A funny.

I've arrived a couple of minutes early at the library today. I am sitting in my car waiting for it to open.

Here it must be noted that the library is across the street from City Hall.

A woman in a fairly new silver Dodge Durango drives up and parks in the 15-minute parking in front of City Hall. She gets out, goes to the door and pulls the handle.

It doesn't open. She tries again. It still doesn't open.

She reads a sign on the door.

I cannot hear her, but I see she distinctly mouths the word "FUCK!" and returns to her car. She backs out of the parking space and is off.

I didn't go read it, but I'm pretty sure the sign said that City Hall would be closed in observance of Robert E. Lee's birthday.

Soylent Crisp is PEOPLE!!!

Remember that tinge of disgust you felt awhile back when I wondered about the OBviously absurd notion of using aborted fetuses (fetii?) to power your car?

Does that feeling change at the idea of burning full-term babies to heat your home?

38.9972678

He's been ingested, injected,
infested, infected,
protested, protected,
detested, detected,
digested, dejected,
incested, insected,
basted, bested,
tasted and tested

But today the godmonster
slouches toward 39
unbroken and unbowed.

Aftermath.

I managed to get the washing machine half-assed going again, as long as I only use the Permanent Press selection. I hope it'll hold together long enough to give me a little time to scratch up enough money (my people call it "wampum") to get the repairman out here. Again.

The city is still under a boil order, which is a pain because a couple of times today I had a craving for shrimp Cup O'Noodles. I didn't want to use a bottle of spring water for that, because that would make the cup of noodles cost, like, two freakin' dollars, and the three minutes I would nuke the stuff would not be enough to bring the water in it to a boil. So I had a cheese-stuffed smoked sausage instead.

The sunset today wasn't very wintery-looking. It was pastel blue and pink. I remarked to myself that this must be what it would look like if Easter exploded and splattered it's pastel entrails all across the sky.

I bought two Sunday papers today -- my regular Democrat-Gazette and the Springfield News-Leader, which now costs two bucks despite being as high-school-journalism-class as ever. At least it had some pretty good coupons this week. But someone really should call them up and ask them what they use to get the Democrat-blue splatter stains out of the front of their underwear every time they think about the Obamas moving into the Caucasian-American House.

Oh, crap. I forgot to hang out the load of towels I washed this afternoon. I'll have to remember to do that first thing tomorrow morning.

Relapse.

I smoked 19 cigarettes today. Not that it's any excuse, but the world pissed me off.

More specifically, the fact that the world is falling apart and nobody seems to want to do anything about it pissed me off.

Today was the first day in the past several that the mercury rose above freezing. During that time, a bunch of laundry piled up, so I decided to wash a couple of loads.

But no.

Halfway through the first load, the machine quit. It didn't even release the water first. It is about eight and a half years old, we've already had to fix the damn thing three times, and there are plenty of mid-century wringer washers out there still plugging along just fine. If it was possible to manufacture a washing machine fifty years ago that would last decades, why is it not possible now? Why is everything made these days total crap?

So I loaded up my soggy clothes, dripping all through the house, and took them to the laundromat, where I would have to pay $1.25 a load to wash them. I had a five in my pocket.

And the change machine at the laundromat had a sign on it that it takes fives and ones. I put the bill in the slot. It spit the bill out. I tried again. It rejected it again. I smoothed out the VERY minor creases and tried again. It again spit it back at me.

Hateful machine.

I tried a total of ten times. It was rejected a total of ten times. I wanted to punch the piece of $H!T machine. If I'd known for certain that the two security cameras in the place were dummies, I might have done just that.

Some idiot child asked if I wanted his help getting the machine to work.

I don't know what he thought HE could do about it. It was the machine itself, not my technique, that was flawed and causing the rejection of the money. The kid was maybe ten years old, and I surmised he was probably going to grab my money and run.

"No," I told him. Not "No thanks," mind you, just "No."

