of cows, a flock of seagulls, a murder of crows, a sleaze of Democrats, etc.)

Jokingly, I repeatedly pointed out to my then-roomie (is there any gayer word in the language than "roomie"?) that if it's not in the World Almanac & Book of Facts, it's not a fact.

Once, he wanted to know the name of a group of some animal (kittens, maybe) and we could not find it in the World Almanac & Book of Facts. So we deduced that that animal does not exist in a collective sense.

Rick Sanchez Miller Redfield has come up with a similar mystical method of determining the truth of things. In this case, he measures the accuracy of a connection between two terms by googling the two terms and counting the hits that return. Presumably, the more hits, the more valid the connection.



Here's the transcript:

MILLER REDFIELD: Something else to take notice of first. I want you to look at this video, all right. It seems almost sad. Look at this. This is the president of the United States walking out on stage to take a picture with world leaders invited to the G20 summit over the weekend. Look at him. And he seems like the most unpopular kid in high school that nobody liked -- you know, the one with the cooties?

Everybody's shaking hands but he walks in and nobody's shaking his hand and he's not shaking anybody's hand.

This is different, though, because look -- I'd like you to watch this again. Watch. Everybody is shaking hands. He's not shaking hands. Remember just six years ago, he was "the bully who everyone seemed to like" -- or did they just pretend to like him?

By the way, just to be clear, bully is not my word. It's one of the words most used to describe the Bush administration's foreign and economic policies around the world.

To check, I Googled Bush and bully together.

Are you ready? Two million five hundred thousand hits. This may be a case of what goes around comes around. But maybe not. Still, you know what, he's the president. And as I watch this video with you guys, I can't help but almost feel sorry for him.

Hmm. 2 and a half million. That's slightly more than the number of hits googling "Al Gore" and "fraud" generates. How many hits are returned by googling "Obama AND socialist"? What's that? 5.56 Million? In this Voodoo Factchecking Method of Miller Redfield's, does that not mean it is more than twice as likely that Barry O is a socialist than it is that Bush is a bully?

How about "God" and "Flying Spaghetti Monster"? Or "CNN" and "biased"? Or "Nancy Pelosi" and "diarrhea"?

For no other reason than it amuses me . . .

How to Fight The Power By Wearing Tighty-Whiteys.

I bought an electric tap with a power switch (think "power strip with only one plug-in") to put on the heat lamp in the basement, which keeps the pipes from freezing in the winter. I could just unplug the thing every morning and plug it back in every evening, but that is a pain, and I know myself well enough to know that if it's a pain, I'll just turn the damn thing on and leave it on all winter. And I could crawl back into the grungy, confined corner of the basement to use the switch that's actually on the heatlamp, but that would be an even bigger pain. With this new system, all I have to do is reach in the door and flip the switch.

If I figure correctly, it should save me about 2 kwh a day, which is about 20 cents. That means it will pay for itself in a little more than 2 weeks. After that, it's gravy.

What I really need for that little area is an extension cord with a thermostat on it, but I don't know if such a thing exists. If it does, it would be too expensive.

I also dug all my tighty-whiteys out of storage. Gives me enough underwear that I only have to wash underwear once a month, in theory. Hey, I made it just fine wearing tighty-whiteys for the 25 years before boxer briefs came along, right? What's a little discomfort when it gives me the chance to starve the beast a little more by doing underwear laundry half as often? I don't know yet how it's going to work in the summer when I almost always wear sandals and hence no socks to wash along with my drawers.

On the theory that it's better to make major purchases before the end of the year so they'll count toward George Bush's economy instead of Barry O's, I finally broke down and bought a cheap DVD player. My idea was that I could check out DVD's from the library for free, but the one that looked most promising turned out to be horrible when I got home. So I bought four DVD's (again, George's economy, not Barry O's), three of which were $6 apiece at the Dollar General. Those three were V for Vendetta, Talladega Nights, and Easy Rider. The other was 300, which was 13 bucks at Wal-Mart. I may have to watch those four movies over and over again for the next four years. Maybe I'll find Braveheart or The Last Castle or something else Ideologically Correct at a yard sale somewhere.

(BTW, that "Buy it now, before Obama can benefit from the taxes" idea also works for small nonperishable items. I'm stocking up on toilet paper, shampoo, and cans of soup, for instance.)

