Wednesday, December 31, 2008

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.

Monday, December 29, 2008

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.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

[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.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

[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.

Friday, December 26, 2008

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?

Thursday, December 25, 2008

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.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

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.

Monday, December 15, 2008

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 . . .

Suzette Kelo's picture,
porn and a bar of gold.

Monday, December 8, 2008

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.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

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:




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.


Monday, December 1, 2008

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.