Instead, I went to the salvage grocery store that's in the same strip mall. I stood in line at the cash register behind some halfwit girl who seemed to be deliberately unloading her cart as slowly as she could. And no, I'm not exaggerating.

That's another thing -- when did it become perfectly acceptable to deliberately waste other people's time?

I finally got to the cashier and got three bucks in quarters and two one.

I got my laundry done, but I was still fuming. That's when my thought process went something like this:

Why do the right thing if the world's gonna screw you over anyway? I'll show the world -- I'll smoke CIGARETTES!!! I'll somehow PUNISH the world by resuming my nasty habit of sucking tobacco smoke down into my lungs! THAT'll teach it a lesson!

I know it makes absolutely no sense, other than the first part. But in that moment, it made perfect sense. The whole world's been shot to $h!t and there's not a damn thing being done about it, so I may as well enjoy myself with a smoke.

Besides, I needed something to take the edge off and calm me down before I came all Angry Unglued on the next dumbass I encountered, like one of the MANY morons in this town who are INCAPABLE of grasping the concept of Left Turn Yield On Green. Trust me on this, you wouldn't like me when I'm Angry Unglued.

Even then, the consequences would have been minimal if I could have bought just one or two cigarettes. But you can't buy just one or two; they aren't sold that way. You have to buy a minimum of twenty.

I stopped at the 24/7 and bought a pack of Camel Menthol Wides and a lighter.

I sat in my car, trying to resist the temptation to open the pack. The size of the box, the texture and temperature of the cellophane wrapper, the faint smell of mint all proved too much for me.

"Fuck you," I told the camel on the box. "Fuck Whirlpool, and Fuck Barack Obama!" I ripped open the cellophane, flipped open the box, tore out the silver inner liner at the top of the pack, and pulled a cigarette out.

I lifted it to the corner of my mouth and grabbed the filter with my teeth. The menthol danced and tingled on my lips. I flicked my Bic, paused long enough to think "Christ I hate me right now," and stuck the flame to the end of the cigarette.

The first puff was long and deep, with a secondary inhalation to let the smoke kiss my sinuses from the inside. The kiss radiated outward, not stopping until it reached the ends of my extremities.

Yeah, THERE it is, I thought. Why hello there, old fried. I hadn't realized how much I missed you until I got you back.

Another puff and the edge began to be carried away on the wisps of smoke, drifting out the window and into the universe.

I flipped on the car's radio, certain that Joan Jett's I Hate Myself For Loving You would be playing. It wasn't. I tested all the presets and settled on something or other.

I finished that cigarette and drove home. I didn't even bat an eye at the water main break at 6th & Chestnut that had the whole town under a boil order and left a giant crater surrounded by traffic cones in the middle of the intersection.

I got home, dipped the water out of the washing machine a cup at a time and poured it into the bathroom sink. And then I hung my clothes on the line.

That was 18 cigarettes ago. I have one left. Will I smoke it tonight? Will I smoke it the first thing tomorrow morning and want more? Will I stash it on top of the kitchen cupboards so that the NEXT time the world pisses me off, I can have just that ONE cigarette?

Time will tell.

It's colder than a Tauntaun's cloaca out there.

About 5 degrees F right now. Sumbitch that's cold, and the bad thing is it's not supposed to get above freezing for at least another day and a half. Supposed to bottom out around zero tonight. Hope the pipes don't freeze; I have the heat lamp on in the basement but even that's no guarantee when the weather falls down to around ten degrees and stays there for several days.

At least there isn't any snow or ice, so we're not trapped in the house, as long as we can stand the walk to the car, and the warmup time for the heater in there, without freezing our fixtures off.

For hate's sake, he spit his last breath at us.

Khan, R.I.P.

My friend Kevin suggested we jettison him in a torpedo tube (or maybe a Chrysler Cordoba) into the atmosphere of the Genesis Planet.