Heh-heh-heh.

Somebody found this little blog by googling "Buckwheat and Hairplug."

Now THAT's funny!

Will she have to get him coffee?

Looks like Barry O is thinking of hiring Hillary Rodham-Clinton as his Secretary Administrative Assistant of State. Summoned her all the way to Obamagrad to have a discussion about it.

Makes no sense whatsoever. Nothing screams "diplomatic genius" like calling your own Vice-President Darth Vader. And what if her duties require her to bake cookies and have teas?

Why do the people of Rodhamgrad keep supporting her when she keeps trying to ditch them for something higher up the ladder?

She would be a better fit as Attorney General, and I really thought Barry O would pick one of the Clintons for that post (not Roger, though, he's in consideration for Drug Czar.) But there's still time, and Bill's still available. His library, built on land stolen via eminent domain, in Clintongrad is complete and Lecture-Circuit Partyboy Algore's got a corner on the public speaking market already.

Unless (shudder) he's holding the spot open for the return of That Scary Man.

AFTERTHOUGHT: It IS awfully convenient how, if Hillary is in his cabinet, she can't exactly challenge him in 2012, isn't it? Don't accept it, Hillary. 2012 might be your last chance. Ya ain't gettin' any younger, girl.

Is CNN's Rick Sanchez the lovechild of Treat Williams and Miller Redfield?

Rick and his guests seem awfully fond of drawing some vague connection between Barry O and the fact that the White House was built by slaves.

SANCHEZ:Coming at you right now: in a White House built by slaves, a historic meeting between old and new. The president-elect and his wife, Michelle, meet the current president and the first lady.
...
There you have it. It's the shot of the White House where this historic meeting is taking place. This is a building that was built by slaves, and now you have a black man who is about to be the president of the United States meeting there with the current president. How much more historic can you get?
...
AMY GOODMAN, HOST, "DEMOCRACY NOW!": Well, first, I watched the first African-American elected president of the United States, together with his wife, walk into the White House -- a house built by slaves. And the idea that he, with his two little girls -- will raise those little girls with his wife in this house is truly historic and voted by people across the political spectrum. This was truly a global election.
...
BRANDON LAWRENCE: Nothing but happiness and, just honestly, a call to action. And honestly, when I say that, it is to be someone the same pigment as President-Elect Obama, looking at his hard work in an election that, when I, for the first time, was able to vote for the election and for someone like Barack Obama to be in this position and walking through these -- the house that slaves who look like me have built, it's something that is very, very encouraging.
...
SANCHEZ:Again -- and I think Amy nailed this a little while ago when she was explaining to us the historic reference -- the importance of this day, this moment -- a house that you were looking at right there, that was built by slaves. But Barack Obama and Michelle Obama inside today, getting ready to take over in that place 10 weeks from today.

Except that Barry O's ancestors weren't slaves. They didn't even leave Kenya until the 20th century. So he has absolutely nothing to do with slavery. Unless, of course, his ancestors were some of the victors in tribal warfare that sold their prisoners to the white man (maybe some of Barry's other ancestors, now that I think of it) as slaves.

Tangential question: Did any of Barack Obama's ancestors own any of Michelle's?

Remember, remember . . .

Happy Guy Fawkes Day, all!

(Only a month and a day until Boston Tea Party Day!)

If Obama is really so fond of "leveling the playing field..."

... then shouldn't he redistribute all the votes above and beyond those he needed to beat McCain to the third parties?

For that matter, shouldn't he have redistributed his campaign money to those that didn't have as much?

I'm all for giving people a chance, but with Obama, that chance will come AFTER he explains to me how one can love a country while simultaneously hating everything that makes that country unique (and in the case of the U.S., the most prosperous and powerful) among nations (capitalism, equal protection, individual liberty, etc.).

Obama wins.

What is wrong with people?

By the way, you are now resolved of any white guilt you may have been feeling. The race card has expired.

Speaking of polls . . .

... I suppose I really shouldn't give up already, no matter what the polls look like.

These are the same polls, you'll remember, that as late as election day 2004 were ready to swear in President John F. Kerry.

Third Party Animal Poll Results.