BTW, can anyone tell me why the Genesis planet re-animated Spock but not Khan?

No wonder the Democrats always want to raise taxes.

Tax increases don't matter to people who just don't pay taxes.

Call it the Geithner-Rangel-Leona Helmsley Tax Plan : Only the little people pay taxes.

Flea Market Finds.

Today I finished making my major video purchases for the next four years. That's not to say I won't buy a good movie if I run across one at a yard sale, but I'm not buying any on the white market until at least 2012.

I picked up a PUMP UP THE VOLUME DVD and a weird little VHS called "The Anarchist Cookbook," which is not a video adaptation of the cookbook but rather the story of how people who read the cookbook ruin the lives of innocent, happy-go-lucky anarchist bums.

I also picked up Toffler's The Third Wave for a buck.

I got all this at the little flea market south of Mammoth Spring that has the army surplus/war souvenir booth in the back; the one that makes you think the nutcase army store owner from FALLING DOWN is going to poke his little head up over the counter.

Hey, it's either him or Zed and Maynard from PULP FICTION; take your pick.

A free box of Afrin and an eight-cent box of cake mix.

I had to go out this morning for a 12-pk of Diet Dew, some bread, and a little bunch of miniature bananas. While I was at the store that doubles coupons up to $.50, I decided to do a little coupon shopping, too.

I got the $4.69 Afrin for free, some $.88 reduced-sugar yellow cake mix for $.08, a $1.25 box of Betty Crocker scalloped potatoes for $.75, a $1.50 can of Campbell's Clam Chowder for $.90, a $1.98 roll of Viva paper towels for $.98, a $.88 package of steam corn for $.28, and a $1.25 pump bottle of Softsoap for $.55.

Double coupons SO rock when you're Fighting The Power.

SHRIEK WOMAN STAFF NO WRITE ENGLISH GOOD.

Well, I guess it's one way to avoid that pesky problem of not knowing when to use an apostrophe.

Just seen as a headline on The Screeching Banshee Show on HLN:

WILL TOT MOM BROTHER GET CRIMINAL IMMUNITY?

Please . . . PLEASE tell me their headline writing has been outsourced to some English-as-a-fifth-language country. Because the only other possibility is that it's a liberal do-gooder jobs program for the Severely Brain-Damaged.

Unless, of course, the wave of kids who got an Outcomes-Based Education are now old enough to enter the workforce.

Why can't things be easy?

It's been one of those days where my thoughts have to fight through the molasses before they can join up with each other and for something approximating coherence.

I ventured out first thing this morning to buy lottery tickets. I usually buy them on the day of the drawing (Wednesday in this case) but the temperature's supposed to drom sharply starting tonight and I thought I was planning ahead to keep from having to go out into the Wednesday cold.

Except that I didn't factor in my town's weekly newspaper, which technically comes out on Thursday but actually can be bought on Wednesday morning if you know where to go.

Where have you gone, Terry Wood?

You can't tell it so much by the picture in his online bio, but these days KAIT Weatherman Ryan Vaughan has Harry Osbourne hair.

Coolest. Thing. Ever!

Well, isn't that a mistake every one of us has made at some point?

From ananova:

An airport spokesman said the security guard mistakenly heard the word 'urine' as 'beverage'...

Anyone else remember . . .

. . . that the world's freest economy used to be a quaint little place called America?

Good to see I'm not imagining things.

From the first time I saw the commercials for the Borg Queen Obama Commemorative Plate (no, not that one) it has seemed to me that something was wrong with it.

Now I see that others have noticed the same thing.

The mole by his nose is on the wrong side of his face.

What good is a Fag Hole if you don't have a bunch of fags in it?

(Quick catchup for those of you late to the party -- I quit smoking 1/1/09.)