Question: Where was John and why wasn't he blogging?

Insane - 4%.
Joined the Super Friends - 4%.
Unabomber Shack - 4%.
Prison - 9%.
Ron Paul - 85%.

Proves my theory that Ron Paul wins all Internet polls he is included in, even if it makes absolutely no sense.

Question: Which of the Superfriends would sniff his/her pinky finger after using it to scratch the inside of his/her itchy ear canal?

Superman. 0 (0%)
Batman. 0 (0%)
Aquaman. 0 (0%)
Wonder Woman. 1 (5%)
Black Vulcan. 1 (5%)
Apache Chief. 3 (15%)
Samurai. 0 (0%)
Zan. 0 (0%)
Jayna. 14 (70%)
Green Lantern. 0 (0%)
Hawkman. 0 (0%)
Robin. 1 (5%)

The obvious answer would be Aquaman, because he is constantly getting water in his ear and is more likely to have a fungal infection in there, so it is more likely to itch than the ears of the other Super Friends are. Aquaman got zero percent. Jayna got 70%.

Question: If Obama wins, does that demonstrate that race-based affirmative action is unnecessary?

Yes. 100%.
No. 0%.

Looks like those of you who are pro-Obama and pro-AFFAC better be careful what you wish for, because you may have to choose between the two.

It just squeaked in to beat the deadline for an October Surprise.

Obama's aunt living in U.S. illegally.

Serves the little bastard right.

Kid tries to steal McCain sign; gets shocking lesson.

Hit me, it finally did.

So yesterday I'm watching yet another hour of CNN's fawning coverage of yet another Obama rally with yet another shot of a member of the proletariat holding up yet another sign that says "CHANGE WE NEED."

On first inspection, it strikes me as an incomplete concept. Maybe we DO need change, but does it necessarily follow that that change must be a step toward socialism? No.

Then it finally hit me. It's not intended to be a complete thought. It's a subliminal message to the Star Wars geeks. It's Yoda-speak.

It's not "Change we NEED." It's "CHANGE we need," which is how Yoda would say "We need change."

And change is all the money you'll have to live on if Obama gets his way, my little green friend.

Anybody know . . .

... where I can get a (preferably cheap) flash drive that will run off of Windows 98? It doesn't have to have a lot of storage, just enough for the occasional Gummint Cheese comic strip and rantposts too lengthy to type as I sit here in the library.

They've upgraded to new computers here, and the new ones don't have 3.5" floppy drives, which is what I used to bring anything I wanted to post here that would take too long to do as I sit here.

And all the flash drives I can find require a minimum of Windows 2000.

Speaking of CNN . . .

... anyone know why they let Glenn Beck get away from them and why they replaced him with some ferret-hugging granola muncher?

John The CNN Contributor.

Got another crawl on The Rick Sanchez Show yesterday:

"Someone keeps stealing Frampton's Obama signs; does Ted Nugent have an alibi?"

(You can see it scroll across beginning at 1:19 and again at 6:12 here. )

Only marginally clever, I know, but they won't run any texts I send that have any substance to them.

Thursday & Friday both they've gone with the "Name one person Obama hangs around with that's anti-Semitic" story, like it's some big mystery and the answer is "nobody that we know of."

Both days I sent an answer -- Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson. They rejected it both times.

I don't know how much he hangs around with Al Sharpton* or I'd send that answer in, too.

* UPDATE: Quite a bit, apparently.

This April, Obama made an appearance at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, the same organization that shouted racial and anti-Semitic epithets at the Jewish owner of Freddy’s Fashion Mart in Harlem in 1995. The National Action Network quotes Mr. Obama as saying, “Reverend Sharpton is a voice for the voiceless, and a voice for the dispossessed. What National Action Network has done is so important to change America, and it must be changed from the bottom up.”

Looks like Obama's gonna win.

And he'll do it with or without Missouri. If I had any hope that it would make a difference, I might reconsider my decision to vote for Libertarian Bob Barr and vote for McCain instead. But it won't make any difference. My vote either way won't make any difference in Missouri, and Missouri's electors won't make any difference on who wins the Presidency.

I guess the best we can hope for is that the Republicans can hold onto enough seats in the Senate to maintain a filibuster, and that they'll do it often.

We spent 40 years, untold hundreds of billions of dollars, and who knows how many lives fighting the Cold War to keep socialism from spreading across the globe, and we are on the brink of imposing it on America ourselves. Why did we bother? Why did all those young men and women die in Viet Nam? Wasn't the whole point of that little exercise to stop the communist/socialist dominoes from falling? Well, the biggest domino on the planet's about to fall, and the ones that will push it over are the American voters.

We have seen how this movie ends, people. And whatever theater it's shown in, it ain't gonna end well (pardon my grammar). In the Soviet Union, it ended with total societal collapse and a splintering of the country itself, after decades of breadlines and hopelessness. In North Korea, it is ending right now with people literally eating each other because they are starving. In China, it ends with tanks in Tianenmen Square and babies dying from tainted milk and people "disappearing" for speaking out against the government, and the only progress made comes from the country's gangsters who bribe the right corrupt politicians into letting them break the cripplingly oppressive rules everyone else has to follow. And it Cuba, it ends with the slow death of bleak stagnation that means the only cars people have are 50-year-old clunkers held together with baling twine and duct tape. Unless, of course, you're one of the lucky few that gets one on the black market one stolen from America.

That's the future America is heading for if Barack Obama is elected President. The Fairness Doctrine. Equal results guaranteed despite unequal effort. Caribou being more important than people. The politics of envy. The resentment of ability. The rewarding of failure. The evaporation of gun rights. Giving terrorists a voice in how we live our lives. The death of individual rights. The destruction of the greatest force for good our world has ever encountered -- capitalism. The rejection of every idea that built this country in to the most free, most powerful, most good nation in the history of mankind. The end of America itself.

But hey, it's all worth it as long as we punish everyone who has the gall to be more successful than we are, right?

Why I Don't Give Out Candy On Beggar's Night.*

If you want your kid to have candy, buy him candy.

Don't try to manipulate/coerce other people into buying him candy FOR you.

SUGGESTION: You can afford a lot of candy for him with what you'd spend on a costume.


*- "Beggar's Night" is a more correct term for Halloween.

John the Texter.

I got another crawl onto the bottom of the screen on The Rick Sanchez Show last week.


"al-Qaeda remembers how their endorsement of Kerry backfired & so they "endorsed" McCain because they want Obama."

Before it crawled across the first time, however, a panelist made that very point, so it looked a little silly.

Obama says he's going to "ask" the wealthy to pay more taxes.

When did the definition of "ask" expand to include "imprison you if you don't comply"?

Question.

If objective analysis of Obama's voting record places him to the left of self-identified socialist Bernie Sanders (as it does), how is Obama not a socialist?

Unless you live in MO, OH, or ND (maybe NV & IN) . . .

... if you vote for John McCain or Barack Obama, you are wasting your vote.

If you live in CA, TX, or NY, for instance, your vote for either of the two major-party candidates will make zero difference to the outcome.

So why not vote for a third-party candidate and maybe help them achieve the threshold to be included in the 2012 debates?

Me? I live in MO. And, although I am not thrilled with their candidate, I will support the Libertarian Party by voting for Bob Barr.

I believe in the Libertarian Party. It's just that sometimes I don't believe in the Libertarians.

There has to be some penalty for McCain-Feingold and for the Giant Sociaist Takeover of The Banking Industry. So, R.I.N.O.* John McCain and D.I.N.O.* Barack Obama do not get my vote.

And someone PLEASE tell me what the f*** McCain is doing spending so much time in PA, with no hope of flipping the state his way?

* - Why is it that the "In Name Onlies" are always to the left of the party they "belong" to?

Finally.

I may FINALLY be back on some semblance of a schedule. So my posting should resume it's normal weekly status.

I do have to go back to West Plains Tuesday (I'll try not to drink the water) but it shouldn't interfere with my Wednesday posting.

And that one and this one.

Except that one.

Too many balls in the air this week . . .

... so no posts.

(Exception: Obama's true colors, like Joe Biden's, couldn't stay hidden for long. Now we just have to see if there are enough real Americans left to defeat him.)

Observation.

The STUPID EVIL GENIUS-In-Chief has been doing some reading, apparently.

Specifically, The Art of War and some Machiavelli.