On the armrest of my titty-pink Escort is a little rectangular depression. I think it may be there to keep change for tolls in, but it's just the right size and shape for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

So, of COURSE I named it the Fag Hole. It has been the Fag Hole for eight years now. So my decision to quit smoking presented me with a dilemma -- what do I call the Fag Hole when it no longer functions as a Fag Hole?

Today, I'm eating yet another salad at the Country Cottage. With the salad comes twelve crackers, two to a package. But there's a problem. Crackers don't go with salad; crackers go with soup. I think it's in the Bible. You can look it up.

I still had four packages of crackers sitting on my dashboard from the LAST salad I ate there.

And OBVIOUSLY I couldn't just let the waitress throw the crackers away unused.

So I took them with me when we left.

When I got to the car, I tossed the crackers on the dashboard. They went everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. I'm pretty sure that if you looked in, say, the sands of Zanzibar or in Paula Poundstone's buttcrack, you'd find some of my crackers there. I gathered them all back up.

That was when I discovered that if I stood the crackers on their side and put them in crossways instead of lengthwise, there was just enough room for all ten packages in the Fag Hole.

And that, boys and girls, is the story of how the Fag Hole became the Cracker Hole.

This post may well give Al Gore a Gorgasm.

I finally gave in and picked up one of the big green (non-biodegradable, mind you) plastic bins for recycling from City Hall. It is bin number 666. Some people play Devil's Advocate; apparently, I play Devil's Recycler.

The instruction sheet they gave me reveals recycling to be a complicated and cryptic process. Instead of just listing ALL the materials they will pick up, the paper breaks them up into Several Groupings, and Each Grouping Is Numbered. It doesn't say anything about us having to seperate the materials. I guess whoever wrote the instructions just thought they Ought To Be Numbered.

I'm going to seperate them anyway, just in case. Besides, it will give me a way to get rid of more plastic grocery bags, which by the way Do Not Appear to be On The List.

You have to wash out glass and plastic containers, which begs the question -- which future would you impose on the planet - one with too much trash, or one without enough water? I wonder if it would wash them out good enough if I put them outside in the front yard until it rains.

Forget that; some things are too cheap and white trashy even for me.

So why, after decades of griping about granola-munching, caribou-loving tree-huggers, am I beginning to recycle NOW? Am I going to grow my hair long, wear beads, smell like pachouli, and insist that there are no absolutes, because I really really DIG Mother Earth, man?

Hell no. I don't give a flip about the planet. As long as it outlasts me, I'll be happy.

But what about our children, you ask?

"We" don't have any children. YOU might have a child or some childrens, but they are not "Our" children; they are yours. And whatever future you want to give them, the responsibility to pay for it lies in YOU, not in US.

Okay, we know what is NOT the reason, so what IS the reason?

Simple. It's the noblest motive of all -- to save me money. By burning the paper content, I've already reduced my trash from two bags a week to one bag every two weeks. That's cut my trash-bag costs by 75%. Chucking my tin cans, milk jugs, laundry detergent bottles, spaghetti sauce jars and the like into the recycle bin instead of the trash can may reduce my trash bag costs another 75% or maybe more.

But they're NOT getting my soda cans. Not as long as I can get paid to recycle them elsewhere.

What, you wanted 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'?

I knew I was out of shape . . .

. . . but I didn't know I was SO out of shape that the very existence of things called "shapes" was in question.

After all, I've been doing 10-pound curls (am put to 160 of 'em each arm) six mornings a week, and a regimen of 10 situps, 10 pushups, 10 leg lifts, and 10 windmills before bed every other night.

So when I came across a near-mint condition Weslo Momentum 610 for $35 at an otherwise dreadful yard sale yesterday, I thought I had a head start on getting fit.

I think the problem, other than the fact that it looks like the Terminator mated with an antelope, is that it's motion nudges you into going faster than you want.

I can't be on the thing more than five minutes at a time without my leg muscles revolting and feeling like they're being ripped apart William Wallace-style. It's not even long enough to get out of breath. And the rest of the day, my hamstrings are about 6 inches too short.