Consider:

Bush knows Obama will win the election. How better to ensure a Republican takeover of Congress in 2010 and a Republican White House win in 2012 than to plunge the country into The 2nd Great Depression, which will fully hit home on Obama's watch?

My One-Point Plan to Rescue The Economy.

1. Sew Paulson's Mouth Shut.

Every time he opens it, the Dow goes into freefall. Take Wednesday for example. With an hour to go until the closing bell, the Dow was up 100 points. Then Paulson just had to begin talking to the press. At the close, it was down just shy of 200 points. Cause and effect, people.

Has anyone else ever wondered . . .

... why people are so eager to settle for "the lesser of two evils" but not for the LEAST of THREE EVILS?

Represent, yo.

I got my message through to a national audience again yesterday, and it was again on CNN. The first time, you'll remember, was with my now-defunct (and apparently now cybersquatted) blog The Puffington Host in the now-defunct segment "Inside The Blogosphere" on the now-defunct show Inside Politics.

About a week ago, Rick Sanchez' show began crawling text messages from viewers on the bottom of the screen. I've sent a different text every day, from noting that the Banking Stabilization Bill sounds like one of the schemes dreamt up by the badguys in Atlas Shrugged to wondering when Congress was going to drag some of the deadbeat borrowers who skipped out on their debts in front of the cameras.

Yesterday, the topic du jour was the sheriff who referred to Barack Hussein Obama at a McCain campaign rally, and how awful and racist it was to do so.

I had been about to give up sending comments, because good ones "somehow" never seemed to make it onto the Ted Fonda Liberal Opinion Network, and stupid, borderline-retarded ones were repeated ad nauseum. (I can't count the times "Rick, this is great!" scrolled across the bottom of my TV that first day.)

But the notion that referring to someone by his or her full name is somehow racist enticed me to try one more time. It actually made it on and crawled across once in the last ten minutes of the program.

Here's what I sent:

RICK, were the Left being racist against whites when they repeatedly referred to "George Herbert Walker Bush"? -- John in Thayer, MO.

For some reason, they edited out "Thayer." Maybe they thought it didn't actually exist, since it's in flyover country.

I don't understand.

Didn't W assure us that Big Brother would only eavesdrop on terrorists, and not whack off while listening to Americans having phone sex?

And the winner of Best Website I Cannot Use Is . . .

... Spinspotters.

Why must I be so tormented by the sad clown of life?

I'll never be able to quit smoking if I can't give up being such a slut for gimmicks.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present Camel Crush.

(My apologies for the shakiness; you can't seem to find professional-looking cigarette commercials these days.)



The gimmick? It starts off as a normal non-menthol cigarette, but it has a little menthol zit embedded in the filter that you pop when you want to make the smoke a menthol.

At least that's what it feels like; a zit that's under the surface of your skin. It especially feels like that when you pop it.

Brooklyner ticketed for having a beer on his own front stoop.

There's no way he said that with a straight face.

Here's a snippet for you.

''We are not trying to be Big Brother,'' Mier said. ''We just want to watch the areas in the public lots where there's a lot of vehicle and pedestrian traffic.''

In other words, "We are not trying to be Big Brother; we just want to watch the areas where people are."

Question.

How long could it take to key in an eight-digit number?

Here; let's time it.

Duh-duh-duh-duh. Duh-duh-duh-duh.

How long was that? Less than a second?

Certainly, not as long as it would take for a bunch of Pleasantville's booger-pullers to put their grimy little digits on a fingerprint scanner. From my recollection of middle school, you'd have to stop and Windex the thing after every scan.

Leave it to McDonald's . . .

... to totally retardify Star Wars toys.

They COULD have given out (admittedly cheap-looking) action figures and little spaceships.

That's what they COULD have done.

But no.

What they DID was put enormous, retarded bobble-heads of characters on TOP of little spaceships.

Don't be looking for THIS Star Wars geek to be gobbling up Happy Meals anytime soon.

Freudian slip.

Remember all the times that Barry O has scolded us and lectured us and insisted that he's NOT a Muslim?

Oops.

It only matters, of course, in that he has repeatedly denied that he is a Muslim. As long as he is not a militant* Wahabi-style Muslim, it would not be a problem had he not lied to us about it all along.


* - I recognize that "militant" is a subjective word. By "militant," I mean "at least as militant as Michelle Obama's eyebrows."

It's like wearing a poodle for a hat . . .

... it just don't make no sense!

(Those of you squeamish about TMI regarding bodily functions, back away now.)

So I pick up a Debrox Earwax Removal Kit. Too many years of listening to Guns n Roses full blast on the headphones are starting to catch up with me. That, and earwax and ear hair seem to come with the territory of being a Hirsute Old Fart.

Thing is, you have to tilt your head and put the drops in and stay that way for several minutes before using the bulbous booger-puller to suction the liquid out. I am easily bored, so I read the carton of the Debrox Earwax Removal Kit. Perhaps I shouldn't have.

Because listed among the inactive ingredients is something I didn't expect -- flavor.

Yeah, you read that right -- flavor. In an Earwax Removal Kit.

Don't believe me? Go to the pharmacy or grocery store and check it out for yourself.

No doubt the Bellamy Brothers had this in mind as one of the things that makes their Old Hippie get out there in the Twilight Zone.

FYI, Debrox's customer service number is 1-800-245-1040.

Biden Flashback to the pre-hairplug days.

Serial plagiarist Joe Biden is WAY smarter than you.




Nope, no hint of liberal elitism there, right?

Q: If he's so smart, why is he still riding the Welfare Train?

A: Maybe he wants to get a peek of these.

Here is the part where we make up a word.

And the word today is "whiteman-ner."

Which ticket is whitemanner?

Barack Obama (1/2 whiteman) plus Joe Biden (1 whiteman) = 1.5 whitemen.

John McCain (1 whiteman) plus Sarah Palin (O whiteman) = 1 whiteman.

If Heather can have Two Mommies...

... why can't Barack have Two Daddies?

Too bad I'm not a seamstress.

I'd start making pants that LOOK like they're low-slung and show off the unmentionables, but actually DON'T.

It should be fairly simple for anyone with any proficiency on a sewing machine.

Just cut off the top of a pair of drawers and sew them onto the top of a pair of jeans. They then become one article of clothing that simulates the look that literally has the Fashion Police in an uproar.

And it'd make me quite a bit of coin, I'd guess.

I'm surprised they didn't run into a stained blue dress in there.

Apparently, the Republicans have been digging around in the Clinton closets for collectivist campaign themes.

"Country First." -- No, John. INDIVIDUAL LIBERTIES first!

"Service Before Self." -- No, John. The government exists to serve the people, not the other way around.

"Serving A Cause Greater Than Self." -- Ayn Rand would vomit.

A snarky little college rag (with a brilliant staff, I might add) at then-Southwest Missouri State University once commented that the Clintons' vision of communitarianism struck them as communism with a few extraneous letters thrown in. That is as valid an observation now as it was then.

Wanna free tire gauge?

Slime's giving one away to the first 10K.

Apparently, the Potential Spoonerism Prevention Manager was off that day.

So I'm in the local grocery store, perusing the aisles of the $1 stuff. Most, if not all, of it is made in Red China.

I check out the toys. I don't know why I check out the toys; I never buy the toys, but I check them out anyway.

One of the toy items is these cheap little tops that light up when they spin, three to a pack.

But it is not the contents of the package that catches my eye. It is the writing on the front.

In big, tacky letters, one of the selling points is:

CUNNING STUNTS!!!

It's official.

In our latest super-scientific* poll, 57% of respondents agree that rooting for the sports team of the school that makes you pay property taxes is akin to Ned Beatty rooting for the rednecks in the movie Deliverance.

A new poll will be up shortly.



*- By "super-scientific," I of course mean "not scientific at all."

Remember the last episode of LHOTP*?

You know, the one where they blew up the town rather than let the scurrilous scalawag take it from them?

Think of that when you read this story of heroism.


*- LHOTP: "Little House On The Prairie"

Life In Post-America Linkfest: 8-27-08.

Puerto Rico makes Wal-Mart raise milk prices.

Kenny Hulshof reminds us Jay Nixon tried to penalize a gas station for selling cheap gas.

9-yr-old ball player kicked off team for being too good.

Long-term effects of Oklahoma's nanny-state-funded pre-K are not OK.

Clayton NC bans "tethering of animals."