Too many years of WATCHING The Biggest Loser on TV (usually while eating a bag of chips) instead of trying to get myself fit. I call it Dieting Vicariously Through Television.

So to keep from getting frustrated and giving up entirely, I'm going to have to start small and increase the workout very slowly but steadily. And by "small" and "slowly" I mean "laughably small" and "absurdly slowly." I'm thinking I'll start off burning 10 fat calories a day and increasing that by 1 daily until I get to 10, when I may or may not up the increase to 5 a day.

Rise Of The Soapmaker!

Or, "Is That A Sliver Of Soap In Your Sock, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?"

My regular minions will remember I am constantly looking for ways to save money by reducing waste and finding new uses for used "disposable" items.

(On that note, did you know you can wash and hang-dry a paper towel an average of three times? But before I digress too far . . .)

With that in mind, slivers of soap have long vexxed me. I tried the Lisa Simpson Method -- smashing them together until they looked like a special effect from the movie Leviathan -- but they would never stick together long enough to wash oneself.

So I gathered up an old sock and put the soap pieces in it, tied up the end, then hung the thing on the shower caddy. My thinking there was to use the apparatus like one would a loofah or a bath scrubby. But it would never put out enough bubbles. Lawrence Welk would suffer an aneurysm waiting on bubbles from that thing. Plus, untying the knot every time I wanted to add a new sliver of soap was a pain in the ass.

Bored a couple of days ago, I found myself leafing through one of my mother's housewife magazines -- Woman's World.

There was a page on urawaza, the Japanese concept of secret tricks to save money, waste, or time.

One of the hints therein was "Turn soap pieces into new soap."

Basically, you throw the slivers into a saucepan, cover with water, and leave them to soak/soften overnight. You might want to crumble them up into really small pieces first (maybe a cheese grater?) or they'll likely turn out chunky and looking like novelty plastic vomit like my first effort.

The next morning, bring it to a boil and stir in two tablespoons of olive oil (I substituted canola oil.).

Pour the mixture into greased muffin tins and let them harden.

If the thought of putting into your saucepan something you have rubbed in your nether regions makes you go "Ewww!" you can pick up an old pan and muffin tins at a yard sale or flea market for, like, a quarter or 50 cents and use those only for soap recycling.

I made the equivalent of about four bars of soap this morning. I don't know if the boiling put more air bubbles in them or what, but they seem to have about double the volume than the size of the ingredients would suggest. (And no, that doesn't mean they shout really loudly.)

And the substance seems to be slipperier than white-market soap, perhaps because of the canola oil. But other than that, it seems pretty similar to normal soap.

I don't know how much money it saved me, when you factor in the water, canola oil, and the energy to boil it, but every cent saved is a cent Queen Borg Barack Obama's economy doesn't get. You also have to factor in the space the soap doesn't take up in your garbage anymore, so that's a plus. If I had a wood heating stove or radiator heater I could boil the concoction on, it would be almost costless.

Poll results show . . .

. . . that I shouldn't be eating any holiday meals at any of my readers' homes.

Nobody chose to throw away the snot-tainted filet mignon and start over. Ewww. :)

I'll come up with a new poll sometime.

Money for nothing, and the Honey Licorice Luden's are free.

Bought a pack of Luden's coughdrops yesterday. It cost 67 cents.

I had a 50-cent coupon.

They doubled it.

I got paid 33 cents to take a bag of cough drops off their hands.

Free money, huzzah!

Your reading assignment for the day . . .

. . . comes, surprisingly, from the tree-huggers at Mother Earth News.

Everything He Wants To Do Is Illegal.

It explores the perils of over-regulation. Even when those regulations are imposed by tree-huggers such as those at Mother Earth News.

Speaking of secrets . . .

. . . why has virtually all information on the Gooseneck Secret Lady been purged from the Internet?

I bet our government "disappeared" her.

I'm a whata?

The secret word of the day is: urawaza.

The Grey Market.

I sent a Tweet a few days ago that mentioned I was enjoying some grey-market chocolate-covered cordial cherries.

It occurs to me that people don't have a clue what I mean when I say "grey-market."

The grey market is a spectrum of shades between the White Market (New items, taxed fully, not on sale) and the Black Market (Stolen goods, drugs, designer counterfeits).

And it goes a little sump'n like this:

Off-white: seasonal items bought out of season (such as my cherries), items on sale/clearance, items bought with coupons.

Light Grey: damaged/expired, items bought at salvage and factory-return stores.

Actual Grey: yard sales, flea markets, classifieds, barter & freecycling.

Dark Grey: free samples & charity.

Near Black: dumpster diving, panhandling, welfare & foodstamps.

And the aforementioned Black & White Markets, of course.

Sleep as distraction.

It is 7:30 PM on a Saturday night, and where am I? In freakin' bed.

Why am I in bed? Because the longer I am up, the more tempted I am to make a little trip to the convenience store for some cigarettes. Even if I have the willpower to resist doing that, the damn fridge is calling me.

"Come," it tells me. "Partake of my lunchmeat. Indulge. Wouldn't one of my Ding-Dongs taste really good on your tastebuds right about now. Explore the many pleasures of my Red Velvet Bingle!"

Bastard siren machine.

The sad thing is, I know I'm not really hungry. I am bored and I don't know what to do with my hands and my mouth. It feels like they should be doing SOMEthing, but if not smoking a fag, then what? Answer: stuffing myself with food.

So I find myself in bed, away from the car keys and away from the fridge. This is Day 3. I am miserable.

Remind me, why am I doing this?

Thwack thwack thwack.

I went out to eat at the Country Cottage today. Out of habit, we sat in the smoking section. I hadn't had any cravings for a cigarette all morning, unless you count the first thing this morning when I had a "What is it I'm supposed to be doing right now?" moment, and the moment when I was gathering up my things to go out for lunch.

Cue flashback.

Keys? Check.

Cellphone? Check.

That seems to be everything, but my coat pocket is noticably empty. I must be forgetting something, but what?

Even seeing other people enjoying a post-meal smoke didn't bother me. The suck, the moment's pause (sometimes with eyes actually closed) as the nicotine rockets to the brain, the exhale of the afterglow-colored smoke. None of that bothered me.

The waitress brought my salad and refilled my tea. I began attacking the food with gusto. It was really good.

And then I heard it. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. The pounding of a new pack of cigarettes against the palm of the hand, to compress the tobacco for a smoother smoke.

I didn't do the packslap myself, but I had been around it enough when I was enjoying a smoke that a couple of synapses fired up and now all I could think of was how badly I wanted a Marlboro Green.

I tried to turn back to my salad to keep my mind off smoking, but now the taste wasn't all that great and the texture was all wrong.

I had the waitress bring me a bunch (and by "bunch" I mean "mountain") of bacon bits to fix the salad. Made it much better. So much for eating healthily.

Now I know why people gain weight when they quit smoking.

Facebook denies an account . . .

... because the person doesn't have the approved number of letters in his first name.

Raul's glowing endorsement of socialism.

Socialism doesn't suck, honest!

Socialism "has not been a failure" in Cuba, President Raul Castro said on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the revolution that brought now-ailing older brother Fidel to power.

Remember the old commercials . . .

... that said to do whatever it takes to keep your friends from driving drunk?

That's what this guy did.

And he got arrested for it.

Question.

When you factor in the leap seconds, was the Bush presidency longer than the Clinton one?

It's not what you know . . .

. . . it's who you're related to.

Anyone remember a quaint little concept called "merit"?

What's that, you say she's the best person for the job?

Yeah, right. And Roger Clinton got his pardon from his brother totally because he's such a good person now.

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.