Hickman NE targets aging horse for eviction.

Is it a legitimate government function to ban "vineyards on hillsides with slopes greater than 50 percent"?

Why do the Democrats hate trees? And on a related note, why is it that, four years after this incident, the Democrats are still being thwarted by the Evil Balloons?

BECK: Penn, did you see -- did you see the thing on the balloons? It`s biodegradable balloons. They can`t get them to degrade. And there is still somebody on a compost heap right now pouring extra liquid on them -- damn these balloons. They`re supposed to biodegrade.

JILLETTE: What scares me about that story was that they didn`t say pouring liquid on it. They said liquid.

BECK: Liquid, yes.

JILLETTE: That scares me a lot. Because when I mean water, I often say water. That`s a word most people know.

BECK: I`ve never, ever -- I`ve never said, "You know what? Gosh, I could go for a big glass of liquid."

JILLETTE: Exactly. So I`m worried that what they`re pouring on those balloons might be something we don`t want to know about.

BECK: Right. Like acid.

Gummint Cheese: Introducing Little Mikey.

We look back in our archives and find this little ditty, circa 1978...

Click pic to embiggen.

If it didn't include the entire subscription base of RADAR magazine BEFORE, I'm guessing it does NOW.

Frightening stuff.

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

[H/T 2 Survivalist News via Bear Ridge Project.]

Excellent Random YouTube Video Of The Week.

This one is dedicated to the memory of R's lettuceless, tomatoless BLT he devoured last night.

Let Me Guess: Milky Way ad execs have driven through Texas recently.

Good thing they didn't drive through Oklahoma. If they bastardized "Drive Friendly, the Texas Way!" that badly, I'd hate to see what they'd do with "Watch Your Speed; WE Are!" or "HITCHHIKER MAY BE ESCAPED PRISONER!"

Life In Post-America Linkfest: 8/20/08.

Barack Obama sees no correlation between legislating paid sick leave and nanny-state liberalism.

Big Brother Is Warrantlessly GPS-tracking You.

The Card Check Bill, coming up soon in Congress, would abolish the secret ballot in unionization efforts.

What? A Texan wants to park his F-150 in his own driveway? Oh, THE HORROR!!! [H/T 2 Dickster's Random Thoughts.]

Clive homeowner fights back against the uniformity-loving Pleasantvillians by declaring his yard a "nature preserve."

ENFIELD NY breaks lease on communications tower property, plans to sieze it via eminent domain.

Paducah smoking ban makes casualty of eatery.

MA State Rep introduces ban on Rent-A-Pets.

Which uses more electricity, a timer or a box fan?

Our former new-found friends the Soviets . . .

. . . are on the march again (Hence the Reagan campaign ad you'll see below). The world is a scary place again.

According to the Whited-Hutchison Steve Austin Theory, that means the Bigfoot stories should start increasing right about . . . now.

Jay Nixon thinks your local gas station owner is Big Oil.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

From Thomas Pally on TPM Cafe:

[To conservatives]it is fine to sabotage the effectiveness of government since that also undermines its popularity. That makes it harder to defend government, and easier to shrink it.

Pally decries in many words what I can rejoice in three:

STARVE THE BEAST.

West Helena Mayor: A is A; A is NOT A.

Here's a charming little quote from West Helena's little dictator:

Mayor James Valley sees it this way: “Now if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I’m fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here. The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK, and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution.”

Vice-Dictator Eugene "Red" Johnson chimes in:

"As far as I'm concerned, at 3 o'clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law," Councilman Eugene "Red" Johnson said. "Anyone out at 3 o'clock shouldn't be out on the street, unless you're going to the hospital."

There have been several instances where I have had trouble sleeping and as a result, smoked up all my cigarettes. So I went to the 24/7 convenience store and bought more. Tell me, "Red" (apt nickname, by the way) whose rights am I violating by doing so? And tell me what exactly the purpose of 24/7 convenience stores is if nobody has any business being out after what YOU deem are appropriate hours?

On CBS, Dictator Valley pipes up again:

"I've heard the critics, and they make an academic argument, but I invite them to come down here on the streets and deal with the problems we've been dealin' with," said Mayor James Valley.

The United States Constitution is not an academic argument.